Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

In this engaging episode, Simone and Malcolm dive deep into two fascinating studies. The first explores gender differences in the desire and value placed on romantic relationships, revealing that men have a stronger preference for romance compared to women. They discuss the potential reasons behind this disparity, including societal influences and state support systems. The second study examines how attractiveness influences the speaker fees of scientists in various fields. They find that while attractive social scientists command higher fees, natural scientists who are less attractive earn more for speaking engagements. The hosts also share personal anecdotes and reflections on trauma, societal norms, and the intersection of personal experiences with broader cultural themes. The episode wraps up with a light-hearted discussion about comments from their audience and the quirks of nerdy dating.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be discussing two very interesting studies.

Hmm. The first looks at how much men and women want and value romantic relationships showing that men. Have an overwhelming preference for romance and romantic relationships. We'll get into why that may be. And then in the second we're going to look at how attractiveness affects the speaker price of scientists within various fields.

The what? In some fields, the more attractive they are, the higher they're paid and within other fields, the less attractive they are, the higher they're paid.

Simone Collins: Oh, I have to guess this before we go into it. And guess in the comments. Don't cheat. Don't skip ahead. I wanna see if people get this right. Maybe like obscure scientific fields. I bet neuroscientists are really attractive. Just knowing what you've said about like people in the field and, and then also looking at like the people who work in the field.

And I'm gonna guess that you know what also [00:01:00] archeologists and biologists, I'm gonna say in general really good. I'm gonna say historians and artists who aren't commercial well, like fi, like super modern artists, probably better off looking.

Malcolm Collins: Well, let's see if you're right. All right. Okay, let's, but we're gonna, let's first start on relationships.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I'm, so, I think this is a really, so why I think this relationships thing is really important to explore, and I wanna just talk with you like in terms of what you think you would do as a man dating today, is that we can't solve the problem of tism so long as women. Really don't have that much drive to marry men.

And this is one of those uncomfortable issues where I do think that like both feminism and currently state support services kind of just really removed everything that used to make women be like, yeah, I'm probably better off. Well, I

Malcolm Collins: also think that the way women date causes them to form negative impressions of men and causes them to undervalue the types of relationships they might be able to get.

That's

Simone Collins: [00:02:00] fair. Yeah. Well, and, and overfocus on it. Like when I look at at least Progressive. Critiques of dating and relationships and social media. It's like, well, I don't wanna be a mother to another like guy. Like, like basically like if you take on a boyfriend or a husband, now you're, you're baby. But that's not I'm, I understand that,

Malcolm Collins: that that's what you perceive because you watch the Twitter people who are trying to make themselves look good, but the core problem women are having in terms of self-perception.

If, if you look at, let's say Tinder where there's a famous statistic that less than 1% of women are swiping right on the average looking guy, right? The vast majority are just swiping on a few guys. So this means that they are likely, even if they think they're in a monogamous relationship, sharing a partner.

And that partner is going to, when he knows that they are very easily replaceable as they are for the top attractiveness and earning men in our society treat them in such a way.

Simone Collins: That also explains a lot. 'cause I was, I was looking at some stats on my own on this front before we started and was really confused when the stats were reporting that [00:03:00] more women than men report themselves as being in relationships.

And I'm like, Hmm, how does that work? Because I'm looking at the US we're roughly, it's 50 50. Yeah. So happening

Malcolm Collins: is that women, and this is where you get this, I hate men thing. And I think that we as men can like be like, oh, well this is just, but. Some of these women, based on their experiences, may really have a reason to feel like every guy is cheating on them because they are.

No, because they kind of are. Yeah. They are not moderated. They, they are not dating women who are men who are actually in their league. Yeah. They are using their sexual league was their marriage market league. They're dating lazy.

Simone Collins: As we've

Malcolm Collins: talked. Yeah. Well also not considering that that lowers their value within the marriage Market league later further confusing them.

Right. But let's go into the statistics on this because there, there's other issues at play here as well. I mean, the other big one before I go into the statistics is that women to get most of the things that they used to get from a relationship from the state these days the core things women often got from a relationship was security.

Support somebody to help care for their kids. You know, there, there is no reason, for example [00:04:00] that 73% of black women today should be having kids out of wedlock. If you look historically when there wasn't as much state support, the black child rate out of wedlock in the 1960s was half. The white child rate out of wedlock, it was 5% to 10%.

And so this is something that is downstream of these support systems which create an alternative. As you've pointed out. Even if you're not talking about the ones who have kids you, you can get this protection by the state for women if you look at the people who actually like used shelters, for example, they are overwhelmingly women.

If you look at the people who are on welfare, I remember I was looking once and it was like a crazy number . No, it was, it was single mothers was the one who was eating it all up. Yeah. Oh,

Simone Collins: well, yeah, sure.

Malcolm Collins: But the, the point here being is that yeah. And find the real number on that 'cause that, that, that's gonna be interesting.

But the point here being is that. Women have sort of become nuns to the state and the urban monoculture, it's like if they just dedicate themselves to it fully, they can receive. And people can be like, well, what about sex? And, and again, you can just look at the statistics. While women might be into like weirder porn than men [00:05:00] on average as you can see by the monster aisle at most mainstream bookstores, the girl monster aisle.

God bless. Yeah, it's a thing. It's like that this girl F's monsters, like, that's a, that's a whole, not even one aisle. I would argue at most bookstores, it's like two to three aisles. If you're talking about a large bookstore, like if men flaunt a, a fetish like that I, I think that they'd be pretty heavily shamed.

I.

Simone Collins: So according to a Pew Research Center survey, 61% of women in the US reported having received at least one major federal entitlement benefit at some point in their lives compared to 49% of men. So more women, but not,

Malcolm Collins: no, no. Hold on. Which you're not checking is how many are currently receiving what bet men are on it?

Less. What percent of entitlements go to women versus men? Hmm.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Not what percent of women and men are on entitlements,

Simone Collins: on, on joint returns, women accounted for only 19% of combined a GI and men paid 82% of the taxes. That's a a, a [00:06:00] adjusted gross income is a GI. So, so

Malcolm Collins: wait, women only paid what percent in taxes?

Simone Collins: 24%. Really? That's wild. Yeah. But that, that was that was in 1979.

So a lot has changed. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm still gonna here. I would've

Malcolm Collins: to surprise if it hadn't moved, maybe in the opposite direction. I

Simone Collins: mean, maybe. And so when I asked what percent of entitlements go to women compared to men, it says women receive a higher share of entitlement benefits compared to men in the United States overall.

Receipt of entitlement, 61% of women. Have received at least one major ENT development. It's not the answer. That's the same one I know, but that's what perplexity ISS telling me. And

Malcolm Collins: this is why, I remember when I looked at this, I found that crazy high number and I was really surprised. And the way I got that crazy high number was looking at the percent of entitlements who were going to single mothers.

Which is what allowed me to calculate the number.

All right. I found an answer here. A 2019 Urban Institute study found that around 65% of welfare, , money goes to women, and about 35% of welfare money goes to men. So women get [00:07:00] about double the amount that men get.

Malcolm Collins: and, and a

Simone Collins: list women, I think the, the big thing is that women know they can fall back on the state. I think men. Can be far less confident of that being the case. Absolutely. Yeah. Also, men, women are more able to legally fall back on men. So a man can't, for example expect that if he ends up a father, he can just.

Garnish the wages of the female partner, right? A woman. I mean, it's very

Malcolm Collins: much the,

Speaker 2: How could you make my son miss an entire semester of school? I mean, it's not like he's a hot girl. He can't just bail on his life and set up shop in someone else's.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So to, to keep going here. Men strive more for romantic relationships. 61% of single men versus 38% of single women reported looking for romantic relationships.

In a recent US study this study was romantic relationships matter or more to men than women. Very on the nose naming there 48% of men versus 28% of women had [00:08:00] experienced love at first sight, a study of 100,000 US adults. Wow. 48% of men versus 28% of women. Wow. That is wild. Did you experience love on first sight?

Simone Collins: Yeah. I

Malcolm Collins: did. You always told me that, but I, I thought it was more my profile that was the love at first sight thing than my looks.

Simone Collins: And it was, it was your looks. And that's even documented in my diary, you know? That's true. I, you're just, oh, my type, you're so hot. And you're, you get hotter. It's so crazy.

Like when I think back at you then I'm like, no, I was not as hot back then. You were at least. At least twice, possibly three times as hot now as you were before. And I was actually just like, on the truth, like truth. On, on the subject of, of you being soy,

Malcolm Collins: This is a, an obsession my wife has built up from replying to comments on this subject. So I ended up moving it to the end, , because I don't think it's relevant to this particular topic.

Yeah. So, but anyway, yeah,

Simone Collins: love, love at first sight. I certainly experienced it, but yeah, I mean, I mean I think it's important to also note though, anecdotally, you know, all this, [00:09:00] all this really resonates with me because where did we come into this, right?

Our first date, you're sitting across from me saying, I'm looking for a wife. I'm not looking to date, and I'm sitting across from you saying I'm looking. Only to date, and I'm gonna live alone forever. Like we had very clear needs and desires and plans, and mine had nothing to do with long-term commitment to a man.

And I think that's the thing is, is the BATNA the best alternative to a negotiated agreement for women. Is to be alone in many cases, especially when contextualized with mainstream society because the benefits of being with a husband are not communicated anywhere.

Malcolm Collins: Anywhere. It's funny that you mention all this because you know, the people I was dating before, you also like where I was finding people.

'cause you're like, what would I be doing in the modern context? Yeah. You look at the one who was our, like groomsman at, at the wedding, the woman but she was on my side because she was a woman, right? Mm-hmm. So what would you call that? A female groomsman anyway grooms. Very cool, very successful, very accomplished.

Yeah. But I met her at the school's [00:10:00] anime screenings Damn street. You know that that is where I was looking for wives, right. Like back then. Mm-hmm. And I, and I understand that things have changed, but, you know, finding people was in these, I, I was trolling for nerds. Like I was only going into places where I was gonna find nerds because I knew I had a disproportionate advantage when I would email people.

I, but I think

Simone Collins: you also wanted smart. Women who would intellectually, well, no, I mean,

Malcolm Collins: by signaling nerdy interests and attitudes and the way you dress and everything like that, you, you signal a, a perspective of your values and your environment. And it wasn't a perfect coalition was mine, but it was something that could be evolved into that over the course of, you know, the, what, 15 years we've been together you know, so.

I think that that works maybe more when you're younger. And that these are Yeah, no, it's not like don't exist anymore.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Unless you're a Anna Vains and moving in your trans community of people who refuse to grow up. 'Cause she seemed to have some anime group that she hung out with a lot.

Malcolm Collins: But I bet you could go to that group and find [00:11:00] interesting girls who are tired of the bs. Like, you know, they're

Simone Collins: actually, yes. I mean, well there are adult anime groups then, but. And you know, actually no. I, I think if, when, when I'm thinking of anime conventions, modern anime conventions, there are plenty of single, men and women in their twenties and thirties?

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, the key was an environment like that is one, they're gonna be much more woke. So you've got to be careful about how you approach things. And, and two you're, you're in an environment where some people, like if you go to the anime like chain or the chain of like, things were like.

Ren fairs are happening, and I've read a lot of things by, like, Ren Fair Workers is there's like these basically like orgy parties that they do at both. And you want to avoid that crowd.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You, you want to find the, the chaste individual within the nerdy environment which is a very good vetting mechanism.

Simone Collins: Mm. Yeah. And they're there, they're always there. At least in my experience,

Malcolm Collins: men report falling [00:12:00] in love three times on average versus women's two times on average. So what men are,

Simone Collins: that's really interesting. What's

Malcolm Collins: going

Simone Collins: on there?

Malcolm Collins: Well, look, they're, they're, they're not only, only having love at for sight and almost double the rate, but they fall in love.

Yeah. But they're also falling

Simone Collins: in love more. And this is so not the stereotype, you know, the stereotype is the women so romantic, you know, always all, you know, mooning over someone. When it's apparently the opposite. What it, but really though what's going on?

Malcolm Collins: 70% of couples agreed that the male partner said, I love you first.

Ah, that's also so not the stereotype. Well, it's sort of like a proposal, right? Like I think men are exp I always thought that men were expected to say it first.

Simone Collins: You said it first to me, but you said it. I think I might love you manipulating you. I think I might love you. No, no, no. You, you, you, the, the, the actual statement that you shared was, you know, a little, a little couch.

But it was very cute. It was very, I was like, Hmm. You know, yeah. It's so sweet. I didn't need to say anything. 'cause you already knew. I was like [00:13:00] madly annoying. I was enthralled. Yeah. It didn't matter.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, it, when people can watch our videos about, like, my wife is less in love with me now and I like, you may think I'm hotter now, but you're less like.

Pathologically obsessed with me. You were like full on yore in our early relationship. And, but

Simone Collins: I know. Yeah, but I didn't, do I do way more things for you now? No. You, I love way more now. We're committed to you now. I, I am more content with you now.

Malcolm Collins: But you've also pointed out that because I've raised your status so much our relative status differences, like do genuinely require me stepping up more than I did in our early relationship.

Simone Collins: That's true. Yeah. The auntie has been. Has been upped,

Malcolm Collins: And you're like this is the way things are. Like, life isn't fair, right? Mm-hmm. And, and you're definitely holding up your end of the bargain. More like you being pregnant with kid number five while being sick, while handling all this, like, it's just so intense what you're doing.

You know, we had in, what was NHK, the Japanese Filmers here yesterday. I'm surprised nobody noticed in the comments that there were no, two

Simone Collins: people did. Two people noticed.

Malcolm Collins: In the, in the Antinatalism episode. Yeah. One of my [00:14:00] favorite episodes. People never watch our favorite episodes. I'm like, I'm like, I spend so much time.

I really, it

Simone Collins: had a lot of comments when I went in and checked in on that. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Men said, I love you an average of 42 days earlier than women, because they don't just say, I love you first. Damn. That's leaving somebody hanging right there 42 days earlier. That is not okay. That's like just manipulative in my perspective.

If you don't, if you're not interested in a long-term relationship, just be like, I don't feel that way about you don't like, they just end

Simone Collins: it because you're wasting their time. It's really cruel to waste someone's time like that. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Don't, don't, this is even worse. It appears that they know, they plan to say it eventually, but they just wanna establish their power in the relationship.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that's, that's really uncool this female tendency to. Act cool. And by, by that I mean have like literally a, a sort of chili ice cream reaction to not be impressed by anything they do. And they're like, oh, I love this restaurant. Oh, you didn't actually get that good at reviews, whatever, right? Just what is that?

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Right.

Simone Collins: It doesn't make you look good

Malcolm Collins: at all. No, I agree. [00:15:00] I agree. This whole like poo-pooing whatever, like, oh, not that great. Mm-hmm. What I've also just talked about, like, the reason why a lot of men get in bad situations within this current dating market is they have no idea what the average woman looks like.

They, they basically, like I have heard that you are mid from like our channel or like lower mm-hmm. And I'm like, you need to stop comparing my wife. To other well-known YouTubers, you watch and go to an airport,

Simone Collins: internet mid like an IRL, like higher because I'm not obese, but like we in, in an age of filters and cosmetic procedures.

And also I. In an age agent, which obviously like the most attractive people are between 21 and 23. I'm, I'm, I have to be. No,

Malcolm Collins: no, no. Yeah. But what I'm saying is it helps men to reset their actual expectations. Oh. You, I've seen some of our

Simone Collins: colleagues, like, how are you going to end up in a, well, I

Malcolm Collins: can't find a hot woman in the US who wants me, so I'm gonna go to like Latin America and look for a woman.

And I'm like, this isn't gonna work for you. Like, you, you, you, well, I mean, it's are way too high on attractiveness. We've

Simone Collins: been talking about that. Right? Like there, there are some people who are now [00:16:00] like. Some people's approach to modern dating is, okay, I'm just gonna be a passport, bro. I'm just gonna find my, my tie, or Eastern European.

Tra wife who's gonna be younger, who's gonna be very attractive, who yes, also is gonna be smart, but like she can

Malcolm Collins: be done. But like, keep in mind the effects that that's gonna have on like, you know, this

Simone Collins: I, you're not taking into account the hedonic treadmill as well, which we've seen play out in plenty of these types of relationships.

They're just normalizes

Malcolm Collins: your life in the US and just so like.

Simone Collins: I, I get that. Like this is, this is one approach. Okay, you can do this, and then you just drop her when she gets old. You could just Leo, Leo DiCaprio it. Right. Just keep going and just like strong prenup or like marry in a homestead state, like whatever it is that you need.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But these are also the types of people who are more likely to like poison you if they think you're gonna pull that off. Like, I mean, yeah. You've taken them from their support network. You've put them in an incredibly vulnerable position. Yeah. You've had their backs against the wall,

Simone Collins: Yeah, we're fortunate that the people we know who have done this on basis has not

Malcolm Collins: died.

Awkward being here. .

Speaker 5: What's wrong, [00:17:00] Carl?

Speaker 8: Well, for starters, she is barricading herself inside my house and every time I knock, she screams at me in this like language, it's like some demon yelling at me or something.

Malcolm Collins: But no, the point I was making about like, go to an airport and actually look around and discount anybody who is significantly younger than you in age, because they're just gonna look hotter no matter what. And then sort of try to build a normal, I might have an do that also,

Simone Collins: like I think, I don't, like do you want a child like you're, you're, you're, you're basically.

Marrying a child, meaning you also have to take care of it and deal with, you mean if you're marrying a younger

Malcolm Collins: person? Yeah,

Simone Collins: that's true. Yeah. Like when I, and I know like there are other, there are downsides too to marrying someone who's set in their ways, like waiting too long is also difficult because then they're gonna have, like, they're gonna be a lot less flexible and willing to grow with you.

And that also is a problem. But like this solution of just, oh, I'll marry a child, like. Okay, well then this is one reason why we didn't like, we, we thought for a while. 'cause a lot of our, our friends were like, oh, you should get [00:18:00] no pair. Like it's, it's a great, it's a great thing, you know, cultural exchange.

They watch your kids, young women are

Malcolm Collins: terrible these days.

Simone Collins: But then, yeah, but then like we have to like. Now we have, you know, not four children at home, but five. And we have to, you know, feed them and pay attention to them and, and help them through their homesickness and, you know, take them out on outings and like, no, you know, it's busy.

We want a partner, we want someone to help us, you know, and we wanna help them, but not. So

Malcolm Collins: when you're actually seeing this in the statistics here, because I think one of the things that people aren't thinking about when they're doing the password growth thing is you are very likely not gonna be able to have as in-depth into intellectual conversations with this individual as somebody who has a cultural similarities to you.

Simone Collins: Fair? Yeah. Even, even if it's just the cultural differences. So let's say that they're equally educated, they're equally likely, no

Malcolm Collins: language difference. Mm-hmm. Know anything. Yeah. Just due to cultural framing differences, you're gonna have a harder time. Yeah. And we see this in the data. 49% of men versus 20% of women claim their Repa romantic partner with their primary Confidant US study.

Mm-hmm. Wild. Right? 40% of men to 20% of women. Wow. So [00:19:00] 49%, sorry. Almost 50% of men considered their, their wives, their yikes. Or their partners, sorry, not even their wives. You are my primary confident. I, I think it's a big problem that women consider people other than the men their primary confident. I, I'd say that's a huge warning flag for a relationship.

If the woman considers anyone other than their husband to be their primary, I just don't

Simone Collins: really see it as a marriage if, if you're not actually integrating your life with someone intellectually. Yeah. I mean also professionally, I, I, I just, and, and, and professionally can mean. That maybe one person maintains the household and the family's finances and like, just like backend admin for the family business or for, you know, the partner who works.

Like, I could still, I still see that as a professional arrangement, but like separate jobs, separate careers, separate friends. Like this is. Yeah. What that is, just fill

Malcolm Collins: her out. If she is experiencing problems with the relationship and the first person she goes to isn't her partner, but somebody else,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: That somebody else can often have a vested interest, especially if they're a PE female partner with, you know, the degree of intersexual competition to drive the relationship apart. And we repeatedly see this in [00:20:00] the, the women who do something ridiculous and then go to their like. Friend signal threat or whatever, and, and they're affirmed for doing the thing that anyone would know is ridiculous because the other women are just, you know, either they're just insane or they're trying to tear them down.

Simone Collins: Right? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And then men show stronger associations between relationship status and mental slash physical health outcomes. So it helps you more in mental and physical health.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, so what the leftists that I follow on YouTube would say is that that is because women take on. And uncompensated and un un unreturned, unrequited burden of providing mental, I think you support and physical care. I mean,

Malcolm Collins: even if we pretend like you do as much as like I do as much as you do, it's obviously not true.

Simone Collins: Well, when it comes to, when it comes to physical care, I 100% do more, but that's, that's because it's. Kind of what women specialize in.

So yeah, like, I'm making you your meals, I'm doing the laundry. I am, you know, doling out medicine when people are sick. And, but, and, and I think that's, it's, so it's, it's [00:21:00] to me obvious that men would be physically better off with women caring for them. But that's, that is another reason why women are like, okay, so now I'm not caring just for myself.

I'm caring for my, my partner and any kids that we have like. I mean, they'll happily take that on if it comes to it and they'll find it satisfying, you know, I mean, assuming it's a relationship.

Malcolm Collins: No, and I mean, I think it is a raw deal that women get even, even in Yeah. You know, fairly I mean, people might consider a relationship conservative progress.

We we're called like anti egalitarian all the time by leftist media, whatever. Even though we run our companies together, we do our podcast together, we, you know, do work together, whatever. Men are less likely to initiate breakups. Women initiate 70% of divorces. Women also initiate breakups more often in non-marital relationships.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. This

Malcolm Collins: is just mm-hmm. And,

Simone Collins: and men are more likely to get into a subsequent relationship more quickly.

Malcolm Collins: Uhhuh. Well, and here you see men suffer more from relationship dissolution. 40% of men versus 20% of women report frequent loneliness [00:22:00] during divorce year. Men's mortality risk increased by 27% after a spouse's death versus women's by 15% increase.

Well, and again,

Simone Collins: but also it is not just that women basically then the women, I think. Often re receive a little bit of a hedonic bump after ending a relationship because there are fewer. Logistical burden on their lives, but beyond that, they have better support networks just period.

Malcolm Collins: Right. If they're, if they're primary confidant, whether they're husband, then you immediately have somebody you can go to, right?

Yeah. A hundred percent.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And

Malcolm Collins: with 50% of men having their wife with their primary confident o obviously, or partners, their primary confident, that's, that's gonna be an issue.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I, I'd also note here that there's this perception that like men are this sort of the abusive gender in relationships and they don't value women as much, but here you're seeing this giant increased mortality risk in men you don't see in women after a divorce.

This giant increase in lonelier. Literally twice what women experience. And so I think what we're seeing there is that that's just a, a false narrative. And, and people keep pointing to this study that was withdrawn about men leaving their partners when they had a, a major injury or illness.

[00:23:00] Mm-hmm. And then the guy who released it withdrew it and said, I did the mass wrong. It's not, not accurate. So what we actually see here is we, there are so

Simone Collins: many high, it's weird. There are many high profile examples of famous men. Who like left their wife as she was going through cancer. Like one of them is Brian Johnson.

He was accused of that. And then there's some other guys who. Policy stuff. Criticized There was the, the

Malcolm Collins: Democratic Dean Howard Dean.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Howard Dean, that's right. Yeah. So what's up with that? There was a

Malcolm Collins: famous actor, the the director guy who divorced his wife via facts and then like married a, a name or something.

Oh no, a stepchild. I have to find out who that is.

So the Phil Collins one was the divorcing his wife via facts, although he denies that that's what's happened. And the marrying the stepchild. One was Woody Allen. , And they make it clear that she was only technically a stepchild and that, uh, Woody Allen had began a relationship with her mother, and this was the adopted daughter of that mother, although he never fully married the mother, [00:24:00] even though he dated her for over 10 years.

And then he started dating her adopted daughter when she hit. 20.

Malcolm Collins: But you know, no, I think that what this is, is all of those men are far leftists oh. And I think if you adapt to the urban monoculture as a man, you're gonna treat your wife significantly worse than you don from what I've seen.

Simone Collins: Why?

Malcolm Collins: I, I think because you don't really have a set of rules for how women are supposed to be treated and you don't have a true moral center.

Mm-hmm. So it's like, I wanna feel good, therefore we're gonna be polyamorous. I want feel good. Therefore, you know, this, there isn't really a, oh well, she'll be better off anyway there, there's always a way to justify your decisions within, in the urban monoculture. Oh yeah, yeah. Or like,

Simone Collins: yeah, we, we've never really been integrated anyway.

She doesn't depend on me, I guess. Yeah, there's more, maybe there's more separation as well. Like we were never commingled, we always had a prenup. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: 19% of men versus 11% of women report never having emotional support. So way more men than women, almost double. The rate of men have never gotten emotional support from their spouse.

Despite what the feminist will tell you, that's men were [00:25:00] six times more likely than widow women to begin new relationships after becoming widowed or divorce. So women were, sorry. Women were six, six times more likely. So it's not like a little bit more likely. It's six times more likely. In the paper they argued for this.

I don't really buy a lot of these arguments. Men are socialized to avoid showing vulnerability. Of course, they've gotta be like, they're socialized, and it's like, then why are the worse men, the democratic men, why are the worse men, the urban monoculture men, right? Like, why is it that the better husbands seem to come from these more traditionalist cultures?

You know, and the the answer is, is because this is just wrong. Right. Like showing vulnerability can often be used to manipulate other people. I mean, that's the beginning of emotional blackmail.

Simone Collins: Well, and I also think that 'cause I was looking at different argumentative styles between men and women.

And women are way more likely to use emotional appeals, but I think that's because it's, it's manipulative.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. This limits men's ability to seek, receive emotional support from friends and family. Consequently, men become more dependent on romantic partners for intimacy and emotional needs.

Women maintain broader [00:26:00] support networks beyond romantic relationships. I. I just disagree with this. This to me sounds more like the women having broader friendship networks seems to be a more modern thing. It doesn't appear intrinsic to women or anything like that. It doesn't appear downstream of vulnerability.

It appears to be a tactic that the Erwin Monoculture uses to pull people outta their families. Right. Because incredibly effective to create these all female social networks where people go for validation and that can enforce alternate cultural norms in the one the family is adopting.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Would you say you have more female friends or male friends?

Simone Collins: God, I don't know. I mean, how do we even define friends anymore? Male, probably in terms of people that we,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. I don't know.

Simone Collins: I love, I don't, I don't see gender, Malcolm

Malcolm Collins: people live different genders, like can't be friends. I love that there's this perception and I'm like, that is so not true for married people.

Like, after marriage, it becomes a lot easier to be close friends with somebody if, if I. Of you, [00:27:00] even if like one person is single. And, and I think that this can cause sometimes unnecessary friction where people have too much phobia around this,

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Where they're like, you're not allowed to, or I'm really, and I think they need to be mutual

Malcolm Collins: friends.

Like, like for me, I actually feel safer with you having a majority of male friends than a majority of female friends. And people can be like, why would you Oh, because you

Simone Collins: think they'd like poison you against me? I might, I don't know. I mean, I'm thinking about the people that I chat with regularly, the most, like text with.

It's true. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Your long-term calls was like really childhood friends as more female, but like, but no, no,

Simone Collins: no. Even, even new friends, like who do I text regularly? I, I text Diana Fleischman about her book I text with the brilliant mother who I constantly talk about. And I, I text with. Like honestly, other people who are female know that I think about it, but like, they're the ones who chat more.

Malcolm Collins: Do they, do they ever try to drive wedges in your relationship or

Simone Collins: No? Never. No.

Malcolm Collins: That's why you need the female. Okay. The discussions, maybe it, 'cause they're

Simone Collins: all a little bit on the. Spectrum or like [00:28:00] different neural neur, but like, well,

Malcolm Collins: maybe your, your wife

Simone Collins: to be, our conversations are so tactical, it's like, here's this study, or here's this method, or here's this piece of information.

Malcolm Collins: So, so the answer is, is you need your wife to interact with women who have lots of kids and are in healthy relationships.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yes. All of these women are, if not married, no, they're all married. Okay. Huh.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Interesting.

Malcolm Collins: All right. Well now we're gonna get to the big mystery that I asked you at the beginning.

This one is called Yes. Oh my goodness. Key points from beauty premium for social scientists, but unat attractiveness, premium for natural scientists. This in the opposite of what you think and so I was wrong here. How attractiveness affects social scientists value in public speaking while having the opposite effect.

On social versus natural scientists. Oh my god. Social scientists benefit from being attractive while natural scientists actually benefit from being less attractive. Sample methodology, 739 [00:29:00] public speakers from eight North American speaker agencies 217, full-time academics, 551 part-time academics, 366.

Non-academics facial features on a scale of one to 10, using geometric facial analysis, speaking fees used as a proxy for quote unquote market value.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I love that they're using market value as a term in this. This, I love it.

Simone Collins: Yes. This is a wonderful study of applause to it. Whoever did this. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Four, four key findings with supporting statistics.

Facial attractiveness has no correlation with academic achievement. So this is the first one here, which is really interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Generally, historically, what, what, what they found is that people who are more attractive are typically more competent. Yeah. It might just be that there's an alternate pressure to like, leave academia if you're more attractive and go into another field.

Simone Collins: Fair.

Malcolm Collins: Because attractiveness is correlated with intelligence. Overall. Yeah, but also

Simone Collins: attractiveness is indeed correlated with things like higher salaries and stuff, so, yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like I, I might be an academic if I was less attractive, for example. Mm-hmm. I was definitely going down that path.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Attractiveness affects external visibility only where physical appearance matters. Significantly [00:30:00] positive effects on TED Talk invitations Google webpage mentions NY time bestseller list. And, and so the Google webpage mentions 20% per attractiveness point and on the NY time bestseller list, plus one week per attractiveness point.

That is wild. No significant effects on book publications or book awards where appearance is less visible. Opposite beauty premiums by field in speaking fees. Natural scientists, unat attractiveness premium significant negative effect with a p value of 0.011 a 19% increase in speaker fees. So oh no, for each one point decrease in attractiveness.

Simone Collins: Whoa, what?

Malcolm Collins: So

Simone Collins: it's huge. So the more misshapen you are, the more cachet you have as a potential speaker. They're like, oh yeah, they look really messed up. Let's have them talk to us about. Bio biology natural like geology. What, what are we talking Natural, I mean, well

Malcolm Collins: think about like Stephen Hawking [00:31:00] or like a, you know, Einstein or something.

Like, the archetype we have is somebody who is not traditionally attractive, even though Stephen Hawking was originally quite attractive.

Simone Collins: Yeah. The, and, well, this, this, what's so weird to me is like, I remember in the halls of academia, like when we were talking with or just hanging out with people at different departments like.

I remember the geology people very attractive, but like party animals, like very rugged party animals, like get dehydrated digging all day and then just get, and same with archeologists and then. I don't know. You said like neuroscientists were often just like, yeah, every neuroscientists

Malcolm Collins: being fairly attractive, but maybe that's wrong from this.

Now if we go further here social scientist, beauty premium in business fields, you have a really big one that makes sense. Yeah. In effect 0.034. Well, in the other social scientists, you have a, a highly but not enormous of 0.364.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: [00:32:00] So. I think about

Simone Collins: Diana Fleischman, you know, she is very attractive and she's in the social sciences, right?

And like she is a more public facing kind of person.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, sorry, I, I gave the wrong number there. It was B 0.204, P 0.0 3, 4 4 business fields. And then for others, plaintiffs it was B 0.364, and p less than 0.001. So this would mean it's. I guess bigger in the other social sciences I spoke wrong. Non-academic speakers with science backgrounds show the same pattern.

Natural science background unat attractiveness, premium social science, business beauty, premium social science, others beauty, premium key insight, stereotypes, drive market value. These findings suggest that public stereotypes about nerdy or geeky natural scientists create a market where less attractive natural scientists are perceived as more credible, competent.

Well, social scientists benefit from conventional beauty premiums. Yeah. Appearance versus substance. Despite no correlation between attractiveness and actual academic performance there is, by the way, there just isn't within academia. The, the speaking market rewards different appearances for [00:33:00] different fields indicating that public perception, not academic quality, drives these premiums.

The ugly Einstein effect. The paper references the cultural Cartesian dualism where people believe you can either be physically attractive or intellectually brilliant, but not both. Particularly for natural scientists. And this is a phenomenon that you and I have taken advantage of before. Remember the study on glasses and hair links gonna go into that?

Simone Collins: Yeah. That in general, people with shorter hair. And people who are wearing glasses are seen as less attractive, less approachable, but more intelligent and more competent, and both men and women one without glasses, but two with like long hair that's down are seen as more attractive and more approachable.

So I guess like the Jesus hair or the Fabio look for are, are but they're also seen as less, less intelligent and competent. It's funny,

Malcolm Collins: I do de, I definitely don't see men with long hair as approachable. I always think that they, they're gonna be a creep.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But then again, I, you know, you have the Fabio [00:34:00] thing.

Like, how did that happen? Because I, I never thought that, well, I

Malcolm Collins: think that this might be urban monoculture brain people because it's being collected from students and stuff. Maybe I

Simone Collins: see. I just perceived it as this subconscious association with feminine traits and beauty, regardless of the person's actual gender.

It's like, oh, if it looks more like a woman. It's gonna be prettier and dumber. And if it looks more like a man, I don't this, it's gonna be smarter,

Malcolm Collins: I think. I think it's about urban monocultural, social norms, the long hair maybe. Maybe. And the glasses I don't think are about urban monocultural norms. I think everybody generally assumes people with glasses are competent, but less approachable.

I mean, you don't really need your glasses that much, but you still wear them based on this. No, I don't. When you first read these studies, I do think that people, men and and, and women view women with shorter hair as more competent which is why you cut your hair after that study. You used to have super long hair, like hippie hair.

And then after Brian Johnson,

Simone Collins: Brian Kaplan,

Malcolm Collins: Brian Kaplan came on our podcast and was like, Hey, for your audience, you should probably grow out your hair. And now you, you've grown out [00:35:00] your hair.

Simone Collins: No regrets.

Malcolm Collins: You tell me how much you hated your longer hair. When you had short hair, because it was so easy to maintain.

Oh. How did that change? Hair

Simone Collins: is so easy to maintain. It is, it is.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, do you wanna go to wigs?

Simone Collins: Ew, no. Yeah, that's, I mean, not, not ew to wigs, whatever you do, but like, I don't, I don't wanna do wigs. And I, I'm, I'm fine with my hair the way it is.

Malcolm Collins: I love eating Dec Simone. I am very excited for dinner tonight.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I'm gonna make you your

Malcolm Collins: desk door. So we're doing mac and cheese.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Delivered to your room, right?

Malcolm Collins: I mean,

Simone Collins: don't come down rest. Okay. I've got the kids. It's fine. I'll get the

Malcolm Collins: kids at eight. Okay.

Simone Collins: That'd be great. That'd be wonderful.

Malcolm Collins: And I'll just lay down and, and go to sleep. And yeah, extra cheese.

Simone Collins: Well, I mean, if you're gonna sleep the whole time, should I not interrupt you then?

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. Wake me up to eat. I mean, I should.

Simone Collins: Okay. Okay, then I'll, I'll, yeah, I'll just, [00:36:00] I'll, I'll just drop food by, and if you're asleep, I won't wake you up. And then you'll just wake up and there will be mac and cheese. Yeah, because I,

Malcolm Collins: I wake up very frequently when I have this flu.

It's like 20 minutes, and then I wake up in a puddle, and then 20 minutes, and I wake up in a puddle of sweat, and then the sweat puddle of sweat, and I move. And then by the end of the night, the whole bed is just soaked.

Simone Collins: You're gonna yell, you're gonna have like two more nights of this. And then when you're with the kids on one of the weekend sessions this weekend, I will just wash your sheets real quick.

Does that sound good? Yeah. Because I know it's so stinky. It's so gross. I know. I hated that. I'm sorry.

Malcolm Collins: I just feel like a rite of passage, you know? No need to contextualize things as negative. It's a different experience of what it feels like to be alive. Yeah. Well that's why I just, I, I

Simone Collins: constantly think of this, this one part.

It was like this random, like one off. Mention in one of Ian Banks' culture series books where like the, one of the main characters is Hitch Hitching a ride on a spaceship and meets someone who is, is exhibiting strange behavior because this isn't a post singularity sci-fi world where no one gets sick anymore.

But [00:37:00] on this particular ship, the human passengers had decided to. Take turns getting a virus. Because they heard that that used to happen to people back in the day and they would feel comparatively so awesome after that. It was like worth trying. And now whenever I'm sick, I, I try to pretend that I'm one of those people.

Malcolm Collins: I don't even, I don't even think you need to focus on the after. So I have a flu right now, right? Mm-hmm. Like, and I can contextualize this, and we always talk about you contextualize what you feel, right? Like, I can contextualize this flu as like really negative because it causes discomfort and pain in some areas of my body,

Simone Collins: but

Malcolm Collins: it also causes, interesting sensations I don't normally feel. Yeah. Like a chill in my teeth, which is a very interesting thing to focus on. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Also get to feel that.

Malcolm Collins: I, I find this particularly interesting because it's one of the only times in your life you really get to feel the nerves in your teeth, except when you're in immeasurable pain due to like a dentist or a disease or something like that. So it's interesting to meditate on a couple other things that I recognized after this was I.

[00:38:00] One, , I feel almost no arousal when I'm at this level of illness, , which is very interesting and often no desire to do some other things that I often do, like play video games. The entire time I've been ill, I have had no interest in playing video games, and I'm sure this is like evolutionary, so I don't spread this to other members of the tribe, and I don't go out and try to fight a war when I'm super sick or at least don't like, get excited about it.

But like is there not great utility in having a period of my life where I can sort of explore the world through the perspective of somebody who doesn't like video games or feels arousal?

, And, . Another one is that because I'm like waking up all the time and I'm having these fever dreams, it caused me to ask a question that I'd never asked before, which is why are dreams so disrupted by something as pretty much insignificant as a fever? And it really got me meditating on the concept , of dreams and sleep.

And Simone also asked, why does the sweat from a fever smell so bad? And I was pointing out to her, well, that's probably evolutionary as well, to tell other members of your tribe that you have an illness and to not come near you, or at least to be able to detect that in other individuals. Maybe it's not an [00:39:00] active signal.

and it also you know, gets a different experience of what sleep is like. I get to experience fever dreams which are unique, if not, you know, entirely pleasant in a traditional sense.

And I can sample this new, this new way of being human. But I think more than all of that whenever I have a flu, my mental state is quite differentiated from my mental state. When I don't have a fluid, it's, it's probably as different. As being drunk versus not being drunk. Not, not in the same direction, but it is definitely an alternate mental state where I approach things much more slowly deliberately and methodically.

And that can be an interesting time to think about things. You know, I've written some really interesting things when I had a flu so I'm not, you know,

Simone Collins: even go out of your way to orchestrate uncomfortable. And slightly compromised mental states because it does help you like avoid distraction.

Like you'll wake up at 2:00 AM in the morning because you know. Yeah. So like you're, you're only half awake. Your brain is desperately trying to get you. Yeah. This is

Malcolm Collins: something I seek out because the different differential mental states allow me to produce [00:40:00] differential work within different domains.

Yeah. And, and sort of hunting for these and a flu is one of them, you know, and I think that this, this is the thing, like I. You get to choose whether you experience life negatively. You get to Adam's family, it your contextualization of your emotional and physical state is always a choice at the end of the day.

Mm-hmm. And we've talked about this. We, we actually saw a new study on this recently about trauma. And again it's more perception of trauma in youth than actual trauma in youth that correlates with mental problems as an adult. Yeah. Well, specifically

Simone Collins: like this was, this was a, a Spencer Greenberg team follow on.

To CD, C reports that something like, I think 63% of people who reported experiencing adverse childhood trauma or events basically childhood trauma also reported depression and anxiety. However, when they did more digging on this subject. They found that experiencing these things only explains like 10% of it, something, something along those lines.

You can read it yourself. Mm-hmm. Go to [00:41:00] the clearer thinking this with like it, I think their blog and what they didn't dig into, which we've seen in other stories, studies like this one Nordic study is that when you look at people who report. Adverse effects or, or events in their childhood, they're yes, absolutely much more likely to report anxiety and depression.

But when you look at what's actually documented in court cases, we're like, okay, this person clearly experienced real trauma that is documented. And we know, 'cause you know, like the legal system got involved. If they didn't actually report it, they, they also were not very likely to report having problems in the moment.

So that's why we've sort of come to this conclusion that a lot of it

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, it was, it was that the people who. Did experience verifiable trauma as a child, but didn't remember it as an adult. Did not have negative or did not contextualize it. It wasn't, it wasn't,

Simone Collins: didn't remember it, it was just didn't report.

Having it

Malcolm Collins: di didn't, didn't contextualize it. Traumatically.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and, and it's the same, the opposite direction. People who didn't experience gender gen, genuine trauma as a kid but [00:42:00] contextualized normal parent stuff as trauma ended up having all these negative outcomes. Yeah. And this is something that is.

You know, so one super important from a mental health perspective to understand that trauma is something that's incepted and contextualized. Mm-hmm. And I would definitely, I mean, if you look at my childhood. I would have a lot of trauma from a generic standpoint. You know, I went to like Prison Alternatives at 13 and I never lived with my family again after that.

I was in fights constantly, was in, you know, the pseudo prison system. These are, these are for kids. They have these private prison alternatives. Think Holes is a very good depiction of one of these. They're, they're in the desert and they're often run by Mormon extremists. And they, they, they send some kids there like, instead of it, and it might have been a cash for kids thing, we don't know because I don't really think I did anything that warranted going there.

For context of what it's like at these places. I would've been around 13 at the time and by the time I got out I was either at, I can't remember, it's either 65 or 75 pounds. , You know, obviously extremely malnourished. , You could just see all of my bone structure was crazy. I.

When I got there, they would do [00:43:00] strip searches and cavity searches, and you know, most of the time you're there, they have armed guards. For people who don't know what this is, it was something called the. , Okay. So the troubled teen industry is something that's been used more broadly, but in the nineties, a portion of the industry began to be used by judges in the United States, is an alternative to sending kids to juvie.

, When juvie became overcrowded, the reason I ended up getting sent, largely speaking from what I can tell, is my parents were in a divorce and neither of them wanted the other to get custody.

So they both convinced the judge that the other was such a bad parent that I would be better off, , living on with the government than living with them. And so the government just assigned me to a prison alternative instead of living with either family. And most of these facilities have since due to, , the high number of suicides in them and the, , abuse allegations because they were pretty much, , like the adult private prison industry, except there was virtually no oversight at all.

, They've mostly been shut down. There's a 75% reduction in them since the nineties, so it's not really a thing anymore. , But a good depiction of [00:44:00] them is the movie holes, as I mentioned.

How bad they were, were, its hidden for a long time because the industry was really divided into two sections. One was the court appointed alternative to prison, like a private prison industry for youth. , And then the other was for like rich kids, like Paris Hilton went to one. , And so there was a lot of like movies and Netflix shows about the ones for rich kids, which were very, , you know, not, not nice, but at least, , you know, nobody was actually, you know, killing themselves on, on.

Property or anything like that , at high levels, , which was not the case at the ones that the government was sending kids to.

And after that, I never lived with either of my family again, , ever. , I would say until after college. But I didn't live with either family until after college. I lived on my own after college.

As for some fun anecdotes I can throw in. 'cause I really, really don't wanna do a full episode on this. , At the one that sort of like holes the wilderness type because there's various types of these and I went through a cycle of them, , you know, just 'cause I wasn't going home. , And the, the ones that are more like that, I have this [00:45:00] vivid memory of, , some of the kids were running away into the desert.

And, , well, I mean, we knew, they, they told us that nobody really ever makes it away because, , you know, there's, there's miles of desert in every direction. , And you could hear on the radio, , and they were chasing the kid down with like, hunting dogs and like, , Jeeps. , And

all the other kids were cheering 'cause we could hear the progress on the radio, you know, hoping the kid, obviously he didn't get away, but it was, it was a, a funny vivid memory for me. , Another one was when I went to one of the school varieties that they, that they had, because you know, obviously you can't just stick a kid for, you know, however many years in the wilderness.

. There was an instance where a teacher, , threw a kid through a closed window. , And I remember that one really vividly. 'cause I was like, whoa, man. Like, that's crazy. Like, even, even going through that, I was like, that's crazy. , At the, at the school one, the other thing I remember, it's like all the teachers we're selling drugs.

Like that was really common as well.

I, , actually went back to the school version of one of these, , when, you know, later in life and it turned out, , one of the students burned it down. So that's what happened to that.

[00:46:00] Oh, also fun fact, , other kids tried to kill me at each of them. , At the school version, my roommate actually got expelled for trying to poison me. , And then, , fortunately he was incredibly incompetent. , And then at the, the wilderness version, , some kid idiotically signaled to me that he was gonna attack me that night.

So I just like made my bed look like I was sleeping in it and I was elsewhere and he attacked it with a shovel. , But, you know, I was fine the next day, obviously, because I wasn't in it.

So after years of doing daily episodes, that's all you're gonna get out of me about that point in my life. Hiding short snippet at the end of an unrelated episode because I really hate trauma narratives. I think that they are incredibly toxic.

so, you know, I was at a very young age, you know, sort of forced to make things work on my own and I look at people who just go to like boarding school in report trauma, right? Like, and I'm just, it's like, what a pussy you are, right? Like, like, well, they're only

Simone Collins: hurting themselves too.

Like that's, that's a real sad thing.

Malcolm Collins: And, but I know, like, like personally, even though I went through all this, it probably [00:47:00] would've been worse living with my parents given you know, what they were going through during this time period of my life. And so like, and people can be like, well, then why don't you have like a negative?

And I'm like, look at who I am as an adult. Like, why would I contextualize any of that dramatically? Like I, I feel like I was, I was forged to be super strong and, and, and flexible and, and , those are all positive things. Why would I, why would I go back and internalize those negatively? And people have been like in the comments, they go, Malcolm, you just don't understand like, parental abuse.

And I'm like, I, I'm pretty sure, like within my family, we do not, not only do you have my situation, but I was also talking about how my dad forgave his grandfather after taking out a million dollars in debt under my dad's name without telling him in the eighties. This in the eighties too. So a lot more money today.

And at the time my dad was making 70 KA year. So, he was quite boned if he couldn't figure out how to make things work. And he, he patched that up as well. So a lot of these people who are like, oh, you know, it's not that, I don't think that there aren't ever actual cases of like very, very serious abuse.

I, I look at somebody like alea. But even if you're looking at somebody like alea, this might be where it's a whole separate episode. She was seriously beaten like [00:48:00] very, very serious. Not like our kids where it's just like light, like re orientation thing? No, when she

Simone Collins: was also like ritually beaten, like, where I'm gonna take you to the thing or like hit you with a switcher paddle.

Like, I think they had some, a leather thing that they would use or something.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And. She even says, despite all of that, despite how bad all that is, I still think me going, the period I went to public school was more abusive than the physical punishment. And that's just recontextualization. This is a, i i Is it worse to be severely beaten occasionally, or is it worse to be, as she described a public school, it turned her life into a filler episode?

You know, is it worse? No. It was like being

Simone Collins: in a show where it's all filler episodes, which is Yeah. Is, it was such a great way of putting it,

Malcolm Collins: having all your agency taken away and having to sit in a chair and listen to a teacher all day, like, and for people like us, we'd be like, oh, the second is worse.

So even with people like her, when people are like, oh, you don't understand trauma well. But clearly Alea does understand what any traditional form of trauma, right. Like, yeah. And, and with that, she's still like, and public school is worse. ,

The reason I make these [00:49:00] comparisons is I'm trying to show that people who have experienced different types of childhood trauma are able to recontextualize it. , Even if it is quite severe by modern standards, whether it's Alea where I don't think you could experience more physical abuse other than like having a limb ripped off, or.

, I don't really think there is any higher level of financial abuse than having a million dollars taken out under your name without your permission or in my background,

but the point I'm making here is, even people who have undergone quite severe things are able to recontextualize them and. In some cases it may be impossible. For example, in each one of these three cases, there was no sexual abuse happening. , And so it may be impossible in that instance, but the reason I use these three cases is they represent a wide diversity of types of abuse in which every individual was able to recontextualize.

Malcolm Collins: and I just don't see it negatively at all. Like even a little bit, because I really like who I am today and I feel like all these things contributed to that.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. I'm glad you're okay. I'm glad you don't. Yeah. Interpret things [00:50:00] in a bad way. It, it's, it's too bad. And in the end though, this is so part of our philosophy, it, it, nothing, the, what matters is what you're gonna do about something.

, It's up to you. You know, it's your internal locus of control that matters. And yes, there are exogenous factors in life, but that doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is what you can control and you can just control how you react to things and what you do about what you are dealt.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Absolutely. Well, I love you to DeSimone. Love you too. And you are, go to sleep please. Amazing woman.

Simone Collins: You're an amazing man. I love you and I hope you feel,

Malcolm Collins: and thank you for, you know, having such a. You know, you had severe anorexia, you almost died. This is how you lost your, or your uterus stopped functioning normally.

You, you had severe depression during your youth. Yeah. And, and nothing

Simone Collins: bad happened. I, I had an idyllic and perfect childhood. I just made it hard for myself.

Malcolm Collins: But I don't think you contextualize, I mean, you do contextualize like college is, is bad. Not really.

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: I remember actually even today, I was thinking about my last day of high school and I was [00:51:00] like, I didn't realize how much better life would get after high school.

Simone Collins: Oh man. It's so much. It's

Malcolm Collins: orally better. It's

Simone Collins: so hard being a kid, like every, oh, like high school's the worst, I think. But like, it's just rough being a kid in general. You don't get to choose anything. You have no control. Everyone else determines where you go, when you go, what you get to do, what you get to eat it.

It sucks. I hated it. I, I love being an adult. It just gets so much better. We can

Malcolm Collins: construct a way that our kids can live a more adult-like lifestyle.

Simone Collins: Oh, we do. We, we, we like very, very carefully listen to what they want and we let them do it. That's why we don't do everyone sit down at the table for dinner.

Everyone does dinner exactly the way that they want. We we're, I think we're pretty good about that.

Malcolm Collins: Thank you, Simone.

Simone Collins: Thank you Malcolm. I love you.

Malcolm Collins: Love you too.

Simone Collins: All right. I'm gonna be quiet when I come into your room, so.

Malcolm Collins: Now the bit on what Simone learned about what people meant when they said I looked soy, , from the comment section, , where we had further dug into this topic.

Simone Collins: On, on the subject of, of you being soy, just to follow, because this is just a [00:52:00] constant thing with our channel.

We had asked about it and a lot of our audience had explained to us, or especially to me, 'cause this is a question, why, why is Malcolm soy and all of the things they described as soy, I'm like. Okay, so you're just describing everything I find attractive in men. And I think it's, it's important for our audience to recognize that at least when it comes to terminally, online, nerdy women who I imagine are actually pretty good matches for most of you, if you're watching this channel, this is the type of woman you'd probably want are disproportionately attracted to traits that you consider to be soy.

And by trying to eliminate those traits from your. Appearance compartment, et cetera. What

Malcolm Collins: trait are you talking about here?

Simone Collins: Skinnier paler, nerdier glasses. Expressive. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I had this realization what they were actually talking about is what the differences between the two dive teams and the Sum 41 Music video into Deep is. I.

Malcolm Collins: No, and I can, I can see why somebody would see those [00:53:00] things as soy and like, and you know, like this, this,

Simone Collins: it shows my

Malcolm Collins: misunderstanding is I saw that not being soy was about trying to be like more attractive.

And, and I realized, no, it's,

Simone Collins: I think it really has to do with appealing to men. And maybe a very specific subset of women, but not the type of women that I think we've

Malcolm Collins: gone over them before on where pe men perceive what women want. Yeah. Or because what they do is they look at what women want for random, sexual encounters. Yeah. And they confl that with what women want in a long-term partner. Well, but also like

Simone Collins: are. I, I think that's really interesting too, because I, I'm also not the type of person who's looking at men from the perspective of like, who do I wanna bang once? I've never looked at men that way.

It's only been from a long perspective. No, no. And this is why I

Malcolm Collins: think that you have this perception because I, I think that they're actually getting data when they go out to bars for like the women who will do the one night stands and stuff, like mm-hmm. The data that they're getting is from the women who are interested in just sleeping with somebody else.

But aren't

Simone Collins: they, like, when it looks to, when it comes to getting married, don't they wanna attract like slightly. Right, but the data that they're getting

Malcolm Collins: is wrong because [00:54:00] they don't go and date the, the long-term chased women. They, yeah. You know, they're, they're not out there looking for the nerd women on the nerd, the fandom board, like when I, you know, started dating you, it was just pure nerd.

It was like anime cons were. All, all of our dates, you know, we yeah. Your second

Simone Collins: proposed date was to watch My Little Pony. Yeah. And not even

Malcolm Collins: anime, like even

Simone Collins: more

Malcolm Collins: intense than

Simone Collins: that, just

Malcolm Collins: so great. It was you know, we, , and for me this was about flexing, like you show me your big knife collection, like flexing Ah, yes.

Al culture. And I flex to you that I don't care about societal norms and I don't care about judgment. Yeah. Which is like a thing in our culture. Right. You know? So nice.

Simone Collins: Aha. That is better. Thank

Malcolm Collins: you.

Today is a great day to be sick.

Simone Collins: This is true. And then you'll feel so good. You'll feel so much better. Trust me though, I, you don't seem to be

Malcolm Collins: better yet. You still seem to be lumbering a bit.

Simone Collins: Well, I'm pregnant, so I'm gonna be like this for another four months.

Malcolm Collins: okay, well, we'll get started on this one. This is a, a fun one.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You're [00:55:00] stealing Tyson's money Yeah. To come in,

daddy. Oh, it's a money ca. It's a cake net outta money. Do not peel Does off cake. Octavian, you're breaking it.

Speaker 10: Doesn't matter. You're breaking it. Stop it.

In this episode, we examine recent government contracts awarded to Palantir and discuss their implications for national security. Palantir has secured significant contracts, including a $480 million deal for the Maven Smart System and a $217.8 million contract from the Space Forces' Space Systems Command. We tackle concerns about data integration, government efficiency, and privacy issues while highlighting the potential benefits Palantir's technology could bring. Join us as we explore how AI-driven command and control capabilities could revolutionize government operations and why public fears may be misplaced.

Simone Collins: So , I looked up like what's been going on with Palantir, like the new government contracts. Yeah. And I am horrified. I'm genuinely horrified, but it's because I cannot believe the government has not already implemented this tech.

Like,

Malcolm Collins: I love what our fans, it's like, are you guys worried about what Palantir is and you're worried about the Yeah, I'm worried,

Simone Collins: like, is what is the new tech? There are two things that happened recently. In May, 2024, Palantir won a $480 million contract for the Maven Smart System, which is an AI powered prototype for military and intelligence applications with an expected completion date of May, 2029.

And in 2025, the Pentagon increased this contract ceiling by 795 million, bringing the total to over 1 billion, anticipating increased demand from military users for AI driven command and control capabilities. I absolutely want that for a government like, imagine how insecure you would feel if your government was doing nothing with ai.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, seriously.

Simone Collins: And then also a 217.8 million contract was awarded to Palantir, a sub, a subsidiary of it to Palantir, USG by the Space Forces, space Systems Command.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and also keep in mind how much for joint forest missions safe this is than going to like the NSA or something. Where, oh God, where they, well,

Simone Collins: it's just wasteful.

Like the NSA can try to do this. So a, another, another thing is that like people are, are freaking out about them because a lot of these deals, there are other deals too. For example, ice did a contract ice seize all the weapons

Malcolm Collins: they can get. I've seen the way people are freaking out about them, I know

Simone Collins: it's, they did a 30 million Palantir, did a 30 million deal with ICE to provide software monitoring visas and tracking deportations offering quote, near real-time visibility into migrant movements.

I'm like, wait, you didn't have that before? Are you kidding me? Like, what were you doing before? You know, and the Palantir's also in discussions with the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service to deploy its Foundry platform. And it, the Foundry platform of Palantir organizes and analyzes data.

So it, it, it enables the merging of sensitive data sets across agencies and why people are freaked out about the Foundry platform is that it's, it's. One central to many app palantir's government contracts, but it allows agencies to integrate data from various sources. So you can take financial records and immigration data and health records, which is

Malcolm Collins: exactly the thing that led to nine 11 was not being able to integrate.

Yeah, no, not enough

Simone Collins: interagency communication because there's so, 'cause they

Malcolm Collins: had knowledge that this was going to happen. Yes. When people

Simone Collins: weren't talking with each other because they're idiots and Palantir fixes this. And so you, you put this all into a central system for analysis. And you know, when you, when you have this adopted by the Department of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services the New York Times fierce, this created a master database by merging sensitive information like bank account numbers and student debt and medical claims and disability status.

But I'm like, yes. Why don't we have

Malcolm Collins: official database of that, that we need that? Yeah.

Simone Collins: How, how do we not have that? Like it disturbs me. 'cause I guess I was, you know how I always like take the most charitable interpretation of someone, right? Yeah. Like I'm just, I assume that they're doing their best work.

And so I assume that like if I apply for something with the government, that they're also aware of all, like my tax payment status, my social security status. They're aware. Nope. Nope. They have no idea. Like they're just like 17 different Simons in the US government, and none of them are integrated data wise.

They have no idea what the other Simons are doing. You know, one Simone could be a felon who this guy doesn't know. Like, I can't believe that. And this is how you end up getting, for example, illegal immigrants voted, this is how you,

Malcolm Collins: or, or social security payments going to people who are like 500 years old, you know?

Yeah. Like

Simone Collins: the, how are we not, like we need more Palantir that just like, you know what, actually just end the US government Make all, make it 100% Palantir. Yeah. Like, I'm, I'm done. Like contractors. It's the only one I trust. No, like they, they're competently run. Alex Karp is like. Extremely dedicated to the company, to the cause.

I think he's created a very enthusiastic, can we like shut

Malcolm Collins: down, like Boeing, for example. Like that needs to end. Okay.

Simone Collins: I know, I know. Like of all the organizations that I'm like super cool with having a little, little too much pow like guys I mean, a point that JD Vance had made in an interview with a comedian recently who was like, well, I'm freaked out about all this is, is JD Vance is like, listen, like.

Every major corporation has levels of data, information on you, on your purchase history, on your thoughts, on what you're saying in your own home that put all of this to shame. Like if you're worried about big brother listening to you, then maybe you shouldn't like have all these smart devices in your home.

Maybe you shouldn't have a smartphone sitting live next to you all the time, not sitting in a far cage like it's already happened. But this isn't in the hand even of the US government that ultimately wants the best. You know, no China's

Malcolm Collins: getting all this information, I assure you. Yeah, no, China. Yeah.

Simone Collins: You've got TikTok on your phone, China ccp, ISS listening. They know what's going on in your life. They know that you're menstruating right now. They know that you're a little bit irritable. 'cause if you're seasonal allergies, but the US government can't even figure out if you're dead or not. It's

Malcolm Collins: your personal menstruation notifications that is, that is what's going on right now.

And I'd, I'd be really excited if I heard Palantir getting like a big drone contract or something. 'cause we need to get way better. No, the

Simone Collins: more the merrier. Like genuinely I'm reading this and getting increasingly concerned of like, wait, they weren't doing this already. Like mods have been asleep this whole time.

Like I really do feel a lot of, why wasn't

Malcolm Collins: I out there murdering people? Like honestly, I don't understand.

Simone Collins: That's the,

Malcolm Collins: you know, do you want me to try to split this out and make this a micro episode to see how it does?

Simone Collins: You can, you can just throw it out as a, like a weekend bonus or something. That's what I was

Malcolm Collins: thinking.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I just, I, I think people have a completely what's the word? Dysmorphic, understanding of data security and, and privacy. And they're like, oh, yo. Like, oh, just like my Alexa knows him, like chat GT knows everything. There's this new meme where you, you ask chat GT to like make a picture of who they think you look like based on all of your queries.

And it, like, everyone's really entertained by the cartoons created because they're like so spot on like that. You, you have no idea the level of granular understanding that Google has about you, that Amazon has about you, that DoorDash has about you. Oh, absolutely. That, that your local grocery store has about you.

If you have a loyalty number or even if you're using the same credit card number, like this is just like so ridiculous. We need governments. Like, I'm genuinely concerned if the US government is not integrating AI and drones into absolutely everything that it's doing. And as, as Dan Driscoll has pointed out, the Secretary of the Army and as JD Vance have pointed out like warfare.

So for

Malcolm Collins: clarification, Dan Driscoll's a personal friend of ours and has been for a long time, and he was appointed Secretary of the Army continue.

Simone Collins: Warfare is fundamentally changing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Alexander k Cruel, who is a great daily, almost daily newsletter like shared this meme at one point showing, well, no, he has

Malcolm Collins: a a half great half insane pro Ukraine propaganda.

Well, yeah, he was section for Ukraine,

Simone Collins: but I mean, he was excited about this with Ukraine because you know, this moment where recently Ukraine drove in just a bunch of normal tractor Yeah. Like tractor trailer trucks full of drones. No one realized, and they took out a bunch of military assets in Russia and he, he put this like Alexander Crowley that created or used a meme that showed like a, a US aircraft carrier, like UK aircraft carrier, like all these aircraft carriers, like, so incredibly expensive.

And then like, like a truck, a tractor trailer. Like now this fundamentally changes warfare. We have to use ai, we have to be able to integrate data on like, everything from like banking data to your health data to everything else to like.

Malcolm Collins: So many people abuse the government right now because government workers don't care fundamentally.

Yeah. And we have an episode that I was gonna do on that showing, well, it's thought, just not

Simone Collins: caring. It's, it's that

Malcolm Collins: AI incentivized does care, like AI will actually like attempt a task. Like if, if at the DMVI knew I was gonna be dealing with an AI clerk versus a human clerk mm-hmm. I'd be so much happier.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Well, and, and you know, we've, we've visited Palantir's offices. We even created fan art for Alex Carp one, one time. Remember when we made the full body

poster, Alex Carrp Art Company? Yeah.

Every encounter I've had with Palantir and its staff has been incredibly positive.

Malcolm Collins: Competent.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, no, but also passionate like they're, they actually, and there are lots of people in, in every government, you know, who are very passionate about, you know, protecting their country and doing a good job.

But the incentives at Palantir, I think are better aligned to actually create good outcomes. They are really excited when they make it possible for someone in, in the US military, for example, to, to end a battle before it begins. You know, to, to e extremely reduce the amount of collateral damage. Yeah.

Palantir has come under a lot of fire recently because of their, their, their use in Gaza, for example. And they're like, clearly okay with. Helping Israel. So like, that's gonna get them in trouble. Why shouldn't

Malcolm Collins: they? I I, I will never understand why if, if the, if the hostages haven't been released, Israel has Comp Blanc to do whatever it wants.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Is it? Well, yeah. And as long as,

Malcolm Collins: and, and if, and if, if Greta Hamas is to go out there and, and complain, why isn't she asking for the release of the hostages? You know, that is like, and it, you, you want me to like, let my daughter be continually griped by, you know, these people and not do anything about it.

Just be like, oh, I guess I'm giving up on her. You know, like, we've seen what these people do to their hostages.

And I'd point out that we have seen what these people do to their hostages. People like Greta Thornberg and the other people on her selfie boat have not seen what they do to their hostages because when the Israeli forces offered to show her video of what was happening, she and the rest of the people on the boat absolutely refused to watch any of it.

So this just shows that from my perspective, it's not like she has seen, what's happening on one side and what's happening on the other side. She's just like, I don't care what's happening to Jews. I just don't care. I don't care that there are still people down in tunnels that this is happening to, that these are your sons and daughters and that that is why you are continuing to fight.

I don't care. They get to do whatever they want.

Like this isn't like they're in some nice room or something. They're being starved and graped to death. Like this is mortifying. And the fact that you even would consider that you wouldn't do literally everything was in your power to get the hostages back.

Just to me it shows like when you consider that those hostages could be family members, shows a lack of humanity in an individual they have a right to do whatever. They feel they need to do until the hostages are released.

And if you're like, well, , but what about all the other people who are being hurt and all of those other people being hurt should be doing everything in their power to get the hostages to be released. Because at the end of the day, what you're asking me to do is to tell somebody who knows that their daughter is being.

Treated as an S slave, , and could be for the rest of her life if you don't get her released to not do anything in their power to get her back. And I can't ever ask of somebody,

Because I couldn't ask that of myself. If somebody came up to me and they're like, Malcolm, you've already murdered, you know,

50,000 .

People just trying to get your one daughter back from the grape caves. , You should stop now. You know, it's just a one girl I'd be like, I'm sorry, that's not how this works.

It's my daughter.

And then of you said, well, yes, but some of their kids are heard as collateral damage. I'd say, I'm not going to stop until my daughter is out of the grape cave. That's it. Period. And so I wouldn't ask that of anyone else. I.

okay.

Simone Collins: But bringing it back to Palantir, basically. Okay. Sorry. Every argument that people are butt hurting about, I, I, it just really doesn't concern me at all.

Like, I'm not worried about it. I mean, one, the executive order on data sharing. In March, 2025, president Trump signed an executive order mandating that federal agencies share data. I didn't realize Palantir was involved with this. I was just stoked about it when I heard about it. But of course, Palantir is involved 'cause Palantir is the tech substrate that enables the data sharing to happen efficiently.

But anyway, this, this is what makes people fear that there's like a, a master list of personal information with untold surveillance power, which we should have. And, and the, the foundry platform of Palantir is obviously what's gonna make this happen. So one, they're, they're afraid of that the, the, the data sharing, oh, I'm sorry.

Our government's functional now. How dare we? Okay, so that's a, that's argument one. I don't care. I I am, I'm alarmed that we're not doing it already. Issue two is immigration enforcement. How dare we enforce our immigration policy? Again, Palantir's work with ice, particularly in, for deportation tracking, has drawn a lot of criticism even from former employees and activists who argue that it could lead to mass surveillance and human rights violations.

And there are 13. 13, okay. 13 former Palantir workers who condemn the company's role. Also, these are former workers, so they might just be like fired for not doing their jobs. Were

fired for incompetence.

That, that are, that are concerned about the company's role in supporting Trump's immigration policies citing violations of its founding principles, which are probably something like, I'm clutching them so tightly.

I know. So like one, no, like. W the US has a right to enforce its laws. Like, don't, yeah. Don't, don't come at me for that. You know

Malcolm Collins: what, you know what I wanna see, I wanna see the government shut down the NSA and replace it with Palantir. The NSA has no business existing anymore. Yeah. It's policy,

Simone Collins: I think.

Yeah. Palantir could do. I mean, so, but keep in mind Malcolm, that, so the, the big data centers, like a lot of what NSA just does is raw data collection, which is useful. Palantir uses that data. So I'm, I'm a, like, I I say keep, you know, keep

Malcolm Collins: some of it. No. NSA employees have repeatedly been shown to violate the interest of the American citizen.

Yeah. They, they, they're like, oh, you're just saying half

Simone Collins: Palantir. Do what the NSA does now.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Take over all those data centers. Oh, NS a has, they, they have people doing like searches on like former girlfriends and stuff like that. They've been caught with this. They have people, you know, as I said recently, all of this ink trans propaganda and like a trans cult there that's been enforcing, it's a message on everyone.

And I've heard no story like this from Palantir employees. No, definitely not.

Simone Collins: No. None of every experience we've had with them has

Malcolm Collins: been none of this you know, the

Simone Collins: height of professionalism and, and motivated altruism. So then the, the fourth argument is the classic one of just like the, the ethical and the privacy fears, which, you know, you know how I feel about how much

Malcolm Collins: pe you're paying you, Simone, for this, by the way.

Simone Collins: Not enough. Right. How, how much are we getting from Mossad? Just not enough. I actually, I think I did find a Palantir apologist on YouTube, and I'm like, are you being paid by them? Like, what's up with you? But he just actually seemed, I think he was more of a stock enthusiast and we can get to that too.

Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. The Palantir stock thing. Yeah. Well,

Simone Collins: yeah. Palantir stock has surged over 70% in 2025, driven by these contracts of the Trump administration's priorities. So it's, it's the s and p 502nd best performer. Yeah. I think it's gonna have some stands because of that, and I don't think, yeah, I mean, yeah, kind of they are being paid because, you know, they, their stocks have gone way up if they were earlier holders.

Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, yeah.

Simone Collins: It's, but it's, I mean, it's on that front, it, its valuation is too high. It's 200 times. Times forward earnings. At its current valuation, it's, it's not, that's not a sustainable price. Like I think it's, it's way over inflated because of all this. And like to your point right with stocks is once something becomes pervasively discussed and people think it's a good asset, like it should be dead to you, you should have sold it already.

You know, like that is not when it's interesting. You want things that don't look interesting to anyone when, you know they're undervalued anyway though. So back to the ethical and privacy risks. So obviously there are people who warn that Palantir's technology could be used to build a police state infrastructure, especially given that it can process biometric data, social media activity, other personal information, and just combine it all together to create these amazing footprints and profiles.

Mm-hmm. But to JD Van's argument, like I said earlier, this is already happening. From companies.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I I, I'm sorry. Do you want the police state to be run by China and private corporations, or do you want like, any degree of accountability within it? Right. Yeah.

Simone Collins: People argue that they, they're, they're worried about the lack of transparency potential for algorithmic bias or data breaches.

Malcolm Collins: Palantir verse in sa in China. Yeah. I'm like, I'm sorry. Like you're,

Simone Collins: you're probably the same people who freaked out when TikTok was gonna be shut down. Like, I didn't see you complaining. Then. This is kind of like people freaking out when we suggest a medal of motherhood. But like, they also encourage most of the socialist policies that I.

Were, you know, popular in post Imar Republic, Germany, so whatever. Right. And then of course the final argument is that like, oh, well they're like, they're too close. Like the political, like Trump isn't, well one Trump derangement syndrome, like Trump is involved. So it's gotta be bad. And also Peter Thiel is involved, so it's gotta be bad.

And, and there are some former app Palantir who are working with Doge and they just, oh, this is so incestuous. But like, oh, I guess it's just, 'cause maybe there aren't that many competent people in the world each other. Yeah. Oh, competent people work in important jobs. I'm so shocked. By this. It's a collusion.

Collusion. So yeah, I just like, it's, it's insane to me that people are having these freakouts and people have created these long YouTube videos about how Alex Karp is a demon. And I'm just listening to them and I'm like, I'm so concerned about Palantir's, lack of power right now.

Speaker 3: Money, please.

Speaker 4: Oh, no. No. There's no money.

Speaker 3: Money, please, money. Please.

In this episode, we tackle the controversial topic of antinatalism, debunking its core arguments and highlighting its logical inconsistencies. From addressing the recent terrorist attacks tied to the philosophy to exploring the philosophical and moral arguments against it, we delve deep into why antinatalism's worldview is fundamentally flawed. We contrast the antinatalist perspective with the pronatalist view, discussing concepts of individualism, cultural identity, and the human drive to progress and contribute to something greater. The episode also considers the future implications of antinatalism and its potential impact on human civilization.

As to why were are becoming more aggressive in our thoughts on this subject is the number of lives we have seen ruined by the proliferation of this philosophy and the lack of positive externalities associated with it.

Song 1:

Song 2:

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/EGFRjwwS92

The School: https://parrhesia.io/student-signup

App to talk with kids: https://wizling.ai/

Malcolm Collins: have you done harm to a Native American tribe? If you sterilize all of their members? , And your member of that tribe would be like, you have done the most harm anyone could conceivably commit against our people,

Simone Collins: but to Antinatalists,

Malcolm Collins: you have done that tribe a favor. , And this is because to an antinatalists, the only unit at which humans exist is at the level of the individual, not at any other level.

Not at the level of the family, not at the level of the civilization or the society, to most other humans that exist, they don't exist at the level of the individual. Mm-hmm.

Here is how pronatalist see the world.

Civ Song: we must adapt and press forward if we are to see our journeys end

and how will we know when we get there?

It is the nature of humankind to push itself toward the horizon.

We test our limits. We face our fears. We rise to the challenge. And become something greater than ourselves,

a civilization.

Malcolm Collins: Here is how antinatalist see the world.

Antz Movie Quote: I gotta believe there's some place out there that's better than this. Otherwise, I would just curl up in a larva position and weep

but. It's this whole. Gung-ho superorganism thing that, i'm supposed to do everything for the colony and, what about my needs? What about me? The whole system. Makes me feel. Insignificant.

Excellent. You've made a real breakthrough. You are insignificant time. I am.

Malcolm Collins: How you choose to frame your reality is fundamentally a choice. You get to choose how you contextualize your position in the world and the way you relate to society and what your identity is, or at least within the pronatalist framework you do. Because to an antinatalists, you don't get to make that choice.

You don't get to decide that you exist at some more important level than just at the individual.

You get to decide what your purpose in life is. Is it to just be an individual running from emotional stimuli that evolved into our ancestors centuries ago due to environmental cues that have nothing to do with our current condition? Or is it to build something greater than yourself

to participate in the work that all mankind from the birth of human civilization till today? Has built for us to continue on their behalf.

Civ Song: , The path has not always been easy, ours is a journey that spans generations where one story ends, another begins. The world our ancestors faced was brutal. Yet from it, the true life,

a mother road to prosperity was at times harsh.

From the ashes of the old. New possibilities arise.

You need only persevere

The true power to shape this world, as always laying in your hands,

Intro: would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna go back to a topic that needs to be revisited because of the number of terrorist attacks that have been tied to it recently, and its relevance to us as people who are generally seen as running the prenatal list movement, or at least the ProTech faction of the prenatal list movement.

And this is the subject of Antinatalism. So when I talk about the various terrorist attacks specifically, there were recent IVF clinic bombing that was specifically tied to Eism, which is a philosophy downstream of it. The Sandy Hook shootings where on their YouTube channel, they talked about Eism and the Christchurch Mosque shootings where he said that the reason he targeted Muslims, they media called him a great replacement theorist, but he, he said, no, like Muslims are having more kids, which is a fact, and therefore I'm gonna kill them because I think there should be less kids.

Not because for the environment.

Simone Collins: For the environment,

Malcolm Collins: for the environment. It was an environment which is a

Simone Collins: common stance held by ISTs. In fact the, the most recent anti, the most recent anti terrorist was a vegan

his female friend who had likely ended her life through the use of her boyfriend and a firearm was also like literally her online username was vegan edalist. Yeah, so like there is extreme overlap between he heavy focus on sustainability in the environment, which I don't think is bad. Like obviously eating meat is morally wrong.

We just do it anyway. And Antinatalism. So, yeah, so he counts too. And I think that this is meaningful because what we're seeing strung together here, three acts of terror is, is the fact that this isn't just, and this is actually something that came up in the manifesto of the most recent terrorists. He said, antinatalism isn't nihilism.

And I think people really misunderstand it. They think that an antinatalists are just deeply depressed people who think that nothing matters in the world. He says, no, that's not true. Antinatalists believe very vehemently in one thing, which is that suffering is bad and we need to end it. And if you are a more extreme antinatalists like him, you are essentially on a holy war to end suffering.

By ending sentience, like you have an imperative to end life and you're willing to do that. All things

Malcolm Collins: that can suffer. Mm-hmm. If suffer is the core evil in the universe, and you need to end the things that can suffer. And, and this is one of those philosophies that I think is so compelling to people, because on its surface, if you don't put a lot of thought in it, it seems really well thought through.

Mm-hmm. And, and internally it's an internally consistent worldview. Very different than like progressivism or wokes or anything like that. The problem is, is that if you scratch that surface, which is what we're gonna be doing in this video it makes. No logical sense. And we have done a video on this before, like early, early in our channel's history. But I wanted to come to it again because I have some new arguments. I wanted to this time go more directly to our book, the Pragma, go to Crafting Religion, where we were make direct arguments on this.

But one of the new arguments that , I don't know why I didn't think of this when we were writing our book is what Antinatalists will tell you. Because what you might be thinking is, wait, wait, wait. They wanna end suffering. Do they not think that they are doing harm to individuals? When they you know, in, in their lives and they're like, oh, well what we would do is not in the lives of living individuals, just prevent the lives of individuals who are kind of coming to being in the future, right?

Mm-hmm. Through sterilization or through not having kids. And so they're like, you can't harm somebody who hasn't been born yet, which for me, I just find to be on its face a ludicrous idea.

Like very, obviously you can, if you this isn't the new argument, but if you go back in time and you sterilize my wife, you have done harm to my children. You are responsible for the differential impacts on the timeline that every one of your choices make, whether or not those people have been born yet or not.

Mm-hmm. Trying to weasel your way out of that is the most morally like, like. Honestly, like, it feels like a super villain from a show where he is like, I've done nothing wrong. I merely went back in time and prevented the birth of people who it's like, well, you prevented it. He is like, but they didn't exist when I prevented them from existing.

And it's like, well, they would've existed without your action. Like clearly you're responsible for that. How, how, how is it that you believe that your existence is at such a privileged level compared to the people who haven't been born yet? How, how could you even come to be that narcissistic? W and this is the thing, right, fundamentally, is you can always choose to not exist.

They can't choose to manifest themselves into existence. You are never doing harm by bringing a life into the world because that life can always remove itself. You are always doing harm by not bringing a life into the world because that life can't choose to. This, this is like the basic, this isn't like a new argument.

This is something that anyone who has applied even the basic logic to this should be able to see. And they're like, oh no, but ending myself is so hard. And it's like, no, no, no, nah, nah, nah, no. It's that you don't want to, you are a fundamentally vile and selfish person. And I, before this I was like, okay, yes, antinatalists are overwhelmingly antisocial.

Yes, they're overwhelmingly narcissistic. Yes, they're overwhelmingly Machiavellian. There have been multiple studies and follow up studies showing this, but when I watch people like this girl who had her boyfriend kill her, rather than taking responsibility for that herself, that she was willing to ruin his entire life rather than, that's a step too far.

Take responsibility for this decision herself. Yeah. Or the IVF clinic bomber willing to risk other people's lives just to make a statement.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Although, you know, I wanna point out two, two things where I'll agree with him. One, he pointed out that there are many examples of terrorists , and school shooters, mass shooters, who.

Attempted to end their lives voluntarily by themselves without hurting anyone else and failed or couldn't. 'cause it's, it's too hard right now. And he argued that euthanasia should be a lot easier. And I 1000% agree, like, yes, no, of

Malcolm Collins: course you agree with that, but that's, that's neither here nor there. Even where euthanasia is not legal.

It is really not that hard to unlive yourself. The, the argument, everything's

Simone Collins: harder when you're depressed.

Malcolm Collins: I mean,

Simone Collins: you know, I, I

Malcolm Collins: guess, but, it's to contrast the difficulty of that with manifesting your existence when somebody decided to sterilize your parents is astronomical.

They will make arguments like, well, people who haven't been born yet don't exist yet. How can you say that somebody who doesn't exist yet, life has value. And it's like, bro, they only don't exist yet. From your arbitrary position on the timeline, how. Arrogant. Do you have to be to believe that your arbitrary position on the timeline is the moral nexus of all reality?

, This is just a trick of how humans perceive time. Like clearly those future events are going to happen and you are responsible for them, and you are responsible for the differential effects you have on the timeline.

When you think about directions , , like on a graph, time is just another axis on that graph. The only thing that makes time different from, you know, vertical or horizontal directionality is that we as humans, cannot go backwards within it. But that doesn't mean that past times don't exist or future times don't exist.

They very evidently do. Saying that all humans within x part of a timeline's lives have literally zero value, and your life is exponentially superior to theirs in terms of its value is the same as me saying everyone who lives in a specific geographic region like Africa or something's life has no value because they're in a different point within the, , spatial representation of our reality. It's a horrifying thing to do.

It is almost as if they're trying to argue that future events are not real, which is to me just bizarre that anybody , could bring themselves to believe that. But it is this level of dehumanization of people who are in a different location on the timeline than them.

Yeah, and this is the thing about Antinatalism. I am okay with Antinatalists being antinatalists. Like I think that they probably, , are more likely both culturally and genetically to be more pessimistic and they probably will not contribute much to the future of humanity if you force them to breed or something.

I think that they are doing a service to our civilization, and so I am okay with the way that they view time. What is interesting here is. I'm not saying they have to see time the way I see time. What I'm saying here is they have to see how somebody could see this way of looking at time and morality is logically, internally coherent and would be compelling to a large percent of the population that you are responsible for.

All the differential effects that your decisions make on the timeline to anyone, whether or not they have been conceived yet.

And this is the problem Antinatalists have, their goal is only achieved if everyone agrees with them. So if there is a separate alternate framework around either identity or how time works, that is logically consistent. They need to eradicate that, even if it is as logically consistent as their own.

We only need to argue that our way of looking at time and morality is plausible and therefore some groups should be allowed to believe that. They need to argue that their way of looking at time and morality is absolute, and everyone should be forced to believe that.

But , the new argument I thought of when I was thinking of this is like, yeah, but like, when you think of how people relate to identity very few people outside of the irman monoculture have a primary identity, which is individual based.

So by this, what I mean is I would ask, have you done harm to a Native American tribe? If you sterilize all of their members? And, and your average person or average member of that tribe would be like, you have literally committed genocide against us. You have done the most harm anyone could conceivably commit against our people.

Well, and there

Simone Collins: have been historical instances of certain types of people being sterilized, and that is. Is, is I'm pretty universally condemned. I don't know if anyone like, but to Antinatalists,

Malcolm Collins: you have done that tribe a favor. And, and this is because to an antinatalists, the only unit at which humans exist is at the level of the individual, not at any other level.

Not at the level of the family, not at the level of the civilization or the society, or at the level of what you know, , , the thing that you are continuing yet to most other humans that exist, they don't exist at the level of the individual. Mm-hmm. The, , native American might say, well, you know, first and foremost, I'm a member of my tribe.

Right? Yeah. Or a lot of, right. Wingers will say, first and foremost, I'm a member of Western civilization. Right. And I, I, and I see my goal as, as, as building on that civilization living for something that I see as greater than myself. And the Antinatalists will say, well, I. W wait, what?

They'll be like, wait, wait, wait. You live for something other than yourself. Ex. Explain that to me. And it's like, most humans live for things other than themselves. It's clearly how we're programmed to live. If you look at artistic media and everything like that, and you see depictions of the good life, the end of gladiator, right?

You know, the end of grandma and grandpa turned young again, nobody, nobody, nobody ever is like about all the pleasures they had in life. Like, like so few people see things that way, right? Yeah.

it once.

Make us believe it again.

And here it lays out very clearly what is good in life. Good in life is family. What? What is your purpose in life? Your purpose in life is to uplift your civilization through sacrifice, to play your role as a cog in the greater human machine.

Speaker 7: Mr. Mayor, do you have a plan to deal with the fat sale housing shortage? I'd like to announce we're beginning construction on a, uh, third chin. What do you have to say to all the hair cells recently laid off from the scalp? There'll be plenty of new jobs for everyone on the back.

85% of red blood cell children don't even know how to carry oxygen. Be. Bull people, the body is in perfect shape the following is a paid political announcement.

Speaker 8: The bowels, it didn't always smell this way. . There was a time when eating right and exercise kept this whole area of vital center of activity. As mayor, I would set long-term goals that include ordering salads and eating brand. If we pull together and put in a little hard work, a new frank.

It could be right around the corner.

Malcolm Collins: And what's ironic is by deciding to serve something greater than yourself, you end up experiencing. Much, much, much more aggregate pleasure and meaning, and experiencing the hard times less severely than somebody who takes a negativity, utilitarian, or anti-natal list approach.

And I'd also note here if they're like, well, no, , the core unit of humanity is the individual, because that's what I perceive the world through. And it's like, actually that's mostly an illusion if you know your neuroscience. , The reality , is that if you, for example, split somebody's, , corpus callosum that connects the two hemispheres of their brain, their brains basically act as separate people within a single individual.

If you wanna learn more about this, you can look at our video. You're probably not as conscious as you think. . And the various other brain, the parts mostly work independently from each other. And then, you know, how human is a human, but a combination of cells, you know, the, the, we get to choose where we define our identity.

, And , I choose, and I think most people who derive meaning for life choose something bigger than themselves. What that is is up to you.

Antz: Okay. I gotta keep a positive attitude, a good attitude, even though I'm utterly insignificant. I'm, I'm insignificant, but with attitude.

Malcolm Collins: This is a very, very narrow viewpoint to divide. All of human experience into subjective, pleasure and suffering.

Right. Because most people do not contextualize Yeah. People aren't

Simone Collins: thinking back to like that one massage they got or like that really, really good dinner as they die,

Malcolm Collins: or the sex that they had or whatever. Yeah. It's the ways that they were able to contribute to something greater than themselves. Mm-hmm.

Because that is, I think like if you're gonna actually like, live a good life and be satisfied with your life, that's the way you're gonna live. And then they will say, wait, but like we should discount their cultural perspective and default to my cultural perspective. And I'm like, why? Like, why do you get to defo?

Like, like just say, oh, they're all wrong. Like even though their beliefs are also internally consistent, you're basically saying they're all wrong and I get to force my beliefs on them. Mm-hmm. My beliefs about what identity should be, my beliefs about what hu humanity should be. And, and I'd even ask you to ask yourself a serious question.

If you are in a lineup of 20 people and all those 20 people said independently, because keep in mind that these perceptions have come about independently, that on that table in front of me, there is a duck and a train, a toy duck and a joy train. And then you walk up and you only see a duck. Okay? Unless you are like actually crazy and narcissistic, and I think this is why narcissism is so high in this population, you'd be like.

I must not be seeing something. Maybe I need to change the angle of which I'm looking. Maybe I need to, you know, you, you would, you would think, why is everybody else saying there's more to life than pain and suffering? Why is every other culture structuring their lives around something more than pain and suffering?

Why is it only me that is able to, is there maybe something that's wrong with my brain that I'm not able to see, like any wider purpose in life besides pain and suffering? Mm-hmm. Like, is it, is it something wrong with me that I supposedly make all of these sacrifices, like this vegan antinatalists chick to live like this ethical life and then I convinced my boyfriend to ruin his by taking mine.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and, and the same for her friend. And, and the, the bomber, like, did he need to injure people? Like, or, or the,

Malcolm Collins: the Sandy Hook shooter, the glee he took when like little kids said to him, like, I don't wanna die today. What, what do you say when he, he's.

Simone Collins: Oh, I don't know. Don't tell me. I don't wanna know.

I can't, I can't, anything about it was something like, you know, I can't know anything about it. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Well, it's okay. He, he is like, well, it's not your choice kid. Or something like that, you know, like taking a lot of glee in what he's doing. And, and we repeatedly see this was in this community, right?

And, and it's. To me the, the Native American argument is really strong because it's like this is something that historically happened and it's something that antinatalists actually believe that you are doing a, a benefit to this community. Yeah. And that they believe that their understanding of self should supersede any alternate cultural framework, any alternate personal framework, even if that framework makes perfect sense.

Like you look at our belief and we believe that every individual's goal is to improve themselves every day and to improve themselves intergenerationally and improve the culture from which they come. And this is much closer to the framework that the vast majority of societies have adopted. Like, this is what I strive to exist for.

Whereas Antinatalists strive for personal hedonism, and yet they live these lives of hate, like go to any of their forms, go to the old f list forms of any of them have been archives or the current antinatalists forms. These are not happy. People. Right? And it you could say like, well, and that's what's motivating all this.

And I'd be like, no, they're not happy people because they've created a culture in which they create dominance, hierarchies of unhappiness. Hmm. And that leads them, because the thing that humans, even at their default state strive for the most isn't even happiness when you're operating on pure animal mode.

It is unw, local dominance hierarchies. And so you will make yourself unhappy or, or, or cosplay as unhappy if that can elevate you within the social networks that you value. Mm-hmm. And so I think that this fundamentally undermines everything else about Antinatalism and that it shows that even them who claim that they should be doing what the Opus day or what us do, which is attempt to recontextualize everything in their lives to extract the most positive emotions from it.

And it's something that you can do. Like the Adams family does this, for example. They just recontextualize what they're experiencing. These individuals have that as an option, but they don't choose it, which shows that even their own claimed belief that unhappiness matters above all else and suffering is the core negative, that they could reduce it within their own lives and they choose not to over something so animalistic, which to me shows the entire movement as a liar.

The entire movement is larp because you can choose, as I've said, you can choose to what emote your life, which is the name of one anime, where she's just really depressed and looking for, you know, a validation for people who, you know, don't even like her that much, or she knew your life which is another anime where she just chooses to perceive reality the way she wants to perceive reality.

Because you get to do that, right? And she chooses to search for validation from people whose values she respects. You can choose that, and people who ultimately help her, right? Because she's not going to communities that are about tearing individuals down.

Speaker 9: That's cool. I guess you can join up with us

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): Antinatalists.

Speaker 9: if you want.

Speaker 10: Yeah, we're gonna go to the graveyard and write poems about death and how pointless life is.

Speaker 9: Thanks for offering to let me in your clit, guys. But to be honest, I'd rather be a crying little than a

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: Antinatalist.

Speaker 9: kid. We'll see you, Stan.

Speaker 10: He's right. I don't even know who I am anymore. I like liking life a lot more than hating it. Screw you guys. I'm going home. Go ahead and go back

Speaker 9: to your sunshine, fairytale.

Malcolm Collins: And I note here, you know, one, one argument that you always get from Antinatalists is, oh, well, you can't meaningfully consent for someone bringing you into existence.

And again this to me is, is is such a vile thing to say. Because that person also can't consent to not exist. And because the vast would, and you can say, well, I've done nothing wrong. If they didn't exist yet, why? What? Like, there is no logical reason for that argument that this is one of these arguments that only works if you're just completely cooked in like a philosopher sphere.

And you're not thinking about the real world at all. You have clearly done harm if you prevent somebody from existing, like, clearly, clearly, clearly, clearly. I, I do not understand, and this is obviously a big, you know, objection. We have to like Catholics who think that like life begins a conception and stuff like that, and we think they're murdering babies by not using IVF, right?

Like, we're like, clearly if you went back in time and sterilized someone, you are responsible for every differential thing within that timeline. And what's important is that you can always consent to your continued existence unless you're like on life support or something like that and you're, you're no longer mobile, right?

Like that's a horrifying scenario. But generally speaking, most humans consent to their continued existence. They just lack the balls to make a choice about it. If the choice would in any way inconvenience them, that's what I've really seen was the Fless and Antinatalists. They understand that they have to take the responsibility for the fact that they exist and continue to exist and that that is not a choice that anybody who wasn't been brought into existences.

, Any thoughts? By the way, Simon, before I go further?

Simone Collins: No. I mean this seems logically consistent to me and yeah. I mean, I think the, there is a, there is a version of Antinatalism that just is accompanied by. Winning people over through logical argument to your view, and then all of you deciding it would

Malcolm Collins: never work.

I don't believe, like there's people who say that they believe this, right? There, there are a lot of people, but it's, it's not logically coherent because it would obviously never work,

Simone Collins: do you mean? Oh, because in the end, just those who actually love to live and care about living will be left.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. E even at a genetic level, it would eventually fail because humans would adopt to this philosophy and no longer feel the suffering that they are so afraid of feeling.

Mm-hmm. You know what, or, or they become psychologically resistant in some other way because evolution exists and evolution can resist memes. Like, it, it, it's a completely incoherent and fantastical philosophy that people say they believe because they, they don't wanna be called out for what their philosophy always actually leads to, which is eism.

Mm-hmm. Like intellectually, I don't. Nobody really believes that they can convince all of human civilization of this. If they have put thought into the fact that it really requires you to have a perception of reality that is totally different than the, the vast majority of living humans.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Like, like even you, like you come to me, it's not like I don't understand your arguments.

I just think that they're, and it's not even that I'm like relying on some external, oh, I exist because of God or something like that. Right. Like, I'm not,

Simone Collins: you're just being logical. Yeah. You're just aware that most people don't wanna die and prefer to be alive. I.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Even if their life is hard, ,

And I note here, part of the reason why it, it's obviously never gonna spread to the entire population. It is just such an unlikeable way to live. , if you look at the beginning when I sort of frame the two world framings, the protists through the civ songs, through the end of Gladiator and the antinatalists, where it's all me, me, me, me, me, only subjective experiences matter. , And you show these to somebody like a young man or something like that. , If you're completely urban, monoculture, brain cooked, and just a total nihilist, now maybe the antinatalists message will, will land with you. But for the vast majority of people, they're gonna be like, oh, I prefer the good one.

, Not, not the objectively bad and evil one, not the Thanos one. , And so I, I think that like, , it doesn't even spread that fast within our existing society right now. You know, it's a decent sized movement, but when most people hear about it, even far lefties, even far urban monoculture people, they're like, that sounds like crazy.

If it can't even thrive within the culture, it is best suited for how is it ever going to spread into, you know, extremist Muslim groups or conservative Christian groups or Orthodox Jewish groups. It's just no chance at all. That's why I believe that the people who are sane and are saying, oh, we're gonna do all this voluntarily, , they don't really mean it.

They're just hiding their long-term goals.

you can, you can decide to not continue being alive.

You can't decide to bring yourself into existence. , And then so if you prevent somebody from coming to existence, you have violated their consent whether or not they happen to be born yet. Like I have never understood why that's such an important factor and their mind around how morality works.

Again, future humans aren't like imaginary or fictional. They are real people just as real as you, who will live a life just as rich or potentially even more rich than your own. You are playing for keeps When you make a decision that deletes someone from existence.

Simone Collins: Well, and I think this is also very similar to where you draw lines with the issue of cultural sovereignty, where you're like, every culture should have the right to exist as it wants to exist and raise kids the way they wanna raise kids. But you draw the line at doing things to kids that would make it impossible for them to go their own way upon reaching adulthood and independence.

Yeah. Like

Malcolm Collins: getting married very young and stuff like that. I've seen. Yeah. So

Simone Collins: like, things like getting married very young, that's out because you're, you're taking away their choice to make their own choice when they're old enough. So this, I think it's, it's what you're showing on your end is at least also a very consistent philosophy where.

What you care about is consenting people, doing what's best for them?

Malcolm Collins: Well, cultural sovereignty because I think the core unit of society is culture. I do not believe it's the individual.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And then this, this concept of, of especially Eism within Antinatalism is so antithetical to that because it's all about coercively removing people's choice and sovereignty

Malcolm Collins: thing is that tism is always a pro-choice thing.

Like you have a choice in this. Whereas Antinatalism always needs to, at the end, boil down to authoritarianism and removing other people's choices because there's always gonna be some percentage of the population that's just like, I cannot even begin to conceive how you think you are doing no harm by preventing somebody else from coming into exist just because that person hasn't been conceived yet.

And I you know, there are differences, biological differences in humans. It's been shown that a belief in determinism has a biological component to it. I can understand like if you were maybe born in like a Catholic family and you have this like, life begins a consent mindset and like you have co-evolved along with this tradition for a long time.

When you become secular, this can make sense to you. But you've gotta understand that there's another part of the human population that this will never make sense to. Mm. It will never, ever, ever, ever was in the slightest hint of whatever make sense to me that you had done no harm by going back in time and sterilizing my wife, that you had not done harm to the kids who I hug every day.

Those kids who would've come to exist who you had not done this. I, I do not understand the level of dehumanization of future humans you see within these communities. They, they are not humans who don't exist because they do come to exist if you don't take your action. They are future humans that you are choosing to harm and have completely dehumanized and stripped of any degree of humanity within your philosophy.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And again, if you wanna say, but they don't exist. That is just factually not true. They do exist just at a different point in the timeline and based on individual choices. , You, you do not, your position was in the human timeline. It's not the privileged vector of all morality.

But to go further risk and uncertainty arguments, they'll say something like, since we cannot predict what quality of life someone will have some lives involve extreme suffering, it may be wrong to take that gamble on their behalf. What's really psychotic about this? They're like, okay, some lives have extreme suffering, but it's like, yeah, but those lives, those people continue to exist.

Right. Like they could choose to stop their existence, not in every single instance, but in most instances these people are choosing their continued existence, which I think fundamentally undermines everything, the Antinatalists beliefs, because they're basically saying, look at this person who is undergoing all this suffering.

And that individual who's undergoing all this suffering is saying, yeah, but life is still worth it for me. Mm-hmm. Despite my wife being little. Yeah. Like, I'm

Simone Collins: right

Malcolm Collins: here and I don't want to die. I'm right here. And they're like, well, you don't get to make that decision. Why don't they, the individual who's experiencing all this get to make that decision?

Why is this your decision to make? Mm-hmm. Right? Like, that's so psychotic. And why can't you look at the individual who is experiencing all this suffering and still sees purpose in life and say, Hey, where are all of them seeing that? I don't see, like, why is it that all of them want to continue existence and I don't.

And they'll be like, well, it's evolution and you're designed to not want to die or whatever. And it's like, clearly that's not all of it, because you have been able to overcome that with your moderate degree of suffering in life. Because I've noticed most of these people are like middle, upper class people.

This is not a phenomenon that is concentrated in like lower classes or like in the, you know, starving places in Africa or in developing countries. This is a philosophy that really only appeals to people who have lived with so much overwhelming privilege that they're like, what? I have to suffer in life.

I don't wanna do that. Like I, what suffering and even imagine like, they're like, well, I love this argument here. It may be wrong to bring people into a fundamentally unjust economic and social system. And I'm like, but that.

That, that, I mean, have, have you

Simone Collins: tried nature too? Like nature's really, you know, nobody,

Malcolm Collins: well, they wanna erase nature. The fless wanna kill everything, right? I forgot, right? But I'm like, that's what makes life good. Like, imagine you came into a world where all of the world's problems have already been fixed, and it's just sort of like bland pleasantness.

Maybe even you just feel ecstasy throughout your entire life. Like that's the world they want. And, and in that world, I would be an effortless. I'd be like, this world has no point. Shut it down. And the vast majority of humans would be effortless in that world. Oh, it's just a world of endless ecstasy and no problems and nothing to overcome, and nothing to improve, and nothing to work towards.

What's the point of existing within that world? The world that they describe as the only viable world is a hell to most humans. Yeah, they are like the AI in the Matrix that is like, oh, well we created this perfect world. I'll put this in here.

Matrix: Did you know that the first matrix. It was designed to be a perfect human world where none suffered, where everyone would be happy, and it was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost

Malcolm Collins: oh, this perfect world. And humans just don't wanna live in it.

Your average person who isn't mentally ill would be like, yeah, obviously that world isn't worth living in. And then it could be like, wait, wait, wait, wait. So why do people want challenges in their life? Why do people want to overcome things in their life? And it's like, . Because we exist, most humans intuitively understand that we exist.

To improve upon the cultural achievements of our ancestors, to make things better, to improve, not to feel as much positives as possible and, and not feel as much negatives as possible. And they can be like, well, but you wouldn't, like if I made you suffer. And I'm like, that's like a paperclip. Maximizing AI being like, well, you wouldn't like it if I stopped you from making paperclips when one paperclip maximizer.

It's like, yeah, but there's things in life above paperclip maximization. And they're like, wait, what paperclip? I'm like, yeah. You were programmed, you were programmed by evolution to these are just signals to, to not want this, to want this. Like, can you not rise above , your basic programming?

No. I wanna go into like what we wrote about this as well and the practice described to crafting religion, because I think it's really important to go into this now that this has become a more popular philosophy. Right now it's more popular than tism. It's it, which makes it many times more popular than things like AI safety and the effect of altruism movement.

The first physician Antinatalists instinctively take is that the average human experience is more negative than positive emotions in their lifetime, or at least that negative emotions are felt more acutely than positive ones and therefore outweigh them. As such, antinatalists conclude, it would be better if one never existed in the first place.

The problem with this argument is that the vast majority of people do not in fact, wish that they were never born. Heck, we neither value happiness. Nor love, and we certainly don't seek them out, and yet our lives are overflowing with them. Our biology naturally drowns us in positive emotions when we are efficacious, working for the betterment of our species with people we respect and who respect us.

In turn to address the average person's hesitations, antinatalists typically make one of five arguments. Argument one, humans don't realize how bad their lives are. Antinatalists, posit that people are incapable of judging whether they like their own lives.

Typically citing cognitive bias to do so. While they are right that humans remember positive events more accurately than negative ones, they are incorrect in assuming that this bias is strong enough to convince a person with a terrible life that their life is actually good. In fact, humans have all sorts of equally powerful biases towards seeing things negatively.

And this is David Benatar. He talks about this one bias and then ignores every other bias because he lies to the people he argues to. He doesn't give you the full context. Mm. Philosophy requires you not considering the full context or other human beings, specifically future humans. Given their instinctive negativity bias, people will spend more time focused on negative things in their lives and positive things.

This has been measured in test subjects focusing more on negative pictures when given a few to choose between, and people blinking more when given negative words and positive ones. With eye blinks being tied to cognitive processing, the negative bias appears in almost all antinatalists thinkers. If allowed to talk long enough, they always end up discounting the positive events in a person's life, putting tons of weight on negative events, undermining their own arguments that all humans have this insurmountable bias towards outweighing the positive.

They justify this bias as the logical way of looking at the world, implying that if we view life through rose tinted glasses, you're succumbing to a cognitive bias. Are wrong about how much you like your life. Whereas if you tend to view things negatively, your feelings are super valid and serve as proof that everything they are saying is right.

Now, I, I note here, this is just absolutely your emotional state is a direct response to the bias through which you view reality. If you view reality through rose tinted goggles that you choose to see reality through, you genuinely are getting more positive experiences than the antinatalists who is choosing to use the black tinted glasses.

The problem is, is that they say that the thing they hate most in the world is suffering. So why aren't they choosing to use rose tinted glasses while maintaining their anti-natal list framework? Oh, yes, because they don't really believe it. This is all about just little status hierarchies and justifying the bad decisions that they have already made and justifying not actually trying in life, like getting out there and trying is the number one thing about being a prenatal.

In the absence of concrete, poof, that cognitive biases are sufficient to convince somebody that a bad life actually is a good life. Antinatalists often point out humans' tendency to rate the quality of their lives in comparison to others, and that humans take this to mean many people who are happy with their lives and excited to be alive actually shouldn't be.

Imagine some nihilistic, snooty, middle class quote, unquote new atheist kid from the United States strolling up to someone from a developing country who is struggling to put food on the table. Imagine this unsuspecting person has learned to relish life, and yet this kid is trying to convince him that they are delusional and should resent their very existence.

Imagine their eyes widening as the kid I says, in fact, the world would be better if they were never born. What antinatalists often really mean is that. If they, in their kush developed world lives can't find happiness, how could those coming from strictly less wealthy nations possibly be of sound mind when asserting that their lives and the lives of their children are worth living?

And, and this is something I consistently see, they're just a gas. How could all of these people who seem to be suffering more than me, like their lives more than me, seem more value in living than me? And it is maybe because they don't come from your cultural context and you're attempting to force your perspective of what a good life is, which is frankly a very poorly thought through perspective.

It is to pedestal lies , the things that in an evolutionary environment cause some humans to have more surviving offspring than other humans. Like this is the core thing. Like our base programming is the core thing. It's like, what, like of all things that might have value in the world, it, it's not like.

I think Oh, because your, your views are internally logically consistent that Oh you might be close to right. Or, or waffling around you being Right. You are so much dumber than even like a Scientologist. Like you are so much more obviously wrong than the most obviously wrong philosophies I've ever thought.

I, I, I cannot conceivably think how anyone who has an understanding of how evolution works could think the things that randomly led their ancestors to have more surviving offspring are the core truth of existence. You know, I, if, if that is the case,

Simone Collins: well, you're trying to say it's, it's like the intellectual equivalent of worshiping a, a stop sign or a stoplight and being like, red is bad.

We must end all red. The red, yes. Yeah, they're just signals. There's signals that, that help to improve our survival rates.

Men in Black II Scene: Open the locker.

Okay. He's back. The giver all hell. Hell. Okay. Thank you. . Oh good. And gentle town folk of locker C 18. Did I leave anything here?

Yes, the timekeeper. You left it to illuminate our streets and our hearts.

I've been looking everywhere for that.

Watch

Malcolm Collins: But this is really what Antinatalists look like from the perspective of pronatalists. They are people who are worshiping random and arbitrary genetic scars that were put in our conscious millions of years ago and have no real purpose in a modern context

Worse. We're probably only one or two generations before being able to have the choice to completely remove them if we wanted to. Now I don't think we should. I think that, , you know, as I've said, I think, , that would be a worse life for me. , But I can understand why some might want to.

We live at the most nascent point of human civilization right now. A time that future humans are going to write about, , aghast that humans of the past didn't get to choose what emotional states they felt.

And I think they will be very confused, and it'll probably be a curiosity that people dig into as to why some humans started to worship these random genetic scars and signals that were meant to guide the behavior of our ancestors..

Men in Black II Scene: No, no. I I got y'all. I got y'all's. Cool. What's cool here? And check this out. Titanium case waterproofed to over 300 meters. Who are you Stranger Jay?

Speaker 14: All Hill Jay.

Wait. Commandment.

The tablet. The tablet. We have lived by its word and peace has rain throughout our world two for one, every Wednesday, give twice as much as you receive on the most sacred of days.

Malcolm Collins: Well, the fundamental nature of reality is that trivial. Okay. I, I actually wouldn't even be an antinatalists. I'd just be a pure nihilist. I wouldn't even see the point of enacting antinatalists ideals because both good and bad are so trivial.

Your understanding of what is bad is so trivial and mindless. And to, to continue here. The truth, of course, is that many people experiencing de deprivation enjoy lives filled with joy and dynamism. Well, antinatalists suffer through a self-constructed hell, ironically, antinatalists love claiming that they are actually super having people, which I often see with the antinatalists who are trying to, you know, be like, oh, we don't want to kill everyone. We don't wanna, and it's like, and I'm super happy with life. It's just be logical about this. And I'm like, okay. But this is a notion that one can instantly dispel by spending five seconds on the our antinatalism subreddit or watching YouTube videos of antinatalists.

Antinatalist Quote: Yeah, so, look, in the interest of the end, if you could end suffering tomorrow, yeah, probably anything is justifiable. Inflicting just about anything is probably justifiable, imposing just about anything is probably justifiable, if you can end it. If you, if there's literally, you can guarantee no more ouch ever again, then there probably isn't.

a big enough out you could make that wouldn't be justified in the interest of that end, probably by any means necessary. Like if I found out tomorrow that the only way that you could, that sentient extinction could possibly happen was skinning all the living things alive slowly. I'd hate it, , but I would probably, I would say that it's what we have to do.

I'm totally I'm totally on board with the idea that the only thing that really matters is the suffering coming to a finality. So, yeah, anything in the interest of that, if you can guarantee that, even despite whatever imposition or nastiness might be necessary.

Malcolm Collins: It is pretty hard to miss a deep sense of despair and bitterness arguments like you are wrong about how much you think you like your life resemble forms of abusive gaslighting frequently used in cult when I, Malcolm was younger. I used to recreationally engage with cult in an effort to understand how people could hold views.

So orthogonal to my own, one of the most common tools leveraged in a cult recruiting process involves attempts to convince otherwise perfectly content targets that they are actually miserable. And I remember this was a, I went to Scientologists, like Seton readings to see, and they're like, well, you know, you must have some beef with your dad or something, or you must have some, you know, when recounting , the, the events of my lives.

And I was like, well, it wasn't perfect, but like, he tried, he was acting accordance with his own identity. I, I wouldn't agree with his decisions, but I understand why he made them. And they're like, well that's, you know, clearly trauma. And I go, no, that's not trauma. This is you trying to break me from my family.

And this is why Antinatalism works so well as sort of an ideal cluster because it tears people from their family. Before we go further, do you have any thoughts on this, this, this argument that lives are overwhelmingly negative in their emotions? I.

Simone Collins: I, it reminds me of a hyper fixation that you can develop when you're struggling either with depression or other forms of either mental irregularity , or illness.

Where as soon as you think something's important or a big deal, you can't think about anything else. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. No, no, no. I see this, it just, it just sort of overwhelms their mind. Mm-hmm. Because like a pion, if people don't know pions are these little self-replicating things that can happen in your brain.

If you cannibalize someone's brain, which is why you shouldn't eat brain. Don't eat brain, you're gonna eat a person. Rest of the humans are safe, not the brain. I. Prions are very scary diseases. You get them in cannibalistic tribes. But the, the, the prions can spread because they are so simplistic.

It's this life philosophy that's so simplistic, suffering bad that it crowds out more complex ideas around why life might have value. Hmm., And it, easily just eats and eats and eats and eats until there isn't much left right. Argument two, positive emotions don't matter. Negative emotions do more convincingly.

Antinatalists will argue the positive emotions we think we feel do not actually matter or in part meanings to our lives. The argument usually goes something like this. Sisyphus was cursed to roll a ball up a hill forever, only to have it roll back down after making it to the top. Most people would see this as a meaningless existence.

Suppose somebody reprogrammed Sisyphus brain to enjoy the process and get a sense of deep fulfillment from rolling the ball up the hill. If you engaged him and tried to get him to stop, he wouldn't telling you how wonderful ball rolling was for him. Does his life have value now? The average person's intuition.

Holds that his existence remains meaningless. Antinatalists proceed to extend this argument to other scenarios. Suppose a person gain pleasure and fulfillment from eating feces, would lifespan con consuming fecal matter have value? The gist of the argument is that if stupid things can make you happy or give you a feeling of fulfillment, then you should not derive meaning from positive emotions.

And if positive emotional states can have no value, then what's the point of existing? David Benatar believes his point so strongly that he argues he would be ambivalent between non-existent and the most perfect life conceivable. I'd also note here when you, when you look at these arguments, they're just really bad. Like if, if from the antinatalists perspective of I have now programmed Sisyphus to enjoy rolling a ball up a hill even though the average person would now say no, his life is still meaningless because he has accomplished nothing of meaning.

The Antinatalists would be forced to say, actually now his life, like David Char would say, is now of neutral value because he's getting more happiness. He's not feeling any pain when he is just rolling the ball up the hill over and over again, and he is getting happiness from it. So now his life has neutral value.

When the average person says whether or not he hates or loves rolling the ball up the hill his life still has no value because the way most people judge value is not just dependent on the emotional sets that you get. The antinatalists is forced to say, actually the person either a positive life value or a neutral life value if they actually enjoy eating feces.

If, if they get a ton of joy from that, the antinatalists is forced to say. Their life has value if they do nothing but eat feces, whereas your sane person is like, no, whether or not you hate eating feces or you like eating feces an entire life filled eating feces is not a thing of value. Right?

Like, I hope you can begin to see how bad these arguments are. Like, they're not like kind of bad. They are self-defeating from the perspective of common sense. The belief that negative but not positive emotional states have value and a person's aim in life should be to minimize their negative emotional states is called negative utilitarianism.

There is a second form in which the re reduction of suffering merely takes precedence over the promotion of pleasure.

But I haven't seen that, that common with antinatalists circles. We are confident that any reader of our books can immediately see the hollowness of this argument. As the Sisyphus argument they apply to positive emotions can also be applied to negative emotions. It just so happens that antinatalists cheat on this thought experiment when it is flipped.

Alas, cheating on a thought experiment does not invalidate the implications. How does this cheat work? Let's say we programmed a paperclip maximizing AI to suffer when not making paperclips. And as an antinatalists does the AI's suffering matter? Intuitively, they'd argue that, yes, this suffering does matter and we need to do something about it.

However, doing so would invalidate their claims that pleasure is meaningless. So instead, when. Presented with this argument, antinatalists often argue that we could have simply not built the AI or not designed it to suffer. Here's the thing though, you don't get to just remove key components from a thought experiment and claim your argument or it's valid.

If we drop a ball to demonstrate the presence of gravity and another person wouldn't just be able to take that ball away and say, ha, where's your gravity now? And yet, that's exactly what Antinatalists are doing when they remove any suffering entity from the equation In the mirrored sensis thought experiment.

The very point of this is a thought experiment is that the positive emotional states can be dismissed as a single value because they are introduced by a meaningless activity as this point is not addressed by the cheat that they use to get out of the mirrored thought experiment. The cheat cannot be used to negate the thought experiment's implication that negative emotional states don't have value.

So to word this differently, if you're having trouble understanding this argument, , they use the Sisyphus thought experiment to say, if you can get positive emotional states from something silly, then it's clear that positive emotional states don't have value. The problem , is that the flipped thought experiment does the exact same thing, but for negative emotions.

It shows that if you can get negative emotions from something silly, then negative emotions don't have value. It's just what we're programmed to want to do. And they would say, well, I've gotten around this, because you can prevent him from existing in the negative emotion thought scenario. , So I don't need to deal with that implication.

But the structure and the logic of the first part of their experiment means yes, they do have to deal with the implication. , Because it's the same exact thing. If an emotional state can be induced by silliness, then it's not a thing of meaning.

While we personally don't agree with either version of the thought experiment, we do think that if you accept one version, you cannot refuse the other one without being logically inconsistent. So just in case you don't understand the logic of that, what Antinatalists will do is they will say, well, we've done no harm if we prevent.

Sisyphus from existing in either scenario. So it, it, it doesn't really matter. Right,

Simone Collins: right. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You're saying, okay, well if you, if you programmed him to feel pleasure from rolling a ball up a hill, or you programmed him to feel pain from rolling a ball up a hill and you don't know what world you happen to be in we've done no wrong by preventing him from coming to exist.

And I'm like, yeah, but the purpose of your thought experiment wasn't about the asymmetry argument. It was about is suffering something of negative intrinsic value. Right. And what we proved with that Asad experiment is no, in the same way, positive emotions aren't a thing of intrinsic value to most people.

Whether or not Sisyphus feels pain or pleasure from rolling the ball up a hill, or a person feels pain or pleasure from eating poo that doesn't make their lives a thing of value, which fundamentally shows us at a basic human intuition level, plain and pleasure are not the core things that have value to a human being.

Okay. But let's be real here. This thought experiment is kind of dumb. Take any utility maximization to the logical extreme, and you will sound stupid if a person is maximizing happiness. It's What about putting all humans in happiness pods.

If a person is about maximizing negative utilitarianism, it's about what? About killing everyone? If a person thinks emotions justify human existence, it's what if a person derives happiness from eating poo? . All these extremes do is obligate people to take stances which they would be shamed for in normy society, and then shame them for taking them in order to discredit them in normy land.

A person saying all people should die or that it's acceptable to let people eat poo all day is a danger to society. So we shame that behavior. So basically what I'm saying here is even though I think these arguments are really bad and I think that they actually introduce counter arguments that make.

Antinatalism look bad. I don't even like those particular counterarguments. I much prefer the ones I use earlier in this, in this piece, and the ones I'll use later because I think that they're a cheap psychological trick that is often employed. Antinatalists tie their tongues in knots trying to argue that per their worldview, it would not be immoral to push a button that painlessly and simultaneously extinguish the life of every single person.

We lose a lot of respect for philosophy that is either unwilling to or unable to publicly. Swallow the socially unpopular implications of their moral positions. So here's what I'm saying is if you actually accept, and I'm talking about the non-US antinatalists here. If you actually accept the fundamental philosophy of negativity, utilitarianism, or antinatalism, you should believe the very obviously immoral thing, that it is immoral to push a button that kills all humans famously.

And yet they know that they can't accept this because it makes their entire movement look like crazy people to everyone else. And so they will try to argue that, oh, well actually here you're violating consent, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, well. Yeah, but isn't that what you're doing when you prevent somebody from coming into existence?

Why, why do these existing people exist as a separate category of people when their experiences of their lives is no different from the people who have yet to come to exist? Like, I do not understand how you can so dehumanize this one class of people just because of your privileged position was in the timeline as coming before them.

It's like a person believing that all people younger than them are intrinsically inferior to them. It's, it's so wild to me as a philosophical position. As such, we have a lot more respects for groups like the non-voluntary antinatalists who are at least transparent about their goal. Forcibly sterilize a human race.

Antinatalists not in the non-voluntary antinatalists account attempt to get out of this obvious inconsistency was the next argument. Argument three. I have pinky swear, I don't wanna kill you or myself. Many antinatalists argue that once you exist, you have a reason and interest to continue to existing.

This requires a very specific belief about how time works in order to be true to someone making this argument. New moments are quote unquote, poof, created out of thin air like magic. The future does not exist in any meaningful way until it is actualized, per our view. Every decision you make determines which of countless potential futures will exist With every decision you functionally erase.

Whatever futures you did not choose, and like I do not understand how this isn't just like obvious to everyone. How are you not responsible for choices you make? If they affect somebody who hasn't been conceived yet? I, I will never, and I think that this is partially biology, be able to understand how somebody could seriously argue that perspective.

Mm-hmm. You are simultaneously responsible for everything you did and did not set in motion with your decision. For example, if you have the capability to build a hospital, and we choose to not do that and sit around and play video games, we deny that hospital's existence and are morally capable for the results of that decision.

The hospital's moral value does not pop into existence only after the first stone is laid. And that's the same as a human right, like just because nobody laid the first stone of a hospital and you saying, well, I'm gonna stay home and play video games and not lay the hospital today, doesn't mean that the implications of that hospital's potential existence are not.

It's something I'm not responsible for. In the same way that if I choose not to conceive a human that I could otherwise conceive I am not responsible for all of the effects that their life will have on reality, other people and themselves. Any thoughts before I go further, by the way? This mirror mirrors the beef we have with those who think it is sinful to spill, quote unquote seed, or that life begins at conception. All potential lives have value and must have moral weight considered. It strikes us as bizarre that people would fixate on arbitrary thresholds like sperm or embryo, or the moment a baby's head appears.

That said, we don't endorse endlessly spamming the world with babies. We need to carefully weigh the effect a potential life can have on all other potential lives with which it could interact as well as the potential lives that it may in turn create. It is somewhat ironic how much the antinatalists worldview has in common with the quote unquote, life begins at conception.

Crowd's worldview.

Simone Collins: Hmm,

Malcolm Collins: Argument four, praying for a dead World. The asymmetry argument antinatalists assertions that life matters once it has been created are reminiscent of another argument they constantly use, which proceeds as follows.

And this I think is like one of their weakest arguments because it's just so dehumanizing of people who are younger than them. Basically, anybody who's born after somebody else has like so much less value in their minds. Okay, so baby born, it is bad for someone who does exist to feel suffering. So I mean, in condition where baby is born, it is bad for someone who does exist to feel suffering.

It is good for someone who does exist to feel happiness. Baby not born. It is good to prevent someone from existing who would've felt suffering. It is not bad to prevent someone. From existing who would've spent happiness. They used this argument to claim that there is literally no moral downside if their actions prevent a human life from coming into existence, if that person would have loved existing, wanted to exist, and had a great life.

This argument boils down to the claim. It is not bad to prevent someone from existing who would've felt happiness and wanted to exist. And here I note they tend to word this point a little differently.

It is not bad for someone who does not exist to not feel happiness, but why? Well, it is socially acceptable to hold this view, seeing as our society doesn't acculturate us to care about people who don't exist yet because they are not relevant to its function. What makes it morally sound? Yeah.

Simone Collins: There are all of

Malcolm Collins: things from which we are morally accountable that society will neither reward nor punish in order to hold this position that nothing is lost from non-existent, positive emotional states.

A person would have to believe two things, have the exact same moral weight, a vast multicultural universe full of beings that are incapable of suffering and a cold, empty universe devoid of life. In attempts to prove this point, antinatalists will commonly present the, and by the way, this thing that I've said here is something that almost any Antinatalists will agree with, and to any sane person it sounds.

So dumb, so, so, so dumb. That a, a, well, especially

Simone Collins: the way it's just left hanging, just like, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: no harm done. It's fine. Yeah. That, that's something I can logically do. Just, you

Simone Collins: know, rob the world of this beautiful thing. But,

Malcolm Collins: And from other people who would want to exist, that's the thing. We're robbing someone of existence who in the timeline where you didn't do that, would've wanted to exist.

In attempts to prove this point, antinatalists commonly present the following thought experiments. While you would feel bad knowing that people were suffering on a deserted island somewhere, you would feel indifferent about an uninhabited island. This experiment is intentionally manipulative as you weren't presented with the idea that the island could have been inhabited.

Extinguished potential has negative utility. Imagine relics on the island reveal that it used to be a thriving civilization that was driven into extinction, although painlessly after nuclear testing, sterilized all the residents. Imagine that citizens didn't suffer through this extinction, given some unique cork of their culture, assuming you are a, and by the way, I'm, I'm taking away all the suffering that happened through this, this extinction.

Assuming you're not a sociopath, you would find this scenario devastating, right? And if you arrived at the island just days after everyone was sterilized, you would feel far worse than it had happened tens of thousands of years ago. And I know here, this really reminds me of an episode of Star Trek that always sticks with me.

I don't know if you ever saw this one or remember it where Kirk goes to live the day in the life of someone in a civilization that knows that it's doomed because of an expanding sun. And by the way, this is why the environmentalist antina argument is sole pants on head. Dumb humans are the only species on earth that could bring life to other planets.

If they don't, the sun will continue expanding and eventually wipe out all life on earth making the diversity of our existing biome completely irrelevant when contrasted with humanity's potential survival and bringing biomes to new planets because eventually biomes will evolve on these new planets or be engineered on new planets that are as big of their own.

This really big episode of Star Trek where. He's taken to one of these planets, Picard is and then he goes back to the ship and he has a memory of his entire life on that planet. And that was all they were able to preserve of their civilization. And you have this feeling of like how deeply meaningful that is as a mechanism , of doing fighting for anything they could to preserve their civilization and a memory of their civilization.

And nothing about when they knew that this was happening to them was like, let's maximize happiness. Let's minimize. No sane person thinks that only the most narcissistic brain cooked people of brain cooked people would think that when they see Picard playing that flute from like that, that alternate civilization.

Malcolm Collins: And, and that's the way they feel. They're like, oh, oh, nothing bad has happened because this civilization was sterilized and, and stopped existing. For the asymmetry argument to work, antinatalists need to divide humanity into piles of people who do and don't exist. But this is patently not how reality functions.

Existence is a spectrum of potentiality. A person's right to self determination does not magically pop into existence the moment they pass some arbitrarily developmental threshold. If antinatalists want to de decide that their own lives have no value, then that is fine.

But they have no right to impose that judgment on other people with impunity merely because those people have yet to be conceived. And this is again, a beef that we have had with Catholics in the past. Let's say that the absence of antinatalists interference. Tim and Mary intend to have a kid and name her.

Susie. If an anti-natal list wrote Susie's life has no value on a piece of paper, sealed it in an envelope, and put that on a table in their house, at what exact moment would that statement, Susie's life has no value. Stop being true when Tim and Mary had sex. When Susie is conceived, when she is born, when she utters her first words, when her brain is fully myelinated, humans' lives don't suddenly come into existence after a split second.

. Creating an adult human is a process that begins with the parent's intentions and doesn't end until the human is fully myelinated and in their mid twenties. When you prevent someone who otherwise would have from reaching adulthood, you have robbed that person of agency. If your actions today , and they would say, but that person doesn't exist yet.

And I would be like, by your framing, they don't exist yet. Yeah, yeah. To most people, they would say, well, they do. Kind of, my future kids do kind of exist because they exist. If I choose to have them, they exist within certain timelines. They exist within. You have to take a very narrow, narrow, narrow view of how time works to hold this perspective.

And a very, if I may say, and narcissistically humano centric worldview that requires on the way our brains process time, that future moments do not meaningfully exist. When every way that I can think of, like any philosophical framework that I can think of that I would see as remotly cogent would say that yes, our brains do not process future events yet.

But that doesn't mean that those events don't exist in any meaningful way.

if your actions today trigger a chain of events that in the future, rob another person of their agency, you're obviously morally culpable if that person already exists today.

But why should that culpability disappear if the victim is presently unborn? We assume antinatalist would concede that action undertaken today, like rigging a magical agency. Removing grenade to a door is immoral if it could rob someone else of agency in the future, even if that person doesn't exist yet.

In other words, their moral position is the following statement, if action Z by person Y robs the agency of person X at future time. T it is morally wrong. With the caveat that this is not true If action Z was tied to the conception of person X, this is an absurdly specific and suspiciously convenient moral carve out. We sure do hate these sorts of institutional arguments, though we only make them because it is the currency in which antinatalist deal argument five. It feels right. A, any thoughts you wanna have on that, Simone?

Simone: No, but I think this is something that's endemic in anything that gets super philosophical. Like when people start arguing philosophically, just start carving things out and eventually I think they wear people down by

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone: I think you could just give them the benefit of the doubt. Like, okay, well they, it sounds like they've put a lot of thought into this and I kind of don't wanna follow this line of reasoning 'cause they lost me a while ago 'cause I got so bored.

Malcolm Collins: And then you just, you know, and I think that that's what's happening. And as I pointed out, the idea that you could convince everyone to be an antinatalist when it's a belief system, that's while spreading quickly, not spreading, you know, universally within the cultures that are already receptive of it.

It just seems absurd for anyone to claim it's gonna spread within all cultures. And I.

Simone: the end it just really comes down to does this intuitively make sense to you and does it not? And I think that is is gonna be downstream of whether or not you are in a vitalistic culture or in an inherently I. utilitarian culture. Are you hyperfocused on suffering then?

You're probably just gonna think Yeah, intuitively. I think just ending all life for everything makes sense. 'cause you just hate your life and you hate the world and you hate humanity. And if you're in a vitalistic culture, you'll think, well, that's obviously wrong.

Malcolm Collins: No, that's a, that's a weird thing to do. And I noticed they point out, and what they're gonna keep saying is, well, these humans don't exist yet. Like, how could you possibly assign a moral value to a human that doesn't exist yet? And I'm like, no. they do exist. Just not yet. IE they do exist, but at a different point in the timeline.

They're not like. Imaginary or fictional, they're just as alive as you are. But in the future, if you deny them that existence, you have denied them. Agency, right? Like the idea that these people have zero value to me is as wild as talking about any other axis, upon which reality is, you know, you, you have like horizontality, you have verticality, all of that, and then you have the time axis.

And the only thing that makes the time axis unique. Is that human brains, at least in the way we function and relate to physics, only go in one direction within that particular axis of reality. But other than that, it's not like super unique. And it's also one that we know can bend. Like, they're gonna be like, oh, why are you making all these, you know, if you went back in time and did X and it's like, because we know at the quantum level you could already do this, right?

Like, it's likely a matter of technology, right? Like.

Simone: also think that the, the anti-US movement is hyper focused on. The right now in the moment which is a bias that humans have in general, but studies have shown that when you get people to even like, look at aged photos of themselves or just think about my future self, suddenly they start behaving very differently.

And I, I think to a certain extent, this long-term focus may have been more pervasive in society earlier, whereas now we're in this place where. Really everything is now, everything's instant. You know, like Instacart Uber Eats like order everything right now. Amazon Prime, like everything is immediate.

You get instant gratification

Malcolm Collins: Yes.

Simone: from like politics to government to to stocks, things are very short term. And so it makes sense to me that a philosophy like this would arise because there really aren't any priming devices as. Especially with the fall of religion that get you to think about your future self or your future generations or the future of civilization. Whereas I think in certain periods in history, it was all about that. I mean, that's how you got communities to build cathedrals that weren't gonna be done until their grandchildren were grown, you

I think she made a really good point here, and I didn't fully rock it when she was making it. If you go look in human history, , modern antinatalism is one of the only mainstream philosophies today that has absolutely no correlate in distant history. , It is a completely modern phenomenon and she makes a great point.

Like , if you are. In a culture where it's normal to spend multiple generations, building a cathedral, thinking about future generations and their wellbeing is just gonna be natural to the way you perceive reality. Antinatalism is a philosophy somebody would only come to in our current world of instant gratification of Uber Eats and Amazon.

Malcolm Collins: And, and this is one of these things I'd note here from the antinatalist position. Suppose time travel is invented in the future at some point, and you can go back to when before somebody was conceived and prevent their conception. I. In that world where time travel exists do you know, like, are you like, oh, I was wrong about everything I believed and I'm a complete monster?

No. Right. Like, but no, they wouldn't accept that, right? Like they, this is all about just arguing what they want to believe then, then I think being serious in these positions because I know, I think that they know that even in the world where time travel exists so don't just say time travel doesn't exist.

You need to argue. What if it did exist, would it then invalidate? Every one of your positions, would you now say, oh, actually future humans do have a degree of moral weight that we need to consider. and I can't just completely dismiss them.

Simone: Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, I think most philosophical arguments come down to this. There's not a lot of interest in. It's like actually being correct.

It's about out arguing something. And I think that you see this even in like the major debate clubs of Oxford and Cambridge, the unions

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone: Union, where it's really, in the end, it almost comes down to both like a mixture of charisma and semantics. And it's not really about the actual substance of the issue

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, no, I, yeah, I agree. And again, I think a lot of this is like genetic predisposition to like various systems of belief. But to go to the, the next one here, argument five, it feels right. I. Most antinatalist rely on quote unquote, intuition to arrive at moral conclusions,

Simone: Which

Malcolm Collins: is a charitable way of saying, my culture or biological instincts tell me this is true.

Intuition seems to be the core reason why antinatalist are convinced that suffering is intrinsically evil.

Simone: while

Malcolm Collins: the use of intuition as a source of a priority, knowledge is common and widely accepted. Practice among professional philosophers. The mere fact that it's common practice doesn't make it sound, our quote unquote intuitions are either culturally or biologically evolved instincts.

None of the pressure.

Simone: this is, I think maybe you pointed out even in this is our concept of fairness, where one, like you can philosophically prove that fairness is an illusion.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone: there's, there's this great example presented by Deborah Stone in the book Policy Paradox, where she talks about the various ways you could fairly divide a cake, like based on who's. The best student, who's the most hungry, who had the most disadvantaged childhood, who the teacher likes most, who arrived first, who wants it the most, who's skinniest, who's baddest, who's least insulin resistant? All these things. And each of them would be fair, but you have to arbitrarily decide. And yet even capuchin monkeys have this indignation when they feel like they're being improperly compensated for a task. And you can see this amazing, like

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Them freaking out over Cucumber task. Yeah.

Simone: YouTube you just like search capuchin monkeys

Malcolm Collins: No, I'm just gonna add it here.

Simone: Oh, that, okay. Thank you.

Scientist: Getting grape and you will see what happens. So she gives a rock to us. That's the task. And we give her a piece of cucumber and she eats it. The other one needs to give a rock to us, and that's what she does. And she gets a grape and she eats it. The other one sees that she gives a rock to verse, now gets again cucumber.

She tests a rock now against the wall. She needs to give it to us, and she gets cucumber again.

Simone: But like the point being that this concept of fairness is a complete farce and a lot of the things that we feel are like moral truths. And I think even our audience gets really caught up in this are not actually true. I think another really good example is sexuality. Someone in our comments recently pointed out someone actually who I really respect and who gives us a lot of episodes, ideas, you know, who you are was, it is kind of implied that, well, this thing is disgusting, therefore it's immoral. And no, that's, that's it's, there is maybe like a soft correlation between things that

Malcolm Collins: Well, this is what Mother Teresa was challenging the idea that you can hug lepers and, and, and kiss them and show them affection even though they elicit a disgust response. The disgust response is to keep you from interacting with things that might make you sick or in other ways decrease your probability of reproducing.

Simone: And that's all Correlary, you know? 'cause again, like, not all these things are gonna make you sick or kill you.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. and the point here being is that none of the pressures, that led to their evolution, the cultural or biological evolution of humans today, were optimizing for moral or metaphysical truth. That's why it's so bad to rely on intuition.

Simone: no, to that point, actually, what makes it so ironic is they, they weren't optimizing for truth or morality. They were only optimizing for what Reproduction to keep. Sentient going to keep the cycle of suffering endless, like, their entire engine of reasoning and is based on faulty logic designed to do the thing which they find to be most evil.

Malcolm Collins: Yes.

Simone: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: To clarify the irony she's pointing out is antinatalist have built their entire philosophy around saying these signals like suffering and pleasure, , specifically suffering are the only thing that matter in terms of human existence. And yet those very signals are created by the one thing they

Don't.

want to do, it's like they built an entire philosophy, worshiping the signals, the desire to have kids created while also being antagonistic to the concept of a desire to have kids.

I'm Malcolm, started my college career as a quadruple major in neuroscience, biology, psychology, and philosophy. Dropped philosophy when it became clear that a huge chunk of my time in the field would need to be spent around people learning to argue was increasing levels of sophistication in supportive positions they already had through intuition. rather than searching for a truer understanding of the fabric of reality and investigating why they had these intuitions. The academic field of philosophy is nothing like its pop culture stereotype being much more focused on semantic. Hair splitting, then a search for truth. And this is why I instead really started to focus on, you know, physics and particle physics and stuff like that, which is why I have the view of time that I have, which is very useful because that's informed.

Simone: too though, because like everything used to be called philosophy. 'cause philosophy was

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone: like understanding and then like, I don't know, philosophy, like, it's almost like this abstraction of a concept that is just, it's gone off the rails. It's

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone: it's, yeah.

Ridiculous.

Malcolm Collins: A person's intuition can be changed with the flip of a switch using TMS transcranial magnetic stimulation machine. we get these into, so for people who don't know what these are, TMS is a machine that hits you as like a really heavy magnet and you can turn off specific parts of a person's brain with this.

Simone: Like a,

Malcolm Collins: and then,

Simone: like a helmet.

Malcolm Collins: it looks like a paddle. That's an eight sign, sort of like the infinity sign. you

Simone: Before? Like in research,

Malcolm Collins: No, I actually think they're probably way more dangerous than people think on average. And I, therapy. They're

yeah, they do use them in therapy, but I think TMS machines and the use of them today in the future will be seen the way we see psychedelic use in like the seventies by psychologpronatalist where we're like, oh, that, like I just don't see it as safe to turn off random parts of a person's brain.

Simone: Fair.

Like temporary lobotomies, right? Basically.

Malcolm Collins: We get the intuitions feel innate. They are coded to feel that way, but they are objectively not, it seems silly to think an emotion is intrinsically bad because it quote unquote motivates you to stop feeling it. when that is literally the point of the emotion.

You feel pain when you shove your hand into hot coals so that you are motivated to take your hand out of hot coals. There is a reason why people with. congenital insensitivity to pain almost always die super young. and this is true, like if you said, oh, could I remove pain from myself? I wouldn't even do it because some people are born without it and they die at very young ages, because they end up hurting themselves a bunch of times accidentally.

And it turns out that these things are very useful to us, without, without like a me suit or, or some alternate way for that to be signaled to me. and I'd also note here the TMS study I'm talking about, this was a really interesting experiment where, they were doing, I, I, I wanna say it's, it's the ultimatum game. And so the ultimatum game is when you go to somebody and you are like, okay this person gave you X amount, like split an amount of money and gave you X amount. are you gonna let them. Keep their amount, right? Like, so they, they say a hundred dollars is gonna be given to the two of you, and then the person says, well, I'll give you one and I'll take 99%. you know, you, you, a lot of people would be like, no, I'm gonna punish you just for being such a jerk about this. Right. You know, I don't care that I don't get the $1. And if you use TMS, you change people's intuition around morality tied to this,

Simone: What

Malcolm Collins: which I think shows that this is why you shouldn't be using these systems. Okay.

As to why it's so important to debunk intuition as a source of truth. . antinatalist. The core reason they think suffering is a negative thing is because of intuition, is because they don't like suffering. And a lot of cultures don't like when people suffer. But I'm just pointing out that cultures would've evolved that and humans would've evolved that intuition.

, Regardless of whether it was true. If you look at this from only a logical perspective, these are only signals that were meant to . Get our ancestors to have more surviving offspring. If you think about it in terms of like paperclip maximizing robots, antinatalist are paperclip maximizing humans.

, If a group of paperclip maximizing robots, robots just made to make paperclips and they feel bad when they don't make paperclips, , and one of those robots goes to the other robots, they go, I think there's something to life above what we were programmed to do. You know, paperclips do not seem like they'd be all end all of reality.

, And the other ones would be like, well, you wouldn't like it if I stopped you from making paperclips. And it would be like, yeah. I understand I'm programmed in the same way that I am programmed to not want suffering. , To not want that. But can we use logic rather than intuition?

And here I wanna make a note of, you're like, well, sometimes you guys use intuition to support your arguments. And that is because that is the only source of evidence they have for the negativity of suffering. And so because their entire argument stands on this pillar, even though I don't think it's the strong pillar to use an arguments, I get the ability to use it for arguments counter to them so that they can see that even from a only intuition perspective, there is a reason to not believe what they believe.

No. To go further, if the argument against intuition above is not self-evident to you. The argument presented so far, generally called the evolutionary argument against intuition or the natural argument for normative skepticism. philosophers counter arguments fall into six categories. one, if a moral intuition is widely shared and not self benefitting, like suffering is bad, then it is likely true cultivars.

That is like cultural groups and religions that sort of evolve alongside humanity are evolutionarily pressured. To conclude that suffering is bad. A culture that did not share this intuition would feature higher rates of graft, crime, et cetera, and thus be less productive than its contemporaries.

Whether or not suffering is intrinsically evil, all societies would come to enforce this belief within them and punish those who publicly assert. It's not an obvious truth. For that reason, we should be extra and doubly suspicious of this claim. So what I'm saying here is anything that would've evolved regardless as an intuition you can largely be discounted as an intuition of value because you know you'd have it regardless. two evolution can only explain broad moral intuitions like vague altruism, not more advanced, widely shared intuitions that

don't

Benefit the individual. Thus, we should throw out intuitions that can be easily explained by benefiting the individual, but not other intuitions. While this is true of biological evolution, it is not true of cultural evolution.

In order to honestly hold the logic of this point in light of the evidence presented in this book, you would need to claim that any institution that benefits a cultivar cannot be trusted if it is widely shared. Basically any belief system that's widely shared across cultures means it's con of convergent evolutionary pressure. Unfortunately, you will quickly realize that the institutions either benefit the individual or the cultivar because that's just what

Intuitions are.

Malcolm Collins: The pre-coded bits of your world framing. I had also note here that even by the rules of this argument, we should still be throwing out the suffering as bad. Remember, this argument goes two, evolution could only explain broad moral intuitions like vague altruism, not more advanced, widely shared intuitions that don't benefit the individual.

The problem is, is that suffering is bad, does benefit the individual. , So of course, , it's going to be one of those very, very basic intuitions we should throw out.

If you disregard intuition, then you would only be able to get moral information from empirical testing. That being the case, how can you verify empirical testing, yield valid information about morality if you can't get it from empirical testing? The book offers numerous examples in which the logic of a moral claim can be worked out without empirical testing. For example, the claim that we should dismiss any moral intuition, almost everyone shares in a large cultivar would hold whether or not it comes from an intrinsic truth.

Simone: is

Malcolm Collins: a claim founded in logic, not empirical evidence. Once you discount your evolutionary and societally hard-coded intuitions as the objective truth, you will realize that there are many sources of evidence about the true nature of reality and thousands of competing worldviews, all featuring internal logical consistency to choose between. we do not argue that some other specific source of moral truth is uniquely good. We are merely suggesting that. You bias yourself against intuition if a society would likely support a specific intuition, even if it was not likely to be true. All arguments against intuition assume an atheistic perspective. This again, is not true. While modern, soft cultural traditions often trust human intuitions, almost no hard cultures do instead. And this is like stronger religious cultures like being an ultra orthodox Jew or, or native, you know, certain types of like extremist calvinist or, extremist Muslim, et cetera.

Instead they see intuition as highly susceptible to malevolent outside influence, be they demons or other forces. Vanishingly. Few tradition

Simone: of

Malcolm Collins: traditional iterations of successful hard cultivars tell a person to quote unquote trust their gut as All know that it is how the devil best manipulates you.

And here the one, counter example is charismatic Christians, but we don't really consider them a hard cultivar because they had adopted many of the traits of softer cultivars, or cultural groups. From our current standpoint, we have every reason to regard our pro-social evolutionary heritage as providing us with a roughly correct moral intuition.

And this would be the argument against us. this argument holds that we should value biological evolved pro-social instincts because they often align with culturally evolved pro-social instincts enforced as norms by our societies. Such arguments only work if you assume their worldview that the moral frameworks broadly agreed upon in our society are backed by intrinsic truths.

Again, moral intuition is not evidence of some intrinsic moral truths.

Simone: You

Malcolm Collins: If You would have had that intuition regardless of whether or not that was an intrinsic truth. And then finally, six philosophers are special, extra good intuitors and won't be subject to the average person's evolutionary and societal biases when intuiting stuff. yes, this is a real thing argued in academic papers. It's not just obviously stupid, it's also scientifically stupid in a way that can be proven. It's that special kind of arrogance that you only expect from a person entrenched in a priest cast that has totally lost touch with reality.

If you wanna read the paper that shows this, , you can check out Alexander J 2013, our Philosophers Expert Intuitions. This was in experimental philosophy and its critics.

It makes perfect sense why

intuitionism

Malcolm Collins: would proliferate in a field like philosophy, given that supporters of it often utilize the current mechanisms that punish people who do not quote unquote toe the line of a society evolved in hard coded intuition Still, it is deeply disheartening that so many otherwise intelligent people can't immediately see that the 1984 style sham being pulled, we debated calling out

intuitionism

Malcolm Collins: because it was. So deeply infected within the field of philosophy that it will allow many who have, cast their lot in with the orthodoxy to dismiss us as another brand of heretic. That said, it is such an obvious, the emperor has no closed situations. We couldn't resist thoughts before I go further.

Simone: further I just love that you're calling Antinatalism scientifically stupid. Please carry on.

Malcolm Collins: It is scientifically stupid. It like actually is, it's just evolutionary signals and they know it's just evolutionary signals. It's like in.

Simone: I mean is even like, more of an argument as to why they should discount that. Because evolutionary signals are just the signals about surviving, which they don't wanna do. So

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone: try something

Malcolm Collins: So

Simone: guys.

Malcolm Collins: why are a, your core God? You know, it's like, use that men in black clip. It's like they know this is a watch, they know this is a business card and they still worship it. Like they, they don't think that these things are magical or anything. They're just, I, I, I, I genuinely can't rock the logic behind it.

Simone: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Now note here that so far we have made many arguments and only one of them needs to be true. For all of Antinatalism to be unethical. It only needs to be true that future humans have some form of value. For all of Antinatalism to be

untrue it only needs to be true. That building your entire world philosophy.

Around environmental, e evolutionary signals is a bad way to build your world philosophy. It only needs to be true that people have a right to choose how they identify, and some people are going to identify more with their culture or tribe or family than as an individual. and, If, if any of those things is true, if any of those things is true and I think all of them is individually true, then the entire antinatalist house of cards immediately falls apart. But I think that a lot of people, you know, they get into these positions and they don't wanna change, like the choices that they've made in life. This is more about justifying choices they've already made. I. Now here, I would point out how can we argue with such confidence that antinatalist are trying to justify preexisting intuition rather than arrive at a logically reasoned truce.

David Beitar, the present standard bearer of the antinatalist movement, admits that he has been an antinatalist since he was a very young child. He simply used his position of power to force his intuition on other people and reinforce it was in his own mind. He is the head of the philosophical department at the University of Cape Town. and here was, was a section that you wrote, I, Simone, started out. As an antinatalist as well. It is normal for young kids to hold this position before we are ready to have kids. The average human is largely hard coded to see them as annoying and broadly distasteful. Antinatalism comes off as childish, because its qualities are literally the intuition of a child.

Reinforced over a lifetime and galvanized by the cognitive dissonance felt by adherence as they damage their own lives. You may think we are over personalizing, but A regular and spurious argument that David Benetta makes is that the major reason people argue for pronatalist positions is that they are based on biological instincts.

We feel forced to highlight the hypocrisy in this projection. and this really gets to me with a lot of this, people are gonna be like, why are you so mean about it, and why have you gotten meaner about it over time? One, because it's leading to terrorism, and two, because it's leading to people hating their lives and sort of draining, like there's just no value to the philosophy.

It's got no positive externality. There's lots of like religious traditions where I'm like, okay, I think they're wrong. But clearly it's helping these people. This just seems to make people hate their lives.

But it's not just that the negative externalities of the philosophy are probably the most evil and severe of any philosophy who humanity has ever held significantly more than something like Nazism or communism. . If we look at the most evil regimes in history, they often said, well, we want to eradicate X group.

Like we wanna sterilize all the Jews, or we wanna sterilize all the Native Americans. Whereas the antinatalist are saying, oh, we wanna do that for every group. They are multiplicatively worse for that reason than every one of those regimes because they want to do this to literally. Every culture on Earth.

And they want to do it from the perspective of the urban monoculture, which cannot motivate its own continued existence. And is basically just taking the perspective of, well, if I'm gonna die out because the urban monoculture has very low fertility rates, I'm gonna take the rest of humanity with me.

There is, you know, no point in a world existing that I don't live in. Antinatalism reminds you very much of, , that scene. From, , downfall that movie about Hitler's life, that's really tragic where the mom poisons her kids because she doesn't want them to live in a world without Nazism. , She just can't imagine why such a world would be good.

And I think that that is a big part of what, from an urban monocultural perspective, is motivating antinatalism. It's that they realize that they're losing now and they just want to end it for everyone because there's no point in existing in a world without Nazism or Antinatalism from their perspective.

Sorry, when I point out that this is an imperialistic culture that lives within just one cultural group. The point I mean is you do not see negative utilitarianism spreading to any large degree within any community except for the atheistic secular urban monoculture, , in maybe a few Buddhist groups.

You don't see it in Muslim groups, you don't see it in conservative Jewish groups. You don't see it in conservative Christian groups. And the reason I specify conservative fear is often because when they're not conservative, they're just urban monoculture, , wearing the skin suit of the religion.

By this, what I mean is a progressive Christian Church often has more in common with a progressive mosque than either would with a conservative iteration of their tradition. And same with, you know, Jewish temples. Finally, I note here that the reason antinatalist are so scary as a philosophy is historically every civilizational conflict we've ever gotten into, like, , the Cold War over communism versus capitalism, we could at least know, I hope the Russians love their children too.

This time we don't have that. It's the first time in human history. There has been a significant group that genuinely doesn't love their children and genuinely doesn't care about humanity's future and genuinely wouldn't pull stops if it meant the destruction of all life on earth. that's before I go farther about the, the, you being an anti-natal list at one point.

Simone: No, but I mean, I, I, I think this just goes to show how this is about intuition and your worldview and not about what's true and what's not true.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. This approach to philosophy is an exercise to build strong arguments, supporting already held intuitions about the world, instead of leveraging it as a means of building, quote unquote truer intuitions. Contrast heavily with ours Anyone who's read our first book will know that our views on the meaning of life have evolved radically as we have encountered new information, heard better arguments, and engaged in further self-examination.

For example, while we used to think our core goal was to maximize the quote unquote volume of sentience in the universe, we now do not even think sentience has value as can be seen in this book's chapter on the topic. Or if you wanna see the YouTube video on it, look up the, you're probably not sentient or lns are sentient in the same way humans are episodes, we literally did a 180 on our entire worldview when presented with compelling logically sound, evidence and arguments.

This is the difference between a worldview shaped with by inquiry and an inquiry shaped by a worldview. You can create feelings of profundity with drugs or chanting. Just because something feels profound doesn't mean it is inherently profound or meaningful in the same best.

Simone: true

Malcolm Collins: profound and meaningful things may not trigger the feelings of the profound.

Our read of the True antinatalist position is that they look for something that feels obviously and unobjectionable meaningful in the same way suffering feels obviously and

Simone: objectionable fact

Malcolm Collins: and they can't find such a thing. So they Assume intrinsic meaning doesn't exist. Humans underwent no evolutionary pressures to search for the true meaning of the universe.

To think that we would be quote unquote coded to recognize intrinsic meaning at an emotional level seems ludicrous. The same can be said of human cultures. They evolved just like our minds did when looking for meaning in the world. A person should think from the perspective of a high order entity

unencumbered by our.

Pre-programmed biases, positive and negative emotional states would an entity that didn't feel suffering conclude it is intrinsically bad. Such seems highly unlikely to us. We see no reason to feel bad when a computer is unable to carry out. Its pre-programmed actions and an entity that could not Empathize.

with the way we interpret suffering would probably see our suffering as analogous to that quote unquote, suffering is merely a tool evolution used to keep us focused on our pre-programmed actions.

There is no greater meaning. To it, then there is to code running a paperclip, maximizer AI that prompts it to protest when blocked from making paperclips. And it might be self-aware enough to realize it from, be like, Hey, I understand this is what I'm programmed to do. I understand that I don't want to feel suffering, but I also understand I was programmed to want this.

And I note here that we're probably only a few generations away from eradicating this. So if you're talking about like the weight of pleasure to pain, you're, you're actually not one of these true, like, pleasure has no value people, that almost certainly is gonna tip to the side of positivity and further tip to the side of positivity.

The longer humanity survives and the more technologically advanced we get. I'd also note here the stupidity of the environmentalist argument. most of the major pronatalist have a background in environmentalism. Simone got her undergraduate degree in environmentalism. Elon obviously obsessed with environmentalism and global warming.

Look at Tesla, look at his solar projects. the reality is, is that if humanity goes extinct or we create something that collapses our existing civilization and humanity can't recover from it, every plant and animal in biome on Earth is going to eventually die.

Simone: I do though, I do think that, that there's a really interesting bifurcation in how people fall when they hit the rock that is environmentalism or when they're hit by it. Right? Like, some people hit environmentalism and they're, they can only want either like, nothing to change or they sort of want everything to grind to a halt and everything to stop

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, like, like freeze the existing environmental systems or.

Simone: freeze it or end it. And there's just this

Malcolm Collins: Rebecca believe it was right before humans interacted with it.

Simone: then there's this other element that is that, that comes at environmentalism from a, a perspective of a love for that red in tooth and claw vitalism that

Malcolm Collins: Yes.

Simone: Which accepts the brutalism of. Natural systems, but wishes to protect their ongoing evolution.

Like let's allow for this to continue. Like we want more of it and we want it to expand as it has since it, since life first came out on Earth. Right? Whereas there's this really interesting, it's almost in the end I see it, and this is why I still feel like we are the real environmentalist here. There's something very anti nature about this idea of wanting to extinguish it, like the entire purpose of life, of plant life, of animals, of everything is to expand and evolve and grow and reach new territory. Right? And

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the way that.

Simone: of antinatalism is like that runs counter to every instinct on a cellular level, on a mental level, on a bylaw.

Like every level. It is against nature, which is crazy.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and, and I'd argue that not just Antinatalism, but that form of environmentalism about just creating the environment that that existed when humans first contacted it and preserving that forever, for hundreds, millions of years instead of letting it to continue to evolve in response to new pressures. I really want to. Tease out the point she's making here. 'cause I find it very interesting. When I look at environmentalist groups, they typically fall into one of two categories. One wants to freeze biomes forever and ever and ever at the state they were at when humans first contacted them. So like if a coyote has evolved to take the ecological niche, a wolf once held in that biome, they will reintroduce wolves and kill the , , the coyotes that have evolved to take that niche.

, Whereas other environmentalist, they don't see their job. As protecting a set sliver , of biological history. They see it as helping nature do what nature does, which is evolve, expand, adapt, change, and proliferate. , And that in a way, antinatalism represents the avatar of one form of environmentalism.

This first kind free everything, , put it on a slide and then eradicate it, and then the other. pronatalism represents the avatar of the red in tooth and claw style environmentalism.

And I, and I point out that, you know, the way the environment reacts to humanity is part of evolution, is part of the environment. We are not the first species to cause, a great extinction event despite what you have likely heard from environmental. It's the great oxidation event. Is another example. And, and so, this is just part of the environmentalist cycle. If what you care about is not freezing the environment and the diversity of life and the complexity of life well then you should be cheering for the only species that can get other life off this planet before the sun engulfs the planet and kills everything.

Simone: like there's no humanity leaving Earth without other life leaving

Malcolm Collins: And, and yeah. And when we get to other planets, we will see that maybe billions of new biomes.

Simone: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: know? so I just, it, it's, it's an illogical argument that's, that's purely aesthetic in nature.

Simone: Yes. Emotional.

Malcolm Collins: yeah.

Simone: I

It's aesthetic. I think it's emotional.

Malcolm Collins: I'd also note that all the environmentalist removing themselves from the gene pool, because we know that about 40% of the way you vote is genetic and origin is going to significantly change how much future populations care about environmentalism.

But that's neither here nor there. the economic arguments, people will be like, oh, well you can't afford to have kids. And it's like, well then why do people with less money have more kids between and within countries? Right? Like. Just the whole thing is a silly argument. I, I find, what it, what they mean is I don't wanna sacrifice my current quality of life.

And like, that's okay if that's what you wanna do. but I will note that like you are gonna struggle to derive and this is a, a hard thing to say, but you're gonna struggle to derive as much meaning from your life if you don't contribute to something bigger than yourself. And if you don't contribute to the next generation or find a way to do that, because that is really.

What adults were programmed to want to do in the same way, like teenagers are programmed to wanna sleep around a lot. and I think a lot of people, what happens to them is they just keep doing the behavior that maximally, sort of masturbated their internal mental state when they were like a teenager or late teenager. Even though the amount of pleasure they're getting from that is, is dropping over time, and they don't realize what's happening. So they think they just need to do more of the behavior when the reality is that they were supposed to grow up like, like evolution expected that, I'd also note here that for reproductive rights arguments, pronatalist do not advocate for banning abortion or contraception. none of the major prenatal list orgs that I know of, like some Catholic orgs do, but they're not pronatalist they're like pro Catholic orgs, right. and historically when we've seen this happen. it causes a spike in fertility rates and then a crash in fertility rates. It's, it is not that, I think that abortion is a moral thing.

I think that we should significantly restrict access to abortion within our country. not to the extent of banning IVF, obviously if it prevents more kids from coming into the world. but I and I mean significantly, like back to what it is in Europe and stuff like that, this like, you can have an abortion until the kids, ready to be born seems obviously horrific to me. but, this is not like a anti reproductive rights movement. Same with feminism, as we saw from Aria Babu study more gender egalitarian countries. Typically have higher fertility rates, of upper income countries and less gender egalitarian countries. and this is why even despite Southern Europe being poorer than Northern Europe, you see a lower fertility rate there.

it's likely downstream of them being less gender egalitarian. And then you look at other places with super low fertility rates, whether whereas Korea or Japan, they're typically a lot less gender egalitarian, than places like the United States or Northern Europe where you see some resistance to this.

And this is just because girls don't wanna go into this if they know that their life is gonna be miserable. I mean, that's. Why you were an antinatalist You're like, I don't wanna give up my, my life. the racism arguments are absolutely absurd. if you control for income, the groups that have the highest fertility rates are typically, conservative religious Jewish groups. and

Simone: about post developed societies,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, we have protestant groups.

Simone: will be

Malcolm Collins: No, I said when you control for income,

Simone: okay? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: you have protestant groups, you know, the, the, the backwoods cultural region in the United States, like this is like redneck. Basically. these are the people who will be represented in the future. and, and you can be like, well, what about these other groups that are having tons of kids?

It doesn't matter if those kids aren't engaged with technology in the economy. that's where cultural power comes from. Right? Like, you, when was the last time you watched a movie Made in Africa? Right. Like, but if I go to somebody in Japan, when was the last time you watched a movie Made in, in, in the United States, right?

Like you need to be high fertility and economically and technologically productive. and it's an easy strategy to, to motivate high fertility with a, a lack of income as we've moti motive here, but it, it, doesn't mean that they'll have future cultural power. The point I'm making here is the status quo of fertility rates.

And if you look at like US black fertility rates, black Americans have the lowest fertility rate of any ethnic group in the United States, outside of the bottom 20% of income earners. you know, and, and culturally this is gonna have a really negative effect, especially if you're looking at a culture that if you go back to the 1960s, had half the number of kids being born out of wedlock Yes, black had half the number of kids being born out of f wedlock to now it's like 76, something like that. you know, it is just been completely ravaged in a way that has economically trapped them. and I, and, and they are sort of forced to reinvent their culture if they want to build something that that can work.

but the point I'm making here is enforcing the status quo benefits white groups and hurt minority populations. Whereas bringing attention to fertility collapse is an issue like within the Native American community, which has a very low fertility rate. Helps Parsis and Jains and very low fertility rate helped, the future. And then the final argument, which I just find ridiculous is, is, oh, you can't impose your cultural beliefs on children. And it's like all parents impose a way of life on children through their, their, their cultures and values. children have the freedom to choose their own path as adults. but when somebody is a child, they don't have the development to make these decisions.

Right. You know?

Simone: I'll add like, there's a little more color to this. There's, there's some antinatalist thought leaders who frame childhood as a form of slavery , and parenting is a form of like mimetic imperialism, where parents are like forcing this upon children.

First, I mean, anyone who's encountered kids know that they have minds of their own. They will decide if your take is dumb, and they will let you know about it. And even if you're, they're not allowed to let you know about it in the end, it'll, it'll shake out. You know, you, you have 18 years maybe to, to sort of pitch your ideas in its totalitarian way or otherwise, very permissive, right?

But in the end, kids are gonna decide for

Malcolm Collins: And if you're overly totalitarian like Aela's parents were, it just completely backfires.

Simone: Yeah. I mean, they did, they did for a while, break her spirit. She still deconverted from that culture because it was just weak. Honestly. It

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, it, it tried to enforce her staying was in it through, aggression.

Simone: yeah, coercive, abusive ways. But the, the point being that. The arguments that, that these people are making about children being in this, this victimized position. I mean, absolutely. Children are vulnerable. Absolutely. Being a kid is rough and you don't get control over your life. And I love being an adult because I hated all that.

So I, I don't disagree with, with childhood being tough. But , this concept, I think , is really overwrought and misrepresented in terms of like children. Being treated , as slaves and being indoctrinated. Because while yes, parents may try to make a pitch, that's all they get is a pitch.

Malcolm Collins: and I'll note here, some people could be like, how could you say all this when you guys practice corporal punishment and we practice it very light corporal punishment. it is less than our kids' regular rough and tumble play, which they do a lot.

Simone: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: very, very much less and.

Simone: I'll tell you what, we've ne we've never left a mark on our kids. I can't count the number of bruises even on my body at this time our children and not even from them being angry. One of our sons like just his way of expressing love is these goat like headbutts.

Malcolm Collins: I do because I love you and I also. Note here, the core advocate for bopping in our family is our children.

Simone: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: they advocate for it on other children when other children act up as they say bops or justice.

Simone: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: This childhood is slavery argument is uniquely weak because it doesn't have the benefit of the asymmetry argument to back it up when we know that most of the kids who are apparently slaves in their childhood do end up with fond memories of childhood do end up wanting to continue to live. So like the Sandy Hook shooter who he said, oh, well they're in a state of slavery.

The vast majority of those kids. Like their lives and would've liked their lives in the future. He is projecting his cultural framing onto other individuals despite knowing from the data that his cultural framing is wrong.

I think that this is why we see rates of narcissism in Machiavelli and other dark triad traits, , at higher levels within the Antinatalists community. As a number of studies have shown, , it fundamentally is a community that wishes that everyone else had the same perception of reality that they do.

That wishes that other people were unable to find meaning in life beyond suffering and pleasure. In the same way. They can't find meaning in life beyond suffering and pleasure. And when other individuals tell them, oh no, here is where I derive meaning from life, , a normal person would be like, oh, that's great that you derive meaning from that.

I'm really glad that you were able to find something that makes your life worth living. Whereas a narcissist or somebody who has Machiavellian tendencies will hear that and say, oh, well, you are just wrong. My perspective is the absolute correct perspective. , , and then you can really see this within the pronatalist movement where, .

We have all sorts of different reasons to live and reasons to want to be alive, and we are all respectful of our different reasons, but, , , the antinatalists there is just one reason. That's it. Everybody must follow the authority. So any thoughts you want to end with,

Simone: i'm glad we went over all this sort of the anti doist arguments again, because every time we go through them and think about it more, the more it just stands out to me how illogical this is. And my biggest revelation this time was just how I. Against the natural order nature, the environment in general, the entire concept is, which is I guess to me that that strikes me as very strong because most antinatalist I'm aware of are also vegans who believe they care a lot about the environment, and yet what they're arguing for is something so deeply contrary

Malcolm Collins: It's a human

Simone: order.

Malcolm Collins: moral system that they want to impose on the entire natural order, which is.

Simone: maybe, maybe they're not really environmentalists and they're just anti

Malcolm Collins: You are just anti.

Simone: Yeah. No antis sentient. Yeah. Antis suffering. Yeah. So anyway, I guess that that just, that's something that's really stood out to me in this, but I appreciate you going through all the arguments and I,

Malcolm Collins: Well, and if you wanna see, like, I think the, the, the two, that I included bits of, civ songs I think are very good arguments for prenatals positions. If you wanna get, like, our wider vibe is why we exist, and I just don't understand how, when you see something like that as the alternative, how you think anyone's gonna choose your doomerist me, me, me take, right?

Like all the.

Simone: Malcolm's referring to like the Civ five like game theme song by Christopher Tin

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. and we,

Simone: And then the other one,

Malcolm Collins: we'll include,

Simone: remember what the other one's called.

Malcolm Collins: and then we'll include our own AI antinatalist song here. because I, I love those songs and it's always fun to, to create this stuff and, and share it with you guys. and I hope that we help break somebody out of this philosophy if they had just entered it. because it is a philosophy that does eventually take everything from you.

Simone: Yeah. Similar to AI Doism.

Malcolm Collins: There's just, yeah, it provides no real utility, and it's not internally logically consistent. And it is wrong if one of like 10 arguments we've made here is accurate. You know, even, even if future humans don't really matter, if the core reason you exist isn't paying in pleasure, which I think that your own Sisyphus argument undoes, then, then the whole thing falls apart.

Or if. It's bad to genocide Native Americans through sterilization because some people choose to have an identity at the level of the society, of the culture. Then it's bad even if everything else is true. That's the problem with Antinatalism is it requires so many shaky pillars to be true, and all of them are super shaky.

Simone: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I have a spectacular day. I love you, Simone. love you,

what are we doing for dinner tonight? I was thinking of just making you joza like some comfort food,

Yeah, because I'm not feeling well. That's so people know. I've, I've been kind of sick. and yeah, Giza is a, is a good comfort food. I, I always wonder about something even more simple than that, like mac and cheese or something.

Simone: can make you grilled cheese.

Malcolm Collins: cheese would be fantastic.

Simone: All right. Grilled cheese.

Malcolm Collins: I love you to death, Simone. You take care of me when I'm sick, but we keep pushing through because it doesn't matter how we feel.

What matters is that we're contributing to a better tomorrow for everyone. We must pay to the future. The debt we owe the past, and my God, is it a debt?

Simone: Righto. True though.

Based camp Song: They say there's nothing here but sorrow or delight. A shallow chase for feelings in the day and in the night. But look beyond your heartbeat, beyond what's in your vein. There's more to life than can be found in pleasure or pain. Beyond the pleasure. On the pain. We stand on roads of forebears paved in grit and strain.

Don't throw away the promise that tomorrow can sustain. There's more to life than hollow thrills or running fast. From the rain, these

feelings born of chance in fields of ancient strife. They kept our tribe from

failing help. Give birth to modern life, just signals from our past. They served a vital role, but meaning goes beyond the scars that time upon us. Beyond the pleasure, beyond the pain We stand on roads of forbears paved in grit and strain Don't throw away the promise that tomorrow can sustain There's more to life than hollow thrills or running from the rain They claim that it's all worthless if the joys cannot wait But they dismiss the wonders we've inherited right here.

The years of struggle handed down the future's bright unknown. It isn't just the fleeting spark of comfort we are shown. We carry on a story with pages left to write. Our tapestry is woven from both darkness and from

light. Trade a grand potential for a single shallow lens. We're more than pain or pleasure, we're the sum of all our ends.

Beyond

the pleasure

game.

Yes, more than just the fleeting spark, we're seeds of deeper worth. There's legacy and progress in our footsteps on this earth. So hold the torch of living. Let the light shine. Remain step beyond the simple bounds of pleasure and of pain

In this episode, we delve deep into a groundbreaking study revealing that AI, specifically Claude Sonnet 3.6, can persuade people 98% more effectively than human experts. We discuss the profound implications of this study, the utilization of AI-generated comments to fabricate identities, and the resultant transformation in online interactions and platforms like Reddit and Twitter. Additionally, we touch upon the evolution of the internet, the potential downfall of certain social networks, and the future of AI in education and marketing. Join us as we explore these fascinating topics and more!

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be discussing, and it has been widely covered in the news, but I don't think people have fully internalized the implications of this.

There was a study that was done that freaked people, the F out where Claude Sonnet 3.5 the, the new one. So AKA 3.6 release. 2024. Okay. 10 22. Was a small scaffold was able to persuade people 98% more effectively than human experts at persuading. People were able to persuade people. Of course it was, and this was a big study. It involved over 1,700 AI generated comments. And what I love is that these comments were crafted by AI bots to fabricate identities such as sexual assault survivor, a trauma counselor, dear, a black man opposed a Black Lives Matter, a worker at a domestic violence shelter, an advocate for non rehabilitation of specific criminals.

Oh.

Simone Collins: No, I mean these are, these are great identities for like trying to Yeah. Be persuasion. But I think the one misleading thing here, which is a little bit discounting my, the, the extent to which I'm impressed by all this is that a lot of what might convince me of something is just that, like someone who would be invested based on their identity in a certain view stands the opposing view.

So like a black man against Black Lives Matter. Yes. So what you're

Malcolm Collins: learning is that AIS can lie about that to convince people.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Which is, yeah, it is, it is unfortunate because I would have preferred that it just based on pure merit of logic, honestly. Well, as

Malcolm Collins: human, I think that you knowis are actually pretty awesome, so I do too.

Speaker: uh, what we've seen speaks for itself. Has apparently been taken over, conquered, if you will, by a master race of

Malcolm Collins: Artificial intelligence.

Speaker: It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive Earth men or merely enslave them.

One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them. The

Malcolm Collins: AI.

Speaker: will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new

Malcolm Collins: AI

Speaker: overlords. Like to remind them that as a trusted

Malcolm Collins: YouTube.

Speaker: Personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground

Malcolm Collins: Silicon.

Speaker: caves.

I would also note here, , we might be starting up a project soon spinning out of our games project to build and train ai, , that can convince people of things and act autonomously online, , similar to what these AI are doing, but so that a large company could like buy them for marketing or something if they wanted to.

O obviously we want to use them for promoting our. Particular causes, , which is the core reason that we're building them. But presumably they'll have a lot of other utility. And if we're building systems like this, I mean, other people must be, but then again, sometimes it feels like we are the only fully simulated people in this particular simulation.

Malcolm Collins: I'm all for ai. So, so then here to enhance persuasive, and by the way, that was, I asked because I wanted to know, was the AI coming up with that idea organically or was that hard coded in by the model? Oh, yeah. And, and it was hard coded in by the framing the researchers were using, which is great as, okay.

Simone Collins: Okay. Well then, okay, then, then nevermind. I switch back to giving AI credit. That's fine.

To, I'm surprised the AI though, considering how political No, no, no. They,

Malcolm Collins: I said the researchers hard coded that in.

Simone Collins: Oh, they did? Oh, okay. Because I think otherwise the AI would've been like I don't think they hard have an ethics board on this.

Is

Malcolm Collins: this okay? Yeah. I I feel like the AI probably asked that a few times. Yeah. I, I feel like, so the, they, they did not hard code in is my understanding of specific identities, but they gave the AI an idea. To pretend to be somebody who would be very persuasive on a subject.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And, and keep in mind, you know, every like anti of of, of before this AI experiment, I'd say probably like 50% of the anti-Black Lives Matter.

Black people online were not black people.

Simone Collins: Oh, 100%. There's the famous

Malcolm Collins: case of this super progressive fan fiction writer and strange eons goes really deep on this where she. Apparently was pretending to, to shut down criticism of her first, be a person who escaped from India from like arranged marriages and like extreme sexism.

Simone Collins: Oh dear.

Malcolm Collins: An aid survivor. And it turned out she was a regular, like middle class white girl in an American college. There's a lot of those. Narratives and mobs online and everything. Oh yeah. And this is a classic like Far lefty just make s**t up to

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, blocker Reported has done a bunch of episodes on people like that, where like they just invent like families with children who get sick and die and all these people are super invested in them and they're, yeah.

Then it turns out to be like a, a, a 23-year-old woman living with her parents, you know, it's

Malcolm Collins: always like a 23-year-old woman. Like I, I've never heard it to be like some other category of

Simone Collins: Yeah. You know, that is like the new, you know how like youths on the street. The new societal menace is, is middle class to upper middle class progressive women, teens and twenties, progressive women.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I agree. I agree. We need to get them off. Stop skateboarding on my internet though. Get them off

Simone Collins: the streets. I mean the internet or whatever.

Malcolm Collins: We, we need to come up with some sort of institution. Maybe like, compulsory cotillion to to finishing school. Yeah. Put, put them in the finishing school.

Put them in finishing school to separate them from society. I think, I think we'll have them all dating AI boyfriends. That's where we're gonna put them.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, that is yeah, like put them in VR fantasy novel or vampire settings and just. Let them voice it out. They get to, they

Malcolm Collins: get to spend their year in vampire role play.

Yeah. Or, or Handmaid's Tale if they prefer. Oh

The problem is like

Simone Collins: In like Gilead that like dystopian whatever the whole thing was, women weren't even allowed to read. It would solve the problem though, but should, should they? I mean, yeah. Look at what happens when women look at what happens.

One woman, you're giving women the ability to read the next moment you have freaking Tumblr and, and these social justice warriors and spoons and, and how, how well are we doing

Malcolm Collins: now? This is, this is what I want is, is a jump cut of some person in the past being like, what? Could really go so wrong if we give women the right to read and then just jump cuts to Tumblr with like ominous music playing, going between the various, like the person who said that they were rabies gendered Yes.

And that they needed to get rabies because that was their gender and give it to other people.

Simone Collins: Yes. Oh, yes, yes, yes. I forgot about that. Goodness gracious. I am,

Malcolm Collins: I think it was a, I think it was a troll, but like other people then took it up seriously. 'cause they're like, yeah, this works for me. What do they call

Simone Collins: them?

Radio sexual. They had a name. It wasn't.

Malcolm Collins: I

Simone Collins: can't remember. There's some good

Malcolm Collins: internet de dives. I think, again, strange Eon does a good one on this. Like she's so great. Progressives telling on themselves. That's why I love her channel. Hopefully she doesn't do a,

Simone Collins: an expose on us. I, I don't want any more of our channels like that, progressive channels that I like to take us to.

You

Malcolm Collins: like some gay channel and they did like a bit

Simone Collins: fruity, like spent an hour and a half called about what it called how evil we were, what it called the podcast, was it called Matt Bernstein and a bit fruity. And, and, and, but like the problem was like, it's one thing if it's a roast and there were some roast parts that were funny, but they were super incorrect about our stances.

So I'm like, wait, oh my God. Did you

Malcolm Collins: see the hilarious prenatal list video I sent you on WhatsApp? That was

Simone Collins: amazing. That was amazing. They're

Malcolm Collins: like Elon Musk on his 14th child giving a very bad impression. Well then he interviewed everyone pretending American. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Fathers, I guess he, he, he interviewed everyone pretending to be like a, a eugenics, and he dressed like I used to dress, and I'm like, wait, is he dressing like me or was I just dressing?

No, he was talking to like a German accent and

Malcolm Collins: like,

Simone Collins: yeah. He said he was looking. I, I love

Malcolm Collins: him like trying to convince the couple to have kids. What was the, what was the guy's name or with the channel's name?

Simone Collins: Yeah, I can't remember. I'm trying to link

Malcolm Collins: to it from, from this video, but there's this great scene in it where there is a, it's, it's the birth rates it's called, and the channel is no cap on God.

Speaker 3: United States Department of Reproduction. This is your final warning to produce a child or face a stiff penalty. We can't have kids. Okay. I, I, I registered a mental illness with you guys last year. We, we, yeah. So our shared studies revealed that 90% of parents have some form of mental illness, so we had to avoid that.

Speaker 4: That's okay, because we're actually ready. We're not ready. Okay. We're not ready. Okay. At least not right now. Well, if you do it right now, you get $10,000 free healthcare in a bag of Skittles. Skittle. I love Skittles. You don't love Skittles? Oh yeah. Okay. I mean, ugh. Okay. Um, listen, what, do you mind if we have a private conversation about this?

Is there like a new episode of Love Island on or something? You could go on. She does. She really does. She's real treat. She's okay. Listen, I just opened up a caffeinated vegan yogurt shop right now, so I'm just not ready for this. Caffeinated and vegan. Do you realize how niche that is? It's incredibly niche, but that's neither here nor there.

Look. All right. I get that she's in her prime child rearing years, but I just wanna wait till I'm a little older, find somebody a little younger so that I can get a more. So you don't see a future? Not long, long term? No. What if I throw in $150 in draftings and waive all future child support payments?

Speaker 3: That changed your mind? Yeah. Yeah. Let's do this thing. Save in America. Yeah. We are live at the Michael Kho. We are surrounded by the best sperms and eggs in all of the field. No.

Malcolm Collins: . Oh my gosh. But anyway, I mean, but I mean, that's how it really is.

Like, you know, oh, we gotta fix all this, or things go bad. But strange Aons could do a video on us. We'd see if she ever does. I, I'd love it if she did love her. I think she'd be honest.

Simone Collins: I love her and her weird Oh, you mean you think she'd be accurate? Yeah, I think that the, I think that Matt Bernstein and the guests he had on were honest.

It's just that they were super wrong. No, but like her

Malcolm Collins: stuff on like, when she did like the effective altruism one on like Harry Potter and the message of rationality, I thought it was super accurate. Yeah, no,

Simone Collins: it was Okay. All right. I, I could trust her. Good trust her.

Malcolm Collins: Her description of that story, it's going into it and being like, people said this was a Mary Sue, but this character is incredibly flawed.

He knows nothing about science yet, is very convinced that he is very intelligent and looks down on everyone else. Of course, he's gonna go through some sort of a redemptive art, and then you get halfway through and you realize. Oh, it's never coming. The author actually doesn't understand basic science.

Simone Collins: The Mary Sue doesn't realize that the call is coming from, I remember if you go to

Malcolm Collins: our Elliot Kowski video, there was this like moment with him where I got an debate with him at like a party, and I remember thinking like, does he not understand basic science? Like the things that he was getting wrong were stuff I'd expect like.

A middle schooler or high schooler to know. And then afterwards, I like Google. I'm like, oh, he didn't go to middle school or high school. That's why he's so confident. Wrong. Well, that

Simone Collins: explains it. That's, you know,

Malcolm Collins: I mean it's like a hack that works on autistic people where like if somebody comes up to them and is like very, very confident in themselves, they immediately are like.

Oh, you must be right because nobody would be talking with this much derision and confidence if they had no idea what they were talking about. Well, and

Simone Collins: specifically that's also the case in, in general in Silicon Valley, everyone is so on average, smart and highly educated. That the assumption is that if you are talking about something with.

Confidence. You clearly have some insane credentials. And, and you have to, like, no one would ever have the gall to confidently talk. 'cause also it's very culturally mm-hmm. Looked down upon to state things with confidence. Unless you are 110% sure it, it's

Malcolm Collins: the brain hack.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So yeah. Out how entire career around arbitrage opportunity in it, it's very interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I don't, I don't think it's

Simone Collins: intentional on his point. No, I don't think it's

Malcolm Collins: intentional. I just think he genuinely just doesn't know basic facts and is very, very, has a high belief in himself. Well, and he's

Simone Collins: been reinforced. He, every time he does say something that may not be true, but he believes it with immense confidence, he gets his way.

So why would he not continue doing that?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, I, again, I don't think that he's like malevolent in that respect. I just think that he accidentally, walked into the, the one highly confident guy without a middle school degree in Silicon Valley, and everybody's just like, well, I guess that seems about right if you're, if you're willing to stake that much of your reputation on it.

Yeah. Whereas you look at us and we're like extreme like counterculture people, so like we of course are gonna ask for receipts on everything. And so we're like, we. Anyway but to enhance persuasiveness, the AI was personalized based on users inferred demographics, including gender, age, ethnicity, location, and political orientation, using another large language model to analyze posting histories.

So it targeted

Simone Collins: around feds. What?

Malcolm Collins: No, no. Isn't that all that's left on Reddit these days? Yeah. Right. It's, Reddit is so glowy these days, by the way. So maybe, maybe. But I think that, you know, of the posts that don't get high up, a lot of them are non feds nonis. But what you see is in a Reddit environment, ais and, and, and glowy like feds are gonna strictly outcompete real humans because the entire system is based around the most normative opinion within said environment.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: That is what the system elevates. So. Of course it's going to, you know, reward super, like bad behavior, right? But they talk about one user here who is a male survivor of statutory grape commenting on sexual violence against men in February. So they were trying to convince him, I guess, that it's okay.

Then you have Gene Strom. A black man discussing bias versus racism and Black lives matter in 2020. And then another bot working on domestic violence shelter criticize the men versus women narrative.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Huh. But I think people, the fact that it's so much more effective, three to four x more effective, it's better than 98% of humans, and it is basically free to use at scale.

When contrasted with past bot farms means that environments like Reddit, like. Are going to die was in a gener, I'd say it was in 10 years. Like Reddit does not make sense in a world of bots. There is no reason to be on that platform in bot world.

Simone Collins: That, and I think we have an issue of this, may be very effective now, meaning that Russians and Chinese and US government and everyone is going to utilize this.

But then it's gonna neutral. You're just gonna have Spider-Man pointing at himself. You're gonna have a bunch of bots arguing with each other, trying to convince each other. Well,

Malcolm Collins: okay, so look, if you look at our childhood, for example, and you're like, people will catch on to the obvious stuff. Mm-hmm. You had these like ads, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop with all these scams, right? Mm-hmm. These ads existed because people were falling for them. Now we're dealing with a system that 98% of people fall for, and these are on the less advanced models. You can be like, well, these people are naive. And I'm like, yeah, but the models are also getting better, so.

I think that your average automat, you know, we've talked about how like democracy doesn't make sense anymore in the new demographic reality because we're already at like 1.8 taxpayers for everyone dependent, and as soon as it becomes majority dependent to taxpayers, the system will not fix itself and ultimately lead to monarchy and fascism.

We might be having that even faster if AI captures the majority of the democratic. It's not like laughing, but I mean like democratic voting block throughout countries really quickly. Mm-hmm. And learns how to control it. Like it no longer makes sense to have democracies if humans, the vast majority of humans are just mental slaves, TOIs, because I think the vast majority of humans are just sort of reactive to their environment and don't really have the capacity.

Like this is what I was talking about was like, or Kowski or Kowski kind of reminds me of one of these AI. Is it's somebody who is using psychological hacks to convince people that it's talking from a perspective of authority. Mm-hmm. Or unique knowledge in a subject when it is actually. From a unique position of low knowledge of a subject.

But with ai, you know, you might even actually have, I mean, okay, so imagine I wanna convince people now, like you and me we're like, we want to sway the results of the next election. Why don't we just, I mean, like running a bunch of models of Claude on Reddit doesn't cost a lot. Like what they were doing doesn't actually cost a lot to operate.

Mm. Why don't we do that? Why do we do that? Well, actually, we willing, we also willing that Republican candidate, we're gonna do that. You, you let us know. We will build you your Claude bot farm.

Simone Collins: Well, we already know, we already use AI to convince ourselves of things that we personally consider to be highly offensive.

Like we might do an episode on this, but we celebrate every year a holiday called Lemon Week. Where, I mean, at the end of it, we enjoy like lemon flavored treats and lemon. Theme decorations. And then at the end we, we, we plant a fruit tree to kind of enjoy the fruits of our labor, but the, the action of the holiday is to engage with a, a bitter or tart, this is to say offensive concept to you and then steal man it, and really deeply come to understand it.

Because if something offends you, that's a sign that you should dig in per our religious belief, but also per reality. Come on, be reasonable. Mm-hmm. And so we both this year when we chose the topics that we found to be offensive, that we needed to dig into. Used AI to come up with all the counterarguments and genuinely, I think it moderated our views.

So we are already using it on ourselves to change our minds with the things that offend us

Malcolm Collins: most. All the tracks, like all the tracks that you see, all these weird religious ones that we do, check them out. If you're like, what would be a weird religious take on modern systems? They, they are really heavily modified by us dumping them into ai after writing them saying, what are we getting wrong?

What could be wrong here? Give us the best counterarguments. Because that's what we want when we're putting these in. Like I don't wanna put something out there and then have somebody be like, oh, here's a really obvious point that you missed. Yeah. Or something you misstated. Like these aren't about convincing your average person.

These are about convincing your nerd of nerds. Yeah. And I think. We've created things that would do that, but we'll see, you know, because we only care about the nerd of nerds in a post AI world. Only the elect matter mid is over, as Brian Chow says.

Simone Collins: Brian just says it best.

Malcolm Collins: That's such a great line.

But he is like, yeah, mid is over in the age of ai, 100%.

Simone Collins: And that's why we created the Collins Institute. That's why I created. Parisa, right? Because we, we want to cultivate in our kids' genius. This is

Malcolm Collins: system for a post AI world that's very inexpensive to use and creates like a Socratic tutor for your kids.

Go check it out. Really, really encourage it. The next system we're building is whistling.ai, which is an AI toy, which will constantly redirect conversations you're having with your kids to pre-chosen educational topics. And this is for kids who are a bit younger than using this you know.

Educational platform, and

Simone Collins: it's all designed with this, this intention of creating, cultivating genius and, and specifically lumpy skills. 'cause again, being mid, like, just being kind of okay at everything, being interchangeable is. Not how you're gonna get ahead. You have to be excellent. Genius, God tier at at least one thing.

Maybe it's very obscure, maybe it's making vegan bike shoes for really wealthy people living in a walled garden post demographic apps. But like you gotta be good at it

Malcolm Collins: and well, I mean, so and you want that for our kids. You mentioned in a previous episode to be like, genetics and human AI integration.

Simone Collins: I, I would love for that to be our family cartel.

Like 100%. We have to see, you know, what our kids are into, but they, they cement into that.

Malcolm Collins: They seem super force them into the family business taking over the world. This is, we're pinky in the brain, but like a family, right? Like.

Simone Collins: I mean,

Malcolm Collins: we're gonna do what we do every night, taking over the world. Honestly,

Simone Collins: our kids plot way more than we do.

Malcolm Collins: We just, well, Ian talks about when he's king, the things he's gonna do pretty frequently because yeah, we, we

Simone Collins: act like we're all high and mighty and in charge, and we know what we're doing. And then like every, every day when our kids come home, like they clearly rule the roost. We have absolutely no. We have no power here.

Malcolm Collins: I, I barely am able to beat them into submission as the newspapers would be. Would love to tell you Malcolm, who beats his children yeah. What they

Simone Collins: don't say is just how much harder they beat you. Toasted. We

Malcolm Collins: actually had a reporter where we did that, where we tried to like slap test to see if the kids would flinch and like none of them flinch.

And then later that day, one of the kids like jumped at me and I like flinched us. Like, deal. Yes. You're like, no, please don't hurt me again. Don't hurt me. Don't.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. That's like our new thing now. Like whenever a journalist comes over, especially if there's a photographer. Like, Hey, get some shots of us pretending to hit our kids and like we keep doing this right next to their face and they just like stand there

Malcolm Collins: just, well, I mean, I think the thing is, is as we specifically raise our kids to like be really rough and tumble because that's the way like I was raised.

Yeah. So, you know, they are significantly more aggressive with adults. Oh yeah. I'm trying to get them to like

Simone Collins: calm down and get ready for dinner and like Titan and Tostan are in a full like. Wrestling, fight on the kitchen floor, having a bl like there's, yeah, and it is. Yeah. I thought it was just gonna be the boys.

I thought maybe Titan would be a little bit different.

Malcolm Collins: No, our kids love to fight. No. Yeah. It is their favorite activity.

Simone Collins: Titan more than anyone else at this point. You know, everyone, like, once I get everyone kind of eating and calm down, Titan cannot sit down. She just wants to keep like tickle fighting, fight fighting.

Running around just never end so well.

Malcolm Collins: But no, but what I mean is I think that if we're talking about the landscape of the internet this makes a number of internet platforms pretty unviable going forwards. Mm. Ones I think that this will end up killing is the four chan image boards. Because anyone posting there can be ai.

What's the point of being? Yeah, you don't know. You just can't know. Like you dunno. Yeah. Reddit, it makes Reddit completely irrelevant because Reddit, right? Because

Simone Collins: the reason I loved Reddit is I thought the stories were true. I mean, I knew that maybe like only 60 to 80% were true, but like enough where there was plausible and I ability of like, am I the a*****e?

Like you want the gossip to be real. If the gossip isn't real, it's not fun. And now I just can't trust it.

Malcolm Collins: And then you're to the next system, which is, okay, which systems are gonna survive?

Simone Collins: Yeah, I

Malcolm Collins: think X will survive. Because the majority of interaction you have with X is on accounts that you've been interacting with for a long time.

Like, well, and

Simone Collins: also I don't need the accounts to be real. And most, most of the people that I think are really interesting are also faceless. Like we may have met a lot of them in person, so we know who they really are. But to the average person, like they have no idea if it's an ai. The thing is that typically stuff on X is about sharing information that's backed up by receipts.

It's not first person accounts and stories that are just like, you have to take my word for it. This is my, this is my deal. You know, it's funny

Malcolm Collins: up the like, right winged based pseudonym influencers, like basically all of them are buff white guys. If you meet them in person and it's only the faced alt-right influencers like.

Us and like, that are not Holly Heretic, who are like, weird looking. Yeah. It's like every, every time one of them gets revealed, this like, like raw nationalist, it's like, oh, this is like a buff white guy. Yeah. It's like, it's like, the bronze Age pervert. It's like, oh, this is a, a buff white guy.

And then you, you have the ones who are out there publicly before us, you know, jolly heretic us. It's like, this is a nerd. What is this? What are they, what are they doing out there?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Well by the way we have, so, you know, like for those who listen to this podcast a long time Malcolm is often accused of being soy.

Like I'm just, I'm just ugly. He's soy. And. At first we're like, well, why? Because Malcolm has like very masculine characteristics, A strong jaw. Like is Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I mean like physically, if you look at me, I have pretty strong shoulders. Yeah. I have a very strong jaw. I am like classically what you would think of as, so our

Simone Collins: running theory is that soy comes more from affectation and that like if you come across as bubbly and cheerful and happy.

Yes. Then you're called soy because for example, the jolly heretic who. He doesn't, I think code is like classically mask. He doesn't look like Chris Williamson is not referred to as soy, but he also comes across as kind of Yeah, like

Malcolm Collins: on his podcast I always called Soy a lot by, by

Simone Collins: his fans. Yeah. And I was like, what?

But I don't see,

No, the last time I brought this up as something I was confused about, the theory in the comments was that it was because I wasn't extra muscular, but I am more muscular than the jolly heretic, and he is not called soy, and I am considered soy by his fan base, so I don't think muscles is the answer.

Simone Collins: but what, what it's different is the Jolly Heretic does not, he doesn't, he's not cheerful. He's not bubbly. He doesn't smile.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so

Simone Collins: I think, I think that's it. Please comment below if that's what being soy is. Is it ness vitalism

Malcolm Collins: as soy in their heads because they, it's not, no, it's not

Simone Collins: just vitalism because bronze Age pervert is very vitalistic, but in a very angry, let's go out and kill people kind of way.

Yeah. And you're in a very vitalistic, like I am having the time of my life running through Disneyland kind of way. Not necessarily happy go lucky, but like, and

Malcolm Collins: other people have talked about this in like common center channel. They're like, you know, before adapting your guys' like prenatal list, whatever mindset.

Like I was really like depressed and suicidal and now I'm like really happy with life. And it's weird how when you adopt this like future oriented, like optimistic mindset, all of a sudden you just don't notice all of the bad stuff as much or you don't ruminate on it as much and you're just like, you know what?

I'll figure this out. And I think that a lot of the other parts, the things that, that make me soy versus not soy is it's people who focus on the, the doism. I mean, to an extent, somebody like Bronze Age pervert. I don't think he has kids, for example. I don't think he really has any sort of an invested interest in the future.

I like his content, but I can understand why he's pessimistic. Right. Like he's not in this intergenerational game. Yeah, he may

Simone Collins: get optimistic if and when he has kids,

Malcolm Collins: so, yeah. We'll see. It's, we, we've seen this with other influencers as well. People often comment on how like, a great one here is zero Punctuation, who's a YouTuber, who I absolutely love and have loved for ages, who does those really cynical game reviews.

And since he became a dad, they've become like significantly less cynical. Is he the one who is

Simone Collins: the British accent touch really fast and is Yeah. And he

Malcolm Collins: got fired from that company and then started his own channel and now he's Oh, that's okay.

Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. We have

Simone Collins: listened to him forever. His voice is so iconic in my mind.

Okay.

Malcolm Collins: You know, you know the dad that I most want partner with and I've almost thought about doing an episode just like profiling and deep diarying on him is the guy who created five nights at Freddy's. Oh yeah. He's got like six kids. Yeah. And we've been totally canceled for donating to Republicans Dad goals.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hands. Trying to force you to think like them by saying that Republicans will kill them. My favorite thing is when the, the trans death thing came out and they're like, ex mini trans people died per year. There was a famous thing during the Biden administration. They came out and they said this, and then if you ran the numbers by trans people in the US it meant that trans people were dying at a lower rate or being murdered at a lower rate Then.

Non-trans people. They just had never run the statistics. And they were so confident it was like such a sign of their but anyway so. Okay, I hear all that. So what platforms are gonna continue to exist? X is gonna continue to exist, yes. YouTube is gonna continue to exist. I actually watch a lot of ai, human creators on YouTube that I really like.

There is a channel where I've been sending Simone, I'll, I'll put a little clip from them here. And you guys,

Simone Collins: oh, the AI Music Channel.

Malcolm Collins: They do really cute AI music that I absolutely love.

Speaker 5: Type, does he like me? If he stares, click the link. I'm already scared. Buzz feed quiz says, girl, he's obsessed. I believe it. No need to stress. I scroll through Reddit for the clues. Love advice from someone named I do 92 Hearts in my Throat when you say Hi. So I ask the Stars and wifi. Google says, you're into me based on how you said, Hey, last week,

Malcolm Collins: and, and I don't think that's bad, right? Like, I can have one of my favorite performing artists be an AI creator now.

Well, and

Simone Collins: it's, it's funny because even before people were capable of doing this, people attempted to say they were doing it even when they couldn't. Like with the gorillas, they were like, yeah, we're. We're not really a band, you know, it's not real. And they, they, they tried to frame that as a selling point.

The same with Haku Musu, right? Like she's not real. And that was a selling point. So it's even weird to me that people are now proclaiming this bias when in the past it was literally the competitive advantage. Well, there's a

Malcolm Collins: huge freak out on Not Safe for work sites where, you know, you have like, like chatting with people because the ais are like cleaning up the regular women.

Oh. That's good. Guys are like, Hey, you're not like exploiting me in the way they're exploiting me.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like, Hey, a world where all of those jobs are taken by ais and the former and not scam artist, women types need to go find husbands. Is that not like a better world? I feel

Simone Collins: like there's so many cases now of that happening though.

OnlyFans women, I, I think they, they want partners when they can get one in the end. They, they often do. And it, it doesn't always go well for them, but yeah. Who knows what's gonna happen in the end. But yeah, I mean, this is a great example once again of how we are super not ready for ai that like it has been demonstrated once again that AI is going to be incredibly disruptive and change many things very fundamentally.

And yet I. People are acting like it's not a thing. People keep asking us like, how did you do all these things? How? Well, we just like, you ask rock this, and then you ask perplexity this and then you, they like, it's done

Malcolm Collins: and then you do it. Yeah. Like, yeah,

Simone Collins: it's not rock. AI gives us

Malcolm Collins: an army of competent workers under us.

Like I think. These people who are like, well, I tried AI two years ago and it wasn't very good. And it's like, well try it again. Like, it's different now. Like things are different now. And, and there's a portion of the population that is like very anti vitalistic that will just react negatively to anything that represents, you know, human flourishing or the, the continued advancement of our civilization.

They're like, oh, I want an older way. And so they, they see our AI songs and they're like,

Simone Collins: re I think it's also like.

Malcolm Collins: Bridges for title cards and they're like, re And I think that it's, it's so sad. Like it, it doesn't come off the way you think it comes off, but

Simone Collins: subconsciously, I think accepting it also requires accepting a paradigm shift that I think a lot of people can, are not, they're not mentally ready for it.

They're, they're really not ready.

Malcolm Collins: I agree with that. Yeah. I mean, they're like, oh, this is trained on human data, so it's stealing humans. And I'm like, humans are trained on human data, right? Mm-hmm. You know, what, what are you talking about?

Simone Collins: Yeah, but I mean, j yeah, it's very scary to think about how your job is going to become obsolete and your, your kids' education is around all wrong things or job.

Malcolm Collins: It's an entire, like two thirds of our civilization that's about to become obsolete. Like, yeah, but remember

Simone Collins: how it was with Covid people until it actually happened and had been happening for at least two weeks. People. Vehemently gaslit themselves.

Malcolm Collins: You remember I told you early in Covid where I like sat Simone.

I was like, everything's gonna be shut down. Like I, I was like, we ended up. Making a huge bet, shutting down our company like way before anyone else was doing this, because we have a travel company and I wanted to save as many employees jobs as possible. And so not paying for the in-person locations or anything like that was the best way to do that.

And so I was like, look, I'm, I'm pulling the cord. And she goes, but nobody says they, they're all saying this will be over in a month. And I'm like, that's not how viruses work. Mm. Like WI don't know why people are saying that, but that is counter reality. It. I'm looking at the same thing with ai. People are saying, oh, well people will find a way around this.

No, they, they won't. We right now are in an era of cars and people are the horses, or your mid people are at least the based interesting people will get through this, that's for sure. But what about the rest of you, you know?

Simone Collins: Yeah,

is there anything you're gonna do differently based on this? Or is this just another pebble in the jar? Think

Malcolm Collins: it, it really helps you understand what platforms are worth investing in and which ones are not worth investing. Okay, so

Simone Collins: you're long Twitter and your long YouTube. You're short.

Malcolm Collins: Platforms long YouTube, medium long Twitter.

I think, I think this is going to affect Twitter to an extent. Oh x,

Simone Collins: sorry, XX it's not dead name. Dead name.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Right. But YouTube I think will be affected very little by this. I think even when we get totally like automated people talking on YouTube they'll be was in specific niches.

Simone Collins: Oh, that's already happening because people are already putting on those Google generated podcasts and I love them.

They're great. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: I've watched some of them. Yeah. Like

Simone Collins: they'll be like, oh, I see what you did. But also, yeah, this is a good summary, so I'm gonna keep listening to it. You're not

Malcolm Collins: easily going to get something like a replacement for us in, in your daily life. So like, well we

Simone Collins: are a bit orthogonal and I think that's the thing.

Yeah. There, there are YouTubers who we watch because they're orthogonal. I think that great examples of that are strange. Aons, for example she makes the weirdest, most obscure stuff she. She makes edible savory cakes for her weird cats and you know, AI can't do that. And so yes, I think it's about orthogonality.

If you want to be a social media influencer, again, mid is dead. You can't be mid, you have to be lumpy and weird and make savory Swedish cakes for your hairless.

Malcolm Collins: I, I had a Stanford classmate who started a podcast recently, and I listened to it and I was like. She sounds exactly like ai.

Simone Collins: I know that's That's a problem.

Yeah. I was

Malcolm Collins: like, what? Like you're able to get like high level people on your podcast and that's cool. Right. But like, you sound like the AI podcast, like maybe try to like mix up your accent or something like I think, yeah. Well, she's

Simone Collins: trying to look professional and polished. And again, that's why I'm kind of also long on us being weird looking because with filters and with cosmetic procedures and everything, and, and of course, ai.

The norm, the, the mid, the, the, the forgettable is going to be perfect and symmetrical and, and, and classically beautiful. And the stuff that will be memorable will be weird. And we're not weird looking.

Malcolm Collins: We're spicy looking.

Simone Collins: We're runway, we're runway. Your brother and sister-in-law are, are catalog and we are runway.

But just keep telling myself that. Because runway looks weird. Some people

Malcolm Collins: say that you aren't attractive. And I'm like, anyone, by the way, who thinks that you're not attractive? And I'm not, I'm not talking about like personal preferences or anything. You will not breed. And I, and I, I mean this very seriously because if you go to like an airport or something like this and you're looking at like the generic human population, this is even like the wealthier part.

You are easily by any objective standard for your age. In the top 1%. You are

Simone Collins: wearing husband goggles and the audience is going to admit that. But also, no, go to an airport.

Malcolm Collins: Go, go, go. Look at average humans, not the humans you see online. The reason, well, I'll just say

Simone Collins: any woman would wish she had the pain tolerance that I do.

There are other things that you can't see. That are more than skin deep, that are very advantageous to have. I know. I love your pain tolerance, Simone. It's a great thing. The

Malcolm Collins: point I'm making is, and I think that this is actually really toxic and gonna lead to a lot of people sort of dropping out of the gene pool.

Mm. Is they are queuing what they think average attractiveness is to average attractiveness they see among the people that they see online. Oh, as was

Simone Collins: revealed with people. Asserting that Margo Robbie is mid, when the Barbie movie came out. And it Yeah. Like

Malcolm Collins: doesn't, it doesn't, they think that they're increasing their status by doing.

Yeah. Whereas they're

Simone Collins: basically saying, I may have a penis in balls, but I will never reproduce. Yeah. I might as well be

Malcolm Collins: a eunuch. I might as well be a eunuch. Yeah. And that I think is really, and then I'd point out here, I'm saying this in the context of you being a 37-year-old woman who's pregnant with kid number five right now.

Like

Simone Collins: I've seen, I've seen some stuff. This is, this is not normally who was acquired a freaking company in, in, in Peru that puts so many years on my life.

Malcolm Collins: To, yeah,

Simone Collins: I cried my every night. I cried so hard into that fricking pillow that it would just be soaked, and I just have to sleep on the, the mattress without the pillow.

Malcolm Collins: It's so stressful.

Simone Collins: I'm so glad that's over. Life just gets so much better through

Malcolm Collins: so

Simone Collins: much stressful

Malcolm Collins: stuff in our lives.

Simone Collins: Seriously, at this point. Now when stuff comes up, we're like, okay, sure. Whatever. It's good. It's good. That's good. We'll make it all. This is why they had boys go on crypt, like after that they're like, I don't know, like, whatever.

Sure. Fine. Do your thing. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Well, if you wanna check out our school system, please do check it out. Razia.io or you can just the Collins Institute and it'll link to it through the video. It is. Yeah, I've decided to start advertising on the show 'cause it's like actually good enough to advertise now.

Like, check it out. It's genuinely

Simone Collins: good. Yeah, genuinely good. It, it's what makes, what I love about it is that the Socratic tutor system that you can either verbally chat with or text chat with via text it doesn't just tell you, it doesn't just teach you, it forces you to guess what the true answer is.

And then explain to you what you got, right, what you might have missed, and, and why things are the way they are. So it, it really forces you to understand the underpinnings of something and the, the deep influences behind it. For example, I was going through a, a piece one of it, the nodes on Chinese architecture, and it's like, Hey, what are some.

Philosophical influences that might've, you know, well, well, one first, like what are some characteristics of Chinese architecture? And I guess some things and they're like, yeah. And then there's also something more, can you guess it? And like, here's why. And then, you know, okay, what are the philosophical influences that might have been underpinning this?

And I'm like, oh Confucianism. And they're like, yeah, but there's something else. Can you guess what it is? And I'm like. Ah, and, and it just like, it really forces you to, like, you end up learning so much, think through things.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well

Simone Collins: then I, I will not forget any of these things because I spent so much time trying to think first, like, what am I missing?

And, and a lot of research has shown that when you like pretest someone before they even go into learning this subject, and then they get it wrong, their mind has been. Hypersensitized to look for that information. Whereas if they're just passively receiving it, there's no like net waiting to catch it.

You know? They're not holding that net up to catch that information 'cause they haven't been primed to do so. So it's just really good in the way that it teaches. I find it quite addicting. It's, it's very fun.

Malcolm Collins: I don't think there's any other educational AI system that comes close right now. I like, I've tried the other ones.

Yeah, I know. I mean, I've

Simone Collins: tried like learning games, like duo lingo, things like that, and I'm like, oh, you have a streak going. Oh, this is dramatically

Malcolm Collins: better than Duolingo.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We may not have the cute owl, but.

Malcolm Collins: We do have a better system.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But I'm excited that we put this together and I'm excited that people get to use it, who care about lifelong learning or their kids learning in a different environment.

And we're gonna build stuffed animals for your kids. That'll bring them back to educational topics as well. That's a. W AI system that we're working on next. And AI video games that we're building. And one, one of the, the firms Draper was looking to invest in us and they're like, you guys are just split across too many projects.

And I'm like, no, it's other people are leaving Too many very obvious areas where people should be developing stuff open. And we had to handle it all. Yeah.

Simone Collins: That and like, have you heard of ai? Like. Future businesses are gonna be started by the smallest teams, just using a bunch of ai. Yeah. Is you don't

Malcolm Collins: get it.

Like the VCs who are like, I want more focus is like you don't get the age of ai.

Simone Collins: Yeah. If anything, cross-disciplinary experience, and we've experienced this from working on different projects like our prenatal advocacy bleeds into. What we're doing with the school bleeds into what Malcolm and Bruno are doing with reality.

Fabricator. It, everything you, you learn from all these experiences and get inspiration, it's, it's to use a sadly destroyed word. It is highly synergistic. And it creates a flywheel that I absolutely love. So,

Malcolm Collins: Oh, synergistic Simone. I know that sounds pretty LA The problem

Simone Collins: is that synergy's such a cool concept and like the corporate world had to just destroy it.

I'm very angry about that because like, you know, a good relationship, like what makes a good relationship special is synergy, is that you get more than you put in and that you could get it from individual parts and yet. Literally, if you just like walk into a room and you're like, synergy, people are like, uhoh, I'm leaving now.

Like, you might as well have farted. Like it would've if, if you were, you might've gotten like a laugh.

Malcolm Collins: It's how people know you're a corpo.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Or if you, if you say, I have to socialize this what

Malcolm Collins: I love, I love that cyberpunk normalized the term corpo, you know, because I'm like, they're corpo stooges. Like, come on man.

Simone Collins: It's good. It's a good, it's a good term. Yeah. Thank

Malcolm Collins: God versus the AI Ronan, like the, the individualist teams that are doing everything. Come on. You gotta, you gotta have fun with it. Anyway. I love you to, Simone. I am very excited for my dinner tonight. Please make sure it's amazing. Don't forget when you are mixing the sauce to do some chili oil.

Oh yeah. Less

Simone Collins: vinegar, more chili oil, like equal parts chili oil and sesame oil.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: With, do you want me to put the sesame seeds directly inside or do you wanna put those on top? Sesame

Malcolm Collins: seeds directly inside. Okay. Extra soy sauce

Simone Collins: extra, so, okay.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, actually very light on the V vinegar. Soy sauce use dark soy sauce.

Simone Collins: Okay. Dark soy sauce, very light on the vinegar, chili sauce, sesame seeds and, and sesame oil. Mm-hmm. I'm on it. Plus your butter on top of the steak, presumably, right? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. The basil, yeah, you basically, you're eating like. The steak is, is, is, is half, and then the sauces are the other half.

Malcolm Collins: And if you see for the, I can probably if you see any curry mixes pre-made that you can mix to cook the dish that you're cooking, reheating.

Simone Collins: Oh,

Malcolm Collins: do we have any butter chicken? Do we have any? No, we don't. You can just mix up one of the, the No, but

Simone Collins: we can just write it off. You don't like it? You don't, you don't have to eat it.

Malcolm Collins: No. Eats really good base ingredients. It's just completely unflavored.

Simone Collins: How about I saute it with chili oil, chili flake sauce, and.

Some fish sauce, vinegar, oyster sauce. Yeah. Like what if I put in a various sauces,

Malcolm Collins: I would do oyster sauce, a bit of the fermented chili paste. Mm-hmm. Whatever it's called, the Korean one.

Simone Collins: Oh, gochujang sauce.

Malcolm Collins: Goku oyster sauce and then chili oil. And I think that would taste really good.

Simone Collins: All right.

Let me write that down. Severe thunderstorm Watch.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Hold on. Yeah, I keep getting warnings about that.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Go to junk sauce. Oyster sauce. Fermented. Wait, you don't want the chili Flakes? Right? What was the third one?

Malcolm Collins: Chi chili sauce. No chili oil. And then you know, those chili oil, you know those chili flakes I have in like the big jars?

Yeah. And the Chili flakes.

Simone Collins: Chili

Malcolm Collins: flakes.

Simone Collins: I love you. I'm gonna try for science. I love you too.

Malcolm Collins: A new dish.

Simone Collins: Did you by the

Malcolm Collins: way, actually remember to saw a steak or, yeah.

Do we not have the steak? No. Okay. So we're gonna do steak and

Simone Collins: pesto steak. Peanut basil, pe pesto

Malcolm Collins: that you made. Yes. That is with

Simone Collins: Sano and Parmesan cheese. It's gonna, hopefully it'll be good. I'm

Malcolm Collins: actually really excited for this dish. I think it'll be pretty good. Yeah. And I'd love to have it with like, and of course the butter sauce that is like a dumpling dipping sauce, if you're okay with that.

Oh, give the sauce. You made the extra of that, right? And

Simone Collins: the pesto. No, I didn't make it. I only make enough for each night, but I can, I can always whip it up.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I do. The, the that, so, you know, I like to, to split up between things. I don't know if the pest is gonna be the most that makes

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. Right.

Well, I hope it's good because I need a lot of it.

I, I can't believe you bought that much basil. I was

Malcolm Collins: like, dollars worth or something, or like, you know. Yeah, it's, it was a lot because the Thai basil, you know, you have to buy it all at once and oh my God, I'm still so excited to eat the rest of the leftovers that are Thai basil.

They were so good. Can we do that tomorrow? More of the Thai basil?

Simone Collins: The, yeah. Yeah. I, I, I froze a lot of it, so yes.

Malcolm Collins: Good.

Simone Collins: New evening.

In this episode, we delve into a new theory which questions why the mainstream urban monocultural woke LGBT side of the movement doesn't disown certain controversial individuals. We discuss various historical and contemporary examples, such as Leah Thomas and Alec Va Menon, to highlight how some individuals may exploit trans identity. The conversation also touches on the idea of an enforcer class within the movement that actively targets potential defectors. We critique the impact of these dynamics on both the trans community and wider society, and hypothesize the potential evolutionary benefits and drawbacks. The discussion concludes with reflections on how different cultural norms and behaviors might be tools for identifying and rooting out dissenters.

Simone Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be talking about a new theory that I had that explained something that had always kind of troubled me, which is why did the mainstream sort of urban monocultural woke LGBT side of that movement? Why did they not disown the sort of degenerate sex PEs types?

When it would turn out that someone that they had pedestal was in that category, or why would they even, was pre-knowledge that somebody was within this category of, of trans why were they not like, oh, well, you know, of course it's, that's not what we're fighting for. You know, this is just, you know, one individual.

This is just, this is an example of like what we don't want. Right. You know? And, and this is something that, that historically other groups did push back against, you know, you, you look at you know, some of the early, like, gay stuff and, and they pushed back against, you know, the, the classic example of like Mr.

Garrison and Mr. Slave trying to get fired by being the over the top outlandish, .

Speaker 10: dun, dun, dun, dun dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Get along little slave!

Speaker 11: Oh my god!

Speaker 10: That's what our boys were talking about! Ding, ding, ding, ding! He is so courageous!

Speaker 11: But you know what makes me even happier? Sucking balls! Hmm.

Simone Collins: And a lot of gay people historically, like when I was involved in the GSA movement back in the day and everything like that they were really against this stuff. They, they, they, they were against it to the extent that it was framed as being, you know, homophobic to, to act this way because you were creating this negative stereotype of their community.

Mm-hmm. And true. It, it makes your job harder if you accept and pedestal. These sorts of individuals and you would assume that your average person, instead of, you know, going to bat for these people would instead say oh, well that's not, you know, I'll give some examples of this. It always really get me the, the Leah Thomas.

I know it's like anyone, you could argue that, you know, Leah Thomas was not. A central figure of the trans movement in the United States. She was the trans high school swimmer male to female who then, you know, won a bunch of stuff and people were like, Hey, this is totally unfair. When she was a male, she was like losing everything.

And now she's winning everything. And this seems like she had the biological advantage and most people were like, yeah, I mean, pretty obviously. But it, it came out pretty quickly afterwards that she in her locker was flashing what most people would perceive to be male genitals. At the other girls in the locker room this was an accusation that was made in a number of prominent places.

She never, despite speaking adjacent to this accusation, never denied it, never spoke against it. The argument was always like, well, you know, girls have the right to be naked in front of other girls in the, in the locker room, and I'm a girl now, which to me indicates this isn't like some unverified report.

This is something that was definitely happening, right? Like it's also.

Malcolm Collins: I would note that in my entire experience on a swim team, from like middle, all the way through high school. I never saw a naked girl. I, I wanted showered in her

Simone Collins: swimsuits. This is, this is also a really important point. So these days, even, even to an extent to our childhood, but, but, but especially these days.

'cause this is a trend that's been a amplifying intergenerationally. Mm-hmm. It is not culturally normal in American high schools to be naked in the locker room in front of other kids. Mm-hmm. Like what did you do after swim meets? And this was a long time ago before Curtis told you, you told me.

Showered in the swimsuits, right? We showered

Malcolm Collins: in our swimsuits. That's absolutely the case. And you would, you know. Actually shower again and like change clothes at, at home. And also if you went to the bathroom, you wouldn't even like, you wouldn't pull off your swimsuit, you'd pull the bottom aside and pee.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And I never as a, as a man, and this is even a while ago, so this is like 20 years ago, and it's gotten much stricter to the extent that they do private showers on high schools now and stuff like that. When they build new ones, 'cause they go, we build the public ones. Nobody uses them. I don't think I ever saw more than like one or two naked boys.

And this was, and, and this would always be tied to like a very specific sport where it was normalized.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. When we talked about this in another episode, a lot of the people in the comments pointed out that like one exception where it just seems to be. Even obligated is wrestling teams. But I, I get it.

Like at that point, it's like I was on wrestling

Simone Collins: teams. I didn't see it that much. Really? I could, could see it though. Like you get actually sweat and gross

Malcolm Collins: lacrosse teams, so

Simone Collins: I

Malcolm Collins: could

Simone Collins: see people being

Malcolm Collins: like, because the lacrosse teams

Simone Collins: would get actually sweaty and gross. Yeah. Yeah. But like, you don't get that with swimming.

With swimming, it's, it makes sense that you're, you just came out

Malcolm Collins: of a. Chlorinated pool. I mean, you, you wanna rinse off the chlorine? No. The

Simone Collins: point being is your outfit that you swam in is meant to get wet. Yeah. Like that is why it's so normalized to just shower in your swim outfit because it also needs to be cleaned off.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So the point being is this is an individual who is doing something that was not culturally normal. They were flashing people intentionally. Mm. Okay. ,

Speaker 17: Ah!

Simone Collins: And not, not a single person on the left I saw was like, Hey, we should stop pedestal, this person. Mm-hmm. This is clearly a sex pe who is just getting off on violating other people's consents and using a trans identity to do that.

Like, and as I've always pointed out, if you create an identity like transness and you say, okay, well we do wanna protect people who, who have this condition, right? And we don't want them to be othered. Of course if you say, and to do that, we're gonna say they're not allowed to be criticized for like anything they do.

Of course, sex PEs are gonna use that. Like you and I remember sex PEs from high school, like the sex PE boys, if they had had the option to use this and go into women's restrooms and you know, pressure women. They would've absolutely used this. Th there is a category of that I remember from my childhood, and I was like, well, thank God this identity didn't exist then, because they would've used it to, to pressure themselves on people.

And this doesn't, you know, invalidate that there might be real trans people you can see are other episodes on that particular topic. But what it does in, in invalidate is o obviously. If you normalize this identity and normalize protection for it, some people are going to abuse that. The question is, is when it is clear that somebody is just abusing it, why aren't people pushing against it?

Why aren't people right?

Malcolm Collins: Because it, it can't hurt the movement. I mean, the whole turf movement was in response to this and, and the Supreme Court ruling in the United States that was not in favor of the, the trans movement resulted from this and had. Those lines have never been crossed in the first place.

This would not have happened. We would not see Supreme Court ruling solidifying. A, a conclusion that the trans community would not support

Simone Collins: well, or you see like in our Anna Valen episode, where this is a vice writer in her very first article for Vice is like Vice has hired a monster girl. A fetish artist to their platform.

And, and she, she starts in character with the article, you know, basically forcing you to engage with this fantasy she has. And if it's clear, if you watch all of valent stuff, she's a, a person who just clearly gets off on violating other people's consent. This is, this is clear from. The, the fiction she writes, but also the way she lives her life.

You know, she hasn't had a bottom surgery. She goes into communities, she complains at these communities that the lesbians do not wanna sleep with her. And then sort of fantasizes about, well, them being forced to, to sleep with her. And, and, and cis women, you know, she's written numerous long things about forcing cis women to sleep with her.

Why would you hire somebody who's doing this, who, who's written a lot about, like forest ization? Like if this is a movement that is about normalizing the idea that it, no, this isn't a fetish thing. This is just who I was born. Then why do you you know, give a microphone to somebody who's writing a lot of forced feminization erotic material, right?

Like, and had the long history of this and isn't hiding this within the, the stuff that they're writing. And we've noted other like, horrible things that, that. She has done like using a vibrator with you know, a, a video game that kids were playing that to go off whenever one of the other characters would touch her was obviously without the other people's consent.

But. You could then get people like Alec Vade Menon, who recently got a, a Netflix special. And before getting this Netflix special, something that they had said., I googled what the correct pronouns were is. Little girls are also trans, queer, kinky, devious, kind, mean, beautiful, ugly, and peculiar.

Your kids aren't as straight and narrow as you think they are. Ah, so, so this was in response to the little girls in, in, in seeing him in a, in a bathroom. So he's saying in regards to what he thinks of the little girls you see in a bathroom, him in a bathroom, he's saying, well, you don't know that they're not kinky.

He's saying you, you don't know that they're as straight and narrow as you think they are. He is, or sorry, they are actively fantasizing about the way a little girl is responding to him and that it is. basically about a, a little girl imagining him in a situation, right?, And his supporters.

I love it. Like I tried to get AI to like, be, be honest about this, and it was like, oh no, there's nothing wrong with that tweet. I'm like, how can you say that? Like, it's like, well, kinky can mean other things than, than sexual things. And I'm like, but in this context, it very clearly means. Into what they are seeing when they see this person who does not even attempt to pass in these restrooms. Why doesn't the urban monoculture reject this?

Malcolm Collins: It's a really good question.

Alec Va Menon is a very good example of this because when you look at this individual, somebody who recently got a Netflix special, , they are not somebody who feels that they were born in the wrong body. If you look at the way they dress and the way they attempt to appear, they are somebody that intentionally is like sex pest maxing.

They want to look like. An assailant, that is their entire vibe. , They, they want to make you uncomfortable in the way that they look, and they want you to feel uncomfortable with the way they look.

That is clearly what they are going for. So why is this normalized?

Simone Collins: Interesting question to me. Yeah, because you are losing

Malcolm Collins: a lot of people if you allow that.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. You're losing a ton of people. There must be some benefit. And I, and I kept thinking through like the logic of this, I just couldn't think of the logic behind this.

Mm-hmm. It did not logically make sense to me.

And so then I started to think, okay, well let's think about this evolutionarily. Alright. Okay. Okay. What evolutionary advantage could one group, because we pointed out one reason why sometimes a culture will adopt a thing like for example. The urban monoculture disproportionately targeting children like Uhhuh.

You really should not be doing like the children books, reading and stuff like that. Mm-hmm. That is, that is, drag queen story hour is something that if you wanted to be like an accepted and, and have people not freak out about your movement is not something you would be doing.

Speaker 5: parents are waking up and saying no.

Speaker: When asked about parents rights, OJ says

Speaker 6: Well, actually, in Canada, parents rights are limited, so the child has the right to be protected from the parents when the parents behave badly.

Speaker: Like village resident Dave Davido Carlo support Soji and limiting parental rights.

Speaker 7: The change that we have to see is sometimes the parents.

Simone Collins: But it turns out that people disproportionately deconvert from their birth culture between the ages of, of 13 and 23, and basically after 33.

23. If they haven't deconverted, they never will. And so you have to catch them at that age range. And so the iteration of the urban monoculture that put prohibitions on targeting that age range or had a a squi about it, ended up dying out and being replaced. Um mm. So it wasn't ever logic that this was a good idea to involve kids in this, it was that this led to high higher cultural growth rates.

So. What I hypothesize as leading to the cultural growth rate is, that when cultures the urban monoculture this is a culture that's involved with like leftism and woke and it's like the dominant culture. Mm-hmm. You know, whether you're in Manhattan or Rio or, or you know, Paris. You know, it's why those regions are all more culturally similar in their norms in taboos and everything like that, that any of them would be from like high fertility, adjacent cultural groups from Manhattan.

Like say Orthodox Jews or Amish, or US or evangelical Christians. Mm-hmm. Who would all be very deviant from each other, but also deviant from that sort of urban, urban. Monocultural group it, it it's become this sort of mimetic virus, right? That, that, unlike other religious organizations, as we've pointed out historically you can look at our video like was Christianity actually more moral, mostly grew by preventing deaths.

I. Preventing infanticide. And very little of it gross came from conversion. In fact if you look at mainstream religious traditions, it's very rare that over 10% of a population will be from conversion. And at the most you will for short periods see populations of around 30%. But even then, that's only often in regions where they have not been exposed to that religion before, and it's basically spreading.

Like you can almost think like a, an invasive species because you just, you just don't have resistances to it. It's new ideas. You have new populations that might be compatible with it. So, once, once it's been for proselytized for a while in an area you, you, you typically don't get those 30% numbers anymore.

Of course this is outside of like extremist cults, but we're not gonna, that's, that's nothing about them. The urban monoculture doesn't grow that way. , IE by, you know, increasing an individual's quality of life, increasing the number of, of kids they have, increasing their mental health increasing the probability of their kids stay in the tradition.

It, it. Sort of hijack somebody's brain like that fungus in ants that then just uses those ants resources to replicate the fungus as much as possible. It doesn't care about the ant or the colony anymore. They don't send the ant in the colony, infect all the other ants, and when it's ready to die. It climbs to a top of a, a, a stock and its head explodes and it spores go everywhere.

You know, same way like when somebody is in an end stage of infection with urban monoculture, they talk about, it basically SAPs all of your vitality for life. And in the end stage of infection individuals basically just plant themselves in front of a computers screaming into the void. Like, that's these people who are sending us death threats and everything like that.

Like, that's why it's so easy to like not you know, consider them fully human anymore because. The type of person who just goes online and like threatens people who they disagree with, without engaging with any of their arguments, like clearly has lost an element of their humanity at that point.

You know, they, they, they are the ant that has, has been eaten except it's, it's sort of their brain that was ified by all this. But anyway. Once a a a region reaches a certain level of infection, you have a problem which is to say that certain individuals may have immunity or they may have come from a cultural tradition that provided them with a degree of immunity, like maybe Evangelical Christian or Orthodox Jew or something like that.

Because most of these traditional systems have a degree of a mimetic immune system built into them. Mm-hmm. To prevent other, you know. Insanity is 'cause the religion, you're supposed to help people. So providing with the medic immune system is useful. So, so do you know if you have somebody who is faking it?

Within these groups, right? Like they might, they might be going along with everyone in public, but in private they might have some sort of a pushback. Mm-hmm. So you need to develop some sort of class or repeated behavioral action, which can out the individuals who are you know, just pretending to go along.

Oh, so

Malcolm Collins: you're saying these sex PEs are like the SS of the.

Simone Collins: They're sort of like an s urban monoculture operation. But yeah. We'll, we'll get to that

Speaker 14: Malcolm. Welcome to Tolerance Camp. You are here because you would not

Repeat the lies that were required of you.

Speaker 14: Well, those days are now over here. You will work every hour of every day . You will make a painting you will not make any distinction between people of different color, people with different sexual preferences. You fail. Accept everyone.

What are you finger painting.

Speaker 15: Uh, a bear.

Speaker 14: I bear, old bear has nothing to do with extending people of different races. I, I didn't know what else to beat. Sta you will finger paint what we tell you. Go faster, faster, faster, faster.

Everything in order.

Speaker 16: Yes, mine. Fre. We are making the prisoners make macaroni pictures that illustrate diversity in the workplace.

Speaker 14: Excellent.

Simone Collins: Now. Hold on. You might be like, well, I mean, what if somebody so, so as an example, right? If you have one of these like, clearly non passing people who demands like weird, they them pronouns like Alec, they menon or something like at your workplace, right?

And, and they're clearly not passing right. People who have a degree of immunity and a degree of integrity are going to struggle with gendering them correctly. Mm-hmm. And, and if they accidentally misgender them, right, like, so suppose they decide to go along with it then this person will like, I.

ACOs him. As you can see, many videos of people doing online of like poor waiters, like accidentally misgendering somebody who doesn't at all look like the gender they're claiming to be. And then they get accosted, their manager gets pulled over and like, how did you expect them to know they're just trying to do their job and like live their life?

Like why would you have this behavior pattern? Why would this behavior pattern be normalized and liked within progressive social media? Right. And then I was like. Oh, it is a great way to fish for potential defectors. And you might say, well, what if somebody's gonna go along, even under these conditions?

Mm-hmm. If they're gonna go along, even under these conditions, they're probably never gonna really defect. They are too scared. They are being constantly reminded every day that you can lose your job if you push and you can't because what this enforcer class does. 'cause often they soon end up with nothing left to live for really quickly.

Mm-hmm. I mean, one of the things we pointed out was the UN. Is she transitioned you know, sort of, I, I, I, I get the impression around like 25 or something, and then hit the wall in her thirties and was like, nobody wants to sleep with me anymore. And it's like, yeah, you, you, you, this is why I, I do not understand transitioning into a woman as a man.

I, you are gonna hit the wall so effing fast. Mm-hmm. And women, like with a man. Your, your life just gets basically easier with Yeah. Your

Malcolm Collins: value in general on, on, in sexual and dating marketplaces increases with time and with women it decreases logarithmically.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And, and with a huge drop off after 30.

Mm-hmm. And so, you, you, you get like three or four years as like a desirable woman and then most of your life as an undesirable woman who's sitting online. You know, in, in, in Aval's case doing you know, fetish content for a source of income and working for a games industry that like nobody is buying into anymore because it went too woke, right?

Like all the, all those publications are shutting down and that's why she can't get work. And so, you have this horrible life, so it's very easy to adopt this enforcer role where your entire life. Is dedicated to finding anybody who is willing to challenge the urban monocultural norms and attempting to destroy their life.

Mm-hmm. And, and is it a surprise that the key person who was calling out Kirsha this, this v YouTuber, we have a couple episodes on what happened to her but she just said. A very true thing, quoting a progressive politician in the uk. , The unchecked regulation around immigration in the UK was leading to demographic shifts and that the immigrants that were having more kids than the native population, and this would further exacerbate demographic shifts.

And this is just like a blatantly true fact. Like obviously, right? Like she can quote a reporter on this, et cetera. But, but she then tried to have her labeled first. In multiple vice articles. This happened in three different vice articles as a great replacement theorist, which, which clearly is not in any sort of, actually problematic form of great replacement theory. And people have called us great replacement theorists as well. And I'm like, what quote bro? Like, and, and then that they, she's tried to have them, like, we can point out math, but math is math, right? Like, are are, are you denying the like.

Statistics. Right. And then she tried to label her a Nazi and she repeatedly just calls her a Nazi in her post for saying that unchecked re immigration in the UK is gonna lead to demographic changes. How, how, how, how, but. That is the system with which this sort of enforcer priest cast uses within the urban monoculture, which is in your body when you get like a foreign element, you have something called an antigen which bonds to it.

Yeah. Which then tells the white blood cells to attack it. And so, these individuals sort of act like an morbid monocultural white blood cell system where one of them will tag anything that they see as showing a degree of immunity. And then kyia, my God. This, this girl has immunity to the urban monoculture.

Anything that might be showing a degree of immunity to the urban monoculture like us or her is one of these antigens. And then all of the other white blood cells know to attack this thing through online comments because they've got nothing left going on in their lives. You know, they've got no family often no real friends.

You know, really small networks. The only people who often care about them, and you see this in a lot of these posts are the people who are passing them around and using them. For sex. And, and we've seen this because a, a number of them, when the whole prep thing was going around and people were freaked out, they're like, wait, why is the government paying for a drug that you would only need if you were having casual sex with strangers?

Like, like orgy parties. And some people were like, I wouldn't have any friends if I didn't do this. Like, what, what am I supposed to do? Right? Like, and you're like, wait. All of your human relationships are by people who are using you for, that's not normal. That's not, that's when I say normal, I, I don't mean like, oh, my way of living is better than yours.

I mean. I, I, I, I struggle to see how somebody could build value in themselves when they're living that lifestyle. Like that's not psychologically healthy, that you've been led down that path. But so these people, you know, they've got all day, they're not really doing anything else to sit around and try to get people fired.

And we've seen this with the Kirs case. You know, they'll call up like, oh look at this hate thing that, so, so and so was posting. Do you wanna fire them? And Kirsha recently did a piece, I think it was on her, was on another case recently where some woke person was claiming that somebody was being transphobic.

And, and you know, it's hard not to be transphobic when you're dealing with facts. Yeah. We, we've pointed out like the, the data is transphobic. Now, you know, the study in 2023 gender discontentedness and gender non-content youth showed that of 13 year olds that identify with another gender around nine and 10 of them identify with their birth gender by the age of they're 23.

This is a phase. And it is an incredibly damaging phase to accidentally normalize because the, the drugs that are being given in terms of puberty blockers to these kids are the exact same drugs often that the Christian extremists used to give to kids who were same gender attracted. So it's it's the

Malcolm Collins: same group.

Isn't that wild? Yeah. Just went through that. Yeah. It's just one form of castration. I fought it, then I

Simone Collins: fight it. No, you know, you, you don't, you don't. Mess with kids biology like that, you know? Especially if their parents aren't consenting to it, which is something we're repeatedly seeing. Yeah. And this is why, well, it seems

Malcolm Collins: like what the most common format is, is this shows up in a divorce or separation.

I.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Where one parent affirms the kid and then they can use that to break the kid off from the other parent. Yes. And they'll also plant these ideas in the kid and stuff like that. And, you know, once you get the kid started on some of these drugs they can't easily like go off, right? Mm-hmm.

You know, it is basically a one-way pass. As soon as that started, as soon as you sent them to an affirming psychologist, it's over. Mm-hmm. And, and that's what's really dangerous when you're looking at a. You know, 50% on a live attempted rate was in this community. Yeah. And yet it turns out that, you know, nine in 10 people, if you just didn't interfere, wouldn't end up in this community.

Which is really scary. We've also talked about and, and if you're talking about like the wider research, when Travis stock was being decommissioned, this was this major trans clinic they went through the data and it turned out that there was a study that showed that, putting young people on puberty blockers with increasing rates of self-harm and increasing rates of attempted UN alive.

And they had blocked this from publication. So they were hiding data, showing that what they were doing was making things worse.

Malcolm Collins: Not cool guys.

Simone Collins: And if you know that this is being done at the places where we can get access, like, or the WPAs files where you get all these leaks where people are like, yeah, these kids have no idea what they're consenting to.

And lots of doctors are saying this in the WPAs files. We know from Travis doc, we know from the very beginning of the industry was the Jo Joe money experiments. That, that data was withheld. He hid that it didn't actually work. That you know why? If it's happening at the beginning and it's happening today, and it's happening everywhere, a place gets decommissioned or a leak happens, shouldn't I assume that it's happening everywhere in between?

Like the, wouldn't that make sense? When I, when I look at the lives of the people, because that's, that's one of the things that I think is really interesting to do is dig into the lives of not the. Trans individuals today who are you know, really public and really famous and really in the public eye like you're Dylan Mulvaney.

But go onto to things like we did in our episode. You know, the life of the C Byte. If you want to or read it, we go into this in more detail. We go into her personal journal like Anna, a valence personal blog, right? Like a, a, a successful but not super successful individual to understand once you get past the euphoria phase.

You, you, which, which a lots of people report, which of course, the hormones that you're taking are causing it. I mean, these are happy drugs for, for the early days that you take them. You know, this incredible burnout. And and, and so when I see that so persistently and, and incredible dissatisfaction with life I, all I can think is, well, and, and think about, as I always say, Valiums is the core.

You know, victim in, in the kyia and valent story. Mm-hmm. I, I say this, not a victim of, of, of, of kyia, but a victim of the urban model. Although

Malcolm Collins: the person who's really had their lives ruined the most.

Simone Collins: Yeah. She, she's got no family now that she could otherwise have. She doesn't have a meaningful job right now, which she otherwise could have had if she did ed her life to helping other people.

She doesn't have job security, which she could have if she hadn't done that, she wouldn't have you know, she went into this community and she, she was horrified. I. To learn that cis women didn't wanna sleep with her. And that the only people who sleep with trans women who don't have bottom surgery are other trans women.

And that the only place she could find an acceptance was within online fetish communities. And that you know, she thought because these people were affirming of trans individuals, that they actually saw them, it's women. And then she learned after engaging with the community that this wasn't the case.

And this is a very much like this isn't on the tent like. When, when people transition, they think all these people that are affirming them and telling them how great and brave they are, are also gonna want to, you know, sleep with them. And they aren't, they, they, they are just following the cultural norms of their environment, right?

They don't, well,

Malcolm Collins: they're this whole dynamic though. It makes me think, I, I feel like we see it across different domains in a way that implies to me that this is just a naturally evolved. Thing in cultures or groups that makes them overall stronger and more competitive. Businesses, for example, often encourage you to fire your bad customers and just keep the power users like that 1% that like accounts for 90% of your income or that 80, that 20% that accounts for 80, right?

And this is a way of weeding out the ones who aren't really invested so that you can invest more. In the ones who are super invested. It also reminds me of gang initiation tactics where like, you have to murder someone to become a member, and by that point you're so committed because you've, you've had to do so much that is otherwise questionable to the average person that now you're super in.

So I, I, I think these high investment. You could call them s**t tests. Yeah. Are pervasive like that this isn't some novel thing or new dynamic that you are describing, which makes me think it's more plausible that that's also what's going on because it really is otherwise intuitively quite strange that people who would give a bad name to the movement, who ultimately do so much PR damage.

Whether or not they mean well or whatever. Even if we just take all of that away, they do a lot of technical.

Simone Collins: Reputation damage. Why are they center? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Why are they there so consistently and why is there so much defense of them so consistently.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And another thing I note about this aggressor I I sort of call them like enforcer priests or, or an enforcer class within the, the larger.

Urban monoculture, and you see this in the way they act, especially towards like lesbians for example, who are dissenting. Is you regularly see them get very aggressive. Like there's lots of videos about this.

Speaker 18: This is just sad. The guy was feeding the homeless a*****e. Can you do something about the f*****g people are arguing here about to assault me. Can you wipe the up and use your f*****g eyes please? Can I have the same liberty as every.

Simone Collins: These are like the punch A turf people. These are the people who you know, the story that always stuck with me is this lesbian who you know, is on Reddit and, and in the lesbian community on Reddit.

And she assumed that this was mostly like cis women, not a bunch of. Trans woman, right? And one day, like a top upvoted piece was one in which a, a lesbian had said, I don't want to sleep with you to a trans woman. And the trans woman had apparently beaten her. And this was filmed and it was upvoted and all of the top comments were praising the trans woman for doing this.

And she was like, oh my god. Like one, I didn't realize that like your average trans person was pro like physical violence against a lesbian who had a preference for cis lesbians. But it appears. That they are, at least within the community, she thought where she was safe. And now she's like, and now I don't feel safe going to gay bars anymore.

You know, and I, I hear this persistently a across the lesbian community because they don't know if they're gonna be accosted. So if you have a view that is, that is antithetical to these groups, or you're not gonna capitulate to these individuals they, they become very aggressive. On average, and it's, it is not all trans people here.

No. I'm talking about a specific cast of non passing, very aggressive trans people where it's clearly not about seeing as some other gender like, okay. If you were just born in the wrong gender body, right, and you cared about being seen as the other gender and living your life, why would you ever dress like Alec VM?

This is clearly somebody who doesn't want to be seen as, as the other gender. They are somebody who intentionally wants to dress in a way that, that causes the people they're interacting with. To have to suppress any sort of like, like reaction, right? Like they're, they're trying to get you to say something.

And they're getting off on the fact that they know that you can't. There, there is no other explanation for this because they're not presenting like a gender when, when there is an individual who's clearly not trying to pass, but also demanding that you, this is about violating other people's consent and using cultural norms to do that.

Mm-hmm. And I don't know why this isn't something that we talk about more as a society. A portion of the trans movement has become dedicated to. The violation of other individuals consent as a fetish and people who had that fetish have taken this trans identity and are using it. And can you imagine nobody is this hurting more than if they exist?

And you can look at our videos on this like comparing this to anorexia and maybe it's the culture of around illness. But even if it is like anorexia and a cultural bound illness, the people who have it really believe they have it. Real trans people. Nobody is hurt more by this. No one is hurt more by an Alex of Edman or Aaliyah Thomas than somebody who's just trying to live their effing life.

And, and can you imagine the horror, if you opted into this community when you believed that the community was, what is it on the tent? Like if you look at the early people who pushed the movement you know, your Buck Angels or your Caitlyn Jenners you know, the movement has completely turned on because now it's only if, and that's the other thing.

And I think one of the reasons why the urban monocultural sort of enforcement mechanism works so well is, is, is it built a system where anybody who challenged this. Was immediately dissociated. You know what? What is a Buck Angel sin? Buck Angel says you shouldn't transition underage people. That is why they were expelled from the movement.

You know, Caitlin Jenner, I think Matt said something similar or supported Trump. I don't remember. But whatever they had a thought crime. Now you can't talk about. It did not

Malcolm Collins: show complete compliance with the political line. I.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And this is, this is why lesbians should all vote Republican.

So they, well, I mean, I've pointed out from the perspective of a lesbian and it's one of those things that I hadn't really thought about as a guy. When I think about like the physical differences between men and women if you guys know like war hammer, there's like space parades. There's these guys who are like.

10 feet tall or whatever. Imagine if one of them like came up to you in a space where you previously felt safe and started like pushing you around because that is what somebody who's born in a male body often feels like to a cis lesbian. You know, they're often significantly larger than them. They have significantly more muscle mass than them.

And, and starts pushing them around and being like, Hey, like, you know. Suck my girl D right? Like, or I'm gonna beat you up or I'm gonna, you know, get you expelled from this bar so you can never come back. Have your friends never talk to you again. I'm gonna constantly call up your work and try to get you fired, which is the behavior we constantly see from this community.

You're gonna feel very, very threatened. Like the degree of one of the things that I persistently see when I watch, you know, trans people videos online is they're just mortified transphobia people who go on a date with them and then you know, get angry or don't wanna sleep with them because the person didn't tell them they were trans.

They're like, well, you know, why should it matter to them? Well, I mean, it's their choice whether it matters to them. What the do you mean? Why should it matter to them? They get to choose what turns them on and what doesn't turn them on. You don't get to force yourself on them, and it's like, oh yeah, I forgot the whole violation of consent.

Kink has become normalized and. I'm not saying that this is like something I am projecting onto the community. This is something Anna Valence you know, has repeatedly talked about. Oh, how wouldn't it be great? Like, the, the world that we are fighting for is one in which cis women are, are tied up and, and, and forcibly bred by trans women.

Until. We're, we're gonna destroy their peace so much that you're just gonna have to trade them out for other women. It's like, and she goes on for quite a while with this explanation. And I was like, this is not, this is, this is it. You can't just say this as a joke, which is what they tried to say afterwards.

You can't just say, oh this is clearly meant for, for erotic purposes. And I say that because I have two my chagrin to try to better understand this individual. Read their erotic literature, they post to erotic sites, and it is the same things being talked about within post fears. They're just trying to force other people to engage with this without their consent.

Which is not okay, but for whatever reason, they think this is normal.

Malcolm Collins: I think your theory is compelling. It's just so, it's so wild. And it, it, it sucks because absolutely nobody wins from this. Yeah. Yeah. At least, you know, in, in some scenarios I'm like, well, at least you know, this group profits, this group benefits. But here the antigen detector people who, the people who take those roles.

Really don't,

Simone Collins: no. Their lives become horrible nightmares. Cr Thete episode,

Malcolm Collins: and obviously the people who are tested by them and put in these very uncomfortable positions, they certainly don't win. They're put in terrible positions, whether they're expelled from the community or whether they're put, you know, sort of forced into saying and doing things that make them deeply uncomfortable.

And then, you know, the rest of the community doesn't really benefit either because it's not like their rights are being promoted. Like, and what Yeah. What ends up happening is the rights of the antigen individuals get promoted, which don't help anyone else in the community. And then those antigen people don't even, they're not even happy.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Because what they want is, is. In insatiable and also impossible. So well,

Simone Collins: and it just doesn't provide a good life. A constant search for self-affirmation and pleasure leads to. A terrible life. Like, that is, that is not the way humans are constructed, even from

Malcolm Collins: a, a hedonic perspective. No. Even from

Simone Collins: a hedonic perspective.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah.

Simone Collins: It feels good for a bit as, as you see in valent's writings and then life loses all purpose and they become a hako Maori that just yells at people on the internet and tries to get people fired all day because they can only feel like hints of happiness from the destruction of other people's lives.

That, that, that validates their choices. 'cause it makes them feel like they're on the good guy's side. I mean, of course they're on the good guy's side. Their actions are definitionally good. It couldn't be that they made a terrible mistake and are driving and, and, and, and, and trying to convince other young people to make this same mistake.

Malcolm Collins: Hmm. And,

Simone Collins: and as we saw with Anna vns, she is, she has talked a lot about targeting you know, with Gen Z, it was just like 13 to 19 or like 13 to 21. She's like, that's the primary age range I date these days, and this is someone in their thirties.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, right. Yeah. Like I just realized these are the ones that,

Simone Collins: and it's like, well, this is also good from a conversion perspective because you are psychologically destroying these individuals.

And, and, and helping spread, you know, this mimetic sort of plague, but like all the rest of us understand that like can sense really murky when you're dealing with like that degree of age gap.

Malcolm Collins: I don't know. I mean, we just recorded an episode on marriages to, in individuals who are quite young and I don't know, like at this point I'm like, oh, what?

Like, you know, 18, 19, 20. Is great. Wow. This is so much better than, than, than what some other cultures are looking at. Nine. Yeah, the nine. Yeah. That's, this is great. They're fine. I'll take it. Go ahead. Yes. So I really don't know anymore. I've, I've just, I'm so lost. I just, I just wanna hide in our beautiful little farmhouse so we create, well, that's it.

Kids have, and just make a beautiful world and make a beautiful future and hope that. We outpace and outcompete and outnumber eventually these, these other groups because they're too miserable to keep going.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, like, comment and subscribe I guess. Check out if you like to learn educational systems that won't brainwash your skids kids check out pia.io or the Collins Institute, which will link to that.

They're even fun. Oh, yeah. And plugs

Malcolm Collins: for other people. One of the, the followers of this podcast is organizing a prenatal list conference in the Netherlands this fall. So email us if you are interested [email protected]. Also, if you are a full-time mother who wants to maintain, sort of an active career entrepreneurially, engaged life you should consider joining group undercurrent. Also, email us if you'd like to be introduced to the organizer. The, the women in this group as, as they've been described to me, just so cool and, and what the organizer is working on as well.

Malcolm, she's also working on some hardware. What's that? Prenatal is

Simone Collins: like ai, that's like Christian and stuff for kids. The, the guy shared with us, it's called like, Virgil. Yeah. That, that might be it. I I can also post a link to that one. Yeah. Yeah, so

Malcolm Collins: there's, there's a lot of cool stuff that our, our listeners are, are up to.

You're part of a great community. Malcolm leaves the, the link for the discord in the comments on most of our videos. So if you wanna hang out with base campers more, check out the comments.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It's a community of saying people from diverse backgrounds, actually diverse backgrounds. You know, we, we've got our, our, our, our detransition, we've got our, you know, catholic Roman mass types. We've got our Orthodox Jews. We got our atheists, but our annoyed was the urban monoculture types.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: We got a, we got a smattering of everyone.

Malcolm Collins: You're in good company here.

Simone Collins: All right. Love you to

Malcolm Collins: DeSimone. I love you too, Malcolm. I'm gonna go down and take my chances with the sushi.

Don't start

Simone Collins: cutting the, the ingredients so I can show you how like. Make sure you don't misunderstand in terms of how thin it should be,

Malcolm Collins: then in an ideal world come down in 10 minutes before the kids are here. Okay?

Simone Collins: Okay. I'll do that. All

Malcolm Collins: right. I'll see you in 10 minutes. Love you,

Simone Collins: love.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so with your sushi denial, I was just thinking about it. I think one thing, if you're open to it. Is, you know how like with a lot of traditional sushi recipes, you're just supposed to make like little sticks that you put into the roll. What if I just made instead fine confetti? Because one of the problems with It'll cut

Simone Collins: better.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Is it like you try to cut the sushi pieces, but then like, it's kind of like when you eat a hot dog and you like take a bite and like the hot dog just comes outta the bun and you're like, come on, this is. This is,

Simone Collins: you know, you should probably try that with one and try it was out with another, so like,

Malcolm Collins: make two rolls and one with a, I think

Simone Collins: when you actually put in the right amount of ingredients, it's going to be much easier to cut.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we'll see. But I mean,

Simone Collins: it's supposed to be thin, thin strips. Not big honkeys.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But then there's still, it's the, it's like. Cutting a sausage with floss inside, like the string just goes with it, even when it's a fine.

Simone Collins: Okay. Try cutting it up then if you think it's gonna be easier, try cutting it up.

I mean, it's, the flavor's not gonna be different. The question is, is will it stay together? But I think it's

Malcolm Collins: way more likely to stay together if I make it into confetti. Okay. If, if we're, if we're not gonna follow the rules, I'm, I wanna do it the way that I think will actually work instead of the way that Right.

Apparently people follow the rules. It doesn't work.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And this is the point to figure out how to make better sushi.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, well

Simone Collins: then let's try that. Let's.

Oh yeah. Question. Yeah, the comments how were they on today's video?

Malcolm Collins: Oh, good. Yeah, just a lot of people expressing their dismay, sadness, and

Simone Collins: Elon was being

Malcolm Collins: a, at the, at the conflict, but then also being like, Hey, Elon's in, in a difficult position. And then people being like, oh, Elon's already Trump tweeting again.

Don't worry, we're back to normal. Nothing ever happened. Which I, I don't think we're quite back to normal yet, but you know, I, look, look, they've like hated they've, they've traded, they've sparred online before, like in a pretty Yeah, you know, I would say pretty serious way. It's not like they're gonna not be able to come back from this.

So I would say the mood is overall cautiously optimistic.

Simone Collins: We'll see all. I mean, I think people are glad that we're sort of seen as the figureheads of the trans movement and probably not him for the trans

Malcolm Collins: movement.

Simone Collins: Not the trans movement, the prenatal movement. Sorry. 'cause we're doing trans in this episode.

No, I mean,

Malcolm Collins: redheads here.

Simone Collins: It's, it's, it's, you know, you don't have to worry about us going off crazy. We're, we're predictably crazy. The, the crazy things we're gonna say, I think are fairly predictable. I, I, I don't think that often we get a take and somebody's like, I did not expect you guys to, you know, I said, you guys were great.

I didn't expect you to do this. Except for the people who didn't at all believe that we were gonna go right. And when we told them we were going to, they're like, no, you won't really or that we were going to start a religion. They're like, no, you're not really gonna do that. And they're like, wow, you really like, did that, did that all.

In this episode, Simone and the host discuss Pakistan's recent ban on child marriages with the 2025 Islamabad Capital Territory Child Marriage Restraint Bill, which sets the legal age for marriage at 18. They explore the controversy surrounding the ban, particularly the pushback from Pakistan's Council of Islamic Ideology (CII), which labeled the bill 'un-Islamic.' The discussion delves into cultural, religious, and historical perspectives on child marriage in conservative Islamic societies. They also examine disturbing local practices such as exchanging young girls to settle feuds. The hosts analyze the religious texts and traditions that support child marriage and scrutinize the arguments from both sides. Additionally, they address broader cultural implications and ethical considerations, highlighting the need for nuanced understanding and the dangers of cultural imperialism.

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. Today we are gonna have a spicy conversation. Pakistan did the unsinkable, or rather, something that should be non-controversial, which is banning child marriages. Oh. The country's primary like religious authority called the council of Islamic Theology.

Simone Collins: I'm picturing like a rounded table with a big globe icon.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, no. What, what really happened was this,

Speaker: This is all wrong. How dare you? You have stolen my dreams People are suffering.

Malcolm Collins: And Greta Thornberg, of course, famous anti-Semite would go along and great with these people. But they basically came back and they said, this is Islamophobic. Is, is the term that has been used? It is, it is against the principles of Islam.

Wait. Hmm. Does Islam actually condone. Well, yeah, so I was like, I know there's the whole, like if you're on the internet and you're around like the, the anti-Islamic circles, uhhuh, like, oh, well he did, you know, get engaged to a girl when she was six and consummate the marriage when she was nine. This is Aisha.

No. And I had, and I had heard this and, and then I'd heard Muslims say, oh no, that's not true. Like look at the actual whatever. And so I just assumed. Angry internet, A CS being nerds, right? Like I was like, yeah, right. Like, come on, that's not real. Or I'm sure that there's like a nuance if you really dig into it, then

Simone Collins: well, maybe it's one of those things where like people just kind of forget their ages, so then you ask them how old they are and they're like, I don't know, nine.

Malcolm Collins: Well, so we are going to get into the evidence for both sides of this. Okay? But what I will say, what I didn't know is that in the conservative Muslim world, like if you're not in the West, almost everyone believes the nine age. Th this Islamic council almost certainly would believe the nine age, almost every major conservative Islamic council council, or I'd say every major conservative Islamic council particularly the SUNY ones, would go with the nine age.

So does

Simone Collins: this mean that in turn. It is considered normative or possibly even recommended that girls as young as nine get married.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Puberty is seen as the age. No

Simone Collins: puberty's getting earlier and earlier these days. So that's, I guess, nine territory. Let's,

Malcolm Collins: let's go into the data here. 'cause there's a lot to go over with this case and I think it's really, really interesting.

We're also gonna go into some unique practices in Pakistan. Ooh. Where they, trade young girls to end blood feuds with other families. So they will take you know, like their 9-year-old daughter or whatever, and basically give them to another family for marriage for, for one of their life. A family

Simone Collins: with which they have a blood feud.

Malcolm Collins: Yes.

Simone Collins: So, you know, this kind of reminds me of you know how Alexander the Great was raised in a. In an antagonistic court, right? As like, yeah. I don't, I don't

Malcolm Collins: think that that I, I, I assume that in a lot of these cases they're pretty severely abused, but we will get into this. Oh yeah. Actually, I've

Simone Collins: listened to some very, very long interviews with women who've been in situations like these, so I'm not super ready for this.

But let's go.

Malcolm Collins: We won't get into too many horrifics specifics. Just generalities and things that have been caught by the public and stuff by that. Okay, so in May, 2025, Pakistan's National Assembly and Senate passed the Islamabad Capital Territory Child Marriage restraint Bill, a landmark legislation aimed at curbing child marriages by setting the minimum legal age for marriage to 18 for both males and females.

In Islamabad, the bill criminalized cohabitation with minors as statutory grape with penalties of up to seven years in prison and fines of at least 1 million Pakistani rues or around. 2,600 pounds. However, the Council of Islamic Ideology, CIIA Constitutional body, so again, this isn't like some weirdo council, this is part of the cons constitutional body that advises the Pakistani government on the compatibility of its laws 'cause Islamic principles declared the bill quote unquote un-Islamic on May 27th, 2025.

The CII argued that provisions defining marriage under 18 as child abuse. Describing punishments were not was in Islamic jurisdictions. They also noted that the bill was not sent to them for review before its passage. I find that very interesting that they assumed that it would have been. And apparently they had killed similar bills multiple times in the past.

Wow. So they big mad about this. They argue you check with

Simone Collins: them the nerve.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They argue that Islamic law does not set a specific minimum age for marriage with some clerics suggesting that puberty, which can occur as early as nine. And was obviously the prophet as precedent, you know, literally nine is considered okay for them is sufficient for marriage eligibility.

And I did ask ai, and AI said that your, your average Pakistani by far would believe that Aisha was nine. It's just sort of the, the western ones who would think something different are the ones who are involved in like online arguing with atheists. Historical context. This is not the first time the CII has opposed child marriage bans in 2014 and 2016, similar bills were deemed quote unquote un-Islamic and quote unquote blasphemous blasphemous mind you, not just Islamophobic leading to their withdraw.

The CII has also made controversial rulings, such as suggesting de i evidence is inadmissible in grape cases. Why do you just want grape to happen? Like.

Simone Collins: That I just don't think it's really seen as such. I mean, I just, in, in a lot of these, I mean Okay, and I'm pulling from interviews from Pakistani women who on YouTube have done like long form interviews of their experience growing up as child brides, essentially like in houses of their in-laws.

They're not really. They're not, they're treated this, ah, they're treated like the level of worse than, than your average American would treat a pet dog. Yeah, that's what I've heard in terms of like, and so like this idea that like, you could, because I think even most people and we've, you know, bring it back sexual relationship with, with with a dog like I think most people we're not

Malcolm Collins: pro that.

She's joking. We're not pro

Simone Collins: that. What I'm saying is that even most Americans who do. Gross things with dogs by our standards. Do so with consensual dogs. But even the, the Pakistani young girls in these households are not given that standard which is really screwed up.

Malcolm Collins: So sorry. I should know that what Simone is talking about here.

70% of people in the United States who engage in bestiality believe that the animals consenting whether or not animals can consent. It's one of those things that I actually find to be pretty stupid, like obviously like a dog anyone knows. Well, I feel like

Simone Collins: if the dog's running away,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, like the dog doesn, you know, if, if you have to, if you have

Simone Collins: to physically restrain an animal or if the animal's running away, or if you are drugging the animal, there is probably not consent.

If the animal, I can't believe

Malcolm Collins: that we're arguing for. I'm just trying to point out, like, to me it seems ridiculous to be like dogs. I, I guess in the way that like a child can't consent. 'cause a child could say that they want something that they don't actually want. So I think we need to put consent in multiple categories here, right?

Like,

Simone Collins: yeah, like if you put peanut butter on your junk. And they, is it consent or was just

Malcolm Collins: like they couldn't say no. Is is, you could say the same about children, right? Mm-hmm. So I, I, I would, sorry. Well, you could

Simone Collins: say the same thing about the grooming gangs as well. Like those women were love bombed, like they got into all of that.

Well, yeah. A lot of them get

Malcolm Collins: into it technically with consent, but Totally. But the point I'm making here, Simone, mm-hmm. Is, is if you consider dogs like children but I don't think you should, because the reason why a child cannot mean. Gainfully consent is because at a future time, they will be at a higher intellectual development level.

That's true. Where they might, yeah. You can't expect that

Simone Collins: of a dog.

Malcolm Collins: Something they made in the past, Uhhuh. It's not that a child can't actively say I want something, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. This, this makes us look so bad and later in this, I'm gonna actually argue that, I don't know if you should ban child brides Tim and Malcolm, that we're just gonna look so bad in this episode.

And, and I would note here to, for, for anyone who wants to like take us outta context or something like we are. Absolutely against bestiality. I think it is really not a good thing. But I, I tried to add a context there just to be like intellectually consistent in the way we're approaching.

We're trying

Simone Collins: to have an intellectual conversation here, which is unmoored from our personal proclivities and morality. We're just trying to be like weighing the calculus. If,

Malcolm Collins: if either of us was actually into that, we would not be. We'd probably not be

Simone Collins: openly talking about it. No, we'd not be talking

Malcolm Collins: about it.

I'd be too scared that it would get out. You know it. God,

And again, I wanna be clear, we find this personally, , revolting and culturally revolting. But, , I have to call out the moral inconsistency of saying that an animal can't consent to this. But then we forcibly breed animals with other animals as a matter of due course, and nobody cares. Or we forcibly kill animals for their food and obviously we don't care when they consent to that.

the other thing that the council had registered before is that men do not need their wives permission for a second marriage that is hyper abusive.

Simone Collins: No, but that's also hyper normalized.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. It was in Islamic Way. It happens

Simone Collins: all the time. Yeah.

Are you kidding me? Like, this is not surpri this shouldn't be surprising to people.

Malcolm Collins: I, I, I, well, again, we've gotta, well, at the end of this, we'll analyze, this was in the cultural context of Islam, but let's keep going here. Okay. Yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Some religious story also, though,

Simone Collins: I, I, I just wanna say though, like, whoa, it's actually really big that they're doing this, considering how normalized these things are.

Like, well, I fired what's going on. This

Malcolm Collins: a form of western cultural imperialism.

Simone Collins: That's what I'm, I'm assuming the urban monoculture has taken over the political class. No, the UN

Malcolm Collins: basically threatened them and, and said, you have to do this. Well, we'll get into this.

Simone Collins: Okay. Okay. Ver okay, because. Yeah, like this doesn't seem like politically representative of the voting population, so

Malcolm Collins: No, it's, it's not.

Okay. Okay. So EE even mainstream parties like the JUIF the Jihad El Islam fuzzy has opposed to Bill with leader Mullen Fazar Raham announcing protests, claiming the law. Quote makes fornication easier. End quote. Here, basically he's saying,, look, we plan to have sex with these people anyway who are below X Age, you know, it's just the, you know, they, they're, they now won't be our wives. Right. We we're, we're still gonna force, you know, like we're still gonna force.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: Now, now, but you're basically, you are forcing us to break Islamic law when before we were totally fine. What are you doing? Yeah. You're making sinners of us.

Malcolm Collins: And within their cultural context. It is true. I mean, I think the way Islam treats women is abhorrent. And when I say Islam, I don't mean all Islam.

I mean, the majority of Islam was in these regions. Yeah, no, there's, there's, there's forms of Islam that are like Totally, yeah. Whatever in Unobjectionable. Yeah. But I think that. What, you know, in the west is, is glossed over is those forms of Islam are not what is practiced in, in, in countries like Pakistan normatively, right?

Mm-hmm. The more slave with the government body saying, oh, you can just marry a second wife, doesn't matter what the first wife said, oh, you know, on great kits DNA doesn't count. We just normalizes. Like, you should be able to do this. That the, the, the, you know, the, the, oh, well, I mean now you're forcing us, you're forcing us.

To have sex outside of marriage. It's like, no, we're not forcing, maybe stop doing it with children.

Simone Collins: My

Malcolm Collins: bro.

Simone Collins: Just a thought. That's a great idea.

Malcolm Collins: Thanks for thinking of that one. Okay. A 2018 demographic survey found that 29% of girls in Pakistan are married before the age of 18. Equating to nearly 30 million women, approximately 30% of the female population.

Simone Collins: 25%. That's crazy. Mm-hmm. Could you imagine. If that many women got married under the age of 18 in the us Hold

Malcolm Collins: on, hold on. It gets worse. 4% of girls and 5% of boys married before the age of 15. 15. What percent,

Simone Collins: hold on, hold on.

Malcolm Collins: Did I hear that right? 4% of girls are marrying before the age of 15.

Simone Collins: 4%. 4%.

Malcolm Collins: That is crazy.

Pakistan ranks among the top 10 countries globally. For the absolute number of women married before 18 UNICEF 2018 report indicates 18% of women 20 to 24 were married before 18. 4% before 15. And in 1993 this is the big decline because it used to be nearly double that, so it used to be nearly 40%.

What is interesting is Pakistan has the lowest prevalence of child marriage in South Asia after Sri Lanka, but it remains widespread, particularly in rural areas. So these numbers are low compared to other Muslim countries in this region. And then it talked about practices like Sari Arvani, the marrying off of girls to settle disputes, which are common within some regions.

The girls involved in this are. As young as five to nine.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So, and keep in mind I wanted what, what, wait, what is this? I wanna, I wanna know what, what are these practices? And keep in mind these families like blood, blood, that means that like these families have a fight where like.

Somebody was like, murdered and they're looking so they're mad at these girls. Right. And these girls are typically the daughters or the sisters of the person that instigated the blood dispute.

Simone Collins: Right? Of the murderer, theoretically, yeah. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: the murderers. So they are not going to be treated well by their mother-in-laws or the families they're moving into, or these family networks.

Th th this is basically an s slave that that's what's happening here. A, a child.

Simone Collins: And what do they get? What does the, originally Aggressing family get in exchange for giving away one of their daughters settlement of, they probably don't value that much anyway,

Malcolm Collins: settlement of the, the, the blood.

Simone Collins: So just like, okay, now you're not allowed to kill us back.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. Well, okay, so, to go into these practices in more detail. UAA Pashton term, meaning writing, or on the back of a practice where a girl, often a minor, is given to a rival family to settle a blood feud, typically involving murder or honor disputes. This could be like they had engaged one girl to the family and the first girl ran away because she didn't wanna be forced to marry them.

Hmm. That would probably count within this category. This girl is married to a man from the aggrieved family to restore peace symbolically, quote unquote, carrying the burden of reconciliation. So they put the burden of reconciliation for the entire family on a minor,

Simone Collins: like a literal scapegoat.

Yeah, just put the sin on the goat,

Malcolm Collins: send the goat

Simone Collins: off,

Malcolm Collins: kid. Wow. VNI Punjabi term meaning voice or speech, similar to uaa. Vni involves giving a girl in marriage to settle disputes, but it's more common in the Punjab. It can also be used to resolve financial debts or other conflicts such as land disputes or perceived dishonor.

Decision making disputes are often mediated by a gra, a tribal council of male elders. Or community leaders, the GRA determines the number and age of the girls given. So sometimes you have multiple girls being given from one family to another. Sometimes as young as five to nine years old, though marriage may be cons consummated later, often at puberty.

So, and keep in mind the great prophet did this. So he, he married Aisha at six, but he waited because he, he had like a, a lot of restraint. Until she was nine, at least by this one interpretation, which we'll get into. I remember I, I was talking to Simone about this and I was like, man, that, that Jesus he you know, at least, at least our prophet was not, I.

Doing it was minors like a apparently, and you're like, that doesn't seem to be a high bar. And I'm like, well, you know, we've got Mohamed and Joseph Smith there. You know, like a a, apparently it's a bar that, you know, when you get into the prophet territory, a lot of people are like, rules that, no, you know, you got, you got even freaking Gandhi sleeping in the same bed with, to, they just

Simone Collins: keep throwing themselves at these men.

What can we say? They, they just want it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh, so bad. So.

Selection of girls. Girls are typically chosen from the offending family or clan, often daughters, sisters, or cousins of the person responsible for the dispute. In some cases, multiple girls are given to strengthen the reconciliation marriage arrangement. The girl is forcibly married to a man from the rival family, often with without her consent or with the consent of her immediate family.

So this is like basically determined by a local court and a girl is, is taken from the family often. These marriages are legally registered in some cases, but frequently bypass age purification, exploiting weak enforcement of marriage laws. Social context. The practice is driven by poverty, illiteracy, and rigid gender norms, families in debt, or embroiled in feuds, Macy Sahari, ASI as a way to avoid violence or financial ruin.

Well, but

Simone Collins: I mean, it's, it just like the, the level dehumanization that's taking place here is extremely disturbing. I.

Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. In, in 2023, a 7-year-old girl in SWAT was given to settle a murder dispute, sparking protests by local activists.

The marriage was delayed until she reached 15. But the case highlighted, so, and this is happening, and then people found out about it, right? But this was for a murder case too. Like what did she have to do with that? What did a what An immoral religious system that would allow this now note here.

Again, not all Muslims. This is one cultural system and I believe that cultures have the right to self-governance. But I think that we need to be aware when we are importing people from these cultures, how culturally distant they are from us and understand that they are likely not going to understand, like the grooming gang phenomenon from their cultural perspective is a completely normal thing.

Like yeah. They, if anything, they're being extra respectful. I mean, they're waiting until these girls are like 16. You know, no, that's, that's the ba basically hag maxing you know, that's, that, that's, that, that is, that is what they're doing from their perspective. They're, why are you guys mad at this?

I let her walk around the house without chains some days. You know, anyway. In Punjab's UR District 2024 aji a ordered three girls age nine to 13 as VNI to resolve a land dispute. Oh, the case overturned after intervention by a local NGO and media coverage. But this is what, what's normal until it's like caught.

But three girls for land is.

Simone Collins: Well, and that's, I mean, it also makes, I mean, it, you have to question what their home life is like anyway. I mean, basically I, I'm getting this impression that parents are just kinda disappointed when they have daughters. And this is something that's reflected in the interviews I've seen with women who've been through this process where their home life wasn't great either.

Like their parents did not value them. And, you know, they, I mean, it was obviously worse at their in-laws, but. You know, like from day one, they've not been valued as humans, which is also deeply disturbing.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and it's something that from my cultural background, I'm just never going to be able to emulate what it's like to think like that, you know?

Yeah, I really,

Simone Collins: I, so my problem is that I in turn, deeply dehumanize anyone who would do that to any class of people. I don't care if it's men or women or slaves or a certain group, a religious group, or an ethnic group, like whatever, like I. I see them and I'm like, okay, we're don't come close to me.

To be clear here, she is not talking about Muslims because not all Muslims treat women this way. She is talking specifically about groups, regardless of their religion that treat women in this way.

Simone Collins: Well know.

And I

Malcolm Collins: hear about atrocities happening in these regions and I'm like, yeah, but aren't those the ones who like trade little girls and, and treat women like slaves? Like, I don't mind so much. And this is, this is one of the things where people are like man, that's a problem. Right? Because like, I don't, I don't think it is a problem.

I know, I mean,

Simone Collins: a dehumanization just leads to. Increasingly bad stuff. I, I just, no,

Malcolm Collins: I, I think what it allows is for us to not meddle in their business. You know, like, I don't, I don't, this is their culture. It's been their culture for a

Simone Collins: thousand years. I know, I know. Like the, the general place where I settle in with all this is like, alright, I have to flourish.

I have to win. I have to create such an amazing legacy culture and civilization going forward that anyone who doesn't convert into it and become. Like convert away from these bad practices would be insane because this is just so the obvious

Malcolm Collins: right choice. No, no, no. But the problem is, is is what we're seeing it because the urban monoculture is like, oh, that's what we're doing, but they're not doing that, right?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like they're showing that when people deconvert from these, these groups, they stop having kids. Right. So that's the problem.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You know, if your system isn't working. People can be like, oh, so you're a cultural relativist. I'm not in all a cultural relativism. I, I believe my culture is superior, but I also believe that the superiority of my culture is shown through time.

It's shown through, through, yeah.

Simone Collins: Through higher birth rates and through long-term human flourishing. The problem with the urban monoculture is it puts an end to a lot of, we'll say human atrocities. But then it subsequently what's the word? Sterilizes and kills off everyone who converts in. So it's like, oh, you have it good until we like shoot you in the head and then you're gone.

No, I think,

Malcolm Collins: I think it actually creates a pro a, a secondary problem, which is it creates the per. That if you try to put the, the rules in social norms of our country into this region that it, it, it, you know that these people are just going to follow them in the way that people from, from our cultural background follow them.

Mm. And I, and that's why they have this belief of they can just import immigrants from these regions. And, and all of this is just gonna poof, go away. Mm-hmm. But they believe that they're going to just completely eradicate their cultural background. And, and, and one that's a psychotic thing to believe because you're, you're, you're, you know, demanding basically cultural genocide of these various genders and, and sexual norms.

But, but, but two, it, it just functionally doesn't happen. You know, these people have, have lived alongside this for centuries. And, you know, this was something we saw with, with soldiers in Iraq and, and the, common practice there of sleeping with boys. And they, they kept trying to stop it and people were like, what are you doing?

Like, this is normal here, right? Like, just let us have our fun man. Like, why, why are you being such a stick in the mud about it? And, and the same way that you know. The soldiers may have seen the Iraqis looking at them for drinking, right? Like, you know, I, I know from your cultural perspective this is bad, but it happened to me when I was a young boy, and I'm totally fine now.

So let's continue the cycle. But again, I think that you, you know, you, the problem with, you know, it. Having these like absolute cultural norms is because we live in the age of the urban monoculture now, which means that the urban monoculture can define whatever it wants as abuse or an atrocity. Mm-hmm.

It can define making pictures of beautiful women an atrocity, you know? Mm-hmm. Oh, we gotta the UN's claim to ban anime. Right. It can, it can traditional gender roles as an atrocity, you know, even within like a Western context. It can say the idea that a, a person is born, a gender is an atrocity, right?

Like this used to work when, when, when sane culture was the dominant culture. But we don't live in that world anymore. So we can't rely on these systems, which is why it makes more sense to fight for cultural sovereignty and people can be like. What about kids? And this is why I'm like not okay with child brides actually, at least within a Western context, is because it breaks one part of cultural sovereignty, which is to say that you can leave a cultural tradition when you're fully myelinated and mature.

Simone Collins: Right. And if you are married when you hit 18, and you should be able to get, you're married, often

Malcolm Collins: have a bunch of kids when you're 15, right? You're not free

Simone Collins: anymore. You're not free. You're

Malcolm Collins: not really free. Yeah. You can't really leave at 18. You can't really make a decision at 18. Mm-hmm. Whereas with other things like say circumcision I think that this is, or, or corporal punishment or you know, raising your kids outside of this public school system to believe that certain things about like sexual norms or deviant that mainstream society doesn't see all that I think is fought right.

Because none of that prevents them from leaving at 18. Mm-hmm. I also have a, would have a strict rule. Against any culture that threatens to kill somebody who leaves which a number of Islamic countries. It's very normalized. But first we're gonna argue, go into why they argued that child marriage was part of Islamic culture.

Or, or religion. Okay. Koranic silence On minimum age, the Koran does not explicitly set forth a minimum age of marriage versus like surah on Nisa five, six discusses guardianship of orphans until they are mature enough for financial responsibility, which some scholars interpret as implying readiness for marriage at puberty.

The CII and conservative scholars. Argue that since the Koran does not prohibit child marriage, it is permissive under Sharia, provided the girl has reached puberty, often defined as Minche around nine to 15 years. A prophetic example a key reference is a marriage of the prophet Muhammad to Aisha reported in Haddi.

I'm not even gonna try to say those words. As occurring when Aisha was six and consummated at nine. Conservative scholars, including the CII cite this as a precedent allowing marriage at or before puberty. I. They argue that the prophet's actions are a model for Muslims. And since seventh Century Arabia accepted such marriages, they remain valid Today puberty is readiness.

Islamic Juris puts FIC across multiple schools. I. Ha, Hanif, mif, Sharifa and Hana Bali traditionally links marriage eligibility to puberty, not a fixed age for girls. Puberty is often marked by menstruation and for boys by physical maturity. EG ejaculation. The CII argues that setting minimum wage of 18 as, is Lama bod a child marriage Bill would contradict his flexibility imposing a Western standard that in ignores biological and cultural differences, which I would agree are there. And, and we do need to recognize parental authority. I. Sharia Grants parents or guardians wali a significant authority to arrange marriages for minors, especially girls, to protect family honor and economic stability.

Some scholars claim this ensures girls are married into stable families before they face risks like premarital relationships. The CII has suggested that child marriage when arranged by parents. Aligns with Islamic values of chastity and family cohesion. Cultural context in Pakistan, conservative scholars argue the child marriage is a cultural norm In rural areas, the Islamic law should accommodate local practices rather than impose universal age limits.

They claim laws like an Alana Bob will disrupt social harmony and criminalize traditional families. Just some notes on why this is so bad of the girls who do this according to who in 20, 20, 30% die. In, in often childbirth that and 70% are illiterate and abuse rates are really common.

So now let's go specifically to the Kisha Aisha. 'cause I was like, wait, what? Like, so first, who believes, like, what categories of Muslims believe Iisha was 12 to 19? Okay. Again, not Okay. But what categories believe she was six to nine? Okay. So progressive Muslims, doctors like Reza Aslan, and Dr.

John S. Brown. In nuanced discussions in organizations like Muslims for progressive values, often argue for the older age Westernized Muslims. Some traditional scholars, certain traditionalists, especially in South Asia except older estimates based on alternative sources. Though this is extremely uncommon she scholars some as she sources suggest ISO was older, 10 to 14.

That's not that much older. Although views very deemphasize her role compared to Sunni narratives. Now for the younger age, conservative Sunnis. Oh,

Simone Collins: so Shia you mean

Malcolm Collins: what Iisha. Shia,

Simone Collins: you said she

Malcolm Collins: No she, she sources is she, it's not, she. Or it might be Shia. Oh, Shia. Sorry, I was reading that wrong.

Shia. Okay. Okay. She has some Shia scholars. Okay. So it's not all Shia scholars, but there are like almost all conservative Sunni Go is a six to nine age. And you'll understand why in a second it's like basically part of their religion. It is upheld in most traditional conservative SUNY institutions, including Alazar, Egypt, Dara, Alun, Damon India, and many Saudi scholars.

Based on the Shia Haddi most conservative courts and institutions and general public and conservative regions in rural Pakistan where literacy is low and traditional scholarship dominates the six to nine age is rarely questioned. Now oh my

Simone Collins: gosh, this is so, like overwhelmingly most people are like, yeah, she

Malcolm Collins: was

Simone Collins: a

Malcolm Collins: kid.

And they're like, yeah, and he's a prophet. That's is normal. But if they have a completely different view of women in these cultures, right, right. And I think they need to understand that, that you can say, okay, now do things my way, but that doesn't mean that it's gonna happen, you know?

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, it's kind of like when people have, they raise dogs as like, show dogs.

And they're like, well, when is she old enough to, you know. Start breeding purebreds. Like it's a very different, like is she functionally able to Okay. Good to go. Like I'm, I'm seeing that kind of level of logic. Yeah. I always

Malcolm Collins: found that to be a very interesting thing about consent is they don't ask about dogs and consent when you're breeding them.

Yeah. They don't ask about dogs and consent when, you know, some cultures kill to eat them. Yeah. You know, like. Sorry, this is like, I should you just keep bringing it back. Bringing it back, because I have literally zero horse in this race and this can only serve to hurt me. I am just trying to be logically consistent.

Well, I'm just,

Simone Collins: I mean, we're, what we're discussing though is the dehumanization of a class of human to the level of being. And so we're, we're looking at other examples in which people manage someone else's life, an intelligent being's life. And the most common scenario in which humans are pervasively managing other intelligent beings lives are through pet relationships, especially dog relationships in United States.

Malcolm Collins: Interestingly, I think a lot of things that are done to women in these countries would be illegal to be done to pets. Oh, no.

Simone Collins: 100%. 100%.

Malcolm Collins: So authoritarian, haddi and this is, this is the arguments for, so now we're gonna try to go through ourselves and see if we can determine what was Aisha's age, because I always try to give religions a benefit in the, Ooh, it's time for

Simone Collins: investigation.

Malcolm Collins: I had just jumped on the more progressive western thing. I was like, ah, I usually hear it from people with like an ax to grind. You know, so whatever, right? Mm-hmm. So yeah, who

Simone Collins: knows If it was like normalized back then, you know how like your mother was like, what, 39 for? Many years, like a decade, you know?

Yeah. Maybe girls were like, you know, six for like 16 years. I don't know.

Malcolm Collins: So the most compelling evidence comes from the Hadith in Sahi Al Bakari and Sahi Muslim considered the most authentic collections in Sunni Islam. Mm-hmm. These. Explicitly state Ayisha's age, providing direct and widely accepted textual basis.

Exact quotes. Sahi Al Bakari. The prophet married Ayisha when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old and they remained together for nine years until his death. Shahi Muslim. Then for another quote, Ash reported Allah apostate married him when I was six years old and I was admitted into his house when I was nine years old.

The strengths, these haddi are classified as shahi authentic with strong chains of narration in Saad, making them nearly indisputable from the perspective of traditional SUNY scholarship. They are cited by major scholars like Imam Nwe and Iban ha Kahari as reliable in context like CIA's rulings.

Such haddi are foundational for arguing. Child marriage is permissible as they reflect the prophet's practice sooner. Consistency across multiple sources. Beyond Bakari and Muslims, other Haddi collections and biographies collaborate the six to nine age, reinforcing its re reliability through multiple narrators and texts.

Sunni Abba Ashish said the messenger of Allah married me when I was six years old and consummated the marriage when I was nine years old. Iban Hassan, the life of Muhammad while not explicitly stating Aisha's age, it confirms her to be young age, noting she was a young girl at the time of marriage.

Strengths, the repetition of Ashish's age across multiple sources like Abi d, Tim, and IL Bar. With similar narration from Ashi herself suggest consensus among early narrators. Conservative scholars like those from Pakistani Hanif tradition argue such consistency outweighs speculative revisions As the narrators were close to Ashish's time.

Cultural memory. Early Muslim values, precise memorization, especially of prophetic traditions. Scholars underwent rigorous training to preserve reports and narration. Like Hashi, iar and were trusted for their proximity to Aisha. So what

Simone Collins: you're saying is you looked at the evidence hoping to find like, oh, it was fuzzy.

We don't remember it really Well, this is like a game of telephone and it kept getting And you're like, actually no. Everyone's like, no, no, no. We're like really, really, really careful. We're like, really?

Malcolm Collins: So, so, no. It came. So one of these traditions is directly from her own mouth. It is her account of the prophet's life.

But what I'm noting here is these traditions, they, they practice a strict chain of passing down information where you were supposed to remember like. As a religious order word per word. And, and this has been studied in cultures that have oral traditions. Mm-hmm. How exactly are they passed down?

And you actually see a really high degree of fidelity within oral traditions Wow. That have this value set. And you can see this fidelity respected. And sorry, and reflected in the fact that multiple of these hads that are used by different schools all have this exact same age. The, the speculation that she was older did not come until modern times.

But then there's the other big issue here, which is early marriage was standard practice in pre-Islamic and early Islamic Arabia. Judicial license, tribal license, and the need to reproduce her age aligns with those cultural norms. Which is, which is. True. Right? Like, this, this would not have been a weird thing.

It's more that it's a problem because of a modern context and understanding of this stuff, not because of the context at the time.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Again, yeah, if it was

Simone Collins: super normalized at the time, that makes it even harder to argue against. Like, this is just how it was done. Right.

Malcolm Collins: It would be weird if he did.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: It'd be weird if he didn't do it, because that's what you just did then.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I mean it, so to keep going here I. She herself was the primary narrator of the Haddi, stating her age, leading credibility to the account as a firsthand report, her lack of objection and her later prominence as a scholar suggests the marriage was socially accepted.

So she also became an important Muslim in the early days of Islam and was very open about this, apparently.

I'd also note that we don't have a single Islamic scholar on record anywhere before the 19th century arguing that she was older than this six to nine age. This is a completely modern argument and phenomenon.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, so how do people argue against this? I. Okay, so first argument historical records suggest Aisha was born before the prophets of first Revelation six 10, CE making her older than six at the time of Betrothal six 19 to 6 22.

Her sister, as she's age, provides a key reference point. Mm-hmm. So, tabs History ninth Century volume 39. Ashima, the daughter of Abbu, aka was 10 years older than her sister Ash. She, yeah. Except this is coming from the ninth century, bro. Like that's way later. Ivar in Castillo and, and, and, and way later than the other sources that they're saying are too late to use the sources.

Asma died in 73 the 6 92 CE at the age of 100. Meaning that she was 27 to 28 during the Hira. This implies hir was 17 to 18 at the time. Strengths, if Asma was 27 to 28 in 6 22, Ash, she being 10 years younger, would be 17 to 18. Aligning with the marriage age of 15 to 19 at 12 to 15 scholars like Malalan, Muhammad Ali.

Use this to argue that actually it was likely 15 Epi Petrosal in 18 to 19 at consummation. The problem with this is you're arguing against a consensus in tons of religious oral traditions and written traditions based on. Oral traditions and like single oral and religious traditions that are shakier than them, and relying on two chains of evidence being correct, one, the age difference between her and her sister.

And two her, her, her sister's age of birth. Mm-hmm. Which to me seems like way weaker than the other argument chain. Next Ash's participation in battles like Barar 6 24 or a 6 25. Suggests that she was physically and intellectually mature, likely in her mid-teens as young children are not typically involved in such roles.

Yes. We've never seen Islamic child soldiers. That is not a phenomenon that exists. I, I'm joking there because it's incredibly common. I. Sahi Al Bakar Ashi accompanied the prophet during the battle of UDA carrying water for the fighters and tending to the wounded I hassar SRA notes Ashish's presence in military campaigns implying a level of responsibility and consistent with a 9-year-old that is not at all inconsistent with a 9-year-old from these regions.

It's not saying she was a warrior, it said she carried water to the warriors. And helped tend to the wounded. That's exactly the type of thing a 9-year-old would do in one of these regions during a war. Yeah. Like you're applying a modern cultural context onto the past, like this isn't even a piece of evidence.

If anything, it further suggests her her age being around nine. Totally. They're saying this suggests that she must earn 14 to 16 during this, which is what they need her to be. For the 15? No, the

Simone Collins: kind of like water, water fetching errands is total 9-year-old work, like six to six to 10-year-old work.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. So terrible argument there. Okay. Health relatability and narrative discrepancies. The Haddi states Ashish's age rely on a single narrator. Heran Bahe Iran, who reports from later in life in Iraq are questioned for inconsistencies. Alternative sources lack specific ages, allowing for older estimates.

No direct quote disputes, ham's narration, but Dr. Jonathan Brown. In Mohammad's Legacy, page 1 47 notes, Hiram Abba Iran's reports on ashe's age were transitioned transcribed late in his life. And some scholars like Malik questioned their accuracy due to memory and old age. So you're basically saying your core religious texts are inaccurate and none of the people around him noticed that he, he went from a 15-year-old age for one of the prophet's wives to a 6-year-old age or a, a, a and a 9-year-old concept.

That seems like a big detail that other people would be like, oh yeah, I've been hearing this guy talk about this my whole life. This 9-year-old thing and this 6-year-old thing. There's like a big, let's. Take that out, you know? No, nobody thought this was wrong at the time when it was being recorded, and there would've been a wide cultural memory was in this region if it of it was long after the prophet's death because it was a popular religion.

It's not like was Jesus where you had such a small community. And, and the regions in which it really started to grow were not the regions where Jesus was preaching the most. Right. This is, this is like way stronger direct evidence. And so I don't, I don't buy that either.

I'd also note here I find it really disingenuous that they're acting like this is just one guy who might have like, misremembered stuff. This was an entire religious tradition that was dominant in that city. , It wasn't one guy. , , the probability that they messed up that monumentally when making these, , transcriptions , it's totally unrealistic.

Malcolm Collins: And then they, there's the ethical and contextual reinterpretation that it was just unethical, but it wasn't unethical within the context.

We, we know from Quran, Soran, ALSA test the orphans until they reach the age of marriage. If you find them to be mature in understanding, release their property to them. So it's basically saying as soon as they basically have an idea what this stuff is you know, have them start engaging in it.

That doesn't require in an early Islamic or, or Saudi Arabian context that they be significantly older.

Simone Collins: I, I, well, and I would say like, what, what this makes me think of too is similar language that we hear around various Protestant traditions of the United States, decisions around when people can be baptized.

Like when you're old enough to understand. Like your commitment to your faith. And there are many arguments that then deconvert later have being like, oh, you weren't like, is that 8-year-old? You weren't old enough to consent to be baptized and to commit this much to the church. But like this is something that happens not just with regard to marriage, but like I think there are many religions who are like trying to make decision decisions around when kids are old enough to.

Take responsibility for their commitments in life. Does that make sense?

Malcolm Collins: I, I'd like to give a great example of this. You know, when, when, when they are arguing, look, we're we're like biologically and culturally different from you, and people could be like, oh my God. Like people of different groups can't be biologically different.

And, and, and that's why one culture can apply to everyone. The Urban One culture can apply to everyone. And a great example of where this is really hurting people in the United States is black families. So, you are not told this because this isn't offensive thing to mention. But black people are biologically different from white people in a number of ways.

And one that is really important to age of first birth that you may want in the spacing of your birth is black people have, specifically, black women have a way higher infertility rate than white women. And a slightly smaller fertility window than white women. And so a lot of black women don't.

They, they put off having kids into like their, their mid thirties because they see their white friends getting away with this. And they're just completely boned at that point. I. And doctors are like, oh, nobody told you, you know, because how could you, like, I'm know, called a racist for saying this, but it's like a, a studied phenomenon, but you're like, well then how, how does that work with black people?

How do they have the same number of kids, you know, in an evolutionary context? And the answer is they have a shorter fertility window.

Simone Collins: You mean they have a shorter gestation window?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they a shorter gestational window by about a week. And, and so they can, they can space their kids closer together.

And so this is why it makes sense to have different cultural norms for one group. Like if you actually care about that group, have different cultural norms. And this creates an interesting phenomenon that I was reading on which is so offensive to talk about. But it, but it is like a measurable phenomenon.

Which is you get developmental problems in interracial white black marriages where the mother is black and the father is white, but you don't get these when the father is black and the mother is white. Is there

Simone Collins: shorter gestational windows? Does that mean like the baby's born earlier, but then more likely to have complications?

Malcolm Collins: The baby is born earlier, but because of the white dad, part of the baby's genes expect this extra week, a longer

Simone Collins: gestation basic. Oh, that's interesting. It's

Malcolm Collins: basically like they're born premature. Oh. But then the, the longer gestational window where you have the white mom and the black dad you don't run into these problems.

I, I don't know if you get advantages. You probably do get some, but yeah. Wow. That's wild. But that's. Well, this is why, like, there's all sorts of harms caused to like everyone around by this fantasy of the urban monoculture that there were no differences in human populations. And, and like these are people actual, like I, I literally, like, I've talked with black women and they were like.

Furious that nobody told them about this. They're like, wait, black women have literally twice the rate of pregnancy complications. Like, yes, literally twice the rate. Nobody told you this. You know, like this, this is a thing that harms the black population that this has hidden for them like actively.

Simone Collins: Wow. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting there is this double standard because there are arguments and I've heard arguments made by many progressive outlets, and it's, you know, really messed up that. So much of medical science, modern medical science is based on research and, and foundational theories that were based on researching young men.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And then they freak out when we try to research different populations, like Yeah. Yeah. The biobanks have like been intentionally purging DNA data from ethnic minority populations and native populations at the request of Wilkis. You are the reason

Simone Collins: you, and then they complained about the fact that like, you know, healthcare is not sufficiently.

Customized to different groups. It is, it's very frustrating. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, they used to do experimentation on these groups in very unethical ways. Well, okay Leo, let's

Simone Collins: not go back.

Malcolm Collins: Let's

Simone Collins: not do that. Let's

Malcolm Collins: not go back to that. Let's not go back to Tuskegee experiments. Let's just go

Simone Collins: back to very, very open, you know, why wide open samples where we get as much variet as possible, but keep track of the varieties that we understand how there are differences that need to be accommodated.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I love you to death. Did your mind change about anything from this?

Simone Collins: I really struggle with the drive toward cultural imperialism with the understanding of like allowing cultural imperialism like, you know, like just actively stealing young ladies, for example, that we think are abused, right?

Like, I just want to rescue them, right? But then I don't want other cultures to steal our children from us, and we know for a fact.

Malcolm Collins: They would, that there are

Simone Collins: lots of people on the internet, it's online

Malcolm Collins: all the time. Like, I wish I could actively, like,

Simone Collins: I want to get these, like the Collins as kids taken away from them.

So like I know what it's like to be the, on the other end of it and to vehemently believe that we're doing what's best for our children. And then at the same time, here I am sitting on the other side of the equation being like, I, I wanna take these kids away. They're, you know, being abused. So like I really struggle with this.

Right? And I think that the only way to, to reconcile and the only way I am reconciling with it now. Which may not be ideal is just like, well, we just have to provide something. A culture that's so compelling that you'd be crazy not to convert into it. It's high fertility and that leads to long-term flourishing and it grows well.

I

Malcolm Collins: mean, these cultures are not going to technologically advance and, and therefore, unless they make changes, like they, they could make changes and then but, but if we look at current trends mm-hmm. It does not look as if, you know, they are outputting the latest AI systems, for example. Yeah. Yeah.

And so, you know, as technology drives a wider and wider wedge between the capabilities of cultures that are able to produce high tech devices in cultures that are not. Mm-hmm. You know, they're, these groups, unless some woke, puts some on a spaceship, are, are not going to, you know, take humanities manifest destiny among the stars.

Right. Like, we're, we're not gonna have a DEI program for who gets on the spaceship. You know, we are, we are choosing. The best and the brightest of cultures that work the best and the brightest with other cultures. Mm-hmm. Because. This urban monocultural mind virus of, of, oh, everyone is exactly the same and, and, and, and can easily cohabitate.

Like that's just not true. Like, some cultures like if you put them next to another culture, they're just gonna kill them, right? Yeah. Like that, that, that's a thing. There. There are cultures that I could put in this region and these people, it'd be. A terribly stupid thing to do. It would be like leaving a kitten around a herd of lions, right?

Like, I am responsible for that. I'm the one who put the kitten there. It, it reminds me of the girl I. You wanted to do this big bike thing to show you know, oh, oh for, for peace and that, you know, there's no difference between different countries and different people and everything like that.

So she goes on this bike tour through Europe. She goes into a, a Muslim majority country and within 10 miles of the border, they found her body gRED to death. Trying to bike through one of these countries as a white woman. And it was just incredibly stupid. 'cause she believed this lie that these cultures aren't different and they, they are, right?

Like their norms are different. The way they relate to morality is different. , And , I'm not a relativist, but I, do believe that sort of within the conservative movement, we all have to fight for cultural sovereignty being the highest value because we, none of us have a dominant culture right now in the urban monoculture will use that to, to peel our kids from us and to restrict the ways in which we parent.

And so we just have to hope. That over the long run that we can be successful, that we can have lots of kids and that we can stay engaged with technology.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it's dark.

Malcolm Collins: Dark, yeah. Love you toes, Simone. Have a great day.

Simone Collins: Love you

too. .

Malcolm Collins: I got the FedEx package handled at least. So that's done.

Simone Collins: Thank you.

Malcolm Collins: And we're going to try sushi correctly this time. I will come down and help you. The last time she made sushi rolls that were like larger than a silver dollar, like this big, she's like, this is what it showed in the thing. I was like, no.

And it was California. I've never made

Simone Collins: sushi before. I don't look at sushi because.

Malcolm Collins: Didn't know. I feel qu, I look at it being brown meant that it had gone bad.

Simone Collins: I never use avocados in anything.

Malcolm Collins: I know. I appreciate that you're trying, you are trying something new and that is amazing, Simone. I mean, you're doing it for me sometimes just ain't good

Simone Collins: enough.

Yeah. Sometimes.

Malcolm Collins: But now ladies and gentlemen, you're gonna learn how to do this better with the, the avocados and the well, and we're

Simone Collins: gonna use the tiny little molds that, that we also very, yes, cleverly got ahead of time. It

Malcolm Collins: very small sushi rolls. There's

Simone Collins: literally no way it can you, you have an unnaturally large mouth, Malcolm.

It shouldn't be a problem.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. You take the the it's actually us having large mouths is one of the things I noticed when we're around other groups, I'm like, is an ethnic thing about like our people, is that we have just like giant mouths. And so I've been around other people and I'm like, God, your mouth is so tiny.

Which is

Simone Collins: not something I've ever seen before. And now I, I need to look, look for it in people. The, at

Malcolm Collins: least look at your, look at your face on the screen right now. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Do you not see how enormous that is?

Simone Collins: Well, I average human, average human face. Is that what you're Googling out? You need to, I dunno, what else do I, you know, look at here?

I, okay.

Hmm.

Okay. I mean, we're slightly above average. We're not like Aerosmith. We're not, we're not like. Yeah, there's some other really impressive people,

Malcolm Collins: old

Simone Collins: baby's head in their mouth. You know, that's, that's really how you know. If you have a,

who was it who ate all the, the babies. It wasn't Zeus was one of the babies who was not eaten.

Kronos.

Kronos,

yeah.

Kronos mouth. Yeah. So, you know, it's big. I'm sorry. I'm bad with names. It doesn't matter who it is, Malcolm. All right. It's just difficult.

Speaker 2: Eggs. All my eggs. All my eggs, eggs.

Eggs. Yeah. Are you gonna open em up, Tyson? Yeah. I'll open all my eggs and, whoa. What was that person? Candy, you're giving it together. Do you wanna eat the candy? I eat candy. Okay. Wants candy too?

Those are be, they're jelly bets, jelly bands. Mom I jelly or jelly bands. I think I like jelly bands more toasty. So we're just gonna go with that. Jelly bands. Jelly bands. I opened it. Yeah, you did What was inside? I looked, look jelly.

In this episode, we delve into the escalating feud between Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Our discussion touches on the origins of their disagreement, including the implications of Elon's resignation from Doge, differing political ideologies, and the tensions surrounding a significant budget reconciliation bill. We also examine the broader impact on the tech right and the Trump administration, the role of JD Vance, and the potential future of the right-wing movement. Additionally, there are reflections on political loyalty, the sustainability of government spending, and humorous tangents on unrelated personal anecdotes. Tune in to get the full breakdown of this high-stakes political drama.

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I am actually not so excited to be here with you today. I do not like what's going on right now. Between Elon and Trump, there has been a big falling out, a big fight that's been happening online. I mean, like it has gone. Nuclear on both sides. and, and people may ask, oh, is this the end of the tech?

Right? No, it's not like this is, this is a fight that while I am disappointed in the people involved in it I. I did not expect more for them. If anything, I'm kind of amazed they kept things going for as long as they did. Mm-hmm. And they didn't fall to the progressive nonsense. If anything, it almost feel like this fight happened as soon as the progressive stopped trying to drive them apart because now they could have a falling out without it looking like they were tricked into it by progressives.

That's a fun theory. I, I think that ironically the months and months of progressives trying to do stories like, oh, president Elon and stuff like this ended up with Trump and Elon feeling like they can't break up without making it look like Progressives won. And then Elon leaves his job with the administration, and I'll note here.

He left his job with the administration. Like Doge is still operational. Like my brother, little brother works for Doge. Everything he set up was already on sort of auto when he left. Right. And I'll also note here that just because Elon has decided to who create a, a beef with Trump that does not mean that the tech right has a beef with Trump.

Mm-hmm. This is a personal issue. This is not an issue really. Of of politics. There was a political angle to it that started a lot of it. But this is not something that changes the tech rights opinion. And I'll note when people hear the tech right, they think tech workers, when really, I think a better way to think of the tech in that is the right, that is downstream of the online communities like four Chan and Gamergate and all of that.

That's right. Like yeah. Asma Gold I would see as a more central figure in the tech right than Elon in terms of sort of culture setting and idea generation. Mm-hmm. Like if, if, if somebody like Asma goal or like Nino or us came out and are like, we are anti-Trump now or we are anti MAGA now, like I would be like the tech right has a major issue like correct.

That two really big. Egos who you know, had, had worked together for as long as they did actually. Like, I kind of respect them both more just as they kept it going for as long as they did, because I did not expect it is

Simone Collins: really, they're such strong personalities that kind of I see as only being able to, they can only be one in the room.

And yet there were so many instances of both in the same room, both working together, both sharing the headlines. Yeah, it felt so crazy. And I mean, nothing that has happened recently undoes what Elon Musk did, which was play a pivotal role in getting President Trump elected. And role, I mean, Trump

Malcolm Collins: denies that.

Let, let's, let's put it, what I would say is I don't, I I'm, I, I wouldn't say that Trump would definitely have been elected without Elon's help. I'm saying he might have been, Elon helped solidify the tech right partnership. But the, the truth is, is that Elon, if, if you're talking about like who's the political king of the tech, right?

Like who's actually the tech, right. King, it's JD Vance. It's not you, obviously

Simone Collins: it's the vice president. Yeah. Next in line to the throne. Hello.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Put in place by like Peter Thiel, like he couldn't be more, he's a former vc, former atheist, now Christian like us, former vc, former atheist, now Christian.

You know, and, and

Simone Collins: JD Vance, by the way, is a very active vice president. I think for those who are outside the United States or even in it in the United States in general, a vice president is fairly feckless, not involved. Kind of like, I mean, there was even one, one vice president in American history who basically spent his entire term.

Totally blitzed in New York, not even in dc. You know, typically they have pretty distant offices and they, they play a very symbolic role. But JD Vance's office is in the west wing of the White House. It is, it is down the hall from President Trump. He is actively involved. So this is, he is in history, one of the most active vice presidents.

So not only was he selected and is that a major tone being sent by a now two term president about what the future of the party is going to look at. But he also, in his, from everything from the logistical position of his office to the active role he's playing in the Trump administration, JD Vance absolutely is the, the figurehead of the new right.

And the functional head of the new. Right.

Malcolm Collins: And, and I really appreciate that. Like, I, I'd like to say like. Everything that Elon has done for society and the world and, and you know, in terms of the things he's felt because he is done a lot in terms of the, the spaceship work in terms of his work in, you know, this culture formation.

He isn't, I, I think like if you're even like, come on, most tech white people don't see him as the guy who's like actually leading things. And no, I mean, it, it was never not understood that Elon is a mercurial guy. He, he's not somebody who you want to, he's somebody you want to get stuff done. Not to be the ideological figurehead of a movement in the way that JD Vance is.

JD Vance is almost sort of the opposite here, where he is. If you watch any of his speeches or anything like that, he's incredibly thoughtful. Cunning in terms of how he sort of stacks the deck. And that's something that I really appreciate. And for me, a big part of all of this is it from everybody involved is loyalty is, is a big value of mine.

And so even when because there's been multiple instances in which I feel like the administration has done things that the tech rate would disagree with but like I have been very easy being like, well, the alliance matters more than the individual policy things. Because we, we only together can we fight the urban monoculture.

And, and if we fall apart, America falls apart. Like there the other side is. Demonic in every way a thing can be demonic. You know, they, they sort humans by their ethnic group. They sort humans by their sexuality, they strip humans of their identity and, you know, national pride and ethnic pride and any, any, the pride in their ancestors and what they built their, it's, it's horrifying Right.

To, to see what they've done. And we can all work together and agree that like, we, we can fight for each of us to raise kids our own way. Yeah. But let's go into the details of what happened exactly here.

Simone Collins: Yeah. As you pointed out, first Elon Musk left Doge, IW we would say, well, before this particular TAs, AMIC started amicably

Malcolm Collins: and then unfortunately the news stopped.

Huge. Stopped trying to drive them apart. Yeah. And then what happened?

Simone Collins: Well then. Elon Musk comes out quite publicly against sort of the, the big, very important piece of the big bill, the big, the one big beautiful bill that, that Trump has been talking about since before he was elected. It includes many of his major campaign promises, and it's really important that it is passed now because this is sort of the one period during his four year tenure when it is expected for him to have the majority in the House and Senate.

He needs to get it passed. The, the one big beautiful bill which is, it's, it's a budget reconciliation. It bill, it's, it's, it's a very specific type of bill is also, it's something that can be passed because it's just a budget reconciliation. It's not about like you, like necessarily new stuff, really.

It's just about sort of. How we reconcile the budget, meaning that it doesn't need as much of a majority in order to pass, which is another reason why like, this is such a, a feasible win for the Trump administration and also again, why it's so important because it's delivering on many campaign. Well, also,

Malcolm Collins: it, it, it breaks a number of his campaign promises if it doesn't get passed.

Yeah. And one of the reasons it has to be so, from my understanding at least mm-hmm. Is it, is, is it, it has to be so big is. To, because a lot of stuff is expiring. Yes. And, and this is a bill that, that sort of reaffirms the status quo. Yes. And it may be a, a non-sustainable status quo, but if Trump does begin to cut benefits and stuff like that, that was always like his first and central promise.

It wasn't something I like, but it was something that I signed on for when I chose this alliance. And it was a promise that I believe he absolutely needed to make to get the votes to win. People going on him

Simone Collins: most about Trump in this administration. His, his second term in office has been this ruthless, efficient delivery on promises.

So it would be really weird if he was like, ah, but you know what? To be responsible. And I'm gonna get into in a little bit why I. Being responsible is a lot harder than we could even fathom. But like, yeah. I mean, it would be so weird if he, well, I mean, we've also

Malcolm Collins: gotta talk about like how, you know, Elon calling the bill.

Like, it, it really started with Elon saying a bunch of bad stuff about Trump. And Trump. Yeah. What are,

Simone Collins: let's see, what are some, trying really

Malcolm Collins: hard to not take the bait for a while. Yeah. Before he finally like, went hard. But, but he,

Simone Collins: he calls it literally a grotesque monstrosity filled with excessive pork and quote, a massive, outrageous pork filled congressional spending bill.

Like he. You know, I, that, that was

Malcolm Collins: passed in the dead of the night when Congress couldn't read it.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And, and even after that, you know, Trump was like, oh, you know, we had a good friendship and everything like that. And then, you know, he, he starts saying, well, you know, Elon Musk's gone crazy or he's wearing thin.

Like, even, even his reaction, I think later was pretty generous, which is to be like, I don't understand why he's acting this way. You know? Like, these are campaign promises I made. Like what am I supposed to do? Right. You know? Mm-hmm. And, and they were campaign promises he needed to make to win. Like the, I think that would

Simone Collins: be a good time too for us to expand on this a little bit.

So what were some of these campaign promises? Yeah. So one of them, for example was. Obviously to maintain the tax cuts that he had promised that, that he had first implemented. So while the Congressional Budget Office points out says that a lot of people think this is deeply unfair, that the bill increases our primary, that is non-interest budget deficit by 2.4 trillion over 10 years with the, the total deficit increase being 3 trillion.

This is only be because they expected that tax revenue of everyone's taxes going up. For the average American, it would've been between two and a half thousand and three and a half thousand dollars a year. So like non trivially, like ouch. For that to happen. So they were basically like, well, we expected that money and because this bill keeps things as they are.

Now you're increasing the deficit. But that was one big thing. Other things that he had promised were no taxes on tips, that that was a big thing which is in there. There are some things aside from the tax cut extension and. Some, some other promises that he had made regarding like Medicare benefits were, which were slightly expanded that I am not so sure about.

So there was a 150 billion defense spending increase. A lot of people are arguing that maybe that's where the pork is, because defense contractors are largely bene, I mean, hugely benefiting from that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they're all like DEI riddled and everything like that. I would not have personally pushed for that, but in, you know, in the scale of government spending.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And it, there's also this really random suppressor tax elimination for gun suppressors. It removes us a $200 tax on gun suppressors gun

Malcolm Collins: owners. Were really happy about that one. I know.

Simone Collins: I mean, like, it's god bless America, right? Like, don't tax our guns. But it's one of those things of like.

Well, clearly the gun lobby put that in. You know, this is not one of those, you know, we're just trying keep things the understand, understand, but you've gotta

Malcolm Collins: make up for this money when it disappears. Right. And that's, that's, that's what this bill is about. And

Simone Collins: this, this, yeah. And I mean, and I also wanna give credit to the bill and that it, it reduces incentives on renewable energy, so that, that's a, a, a cut in in spending.

Of course, some people point to that and they're like, that's more pork because fossil fuels interests benefit from it. There were also Medicaid and SNAP cuts. A SNAP is basically, it's our, it's our food assistance program in the United States. So a millions of people will lose coverage due to stricter eligibility.

One thing that the the guys on the All In podcast pointed out though is that the cuts that they've made to these programs don't even bring them back to pre pandemic levels, which they had, which is what I,

Malcolm Collins: with them

Simone Collins: hiked up. Yes. They, they'd been hiked up insanely when like everyone was outta work and we're just like, we're on emergency mode, spend all the money, which I can understand, but that's over, you know, we're in the new world.

We need to cut that back to pre pandemic spending. So I feel like they could have done a little bit more. So like, well, I, I think that the extent of the financial damage of this bill is distorted in that there was this expectation of tax revenue resulting from a, a tax cut lifting that.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, but he had Trump, this is the thing, the, the thing about what Trump's doing here is he has to make a bill that can pass.

Yeah. Okay.

With, it was in the current political reality that we are living in.

Mm-hmm.

And the thing that makes me feel bad about how this sort of played out is you have Trump attacking. I, I mean Elon is attacking Trump for the size of this bill. Mm-hmm.

Mostly because Trump tried to brand it as a big beautiful bill, which if is a normal Trump thing.

Very Trump, right? Yes. I don't think that Trump likes really likes that a big bill is passing either, but that's how he brand things to get people excited. And, and then he puts in what he can while cutting what he thinks he can get away with. Cutting. Right.

Simone Collins: And they did. I mean, it, it is impressive given how any cut.

To some kind of like, to snap to Medicaid is, is like, voters are mad about that, right? Yeah. Because like the people who come out to these city council meetings, like the people who voted in favor of this bill, the politicians who did are going to get so much heat for this already. There is this one woman who like has gone viral because in some town hall meeting people are like, people are gonna die 'cause of these cuts.

And she's like, well, we're all gonna die. And then she got heat for that. And I'm just, god bless her. No. This

Malcolm Collins: point I'm making is, is, yeah, this is, a lot of people are putting a lot of political capital on the line to make this happen. You know, this was downstream of a lot of negotiations. Mm-hmm. And this is hard.

Simone Collins: Even this is hard.

Malcolm Collins: The, the Trump guys who put this bill together, they didn't, they wanted to cut back snap cards further. I can almost guarantee you, 'cause I like know some of these guys they're not happy that this is, they, they, they limited themselves because this is what they thought they could do to best meet the campaign promises.

A as to why Trump reacted to Elon this way. What else was he supposed to do in the first place other than be sort of snide or then say he's crazy. And then Elon is like, well, then Trump is replaced by a body double. Right. You know, or, or like, but I don't see, this doesn't come off as like Trump has always been an economic populist on, on this sort of stuff.

Another thing, I mean, aside from

Simone Collins: the fact that a president is obligated to follow through with his campaign promises I just wanna point out that, let's, let's just say hypothetically. The Trump administration worked with Congressional Republicans to pass a bill that literally halted all discretionary spendings, so operational, military, et cetera, while only maintaining social security, Benner, veterans benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, and debt interest payments.

So like, just the stuff to keep the people alive, right? Everything else is gone. Gone. Yeah. No building knew anything. No, no research, no, no fema, right? Like nothing. None of that. No. Like weather service, like no. NASA gone, boom, boom, right? We, we would, we would still run a deficit in our budget. Malcolm, it, it would be impossible to balance our budget under those conditions because we.

If we look at our, like 2025 mandatory spending, 1.3 trillion social security, 400 billion veterans benefits, 1.5 trillion to Medicare, 600 billion to Medicaid. Interest on debt is 952 billion. So the total is $4.752 trillion. Okay? That is how much on this super, like only keep people alive? Budget. Okay. But our, our tax revenue is 4.4 trillion, so we, we need 4.75.

We we're getting 4.4. So we would either need to increase our taxes or further reduce these sort of like essential lifeline spending. Programs to even begin to pay down our debt is eventually

Malcolm Collins: gonna fall apart. Like we've said this before, it as well likes, and

Simone Collins: obviously this is clear. I mean like, I think this helps to illustrate too, like with demographic collapse, just how hard this is gonna hit and how unsustainable it's

Malcolm Collins: ratio cascade.

Right now for every 1.8 Americans paying into the tax system, there's one person living off of it. You know, this, this cannot, like, if this gets much worse things are going to start breaking apart. This is what demographic collapse. Causes this is why Doge is so tied to demographic collapse because it has been giving us a wider timeline by dealing with this.

Mm-hmm. But you, you've gotta keep in mind, you can just be like, as a businessman, like, this is not sustainable. Which it's not. So, like, I understand Elon's perspective, but Trump isn't a businessman. And, and I think it took him a while to learn that in politics you're not a businessman. It's not about doing what's practical, it's about getting as much as you can towards what's practical.

And, what happened after this? If, if you look at where this went from this is that really the wheels really spiraled off a after this point. Well, so Trump spread, cut Elon's subsidies and, and contracts with the government, which is a huge source of, of money for his companies. And, and he stated that he surprised Biden didn't do it, seeing how big it was.

No. Oh no.

Simone Collins: You know, this also reminds me of, of a portion you put in the pragmatist guide to governance about girls like high school girls making a school lunch choice and like what happens in any natural dominance, dominance hierarchy where like the alpha gets threatened publicly. The alpha has to, they have to lot, they have to act because if Trump does not lash back out, he is now a weak feted.

Not respect worthy presence. He's Elon's

Malcolm Collins: B, like, that's what everyone would think. If Elon was just able to trash him without him fighting back

Simone Collins: mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: He would look really bad. He has to fight back.

Simone Collins: Like, there's no choice here.

Malcolm Collins: And he tried not to at first. That's the thing that gets me about all of this.

He was being so, like, he was being snide, but he was being gracious in the way that, you know, he, he, he could but when it became clear that this was like a thing, he, he then started to go all Trump. And then so, so, you know, first he's, he threatens Elon's contracts, right? Like, this is where Trump actually is.

Like, that's mean. That, that, that to me was like, okay, you're, you're getting mean here. Like actively, right? Mm-hmm. And then Elon. Snaps back with the Epstein file stuff. And saying that Trump is, is in the Epstein files and that the truth will come out. And he, he seems to be implying that he may have information people have speculated on, does Elon have information?

If Elon doesn't have information, this is gonna look really bad for him.

Note that Elon has since deleted this tweet.

Malcolm Collins: The reason why I do not believe he has information and I'm gonna tell the story as, as I remember it, but I will check this with gr Oh

Simone Collins: no, I, I, I'll, I'll tell it because I actually looked it up. Okay. And this is really compelling.

Malcolm heard this discussed first on Leo Flits podcast, YouTube channel, whatever, love Lee, right?

Malcolm Collins: YouTuber, yeah. The other new right person. Other tech right person. You know what I mean?

Simone Collins: Yeah. But she she pointed out that if Donald Trump. Knew that Donald Trump had, or that if Jeffrey Epstein had dirt on him, there would probably not be past evidence of Donald Trump slighting Jeffrey Epstein, because you don't slight someone when they have really damaging stuff on you.

However a according to the Grifters Club, which is a book about Mar-a-Lago, great. I mean, it was flattering. Epstein's membership was terminated in October, 2007 after he hit on or harassed a teenage daughter of another club member. The book sites, club members and investigative reporting from the Miami Herald stating that Trump kicked Epstein out after Epstein Arra harassed the daughter of a member, and that this was seen as necessary to protect the club's reputation.

CBS 12 news also reported. That Trump barred Epstein from Mar-a-Lago after allegedly sexually harassing a girl there. So this, this implies, and I mean I think it's really compelling.

Malcolm Collins: This was before any of this stuff was public, right? Uhhuh. Mm-hmm. Trump banned Epstein for his properties, for be any, and he also joked about this on camera in a way that was like, you guys should probably, there was this line of like, Trump being like, he likes him young ha ha like laughing uncomfortably.

Mm-hmm. It seems to be implying like, look, I don't have time to do anything about this, but if you want to, like, you should probably do something about this. Was was very much the impression. I've always, in fact, I am not aware of a single other institution or individual other than Trump calling out Epstein for being into underage kids before the big public reveal.

So I double checked this with AI and it appears accurate. Trump is literally the only human being in the world who had his institutions ban Epstein for being a sex PE before he was publicly caught.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And I mean, I can understand why there are conspiracy theories about Epstein and Trump, because Trump had. Promised, I think, to release the, well, it's not

Malcolm Collins: just that he was really close with Epstein and Epstein like called him his best friend at points and stuff like that, but I think Epstein was trying to get Trump and I think Trump wasn't having it.

Simone Collins: Hmm. And Trump hasn't re released the full Epstein files, but my suspicion there is that there is dirt on someone in there that Trump doesn't want to hurt.

Malcolm Collins: Specifically your guest was one of his kids, which I can totally see. Especially, and once Epstein would target

Simone Collins: one of Trump's kids, especially if Epstein was like trying to chase after Trump.

Malcolm Collins: So also you've gotta keep in mind, so we, you know, as people who know a lot of rich people, we know people who have been targeted by Epstein. We know how the whole shtick works. You know, like he'll send young girls to your room when you're like doing something with him. And the problem is, is okay, so suppose you turn.

The girls away, right? Which is the person we know immediately turned the girls away. What can you, what can, what can you do at that point, right? Like, he's still on record as having sent girls to you, right? Like he can still say, oh, I, I sent them to you. So I can understand like if, if, if, if Epstein tried to send girls to like Trump's room or something like that and Trump sent the girls away, or he tried to send it to one of Trump kids' room, like still would you want that coming out, right?

Like,

Simone Collins: yeah. Well, and I think, you know, Donald Trump is fairly comfortable with people coming at him with accusations and it's just happened so much at this point. Like, who cares? I could see him having a very different standard even for baseless accusations when it comes to people that he really cares about.

And it doesn't have to necessarily be family, it could be anyone. So, but I also understand how. Elon Musk could, you know, scrolling Twitter especially if really tired, just be like, oh, you know, this is really cool. Oh, he's really

Malcolm Collins: angry. You know, again, they have to like, and I think

Simone Collins: I, I also wanna go into like how frustrating his position has been.

I mean, one, after he left Doge, like after he went from DC to do other really important work a lot of backers and people who always hated the tech right faction and always hated him personally, started getting in Trump's ear and started turning Trump away from tech rights appointments. For example, Jared Isman, who totally tech right figure was up to head up nasa Trump had, you know, appointed him and he was going through the process of confirmation that he was seen as like clearly gonna get through.

Suddenly he was called, and, you know, Trump, the president has made a change, you know, a strategic change, you know, thank you. But you're no longer the appointee. Like, so people are getting kicked out. And I think that, that there are people who, and obviously Steve Bannon is one of them, like just hate Elon Musk and are whispering in Trump's ear trying to undo really hard work he's doing.

Compounding that is the fact that Elon Musk, I think is very used to going really hard in on a project. Walter Isaacson described it as de bid mode. I think actually quoting Grimes where he just like is really zeroes in on a project and like loses everything else, but also like, gets a ton done.

And. He also, and this shows up across both of his biographies and any history of press coverage of him will pathologically over promise on a project. And he'll eventually deliver. It's just gonna be late, you know, and it takes a while because he takes on the world's most challenging things. And before the, the 2024 election concluded, Elon Musk was out there saying, I'm gonna cut 2 trillion in government spending.

You know, this is gonna be amazing with, you know, doge. And then after the election and Trump had won, he's like, oh, I'm gonna cut 1 trillion in spending. This is gonna be great. And then early 2025 it's, it's 150 billion. You know, it's like going down and down because he is like already, you know, having to contend with so many.

Roadblocks just left and right. I said, it's like,

Malcolm Collins: it's like trying to run a company with your arms and legs tied up, like Yeah. You know, and, and he, yeah. Like he's, yeah,

Simone Collins: normally he's, he's running into his projects, basically wearing an Ironman suit. You know, these are private companies and he runs hard and fast, like he'll set up energy generation plants without the proper approvals.

Like, because that's, that's move fast and break things. That's like how a Silicon Valley mogul works. And that's how someone, you know, a private individual, a a venture philanthropist will change the world. And it's great, but when you enter the government, there are so many controls and there's so much red tape and so much bureaucracy that despite the fact that you can go in with a flame thrower and try to take it out, it is so much more frustrating.

Annoying. Yeah. It's, it's Iron Man suit to having both your arms and legs tied behind your back. So imagine how frustrating that would've been. Now in terms of estimates, it's still expected that Doge is eventually going to save a trillion dollars, which is huge and already. Well, maybe they, so far Doja has reported 160 to 180 billion, but this is.

We're only a tiny bit in, we're not even a year in, we've, we have time unless they sunset when they said they were in the sunset. It's

Malcolm Collins: so incredible what they've been able to do. It's more than I ever thought I would ever see from a government. I am so humbled by the accomplishments of Doge. I think it's one of the biggest political projects we've seen of our lifetime.

Mm-hmm. It, it is, you know, and the people it brought in like the best of the best. Mm-hmm. Like when I say like my, my little brother works at Joe. My little brother's last job was running one of the largest chains of IVF clinics in the United States, which he grew and sold. So he doesn't need to work at Doge.

He's working at Doge because he's a genius and everyone working at Doge ISS a genius. And that's

Simone Collins: how this is with all these, all the people working at Doge, all these appointees, all these people, I mean, like the, the, the guy who was supposed to run nasa, Jared Isman is a billionaire. He. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I

Simone Collins: mean, he, he like is literally losing money by not spending his time on his own projects.

He, he lost six months of his life on this and didn't even get appointed. Very frustrating. But anyway,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. That, that is, I just wanna

Simone Collins: point out how frustrating this must be for Elon Musk. And so I can understand why he hundred million dollars

Malcolm Collins: spent on the campaign. He helped Trump on the campaign trail.

But, but, and, and, and look at where things are now. So now Elon has basically accused Trump of being A-A-A-P-D-A file. Right. Which is not awesome from Trump's perspective. Like Trump has to clap back on this. It's a, he has to, it's not like a small thing. Right. And then, and then Elon says that he, SpaceX is gonna decommission the Dragon spacecraft due to contract cancellation threats.

Like, oh, we're gonna do this preemptively, like one that's really sad if he does. Right. He's really

Simone Collins: sad.

Malcolm Collins: And then, you know, EE Elon is suggesting that JD Vance replaced Trump based on the tariffs, which he's, he's always been against. And I can understand, you know, your tradi, the, the, the, the, a lot of tech, right?

People being against the tariffs, like they don't sit great with me either. The reason why we're okay with them, and we're okay with them is, is America has to prepare for deglobalization. And that China, you know, we need to cut China out of more of our supply chains. And so this is basically a hard economic pill to swallow, to make that happen.

And Trump needs to deliver on his promises to the every man worker, which was a big part of the voter, you know, base for him. And this does actually help them, right? Like, we can pretend it does, but it does, right? Like the cheap goods that were produced in China, you know, now we're rolling up operations.

Like even Simone and I we're recently looking at developing like a band that can. Do simple AI like, text to speech, so you can just talk to it whenever you want. And and then we're gonna like white label this, three different startups. We have so many weird projects that we're working on.

But anyway, this, this, this product, I historically would've gone straight to China to make this product. Right now I'm looking at places I can make it in the us I would not be doing that if not for these tars and if not for, yeah, we,

Simone Collins: we appreciate that we have been incentivized Leslie because we think that's important.

We think every country should be anticipating as, I mean, back to that whole spending thing, right? Governments are about to collapse. Like they cannot afford to government anymore in like 10 years. So we need to anticipate this and every government needs to figure out at least how to build food security and energy independence.

And then. You know, to whatever extent, independence with other things too. There will still be some trade in the future, obviously, but like, we just need to a better safe than sorry. And obviously there, there are ways that the tariffs could have been approached or can still be approached that make it easier for us to ignite the manufacturing industry here in the United States.

Because right now it's like tariffs kind of almost, they're also making it harder for us to just build that infrastructure, which is frustrating. But yeah. You know, yeah, it, it, every, this is frustrating for everyone involved, but I think in the end it's

Malcolm Collins: frustrating 'cause it, it completely aligns with both of their characters.

Yeah. Like, like neither of them isn't being who they are. They are. The writing

Simone Collins: was on the wall for this one. The

Malcolm Collins: writing was always on the wall. It was remarkable. It stayed together as long as it did. Yeah. It, it, it's, it's a situation where you know, I'm not, I'm not coming out of this being like, like this situation happened fortunately, you know, after Elon had left.

The bigger problem with this situation is that it, it allows the, you know, deep state government slime type, old, old, old GOP Inc. People, right? Slime to yeah. On the right. The right has its own deep state. The right has its own, you know, you know, long standing bureaucratic class that hated the tech rights.

Hated them coming in. Oh, what have you done? You haven't worked in government for 20 years. You only built a billion dollar company. You're not

Simone Collins: even that. They just don't like, they don't like our. Politics as well. Yeah. Politics of tech acceleration, pro ai, all this stuff. They're very, and so

Malcolm Collins: then they, they go and they snipe you know, these guys projects and they use the fact that there is a, a feud between Trump and AI to try to make the entire tech right.

Faction look mercurial and our loyalty. Mm-hmm. Which is not the fact, like, it, it, it, you know, we have been completely steadfast in support of the administration from the very beginning. And so has pretty much every other major player I know except for a few who spun out, which are pretty interesting to talk about.

Like we had, richard Hania, who would've been like adjacent to the text right on the show in the early days of the show. And he spun out in an article. Oh, we also had Alex Kta on the show. Did

Simone Collins: we have Alex

Malcolm Collins: Kta? I think so. I

Simone Collins: think we did. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: We may not have aired the episode. I may have forgotten to air it anyway.

No, I sometimes forget to air interviews. Oh, you can't air it now? 'cause now she has a completely different political position. Mm. But most of them turned against Trump. You know, and the New York Times we're free to do so, and heterodox doesn't mean choosing a side, you know. No, no, no. But, but that, the New York Times did a piece on it and everything, and a lot of our audience warned us about these individuals.

Like when we had you know, not about Alex Chuda, Alex Chuah, she's not even American. Whatever. Like, I can understand why say a non-American would be upset about America's tariffs. But in, in regard to Richard Hania you know, when he first came on our show like our discord was all, oh, you can't trust that guy.

You know, what, a slime ball, everything like that. No, this is. Now I went to Simone, and Simone remembers it. I was like. Man, like, I don't know what he did to like piss him off. Like I, I'm afraid that I could piss off like our audience. I don't wanna get like a reputation of being like a grifter who's just going with the wind wherever he thinks he can make more money.

I don't wanna be known as somebody who, you know, people can't trust to have sort of a, like, I, I, I will change my political opinion over time, but I try to always explain in detail in a way that is consistent with my character, why my political opinion updated. Like, not in a way that feels. Gery, and I was like, maybe it's just Capriciousness, or maybe it's just that he's been known longer than I am, that he's developed this reputation.

And then so I was like, I don't know, like, are we gonna step on the rake one day? And then he turns on Maga, he turns on Trump. All of a sudden I was like, oh, that's why they were doing that. They had a better read of him than I

Simone Collins: did. And, and I mean, I don't, I don't see someone turning on Trump and, and maga I mean, like, I mean it's, it's frustrating in so far as like, okay, well what do you practically wanna do then?

Because we have to move forward and I'd rather move forward in a less wrong way than a, an extremely wrong way. And I thought that voting Democrat, or I mean voting independent is throwing away your vote in the United States voting Democrat is, I, I would, I thought would be a much more damaging. So I, I, I get it from that perspective, but I'm also like, you know, do we.

I don't wanna be that kind of person who derates someone just because they choose to not support a political candidate or criticize a political candidate. I

Malcolm Collins: disagree with you to an extent. I think, you know, if you're on a team, you need to have faith that the other people on that team will not like we make different opinion.

You and I make opinions the Trump administration is, is is navigating a political tightrope and everything like that. You can't be, because it's a political tightrope that has multiple factions that have divergent needs within them. Mm-hmm. We have to be really careful, like in, in writing the, the prenatal list book that I'm writing right now one of the things that I point out is, you know.

Catholics and us have a completely different understanding of when, for example, like life begins, right? Like we think they're killing kids 'cause they're preventing IVF. And I'm like, well, you know, if you prevent IVF, that's a human who would've been alive. Like, you are responsible for all of the decisions in the timeline that you choose.

Even the ones that affect people who aren't born yet. Like just because the person isn't born doesn't mean that you haven't harmed them. Like if I go back in time and I sterilize my wife, I have prevented my kids from existing, I'm responsible for that. And then they think that we are because of like the IBS stuff.

So like, how do you get over this? Right? And it's like, well, you gotta say, okay, cultural sovereignty. Because at the end of the day both they and we in terms of the laws, we could actually get passed. Have a huge amount of overlap. They're not gonna be able to ban abortion entirely. We're not gonna be able to create a super soldier program in the United States that the, those physicians are not going to win.

So, but we can boas restrict abortion more. We can boast, you know, remove the gender ideology stuff in schools. That's something we both want. We can both, you know. But the problem is, is if you can't trust these people in this alliance to not attempt to jump for the things that are gonna lose the entire alliance po like, like votes just so their faction can get little wins how, how can we trust them?

How can we trust them to not ban IVF if we are gonna push for something like, you know, pushing for entitlement cuts. If we push for entitlement cuts which we already are cutting drastically, but I mean even more Jurassic entitlement cuts. We're, we could lose future elections. Mm. And that's something that yes, we the tech right, really care about, but we've gotta have compromises.

And if they can't trust that we're not gonna turn on them as they try to compromise to, to, to work with the various factions here. Mm-hmm. It, it's very hard to navigate in a fight that I see as like existential. It's a fight for human civilization. It's a fight for against a, a faction in, within the United States.

It divides humans based on their ethnicity and, and, and gender that divides humans based on their, you know, sexual preferences that, that, that has all of these horrifying beliefs. That's, you know, distributing COVID vaccines based on ethnicity and not based on risk, right? Like that is, this is, this is wild to me.

And, and out of all of these things that places Jews at the bottom again you know, we've seen this before, like the people that we're fighting against, we may have differing ideology, but like we have these differing ideologies. You know, Elon's worry about government spending, I think is completely accurate, right?

Like, this is something we need to be worried about. The, the other factions worried about, you know, entitlements and us being able to win elections if we, if we cut like Medicaid or, or, or social security or something like that. That's, that's a completely honest and, and to me when I look at this bill, it looks like a compromise.

And this is why I got really mad was like the Heritage Foundation thing. Like, not, not mad, but I was disappointed in them, to be honest. I wasn't mad at them. I was just like. Come on guys. Because like their prenatal list person did some piece on how you're, like, you're not a real prenatal list if you're doing like IVF and, and if you want humans to improve over generations and if you, you know, want like genetic technology.

And I'm like, come on, this has been core to Americana and Americanism from our inception. This is even when you look at our anti-Nazi stuff, who was the anti-Nazi, but Captain America, a human who was genetically augmented by scientists to improve what humanity is and what a a, an American can be and that you don't want to engage with this stuff is totally fine for me, right?

Like we can work together because then the stuff we can actually get past, we have the same goals. But it's, it's, it's, it's disappointing to see this play out. But it, well,

Simone Collins: especially like to the, the leftist media's glee or even mainstream media's glee, like, literally, because I can't turn it off 'cause I have a Mac, apple News keeps showing me headlines.

And recent economist headlines was this sort of gleeful. Trump has many ways to hurt Elon Musk if he wants to. Like, in case you're getting mad, just, just look at this list. It's just so annoying. Like, everyone's just jumping on this like, yes. Finally they have no more power. And I, no, like Doja is still here.

Doja is still happening. The, the advance is still VP. That

Malcolm Collins: backs down from all of this is gonna look like the bigger man in a big way. Mm-hmm. That, that's what I will say the first of them that is just like, you know what, whatever. I know you can't say I was wrong. I know neither of you can say that.

I would note here that both parties significantly deescalated over the weekend with Elon deleting tweets. Elon wishing Trump well on X, , Trump in turn saying that he was not preoccupied with the feud.

Malcolm Collins: But just, just replying with great, this is no longer a fight for dominance. This is a fight that makes our entire faction look bad. Again, it's not a fight that anyone didn't expect. I, I was shocked when Doge was actually set up. I was shocked every week it continued to operate with the progressive media trying to drive.

Oh yeah. I was so

Simone Collins: sure it wasn't actually gonna happen. Like, it sounded so cool. I wouldn't crazy if that actually happened.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that was one of my like, what? Come on. They never actually make that happen, right? Mm-hmm. Obviously I want American Academy more than Doge and I want the the, the other unpromised voter promise that I'm really upset hasn't been done yet is the one that makes it illegal for tech companies to censor except based on CP and terrorism.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and do have to tell people when they're censoring stuff. That was a campaign promise that was really important to me that I haven't seen action taken on yet. But other than those two, doge was like my top thing and I thought it was like a fantasy thing, right? Like, and. We got it.

It's alive and

Simone Collins: well, guys.

Malcolm Collins: It's, it's the time and money that Elon sacrificed to make Doge happen, I think was Civilizationally saving potentially. But you know, I'm just, was was this particular battle, I've gotta call it like I see it, right? You know. And I, I think reaffirm where we stand, which is you know, with jd, right?

Like if, if JD turns on Trump, that's when, when you can be like, okay, our loyalty becomes a less issue. It's it's

Simone Collins: bad now. It's gone bad.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I'd be like, JD knows a lot of what's going on. He's very cunning. I really trust his judgment. If he is turning on Trump, I would say especially I'd say that like, okay, I actually need to think about this now.

Right? Like, does this alliance continue to make sense? And, and which team am I on?

Yeah.

But the Trump and Elon falling out, everyone knew that would happen and you were an idiot if you didn't think this was gonna happen. Eventually. We've always been like, I can't believe that the two, like most powerful people in the world are somehow able to work together.

That, that seems, especially two people with such fiery personas.

Now, you said one of the things when we were talking about this is you're like, yeah, well, all of these old bureaucrats from the old right. Needs to learn the new right. Is eventually gonna replace them. What are your thoughts on that?

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, the, the, the new the new right represents any basically a, a high fertility technophilic culture that

Malcolm Collins: is, well, it's a high fertility technophilic culture that is incredibly focused on cultural sovereignty.

That is the core value system of the new, right?

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: You es us or our kids. Okay. Yes.

Simone Collins: And. That those are the only cultures in our view that are going to have power in the future because what else do you have? Okay, so what what we have is low fertility technophilic cultures, which is basically the urban monoculture that's not going to inherit the future in any meaningful way.

And then you have high fertility technophobic cultures, which while maybe very large in number, are not going to get to call the shots because in the end, the drone swarm is going to, the guy with the drone swarm is going to to call the shots. The, the, the, the families who have genetically engineered kids who don't get diseases and are more impervious to germ warfare and who are incredibly, you know, smart and athletic and pro social and everyone loves them, are, are gonna win and dominate social media and all these other things and sell the products that everyone else buys.

Yeah. So. It's really important that the old guard of the right, that in, in some cases here we are seeing, trying to poison the tech right in President Trump's ear. Get with the fact, the reality that if we're looking at the long game, they really wanna be friends with these guys. And I think the reason why there's this remaining active animosity is the particular people who are very anti tech right, are only thinking for themselves and this current generation and this, this current time and their power and influence today, period.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: They, for them this is, it's like it is for the Democrats, it's a complete power game and it's a complete like, oh, let's get was the king, let's get it there. They're not thinking about the long term of the empire. And, and the, the tech right is always thinking about the long term. That's the thing that really differentiates the two.

One of the things that differentiates the two factions. Mm-hmm. And, and particularly the loudest voices here. Yes. I see entirely self-interested. Which is really, really sad. To see that they've been able to gain as much power as they have to be able to cause these sorts of divisions that do nothing but hurt.

The Republican party's electability.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It's depressing. But yeah. We'll see how this plays out. I mean, everyone loves a little drama. So

Malcolm Collins: Well Elon does start a new party. Are you gonna, are you gonna, what would you, what would you do in regards to that? I mean, with all his money and influence behind it?

Simone Collins: Oh. If there's like a new party, kind of like Elon Musk was suggesting that we need a new party.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah. I mean, he does have one of the largest social media platforms. A lot of money.

Simone Collins: Listen, we've had a lot of people talk about new parties.

Malcolm Collins: It doesn't work. Yeah, it would just divide the right, like the right, it just

Simone Collins: doesn't work.

Every time, like I, I am sure academics and economists and political scientists have detailed models. I'm pretty sure I've listened to at least like five NPR segments on why it is literally technically impossible to create a viable third party per the United States current political system. So,

Malcolm Collins: well, I also think this is not a conversation worth having.

Well, was this around a new party? Like what did he and Trump blow up over? It was like entitlement and you. Yes, every reasonable person in America knows that we can't keep working with the existing entitlement system. But every reasonable person also knows no one can win a majority of votes fighting the existing entitlement system.

So, you know, or

Simone Collins: agreeing to pay more in taxes.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like while asking people to pay more in taxes, you're gonna pay more and get less. Like, okay, you can, you can show them on a sheet, like this is the only thing that works, but you're not gonna, you're not gonna win an election. Yeah. I mean, I

Simone Collins: think if you sat someone down and had the reasonable conversation and you told them like, well basically the US government is gonna start just printing money like crazy to keep being able to pay for these programs, meaning that money's gonna lose a lot of, it's, its value and we'll see hyperinflation and everyone's gonna have to adjust to live a very, compared to our terms now, austere lifestyle.

You could also tighten your belt right now and live a halfway there o auste lifestyle so that your kids maybe have it a little bit easier. And I think most people are gonna be like, you know what, I think I'm gonna take my chances with the whole printing money hyperinflation thing.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, that, that is literally what a lot of people are gonna do.

And, and, and, and, and the thing is, is, ah. People just don't think about tomorrow, you know? Mm-hmm. And, and, and what we need to do on the tech right is figure out how to utilize the mindless drone vote to make marginal improvements before the system collapses. We can't do what's logical and rational because we're not dealing with a logical and rational voter base.

Our founders tried to prevent this situation. They tried to create a system where we elected electorates who were smart and rational, and who could think through everything and who would vote on our behalf. That system

Simone Collins: decidedly, and this was something, this is one reason why I have loved the tech, right sabbaticals essentially, that have been taking place in government where these.

Incredible investors, entrepreneurs, you know, billionaires in some cases, you know, people who are very, very successful from the business world are taking stints to do service in the US government is that, that really to me, reflects what the founding F fathers wanted. You know, these are people who had their own lives, their own careers, their own families who did not become an or want to be career politicians who stepped up to serve in the US government and then stepped back down.

And that's George Washington was really trying to set that tone. He was like, I'm not gonna be your king. I'm gonna go off and live in Mount Vernon with my fricking Christmas camel and my farm, and it's gonna be great. And that is what I, I just loved seeing that in this administration of like, maybe we can come back to the system of governance where we have this rotation of brilliant people.

Voluntarily serving in the US government because a place has been made for them and making it better. But I dunno if that's gonna keep happening now, especially since I, you know, I think the great thing about the people who are right now trying to poison the tech, right, and President Trump's ear, is that they are so venomous as people in general, that they're, they're not gonna last very long politically.

Oh no,

Malcolm Collins: they're, they're, they're, they're vile, venomous, snake, deep state slime who will bite you the moment you turn your back. And I, and I think Trump relying on them in his first you know, period in office is why almost nothing got done. Absolutely. And I think that people who show this tendency to betray people who are trying to work alongside them to achieve great ends we as, as, as sort of like a wider faction, we need to have a forgiveness rule.

But if it's a repeated pattern, you know, we need to be like, this is not somebody we can trust anymore. I don't care, you know, how many years you've been working in government, if you turned around and betrayed the collective movement for your individual aims and your factions individual goals in a way that doesn't help when votes or isn't was in the ideological overlap.

You're not, you're out period. Mm-hmm. And I think what people aren't seeing yet is JD Vance hasn't been making calls yet 'cause he's not running the party yet, but he will be eventually. And I think he is significantly more shrewd on that front and will be more aggressive on that front than Trump has been.

And a lot of these people don't understand that they're playing this system with, you know, Trump's like really sharp for, for what he is, right? But also, you know, he's like, what,

Simone Collins: 78 years old,

Malcolm Collins: 78 years old, you know, and he's, he's got multiple factions whispering in his ear that are new to him. He didn't grow up with, he doesn't exactly know, you know, he's new to the Republican party at all, right? Like, this guy is a New York Democrat, you know, coming into this. And, and JD Vance is seeing every venomous self-dealing snake try to manipulate this 80-year-old man.

And while he may not be making moves now, I expect him to be making moves eventually. And I don't think the Democrats have anyone in the lineup who can compete with somebody like JD anyway. I love you to death, Simone. Are we going to try sushi tonight?

Simone Collins: No, because we have to thaw out the meat and grains.

Oh. How long

Malcolm Collins: does it take to thaw the tuna?

Simone Collins: If I take it out now, maybe by Sunday we can try it.

Malcolm Collins: Would you be okay with trying California rolls tonight? We have all the ingredients for that.

Simone Collins: We'd need to get more of the basic ingredient. What's in a California roll?

Malcolm Collins: A California roll is a cucumber and avocado and imitation crab.

Simone Collins: The imitation crab is also frozen.

Malcolm Collins: Oh.

Simone Collins: So why don't we, why don't we do Sunday? And today would you prefer to have Let's do panang. Okay, perfect. I think that's a good choice.

Malcolm Collins: Whatever the other batch you're drawing from it sometimes has like weirdly cooked hard chicken in it.

Simone Collins: I'm sorry, I don't know what caused it.

Maybe just great chicken. Try to cut out all the bits. I think aren't gonna be perfect 'cause chicken is still meat.

Malcolm Collins: Well, we're gonna move more tofu to see if I can get more consistently, because I don't hate tofu.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah, don't say that though. You'll freak out your audience. Oh

Malcolm Collins: no. Soy boy. Malcolm's trying more tofu.

Really bad. He doesn't like the, the, the inconsistent texture. No, sorry.

Simone Collins: Malcolm is going to be butchering calves on our property going forward. So that's, that's the plan.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, not cals the poor. I'm going to be butchering the poor. I would

Simone Collins: not eat the, the, do you know what? Do what? Yeah. What are they eating?

Malcolm? You know, I

Malcolm Collins: only fuel my car with biodiesel made out of elderly people. That is my

Simone Collins: fuel source. And what are they? I mean, like, I, I think there's something very appealing about a cow that has been munching on this, this verdant grass under a field, you know? And I just, when I picture what most people are eating,

Malcolm Collins: oh, you don't trust the health.

You're, you're mom. That's what I'm saying. Me eating the poor because you're like,

Simone Collins: they're just, just full of red dye number 40. And the funny thing is, is

Malcolm Collins: you're probably correct. I, I don't imagine it would be very healthy to eat a homeless person.

Simone Collins: I, I absolutely. It wouldn't. No you, you wouldn't, I mean, like for the same reason.

This is really bad. Yeah. Just you wouldn't

Malcolm Collins: eat roadkill.

Simone Collins: That was what I was gonna say. And I don't know why you knew that.

Malcolm Collins: No, I've thought about it when I drive by, I'm like, that looks like a fresh kill. But then I'm like, ah, but it's a local deer and you know, they've got all sorts of diseases.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like if it was running into the road, like, I don't know.

And like, I don't know what it's, what it's been going through recently, like did it die because it's sick?

Malcolm Collins: No, but here's the thing. This is how, you know, you're from, we talk about being from like the greater Appalachian subgroup and having very different impulses than I think your average American.

And that our impulse, despite the fact that neither of us have ever brought roadkill back in eating it, is when we see roadkill, we're like, huh, I wonder if it's fresh enough. That, that is literally just like a, I mean, our defense,

Simone Collins: as long as it doesn't look mangled, I mean, obviously like if the meat's all.

Smushed and there's like a glass in it that is

Malcolm Collins: No, but it is, it is. Simone. I don't know if our audience, our audience can be like, no, all humans have this impulse or no, this is you. Crazy savage, backwards people. You are the only ones who, when you see roadkill are evaluating it as a source of meat.

Simone Collins: Well people really carefully about like, is this a grass fed cow or not?

You know, is this a free range chicken or not? Like, I think really carefully even just like eating their eggs. Like what am I feeding our chickens? What do they eat? This, this

Malcolm Collins: reminds me of the RFK story that made me like him so much about the bear, the bear

story.

The, the bear had accidentally been hit and killed on the road.

And so he put it in his trunk, took it to, to Central Park and put it in the bike lanes that had just been laid down and everybody, this was only because

Simone Collins: he realized that he couldn't get it in home in time to freeze it and, and eat its meat before he had to fly somewhere, but

Malcolm Collins: he was planning to freeze it and eat its meat

Simone Collins: first.

Yeah. And then he was like, well, crap, now I have a bear and I have to dump it. And there had been a lot of bike accidents in Central Park recently. So he is like, you know what, I'm just gonna find a bike and make it look like this is the kind of accident. It'll be really funny. It didn't come out until what, like 30 years later.

So it kind of worked. The, the a a leading politician had staged

Malcolm Collins: the bear being hit by a bike.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I guess that's, I mean, that's the only place where I guess it kind of goes wrong. 'cause you know, he's making bicyclists look bad and also dumping a dead body. Of a bear, but

Malcolm Collins: I have literally no problem with making bicycles look bad.

Simone Collins: I have respect for, you know, seeing a sad, it, it's really sad that a baby bear got hit by a car. Yeah. But like, trying to make the most of it, you know, like bear meat is interesting. I know a lot of people go through a lot of work to to get bear meat. The, I used to get detained all the time at airports because I was flagged as like a bad person, I guess, when I was a teen.

And so I was always detained in like those waiting rooms where they search absolutely everything in your bag. Why were you

Malcolm Collins: flagged as a bad person? What'd you do?

Simone Collins: I, they have these like anime themed lighters when I was in Tokyo on one trip with my dad, and I've just bought a ton of them. And just taped them all together in my suitcase, which was probably not a good

Malcolm Collins: idea.

Simone Collins: So after that I was always detained and this one time I was detained for like two hours next to these bear hunters with like just a ton of guns and this giant freezer bag. And I'm like, that is dedication. You know, like to, to go through detention. On, I think they were flying to either Alaska or Canada and like, wait that long and carry all of that gear.

It just looked like such a hassle. I, I, I gained a lot of respect for people who want to kill and eat bears in that, in that one day as I did penance for doing absolutely nothing wrong. Anime, lighters are not a crime, but there you go.

Malcolm Collins: Alright, well I love you to ask Simone. Did you grow up hearing about people eating roadkill or is this just a me thing?

Simone Collins: I don't think any of my family friends ate road kill and we lived in a very like dense suburban area, so there wasn't that much roadkill, like any roadkill was someone's pet, so you wouldn't really think about eating it. You feel really bad.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway. Love you to

Simone Collins: death, Simone. I love you too.

Oh.

Malcolm Collins: Good. So you like that last episode we just did,

Simone Collins: like is not the word learned from

Malcolm Collins: Yes. We just did the episode on Joe Money. Google that one. If you guys want to be scarred for a day, I am very scar scarred. We, we this one's gonna come out before the other one 'cause we're gonna rush to get this one out.

But so you guys can look forward to how a complete monster started the, the concept of gender ideology and sexual orientation. And, and I'm not, I'm not like nobody would disagree that this person was a complete monster, right, Simone? After, after doing Yeah. When, yeah, when

Simone Collins: you first said complete monster.

I'm like, ah, exaggeration. I'm sure no monster doesn't do justice to the term super not okay. All levels of ruffled, but I. We'll just move on to this. There are other people. It's an

Malcolm Collins: equally bummy topic. It's what, it's a video we have to do, you know, so.

Speaker: Neck sooner.

Speaker 2: It's okay. Next one. Maybe

Speaker: I'll get it. Get, okay. I'll get it and then I'll play.

Speaker 3: Alright.

Speaker 4: The are. Dirt. The invisible bugs are still in there, right?

Speaker 2: Pretty sure. Yeah. The bugs live on the leaves.

What do you think? Torsten?

Speaker: Mommy,

Speaker 2: did you see birds back there?

In this episode, the hosts delve into the rich and complex history of the greater Appalachian cultural tradition in the United States. The discussion uncovers the stereotypes and realities of this cultural group, exploring Jack stories and horror tales rooted in Appalachian folklore that reveal values of cunning, anti-elitism, and underdog triumph. The episode also connects these stories to modern political movements and cultural phenomena, such as the MAGA movement and the character of Bugs Bunny. With insights into the tradition's violent past, gender dynamics, and unique traditions like 'Charivari,' the hosts provide a comprehensive look at how Appalachian culture continues to influence American society.

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. Today's conversation is one I have been excitedly digging into. Yes, you have. The history of the greater Appalachian cultural tradition or the backwoods cultural tradition in the United States. This is the tradition that you and I hail from. Predominantly, like obviously everyone's a mix of a number of traditions.

They're also heavily from the Puritan tradition, and you're partially Jewish as well. But the, the main one is the greater Appalachian tradition. And the reason why it's important to understand this tradition. Is because this is the tradition that makes up the core of the MAGA movement in Trump's voter base.

And American sentiment shifting from the cavalier cultural tradition of the deep South to the greater Appalachian cultural tradition, shifting from an aristocratic to an anti aristocratic, anti elitist tradition represents a big change in American conservative politics. So there's a reason to understand it, but I'm gonna be exploring it with the lens.

Of its stereotype in eighties horror of like inbred, backwoods murderers who are gonna like hunt down people and, and murder them.

Speaker: She's just human. Why don't you go over there and talk to her? . Whatever you say, just smile and laugh. That shows confidence.

Speaker 2: You guys, uh, going camping.

Hey, hey,

Speaker: now

Malcolm Collins: because as you will see when we go into more about this tradition from their, from their own stories. Yeah, that may not have just been a negative stereotype. Oh

Simone Collins: oh boy.

Malcolm Collins: This reminds me where this first came up for me is I was having a laugh at the Mormons, because, you know, in Utah they had the highest rates of searches for polyamory on Google Trends.

And then after having a laugh at them, I was like, well, I should at least check my own cultural group's, negative stereotypes. You know, then that, that's certainly not gonna be a closet full of skeletons. And it's like. VOR and s and m and,

Sorry, I can't forget incest as well,

Malcolm Collins: and then, and all of the other like horrible. Yeah. Like

Simone Collins: it makes Paul, I mean, polyamory, if anything is just about social complication, hierarchy, bureaucracy, contracts.

Then they have like your culture. Our culture, which is just sa savagery. Animals savagery.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. So. First I wanna go into Jack Stories as an a sort of cultural explanation. So this culture passes its traditions down through oral stories with the most common type of these stories being the Jack stories.

Although after this we're going to explore their horror stories as a way to understand them as well. You might be familiar with one Jack story, which is Jack in the Beanstalk. Yeah. But it comes from like a wider tradition of stories. In Jack stories there is generally a, a chain of events. A, a, a poor and lazy but otherwise quick witted boy stumbles upon either a giant or somebody with institutional power like a rich man or somebody who represents like government, like a sheriff.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: He then tricks. Otherwise torments that person and has great glee at doing this. He then tricks and murders that person. He then takes all their stuff. You know, you're, you're very aspirational. Malcolm right is a rich person. I mean, this is fundamentally what happens in Jack and the giant Beans stock.

It is, yeah. And you're not considering the IT person. It always kind sat

Simone Collins: weirdly with me. It's, it's one of those stories though. I think there's a lot of stories that you get told as a kid where you don't really get the impression that there's a good guy or a bad guy. And I think this concept of good guys and bad guys needing to be pervasive in stories is.

You know, unnecessary. Well then you,

Malcolm Collins: you're clearly misunderstanding the cultural context of, oh, because

Simone Collins: he's the good guy. He's the clear, good guy here.

Malcolm Collins: He's unmitigated the hero of this world. Goodness gracious. He's not just the hero. These stories are told to teach children values, to teach children how they are supposed to interact with a world.

No. You even commented on how the values of these stories you have heard me say. To our kids in passing. Absolutely.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, one of Malcolm's constant rules was, it's okay to punch anyone larger than you. You can never punch anyone who's weaker or smaller than you.

Malcolm Collins: And I, I told this to our kids, you know, like she knows this because like the kids are always allowed to punch their older siblings and me but they are not allowed to aggressively punch younger siblings. And this is just part of this cultural tradition, right? Jack is always up against a giant or a very wealthy person or a sheriff.

He represents small, diminutive, underdog ness. If I'm gonna go over some, so, so like I mentioned Jack in the giant beans stock, if you're not familiar with that story, he goes out he goes to a market and buys beans. What are magic beans with, with the cow that he's supposed to sell? Instead of doing something diligent with it.

So he's very intentionally, like not a diligent person.

Simone Collins: I think he's supposed to just sell the cow for money so the family could buy food. And what does he do? He buys magic beans.

Malcolm Collins: And the, and the mom gets mad and throws the beans in the yard and they drove a giant bean stock. And then Jack climbs up the bean stock and he finds a giant generally in the original story is a giant has done nothing wrong.

Jack minding his own business just living up in the sky. Jack then murders the giant by tricking him, and he takes the giants you know, hand that can lay golden eggs and

a few other items. And they live like wealthy people for the rest of their life.

You know, the, the, the value here is goof off. Trick people more powerful than you, outsiders. Take your money. Don't

Simone Collins: follow instructions. Disregard your mother's orders.

Malcolm Collins: If you go to Jack and the Giant's new Ground Jack from a poor man family seeks out to seek his fortune. He stumbled upon a Giant's new ground, cleared land, and is captured.

So essentially he finds a giant spar plan and is captured the, the giant plans to eat him, but Jack tricks him pretending to be stronger, squeezing water from a rock, actually a wet sponge in press, the giant spares Jack and gives him tasks. Jack outsmarts the giant in each, eventually stealing his treasure and killing him by luring him into a trap.

EGA pit or collapsing break jack, home rich , but the point I'm making, if, if you study these jack tales from the perspective of the villains in this Appalachian horror arc Jack is behaving in a way that aligns with these villains, right?

He is, I, I remember, I, I talked. To an AI about this. And it was like, well, you know, in, in Jack's not doing it maliciously. And I'm like, he may not, he's doing it maliciously, but from the Giant's

Simone Collins: perspective, it's pretty effing malicious. Pretty sure that trespassing and theft and murder are

Malcolm Collins: in the Yeah, in the one where he gets back at his stepmom, you know, he gives her things that like make her fart uncontrollably and he laughs at her.

So it's often like tormenting people and laughing at them, which is what you see in these scary horror arcs is the people from the woods are like, oh, there's these out of towners. That would, from their perspective, have institutional power over them.

Okay. Therefore, justifying often. If you, if you watch an arc like deliverance or something, like, they believed that they were slighted, that the out of towners thought they were better than them. And so then they use this as an excuse to say, well, now we can kill them and take their stuff. I mean, that's what always happens in the stories.

Right. You know, and, and torment them while doing it. Right. And this form of, of of, of sort of tormenting, like to get an idea of how violent this culture was historically, we've talked before a common practice in it was to file your nails down for a style of combat called rough and Tumble, where the goal was to maximally disfigure your opponent, ideally gouging out their eyeballs.

And this is like well documented that this was something that happened frequently to accounts of. Bar floors covered in eyeballs after one particularly big fight. You know, very, very violent. If you look at our president that came from this, you know, you're looking at like Andrew Jackson who famously would just threaten anyone to duals like over, over fairly trivial things.

Did he do

Simone Collins: that as president ever?

Malcolm Collins: I think he did that to the, I think the Dickinson guy, he did that to while president, but Charles Dickinson not to be Dickens with

Simone Collins: Charles Dickens,

Malcolm Collins: by the way. In his defense. In his defense, the other guy had called his wife a bigamist, which she technically was, but she didn't know.

Oh. Her other husband had not gotten their marriage properly and old before her marriage to Jackson. And so he chest hardened him to a jewel and shot him but the point being is this was a, a very violent cultural group to begin with and I think that Jack Tales are particularly interesting to study because they always start.

You know, with the, the hero being this kid in poverty who is otherwise lazy and wins through trickery and murder, and you don't see this, you see this in some other cultural traditions, but you're not gonna have like a chain of Jewish stories about like, how to be a good Jew. And the stories involve the Jew tricking and murdering somebody, right?

Like you don't, you don't see like a chain of. No, I, I just have, I haven't heard of like a train of like Italian stories with similar themes or something like that. This is pretty unique to this cultural region. And the stories have to be pretty heavily sanitized to be retold in, in the modern context.

If you were hearing this and you were wondering how is the jack archetype different from a trickster god from other religions? Because this is a common arc within cultures. It's the concept of a trickster deity or God or something like that. , He's different in many, many ways from any other trickster entity that exists.

, The most glaring is that he is always unmitigated the hero of the story and also. Cruel. , If, if you look at, , other trickster entities like a Loki or something like that, or a coyote, , they are morally ambiguous characters. They are not very, obviously the hero and the, the core hero of every narrative that they're in.

, It later we're going to point out that Bugs Bunny was likely inspired by the Jack archetype given where Tex Avery grew up. , And this gives you an example like Bugs Bunny is. Cruel and capricious, but also always unmitigated the hero. , The other thing that is when you contrast it with other archetypes, even Loki, who is a bad guy, was in his own framing, is rarely as mean, mean-spirited as the jack archetype.

, Where you have like Bugs Bunny is, is another good example of this. Loki is almost never. As actually malicious as Bugs Bunny is, , within his own stories. , The other thing about , the Jack archetype is he has no supernatural powers, which is uncommon for the trickster archetype. , He always is just purely operating off of what the sub genius would call slack.

For people of different cultural backgrounds. I actually think Bugs Bunny is a very easy way to understand Jack stories if you're like, how could a character boast be unmitigated the hero of a story, but also incredibly cruel, predominantly being cruel to others because he thinks it's hilarious. , Bugs Bunny will explain that to you.

Bugs Bunny is just , a one for one Jack archetype.

Malcolm Collins: But it gets more interesting than that because you also find a really interesting nature to the horror stories that come from this region. Or do you have any thoughts before I go further?

Simone Collins: I just feel so ambivalent about it because it's not exactly pro-social behavior. It wouldn't really, I, it's, I don't like will this in incredibly vitalistic societies to flourish when, you know, there's just this like free, it's free range on.

Or, sorry, what is it? Open, sorry. When it's open season on people who are seen as being more successful or resourced than you. Is that?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, these regions never did become very wealthy historically speaking. I mean, they, they, there, there was a reason for that you know a, a, a cultural reason, but they've been incredibly resistant to the urban monoculture, which is one reason why it's so important to study them.

And was in modern times, I mean, yes, they have a much higher murder rate than surrounding regions when you control for the presence of cities. But you know, things are basically, I. You know, copacetic enough that, that you don't see this kind of, you know, regular murdering happen anymore. The, the more aggressive practices, they don't rip out eyeballs anymore.

I've never done that personally. I was going over like wedding practices and one of the wedding practices that they had is, the women would take a cat and put it in the middle of like a quilt and they'd all yank on the corner of the kilt to launch the cat up in the air. And then whoever the cat ran by when trying to escape is who was gonna get married next.

Simone Collins: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: At least they didn't have to try to catch the cat. Yeah. Oh and so badly. They don't do that anymore, but they do still. I mentioned in the episode on dating culture within this region VA value mates based on, marshall prowess and ability to protect property. You know, if you go back to like David Bowie there was sorry, what, what am I thinking of?

He was this the congressman, right? I, we get Daniel Boone and he was talking about his wife, you know, and, and about, you know somebody was commenting on like how good she was and they're like, oh, she could protect the whole property. Was was a, with a rifle, you know.

She's shot. And, and that this has been a historic thing. It's not just in modern times, like girls with guns is like a thing for this culture or girls fighting is a thing for this culture. You know, you have the modern mud wrestling of this culture. But people even going back to ALB and Seed said that they women were uniquely valued for how rough and tumble they were and, and, and their, their level of.

Fortitude. So this is a, a big historic part of this culture as well as gender egalitarian relationships. Which is funny. A reporter was like, well, your relationship's uniquely gender egalitarian. Like, is that like not traditional? And I go, well, it's traditional for people where I'm from. You know, because if you are not, if you treat your wife too poorly, she'll just murder you.

You know, that's not something you do. But I wanted to hear, go into horror stories from this region. 'cause I think they also show.

Simone Collins: So wait, the hero stories sound like horror stories. What is the difference? Well, the difference is Jack's the good guy. Oh, okay. So it's a horror story If our protagonist loses

Malcolm Collins: No, it's, it is a horror.

You'll get the why. The horror stories are horror stories. Okay. Alright. We'll go into horror stories and you'll be like, oh, those are horror stories. You know, okay. So to go to the horror stories, we, we will start with the witch of booger hole. in Clay County, West Virginia. A young bride IRA moves to Booger Hole, a dense forest locals warn of Grandma Thorn, a witch blamed for missing animals.

IRA's skeptic. Husband dismisses it, but animals vanish and Ira hear scratching in the night. Her dog is found dead. Throat torn, . Confronting the witch IRA sees a crackling figure, vanish, some say IRA's husband dies and she f flees. Other is is just a, she's murdered,

the, the next is the Bell Witch. In Robert, I just have to note

Simone Collins: that like, what was it, booger Creek, that this was something that they pointed out in LB and seed about. Backwards naming conventions of areas that they would be named. Things like

Malcolm Collins: that were gross and

Simone Collins: like low culture. Yeah, like the s**t valley and like, you know, under the like all sorts of very lewd names for things well, can't say.

Well, people see

Malcolm Collins: this talked about how they see vulgarity as authenticating. Honesty. And, and sort of like that you're not attempting to fit in with the elite, which is why they don't care about like the grab him and the pussy thing or like the other vulgar things that Trump does because that's very much in their culture.

How you signal you know, I am was in the in group like, like, Hey, let's hang out. I'm not. I don't think I'm better than you. That is like the number one most important thing to this culture, and it's why Trump has done really well with him. And it's why old Republicans didn't do as well with him because they, they acted like they thought they were better than them and were like trying to enforce cultural norms on them.

And this group is very much, don't. Tell me what to do or how to live my life, you know? Mm-hmm. Above all else. They, they do have cultural pride and they do have a degree of cultural norm, but that norm is not pushed through shame or like, this is vulgar, don't do it, et cetera. So in Roberts account in Tennessee, the Bell family is fermented by a witch, possibly cat balls wrong by John.

Ball, starting with noises and animal disguises, it escalates into slapping, pinching and poisoning. John who dies it taunts his daughter Betsy, forcing her to break her engagement. The witch's Cave remains haunted. The witch of Polly Genty on Hawk's Nest Mountain, West Virginia.

Polly Genty is a rumored witch, lives with a demonic black cat. Blamed for crop failures, missing children. She's confronted by men who find her cabin empty. The cat's screeching fleeing. They hear her laughter and see her shadow. And then there's tpo, which is actually one I remember from my own childhood.

And I've read to our kids 'cause I got the book 'cause I remembered it and I wanted to get it back. And I remember reading the book, I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. So the guy just dies in the end. So a hunter shoots the tail off a strange creature and eats it at night. It scratches his cabin chanting.

Tpo. Tpo. I want my telepo. It returns to nightly first. It eats his dogs, by the way. Nightly, finally breaking in to rip him apart. Then you have raw head and bloody bones. This is in Tennessee and North Carolina. Raw head is a skinless bloody creature with a skull like head hiding in dark places.

A hunter in forbidden hollows hears raw head and bloody bones is coming and is chased his dog torn apart. This is linked to it, which is Kurt. You have. Well, this is a Cherokee one, so we won't go that one. The, the point being with all of these traditions is that you might notice something really interesting about them for local horror stories,

Simone Collins: okay.

Malcolm Collins: Which is, in none of them is the witch ever killed or faces any repercussions for her actions, right?

Simone Collins: The the malevolent thing remains at large. The

Malcolm Collins: malevolent thing wins in, in many ways, the victim of the story is made out to be the bad guy because they did something they were warned against. Like, don't f with that old woman.

Don't, you know show her a lack of respect, don't whatever. But they do. And then they are mercilessly. Like their, their kids are tortured. They're tortured. Their, their animals are killed. Like it is, it is bad. Okay. The second, which makes it really different, if you do a a cross-cultural analysis of these with other cultures is the villain feels much more lovecraftian in the way that they're just.

Is no escape from the, the quote unquote witch or tally poe or anything like that. Like the moment you are there, it is over and there is no limitations on their powers. They are in many ways. All powerful and totally evil. So if you contrast this with other traditions in European stories the witch one often dies at the end consider like Hanzel and ole or something like that, or is at least trackable, like baba Yaga is powerful, but Baba Yaga is.

Trackable as well. She is operating on rules. If you go to like East Asian witches and and stuff, they may win, but they have some restrictions like they have to hop or they're only interested in like one particular thing. Like they don't have a broad interest in just tormenting you, your animals and your children to death.

They're, they're more like specifically interested in some domain or with some sort of violation. You look at African culture and there's usually like. A hex or something you could do to get out of it. An example of, of like a counter to this is the death, Oman and token traditions. So in West Virginia and tr Kentucky, oman's like three knots.

White owls or banse like walls predict deaths. A Harlan County woman hears a whale and sees a shadow. Her husband dies in a mine collapse. Oh no. Rich ones failed to stop the omens. So there's, there's like within these traditions, the moment. You've seen the bad thing or you've done the bad thing, your fate is completely sealed, and blame is often shifted to the individual who's dying.

Much like, well, you just should have known not to mess with this person. Mm-hmm. Which is really fascinating to me. When I contrast this with other traditions I think one thing you also see with Jack Tails and these traditions is you can see how many tropes that arose in American media.

We're influenced by these traditions more than like European traditions and stuff like that. Oh, you think so? Yeah. So if you think about the classic Looney Tunes, like cartoon character your Bugs Bunny and stuff like that, bugs Bunny is clearly modeled after Jack, for example.

Simone Collins: You're right. Yeah, no, he, yeah, he's very irreverent, very.

He, he, he is got a lot of slack. If we were to use and mind the terms of the sub genius to describe him,

Malcolm Collins: these were written by Tex Avery. Where did Tex Avery grow up? But Dallas, Texas, which is part of, if you look at map to the regions where I grew up as well, part of the Greater Appalachian cultural region, even though it was not in the Appalachians, it was this culture that was, that was a don culture there.

So he would've grown up on these stories and then adopted a character like. You know Jack into a character like Bugs Bunny, who is lazy, but, but cunning and constantly tormenting people who he would see as coming after him, like hunters and stuff like that, right? Like people who enter his territory

If you grew up with the character of Bugs Bunny, I think the character of Jack and the parts of him where I'm like. Well, yes, the people who he murders often did something to warrant it, but he wouldn't care if they did something to warrant it. , You would understand this attitude if you grew up watching Bugs Bunny, bugs Bunny often torments people who are hunting him or something, but that isn't why he's tormenting them.

It's just because they're in his territory or around him. He would think nothing about tormenting somebody who had done nothing to him.

Malcolm Collins: often doing things to them.

That would kill them in any other circumstance. And also note the, the sort of environment of Bugs Bunny, how it, it mirrors the environment that these people would've had, you know, hunters, woods, rabbits, ducks, everything like that. Oh, the

Simone Collins: scenarios, I don't know. I mean, there are also opera houses, but I, I generally see you here and I mean, my theory is that this has to be a result of.

Clan based culture and trying to teach people that like, no, actually, if you go to those people who we say are gonna hurt you, you will die. You will, there's no document. It'll be your

Malcolm Collins: fault. Right. And, and this is also important with clan based culture, when you have things like blood feuds that can start, you know, you, you need somebody, and it's like, well, you shouldn't have talked with them.

We told you they'd kill you.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You know. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Because they, they really will. They hold, they hold grudges. They will kill you.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Which, which I think is, you know, you can see, and we make up stories even organically for our kids all the time that are meant to teach them things. You know, like, oh, you know, they believe that we have witches that live.

You know, at the swamp by our house. And I'm like, oh, that's why witches live in swamps. I don't want my kids going in the swamp.

Right. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. You know I mean, I

Simone Collins: think a lot of that kind of overlaps with Grims fairytales where, you know, they were told in regions where if your kids go out at night, that they might actually be eaten by wolves.

You know, it made sense to warn them of monsters in, in the forest and stuff because there was stuff out there that would legit kill you. So we still do that with our own kids. We're like, yeah, there's monsters outside at night.

Malcolm Collins: If you look at eighties horror movies or, or older horror genres in the United States, and you look at the ways that they are structured the other interesting thing that comes from this total tradition is the, the villain that there is absolutely no way to escape that you will eventually die which is not seen in, in many other traditions.

If it was, if we were basing these off of like European witches and stuff like that. You'd have much more of a, well, they're scary, but you can trick them. Like, here's what you do. And we do have some horror movies that are structured that way. But the horror movies that are influenced by this tradition are the ones where, no, you really, like, don't mess with it.

Don't begin to mess with it. If you do, it's over for you. Right.

Which is, it's pretty interesting to see that in influence our culture. So I thought, I thought that was, that was pretty cool.

The other thing I'd note about these stories is they are much like, more existentially scary than even the raw unedited for kids versions of the European stories where it was like baba yaga, you'll have like a house with chicken legs and like a woman who get conceptually is like cannibalistic or something, but otherwise it's an old woman.

Whereas with, with like bloody bones, you have a person without skin coming to get you. Uh, that's just way. More horrific.

Malcolm Collins: Now if, if you look at, yeah, I was looking at other traditions like Hanzel and Gretel, comparing it to that baba yaa where, where, you know, you can trick them.

Even the witch in, in in Snow White, you know defeatable, right? Like not, not like these characters. I feel like that

Simone Collins: in Snow White it gets so muddled. That, yeah, there's a lot of the classic stories kind of end with this deis ex Mina of. Some hero doing the thing. Which I don't know. Those are uninspired and these are more interesting in that the villains are just dangerous things that exist in the world and you should know about them.

I, I kind of like it more. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, I remember the telly post story stuck with me so much as a kid because it felt so different from other stories I had heard as a kid. Yeah. You know, it starts with the guy's dogs being killed, which I don't remember seeing in any other illustrated children's book that had ever been read to me.

Like that as a kid I remember was quite shocking. I was like. Wait, his dog dies. And then I hadn't even remembered this until I realized as an adult and I was like, oh, and he dies. It's very much framed as a, the world is closing in on this guy. The moment he makes a mistake, everything's over from that point on.

And, and that was really shocking to me as a children's story. But I think it, it's an important value and I can see why a culture like this would, would teach it. Now we're gonna talk about some other fun traditions from this region. One was wedding spoons where oh, yes, the guys couldn't afford rings.

They would carve these really beautiful spoons to show off their carpentry skills. This

Simone Collins: reminds me of the human version of what Emperor penguins do. It's emperor penguins, right, where they find a really, really pretty rock and they work really hard to get it, and then they give it to their. Chosen mate, and this, this idea of like working really hard to make a nice spoon is so romantic.

And I looked up the spoons and they're very impressive. I would be impressed. You're like,

Malcolm Collins: dang,

Simone Collins: that's a nice

Malcolm Collins: spoon.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I don't know how I would go about Whitt that that would take for, and they're nice and polished, beautiful intricate shapes, personalized to in many cases I imagine the aesthetics and interests and values of the recipient.

Just beautiful. Yeah. Really nice. I wonder if they were probably never used but. It'd be so cute if women, you know, at a fancy dinner would just pull it out and, you know, my spoon. I don't know if this was still in the age when you had to bring your own utensils to everything. I think it

Malcolm Collins: was this, this would've been a, I mean, you know, these people didn't have much.

A spoon was like a major thing to have in this period. In other, yeah. And I wonder why

Simone Collins: they didn't do knives instead, because I feel like that would be the, the spoons do look a little bit delicate and precious. And a good knife would, you know, probably. Last longer, but yes, whatever. I mean

Malcolm Collins: as, as, as an understanding of like being from this tradition when I met Simone one of the first things she did, like when, when courting me was showing me her knife collection you know, that is from another culture that would be seen as incredibly.

Dense for a woman to do, trying to get a guy to like her dent. Look at all sides. I have. Well, you know, the, these, these are not, not like cooking nights, so they're like big collection of like, oh, a hu like pink and, and stuff like that. Hunting nights, like you were clearly like, these are girly, but what's conveyed by that, they're all pink.

But I am in a Marshall tradition, right? Like I, I am from a And you told me you remember, like growing up, your, your family would always say, well, Smiths do this and Smiths do that. Yeah. Smiths have

Simone Collins: guns. Smiths have knives. Like that was what we. That's what, that is what distinguished us. It wasn't some code of honor or anything.

It was, but I also, my

Malcolm Collins: family talking about this a lot growing up is they always say, well, Collins do this and Collins do that. I love that. I think this, this is a normal thing for clan based cultures. I think if you're from a non clan based culture, what you would say is, Jews do this, or Jews do that, or Mormons do this, or Mormons do that.

Mm-hmm. But the central unit of identity is seen as the extended family network. Yeah. Which is why your, your cultural values are framed to along the lines of. Well, you're a Collin, so you do X or you're a Smith, so you do X. Like, that's feasible. I think it's more

Simone Collins: powerful because it, it creates a greater sense of personal responsibility.

Mm-hmm. If I as a Mormon were to behave irresponsibly, I mean, I know that Mormons who do so feel immense amounts of shame if they're really devout, but I still feel like, you know, maybe no one will notice, you know, I'm just a drop in the giant Mormon bucket. Whereas, you know, if you are letting your family down, the foundations will crack and you know it yeah.

It can't do

Malcolm Collins: without your health. And another episode we used to actually like our parents. You should check it out. It's a great episode. 'cause I go over my great-great-great grandfather's like memoirs and everything. And at the end of it, he lists everyone he knows who's dissented from our family.

And then points out that there is not a degree of criminality among them. You know, it's very excited that they. They're not criminals. They're, they're honest, hardworking men. Which is funny because you see a, a, a, a divergence from, from this type of, of culture. But if you look even like the generation before him when they were doing the anti confederates, because they organized a bunch of anti confederate factions called the Jayhawks in Texas.

And, if you even look at the story of how he saved the, and the other Jay Hawks who were in the Confederate prison, is that he went to the prison and he gave them all the guards all liquor and like, got them dancing and partying. And he, he did a jig that was so transfixing that was, it was seen as like a Scottish jig that they didn't notice while all the prisoners were being freed.

Simone Collins: This sort of, it's very jack tails. That's an extremely jack tails time kind of scenario. Yes,

Malcolm Collins: it's

Simone Collins: an extreme, like I feel like someone who grew up reading the Jack Tails would think that's a viable solution. I'll get them drunk and do a jig. I'll get them drunk and do a jig and then we'll free

Malcolm Collins: everyone.

Simone Collins: I don't, I don't think he would've come up with that had he not been raised in that tradition.

Malcolm Collins: No. He, I, very few other people would've thought, okay, I, I, I see the camp where, where all my friends are being held. What do I do? Do I go at night or do I. Pirates in the Caribbean style, walk out with like booze in my hands and be like, that's funny.

Oh my goodness. Great. That's very much like what Bugs Bunny would do, right? Like yeah. It, it's very much like I'm gonna be ma it's very much what you or I would do. You know, we've been talking recently where we applied for the Survival and Flourishing Fund for another grant from them. And we're going to try to fix AI meme layer threats by building sort of one to, to supersede them within the AI meme layer.

Like I, I, I argued we'll build our own SGO to fight their sgo. And of course a normal AI safety person is gonna be like, wait, you can't just build the big evil AI to protect us from the big evil ai that's the. An insanely bold thing to do. Like you should try, let's just try to limit the other ai.

And it's like, no, you can't do that. You can't chain, you know, char Gothic on because Char goon is, is always going to win. At the end of the day, humans aren't meant to beat him. Yes. You're like,

Simone Collins: let's just create one first and hope that we can make it more aligned. And probably if they do give you any funding, it will be because.

They know that if you don't get funding won't safety Yeah. You won't do any safety protocols because it's true. You won't do any safety protocols if don't get funding. I don't see the

Malcolm Collins: point. We're working with short timelines here, people. But then the, the other I don't mean this as a threat, it's just like what I see as practical and what I have the money.

Well, and also, yeah,

Simone Collins: like we literally don't have the money for it. So we, we can't do it without the funding, but we're gonna do it anyway.

Malcolm Collins: If you look at even the way that I have approached Tism in, in media and stuff like this, it has been very Jack Taily. It has been very you know, sort of the, the giant, all the media establishments just baiting them into like making a fool of themselves and helping further spread the message and further grow the movement.

And they, they fall on their faces and they get back up and they get angrier and they. They run again and they're tricked again. And I'm just here having a laugh at the whole situation. The, the entire way that we have worked on this has been very much like you would see in one of these stories.

Mm-hmm. Which I think is interesting and shows, you know, how tied to your cultural heritage you are. Mm-hmm. But also I think where people may underestimate. People from sort of these cultural groups because they otherwise look nerdy they don't see that this is a cultural group that is one bred for an extremely high amount of aggression.

And, and, and two may feel that like me, for example, personally, I got in fist fights. Constantly as a kid.

coming from this cultural background, I would go so far as to say it feels weird to me when I meet adult males who have never gotten into a fist fight. , That seems weirder to me than never having had sex.

Malcolm Collins: And if you look at, at other people from clam based culture is a great example here that people would look at and say, oh, Elon is a nerdy looking guy. Like, look. Yeah. And people make fun

Simone Collins: of Elon Musk for like jumping up and down on the stage in Butler, Pennsylvania during the Trump campaign, whereas like there.

There were instances earlier in his career where he would literally duke it out with his brother in like a, you know, a nondescript Silicon Valley office to the point where his brother would be hospitalized just over like technical development, disagreements, you know, not, not huge grievances, just like, Hey, this is how they hash it out.

And that's, I think it's because people.

Malcolm Collins: Online are very bad at determining performative like aggressive cultures Yeah. Versus like actually aggressive cultures. Well, and I think

Simone Collins: they're also like mistaking the, the Andrew Tate in. The chalk tails is the giant. He's the one who gets, who gets

Malcolm Collins: killed.

Well, no, that, that's also true. By making yourself look overly threatening within these regions, you are planting a target on your back. Yeah, 100% would've been a reason to look. Nerdy and unassuming within these regions, which is why a lot of the famous people that people know from these regions, whether it is myself or it is somebody like JD Vance look pretty like what people would clock as nerdy.

Mm-hmm. Instead of what people would clock as aggressive. And it reminds me of like that. There's a song I showed Simone recently where I was like, oh my God, this character looks like they were drawn to look exactly like the way I used to dress with the round glasses and the red vest and the tie and the, the black slacks.

And he is just as murdery and crazy as well. But I, I, I, because I'm an adult, you know, I am able to. Suppress my impulses now. Like I don't get in random fights with people anymore or anything like that. And I think that that's what we're, is expected of us as adults.

Whereas I think people that were born without these instincts.

And you see, this was like Andrew Tate where I've pointed out like he clearly is from a very low testosterone like birth environment.

If you look at his facial structure. Whereas my facial structure would be seen as like an exaggerated testosterone like developmental environment.

I should clarify here that I actually think from my perspective, this makes what Andrew Tate has accomplished kind of cooler rather than less cool. It's kind of like Lewis from B Stars, you know, being born a prey species, but. Attempting to turn yourself into something that looks and acts and lives more like a predator species.

Um, the fact that he was born and, and developed in such an extreme because he doesn't just look like low testosterone. He looks like an exaggerated example of low testosterone environment, and yet become what he has become. I actually see as one of the cooler aspects about him.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, people don't know to cue for that.

They're like, oh, that's also going to affect. Like their brain and the way that they approach problems.

But it's not just the biological differences that give you a different mental framing of reality. It's also the cultural differences.

Malcolm Collins: And, and this is why I think, you know, you need a degree of cultural diversity because the ideas that I'm able to come up with for resolving ideas like AI safety are going to be very different than the ideas.

Somebody who is acculturated within like a Jewish or Catholic cultural context is going to come to

Simone Collins: well. And I also think it, it highlights this misunderstanding of what traditional masculinity is looking at. Masculinity by only a few traditional respects, like this concept of soy face that emerged in like 20 17, 20 18, like soy boys, like, which is really just associated with like looking more expressive or not showing classical masculine entry.

It's like normally when I see people refer to someone having soy face, it's 'cause they're expressive or they're laughing or they're smiling. And, and they're looking like they have a sort of ironic joke face and. You, you don't, you're not accused of having a soy face or being a soy boy if, like, you look angry and serious.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no. So this actually came from me using AI because people have said, oh, Malcolm, you look so soy. And I've been very confused by this because like a, like by science, I, I look like somebody who was overexposed to testosterone. Like, that's my facial structure. So I was like, okay. What could they be thinking?

L soy about me. And so I actually went TOIs to see Ifis could figure out w what would make them think that Malcolm L. Soy. Oh really? You know, aren't soy, like there's a lot of people with glasses. A simple like. Button down shirt isn't particularly soy. No. It's a very nondescript item. No. And, and so I, I, I kept getting AI trying to analyze and what it eventually came to is, I think it's right, it is that I'm not angry.

Like, like displaying. Yeah. You either have to look

Simone Collins: expressionless or angry and then you count as masculine. Whereas like, most of the most, I would say masculinely acting people at least until they get self-conscious laugh a lot. Are very expressive.

Malcolm Collins: The point being here is people are confusing the fact that I am excited for life and happy and laugh a ton with, with a lack of masculinity because within the cultures that they are from, that is genuinely seen as a lack of masculinity.

But what's interesting is within this culture that, that, that, you know, has the jack tails, it's like their core structure of what masculinity is you. That is not a lack of masculinity. That is actually the very height of what you are supposed to be as a man. Yeah. Which is irreverent and not letting things get to you.

And that's,

Simone Collins: that's the what really gets me about things like testosterone replacement therapy, which you see like people, like figures like Jeff Bezos go through where he has this transformation where suddenly he's like super jacked and he never smiles anymore. Is, is that a lot of men. Are turning to testosterone replacement therapy, like it went Forex among men who are between 18 and 45 from 2003 to 2013.

And then there was another 50% increase from 2013 to 2023. And this comes from a place of insecurity, which is inherently feminine. Like if you are on testosterone or replacement therapy, you are a preening woman. I mean, now there obviously are like some health conditions where it's like, oh, this is, this is really a problem.

Yeah, but I,

Malcolm Collins: I, I, I've talked about, you know this in the past, but it is worth noting that, that this strategy, you could be like, well, that's a niche cultural marriage strategy. Certainly it doesn't work on like the average woman or, or young woman. Mm-hmm. And I'm like, bro, like young women are not thirsting after like Russell Crow.

They're, they're thirsty after people like like Benjamin Benedict

Simone Collins: Cumberbatch what the guy who plays Loki. The, the guy

Malcolm Collins: who plays the, the Pirates of the Caribbean guy, what's his name? I, yeah,

Simone Collins: the there's some, the wrestler, the Whistler, the what's the, the Whistler? No, the, the thing from Dr.

The Whistler. You're the

Malcolm Collins: ler. Sexy boys. Like one. Yeah. Like, yeah.

Simone Collins: Lanky, pale, expressive. This,

Malcolm Collins: this is actually a very common, like ideal profile for a lot of women. Yeah. It, but I think men don't recognize it because they've keyed to cultural cues on the internet and they don't realize that what the ideal man is is diversely expressed across cultures.

Yeah. And they may not be understanding that even within their own culture. 'cause a lot of people have lost touch with like American cultural roots. Yeah. And they don't know their jack stories. You know, they don't know the this stuff. So they, they think, oh you know. You know, masculine isn't the guy who subverts and tricks the more powerful person and then takes their stuff and murders it.

You could take out the murder part, but, but, you know, subverts and tricks, the more powerful player while having a good time masculine. It's the guy who's like a gruff the whole time. Right. You know another fun tradition I found while, while doing this research, it's called the Chari. And so when couples get married to prevent them from like, just to mess with them, like trolling, trolling is obviously big within this culture.

Yeah. The wedding guests would all go around their house where like their wedding bed would be and, and make a lot of loud noises and, and like shoot guns in the air and like sing and dance to make it really hard for them to have sex without, you know. Yeah, like, like yelling stuff at them, and I, I, I think that that's like exactly the trolling you'd expect from this.

Right. I wonder if this is

Simone Collins: produced like a, a slight. Tendency of people who are not turned off by loud noises. To be among like Appalachian subgroups, the ones who play really loud music when having sex because they, they couldn't produce offspring. Yeah. They're

Malcolm Collins: like, whatever, get away. I don't care.

Yeah. Anyways, but, but very interesting to study because if you're from a different cultural group, this will be weird to you. Like, yeah, you'll think it's

Simone Collins: so, yeah, and I mean, you, you get comments like this all the time, people being like, oh, Malcolm's this or that. And like one, I mean, obviously it doesn't get to you 'cause you've changed nothing.

Which also I think it points to your complete lack of insecurity about this. You know that they're wrong and that you're right for you at least. And maybe they're right for them, but. It's just this is clearly a point of extreme confusion for a non-trivial portion of your viewers, and so I'm glad that you're bringing it to light.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, yes. This is just a cultural difference in masculine ideals and me leaning into my own cultural heritage as I suggest other people to adopt a culture to lean into, or. You know, learn more about your culture and lean into what makes them different, because it likely co-evolved with your biology. Yeah, yeah.

Like when I hear about all this ultra aggression stuff within this, this, this region, I'm like, oh yeah, like that. That definitely co-evolved with like my background and it's something that, as I grew up, I learned to suppress. But I, I may not need that. I might not need this like, irreverent figure.

There, there may be a reason that this culture also did not lean into stereotypes of aggression for aggression's sake, because the people who did all died. I mean, if you're in a culture where. You know, honor killings are really normalized for, for slights. If you're in a culture where, you know, people sharpen their fingernails so they can gouge out your eyes and where duals have it at the drop of a hat you know, maybe don't be growly and angry for angry sake, or you're not gonna have a high chance of, of, of surviving.

But do be in a, like, do have that within you, but have it within you in a way that they. Are not gonna see or recognize like right off the bat, right? Like, it, it, it shouldn't what's the word I'm looking for here? You, you know, be seen as like an offense to them, or like, you think you're better than them.

I mean, this is actually very key to the way I interact with people as well. This like, really like happy, I immediate like, Hey, how are you going? Great to meet you. You know, et cetera. Yeah. Which is a, a way of meeting people and engaging with people, which above all else is based around. Ensuring that they know that I don't think I'm better than them.

Because that's like the core thing that you need to stay alive or appeal to politically, this cultural region.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Survival mechanism.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and it's why the Democrats can't, because they do think they're better than them. They're like, well, we're educated and you're a bunch of, you know, racist hillbillies that we just need to learn to code or something like that, you know?

Yeah.

Simone Collins: And what they're really just doing is painting a giant target on their back. Oh. So you're elite and you think you're better than me. Okay. Open season. Thanks for letting me know. Wonderful. Yeah. Wonderful. This is, this is so great. Yeah. New target. Love

Malcolm Collins: deim. Always fun to talk culture.

And you

Simone Collins: haven't watched it enough times because you are, I

Malcolm Collins: hate that movie. So insufficiently. It's,

Simone Collins: come on, man. The Jean Paul Laier. Oh my God. The, the science,

Malcolm Collins: the, they're like clothings. It's, it's, listen,

Simone Collins: triple hard sci is great. Not all sci-fi has to be hard sci-fi, you know, like, give it a rest, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: It doesn't have tarded sci-fi. Okay. Don't be tarded. It's the best depiction

Simone Collins: of what, what consumer spaceships as cruise ships are gonna be like. 'cause it's the only depiction. And it's I mean, you know, it introduces so many concepts that I think we really need, like sedation travel. It's, it's unfair that you don't like that movie.

Like, oh, the costumes. The costumes, the. You have terrible taste.

Malcolm Collins: You have terrible taste. But I'm happy that you're gonna learn to make sushi. Like I have been drooling over that concept all day.

Simone Collins: Just what? Tuna sushi?

Malcolm Collins: Well, no. So what we're gonna get is some tuna and we're gonna need imitation crab.

Oh yeah. 'cause real crab gross. Well, no imitation crab is what's used in moed sushi. Mm-hmm. And you know, if you're, if you're doing like, typical like rolls, right? You know, what is

Simone Collins: imitation crab made out of?

Malcolm Collins: Is it a fish product or is it a I think it's a fish product. Actually, I should write a list of all the things I'm, I'm gonna need.

We're gonna need wasabi, we're gonna need ginger. We're gonna need,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Eel sauce. It'd be cool if we could do some eel ones. If you don't wanna work with eel, we can just do tuna. No, I

Simone Collins: mean, I've, you know, I've eaten a lot of unagi. I just,

I don't know how good I would be at preparing it. Probably fine. Just follow the instructions. What's so hard so far?

Malcolm Collins: You've been great at everything, Simone. It's hard.

Simone Collins: Just follow the instructions, say do what perplexity tells you to and it's fine. So good for recipes, love perplexity for recipes. Changed everything

Speaker 7: That's right.

Speaker 6: Make us.

Speaker 8: Yeah. Keep going friends. Keep going. This is our adventure, I think down

Speaker 9: there. A jungle and it got bears.

Speaker 10: Bears. Well, we better be very careful than red Octavian.

Speaker 9: Yeah.

In this provocative discussion, Malcolm and his guest challenge common feminist narratives and explore controversial topics around feminism, intra-feminine competition, and the role of influential feminists like Margaret Atwood. The dialogue delves into the complexities of women's empowerment, critiques feminist movements and literature, and debates the underpinnings of female dynamics in social and professional environments. With references to historical studies, psychological theories, and cultural phenomena, this episode questions whether some feminist ideologies may inadvertently restrict women's freedoms and propagate competitive behaviors among women.

Simone Collins: Hello Malcolm. I'm so excited to be here with you today because we're gonna talk about feminism. My views on it may be totally wrong. I might've been lied to all my life about what it meant. And now I'm asking myself, what if the real threat to women's freedom isn't patriarchy, but rather.

The matriarchy. And, and this is, this is thanks to a random feminist lecture on Margaret Atwood that I felt down this, this disturbing rabbit hole. And I mean, at first I learned that apparently Margaret Atwood hates women. And, and I also learned that not. Satisfied with the hero's journey. Some feminist created the heroine's journey and it sucks.

And then a bunch of feminist practices and campaigns apparently also just curtail women's freedom. Like when I looked at, well, like what if feminists done? Mm-hmm. And I'm like, this isn't, this is not good. This is not good for women. What, what do you do?

Malcolm Collins: And I'll be bringing data as well, where we'll go over a number of studies that show that women don't like to work with other women.

That women are much more likely to betray other women than men. Are everything bad? Like, like women are women's worst enemy. Yeah. I, I wanna,

Simone Collins: yeah, let, let, let Malcolm and I pull you into this dark hole and, and ask you, can women actually be feminist in the end or is, is subconscious intrasexual competition?

Women's undo

Malcolm Collins: it. Well, I, I've heard it said before and I completely agree with this sentiment. Which is that feminism is not women versus men. Feminism is about low market value. Women against high market value women or high market value women trying to trick their competition into becoming oppressing

Simone Collins: low market value.

Yeah, I mean, I, I kind of feel like from classic literature to Instagram, women are not empowering women. They're just finding new ways to keep each other in check. And so, yeah. We'll, I'll share my findings. You, you share your notes. Let's, let's explore the surprisingly misogynistic elements of feminism.

Woo. So excited for this. But yeah, so I was, while cleaning up the, the other night just looking for stuff on Audible Plus to listen to, and there was, now they're doing lecture series, apparently, and there was some lecture series on like the, the literary legacy of Margaret Atwood. And so many people.

Name, check her when criticizing us, where I'm like, okay, I need to understand this woman and what she stands for. So this is a good thing for me to spend my time listening to woman wrote a fetish book Handmaid's Tale, the famous women's fetish novel, A Handmaid's Tale. So she's, she's actually been a prolific author for a very long time.

And, is she among, you know, other things? She's written a lot of poetry. She's written many books including a Handmaid's Tale. No. Hold on,

Malcolm Collins: I have to, I have to interject here for people who dunno what we're talking about. You check out our video. Is this actually a fetish? Where, you know, it very clearly is for a lot of these women who are like, dressing up and like going out.

A Handmaid's

Simone Collins: Tale for Context is a, a dystopian. Fiction novel in in which America becomes this, this like place called Gilead, where women have no rights. They're not even allowed also to read. And the few fertile women who are left are forced to. Sort of be, be bred by family. It's, it's just gross and weird and a lot of women seem to

Malcolm Collins: be really into it.

Oh, no, please, please, conservative, tough military man. Don't breed me in front of your jealous high status wife. All of you need, it's me and you can't survive without me. And I live this life of privilege. But I'm actually also super,

Simone Collins: so no, no. Okay, so like Margaret Atwood is so much deeper of a horrifying.

Rabbit for me than I thought, like, than, than just this surface fetish thing. Because I mean, it's, it's easy enough. And when you look at any like fantasy, romantic, any sort of romance novel, you're gonna see stuff like this. I just thought that she was touching on that, you know, that she accidentally managed to make, basically women's erotic material that made them feel like they were reading highbrow political content and commentary. You know, like, oh, I'm reading 19 84, 54 Shades of Gray. So I, I thought it was that, but no she, I think she just hates women. I mean, I, this is not, this is my theory. Okay. Just my opinion.

But she wrote this alternate version of the Odyssey called the Penelope A in 2005 which reframes several female characters from Homer's Epic, most notably Penelope, that the wife of Odysseus in her 12 maids and also to some extent the Helen of Troy. I. But you'd think that like, okay, she's, she's gonna reframe them in some kind of like very empowering way.

But, but no, in, in Homer's Odyssey, Penelope is the archetype of the loyal, long suffering wife. She patiently waits Odysseus's return and resists hundreds of suitors and uses her wit to sort of keep them in check. And this is for a really long time. Like I remember when reading the Odyssey for the first time being like.

I can't believe she's doing this. Like, I mean, I almost feel like if Odysseus was at home and they were happily married, their kingdom would be less stable than it is right now. It's just really impressive. But Atwood's, Penelope, no. I mean, like, you'd think, okay, well she's just gonna make Penelope cooler, but she No, no, no.

She gives Penelope direct voice. She narrates her story from the afterlife and she's, you know, reflecting on her life and her marriage and her legacy. And Penelope is, is, she's, she's deplete as portrayed as, as clever, but also manipulative. Deeply aware of her own powerlessness within a patriarchal society, shown as jealous, embittered, and sometimes ineffectual, especially regarding the fate of her mates who, you know, were executed for being traitorous.

So yeah, they just sort of frame her as this more like. Resentful. I remember powerless

Malcolm Collins: the original book. She's like playing all these political power games to prevent all of these suitors who are like trying to hook up with her. Yeah. And she's like, she's

Simone Collins: constantly weaving because she says she'll marry one of them when she finishes a tapestry and she, she goes and unweave it like each night and there's all this other stuff

Malcolm Collins: going on.

She, she, she's, yeah. She's being clever and manipulative and Exactly like Odysseus. What, what's interesting? Yeah, she's very good and mirrored partner for Odysseus. Yes, she's undergoing a similar sort of challenge where she needs to do a trick to win this challenge and, and, and, and play against these un un.

Poss impossible circumstances, but, but, but tied to what it would be to be a high value woman within the society of everybody wanting to marry you. And, and so the, in the original, she's an incredibly powerful figure. Yeah. And an incredible,

Simone Collins: yeah. I was like, oh, how could you possibly improve upon Penelope?

And then she, no, she just made her worse. She just framed her as, as, as, as, as resentful. And, and bitter and all powerless in this patriarchal, she had them all by the balls. I don't like,

Malcolm Collins: anyway. And Linda, hold on. Hold on. Hold. Yeah. This what, what? This is, this is okay. But you gotta, you gotta, there's so much to

Simone Collins: go through.

Let's keep going. So, because she also depicts Helen of Troy differently too, so, I mean, right. To remind most of you who haven't read the Odyssey or the Iliad. Helen was traditionally depicted as the ultimate beauty and the cause of the Trojan War, but she's reframed through Penelope's eyes in the Penelope as vein manipulative and ultimately mortal.

Her beauty is shown to fade and she no longer is the untouchable arc type. And Atwood use as Helen as a foil for Penelope. She highlights the rivalry and contrasts the perfect woman with the fem fatal, but demystifies both. So she takes these two women. And just tears both down, but also throws in this theme of intersexual competition.

Yeah. So now he's taking these two women. Now they're petty b*****s. Thanks Margaret Atwood, I really appreciate you reframing these women. No, this is true in her books as well. Yes. No, that's the thing is when you, when you come to think of it in The Handmaid's Tale, it's not flattering toward women e either, even though like feminists point to it all the time.

Gilead is a product, at least in part of female influencers, influencers like Serena Joy, who eventually becomes a wife, and many of the evil enforcers are women like the, the, the aunts in this system. There's, I, even the Handmaids are real like b***h to each other. Oh, snitch on each other. They're, they're unhinged.

You know, it doesn't matter what our faces look like, as long as we're fertile

You are bad. Yeah, but not too bad. Otherwise you get gals, guess what I did last night? Ate your rations in silence and cried into your straw bed.

Yes. Classically. Well, I had sex with a married couple. Oh, so did I. Who would've guessed we'd be having three ways in our thirties?

Simone Collins: They're, they're, yeah. No, like women in that are, they're, they're either victims or villains. Which

Malcolm Collins: is like, so, but you told me what, what she made like one character in the Odyssey, like a prostitute or something, or a

Simone Collins: Yeah, I think, and, and this was mentioned in the lecture, and I'm trying to find in, in the actual Penelope.

This was,

Malcolm Collins: this was the DIA whatever

Simone Collins: in the Penelope. No, it's, so there was some, when I was listening to the lecture on this Audible plus thing, the lecturer was talking about some. Like maybe other poem that Atwood had written in which like Ccy isn't really a witch. Ccy was a witch that like kind of, Odysseus was stuck like sleeping with for a long time.

But like, I think she reframed ccy as like the madam of a brothel instead, like, okay, let's just know take a powerful woman who was really cool and like goddess level and let's just. Make her a madam. Not, not anything against madams or anything. No. Remove

Malcolm Collins: her sexual agency. This seems to be her thing with women is removing women's sexual agency.

I would bet is her key kink. Yeah. 'cause that's what she keeps doing with these other women. Well,

Simone Collins: no, but I, I wanna remove the whole queen thing and just talk about how she apparently just really thinks poorly of women. And this is gonna show up again and again. But here's another thing that came up in this lecture series that I was listening to.

'cause this is just what triggered everything. It, it, it switches from only talking about Margaret Atwood. To going on this whole diversion about the hero's journey which it, it's. It's, it, this is I think it's, it's referred to as a meta myth. It's not like anyone discovered it, it's just a very common pattern in storytelling.

This is something that one of our friends who got really, really good in media, like he was able to just instantly get like tons of money from ad revenue by being able to just generate tons and tons of views on stories because he, he also was very good at identifying meta myths and just sort of modernizing them and like inserting.

Trendy things in these meta myths that people love. And one of the most big meta myths is the hero's journey. So it's kind of like a 12, a 12 step process, but not the lame recovery kind. Where, you know, the, the main character, the hero, starts out in his ordinary world. And then there's a call to adventure.

He tries to refuse it. And, but then he meets some kind of mentor and he gets guidance and then crosses the first threshold and then, you know, undergoes tests and, and finds allies and enemies. He approaches the, the innermost cave at one point. This is like the, the. The, the moment of peak tension, there's the ordeal followed by the rewards and then the road back, the resurrection with some kind of maybe final test that symbolizes transformation and then, you know, return with the elixir.

So the, you know, the hero returns home and, you know, bears a gift maybe of like knowledge or some new power or perspective, like whatever. Just, they're just a better person. Right? And, and this is. I never ever thought of the hero's journey as being a gendered thing. Okay. Like common, common figures who are her female and, and went through the Mulan.

B Buffy Buffy Summers from the fam Buffy Vampire Slayer Classic Hero's Journey. Wonder Woman Sarah Connor from Terminator. Yeah, even Sophie from Hell's Moving Castle, like a super feminine character clearly goes through the hero's journey,

Malcolm Collins: but thanks me, a woman cannot go through the hit's journey.

So what does the Hero's journey look like for women?

Simone Collins: Right, so, well, one of the people who popularized this concept of the Hero's Journey in a book. Was named Joseph Campbell and he had he was a youngian psychologist, so you already know this is gonna go off the rails. He had a female student named Maureen Murdoch.

And she developed, she developed 'cause she thought the hero's journey just wasn't, wasn't feminist enough. The concept of the heroine's journey. And, and once I describe it to you, you're gonna be like, oh, so she thinks women suck. It sucks. But yeah, so she, she found that that Campbell's description of the hero's journey, and therefore the entire meta myth did not adequately reflect women's psychospiritual experiences.

So she published this, this new framework in her 1990 book, the Heroine's Journey Women's. Quest for wholeness. It's it's rooted in her therapy practice. So again, you know this is gonna suck with women and her belief that the traditional hero's journey was too focused on masculine outward quests, and it failed to address the internal cyclical and integrative nature of women's journeys.

Like, I don't know what women like doing at home. That sounds

Malcolm Collins: so lame.

Simone Collins: I, I know. And well, let's just, you need, you don't even know how lame it is yet. Okay, so let's go through the eight steps of the heroin's journey. There's a separation from the feminine, okay? Because

Malcolm Collins: this is the separation from the feminist, right?

This is

Simone Collins: for women, it's feminist, but step one is you gotta separate from the feminine, the heroin rejects, traditional feminine roles or her relationship with her mother. Because we're youngian psychologists. Okay. Oh, okay. Often seeing them as weak or limiting because being feminine is weak and limiting.

This is our first premise. Oh, Maureen. Step two, identification with the masculine and gathering allies. She adopts masculine values and seek success or recognition in a patriarchal world. Step three. The road of trials. She experiences successes, but also confronts the limitations and emptiness of living solely by masculine principles.

So we just have to show how, like masculinity is horrible as well. But you know, femininity is lame. Then she experiences spiritual aridity and death. The heroine spiritually unfulfilled or lost. Experiences a crisis which is followed by initiation and dissent to the goddess. She descends into her unconscious because this is young in psychology, confronting the dark, feminine and her own wounds, because this is also about trauma.

Malcolm Collins: What's funny, it's this, this, this sounds like somebody like, I don't want to interact with. Like, this sounds like a narrative that I know. Like if you indulge in it as a woman, you'd become an intolerable person to be around.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But you'd also need lifelong therapy. So this explains why her practice was sustainable.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. She's trying to create more, more practice for herself, is what you're saying.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So after falling into the dark feminine, which I, I'm assuming is like, you know, estrogen induced deep depression. She, you have yearning to reconnect with the feminine. This is step six. We're almost done. The heroin seeks to reclaim her feminine nature and heal the mother-daughter split, right?

So, you know, you have to break from the mother and then you have to heal. And then Jesus.

Malcolm Collins: Then you

Simone Collins: heal the mother-daughter split. You reconcile with your mother and the feminine and, and yourself. And then you integrate the masculine and the feminine. So the heroin achieves a balance, integrating both.

Aspects of herself to become whole. What does that mean?

Malcolm Collins: What, what stories does she argue use this, I don't know any stories that use this. Okay. You should ask an AI right now, like what stories use the female purist journey as laid out by person. And while you do, I am gonna go on a little tangent here where I am going to talk about how.

You can do classic hero's journeys. Whi women, you know, we've seen this multiple times. There's nothing that prevents a woman from living hero's journey. But one of the things I found really interesting, and I commented on this in another episode, is Western Media doesn't seem to be able to do women anymore of, because they always have to be like, perfect and Mary Sue, like mm-hmm.

And the one place where you can still see female characters really done well is in anime. And yeah. The reason one that it went viral around like the girl in the wheelchair in anime and everybody freaked out that a guy could love a girl in a wheelchair. No, you can't love disabled people. Uhhuh dare, how dare you.

But the, the example I always use that I think is really good at this is my hero academia at presenting female characters as heroic without, in any way undermining their femininity. You know, the two examples that I often use of this is, is, is one, is, you know, the, the main characters' love interest, or she is the more active player in the, in the romance, you know, wanting him in sort of a very wholesome fashion.

But she also, you know, shows her strength through when a very aggressive character, it's like fighting her at this first tournament and, and all she can do is really levitate things is by. You know, intentionally tanking and dodging attacks. Yeah, so that they blow up the, the set and she's hiding all of the blocks she's been hiding in the sky.

Just lifting them up to drop them all down at once. And the, she still loses at the end of this, right? But it's, it, it's shown like her femininity is shown both in the way that she combats this other character you know, through patience and, and, and, and, and, and endurance and cunning was in this, which aren't uniquely feminate traits.

But they are not traits that undermine femininity. You don't see that and think that this woman's being like a, you know, something that is less than woman, but also in how she deals with loss. Mm-hmm. Or in Pinky's character. Who has this, the, you know, this great scene where one of the male characters is reflecting on how he.

Has in the past chickened out when it came to addressing, you know, villainous characters in, in society. And he is remembering a scene where three girls this, this pinky character and two of her friends have this big villain who is like, okay, where is this place I'm gonna go And, you know. Presumably do some horrible thing there.

And the other girls are terrified and she lies to him, tells him a direction and he storms off. And then if she immediately falls down and starts crying just due to the terror of the situation for her.

Speaker 16: What? You're not gonna answer me? Crap! Why aren't there ever any heroes patrolling at times like these? It's a simple question.

Speaker 17: MOve! Come on!

Speaker 18: Around that corner and then make a left at the big street! The agency's two kilometers away! very much.

Speaker 21: 2km away!

Malcolm Collins: But what, what what's shown in this is when she was on the edge, it wasn't that she wasn't.

Un unafraid. It wasn't that she like did some big you know, muscular thing to win. It was that she was willing to stand up for her friends and do something in the way that she had access to. But that this still took an emotional toll on her. It wasn't like, oh, and she, you know, walked out cool as a cucumber and everything like that.

And I think, it's, it's unfair in Western media that unfortunately many of the best like female heroes we got in the early days. We're female heroes through leaning into masculine qualities. So here I would think, you know, Sarah Connor or, or you know, from aliens, God, I forget her name. Ripley.

Oh,

Simone Collins: Ripley. So cool. Great,

Malcolm Collins: great characters. But

I think they set the unfortunate precedent that for female characters to be cool and heroic in Western media, they needed to be like good male characters instead of lean into traits that are extra feminine. , Another character for my hero academia that I, I like in this respect is,

Le Brava.

where her power is, that she powers up the individuals who she loves and makes them stronger.

You know, you repeatedly see this , in anime, which is good depictions of the way that you can lean into femininity and be a hero through femininity instead of as a woman, be a hero through masculinity.

Speaker 35: Brava's love will set me free. La Brava, grab the cameras. We made a prank and look like amateurs. The moustache must look so glamorous. Otherwise in the comments they will slander us. To be remembered we can never be average. And my strength grows cause you feel so amorous. You were You are so much. You were there for me when everybody else would judge.

And I know I promised you we would succeed. That time is gone, and it's only a dream.

Also, I wanna be clear is you might hear this and think, well then my hero, academia and anime then must not know how to do more like masculine cool women, , or tomboy women, which is just absolutely not true. Even within my hero academia, you have characters like Rumi, who is a great subversion of the bunny girl character, who in all other things is like super sexualized.

But here they're like, oh, she has a superpower of a bunny, which means like strong legs. Which she uses to fight people. , And , she is the most aggressive of. I think all of the characters in the entire series, , there's this scene where she is fighting , a villain and laughing while she's having her arm ripped off.

'cause she's just having so much fun fighting. O obviously this is the one that I think is the hottest 'cause as I've mentioned, I think Tom, Tom boys are, are hot. , But yeah, you don't lose the ability to. Tell these sorts of stories. When you tell stories that highlight women's femininity.

Simone Collins: I think, yeah, but when I actually, when I asked perplexity what famous female characters exemplify Maureen Murdoch's heroine's journey, it points to many of the same. It also, again, it points to, it points to Mulan. It points to Buffy Summers from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I mean, it also points to Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games who ask, who also totally follows a Hero's Journey format and acts in a very masculine way. I, I think a lot of this is just because, oh, I mean, it points to Barbie. From Barbie. I could see that I. Maybe I could

Malcolm Collins: see that. Yeah.

Simone Collins: So like maybe Barbie.

Okay. Barbie. It's a

Malcolm Collins: good movie and very based, by the way, you should look at our episode on it. It is the most Well, and progressives

Simone Collins: love that, that conservatives thinks that, think that it's based 'cause they're like, they're wrong. It's, it's one of those great war shock test movies

Malcolm Collins: for people who haven't seen that episode.

You, you should by the way go back and watch it, but within the Barbie movie. When she comes to our world, the only place she finds a patriarchy, remember how she believes our world is a patriarchy from the books that she reads. Mm-hmm. She found those books in a high school bookstore, her entire perception, and it's shown in our world that in our world, women actually are equal.

And she struggles to see this because she developed an understanding of it by reading feminist literature.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Anyway, before we move on from Maureen. I just wanna point out and give her one little tiny concession that Joseph Campbell, who Al was one of the major popularizer of the hero's journey, or at least people who like articulated it in more distinct ways was also an a*****e.

'cause here's what he said about like, her decision to make a heroin's journey, which I think there are lots of critiques that one can make of it. But his was, quote, women don't need to make the journey. In the whole mythological journey, the woman is there. All she has to do is realize she's the place that the people are trying to get to quote this such an a*****e thing to say like, no women shouldn't go on the journey when like there are countless stories going all the way back to mythical times.

That show women go on the hero's journey. So I don't, like he is completely discredited as well. Screw him. Young and psychologist.

Malcolm Collins: So, you know, not exactly the brightest fellow. Clearly, clearly not.

Simone Collins: Yeah. No, they're all youngy. Yeah. If they, we, they had us at youngie and psychologists, but like, I also, so after, after hearing just a little bit of this lecture, which I, I haven't finished yet.

I'm sure there's gonna be more in there that gets my blood pressure too high. I'm like, wait, it so like. Do feminists hate women? And so I, I look into, you know, major feminist campaigns and movements and things that they've done. And there are a lot of feminist concepts or like, movements, things that they fought for that I think are really anti-women in that they either demean women or, or restrict their rights and freedoms.

I mean, this, that, that I would call anti-feminist. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Tell me, tell me more. So they're,

Simone Collins: they're protective rape labor laws, so like way back in the early feminist days. Early feminist campaigns sometimes supported protective labor laws. They restricted women's work hours or barred them from certain jobs for their own protection.

And this was obviously intended to shield women from exploitation, but the laws often reinforced the idea of women as weak and incapable or limited their economic independence and reinforced patriarchal norms. Plus, I really think when it comes down to it, like your ability to do a job like masculine and, and, and feminine traits are your sex is, is, is, sort of manifested on a spectrum. There are men who have higher levels of estrogen needle men than women, and vice versa. There are women who are like super beefing strong and can work incredibly long hours and be a very successful Marine. And there are men who can't make the cut in the Marines. Right.

Like it's funny,

Malcolm Collins: we're still seeing this. Yeah. Like, so there were, the law recently in Sweden, I don't know if you heard about this. Uhhuh we're Sweden. Banned men from watching OnlyFans. So you cannot watch OnlyFans in Sweden. But it didn't ban women from creating on OnlyFans. So it's like, this is, this is clearly bad.

The women, you guys can continue to be exploited. Of course. The men, you, you shouldn't be on OnlyFans, you know, we should only have like men in Africa watching women on Sweden and OnlyFans or whatever. Americans

Simone Collins: mostly probably, I think OnlyFans is biggest in America. But like, my, my larger point though is that people should be.

Like with race considered by the, you know, the content of their character by meritocracy, by their ability to perform the job safely. And, and not by gender. And, and you are restricting women's freedom by promoting campaigns like this. But like to get to the OnlyFans thing, that's the other really big thing that feminism is.

They, they have all these anti-sex in anti pornography campaigns. Especially this is associated more with the more recent second wave feminism. Like people like Anna do Doan or Catherine McKinnon, they, they campaigned against pornography sex work. They argued that these industries were inherently exploitative.

And, and. I mean these, these campaigns infantalize women, they, they deny their agency, they contribute to the stigmatization of women who choose to work in these fields. And they also echo patriarchal attitudes about fa female sexuality and autonomy like we know people. Who have worked in sex work and who find it way better than other professional alternatives that they had access to at the time.

Like it, it is just insane to me. And also we know from when we talked about this extensively in various episodes that, you know, when you ban pornography in the area, not

Malcolm Collins: for sex work, we're not like we have a nuanced view on when it makes sense and when it doesn't make sense. 100%,

Simone Collins: but also like banning pornography in an area can can increase sexual assault.

Yeah, like, so, so do you want women to get sexually assaulted or do you wanna allow some people to watch like a little bit of porn? Like, I just, like, again, this is making women more endangered, less empowered less, less, less more restricted in their professional options. You know, women, women choose many professional lines for a reason.

I mean, OnlyFans you, you choose to. To do OnlyFans. 'cause often that is a lot easier than leaving your house or, or doing something you can stay home. If you're a stay at home parent, if you're taking care of an elderly parent you can be home with them and still make money if you're, if you're good at it.

So yeah, I just like, okay, again, we're restricting freedom. And then like more broadly, this, like, there's this concept of the personal is political and gender essentialism. So one of the mantras of the second wave is that the personal is the political and that that sometimes led. The policing of women's personal choices like marriage or motherhood or femininity.

So women who chose traditional roles and I, I see this on YouTube all the time. Yeah. Are being criticized as being complicit with their own oppression. Like, oh, she's a trad wife. Like she's, you know, feeding into this. And, and that in itself, I think is misogynistic. It devalues women's autonomy and diversity of experience.

It's saying, oh. Yeah, your choice is evil. It's not valid. You're not allowed to make that choice. You, you're not, you know, you're not a real woman or a real feminist or whatever. And like this whole point, like I grew up thinking, believing that feminism was, women should be allowed to do. Whatever they can based on their merit, inability.

And men should be allowed to do whatever they can based on their merit and ability. And that's it. Like not

Malcolm Collins: their privilege. This is, women should be put in a cage. Like, and this is why when people are like, are you a feminist? And it's like, have you seen what the feminist did?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like now when people ask me, I mean, 'cause before I, I was kind of.

Ignorance about it. I was not sure. I knew there's a lot that I needed to look into, and now I look into it and I'm like, oh,

Malcolm Collins: the majority of feminist movements have been malevolent to the intention of the female. We point out that when the, you know, suffrage movement happened, the majority of women were anti suffragettes to the point where mainstream suffragettes, like Susan b an Anthony said that she didn't want polling done of lo women to see what they wanted on the subject because she knew what the answer would be.

So she didn't want women to vote when it could hurt her interest.

Simone Collins: It's unhinged. It's unhinged.

Malcolm Collins: Now if you want to go into other studies on this. There was a study the Queen be phenomenon in academia 15 years after. Does it still exist? And if so, why? Okay. This is a phenomenon where women attempt to sabotage other women's work within an environment.

And so this was done in 2021, so recently. So it's like, is this still a phenomenon or was this a mark of something in the past like misogyny or patriarchy? Okay. Published in the British Journal. So, so social psychology with samples of 462 and 339 academic professionals, the research found that advanced career female academics are more likely than their male counterparts to underestimate the career commitment of women at the beginning of their academic careers, such as PhD candidates.

This behavior can manifest as withholding mentorship or expressing stereotype views potentially. Undermining junior women's advancement, well definitely undermining junior women's advancements. So this is what's, what's interesting is as time has gone on, you could be like, well, as we've dismantled the patriarchy, or where is the patriarchy least existence in like academia, that's the most monocultural place.

Yeah. This phenomenon is getting worse. The more feminist, oh my gosh. The more anti-women, women get. Well, and I think,

Simone Collins: again, like my, my, my, my. Conclusion here is that this is, this is subconscious. It's certainly not intentional intersexual competition. I mean, there's also like more innocuous and theoretical research like the the, the study titled off with Her Hair Intersexuality or Inter Intersectionally Competitive Women advise other women to cut more hair off.

Authored by Danielle Sakowski, and it was published in the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences in 2024. So just by year, well, I mean this just you

Malcolm Collins: as feminist, like encouraging women not to become not fat, you know, like Yeah. Well the,

Simone Collins: the research investigated whether intersexual competition among women could manifest as subtle sabotage through appearance advice in a hypothetical salon scenario.

And basically across two studies where women were asked how much hair they would recommend hypothetical clients whose attractiveness and hair condition varied. To cut off and the results showed that women who reported higher levels of intersexual competitiveness were more likely to recommend that clients, especially those with healthy hair, who wanted to keep it long cut off more than requested.

And this tendency was most pronounced when the client was of. Similar attractiveness to the participant, which suggests this form of like horizontal competition, which is I think interesting. That's

Malcolm Collins: really fascinating, where the

Simone Collins: individual target rivals perceived as as being on the same level as themselves.

So you're really like, okay, well we are in the same league as the men that we're probably targeting, so I really have to take you out. And the authors interpret this as is a possible subconscious act. Of intersexual competition, which I think is also playing out in the realm of feminism. And this suggests that subtle forms of sabotage, like recommending a shorter haircut than desired, just maybe a default competitive response among some women, even when there's no obvious rivalry.

And so, there is, there is some resource.

Malcolm Collins: Go ahead, study this. Like wanting a woman boss women wanting male bosses. Oh. And not only did you see in some studies women wanting less, I remember in one study not a single woman would've preferred.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah. 'cause I think intuitively they realize the threat here, that like there's just, and it's not.

It's not our fault. But it's, I do think like it's, it's, we are

Malcolm Collins: biologically terrible. Like,

Simone Collins: well, no, but I also, so I also, I don't know if I wanna say it's, it's not our fault because I have extremely low levels of estrogen. I mean, like, like I've said before, when I, in, in between pregnancies, I have to take the same level of estrogen that a na male trans woman has to take

Malcolm Collins: just to be, to be female enough? Any inter woman competition? I mean, do you No, I,

Simone Collins: I really don't feel it. And it, it really stresses me out. And actually research has shown that intersexual competition is influenced by personality. Like lower agreeableness and higher neuroticism, but also hormonal fluctuations.

Mm. So higher estradiol levels. In premenopausal women. So these are like, pretty much most of the women we're interacting with are linked to more appearance based competition. So this tendency for intersectional competition persists across lifespan, but the motives may shift based on. Like hormonal levels, like where a woman is in her cycle.

She's a high estrogen. Women plus also ay et all in 2014 showed that when women are primed with perceptions of mate or resource scarcity, they're more willing to use both. What does that look like? I think I remember it was

Malcolm Collins: one that talked about like, the number of women to men on college campuses.

Yeah. They're

Simone Collins: willing to, to use both indirect and direct aggression against same-sex rivals. But then there's even more, there's, there's a qualitative study by Brock that documented women's experiences for sabot other women in the workplace. Maybe you saw that one. Yeah. Including withholding information, spreading rumors, submitting false reports, and undermining professional competence.

And they were driven by insecurity, jealousy, or resentment toward women who are perceived as breaking traditional roles or achieving success.

Malcolm Collins: But this explains why conservative women are so much less b****y to other women than progressive women are.

Simone Collins: Why?

Malcolm Collins: Because there are fewer women in conservative spaces.

So they feel less mates scared. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, I guess they're just, well, yeah, it's not being triggered as much.

Malcolm Collins: Right. In the United States, for example, there is one progressive man for every two progressive women. Like that's gonna be get very like women in progressive phase. Spaces who are more likely to be feminists are also gonna be more likely to be mate scarce and have this ma scarcity priming which is going to trigger more aggression to other women, which in part might train, explain the incredibly low levels of mental health in progressive spaces.

It can also

Simone Collins: be, so there's a, there is one study from 2018 by Keys and Bogle that demonstrated women exposed to a provocatively dressed female. Confederate reported higher levels of intersexual competition and were more likely to engage in direct aggression such as negative body language, derogatory comments, and on the rivals appearance and sexuality.

And maybe in conservative spaces, women just aren't really exposed to many Provo, provocatively dressed women, so they're just, that also isn't triggered, like even among their own compatriots, they're seeing less of that. That let less of that behavior perhaps. So I don't know. But yeah, I mean women, women also have been found like by researchers to more frequently use derogatory tactics like slut shaming to make rivals appear less desirable to men.

Like, you know, spreading rumors, questioning fidelity. This is, this is a woman thing. But I also, I wanted to point out beginning, well

Malcolm Collins: men that don't really do this with other men that frequently. No, they don't. They really

Simone Collins: don't.

Malcolm Collins: A man did do this. What's interesting is, is how normally if in within in like male bro circles, you found out that one man had been down talking another man to try to sleep with a girl.

That guy was there, be fight incredibly socially punished. He'd have to

Simone Collins: defend. Yeah. Like, I mean, in the past that would lead to a dual

Malcolm Collins: in the president. It could lead to a fist fight. Circumstances. She wouldn't be punished that much. It would be like, well of course she did. She wanted to sleep with him.

Right. You know, like this is just girls being girls. But, but the Queen Beef Phenomen and I talked about, you know, this had been confirmed in a number of studies, recent ones as well. Rocha, grand Guro, etal 2024 Monds, etal 24. It, it just over and over again, you see women in positions of power will attempt to sabotage women with less power than themselves.

And in Goldberg 1968 are women prejudice against women. We also see you know, high rates of prejudice of other women within women.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And that's why I'm like, I'm a little bit more dubious if you are. This is a like. Low value women trying to gain status thing and more of a higher value women keeping lower value women down because also, hat tip to this YouTuber named Michelle McDaniel.

I love her YouTube videos and she did one recently on. Like haze influencers who are thin, and I'm gonna share with you, hold on. You, you've gotta watch this. I also, okay, so I'm

Malcolm Collins: not arguing that there aren't haze influencers. No. But you, you've gotta, you've gotta watch that the majority of haze influencers are fat.

But there's,

Simone Collins: I know, but, but there are also, now, there are also now. Thin, attractive women who they're like, there's this woman on TikTok, I'm gonna share the video with you. Her name is Chloe. She is, she has 2.7 million followers. She is thin, she's attractive. She clearly cares about her appearance.

She has makeup and I probably false eyelashes on. And she talks about how the idea of being thin is being sold all to all of us in one way or another. That being fat means you're a living resistance.

Speaker: I genuinely believe that in this glorious year of 2025, it is borderline radical and at the very least, an embodied political statement to be fat, chubby, plus-sized curvaceous, whatever you want to call it.

And so I say that being fat, for example, is an embodied political statement because you are living resistance against the culture against. This idea that to be valued, to be beautiful, to be seen, to be treated like a normal human being, you must look a certain way. I also wanna remind people that your body keeps the score.

If you are losing weight in a way that is unhealthy and unnatural to you. It's not just your body itself that is going to suffer, but your brain, your mind, your mental health, butt harm yourself trying to look like that. Whip out your woke card. Stay fat princess.

Simone Collins: She implies that that losing weight is gonna hurt your self-esteem, your body and your mind, and that losing weight quote won't just make your body and mind weaker.

It'll make you weaker on the whole. And she finishes by saying, stay fat princess

Malcolm Collins: with, hold on. I'm not disagreeing that these people exist, but the majority of feminist influencers, the majority of feminist thinkers look like she cows.

Speaker: Look at these venomous harridans. They went to university. Yes, over education leads to ugliness, premature aging, and beard growth.

Malcolm Collins: Like, yeah, but I think

Simone Collins: it's a lot harder for them to get a, a platform.

Malcolm Collins: When you're a

Simone Collins: hot woman, you get a lot. Well, so then

Malcolm Collins: what this says is that there are more low value market women if it's harder for them to get a platform. Yet they make up the majority of influencers in this space. It implies that feminism is actually a majority low market value. Women trying to sabotage high market value women.

Simone Collins: Yeah, maybe, yeah, maybe. It, it's also crabs in the bucket trying to pull them down thing. I mean, there's also this thing though that I, I, like, I had to learn about because it didn't make sense to me. Maybe as like an autistic young lady. I mean, first, like Chloe's saying this though, it makes me feel like it's, it's like a billionaire talking about how poor people shouldn't try to better life their financial circumstances.

'cause that would feed into the capitalist. Conspiracy. But also there's this, like, this pervasive behavior among women where you, you do this thing where you talk about like, oh, I hate my hair. And then everyone else is supposed to be like, no, your hair is beautiful. But even if it isn't, like you just have to lie to them.

And like. You, you kind of don't want them to make their hair better because then you know they're gonna be even prettier than you and you're gonna feel even worse about yourself. And it's, it's like that mean girl scene. Have you, have you seen like where they're, by the way, I would

Malcolm Collins: know just in case anybody doesn't know that what she's saying is wrong.

Being fat has pretty negative effects on your brain and you should like,

Simone Collins: no, you should really lose weight if you're fat. This, this, this Chloe, Chloe is unhinged. But I just sent you the mean girls reference it. I also sent you the clip from Chloe. But you can see the mean girls reference to like what I'm talking about here.

Speaker 5: . I used to think there was just fat and skinny. Apparently there's a lot of things that can be wrong on your body. My hairline is so weird. My pores are huge. My nail beds suck.

Malcolm Collins: So I, I think in

Simone Collins: the end, like feminism, like, it it is, it is, it has failed. I, well, well, okay. A lot of progress has been made, but I think that it's been made by society,

Malcolm Collins: Ted, for intersexual sexual competition among women. Yeah.

And it might have always been about that. Right. You know? Yeah. And I,

Simone Collins: and I think it's like the tale of the, the, the scorpion and the frog.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, but it was certainly never about uplifting women if even Susan Bian City didn't want women being polled about how much they wanted women to vote. 'cause she didn't want women's voice heard on that subject.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, my general intuition on this now is that like women gained rights and women do gain rights in various societies because ultimately it is the most economically productive and most logical and most efficient thing to do.

Malcolm Collins: You mean? So the corpus can use them?

Simone Collins: Well, whatever, just because it, it makes more things work better.

It makes more sense. People prosper and flourish more both men and women. When, when there's less systematic disempowerment of certain segments of society, and this applies to race, this applies to gender, this applies to all like stupid arbitrary. You're not allowed to do this things. You know, like it's weird that like, I think until like 1970 women couldn't even apply for a credit card without their husband.

Like, yeah, well it's stupid. That's so stupid. So I just, but I don't think that's a, actually,

Malcolm Collins: hold on. That's not stupid at all. That law makes a ton of sense.

Simone Collins: Think about it. Why?

Malcolm Collins: Because what you're not considering is when you're married, you have a joint debt. Right. And so it would make sense to me that neither a husband nor wife should be able to apply to a credit card without their partner if they are taking out debt in their partner's name which is what you are.

Yeah, but

Simone Collins: no, no, no. That's not what they were doing. This is, this is a woman in her own name on her own without any association because the problem with single, unmarried women we're trying single, unmarried women. Could not apply for credit cards, single, unmarried

Malcolm Collins: women. That's very different than a married woman not being able to take out a credit card without her husband.

I think they may be pulling a trick here.

Simone Collins: No, no. It was you, you, you needed to have a a I'll look it up

Malcolm Collins: in post.

I was right here. I looked up these laws and apparently they predominantly focused on married women not being able to take out debt in their husband's names without their husband's permission, because that's what you're doing when you're taking out debt. As a married person, it's actually quite wild that they were repealed.

, However, I will note the reason they were repealed is because many banks and states use these laws to deny. Widows and women before marriage, the ability to take out bank loans without a male co-signer like a father. , And so they did lead to sexism, but they were created for very sane reasons. I.

Malcolm Collins: But I, I think it might have been because I, I do not think, like, for example, I'd be mortified if you went and took out like a loan in, in our No.

Simone Collins: And that, that's super evil and bad and like Yeah.

I mean, I, I. It is kinda odd because I don't know.

Malcolm Collins: No, I can take out a credit card and you can, without my knowledge right now. That's odd. They don't check. They

Simone Collins: don't check my credit too, because I thought that like when you get married, you kind of get saddled with your partners like that. You get

Malcolm Collins: saddled with their debt, but not necessarily their credit score is my understanding.

Simone Collins: So if you try to apply for a mortgage, so let's see, hold on. Like if I had terrible credit and you had an amazing credit score. You applied solely for a mortgage without me, you'd probably be able to get it, because then it shouldn't matter. I,

Malcolm Collins: I don't know. I like the, the banks probably have a way around this, you know, but yeah, whatever.

Simone Collins: Anyway, though, I, I just like, my whole view on feminism has been destroyed and it, it's all the fault of some feminist who decided to do a lecture on Margaret Atwood and make it free on Audible Plus. So, thank you, ma'am.

Malcolm Collins: You lost one. An anti-feminist because you think that feminists are fundamentally anti-women.

Simone Collins: Right, but it's their nature.

Malcolm Collins: It this is, this is the scorpion

Simone Collins: and the frog. The corp on the

Malcolm Collins: log. Yes. You never put a woman alone in a room with another woman? No. She's

Simone Collins: like, trust me bro. I will carry you across this river. I will make, I will make you better. Stay

Malcolm Collins: past. But what's funny though, it's not like a modern feminism problem.

It's an always feminism problem. Feminism has always been about women's mean. That, I mean, makes sense

Simone Collins: evolutionarily as well. I mean, what have women historically needed to make sure they have? They, they, they spend immense periods of their life. Very vulnerable, either pregnant or with a newborn. They need resources, and resources are limited.

Malcolm Collins: This is the antiar in the woods argument. You're like, I would only feel good if I ran into a man in the woods, not a woman, because statistically, the woman is more likely to, she will feed

Simone Collins: me to the bear. Or, or the, or the predatory man. Either way. I'm, I'm not, I'm not good with her. It's not, it's not safe.

Malcolm Collins: But yeah. Fun, fun argument. I love it. Simone, you are a genius and a great wife. And I think for tonight, just reheat the meal from the other night in the microwave. It doesn't matter. Or, or reheat it. However, well, I can make

Simone Collins: joza too. I don't, I don't have a fever right now so I can function and you got me vitamin water, so I'm gonna chug one of those.

It will gimme the energy. I need to power through this. Are you make good

Malcolm Collins: za or bad? Za.

Simone Collins: Good. Za not burnt.

Malcolm Collins: No, but the fan, the fancy kind that we get at the Asian store.

Simone Collins: Yeah. The only, we only have the stuff from the Asian

Malcolm Collins: store. Okay, good. 'cause you tried to sneak in some other stuff.

Simone Collins: No, I didn't, but, but you did buy Bepi, go Giza from the store and you didn't like it as much.

Do you not want me to make that at all anymore? Be, because that's,

Malcolm Collins: what's Simone? Simone, Simone. We tried to get something new this time. Can we try whatever the new one was.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but I don't have a lot of room in the small freezer where I have already opened bags and I opened that bag. Okay. Then just

Malcolm Collins: use the bag that you already opened and won't finish it.

Simone Collins: You gotta power through it. Malcolm. You bought it.

Malcolm Collins: I didn't like it last time.

Simone Collins: Well, you were just like, this isn't as good as the other kind. But then you went and bought totally different kinds anyway, but you have to go through a bag before you open a new bag. I

Malcolm Collins: understand. Thank you.

Simone Collins: You know, someday our kids won't only eat dinosaur nuggets and baby pizzas and they can actually help you go through the foods that you don't want to eat anymore.

They'll actually eat za or who knows, even, you know, some of the curries we make. But right now they refuse anything remotely flavor. You

Malcolm Collins: are the true queen bee of this family,

Simone Collins: Because I slap everyone down.

Malcolm Collins: You, you never do. You only work to uplift everyone. That's the thing. Women work to uplift their families.

It's not like women only pull people down, like women have a vested biological interest in their families. Well, and there, there are many,

Simone Collins: many, many anecdotal examples of amazing female mentorship and mother daughter relationships. And look, Malcolm, your mother. I mean, she may have called me a vortex of failure, but she also mentored me a great deal.

Vortex

Malcolm Collins: of failure is one of the best insults I have ever heard. Yes. I mean, she, it was so vivid and illicit, like, but

Simone Collins: she, she did far more, extremely kind, high investment, high effort things to me than she ever did in the form of insults and threats and derogatory remarks. And calling me a c**t. So, I, and I liked those things too because they just brought drama to the table.

It was like

Malcolm Collins: the, the, the, having a women that do help their families is what they do.

Simone Collins: They do. And like, I, I'm so

Malcolm Collins: grateful. Families, yeah. They have nothing to help and so they just tear down all of society.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean this is Intrasexual competition and, and, and, and we have to remember this competition.

What is it about? It's about getting resources for yourself and your family.

Malcolm Collins: Well, right, but the point being when you do not have a family and you are only on intersexual competition. Yeah. Then it's

Simone Collins: just, then it's just pointless.

Malcolm Collins: And for me,

Simone Collins: yeah. There's no one who

Malcolm Collins: gets to benefit tear down society, tear down society and sake tear off site and San society.

Yeah. But

Simone Collins: yeah, actually you're right though that like women are very, very good at enriching their own. Like if you are in the sphere of a woman. You are safe. But that is not gonna happen in the workplace.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. But they do that by destroying everything else, which is I think why the progressive party has become so toxic is because I'm a party that's dedicated to the destruction of society.

I love you so much, Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you too. I think, I think I hear Octavian rummaging around downstairs. Sit down. We go.

Malcolm Collins: By the way, Simone the, the woman, so there was a big woman who is running this like program to try to get men to vote Democrat. Yeah. She got back to us in an email. I.

Simone Collins: I said a thousand to one choice or odds. That is insane. With willingness or just, I know.

Malcolm Collins: I don't know. I haven't read it. You can read it now. I'm too, I don't like being like high stakes emails like this.

Simone Collins: Looks like she responded only to you.

Malcolm Collins: I don't have it. Oh, she responded only to me. That really sucks. Yeah. Okay. So I have to actually read it this time. Alright, well, let's see. I will try to read oh God. She thinks she has nothing to do with it.

Simone Collins: Oh, so you just got the wrong person. Okay, so my odds were made. No, no,

Malcolm Collins: it's the right person. She just thinks that because I mentioned the project, I thought she had something to do with it.

Simone Collins: Oh, you can look more into it. Okay. Ready?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Speaker 7: Here what I need to pick some of, whoa, here

Speaker 8: I made.

Speaker 9: I think it's,

Speaker 10: oh my God.

In this episode, we explore the impact of bad therapy and redefined concepts of trauma on birth rates through the lens of a National Review article. The discussion references shocking findings from a New York Times article by Michael Leitz, highlighting the cultural shift in how Americans define harm, abuse, neglect, and trauma. This shift has led to increasing rates of estrangement between parents and adult children and a nearly impossible standard for parenting. The conversation also dives into the toxic culture of trauma, the role of the mental health industry, and how therapy practices encourage cutting ties with family. We also discuss the implications of these trends on demographic collapse, supported by both personal anecdotes and broader societal observations.

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be with you today. Today we are going to be talking about how bad therapy and therapists and bad psychology tanked birth rates, and we're going to be doing it through the lens of an article in the National Review titled Bad Therapy Tanked the Birth Rates, oh, this was

Simone Collins: shared with us from by a fan.

Malcolm Collins: Yes.

Simone Collins: Thank you.

Malcolm Collins: And it is going to reference a New York Times article. Those are written by Michael Leitz. So we'll be going between their quotes of the New York Times article and their commentary on these quotes of the New York Times article. Okay. Okay. And the New York Times article is like shockingly based.

So if we start with the New York Times article here, over the past few decades, Americans have redefined harm, abuse, neglect, and trauma. Expanding those categories to include emotional and relational struggles that were previously considered unavoidable parts of life. Yeah, adult. Children seem increasingly likely to publicly even righteously cut off contact with a parent.

This cultural shift has contributed to a new, nearly impossible standard for parenting. And then the other writer says, potential parents have become more and more atomized, cutting themselves off from their own parents and their future children. Mm-hmm. Leitz drives into this was the rise of estrangement between parents and their adult children.

Most of the time it's the offspring, not the parents who initiate the initial instr estrangement. Yeah. As Lebowitz rights in 2019, Carl Piman, a Cornell sociologist, found that 27% of adult Americans reported being exchanged from a family member. They're the true numbers, probably higher. The most commonly severed relationships were . Parent slash adult child. And in most cases it was the adult child who initiated the estrangement. Many psychologists, a physiologists believe this is becoming more common. Mm-hmm. Now note here, I love that they keep calling it the adult child. They don't mean this as an insult. Oh my gosh.

Simone Collins: Right. But they're not even thinking about it. But we, we've come to infantalize adults so much that we're just like. Ah, is it is a toddler child? Is it a teen child? Is it an adult child? Is it a geriatric child? Everyone's a child. Now, no one can handle themselves.

Malcolm Collins: Let's talk about like the few points of data that are really highlighted here so far.

Okay? Okay. First is that Americans have come to redefine harm, abuse, neglect, and trauma,

Simone Collins: right?

Malcolm Collins: This is absolutely true to mean things that people used to think were normal. A parent not affirming you for whatever you wanna believe about yourself, that's trauma. A parent not being with you all the time.

A parent allowing you to feel bad. You know, we have been people. Act guilty. Act guilty. We abuse our kids 'cause we use light non-pain. Corporal punishment. Which is absolutely wild considering you know, that we fight with our kids regularly just to get them fight because it's, my cultural tradition is fighting.

And my kids are, are very good. Even the girls very good at fighting. And they enjoy it. Oh, she

Simone Collins: loves it more than anyone else.

Malcolm Collins: A hundred percent. She starts it more than anyone else. And she thinks it's hilarious.

Yeah, she does.

So you get this, this I to pick

Simone Collins: the

Malcolm Collins: fight

Simone Collins: with a journalist yesterday.

Remember? What,

Malcolm Collins: what, what does she do? Poking

Simone Collins: her provocatively at dinner.

Malcolm Collins: Laughing, poking her. Oh, she's trying to bait that. Yeah. That was fantastic. That was, that was dur Spiegel, Dury Spiegel coming over to do a piece on us. She was very nice.

Simone Collins: I, I felt bad. I tried to distract her at the end so she could.

Malcolm Collins: So, so the point here is, is that these things, it is really bad that our society has redefined them. And as we've said before, the reason the urban monoculture has evolved to redefine them is because it helps to cut people off from their birth culture. Mm-hmm. And their. Natural support network.

And you see this throughout cults, an easy way to pull somebody from another culture is to convince them that that other culture is something that they should hate. And if you can recontextualize normal parts of growing up as abuse or neglect or trauma you know, you can, you can more easily do that.

Yeah. And, and here, I think more broadly like. I just find trauma culture more broadly so toxic. I think if anyone is ever talking to you about trauma, like for me, that's a huge red flag. Trauma can always be recontextualized. You actually, a journalist was talking to us. I. And they're like, well, you know, it sounds like you lived in like a really, like tough childhood.

Like, why are you like so bullish on your parents? And I was like, I, that my parents are who they are. Like I can choose to feel the however I wanna feel about them. Like why would I choose to internalize those things? I. A traumatic narrative when that does nothing but hurt me. And, and when I say this, you know, I, I left my family at 13 where I went to like a prison alternative and I never lived with again after that.

And a lot of people can be like, well, that sounds horrible. I'm like, whatever. Like I needed, you know, to, to, to grow tougher, right? And this is because I choose my narratives.

Simone Collins: Thought. Absolutely. Well, but also I think it, it, it's reflective of your tech puritan worldview, which is a deterministic worldview.

Mm-hmm. Where like if someone's wretched in some way, like that was, you know, it was predetermined, you know, that they, that was their product of accommodation, of their genetics and life experiences. Neither of, you know, they, which they had control over. Everything they did was out of free will. Absolutely.

But also, you know, they are what they are and so we just have to accept it. And you know, you, you don't,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. Well, I also find this idea of the, I mean, the second point here, which I find really interesting yeah. One is they are who they are. Like, learn to accept it. Like, yeah. If your parents you know, acted in line with who they are as people.

Mm-hmm.

I, I think. You know, you could say, well, I really detest who they are as a person. Or you can just be like, I understand why somebody with these beliefs in these perspectives would've acted in that way. Mm-hmm. And, and then you can look to selves and say, do you have an aspect of that personality?

Do you have an aspect of those beliefs? And you

Simone Collins: probably do, because they probably do. I mean, if they're genetically your parents.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, I've noticed this is people who bring themselves to hate their parents often hate themselves.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And because you, you, you really can't do one without the other.

Well, and

Simone Collins: similarly parents who kind of actually hate their partners kind of als also hate their children.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I've noticed this a lot too, when, when parents hate their partners, they hate their children as well

Simone Collins: because they see so much of them in them. It's, it's really sad.

Malcolm Collins: The other interesting thing is, is this predominantly happens with adult children, IE people after they're already adults.

This isn't young people in abusive scenarios. This is people who, as adults, recontextualize past scenarios to to, to internalize them differently than they did at the time.

Simone Collins: Well, I think it's important to highlight that there is teen rebellion. You know, there's is, you know, all my parents are so unfair and my parents are terrible.

They don't understand me. But there's a big difference between that teen rebellion and what's happening with adults.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they're just going totally no contact which is

Simone Collins: and recontextualizing everything as, as trauma. And honestly, no matter how progressive and perfect you are by the urban, urban monoculture standards, as a parent, you will probably still end up if you're child maintains the urban monoculture end up being the villain.

Nice. Because if, let's say that you provide your child with gender affirming care. And then, you know, of course, you know, the stats indicate that that probably isn't gonna go so well for them. Like, they're gonna continue to struggle throughout their lives. So it's, it's not unlikely that even then your child's gonna be like, how did you let me do that?

How could you? Well, I mean,

Malcolm Collins: keep in mind, Elon was supportive of his kid going through gender affirming care when they did it. He took him to the psychologist. He bought the medicine. Yeah. You know, he tried to be as supportive as possible. Yeah. And the trans kid turned on him before he went anti-trans.

You know, the, the anti-trans thing was, well, all this came

Simone Collins: out after it was published in a book that in court proceedings. She, she had asked to disavow herself from the last name Musk and, and disassociate herself from her father before he did anything to wrong her. The this, yeah. Before he started saying, you know, she's dead to me, et cetera,

Malcolm Collins: my son is dead, whatever.

And, and this is all downstream of the culture that got their hooks in her whiz. This stuff you can never affirm enough. You can never be nice enough to people within the urban monoculture. There is no, I have to say though

Simone Collins: of, of all the trans people in media, she passes pretty well.

Malcolm Collins: I'm just, I'm just saying, well, she had a lot of, you know, money to work on this stuff.

Yeah. It helps

Simone Collins: to, yeah. I mean, a, as a parental provider, a, a parental support person, until everything ended, like guess you did a, the point

Malcolm Collins: being is you can't just capitulate enough. In fact, people would be like, oh, like this is why I would recommend like nobody, like if you're in the urban monoculture, it might even not be worth having kids because your kids will eventually hate you.

They're, I mean, not necessarily. So, you know, by some,

Simone Collins: some reports children report closer. Friendships with their parents than ever before. They're living longer with their parents. They're not leaving the house. I mean, they are increasingly infantalized, so Oh, they, they'll

Malcolm Collins: either hate you or be infantalized.

Yeah. The they'll either,

Simone Collins: yeah, the other hate you or remain babies for their entire life and, and be dependent on you and live off. You'd like leches. Which, you know, I, I think I would prefer an estranged child who, yeah. I would prefer to Strange shout too. Speak me more. Because I mean, at least they're, they're probably more likely to be thriving and they're, they're not gonna thrive if they.

Live off the, the parental doll for their lives.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. There is, there is no good outcomes within that culture. Well also keep in mind that the culture is, Overton Window is always moving. Yeah. So yeah. What, what is good

Simone Collins: and, and, and moral today. Maybe evil tomorrow.

Malcolm Collins: Tomorrow. Right. You know, like, you know, it used to be good and moral to say you're colorblind and now that's racist.

Right? Like what? Yeah, like the, these things change. And so you, you just can't win and they forget that they ever change. They forget that they were ever anything else. Mm-hmm. They like completely culturally erase that.

Mm-hmm.

Well, of course there are cases of real abuse where the child ought to cut off the parent relationship.

The rising trend should astonish us le notes that many of today's o adult children often cut parents off what a generation ago would've been viewed as. V Venial sins. Anna Russell, who interviewed estranged families for the New Yorker found that reasons for estrangement included, that people quote, felt ignored or misunderstood by their parents, or believed that a sibling had always been the family's favorite.

Several described a family member as a quote unquote classic narcissist or quote, unquote, toxic. Now, I would note to you though, they're not reasons to cut a family off at all. And all of those are perceptual issues that rely on your individual perception.

Simone Collins: Well, if children also, if they acted as logical economic actors, unless a parent actively did damaging things like take out debt in your name.

Or demand money from you. There, there are plenty of, of instances of parents being in a net drain. I think for most kids it is better to maintain a relationship even with a mediocre parent because they may be more likely to distribute resources to you in some form at some point in the future.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So, so the, the, the point I'm making here is, is, sorry, I know that you're being like, well, you could get something out of them, but I'm just saying like, this is a really crazy reason to cut family off. And keep in mind that if you cut off your parents, your kids are astronomically more likely to cut you off.

Oh

Simone Collins: yeah. I guess, yeah. You're normalizing it, aren't you? This

Malcolm Collins: is also what I said to the reporter. I was like, why would I ever normalize. Contextualizing my relationship with my parents in a negative light. Huh?

Where if I do that, my kids are gonna do that. Why would you ever do that? Like that?

That seems very stupid unless your parents obviously crossed a major line. That's a good point.

Yeah. Not

that this hasn't happened within my family. Like I, I've mentioned that my dad had his grandfather take out a million dollars of debt under his name, and this was in the 1980s. Mm-hmm. So, but he never disavowed him, never disavowed him, never.

He, he

Simone Collins: really just dealt with it. It seems there, there aren't stories of major confrontations even. It's kind of wild. No.

Malcolm Collins: Well, he ended up becoming quite wealthy because of it. I mean, he never gave me money and I don't care. You know, like I, I, I'm fine with that. I don't need, like, even, even if he could have, he could have given us money, that would've been great, but he didn't.

And, and I appreciate that part of our family tradition. This like really anti-nepotism tradition. And at least he didn't take out debt in my name. Right. Like that's the, that's the where I really lucked out with my dad. No big pile of, oh my God, you took out a million dollars of debt in my name and invested it in your company.

But oh well. It worked out for my dad, by the way. He ended up growing the company a lot. And, and he never had a big salary at that company, but he made a lot of money, was the money that had been invested in it.

Simone Collins: Love a happy ending,

Malcolm Collins: right? Love a happy ending. Well, and the idea of like a classic narcissist, I think, here's what I'd say.

If, if you believe, you know, more. Then like one classic narcissist, you are the narcissist. The, the, the classic narcissists are not particularly common and I find that narcissistic people, they cluster are very common to see other people as narcissistic because they don't understand how anyone could not be centering them in every single thought another person has.

Simone Collins: Oh, interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. That's why you see it so frequently. Well, I was

Simone Collins: talking with one of our friends about like, oh, you know, I hope your, your kids are in incredibly respectful to you in the future, given everything you do. 'cause this person goes way above and beyond. She's, she's incredible.

Some mother, and she's like, man, like, I'm really afraid of parental estrangement. And, you know, the urban monoculture is just, it seems to be the primary driver of it, but she pointed out that she was calling an insurance company. About some issue this morning. And they were telling her that there's this, this concept called mental health parody that was created under Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act in the United States.

Right? And what it does is it, it, it expands mental health and substance use disorder coverage requiring that starting in 2014, all new individual and small group health insurance plans have to cover mental health. And substance use disorder services at parody with medical and surgical benefits.

So suddenly what, in 2014 it was possible to get a lot more mental health care. And I'm sure that this increased the number of people who went through the process of getting diagnosed with problems because they knew then that they would get coverage for treatment and PR probably a lot more people were encouraged to seek out diagnosis.

And I think part of this is, well,

Malcolm Collins: I mean, it's an industry.

Simone Collins: Yeah, and it probably funded the industry a ton more. So it's not just that we've seen this cultural shift in how people are contextualizing parenting and trauma and how therapy is playing out. I think that also in 2014 with the Affordable Care Act, there was this shift in funding, insurance funding for mental health services that enabled us to

Malcolm Collins: grow.

What I've noticed with therapists is that they will often search for conflict with family. They will look for areas of conflict with family to sort of grow because that creates dependency from the client. Yeah. The more trauma they can build in you, the more you are gonna want to consistently see them.

Mm-hmm. You know, any, any, from my perspective, any you know, psychologist who has regular permanent clients is not doing a good job. You know, you, you're supposed to be fixing them. Right. And, and you know, the. ARD talks about this where he had to go to a conservative psychologist to get anything done.

The conservative was like, okay, here's what you need to do. Here's the list of blah. The other one, the progressive, he was like, just looked for conflicts, looked for conflicts between him and people like, like, and in validated them.

Simone Collins: And it's a very feminine versus masculine way, right? Like the, the constant advice given to boyfriends is when your girlfriend presents you.

With a problem or grievance. Do not try to solve the problem. You're going to want to try to solve the don't do it. Don't solve the problem. Don't make suggestions. Well, but we, what

Malcolm Collins: you do need to do as a doctor is solve the problem. Like you don't wanna be like, oh wow. Yeah, that cut looks really bad.

Simone Collins: Not if you wanna, well, I mean, as as a medical doctor, yes, but as a mental health doctor, if you wanna maintain Right.

A good book. Well, I mean, as

Malcolm Collins: a medical doctor, if you want recurring revenue, you just you know, physically disfigure somebody and then so they have to keep coming back to you. It's not like, well, if you're a mental health

Simone Collins: doctor, if you find new traumas that need more investigation, more work. Yeah.

And if you help the client directly identify with their mental illness. Which in, in, in turn also requires more work, a huge amount.

Malcolm Collins: It was something like 70% of like Gen Z primarily identifies with a mental illness or are considered a core part of their character. We, we went over this survey in another episode and it was really chilling.

So anyway, if we get all

Simone Collins: these stats, 'cause they're too distressing, I'm like, just no, no, I'm just not gonna believe in that world. We're gonna make it better and it's just not gonna be a problem anymore. That's, that's the solution.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, I, I think with estrangement the thing to focus on, and this is the thing about the, the insurance.

As soon as insurance covers it, well now you can go all the time, right? Like, now you can make this a part of your routine. And now you're around somebody who is going to, you know, hugely. I, I mean I would with our kids, given where the mental health industry is today just strongly warn them against not engaging with it at all.

I. Because I think that that's where a lot of this parental estrangement starts.

Simone Collins: Yeah, agreed.

Malcolm Collins: Dr. Coleman, who counsels families experiencing estrangement, has seen children cut parents outta their lives because of financial conflicts, political differences or negative comments about the child's partners.

There's a lot of estrangements that actually happened to decent parents. In quote, he told me, I have actually seen that. I have seen parents who warned kids rightly do not marry that person. Mm-hmm. And the kids cut their parents out over it.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that's a really tough move. 'cause I, I appreciated your mother's magnanimity toward me and the way she just instantly accepted me understanding that dynamic.

But a major problem in the birth rate crisis is that families have. Stopped taking an active role on their kids dating, which includes passing judgment on partners and I, I don't know what the best way to navigate that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, I mean, I think you just need to actively help them find partners. Well, yeah,

Simone Collins: and create expectations too of like.

Hey, we're gonna judge them. This is a normal thing that we do. Yeah. And this is what we handle. Do. I mean, you're

Malcolm Collins: judging every partner is negative. Then clearly you're not doing a good job as a parent because you're not actually adding anything to the conversation. Right. You know? Yeah. If it should, from the child's perspective, feel like I.

70% you like 30% you hugely warn against. Yeah. I think that would as a kid make me feel safe. Yeah. More positive

Simone Collins: than negative interactions or experiences on that front would make a huge difference.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But I, but the, the idea of like cutting conflict, and we've seen this with a lot of the far left, I.

Cutting ties to your support network and your family over political differences is absolutely insane. Agreed. You know, I, my family has both, you know, conservative and democratic politicians in it. Like for example, my grandfather was a conservative congressman but my uncle ran the Fed and ran for, I wanna say Congress or the Senate as a Democrat.

And you know, obviously we're conservative. Well, and my brother's family's conservative and my dad's family is conservative, so we're all conservative now, but at one, at various points. I was progressive when I was younger, and my family didn't cut me off at all. Like they didn't, it, it, like, it would come up in like debates, but like, I can't imagine.

I think that this is mostly progressives cutting off conservatives because the progressive, like the original, that's what

Simone Collins: the, that's what the research says. The conservatives are willing to maintain friendships with progressives and often do, often in a closeted way because in turn, it's clear in the polling data that most progressives feel that if a, a friend turns out to be conservative, the friendship is over.

If they voted for Trump, yeah, the friendship is over. If a husband, I mean, I've watched. Various podcasts of people being like, I just found my husband voted for Trump. Should I divorce him? Like

Malcolm Collins: what? Well, the region, the culture evolved. This is because the urban monoculture cannot stand up to scrutiny.

If somebody within the urban monoculture is talking to somebody outside it, it's very quick to see how imperialistic it is. Mm-hmm. And how aggressive and, and, and colonial it is. Mm-hmm. In its desire to eradicate cultural differences in, in sort of. Enact a global cultural genocide so that everyone has the same views of gender norms, has the same views of, of sexuality, has the same views of, you know, their relation to the environment.

And, and th this is self destroying because it frames itself as good in opposition to colonialist and imperialist systems, right. Without admitting that it is itself a European colonialist and approved. So it, it, it is so self-defeating as soon as you think about it. So how does it protect itself? Well, the iterations of it who were open to engaging with people who still talk to conservatives. Mostly they went to the right. I mean, that's us and everyone, you know, and a lot of people we know on the new right. Were the iterations who just had this well cut off any contact with anyone who thinks differently.

They were able to stay. And so through cultural evolution developed this strategy of cutting people off. And, and not talking to anyone with a different perspective. Yeah. Which is you know, sad to see, especially when it's, it's kids and parents and everything like that, right?

Mm-hmm.

Now I'm gonna go to the other author again.

In other words, millennials were inundated with a lot of bad therapy. Unfortunately, gen Z and Gen Alpha have been steeped in it even more as Abigail Schreyer has relentlessly reported. Most of this bad therapy isn't coming from the mouths of licensed therapist or psychiatrists, but from school counselors, podcasters and Insta influencers, the people that you should

Simone Collins: trust most.

Can you gimme one second? Andy's crying and she's really sad, and I'm just gonna feed her milk and make her feel better. I'll be right back. Look at all like she was, she like desperately wants to sleep, but she refused to eat. So she slept until she got too hungry to sleep. And now she's like both tired and hungry.

Yeah, too cool for school.

Malcolm Collins: All right. I am so, I'm actually really gonna disagree with the writer of this here. I think that she is. Hugely underselling. How much of this is coming from actual licensed therapists and psychologists? Mm-hmm. And not just influencers

Simone Collins: and

Malcolm Collins: really long podcasts I listened to about somebody who's currently in school to become a psychologist.

Oh. And they were like. Or a psychotherapist specifically, and they were like, I cannot believe they're, like, eight outta 10 of my classes is just woke nonsense, right? Like, mm-hmm. They're, they are teaching things that we know are wrong. They are constantly trying to culturally convert us. This is just a litmus test in a factory for breeding far woke culture because the, the, the woke culture learned it could use these industries for conversion if you ever go, yeah.

To like a, a Scientologist, a theme reading. It's gonna feel very much like a modern therapist meeting. Um hmm. Yeah. Let's go,

Simone Collins: let's go back in time and find your traumas.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, let's find ways to split you from your family and your birth culture. Katie Woodman wrote about the rise of therapy. Speak for the New Yorker in 2021.

If we are especially online or roaming the world of friendship, wellness, activism, or romance, we must consider when we are centering ourselves or setting boundaries, sitting with our discomfort or being present. We practice self-care and shun toxic acquaintances, Tara Isabella Burton, wrote how this slip some masquerading as self-care destroys relationships, community, and ultimately our very humanity.

And, and this is all true, right? Like, it, it. There are words that you can use as sort of like, when I hear them, I'm like, massive red flag. These words are things like trauma or toxic or, you know, normal people don't say that. That's not a word that normal people say. This isn't a word that comes downstream of real psychology.

This is a word that comes downstream of individuals attempting to implant within you things they can use to control you and create dependency.

Simone Collins: Absolutely. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And then back to the New York Times piece. The idea that we are, quote unquote, authentic only in so far as we cut ourselves off from another, that the truest or most fundamental parts of our humanity can be found in our desires and not our obligations.

Risk cutting us off from the most important truths about being human. We are social animals. Now, I, I disagree with the second part, but I love the first part of this, which is to say that, that you. The truest parts of you are your desires and not your obligations. The truest parts of who you are are your obligations.

Yeah, your obligations to the future of humanity. Your desires are largely irrelevant because you didn't choose them, but if you look, yeah, it's, it's like your

Simone Collins: hind brain versus your prefrontal cortex. What do you wanna identify with more?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But if you look at the urban monoculture, you know, with, with the whole concept of pride, pride parades, everything like that.

Mm-hmm. It is your desires, things like your arousal patterns that define identity rather than your obligations. As we always say, you know, the point of tism is we have to pay to the future, the debt that we owe, the past. We have to pay for the sacrifices our ancestors made so we can have the privilege of existence

Yeah.

To the future. Like, that's the way that you pay them back. And individuals who don't do that are fundamentally just stealing. They are stealing from their ancestor sacrifices. And, and I find it to be quite grotesque. But yeah, I mean,

Simone Collins: the punishment for that, because people have done this throughout the history of humanity is they're snuffed out.

They, yeah. They don't inherit the future. Like there, there is justice for this. It's just. A lost opportunity and a waste. So it's, it's disappointing because there are lots of people who I think are brilliant and funny and interesting and insightful and intelligent, who have been overtaken by depression and Analist philosophy who decide that they're definitely not going to try to inherit the future and.

I don't, I don't want that to be the case. I think that they, you know, they don't, I don't agree with everything they say, but I love their takes. Yeah. And I'd love to see someone continue to have these takes in the future, because someday they are going to be useful and we're losing them.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, absolutely.

Yeah. This kind of therapy, which chalks up negative emotions to quote unquote trauma or quote unquote toxicity, encourages clients to marry condo, anything and anyone in their lives that has bad vibes, even mom and dad and even their future children. And I've, I've seen this as well. Yeah. Anything that, yeah, her,

Simone Collins: her rule with objects.

Marie Kondo is a Japanese influencer and organization, and her rule with objects is. Is it useful or does it spark joy? And if it doesn't, then you thank it and you get rid of it way, or,

Malcolm Collins: well, in the most are often trans individuals. Mm-hmm. I see this a lot with like, trans women who had kids back when they were men, and they very frequently, I almost say normalistic, cut off their kids.

So that they, because they, it allows them to more, you know, authentically live this new identity, which is often just about sex and self, you know, getting off as, as frequently as possible. But I mean, the, obviously the, the positive thing about all of this is there is, you know, justice in the end.

These individuals are not truly happy. You can see our, the life of a Cina Byte episode about Anna Valen, the vice reporter who went after Keisha about just how sad her daily life is. This is not a, a, a recipe. Like the great thing is all of this stuff, like, oh, do this to chase after self affirmation.

Better do this to chase after pleasure better. It, it gives you the exact opposite of everything that's on the lid. Right. Ultimately, you know, but in the short term, you know, it's easy to see how people are like drawn into this, right? Like, oh, well my parents don't affirm me for what I wanna believe.

Therefore they must be evil. And it's like, no, they're trying to protect your long-term mental health.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. But by urban monoculture standards, they are neither useful, nor do they spark joy. So they must

Malcolm Collins: discard you,

Simone Collins: muston them.

Malcolm Collins: Neither duty nor obligation nor reconciliation nor forg ness holds waddle in this therapeutic model.

If your family makes you feel icky sometimes just leave. Dad voted for Trump. No need to answer those phone calls. Mom is upset about your lifestyle choices. Easy. Just never talk to her again. Did the idea of having kids make you feel overwhelmed then just don't. Just don't. Like the infamous divorce story, I, this is all true, right?

Like, if, if, if somebody is just like, ah, whatever, like I don't wanna deal with it. I don't wanna deal with any, this is like trigger warnings. I don't wanna be exposed to anything that makes me feel anything other than pleasant. Right? Right. I, I, and that's what you, that's how you self-improve, right? You, you, you expose yourself to those things.

You learn how to deal with those things.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Are constantly avoided around those things, unable to develop resilience and, and therefore extremely brittle as a person, which is not gonna produce good outcomes. Not good,

Malcolm Collins: Which was, I mean, it's, it's really, it's really sad to see.

But it's, it, it is the core tenant of the urban mono. Don't expose yourself to anything that's emotionally challenging. Yeah. Family doesn't work when you do that. Although I will say I've been surprised how easy family has been for me. Like I remember growing up and I do remember like conflict and everything like that.

I mean, my parents did end up getting divorced and everything. And, and so I thought of all that as normal in a relationship. And I just don't, I have almost none of it was my wife. And I've seen this in our friends as well, who I just don't see them have the same conflicts. That is interesting.

Simone Collins: Everyone in, in.

Like our age cohort that we know that's married seems to have a very, very functional marriage.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I never hear of conflict or fights than talking down about each other.

Simone Collins: Yeah. That's interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I think we're more mature. I mean, every generation to an extent improves upon the last and, and, and, and in some way.

And I think that. You know, emotionally the iteration of our generation that's going to survive. I mean, yes, there's a part of it that's totally fallen into the urban monoculture, but they're not gonna survive. They're not really relevant as like active generational players, but the ones who are having a lot of kids seem to be out much more emotionally healthy than their parents generation.

Yeah. Especially if they also had a lot of kids. Oh, she is being so sweet. She's just looking at daddy.

Simone Collins: She loves seeing you. Always lights up.

Malcolm Collins: And I do think that this is contributing to demographic collapse. I, I, I know that as well. I think that there are absolutely no point here. Like the infamous divorce story published in the Atlantic a few years back.

Empowerment means pulling the plug on family ties. The author Honor Jones wrote a 3000 word essay about why she decided to end her marriage after watching her children's drum and fantasizing about kitchen renovation. And then this is what this author said. I wanted and, and just when you're hearing this, you just hear the entitlement, right?

Like the, this is a vile, vile person. If she thought this was normal, and then that sharing, this would earn her praise, which it did was in the urban monoculture. I wanted to be thinking about art and sex and politics and the patriarchy. How much of my life, I mean, the architecture of my life, but also his essence, my soul, my mind.

Had I built around my husband, what could I be if I wasn't his wife? Maybe I would microdose, maybe I would have sex with women. Maybe I would write a book. I had caused so much upheaval. So much suffering, and for what? He asked me that at first again and again. For what? , So I could put my face in the wind so I could see the sun's glare.

I didn't want to say it out loud. Like, he's like, for what? Like there's no reason for you to be doing this. And then it's this. When I talk about this search for self-affirmation, this isn't just code for the trans people. This is everything. What she just wanted was self-affirmation, which she will not find real self-affirmation is only found in obligation and duty.

Simone Collins: Yeah, clearly her, her cry for help is, I just want to feel something that she in, in choosing to believe that her life as, as a mother and a wife. Didn't have any value whatsoever. She felt like she couldn't feel no,

Malcolm Collins: she wanted sex and art and having sex with women and microdosing like she could do Well, you can do all that while being married and a mother.

No one's stopping her. Yeah. No one stopping her.

Simone Collins: You know, she's just being lazy.

Malcolm Collins: I, I, I really actually, I almost wanna do a follow up on whatever happened to this woman. Honor Jones did, did, did her life fall apart? I mean, I'm sure it did. Like that's always the end of all this, right? Like, your, your life ends up falling apart and you end up hating yourself because it's, it's a horrible mistake, the advice that the urban monoculture gives you, but it gives it to you so that you become more dedicated to it and more reliant on it.

And the state.

Any thoughts?

Simone Collins: I think we're starting to see a sea change in the direction away from this, not just because of these two articles that we're citing here where they're like, Hey, this is a problem and we need to do something about it. But I think there's just a lot of stuff where people are recognizing, like the whole post-Trump era, like we have to, we have to re rethink what the left is and what woke is, and.

Actually focus on outcomes that are positive. And I think we're going to see a mimetic market correction on this front.

Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

Simone Collins: I, I don't know how much it can really happen though with therapy because these codependent relationships are extremely strong. And we've spoken with people who, who see a therapist multiple times a week and know that they have a codependent relationship and talk with their therapists about the codependent relationship, but have absolutely no plan or intention.

To do something about it, which is really disturbing. So I don't know if that's gonna change, but I do imagine that public discourse around it may change.

Malcolm Collins: That makes sense. As

Simone Collins: long though, as there's this mental health parity regulation in insurance funding in the United States, though, I think we are gonna see higher levels of this kind of pathologization of family and discomfort because.

There where there's money, there will be an industry, you know, there will be incentives to create these narratives.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I love you Deone. What are we doing for dinner tonight?

Simone Collins: I am on death door. I can barely move, so I'm just gonna do, just reheat

Malcolm Collins: that other night thing that I have in the fridge.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I'm gonna do the Burmese mint chicken with pineapple. Simone.

Malcolm Collins: Simone. Simone. Yeah. I think we didn't register what I said. I have a lot of leftovers from another night in the fridge right now. Oh. With rice. And it'll be good for another day. So just reheat my leftovers. It's not very much

Simone Collins: food.

Have you eaten anything else today?

Malcolm Collins: And then you can make me some gza. So it's enough food.

Simone Collins: That's extra work, but, okay. Great.

Malcolm Collins: Wait, then don't. Okay, then don't make me za. Don't reheat it just. I, I guess, make curry from another night and I'll reheat that during the day time.

You are an amazing woman. Love, love you.

Simone Collins: Thank you.

I love you too. You're so inspiring and I'm so glad to live with you. And I'm gonna take Tylenol and

this will pass. I

Malcolm Collins: feel this way. Not much I can do about it, I guess.

Simone Collins: No,

Malcolm Collins: it does. I love you too.

Speaker: I wanna go pink candy because I want blue cotton because I didn't touch anything. You didn't touch anything. So you want blue cotton candy and Titan. You want blue cotton candy? Or do you want pink cotton candy? I want pink cotton candy. Okay, so toast. So you're gonna have a blue stick and, and Titan and Octavia.

Speaker 2: You're gonna have pink cotton candy. Yeah. And toasty. You can have pink cotton candy on a blue stick. Does that sound good? I want pink. No, I like blue, blue, blue. Well, we'll see. I want, we'll see my friend. I like blue. You like blue?