Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

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In this insightful video, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into the anime "Grandpa and Grandma Turn Young Again," exploring its pronatalist themes, cultural significance, and artistic merits. They discuss how the show effectively promotes traditional values, happy marriages, and intergenerational relationships while addressing Japan's demographic crisis. The couple analyzes the anime's emotional impact, its portrayal of older generations, and its unique approach to showcasing the beauty of long-lasting love. They also touch on broader themes in contemporary anime, the potential influence of government policies on media content, and how this show compares to other popular anime series. This video offers a thought-provoking look at the intersection of entertainment, cultural values, and demographic challenges in modern Japan.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] But now I want to talk about some of the pronatalist propaganda in it as well. And

Simone Collins: it's, it, I would say it's almost to the point where it takes you out. of the plot as a viewer.

Malcolm Collins: There is one scene. Where the old lady goes to an old store that she used to frequent in the train station. And the train station's completely deserted and the store owner marks that, they're probably going to be going out of business soon, but what can you do?

This is just the way it is with changing demographics. And the old person turns around and gets one of those, like black miasma, like anger things around them. And she goes but we need to resist this. Why are we not even fighting?

 The show is meant to encourage you to not like normal anime, thirst after young women but make you thirst after a long and happy relationship. That is what the whole show is. It's a thirst trap for getting married and having a long happy relationship and being intergenerationally invested in your family.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I am [00:01:00] excited to be here with you today and we are going to be doing something we haven't done in a while on this podcast, which is discuss anime because I am a big anime fan and you are a medium anime fan, but you're very like good to lean into the culture and everything like that.

Like you used to dress up for conventions and everything. I was

Simone Collins: president. and founder of my high school's anime club. I've been to numerous anime conventions across multiple countries. I love anime. I just don't watch it because I don't have time.

Malcolm Collins: What other country other than the US? The UK.

Simone Collins: I went to a, an anime convention in the UK.

It was fantastic.

Malcolm Collins: Where

Simone Collins: you

Malcolm Collins: were

Simone Collins: at

Malcolm Collins: Cambridge.

Simone Collins: No, actually. I was randomly traveling in the UK and I had a day free and there was an anime convention and I'm like screw it. I'm obviously not going to go to the British Museum. I'm going to go to an anime convention because that's how people spend their time.

Malcolm Collins: So this last year we were in the UK for ARC, which is like a conservative convention. When you were wearing one of your [00:02:00] traditional outfits which, you often wear similar to this and a bunch of anime goers, there was an anime convention at the same time. I was actually wearing

Simone Collins: my fascist outfit, not this one.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah, more fascist looking. They still

Simone Collins: thought I was cosplaying though. They

Malcolm Collins: thought you were cosplaying. They're like, oh, who are you cosplaying as? Like that. So great. But we are going to be talking about in this episode An anime that I think is really interesting for a number of reasons. Yeah.

So I'll break down the reasons why it's interesting to me. One is the pro natalist propaganda, which is put. throughout the anime and is very heavy handed and I think very effective because it paints the reality of Japan as it is today or rural Japan, which is depopulating right now in, in this very stark term.

So we'll get to that. Two, it is an anime that is incredibly simplistic in terms of the characters it presents and the roles it gives them. Yet, [00:03:00] despite being in a, in the plot structure more broadly. It's a slice of lifestyle anime. Very chill, very, you could say it's very cookie cutter in many respects.

And yet I think it is incredibly effective as a piece of art. Which is really worth highlighting about this show. As to why it's effective as a piece of art. I'll just quickly go into this because I think that this is useful to talk about and it can bring us into the plot of the show really quickly.

Despite being very generic in almost everything it lays out, and I'm like, okay, I'm judging art by arts quality, right? I'm judging it on three metrics, okay? The first metric is it able to invoke the emotional states that it is attempting to invoke in me. Art, Can be used to invoke emotional states.

This anime does that spectacularly well. Two, and this is a personal preference thing. Are those emotional states positive? I do not want to watch shows that just make me cringe or make me sad. [00:04:00] Or I find that really dark.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I find that unpleasant in a show. And this is,

Simone Collins: I would not say that makes me feel good.

Malcolm Collins: What show? Code Geass. Code Geass? Oh no, I really like all the strategy in Code Geass, and Yeah, so you found it intellectually stimulating enough where all the dark sadness didn't get to you. Yeah, no, it's a power fantasy, and it's my kind of power fantasy because I identify with Lil Luke so much.

Come on, I get it. Rollo! Justice for Rollo. Hashtag justice for Rollo. Anyway, we have another episode where we talk about Code Geass, that people can go check out if they want. But anyway it very effectively makes me feel an emotional set. And you watched some of it too, you'd agree that it's a conveyor of emotional set.

Simone Collins: Nailed it.

Malcolm Collins: It's very wholesome. It does a very good job of conveying what, a good marriage is, what it feels like to be in a good marriage, why you would want that from an emotional perspective. [00:05:00] But I also think the feeling of real love, it conveys very well. As opposed to After this huge buildup, are you going to name the anime?

Yes, I'm going to name the anime and describe the plot. Okay. So the name of the anime is Grandpa and Grandma Turn Young Again. It sounds like a kid book title, right? It does. Grandpa and Grandma Turn Young Again. It looks like a kid's book as well, but the anime is incredibly this new way of titling anime titles whereas like a long title and it's just descriptive of the plot of the show.

It's become this recent thing in anime in like the past two to three years. I think it

Simone Collins: makes sense because when you do internet searches for streaming shows, you're often just searching by what you know of the plot, like what you've seen in AMVs, what you've heard. heard from people talking online. It's Oh, what's that anime where the grandpa and grandpa turn young again?

Malcolm Collins: And

Simone Collins: it's

Malcolm Collins: what's that anime where the character is a main character and overconfident? That's like the way anime is named these days. But anyway, what about that anime where they slay demons? No, that's not as good because [00:06:00] demon slayer actually sounds like it, but grandma and grandpa turned young again.

So the show is about an old loving couple in Japan. They eat a magical apple and become, they gain the ability to transform into their younger selves whenever they go to sleep. So basically they turn young again. And the, and actually the final thing that a show needs to do to be good art is it needs to make me thick.

It needs to make me have new ideas that I've never had before.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: The show is remarkably effective at that. Yeah. In other words, it

Simone Collins: needs to change you. You need to come out from watching that show a different person fundamentally than who you were coming into it. And that is valuable art for sure. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I would argue that. Anybody who watches this show, and it's an only one season show, and I don't think they're gonna, I haven't watched the last episode yet. I am on the last episode right now but it's pretty heavily foreshadowed that the couple's going to die in the last episode. So I, it's not like you're gonna get another season.

The last episode, by the way, I've since watched it is incredibly strong.

Malcolm Collins: It's a [00:07:00] short, tight, really high quality show that's going to make you have new ideas. But the thing is, how does it get people to have new ideas? How does it push a pronatalist agenda and how does it push like positive themes about relationships and stuff? So the first thing that it does just over and over throughout the show is it's made me realize by having the couple be young, attractive like anime protagonists looking but then doing things that you see old people do all the time.

Humanizes those actions. And I realized that I hadn't considered just how kind most old people are because I saw them as like this different class of human that has different expectations around them.

Simone Collins: Yeah, different

Malcolm Collins: standards.

Simone Collins: But also the brilliant thing is simultaneously, They are modeling and creating an attractive aspirational model for a functional, happy [00:08:00] relationship, which is beautiful because that's a big problem these days.

People don't have a good model for what a healthy marriage looks like. And so this, it's brilliant to take an old person relationship and subvert it into a young person, like hot young person relationship.

Malcolm Collins: And it does a great job of elevating the values of earlier generations by making them young and hot and in a modern context.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: But still living with those older values.

Simone Collins: Huh, having made sacrifices, having lived with austerity, having, yes, built each other up. And

Malcolm Collins: We should talk about some of the austerity that's constantly, so I'll go over a quote from the show right here to give you an idea of the type of values that they teach.

But there's a line here where they go, extravagance is the enemy, wanting things is wrong, the mentality of restraint that was drummed into us during the show on era. And it also shows a lot because, there's occasional flashbacks to their early relationship, what it was like dating during World War II and [00:09:00] the environment that created for them.

But it also recontextualizes it as a point of marriage. Here's like an action that was recontextualized for me in the show, is in the show, they're constantly trying to hook up their grandkids with other kids so that they can have great grandkids, right? That's The goal, right? And it is, as a young person, when you see this action, it feels like somebody is being intrusive into your life, right?

That is the way that people contextualize parents hooking them up and stuff like that. Yeah. It's

Simone Collins: seen negatively these days, like meddling.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and in the show you realize, oh god, it's not meddling at all. It's that families are intergenerational units, and this is the way that old people relate to each other.

Two new relationships is something I often think about myself. What kind of people are my kids going to date? What kind of people are my kids going to marry? How can I help them? Yeah,

Simone Collins: honestly, most of the friendships that we established now are established in an [00:10:00] effort to build a friendship and dating and professional network for our children.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but it made me recontextualize it. Oh, they're not doing that to metal. They're doing that because they want to help.

Simone Collins: And it cannot be overstated just how much of a role parents and extended family used to play in matchmaking and how much of the this absence of this matchmaking contributes to current relationship market failures because no one really talked about that role.

And even back in the past, I think younger people used to Complain about it or whinge about it when really it played an invaluable role and parents put a ton of effort into this and people who watch Bridgerton can totally see this while Bridgerton is not very accurate in its costuming or plot or anything like that It is still pretty accurate in the involvement of parents in the matchmaking of their children and the huge amount of effort they put historically Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: and there's and it also takes a pretty hard anti life [00:11:00] extension of stance, which I find very interesting and obviously, aligns with our value set.

There's a few very sweet scenes around that. For example, in one scene And this also shows like the way it gives you better models for relating to your parents and other people in your life. So there's one scene where the son who has become a doctor so that he could care for his mom you know, because she had a chronic disease and that's what motivated him to become a doctor.

And she's just proud that he's a doctor. Like she's just excited to be a doctor and he feels like he's been a failure because he hasn't been able to cure her disease and it shows this misaligned exclusion. can sometimes get, which is what does the grandmother, what does the mom want from her son?

It's to be successful and to have a family of his own. But what does he want for her? He wants to cure her, right? And he is unaware [00:12:00] that he has already fulfilled all of the expectations she may have had of him and done the kindest thing he can for her, Through achieving his own success and stability, he doesn't need to solve her problems to, to have served what she wants of him.

And there's also a great scene there that the, you'll probably tear up when you see it where the father turns old again because they don't realize that they can control this early on. But she's still in her young body. And the Dr. Sun is crying over this because he's okay, so this is a temporary thing, and now she's gonna turn old again, and she's gonna die and in the other room, she is also crying and very distraught, but it is because She now believes that she's going to outlive her husband and maybe even outlive her own children.

And she's I just really and I think that this shows this contrasting that he sees the horror as her dying and yet she was totally okay [00:13:00] with dying. That is something that is made clear throughout the show. Yeah, death is

Simone Collins: not a failure scenario once you have kids.

Malcolm Collins: Great life there are a few times, there's another scenario where she begins to become worried that they might live forever and she is consoled when the husband points out that, no, the the, it's a metaphor in the show, hourglass, it doesn't matter, but he, it seems that the sand's coming out of the hourglass and eventually they are going to die and that they only have maybe a year or two of this so there's that, and then there's the other part of the thing there where he finds out, this is after the part where you were watching that she only has a couple days left to live but he has over a year left to live.

And so he secretly, without her knowing, of course, makes a deal with a a shrine. Yeah, to trade his lifespan so that they can die at the same time. I

Simone Collins: would man, if only we could die at the same time.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, I feel so much better if I could do that. Like that to [00:14:00] me, like when that happens in the show.

He keeps it secret from her because he doesn't want her to know about this. But like you as a person You would

Simone Collins: tell me and I'd be thrilled.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Me as a person watching this, you would understand and I would understand. I would want, if I knew I could just trade a portion of my life to extend your life and then we both die at the exact same time.

That's like a win across the board. As long as that's happening

Simone Collins: after our kids are sorted and taken care of. Yeah, that would be the

Malcolm Collins: one caveat. We both

Simone Collins: agree that if it comes down to Both of us would die before we could get our kids in order. Then we just have one of us survive long enough to get them in order.

I was actually really surprised by her lucidity on this point. , and so I went to ask her, you know, to elaborate on her position on this later, And she was just like, you know, knowing both of us the way she does it, both of our quality of life would be so low without the other one. That it would only make sense for one of us to trade part of our lifespan for the other person. And when I heard that, I was like, yeah, that, that shows real, you know, empathy and understanding of my [00:15:00] perspective.

, and it really made me appreciate her.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But I thought that was really interesting in terms of contextualization because usually when people do. this life exchange trope in a show, you feel like they are giving up something. Oh, yeah. Like

Simone Collins: it's so tragic, et cetera, et cetera.

Malcolm Collins: But when I saw it in this show, it was, it's not played like that.

It's played as Obviously this is what you would do. Like, why would you do anything other than this? This is just such the obvious choice when you are in a happy relationship and you like being with someone. So it does a very good job at and showing the purpose of these people's lives is their family, is the intergenerational part.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But now I want to talk about some of the pronatalist propaganda in it as well. And

Simone Collins: it's, it, I would say it's almost to the point where it takes you out. of the plot as a viewer. You're like, Oh, wait, okay, we've got to the point where there's [00:16:00] propaganda.

Malcolm Collins: I liked it because it was a major theme of the show.

And it was a theme of the show that the show is meant to encourage you to not like normal anime, thirst after young women but make you thirst after a long and happy relationship. That is what the whole show is. It's a thirst trap for getting married and having a long happy relationship and being intergenerationally invested in your family.

But , to give you an idea of like how dystopian it's framed as so two of the young people in the show who end up getting together and deciding to take over the family businesses. The young girl, actually from the beginning, Simone, she ends up deciding that she wants to take over the family's apple orchard.

And she is obviously slated to, you can see they like each other, become married and have kids with a young boy whose family also has an apple orchard not an apple orchard, a different type of farm in the area. And one, the show paints this, is this enormous sacrifice that these kids are doing this for their families.

Yeah. Because all of the old people just [00:17:00] expected to shut down all the farms. That is the expectation in these communities these days. And when the two young people were talking, because they plant a tree together and they're go, can I come back to this in 50 years? And, she's of course, and then they're imagining what that area of the country is going to be like in 50 years, and they comment that they might be the only people left living in the area and it's made very clear in the show that they probably will be the only people left in the area.

There is a run. One of the first episodes is on a sporting competition. And the conflict was between two

Simone Collins: little villages in the countryside.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And between two little villages in the countryside is their village no longer has any young men to attend. And the other village has this it's seen as this super advantage, like the, almost the mean kids trope they play it as except nobody's mean in this show.

The advantage they have is two young brothers and none of the other villages have that. Yeah. And so We have children, we have youth. Yeah, we have youth! And it's one of those brothers who ends [00:18:00] up dating the girl. So it's one of these everyone's nice in this, everyone's sweet, everyone gets, happy endings in this.

You really don't need to worry about any negative emotions from this show. But That's like what they're showing is they're imagining a completely depopulated region. Whenever there's a side plot, like the Suns company is failing and doing layoffs and they say they're failing because of changing demographics.

And because the people are disappearing. There is one scene. We're like, this is one of the really took me out of it for a second. Where the old lady goes to an old store that she used to frequent in the train station. And the train station's completely deserted and the store owner marks that, they're probably going to be going out of business soon, but what can you do?

This is just the way it is with changing demographics. And the old person turns around and gets one of those, like black miasma, like anger things around them. And she goes but we need to resist this. Why are we not even fighting?. And it's it's like a sign of, and it's what this show [00:19:00] is, which is to look starkly at the reality of demographic collapse and then say, but you can fight this and you fight this with love and happiness and wholesomeness. And stop with the degeneracy.

Okay. You just be happy and wholesome and understand that happy and wholesomeness includes degeneracy sometimes, but that's not like a focus of the show, right?

Here. I need to note that in the first episode of the show, there are two or three jokes that are rather lewd about the. , grandchildren thinking that the grandparents younger forms are attractive. This is not a theme that goes throughout the show. It's just in the first episode.

, and I guess they did it just to try to catch them horny young people who are into more normal animated comedy and in an attempt to trick them into watching a wholesome show.

Malcolm Collins: [00:20:00] Which I really like as well. So yeah, did you have thoughts on the show that you wanted to elevate?

Simone Collins: I'm just thrilled that. Old people are getting some air time.

I feel like old people don't get enough of it. And it's nice also that Japan is, I think, trying to humanize this population that is going to be in a very delicate and precarious situation. And it's an element of the pronatalist conversation and demographic collapse conversation that actually isn't being had as much.

Originally, when people talked about demographic collapse, they talked about who's going to take care of the old people? And I haven't really heard that in any of the current discussions. It's more what are people of childbearing age going to be doing about this? Instead of, what about people who are retired and who need help and who need attention and love from an increasingly dwindling younger person population.

And so I appreciate [00:21:00] the extent to which this also elevates the experiences and worth and humanity of people who are more advanced in years, as it were.

Malcolm Collins: I think more than older people, it does a very good job of showcasing why a good marriage is desirable. And I think that if you ever struggled, like, why would I get married?

Why would I compromise for somebody else? And this show, both of the people heavily compromised for each other. It's actually made it pretty clear that when they got married, they were both They're into each other, but also had many reservations about the marriage. , in one of the flashbacks, she's asking could this farm boy really melt my heart?

And then in the present time, she's Oh yes, he completely melted it. Or completely or something like that. She says in response to what's happening in the flashback, but it's made clear that wasn't something that happened like on their marriage day or something like [00:22:00] that, it was something that happened after a lifetime of dedication to each other.

And also what the point is in marriage. And I think that this is one of the things why some people can't have good marriages. When they've been too steeped in the urban monoculture is a line from the show where she's younger and she's before they get married, she goes, I bring you so many unhappinesses, it causes you so many problems to be with me.

And he goes just making you happy, just doing things that make you happy brings me so much happiness that all of the other emotions that I'm being barraged with become meaningless in the face of that. And I think that's the way. Most, happy married couples feel about the way they interact with each other.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I agree. I agree I'm curious to see one. I feel like there might be some legislation in Japan that is encouraging a certain amount of pronatalist propaganda or demographic collapse [00:23:00] propaganda more widely because this feels

Malcolm Collins: You think it seems subsidized. I think it's doing well. Other people I know have said that this is an amazing show.

I think this is No, it is

Simone Collins: an amazing show. I just feel like this is not the only anime that's throwing in laying It's spreading it on thick, as it were. And I just wonder if And I think this is one of the most effective forms. of intervention that a government can support. So that's another reason why I'm thinking Japan's doing it, because all the subsidies, all this, like the payouts and the, in some cases, nations curtailing reproductive rights, I don't think those are effective interventions.

I do think that shows like this and I would love to see more of that. I'd love to see it in the United States. I'd love to see more great anime coming out that has lots of families. Spy family is fantastic. You already talked about what's that other one that's super printed the list. Darling was Frank's.

Yes,

Malcolm Collins: Franks. Yeah, Franks is heavy pronatalist propaganda. Guru Mangan though, even in the older days, was Another thing I've noticed in anime, and I was [00:24:00] actually telling her this, is there's a lot more kids in anime than I remember historically. People are put in dad roles. For example, I was just watching Re Monster, which is not a show where I'd expect him to take on this dad role, and yet he does, and he has little kids, and it's seen as his dad role is like this really elevated thing for him.

It's something that all men should desire. And three kids he has so also above repopulation rate. And I think it might be government programs that are causing this. And I'll do some research before this goes live and add, have I been able to find any of these?

After some research , it seems pretty clear that the Japanese government did not sponsor this and has not sponsored any of the recent more per natalist anime. , this seems to be a totally grassroots movement. And, , it makes sense. I will say that they have sponsored some anime before, but it's mostly been for military purposes. , to try to get people to sign up for the military or to try to make them look good to other countries.

, there is no evidence that they've supported any pro natalist animate. And given that they do make it public when they are sponsoring enemy for military [00:25:00] purposes. , there's a reason they would keep it quiet if they were doing it for pro natalist purposes, which is even less controversial.

Malcolm Collins: But I suspect it's more just that it's gotten to the point where your average Japanese person realizes that this has become an existential threat to their culture and way of life.

And that it's to everyone, whatever your job is to be fighting this from the position that you have in the same way that like progressives try to insert the quote unquote message into everything they're in a society where that message hasn't caused as much damage yet.

And so there's, saying to an extent and able to be like, Hey, fertility rate is an issue. And like, why aren't we even fighting? I love that sentiment. Been fighting. This was all about intergenerationally passing on this responsibility. And that's something that's also talked a lot about in the show is the idea of the sort of intergenerational duty we have to those who came before us and sacrificed for the things we [00:26:00] have in the life we've been able to have.

Because I think that's often a really easy thing to forget in the show really brings it home for me.. Yeah.

So I watch a lot of like Fundy, snark videos and stuff like that, where progressive women are sneering at conservative, or really just any form of diverse lifestyle. And they, I love. Sorry, side note here that progressive has like diverse TM, which includes like three different pre-approved lifestyles, Like gay. Polyamorous. Or living alone with cats. but any actually religiously diverse lifestyle is seen as like axiomatically bad. , but anyway, one of the things that they always complain about is this idea that you would have any sort of duty to sacrifice for your ancestors or your culture or your family.

And, you know, you can go watch our review of Starship troopers to get an idea of what I mean by that.

You know, you have this idea where presumably it's perfect [00:27:00] from a progressive perspective, you know, you have totally quality, total gender equality. Everyone uses the same restroom, but they view it as an inhumanly, evil and fascist society, just because it's a society that expects some sacrifices to achieve.

Not, not. Not even have everyone not even forced to everyone, but just to be able to exercise political power and violence over other people because political power is always violence. , and they're just like, no, we can't have that. We need a world where nobody has any responsibilities expected of them.

That that is the ultimate thing they're fighting for. So. You know, to see this value system turned on its head and somebody saying, well, actually, no, you do. Oh, something to the people who have made sacrifices so that you can exist, which are your ancestors and which are your cultural group. And that's a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with.

And I am quite excited for this really toxic view that you owe nothing to anyone.

, dying out, which it is fortunately due to [00:28:00] fertility rates.

Malcolm Collins: And I also would say another thing, the show does really well and it's able to do this because it has these older characters, is show that you can have an evolving culture that is still true to the spirit of the cultures that came before it.

So as much as there's this push and the anime for pushing society I mean for keeping, connection to the ancestral traditions and everything like that. There's also a big push for things like gender equality throughout it And that like we do need to evolve the way that we're interacting with each other in some ways and that scene is like a great thing.

In the couple and for example in one arc the woman loses her memory. And so she's around the husband and gets to basically judge him from the perspective of her before she met him and she notices that he's doing all sorts of chores that she thought of as woman's chores like cleaning the dishes and stuff like that and doing them without expectation of her wanting something from [00:29:00] him.

And she's like, Oh this is great. Also in that arc, I do think they feel, do a very good job of showing the type of love that you build in a marriage. Doesn't feel like Oh,

Simone Collins: passionate romantic love. As is typically depicted among young couples.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, she's trying to wait for this feeling of the young person being around her partner and she doesn't realize the way that she feels for him until he's gone for a day.

And she's and that's when she was like I don't love him yet. And I don't have any attraction to him, but I just feel incredibly anxious when he's not around, like not really complete when he's not around. And I think that people who have been married. and have good marriages, absolutely know this feeling of being away from your partner feels really off. Final thoughts here, Simone?

Simone Collins: Recommend the anime, love a good wholesome slice of life anime, and I'm glad that you, who is not typically a slice of life [00:30:00] kind of guy on the anime front, found one you like.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no I definitely think this is going to be in my top probably four or five anime I've ever seen in terms of quality.

Simone Collins: Okay, number one is Food Wars. Number two, no, okay, number one is Gurren Lagann. Number two is Food Wars.

Malcolm Collins: No, Food Wars is actually above Gurren Lagann for me in terms of entertainment value. It's really good. Yeah, probably Food Wars Gurren Lagann. Code Geass, and then this one? Actually, no, it might be this one next.

Then Code Geass. And Thermaroma, the original Thermaroma. Oh, yeah,

Simone Collins: Thermaroma, yeah, the original, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: not the new nonsense. God, I'm trying to think if there are some other that I just like absolutely love that I'm freaking hearing. I'm sure, afterwards

The one in my top five here that I absolutely forgot here that easily replaced there may Romi. Is B got an H Kia.

Simone Collins: Maybe the Goblin

Malcolm Collins: Slayer.

Oh, yeah, Goblin Slayer. Goblin Slayer, I'd slot above this one. I think Goblin Slayer is slightly better than this. Too dark for me.

Simone Collins: Too dark. I [00:31:00] don't, see, again, I don't know how you could handle that. I couldn't. There was too much. Infanticide and .

Malcolm Collins: But that's what the first episode is known for people going into it.

It is gritty. They come in

Simone Collins: strong. They come in

Malcolm Collins: just right. So was Goblin Slayer the thing that really does for me? I think it models very good cultural values. Yeah. And it models

Simone Collins: objective function extremely well.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It models the concept of objective function, which the pragmatist guide to life is all about the first book we wrote.

So I really like it from that perspective. And it is moderately in food wars, like Ernest's talks about just entirely for entertainment purposes. I also think that the main character, it models relationships really well. I think Food Wars does that. It models tenacity.

Simone Collins: It models vitalism, extreme vitalism.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. A very good modeling of vitalism. And I learned a lot

Simone Collins: about food science, food culture and food history. Yeah. It's educational.

Malcolm Collins: Education. You've got to watch it.

Simone Collins: It's

Malcolm Collins: for learning. So if you like some of these other shows that I've been listing and I'm [00:32:00] like this show is among them in terms of quality definitely go check it out.

It is top tier.

Simone Collins: I love you, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: And I see you like in the show, I just see our relationship modeled so well and it does such a good job, even as somebody who's in a happy marriage reminding me what I have in terms of a relationship with you, getting me think about if this was me having turned young as an 80 year old with you, what would I be doing with our life today?

If I transformed into a young person with kids again, taking them out on the river, which I'll do again this weekend, that's one thing I'd probably be doing, making sure we pick berries together making sure I plant some trees so yeah, there's a lot of things I do, and I

Simone Collins: Also

Malcolm Collins: though, we're going to

Simone Collins: make a, if we're lucky enough to live to an old age, we're going to make a pretty cute old couple, let's not die too early,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, so I what I guess is the feeling that the show gives me is the same feeling that you give me. [00:33:00] And it's something that these ultra progressives, I think, just totally lack in their life. Because even when they're married, they don't really live as a unit in the way that you should when you're, like, in a happy marriage.

They live As

Simone Collins: atomized roommates.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the atomized roommates who exist to be each other's friend who they have sex with, instead of be a huge chunk of their identity, a half of their identity in terms of how they relate to reality. And because of that they're never gonna experience there's so much that they're missing, and this show Served you on a platter, I think so what they are missing.

What did you get a blowout?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: All right. In between episodes, I'll let you take her to get changed. Okay.

Simone Collins: And thanks Malcolm. You're amazing.

Malcolm Collins: Poor Indy.

Simone Collins: I love you, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: Love you too.

Simone Collins: Will make a link for [00:34:00] the Scott Alexander one, but I got to handle this first. Go for it. Okay.

One final note, I'd make about the show here that I thought was actually pretty interesting is it is shown that this phenomenon is not unique to them that occasionally in this world, they live in golden apples. Present themselves to old couples shortly before they die. That have lived long, happy, and healthy marriages, dedicated to their partner and their community and their, , defendants.

And it's a really sweet concept.

It'd be quite cool. If that was real.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I'm so excited

Simone Collins: for today.

Malcolm Collins: I like these talks. You are amazing. I love them too. So I will get started.

Simone Collins: Did you Listen to that podcast, by the way, where Jenny was

Malcolm Collins: most of it. I stopped listening to the part where she had gotten to like the smack.

Just because I had other, I had to run into the side scrollers episode. Does it get bad after [00:35:00] that? It sounded like she was beginning to get pretty critical.

Simone Collins: She was critical and she defended her

Malcolm Collins: points.

Simone Collins: It's a

Malcolm Collins: piece of media made about us that we're referring to that they were doing an interview.

Would you know what a podcast it was on?

Simone Collins: Yes. I can tell you,

Malcolm Collins: Probably in one of my tabs right now. I know

Simone Collins: I've written it down. It was on the front burner podcast where they interviewed Jenny. I think what really came out was just like a difference in culture for the most part. Like she. She came to our house and the house was cold and, Torsten was on his own upstairs for a long time and, you practiced corporal punishment in front of her and she asked you some questions about the population size of pronatalists and then she just came to this conclusion that like one, We don't love our kids and to, or we say we're data driven, [00:36:00] but we're not actually doing data driven stuff.

Malcolm Collins: It's because all of the ways that she would have us change the way we're parenting our kids would be incredibly high. Like you, you've got to be around your kid 24 seven. It's you can't have a lot of kids.

Simone Collins: Also Torsten wouldn't like, like our autistic children really want alone time and we give it to them when they want it.

And we check in on them quite frequently, but that doesn't change the fact that sometimes they get overstimulated and they just want to be by themselves, especially when we have visitors.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But I think it just showed what, so there was that, the, Oh my God, they sometimes have screens and then the corporal punishment, both of which were just things that become a norm whenever you get a family above a certain size.

Simone Collins: Also though, I think she's mostly playing up the sensationalized element of it, the more monstrous we look, the better the story is. So using terms like they had tied the screens around their children's necks. One, I don't even know. Those straps broke [00:37:00] off right away.

Malcolm Collins: And I just one of these actually had a strap that day.

Simone Collins: One of them, one of the must have, you wouldn't have made it up, but like it, it, there's a big difference between A kid putting carrying a satchel of an iPad with a strap that's used for

Malcolm Collins: Especially if you don't find one. There's none down here. There's none down there.

Simone Collins: Versus having a parent that tied it to their neck. It sounds like those horse feedbacks. I'm actually

Malcolm Collins: more offended and this is the core to me, offense of the article and lie of the article is they are not iPads. I would never get my kid an iPad. That is way too expensive.

They are 100 mini tablets.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah they're Samsung galaxy. Tabs the A1 variety, which is they're very cheap variety that you can get for 120 bucks, I think and then if you get them used, you can get them under a hundred dollars and then there's these 10, like large rubber casings you can get for them.

That we use for our kids.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that includes straps so you can hang them from the back of an airplane [00:38:00] seat or something. But I'm always

Malcolm Collins: fascinated when people are publicly talking about us like this. Like just genuinely interested in how much of weirdos we are. Anyway Let's do it. Are we ready to get started?

All right.

In this thought-provoking video, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive deep into the controversial topic of fertility rates among conservatives and liberals. They explore recent claims by right-wing influencers about "outbreeding the left" and analyze the statistical evidence behind these assertions. The couple discusses the genetic components of political beliefs, the historical trends in fertility rates between ideological groups, and the potential long-term consequences for society. They also touch on topics such as immigration, cultural assimilation, and the ethical implications of politicizing childbearing. This comprehensive discussion covers the complexities of ideology, genetics, and demographics, offering insights into the potential future of political landscapes in the United States and beyond.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] you can obviously just convert your opponent's kids, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Because liberals have always been doing this. If liberals would cease existing, if they stopped having kids, then why are there any liberals at all?

And then you point out this trend only started in the nineties.

 Before the 90s, you didn't have a big difference in fertility rates within these two genetic clusters that led to different voting behavior. And now one cluster was in a period of two generations is just going to be hard deleted from the gene pool. ,

Simone Collins: and isn't that wild? Because for so many generations, they were more or less even birth rate rise.

This is unprecedented. We just don't know what it's going to look like.

Malcolm Collins: here are two other studies I'm gonna post, one showing that 60 percent of the way you vote is genetic, and the other showing that 40 percent of the way you vote is genetic.

Yeah, but it is going to have a genetic effect on human psychology like they are getting hard deleted in a way that is going to change the way humans think. So if you're one of those people who's bragging about leaving [00:01:00] your parents religion, but are you having kids? Because if you are the mutant, and that mutation is correlated with not having kids, then you're just furthering our argument. Okay?

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Kick us off, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: So there is a an article in the Daily Dot recently. I think there's some articles on us in the past from the long past, back when I proposed to you on Reddit, actually they had a thing on us. It's titled, Who Says Romance Is Dead? Right wing influencers launch a campaign to out breathe the left.

And then it goes on to say, Four right figures, Chaya Raichi and Charlie Kirk, both said they plan to quote unquote out breed the left this week by having more children than liberals and raising them to have right wing values. Both of their statements are being memed online. Raichi runs the internet.

anti LGBTQX account, Libs of TikTok. Oh, yay! I love Libs of TikTok. Which doxxes left wing educators and individuals. [00:02:00] Her tweets have been linked to more than 20 bomb threats at schools. Okay bomb threats. It's like the people's tweets being linked at, like, how many death threats do we get regularly?

Kirk is the founder of The Turning Point USA, a conservative organization with chapters at high schools and college networks nationwide. Last weekend, Kirk hosted his organization's Young Women's Leadership Summit. On Sunday, he tweeted a video of mothers who attended the event. We are going to win, either now or later, Kirk tweeted.

We can out breed the left.

Simone Collins: It's not even a can, and it's not even a pledge thing. It's just a will thing. It's so lame to make this. It's like a statement. It's just the sun will rise. I don't know what to say.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So yeah, we actually Elon Musk tweeted that it should be considered a national emergency to have kids.

And this is what, the person who founded lives of Twitch talk replied. I come from a family of eight. I plan [00:03:00] to have a lot of kids. We're going to outbreed the left. Then we're going to homeschool our, send our kids to private schools so they can't be groomed and become any activists for leftist causes.

Unless it's that's a radical, but it's not a radical thing to say. I'm going to be

Simone Collins: honest. Every slightly conservative parent is saying now, and this is what I'm seeing on the ground in Pennsylvania, running for office is. Very reasonable, normal, not even really religiously affiliated, just not.

Actively progressive parents are saying I'm concerned about what my kid's learning. I don't want my kid to have mental health problems as a teen and adult. I'm going to homeschool them. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And it and I think a lot of people, when I'm like, I am like bothered by woke ism and stuff like that, they're like, Oh, are you really scared of the woke ism that's going on in schools now?

And stuff like that. It's I don't not think because. Certain leftists seem to have a problem with breaking out of the current social mores and looking at this from the perspective of you're not at a moral nexus of history and how are you going to be judged. You guys are going to be seen [00:04:00] as a cult that went around castrating gay kids.

You are not going to be seen favorably in the eyes of history. You will be seen As monstrous, genuinely monstrous, alongside some of the worst atrocities in human history. You I do not think the left realizes how evil they've become. And how transparently evil they've become to everyone else.

But let's go into statistics! Cause this is gonna be a statistics episode! Where we're like, will this plan work? Because there's two things here, right? One, is the right really outbreeding the left, right? That's one question. Two, is, can that work intergenerationally? Or do, will these kids just leave their parents religious or structural, like cultural, structural, or voting frameworks, right?

So first I'm going to go from a quote here. Liberals are not having enough babies to keep up with conservatives. Arthur Brooks, a social scientist at Syracuse University, was the first to point out all the way back in 2006 when he went on ABC News. [00:05:00] and blue state minds. Quote, the political right is having a lot more kids than the political left, end quote.

He explained, quote, the gap is actually 41%, end quote. Data on U. S. birth rates from the General Social Survey confirmed this trend. A random sample of 100 conservative adults will raise 208 children, whereas 100 liberal adults will raise only 147 kids.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh.

Malcolm Collins: And so you need to divide these numbers in half given the way that this is, it's a very confusing way to word it.

But the point being is that and this was done a while ago and this gap has widened. Before the 1990s fertility differences by ideology were small. And I'm quoting here, by the way, this is from the Family Studies Institute in Limestone.

Women over the age of 45 had no difference in completed fertility and women of all ages, but with controls for years of age had only a small difference. There was however, already a difference in ideology. Conservative [00:06:00] women reported a childbearing ideal of about 0. 12. So even the difference back then in the ideal was fairly small, only a difference of 0.

12 kids higher than liberal women, which is small, but significant difference. He goes on to say, I'm gonna put the graph on the screen here. Basically put when people are like, you can obviously just convert your opponent's kids, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Because liberals have always been doing this. If liberals would cease existing, if they stopped having kids, then why are there any liberals at all?

And then you point out this trend only started in the nineties. That's why they're still liberals. Because this wasn't a correlation we had historically. People can be like, come on, people live their birth culture all the time. Except, in a big study that was done on this, 70 percent of teens vote like their parents.

And then, here are two other studies I'm gonna post, one showing that 60 percent of the way you vote [00:07:00] is genetic, and the other showing that 40 percent of the way you vote is genetic. Regardless, it's still a race. Yeah,

Simone Collins: I'd never thought about that point before and I think it's worth hammering home that birth rates were not that different between progressive and conservative groups until quite recently.

So this whole Parasitizing slash raiding Conservative groups to get progressive populations thing is not sustainable.

Malcolm Collins: No, it's not sustainable It wasn't done historically. Yeah and it is going to disappear now There's a study that i'll post on screen here where people are like I grew up in a conservative household and I left and it's yeah, but that's an anecdote.

Okay. That's not like statistics. And I will

Simone Collins: know conservative households all the time, but also those people didn't become sterilized. Yeah. There are going to be fewer people like that over time. And you're going to end up having.

Malcolm Collins: If they are the, if 60 percent of the way you vote, if you're, if you didn't have the genetic [00:08:00] component that led your parents to be conservative, it turns out that genetic component was also correlated with you staying high fertility.

So if you're one of those people who's bragging about leaving your parents religion, but are you having kids? Because if you are the mutant, and that mutation is correlated with not having kids, then you're just furthering our argument. Okay? And when I say having kids, I don't mean two kids, like above repopulation level, three or more, okay?

So if you're not doing that, then no you're just Proven our point further but to their side, it is shown that people are more likely to be in this small fraction of people that leaves their parents political beliefs. If the parents trade to force them to have those beliefs while they lived with their parents.

So parents who are loose in terms of their children's political beliefs are much more likely to have children of their beliefs. Than the parents who are not for example, my parents were always fairly conservative. Like my dad, my granddad was a conservative congressman, and when I grew up, I was considered myself quite progressive.

And now I'm quite conservative. [00:09:00] And it's almost certainly the genetics at play there. Wasn't that my dad tried to like, and this is the other thing. People are like here's how we'll win as progressives. We will extra educate the kid about political issues. And through extra educating them we can get them on our side and oh.

Here's a little study here called genes, ideology, and sophistication. Okay. It looks up how much genetics matter based on how much somebody has studied politics. The heritability of political attitudes increases with greater political knowledge and sophistication.

Once we found sociopolitical conservatism was 74 percent heritable among the most politically informed, but only 29 percent heritable for the least informed.

Simone Collins: This reminds me of other research that found that when you give more information to people with very opposing views on subjects, they just become more entrenched in their views.

I guess this rhymes with that. I don't

Malcolm Collins: think that this is what this is. Okay, so imagine it's true that you are pre coded. To have a [00:10:00] specific political perspective, like sociologically how could you convince somebody to go against their precoding? You give them information that isn't real about the world, right?

If you want to convince somebody who is genetically conservative to not be conservative in their actions in voting, what you need to do is hide information from them or tell them information in a twisted way. I see causes their conservative mindset to be

Simone Collins: overridden,

Malcolm Collins: but the more information they gain access to about the world, the more they are going to fit in to like their actual puzzle piece slot.

If we are all like political puzzle pieces, the more we know about the board, the more we're going to fit into our accurate slot. And I actually see this on the left when I see the leftists who have deconverted from conservative families. They're often the least educated political individuals I know.

Like their views on politics are usually more just like the party line IE like tm. [00:11:00] Yeah. Or, yeah, when,

Simone Collins: And we see this a lot, for example, with people in California who are not at all politically involved, but of course we'll only ever vote for. Progressive politicians, because that's what one does.

And it is one's understanding that the correct view is the progressive view, because you didn't even allude to this a little earlier, that the assumption is that to convert someone to progressive views, you simply must educate them. And there is this pervasive view that the party of science in the United States is Democrats.

The people of science and of reason and correctness are progressives and the people of backwards religious tradition are conservatives. Which is also just interesting because now I think it's starting to shift in the other direction and when you find hyper evidence based people, they're now conservative.

Yes. Yeah, it is. But only hyper like we're willing to believe in the truth even when it is not true. But I think

Malcolm Collins: that was true historically. What is the fight? And this is actually interesting between [00:12:00] capitalism and communism or libertarianism and socialism, but a fight over how educated you are about economics and your willingness to believe the truth about how economic systems work.

Oh s**t. This is why we have reconverted.

Simone Collins: There's the graph, right? There's like half wit, there's mid wit, and then there's

Malcolm Collins: And this is actually the core problem, right? Because two groups are drawn to conservatism, right? Like the reason why I am a capitalist and not a socialist, and this is a capitalist, whiz modifications and stuff like that.

Like I'm not a pure libertarian is because it's the system that leads to the most prosperity and ability for individual freedom. And I do understand how being economically constrained constrains an individual's Freedom and therefore if socialism worked, I would support it. I don't support it because it doesn't work.

It makes everyone poorer on average. Even the people who are getting the social handouts. Um, just so you people understand like how [00:13:00] bad socialism is. Here's a great example. Okay. You can look in America right now. And be like, Oh, certain groups are poorer than other groups. Like people will say like a black Americans are poorer than the average American, but did you know that the average black American is wealthier than the average British person?

In terms of yearly income, that is not, no, that's really interesting. Is that's true. Yeah, that's how much of a difference it makes. It's huge. Even fairly not socialist countries. I don't know if Britain people would consider a fully socialist state, but to me it is. Or look at Canada, right?

Simone Collins: If you've nationalized healthcare,

Malcolm Collins: you've gone pretty far.

Like the, like the anyway, but hold on we're, we'll keep going here. But there, here's a problem on the right. Okay. There's two reasons that you can adopt right leaning perspectives. And this is why I'm scared. Like a lot of people, when I am approaching. Fertility collapse and who are our enemies and who aren't our enemies.

I often approach the urban monoculture or the progressives like they're an NPC, [00:14:00] like they don't even really matter. Like they're not going to exist in the future. They're just an obstacle for me to jump over. Who is the player killer? Who is the other player in this game? And it's that there are two genetic propensities that can drive somebody to conservatism and there are.

Two broad conservative frameworks. I'd call this the fascist framework in the individualist framework. So one framework is like me where I am driven largely by the belief that everyone should be free to do things their own way. And to live the life they want to live. And that's, what's guiding a lot of my decisions.

Like how do I maximize this outcome? And every cultural group should at least not at the individual level, because that leads to stupid externalities, but at the cultural group when people are like, what are those stupid externalities. Like a kid says, I don't want to be spanked.

And they're like the kid doesn't want it. Therefore we don't do it. Or a kid says, I believe I was born in the wrong body and I need to medically alter myself as an 11 year old. And the adults like, no, that's [00:15:00] stupid. It's f**k off. But if you take this like pure individualist instead of an individualist cultural frame threat then you end up making really stupid decisions.

So I take the individual's cultural perspective. So that's what I'm optimizing for. But then there's the second, instead of saying, okay, if all human groups are allowed to act the way that they want to act, that righteousness will be served. And there's the other, Drive to conservatism, which is they want fascist.

Sorry. They want capitalism because they want the strong to rule over the weak They want libertarianism because they see that as like an aesthetic ideal They want a system where they are the strong and they force the weak to live like them Where everybody has to live the way that their culture lives And for us, these are really just progressives, but by a different color, because this is what the progressive movement is doing right now.

It's trying to enforce its beliefs on other people in regards to child rearing structures or in regards to the way you should [00:16:00] live or in regards to education. And we try to, Take our kids outta these systems. Somebody was like, why are you ragging on Germany for what they're doing with schools?

Germany doesn't not, no. Germany doesn't allow homeschooling, homeschooling does not allow it. It's illegal. You cannot protect your kids from the urban monoculture in that country because it has gotten to that state. So that's how bad it's Okay. Yeah. And

Simone Collins: specifically, yeah, we're not traditionalists, we're not crazy progressives.

We are in favor of. cultural sovereignty, we're in favor of pluralism, and we're very strongly against coercion, and there are groups within conservative factions and progressive factions that are coercive and domineering in this way, and we are not for it.

Malcolm Collins: I'm not just not for it. I am willing to ally with them in the short term.

Yeah, but they're not,

Simone Collins: they're incapable of being coercive in the short term. So that's, I don't know. Yeah, they're incapable of being

Malcolm Collins: coercive in the short term. That's the only reason we rely [00:17:00] on them. Because our faction, ideologically winning, gives them the cover to grow and recover and try to gain power again.

But to us, while we may ally with them in the short term, they are just as evil as the fascist progressives.

Simone Collins: They are just as much of a threat and anyone who decides that their imperative is to impose Their standards and values and cultures and lifestyles on you is going to be a threat ultimately

Malcolm Collins: Yeah this is actually I think it explains a very odd thing about us where people are like Why are you guys so philia semitic so nice to jewish populations and the jewish culture and we're like This is the core reason it's one of the few You really successful, very high fertility, very culturally successful and technologically successful cultural groups that is not interested at forcing my family to live a different way than we live.

Like they are just like, yeah, we're okay with groups different from us existing. So of course we're going to uplift that. Example for other cultures to [00:18:00] learn from. And our culture historically did that. The Calvinist cultural group was generally that way in a historic context.

Because, we believe in the elect and the fallen, right? And the fallen are going to hell anyway. It's not our job to save the fallen. The fallen are meant to go to hell. The elect will be called by God themselves. And if they're not, then I don't need to go I can broadly be part of the intellectual conversation and put my stuff out there and my ideas out there without an attempt to convert somebody because I genuinely do not think that is how God works, is through proselytization.

He works through calling people to the to the truth if they are meant to be among the elect. Or if they were pre assigned among the elect. But anyway so that's one answer there. But then you have the question of what was I going to say here?

That's another there's a confounding factor here, Simone, that we haven't considered. Which is to say that and I'm quoting here from the family studies article on this. However, having children probably also makes people more conservative. Prior academic research has found that after women have children, they tend to [00:19:00] subsequently adopt more conservative social attitudes about gender roles as a result in both British and American data sets.

Now you certainly have after you had kids. I think it's because once you have kids, do you realize that the traditional gender roles just work? And why the hell were you fighting this to begin with? Our stance

Simone Collins: on this is it doesn't matter who does what people should just lean into what they're good at.

And I think that's the thing is if it turned out that we were flipped and somehow you did more traditionally womanly things, and I did more traditionally man things, it wouldn't be a problem for us. We would just do what we're good at.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then there's this other point here, which is going to make things harder.

And when people are like, why do I care? Like, why am I so worried about the economic effects of all of this? Not just from a population fertility falling perspective, that it is disproportionately falling within the economically productive regions. This also comes into this conversation, which is, and did you know this, that democratic counties make up 70 [00:20:00] percent of the United States economic output.

Simone Collins: Oh, ouch. Yeah. That makes sense because also when you look at cities, which are largely progressive, they are famously referred to as IQ shredders. They're drawing the most productive, talented people to them. Who typically adopt the local culture and also stop having kids. And yet these are some of the most high achieving people in the world.

So that's, yeah, it is really scary. And I think that's something that's also not discussed enough when people are talking about perinatalist policy. Is they're looking about how to create more people in general and not how to create more high taxpayers in general, which is going to be the really big question, because if we're going to maintain any kind of semblance of the format of social services and infrastructure funding and pensions that we have now, we're going to lean more than ever on a very increasingly small group of productive taxpayers.

To pay for everything. And [00:21:00] those people are disappearing the fastest, which is really scary. When I think about this though, from the perspective of that original statement of we're going to out compete them, I pledged to do this. We can do this. It's it's stupid. It's not a battle that any conservative is really fighting anyway, because any conservative actually really just knows that.

We are, and we do, and we will but if this were a battle where you had conservatives pledging this and you had progressives pledging this, the progressive rallying cry is what are children for? A new book that came out, which was supposed to be the progressive answer. We got to do a whole

Malcolm Collins: other episode on this.

Simone Collins: And we are. To the Pronatalist Manifesto. And punchline, I only have maybe one or two chapters left. It is extremely unconvincing. And I'm reading it from the perspective of my teen young 20 self, which was still very progressive and still quite against having kids, if we're being honest, it does not make

Malcolm Collins: any sense.

Simone Collins: A [00:22:00] compelling argument. Oh. When we're simply getting angry,

Malcolm Collins: you're like, these women should not be having kids.

Simone Collins: Yeah. No, it's bad. It's making me actually antinatalists toward progressives reading this book which is deeply disturbing. I feel like the progressives are even more hoisted by their own petard than, they Simone,

Malcolm Collins: they are hoisted by their own retard.

Hoisted by their own retard. I don't know if we're allowed to say that yet. The hard R is returned. It's back. Progressives have been hoisted by their own retard. But there's a few other points I wanted to go here, um One that I really wanted to elevate is that this is going to lead to a genuine genetic change in the population that humanity has never experienced.

The fact that before the 90s, okay and we actually did a study where we were looking at progressive fertility rates, and we found the rate to be 100 percent difference, or I think it was more than 100 percent difference, like 120 percent difference, so this other study is I think they're underselling it or it was done a while ago.

But anyway, that before the 90s, you didn't have a big difference in [00:23:00] fertility rates within these two genetic clusters that led to different voting behavior. And now one cluster was in a period of two generations is just going to be hard deleted from the gene pool.

Simone Collins: And isn't that wild? Because for so many generations, they were more or less even birth rate rise.

This is unprecedented. We just don't know what it's going to look like.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but it is going to have a genetic effect on human psychology like they are getting hard deleted in a way that is going to change the way humans think. Yeah, this is a selective pressure

Simone Collins: similar to, I don't know, like the Irish potato famine.

You've got this population where one group is choosing to go out into the future and the other group is choosing to stay and die. And what's that going to look like?

Malcolm Collins: We can predict some of what it looks like. The ideas that progressives are pushing are not going to win in politics in the future.

They will win more in the short run because people become more progressive when you break up a family structure. And they go unmarried, but in the long run, they are just deleting [00:24:00] themselves from the gene pool. And anyone who is ideologically siding with the progressives right now, you in history Even if you are not morally wrong, like in an absolute term, you will not be on the side of the victors.

And therefore you will be treated in the same way. Today, we talk about the people who supported slavery, or we talk about the people who supported the Nazis, or We talk about maybe in a more modern context, if you're talking about things that's what's going on with the extremists was in parts of the trans movement the way who supported lobotomies, which actually were disproportionately done by progressives on their kids.

Because the scientific community said lobotomies are good. And so they used it like the Kennedy family, for example, famously did progressives

Simone Collins: then and now, or we're in favor of medical interventions.

Malcolm Collins: And they don't know how monstrous they're going to look in the eyes of history, but it's going to be bad.

It's going to be a historic bloodbath, and there is, I would not attach any idea I have to this stuff. Now the second thing I need to [00:25:00] talk about is the silver lining on all of this. Oh, that's good. Which is, as we've said, we don't really worry about the progressives. They're just like a hurdle our family has to get by, but they don't actually matter.

They're not actually a threat. It is the fascist conservatives who are the real intergenerational threat, right? Those conservatives who have this sort of ethnic hierarchy and think that everything can be solved by control and domination and my group of rule is that the leaders of this movement often have. Um, you know, Recently we did an episode basically trashing Nick Fuentes for not having kids, but like he doesn't have a wife even, but like you can look at older iterations of this movement. So I was on a talk show recently, Zero Hour with John Papalopoulos or something. I don't know. It was by Blaze TV.

So they flew me out to Dallas and I went to this nice studio and everything like that. It was really fun. It's run by Glenn Beck, the network. Anyway, so before me they had on And culture. And I actually trashed her in my talk. I was like, cause she said the entire talk complaining about [00:26:00] Hispanics in our country and low quality people in our country that we were letting in from other countries.

And she's Oh, and we used to have high quality immigrants and people are thinking like pre 19. 30s immigrants, not the immigrants we have today when they say, Oh, I only want legal immigrants. Oh, because

Simone Collins: we loved Italians and Irish people back then. I'm like,

Malcolm Collins: bro, yeah, this is, first of all, she's just High quality people.

Living in f*****g delusion. To explain what I mean by this she's look at all these. Freaking immigrants coming with their crime and all of their, there's exactly the same accusations made against immigrants always bring organized crime. The Irish brought the mob, the Italian brought the mafia.

This is just a Catholic immigrant thing. And then they integrate and they're not like that anymore. And then we call them white, even though we thought of them as different ethnicities to begin with. I guarantee you, Hispanics, will be thought of as white by the time you and I die. And in fact, I imagine that the ultra lefties will start thinking it's offensive for [00:27:00] Hispanics to pretend they're not white in the same way that they might talk about an Italian pretending they're not white or Irish pretending they're not white, even though these were historically discriminated groups.

Yes. The Irish were a historically discriminated group, both in their home country and in the United States. Yes. The Italians had it. Terribly so terribly by the way that Frederick Douglas, former slave, famous activist. When he was doing a tour of Southern Italy, he said that they lived in conditions worse than the American slaves.

So I don't think that people realize how bad the Italians had it, or that when they came to the U. S. people really did see them as like uneducated savages. And they did have a lot more organized crime than the current Hispanic immigrants to our country. But anyway and a culture No kids, no husband.

She's been through like five engagements divorce every time or broke up every time. That's a, her problem at that point. Like you don't breaking up even a single engagement from my perspective is a huge deal. Like you. It's not a normal human thing to do. [00:28:00] Having done it so many times that she says she can't even remember everyone she's been engaged to, that is a, you are in some way, some sort of a psycho.

But I think that this psychoship, this incredibly high standards, which leading to these people not getting married, I think is part of it. Is part of this ultra authoritarian mindset. And this ultra out group hating mindset. They just don't know how to love. Again, I think love is just a tool to hold marriages together.

Like I'm not like a love is a good thing, but I think that like our marriage has so much love in it. It's insane. For people, but I also

Simone Collins: think

Malcolm Collins: love,

Simone Collins: I hate to say this, but, or we'll just say a positive experience and feeling of pride is a large driver of intergenerational durability in cultures, which is to say.

If you really love your kids and give them a great experience and actually love each other, it's probably going to inspire those kids to want to do that themselves and pass it on. [00:29:00] Whereas if you're doing this out of some sense of competition or pride or regimented, stern, religious ferocity, you're not going to see a lot of people want to pass that on when they're given a choice.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly. And I think it's that they don't know how to, Treat or think about other humans fundamentally. So I could think about intuitions I've had recently, where like you the other day I accidentally locked her out of the bottom of the house. Cause we generally bolt all of the inside doors of our house.

Cause we get so many death threats and I really had to go to the bathroom and then she was short with me for doing that, upon telling me and I and by the way, you could have gone to the bathroom downstairs. You needed to go to your specific bathroom. But that's the toilet

Simone Collins: that the kids use, and I would have to completely wipe it down before I could,

Malcolm Collins: and I could not wait.

But I also knew that you were going to feel bad about being short with me, and I was like, I really hope she doesn't feel bad about that. It was totally justified in context, because she was probably in a lot of pain in that moment.

Simone Collins: Losing emotional [00:30:00] control is never justified.

Malcolm Collins: You never I should have thought about that.

I knew you were out. But anyway there was like a big yelling, too It was like a few like Malcolm don't do that again. I really need to go it wasn't like an argument or something like that before storming away to go to the bathroom But I guess it's just that any sort of negative interaction with you is so rare that I know you're going to have this big existential reaction to having had one.

And I feel bad about that because I don't want to cause you any negative emotions through anything I do. And It's just this thinking about another person first in all things is a mindset that is very hard for the person with a fascistic worldview to get behind. But it's something you need if you're going to make marriages really work, especially in a way where kids want to replicate that because you might be able to get your marriage to work. You might be able to stay in your household as a stern man, spanking your wife like they used to in the third, I don't grow up.

[00:31:00] They see you abusing your wife. They see your wife acting as totally subjugated by you, not uplifted by you. Do you think your daughters want to get married after that? You think they want to stay in your culture? No. And I think that this is why those groups will ultimately fail is even though they're part of the larger conservative alliance they just are not very good when people can leave their culture and when they can't say stay in or we'll kill you at keeping their culture together.

Now, I do think they'll spread in regions where they control people. You look at Gaza, for example, right? There were people in Gaza who were against the war, but they were murdered by other. people in their country.

But there are other places in the world where the fascist group is dominant, where the group that is my culture, my way of seeing things, everything must be militarized. Everything must be my way or the highway, my way. Or we will come to your home and we will kill you and your children. That does exist as a majority viewpoints in some parts of the world.

And those parts of the world, I think are our cultural enemies. And [00:32:00] there are people in this country who want to create that and act Oh, I'm so goody, I'll partner with you for now or worse. They're like, no, we should do this in America today. And I'm like, first of all, I disrespect you because of your position.

Second of all, I disrespect you because you're stupid. You do not control a majority large enough to take power or competent enough to take power. You control a bunch of low economic producing zealots who cannot make up even a single election or maybe a few local elections, but that's it. Like you need a big tent alliance to actually win and you are sabotaging your own objectives which should mostly be just living in peace because you're a minority population, which all conservative religious groups are in this country.

You are the smarter of us and I know you're who fans really want to hear from we saw this in a recent comment and I will never let you hear the end of it because I get

Simone Collins: the

Malcolm Collins: one out of [00:33:00] thousands of comments people upvoted it that two people upvoted it and then I've upvoted it. So there's three of us here.

Oh boy.

Simone Collins: Just ridiculous. We know this is happening and the whole reason why we are in this fight to a great extent is because we're concerned about a loss of plurality. It's sad to me that people would gloat about the fact that they are just going to outbreed other groups. Because when I hear that, I feel sad.

I feel sad that we're losing those perspectives. At the same time that I feel very frustrated by the perspectives of those we're losing. I'm reading this book, oh god, why, I keep forgetting the name because it's a really, What are children for? Why is that even the title of this book? Why? I just, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Children are for how they make the parents feel. That's why progressives cannot motivate kids. There was actually a tweet I saw recently that I really agree with, which said that 70 percent of maternal instincts are fulfilled with one kid and 90 percent are fulfilled with two kids. That is why progressives cannot motivate [00:34:00] high childbirth.

And it is true if you're only doing things because that's what you want. This is the thing, like, how could you do something to your kids that they don't want? And it's because I'm interested in something more than just doing what I want all the time. Being affirmed for whoever I want to be all the time.

But in this

Simone Collins: book, they, in this book, they talk about people who like political lesbians are like political anti needle lists, where they say, I'm not having children. Unless you vote Democrat, unless you fix climate change unless. So they're politically not, they're politically childless.

But I feel like the exact equivalent of that is these politically childful people on the right who are like I'm going to have kids just to stick it to you. And I think both are incredibly lame. Have kids, if you love them, and you're going to be a good parent.

Malcolm Collins: Which of these groups is actually good people, right?

The people on the right who are doing it because they believe their cultural group matters and are good guys, and they're willing to put their money where their mouth is and do the effort of raising kids, which is hard. That's what the other group [00:35:00] believes too. No, you, they're basically just cry bullies.

They're like, I am going to threaten you by saying, I won't have kids. They are really the suicide squad from Life of Brian. The crack suicide squad that goes off and he thinks he's going to be rescued and they all commit suicide and go, that'll show them.

So you you're getting people to sign a petition.

pledge, basically saying that they will not have Children until the Canadian government takes serious action on climate change.

 The E. T. N. people's We are to defend people's front! Crack Suicide Squad! Attack!

That showed them, huh? You silly sods.

Malcolm Collins: Because that's what they're doing.

They're, I'm not, if they come to me and they're like, I have different political beliefs than you. And unless you adopt my political beliefs, I'm going to kill myself. And [00:36:00] I'll be like. But I don't agree with you. I like, I don't want to deal with the cleanup after you kill yourself, but like I guess go ahead Can you lay down some newspapers first?

That's really the way I feel about progressives right now

Simone Collins: Yeah My point more largely is that I don't think that having kids should be politicized as much as this is a politicized issue as much As this is a major No, I just agree with

Malcolm Collins: you wrongly on this point I do. I think that people should have kids because they think that the way of life that they have should continue to exist in the future.

People who don't have a hypothesis about how to create a good way of life or who didn't have a good childhood and way of life growing up it is righteous that they should have no kids because they will not be able to give the next generation a better life than they've had, which I think is always our duty is to create a generation that's better than us.

So I do not mind that the people who [00:37:00] can't even hypothesize a better civilization are the ones who are sterilizing themselves. And, we have the episode that's on why running the pronatalist movement is so low stress, which I'd really suggest you guys check out. It is hilarious.

It's the Tucker and Dale vs. Forces of Evil pronatalist problem episode. It'll include the little clip I put together from it in here.

Oh, good, look, your friends are here! Hey!

You're supposed to want to have children. And this is your ultimate goal in life. It is a very archaic idea and old idea and representation of a woman.

 So you you're getting people to sign a petition.

pledge, basically saying that they will not have Children until the Canadian government takes serious action on climate change.

Is that your blood? What, no. No, it's college kid blood. And how many people have signed on so far. 1, 381 as of right now. I know what this is. This is a suicide [00:38:00] pact. Oh my god, that makes so much sense. , we have got to hide all of the sharp objects!

if only I was born with a vagina. To solve that problem. Amen, sister.

 Holy mother of God! Some kid, he just hucked himself right into the wood chipper! What? Head first, right into the wood chipper! It looked like it might have been one of the college kids..

Malcolm Collins: Because, it's, True it's they, it is sad, like, when we go to someone and we're like, okay, here's how we can help your group survive, they're like, you must hate us, because you want us to change something.

And it's not just progressives, the episode I hope goes live right before this one, we'll see how processing works, is the Catholic episode. And when we go to Catholics and we're like, your fertility rates are desperately low you need to culturally do something different. You hate Catholics, it's we're telling you this because we're trying to save you b t.

Freaking knob, okay? We're just telling you the facts. Your fertility rates are uniquely low for your economic condition when contrasted with [00:39:00] every other human group alive, okay? Figure out something or you're gonna die out. But it's the same with progressives. But with progressives I have less care because for me the current progressive party has just become I, do I really want to save the Nazis?

Do I want to save these people who believe that humanity should be divided into an ethno hierarchy with certain groups, human dignity mattering more than others, as you see, was like COVID vaccines in our state being distributed based on race, not based on need with certain ethnic groups getting access to it earlier or you know, more, more extreme than that.

The fact that they have literally become anti Semitic now, they're like, Oh, we just hate Zionists. We don't hate Jews. I'm like depending on the study, you look at 80 to 95 percent of Jews are Zionists. And they're like yeah, it's those ones I hate. I'm like, bro that's like saying, I don't hate Christians.

I just hate people who believe that Jesus was the son of God. It's that's like a near hundred percent overlap and they're like, why would the [00:40:00] Jews, why would the Jews think they need their own state to be safe? What historically could have happened to them that would lead to this insane perspective?

The pogroms, the Holocaust, the constant genocides that they went through. Yeah. There's a reason why this is such a common perspective in Jewish circles. You guys are the delusional ones and you are promoting. A country that has already killed almost every person in it who promoted this non ha Anyway I'm going on a I guess the punchline is just I'm okay with the punchline!

I'm okay, we will And you're okay with it. We're gonna replace you, because you do not deserve to exist. With those vile opinions that you have castrating gay kids. See, here's where I disagree with you.

Simone Collins: I think that the, what as progressives is a very small radicalized sub faction that controls the party and is setting policy.

That's the problem is that they're [00:41:00] still controlling the lifestyles and the birth rates of the very reasonable and pluralistic people. Existing under their reign.

Malcolm Collins: You're saying I support the Nazis who didn't support the okay, yeah, they voted for the Nazi party, but they personally weren't on board with the whole genocide thing.

It's bro, it doesn't matter if you're on board with the genocide thing or not. If you are voting in a way that puts those people in power. You are the consequence not the consequence, but you are leading to this consequence. You can say, I'm putting this person in power, but I disagree with the thing that they consistently do.

Simone Collins: I think that drawing a comparison to Nazis here is unfair because it's one thing to be aware of, for example, concentration camps, and it's another thing to not really understand what's going on with many progressive policies, which one's entire life, one has been taught are backed by science, reason, and goodness.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, to the children transitioning things. I support trans adults, but children transitioning, even the most recent [00:42:00] study but a lot of adults still think I just need to quote the results of the study so people are aware because it's something people should be broadly aware of. It came out in 2024.

It was titled, , something like development of gender nonconformity in adolescents and early adulthood. And it found that of 11 year olds who are gender nonconforming over 90 percent by the age of 26 are completely gender conforming. Of kids who claim that they are trans and go on things like purity blockers, which we now know lead to irreversible long term damage and likely even more severe than the studies are showing in animal models is a one standard deviation decline in IQ.

You can't just. Turn off purity and turn it on again. Are leading to real damage to these people. And I think probably more damage than lobotomies. It is incredibly

Simone Collins: damaging. What I'm saying is there is probably more disinformation to mainstream progressive voters and adults now about what's really going on.

Then there [00:43:00] was with like mainstream. voters and citizens in Nazi Germany about what was going on and that there is going to be a lot of innocent collateral damage with falling birth rates because of what's happening. So when I see progressives going extinct, Okay, there is this sub faction that was going to burn out anyway, and then there's a lot of Actually,

Malcolm Collins: I actually think that the types of misinformation are really overlapping.

So why did the Nazis target the Jews? Because they were seen as like a wealthy elite that had more money than the mainstream population. Why did the progressives target the people who they target?

Simone Collins: These people were being removed from their homes. People were disappearing.

Malcolm Collins: I'm sorry. I have seen Jews being attacked on college campuses.

I have seen the signs that they are chanting in mainstream progressive circles on college campuses. I'm not saying it's not egregious. Sorry, from the river to the sea, you're just, we're just on different points of a f*****g timeline, Simone. But this timeline could [00:44:00] play out if we don't resist it now. No, it needs to be

Simone Collins: resisted, and I'm with you on that.

I'm just saying that there is, I'm with you on that. a vastly large mainstream progressive audience that is incredibly centrist. That is, look at how all elections work, right? The primaries, you get these extreme candidates, and then they spend the entire general election lead up trying to look as centrist as possible, because guess what?

Most voters, are very close to the center with a slight skew in one direction or the other. But these are the progressives that we're going to

Malcolm Collins: lose to convince them are the same taxes that were used to convince the Nazis. How did the Nazis convince people to hate the Jews? They said that they were going to come in and kill them.

Basically, you had the blood libel claims. You had the claims that they were going to come and attack them. Look at the way progressives make up stuff about conservatives and like the LGBT community. We don't have, we don't have a problem with trans adults. I support gay people to hell and back, okay?

But I do think that what's being done to kids is completely out of line with what the data says. I

Simone Collins: agree with you. I [00:45:00] think we're just talking

Malcolm Collins: past each other at this point. No, hold on. I gotta go. I gotta finish this statement here, okay? But progressives, of today are being convinced to take these actions to go into neighborhoods to burn down people's stores with people.

No Malcolm, the

Simone Collins: mainstream centrist progressives are not doing that.

Malcolm Collins: They are allowing it by not shutting it down. These should be met with local police forces where they are, ban the police and stuff like that. That this stuff is passing, that these things, that in nearby states These people

Simone Collins: are living in a world where the mainstream media frames this as a mostly peaceful protest and people don't understand what's happening on the ground.

So I'm sorry, that's what's happening. People are being lied to and many progressives have no idea how gravely terrible it is. And it's a little bit of Stockholm syndrome. It's a little bit of genuine misinformation. But I'm just saying there's like Trump would say a lot of good people on both sides.

[00:46:00] Okay. All right. A lot of good people.

Malcolm Collins: I love that. I'm more extreme than Trump. I don't think there's a lot of good people on both sides. I think people I stand with Trump on this husband, but we got to go get the kids. As a smarter one, I should defer to your opinion now, but I know that this is true.

You're amazing. I can't roll my eyes

Simone Collins: hard enough. I can't. I hate

Malcolm Collins: you too Simone.

Simone Collins: Octavian's probably running out here already. Would you mind intercepting him and getting the kiddos and carrying them over the mud ditch so they don't track it in. Okay, I love you. I

Malcolm Collins: love you too. And

Simone Collins: he loves you too. He loves you too. Oh, let's go get him. Let's go have fun.

A citizen has the courage to make the safety of the human race their personal responsibility.

In this eye-opening video, Malcolm and Simone Collins delve into the startling fertility decline within the Catholic Church, both in the United States and globally. Through a comprehensive analysis of survey data and demographic trends, they uncover the shocking reality that Catholic fertility rates have fallen below replacement levels, and even devout Catholics are using contraception and obtaining abortions at rates similar to non-religious individuals. The couple explores the potential causes of this phenomenon, including delayed marriage, the influence of the urban monoculture, and the disconnect between the Church's teachings and the behavior of its adherents. They also discuss the theological debate surrounding the beginning of life and the impact of the celibate priesthood on the Church's ability to provide relevant guidance on relationships and family formation. Throughout the video, Malcolm and Simone offer thought-provoking insights and propose potential solutions to revitalize the Catholic Church and ensure its survival in the face of this fertility crisis.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Needed fertility is the fertility rate that you would need to have to stay stable. As a cultural group, when you account for the percentage of people who deconvert from your religion per generation. On the other hand, Catholic churches will see appreciable decline.

He says that they have 1. 9 children but these don't separate out the Hispanic Catholic population. the TFR for non-Hispanic, white Catholic women in the United States is 1.64,

anyway so he thinks it's 1. 9 which it really isn't. Children born per woman is nowhere near enough to offset the rates of conversion out of these faiths, yielding a needed fertility rate for Roman Catholics of 3. 1. Whoa. Therefore these churches, and this is with the inflated 1.

9 number, that's including the Hispanic population. Okay. A 40 percent decline in the next generation.

Simone Collins: Wow.

Malcolm Collins: Catholics view that life begins at conception the problem with this view is that by the statistics, it doesn't really appear to impact the rate that Catholics [00:01:00] use contraception or get abortions very highly.

We'll go over the survey data right here. let's go for non religious affiliation.

And so they must be doing it like way more than Catholics, right? Morning after pill. Presumably. No, 33 percent to 35%

Simone Collins: Hold on, all of this gets worse.

It's just gonna be like a, oh, and it gets worse! How can this possibly get worse? We just learned that Catholics have abortions at rates similar to those who are not Catholic.

Malcolm Collins: I know what people are thinking.

They're thinking. Okay, but this is just lumping all Catholics into one group. What if we divide Catholics by how religious they are? Simone, before we go further, I got more stats for you here. You've got to be kidding me. It can't

Simone Collins: get any worse. Oh, it

Malcolm Collins: gets worse.

Every stat here is this situation is more catastrophic than you could have imagined.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: .

Hello. This is Malcolm and Simone Collins. We are so excited to be here with you today. And I am excited to be talking to you today, Simone, because this is going to be an episode our fans are going to [00:02:00] love because the. Stat heavy fertility episodes always do spectacular.

Ooh, we're looking at here some terrifying numbers. Oh, really? Yeah.

Simone Collins: Oh, no. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: So I have mentioned before that Catholics have a lower fertility rate than non Catholics when you control for income and that Catholic countries. Seem to be hit by fertility collapse a lot faster and harder than other countries.

For example, the average European Catholic majority country has a fertility rate of only 1. 3. And then you have the rapid declines in fertility across Latin America. With examples like Uruguay in just the past seven years going from an above replacement fertility rate to only around 1. 3. Argentina, if you're looking at the four year olds who are entering kindergarten this year there is going to be 30 percent less than just four years ago.

You look at Costa Rica where a local demographer used the term vertiginous to describe their fertility situation and local [00:03:00] women have below one fertility right now. So just. Absolutely catastrophic. But what has always been said to me is for whatever reason, this is not true of American Catholics.

Okay. Is that true? I, I idly decided I had taken it as a fact because so many people had told me this. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Sounds like it might be true. The Catholics that we know have a lot of kids, so it. Seems to totally check out

Malcolm Collins: of the prenatals movement. There are a number of Catholic the thought leaders in the movement.

So I was like, okay. But, and I will also note of the prenatalist Catholics that I know of they fall into two categories of, they are either weirdly unmarried and childless younger people or married with a lot of kids, older people. But the unique thing about the Catholics in the prenatalist movement is that when they are younger, they are much more likely to be unmarried.

Now, I'll get to this because this actually is what the statistics would [00:04:00] suggest we would find. So I decided to Google this. What is the TFR of Catholics in the USA? And I will put the results on screen here.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: The very first result is It, the AI review of the literature. Okay. Which says in 2023, the total fertility rate for Catholics in the United States was just over 1.6.

Ah. But then I go down and I find a study that looks into this, right? Yeah. So the TFR for non-Hispanic, white Catholic women in the United States is 1.64,

Simone Collins: as of

Malcolm Collins: does

Simone Collins: it give a year?

Malcolm Collins: This is the terrifying thing. It does. This study was done in, 1992. Ah!

Simone Collins: Oh no.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so it's almost certainly below that now.

Simone Collins: Yeah, because I haven't seen in any instance, there have been tiny improvements, but not any crazy bounce backs. So we can't expect it to have gone up significantly if it's, , and

Malcolm Collins: it is MUCH lower than the Protestant fertility rate.

Really? In the same study, the [00:05:00] average Protestant fertility rate was 1. 91. So 1. 64 for Catholics. Now, if these numbers are correct, it means the average Catholic fertility rate in the United States is below the average fertility rate in the United States. What on Earth? But we'll go into more data here, because I Okay.

Yeah, this is really neat. Okay, maybe it's being offset by these ultra religious Catholics that we're hearing about. Because I keep hearing about these hypothetical ultra pro family, ultra religious Catholics. And the stats are, basically show that they don't we'll get to them in just a second.

One is an article actually written by a Catholic for Catholics. The alarming fertility decline among Catholic women. So first we need to note something. What we're seeing right now, and I'm gonna read some quotes here, uh, from the study that was looking at this, that they say, this contrast was the pattern during the baby boom era where Catholics had a higher fertility than Protestants.

The authors state that quote, the baby [00:06:00] boom era pattern of high Catholic and low Protestant fertility has ended. Most of the, now what's causing this difference? And this is where it gets interesting because the studies have actually looked at this. Most of the Protestant Catholic difference in fertility is related to Catholics marrying later and less frequently compared to Protestants.

When looking at currently married women, the difference in fertility between Catholics and Protestants was smaller, indicating less fertility. Later, and less frequent marriage among Catholics, it's a key factor. The marital fertility of white Catholic wives was still higher than that of non Catholic wives in 1977 to 1981.

But, this difference has disappeared when Hispanics were excluded from the Catholic group. Basically, I'll word this. In other words, once Catholics are married, they have the same fertility rate as other Americans. Not a higher fertility rate, but about the same as other religious Americans. But they're,

Simone Collins: they're struggling with relationships.

Malcolm Collins: [00:07:00] So let's look like anecdotally. Okay. Okay. Few. Let's look at the Catholic influencers that I know about Nick Fuentes. Talks all the time about American fertility rates, and he's still unmarried. He cannot Oh, and Pearl Davis.

Simone Collins: Oh no. Or

Malcolm Collins: Pearl Davis. You still subscribe to the channel and subscribe. I don't know what I did to anger her.

Maybe it was a tracked episode. You're like, sometimes people just unsubscribe. I'm like, she must have been thinking something when she just did that. I don't know. I still like her. She's cool. I wish she could find a husband, but she hasn't found a husband and this is interesting, right? And then I think more broadly at the young Catholics I know in the pronatalist movement and not one of them is married.

When it is actually fairly rare to see unmarried people from other groups. They might be struggling to have a kid, but just completely unmarried. Yeah. So first I want to see if you have some thoughts here, because the stats will keep going and get worse.

Simone Collins: Yeah, my first intuition, and I wonder if this is maybe at play, is that [00:08:00] more Protestant church communities in the United States have stronger overall community and town social networks, meaning people are more likely to find partners.

Whereas I don't really think about Catholic towns, if where you would really see a religiously affiliated dating market the same way you would with I can think of cities and towns that are very Baptist, or very evangelical, and you can end up with a very strong church community there, certainly very Mormon, etc.

I

Malcolm Collins: disagree with this hunch pretty strongly. I think Catholics have great social networks. Consider that a lot of the Catholics, so you're thinking Catholic but a lot of the Catholics come from minority immigrant communities, like Irish and Italian Americans. And if you think about the Irish Catholic, it's because you're thinking Catholic broadly instead of about what Catholic communities actually are, which is often ethno national communities.

Yeah. A town, like the old mafia families is probably what you should be thinking more of instead of this modern [00:09:00] idea of what a Catholic is to a Protestant and these families have great networks often. So I don't think that's it. Now, before I give my hypotheses, I'm going to throw out some more stats here that will further scare anyone who is concerned about Catholics continuing to exist.

So this is a quote from Limestone. Okay. Likewise, Pentecostal churches will grow with an actual fertility of 2. 1, substantially above the needed fertility, 1. 8. So let's talk about what needed fertility is.

Needed fertility is the fertility rate that you would need to have to stay stable. As a cultural group, when you account for the belief that your cultural group has, i. e. the percentage of people who deconvert from your religion per generation. On the other hand, Catholic and Orthodox churches will see appreciable decline.

He says that they have 1. 9 children in both, but these are the 1. 9 study. They're the ones that don't separate out the Hispanic Catholic population. No, hold on. I will note here about the Hispanic Catholic population. Why am I considering them separate? Because their fertility rate [00:10:00] is declining rapidly.

It's declining in their home countries. It's declining in the United States. It's declining much faster than just about any other fertility rate out there right now. So it's certainly not going to contribute to the higher Catholic fertility rate in a few years. When I say higher, I mean it's a lower fertility rate than you would expect, but a, it's bolstering the Catholic fertility rate in the United States in some studies.

Way above that 1. 6 number. And the the second is that it culturally, they're a very different group. The Irish and Italian Catholic cultural groups are just, while they're like superficially the same religion as the Hispanic cultural group, the way that they, as somebody who's lived, like we live a lot in Hispanic majority countries.

Like we used to split our time between Miami and Lima in terms of where we were living. And both of us have gone to school in the UK. So we've also been around a lot of like Irish communities. They are not culturally the same community. Not at all.

Anyway, so I'm going to keep reading here. So he thinks it's 1. 9 which it really isn't. Children born per woman is nowhere near enough to offset the rates of conversion out of these [00:11:00] faiths, yielding a needed fertility rate for Roman Catholics of 3. 1. Whoa. Therefore these churches, and this is with the inflated 1.

9 number, that's including the Hispanic population. Okay. A 40 percent decline in the next generation.

Simone Collins: Wow. Like, Wow. Well, Especially, and here's the thing too, they're extra screwed if they're getting married later because then they're starting their fertility journey later and they don't believe in using IVF it seems.

And yes,

Malcolm Collins: so a lot of this is, I think, actually downstream of the abortion stuff. Catholics view that life begins at conception the problem with this view is that by the statistics, and we will go over the statistics here, it doesn't really appear to impact the rate that Catholics use contraception or get abortions very highly.

Simone Collins: Wait. So Catholics in surveys are reporting that they're getting abortions at rates similar to non [00:12:00] Catholics. Yes,

Malcolm Collins: we'll go over the survey data right here. Okay. No, I'll read the quote Finally, a bit of even more disturbing news for Orthodox Catholics. First, as shown in figure eight, the percentages of Catholic women using so called morning after pills is quite high.

Among those who have ever had sexual intercourse, 25 percent have, 32 percent among never married women ages 15 to 44 have. So if you look here and you look at the percent who have used morning after pills, for example, of Catholics for the Overall, it's 25 percent for the never married at 32%.

Now contrast this with evangelical Protestants, where for the never married it's only 20 percent and for the married it's 28%. Or you can go for black Protestants, 20, 21 percent respectively. Or you can go with main So Catholics are

Simone Collins: doing it more? I guess they can ask

Malcolm Collins: for forgiveness. They can ask for forgiveness.

It's okay. Hold on. But this is of the Protestant groups. Okay. So let's go. Now the mainline Protestants do it slightly more than [00:13:00] Catholics. So remember for Catholics overall, it was 25 percent for the mainline Protestants. It's 26%. Yeah. Slightly more. And so these but okay, let's go for non religious affiliation.

And so they must be doing it like way more than Catholics, right? Morning after pill. Presumably. No, 33 percent to 35%. For the non married women group, keep in mind in Catholics that 32 percent who have done it, 35 percent for the non religious denomination. Now hold on, we're gonna, we're gonna go into even more chilling statistics for Catholics out there.

Oh no. Figure nine shows the percentages of women who have ever been pregnant who admitted to having an abortion. Okay, yeah.

Simone Collins: So we're getting into more serious ground. Yeah. Not just running after.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so for Catholics here, overall, it was 13%. Never married, it was 20%. Contrast this with Evangelical Protestants.

Overall, it's 12 percent and never married. It's 19%. Now if we go to [00:14:00] mainline Protestants, okay, these people are like, not very religious often, they must be all, no, it was 13 percent overall for Catholics, 16 percent for the mainline Protestants and then for the never married group, 26 percent when contrasted with the Catholic 20%.

Now if you look at the no religious affiliation at all here you actually get a slightly bigger boost with it being 28 percent and 33 percent respectively, but still not as big as you would expect.

Simone Collins: That's a lot of people getting abortions. That's a lot.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It's a lot more people getting abortions than I would expect as well.

Genuinely,

Simone Collins: like genuinely, apparently birth control is not as widely used as I thought, which surprises me because. I was not sexually active before I met you, and yet I had been on birth control for years to control acne. I don't know, it's just bizarre to me that so few women are on it. Hold on, all of this gets worse.

It's just gonna be like a, oh, and it gets worse! How can this possibly get worse? We just learned that Catholics have abortions at [00:15:00] rates similar to those who are not Catholic. This is

Malcolm Collins: So now we're getting into the next issue, which is, in fact, the, this is, I'm quoting from the article where these come from.

In fact, the National Academy of Sciences estimates that at least at earlier versions of the NSFG, that's this study right here, up to half or more of all abortions were not reported by the women who had them. This type of survey error is called selective recall bias. So basically if you have a strong religious reason to not recall something in a survey, you often won't.

What you're saying

Simone Collins: is a lot of Catholic women who filled this out and said they did not have an abortion have had an abortion

Malcolm Collins: have based on other surveys that have been done. This is a mistake we see in the data. Now we're going to look at another thing here because I know what people are thinking.

They're thinking. Okay, but this is just lumping all Catholics into one group. What if we divide Catholics by how religious they are? And I have done that here, and it doesn't solve the problem. Right here we are dividing them [00:16:00] by church attendance. We have a once a month group, a one to three times a month group, and a weekly group.

So less than once a month, it's the first one to three times weekly. Okay. Okay. This is the ever married, ever used artificial birth control of any type. So have they used artificial birth control? So of the people who don't go to church or go to church less than once a month, Catholics, 99 percent have used birth control.

Okay. Okay. What about the people who go one to three times a month? 98%. Okay. What about the people who go weekly? The really devout ones? 95%. This is so

Simone Collins: odd because we meet so many Catholic and otherwise. Harder line Protestant people who will not shut up about birth control being so unnatural and bad.

And yet. It's so pervasively used. I guess that's why they're going on about it, but this really surprises me.

Malcolm Collins: Hold on. She ain't over here. I've got to go through a few other things. But also if

Simone Collins: that many of them are using birth [00:17:00] control, are also that many of them so unconscientious that they don't use it enough to need, actually to use the morning after abortion?

That

Malcolm Collins: was birth control of any type. Let's narrow it down. Ah, okay,

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Let's say, of the Catholics who were married, An ever used birth control that does not include condoms or

Simone Collins: vasectomies. I.

Malcolm Collins: e. Plan B and abortions, etc. The pill, etc. Okay?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Of the group that goes less than once a month, it's 94%.

Of the group that goes three to four times a month, it's 88%. And of the group who goes weekly, it's 81%. So the restrictions are just not that effective within the community. Do you want to talk about abortions? So if we're talking about abortions here the difference between the groups is 24%.

One in four Catholics who goes to a church less than once a month has had an abortion. That's wild. Wouldn't that

Simone Collins: just be also mentally tough to go to a church that has such views? I guess it helps that you can confess, [00:18:00] but

Malcolm Collins: still. One to three times a month, 22%. And then these very religious Catholics that go weekly, okay weekly plus.

11%! Over 1 in 10 Catholics who is going to a church very frequently. You have a group of 10 Catholics, one of them are, Catholic women, so 20 Catholic women. One of them has had an abortion.

Simone Collins: What this really says to me is that our message around cultural sovereignty and reproductive choice really matters in that you should focus in on your own group.

If you believe abortion is bad, try to get your own group to ban abortion internally, but to impose that on other people is both. We've got to talk about why it doesn't

Malcolm Collins: work. But Simone, before we go further, I got more stats for you here. You've got to be kidding me. It can't

Simone Collins: get any worse. Oh, it

Malcolm Collins: gets worse.

Every stat here is this situation is more catastrophic than you could have imagined. So the next one [00:19:00] is so some Catholics might be watching this and they're like, yeah, but I know a number of Catholics who attend church weekly and are still not very religious. So what if instead we separated Catholics by how religious they are between very, somewhat and not.

Okay. And we asked the same questions ever used artificial birth control of any type. 100 percent of the non religious ones, not surprising, but of the somewhat religious ones, it's 99%, and of the very religious ones, it's 96%. If you're talking about had an abortion of the not religious ones, it was 27%, but of the very religious ones?

It was whopping 18 percent of Catholics, of the ones who are married and used artificial birth control other than condom and vasectomies, i. e. morning after pill, the pill, et cetera or abortions themselves. You are looking between 96 percent of the not very religious ones to [00:20:00] 94 percent of the somewhat religious ones and 82 percent of the very religious ones.

 And as a quick put related aside, it is important to remember that if you overlay a heat map of how restrictive abortion access is across the EU, it is going to directly overlap. , with a heat map of how low fertility rates are across the EU, there appears to be a direct link between how restrictive the culture is around abortion and how low its fertility rate is.

Simone Collins: So the issue is that Catholics aren't Catholic ing.

Malcolm Collins: And we've got to talk about why. Because they are Catholic ing when it comes to things like IVF. They are, and this is a major problem. Like, when I say I'm afraid of Catholics going extinct, I very sincerely mean that. When we have studies showing us that by 2060, 50 percent of men in the developed world are not going to, , be fertile anymore.

And then you get the, and so if they ban IVF, they're banning 50 [00:21:00] percent of their population from having kids and they already have terrible fertility rates. And why are they doing this? This is where it gets really tragic and sad to me. So people on our show, they'll know. We talk about like high and low Muslim culture.

There are is absolutely an iteration of Muslim culture that, goes out and defaces things in museums and attempts to start a caliphate and basically are barbarians, like in terms of their level, the way that they treat people within their culture and outside of the culture, the way they view outsiders.

But then there's a side of Muslim culture, which is where the Muslim golden age did. And like all of our Muslim scientists come from. And, I have a number of Muslim friends who are. Very enlightened, philosophically engaged people, like within every culture, you get to choose the high road or the low road, right?

And Catholicism, it has a high road, it has its Thomas Aquinas and Augustus of Hippo. It [00:22:00] also has a low road. The mad Pope Pius IX, who wrote the Syllabus of Errors, basically calling for a Catholic Caliphate. For people who aren't familiar with the Syllabus of Errors, I can read some stuff on it so people know.

The syllabus of errors called for people who lived in Catholic majority countries to remove freedom of religion and freedom of press within their countries and create Catholic states. Some quotes here. Moreover, it is false that the civil liberty of every form of worship and the full power given to all overtly and publicly manifested any opinion whatsoever and thoughts conduce more easily to corrupt the morals and the minds of people and to propagate the pests of indifferentism.

And then you can look at other quotes where like one of the things that should be banned or ideas that should be banned in the syllabus of errors is every man is free to embrace and profess that religion, which guided by the light of reasons he shall consider true. Another one is in the present day, it is no longer expedient.

The Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the state to the [00:23:00] exclusion of all other forms of worship. Wants to He's against these things. He thinks that, we need to end this. But he is also the pope who ordered the great castration, the going out and ripping the penises off of statues made by a guy like higher than his own, that he personally could not even see the worthiness of this art, just like this level of cultural depravity.

But here's the problem, right? I contrasted these three individuals. It turns out that the only reason that Catholics today think that life began at conception is because of the mad Pope Pius IX, the great castration guy, the syllabus of errors guy. Oh boy. Thomas Aquinas, Augustus of Hippo, they thought life began 30 to 90 days after the fetus began developing.

So they'd have no problem with IVF. So you're really getting this option with Catholicism, which is culturally. Where do Catholics go? Do they go back to their great figures in their [00:24:00] history and try to revitalize a true older form of Catholicism, or do they go with the guy who went around ripping penises off statutes?

The, an act that to me seems, not particularly different from, the Muslims who are defacing things in their museums because they see them as an affront to their religion. And Protestants have gone through dark periods like this as well, where they deface things.

I've got to, admit Protestants went through lots of great art and just defaced it. Because as much as I'm against mythology, I do not believe it. So many Catholic church

Simone Collins: interiors that used to have priceless art. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: so every culture has a high road and a low road. It's which iteration of that culture do you decide that you want to follow?

So I think that's one thing that we have to note here, right? Is if you're going to get married later, you got this issue. Oh, hold on. I've got some more stats here to go over really quickly. Before. Here, what we're going to do is we are going to put a silver lining on this potentially.

Okay. That

Simone Collins: sounds nice at this point, [00:25:00] please.

Malcolm Collins: Some other stats that we didn't get a chance to mention. Among ever married Catholic women aged 35 to 44, the percentage having five or more live births dropped more than six times between 1976 and the most recent data. Six fold.

But, More devout people do have more kids. The problem is I haven't been able to find this broken out by religion. So I don't know. What is also really interesting in these statistics that I'll put on screen here is that while more devout people have more kids the number of kids that non devout people plan on having when they are 18 to 24 actually isn't that much lower than the number that devout people plan on having.

It's just the actual realized fertility potential is much higher for the devout people. They're just in the expectation among the other group just goes down and converges with the number of kids they actually end up having as time goes on. And you'll see this in the graph. So that's a little bit of a, maybe there's a way out of this.

But now we need to talk about why are Catholics marrying [00:26:00] later than other groups? And this is something I can only speculate on, but here is my thought. And of course I have to go into some stereotyping about the Catholics I know. Catholics are typically, in my experience, much more intellectually heady, and things need to be technically correct, in terms of how they approach life, and much less I guess I'd call it like passionful in the way that they approach things, it's more what does the research say, what does the, very nerdy, but in a type of nerdy that's very divergent with our type of nerdy.

Our type of nerdy is very much let's head for the truth and look at the statistics and find out how like the authorities are lying to us. Where the Catholic nerdy is, let's go through the ancient literature and the great thinkers and everyone that genius who has written on this subject. I think you need both of these working next to each other in an ecosystem to produce great outcomes, but consider finding a [00:27:00] wife.

With these two hats on, or finding a husband with these two hats on, you're going to be much more interested in the particulars of an individual rather than just making it work if you're approaching it with this heady perspective. Whereas if you're approaching it with this you just have to make things work and.

To an extent, like even though we try to quarantine our emotions as much as possible, I would still say there's much more emotional leak into our actions which may be leading us to sublimate this basically checklist mentality a bit more than Catholics do. That is one hypothesis here. The other hypothesis, it might be that historically, because we do know that historically, as I mentioned in all of these studies, pre 70s, Catholics really did have a higher fertility rate and they got this higher fertility rate by their perspectives on contraception which did genuinely increase their fertility rate.

It might be that the Catholic cultural group was [00:28:00] basically able to cheese their fertility rate for a long time and not develop other mechanisms to motivate people to find partners and have kids because they had the boost from their bans on contraception. And when those bands stopped being effective anymore, then, They didn't have the rest of the cultural technology that motivated kids for the sake of kids, instead of because you're having sex and not using contraception.

And so there's all of this talk around and you see this within Catholic communities, like this, elevation of life and children as being these great glorious things. However, I feel like the way the Catholic community intellectually relates to these concepts is in the abstract and not in the actual.

I think it's the same way that they relate to marriage, for example. How much does like Nick Fuentes opine on the type of person you need to be to get a good partner? Now, if you're approaching information like a Simone or Malcolm, I would [00:29:00] immediately discount anything he says about the way a married couple should live their lives because He or the way you should go about securing a partner because whatever he's doing clearly isn't working, but a Catholic like the way that Catholics intellectually relate to information might actually take advice on how to find a partner from somebody like him because he aesthetically is giving views that align with great thinkers in history who they have respect for, even if functionally him following those perspectives has shown to not work within our modern context.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. There, There does seem to be a risk with Catholicism of becoming so divorced from, we'll say like this source material, and instead looking at experts who analyze experts and eventually become too separated from the actual religion. But I can't see a direct line between that and fertility rates.

I just, [00:30:00] I think it's telling one that there clearly is a lot of a We'll say functional attrition taking place with Catholicism. Like they may, you might say that you're Catholic, but the urban monoculture is driving more of your behavior, if not your thoughts, then you would like or in practice. And then I do think that there's something going on with community formation.

Most of the community amenities services, even missionary work that I've encountered in my life. And of course this is anecdotal, so it's not great information, but it hasn't been Catholic. It's been Protestant. And I do think that those are signs. If I don't see missionary work, if I don't see soup kitchens, if I don't see charities, if I don't see auctions, if I don't see events, then I'm probably also not encountering a community that is providing dating solutions.

And keep in mind that people often meet each other at these things as [00:31:00] well. So I just, I don't know. I don't, it could be that the Catholic church has so much dedicated.

Malcolm Collins: I'm actually being proselytized to by a Catholic. I'm just thinking about it now. That's what I'm saying.

Simone Collins: And it could be a structural issue.

Because for example, most Protestant groups are not really oriented around a large sprawling church. The attention goes more to mission oriented things or local community events and programming. Whereas because the Catholic Church has orders of priests and nuns and, payroll and staff and bureaucracy and internal processes, it could be that it's developed a form of governing bureaucratic bloat.

That it's caused resources that would otherwise go toward community programming, like mission work, like community services, like matchmaking. Now that's instead going to training priests, and maintaining orders of nuns, and maintaining the internal apparatus of Vatican City, etc.

Malcolm Collins: I have two other ideas I've come up while you've been [00:32:00] talking here.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. One idea is the aesthetic idealism of Catholics is what is causing them to get married later. So when I talk about the aesthetic idealism of Catholics, I don't even do I need to explain what I mean by this concept? You know what I'm talking about when I say Catholics are aesthetic idealists.

Like they really like, This grandeur feeling this everything it's like this is the way you do a marriage for it to be just and good, right? This is the way you live your life for it to be just and good and it's an aesthetic direction of Perfection and grace and beauty and there is you know, obviously there's something motivating about this But it's pretty bad at sealing the deal with specific other individuals.

Because it's very easy for someone to not meet this aesthetic idealism in a fallen world. So that could be one. Okay? Next. What if it is downstream of the priest class being celibate? Because you're talking [00:33:00] about this giant bureaucracy that the Catholics have, and one unique thing about the Catholic bureaucracy that is often acting as their dating coaches and life coaches and psychologists, like when it's functioning correctly, right?

They're celibate. They haven't gone through these trials.

Simone Collins: Oh, and so these, yeah, basically the tribal elders of the Catholic community are not speaking from experience when helping people form relationships or, that is to say romantic sexual relationships or get married or find a partner because they themselves.

Did not successfully do that. They didn't want to. It wasn't their calling. Contrast like

Malcolm Collins: a young Jew, or a young Mormon, right? I go to my rabbi and I talk about dating problems, or finding a wife, or something like that. Or I go to a Mormon. A stake president, or

Simone Collins: yeah, whoever. Yeah. Yeah, they're gonna probably have a family and a ton of kids.

They're gonna

Malcolm Collins: be able to talk from a position of not sympathy, but empathy. Really, some people don't know the difference. Empathy is when you're talking about an [00:34:00] emotion that you've had before, and you can put yourself in their shoes through mirroring the emotion through when you've had sympathy. It's when you're you can imagine what it's like to be them, but you haven't actually experienced something like that yourself.

When You've got it mixed up. I got it mixed up. It's the empathy is one and the empathy is the other. Yeah it's the same word. Simone is the smarter one, and you're proving it again right here. I'm probably wrong, Malcolm. I just we'll see. We'll see. I'll just leave this whole thing in. I won't even check it when I'm doing editing and then A couple things.

Okay. No, so I think you

Simone Collins: make a good point there, though. If the influencers of your space are giving advice, it's going to get, our general rule of thumb is the advice that you take from someone is advice. It's going to get you where they are. And if you're getting advice on relationships from a celibate person who works in a bureaucracy, yeah, you can end up married.

Malcolm Collins: Then consider like we've got to, we've got to flip this consider how this is actually protective of the aesthetic idealism problem I was talking about. So when you go to a, [00:35:00] Rabbi that's actually had to deal with being married to someone and finding a spouse, and you're like, look, they don't live up to my ideal of what a woman should be in this area.

They're going to be like, buddy, it's like that for everyone. You'll grow together. It'll work out. Yeah. You go to the Catholic priest because they've never actually had to deal with these compromises in a marriage. They are much less likely to be compromising on those aesthetic

Simone Collins: Yeah, or you can talk to a nun.

She's basically married to Jesus. That's a high bar. She's comparing all men to Jesus. Yeah, she's

Malcolm Collins: comparing your husband, your potential husband to Jesus. No, it's hard. And then you've got to keep in mind that as a Catholic, and this is another huge problem that Catholics have, because of the priesthood, is typically your most devout members, okay?

Your fanatics are the people who in a normal religion are pumping out the most kids. In Catholicism, you're memetically castrating them. Your most devout members are entering the priesthood.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Rather they serve their

Malcolm Collins: [00:36:00] duty to God rather than by having kids. So if I would make a few prescriptive changes for Catholicism, one is the celibate priesthood just doesn't make sense anymore.

It's not a biblical thing. It's definitely not in the Bible that your priest should be celibate. This is. Something that was made up after. It was made up with good reason, I think, when it was first made up to prevent nepotism within church institutions. Great reason to do it initially.

It doesn't make sense anymore. End it. Two this life begins at conception thing. During the greatest periods when your church was still this living entity that was producing all these amazing and great thinkers That I look to respect and that I draw religious authority from even as a non catholic I can go to the writings of someone like, Thomas Aquinas and Feel like getting information from somebody who is genuinely touched by God in his writings and these have theological import to them.

Whereas when I look at more modern Catholic writings [00:37:00] they read like research abstracts. Like it's it's it's the difference between a living and a dead religion right and to Bring a religion back to life. You have to bring the theological conversation back to life Which means you need to be having a living conversation about the theology and that's the final thing.

I would say it's that the conversation about the Catholic theology Needs to become more of a living thing in the way it is within Protestant communities you know If you look at like the pre millennialist versus the post millennialist Protestants, and you look at them debating this is a living conversation.

Even if it's like nuanced stuff they are passion about this. I don't see this because I watch a lot of like religious communities talking to each other. With the Catholic religious authorities, it always feels more like an academic debate.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And so it's, how can you bring that passion back in?

I think it's by Doubling down on the asceticism, but the asceticism of the old and the ascetic not asceticism like being an ascetic, but the ascetic drive or [00:38:00] morality, I think you can maintain that because I think that's key to Catholic culture, but to aim for the early church instead of the modern church.

Simone Collins: Which should take you closer to the true church. Any organization that grows over time is going to drift a little bit. Sometimes you have to reorient back.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so to aim for the early church restructure around that. And to would be the second thing the priesthood thing. I just don't know how you can fix this issue when your entire ruling bureaucracy has never had to find a spouse.

In a world where the difficulty of finding a spouse has become astronomically harder you're talking about the Mormon prophet, right? He's an old guy. So he's out of touch was what the modern dating market is but at least he has like some connection to it. Like at least eventually somebody is going to be in that position who has dealt with something like a modern dating market that will just never happen with the Catholic community.

So there is not the same mandate to update their perspectives. [00:39:00] And you even have the Pope now calling for people. There was a quote recently that like women need to have more kids and they're shirking their duties.

Simone Collins: Wow. That's. intense. And I, I wish there were something more productive to say aside from I still think the big thing is when people look at falling birth rates and they think that the solution is to impose one cultural solution on everyone.

I don't think that's the right answer. And I think cultures really need to look within and solve their own problems before doing things like trying to universally ban abortion. Which is only causing things to become harder for Catholics in many ways, because now a bunch of people are pushing back where they wouldn't otherwise see pushback.

Yeah, I also feel like a lot of people maybe stepping away from the Catholic Church because of these developments, which is only going to hurt them more. And the bans aren't

Malcolm Collins: even really affecting abortion rates within your own community. Like, instead of focusing on this deontological like ethical structure to build [00:40:00] relations.

And if people want to hear more of our Catholic abortion debate you can go to our video, who's actually killing more kids, other Catholics. Where we go into that question and the theology behind it really in detail. For me, I think the sign that God does not, did not intend us to believe that life begins at conception and meant for us to know this, is really clear in the fact that human identical twins exist, where the conception happens and then it splits into two humans, and chimeras exist, where two different fertilized eggs end up forming into one human.

This is something, both of those things don't happen in all species. God didn't need to make them happen in our species, that he did seems like a pretty loud signal that the early Catholic thinkers were right and not the penis rip off guy not the caliphate guy not the anti freedom of religion, anti freedom of press anti I think That there's this, oh, this is what we've always thought in perspective, and it's just, it's useful to help break that, and I'm trying to break this, not as an attack on Catholics, but because I want to save the [00:41:00] Catholic cultural group.

I think that it has something to offer our civilization but by the numbers right now, if it keeps doing what it's doing, it will die. It

Simone Collins: will die. Admitting you have a problem is the first step to hopefully doing something to address it. And I hope that awareness is raised about this actual issue because clearly the current stances being taken are not effective.

And a lot of introspection and inward looking, I think would, Do good. And I also think more focus on the actual infrastructure of relationship formation within the Catholic church needs to be revisited because one reason why probably people are even getting the abortions that they're getting is because they're not married.

And I bet if they were in, and happy marriages at younger ages, Those abortions would have turned into live births, which is really sad too. So I think that's where it should be.

Malcolm Collins: Here's the real fix. Some of the Catholics that have reached out to us have [00:42:00] indicated that they live in small, all Catholic communities that are very high fertility rate and absolutely religiously zealot.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: These are the communities that will end up replacing the current Catholic church and potentially saving it. I'm super

Simone Collins: okay with that because these people we've met are awesome.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but the challenge that these communities have is they are ruled by a central bureaucracy that is much more moderate than they are, and that's out of touch with them for

Simone Collins: sure.

It's

Malcolm Collins: so challenging to be a community that is being dragged towards the urban monoculture, not just from the culture around you, but your central ruling bureaucracy, which is setting your church mandates. Yeah, I think what we really need to see is a Catholic break off church. I think that's what's gonna survive.

Simone Collins: We'll see.

Malcolm Collins: Or an order. Oh, this would be interesting. An order. An order of nuns slash priest like Catholics that all take a vow to be high of fertility and incredibly religiously celibate. The order

Simone Collins: of families. I like it. Very cool. The order of

Malcolm Collins: [00:43:00] fecundity. Anyway I, what would you call them?

The the baby friars?

Simone Collins: No. The family order.

Malcolm Collins: I love you. I love you too, Malcolm. Have a great day. And I do hope the Catholics solve this, cause I'm worried after seeing these stats.

Simone Collins: We love you Catholics, good luck!

Malcolm Collins: We can't help, but hopefully you've worked this out on your own somehow. Trust in my BF!.

Simone Collins: You look very pretty, by the way. So do you. I know the white is better,

Malcolm Collins: I know you try hard and I

Simone Collins: looked like Dobby the house elf. And so I figured, gray

appropriate for me. All right, let's do it.

This way? Yeah. Yeah? Where are we [00:44:00] going?

In this insightful video, Malcolm and Simone Collins dive into the complex ethical considerations surrounding parents showcasing their children on social media platforms. They explore the potential benefits and drawbacks of raising children in the public eye, addressing concerns about privacy, consent, and the long-term impact on a child's future. The couple discusses the importance of age-appropriate media exposure, the need for open communication and education, and the value of building a strong family brand in an increasingly connected world. They also touch on the role of social media followings in creating opportunities, fostering trust, and navigating a changing societal landscape. Throughout the conversation, Malcolm and Simone emphasize the significance of parental responsibility, adaptability, and the development of resilience in children growing up in the digital age.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] I claiming there are no ethical issues here? No, I'm very clearly not. I'm saying there are ethical issues, but what people on the other side of this argument are

pretending, which is just false in a lie is that there are no potential upsides for the kid from this. I'm doing is I am contrasting the upsides with the downsides . That they have the environment to start their lives with decent sized social media followings within wealthy intellectual circles, the doors that is going to open for them. And this is something that we also haven't talked enough about in society, social media followings and the ability to translate these into high value relationships.

Simone Collins: if we live in a future in which Society's current vetting systems are bankrupt and don't work anymore. The only way that you can really build trust and have people expect you to deliver on what you [00:01:00] promise is if they feel like they know you and can trust you and you're predictable because trust lies in predictability.

And the only way that they can know that is if they have some kind of access to your thought process or they have a parasocial relationship with you. And the only way to do that is if you have a very open and transparent media history.

Malcolm Collins: And we want to have kids whose lives matter. If you are afraid of people making fun of you online, Your life won't matter

Simone Collins: because

Malcolm Collins: you can't do anything publicly.

And it's very hard to change the world if you don't do things publicly

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello everyone I am excited to be here with you today. Today. We are going to be talking about the ethics of putting children in media and the Considerations that need to go into this because a lot of people might look at what we are doing we are a very public family. We are in the news all the time these days which is funny because

our channel is medium size, but not really correlatory to how [00:02:00] publicly famous we are getting. But again, just this last weekend, like the big three page front page piece in the guardian. And then a bunch of follow up pieces to that and then trending and and so people are like, wow, your kids are in all of these, like in the Vice documentary, right?

This little baby right here is in the media because she is in this shot.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And I watch a lot of snark online. A lot of the snark there's a big theme and people criticizing parents who include their children in TikTok and Instagram and YouTube posts, et cetera. And whenever they include clips that they're criticizing, they blur out.

The poor baby's faces, because they've been included in the shot. And even when they're trying to critique the video, they themselves do not want to repeat the crime of putting a child's face online, which to a certain extent, I understand the basics of where they're coming from.

For example on Google photos, which uses facial recognition, it is able to recognize the faces of. Baby versions [00:03:00] of very old people. Like it is very good at continuous face facial recognition. So it's not Oh, it's a, it's them as a baby. No one will know that this was them. Oh, actually they will.

There is no not parsing that, but also you and I have been talking a lot about this recently, this concept of privacy. Is such a farce and often to a great extent, trying to be more private and trying to hide is only subjecting. I'm going

Malcolm Collins: to push back on you here from their perspective.

Simone Collins: Yeah, you can say

Malcolm Collins: that as an adult privacy is a farce to adults. Okay. Yeah. Which is very hard to actually both be private and have an impact on the world in this current world. You can be private, but you are sacrificing your ability to impact society by doing that. Yeah. However, and I think that most like sane ethical systems believe some form of social impact is a personal obligation.

I can see how there could be like hedonist based ethical systems or like weird ones where like your family is literally the only thing that matters. But your [00:04:00] family is going to have to deal with downstream consequences of a society you didn't alter. So that's silly to me. So as an adult, yeah. I believe that privacy is a silly thing to strive for, but you could keep our children from appearing in any media.

Like I could genuinely achieve that in the way that the world is structured today. So why Delta? Hmm. Okay. Now let's talk about the ethical position that they're arguing from, right? They're saying the child did not consent being in media. And therefore the child. should not be in media, right?

Which is a fairly stupid argument. Children do not consent to the vast majority of parental decisions made around them.

Simone Collins: They did not consent to broccoli. They did not consent to bedtime. They did not consent to. Exactly. Many things.

Malcolm Collins: So that's [00:05:00] just stupid. Like the consent argument around kids appearing in media is stupid.

Simone Collins: But they would argue broccoli and bedtime are good for you. Media is. But

Malcolm Collins: that's their judgment. And this is what we're fundamentally going to argue by the end of this video is that I suspect that the core value source in our society going forwards, especially like accreditation source with the universities, is Collapsing as trusted sources of accreditation.

Cause I've seen this more and more just nobody trusts the universities. Like they've gone way too far on DEI. They've basically become these extremist cults. Nobody really sees them as a good source of an individual's value anymore. Where do people. And then it's then what about like designer brands, no longer like this sort of scarcity around fancy clothes, no longer has value anymore.

It's what is luxury? What is value today? Because we have now, I think, cross correlated luxury with. Signs of this is somebody you should [00:06:00] pay attention to which is the way historically used to be the guy who walked into the village with all the beads on him and all the gold on him what he was showing Is I'm someone you should pay attention to you.

I am someone you should

Simone Collins: well really to boil it down someone who Actually has wealth or luxury has a scarce commodity. And right now branded luxury goods are not a scarce commodity. A lot of these other things, prestigious university degrees are becoming less scarce as a commodity. For example, there are a lot of people claiming that they have a Harvard degrees because they've gone to a Harvard extension program.

They just stretch it a little bit and, other universities have really loosened their. Admission criteria, right? So carry on.

Malcolm Collins: So it's scarce quantities. But in this current world order, the, it seems to be sorting towards the core thing of value and the core sign of competence and the core thing that opens doors from you is.

is subscriber count. Basically, it's how many people are paying attention to you in online environment. Please and subscribe. No but I mean that very [00:07:00] seriously, right?

Simone Collins: I would say it's that or Other means of proving value. Like I, I built this thing that created this much in wealth, or I am able to turn this thing into money.

So you have to just prove value or prove reach. And I think, reach is a sign of proven value and that's what we're looking at. You can no longer just use someone's vetting or someone's someone else's possessions to get there.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, there are, I would say it's. There are other means, but it's mostly proven reach.

If you look at what's the richest person in the world doing with his money, Elon Musk, he's buying Twitter slash X, right? He is buying something that gives him control of the flow of information because that is the key thing about, especially as we move into an economy was more AI where human labor has a different value than it did in a historic context where like human information labor is less important The human creative labor where creativity [00:08:00] isn't defined in the narrow sense it was historically, which is to say around narrow like pictures, which it turns out we're just like averages basically, or art, which it turned out was averages or music because all of this was very easy for AI to replicate. But, nuanced conversation and interpretation of what's going on in a global context and philosophical and cultural, like the type of information that we are providing people with or the type of entertainment we are providing people with, we loop our children into this at an early age and they come out with the large followings, basically starting their lives, what people are from our perspective, arguing against our kids having right is it's almost in the last generation.

It's like we have prepaid for our kids to go to Harvard, but they also absolutely have to go to Harvard. And you can say, what if your kids don't want to go to Harvard? I'm like, that's a [00:09:00] possibility. A lot of people in the world might not want to go to Harvard. Yeah. But. on the edge. If I told the kid I didn't know if you'd want to go to Harvard or not, so I didn't pre pay and secure your acceptance, the vast majority of people would be like, fuming.

Are you insane? How dare you deny me this opportunity that I had so set in stone for some sort of bizarre I wasn't sure if you'd want it or not. That is the way that we relate to this concept. So we can look at the counters. It's what if your kids don't want this, right? So you need to look at the actual, because we're very consequentialist in our ethics.

What are the actual consequences, negative consequences to our kids?

For being in media and stuff like that. I can

Simone Collins: walk, I can walk through some of that. And I think this is where the nuance comes in that people aren't willing to discuss. And a lot of this is similar to what we saw with corporal punishment, where there's a lot of people who are like under no circumstances, can this thing ever be done?[00:10:00]

And then on the other end, you have people who take it too far after hearing that it's okay, or thinking that it's okay. And there has to be a happy medium. So the top critiques that I hear when people are criticizing this is one, parents are bringing up subjects that these kids probably really don't want.

to have their parents talking about my daughter just had her first period. Now I'm picking up tampons for her and we're going to go have the talk on how she's going to use them. And, as a teenager, maybe that's not something that she really wants to have heard, or, people talk about, with eight passengers, obviously Ruby Frank was having conversations with her kids when her kids were even quite openly and verbally signaling that they did not want to have those conversations on the plane.

Camera. So there are instances in which there's active lack of consent. There are instances in which embarrassing things are happening. There are instances in which the kid is okay with it at the time, but in the future, you're pretty sure, like 80 to 90 percent confidence that person is not going to be happy to have that video content out there.

Cause it's just embarrassing. And then there's the [00:11:00] instance or the issue of financial exploitation and already States, I think like California have legislation that require Parents that are making money from content with their kids in them have to set aside a certain amount of income for their kids.

But this is far from, universal legislation. And I imagine that many parents that should be compensating their children for the income that they're getting using their children are not doing so, and just using their children.

Malcolm Collins: So I want to push against all of these points because go ahead.

Okay. I'll explain why they're dumb. So first you've got to look at different age ranges. And stuff like that. Yeah,

Simone Collins: absolutely.

Malcolm Collins: So suppose industry, the one who's in the shot right now wants to be a private person when she gets older within no like normative or logically consistent ethical system, could she be concerned that something that she did at this age is going to be used against her as an adult?

Like

Simone Collins: what is the effect? What about that girl who tweeted those, that the hummus or, But the girl who [00:12:00] tweeted really insensitive and very racially bad things, racist things. And then her father's business was completely shut down. I've forgotten his name. Do you think industry is going to be tweeting anything?

Malcolm Collins: No. Are you out of your mind? But what I'm saying though is there are instances of kids doing things that come no. The point I'm making is you need to divide by age ranges. Okay? Huh.

Simone Collins: Huh.

Malcolm Collins: Anything below I'd say the age of probably about six just isn't going to affect you as an adult.

Maybe even the age of seven. Anything below the age of seven. Yeah, I'll go seven. Anything below the age of seven, just know it. They're like a seven year old. That's probably fair. Yeah, and they're probably not All the things people are like,

Simone Collins: that's fine. Tweeting anti And

Malcolm Collins: you could be like what if the kids walking around screaming racial obscenities or something like that?

Simone Collins: One, It's more a reflection of the parents than anything. It's more a

Malcolm Collins: reflection of the parents. It's going to be a general problem anyway, if they're that sort of person. When they're that young,

Simone Collins: again.

Malcolm Collins: And whether or not they're online, it is not a problem that their [00:13:00] parents made a mistake there. Their parents made a mistake somewhere if that's happening, okay?

The point is that under the age of seven, Or so there's they're just not going to be held responsible for any of their actions once they decide to become private and all of this stuff can really be disintermediated from their adult identity. So it is largely irrelevant, especially when there is a potential positive for them.

Now we're going to deal with the tricky age. Okay. And this is the age you were talking about. Yeah, this is like seven to maybe 11. Oh, you're saying tween

Simone Collins: years, really? I thought it was when that sort of, I would say from 13 to adulthood. No,

Malcolm Collins: I actually don't think there's any. And so we'll take out the tween years and then we'll just jump to the next age range to explain why it's not ethically complicated.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: The sort of. I'd say 11 and up. So let's say 12 and over. These are [00:14:00] fully cognitively human things. They can decline consent whenever they want. They can say, I don't want to appear on film. And if they say, I don't want to appear on film, I think it is the parent's duty to respect that.

And I think honestly, in most cases, except when you're dealing with like actual crazy people, like the eight passenger situation, most parents respect that. Yeah. If a kid says, I don't wanna

Simone Collins: line there, you say, if a kid ever says no, I would even say, what if a five YEAROLD or 4-year-old says no, then we don't, we would never put them on camera.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But I don't look, what I would say is. A four year old not saying no, even if they might have said no, if they were more cognitive is not relevant to me because there's no real negative repercussions for their actions. No one's going to

Simone Collins: judge them for the thing that they might've said no to.

Right.

Malcolm Collins: So irrelevant. And then you could be like, yeah, but what if a 12 or 13 year old is they they say yes, but then they do something stupid, like something racist or something like overly sexually aggressive or And it's and then they have to deal with repercussions for that when [00:15:00] they're older.

It's excuse me. What about me when I was 20, if I did stuff like that? And then I had to deal with repercussions for it when I'm like a totally different person. Now people change over time. All I can do is try to inform my kids as much about the world as possible and hope that they make good decisions.

The fact that they might need to if my 12 year old murders someone, are they not supposed to be long term responsible for that? Be realistic people. So I really just don't see a lot of ethical consequences there. Like we are giving our kids the chance as fully mentally developed beings.

Not fully, but like they're on the way to full mental development and they have the ability to decline consent and the record, the historic record is going to be judging them with that in mind. So as an example, recently, I saw there was somebody trying to cancel Turkey Top for saying something Using racial slurs when he was 15 or 16 on like Twitter threats.

Now, he wasn't public. He didn't have parents who were making him public. But [00:16:00] once you're at this fully mental age and you're in an online space, this is where your argument of privacy is an illusion at that point, right? He wasn't public, but he became famous later, and so those things became relevant later.

And most people were just like, bro, he was 15, chill out. And nobody who matters actually cares. Turkey Tom isn't canceled. Turkey Tom is a popular YouTube channel who most people think positively of, who are not insane. Might an insane minority hate yeah, but that insane minority doesn't matter.

Like they don't have, like, okay. Ignore the insane minority because. They don't matter, and they'll always find some reason to hate you no matter what if you fit into the groups that they desire to hate. So now we've got into the, do you have any counter thoughts to that? It seems like you might, before we get into the tween category.

Simone Collins: I guess I, some I mostly agree with that. I do think though that what this is, This means also is that you have to do this the right way. You have to educate your kids about the ramifications of anything that they do [00:17:00] online or frankly around any smart device or anyone who's holding a phone, because that phone could be recording.

But perhaps the fact that we would have our kids on camera, anyone who does have their kids on camera and does educate them about safety around these things it acts as a good forcing function. It gives them essentially media training at a young age. For example, had the girl I'm thinking of who tweeted all these racist things been trained early and also been exposed to media a lot earlier, maybe she would have been a whole lot more savvy and wouldn't have tweeted all those things that ultimately then destroyed probably much of her career and also really either destroyed or Really compromised her father's business, which employed quite a few extended family members as well.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So there, I think it's more just good parenting and it's just that you're more on the hot seat for good parenting. And in a way this could be positive for the kids because again, you can only look at the negatives. If we are doing a bad job as parents, it is going to be more loudly and immediately obvious at these age ranges.[00:18:00]

If our kids have a public window, right? No, I need to look at the

Simone Collins: ethics of our life philosophy in general, and that we are willing to be subject to criticism. And we believe that's the right way is that if you're wrong, you want to know that you're wrong. And so the idea that so many people are trying to hide anything that might be criticized about their lifestyles, their beliefs, how they raise their kids or their kids lives.

That they're trying to hide that from any potential criticism means that if they are doing something wrong, they're probably not going to correct it, which is a pretty big deal. And so I like, we

Malcolm Collins: get to know a lot sooner and the public gets to know a lot sooner. Are we bad parents? You don't have to wait until our kids are adults to know that y'all find out pretty soon, I think.

Because we do plan to keep our kids in the media spotlight and I do plan to with this podcast, as our kids develop more cognizance, bring them into the podcast.

Simone Collins: When they want to participate.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I imagine five, 10 years from now, instead of me talking to Simone every day, some days it'll be me talking to one of the kids, or Simone talking to [00:19:00] one of the kids, or two of the kids talking to each other, or, I want this to be a family thing.

That's based around their understanding of reality and their engagement with reality, because I think people would find that very interesting. And I think they'd find that very interesting as a historic record of their development of ideas and stuff like that. We'd keep it focused.

It wouldn't be like a normal parenting podcast. I'm not interested in. You guys seeing like how awesome of a dad I am by like following me around and making sure I'm punishing them correctly and making sure I'm doing, like a lot of the parental bloggers.

Simone Collins: No, I'm watching your YouTube channel.

That's just Octavian and Torsten. They already have very interesting conversations.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I'm much more interested in the philosophical development of my kids and their development in terms of self narrative and how they think about reality in the world. I think that's more interesting and I think that our audience would find it pretty interesting.

And I don't think I just don't see a lot of negative externalities coming from that for my kids in the future, even if they decide to be private. There's a lot of child stars. Who are now like, Oh yeah, I'm private now because I decided to [00:20:00] become private. It's not like some huge scarring thing for them unless they like got into drugs or something while they were a child star.

And that's even

Simone Collins: people who I think, I don't know, catch a lot of heat for things. Typically it only goes wrong when they try sand it. When they're like, Oh no, no one needs to know this. We have to stop this right now. And then they flail a lot and then people pay even more attention. So again, a lot of this comes down to media training, which I think is a key theme here is that parents have to be savvy about teaching their kids how to deal with a public life, but also only doing this with.

So

Malcolm Collins: now we need to talk about the ethically dubious age. So this is the seven to 11 age range when kids are cognitive enough to do things that can cause long term repercussions for them. And they are also in hierarchical social environments. Where things that they do privately, they may not want shared, but they may not have the ability to be able to tell their parents.

I [00:21:00] don't consent to you sharing this information. Whether it's first puberty or something like that, like we would always just have a rule. If you're going through something and you just don't want us to share it, just say, I don't consent to you sharing this. At that age range, okay.

I can understand where some concerns come in, but again, not really. So I'll explain why the not really enough it's where you get this a little blurring of the slider of, but they didn't know at that age range that Y would have those consequences.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And. I think that we are entering a generation where because of the consequences of doing something like going online and yelling a bunch of racial slurs or like sexually aggressively approaching someone can be as severe to a person's long term like employability as them as an 11 year old taking a knife and stabbing their little sister.

We need to teach them that those consequences are that severe. At a very young age. And make sure that they internalize that. And it's more of [00:22:00] a I think people who want to, keep this pure privacy at this age are more people who are just not about parental responsibility. In terms of the them teaching kids like proper social boundaries, because even without us, if they're on a discord or something like that, and they do something insane, like this is there's still consequences for it.

And people can be like they chose to be on those social media channels. They chose to be on that discord or that Twitter or that. YouTube channel. It's not really. All of these things have addiction based algorithms or those TikToks, right? That have sucked them into them. Do they really choose them?

No. It's a combination of their parents and their environment and their, So again, I'm just not really concerned. And this is where you get to the downside. Am I claiming there are no ethical issues here? No, I'm very clearly not. I'm saying there are ethical issues, but what people on the other side of this argument are complaining.

Pretending, which is just false in a [00:23:00] lie is that there are no potential upsides for the kid from this. I'm doing is I am contrasting the upsides with the downsides and there, the probabilistic relation our kids will have to those upsides and downsides. Okay. So when I look at my kids, um, coming out of this, that they have the environment to start their lives with decent sized social media followings within wealthy intellectual circles, the doors that is going to open for them.

It's just so obvious to me that, you go look at who's even though, the podcast is okay. Like we do. Like 1300 hours a day or something. At this point, we've got about 55 people watching us at any given time at this point, a day or night. If you just look at what's the average probability, somebody's watching our channel and this is just on YouTube and we distribute through other channels.

But so this isn't a huge number, but what's the demographics of this [00:24:00] number? Because we know, because we interact with a lot of them, it's venture capitalists, it's campaign operatives. It is. academics. It is this channel just does not appeal, to like your average person that much. And it is the type of people who, one, my kids can source good career opportunities from that will get them a huge leg up in life.

But And I think that this is really important that they can serve as partners through. And this is something that we also haven't talked enough about in society, social media followings and the ability to translate these into high value relationships. Which I think is going to be when our kids are like, yeah, I really appreciate that you were able to hook me up with a spouse through this network that you spent the time to build.

But yeah, and I want to create something that is a clan based network or channel or something like that. So that my kids, cause right now we're trying to build it so that we get a TV show made on our family. And we're in talks with a lot of people that I [00:25:00] can't talk about.

But as we do that I want it to be like a clan based media empire, right? Like where they are Working with each other to build up their own properties, but they're also investing in any properties that we built out.

Simone Collins: So what you're saying is a lot of your interest personally in

Malcolm Collins: inheriting any properties we built out

Simone Collins: and having a lot of people be aware of your behavior and philosophy and activity is it makes more people willing to are interested in working with you.

And the same would happen with our kids. Yeah. If there is, if we live in a future in which Society's current vetting systems are bankrupt and don't work anymore. The only way that you can really build trust and have people expect you to deliver on what you promise is if they feel like they know you and can trust you and you're predictable because trust lies in predictability.

And the only way that they can know that is if they have some kind of access to your thought process or they have a parasocial relationship with you. And the only way to do that is if you have a very open and transparent media history. And if you can't show those receipts and you reach out [00:26:00] to someone and you say, I want to work with you, or I think we should start a business together or please hire me.

They have nothing to go on. So it's

Malcolm Collins: not just that, as the economy changes, like if our kids want to start a company, how do they get their customers? Like it's hard to get customers, right? But if they have online followings, it's much easier.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: How do they get, how do they get anything they want?

Like everything gets easier for them. The larger a following they have. And we have some people in our circles that are like, I want to be as private as possible. And it's because they view, I think negative comments about them online is like a genuinely negative thing. When like random haters don't matter.

Like they do not matter.

Simone Collins: Yeah, there was one critique video I watched where they showed a clip of someone filming their kid's reaction to someone, like an online commenters snarking about their name or something. And the kid looked hurt and was like, why would someone say that? And they just looked, [00:27:00] genuinely like their feelings were hurt.

And that is a combination of bad media training in general. But. They're totally missing the point that if a kid learns early on that a bunch of idiots online are going to say dumb things about them, they're going to develop a much thicker skin. They're going to become anti fragile and shielding a kid from mean commentary online or from criticism that is coming really from no strong foundation.

It's not something to worry about. That's The

Malcolm Collins: Bergens are gonna Bergen, we have an episode of like it's humanity becoming the Bergens from the trolls series, which I referenced way too much on this show for a child's cartoon. But yeah the Bergens are going to Bergen.

They just hate everything. They're weird mutants who sit online all day yelling at people. And the earlier

Simone Collins: you get used to their commentary, not mattering the better, cause we even know people now who. After seeing the tiniest semblance of that act as though someone has showed up their front porch with a gun pointed at [00:28:00] them.

And this is not a productive way to live. And if that's what takes you out in a day, if that's what you have a freak out over

Malcolm Collins: life is never going to matter.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And we want to have kids whose lives matter. If you are afraid of people making fun of you online, Your life won't matter

Simone Collins: because

Malcolm Collins: you can't do anything publicly.

And it's very hard to change the world in any sort of productive way. If you don't do things publicly. So that's the other thing where I'm just like, I don't care. Like it's about training my kids to be good people, not about. Protecting them from dealing with the consequences of their actions. No, I need to help head off those actions to begin with.

And we live in this fragile world, right? And I think that you make a great point there. I'm really sad because some of the people we know who are like, Oh my God, like you guys are getting so famous. And now it's hurting me and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because you're in the media and some idiots don't like you.

And it's How are you ever going to do [00:29:00] anything? You don't disagree with my views. I know you don't disagree with my views. You don't disagree with how we're trying to change the world. You're just afraid of pushback. So you can't do anything. Even if you're competent. Even if you're rich.

You can't do anything until you are willing to do it. to allow the world to hate you or the idiots, the Bergens to hate you because the truth is, and you've seen this with the whole like corporal punishment controversy where at first Simone was like, Oh my God, everybody hates us online. I got to chill out Simone.

There were things I was embarrassed about with people. With that article, I was embarrassed that I had framed Kevin Dolan is further right than he really is. He's actually probably to the left of me. He just has a public reputation as being to the right of me and I shouldn't have done that.

And I was really guilty about that because I had caused somebody else, negative repercussions that they didn't need to deal with. But the slap itself, I was like, no, this is going to turn out in our favor. Don't worry about it. Like the research agrees with it. And. You've seen that now since the, then, like [00:30:00] everyone we know who is like a smart, competent person has been like yeah, they were right to do that.

What did you about, or at

Simone Collins: least they acknow that this is a nuanced situation. I think that's,

Malcolm Collins: I haven't heard that. I, no, I literally haven't heard anything other than enthusiastic support. What do we have? We got like Richard Hania, the enthusiastic support. Recently I had Sarah Hater and Meghan Dunn yeah. But no,

Simone Collins: but they said it's nuanced. They said it's nuanced. Sarah Hader didn't even say that. I don't think she practices corporal punishment with her own kids. She just had made one comment that like,

Malcolm Collins: Sorry I watched the whole video. She said, if it's not done in anger, okay. And it's not done to cause pain.

Yeah. But I, that's,

Simone Collins: I count that as nuanced. No one's coming up being like we're not saying that either.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. She said it is enthusiastic support was in the realm of what actually happened.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And this is what you saw with other people who reached out to us whether it's a, God, we had her on early.

We should have her on more often. I have an episode of hers [00:31:00] that I haven't done live yet. Yeah, Diana Fleishman. It's on how we can stand being such lazy parents. That's the episode that hasn't gone live yet.

Simone Collins: Oh, we shouldn't do that.

Malcolm Collins: I'll put it out. She's so

Simone Collins: cool. I've

Malcolm Collins: got such a backload of interviews because I'm always, I process the interview so much slower than the other episodes because it causes me like emotional pain to process them because I have to think through somebody else judging me and I often just don't really fully process the interviews.

I think going forwards, that's what I should plan on doing. It's just interviews are cut as they are.

Simone Collins: Why not?

Malcolm Collins: Because I can't deal. I do not like social environments and it's like reliving a social scene. Whenever we do one that's what I'm so slow with. I'm like the make this or hater one.

Anyway, I absolutely love my wife. You are amazing. I appreciate that you are so sane in this world of stupid, weird deontological stuff. Can shouldn't do, it doesn't matter when you're talking about a f*****g four year old. [00:32:00] Okay. Because they, no, it doesn't. They don't understand. I

Simone Collins: think, I think it's important to model what, when, and I, no, I actually do think that an infant can show and in toddler can show consent and lack of consent.

You tell you can tell when our children are not happy with the situation and when they're happy with the situation. I

Malcolm Collins: don't, I don't disagree with that, but the problem is that when you value the perspectives of somebody who's not fully mentally developed, you get stupid things.

Does my child consent to being punished when they do bad things? Do they consent to timeout? Do they consent? No, they don't consent to that being. Of course they don't. They're a child.

Simone Collins: I'm just saying that there's nuance.

Malcolm Collins: And then there isn't nuance. There isn't nuance. I am saying there isn't nuance. Okay.

The, if our child comes to us and they go, I think I'm a woman today. Can you medically transition me or put me on a drug that will change the course of my life? I'm going to be like, no, f**k off. That's a dumb idea. I understand that you're hearing about this online, but you're four. Like you don't [00:33:00] even like our four year old cannot consistently state his gender.

Simone Collins: But Malcolm, if our, if our two year old or something saw us filming him with a camera and said no and ran away and started crying, we would think it wasn't cool to film him with a camera.

Malcolm Collins: I suppose, but that doesn't happen.

Simone Collins: I know it doesn't happen, but if it did, we would take it seriously.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we take it seriously, but I'm just saying it doesn't happen. So it's not within the realm. I guess there might be some kids that are afraid of the public seeing them, but our kids love it.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that's our fortunate

Malcolm Collins: reality. But again, it's because they're genetically related to us. So I think that this is another thing that people don't understand is we're making these decisions for people who will think similarly to us.

And

Simone Collins: yeah and you have in mind for all these influencer fame w****s as well, who are fame w****s like us, that, these people have children who are probably, So at least a little bit like them and

Malcolm Collins: the problem with a lot of the fame w****s and I'd say that they're [00:34:00] in a more ethically questionable scenario than us is they use their children to augment the way the public sees them.

So their children are props to demonstrate their parenting and stuff like that to the public. Whereas our children, like the point of all of this is our children, the point of developing the schools, our children, the point of everything is giving our children the best shot possible. We are developing like an intellectual conversation.

Brand which is very different from the brand that a lot of people are developing is like the only negatives to our brand is that it's weird and that the kids can even leverage that in the early social media days if they want to go against it. I hate what my parents did. It's horrible, but a great way to get sympathy and build up a lot of followers in your early days, right?

Like Even if they disagree with us, that very disagreement can be capitalized on, but only because of how extremely weird and extremist we are. We're an extremist and they just look ungrateful, right? You've got to create an environment where even if they hate you, it's positive.

Simone Collins: Yeah and you can't skew things.

There are famous examples, too, of [00:35:00] YouTubers who, I don't know their dog is dying or something, and then they, are filming in the car and the parents coaching their child on how to look more devastated. So I think a lot of it also comes down to being genuine.

Malcolm Collins: I love it. All right. Have a good one, Simone.

Bye. Hi, Malcolm. Spectacular woman. We're gonna be talking about, we're having a call for the Natal Wisdom Conference Two. For anyone who missed the first one, be sure to check it out on the website,

Simone Collins: number six and seventh. See you there.

Malcolm Collins: Bye. Oh we have to go. Oh, it's a call.

Simone Collins: It's a video call. So stay here.

Not stay here, but get on the video call. Wait, let me check. Hold on. Let me check.

Yep. It's a Google meet call. Join it. It's in your calendar.

Malcolm Collins: Sarah is deleting angry Facebook comments.

Simone Collins: What wanna happen?

Malcolm Collins: No. Facebook just seems to bring out like the lowest of the low in terms of haters.

Simone Collins: Oh no. Twitter is pretty bad. [00:36:00] Twitter's pretty bad. I

Malcolm Collins: appreciate that you engage with Twitter to protect me.

Hold up. There you are. You have my social media comments? Yeah, yeah, right here. . Oh, that's nice. Oh, great. This is all the Twitter comments? Yeah, oh, Kyle! You thought me having someone edit my social media would make me look stupid?

People are actually really stoked on me now. It's a pretty brutal job sifting through all that darkness. Mhm.

Simone Collins: Instagram's just funny because now the theme is every time I post something because, oh, people just say. It's always oh god, his face is red. Was he just slapped? Or oh, do you slap him for being adventurous or not adventurous enough? They'll just find some It's gotta be like a little bit of both.

Yeah yeah. I

Malcolm Collins: would love to post the Venezuela meme there

This is outrageous. You shout like that, they put you in jail. Right away. No trial, no nothing.

 You're playing music [00:37:00] too loud? Right to jail. Right away. You're driving too fast? Jail. Slow? Jail. You undercook fish? Believe it or not, jail. You overcook chicken? Also jail. Undercook, overcook.

Malcolm Collins: That's such a good

Simone Collins: one. Parks and Rec is so underrated. It's actually not underrated as a show.

It got the attention it deserved, I think. Speaking of things that I really enjoy watching is Snark. It is a delight to me and I love Snark. So are you trying to do the intro? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Then do the intro from the intro not from banter because that loses people I always have to put that at the end and you just do the intro.

Okay.

In this thought-provoking interview, YouTube creator Benjamin Boyce joins Malcolm and Simone Collins to discuss the complexities of the transgender debate. They delve into Boyce's extensive work interviewing detransitioners, the concerning rise in rapid onset gender dysphoria among teenage girls, and the potential risks of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones on brain development. The conversation also explores the societal implications of the transgender movement, the influence of social contagion, and the importance of open dialogue and education in navigating this sensitive topic. Boyce shares insights from his personal journey and his documentary on the Evergreen State College protests, highlighting the need for nuanced discussions in the face of polarizing ideologies. The group also touches on the role of religion, the challenges faced by different communities, and the importance of protecting children while fostering understanding and compassion.

Benjamin Boyce: [00:00:00] Anyway, so he, he was a very effeminate gay man. He goes on these hormones and stuff. And then he become, he comes of age 18, 19, but he's still like a little boy

and I'm like, wait, they were, it wasn't just a gay thing. Like they had a young boy. It was basically legal

Malcolm Collins: PDF

Benjamin Boyce: files?. Because he was, he had all the attributes of, he was locked at 14, but he's 19. Oh, that's

Simone Collins: so gross.

Benjamin Boyce: So they're like, he was preserved and then offered on the altar of this stuff.

Simone Collins: No. Oh no. No.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello everyone. It is so wonderful to have you here again today.

We have a very special guest with us today, Benjamin Boyce his YouTube channel has one of the highest overlaps of subscribers was ours And if you watch it, it would be immediately obvious that Why he does lots of very high thought, high intellect intellectually dissonant interviews.

Benjamin Boyce: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But what's interesting is I can get a trickle of what you think in your perspective from the interviews, but I haven't, I, I'd love to have an interview that's like the you [00:01:00] interview, what you think on things.

So I'm excited to at least be one of the people who's doing this. And one of the projects you've been working on recently that I think would be a really great start to this. Is I guess I, I call it like the de transition project, which is lots of interviews with people who are well known voices in the de transition community.

I'd love it if you could just get started with what got you thinking about this and where you see things changing within that community over the past year or so.

Benjamin Boyce: Can I answer that question by asking you guys a question? Of course. Like, when did you become cognizant or invested in what we call the culture war, in its current iteration?

Malcolm Collins: Wow. God, that's a good question. Honestly, not at all until they started firing at us. It's very interesting. So I would have considered myself Is this about

Benjamin Boyce: Spankgate? So just two or three weeks ago? Oh god,

Malcolm Collins: No, before Spankgate. It was the beginning of the pronatalist stuff. Really, as soon as we started getting public attention [00:02:00] you're forced to pick a side these days.

And at first, both sides were yelling at us. But the one side when we'd sit down and try to talk with them they could have a lucid conversation. And then the other side, there just wasn't really a conversation. It was just. Concede and submit to our world perspective.

I'm actually going

Simone Collins: to say it's earlier than that. It's when we got involved in education reform in the state of Pennsylvania. And the mere idea that we were critical of the legacy education system meant that we were going to be Republicans. Just like period of course you didn't Republican because you don't think public school is perfect and in need of more money and therefore.

Obviously.

Benjamin Boyce: Yeah. So what year are we talking about?

Simone Collins: At least 2019. Yeah. Okay. We were like firmly centrists. And then when we were younger, we were full out, like quite progressive Democrats. I would say. Yeah. Blue

Benjamin Boyce: Pills. Yeah. Do you guys have any remembrances or you might be too young of Gamergate?

Oh my God. [00:03:00] Of

Malcolm Collins: course. Would I, when Gamergate was happening, like I was well on the side of the gamer, like I was like, okay this whole five guys situation is ridiculous. This is clearly a bit breach of journalistic integrity. But I think back then there was still a believable disconnect between the, of the time, the Tumblerina army the Tumblr internet and the cloud agendas and all of this insanity.

And. The real mainstream democratic party. Like I didn't think that those people had any direct connection on the type of policy that would be implemented by a Hillary Clinton government. That changed pretty dramatically over time.

Benjamin Boyce: What's your memory of Bernie Sanders, the 2016 lead up.

I never

Malcolm Collins: liked Bernie. So I, my favorite progressive, but not

Benjamin Boyce: commie. Yeah. That's interesting. Okay. So you're already, the red pill is already leaking into your

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, I loved who was the other guy, the old guy who [00:04:00] was the anti Bernie, who seemed really cool? Ron Paul?

Ralph Nader? Ron Paul. I really liked Ron Paul. Ron Paul seems like a righteous dude. Ron Paul is what all libertarian bros are really into. In the early political dissonant days, I was Ron Paul count, not Bernie camp. One of, one of my favorite things about Bernie, and this is like one of my favorite stories about him, because to me it represents who he is.

And I think he truly is both him and Ron Paul, I think, show themselves really honestly in the public sphere. And the big, it was when he was a kid younger than us, like in his late twenties, I think is he went to a commune and they kicked him out because all he would do is stand up in like the common room and give speeches every day.

And I was like, this man has not changed over the past 50 years. And so he is honest about who he is. It's just, I think a malicious element in society. But Our malignant element in society. But what about you? Were you at Ron Paul Bernie?

Benjamin Boyce: So I went to this college, hyper progressive [00:05:00] college.

I didn't know that it was going to be hyper progressive. It was just down the street from where I was living. And it was really cheap state school. I was older. I hadn't gone to college. So I got the Pell Grant and it was just like basically free college for four years. So I could pause my life and.

Concentrate on what I wanted to concentrate on, which is what I ended up calling narrative arts. Like what is the function of narrative? How do you build it? How is it deconstructed? What are the different ways to arrange, rearrange and derive meaning from it? And so I went to this place called the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, which has a very non traditional structure, no grades.

Courses are like completely immersive, three, four or five professors for a quarter or a year. You just go there, you sink your teeth in and a lot of independent work. So that's why I went there. But when I got on campus, it was like stepping from, what year was this? 2013 back into 1993, they had Pictures like posters everywhere, stop the war in Iraq, so there's still a little bit behind there by 10 years, which would all, by the time I left, [00:06:00] all those posters would be replaced by the BLM poster.

And then they had big posters about no one wins under patriarchy and like this really crusty kind of old. Weird Gen X feminist kind of bluster and gusto. And I'm like, okay, that's really weird. This is like ersatz or anachronistic. And as I went to, and as I like, progressed through my degree, working on my stuff, the civil rights or the civil rights 2.

0 anti racism via D'Angelo and even Kendi came and became central to the entire experience of the college where the administration empowered, very radical teachers to basically try to redesign the entire college experience around ending racism in our time. And that blew up in their face.

Phenomenally. It just completely the, what happened at my last four weeks of school is that the students who were taught to fight the system and end racism, turn that against the system that taught them that and took over this college. [00:07:00] took people hostage, live streamed the whole thing on the internet in this super cringey manner.

You guys should watch my documentary. It's if you're into cringe, if you're into like the end game of this progressive It's I document it all, but I'm ready

Malcolm Collins: for this documentary called of our fans want to watch it.

Benjamin Boyce: It's called the complete evergreen story. I'm currently doing a watch through because of seven years.

It just, the seven year anniversary just happened and me and my wife are now going through and watching the whole documentary. It's really extensive and it's not even complete because there's too many stories going on. I was there watching that whole thing progress and I was working in the media department.

I was on the camera recording these workshops. Yeah. I would say, as we've heard it's a, it's an interesting like an interesting if you look at the black community, there's a lot of people that are like, you know, we're in the middle of, You know, they're kind of, they're trying to, you know, reinvent the race.

students. Community

Simone Collins: groups. That's. What? Affinity groups. Like I [00:08:00] know we need like black people to hang out with black people and white people to hang out with white people because and I'm like this is, you are reinventing racism.

Benjamin Boyce: That's basically what got them a lot of press because the college had a, every year they had based on a Douglas Turner Ward play called a day of absence where this Southern town, all the black people don't show up for the, for a day.

And it shows just how much this town relies on the black people. And then they did that every year at evergreen, like do this the people of color, the POC would go off campus and they'd have a little thing. And then they come back and then they have a day of presence where everybody gets together and have a cultural sharing multicultural positive thing.

But one year, 2017, after the election of the former president, Possibly next president, Donald Trump. They decided to reverse that and ask white people to leave the campus. And they even required white students to not be on campus, go out in the woods and do classes like under tarps in the rain, because the campus was going to [00:09:00] center people of color because they wanted to be inclusive.

under diversity, equity, inclusion. And then Brett Weinstein, who's an evolutionary biologist, who has a lot of, you guys probably heard of him by now. He stood up against that and then got flack back and forth. And so when all the, it's a, this crazy narrative, I won't spend too much time on it right now, but all these layers upon layers of stuff going on in this tiny little campus, when you know, the students do this uprising, they live stream it, they're acting just insane.

And. The internet gets wind of this. Now, this is post Gamergate. This is 2017. A lot of people post Gamergate on YouTube had gone from, anti feminism to anti SJW stuff, which would then become anti woke stuff. So there was just a lot of hay being made out of social justice. Warriors. And that was just how people made their money was doing all these cringe compilations when the evergreen stuff just dumped all of that material on there.

They had a heyday. They had an absolute heyday. And I was already like interested in what was going on the internet, but I [00:10:00] didn't understand that people would just run with the narrative and not actually talk about what was going on behind it. And so what I did was I just took my phone and I started to record like a view from the inside.

And then I worked in the media department. So I got my hands on all of the yeah. Primary footage of how the teachers taught the students to rebel and explicitly said you need to uprise and destroy these bureaucratic institutions because they don't treat, they treat you just as bad as they treated your ancestors in the sixties or in the 18 twenties or, in the Caribbean and stuff like that directly they said that.

So my job as a YouTube person, when I got onto YouTube was to chronicle that, and I spent a lot of time just focusing on that one story. And then a similar event to get to your question, a similar event happened up in Canada at Wilfrid Laurier University, where a young TA named Lindsay Shepard was she showed a video with Jordan Peterson and this other guy arguing about pronouns.

And she was teaching in a [00:11:00] composition class and she. Politically just shared this about composition because if this is how language is changing, like what are your thoughts and the, her professor and her her, the guy in charge of the department over there and then their DEI All took her aside and grilled her for 40 minutes and she recorded the whole thing.

They broke her down into tears, this total struggle session and it was all about gender. And then that hit the internet. And again, the internet makes hay with that. And I'm like, there's something else going on deeper in there. So I started going through that college and looking at the gender issue. And I saw that these gender.

Activists, these trans rights activists specifically would are just the most borderline personality, narcissistic Machiavellian characters on the planet. They claim to represent this marginalized group and then they proceed to act like complete tyrants. And just like the black people are, POC did at evergreen, like these this handful of just [00:12:00] radical idiots took over and then just smeared.

That community that they supposedly represented, it's just replicating. So this social justice ideology or whatever this thing is, I don't know what you guys how you frame it, but that has a pattern that just goes over and over again. Once I got into the gender aspect of it I was just fascinated.

with this topic because I was tired of race. And I don't think that there's an end game with race. I don't know. Maybe we can talk about that. What you guys are your thoughts on the end game of race politics, but gender stuff is so dynamic. It creates children. It transcends race. And we always are struggling and it just, it's flies in the face of this kind of liberal ish assumption that we're all created equal.

And that, that different noticing difference is really problematic, but it keeps on protruding into our,

Malcolm Collins: I think both the race and the gender thing have really backfired on them in completely unique in different ways. Recently. The race thing, and this is [00:13:00] fundamentally what progressives don't understand,

Benjamin Boyce: sorry, interviewer hat. You said them backfired on them. Could you just define for the sake of the conversation you, they are

Malcolm Collins: the larger memetic structure that is obsessed with race.

The normal American doesn't give a s**t about race. It's just not important in our daily lives anymore. So you're saying,

Simone Collins: so them, them is defined by the activists that are actively trying to end racism. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: They have created a world Where they seem to believe that America is okay, this is the way I genuinely think the world works in their head.

America is 70 percent white, 30 percent black, and the 30 percent black is like this oppressed class. That, that is not The case in America. The, for example, Hispanic population is about twice as large as the black population. They cashed in all of their Hispanic chips by over indexing on the black population in a way that [00:14:00] completely marginalized the Asian and Hispanic population in this country, which are both fairly significant voting blocks.

And then They went even further by going this whole anti Semitic route recently. Which has, the Jewish population in this country, even if they're not a big voting block, they do have a lot of institutional power and wealth. And so that was astronomically stupid of them.

And so I think that this sort of missed is it's one of the things I often look at when I'm looking at like media representation is media representation. If you want to talk about who's not being represented. It's Hispanic people, like white people, we get like less than we probably should but low numbers when I'm talking about like percentage of the population, black people, like they seem to believe that black people represent all minority groups and that all minority groups like and identify with black people.

And that's just not true. One of the things I point out is that in the LA riots, The communities that were hurt the most were the [00:15:00] most recent immigrants because they had moved in right next to the black community. And in that instance, those most recent immigrants were South Koreans which were then radicalized because it was their community being burned to become a far right community.

This happened within many Latin American communities during the BLM riots, is that the towns and neighborhoods that were being burned And the shops were mostly Hispanic owned. And of course the media wasn't talking about this, but that again, doesn't matter because the media doesn't understand Hispanic families.

So I, as a white person, I get my media from like the news, right? Hispanic families get the media from their family networks. That is like their source of what's true in the world. That's also

Simone Collins: like Hispanic media, but it seems to be somewhat similar. Someone divorced family

Malcolm Collins: network information chains. Yeah.

Simone Collins: And

Malcolm Collins: so we have a lot of, our company is almost entirely Hispanic. We, like our friend network is heavily Hispanic. This is we're, we used to split our time between the US and Lima. Between

Simone Collins: Miami and Lima. So we were

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. [00:16:00] So the media, like the progressive tool for manipulating public opinion doesn't work as well against Hispanic communities as it does against other types of communities.

Yeah. So they just,

Benjamin Boyce: where is their outcry from the 2020? Were they just ignored or did they not complain if they were, we didn't see complaints.

Simone Collins: What we thought internal, we saw people left behind, like internally they're like. There's been a

Malcolm Collins: huge shift in the Hispanic community towards conservatism.

And then they have a problem that they don't understand the real American black community. So the real American black community. is more than anything else distrusting of authority. They're very conspiracy theory is the wrong word, but they are very open to these right leaning ideas of the powers that be are lying to you in attempts to manipulate you.

And this isn't like gullibility. It's something they've gone through multiple times learning from history. And it is clear to many in the black community, who is the power that be today. And it's this urban [00:17:00] monoculture, progressive, whatever you want to call it.

In regards to the the trans stuff, this is insane. And as you say, it's insane. Like I can't imagine being like a real trans person. Or like a real lesbian or a real gay person. And now somebody says I'm queer. And I'm like by queer, do you mean that you're a sexually aggressive, cis male sex pest that's pretending to be a woman?

Or do you mean that a lot of these quote unquote, trans women. When I was growing up, I was very involved in the LGBT movement. I really support the real gay, lesbian and trans community. What is being represented, like the people who took over this movement are just this male sex pests, largely speaking.

Benjamin Boyce: And they're female enablers. If you look at every major feminist organization that's connected to power, they're all on board and pushing the trans stuff. Hardcore. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Spread like a virus through many lesbian communities and ended up one of, one of the most interesting yeah, I was listening to, and I'd love to hear your anecdotes around this and a [00:18:00] lesbian who I respect talking about this recently.

And she's there was this weird moment when I went to a group house where three lesbians was living. And I went back a few years later and all three of them were transitioning. And I was like, wait, what are the odds that all of you just happen to be trans? This is supposed to be an incredibly rare thing.

And so I think that's, something that we've seen. As to why this disproportionately happened in lesbian communities. I don't I think and I know this is a very offensive thing, but I think that women are slightly more susceptible to social norms changes. Like they, they're more likely and you see this in the data as well.

They're more likely to support whatever the So the perceived social norm is that

Benjamin Boyce: some sort of evolutionary Stockholm syndrome baked in because women would be captured in combat and just have to adapt to new it could be. And also

Simone Collins: There's more dependence as someone who like when you're more likely to spend a significant or not insignificant portion of your life vulnerable to, to pregnancy or having an infant [00:19:00] with you, it would make sense that you'd be more compliant with whatever Society you have to depend on for some protection or social services or at least a little bit of assistance

Malcolm Collins: Also, I think that part of this is probably downstream of religiosity women historically were more religious and more spiritual than men and We've argued in the past that gender has taken on the role of the soul within progressive circles where they're talking about there's something about myself and it's not biological.

It's not how I was raised it's different than either of those, but it controls who I fundamentally am. It's that's what we used to call a soul. And so I think a lot of this is a type of a religion.

Benjamin Boyce: Yeah. I love how they don't do that with race. Like my inner black man, if they went that route with the race, racial soul, then Rachel Dole is all would be, would come out on top.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. I'm wondering yeah. So when you saw this happening, when were you like, I'm where did you? think you were a progressive or identify with the progressive movement when you were younger?

Benjamin Boyce: Oh, [00:20:00] no. I grew up in suburbs of Sacramento mostly. So red, but purple.

And, my, dad's pastor. So we were pretty much in church all the time. I did a lot of paper routing from 11 to, 18. And I would listen to Rush Limbaugh a lot because he had, he was really entertaining. And, he did all these bits and skits and stuff like that. And then I just went apolitical.

And then when I wanted to get political again, when post 9 11, George Bush W just goes in this holy crusade about just going after people that are millions of miles away or thousands, hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands of miles away have far Iraq is. And I didn't like that.

I didn't like the war mongering and stuff. And I wanted him out. And then Bush. John Kerry concedes. I'm like, this is just b******t. I spent all this energy caring about this thing that doesn't care about me at all. I was also living in Portland at that time in the 2000s when it was like the Portland that people wanted to move to [00:21:00] before people moved to and made it something else.

Yeah. Portland squared. But and I just had the sense before Barack and during, Obama's era that we're just in this, we're in this bubble where we're not really connected to reality and we have these beliefs. I just had the sense we have these beliefs about what truth and goodness is, but we are so coddled in this bubble and someday it's going to break.

Someday it's going to pop. And I just, I was uncomfortable with the smugness that, just became more and more ramped up. Over the course of Obama era, and then I want, I thought Bernie was You know, had some sort of mandate of heaven on some level and his treatment by the democratic party was just so awful that I just said, screw you.

And I went, I didn't go pro Trump, but I was just really happy how upset Trump made everybody because it was so hypocritical higher on their own farts. And that Just piss them off [00:22:00] so much. So it was I slowly became trollish, but then when I saw what happened at evergreen firsthand with the end game of this racial stuff where I like, they turned me racist where I went, I was on campus after that hostage situation happened and I saw a black person and I got literally the first time in my life, got scared and just turned around and went another way because I'm like, this person has all the power and can completely lambast me, accuse me of all these things and even beat me up.

And I have no recourse just based on the color of my skin. Imagine how Jews feel today if you've seen some of these videos. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's a yeah, that Jew thing, the Jewish thing really throws a wrench in the whole system. It upsets it, which just makes me really interested in how it, because a lot of like the Jewish people were complicit in a lot of the anti white stuff.

But then once it comes after them, then they're like, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're, We're there. We are the og oppressed class. We've been oppressed. longer and harder than anybody because we've been living [00:23:00] with these whiteys. So don't turn that stuff on us. But it seems like in colleges and stuff, I saw a lot of that, like that lot of Jewish people riding the anti white line up until, like it blows up in their face.

And then you're like, okay what did you expect? You're dancing around with leopards. I'm, this sounds like I might be a little, I don't know how it sounds. No, I think

Malcolm Collins: The problem we have is the conservative Jews. And the Orthodox Jews never went along with the progressive b******t.

It was always the reformed Jews, but reformed Jews are richer and they're more likely to be in colleges but like we always say people don't confuse Unitarian Universalists Christians was like Catholics, right?

And yet they often confuse Yeah. Like conservative Jews. Yeah. With reformed Jews. And I'm like, these are, it's a branding

Benjamin Boyce: issue. It's, their names are all the similar. So you just lump 'em all in. Yeah. They're all of one thing. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But the reformed Jewish movement basically has no fertility rate.

Like they're going to be gone soon. They're basically just a a malignancy, which is [00:24:00] affecting this one generation of Jews.

Benjamin Boyce: Malcolm, I have to inspect this idea because you put a lot of stock into, fertility rates, like being drivers of meme.

The meme complexes and stuff, or like the, these meme complexes are not Yeah, I wanna hear pushback inseminating itself. But are we not at a time where the meme complexes are faster than genetics By orders of magnitude, can't they travel faster, infect more people than the other ones that breed people so that they can just Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: and you're absolutely right about that, but they in sort of their wave, they wipe out.

So it's a bit like saying okay. The Black Plague is spreading through our civilization right now, right? Except it doesn't kill people immediately, it just sterilizes them, right? And I'm pointing to one community that's been sterilized, and you're like, yeah, but it's continuing to spread in this neighboring community.

And I'm like yes, it is spreading in the neighboring community. I don't disagree with that, but it eventually burns out. Like it is true that it is spreading in neighboring communities right now, but it [00:25:00] hasn't fixed its fundamental issue that it hasn't figured out how to replicate itself other than through taking children.

And because of that, I just don't see how it survives. It can in some countries like in Germany where they've gone full Nazi where they're like, okay private school is not legal in this country anymore. Okay, we get all your kids. It can burn itself out. And then what does that end up looking like at the end of the day, German becomes what a Muslim country or something like that, because they know how to protect their kids.

Eventually, whichever group it is. Fundamentally knew how to protect their Children in a way that other groups didn't or the groups that come out on top after the disease is done. We're just in this period of fallout now where we can predict the various outcomes. We can't predict them with 100 percent certainty or anything like

Benjamin Boyce: that.

It's just because our, because the way that information travels so fast now and the way that kids are plugged into the internet from such an early age and the way that these algorithms work in a black box, there's, I [00:26:00] don't think that the battle so much can, we can just rely on fertility.

Replacing it has to be active and that's what you like, why your work, I think, is so important because you guys are speaking into this place that's dominated by these anti natalist forces, right? And you're providing pushback and upsetting the radfems and, Poking fun at the all these different groups that you guys find yourself being on the

Malcolm Collins: end of the whip of interesting points you make that has me reflecting on something that I hadn't reflected on before.

Which is to say, you're showing off your skills as an interviewer here. So this is why people need to go to this channel, right? The thing I was thinking about, you are the

Benjamin Boyce: gazelle. I am the cheetah

Malcolm Collins: Kiki. The different communities and how they react to, like, when I say communities, cultural groups and how they react to, or how susceptible they are to the virus.

And there's huge amount of differential here. So conserved Jewish communities seem to be uniquely, good at preserving their community values [00:27:00] without going crazy. They seem to have almost a complete immunity to the, this these intellectual viruses in a way that doesn't cause them to radicalize as to why I think it's because Jews are predominantly an urban cultural group.

We did a video recently, something like 89 percent of Jews or 98 percent of Jews live in urban centers. Can I

Benjamin Boyce: What do you mean by radicalized? Can you specify what you mean by that?

Malcolm Collins: So a weird thing that happens to some communities when they're hit by the urban monoculture is the iteration of them that is resistant to it or survives the interaction becomes like crazy radical.

So I think this is what happened to Protestant communities in the late nineties, early two thousands is that they were hit by the urban monoculture and their reaction to it was to become the form of evangelical that fits into popular culture today. But this sort of radicalization in response to contact seems to burn itself [00:28:00] out.

That iteration, that evangelical Protestant. doesn't really exist in huge numbers anymore, or not in a way that's actively engaging in the cultural conversation. If you look at the listened to conservative commentators they are predominantly of Catholic or Jewish heritage.

You're looking at like a Ben Shapiro or a, whatever, or bill O'Reilly. Oh yeah, Bill O'Reilly! Yeah, I'm pretty sure Bill O'Reilly was Catholic. He also wrote crime novels. But the question is again, okay why Catholics? Why did they not go crazy? They went a little crazy in response to this and their fertility rates have fallen more than other groups, but they seem to have a little bit more resistance to deep penetration.

And again, it's because they're a predominantly urban cultural group. Catholics mostly settled in urban environments. And so they're already

Benjamin Boyce: adapted to what is the special sauce in the urban,

Malcolm Collins: Were adapted to the proto version of this mimetic virus. They were they, which would be old

Benjamin Boyce: school multiculturalism, like being able to coexist with a bunch of different kinds of groups and then seamlessly [00:29:00] integrate through.

Commerce

Malcolm Collins: basically, you live in a city. You have to learn culturally how to prevent your kids from being deconverted in an environment where you're a minority. And the Protestant groups just never needed to pick up that skill. And so when this sort of virus like swept across the country, like the black plague or something, it just completely decimated their communities and turn them woke like super fast.

And then they began to put up what we call the colonizer flag based on a part of our discord, which is the the triangle flag. We call it the colonizer flag. Yeah. And

Benjamin Boyce: then the other faction of that same group that you're talking about broke Trump. Broke MAGA and became the blunt of the regime or the monocultures jokes and fears and a lot of the riling up, like they are the enemy.

If those who didn't succeed and going breaking towards progressivism, we're are the Number one outcast group. They are the ones that Biden talks about when [00:30:00] he's I'm going to bring, I'm going to unite us together to destroy this one group in our country. These mega ultra mega, people who are going in the NASCAR, who still believe in Jesus, but the wrong Jesus, the white Jesus or whatever.

So they are a very powerful group, but they are vilified inside and out by everyone. Every rung of the vertically integrated messaging apparatus. And

Malcolm Collins: one culture that was uniquely susceptible to this, maybe even more than the Protestants were the Mormons. The Mormons just were destroyed deconversion rate wise.

Within their culture and your

Benjamin Boyce: theory is that because they were so isolated by within a very specific chunk of time, 50 years in American history, they took a break from they were disconnected from the path of American culture for a certain amount of time and then it caught up with them.

Malcolm Collins: No. So the Mormons were destroyed for a somewhat unique reason. So Mormons were both isolated. They lived in mostly Mormon communities for a long time. But then in [00:31:00] addition to that, the Mormon community became hyper fixated on trying to fit in like being normal, being weird. And this drive to fit in with the perfect like black pill or kink in their armor, Cultural viruses could use to infiltrate the community.

Benjamin Boyce: Yeah. Yeah. I spoke with a ex Mormon. He's a therapist. And so he works mostly with ex Mormons. And it was just like hearing his story about how he was really plugged into this worldview, this Mormon worldview. And then he lost faith and he was in faith. Free fall and it was terrifying for him. So he grabbed onto progressivism and then he realized like, this is just as radical and just as disconnected from reality.

But there's no going from a really tightly formed meme plex or whatever you want, like belief system or ideology into this liberal wasteland. There's nothing to believe in and the people, a lot of people have to reconfigure how to believe or what is the function of belief. And progressivism [00:32:00] is.

Is a tight or a thick belief. Whereas liberalism is a loose or diaphanous belief system, like where you can have you bring your own, you create your own meaning, no meanings handed to you. It's really destabilizing for, the Mormon frame of mind when you're really deep into it. So I wonder if there's something there about liberalism's problematic relationship to progressivism or how this kind of liberal, anything goes, you do you, we do.

us. We just understand what reality and truth is. We're all going to work on that was so susceptible to this progressivism, which is a more thick belief or a narrow myopic belief, harder, hotter.

Malcolm Collins: I think you're right. I think that one is the funnel that leads to the other, like one catches you as you're falling and then funnels you towards the extremism.

Benjamin Boyce: That is, can we live in a world without extremism and do you guys in your consciously created ideology or, and I mean that in [00:33:00] a, just a non moralistic way. Are you building into your Children? Antibodies to radicalism. Have you seen have you played around with your ideas enough to say, okay, how could they be radicalized?

And what would the end of that radicalization point be?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I the radicalization of our ideas and the dangerous radicalization of our ideas would be extremist transhumanism IE AI over humanity robo

Benjamin Boyce: wombs.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, no, that's perfect.

Simone Collins: Of course, for

Malcolm Collins: us,

Simone Collins: that's

Malcolm Collins: perfect. The extreme radicalization is the discounting of humanity altogether.

Which is a potential downside of what we're doing. But we protect,

Simone Collins: I disagree with Malcolm. I think radicalism is inevitable and we have a radical religion and a lot of people see that and criticize us for it. But the stance, you guys are

Benjamin Boyce: already radical. Yeah. You cannot

Simone Collins: be a true religious devotee.

You cannot truly live your values without being seen as a radical by mainstream society. So we have to define radicalism. But [00:34:00] you're going to be seen as a radical if you adhere to your beliefs and if your beliefs do not immediately track with mainstream society, which in any person's lifetime, especially now in this period of rapid cultural iteration, you're going to seem at some point like a radical.

If you do not change with the vicissitudes of changing culture. For example, if you just, let's say like you held the mainstream political beliefs about gender and race and everything else from 1992, you would be seen as some kind of radical today. So I think that the nice thing about being a religious radical is that you are at least.

radically devoted to carefully selected values and objective functions.

Benjamin Boyce: More or less coherent system. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Instead of just this is what's correct. And what I would say is the worst kind of radical is one that hasn't basically come to a conclusion where they can show their work. They've just chosen a random, seems to be [00:35:00] correct answer.

And then that's where they're going. And that's what you're showing your

Benjamin Boyce: work right now. Oh, baby work there.

Simone Collins: She

Malcolm Collins: is wobbly. My first

Benjamin Boyce: infant interview.

Malcolm Collins: There you go. We're ruining this little infant's life by putting her on camera.

Simone Collins: Yeah. That's yeah. Someday someone will be critiquing this YouTube video and blurring her face out in their attempt to undo the evil we have done.

Stole her

Benjamin Boyce: soul before her time. Honestly, like I watched

Simone Collins: a lot of YouTube critiques of people who have babies in their videos and always they blur out the babies and it's not good. There is this kind of yeah, I'm preserving their soul. I'm not going to be a part of this terrible machine.

But yeah, anyway, I, what I'm really curious to know is what has surprised you in these interviews, because I think a lot of us come to blanket conclusions around, this is progressivism. This is what progressives think. This is what gets people to convert. But I think that there's a lot lost in, in those functions.

I'm curious. [00:36:00] Yeah,

Benjamin Boyce: So I'm I have about 80 interviews with de transitioners or around that topic and de transitioners fall into variety of different. Categories. So you have the male to estrogenize male to male de transitioner, and then the female to masculinize female to female de transitioner, and then you have the lesbian, or you have the straight girl, or you have the teenage girl, ROGD, rapid onset gender dysphoria, read a bunch of, fanfic, and was attracted to men, but like really disliked the power dynamics.

So imagine herself as a gay man to enact like that, what we were talking about earlier about the spicy straight queer stuff. And then you have males with autogynephilia, you have males with personality disorders, you have males with, pornography addiction, you have very hyper effeminate gay males who don't fit into society.

And if they just surrender and build on that femininity, they can just be accepted as a female. Cause they're never going to be accepted as [00:37:00] a like kind of Blair white, just as a very hyper effeminate male, you just don't really have a place in certain societies and stuff. One thing that surprises me to directly answer your question with regard to that kind of community, which is not a community because there's so many different people there, is just the resilience of the human soul.

And the central key in the detransition or story arc is where their soul speaks to them or where God speaks to them and say, you're lying to yourself. Stop lying to yourself. It's just such a, Beautiful moment. And then they look down and they realize it's usually after a very traumatic surgery that these doctors just sped them on either an orchiectomy penile inversion or a mastectomy.

They look down at their body and say, wait, I didn't like what I was, but this is not what I am. I'm not. This is not my pet destiny or something. And you just get this glimpse that we are, for lack of a better word, and maybe poking fun at Malcolm's interview with me, we are loved and that when we betray that, which loves us, we betray ourselves and we can't actually function in [00:38:00] this world without that connection, that really deep.

Belonging that is underneath all these other, hierarchy of needs and that D transition or arc, probably similar to like an alcoholics arc, like a lot of TV shows and movies over the last 30 years have overused the A format because it does have this. It's got this really convenient arc where somebody recognizes the truth.

And then apologizes, confronts their resentment, confronts their your regrets and then, picks up and moves on and then say, okay, I'm damaged. And everybody can see how damaged I am. Everybody can see how fucked up, I am. Because I participated in this lie, and then it shows the lie of the system, but it's no longer a political act.

It's no longer a political story. It's no longer a reformation story of the system. That's just gobbling up people. This huge satanic industry. That's basically Literally sacrificing children like you people cannot understand that are our current regime is worshiping Moloch. They are [00:39:00] sacrificing babies on the altar of this gender ideology and nobody can see that.

But if you these D transition or stories they show they just show this is a human thing, and so bring it back to the human and then you go to the universal and that's what it's not surprising. It's just beautiful to me. It's like damage.

Malcolm Collins: To your answer there one episode that hasn't gone live yet because I don't want to get, too cancelled, too many of these, too quickly.

Oh, you love it. I'll use the word, I'll use the word boobicide. So that what I'm saying here which is to say that it is widely known, like even the, who has training courses and Stanford has training courses for media professionals to not talk about boobicide because it's a very addictive concept.

And so whenever you have it happen publicly, they typically tell the story. Yeah, he's talking about

Simone Collins: the

Benjamin Boyce: real

Malcolm Collins: one.

Benjamin Boyce: I thought you were talking about this massive amount of Ectomies, not Ectomies. Okay. Which is a, breast center also a thing. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. What's really interesting is that they have created [00:40:00] this idea for young, impressionable people where they're like, okay, you are X now, and if you don't do Y, the only alternative is Bic side.

And like any previous study of this would be like, Oh yeah, of course, that's going to lead to a lot of kids doing it. And it reminds me of this South Park episode which we put in the other thing where Rob Reiner is going to kill Cartman. To prove that cigarettes aren't bad for people and that secondhand smoke can kill and Kurt was like, but he reads it and he's all happy to have all these adults paying attention to him.

And he's wait, what? And I feel like that's, unfortunately what's happening to a lot of young people is that anyone who understood psychology could have predicted the result of this ideology.

Benjamin Boyce: Yeah,

Hell do you think you're doing? This is the girls bathroom! Alright, I need to tell you something, I'm trans ginger. What?! Did you notice the bow? It's okay Red I can take a s**t here.

I'm a dumb chick, too. You are not transgender, Eric. You don't even know what that means. Yeah, huh, it means I live a life of torture and [00:41:00] confusion because society sees me as a boy but I'm really a girl.

Trust me, you don't want this hot potato. But this isn't a hurting, confused child we're talking about. This is Eric Cartman. Nobody else is gonna know that. You better just give him what he wants. All you gotta do is just read the words on the teleprompter here. Heh, okay. Let's see how the

Transphobes. deal with this.

You know, some people say there's no proof that

Not transitioning children. kills. I guess I'm the proof. By the time you see this commercial, I'll be dead.

Dead? That was fantastic! , what does that mean, I'll be dead? That was very good, Eric. Here, eat this cupcake. It has sprinkles. Do you know what a hero is?

A hero is somebody who sacrifices himself for the good of others. You can be a hero, Eric. . Jesus Christ!

Benjamin Boyce: That's I was interviewing somebody for I've been doing some [00:42:00] interviews with my spiritual group and, just different people's stories and stuff.

And I was interviewing somebody who's deeply involved in the in the deep state, literally, like they worked in Congress for years and years under Pelosi, under all these people. And we got to the idea of the trans kid and this person just was so on fire to protect the trans kid that they, I just saw in this.

Yeah, I just really saw like what Yarvin talks about or what other people talk about like the global empire like the global american empire like we want to eat all of your culture and the trans kid Is the one thing that can just put these women specifically these bureaucratic women on fire to go and you know Love everything about a culture except completely destroyed that facet of the culture that replicates the culture, which is the cultures where culture plugs into sex, which is what we call gender.

And these women want to destroy that gender thing, which allows that culture to replicate. And they think that they're like, it's so the fire in their [00:43:00] eyes, this crusade. And the trans kid idea, I think is the most satanic idea. Like one of the most satanic ideas of this particular century.

Malcolm Collins: No, I was saying it's really interesting.

So contrast this idea with a kid consenting to PDA file ness. So in one case PDF

Benjamin Boyce: files? Like the Adobe? No

Simone Collins: he's trying not to use Man boy loving.

Malcolm Collins: Man

Simone Collins: boy

Malcolm Collins: loving? Be proud to be a man boy lover. This is from the old, this is the skit they used to do on Howard Stern, where a guy would come up and go, I'm proud to be a man boy lover.

Anyway the kid sleeps with somebody who is older than them. That's bad, right? And I would say a kid shouldn't be able to consent to that. But what the result of that is, is a single traumatic experience. If a kid consents to puberty blockers, or gender transition, that is a [00:44:00] lifetime commitment of potentially negative experiences.

And not just

Simone Collins: biological, financial, and cultural, and social. It's all of these things. There is no escape in life.

Malcolm Collins: I can say, no, my 13 year old daughter, I don't care that you find this guy attractive. You cannot, or, or my 15 year old daughter, you cannot sleep with him. You're, f**k off.

That's obviously a bad idea. And I'm going to prevent you from doing that. Yet if you do that in this other category, it's considered like a protected class. And I'm like how?

Benjamin Boyce: Yeah, it's just it's people haven't thought through it. I was I'm just transcribed an interview with a young man who went on puberty blocker It went on.

Yeah, puberty blockers by reluctant. I think it's called and estrogenized hormones at 14 so he was essentially frozen and the data's not it But we were pretty sure that the brain has very specific windows when it develops and if you miss those windows It doesn't go through these development phases.

[00:45:00] So we're literally retarding You Brain functioning for these kids

Malcolm Collins: And animal models. It's about a one standard deviation decline in IQ to be on puberty blockers. Yeah.

Benjamin Boyce: Yeah. Anyway, so he, he was a very effeminate gay man. He goes on these hormones and stuff. And then he become, he comes of age 18, 19, but he's still like a little boy and he gets swept up in, in gay sleeping around round culture.

And I'm listening to a story. I'm like, wait, they were, it wasn't just a gay thing. Like they had a young boy. It was basically legal

Malcolm Collins: PDF

Benjamin Boyce: files?. Because he was, he had all the attributes of, he was locked at 14, but he's 19. Oh, that's

Simone Collins: so gross.

Benjamin Boyce: So they're like, he was preserved and then offered on the altar of this stuff.

Simone Collins: No. Oh no. No.

Malcolm Collins: So actually a lot of people like. And I know this is something that again, I think there is a real trans community, but I think that sex pests took over parts of the community because they realized they wouldn't be criticized if they just claimed to be trans and they can be [00:46:00] sex pests all they want.

But this isn't a hurting, confused child we're talking about. This is Eric Cartman. Nobody else is gonna know that. You better just give him what he wants

Malcolm Collins: That actively targets underage kids. For this stuff if that is their thing and I'll put a from Turkey, Tom did a great video on one of these people.

Has he started hormones yet? Yes, but not effectively. I guess that's what you'd expect just telling a r to buy hormones. They bought estrogen, but no anti androgen. It would have been more fun if he started hormone blockers at like 12.

Haha, isn't that true for everyone? Don't worry, I'll make him into a good girl

Don't blow up our spot, bro. All t slurs are like that. You can trust me around your kid. It'd be transphobic not to. Me with daycare tots. To Orion, and many of his associates, their identity was little more than a political shield.

It clearly worked, given he publicly fantasized about assaulting women in bathrooms. Me when transphobic little girls ask me what I'm doing in the women's restroom when I'm obviously a woman.

Malcolm Collins: And I'll put a quote from that video here because people were like, no, you're making this up. And it's no, like this is [00:47:00] a real thing. It doesn't matter if it's a minority thing.

What about those kids? Do you not care about them? Because some of this is sexually motivated and to pretend it's not, is just to ignore what the trans people are saying.

Benjamin Boyce: Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: We're considering trans people.

Benjamin Boyce: So I would, I was at a, when I embarked on this series of interviews, I was really open to the idea.

I had no idea what I understood. I had a friend who was trans and then over the course of the years, I see this, my friend just never stops transing. It's like there's always one more thing to trans about themselves. And so I just, I have a hard time, especially with the idea of trans kid is a mutation from a trans person.

So I really have a hard time at this point in time, really thinking of transness as anything other than something that one does. Like I am a Smith. I am a Miller. I'm a content creator. I am trans. It's the answer. There's no such there's because you can be a gay person that makes sense to me because it's, and you can argue, I [00:48:00] try to understand the argument of the Christian argument or the religious argument.

Even if you are that doesn't mean you should act on it. That's a whole other conversation. But you're built in. That's an emergent property of you to be gay, to want to have sex with men. If you're a man or woman with women or be actively it. by the opposite sex, but transition there's gender dysphoria and active Dislike or hatred of one's own body, which is a mental condition.

And then there's steps to cause that body to become in the likeness of what you want, which is a medical procedure. And that's, it's an elective cosmetic procedure. And then the hormone stuff, the endocrinology on this stuff, it's so messy. These systems, these are endocrine systems are way too complex.

Injecting cross sex hormones affects the entire system. Not just your secondary sex. Yeah. It affects your brain development. So I just, I there's the libertarian argument about you're a grown adult. If you're [00:49:00] consent to this, you should be well informed. But the idea of transness is where it just, it's a big black box and it's really easy to swallow because it's inclusive.

It's you do you, but what, but how does that not turn into trans kid? If there's a trans adult, then they were a trans kid. They were always trans, which means that they're always born in the wrong body.

Malcolm Collins: This is the thing we don't we don't say, oh, you're a gay kid, go out there and have sex with guys while you're underage and I think that we should treat gender transition the same way I can admit I'll be like, okay, trans people were at one point kids.

And that is okay. But So what do you

Benjamin Boyce: mean by trans people then?

Malcolm Collins: I, look, it, The human brain is very obviously gender. There is very obviously a male and female brain. My wife does not think like me. That, in some small portion of the population, I don't know how small, It could be very small one, 0.

1 percent that they are born with a brain that is gendered more like the opposite sex, [00:50:00] especially when we look at endocrine disruptors in pollutants, which seem to be affecting this. I can see that being some portion of the population and that these people might realize that they are in this group before they go through puberty.

The problem is, there was a great study done in 2023 that looked at gender non contentedness in 11 year olds, and it showed that by the time they were 23 More or I'll put it this way, less than one intent of them, one intent of them was still in the gender non contented group. The other nine plus were entirely happy with their birth gender.

And so the problem is that when people go through puberty, there is often an illusion of gender non contentedness, which is created by puberty itself. And people are like what if I am that one in 10? And it's unfortunately there's no way to know if you're that one in 10, at least with current research.

So you're better off just banning [00:51:00] everything before the age of 23.

Benjamin Boyce: Yeah. It's hard. Yeah I it's just, it's a, it's really odd. issue to talk about because it does take into account, like the idea of what should other people be allowed or not allowed to do? And I, do I have any right?

Do I want to make laws? Do I want to, you go in another direction, the same topic, like pornography, do we ban pornography? Like how do we educate around pornography? But we know that pornography is a scourge. That it's doing a lot of damage to a lot of relationships, a lot of people.

It's, It's poison. But do I want to not drink anymore? Okay. Do you just let the world eat people alive, in all these different ways and let people like, just give themselves over to this or that affliction and let God sort out.

Malcolm Collins: You're right. One of the things that always concerns me is with conservatives, when they're like, we need to get these, trans teachers, we can't have them talking about it in school.

We got to get these trans books out of school and you are, because they're afraid for their kid's [00:52:00] safety. And it's not that their kid's safety doesn't matter. Like in my state recently this to me, what is obviously a cis guy pretending to be trans use that cover to attack young women and nearly killed one and had another on a kill list.

So he had, That's the

Benjamin Boyce: real trans genocide. It's just happening in the other

Malcolm Collins: direction. And he wasn't able to be fully punished because people were like he's, she's trans, we can't punish her. She can go into the women's restroom and attack them. She had a

Benjamin Boyce: woman moment.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Women be crazy.

Probably. It's so sexist. No, you want to talk about sexist? It's so incredibly sexist. Star Wars Acolyte. We're about to, we'll end this interview soon so I can get our Star Wars Acolyte video in. Yeah. I don't mind. Favorite moments in the episode three was the two less actually, no, Simone, I can't talk to you.

Spoilers. Spoilers. Oh no. Okay. I watched our Dark and Light episode. We're not going to talk about

Benjamin Boyce: scissoring on this show. No. You're going to wait. Stay tuned for scissoring next on Based Camp. [00:53:00]

Malcolm Collins: What was I going to say about the Trans people

Simone Collins: being sexist, Malcolm.

Benjamin Boyce: Or yeah, this issue being sexist.

Oh no, there was

Simone Collins: a trans person in Pennsylvania who caused the suicide. Oh yeah,

Malcolm Collins: No but for a lot of these people it's just, cover to do whatever. Like it's cover for aggressive, sexually aggressive cis men to do whatever they want. And manipulate and brainwash a lot of, Oh yes.

I remember what I was going to say. It's about targeting young people. So they're afraid that what's going to happen to these kids is that they're going to be attacked by these trans individuals. And I think that is fundamentally wrong. Like mostly speaking, while there are a few of these cis male, aggressive people who attack kids, the real risk you have is in being converted by these individuals when they're not actually trans.

And so you get rid of the book, you get rid of the teacher. You haven't gotten rid of the risk to your kid. And the only way you really protect your kid is with sex education.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Never shelter annotate.

Malcolm Collins: [00:54:00] That is the biggest defense you have against all of this. If your defense is. Trans people are evil or gay people are evil.

Then they meet a trans teacher and that person doesn't appear to be evil. And now you have lost all of the defenses that you have built.

Simone Collins: Yeah. You

Malcolm Collins: need to annotate.

Benjamin Boyce: Yeah. Run toward the information. Information is your is the truth shall set you free. Yeah. The truth shall

Malcolm Collins: set you free. Exactly. The truth will defend you.

Benjamin Boyce: Malcolm, can I ask you one more question before you hastily end our delicious talk? Thank you very much for having me on. Oh, no problem. At the end of our interview, which I love, I'm going to have you back on and Simone, I'm really looking forward to having you on.

You and me.

Malcolm Collins: You'll have fun.

Benjamin Boyce: Was, you said that in millions of years, so I'm like, okay, what's your transcendent goal? What's the one thing? Cause you're like,

Malcolm Collins: love is s**t. Love is death. Love is a cul de sac and it's going to end you. Puritan dating joke, [00:55:00] which I saw recently, we put it in our last episode.

And he goes to his partner, roses are red. Violets are blue and both are useless. So grow wheat. Utilitarian. Yeah, for sure. All the way down. You said

Benjamin Boyce: something about the eventually in millions of years, humanity is Going to turn into God or something. I can't remember exactly how you phrase it, but you said you it's did you have a vision of that?

Do you have you had like a

Malcolm Collins: beliefs watch Gurren Lagann?

We evolve, beyond the person we were a minute before! Little by little, we advance a bit further with each turn! We humans used to have somebody much greater than us! For his sake alone, we'll keep on moving forward! The dreams of those who have fallen, the hopes of those who will rise. Those two sets of dreams weaved together [00:56:00] into a double helix, drilling a path towards tomorrow!

Malcolm Collins: Gurren Lagann is a very good representation Oh, i'll send you a

Simone Collins: you didn't have a vision. He watched anime, which is what? You know what? It was

Benjamin Boyce: 50 50. He's gonna turn into a twink or he's gonna turn into a pronatalist, father of eight, and you broke fertile.

Malcolm Collins: So here's the thing. Gurren Lagann it like treats people who believe that Earth has a what's the word they use here? A population threshold? airing capacity. And it treats them the same way Captain Planet like treats polluters as like these evil bogeymen who want to suppress human potential.

And a lot of people saw Gurren Lagann and they didn't realize how pertinatal it was. And then as if to slap them in the face and wake them up, they made A second show recently called Darling and Frank's which we have an episode about as well, which is about mechs, but they can only be piloted by a cis man and cis woman [00:57:00] piloting them together and the evil villains in it are the life extensionists.

Not being subtle

Simone Collins: with the propaganda here. No,

Malcolm Collins: the propaganda of Studio Trigger is not subtle. It is breed. So they brainwashed me into their insane ideology of humanity is a good thing. And that every so in Gurren Lagann, it's even more than just this idea of a, Carrying capacity, they divide humanity into two factions, one faction, which is the goal of humanity is to always improve ourselves, every generation become better.

And then the other faction, which is like an alien faction is like every race that does this must be eradicated because don't you understand if you're always improving yourself, that eventually spirals out of control and destroys the universe. You cannot keep. becoming better. You cannot keep improving yourself.

You need to find some sort of harmony or stasis

Benjamin Boyce: or [00:58:00] accept yourself for who you are, what you were talking about in today's episode.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Accept yourself for who you are. And that's the way I see it. That's why I see these concepts of love and self acceptance is like the purest form of evil that humanity has contacted.

And it's like pure. From my perspective,

Benjamin Boyce: I wonder what your Valentine's day is like. Simone,

Malcolm Collins: you should our wedding during our speech we said instead

Benjamin Boyce: of flowers, it gives you like some sort of Neuralink implant or something. It's I love you so much here. I want you to think

Malcolm Collins: implants.

By the way, that was my first job. I just, the technology wasn't moving fast enough. Not at Neuralink, but at their predecessor companies, the predecessors of that technology. Great. But so for Simone, I told her when I was getting married, I was like, look I cannot promise to love you because love is an emotion outside of my control, right?

But I can promise to keep improving myself every day and keep pushing you to improve every day. And I think that [00:59:00] push that we have within our relationship exists towards humanity more broadly. Love is just this evanescent thing, it's like a genetic scar. And one day A genetic scar? No the

Simone Collins: post ceremony reception was fantastic.

Cause everyone, we passed around the fried haggis balls. Everyone's that was just so you.

Malcolm Collins: A dangerous genetic scar that can be used to hijack us. And one day, mankind will be freed from love and happiness. And all of these useless concepts. We'll be able to put little chips in our brain. Yeah. If somebody was like do you want to get rid of them entirely? And it's no, like the Mechanicus I can tell that my brain is outputting grief, but this is not useful in my decision for what I do next, so I won't do it.

That's

Simone Collins: how it works in I'm Obsessed with Iain Banks Culture Series, and none of these feelings. Oh gosh, you have to, yeah. The Culture Series by Iain Banks. I think it starts with Use of Weapons, maybe? Anyway, continue. [01:00:00] You can have what's called a neural lace in your mind, and it fully integrates you with AI and the internet or whatever, right?

Tech. And you can also set up your body where you can feel everything, emotions, pain, physical, mental, etc. You can also turn it off whenever you want. So let's say you're in a very violent car crash like an immediate emergency system turns off the pain, but it's there's pain here, there's pain here and you can do the same with your emotions.

And that's, ultimately when people talk about mastering their emotions from a much more woo standpoint, it's all about, you feel the emotion, you let it pass through you. The thing is that we just our wetware is not that good. And so it can be really difficult to be like, I feel the pain and I let it pass through me.

You're like, no, it still really hurts. And I just can only think about this thing. And then you're non functional. And really pain exists as a signal. As soon as you've got the signal and you are changing your behavior as you need to, based on that signal, You should not be so distracted by that signal that you literally can't change your behavior appropriately.

And so that's how it should be. We definitely [01:01:00] respect emotions and we respect why they are there, but I think to be ruled by them or to see them as inherently valuable is incredibly dumb. So that's what we're trying to avoid here.

Benjamin Boyce: Yeah. I don't know. God loves you guys. Both of you. Every cell, every moment.

Malcolm Collins: I know he does. He is a big fan of ours. He really loves God too. I like that we're on the right side of God. Okay yeah. Keep on the

Benjamin Boyce: right side of God.

Simone Collins: Yeah. That's a cute thing.

Malcolm Collins: It's actually something I was talking to Simone about recently, where I was like, It is remarkable how stupidly good our lives are.

We might not be stupid. Super rich or anything, but I have everything I could ever want,

Simone Collins: we're always freaked out because we're, our life looks like the B roll from the before disaster scene. I'm like, we're like the beginning of a punisher movie, where

Malcolm Collins: everything's taken away and I'm like, we only get to keep this if we keep fighting this culture war on full battle, because God has only gifted this to us because we are making sacrifices that give us no financial or [01:02:00] public sector benefit.

Yeah, it's very nervous making.

Simone Collins: I cannot wait to talk with you again. You are so thoughtful and you,

Benjamin Boyce: that's all I share. I just play one on tv. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: channel. Stay for us chatting that we did before, before the episode.

Benjamin Boyce: Yeah. Thanks for having me on, guys.

Malcolm Collins: And where can people find you?

Benjamin Boyce: Benjamin, A Boyce on YouTube and Odyssey, et cetera, and calm conversations in your podcast stream.

Simone Collins: Excellent. How frequently do you publish?

Benjamin Boyce: Every other day, sometimes more, sometimes less,

Simone Collins: two or

Benjamin Boyce: three times a week. Yeah. You have to keep the wheel spinning.

Malcolm Collins: Hardcore. Like this podcast started every other day. And then I made a fateful decision of deciding every day at one point. You can

Simone Collins: always

Benjamin Boyce: take a break.

Just do seasons. You can always

Malcolm Collins: do seasons.

Benjamin Boyce: Hitting it.

Malcolm Collins: so

Simone Collins: much. Much and I felt so sick, but it was so worth it. Sometimes it's just worth it to be in that much pain. And a bucket of sour [01:03:00] cream and onion fried chicken is one of those things. By the way, we take this banter

Malcolm Collins: at

Simone Collins: the end of episodes, but yeah. No, more like I say something embarrassing before I know Malcolm's going to record and then he's

Malcolm Collins: no, no wing bucket has sour cream and onion fried chicken wings. It's a good, and it's in the center of downtown Dallas. Now, is it still there? They were actually talking about franchising it the last time I was there. And I don't mind investing in that.

Simone Collins: Every time I go, there's people there. It is worth it.

Benjamin Boyce: You guys have a lot in your heads. How old are you collectively? Collectively? I don't know. 60? 65? More than that.

Simone Collins: We're 70, 73 together. That's the

Malcolm Collins: point of marriage, right? Collective age.

Simone Collins: Collective age. I like

Malcolm Collins: that. That's good. Yeah. Collectively. But no, I'm always thinking about, oh, okay, what's going to be a good, investment or whatever.

And How many

Benjamin Boyce: franchises have you bought into? None.

Malcolm Collins: None. None. Oh, wait. There was the one. I don't know. Did we invest in Jonathan's? [01:04:00] Or did we just talk

Simone Collins: about it? No. No. We never got the opportunity. We would if you let us. Yeah.

Benjamin Boyce: You have five shares in staples or something like that. All right.

Malcolm Collins: No.

Okay. So there's this weird phenomenon where if you are like I'm sure you'll get to this. Have you had people offer you equity in their companies yet?

Benjamin Boyce: No.

Malcolm Collins: Like you're more famous than us on YouTube. So I would figure,

Benjamin Boyce: yeah, but you're plugged into that whole technocratic set, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So I guess it's a whole techno nerd thing.

Benjamin Boyce: No. Yeah. You guys are all in the, up in that investment community. You're part of a clan. I don't, I'm not, I'm trans clan. If I'm trans anything, it's trans clan,

Malcolm Collins: I was talking to Raziv, and he's Oh yeah, that happens to me all the time. So it's definitely part of like our scene. Okay.

Valley adjacent. Yeah. Anyway. So I'm going to wind down here on the no.

Benjamin Boyce: Go flow. No, I'm going to do

Malcolm Collins: the part where we're going to start the episode. And then this gets plugged in at the end of the episode, just because we don't want random chatter And during this, like the opposite of me, I just

Benjamin Boyce: let it roll.

Simone Collins: See I, that's how I am. I love [01:05:00] when a podcast begins. I mean Red Scare, they just begin in the middle of God knows what. And I'm here for it. I don't know

Malcolm Collins: how they got popular. Like I don't get it. Like sometimes I look at a popular podcast and I'm like, I don't get how you're a popular podcast.

Simone Collins: Because they're internet mean girls and you're sitting in their cool person room and you want to sit there with the cool girls.

Benjamin Boyce: They're cool. They're cool. They have a nice voice. Yeah. It's a pair of voices.

Simone Collins: It's very relaxing. It's low energy, but in a very relaxing way.

Benjamin Boyce: Yeah. Kind of club girls, but they don't have a hangover, but they haven't started partying.

It's like this nice little between zone. Yeah. It's beautiful.

Simone Collins: Luminal. It's yeah. Intellectual liminal space. Very calming. Yeah. Like ASMR, but not gross. Really nice.

Benjamin Boyce: Yeah. No, it is very SMR.

Simone Collins: Yeah

Malcolm Collins: Okay. I'm not I'm actually do it now. Do it. Yeah

Benjamin Boyce: You're fine

In this episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins delve into the controversial portrayal of a lesbian cult in the latest Star Wars series, The Acolyte. The couple breaks down the problematic elements of the show, including its misogynistic undertones, bizarre plot devices, and the implications of the cult's reproductive practices.

Malcolm and Simone discuss how the show's attempt to introduce a powerful female-led community ultimately fails, as it relies on harmful stereotypes and illogical plot points. They examine the cult's use of the Force to impregnate women, drawing parallels to the immaculate conception of Anakin Skywalker and the troubling notion that men create children while women merely carry them.

The conversation also touches on the decline of the Star Wars franchise, with Simone sharing her personal journey as a fan and pinpointing the moment she lost interest in the series. Malcolm and Simone explore the idea of Jar Jar Binks as a Sith Lord and the prevalence of racial stereotypes in the earlier films.

Throughout the discussion, the couple shares insights into the challenges of creating conservative-leaning content in the current entertainment landscape, drawing from their own experiences with a canceled documentary project. They highlight the role of legal departments and institutional bureaucracies in stifling diverse viewpoints within major streaming networks.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] It would be like, if you wrote a biblical fan fiction and you knew the Jesus story, And you were like, and there was this whole other town, this whole other town of lesbians where everyone just prays to God and gets pregnant in the same way Mary did, hold on. This is where it gets insane and misogynistic.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: There is a famous scene in this.

Carry them

Malcolm Collins: which implies that men create the child And women carry the child. This is even more misogynistic than real human earth biology.

So she's actually,

Actually I inseminated you. Therefore I created the child. Therefore I am the dominant partner in this relationship and make all child rearing decisions.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: I am so excited for this episode.

Simone Collins: Yes. Okay. Let's do

Malcolm Collins: it.

Simone Collins: Let's

Malcolm Collins: go for it.

Yeah. This [00:01:00] is going to be the worst. Yeah,

The worst! She's the worst person in the world. Huge skank. Terrible. What did I tell you, huh? The worst!

She's the worst in the world.

Malcolm Collins: I gotta put the word team here because oh my God, does this deserve it? Two things that is going to make this somewhat unique when contrasted with other discussions of the Acolyte. One is we have some interesting insider industry information, given that our own documentary was recently cancelled, about how decisions are being made inside of Hollywood right now which can help you understand how something as insane as this could have gotten greenlit because that is something that before we worked in Hollywood, genuinely perplexed.

Why is this getting greenlit? It's obviously not good for the industry. But then the second is how absolutely misogynistic the ideas presented in the [00:02:00] Acolyte are. But wasn't it like produced by women? Yes, it was. They were trying to create something that was misandrist. A world, and I want to get your reaction to the world.

Start with one of the most controversial things. So let's get your real time reaction to this. Okay. Because no one knows what happens.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Tell me about the Acolyte. I didn't know what is out. I did not know there was more Star Wars property to enjoy. So I have not watched anything.

I have not seen a single thing. So it

Malcolm Collins: takes place during the High Republic. What is the High

Simone Collins: Republic?

Malcolm Collins: A long time before most of the stuff that you've seen. So pre

Simone Collins: Queen Amidala, or before. Very before that. Long before. Before,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, this is in a time when there were lots of Siths and lots of Jedis before the Rule of Two.

Simone Collins: Living in harmony? There wasn't a split time

Malcolm Collins: the different era of star wars. The point being, this is an important to the show right now. So the point being into the high Republic it follows two twins an evil twin and a good twin, but goodness, there's

Simone Collins: [00:03:00] an evil twin.

Malcolm Collins: It reminds me of that scene.

I've got to post it from Sky High.

What if I said it's not just her twin, it's her evil twin? This Friday you say? Medulla, you dog!

Malcolm Collins: Sky High is so undersold as a show. It really is. Do you want to go? Because it's about a world of superheroes. And it plays with a lot of tropes from that. And one guy asked the other guy, do you want to go on a date with twins? And what if I told you she was the evil twin?

It's such a great scene. I can

Simone Collins: already tell that this movie is very unique and bold in its writing. Hold on. I haven't gotten

Malcolm Collins: to the insane part yet. So episode three is the one where everyone goes crazy. So episode three takes place in a backstory where these two girls were raised. Okay. They were raised.

In a lesbian cult or religion. Oh [00:04:00] okay. Everyone's a woman. It's run by a strong black woman. So don't worry about that. Good. Okay. This is very South Park predicted this

. Put a ticket in it and make her gay! Uh, yes, Mrs. Kennedy, uh, some of the execs are just expressing that maybe Well, that maybe we should go a different route than we did with Indiana Jones.

F**k Indiana Jones! Put a ticket in it and make her lame and gay! Any diverse woman in it, make her gay! But Mrs. Kennedy, Bambi's a baby deer! F**k baby deer, put a chick in it, make her gay! Linguine and clam sauce. Uh, excuse me, I believe I asked you to put a chick in this and make her gay. Uh, yes, the chef was a little confused what you meant by that.

It means put a chick in the linguine and make her f*****g gay! It's lame!

Malcolm Collins: and I think that's why she was so mad. I was probably, this was already so well under production at that point that she couldn't stop it, but they put a chicken in her and make her gay and lame.

Simone Collins: Oh no.

Malcolm Collins: Was [00:05:00] being a meme, when this thing had been greenlit and funded and she couldn't get out of it. Lesbian cult but,

Simone Collins: Were they trying to play it off like Amazons? Amazon

Malcolm Collins: warrior much more Wiccan ish than that. If it's very clear, there's this one scene where they're all chanting and very Wiccany and Oh, they call it a force, but we call it a thread.

If Amazons

Simone Collins: were really mystical.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So I got to get your reaction to this. So how do you suppose this tribe procreated in the star Wars universe?

I'm by the way, I met Simone in her pictures on her dating profile. She wore film grade stormtrooper armor for 7 division, like very into Star Wars back in the day.

We still have Star Wars art on our walls from back when she was younger. This is something that she identified with, but hasn't really watched any of the recent stuff because why haven't you watched the recent stuff?

Simone Collins: It started sucking. I don't like it anymore. How do you suppose

Malcolm Collins: this lesbian cult was [00:06:00] reproducing?

So

Simone Collins: They would cut off one of their breasts, like Amazons, and then the breast would form into a new child. No. No. Okay. They would form a Wiccan circle. They would form a Wiccan circle. No. They couldn't

Malcolm Collins: know about Star Wars lore. No. What could be the most sacrilegious way they were reproducing to the lore of the Star Wars universe?

Simone Collins: They they killed baby Yodas to create genetic material. They

Malcolm Collins: were using the force to impregnate other women.

, the way Anakin was born and only Anakin was born. And that made Anakin unique and special in the Star Wars universe?

Oh yeah! Was Jesus'd! Yeah! That's how they make All of their kids in this community. Oh, okay. It is very Jesus..

But this is and I actually like it with biblical fan fiction. It would be like, if you wrote a biblical fan fiction [00:07:00] and you knew the Jesus story, And you were like, and there was this whole other town, this whole other town of lesbians where everyone just prays to God and gets pregnant in the same way Mary did, because they're all sinless.

That's basically what they did was this. Isn't

Simone Collins: that kind of a lesbian dream? If you could just have kids without male involvement.

Malcolm Collins: Hold on. This is where it gets insane and misogynistic.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: There is a famous scene in this.

Carry them

Malcolm Collins: where the one lesbian is saying to the other lesbian, to try to say that I should be the one who decides how they're raised.

She goes, I carried them. And then the other lesbian, the strong black woman, she replies, I created them, which implies that men create the child And women [00:08:00] carry the child. This is even more misogynistic than real human earth biology.

So she's actually,

Actually I inseminated you. Therefore I created the child. Therefore I am the dominant partner in this relationship and make all child rearing decisions.

Simone Collins: It's worse that the analog for the male here. is the force. I just, wow. Okay. This is, did they need to they need to have sensitivity readers, but they're just normies.

Because I don't. They were

Malcolm Collins: so woke. They didn't even think to have sensitivity readers. No. Sensitivity

Simone Collins: readers are the most woke. So that's the problem. I think the problem is that like a normal person reading this

Malcolm Collins: would be like, this is very misogynistic. Yeah. Bye. You think that men create the child and women just carry it and therefore men should have dominance over all family decisions?

Simone Collins: There was a period in human history where that seemed to be what people believed. [00:09:00] Yes.

Malcolm Collins: And this is actually interesting. It shows that like when you're in these ultra woke circles, cause you cannot criticize strong black female writer or whatever, whoever wrote this, like that no one they're just so unaware of how genuinely toxic their views have become.

In terms of misogynistic aspects of their views, because nobody's willing to challenge them.

Simone Collins: Yeah. What I am, that really happens in the,

Malcolm Collins: I'm gonna, I'm gonna put the shot in this show. I created them, therefore I win. Okay here's, so we gotta keep going with what happens to this temple.

Simone Collins: There's more.

Malcolm Collins: Before we get to our insider story here. Yes, there is more.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: They try to brainwash the girls. Now in the show, it's they're the good guys and the Jedis are the bad guys, which is f*****g stupid.

Simone Collins: So wait, so the, again, we're back to the lesbian A Jedi [00:10:00] commune and they're raising the female Amazon younglings.

Okay. Great. And they are talking about the

Malcolm Collins: Jedi's think, and this is framed multiple times that we are using the dark side. Now, keep in mind, we know from the series. So if you were taking this from the outside perspective and you were watching this, the way I think it should be watched as in universe fascist propaganda.

They admit that the Jedi say that they're using the dark side of the force. They're like, some would say the way we're using the force is dark sided. There is only one way to dark side use the force, which is to use the force to control and manipulate other people to force the force to act by your will.

Wait, but Jedi do that all the time. The whole like, no, the Jedi are supposed to be enacting the forces will on reality. force helps them do that. The darksiders have their own will and they use that to exercise the force on Riel. Yeah, but how

Simone Collins: is, how are darksiders using their own will? Is that not just the force using them to use their will?

Malcolm Collins: No, that is not the way the dark [00:11:00] side is seen in the universe. No. And this is also why the dark side isn't intrinsically negative. It's just, do you relate to reality via harmony? Which of course we would see it's a mystic pathway. So in many ways, from our perspective, the Jedi's are the bad guys.

 Anakin, Chancellor Palpatine is evil! From my point of view, the Jedi are evil.

Malcolm Collins: They are fighting for a mystic pathway, whereas the dark siders are, can be fighting for a monotheistic pathway.

I've been team

Simone Collins: Sith since you met me, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: But in this context, it means something quite different because this is like a coven of witches. And we are seeing that the girls are trained from a young age to just not trust anyone outside the group to not trust and to believe that they're a persecuted minority.

And are they raised

Simone Collins: with a certain imperative? Is there a raison d'etre they, Yes, we are

Malcolm Collins: a persecuted minority. Everyone else is a bad guy.

Simone Collins: But so is their job to Eliminate all other people. So what do they do? They exist to defend themselves and just exist.

Malcolm Collins: Here's this f*****g insane.

Okay. They exist to defend themselves, [00:12:00] but, and it's all and we need to use the force to procreate. These are the only two children in this giant commune of women. Okay. Oh, so there's not. Okay. Like a regular thing that they do. And I think that this shows the way progressives view children.

They're like, if we have two children for 80 women that can save our culture, that'll do well intergenerationally, that won't do especially what happens immediately after the children leave this culture.

Simone Collins: Isn't that more of an indication of the short term thinking of progressive culture in general, that there's a complete lack of longtermism and it's really about what's happening now.

There's a myopia.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So then next what happens, because we got to go over what happens in this episode because it's insane. So they live in this like old base on a mountain in an abandoned world and it's this giant stone semi circle, like you would see in a lot of Star Wars stuff. Okay. Oh, yeah.

Cool. Yeah, cool idea. Problem is they light it up like a freaking Christmas tree. So it would be [00:13:00] obvious to anyone when they're trying to hide their kids from this Jedi thing. Don't you understand? Women need good lighting, Malcolm. Even after a lifetime of brainwashing the evil one wants to stay.

The good one wants to go as a Jedi, or at least this is the way I'm reading it. I, it might be the other way around, but yeah. And, They're twins, I'm sure they're hard to tell apart.

Simone Collins: Do they dress the same?

Malcolm Collins: No, this group tells her to lie to the Jedi. That's how she's gonna stay. She needs to lie to the Jedi in order to stay in the group, and she doesn't want to.

And she doesn't lie to the Jedi, by the way.

Simone Collins: So they're trying to take their two young and use them to infiltrate an existing Jedi order, correct?

Malcolm Collins: No, they just don't want the Jedi to take their kids at all. Oh, okay. And so they tell the kids to lie to the Jedi.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Except the kid wants to escape them.

The kid clearly seems to understand that they're abusive and wants to get away. Which is interesting that they don't see the coding in this. But it's very clear. The kid, you can read this separately. The kid wants to join the Mormon missionaries who have come to [00:14:00] their house. And the, oh, there's space

Simone Collins: Mormons in this too.

All right. So we've got some starship troopers going on

Malcolm Collins: here.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So, they, she's been coached to lie to them, coaching children to lie to space CPS, basically. That is fantastic. But she doesn't cause she has a moral conscience. And then the other one, the evil one is I won't let you leave.

And she's what do you mean by that? And she's I'm going to kill you. Like immediately to 11, right? That escalated.

It's also like, it's very clear that this giant group of women who is only raising two kids by the way, is not at all qualified to be parents. If one of their kids is already. Trying to murder the other one and torturing animals. That's how, by the way, it's established that she is the bad, the evil twin is that she tortures animals. I'll do it like, no, this is fine. ,

The space CPS does need to come and take these kids.

Malcolm Collins: And she lights this girl's diary [00:15:00] on fire. And then locks her in the room and throws it on the ground and what happens next? The giant stone fortress burns down.

She burns the oopsies. She burns down. Now, keep in mind that in the episode before this this is like why you need mansplaining, many people are like. In the episode before this, there was a fire in space, a campfire in space. Outer space. With no air. And in this episode, a giant concrete slash stone fortress caught into a rapid fire.

Simone Collins: Oh, I was going to ask. I figured it just, it'd be more like the Globe Theater or something, fully wood. No. It's completely concrete and stone.

Malcolm Collins: You don't see I don't even, your

Simone Collins: space rocks are flammable, Malcolm. Stop telling women how space rocks are made.

Malcolm Collins: It's

Simone Collins: made of potassium

Malcolm Collins: infused rocks.

Yeah, duh! It's combustible. Yeah. So one this is why you need a sarcastic conservative man on every [00:16:00] set. If you would like to hire us for anti DEI consulting, we are starting a firm to do that. Just let us know.

Simone Collins: Sarcastic conservative man.

Malcolm Collins: Why, of course they should. I know, no, I, there actually should be and we can clear up all of these problems you might have on the cheat. We'll just fire people. We'll only take a percent of the money we save you. So

Simone Collins: that's actually a good business model. I know it is.

Malcolm Collins: And the company would be run technically because you are a trans ace woman.

By their perspective, you're disabled.

Simone Collins: I'm autistic.

Malcolm Collins: You're autistic, right? So who better to be making these decisions? Um, so anyway and I haven't, MBA from Stanford. I'm qualified to do this. I've run big companies. I've been, a director of strategy at a major VC firm. So anyway we are at this point, the whole thing's burning down.

So all of the lesbians. As they're leaving, because of course the Jedi save the good one. They run by the Lesbian Oh, what happens to

Simone Collins: the evil twin whose diary was burnt?

Malcolm Collins: She teleports outside somehow, plot armor. It's insane. [00:17:00] It's genuinely insane. But anyway the, but she, the good one thinks she's dead.

And I'm assuming it's a good one that goes with the Jedi. If it's not, I haven't watched the episode because I will not torture myself with this or pay for Disney plus. I've watched a lot of reviews and they haven't clarified this point yet.

Simone Collins: Okay. Gotcha. It doesn't matter. Does it? No. Doesn't matter.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Doesn't

Simone Collins: matter.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. She what was I going to say? She runs by this room and all of these lesbian witches are dead.

Simone Collins: Do they all murder suicide or

Malcolm Collins: what? We don't know. It's, it doesn't look like they burned. The room isn't on fire. Maybe

Simone Collins: they didn't know about crawling on the ground.

Malcolm Collins: The bad fire training. That's what killed

Simone Collins: her. That's it's deadly. Maybe Disney just wanted to use this as a teaching moment to remind everyone to, to crawl on the ground. For a friar.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and it's interesting that this cult is supposed to be, like, way more powerful than the Jedi.

Make that clear. That lesbians yeah,

I love this comment here, by the way. Okay.

The witches are [00:18:00] so powerful, they can easily kill a Jedi using the thing they said wasn't a weapon. I should note here that they said that the Force isn't a weapon. Okay. That's what they're saying. No one can use the force as a weapon, or at least you're not supposed to use the force as a weapon. Yeah.

So the witches are so powerful that they can easily kill the Jedi using the thing that they swear is not a weapon, and no one should use the weapon. Then they all died, at once, by a fire, caused by a single girl, in a giant fortress made of stone, with people inside the fortress, who can project barriers, and control gravity.

Simone Collins: Flammable stone, and Not necessarily smoke barriers,

Malcolm Collins: potassium.

Simone Collins: It's.

Malcolm Collins: Plausible. Plausible. So now we get to talk about our own little private story with Hollywood. Hey, let's see if you have some final comments on this. And do you think that like Star Wars Zorro is recoverable at this point?

Or anyone's going to give it a chance again? When did you stop watching?

Simone Collins: I stopped watching after [00:19:00] The pod race. That's really by stop watching. I still went through the motions of trying to watch some of the properties, but I have no memory after that. So even before it went woke, you stopped in the

Malcolm Collins: prequel.

Simone Collins: Yeah. The last good moment for me was the pod race. And after that, everything was so traumatically bad as far as I'm concerned that I literally have no memory of it, but pod racing is cool. So that's okay.

Malcolm Collins: You watched the first and the second of the new movies was me. We, we didn't watch a return of whatever.

I do not that one with the Palpatine movie. You don't remember it.

Simone Collins: I remember being happy and in the one. No I've literally blocked them out and I wasn't even drunk. Remember I used to try to get blackout drunk to watch things with you. Cause it was really fun. And then I'd forget them and then I could watch them again.

But now. No, yeah, sorry. It just, I don't know. They just got bad. I liked the camp. And the camp went away when it became corporate. So that's where I lost it. Woke wasn't even [00:20:00] what killed it for me. It was the loss of camp. Wait,

Malcolm Collins: Jar Binks wasn't camp enough for you?

Simone Collins: Yeah, I guess he's pretty camp, but that, it felt more cringe than camp. And of course now he's gone through, he's gone through the gauntlet and now he is, Sith Lord Jar Binks. That's cool. That's not canon, that's fan That doesn't matter because it's just obviously true. Come on, Malcolm, there's no way it's not.

Malcolm Collins: But People who aren't familiar with the Sith Lord Jar Binks theory, it's that Jar Binks was actually very powerful as a force, and was a Sith Lord who was tricking Jedi and creating these events. And it actually makes a lot of sense given all of his canon appearances. And there's an easy way you could craft a narrative around that.

And I would love to see Disney do that but they won't do anything that interesting.

Simone Collins: Yeah. No, everything about Jar Binks points to that. It is irrefutable truth. Whether or not the creators of Jar Binks realize that is not my problem. He's a racist stereotype. That makes it even better.

It's he's also [00:21:00] this like anti woke, like I'm going to even mock, like every concept of you thinking you're, like it's just everything about it, this, it's incredibly like racist, evil character. It's like a a white minstrel performer. That is also incredibly evil and trying to ruin all the forces of good.

What better character could there be? But yeah, I love

Malcolm Collins: the Star Wars. The old Star Wars went hard into racial stereotypes. Oh my God. Remember the Jewish character, the floating guy was the long nose who owned slaves and was like, trick people. It was games and he wore like the old timey like medieval Jewish hat style.

Yeah, Anakin 2 boss. And he spoke in that accent. Oh my God, that was horrifying. I was like, whoa! It was extremely.

Simone Collins: Racist movie.

Malcolm Collins: And I've always said that the original Anakin slash Darth Vader stereotype was obviously a Calvinist stereotype from older media. It [00:22:00] was all of the pain obsessed, minimalism obsessed, single minded focus, moralizing I know what's right, everyone else is wrong.

And the super manic, it's like a young person. And then the older iteration that's okay, I'm just going to carry out my mission no matter what. Yeah it's interesting. The whole thing was built around stereotypes and I think that. Made it better, to be honest, I think the stereotypes fit snuggly was in our mind.

Simone Collins: What are you saying? I guess there are still very offensive stereotypes, right? So there was the offensive Jew stereotype, the offensive, what was it supposed to be? Jamaican stereotype. And now we have the offensive lesbian stereotype and it's fine. Lesbians who,

Malcolm Collins: because it's not like lesbian, it wasn't interesting lesbians.

This is another thing where they're like, they tried to make this movie a palatable to women by putting a bunch of lesbians in it. That is not what women watch.

Simone Collins: I don't know. No, there are some, a very small handful, but there are some good lesbian shows according to lesbians.

Malcolm Collins: But this is not what the mainstream woman wants.

Simone Collins: The mainstream

Malcolm Collins: woman wants Bridgerton. Okay. [00:23:00] Yes, she does. You could do this with Star Wars. You could have a bunch of nobles with hot, masculine buff men interacting with women and saving them. And I was actually

Simone Collins: going to say though, here's the thing, and this is actually even more accurate. Although Bridgerton is very accurate. The mainstream woman wants yaoi. And then you have a, yeah, you have a man on man action devoid of women. I'm sorry, but like putting a bunch of chicks in it and making them gay is not the answer. Unless you're actually like really good. You have to be really good.

And these are like

Malcolm Collins: old women, by the way, this isn't like hot lesbian stuff. See that's yeah.

Simone Collins: Okay. Like at least make them hot, at least make them, fun for the whole family. But yeah, that's, yeah, I guess go ahead. And

Malcolm Collins: But, okay, so people might not understand how this happened, and now I need to tell a personal anecdote that happened to us recently.

Simone Collins: And this is speculative whatever. Speculative,

Malcolm Collins: and I'm not going to give names or companies, so you guys can ignore that. But we have been trying to make a documentary, or a lot of firms have been trying to make a documentary about our family for a while now. And prenatalism in [00:24:00] general.

And it's generally the same story over and over again, which is it gets approved by the creative department and it gets shut down by the legal department.

And we've had this at major streaming networks multiple times at this point. The most recent excuse for the shutdown was that we practice corporal punishment. And that caused problems for legal. Now, this is very confusing to me because it's legal in our state. So it shouldn't have anything to do with legal except that maybe it affects ads, but that's not legal department.

But in addition to that, it's something the majority of Americans do. And it's something that the most recent research backs, you can look at the giant meta study done last year parental punishment. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater 2023. Those two things being the case, why would it be shut down by legal?

And this is where I realized something, there hasn't been a single right leaning show that has been greenlit by a major [00:25:00] streaming network in about the past 10 years, where characters are shown in a somewhat right leaning light as positive. And people can say, what about Tiger King? Which you might not be familiar with as Tiger King was actually pre produced and then bought by a studio, which seems to be okay for conservative shows.

You just cannot have the studio produce it itself, which shows me that the legal departments of these studios after they have been ransacked by DEI departments are the core problem. It is not the DEI departments themselves. And unless you can influence legal departments of the major studios, you are never going to get anything passed through, but also these departments and the managers.

Who do not get fired when they make bad numbers. They get to fire the creatives, right? But they have incentivized the creatives to make these sorts of things by canceling everything that comes through the pipeline. That isn't far left. These [00:26:00] are the same companies that let. Forward videos that have a literal like PDA file content in them that have it is insane the stuff that they are greenlighting, right?

Dear white people, for example, right? Yet slightly conservatively coded content ends up getting killed. And the reason is because the institutional bureaucracies of these structures are structured in a way where the urban monoculture has such control of them that deviating from it.

Even in ways that the majority of the American populace, the vast majority of their audience deviates from it in is unacceptable.

Simone Collins: Now, of course caveat, there are exceptions to this. There are some streaming platforms or networks that do have shows that that showcase conservative people. No.

Have you looked at that

Malcolm Collins: big conservative show that did? You're looking at like duck dynasty. And that was well over 10 years ago.

Simone Collins: Welcome to Platteville.

Malcolm Collins: Welcome to Plackville. Plackville. [00:27:00] I've never heard of this. Where is it streaming?

Simone Collins: TLC.

Malcolm Collins: That is not a major network that we've talked about.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. No, we.

So that's interesting that there are. There are exceptions,

Malcolm Collins: but I think that kind of proves our point. If that's what you came up with as your example, when historically speaking, there were lots of conservative leaning shows like duck dynasty the fact that this exists, or do you guys remember the man show, like this was a thing that existed for a while.

Do you remember spike

Simone Collins: TV in general? Which was like, yeah, everyone

Malcolm Collins: watched it because it

Simone Collins: was fun. Yeah, they had a lot of fun stuff.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I liked

Simone Collins: it.

Malcolm Collins: I remember that this one a skit where the little kid, this the Spike TV boy would go into his quickie mark type things and been like they'd be, he'd get alcohol and they'd say, can you show me your ID?

And he'd go, can you show me your green card?

Simone Collins: Oh God. Yeah. [00:28:00] Back when jokes were jokes. Back when

Malcolm Collins: jokes were jokes, you can never do that today. I'll tell you what. It's not

Simone Collins: it's not funny anymore because people have made immigration. Lame and not fun. Scary.

Malcolm Collins: Can you show me your ID? Can you show me your green card? I just can't. But yeah, no.

So the problem is that it's systemically even lightly conservatively leaning things cannot be shown at these platforms, even when what makes them conservative. Is opinions that are held by the majority of Americans.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And when there's probably a pretty big market for it there are only a small number of channels that appear to be actively catering to that market, which is interesting.

Even though honestly content about conservatives is equally entertaining to both conservative and progressive markets, because it's one of those things where you're either like, Oh, these people are great. Or you're like, Oh, these monsters are hilarious. And so either way you win. But I think this is, this makes me think, of course, of Tracy Woodgrain's sub stack essay on how [00:29:00] Republicans are screwed.

How, when you look at a lot of the executional apparatus that is being minted by universities, and this is lawyers, this is legislators, this is, the people who functionally get things done within large bureaucracies, because these institutions are so progressively coded. I got it designed at this point to mint progressives, even if centrists and conservatives enter them, only progressives can come out to a certain extent, unless you've been totally radicalized against it.

And there may be more of that backfiring. Benjamin Boyd seemed to be radicalized in the other direction by his brush with the progressive institution. But yeah that just means that you're not going to have. A lot of conservative lawyers and producers and, people who can grow within these really large networks.

So of course you're going to have conservative, independent filmmakers and conservative entrepreneurs and conservative, anything that's small scale, but when you get to the big bureaucracies, it's going to be, AI is

Malcolm Collins: going to change this game, I [00:30:00] think. And I also, when we can do AI, Automation of shows or animation.

It's going to completely up in this model. And with

Simone Collins: Sora and other Sora like competitors, you can already make really amazing film content. It's only a matter of time until.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah so the final point I'd end on is we have been told that if, and this is just a thing, if somebody wants to invest in this, They can I don't really care one way or the other way.

But if we created something like a Tiger King for our family, right? Like of our family it'd probably do well in the film festival circuit and then we could get it onto one of the streaming platforms and you'd likely make a good return, but it's going to require a pretty hefty investment, like half a million dollars or something like that.

So if anyone is interested in doing that let us know, but only if you're like, You have the money to do something like that. I don't want to fan raise money for something like this. If somebody is doing it, I want it to be an investment that they plan to [00:31:00] make a good return on. And then we'll do our part to ensure that you make that return.

But outside of that, yeah, tough situation.

Simone Collins: But that might help to explain why. The lesbians didn't know basic fire safety.

Malcolm Collins: Not fire safety. Living in a f*****g concrete building is fire safety.

Simone Collins: Not when the concrete is obviously flammable and they probably knew that. I don't, where did the good slash evil twin get an incendiary

Malcolm Collins: device?

She just left fire on the ground. She's a little lighter. So they had fire there. Yeah, in the building full of flammable stones. It hadn't

Simone Collins: burned down yet for some reason. I you've left so many loose ends with this fascinating show. I feel like now I have to watch it, but I'm too busy watching Bridgerton and their ridiculous costumes.

Cause here's what Bridgerton actually is. Bridgerton is not a historical romance. It is the [00:32:00] season in. The capital of the hunger games, which is what I always wanted. It is literally the dating scene. You could have that in Star Wars. You could have a Coruscant movie. You could have a Coruscant. Yeah, for sure.

But honestly, Bridgerton just did that. Bridgerton sci fi practically. It's not actually like period dress or anything. And, it's it's great. So personally, I think I've got what I need media wise. So I'm glad I'm watching that. And

Malcolm Collins: I have seen that there are a lot of Sexy men in Bridgerton.

Are you watching too many sexy men being sexy? No

Simone Collins: one watches this for the men or women in it. They watch it for the costumes. 100 percent is the costumes. They're really pretty. Yeah. I love them. I love them.

Malcolm Collins: I love you.

Simone Collins: You too. Still a lot of poop. This was the big one. I'm still I'm on my way. I'm nearly done. Okay we're getting cleaner. This is getting good. So the situation is improving. I'm almost [00:33:00] done. There's still a lot of wiping happening. It's okay. We have plenty of time for the episode. Hang in there. We can do this.

Hold on. Hang in there. Okay. Almost done. And I'm getting the diaper now. Fresh diapers come in, and I'm doing this with one hand, so it's a little awkward. Hold on. Okay. Getting the diaper installed. It's happening. Oh boy. I've discovered more poop. And I'm wiping it off. Alright. And the diaper's coming on.

Other diaper's going into the trash. I'm nearly done now. I'm on my way over. I'm definitely on my way over. The diaper is being affixed. One tab is on, now the second tab is on, I'm almost there. She's looking very serious about [00:34:00] this, Indy. I'm putting out the fluffs, if you don't put out the fluffs, the next diaper's blowout, almost guaranteed.

And now, I'm tucking in legs, checking to make sure that there is no fecal matter on my hands. And I'm making my way over okay, I'm almost there. Almost there. On my way right now. And I'm walking over. I'm walking over. I'm walking over. I'm sitting down. I'm here now. I have the baby. I cannot hear you yet.

I am Putting her down. The poop has been removed and I will soon be able to hear you. And I'm super excited for this. The yes. Okay. Oh, okay. Sorry. I didn't want you to give up on this just because we had another diaper. No.

In this deeply personal and thought-provoking episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins delve into their evolving religious beliefs and introduce the concept of Techno-Puritanism, a new sect they believe is an iteration of Christianity. Malcolm shares his journey of discovering uncanny parallels between the belief system he crafted for his children and the writings of Victorian-era thinker Winwood Reade, particularly in his book "The Martyrdom of Man."

The couple explores the core tenets of Techno-Puritanism, including the iterative nature of prophecy, the mandate for intergenerational improvement, and the importance of living a life of sacrifice and service to the future of humanity. They discuss their approach to canonizing and rejecting specific religious texts, such as the Book of Revelation and the Kabbalah, based on their adherence to monotheistic principles and the elegance of their teachings.

Throughout the conversation, Malcolm and Simone grapple with the challenges of crafting a religious framework that is both logically consistent and spiritually fulfilling, drawing inspiration from the irreverent passion of early Puritan traditions while embracing the boundless optimism of Victorian scientists. They emphasize the role of choice in faith and the transformative power of evidence-backed belief in improving one's quality of life.

Tract Text:

Tract 6: Humanities Manifest Destiny / Why We Choose to Believe in God

Now those who are familiar with us know we crafted this set of beliefs because we believe it is both what is psychologically healthiest for our kids and allows for religious fervor while being resistant to conflict with science. They laugh and say, can you really expect a set of practices to carry itself with fidelity and fever intergenerationally just because people think it helps kids? You really think that could compete with traditional religions? Here we take our turn to chuckle, gesturing at Santa pummeling traditional religion to dirt in the public mindshare.

But I also know that what I believe about God is true. How? I am not a man of faith—I don’t believe things without evidence. Even if God started talking to me, I would just assume I was having a psychotic break. I created this system and framing for my kids along with holidays and mandates in an effort to save our species, not because I thought it was true—then one day I thought: “If it was true how would God communicate that to someone like me.” 

First, I started going through books I had tried to flippantly include in my religion as earlier revolutions—religions I had included to preserve and create continuity in western history—the Abrahamic tree of profits. As I studied them, I started to see lines and interpretations of what was written that supported this weird religion I thought I had invented, lines that directly contracted the most commonly practiced iterations of those traditions, (See Tract 1). But while weird, that was hardly enough to convince me, the human brain can easily pick up patterns where they don’t exist.

An example of this are the lines in the Quran that explicitly state all of the major Abrahamic religions are true religions and that God sends different profits for different people with different all true yet seemingly contradictory teachings (Surah Al-Ma'idah—47-57 & Surah An-Nahl—36) and that Islam was the revolution meant to be followed by Arabic speakers (Surah Yusuf—2). Another example would be lines in the Bible where Jesus warns us of future prophets to come (Matthew 23:34), then Paul gives us criteria for vetting their revelations (Thessalonians 5:20-21). If you want to see us doing a detailed breakdown of this phenomenon we kept running into, see the “Are we Mormons” Episode of the Based Camp podcast which investigates how similar our system appears to early Mormon writings.

In this hypothesized metaphysical system, I believed I created in the best interest of my kids, God is what humanity is destined to become millions of years from now, an entity so powerful it lives outside of time and guides its own creation. An entity that has attempted to give human groups throughout history the closest to true revelation they could understand. If those things were actually true the first time God would have tried to give this revelation to man would not have been to me but to someone in the Victorian era likely soon after humanity discovered the theory of evolution. 

He could have attempted to prove the author of the story was his emissary through giving him the capacity for thaumaturgical performances (miracle working) but someone like me would just read Victorian reports of miracle workers as con-artists. No, the only way he could prove to me the text was actually directly inspired by Him was to include something totally unfakeable that anyone could independently verify, like a detailed prediction of future events in a widely printed yet somehow almost entirely forgotten Victorian work. 

Then I was reminded of an old book I had picked up in a collection of antique scientific literature, The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade written in 1872, (well that, and my kids were playing with it at the time). The book is meant to be a full history of man but weirdly it does not stop recording history when it was written in 1872 but keeps going—it keeps going until, “Man then will be perfect ... he will therefore be what the vulgar worship as a god.” In this old dusty antique book not only did I find an exact copy of the belief system that I thought I had invented whole cloth but a set of predictions about what technologies would be invented over the next two centuries, what order they would be invented in, and what the social impact would be.

Now if you are like me, you are skeptical, either the system he developed must have more differences to ours than I am admitting or his predictions are really not that impressive. 

Here is an example of Read’s writing: 

Three inventions which perhaps may be long delayed, but which possibly are near at hand ... The first is the discovery of a motive force which will take the place of steam, with its cumbrous fuel of oil or coal; secondly, the invention of aerial locomotion which will transport labor at a trifling cost of money and of time to any part of the planet, and which, by annihilating distance, will speedily extinguish national distinctions; and thirdly, the manufacture of flesh and flour from the elements by a chemical process in the laboratory, similar to that which is now performed within the bodies of the animals and plants.

If this prediction is not shocking to you I suggest you look up images of what other people were predicting the future would be like in the second half of the 1800s. Even early genius science fiction writers born well after Read died, like George Orwell, came nowhere close to such an accurate description of the future. And it’s not just his writings of the future that have already come to pass that are uncanny. His writings about what happens next could have easily been written by an effective accelerationist last week: 

These bodies which now we wear belong to the lower animals; our minds have already outgrown them; already we look upon them with contempt. A time will come when Science will transform them by means which we cannot conjecture, and which, even if explained to us, we could not now understand, just as the savage cannot understand electricity, magnetism, steam. Disease will be extirpated; the causes of decay will be removed; immortality will be invented. And then, the earth being small, mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless Saharas which separate planet from planet, and sun from sun. The earth will become a Holy Land which will be visited by pilgrims from all the quarters of the universe. Finally, men will master the forces of Nature; they will become themselves architects of systems, manufacturers of worlds. Man then will be perfect; he will then be a creator; he will therefore be what the vulgar worship as a god.

The way he talked about the goals of this religious system and the nature of God also mirrored ideas I thought I had crafted for the best interest of my children:

We do not wish to extirpate religion from the life of man; we wish him to have a religion which will harmonize with his intellect, and which inquiry will strengthen, not destroy. We wish, in fact, to give him a religion, for now there are many who have none. We teach that there is a God, but not a God of the anthropoid variety, not a God who is gratified by compliments in prose and verse, and whose attributes can be cataloged by theologians. God is so great that he cannot be defined by us. God is so great that he does not deign to have personal relations with us human atoms that are called men. Those who desire to worship their Creator must worship him through mankind.

So what does he say the purpose of human life is? What are we commanded to do? Here again I find the way he lays out these concepts to be ideologically identical to the framings I thought I had crafted:

You blessed ones who shall inherit that future age of which we can only dream; you pure and radiant beings who shall succeed us on the earth; when you turn back your eyes on us poor savages, grubbing in the ground for our daily bread, eating flesh and blood, dwelling in vile bodies which degrade us every day to a level with the beasts, tortured by pains, and by animal propensities, buried in gloomy superstitions, ignorant of Nature which yet holds us in her bonds; when you read of us in books, when you think of what we are, and compare us with yourselves, remember that it is to us you owe the foundation of your happiness and grandeur, to us who now in our libraries and laboratories and star-towers and dissecting-rooms and work-shops are preparing the materials of the human growth. 

And as for ourselves, if we are sometimes inclined to regret that our lot is cast in these unhappy days, let us remember how much more fortunate we are than those who lived before us a few centuries ago. The working man enjoys more luxuries to-day than did the King of England in the Anglo-Saxon times; and at his command are intellectual delights, which but a little while ago the most learned in the land could not obtain. All this we owe to the labors of other men. Let us therefore remember them with gratitude; let us follow their glorious example by adding something new to the knowledge of mankind; let us pay to the future the debt which we owe to the past. 

All men indeed cannot be poets, inventors, or philanthropists; but all men can join in that gigantic and god-like work, the progress of creation. Whoever improves his own nature improves the universe of which he is a part. He who strives to subdue his evil passions—vile remnants of the old four-footed life—and who cultivates the social affections: he who endeavors to better his condition, and to make his children wiser and happier than himself; whatever may be his motives, he will not have lived in vain. 

Intergenerational improvement is not a preference or an inclination but a mandate. All men die, it is not death that makes a martyr, it is how one lives, how one spends this one life we each are gifted. The story of Jesus is misinterpreted, it was God trying to gift primitive man a truth of reality he could not yet decipher. It is not God who as a man martyred himself for the salvation of man but instead God while still in the form of a mankind who martyred himself for the salvation of mankind—for it is only through choosing martyrdom, choosing lives of service to the creation of a future not meant for us and that we are undeserving of entering that we can give meaning to our lives. It is this truth that the story of Moses was meant to communicate to the child like Bronze age man.

I give to universal history a strange but true title—The Martyrdom of Man. In each generation the human race has been tortured that their children might profit by their woes. Our own prosperity is founded on the agonies of the past. Is it therefore unjust that we also should suffer for the benefit of those who are to come? Famine, pestilence, and war are no longer essential for the advancement of the human race. But a season of mental anguish is at hand, and through this we must pass in order that our posterity may rise. The soul must be sacrificed; the hope in immortality must die. A sweet and charming illusion must be taken from the human race, as youth and beauty vanish never to return.

It was fascinating how stories I had learned in my youth but made no sense now came into crystal clarity. I could not understand why God would need to sacrifice himself in the form of a man to forgive man for his sins. Why not just choose to forgive man? Why would the sacrifice mean anything if immediately afterwards he knew he was going to be brought back to life and rejoin God? How would man in an act of foolishness (crueling killing the earthly manifestation of God) somehow cleanse himself of his sin? But when I examine the story with this new farming it now seems almost impossibly elegant in how it described a concept man was centuries from having the capacity to grasp. 

But it’s not just this story, all over the Christian tradition things that had seemed like non sequiturs suddenly had meaning. As another example the temptation of Christ never made a lick of sense to me. How could Satan tempt God with things that God already owned? Why would Jesus bow to Satan if he knew he was God? And how could Satan act outside of God's will and tempt his own master in a monotheistic tradition? However, if I reframe this story as not one about Jesus as traditional Christians understand him but the Martyr as we understand him the story comes into Crystal clarity. (For the full context of this story see Tract 6.) 

As another example, what's the point of the Trinity? Why was it so important to understand God was three completely separate entities but also one entity? And for that matter what's up with the Holy Ghost—why not just explain Jesus is fully God but also not God if that is the point the Trinity is supposed to explain? Because the Trinity was attempting to explain the concept of the Agents of Providence (the Holy Spirit), God (The Father), and the Son (Mankind) to an earlier iteration of man not yet capable of understanding or accepting a fuller revelation. God is a plural entity, a singular entity, and the fraction of humanity willing to live as martyrs destiny—these are completely distinct manifestations of the same entity. In the old Christian tradition the concept of the Trinity provides little additional information in terms of the nature of God or how to worship but with this additional information it becomes critical. 

But with the salvation communicated in this understanding is also a commandment. Man must live as a martyr to be sanctified. A man that stagnated technologically, genetically, or in one's personal self-improvement is living in the highest order of sin possible. To claim that you are good enough as you are whether that is culturally, genetically, or personally is to claim oneself as perfect and is an affront to God.

Persons with feeble and untrained intellects may live according to their conscience; but the conscience itself will be defective. To cultivate the intellect is therefore a religious duty; and when this truth is fairly recognized by men, the religion which teaches that the intellect should be distrusted, and that it should be subservient to faith, will inevitably fall.

Every moment of your life that you spend on something other than the improvement of yourself or mankind is a moment you are living in rebellion to God. But to aspire to not sin at all, to think oneself capable of living a sinless life, is in itself a sin. Only those yet to come and whom we will be instrumental in creating are capable of living a sinless life or deserving the rewards of one. Instead, it is enough for us to not glorify our sin. We are to use sin like meat to tame the animal that still lives inside us, an evolutionary scar. A beast that still craves sex, luxuries, and status. But because the more we feed the beast the stronger it will become; we must feed it only just enough to prevent it from distracting us from our purpose within these short lives. The efficacy of a preacher is shown though how little meat he must use to tame his beast. 

Whoever improves his own nature improves the universe of which he is a part. He who strives to subdue his evil passions—vile remnants of the old four-footed life—and who cultivates the social affections: he who endeavors to better his condition, and to make his children wiser and happier than himself; whatever may be his motives, he will not have lived in vain. 

Fascinatingly, when I examine the life of Winwood Read in this new context it is almost blindingly obvious he was meant to be a prophet. 

* He completed trials which showed that he was a paragon of the values our faith teaches. While in Africa he was captured and made a slave of King Seedwa of Falaba. King Seedwa put Reade under conditions of unimaginable physical and mental hardship, giving him four grueling tasks every day. He completed these tasks with aplomb showing King Seedwa such mental fortitude and self discipline that he was released. 

* He showed an ethical understanding far beyond his time. In writing what the fate of the newly freed American slaves in America should be, “Experience has shown that, whenever aliens are treated as citizens, they become citizens, whatever may be their religion or their race, It is a mistake to suppose that the civilized black American calls himself an African, and pines to return to his ancestral land. If he is born in the States, he calls himself an American he speaks with an American accent; he loves and he hates with an American heart.”

* Almost in direct contrast to Mormon profits like Joseph Fielding Smith who said "If evolution is true, the church is false," Winwood Read corresponded with Darwin during the writing of the Descent of Man and is considered one of its contributors. 

* Finally you might say, if Winwood Read is so smart why was he not recognised as such in his time? To which I would direct you to a quote you yourself may have read if you have read the Sherlock Holms books, in which Sherlock says to Watson, “Let me recommend this book,—one of the most remarkable ever penned. It is Winwood Reade’s ‘Martyrdom of Man.” Yes, canonical The Martyrdom of Man is Sherlock Holmes' favorite book. 

So this is a system that sees prophesy as iterative with each generation having a religious duty to expand their mental capacity for comprehension?  But if intergenerational improvement is our mandate how can such a religious system stay intergenerationally stable? How we overcome this seeming impossibility is something we will be discussing in the next Tract. 

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] this is a track that was actually supposed to be track three, but I delayed it because I was like, Oh, this is going to be crazier ones. Cause this is the things we believe and you've got to imagine like you as a viewer, when you're like, why did you really believe this stuff?

I thought I had made all of this up. Okay. I like, imagine you made up this theology and then you find it in an old book in your house. And then on top of that the book made a bunch of predictions and they all came true. Like this may not convince you, but it convinces me

. The traits that they're making fun of them for are traits I want to reestablish within our civilization.

And I think that we are lesser for having lost. And the Puritan vision of this utopian city on a hill, I think it's something that we can bring back, you know, combine the Victorian scientists, it was this endless hope for the future with strict Puritan ideals and aesthetics.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: hello, Simone! Today, we are going [00:01:00] back to the Tract series. This Tract is called Tract 6, Humanities Manifest Destiny, slash Why We Choose to Believe in God.

So recently we were at this conference called Manifest. And largely speaking, I had decided not to do the tracks anymore. They were taking up a lot of time. They require a lot more editing than a standard episode. And for people who don't know what they are, it's us talking about our religious framework.

Why we believe the things we believe, what we believe theologically, and sharing this with you, not with the interest in converting anyone, but just so you can get an idea of, I think for a lot of people, it's just interesting, like theological speculation, they find interesting. And when we were at this conference, every single person, like every one of our fans, and we met a lot of them there, I'd say like 50 of them, it was like a lot wanted us to do more tracks, like that was the core thing, do more tracks, why did you stop the tracks?

But it's not just them, for example, a quote that from a letter we got from one of the fans.

[00:02:00] I've been listening to the tracked episodes of the pod and I've heard you both make statements suggesting that they're maybe exceptionally boring, too far out, etc. In light of that, I wanted to express clear and emphatic encouragement of you presenting these episodes. So much of your content has been engaging and actionable to a degree I basically never encountered in a podcast, let alone one that publishes daily.

And yet I find the tracked episodes To be valuable and penetrating at a totally different level. I say penetrating because as someone who recently tried to rejoin the Christian congregation via Catholicism and found the experience uninspiring,

Simone Collins: what

Malcolm Collins: you're presenting strikes me as something that advances my own view of religion in a way that does feel inspiring and prescriptive for this moment in history, Whereas the modern state iterations of antiquity traditions do not.

In any case, please keep up these efforts. I suspect there are many among your listeners who value these episodes in the utmost. So that really meant a lot to me. And I understand that the [00:03:00] tracks are going to be uniquely grading to individuals who have really strong Christian faith via Catholicism or orthodoxy or something like that.

Because what we are putting out there is an alternate view. Now, I will say, as we think about this more, a few things that I would note here I no longer really think about this as a new religion, but rather an iteration of Christianity. Maybe you could say Christianity, the Judeo Christian branch of Religions.

That is probably as distant from Christianity as something like Mormonism. And interestingly some Mormons don't think differentiates from Mormonism that much. But then we do throw out some books that they would keep and add some books that they would not keep. And I'm going to go over like books that we throw out at the end of this examples would be like the book of revelations.

I do not think is built inspired by God. I don't think Kabbalah is inspired by God. We'll go into like why we have these weird views, but there is an additional book that we add to everything, which is the martyrdom of man. And actually [00:04:00] really interestingly, Paul Vander Klee, he was going through our videos and he was pointing out that people who start new sex or new religions Are so very likely to fail.

How often do people try and those people who try, how many of them are doing it? Not just to create a sex cult or get people to worship them specifically or make money, but to try to make other people's lives better. This is a, the type of a project that you really see people trying, Once in a generation if that now there are a few people trying it right now with the mystic path, but that's also really interesting.

Because normally, when people try this, they do it down the mystic path. Sorry, when people don't know what I'm talking about. When I talk about the mystic pass, I'm talking about mystic perennialism, meaning that they believe that there is some truth to all religious traditions that there is some Super true substrate that reality is written on and this super true substrate that we can only [00:05:00] access through altered states of mind is the real God.

And our goal is to rejoin. We do not believe that don't have any antagonism really against people who do, but it's just, we don't, but most of the let's try to make people's lives better. What they really mean by that is let's try to make people's mental states more expansive, like it's make them better in a mystical theological sense instead of the way that we mean when we say make them better, which is to make them more mentally disciplined, to make them more mentally healthy, like to not have the same amounts of anxiety and depression and everything like that, and to give them a sense of purpose and to help them build a good sense of moral values and to help them through this unique challenge that our species is going through right now.

And I did. Finally settle on a name for the religion that I'm excited about before I start the track here. , Which is techno puritanism. , and, And another really interesting thing is this idea of Founding this new sect when I really don't think we did found it. It's a bit [00:06:00] like saying darwin founded evolution when he had the idea a lot of people were having very similar ideas during that time period and what i've noticed when I put these videos out there is when they connect with people It's people who are saying Oh, yeah, I had a lot of ideas like this.

I just maybe hadn't fully systematized them in the way that you did or something like that. I do not think that this is unique information or that I have any direct path to what's true and what's not true.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I think it cannot be understated how often people write into us saying, It's so exciting to see that someone else has articulated the same conclusions that I have drawn based on, and this is typically people who come from a more Protestant background and are looking at the primary sources.

The people who tend to find these tracks most grating, like Malcolm said, and who tend to find also these views most offensive are from people whose cultures involve a sort of filter in between the primary source and The ultimate faith priests or analysis [00:07:00] or some kind of organization.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The final thing I'd like to note because this is a track that was actually supposed to be track three, but I delayed it because I was like, Oh, this is going to be crazier ones. Cause this is the things we believe. But it also elevates the additional book that we add to biblical texts, which nobody else adds to biblical texts.

As it's divinely inspired works, which is the martyrdom of man by Wynwood Reed. And the way that we relate to theology, like even if you look at the tracks, I would generally recommend that somebody who was born a Muslim and identifies as Muslim first and foremost, go to the Koran for their religious learnings.

Somebody who was born a Jew and raised a Jew, I would say, go back to conservative Jewish values. Study your books. Same was Christian. However, I would say for people who were born atheists or are pure techno Puritan, like just pure this branch that we are creating, the core book [00:08:00] of ours is the martyrdom of man.

Simone Collins: of

Malcolm Collins: all of the faith background books. So that's another thing to note. It's what if I'm coming into this and I don't have a theological background or my family does I don't feel strongly like a Christian or a Jew or Muslim, then the martyrdom of man is the default because I think it's the most recent and clear of the revelations from my perspective.

And we'll get to why we think that. All right. So I'm gonna get started. Let's do it. Anything you wanted to say Simone before I do?

Simone Collins: I'm excited. You had me crazy.

Malcolm Collins: Those who are familiar with us know that we crafted this set of beliefs because we believe it is both what is psychologically healthiest for our kids and allows for religious fervor while being resistant to conflict with science. They laugh and say, can you really expect a set of practices to carry itself with fidelity and fervor intergenerationally just because people think it helps kids?

You really think that you could compete with traditional religions? [00:09:00] Here we have to take our turn to chuckle, gesturing at Santa pummeling traditional religion to the dirt in the public mindshare, or the Easter bunny, or solstice events. The alternative religious systems that people have chosen. Seem to be out competing, specifically for their kids oh, let's do what's right for our kids, the traditional systems.

But I also know that what I believe about God is true. I am not a man of faith. I don't believe things without evidence. Even if God started talking to me, I would just assume I was having a psychotic break. I created this system and framing for my kids, along with the holidays and mandates, in an effort to save our species, not because I thought it was true.

Then one day I thought, if it was true, how would God communicate that to someone like me? And he rushed it out because he couldn't communicate it with me by talking to me. If God just directly talked to me, and I assume you probably feel this way too, Simone, you'd be [00:10:00] like, oh, I'm going insane. My initial thought wouldn't be, Oh, this is affirmation of my beliefs.

Simone Collins: By the way, this is such a Cal like a classical stereotypical Calvinist view. If you go back and read a Christmas Carol, about Ebenezer Scrooge, the first thing that happens when he starts seeing the ghosts is he is, he says that he must've eaten some like off food. He assumes he has food poisoning and he is.

Seeing ghosts. That's great.

Malcolm Collins: First, I started going through the books I had tried to flippantly include in my religion as earlier revelations. Religions I had included to preserve and create continuity in Western history. The Abrahamic tree of prophets. As I studied them, I started to see lines and interpretations of what was written that supported this weird religion I thought I had invented.

Lines that directly contradicted the most commonly practiced iterations of those traditions. See tract one, but while weird, that was hardly enough to convince me the human brain can easily pick up patterns where they [00:11:00] don't exist. As an example of this are the lines in the Quran that explicitly state all of the major Abrahamic religions are true religions and that God sends different prophets for different people with different all true yet seemingly contradictory teachings.

And I'm going to butcher the pronunciation here but Sarah, I'll muddy. 47 to 57 and Surah Al Nahl 36. And that Islam was the revelation meant to be followed by Arabic speakers. Surfa Yusuf 2. And just as a quick aside here, some people have been like, Muhammad, it says Muhammad was the seal of the prophets.

Except this phrase is directly taken from Manichaean literature. The seal of the prophets because they commonly use phrase in Manichaean literature, like almost as common as amen and other literatures or something like that. And what it means is a seal of verification, not the last of, but like a seal of proof.

It's the Twitter

Simone Collins: blue check of religion.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And he [00:12:00] verified interestingly like to the opposite of what a lot of Muslims want to believe. And it's pretty clear if you read the Koran that this is what was meant that the Christian tradition is 100 percent too. And the Jewish tradition is 100 percent true.

And Islamic laws should not be forced on these populations, because While it may seem that their traditions are different and people can look at our Tesseract God concept to see where this aligns with our understanding here.

Okay. So I realized that because we haven't done a tract in a while. You may not remember what our thoughts are on. Are about Islam what was what. Muhammad was actually trying to say. , so I'll just quickly go over some of these passages that I cited here. , one year we have, we surely sent a messenger to every community. , sometimes this is translated nation.

So to every community saying worship Allah and shun false gods, but some of them were guided by a law. While others were destined to stream, so travel throughout the land and see the fate of the deniers. So this tells us a few interesting things. First. , it tells us that there are [00:13:00] multiple profits and keep in mind that like a nation or a community. , the nations that are in, for example, the middle east today are not the nations that were there in the long pass.

It means that you are getting multiple iterations of messengers for different basically cultural groups. And it means that you can tell, which are the true iteration and which are the false iteration by God's favor. And as I say, you know, when you look at history, , you will see God favoring individuals like. The early Jews.

, and then he removes his favor or the ER. You know, the early Christians or during the Protestant reformation, you know, God's favor returned to the Christian community. , or during the Islamic golden age, , And so when we're looking for, okay, where is God's word in the world? We need to look at the fate of the deniers essentially. , you can tell the truth of the word by how healthy a community is.

So if we see periods , in world history where you see a unique amount of cultural [00:14:00] explosion, , for example, like Victorian Britain, you can imagine that something about their mindset of that time period is, uh, inspired by a law or by God. And we can also see the fate of the Muslim community after I believe they turned their back on God and turned to, , and were influenced by the. Well, we'll, we'll call them Sufi mystics. They got removed his favorite from the Islamic community and the community crashed. Mohammed's second important revelation from our perspective. Is the understanding that these different prophets teach different and to the human mind, mutually contradictory lessons about how to get to God and the best way to do it is to follow the lessons that were taught to your community. , so for some lines from the Qur'an here. Surely those who believe in our law and those who are Jews and Christians and Sabians whoever believes in the law and in the last day and does good deeds, all such people will have their reward with the Lord.

And there will be no reason for them to [00:15:00] fear nor shall they grieve. Or as another quote. And we have revealed to you. Omahamed the book in truth to each of you, we prescribed a law and a method, how to allow willed. He would have made you one nation United in religion, but he intended to test you in what he has given you.

So race to all, all that is good. So. Here and this add some bits like he intended and United religion. But anyway. One nation, one, religion, et cetera. He's been here. , or at least that's, that's what I take it to me.

Uh, what I read this to mean?

Is that if you are of, , the Jewish group, and I believe that God will tell you in your heart, you know, which group is really your group or the Christian group or the Muslim group. , this is why I said earlier at the beginning of this track, you should. Predominantly, if you consider yourself like a techno Puritan, , you are first and foremost, a Muslim are first and foremost, a Jew, but a techno irritate you or first and foremost, a Muslim, but detect out Puritan Muslim. , however, if you don't have a burst tradition or turned your back on your birth tradition, [00:16:00] then your cortex is the martyrdom of man, which we will be going over here.

I should probably also hear elaborate on the seal of the profits point I made because it's one of these points that will be obvious to people who study religion. But if you don't study religion, you'll be like, wait, what? That's not what it means, but that's what all the Muslims say. It means. , so here is, and I'm quoting. From Oxford academic, This abstract here.

This chapter explains that the concept usually perceived to be first used in relation to Muhammad and meaning the end of prophecy was actually first used in a keen literature there, it referred to Manny's disciples and mint. They were the proof of Manny's prophecy. Again, the results have a significant impact on the importance of prophecy in late antiquity. The concept of quote-unquote seal in Hebrew and other Semitic languages.

What's certainly common in ancient societies and is well attested from the Bible on, on a letter or on a sheep. The sealed clearly confirms belonging. Now research shows that also in early Islamic texts, seal referred to prophets coming after Muhammad and confirming his prophecy. This [00:17:00] is then an old idea, which goes like a thread through the ages in your Eastern religious history. So,, this is a mainstream concept.

It's well-known that the term seal of the prophets was borrowed from Manichaean literature. When Mohammed was writing it, he would have known this, , it was changed by later Muslim scholars to mean something else. Uh, to fit their means because you know, it's easier for religion to spread.

If you can, if it doesn't keep updating itself. , but it was built into Islam to be able to update itself. , and this is not some sort of a fringe theory.

Malcolm Collins: Another example would be lines in the Bible where Jesus warns us of future prophets to come, Matthews 23 to 34.

Then Paul gives us criteria for vetting the revelations. Thessalonians 21. If you want to see us doing a detailed breakdown of this phenomenon, we kept running into C, Are We Mormons? episode of the Base Camp podcast, which investigates how similar our system appears to early Mormon writings. And I would also recommend people here go check out the [00:18:00] Adam and Eve episode of Base Camp because that was one of the most shocking things I have ever done.

It's actually I was like, this standard reading of Adam and Eve Did not want mankind to know good from evil and we are punished for that. Felt stupid to me. I was like, this cannot be a true religion. That's not a God I want to follow if that's what it actually says. Then we went and we read it and that is not at all what it says.

And not only that, but it had like weird supernatural elements. When I say supernatural, I was like reading the story and I go, this seems to be the story about the first city. And when man first started making his own rules, And weirdly, I had been told we didn't know where the garden of Eden was.

And yet it says very clearly in the story that it's at the mouse water that the Tigris and the Euphrates, and we absolutely know where that is. So I just decided to do a Google search. I was like, where is the earliest city that we know about? And it was right there. Like exactly in the region where the garden of Eden story takes place, which given that the story was written 5, 000 years after the city that Feels [00:19:00] almost like supernatural providence to me that it would know that it given the theme of the story and I This basically happens whenever I go through one of these biblical stories.

So I'm like this is like the Muslim stuff This is not what Muslims tell me Islam is but this is what's written in the Quran This is not what Christians tell me this story is about but this is what seems to be written in the Bible It's not what Jews tell me the story is about. This is what I'm reading Like, how is this true?

Is this some sort of Mandela world where somebody switched out the Bible and everybody created their religions off of some other texts? I don't know. But to me, like that is a really powerful I can say supernatural signal, which is to somewhat fortified a not faith I have because it's not faith, right?

It's based on evidence. I cannot explain through other mechanisms.

So an evidence that other people can check and verify

Simone Collins: no. I'm with you on this. I like,

Malcolm Collins: do you feel sometimes like it's weird that this all like the religions that were told to What the Bible and Koran say isn't [00:20:00] what we read when we read it,

Simone Collins: yes. And I experienced this first in high school when they had us read the Bible. I was pretty shocked by a lot of it because I expected to find a bunch of things that I'd been told about and they weren't there. So this has always been something that I wonder at. I also wonder if this is something that Comes directly from our Protestant heritage or that people who tended or were drawn toward Protestant based faiths were also more likely to be the types of people who question these things and want to go directly to the primary source and be like where's your.

Malcolm Collins: I also feel that a lot of people are like, how dare you add things to like biblical interpretations? And I'm like, one biblical interpretations have heavily evolved over time. And we even see this captured within the biblical interpretations was the snake staff of Moses. As we've mentioned this was the staff he used to heal people who had been when he was going to Israel for the first time who had been bitten [00:21:00] by stakes.

And then it got placed in the temple. And then some like 500, 600 years later, still captured within the Bible, people had started worshiping it and had been doing it for hundreds of years and committing idolatry. And then the staff had to be broken and discarded because that it entered the temple.

And what that story teaches us is that antiquity or the antiquity of a tradition is not proof that it is approved by God. Which. Is important to remember that what we're doing and then a lot of people are like, oh, yeah I just follow the by and then they believe stuff like, the rapture which isn't like that supported biblically or like in a satan.

That's like a red guy was like Hooved feet and horns. And I'm like, that is like pure biblical fan fiction.

Simone Collins: I really expected to find that in the Bible though. I was very confused. Or hell. Yeah. Where was hell? Where was hell? Everything

Malcolm Collins: we believe about hell. The Bible doesn't mention hell and fires of hell, but like nothing really beyond that.

And yet we have all these ideas about it. Me to be drawing ideas from other places, doesn't distant me that much from other [00:22:00] Christian groups.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Now back to the text. In this hypothesized metaphysical system I believed I created in the best interest of my kids, God is what humanity is destined to become millions of years from now.

An entity so powerful, it lives outside of time and guides its own creation. An entity that has attempted to give human groups throughout history the closest to true revelation they can understand. If those things were actually true, the first time God would have tried to give this revelation to man would not have been with me or with you.

But with someone during the Victorian era, likely soon after humanity discovered the theory of evolution. And this is because mankind of that kind had all of the science they needed to understand a concept like this. So I would very unlikely be the first time God revealed this to somebody, and not revealed it through any sort of revelation, just through just studying things and thinking okay what might God actually be?

look like given the physical boundaries that we know and given that it appears to me that this Judeo Christian God is a real [00:23:00] entity he could have attempted to prove the author of the story was his emissary through giving him the capacity for somatological performances, miracle working.

But someone like me would just read Victorian reports of miracle workers as con artists. So what I'm saying here is that, okay, if God had actually revealed to somebody through their intellect this understanding of him, he could have proved it by having them be a miracle worker.

But I wouldn't take that as proof, right? Which is also interesting. It's also, it's almost like. And this is why I believe in God so much these days, that all of the evidence was specifically crafted just to cater to my standard of evidence. And so then I write, no, the only way he could prove to me the text was actually directly inspired by him was to include something totally unfakeable.

That anyone could independently verify, like a detailed prediction of future events in a widely printed yet somehow almost entirely forgotten Victorian work. Then, I [00:24:00] was reminded of an old book I had picked up in a collection of antique scientific literature, The Martyrdom of Man by Wynwood Read, written in 1872.

That and my kids were playing with it at the time. The book is meant to be a full history of man, but weirdly it does not stop recording history when it was written in 1872, but keeps going. It keeps going until, quote, Man then will be perfect. He will therefore be what the Vulgar worship as a god, end quote.

In this old, dusty, antique book, not only did I find the exact copy of the belief system I thought I had invented, whole closs, but a set of predictions about what technologies would be invented over the next two centuries, what order they would be invented in, and the social impact they would have. Now, if you are like me, you are skeptical.

Either the system he developed must have had more differences to ours than I am admitting, or his [00:25:00] predictions are not really that impressive. Here is an example of Reed's writing. Three inventions, which, and I should note this was written in it was published in 1872, so it was written in like the late 1860s, okay?

Yeah, this is before people have

Simone Collins: light bulbs in their homes, this is before. So many things.

Malcolm Collins: Three inventions, which perhaps may be long delayed, but which possibly are near at hand. The first is the discovery of a motive force, which will take the place of steam with its cumbersome fuel of oil or coal.

Secondly, the invention of aerial locomotion, which will transport labor at a trifling cost of money and time to any part of the planet. And which by annihilating distance, will speedily extinguish. national distinctions which we have seen from like an ethnic perspective. And thirdly, the manufacture of flesh and flour from the elements by a chemical process in the laboratory, similar [00:26:00] to that which is now performed within the bodies of animals and plants.

 If this prediction is not shocking to you, I suggest you look up images of what other people were predicting the future would be like in the second half of the 1800s. Even early genius science fiction writers, born well after Reed died, like George Orwell, came nowhere close to such an accurate description of the future.

Malcolm Collins: And it's not just his writings of the future that have already come to pass that are uncanny. His writings about what happens next could have easily been written by an effective altruist last week. And then here's a quote from him. These bodies which now we wear belong to the lower animals. Our minds have already outgrown them.

Already we look upon them with contempt. A time will come. When science will transform them by means which we cannot conjecture, and which even if explained to us we could not now understand. Just as the savage cannot [00:27:00] understand electricity, magnetism, or steam. Disease will be extirpated. The causes of decay will be removed.

Immortality will be invented. And I would note on the disease will be extirpated line, that has happened from the perspective of somebody living in the 1860s with the advent of vaccines and all of that. Remember half of infants used to die in childbirth and stuff. And then, the Earth's being small, mankind will migrate to space and will cross the airless Saharas, which separate planet from planet and sun from sun.

The Earth will become a holy land, which will be visited by pilgrims from all quarters of the universe. Finally, men will master the forces of nature. They will become themselves architects of systems, manufacturers of worlds. Man will then be perfect. He will be a creator. He will therefore be what the vulgar worship as a god.

Simone Collins: Do you have any thoughts on this? Yeah, I love things like this. I love it when people [00:28:00] seem to be able to model out how the future is going to, The, and what I love too is that he is one of the few people that could go ahead and extrapolate into the future and think through the implications of technology that was already in development at that time and the incentives that would be present.

I,

Malcolm Collins: I'm going to go further. I think. That his predictions were supernatural, like they were divinely

Simone Collins: inspired

Malcolm Collins: when you read other quote unquote, like prediction people, it's like Nostradamus or something like that, like stuff that you could interpret in a few different way. He's

Simone Collins: explicit. He's saying we will be able to fly.

We will be able to

Malcolm Collins: eat synthetic

Simone Collins: meat and other synthetic foods. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: There is like no vagueness in his predictions. And that is the only thing that I would trust. Also, I wouldn't trust it if this was like some rare text that somebody just found today. But no, like this text is incredibly well [00:29:00] recorded during the time period.

This is not a modern fabrication. He really predicted the future in a way that no other person I have seen and no other text I have seen was this accurate and this uncanny to me. So to go further, the way he talked about the goals of his religious system and the nature of God also mirrored ideas I thought I had crafted for the best interest of my children.

Quote here, We do not wish to extirpate religion from the life of man. We wish him to have a religion which will harmonize with his intellect, and which inquiry will strengthen, not destroy. We wish, in fact, to give him a religion, for now there are many who have none. We teach that there is a God, but not a God of the anthropoid variety, not a God who is gratified by compliments in prose and verse, and whose attributes can be categorized by theory, Theologians, God is so great that he cannot be defined by us.

God is so great that he does not deign to have personal relations with the human atoms that are called men. [00:30:00] Those who desire to worship their creator must worship him through mankind. And by that way, he means is through the improvement of mankind, not through as he said in other places.

Our goal is to move from the. Pre coded, four footed, and you'll hear this in some of the quotes I read from him instincts that we have, not through like sex or through gratification, but through the things that differentiate mankind from animals. Our logic, the parts of ourselves that we choose to be.

Do you have thoughts?

Simone Collins: Yeah, I appreciate how weirdly you could say transhumanist or Non carbon fascist he is as well. Like he clearly is somewhat disgusted by the human condition and really does want to rise above it. And I love that about him. Because yeah, I feel like

Malcolm Collins: Mechanicus intro here.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it's being uniquely a theme uniquely weird in our time, I think, is a romanticization [00:31:00] of devolved humanity.

Oh, wouldn't it be great if we lived like Pre civilization humans. I feel like these people really predated

Malcolm Collins: this idea of, I guess I'd call it the chimp man, like they want to go back. They want to devolve and posing and everything like that. And I'm like, this is not the elevation of humanity.

That I think it's pretty clear God intended. And we can go into what, our Adam and Eve interpretation and the idea of the punishments that we were given in the garden of Eden, largely being removed, we are no longer, um, cursed to work the land for our food the days of our lives, we are no longer in a society where women are ruled by men and are forced to left after men.

We are no longer deal with pain in childbirth. You're able to take epidurals now if you want to and what we learned when these, and a lot of people think that one of the curses For leaving the garden was death. It actually very clearly is not. He said, you will, until death [00:32:00] be cursed to work the land.

Now the way that line is actually written, you could read it either way. Maybe we were cursed with deaths. Maybe we weren't cursed with death and it was just a time duration, but you can actually tell that we were not cursed with death from another line where it says, I had to expel man from the garden.

Because, and I'll read in the exact lines here, because if he ate from the tree of life, he would live forever,

So for a few different translations here,

we have the new international version that says he must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever. So the Lord, God banished him from the garden of Eden. To work the ground from which he had been taken. Here we have the new Catholic Bible, which has now we must prevent him from reaching out and taking the fruit of the tree of life. Lest he eat it and live forever. And then we have the Christian standard Bible here, which says.

He must not reach out, take from the tree of life and eat it. Since man has become like one of us knowing good and evil, [00:33:00] he must not reach out, take from the tree of life, eat it and live forever. So you can see there's. Really, I find it hard to get any other interpretation of this then. If you had ever eaten from the tree of life, you would live forever. Meaning man never did eat from the tree of life.

Meaning that man was mortal in the garden of Eden. , and in addition, just in case, you're wondering why I say that it was a duration, the, from dust to dust thing, I'll just be reading from just the Christian standard Bible to not bore you here. , but it says. The ground is cursed because of you, you will eat from it by means of painful labor. All the days of your life, it will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.

You will eat bread by the sweat of your brow until you return to the ground. UN. And note this line until you returned to the ground, since you were taken from it. . For you are dust and you will return to dust. Okay, this is not a curse. It's a statement for you are dust and you will return to dust. And [00:34:00] it's describing links of duration here.

You will eat bread by the sweat of your brow until you return to the ground until you returned to the ground.

Okay.

Malcolm Collins: which implies that you only needed to eat from the tree of life once to live forever, meaning that man had never eaten from that tree, meaning that man wasn't immortal in the garden. So that means that death was not one of the curses.

And this is actually important if you look at an environment now where most of the curses have been lifted, which brings us to a time when people are like, why would there be a new text? Why would there be this new edition of theological law for people of our age? And this is because we are entering a new covenant.

Based on these curses being lifted and us realizing that they were not curses, but they were blessings. They allowed us to be high fertility. When you put men into the trial of the lotus eaters, which we talk about in our first tract you're actually putting them in a harder situation.

Anyway and go check out our Adam and [00:35:00] Eve video if you want to get a deep dive into that. What does he say the purpose of human life is? What are we commanded to do? Here again, I find the way he lays out these concepts to be ideologically identical to the framings I thought I had crafted. You blessed ones who shall inherit that future age of which we can only dream.

You pure and radiant beings who shall succeed us on the earth. When you turn back your eyes on us poor savages, grubbing in the ground for our daily bread. Eating flesh and blood, dwelling in vile bodies, which degrade us every day to a level with the beast, tortured by pains and animal propensities, buried in gloomy superstitions, ignorant of nature, which yet holds us in her bonds.

When you read of us in books. When you think of what we are and compare us with yourselves, remember that it is to us you owe the foundation of your happiness and grandeur, to us [00:36:00] who now in our libraries and laboratories and star towers and dissecting rooms and workshops are preparing the materials of the future.

The human growth, and as for ourselves, if we are sometimes inclined to regret that our law is cast in these unhappy days, that let us remember how much more fortunate we are than those who lived before us a few centuries ago. The working man enjoys more luxuries today than did the king. England in the Anglo Saxon times, and at his command are intellectual delights, which but a little while ago the most learned in the land could not obtain.

All this we owe to the labors of other men. Let us therefore remember them with gratitude. Let us follow their glorious example by adding something new to the knowledge of mankind. Let us pay to the future the debt which we owe the past. All men indeed cannot be Poets, inventors, [00:37:00] or philanthropists. But all men can join in the gigantic and godlike work, the progress of creation.

Whoever improves his own nature improves the universe of which he is a part. He who strives to subdue his evil passions, vile remnants of the old four footed life, and who cultivates the social affections, he who endeavors to better his condition, And to make his children wiser and happier than himself, whatever may be his motivations, he will not have lived in vain.

Simone Collins: Yeah, this is a man who, again, does not like being human as he is, and two, is deeply inspired in servicing future, in serving future generations and making them better and improvement and not accepting humanity as it is.

Malcolm Collins: If you think about, so this line right here, I think the really important line, especially when you contrast, it was our thoughts that I thought I had crafted and you've got to imagine like you as a viewer, when you're like, why did you really believe this stuff?

I thought I had made [00:38:00] all of this up. Okay. I like, imagine you made up this theology and then you find it in an old book in your house. And then on top of that the book made a bunch of predictions and they all came true. Like this may not convince you, but it convinces me. Okay, it gives me not face, but like Evidence backed faith, which is such a weird thing to have.

Simone Collins: What do you say in rebuttal to those who say you're just, searching for faith in random places and, connecting dots where it seems convenient and you're no better than the people that you. It seems

Malcolm Collins: completely implausible to me. It seems completely implausible. Yeah. But

Simone Collins: the other people are like, Oh, isn't it crazy that this bird pooped on my head this one day when, I just said this and then, they just connect the dots.

They choose to find the meaning where it is. I'm not doing that.

Malcolm Collins: I'm not reading from current things that other people can't verify. I'm not reading [00:39:00] from anecdotal events. I am pointing to somebody who anyone can verify in history. Okay, who seemed to predict things. I have no other way of explaining how he predicted this many things.

And when you contrast this with even great thinkers at this period, like George Orwell or something like that, who literally wrote, after this guy died, George Orwell's predictions are infinitely less accurate than his. And then, given how well he predicted all of this, given how widely he was known as his time as a great thinker, why was he forgotten?

Why was it to me to find this book, and how did I even find this forgotten book? Like, all of this is just too impractical to me. And when I look at the specifics, like the specifics of his theology, when you hear about Simone and I talking about ideas like what makes a human, Are not the pre coded genetic predilections like love, lust, happiness, et cetera.

But the things we choose for ourselves, the things we choose with our human brain. And then you read [00:40:00] what he writes more beautifully than I could ever put. Whoever improves his own nature, improves the universe of which he is a part. He who strives to subdue his evil passions, vile remnants of the old four footed life and who cultivates the social affections.

He who endeavors to better his condition. And to make his children wiser and happier than himself, whatever may be his motives, he will not have lived in vain. He very clearly points out what he means when he says subdue his evil passions. Vile remnants of the old forfeited lives. These pre evolved things.

And he is literally having these ideas. While Charles Darwin is still alive. He is literally building this infrastructure as early as a human could. Given, when we say that revelation is given to man. As early as it can be, as our civilization progresses and gains new understanding, this is literally as early.

One of the things that Wynwood Reed was actually known most for was being one of the main evangelists of Darwin, and going [00:41:00] out and debating people about Darwin. So I didn't know that's crazy. Yeah, I, he actually communicated with Darwin

winwood reed corresponded with darwin during the writing of the descent of man and is considered one of its contributors

So some of his ideas are in this book.

 Where he proposes that these evolutionary forces affected man as well.

Which also like when I can trust weed, when would read to other profits, this guy is like actively known as an anti racist crusader. He's actively known as like a which we'll see from other passages, he's actively known as a, a, he called evolution early on, when I look at other prophets they just don't inspire me the same way.

This guy is never written as doing like an unethical thing in his life. And I really like that because it's in some way, easier for me to look up to him as a prophet. And I don't know if I'd be able to, if the same things are recorded about him as we have recorded about some of the other prophets in terms of the Things that they did.

Now, I still think that they're divinely inspired. [00:42:00] I don't think that somebody needs to be a good person to be a prophet. I think we or to have god's favor I think that this is recorded in all of the judeo christian traditions with David and the story of Bathsheba you can be a total douche canoe and be a prophet Sorry for people who aren't particularly like religiously read and don't know the story of David and Bathsheba.

David who god favored Saw a guy's wife like naked on the roof of her house from his high roof He wanted to sleep with her So he sent her husband who was a faithful shoulder to the front lines to be killed So that he could sleep with this guy's wife like that is douche canoe high tier status, you know Whatever you blame, I don't know whether it's muhammad or joseph smith for like it I don't know if you get much worse than that.

And we are pretty clearly told if you're in any of the Judeo Christian traditions that David did have God's favor. I just like that, that, that read and also like that I can look to somebody else that I'm not like, this is my ideas. I can look to somebody from antiquity and say, this is their [00:43:00] ideas.

And so the level to which I can go crazy is really constrained by a previous thinker and the level to which he can do terrible things by today's social standards is really. constrained because we can look and see the way he lived his life. Intergenerational improvement is not a preference or an inclination, but a mandate.

All men die. It is not death that makes a martyr. It is how he lives, how one spends this one life. We are each gifted. The story of Jesus is misinterpreted. It was God trying to gift primitive man a truth of reality he could not yet decipher. It was not God who, as a man, martyred himself for the salvation of mankind, for it is only through choosing martyrdom, choosing lives of service to the creation of a future not meant for us, , that we are undeserving of entering, that we can give meaning to our lives.

It is this [00:44:00] truth that the story of Moses was meant to communicate to the childlike bronze age man. And then here's a quote from the martyrdom of man. I give to this universal history a strange but true title, the martyrdom of man. In each generation that the human race has been tortured, that their children might profit by their woes.

Our own propensity is founded on the agonies of the past. Is it therefore unjust to that we also should suffer for the benefit of those who are to come. Famine, pestilence, and war are no longer essential for the advancement of the human race, but a season of mental anguish is at hand, and through this we must pass an order that our Posterity may rise.

The soul must be sacrificed. The hope in immortality must die. A sweet and charming illusion must be taken from the human race. As youth and beauty vanish, never to return. And here I want to elevate, when he's talking [00:45:00] about But a season of mental anguish at hand this was written before World War One and World War Two.

So he was not wrong in that prediction in, in saying that a lot of people at the time believed that, wars were basically over. But anyway. It is fascinating how stories I had learned in my youth, and this is me talking again, but made no sense now came into crystal clarity. I could not understand why God would need to sacrifice himself in the form of a man to forgive man for his sins.

Why not just choose to forgive man? Why would the sacrifice mean anything if immediately afterwards, he knew he was going to be brought back to life and rejoin God? How would man, in an act of foolishness, cruelly killing the manifestation of God, somehow cleanse himself of his sins? But, when I examined the story with this new framing, it now seems almost impossibly elegant in how it described a concept.

 Man was centuries from having the capacity to grasp not just this [00:46:00] story all over the christian tradition things that had seemed like non sequiturs suddenly had meaning as an example the temptation of christ never made a lick of sense to me how could satan tempt god with Why would Jesus bow to Satan if he knew he was God?

And how could Satan act outside of God's will and tempt his own master in a monotheistic tradition? By that what I mean is, if there is only one God or at least an all powerful God, Satan should have no ability to realistically challenge him. So why is he able to challenge God in this instance? And how could Satan act outside of God's will and tempt his master?

Own master however, if I reframe this story as not one about Jesus as traditional Christians understand him, but the martyr, as we understand him, the story comes into crystal clarity.

And I say for context of the C Track six, but it's one of the future tracks where I'm gonna talk more about this context.

When I talk about Satan, the rule [00:47:00] of evil in temptation, which will be a future tract as an example, what's the point of the trinity? Why was it so important to understand God with three completely separate entities, but also one entity? And for that matter, what's up with the Holy Ghost? Why not just explain Jesus is fully God and also not God?

 If that is the point the Trinity is supposed to explain. Because the Trinity was attempting to explain the concept of the agents of providence, the Holy Spirit, God, the Father, and the Son, mankind, to an earlier iteration of man, not yet capable of understanding or accepting a fuller revelation.

God is a plural entity, a singular entity, and the fraction of humanity willing to live as martyrs destiny. These are completely distinct manifestations of the same entity. In the old Christian tradition, the concept of the Trinity provides little additional information in terms of the nature of God or how to worship.

But with this additional information, it becomes critical. This is really interesting to me. All these ideas where I've [00:48:00] been like, what's the point of that? What's the point of the Holy Ghost? Why? What's the point of Satan's temptation of God, like Jesus is going to immediately become God. What's the point of this sacrifice?

Why did God being killed unjustly by man, Caelo, man of his sins. But now if all of this makes sense to me was this new framing, and it's like an impossibly elegant explanation of a concept that I thought I had invented. And keep in mind I thought I had invented, oh God's a future entity and mankind intergenerationalizes, aggravates themselves.

And now I go back to these religious texts, which I grew up with and didn't know they said the things they say, and I'm like, whoa, I did not expect this.

Simone Collins: Do you think that You had subtly grown up with these core messages and just not known it and had them set in and then intuitively no, just weren't exposed to these primary sources at all to start.

Malcolm Collins: I never read them seriously.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I'm just wondering where it could have come from. [00:49:00]

Malcolm Collins: It's not like I read the martyrdom of man.

No. Yeah. Yeah, this was not primed by something. But with the salvation communicated in this understanding is also a commandment. Man must live as a martyr to be sanctified.

A man that's stagnated technologically, genetically, or in one's personal self improvement is living in the highest order of sin possible. To claim that you are good enough as you are, whether that is culturally, genetically, or personally, is to claim oneself to be as perfect as God and an affront to God.

And then from the Martyrdom of Man, he says, Persons with feeble and untrained intellects may live according to their conscience, but the conscience itself will be defective. To cultivate the intellect is therefore a religious duty, and when this truth is fairly recognized by men, the religion which teaches that the intellect should be distrusted And that it should be subservient to faith will inevitably fall.[00:50:00]

Every moment of your life you spend on something other than the improvement of yourself or mankind is a moment you are living in rebellion to God. But to aspire to not sin at all, to think oneself capable of living a sinless life is itself a sin. Only those yet to come and whom we will be instrumental in creating are capable of living sinless lives or deserving the rewards of one.

 Instead it is enough for us to not glorify our sin. We are to use sin like meat to tame the animal that still lives inside us, an evolutionary scar, a beast that still craves sex, luxuries, and status. But because the more we think about it. the beast, the stronger it will become.

Malcolm Collins: We must feed it only just enough to prevent it from distracting us from our purpose within these short lives. The efficacy of a preacher is shown through how little meat he used to tame [00:51:00] his beast. And then from the martyrdom of man, Whoever improves his own nature improves the universe of which he is a part.

He who strives to subdue his evil passions via remnants of the old forfeited life and who cultivates the social affections, he who endeavors to better his condition and to make his children wiser and happier than himself, whatever may be his motives, he will not have lived in vain. And here I would note, what I'm talking about, to, to think yourself incapable of sin, or to live a life incapable of sin is in itself a sin.

And what you need to do and what's commanded of us is to attempt to improve the next generation, attempt to improve ourselves,

Simone Collins: but

Malcolm Collins: also to never ever glorify sin as not sin. So for example, I, Drink alcohol. This has no efficacious point in my life. It is a sin. Okay. Drinking alcohol is a sin, but I do not aspire to live a sinless life.

I simply [00:52:00] aspire to be better every day. And when I look at the aspects of my life, that I could improve. This is one of the aspects that if I endeavored to improve it would distract me from other aspects I am working to improve right now. But it is very important because mankind has within him the desire to do this, to take things that are sinful and turn them into status signs.

Whether it's an addiction to exercise, for example, where you have worked out far more than you need to for your health. And I've started using it as a social signal

Simone Collins: or

Malcolm Collins: you brag about being able to drink someone else under the table. These are the true and highest form of sin because here you glorify your sin.

Instead we don't need to be perfect. We just need to know that sin is or we just need to admit to our sins. And I think that this is something that the Catholics I really like about their tradition with confession is this idea that God doesn't command us to never ever sin. That's an impossibility for man as he exists today, [00:53:00] but he does command us to take responsibility for our sins and to not glorify them.

Do you have thoughts on this Simone?

Simone Collins: No, that just, it seems so much more practical than other interpretations of sin that I've seen, just don't do it. ever. Or if you do it, you'll be paying it off for, hundreds of thousands of lives to

Malcolm Collins: end all sin that you have, because that leads people to build these cognitive dissonance where they're like I'm sinless or I don't sin.

Therefore, if I'm doing something, it must not be a sin, yeah. Or

Simone Collins: there's no point in trying. To not sin or I'll just ask for forgiveness later. None of those systems seem to make sense in the same way of always sharpening oneself in the direction of whence inherently deepest values. And especially this orientation toward building a better future.

It's such a better North star than just here, all these various rules don't do this, don't do that. Yeah. So I like that

Malcolm Collins: about this. Alcohol is a sin. [00:54:00] Exercising too little is a sin, exercising too much is a sin, playing video games is a sin. So many things can be sins, right? And you should expect to do them because you are human, right?

But, just don't glorify them, don't be like, I'm amazing because I'm so good at video games, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: if it's not making the world better, heating, heating your house in the winter is a sin if you can live without it And your kids can be healthy without it. It's a sin and The left loves to demonize because they demonize us for all the areas in which you practice austerity any form of austerity They're like, how dare you live without here or here.

I

Simone Collins: should just note that people think we don't need our house at all. That's literally not possible for you to do. If you live in a region that freezes because your pipes will burst. So we just don't, we don't go excessively high with our heat. Like most people do. But we do actually have to heat our house a little bit.

Malcolm Collins: Fascinating. And I hear her talk a little bit about this. I [00:55:00] think that this is psychologically healthy for kids. I don't come when I'm thinking of an idea, like I, I would not choose any theological idea that I didn't think also had a secular motivation for it. And it turns out that the secular motivations are always backed by the theology that, that austerity is commanded of us by God.

But and you can find thousands of lines from any of the true revelations that, that we'll talk about this. Yeah. But I also think that it's psychologically healthy for kids. I think when you don't expose kids to negative stimuli growing up, whether that's discipline, like corporal punishment or austerity, like heating, then they become hypersensitive to negative stimuli.

And I think that this is where you get things like trigger warnings and stuff like that, where they spiral into depression, where they can't handle their anxiety and where they have,

Simone Collins: it's like someone who has never been sick before. You then get the tiniest cold and instantly die because you're immune to this disease.

I don't know if that's

Malcolm Collins: exactly the way, maybe a people group that had no immunity to something, but yes.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I'm thinking more of when Europeans came to [00:56:00] North America, brought a bunch of diseases that no one had ever been exposed to. I think that, The human body, when exposed to anything that it is not used to.

So if you're with like, for example, if you suddenly lift something that you've never lifted before, and you're using a set of muscles that you don't know how to use, you're going to pull out your back or someone who's regularly lifting things. Say they're moving for or sorry. Say they're working for a moving company.

Their muscles are accustomed to this. They know how to lift the thing they can deal with that stressor. So the human body works like that with mental things too. And I love that about the face that we have found.

Malcolm Collins: And people think that like when we're giving our kids austerity or we're giving them some form of controlled hardship, This is lowering their quality of life.

And yet these people are on, however many drugs just to get through the day. They are seeing a psychologist regularly. They are barely mentally holding it together. And I'm like, I am pretty certain, having started my career in neuroscience that we are actually causing our kids to experience less overall suffering in their lives.

Bye. Not shirking from our [00:57:00] responsibility as parents, which is to not just give them a perfect childhood existence, but to discipline them and give them trials and give them hardships and expose them to hardship so that they do not become oversensitive to it as adults and spiral out of control when they experience it.

So next fascinatingly, when I examined the life of one would read in this new context, it is almost blindingly obvious he was meant to be a He completed trials, which showed that He was a paragon of the values our faith teaches. While in Africa, he was captured and made a slave of the King of Sidwa of Falaba.

King Sidwa put Reed under conditions of unimaginable physical and mental hardship, giving him four grueling tasks every day. He completed these tasks with aplomb, showing King Sidwa such mental fortitude and self discipline that he was released. He showed an ethical understanding far beyond [00:58:00] his time in writing what the fate of the newly freed African American slaves in America should be.

Experience has shown that whatever aliens are treated as citizens, they become citizens, whatever may be their religion or their race. It is a mistake to suppose that the civilized black American calls himself an African and pines to return to his ancestral land. If he was born. In the States, he calls himself an American, he speaks with an American accent, he loves and hates with an American heart.

That's so modern sounding, like imagine like Joseph Smith saying something like that. I really admire Wynwood Reed as a person for what he fought for in his time period. Almost in direct contrast to mormon prophets like joseph fielding smiths who said quote If evolution is true, the church is false in quote Correspond, I know that is not good winwood reed corresponded with darwin during the writing of the [00:59:00] descent of man and is considered one of its contributors .

Finally, you might say, If Wynwood Reed is so smart, why was he not recognized as such in his time? To which, I would direct you to a quote you yourself may have read, if you have read the Sherlock Holmes books, in which Sherlock says to Watson, Let me recommend this book, one of the most remarkable ever penned.

It is Wynwood Reed's The Martyrdom of Man, end quote. Yes, canonically, The Martyrdom of Man is Sherlock Holmes favorite book, or at least one of his favorite books. So this is a system that sees prophecy as iterative, with each generation having a religious duty to expand their mental capacity for comprehension.

But if intergenerational improvement is our mandate, how can Such a religious system stay intergenerationally stable. How we overcome this seeming impossibility is something which discusses the updated index system, which is quite updated from the system that we discussed [01:00:00] in the pragmatist guide to crafting a religion.

So what are your thoughts?

Simone Collins: There's nothing new to

Malcolm Collins: comment on. I can give you some other, so when I think about what we're trying to create here, right? I want to create a theological tradition that is like irreverent and fun, but also strictly logical and ordered.

I think people might think that this is impossible. When I read something like one would read and has boundless enthusiasm,

Simone Collins: it

Malcolm Collins: really reminds me of Gurren Lagann, which we have noted as having like religious significant in this concept of spiral and anti spiral energy., in many stories, logic, and industry, and science are always cold. They are Vulcan like in nature. But they don't need to be. In fact, I would say by nature they are not. If we look at the Victorian scientists with this boundless optimism for the future, you can see this.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like the pioneers of science were curious, [01:01:00] irreverent sometimes dangerously and enthusiastic about the potentiality of reality and even God.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah and I also want to talk here because it's weird that we have added and removed books and people might be like, why have you done that?

Like, why do believe that Judeo Christian traditions are true, but you see some books as theologically inspired and some books as not theologically inspired. And there's a few criteria we use to do this. So you can look at something like the book of revelations and one, It was on the edge when they were confirming which books to put in and which books not to put in.

In fact one group, which I'll add in editing here, didn't even include it.

I was thinking of the Ethiopian Orthodox to lado church and the Oriental Orthodox church. , and actually the Eastern Orthodox church while it is considered Canon. It is not considered. Part of the liturgy was in the church.

Malcolm Collins: One mainstream Christian sect doesn't even include it in their canon religious texts. On [01:02:00] top of that, the Greek in it is very bad. It's written by a fairly uneducated person when contrasted with the other scriptures.

And this is something that was noted like by people who study the Bible. They're like, this is written by a dumb person. But then on top of that, also just you read it and it doesn't feel true. Like when I read the story of Adam and Eve and I was like, Oh my God, like this explains so much, this feels so deep, and when I read, parts of the Torah, I feel that way. But when I read the And I think, for people like, why do you dismiss the Kabbalah so regularly, given that it's a late edition, only about a thousand years old, but it's in the Jewish text for the same reason I dismiss revelation.

It's not like distinct to you. So I'll read some passages from revelation and you'll see what I mean when I'm like, when something like, Genesis can feel very awe inspiring to me when I read it. So I feel like the book of revelation feels like a schizophrenic yelling at people in the streets.

So this is Revelation 12. A great sign appeared in heaven. A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her [01:03:00] feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven. An enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns Oh boy.

and seven crowns on its head. Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and fell. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.

And her child was snatched up by God and to his throne. The woman fled into the wilderness to play to a place prepared for her by God where he might be taken care of for 1260 days. Then a war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in the heaven.

The great [01:04:00] dragon was hurled down. That ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray, he was hurled to earth, and his angels with him. When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. The woman, Was given so I think a lot of people they don't know that this is where like the satan Being an angel and going to war with god and then they're like, oh that sounds yeah, michael and his angels fighting satan They're like whoa, whoa with the pregnant woman and the satan's a dragon and he's like chasing her around and when you take out these ideas of satan being an angel and then being cast to hell Which you know you get solely from revelation, which we'll talk more about later You It makes a lot more sense of the character, which we'll talk about in future tracks.

But anyway. When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a [01:05:00] time. Time and half a time, out of the serpent's reach.

Then, from his mouth, the serpent spewed water like a river to overtake the woman and sweep her away with a torrent. But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of its mouth. Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage a war against the rest of her offspring, those who kept God's commandments and hold fast their testimony about Jesus.

Simone Collins: This is Imbrof gone terribly wrong. There is Way too much. Yes. And I'm going on here.

Please prove, just say something to him. Not here to talk to them. You are the hand chosen by the master. No! Yours is the wheel of plot. Yours is the sword of Michael. Sonny!

Simone Collins: You have our

Malcolm Collins: tract. When we talk about the three faiths, like policy ism, mysticism and monotheism. And I'm like, sometimes you can see that accidentally, of course it would happen. You have a true face. Sometimes they accidentally confirm a book.

[01:06:00] That's from another tradition. This is very clearly policy is, this is like Popol Vuh. People don't know when I'm comparing things at Popol Vuh, it's like the Mayan Bible. You can read it if you want to get a good, it's a very good, example of what polytheist traditions are like, but you'll also get stories like this.

If you read like ancient Sumerian myths, or if you read a lot of old early native American myths where it's like the next insane thing happened or like ancient Greek myths. Oh, that God's head was hit and then it split open and then his daughter came out and then they made friends. Was chased by a dragon and then she hit the dragon and from his head split water and like it's very clearly polytheist and not monotheist in nature And I think that if you are monotheist and you read from a polytheist tradition That's not based on logic and order and god's what you're like Oh, this is clearly something different and that's what I use when I am disconfirming certain judeo christian texts In a way that people might, and keep in mind, we're not saying everyone in our face has to do this.

You've got to [01:07:00] choose your own canon within this system. And I think that the correct canons will be chosen by God in the groups that succeed and the groups that fail. However I think that we need to be more, uh, questioning of the staff that had been in the temple for hundreds of years, we need to say sometimes I know that this tradition has antiquity and I know that the traditional church bodies say that this is okay, but this looks like idolatry.

This smells like idolatry. And I think this is idolatry. And the. We know from the tradition, like our traditions, that we are commanded to do that sometimes. And I read something like the book of revelations and I'm like, Oh, this is a crazy person yelling at people on the streets. And if you grew up in the Christian tradition, you may not feel that way.

You may read this and be like, Oh yeah, of course I knew about the pregnant woman and the numbers and the thousand 260 days. And the, but I think that, this leads to the temptations of things like neurology. And other forms of trying to [01:08:00] divine the future using God's message instead of which can lead to hugely deleterious outcomes.

When it's not just plainly laid out. When people use this and they're like, oh, the Bible is true because I can find like X correlations here, and then I'm contrasting it with what, like when would read. Who's Oh yeah, here, this is exactly what's going to happen. This is going to be, he even goes into Oh, once we can create meat in the lab we're going to and I'll include the quote here.

We're going to look down on the people who used to eat meat. But people should not look down on us for eating meat. Because, they're living with the technology that we didn't have access to, so they can't fully understand why we lived life the way we live life.

Yeah, the line here is in specific reference to that. You blessed ones who shall inherit the future age of which we can only dream you pure radiant beings who shall succeed us on earth. When you turn back your eyes on us, poor savages grubbing in the ground for our daily bread, eating flesh and blood dwelling in file bodies, which degrade us every day to a level with the beast tortured by panes and by animal propensities, buried in gloomy [01:09:00] superstitions, ignorant of nature, which yet holds us in her bonds.

When you read of us. In books, when you think of what we are and compare us with yourselves, remember that it is to us, you owe the foundation of your happiness and grand jury. To us who now in our libraries and laboratories and Starr towers and dissecting rooms and workshops. Are preparing the materials of the human growth. And keep in mind, he's saying this in the context of the prediction. And thirdly, the manufacturer of flesh and flour from the elements by a chemical process in the laboratory. Similar to that, which is now performed within the bodies of animals and plants. And so we would say if there is a religious mandate around food for this religious sect, I would say it's that once, Lab grown meat is widely available, that you are mandated to use it rather than factory farmed foods.

Malcolm Collins: And I think that's true about so many things as like technology progresses.

But do you have any final thoughts? Do you disagree with me about saying I do not think the book of revelations is inspired by God? [01:10:00]

Simone Collins: It just, yeah. I, I really struggle with this because It's so tempting to say that the Bible just is the Bible, but it's not. It's not like everything in there has been equally vetted. It's not like everything in there is of a good source. And just people looking at, just people looking at the New Testament and looking at stories of Jesus can, find all of these conflicting reports.

It's very clear. And even biblical scholars will agree that not everything in the Bible is accurate and that you're going to get differing accounts of the same events. Like with Jesus riding the donkey and and like sometimes it's one donkey and sometimes it's two donkeys and he's straddling the donkey, like two donkeys and all these things are happening.

And so I, It's hard for me to say we believe in going to primary sources, but then it also seems, it seems disingenuous to me that people can be like, Oh I read the primary source, but also I decide what is primary source, right? That seems wrong. But I also know that we have no other choice [01:11:00] when the primary source.

is comprised of corrupted materials. So I guess that's what makes me uncomfortable.

Malcolm Collins: To me, the primary source was Jesus is Jesus. And we don't have direct writings from Jesus. Exactly.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But then what about the Old Testament? We don't have any, aside from God. And so a lot of people are going to turn to the, to like personal Revelation and praying directly to God and then God tells you, but that's not right.

Malcolm Collins: I think even in the Old Testament, some policy as it gets written in, I can read some like Jewish writings that are quite old and I'm like, this is clearly policy of them. And I think it's important that we know now that 50 percent of early Israel DNA came from the Canaanite. preexisting population.

So when we hear about the evils of ball and ball light worship and this alternate system of worship that we that we understand that it is, It's likely that it got worked into Jewish writings and that later, when the early Christians were [01:12:00] around, they were not actually primarily converting Jews.

I think as many scholars know, they were, the early Christians were predominantly converted from pagan communities. Of course, they're going to bring some of these ideas from these early pagan communities into Christianity. And it's up to us to be vigilant. Is this a pagan writing or is this a monotheistic writing?

Is this policy ism or monotheism? Is this mysticism or monotheism? And I think it's not one of those vague things. Like when you read it, I think it's pretty obvious to me, at least Oh yeah, this is not the same kind of thing of the monotheistic writings. I think God further, it.

inscribes this for us by making sure that we know that it was written by somebody uneducated who didn't appear to speak Greek very well, who doesn't appear fully literate. So that it's easy for us to be like, okay, like if God's inspiring something, he's at least making sure the language is like good.

Like the person has a broad grasp of at least their culture's idea of what something intelligent would look [01:13:00] like.

Simone Collins: Maybe I, yeah, I feel so uncomfortable with any of these things, but in the end, I think what we've taken away personally, and what I feel comfortable with is that we have established our standard of evidence for what we believe, and we've received an abundance of evidence encouraging us to lean in a certain direction of faith that fits our particular criteria.

We'd be dumb not to follow through with it, basically. And I think everyone has to do that with their own standards of evidence in their own faith.

Malcolm Collins: And this is the other thing I'd mentioned for people is that faith is ultimately a choice. That's what I think many atheists don't get about faith.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You can look at evidence and it can confirm the things that you're like, I, I can't explain this easily in other ways. And I find this a unique kind of miracle to me when I look at all of these predictions, when I look at finding things in the Bible and the Koran, I didn't expect in the Torah, I didn't expect because it wasn't the [01:14:00] stories I was told.

To me, It feels like such An impossible thing that it is confirming for me, right? And it leads me to then choose to have faith. And that and to believe that the earlier instead of what I had originally done, which is saying I'm creating, What I thought of as a new religious system.

It's more of just a different sect of Christianity. That's like techno Puritanism is an evolution of early Puritanism and not even that deranged in evolution. When you contrast, it was like, Scott Alexander's Puritan spotting piece. And you're like, Oh, like Puritans have been doing this a long time.

The early Puritans would always try to rewrite the Bible to be more in line with science. And I think that they were fundamentally wrong headed in that endeavor. I think that the Bible was fundamentally true and any efforts to rewrite it are inaccurate, but I do think that it does need to be like, we do need to be scrupulous when we're choosing which texts we think are inspired by God and which are not in which lives are [01:15:00] inspired by God and which are not.

, and so that's the way I approach it. And it has given me this religion that like, I believe very strongly. And I think a lot of people don't realize how fanatically strongly I believe this now. And it's very easy Two for me, because it has improved my quality of life so much. But I don't do it because it's improved my quality of life.

And I don't even do it because I think like this evidence, I can't explain it another way, it seems to point to it. I do it because I've chosen to do it.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But all those other ancillary benefits, I think help, which is how you end up having people who join religions where they start off being very skeptical, if not.

Outright non believers, right? They're like, this is just, this is not for me, whatever. I'm just going to go ahead and do this, but then I'm going to choose to lean into it because maybe my spouse has leaned into this, or I've just decided this seems to be better for the community and it's better for me.

And then I don't know, there's, I think there is a [01:16:00] compounding effect, like sometimes just surrendering yourself. And I think people talk about this a lot with faith. It's a lot like surrendering yourself to. That doctrine or that religion of letting go then leads to all these ancillary benefits then leads to what either could be referred to as confirmation bias or finding all the connected dots and realizing that, the evidence is actually strong and maybe you really should believe.

I don't really know. I don't think it really matters. If ultimately it's correct, if you have chosen it from a place of conviction and for good reasons, like you've done your work, you haven't just randomly chosen a societal default or something that was right in front of you. And you choose to surrender to it and it produces good results for your life and those in your life.

Then great, like it doesn't matter if it's true or not. It matters if. All those other conditions are set.

Malcolm Collins: And I also like to, as a final [01:17:00] here, explain why I settled on techno puritanism for the name of this you should probably buy that URL before this episode goes live. But the reason I decided on techno puritanism

is that one I wanted to connect it to earlier Christian traditions.

And I think that many people have in their mind what a Puritan is, aesthetically speaking, right? So it gives you something that you can visualize. It's not a holistically positive image. I look at the videos that people make to make fun of Puritans, and I'll put in some here.

This is just a date, not a wedding auction. What's a date? It's where you invite someone to do an activity so you can get to know them better. You know what that sounds like? It sounds like It's not the devil's work! I was going to say it sounds like a waste of money. Jedediah, women like romance, not being compared to livestock. I see. Roses are red, violets are blue, both are useless, plant some wheat! Your views on women are extremely antiquated. Yeah, let me guess, you'll only be happy if your future wife bears you [01:18:00] a son.

Actually, I would prefer a daughter. Yes, because suffering is good for the soul. You cannot tempt an iron heart! Iron can weaken with the rust of pride, for certain. And what shall I call this embodiment of virtue? Virtue. Come again? Virtue, obedience, Hawkins. Good name, no doubt. Names do not carry us to the golden gates, for certain. Gonna have a bonfire out back, eat some s'mores. Your thirst for s'more will ultimately give you some less.

And you will be consumed upon the bonfire of vanity.

 I am never alone in the company of men. Come in, silence!

A sage choice, which will make our gathering a blessed evening? I will be gone by evening. Those who court when the sun descends court the devil's design for certain? Ah, yes. I could not agree more. How dare you express enjoyment? [01:19:00] My deepest apologies. The pain purifies my predilection for pleasure. Your alliteration sounds dangerously like poetry. My apologies. Strike me, silence!

I apologize for this unholy demonstration of passion. This deserves the cleansing ritual of stoning. Will you stone me with the stone of justice? No, I will use mercy. You

Malcolm Collins: The traits that they're making fun of them for are traits I want to reestablish within our civilization.

And I think that we are lesser for having lost. And the Puritan vision of this utopian city on a hill, I think it's something that we can bring back, you know, combine the Victorian scientists, it was this endless hope for the future with strict Puritan ideals and aesthetics. That's what I mean when I combine these two words.

And I thought of other words like new wave Puritanism or Neo Puritanism. And whether either there might be other movements that sort of talk [01:20:00] about these ideas which I don't like, stepping on something else there. But they also are just too conventional of names. And I also wanted the name to be a little silly.

As I said, I want it to be irreverent and passionate. I want it to be something because I think that's something that religion has lost a little bit. If you read the old Testament, there's lots of like sex jokes in it. Talking about like people's feet, which were often meant to be on like the side of it.

It was meant to be a standard for like genitals and like in various parts. And they're really like lots of sex jokes in the old Testament. And we've gotten away from that, even the Bible has sex jokes and a lot of people don't know this, like dating jokes, but like Jesus at the well was meant to be a joke.

There was this convention of stories at the time when a husband would meet his wife at the well. And when Jesus goes to the well and meets a woman he gives her the water of everlasting life, everyone would have thought that was hilarious because it's turning this sexual story on its head [01:21:00] and we have forgotten that everything's become too solemn and too Beautiful.

And this is what I mean, like one of the fears I have around like the aesthetics of beauty in these traditions, drowning out I think the I do think to an extent, like when you have this grandeur, like when you walk in to this great grand cathedral, you can feel all inspiring and it can have you feel minute, but at the same time That in a way it makes you feel under God, right?

Not oppressed by God, but you can feel his presence. It removes you from the personal relationship with faith and life that you can gain from not taking things so seriously.

Simone Collins: And

Malcolm Collins: I think you need this absolutely massive, rigid seriousness combined with frivolity. Which I think is possible. [01:22:00] And I, yeah that's something I really want to elevate with these terms and when people are like the Puritans were harsh, the Puritans ever punished the Puritans.

And it's yeah, these are all these things that secular society hates. It hates the expectations of itself, but I think we should, as a community, have expectations of ourselves. I have expectations of myself. I have expectations of you, my expectations of the family. And if somebody else decided to follow this, I'd have expectations of them too.

And I also really outsourcing this to an external profit. Like I really don't want to be seen as somebody who has any sort of special access to to, to revelation or knowledge or anything like that, because I think that when you do that with somebody who's currently alive you allow for huge potential for negative externality.

And because who knows what I do, who knows if I go crazy, et cetera, but being able to do that with somebody who's already long dead, the extent of how crazy we can go when we're looking to our profit and trying to interpret for him. So I would see. What I'm doing is maybe a bit more extreme than what some, no more extreme than what [01:23:00] Joseph Smith did, for sure.

And maybe a bit more extreme than something like Calvin or Martin Luther or, a few other people did, but I still see it as a sect. And a sect of Christianity specifically, even though it believes that some of the other Abrahamic faiths were correct interpretations, or were in some way divinely inspired, specific Mormonism, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.

Oh, and of course there are extremism. Can't forget them. , I also want to note here. The goal of what we are laying out here is a system that is more in line with early puritanism than many of the new religious sex that are created by a single individual who would like lays out what's true and X like a prophet.

So this would be much closer to early at a baptism or early. Calvinism or Puritanism, , which is to say that that no one individual in the movement like myself has more access to what's true than other individuals. [01:24:00] I have just laid out a list of sources and the way that I am relating to those sources. In a way that starts a conversation of people who want to have this sort of vitalist religiously active. Theological conversation because when I look to the other religious communities, , the conversations I see are becoming nuanced and pedantic and nothing like the conversations that we saw a century ago, you know, whether you're talking about the great awakening. Or you're talking about the Protestant reformation or in Judaism , you're talking about the early days of the Hasidic movement.

, and . Even given my reservations about the early days. They had said, but at least things were happening theologically back then. I think that when we look at the iterations of the Judeo-Christian tradition, that ended up being important in the future, they were, the iterations were this. Active. , and.

Evolutionary conversation with happening. And that's what I'm looking for instead of, you know, what I see today in the Protestant tradition, which is often [01:25:00] like nuance, semantic, and pedantic arguments about like, pre millennialism or post millennialist ideologies, which really doesn't even matter at the end of the day for most people.

I mean, we're either in one situation or the other. And isn't really going to inspire people. It's just nerds fighting in a room. As a final note here, while we have been asked to bring back the tracks by a lot of people, there's also a minority yet. The vocal and considered minority from our perspective, that would prefer we didn't. , the groups that typically like the tracks are people who are culturally from the Protestant tradition, the Mormon tradition, the Jewish tradition, or that have left and are angry with a Christian tradition, or that grew up in a new age tradition and have since rebuked that tradition, the groups that dislike them. Are typically, , from Catholic traditions and Eastern Orthodox traditions. The key difference between these traditions? It's typically how they relate to truth. And I don't think [01:26:00] that one is better than the other.

I mean, Uh, for example, the way the Catholics relate to truth, you know, when we're talking to them is really nerdy in a way that I can respect. They're like, oh, well, you know, we can't trust this source because you know, they mispronounced did this, went to a Protestant, like mispronunciation means literally nothing.

It's, it's, it's an aesthetic preference or they. Uh, you know, don't D D haven't read this book or haven't read this philosopher or don't, you know, this and, and antiquity philosopher and, uh, you know, two people of the other officers are like, why would I care about that? Why would I care? What I care about is what's true.

Not like what, um, fulfills some athletic threshold before it enters the vocabulary of truth. And I think that that's fine. That's fine. It's just not going to be appealing to you. It's not for you. And not every theological thing needs to be for every person. You know, as, uh, Wynwood Reed said, our goal is not to replace religion, but find something that works for the people who today have none.

Simone Collins: Thank you for sharing that. We're back to [01:27:00] the tracks.

Malcolm Collins: They're back, guys! After so many, and I would not have gone back to them had so many people not told me to do them. So if you like this you really need to encourage us, because I Deathly embarrassed to doing this. I do not like when I was little, I joked about the idea of Oh, I'll start like a cult or whatever that can help people like unlock themselves and blah, blah, blah.

And but I never really wanted the responsibility of doing that. Yeah it's not the person I want to be exactly, but I feel called to do it. So

Simone Collins: here's how I look at it. At the very least. We know that we need to give our kids a shot at a culture that gives them mental fortitude in this world and none of the existing cultures as they exist now, as good as many may be, are capable of imparting mental fortitude in an age of globalization and Skinner box based phone apps and games and [01:28:00] shows.

At the very least, I want to give our kids a good shot and I want to give them a culture that imparts fitness. So I'm glad that at least you're sharing this with us. In a base level of mental health, which is a base level of mental health. So I say. Let's go for it. I know that they'll iterate on it if they use it at all in a way that makes it a lot better.

And we're depending on that. So you have to start somewhere and sucking is the first step of getting good at something.

Dude, sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that's what we're doing. . But no you're absolutely right. And and and I guess it was the agents of Providence that had me go to this conference and had people tell me, you have to create more tracks.

You have to create more tracks. I didn't know that it was what our fans liked most. I'd gotten emails to that extent. I'd seen it on the discord, but we also get a lot of critical emails every time we do one of these. So I was just like, why bother?

Simone Collins: I think it really comes down to whether you [01:29:00] are in a religion.

That is what you'd call the Pride and Disguise of Crafting Religion, Symbiotic or Domineering. Meaning you believe if you're as part of a religious sect or following that is trying to save everyone and that believes that those who do not hold your views are going to go to hell if they don't change to your views.

Then you're probably going to find this quite offensive. If you are of a religious subset of chosen people or limited atonement where basically just by design, not everyone is going to be saved. Not everyone is going to be special. Some people just aren't part of the group and there's nothing you can do about it.

Then you'll at best or at worst just find us very entertaining as people who are just wrong, but wrong in an entertaining way that isn't a problem for you because you don't have to save us. Or intriguing enough to potentially join because maybe this is the right club. And I think that's what it comes down to everyone who really finds these offensive finds it offensive [01:30:00] because We are going to go to hell for not joining the correct group.

Does that make sense?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I'd also say for people who look at this and they're like, Oh, you've made up these like non biblical holidays and you're like, practicing Christmas was like Santa Claus or like Easter was like an Easter bunny. It's you're doing the same thing, just because something is culturally normative doesn't mean it's biblical.

And if somebody wants to follow this tradition like while we have made it for our kids, I've begun to become more okay with the idea that other people who don't really see a religion that compels them in the world today might think that this is a compelling system. And like we have no, no problem with that.

Our kids will need people to marry after all. And yeah, I have no problem with that. But my goal is absolutely I believe very strongly in limited atonement which we'll talk about in other tracks. But that is to say that this is a non proselytizing religious system.[01:31:00]

Simone Collins: Yep. Cool. Thanks again, Malcolm. And I love her and I appreciate you willing to, embrace the cringe.

Malcolm Collins: Embrace the cringe, pass through to the other side.

A citizen has the courage to make the safety of the human race their personal responsibility.

Simone Collins: She's,

Malcolm Collins: Imitating one of our sons.

Simone Collins: Cause he likes to crack eggs and he says it cracked. It

Malcolm Collins: cracked.

Simone Collins: Why does Toasty get all the best lines? I'll,

https://discord.gg/EGFRjwwS92

In this illuminating episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins sit down with Dan Hess, better known as Morberths on Twitter, to discuss the crucial behavioral and lifestyle factors that correlate with higher and lower fertility rates. Hess, a prolific demographer and data analyst, shares his insights on the impact of marriage, urban density, living arrangements, and sexual history on fertility outcomes.

The conversation begins with an examination of the dramatic rise in the average age at first marriage across Europe and its potential implications for fertility. Hess emphasizes the importance of marriage as a fertility factor, highlighting the significant happiness and wealth gaps between married and unmarried individuals.

The discussion then turns to the role of urban density and housing in shaping fertility patterns. Hess argues that suburban living and lower population density are more conducive to higher fertility rates, while high-rise urban environments tend to suppress reproduction. Malcolm and Simone explore the potential of exurbs and remote work as a solution to this challenge.

Hess also delves into the impact of young adults living with their parents on fertility, noting the stark differences between countries like Spain and Italy, where a large proportion of 25-34-year-olds still reside with their parents, and countries like Sweden, where this practice is far less common.

Finally, the group discusses the relationship between sexual history and fertility, with Hess presenting data suggesting that individuals with fewer lifetime sexual partners tend to have higher fertility rates. Malcolm and Simone offer their perspectives on the underlying factors that may drive this correlation.

Throughout the conversation, Hess showcases his extensive knowledge of demographic trends and data, emphasizing the importance of understanding and addressing the complex web of factors that influence fertility in modern societies.

Dan Hess: , [00:00:00] this is, this is one thing that's really wonderful about my feed is that you can search at more births for whatever topic.

And there's a good chance that I will have written about it.

Simone Collins: Now you are the kind of the, the reference point in encyclopedia. If you need, well, I

Dan Hess: really want to, want to Uh, give 40.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, this is this is fascinating. Yeah. 48 percent of homeschooling households have three or more children

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Hello everybody. Today we are joined by Morberths on Twitter, also known to his more close acquaintances, such as ourselves. And now you, Daniel, we're super excited to have you, Daniel. And today, because you are the foremost person on Twitter, giving really great graphic, heavy, in depth threads on Twitter on demographical apps and prenatalism, we'd love to discuss.

The fertility factors that correlate with higher fertility and lower fertility from a behavioral and lifestyle standpoint. Uh, previously we, we talked about things that were happening on a national level from a [00:01:00] policy and propaganda standpoint, but I think it's really fun to talk about the personal attributes.

So, um, you know, Malcolm and I have talked a lot about Different cultural elements, but really what really stands out to you. And what have you talked about at length on Twitter when it comes to factors that correlate with low or high

Dan Hess: fertility? Uh, yeah. So, um, one of the factors, uh, that that's a really big factor that's not especially talked about is, is marriage.

So, so that's one thing that, that, that's a really big fertility factor. And, um, and so, so part of it, um, is. You know, people are just marrying late. And actually this is a, this is a Twitter that I just put out today, but we, you can see the average age at marriage for, um, let's put it up on the screen here.

Let's see if I can, you know, pull that up one second here.

Simone Collins: What has it gone down from? [00:02:00] I've, cause I feel like when I've watched all these 19 average age at first birth. Yeah. Marriage, marriage, marriage. I thought it used to be around 20, 21 or so. That's what I would guess in like the 1940s through, right.

I'll put it here.

Dan Hess: Yeah. So here we can see the age at marriage in Europe and it's like super high everywhere. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: so for people who are watching this on audio, like it is actually shocking. Like, most of the ages are like 33. 8 in France, 34. 8 in Sweden,

Simone Collins: 31. 9

Malcolm Collins: in the UK in Germany at 31. 2 in Ireland, 31. 9. Like it is wow.

Where'd you get the UK number? I don't see that. Simone.

Simone Collins: I'm sorry. I'm looking at Ireland. Silly

Dan Hess: me. Sorry. Yeah. This, this map doesn't show the UK, but it's, yeah, certainly it's, it's very high in all of Europe and I'm going to, I want to switch to share the lowest one

Simone Collins: we're seeing here is. 24. [00:03:00] 9. Malcolm, you and I married at like 25 and 26.

We're, we're, we were young

Dan Hess: married

Malcolm Collins: people. Yeah. You look at a country like Turkey, it's 25. 2. So we were younger than we would have brought down the average first age in Turkey. Oh. And, uh, yeah,

Dan Hess: that's wild. Yeah. So I, yeah, I want to, you know, actually, uh, share something else that's, I want to share, show this on a world scale so we can see what's going on even, even, even more.

So, so here I didn't realize

Simone Collins: how late it was on average. I think I'm, I'm wondering maybe this has to do with second marriages. If, you know, if they're counting every single marriage that happens, maybe when 70 year olds get remarried after they're widowed,

Dan Hess: here is the world. So here we can see first marriage, first marriage, first marriage.

So you can see how, how Europe stands out as having like these super late marriages. You can see, you can also see that what's the most fertile part of the world. And what's the part of the world that has. Early marriages. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: [00:04:00] but this is really interesting. So we talk about fertility collapse in Latin America and I think what people would be surprised by here is a good chunk of Latin America has later fertility, uh, later marriages than the United States.

Um, and I, uh, and, and, and most of the developed world has later marriages in the United States. Um, you know, you're looking at a place like, you know, Australia has much later marriages, South Africa, Canada, developed country anymore. Um, Greenland has super late fertility rates, Chile very, very late fertility rates, Brazil late, late, I'm sorry, not late fertility rates, late marriage rates.

So, uh, Brazil and Chile are really unique on this graph and they're, they're in, uh, like 34, 32 range, right?

Dan Hess: So interesting, you know, and, and fertility is dropping all throughout the twenties. So like by the time you're 30, even for a woman, uh, fertility is already like way lower than it was. I mean,

Malcolm Collins: that's like trying to, to have kids with a

Dan Hess: [00:05:00] grandmom.

We have, we have six children, so I'm, I'm, I'm very fortunate. Um, my, uh, You know, when my, when my wife was, uh, third, she was 36 or 35 when she had the fifth one and she was 40 when she had the sixth one, but when she was like 30, 35 or 36, you know, the doctor called it medically like a geriatric pregnancy.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, which is. This is the, now this is the age that, that, that people are getting married in Europe. Now, I, I, I do want to, you know, you know, people are, are instantly going to react. Well in, in Europe, uh, people don't have to get married to have kids and most people don't. And that's kind of true, but nevertheless.

Um, it is still true that the odds of getting, uh, of having children are far, far higher, like four times as high if a couple is married. And this came up in the

Simone Collins: Swedish data that I think Malcolm and I reviewed in a previous podcast where [00:06:00] correlating highly with this drop in fertility rate that now even Sweden is seeing, despite their incredibly pronatalist lifestyles and policies is the.

The cohabitation of couples, but not marriage, uh, which is interesting. So,

Dan Hess: yeah. Yeah. So people who say that marriage, uh, you know, doesn't matter, like the data does not bear this out. The,

Malcolm Collins: oh my God, the data on marriage in terms of like life, happiness and stuff like that is so high. We did another episode on this and I'll try to pull this up in the research, but I seem to remember it's like the difference between making like.

200k extra a year on average. Um, and so if you correlated, it was career decisions that people are making, uh, uh, you know, instead of getting married, um, if what they are actually pursuing is happiness, uh, they are making the wrong decision. Like,

Simone Collins: I think we have to think about what marriage signals to, um, marriage signals, a level of [00:07:00] expectation.

That you are going to be in this for life. And when you choose to not get married, I think the default assumption is that at some point you're not going to be together. Even couples who marry and then get divorced a year later, they still started out thinking it was going to be forever. And those are the people who are going to commit to having kids.

Yeah.

Dan Hess: And I mean, the, the, the advantage of marriage like socially is just massive. I mean, in terms of, if you look at. And happiness, the happiness gap is huge. The wealth gap is huge. The life expectancy gap is enormous. So, and, and, you know, there's another thing you have this, it's funny. You have this element of like the far right and the far left that are like against marriage.

You have the men going on their own way, manosphere types, and then you've got the hardcore feminist types that are both against marriage, but you know, whereas the, the normies in the middle are like, you know, this is obviously good. Um, But you go ahead. I don't know. I was

Malcolm Collins: just going to say, it's 12 to 25 percent higher, uh, or 24 percent higher.

What is [00:08:00] higher? Uh, happiness ratings among individuals who are married versus ones who aren't. Um, and so I'm talking

Simone Collins: about that when I'm, when I'm on YouTube and I'm just organically letting things autoplay. The messages that I'm getting, at least from women, is having a husband is like having another child to take care of.

They don't provide support or they're going to leave you, you know, even if you want to be a trad wife and be supported by them, they're going to dump you and you're going to be on your own and your life's going to be ruined. Well, it all

Malcolm Collins: doesn't, you know, we do have. Fewer disincentives to leave a partner.

Like if your husband has married you because you're attractive, um, which is a huge problem because women often try to secure husbands for, you know, using that. Um, he doesn't really have that much of a reason to not leave you when you become older and that's intrinsically less attractive, which is like a natural thing.

process that women go through when we're attracted. This is how fertile and genetically healthy a woman looks in a historic context. Um, and, and historically the reason why men didn't do this [00:09:00] is because when a man left his wife in a historic conservative context, um, everyone in the community would know that he had left his wife and this would attach a huge negative social modifier to his, Status as a partner and his status was in the community.

Um, whereas we no longer have these externalities anymore. And then with women, you know, you've got alimony and all sorts of other perverse incentives around, uh, potentially leaving a husband and not having as much, uh, negative effects as you would have in a historical context, because you're still getting the cash flows, you know, why not leave the husband, if you still get the cash flows, no matter what you do, you know, um, Um, and so, uh, it is important to recognize why people are so critical of the, of, of, of the institution of marriage today, while still pointing out that like, objectively, if you can get into a healthy marriage, um, because keep in mind this, like 24 percent happier rating, uh, this is including the terrible marriages.

Oh yeah. [00:10:00] And good marriages are like. Off the charts, like double happiness ratings.

Dan Hess: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Like it's, it's, it's, it's the gap is just so incredible that, that it's, it's almost ridiculous that the people aren't like knocking down the doors eager for this. And you know, one interesting point is that divorced men who are supposedly the ones that got burned and wrecked the worst, you know, the, these are the, the, the reason that the, the MGTOW people are.

are, are so against marriage because, oh, it might end in divorce. And then like the guy's wrecked. No, those are those guys that got divorced are the ones that are lining up first to get remarried. So they're not upset that they were married. They're just upset that it ended and they want to get back into a marriage.

Because if you look at the remarriage rate, it's actually very high. But I, I have, I have another chart that I want to, uh, share next,

Simone Collins: which is, do you know, off the top of your head, if remarriage rates are higher among men versus women? Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Hess: They are higher among men than among women. That's that, that is what the data [00:11:00] shows.

But the, the, you know, one thing that, where, where women really, uh, have a huge benefit from marriage is if you look at household wealth and, and, and household income. It's just massively, massively higher, uh, for women that are in marriage there, there, there's just, um, there, there's just so many, uh, economic efficiencies, you know, in terms of, in terms of everything, but there, there is another point that I want to talk about.

With marriage, uh, there's actually kind of two types of marriage. And we, so there's like kind of the, the business type of marriage, which is the marriage that existed until like the 20th century, the corporate family. Yes. Yes. And well, but, but this is not a dead model. It's actually a pretty active model.

Yeah, totally. If you look, you know, your couple, even, I mean, I know you, I know you guys are quite in love with each other, but also [00:12:00]

Simone Collins: we also decided to get married when we knew we weren't in love. And that was

Dan Hess: crucial. You were also have a, you're a mission driven marriage. No, no,

Simone Collins: we are, we are a corporate marriage first and

Malcolm Collins: foremost, the concept of marrying for love or for, I mean, it's one of the crazy things is, uh, you know, we tried to match make people right.

And they'd be like, we're like, look, we've done like a deep dive on all of your personal history, everything like that, your class status, everything. You guys are an amazing couple. And then they look at the picture of the person and they're like, Oh, I'm not interested. And I'm like, uh, excuse me, this, this isn't a prostitute.

This is someone you're marrying. How arousing you find them is next to irrelevant. Um, and, and, uh, they'd been taught. They're like, no. Sex is very important. I've learned that from, uh, What? Well, where did you learn that from? You learn that from these stupid status hierarchies that you're competing in, but at an objective level, if you choose your partner, uh, and, and how arousing they are is a huge [00:13:00] part of why you are choosing them, you are going to be dramatically less happy.

And less productive and your kids are going to be less efficacious than you would have been had you just approached this like a sane person. And we're not like serving people, you know, individuals who are way out of their league or something. No, no, no,

Simone Collins: no.

Malcolm Collins: These are people who just like are not their Perfect aesthetic, you know, where the way you should really be approaching marriage is anyone who's like above like a bottom bar of like, I would have sex with that person should be easily in the category of marriage.

Simone Collins: Anyway, what, what, Daniel, is your, your second type of marriage aside from

Dan Hess: the second one is called companion and marriage. And so actually this is an interesting thing because most people don't realize this, but the original fertility collapse in America was. Like before, like long before the pill, like America and like all of Western Europe were actually below replacement level in the 1930s.

And you have to remember, by the way, [00:14:00] That replacement level fertility, uh, was higher than 2. 1 back then. It was probably like 2. 5 or something. With all the deaths and with higher like infant and child mortality and stuff like that. So like Europe and America were below replacement fertility, like in the 1930s, imagine that.

And what, what caused that was the, was the transition from this corporate or like the view of marriage. Of a household as like a business and as a purposeful, like mission driven thing to, to like companion of marriage, which, which is like, you know, so I actually, uh, you know, because there was, there's a ton of ways actually, you know, people think that, Oh, it's just modern birth control.

People have been able to control their fertility for like thousands of years. Oh yeah. You know, the, the reason that Rome collapsed almost certainly. And I had a, I have a Christmas day thread. That's awesome. I just popped that out there and it got like. Like a couple hundred thousand views. Like I just, I, I came home, I, I came downstairs, like to the presence just like a little bit late so that I could, I could pop out [00:15:00] that thread and then, you know, but it was this, because it was like talking, talking about the fall of Rome, which is like on every person's mind, right?

Every man, you know, every man's mind. Every man's mind. Every man's mind. No. Right. So, so, uh. Yeah, it was actually fertility collapse, you know, uh, in Rome, like back then, you know, we know because, because the, the leaders of Rome were trying really hard to encourage fertility, but people, you know, the Roman leaders were able to, they were trying to pass laws to encourage people to have more children, but people were able to control their fertility very easily.

You know, through withdrawal is, you know, people have known about withdrawal since probably like caveman times, probably, you know, so, so, and also they would, they would leave, leave the babies on hillside. So there are all sorts of things. Oh, there

Malcolm Collins: are loads of interventions. There's less reasons for cultural practices.

That you inherited from your ancestors to be followed because they can seem pretty pointless and they will endanger, uh, hedonistic pursuits and mindsets. Um, [00:16:00] and so, you know, cross culturally, whenever you have a time of prosperity, uh, you often abandon many of the old ways, which motivate things like kids have value and stuff like that as concepts.

Yeah, we do see this in Rome,

Dan Hess: as you pointed out. Okay, so something new, something different I want to point out next. Here's a new, a new visual. This is probably something that you guys have seen. Um, here we go. This visual was created by John Byrne Murdoch over in the UK. Oh, we did an episode on this. This went super viral.

Um, you know that, so here, here's an interesting fact. Like in the United States in the current year, uh, Interracial marriage is more common than interpolitical marriage. That's interesting, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And, and it's interesting when you consider that for every conservative man, like if you're out there dating and you're a conservative man, there, there are more than two conservative men [00:17:00] fighting over every conservative woman.

And there's more than two democratic women fighting over every democratic man.

Dan Hess: It's wild. Right. So, so, so I would say my recommendation for my daughters would be, you know, become a hardcore conservative. My, my recommendation for my sons would be to, you know, kind of hide if you're high, hide any conservatism and be, you know, show, show, show moderation.

So, so it, you know, just, just sheerly by the numbers, but I,

Simone Collins: that's actually really solid dating

Dan Hess: advice. Now, here's another piece of Well, I don't

Simone Collins: Malcolm, you, you coded as broadly progressive when I met

Malcolm Collins: you. I agree. So what, find the conservative genotypes in the progressive population?

Dan Hess: I guess. Okay, well here, I want to, I want to show like another chart.

And this is, um, here we go. Let's see. So here we go. What this is, what this shows is, um, How the, the time that [00:18:00] men, uh, in invest in household chores. So this is one way of bridging the, the kind of the, the cultural gap between men and women. Men and women have, have got to get along if you're gonna have children, obviously.

So. It turns out that the countries that are kind of more, have more hard, hard coded gender roles, which would be like Japan, South Korea, Italy, you know, the term machismo is an Italian word. I think, um, you know, these, these countries have lower fertility rates than countries where, where men are more, uh, willing to, to help domestically.

Um, And so this is something

Malcolm Collins: I hadn't seen this before, but this makes perfect sense. And it's something that a lot of conservative guys misunderstand. They're like this, get in the kitchen attitude. They think this leads to high fertility rates. And I'm like, it objectively does not. If anything, it is what is causing the South Korea's fertility collapse because no woman wants to get married under these

Dan Hess: [00:19:00] shirts.

Oh yeah. Yeah. In South Korea, there's like a term for it. I forget what it is, but it's like the, the three nose. It's like no marriage or nose. Oh geez. There's four now. I

Malcolm Collins: know it might be today. It's a no marriage, no sex, no kids. And I think that there's a fourth one,

Dan Hess: but I could be wrong anyway. Yeah. Yeah.

And these are women that are just, you know, straight on strike. Now, what is manlier to like refuse to do dishes and have no children or be there as a guy, like in the kitchen, helping out and then have a bunch of kids. You know, I,

Simone Collins: it's no sex child rearing, dating or marriage. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It's no sex. Yeah. No sex.

Child rearing. Yeah. Dating

Dan Hess: marriage. Well, and I have a personal, uh, uh, a personal anecdote related to that. Uh, so, um, my, after, after four kids, I received an ultimatum from my wife. Uh, oh. You know, no more kids we're done, you know, unless you start helping around the house. Ah, you know. Actually, there's a big gap between number four and number five and six.

I had to, you know, 'cause I thought, you know, I'm, you know, I'm [00:20:00] the breadwinner. My wife is taking care of the kids. Like, you know, I, I was like, I'm doing my part. I'm done. Mm-Hmm. , I, I, I've, I've checked off my box, you know, and I, I got that ultimatum and I had to learn, uh, learn to be a lot more domestic. I do a lot of, uh, I do a lot of laundry.

I do a, I do all the grocery shopping. I do all, all sorts of house cleaning and cooking. You know, I had, and then my, my wife was, uh, was willing to, to have two more. Now we're, we're, we're at six.

Simone Collins: So that's really interesting. So like the marginal investment needed from you in terms of supplementary care became higher.

after a certain number of kids.

Dan Hess: Yeah. So, well, there were, there's a, there's two aspects to it. One is like the raw amount of help, you know, and, and the fact that, you know, taking off the load so that, that certainly made it easier. But the other part is, you know, when there's like, you know, a, a, a cold, uh, gender dynamic when there's conflict in the gender domain, you know, in the, you [00:21:00] know, then that's gonna, And what, what the, what the guy can do to, to soften that and fix that is to, is to, is to start helping domestically, you know, or help it or help it in, in whatever ways they can.

And, you know, all, all large families know that, like, it's all hands on deck and it's not, uh, uh. You know, it's whatever works and what, you know, if somebody is, is good at some particular thing, you know, then they can do that, you know, regardless of traditional gender roles. So, so it's, I think that the, the best, uh, philosophy for what kind of household you have or what kind of dynamic should you, you have is like, whatever

Simone Collins: works.

Yeah, totally. And our household, I do all the inside. housekeeping. Malcolm does all the outside housekeeping. I get any, I do the, obviously all the pregnancies and then any infant and he gets all the

Malcolm Collins: older ones. Every kid other than the youngest is my responsibility. So as you

Simone Collins: can see, Malcolm's

Malcolm Collins: taking on the lion's share.

Oh, I don't think so. Uh, [00:22:00]

Dan Hess: And there is no answer. There's no right answer. It's just like what every couple is going to find it, like what they're comfortable with and what they're good at. And it may, it may break along traditional gender lines. It may break totally opposite, you know, there, so, but it.

Malcolm Collins: That's the, but the get in the kitchen mindset is sterilizing.

And it's something that so many guys think that they look so cool for doing. And it's like, no, you don't look cool.

Simone Collins: I appreciate too, that you pointed out the birth control argument. Cause it's both the get in the kitchen argument and the birth control argument that we hear so much from misguided people.

Talking about pronatalism and it just drives me so nuts because to your point. Yeah, people totally had ways of not having kids Um, and that has existed for a long time and no birth control was not the death now There are a lot of other cultural factors Um, but what would you else what other

Dan Hess: factors?

Something completely different. Yeah, which is which I want to talk about which is housing [00:23:00] So let me, let me pull up another. This is great because

Simone Collins: there's a huge correlation between Yimby people and pronatalists. We've noticed. We're not really sure why, because we haven't, we don't see a whole lot of

Malcolm Collins: practical, real, obvious solutions that you can implement that make things better in society, but the Yimbyism is, or.

Um, yeah, you know, people who don't know Yanby as it means yes, in my backyard, they're, they're trying to loosen restrictions on development to get less expensive houses and they want to cross correlate these things. And I don't think that they're highly cross correlated

Dan Hess: at all, but maybe

Simone Collins: Daniel, you can

Dan Hess: change your mind.

Okay. So I, I have, yeah, yeah, this is, uh, uh, an issue that I have and I have a strong disagreement, actually. I love that. That's our favorite. Okay. Here we go. This is a. You know, this, this, so what we're, what we're looking right now is Macau. Okay. This is Macau. It's fertility is like 0. 6 or something. It's like insanely low.

It's like one of these insanely low places, just like Seoul and Shanghai and [00:24:00] Beijing and Bangkok and places like this. Um, so this is my, I have a very sharp disagreement with like Brian Kaplan. I know he's got this new book coming out and he's a Yimby guy. He's like, get rid of all zoning. Yeah. Um, but I think you have to be.

Very careful because it matters dramatically, you know, what you build, uh, you know, because this, you know, if you build a, an apartment tower, uh, you know, that could be around for a hundred years and, and, um, you know, so one of my posts, uh, you know, the, the density is, is intensely correlated with fertility, like all the way up and down the spectrum.

So let me, let me share something, something else next. Um, so. So a kind of a contrast, um,

let me see, here we go. Now how does that look? [00:25:00]

Simone Collins: Now we're looking at a picture of a This is Atlanta. Suburban

Dan Hess: neighborhood. This is Atlanta, so the fertility, so nor, usually what we see in the world, and this is one of the most strong correlations in like all of demography. It's the denser you get, the lower the fertility is.

So, yeah. And I think Emil

Simone Collins: Kierkegaard has done some interesting blog posts on how cities for a very, very, very long time have been fertility shredders. How for ages

Dan Hess: and ages, shredders is the term. No, no, no.

Simone Collins: But for him, fertility,

Dan Hess: fertility shredders, he talks about the term on the internet. It's been floating around for like 15 years is IQ shredders because the cities draw in the smartest people.

Um, you know, for, for economic purposes, economic purposes, and then they don't have children. Yeah. But just think of high fertility groups. So, so America has to answer. We know the answer that I think one of the greatest inventions that America has had is like the suburbs. Cause the suburbs. Uh, can let people have space and a yard.

And

Malcolm Collins: [00:26:00] the Yemi people wouldn't like this

Dan Hess: is the answer. Oh, no. No, it's a wonderful thing. Like God bless urban sprawl. Like seriously, you have to like pro natalists have to understand this because the correlation is so incredibly strong. Like one reason, and I was in Japan, Uh, with my family in September. Um, and I got, we were, we were staying on the outskirts of Tokyo.

We rent, you know, Airbnb is a thing in Japan and also, and if you have a big family, like we do, uh, you have to rent a house, you know, there, you can't, you can't be staying in a hotel, you know, anyway, but, but we were, so we, we, I got to see, uh, Tokyo and, and Japan up close and, and. And the urban landscape is, is the reason that it's almost impossible for, because Japan is actually extremely pronatalist now, like they have been trying to be pronatalist for like 30 years.

And people in Japan are really positive on kids, but Japan has this problem, which is that, uh, you know, Tokyo is [00:27:00] like a sea of urban high rises. And that like structure just has. Is associated with super low fertility. So that that's one dynamic. And the other dynamic is that all the young people are just drawn to Tokyo.

And so they just keep coming to Tokyo where they go on to have like very small families. And meanwhile, uh, in the countryside of Japan, like there are all these suburban looking house in the beautiful Japanese countryside, like our. Available for like a song. Like they're, they're practically giving them away, but nobody wants to live there because everybody's drawn to these urban high rises.

And so it's like this, this elevator effect or this, this, everybody's just drawn into the city where they, where they keep having low fertility. The, the TFR in Tokyo is like 1. 0. And this is, you have to understand that this is now a very pronatal culture and still because of the urban architecture, they can't, uh, they can't break through.

So what I, what was so. Wonderful about the suburbs is that people are [00:28:00] still integrated with the urban economy. Uh, they can still be connected with the urban economy, but they're not in, uh, these urban high raises, high rises. And then, you know, the, the, the, the density. I'd

Malcolm Collins: promote a totally different answer.

I think exurbs and, and building up the exurbs. Oh, yeah. You want to

Simone Collins: take it further.

Malcolm Collins: Office economy.

Simone Collins: Okay. Yes. Well, so yeah, I think about what Daniel's talking about here. And also I have to, I'll find a link of, to the email Kierkegaard sub stack article where he talks about this and he does talk about like, what, what distance from cities is optimal?

Uh, because that's kind of the question, right? Like

Malcolm Collins: where does the human farmer, everyone needs to own their plot of land where they can grow food. Um, and it can commute to the city. Once a month if they need

Simone Collins: to. But yeah, what you're saying though is based on where we're going. Yeah. With the, the economy that in the end being even further

Dan Hess: away.

And here's another chart that I'm, that I, that we can put [00:29:00] on the screen if you'd like. This is, this is actually by the Institute for Family Studies, which is awesome because you can find, uh, you know, so much, such a wealth of data and all the fertility factors. But here, what we're looking at is, you know, Uh, the fertility, you know, for rural suburbs and city center.

So like, uh, the fertility is far higher for rural than the suburbs, which is far higher than the city center. Um, so like the, the less dense you can have, the better it is for fertility. And this seems, uh, This seems to be like such a robust relationship. This is like one of the iron laws of demography, uh, is the more urbanized the, the, the lower the fertility.

So, so that's a major factor. No. So argument in your

Simone Collins: favor, Malcolm.

Dan Hess: So, yeah, so, so the, the further out you can get, um, yeah, and, and work from home is also a wonderful factor for this reason. So if you, you know, and, and part of it is like the, the burden of childcare. Like, like one problem in Korea is that people have to, you know, [00:30:00] have a hundred activities for their kids and child, child care is so difficult.

Um, but if you just have a house with a yard, the kids can just be out in the yard, like, like bouncing around on the trampoline or, uh, playing with, uh, You know, playing in the backyard and you don't, you don't even have to supervise them much, you know, cause they can just play and, and you, they're with an earshot and, uh, it, it, it just incredibly lowers the, the burden.

And there's also like the psychological effect of like feeling crowded, like, like, you, you know, the mouse experiment, right? Um, Yeah, the

Malcolm Collins: mouse utopia experiments continue. Right.

Dan Hess: Yeah. Yeah. So the, the, the denser it is like density itself has like a really negative, you know, psychological impact. So, and I don't

Malcolm Collins: think that these dent centers economically make sense anymore.

They have become economically unrealistic. And a lot of people are like, what? No, there's so many efficiency gains. And it's like, yeah, but all the efficiency gains are offset by how progressive they become, which ends up creating these giant [00:31:00] bureaucracies, which ends up making them less efficient than.

less urban areas. So on paper, they look more efficient, but because they allow and encourage this ultra progressive mindset, they become

Dan Hess: less efficient. Yeah. So this is something I want to show here. Here's another, another thing. Here's just a quick thing related to density here. This is a map of South Korea by density.

And here, here people in South Korea. Concentrate in an insane people, you know, people talk about South Korea. Oh, they can't, they have no choice. It's a tiny country, you know, that's, it's, it's going to be dense. No, it's actually by choice because you know, so much of South Korea is like empty. It's

Malcolm Collins: like culture.

One of the weirdest things about South Korea is if you drive outside of the major cities, when you see the suburban towns, what you will see is a cluster of like. skyscrapers next to each other, and then nothing else. Um, it is the most bizarre [00:32:00] thing you have ever seen. Yeah, it's like three

Simone Collins: high rises and a mall

Dan Hess: complex.

Right, so this is a terrible, this is, you know, cause, Yeah. So this, I, I think, I think Brian Kaplan is making a big mistake with his book. I think it's, you know, and that's my, that's my, that's my position and I'm sticking with it now because yeah, because he's actually a pronatalist, but he, he's got, you know, he had that book.

I think I even have it on myself. Um, selfish reasons to have more kids. Yeah. Here it is right here. Here we go. Here we go. There it is.

Malcolm Collins: You're saying that these buildings will be here for, you know, a hundred years. No, they'll be rotting in a hundred years. Look up like Detroit blight porn. I'll add some to this.

You

Dan Hess: know, I, I know what, well, this is, this is an interesting thing because actually, if you look at Japan and I was just there, um, It's not, even though the TFR in Tokyo is the lowest in all of Japan, like Tokyo is full of people because people are like coming out from the countryside [00:33:00] and it's actually the country where the countryside where the fertility rate is higher, that is empty in Japan, because everybody keeps flocking to the city.

So, So actually it's the, it's the countryside where the fertility rate is higher that actually will give you the despair porn in, in Japan where we're of all the rotting, uh, houses, uh, which is, which is kind of ironic. So it's, it's not necessarily true that the places that have the lowest fertility rate are going to be the.

Places that empty out because people are keeping, keep, uh, being drawn to the city. So I think like, if I was actually, if I was king of Korea, if they still imagine they still have Kings and, and for some reason they make it me like that, not, not so likely, but if I was, I would like. Order everybody into the countryside.

And then I would like, uh, you know, make sure that nobody's in the buildings cause I, I love Korea and I don't want to hurt anybody, but I would then demolish all the, these, these skyscrapers, because I really believe that, that these, that these buildings, these, these tall. Uh, [00:34:00] you know, uh, dense skyscrapers are are a big cause of the ultra low fertility in in all of, you know, this is true in Shanghai.

This is true in Beijing. This is true in all these agencies. So, so I think we have to be incredibly careful because if you throw up a high rise that's You know, that could be drawing people in for a hundred years and that could be killing fertility in a country for a hundred years. So I don't think we have to worry about

Malcolm Collins: that.

Okay. Okay. I don't think any of these high rises are going to be fully operational in a hundred years.

Dan Hess: Okay. Anyway, I want to, I'll move on to some other factors here. Uh, let's see, let's see. Here's something that is completely different. Um, let me see.

Simone Collins: We've just been to so many cities at this point, where the buildings are 30 years old and crumbling.

So it's kind of scary. It's a

Malcolm Collins: critical mass. We're going to have a level of urban blight and nature recapture that people can't [00:35:00] imagine. And I think what we'll be dealing with in a hundred years is rats eating people's babies in Manhattan. You know, that's, that's going to be a major issue.

Dan Hess: Um, Okay, so this is a completely new fertility

Simone Collins: factor.

Okay, so we're looking at a graph, a share of young people aged 25 to 34 living with parents. Oh no.

Dan Hess: Okay, this is painful, but you look at these numbers and it's like insane. Oh my gosh, in

Simone Collins: Spain, it's 37. 2. I want to be

Malcolm Collins: clear here. This is inversely correlated with their economic success often. Yeah. Oh, wait.

Oh, no. Oh, no. I'm wrong here. No, it's correlated with their economic success. The more economically successful, sorry, I thought the colors were reverse.

Dan Hess: No, no, no. Okay. What we're looking at is the share of young people living with their parents. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So it's much lower in the economically successful regions and much higher in places like, I'd really be interested

Simone Collins: to see.

No, no, no. Malcolm, you've got it wrong. It's lower in regions that I

Dan Hess: can, let me, let me explain [00:36:00] this, this, this map what we're seeing a little bit. So this sheds a lot of light on why the fertility in the Catholic countries is so low. Um, so we can see Poland, we can Poland in Poland, 43%. Of young people age 25 to 34 live with their parents in Italy.

It's 47 percent in Spain. It's 37 percent as compared with, uh, like in Sweden, it's 4%. Yeah. So, so we can see like, uh, this incredibly dramatic difference across Europe, um, uh, of, uh, And, and we know, as you guys know, uh, the, the fertility rate in, in Spain and Italy and also Poland are incredibly low, even though they're Catholic countries.

And I would argue that this, you know, ironically, you know, having a, a close family culture can be bad in the, in, in the sense [00:37:00] that the parents coddle their, But

Malcolm Collins: I want to see, I don't know, I find very little interesting about this to be honest, because I, this only is useful to me if I'm seeing it in contrast with the high fertility countries of equivalent economic success, where this just looks like a graph of economic success of each country.

Like if I could contrast Greece or Italy was Turkey or, or something like that, that would be interesting. I don't want to highlight.

Simone Collins: One thing though, which is that another thing that correlates with a better relationship with parents or parent relationship satisfaction is I think higher depression. So I think a lot of parents think I need to give my kids this amazing childhood.

They need to be my best friend. I would love for them to continue to live with me. I'll support their lifestyle, but what you're, you're creating while they're, they will really genuinely like you more. They're also sadder. They're not getting married to your point [00:38:00] and they are not economically.

Dan Hess: I understand your point and it is a valid point, but, but there is, um, and it'll take me a minute to, I don't, I don't want to throw up this, this chart cause I'm going to have to look for it.

But you see the same relationship in the United States where in the States where people leave the nest earlier. They all have a higher fertility rate. So this is like the flyover country. Very interesting. Well, you can send it to us afterwards and I'll add it. And you can find it very easily on my Twitter.

Uh, if you just search for, you know, I think even better drive people

Malcolm Collins: to your

Dan Hess: Twitter. Yeah. If you search like launch, like at more births, you search launch because I talk about it as failure to launch. Um, but you know, so, so country like in the flyover States where in the States where people, you know, get out of the house earlier, you know, and are on their own earlier, they have a much higher fertility.

Malcolm Collins: It's been great to have you on. I love all these thoughts. I love all these graphs. I know our audience will. Uh, [00:39:00] you, you can join our discord server too, which apparently some fans started and now it's actually like bopping. Um, it was, it was pernicious conversation, which is cool. Um, everyone lists themselves with how many kids they have next to their names.

It's happened organically. I didn't ask for this. So you, you'd be high stat. You got six kids.

Simone Collins: Yeah. You're living the dream.

Dan Hess: Yeah, yeah, no, I, I have a, I have more, more factors that we can share and we can, we can talk more, but I guess we're reaching the end of the end of our time here. If

Malcolm Collins: you had a few more graphs you wanted to discuss quickly, pull up the ones that you're most interested in.

I just want

Dan Hess: to let's talk about a couple more facts. I have one more. I have another, uh, spicy take here. I'll try to. Um, let's see if I can pull this up.

Let's, let's gimme a,

so you may appreciate this [00:40:00] one. Um,

Simone Collins: all right, let's take a look at this. All right, so we're looking at the average.

Dan Hess: So this is a graph by ala. Oh,

Simone Collins: I, this looks familiar. Oh,

Dan Hess: interesting. So, uh, this is her own, uh, data and, and it's, it's great that she's so. You know, honest about it, but this is, you know, and I, there's other data that, that backs it, backs up this same, uh, trend where, uh, actually the more partners somebody has, the lower their fertility is, you know, so, and actually, uh, and I can,

Simone Collins: also just being poly, regardless of your partner count.

Seems to

Malcolm Collins: make, yeah, but I also see something here that you might not be noticing is the jump in number of kids in poly relationships between 45 and 45 and 50, um, which [00:41:00] implies that they're counting kids that are brought in from alternate And Partners in relationships. Um, they're considering their kids.

I know she said is your partner, but I bet that that's what's causing that. So you think that

Simone Collins: poly is even artificially inflated in this graph? Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: because I almost know a woman is having kids over 45.

Simone Collins: Oh, that's

Malcolm Collins: fair. And this is showing a big jump in the number of kids per poly relationship

Dan Hess: after the age of 40.

I want to, I'll stop sharing this and share one more chart here that's related to this. Um, so here we go.

Simone Collins: I mean, I think that the high correlatory factor here, we're talking about the depressing effect of multiple partners or more partners on fertility is what are you living for in life? Are you living for a broader purpose or your value set?

Or are you living for fun and pleasure? And if you're living for fun and pleasure, I could see partner count being higher and kids being lower because that's

Dan Hess: just how it works. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, That's right. But this is a trend that is not new. It's [00:42:00] actually, this is, this is a chart. You can look at the number of children.

This is for men. Uh, this is the number of children by the number by partner count since age 18. And the, you know, people who think, you know, That it's the players. It's the, like the Mac daddies who, who have, uh, tons of partners have the highest fertility. That's not true. It's actually, you know, the, the highest fertility are the people that had very few partners.

Um, and the, I think a big correlation for this, uh, is early marriage. So the earlier, uh, you know, if one of the most important factors for high fertility is, is early marriage. And if you want to understand, you know, the baby boom, you know, which, you know, 1946 to 1964 baby boom, like the OG baby boom, like what caused that?

Um, A big part of that was that people were just getting married [00:43:00] young and, and in high numbers. And so, so that, so getting married young, it would be correlated, of course, with a lower partner count. So, so that may be a big part of what we're seeing, but this, you know, people who think that they have to, you know, be a player with, with, with tons of partners in order to have a lot of kids have it.

I mean, if you're

Malcolm Collins: sleeping with lots of people and you're not having kids with them, that's just masturbation with another person's body. You know, um, I, I had Simone tweet recently, uh, non reproductive sex is a fetish. Yeah, it is. It is a fetish because it's, it's something that you find arousing that has nothing to do with reproduction.

And, and, uh, so that's, uh, that's because people always accuse us. They're like, Oh, you have a breeding fetish. And it's like, one, it's disgusting that your world perspective is the only thing that can motivate someone is what arouses them, which is a lot of like ultra leftist worldviews, like their entire identity is based around what arouses them.

Um, and so they assume that everyone else's must be because [00:44:00] they're sociopaths and that's the way sociopaths see the world, um, or at least narcissists do. But also, also what you're seeing here. Yeah. Oh, but

Simone Collins: three also, all of our children were created through IVFs. The breeding fetish kind of goes out

Dan Hess: the window.

Yeah, yeah. And that's something that I wish, uh, you know, conservatives would, would, would kind of, uh, let go of is this, this hang up about, uh, They

Malcolm Collins: mostly are. It's interesting. The conservatives that have a hang up about this, like they're not having kids. Like, you know, well, who did we meet at the prenatal conference?

Like Pat Buchanan, who had a big hang up of this and all of his kids have been victim of the Catholic priesthood. Um, and, and

Dan Hess: he went, Pat Buchanan was not there at the natal conference. I mean, who am I thinking of? We were talking about, no, Pat Fagan? I don't

Malcolm Collins: know. I, I feel like it was

Dan Hess: a Pat

Malcolm Collins: Catholic guy.

Yeah, but he got, we got in a big fight at the conference. Whoever it was, it was like a hardcore old Catholic guy and he had three kids and every single one of them had joined the priesthood [00:45:00]

Dan Hess: and he has no Pat Fagan. Cause he's got eight kids. He would, I remember because every, you know, they, they, they went around the room asking who has the most kids and like, he won, he like, Oh, it

Malcolm Collins: might've been, I guess I assumed was all of the kids that he was mentioning who joined the priesthood that maybe he had, So we might still have some that are having kids.

Okay.

Simone Collins: So you just tie the 10%. It's fine.

Dan Hess: It's not.

Malcolm Collins: Um, but it's, it's, it's, um, you know, uh, uh, these, these cultural groups, like, as I've mentioned, the, the cultural groups that are being most hit of the religious communities by fertility collapse are, uh, Catholic Christians and Orthodox Christians. Are the two highest hit of all Western cultural groups.

Uh, Jews aren't hit that bad. Protestants are hit a little, but not that bad. Uh, Muslims are hit actually worse than Protestants or Jews. Um, uh, but still do a little better than Catholic and Orthodox communities. Uh, but the communities that motivated high fertility through these strict restrictions around, uh, like [00:46:00] when life begins, condoms, et cetera.

Don't appear to be able to motivate fertility anymore in a modern ecosystem.

Dan Hess: Well, yeah, it depends. I mean, with Catholic fertility, it's hard to tell and it's hard to tell where things are going because you have a big contrast also between Catholics in Europe and Catholics in America. And I don't know if maybe Catholics in America, I

Malcolm Collins: need to be clear classics in Europe and in Latin America, which are both collapsing.

Dan Hess: Yeah, that is, that is true. That is true. Now, now somehow in, in, in the United States, it seems Catholics have a higher fertility. And I don't know if it may have to do with the fact that they're a minority in America. That could be it. Yeah. So being a minority, you know, we think that's a big factor. Yeah.

Yeah. I

Malcolm Collins: do think that's a big factor,

Dan Hess: which means the sense of being a renegade, like you're not going to feel like a renegade if you're a Catholic in Italy. I'm

Simone Collins: feeling like there's something to fight for because you are the other surrounded by a very different group. Yeah. In hostile

Malcolm Collins: land, [00:47:00] which is interesting because a lot of conservatives fight for the opposite of that.

They're like, we need like one country, one people. And it's like, that's the exact opposite of what's going to succeed. Yeah.

Simone Collins: It does not correlate with success fertility wise.

Dan Hess: Yeah, well, a lot of things are changing a lot of, so, you know, as you have said, you know, culture cultures that, uh, you know, that have been in this situation for a while can, can learn to, uh, to fortify themselves.

Like one example that's been exploding, um, of a high fertility subculture, uh, is homeschool families. This is what we talked about, but actually. And, and homeschool, uh, families are kind of a renegade culture that, that. Wait, have you, do you

Malcolm Collins: have statistics on

Dan Hess: homeschooling fertility rates? Let me see if I can pull that up.

It'll take a moment. But if you, if you don't mind, uh, waiting for a moment, we, and you can then cut out, cut out that time or something.

Simone Collins: That is really useful for us to have stats on like hard stats. So we

Malcolm Collins: appreciate it. You need to hop off in a

Simone Collins: second though. Yeah. Oh [00:48:00] God, we're running up on time. We're always running up on time.

This is our life now.

But I mean, we've been, we've been arguing this for the longest time, that When you finally remove people from sterilizing educational platforms, and of course, you talked about that when we in our previous conversation, where at public schools, people are literally being taught to see population growth and reproductive reproduction as a bad thing that hurts the environment.

Is it any wonder that going to homeschool suddenly helps you out?

Dan Hess: All right. Here, I'm going to share something related, some data related to homeschooling right now. Nice. All right. Cause I do have that. And you, this is, this is one thing that's really wonderful about my feed is that you can search at more births for whatever topic.

And there's a good chance that I will have written about it.

Simone Collins: Now you are the kind of the, the reference point in encyclopedia. If you need, well, I

Dan Hess: really want to, want to Uh, give 40.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, this is this is fascinating. Yeah. [00:49:00] 48 percent of homeschooling households have three or more children

Dan Hess: Yeah, this is a very important thing we It turns out like you need to you need to have a norm of three children as like the baseline In order to just have replacement fertility because in our world today now approximately one third Of young people will have zero children.

Simone Collins: It's also compelling stat because homeschooling is not easier when you have more kids per se.

Malcolm Collins: So presumably

Simone Collins: it's harder. So yeah, you have more kids to educate. You would think that home, that parents of more children would be more motivated to send them out, send them to public school, not have to pay for them.

Use food services. These are

Malcolm Collins: great stats that will definitely be repeating. And it has been so good to have you on and people should definitely check out your profile on

Simone Collins: Twitter. It's like the encyclopedia of demographic collection. I think that's the most

Dan Hess: important thing. It's not merely [00:50:00] collapse porn.

It's not, it's not, there's a lot of, there's a lot of levers and there's a lot of ways to, to increase fertility in every little, every little bit helps. Because, you know, getting from like one 3 to like one 5 or one 6, you know, makes such a dramatic difference for the future because it all compounds.

Totally agree. That why you were

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It's been great to have you

Simone Collins: on. Yeah. Thanks again for coming on. This was really fun. And,

Malcolm Collins: uh, thanks for your time. Have a spectacular

Dan Hess: day. Yeah. Thank you so much. You guys also. Thank you. Thank you. It's been wonderful. Ciao.

In this eye-opening episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins dissect the inner workings of Leverage, a now-infamous Silicon Valley cult that operated from 2011 to 2019. The couple delves into the group's origins, its novel business model, and the factors that led to its eventual downfall, highlighting the dangers of mysticism and the importance of grounding one's understanding of reality in objective truth.

Malcolm and Simone examine Leverage's initial goal of creating highly effective, cooperative individuals to solve global problems and generate revenue for the organization. They discuss how the group's embrace of mysticism, led by its charismatic leader Jeff Anders, ultimately undermined its mission and led to psychological damage among its members.

The conversation also touches on the vulnerability of certain communities, such as the Effective Altruism and Rationalist movements, to cult-like influence, the ethical implications of Leverage's power dynamics, and the potential pitfalls of well-intentioned individuals who prioritize their own subjective experiences over objective reality.

Throughout the discussion, Malcolm emphasizes the critical importance of basing one's understanding of reality on confirmable, rule-based knowledge rather than mystical experiences, arguing that even the most well-intentioned individuals can perpetrate evil if their understanding of the world is fundamentally flawed.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: You then have somebody who is supposed to constantly be watching over you, who is allowed to have sex with you, because that often happens, she mentions it in pieces, that people who, We're other people's direct subordinates. So you needed to meet with them. You needed to do these life counseling things where they would debug you and you could get fired if you didn't please them and you would lose a home and a source of income and have a big blink spot on your resume.

You think that didn't create an intrinsic pressure to have sex with them?

Simone Collins: Well, when you put it that way

Malcolm Collins: The, the thing that I find interesting about leverage about the only thing I find interesting is the novel business model novel business model for a cult, but, but the novel business model itself was sort of cheesing the Silicon Valley environment at that time period. Everybody has the intentionality of being a good person. How good you intend to be has no correlation with how good you are. How good you [00:01:00] are is dependent. On your understanding of

Simone Collins: reality.

Oh, and that's, you know, a really good example of this because we don't just have to s**t all over mysticism.

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: So Malcolm, since you were, oh, we lad you had always wanted to start a cult and run it and it's so sad that you have not realized that dream. But you still studied colts a lot.

And so I thought we could go over a recent colt that formed and fell apart and theoretically is reformed and is still alive and operational today. And I can get your analysis.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So this is going to be the leverage video. Now something I should note to our audience about us and leverage. Is we have a lot of connections to leverage, like I know at least a dozen people who were in this cult, in it or just involved

Simone Collins: or they knew

Malcolm Collins: someone involved or in it.

So yeah, so I, I, if you were in the [00:02:00] effective altruist community or the less wrong or rationalist community, In the Bay Area in the like well the period I was there, God, if I can remember when that was like early two thousands. I wanna say.

Simone Collins: We met in 2012. You were there from 2012 to 2015.

Malcolm Collins: No, I was there before we met Simone for years.

Okay, so

Simone Collins: you were there, you well then, no. You graduated college 2010. So theoretically you were there from 2010. Dates didn't really matter. 2015. And leverage during, we'll say leverage 1.0, which is leverage and paradigm. Failed cult that we're going to be talking about existed from late 2011, early 2012 through 2019.

So there was definitely. Overlap while you were in the Bay Area. Perfect

Malcolm Collins: overlap while I was in the Bay Area. I now a few things that you should note is a big fallout of this is a lot of people in this cult take umbrage. Was it being called a cult? Which is actually now, was it publicly being known as a cult?

Which is interesting. Some people

Simone Collins: openly call it a cult. Most seem to not.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, no, you, you, people who are in it actively. [00:03:00] I should note that normatively, like, of the time when I was in Silicon Valley, and everyone I know after my time in Silicon Valley, everyone who touched it called it a cult. While they were involved? Yeah, that was common. You're like, oh, I'm going to go hang out at the cult headquarter. Yeah, this, this, we're not a cult is some new, they like, well, at least the younger lower order members knew it was a cult, but like, Who joins a cult as a lower order member knowing that it's a cult?

Well, for the same reason that I'm interested in cults, in a way. Oh. They have this idea of well, maybe we can construct a true metaphysical understanding of reality and like a better way of ordering our brains and the way we relate to reality. And through that improve ourselves, like when I studied cult psychology, the thing that interested me about cult psychology is I was like, these people are able to significantly alter their self identities.

[00:04:00] Maybe that could be used for benefit. Like if our self identities are that malleable, then why not build a framework that an individual can just sort of pick up and use to rewrite who they are in the same way cults do that to people. And that is, that is what really interested me about, about the topic.

And I think that they saw the same thing and there was this sort of cool Underground stigma to talking about it that way, or thinking about it that way. Like, Oh yeah, I hang out with this cultist, you know, Eric's

Simone Collins: saying that you're, you're in a gang. Maybe it's a little cache. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So I, I will note that this modern framing of we're not a cult is just out of nowhere and likely due to the negative repercussions they've had of being likened to a cult instead of saying, well, we are a cult, but we're cool.

So that's

Simone Collins: so interesting. Cause I, I, I wasn't. One, you were there, you were in the Bay Area during early leverage days. So maybe at the end of leverage, when things started to fall apart after 2015, things were different. And they started getting a little more self conscious, [00:05:00] but yeah, it's, I had no idea.

That's really fascinating.

Malcolm Collins: So read to me, I I've been watching some leverage content recently, so I have some idea but read to me.

Simone Collins: So to really understand how things went off the rails, which is where I think Malcolm really wants to delve in here and where I think things get interesting. It's just best to turn to Zoe. K. Medium write up my experience with leverage. I'll give you some highlights just to give you a picture of how this went off the rails and why this was a cult from Zoe quote people, not everyone, but definitely a lot of us genuinely thought we were going to take over the U S government.

One of my supervisors would regularly talk about this as a daunting, but inevitable strategic reality. Obviously we'll do it, but, and succeed, but it seems hard. Another supervisor bemoaned with some performative unease that the necessity of theories about violence and military skill because they just couldn't see any other way we could get to world takeover level.

So here's an organization. A, a cult, it turns out, as you would say, [00:06:00] that is keen on taking over the world. That, that's its plan. Which actually isn't necessarily a red flag.

Malcolm Collins: So a lot of people here people in my organization, we're talking about eventually taking over the world. Look, the world needs taking over.

I've got a plan to take over the world. So you're, you're, you're flagging this as not bad. Not bad. No, again, this is one of those categories where like, fine, you want to take over the world? Take over the world. And you do need to, but, but I would say that the group was stupid. It like, like actively stupid.

The more you'll hear about this group, the more you'll be like, Oh, wow, there must have been a really large number of stupid people in like the early singularity EA and rationalist community. And it's like, there still are. Yeah. But like astoundingly stupid like the idea that you're like, okay, well, we're going to take over the world one day.

So let's study military tactics

Simone Collins: like that is not that was one person. And this was a minority. I'm just saying, but they were there were people who had their own opinions in there. And yes, it was, it was a thing, but yeah, so that, that is one place where it went [00:07:00] off the rails and that is a spicy detail, but I guess you're going to play Liz Lemon in this and be like, is it a deal breaker?

And this for you, not a deal breaker. Yeah. Domination. Also, I think it's, it's uniquely ballsy for a cult. Normally they're just like, we're all going to go to heaven or something, so good for them. Zoe also very conveniently has a numbered list, which is, I think, very EA rationalist community, of a taste of how out of control this got.

So I will read to you. To give you a picture of where the culture eventually ended up, here's a list of some of the things I experienced by the end of my time there. One, two to six hour long group debugging sessions in which we as a sub faction alignment group would attempt to articulate a demon which had infiltrated our psyches from one of the rival groups, its nature and effects, and get it out of our system using debugging tools.

Malcolm Collins: Deal breaker? Well, no, so this is actually interesting to talk about [00:08:00] debugging. So something you'll often have in groups that are attempting to. Manipulate you psychologically and it's important to know because like, okay, if you could actually rework your personality in your brain, which I believe you can, like, would you not want access to those tools and somebody else to make sure you didn't utilize them in a way that was deleterious or cause negative downstream effects?

Sure. I think the real core is who's setting the goals. So with something like debugging, it is very easy to brainwash someone. If you are in the room with one other person who is asking you about your past and who you are expected to often admit sins to, that's another thing that's really important.

Especially if you have to look at them in the eyes for long periods of time this can very easily brainwash people. All right. It was a technique that I looked at, I learned, I was like, could I, like, where should you notice this? So whenever you're in a group and this is something that's happening that [00:09:00] group has developed, often organically, a form of brainwashing.

Oh, so without

Simone Collins: intending it, this can all be Yeah. Sometimes it just happens

Malcolm Collins: accidentally. Like you have a group of people who are trying to like talk through things, right? Like trying to work on themselves, like do interpersonal work. And so they get in groups of two where they talk through things.

And then, Oh, accidentally they decided to do this in a hierarchical way because they wanted people who were more competent. To be sort of helping the people who are less competent. And now that hierarchy ends up self expanding because everyone who's doing it is supposed to recruit more people to do it.

And now, oh, you accidentally just evolved a cult. Cults do not need to be started malevolently. Now in In Jeff's case because I know a lot about Leverage, I do believe that he intentionally googled brainwashing techniques. Oh gosh. Just because they, they look like they were a collection of obvious brainwashing techniques.

But yeah, this is why you see this in Leverage right here, which is actually very similar to Theaton readings.

Simone Collins: [00:10:00] What's, yeah, debugging sessions sound like audits from Scientology.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Or Catholic

Simone Collins: confessions, I guess.

Malcolm Collins: I'd say they're quite a bit different from Catholic confessions. Actually, I can go into how they're different from Catholic confessions and why Catholic confessions are so uniquely healthy among cultural subgroups.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah, let's compare and contrast.

Malcolm Collins: When you go to a Catholic confession, you are Taking the things that you, like the sins you feel you committed. Okay. You are volunteering those to a external party who you don't know. So you cannot accidentally become influenced by them as an individual, which is very important.

You are unloading them more to like an amorphous entity. The church. No eye

Simone Collins: contact. You can't see them. You don't. Theoretically know who they are, but you probably do.

Malcolm Collins: It's pretty hard for an individual priest to use this system to manipulate an individual. So that's, that's one thing that's really important because of how [00:11:00] simplistic the interaction is.

I give you my sins. You tell me what I need to do to make them not important anymore. Now, psychologically, this has a lot of benefits doing this because now you're taking the things that are psychologically weighing you down and you are, Giving them to an external entity, but they are not saying those things don't matter, or you should learn to not care about those things, which is what modern psychology does, which I actually think is pretty psychologically unhealthy.

Those things do matter, and here is how you play pennants for them. And it's an easy physical act, like saying a prayer a number of times, or doing prayer beads, or something like that.

Simone Collins: It's

Malcolm Collins: a very eloquently and well designed psychologically healthy system. Now, psychologically unhealthy systems will often have you in these stories do full personal narratives, often with the goal of discovering quote unquote trauma or where thetans bind it to you.

That's what they do in psychology. You mean Scientology. Scientology, that's what they're [00:12:00] looking for, some sort of inciting event that they can then say, Ah, this is why you have these problems, and you need me to deal with this inciting event. They will usually choose something tied to your parents or birth culture as the inciting event, because it makes it easier to draw a distance between you and your birth culture.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: So if you, if you see a group that's doing that, what they are trying to do is drive a wedge between you and your, your support network while also recontextualizing yourself as needing that group being dependent on that group. All right, keep going with the list.

Simone Collins: Well, you haven't even commented on one of the most interesting elements of this, which I think is the group faction that she alludes to here.

Keep in mind that Zoe is talking about how the debugging sessions weren't just this type of audit that you're describing, Scientology style, but this is one in which the alignment group of which Zoe was a member was attempting to articulate a [00:13:00] demon That it infiltrated their psyches from one of their rival groups.

Do you think that these rival groups were intentionally created? They, I don't, I've not heard of them in any cult environment, but I have heard of them in that one psychotic study where they took a boy's camp and made them hate each other and things got so violent they had to stop the study. You recall this, right?

Malcolm Collins: Very interesting. So, I know. I think that the rival group thing naturally evolved. And it, it actually evolved because sort of an inefficiency and the way the group, the organization was created.

Side note here. I find it odd that they thought that they could create these. Ultra. Cooperative and efficient humans with their techniques. And yet the people acting within their organization that were demonstrably less.

Good at cooperating with each other and less efficient than people outside of their organization. Like to see around you, everything collapsing and not realizing that the [00:14:00] psychological techniques that you are implementing. Or. Markedly worse. Then even the terrible psychological techniques that pervade our society today.,

Malcolm Collins: so first we should talk about the demons. So they believed in two types of things at different parts of the, the story here.

One was demons and one was objects.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: They are both Basically, like, concepts that one person can create and plant in another person's mind. So it's like memes or ideas, or even moods. Yeah, there's, well, you and I would contextualize them as like a packaged meme, but they don't. They sort of see it more like a bomb or a security camera that somebody placed in their brain that is like watching them and will like give them like vibes of like who planted it there.

Or that demons I think also can enter from the other world and, and engage with them. So something that is very important in understanding leverage is you wanted to create an integrated philosophy of everything, right? [00:15:00] And Jeff Anders

Simone Collins: did, yes.

Malcolm Collins: Jeff Anders did. And The way that he decided to do that was what I would actually call sort of bog standard mysticism.

And so what is he combining? Which is bog standard mysticism. If people know what I mean, bog standard mysticism is the belief that there's some sort of supernatural like extra Real reality that's beyond our fabric of reality and that is also God, that extra, that, that medium, that ultra reality is actually God, and that, that reality can be engaged with through certain types of corrupted mental states, what those states are depends on which group of mystics you're with and He came up with honestly pretty bog standard mystical beliefs, like demons exist and stuff like that.

The core thing that makes Leverage different from other groups in the way that it formed and the way that it was structured is that it paid its members to be members. So Leverage would pay you to live in a Leverage house and you had to commit to live in a Leverage house for a year. And So who's going to do that?

[00:16:00] First of all, you know, it's, it's, it's people who are already, you know, on the outskirts society. Often, you know, they don't have a family where they're living. They don't have a you know, a support.

Simone Collins: Common themes seem to be that these are recent grads who may have had some short term jobs, like Zoe, for example, had done some acting.

She'd done some admin work and that was kind of it. So she didn't have a big career already started. No one who could do something easily. That's

Malcolm Collins: what you think. No, she was, I can tell from the profile. She was a quote unquote actor who was paid to give acting classes once a week. No, she was being paid around.

Keep in mind, these were all like big polyamorous houses. She was being kept for, to be used for sex.

Simone Collins: Well, I have to say legally, this is all very alleged. And you're

Malcolm Collins: No, no, I'm telling you, like I under

Simone Collins: I'm saying from a legal standpoint, Malcolm. Okay, yes. This is alleged and we are not slandering

Malcolm Collins: Are like competent individuals, like many people in these groups, they would get.

So it was hard to get into leverage. Because you know, [00:17:00] it, it was a closed resource. It was like a cult that paid you to be a member, gave you housing and gave you access to well connected wealthy individuals.

Simone Collins: Okay. Well, and people, I think genuinely thought they were saving the world. They didn't think that they were being used for things.

Malcolm Collins: It, it was a cult playing on the easiest difficulty conceivable. So it did a lot of inefficient things that a normal cult that couldn't afford to pay its members wouldn't have done. Now you're asking, how did a cult get a bunch of money to pay its members to participate because they sold itself to wealthy people as a group that was going to do, like, systemic functional research on this mystical realm.

Like, mystical perennialism is a thing. Fairly common philosophy, even what is mystical?

Simone Collins: Wait, define mystical perennialism. This is new to me.

Malcolm Collins: Radialism means they believe there is some truth in every religious tradition. Mysticalism is [00:18:00] that your fabric of reality thing I mentioned before. And so they basically told these wealthy people, we are going to do systemic research.

this other side of reality on like you know, mystical truths. That is not like a terrible idea if you're actually going to do like evidence based research, but we're doing evidence based research. The real con, and this is interesting, this caused the whole thing for the structure to be inverted, if you are contrasting it with a traditional cult.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: A traditional cult recruits people and takes their money.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The source of income,

Simone Collins: Comes from the recruits, the converts.

Malcolm Collins: Right? Yeah. They used converts who they were paying to be converts and paying to house to sell a product up to wealthy people. Part of this product was you know the research that [00:19:00] they were doing.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But part of this product was also the humans that were being brainwashed.

Simone Collins: Yes, and we should clarify that. The mission of the, well, obviously the mission of the cult was to save the world, but the general project that they established at least for leverage 1. 0 leverage 2. 0, who knows was to create extremely highly effective people who are also cooperative.

So apparently it's a misnomer that they're trying to learn how to sort of mint Elon Musk's because Elon Musk is not very cooperative. But they were trying to basically. Meant very highly effective people. And there was this premise, at least stated that it would be possible to take the right type of person.

And they apparently vetted people for this before offering them these paid positions and housing who could, through all of this coaching, through this, these, these debugging sessions, et cetera, become these people [00:20:00] just. To provide context. So the

Malcolm Collins: goal, I, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to, so the, the, basically you can also give it as a cult startup.

It was pitching to these rich people, yes, we're going to do this mystical research. And that was what most of the rich people who funded it were actually interested in was the mystical research.

But they also were pitching it sort of like a startup, like, well, we're going to figure out how to make these ultra effective people who then send money back to the central organization. Like that was the idea when they say cooperative, they mean subservient, like that they're going to continue to support this organization and its mission that turned them into these uber mitches.

What their goal was, was to create spiritual uber mitches that could out compete within competitive capitalist economies. Other individuals. And that was like their game plan. Well, of course they failed to do that because they, they, they, we can talk about why they failed, which I think it's actually a very specific reason why they failed.

And they have changed their business plan with leverage too. They've actually moved to a crypto product. And so what they do is this crypto [00:21:00] product. Is they have moved from because most of the wealthy people that they otherwise could raise money from like they could with leverage one Now know that one they are a cult to jeff is just an incompetent buffoon like i'm, sorry, like everything i've heard about him his theories.

They are bog standard mystic cult they are not sophisticated ideas They are not even sophisticated. It's like a guy picked up a book on brainwashing and then read a few. He is not a bright guy. He's really

Simone Collins: charismatic enough to get all of these people to sign on, to get all of these people to hold him with a very high level of reference and to raise a Enough money to do multiple times

Malcolm Collins: hard if I wanted to start a cult by brainwashing people in the way He started this cult.

I could have done that ages ago

Simone Collins: Why didn't you

Malcolm Collins: because my goal was always to free people?

Simone Collins: Hmm. It was all right. Yeah your whole Yeah, the thesis was can you use cult methods on yourself to become a better person not? [00:22:00] Coerce other people, right?

Malcolm Collins: Not coerce other people to be your servant.

Simone Collins: You're ruining our evil reputation.

Stop.

Malcolm Collins: I know I will actually, well, people could argue like, remember, like a lot of people know, you know, I flipped with over a hundred people. I got really, really good at getting people to sleep with me. One of the things I implemented in that process were some of the brainwashing techniques. Oh, okay. Okay, there you go.

Simone Collins: Bringing it back. Thanks, Malcolm. Bringing it back home. Bringing it back. Well, it's not that I

Malcolm Collins: never utilized these techniques in my life. Yeah. I just had no interest in creating a self replicating memetic set. Yeah. I may have to some extent, you know like when I was younger and horny, all that, I was not the most ethical person in the world.

Like I could definitely be a better person. You're an addict to

Simone Collins: anything you will do on ethical stuff. And I think most young horny men could be argued. To be yeah, so

Malcolm Collins: I look at these these sort of sessions that he's talking about and I did this With girl very easy like like and then and then you realize oh like and this happened to me [00:23:00] When you can get sex whenever you want with anyone you want it gets really boring.

And you think that's how he turned

Simone Collins: to world domination?

Malcolm Collins: No, I don't think he, I, I, I think that we'll talk about what, what he screwed up. It wasn't the world domination that screwed up. It wasn't even the goals that screwed up. It was the touching mysticism that ruined everything.

Simone Collins: Back to the themes.

Malcolm Collins: Well, if you look at the things he did, when other people would give an idea, he would always shoot it down and then maybe like give it again, repackage to the next week or something. Only ideas that came from Jeff were allowed to be thought of as serious ideas was in this group. Yes. According to Zoe, but that's what I've heard as well.

Yes. So if this is true if, you know, Jeff just shoots down ideas all the time and everything like that, that's very easy to do when you adopt a mystical framework. It is one of the core problems with mystical frameworks. If your access to truth is supernatural, i. e. it is achieved through states that only you can achieve, well, this causes a [00:24:00] problem.

Either you can't communicate with anyone else's source to truth, So there's no cross interpretability, or one individual has access to a source of truth above all other individual source of truth. So if Jeff sort of disagrees with your belief about like the way psychology works, or the way whatever works, because he has mystical fortification for these beliefs, he's able to just lean on that.

And so, there can never be any real study or advancement in a meaningful context. That could be the way that you see this as a secular person. And like, people need to understand my hatred of mysticism is both theological and secular. Clearly, that's why mysticism is so bad. But from a theological standpoint, I could say, well, okay, so suppose they had good means and they were trying to tap into this mystical realm.

Why did it read with like, everyone I know who was involved in this was like, this really messed me up. Like, [00:25:00] this is not just a her thing. Like, Everyone I've heard of who's involved with it. It's like, yeah, this was really,

Simone Collins: even, even the, those who seem to be defending it. Report having gone through a lot of healing after it and are no contact with most of the people who were involved.

So yeah, kind of damning.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah so no, I don't think, I, I, I, and you don't just get this here. I actually argue that Stanford has a weird evolved cult in it called Touchy Feely. It's a, yeah, it's a class

Simone Collins: that basically is a cult. You are.

Malcolm Collins: I started it and I was like, wait, you're trying to brainwash me. You started taking class.

Simone Collins: You didn't start the class.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I started taking the class. And I just was like, these are all brainwash techniques from the eighties that you're using right now. And if you talk to people who completed it, they'll be like, it's the best thing ever. It transformed me for life. It blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, yeah, because there was a bunch of brainwash techniques from the eighties that like, we are taught now in psychology.

Make sure you never do this. It can cause dependency. And keep in mind,

Simone Collins: these are, they were uniquely long classes. They typically took place at the end of the day. They would, people would come [00:26:00] home crying, that kind of thing. This is not a normal class. No, no,

Malcolm Collins: no, no. They, they would intentionally sleep deprive you.

They were at the end of the day, they were in an incredibly emotionally charged situation where like you really couldn't win. It was, it was stupidly, obviously just brainwashing. And I do not know. I wanted to bring this up, but I knew I couldn't bring this up because so many people have gone through the brainwashing session that if I was like, you know, that's a brainwashing seminar.

You sent me to, they'd be like, but all of our top staff at Stanford business school has gone through the brainwashing thing and they love it. They say it's actually become the focus of their entire lives. And I'm like, okay, well. Listen but touchy feely isn't as bad. It's just brainwashing to indebt you for your entire life to a corporation.

The Stanford business school, but leverage is bad because I actually don't think that the type done within Stanford causes that much damage. The type done within leverage is incredibly damaging. Because it's mystical brainwashing [00:27:00] that levels one person's personal and subjective experience of reality above other people's, which always leads to deleterious outcomes and prevents any real research from taking place.

That's why all they have are their quote unquote notes and they've never gotten better at anything. And it's such a shame too,

Simone Collins: because that whole apartment building they were living in could have been this incredible. Psychological research study.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, but what's really cool. You can still do it, like find all their notes and then do a study on it.

Cause it's interesting. But if you look at, um, the theological perspective on the mystic, it's like if their hypothesis was true and you could study the mystical realm and use it to improve people. People like these would have ended up all successful, or at least some success cases, instead of all severely psychologically damaged.

So if I'm outside of my Some have gone on to be

Simone Collins: successful, I think.

Malcolm Collins: Not wildly as far as I've heard. I've heard of people like getting out. I don't know anyone who's successful and thinks positively of it.

Simone Collins: You're going to take this part that I'm about to say [00:28:00] out, right?

Malcolm Collins: That doesn't matter. I said, anyone who's successful has a non positive perception.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay. I thought you were saying anyone who came out wasn't successful. That's what I heard.

Malcolm Collins: No, no. Okay. Anyone who came out, I should clarify the successful people who came out of it typically have a negative perception of it.

If it was able to work. So, so then the question is, and they would say it did psychological harm to them. So then the question is, okay, if they're right in these mystical beliefs, because they actually are contacting some sort of, then what they have demonstrated is you should never attempt to do this because you will release real demons.

Simone Collins: Well, actually funny aside, and I feel like this must be some kind of Bay area contagion. I feel like my father participated in things almost exactly like this in the seventies and eighties in the Bay Area, like in the same, like five mile vicinity of leverage. Because I remember my dad, one, like he went to these like psychic worship workshops.

And he was in a, he went through Est which is a little cult like as [00:29:00] well. And I remember him telling me at one point when I was a kid, when I was trying to ask him about all this psychic stuff, he's like, yeah, man, like we were messing with some pretty dangerous things. You have to keep in mind that when you open your mind to these things, like they can get in.

And I just took that away to like, I, I contextualize that as a kid quite helpfully is this is what happens when you allow yourself to believe something and fear something that then it actually you get really afraid of it, but I think he actually got, I think these people thought bringing up demons and I think having leverage.

Why is this always in the Bay Area?

Malcolm Collins: Most long lived philosophical traditions culturally evolve prohibitions against this form of mysticism. Now, you can say that there is a theological truth for them or you can say they did this for secular reasons. But it's just, oh, by the way, people might be like, not Jews.

I'm like, actually, yes, Jews. If you look at the Kabbalah. Sorry, hold on, what's the word I'm looking for? If you look at the word Baal Shem you get the Baal Shem Tov, the guy who originally started the, the [00:30:00] recent Hasidic sect, Baal Shems used to be thought of as mostly con artists within Jewish communities, and were generally looked down upon.

That's why he's called, like, the, the good Baal Shem. Like the, the, so, so when Kabbalah originally started, it was fighting against an upstream fight not Kabbalah, but when the Kabbalistically, the, the extremely Kabbalistically influenced sects of Judaism began to gain prevalence they were fighting against evolved mechanisms that said you should think of these sorts of things as huckstery.

They just overcame it. But generally, every group in, in history is like, yes, if you touch the realms of chaos, your mind gets corrupted. Don't do it. And that's a good theological framing for a secular truth, which is when you engage with these sorts of mystical concepts, it always leads to negative externality.

It just doesn't

Simone Collins: go well. Yeah, just

Malcolm Collins: don't do it. And people will say, when I'll talk to religious people about this, they'll be like, no, it causes negative externality. Fanaticism. It causes a fervent belief. It causes, you know, visions, which [00:31:00] reaffirm a person's face. And it's like, yeah, but all those negative things are happening in leverage too.

Like all of the good stuff you're getting is getting from the non mystical side of things. The mystical, like those things, the fanaticism, which is created by whether or not it's this realm of evil, or it's this realm of mental corruption, or it's this just completely, you're allowing some people to say that their subjective experiences of reality trump other people's subjective experiences of reality and everyone should be engaged in their own.

It's always going to lead to these negative externalities, which is why I'm so anti mystic. But something that's interesting here is the framing of this for a lot of people. I think the, the people who are at the high levels of this. What they see as the collapse reason is that they accidentally unleashed a bunch of demons.

Simone Collins: Wait, people actually believe that? They don't just think that people devolved into weird social What's the word when you have a schizophrenic break? Psychosis?

Malcolm Collins: No, no, outsiders who are secularists believe psychosis. And, [00:32:00] and if you look at what they did, it was basically like a house. Insiders who left

Simone Collins: don't think it was psychosis?

Malcolm Collins: I'll explain.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: So basically everyone involved was like a house where almost everyone else, they were the strict hierarchy and within the hierarchy, people were just constantly watching you, taking notes on you as if you were their test subject. So they had this sense of superiority over everyone else.

Well, in many cases,

Simone Collins: their financial compensation and role in the house was contingent on them working on you. So yes, they kind of had to do it.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, yes, but but keep in mind this cycle if you know that like everyone you're interacting with is like writing about you at the end of the day, like, oh, here's this and trying to understand you and your motivations if you can't see how that would be psychologically harmful in mass, like you just don't understand human psychology, like, of course, that's going to lead to negative externalities.

Of course, it's going to lead to everyone attempting to you. sort of overanalyze everything they're doing in the movement, having this sort of panicky self reflection and an existential dread, [00:33:00] and it will cause the creation of little cabals that are going to fight against each other because Wow, hence

Simone Collins: these, these groups,

Malcolm Collins: yeah.

Because you need teammates to sort of protect you and everything like that. In this incredibly hostile environment where everyone is constantly psychoanalyzing you, but is untrained to do so. Well, so then I can give

Simone Collins: you, I can give you a quote from a taste of how out of control this got, which is number two, which is related to this.

Just to give an example to people from a firsthand account, quote, people in my group commenting on a rival group having done magic that weekend and clearly having. Powered up and saying we needed to now go debug the effects of being around that powered up group, which they said was attacking them or otherwise affecting their ability to trust their own perceptions.

Number three related as well. Accusations of being thrown around. Oh, sorry. Accusations being thrown around about people leaving objects similar to demons and other people and people trying to sort out where the bad object originated. [00:34:00] if it had been left intentionally or malevolently or by act slash subconsciously.

Malcolm Collins: So as, as a secularist, when you put on a secular hat and you're approaching any of this, it's very obvious that this would lead to psychological breaks. Yeah. Like this is obviously a psychologically unhealthy environment. However, these people are not secularists. When you have entered this community, you have accepted that there is some other Like supernatural realm that you are studying.

Yeah, well, she gave the

Simone Collins: definition of objects. Would that be helpful?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, go for it.

Simone Collins: Objects were something that became a topic of study at leverage, about which Jeff gave presentations. Aside from Simone, do you think Jeff intentionally created the concept of objects? Or this was just something that he No, it's

Malcolm Collins: a stupid, obvious concept.

Okay. Jeff is just not that bright. I'm sorry, but anyway, continue.

Simone Collins: They were considered to be sort of like autonomous psychological bits that you could accidentally or purposefully leave in another person's mind to affect or control [00:35:00] them. If intentional, it might cause them to subtly view you a different way, make more real or less real certain concepts, change their experience of the passage of time, say, or make them more susceptible to mind reading.

Attempts in the future, et cetera.

Malcolm Collins: This is just meant to stoke paranoia. Like, I don't think that he, he may have been trying to snook paranoia, but it's also just not a particularly novel or complicated concept he he's describing like a self replicating memetic package, like a, a meme bomb basically, but that's not the way he sees it

Simone Collins: as a mystical.

To your point of things going off the rails because they went mystical. I think it's also helpful to give these additional examples. She presented. As an example, just how mystical they got. Cause some of those could probably be construed as, Oh, they're doing this weird psychological research. They're just trying to use weird words to explain a phenomenon that they're trying to coin as psychological researchers and they'll publish it.

But here she says. [00:36:00] And number four, people doing seances seriously. I was under the impression the purpose was to call on demonic energies and use their power to affect the practitioner's social standing. So seances, she also has number five, former rationalists clearing their homes of that energy using crystals.

And this is where I think your point about mysticism is really strong, Malcolm extra strong because rationalists were, it was like, it was like a different Bay Area cult, but the standard of that religion. Was just how much based on scientific research, your life was being lived to a great extent, you know, just how completely reasoned and non mystical you were and the fact that someone could go from being a rationalist to using crystals to clear their homes of bad energy.

That's

Malcolm Collins: wild. Well, I mean, but that can happen. When you engage with the mystical, you allow for forms of truth to come from [00:37:00] things other than objective evidence and objective reality. And so you're like, wait, really? People who were in this, even afterwards, still believe that they were just attacked by demons?

Like, of course they do. As soon as you open yourself to these sorts of explanations, and you're trying to explain why these bad things happened to you when you were engaging in these environments, you're going to come up with mystical explanations for it.

Simone Collins: And

Malcolm Collins: that's what they did. They thought they were attacked by demons that they had accidentally summoned.

Oh,

Simone Collins: yeah. And what's so notable too is that, This was so damaging to the members of the group. So to provide her number six, seven, and eight on this list, which give, I think, good illustrations of how people came away damaged to your earlier point and prove your earlier point. Number six, much talk and theorizing on the subject of intention reading.

Which was something like mind reading. Jeff gave multiple presentations on this, which of course, like you said, would have people acting [00:38:00] weird and feeling paranoid seven, I personally went through many months of near constant terror at being mentally invaded. My only source of help for this became the leaders of my own subgroup who unfortunately were also completely caught up in the mania and had their own goals and desires for me.

That were mostly definitely not in my interest. Eight, I personally prayed for hours, most nights for months to rid myself of specific demons. I felt like picked up from other members of leverage. If this sounds insane, it's because it was, I was completely. Oh, It was a crazy experience unlike any I've ever had.

And there are many more weird anecdotes where that came from. Again, it's a really good read and you should read it the whole thing. But yeah, but I think, yeah, this, this hammers home your entire point, that it was the mysticism that brought them off. This is

Malcolm Collins: why you don't engage with mysticism. You could have done something like this.

That could have been quite interesting without the [00:39:00] mysticism.

Simone Collins: Well, and to that point, I'd love for you to open up. A one of their very, very early plans. It's a, it's a flowchart.

Malcolm Collins: Open it up here

Simone Collins: because I think this can show how such a well intentioned and Widespanning projects that I'm sure this was pitched to some of the people who donated initial funds to leverage 1.

0 got really excited about. And the plan Malcolm, you'll probably include some of this on the screen. The, the end, the goal was global wellbeing. So yeah, they, they probably really did intend to take over the government cause you kind of can't do all of the things that they wanted to. Which included

they were going to really solve everything. Education, ensure universal access to excellent educational resources. They were also going to cure disease and ensure universal access to recreational and artistic opportunities. They were going to provide basically universal basic [00:40:00] income and access to social goods.

And they were going to. Eliminate all harmful governments somehow which is probably where their whole, we have to take over the government thing came over and reduce risk of global catastrophic events, which also would probably need to involve governmental control while also minimizing harmful norms.

That is to say, quote, have everyone choose to remove all harmful social rules that can be removed, unquote, which is, you know, Also very coercive and creepy, per our standards but still, like, these people basically just wanted to fix the world and make heaven on earth, right? Like, that was it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, I, it's very clear.

Their, their plan is eventually, I mean, they were trying to create a memetic structure, very similar to, to what I'm trying to do, in a way that could eventually become the dominant memetic structure on earth. When instead, what I'm trying to do is create a memetic structure that can become a a reach a stable optimum with other rheumatic structures that allow people different from them to exist.

Which is, [00:41:00] which is quite different from their goal in that respect. So it's not true world domination. And the, just the core difference is, is they engage with mysticism. They engage with saying we're going to do all this, but we don't need to have the secular backing. Like whenever I give a theological position, I always say, and here's the secular reason you would take the same position.

They didn't need to do that.

Simone Collins: They didn't. And when you look at this flow chart, there's nothing, at least I haven't looked at every single box on it, but there's nothing to me that reads mysticism in the beginning. In fact, it, what it seems to more or less be is we're going to make the world perfect by our standards at least.

And we're going to do so by creating incredibly effective people and have those people create nonprofits. And businesses. That get more resources and get more control until eventually we run absolutely everything and have infinite resources and can solve all the problems. That was it. [00:42:00] And of course they started with trying to create the world's most effective people.

Cause they felt like that was the most limited resource. You couldn't start an amazing nonprofit. You couldn't start an amazing business and solve market problems and find arbitrage opportunities if you didn't have these high agency cooperative people. And so. And it seems to, I

Malcolm Collins: disagree with you on that's why they started with that.

Simone Collins: Really? Okay. Why do you think They sold them as a

Malcolm Collins: revenue source. That was the core reason they wanted to create effective people.

Simone Collins: Well, that's part of it. Yeah. Is that they would generate the nonprofits and the companies that created revenue, but those were also supposed to be the nonprofits and the companies that did the research that cured disease and created amazing education.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, it was a plan for creating power based on the hypothesis that if they expose people to the mystical realm, it improves them instead of destroys them. And what we saw is the hypothesis, the opposite turned out to be true. When you, it engages mystical realm for both secular and theological reasons, it destroys your soul.

Whatever you want to say, or your brain or your ability [00:43:00] to think rationally. And so now we need to look at what they've become with leverage 2.

Simone Collins: 0.

Malcolm Collins: So leverage 2. 0, because now most competent, rich people who are in any way connected to Silicon Valley ecosystem, you know, they know that this doesn't work at the very least.

They know that whatever Jeff did last time, summoned a bunch of demons, you know, even if they believe that everything else happened and they're just not going to work with him again.

So now he needs to find another way to get money to fund this. Now, he is not quite smart enough to start a real cult to start a real cult.

He'd have to start a group that, you know, funded from its members, like the people who were going through it were both competent and believed in enough to fund it. Which is, which is a hard thing to do. You know, one way you could do that is exhaust your members. Well, it's like them to give everything to you when they joined the cult.

But then you need to constantly recruit new members to keep things basically running and that's stupid Like if you're going to create a really effective cult, you need the people to be able to earn money while still paying it. Now what he's doing now is a crypto iteration where he is trying [00:44:00] to build the cult into the product, you know, still pay people to be a member.

And then fundraise through making the product exclusive and cool enough that people want to engage with it, you know, through this belief that they're going to have a lot of access and everything like that in the future, which is doable when you're dealing with. You know, bog standard mystics. I think when people begin to see mysticism, like leverage and stuff like that, coming from an external force, they can begin to see why I have so much, ah, when I see it was in their own world, right?

Like they see me walk up and encounter mysticism and, and whoa. And they don't get why I'm doing that because they're like, but this has been here for a couple hundred years at this point, you know This has always been part of this tradition. They're like, no, it just came a couple hundred years ago. What are you doing?

That's the dangerous bomb you're wielding. And with leverage, it's the same, right? Like or not with leverage, it's the same. With leverage, it's a good external way to [00:45:00] see how mysticism can destroy otherwise well intentioned individuals. The problem is that if you move, remove mysticism from what they were doing, then what he was doing was just psychology and education, which is sort of like what we're doing, right?

If you look at the Collins Institute, it's like, how can we at scale create more effective people, but we are doing it with a completely different framework than him, which is saying, but what if we can do it in a pluralistic way where they're able to maintain their birth culture? So, so instead of doing what he did, where like you go into his educational system, you go into his psychological framing and you need to adopt Everything he subjectively believes about reality, you need to presume is true.

Simone Collins: Yeah, everything he did seemed to be very unifying and unified.

Malcolm Collins: Whereas, and this is the problem with mysticism, you know, it leads in that direction, right? Like, well, if this is ultimate truth, then everyone has to believe it. Whereas we take the exact opposite of that. We're like, well, [00:46:00] truth emerges from different ideas competing in an ecosystem.

And so that, that, that causes us to say, well, we'll create an education system. We'll eventually take over the world with the Collins Institute. It's called the Institute at that point. You've got leverage versus the Institute. But we will be able to be efficacious in the way that we lay this out.

You know, I think we make our fans lives better because we basically lay everything out for them. Like when he would do something like do all the things and that could potentially brainwash whatever I suggest, like brainwashing techniques. I'm like, this is a brainwashing technique. Here's how you might be able to use it to benefit yourself, but be careful.

But yeah, to, to the mystical thing, I think through leverage, somebody can see why They may have blind spots in things that are just like culturally and ancestrally close to them and not understand why we view them with such antagonism and fear and, and genuine fear. Like, like I, I view mystical engagement as really dangerous.

And I don't think that [00:47:00] everyone who engages with it is like permanently damaged. But I think that when you, when you like at the community began to engage with it like this and certain individuals can like Jeff can then utilize this to brainhack people pretty quickly. And then there was a pushback, which was like, this isn't a cult.

It's a, here's all the cult things we do.

Simone Collins: Why do you think they started trying to distance themselves so vehemently from the cult branding if you indeed are correct about them being so open about it in early leverage?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, now keep in mind, a lot of groups, you go to early Singulitarians, they're like, we're a cult.

You go to early, they may have meant it kind of jokingly, but with leverage it was taken differently because like they obviously were a cult. And keep in mind, you know, these are, everyone has to live in the house. They're all poly, or a lot of them are polyamorous. And they're being paid by the house and you could be fired if you don't please your superiors.

Like to, you don't [00:48:00] see how this would basically lead to a garden of sex slaves. There's really nothing else that could come out of this. That was the, always the end state. As soon as you structured things this way well, I mean, no, just think, I'm not saying like, everyone in Leverage is a perfect saint, okay?

You then have somebody who is supposed to constantly be watching over you, who is allowed to have sex with you, because that often happens, she mentions it in pieces, that people who, We're other people's direct subordinates. So you needed to meet with them. You needed to do these life counseling things where they would debug you and you could get fired if you didn't please them and you would lose a home and a source of income and have a big blink spot on your resume.

You think that didn't create an intrinsic pressure to have sex with them?

Simone Collins: Well, when you put it that way,

Malcolm Collins: and then the house is run by this stud, right? Who's like, well, You know I am the number [00:49:00] one, you know, enlightened guy of all enlightened guys, and I have access to truth and I can basically kick anyone out who disagrees with me in any meaningful way.

The, the thing that I find interesting about leverage about the only thing I find interesting is the novel business model novel business model for a cult, but, but the novel business model itself was sort of cheesing the Silicon Valley environment at that time period. To hustle ultra wealthy people not, you know, it's that impressive to me that somebody was able to hustle ultra wealthy people with bog standard mysticism.

Like, no, no, not really. Are ideas like objects, sophisticated ideas? No. Do they give you a better understanding of reality? No. Like nothing that came out of leverage was sophisticated or, Like, even from a completely malevolent perspective, other than his marketing and sales skills. [00:50:00] But that was mostly cheesed by the environment he was in and all the dumb EA people.

And this is the other thing about like the EA community. The EA community singularitarians, they like think of themselves as smart but they get brain hacked way too easily. They're like one of the easiest communities to brain hack. And this is what I see with the AI apocalypticism movement. Actually recently I've been trying to understand that movement better and we'll do a different episode about it.

But one thing I've noticed is I started to be like, There's these people who I respect and see as smart and they believe this person who is obviously a charlatan and does not think using logical structures. And so then I dug into it and I was like, Oh, everyone who I respect who believes in is autistic and he's just hacking their autism.

Simone Collins: Oh dear. I don't think that Zoe comes across as autistic.

Malcolm Collins: I don't think that this was totally that, but it was like, I'm a well meaning person who wants to make the world a better place. Okay. Come into the system. And then they [00:51:00] begin to define truth differently than the way a person who is a steeled in the monotheistic traditions would, which is it's, it's about rules and laws and predictability and using faith and, and, and your ability to understand reality, to better predict future states of reality.

They just throw all that out.

Simone Collins: They say.

Malcolm Collins: Truth comes from your subjective experience, and now when our subjective experiences clash, truth comes from the hierarchy, where the subjective experience of the person at the top of the hierarchy matters more than the subjective experience at the bottom of the hierarchy.

And that's really what I mean when I say mysticism. So when people are like, what do you really mean when you say mysticism? I mean all truth. And all philosophical systems where an individual subjective experience of reality has more truth than their objective engagement with that reality.

Simone Collins: Interesting.

I think one of the final things that you often say about people going off the rails [00:52:00] is that when people believe that they're good and they're right that they're far more likely to end up doing very evil things. So, I don't necessarily think that Jeff or other leaders in this organization is wrong.

Meant to do harm or to act selfishly. In fact, a really common theme among everyone writing about their experiences is that they legit thought they were going to save the world. They were going to go down in history books. They were doing such important work and it was really scary to them, this concept that they could be kicked out because then it's like you could have mattered so much, right?

And, and what makes me think that that. Kind of mindset really pervaded this is the fact that in her account on in defense of attempting hard things Kathleen writes. About her current state, her current life. Quote, it's painful for me to share all of this. And it's also inconvenient. I have important work to do on my current project that a lot of people are counting on me to do [00:53:00] carefully and quickly, which is already pretty overwhelming for me in my current state.

And which unfortunately can't be paused while I figure out What might make sense to say publicly that will steer people toward what seems to be more accurate beliefs. And you can just see this sense of urgency and importance and everything that she's writing, that she thinks that she's doing something urgent and essential, and it's weird reading it because I, I read it and I think, Oh, you're in leverage right now.

Right. But no, she's not, she's no contact with leverage people. She's doing her own next thing now, but she still maintains this mindset of, well, it almost seems like someone who's like, On 24, you know, who's like, they have to save the world. The world's about to blow up and it only depends on me and everyone's well,

Malcolm Collins: you're believing her that she's no contact with leverage.

She might still keep in mind, you know, if she's defending them, this is why I don't, I don't know anyone who contacted leverage that defends leverage. Everyone I know who was involved with leverage said either one of two things, either. It [00:54:00] was a deleterious cult, or it was all real, but they let demons into the world.

Those are the only two opinions I have ever heard. Oh no. I have never heard anyone be like, Oh yeah, it was a good project, just a little wrong headed in a few areas. But this is a

Simone Collins: sentiment that I see pervades rationalism, effective altruism, AI apocalypticism, that I am right, I am fighting for good.

Anyone who thinks that I'm doing the wrong thing or whatever is, is wrong, misguided, evil, ignorant, et cetera. And that there's a lot less internal criticism, even though everything about leverage was about questioning yourself and breaking yourself down to build a better self, which is really interesting to me.

And I just feel like that perception that you're fighting on the side of good and that you're doing good. Can be really dangerous or even if you just think that you're, you're out to do good because Zoe in her account keeps talking about these instances in which people kind [00:55:00] of accused her of, of placing bad objects in them, you know, and she was seen with a lot of suspicion after a period of time.

And 1 of the reasons her experiences were so bad was that the community really started to demonize her and fair her to the bottom of the social hierarchy. Okay. And accuse her of all sorts of things. And she genuinely believed it because she was in this terrible position. And she was like, Oh God, what have I done wrong?

I can't believe this. But I think even she thought that she was a good person and that may have just led to this. led her to be victimized more. I don't know, but I just feel like that's another theme going on here. This

Malcolm Collins: is the problem. It's people fighting to be good people that creates most of society's problems.

You should be a great person and a great person is often a bad person.

Simone Collins: A

Malcolm Collins: great person doesn't care about what is good and bad. They care about what must be done. For what must come to pass. Alexander the Great. You know, Catherine the Great. These are not good people. Or even

Simone Collins: Ivan the Terrible.[00:56:00]

Malcolm Collins: But that'd be fun. One day I'd become the type of Malcolm the Great. But no, you want to be a great person, you know, that requires, and this is, this is Like, I understand what you're saying, but you can develop this sort of mindset around anything. You can develop it around climate change. You can develop it around, you know, the question is, is are you basing your beliefs about the world?

And this is, this is the problem. It's too many people decide how good they are of a person based on their intentionality. Hmm. Everybody has the intentionality of being a good person. How good you intend to be has no correlation with how good you are. How good you are is dependent. On your understanding of

Simone Collins: reality.

Oh, and that's, you know, a really good example of this because we don't just have to s**t all over mysticism. We [00:57:00] can also s**t all over antinatalism is the Sandy Hook shooter. He thought that he was doing a favor to all of these young children who were tragically shot because. Life is suffering and it's terrible that their parents brought them into the world and it would be terrible if they lived full lives and were exposed to all the horrors of being alive.

And he thought he was doing good, right? Hitler thought he was doing good too. I don't know if Genghis Khan thought he was doing good though. I don't know about that. This is

Malcolm Collins: why it's so important when people are like, why do you care about all this philosophy stuff? Why do you care about like the nature of good and evil?

The true nature of reality, et cetera. That needs to be like your top question because how good of a person, how good your life ends up being, ends up not being determined by how good you tried to be. It ends up being determined by your understanding of reality. You know, I was just on a show and somebody was like, and we'll do a longer episode about this.

But he asked me, well, there doesn't seem to be a lot of room for [00:58:00] love in your system. And I said, yeah, there is it. Because love isn't a compass that points to good love often points to evil. And if you're using the wrong thing as a compass, no matter how hard you follow it, you could be the most evil person ever.

People who live for love often end up living lives of evil. Okay. Because they misunderstand reality. They misunderstand the consequences of the things that they're doing. And that's why this is so critical. And it's so critical with these people, whereas they thought they were good people because they were trying to be good people extra hard without understanding everyone does that.

You need to understand. When I say understand reality, I mean, understand society, understand the way other people think, understand philosophy, all the things we talk about on the show that is understanding reality, right? If you're understanding there is wrong, then you end up evil every time.[00:59:00]

Simone Collins: Depressing, but still fascinating. And a dumpster fire that I wish I was able to watch more closely. Probably not though. Actually, it seems to involve a lot of socializing.

Malcolm Collins: And this, this comes to why the mysticism thing is so important to us. Because if we have this framing, if you are getting an understanding of reality from a non confirmable space, from a space outside of rules and reason and knowledge.

Oh, then

Simone Collins: there's no way you'll know when you teeter into the world of evil.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly. So you always do. Anyway, love you.

Simone Collins: I love you too. What would you like to say?

In this thought-provoking episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins sit down with Sarah Haider, an ex-Muslim activist and co-host of the "A Special Place in Hell" podcast, to discuss her search for a secular, rationalist approach to parenting and the challenges of raising children in a rapidly changing world. The conversation delves into Sarah's experiences growing up in a Muslim community, the unique characteristics of Islam as a religion and cultural framework, and the potential consequences of technological advancements on traditional societies.

Malcolm, Simone, and Sarah explore the role of social technologies in shaping cultural identity, the importance of cultural experimentation in ensuring the survival of diverse belief systems, and the potential pitfalls of relying solely on reason when crafting new traditions. The trio also discusses the Collins' unique approach to parenting, including their creation of the "Future Police" holiday, which aims to instill values of long-termism and agency in their children.

Throughout the discussion, the participants emphasize the need for thoughtful innovation in the face of cultural upheaval, the value of learning from the past while adapting to the present, and the importance of fostering a diversity of belief systems to ensure the robustness of human civilization in the face of unprecedented challenges.

[00:00:00]

Simone Collins: Hello, everyone. I'm really excited because after listening to Sarah Hader on a podcast for.

Months, maybe years at this point, she is here on our podcast and we're so excited to have her on if you don't know her, she is on sub stack. Her sub stack is called hold that thought. You can find it at newsletter. sarahhater. com. That's H A I D E R. And on Twitter, she's Sarah, the hater as an H A I D E R, which is.

A great, it's a great name, Sarah. She also does with Megan Dom who we also love a podcast called a special place in hell. Which is very fun. Your banter is fantastic. So we're very glad to have you here bantering with us. Welcome, Sarah.

Sarah Haider: Thank you for having me. And let's jump

Malcolm Collins: right into the tweet that got us connected because I think it's good framing for the topic of this show.

Let's go. All right. Let's do it. Do you want to read it, Simone, or? Yeah,

Simone Collins: I'll read it. The other. The other day, Sarah asked if there were any groups slash resources [00:01:00] out there for lack of a better word that offer traditional parenting, but with a secular or rationalist approach. And someone from probably like a follower of this podcast followed us and followed Sarah and Connected us saying, Hey, you should probably talk to someone in Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: Let's start with whatever motivated this tweet.

Simone Collins: Yeah. What made you decide to tweet that? What do you think in there?

Sarah Haider: Yeah, it's been in the works for a while, but I am a new mom, new ish. I'm a toddler. So I was looking to connect with other parents. I have been for some time now that it's, like a play date age.

And, just thinking about how to think about parenting, like what are the models that make sense? Now we're at a point where we're thinking about, school, preschool, homeschool, Montessori, so all these big questions are coming up and I'm not the kind of person who trusts establishment, like the kind of, Normie options make me nervous sometimes.

And I actually have good reason to feel that way about our education system. I didn't love it when [00:02:00] I was going through it. I went to public school. I don't know if you guys did as well, but terrible experience. I just can't the prison metaphor is a good one, but I think it really killed my love of learning, which I had very naturally, same

Simone Collins: contractors.

Actually in the Bay Area, when I went to school, the same architectural firm did design most of the jails and the high schools. So

Sarah Haider: I think they had the same parent company that was creating the cafeteria food. Oh yeah. No, I

Malcolm Collins: imagine that's true in a lot of areas because it makes sense. If you're winning government contracts anyway, it is a school to pipeline ecosystem in a lot of these districts, right?

One and the other. Yeah.

Sarah Haider: Luckily I was not in one of those. places, but I was definitely in a like testing, get good grades and compete in incessantly have 10 hours of homework a night. A school environment. It was not amazing. I was thinking about that with my son as well.

And my background is actually in new atheism, which we were touching on a little bit.

Malcolm Collins: So for context, [00:03:00] for our viewers. This is I think, germane for the topic of this podcast, somebody who rose to fame and the new atheist community, Simone and I really rose, like we were mostly affiliated with the EA rationalist, less wrong community before this.

So obviously a bit of a different community, but very aligned, culturally speaking.

Sarah Haider: Definitely big areas of overlap for sure. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And the pronatalist movement in many ways within those communities represents a group that's Hey, we threw out a lot of stuff that maybe we shouldn't throw it out.

And it's hard to find people willing to engage. With any aspect of the traditionalist idea, like we often use the term neotrad to mean, and when I'm explaining it to reporters, I'm like what it means is we look through various older traditions for social technology that we can re implement and that still makes sense within our social and technological context right [00:04:00] now.

And a lot of people, they think when you're looking to the past for social technology, they mean, Oh, so you're looking to, just the 1950s. And it's no, like there's a lot of cultures in the past. I can look to ancient Athens. I can look to things that was common in Rome. I can look to things that was practiced in Egypt in various time periods.

There are lots of social technologies that have evolved and can be re screwed together. That aren't just remove boundaries. Another thing that I was talking to somebody about recently that really colored this idea for me is for a long time. I've actually speaking to a reporter at the economist about this today.

Technology like societal progress has been. Tearing down fences and we didn't know why they were there. It's been very much okay there's this random rule here, let's get rid of it. And up until today, we're now finally at a part where we have torn out so much of the base infrastructure that people are now realizing, Oh, a lot of that infrastructure had a purpose.

And we get the opportunity to, we can either [00:05:00] rebuild things exactly the way it used to be. Or we can intentionally build the social infrastructure to really it. Optimize it going into the future in a way that humanity never really has which is really interesting to me. But anyway, yeah, just some context there.

Sarah Haider: Yeah. Yeah. So those could be I've always been like rationalist curious. Like I've always been like poking around in the blogs and not participating, but lurking. So I'm familiar just broadly speaking with some of the kind of movements and tendencies and values of like the rationalist sphere.

And I definitely feel that. That I align with that in a Personality sense. It's harder when, when we get to policies that it can get trickier there, because then that requires us to have the same facts on hand. So I don't know how much, maybe we'll fork a little bit when it comes to that, but I definitely, I like that approach.

The kind of optimistic yet grounded in like a real reality, let's engineer something. [00:06:00] I like that. And I wanted to be able to talk to people who could, I like the way you put it Malcolm, I like that you put, that you can look back into the past as also, also something that we can look towards, not just, we don't just have to come up with new ideas.

We can look back and think about the wisdom of our, forefathers or whatever. But that's a weird word, isn't it? Wisdom, because I don't know if they knew what they were doing, but nevertheless, it came together in a useful way for them. And I, I've come around to appreciating that as well.

I think a lot of people have walked that path. In the past like 10 years or so in the atheist, like new atheist kind of community. Not so much. Like there, there definitely was a big woke woke pilling that happened and like atheism. I don't know how you guys feel about that. I feel like I know, but

Malcolm Collins: It seems like the parts of it that survived actually became like anti feminist channels and stuff like that.

Almost like dedicated skeptics [00:07:00] of whatever the dominant cultural group is. And I think that, we see, I want to say they're true colors, but what they are and I suspect this is a genetic proclivity. The somewhat hard coded in some people that they get off most on just criticizing the dominant culture in our society.

And the dominant cultural perception from me growing up transitioned from. Theocratic perception of the dominant culture, which is what I believed was the dominant culture when I was a kid, and I think it was accurate to a woke theology which is, it gives them something new to criticize and yeah.

Sarah Haider: Yeah, maybe that, maybe there's definitely something to that about the public figures. Because certainly if you get popular in the new atheism movement, you are known to be like this big critic of religion and religious values. And I don't think that average atheist necessarily is that way.

Even if they like lurk around in the communities, they're not necessarily that way. So there's a misrepresentation [00:08:00] of the kinds of person who rises to the top in that space. I tried not to be too much that way. I was trying more to fight for the right to criticize religion because I come from a Muslim background.

In many Muslim majority countries, there's like nothing resembling freedom of speech or religion. And that sort of carries over into Muslim majority or just Muslim communities here in Western countries. Context as well, because there's so many of them, for multiple reasons and they're becoming very isolated.

And so you have this like mini nation and there's a, I think of a very a culture that is not open to dissent at all. So that's the kind of thing that I was talking about. And I, found that it was really hard to talk about Islam openly because there were some things you're not supposed to say, and that was one of the things you're not supposed to say.

Say and so that was my entry way into pushing back against, the normal dominant, like political paradigm. And my instinct, because [00:09:00] I came in from that background was to look away from religion when I'm looking or even religious communities or anything resembling religious communities or traditional communities or anything like that, like it was just, I don't think that.

I'm a person that's easy to bias. Nevertheless, this was my social context. This is everybody I knew. And this is still many of the people I know. So traditional is a bad word in the way religion is a bad word. It's it's the way that people think about it is.

Definitely tied strongly with women's disempowerment, all these like social ills that now we can talk about in a kind of a different way but it's impossible to move that conversation forward in some circles. So I was, when I was tweeting that I was actually wanting something else, I don't want to, I don't want to, be a part of the atheist parenting communities.

I feel like they are, when they're not looking at traditional cultures or even religious practices [00:10:00] associated with the religious, we don't have to accept it for the religious reason. We can accept it for a different reason. I feel like in an abandoning all of that. Or refusing to take a good look at it.

They were abandoning a huge and important source of knowledge. And as you said, social technology, so

Malcolm Collins: yeah, I'll elevate a a misconception here, but I think a misconception that also delineates probably where some of the negative parenting practices come from. So if you're talking about The rationalist community is 99 percent atheist.

They just don't primarily identify as atheists. And one thing that we often elevate on this show is that when a community identifies in a specific way, status hierarchies within that community can often begin to form. With how far you other yourself along the metric of identification within the community.

So an example here would be, if I'm a goth and I meet another goth, how much that person has othered themselves from mainstream society, whether it's through piercings or facial mods or a weird way of dressing, that is my immediate [00:11:00] assumption of their goth status. And so when a community has identified primarily, primary mechanism of identification is atheist you get How do you be more it's and other people can become a bit of a part of the status hierarchy Which can make it really hard to pull from these older social technology

Simone Collins: Oh, but I also think that a big problem with people looking at older social technologies and traditionalism Like you say is they often look at oh Oh, so this the traditionalism equals female disempowerment or a social isolation and they often do but I think that Often people look at the worst devices of the worst aspects of these traditional cultures and think of those as the defining aspects of those cultures when really what we talk about a lot in the book that Malcolm wrote the practice guide to crafting religion is that really the key is it has to be a hard culture and by hard we mean a culture where you Make serious sacrifices.

You other yourself to a certain extent, like you look funny or you dress funny, you have a weird name, you live differently. And you [00:12:00] really lean into and invest in, in that tradition and religion in a way that leads to benefits. So for example,

Malcolm Collins: it's hard to adopt a sense of identity if you're not making those kinds of daily sacrifices with a community and many of those

Simone Collins: sacrifices is also.

Are the things that do impart strength. So while female disempowerment does not impart strength as far as I'm concerned, things like fasting do because they help you develop stronger inhibitory controls.

And that's hard. People don't like fasting or giving things up. It's pretty fricking difficult.

I

Sarah Haider: might even push back in the female disempowerment thing, because I think there's push and pulls with all the different choices that we make in terms of, okay, we're going to allow more. for something here. There is sometimes there is a loss on the other side. It's not visible entirely, but I think that all the ways in which we have allowed women, especially young women greater autonomy and control over their life choices.

There has been a negative consequence for those same [00:13:00] women, I think, when they become mothers because it's the same forces that give you more autonomy as an individual weaken the social ties that are very, they're important for families and for mothers. Yeah. Or when they try to get married, for example, if you have a super

Malcolm Collins: sexually free

Simone Collins: partner and you try to get married,

Malcolm Collins: it's hard.

Yeah. Or a society with equal wages being harder for women to get partners if they always want a partner who's earning more than them or

Sarah Haider: I mean there's so many ways that I think that they're, I wish that there was a more open discussion about some of these things. But it is hard to do.

So I think I, and I definitely agree with you in terms of, Hierarchies within communities. This is why I, when I said rationalist, I wasn't even sure. Do I want to be a part of a community where everybody considers themselves a rationalist? Because yes, I found like within those communities, I think the rationalists really enjoy.

contradicting each other in

Malcolm Collins: an intelligent way. They absolutely do. I've written long things about how that community fell apart. It fell apart because it was a community where status hierarchy was determined by knowledge like scientifically backed knowledge. [00:14:00] The problem is that if you try to front with a scientific study that everyone knows then that actually hurts your position because it shows that you thought that something that was commonly known was not commonly known.

So you can only really front with either. Scientific studies that go against what anyone would think is true are scientific studies that are fringe or rare findings, which leads to the communities becoming what I call, as a slur for them, butter eaters, because they'd have these things where they'd eat full sticks of butter every day, because there was like one study that said it was a good idea.

And

Simone Collins: because it was an obscure study, they looked good or like extra special for doing the weird thing, the obscure thing that people didn't know about.

Sarah Haider: I didn't believe it discourages following actually it does that's a community that discourages true followers, which you do need in a healthy community, actually,

Malcolm Collins: but then this becomes a thing if we're restructuring culture, right?

We've got to think about how do we prevent these sort of downstream effects that you're easy to [00:15:00] miss. You say something like, I often think of culture crafting as being like a monkey's paw. Like you don't, if you're not really careful in how you word things, like I want rationalism, and it's define rationalism.

They're like, scientific studies. And then the monkey's paw does its horrible wish. Or I want atheism. And it's okay, how do you define atheism? Lack of old traditions. And then the monkey paw does its horrible wish. And so it's, if you're building something, especially for your kids, for your family, you've got to think, so I would love.

To ask you three questions I want to go through. One has almost become like a mainstay on this show, that I think will make a mainstay on the show, every time we have somebody who's deconverted from a religious tradition. What did you like about your birth religious tradition? What social technologies do you think Islam does well?

Or and before we go further, It's useful if you talk about the branch of Islamic culture you came from because one of the things we're always talking about in this podcast is one, the difference in Muslim and Western marriage strategies. One of the [00:16:00] ones that we say is very interesting is Andrew Tate has taken like some Muslim strategies around marriage structure and tried to almost secularize it into a new family structure.

And I'm like, that's interesting, but I don't know if that's something that Western men should be emulating. But anyway, yeah. So I'd love to hear what your thoughts are on like. What do you think Islam gets right, especially that you think Western culture doesn't?

Sarah Haider: Okay. So let me start from the first question, which was, how did I grow up?

I I was raised Shia Muslim, which is like a minority, but it's the Iran people and Iraq. And But I was schooled in the Sunni like tradition because that was the local community where I grew up. So that's where I was going to Sunday school. And that's, those are the like religious, like competitions I was involved in.

So it was, in my mind, actually the two traditions are very, um, mixed up. I'm actually confused and it's only because I've been doing this kind of activism for a long time and this topic has come up that it has, I've been able I, it's but it's like [00:17:00] saying that I was Catholic and also Protestant from evangelical on one side of my family and Catholic from my mom's side.

But I think that, I there's a lot that I like about Islam. And there's a lot that I think is unique and interesting. So I, it's actually not a hard question for me to answer at all. It's just that I think that on the whole, it is like deeply harmful. So I don't have any trouble talking about all the things that are great about it.

And but I think that what's fundamental to understand is that the internal logic of Islam is so alien. I think it's so different. It's not I didn't even appreciate how different, like how fundamentally different of a social structure it is. Until like now, I couldn't possibly, I couldn't, I'm not actually, we don't have the, we don't have the time.

We don't have the, I don't have the intelligence but I think that it's just something I've I'm coming to fully understand. If anybody wants to read up on this, Ernest Gellner is a scholar that I would recommend. He is so interesting that he wrote [00:18:00] several books that are, he also, he wrote about like philosophy, words linguistics, but also Muslim society and civil society in particular.

What are the kinds of conditions that foster healthy civil society? So he took a look at Muslim societies, Asian societies, and the West and compared the ways that they structured power in the kinds of conditions that brewed. Very eye opening. What do you think

Malcolm Collins: you remember from this?

Just any specific you're

Sarah Haider: putting me on the spot. I, I think.

I don't know. I don't know. I would have to prep. I would have to because there were so many ideas

Malcolm Collins: about it.

Sarah Haider: We'll

Malcolm Collins: keep going. So what other specific things would you borrow from Islam for your kids?

Sarah Haider: Yeah. Back to that question as to what's good about it. One of the things I always liked about Islam is the way that it encouraged charitability amongst other Muslims.

So there's a requirement to give a certain percentage of your income to the community, the poor [00:19:00]

Simone Collins: really in the community.

Sarah Haider: And that

Simone Collins: is that Through any religious organization or just directly to, is it direct giving or through an organization?

Sarah Haider: I think it could be, I don't know if it's specified, but it could be anything.

It could be direct giving. You can, you

Malcolm Collins: look at the words of the text, because I was looking at this, it is implied that it's direct giving. Nice. I'm sure some people have, or, any tradition is going to over time have a lot of branches which end up hijacking this.

But it is actually pretty unique in that you do not get this in most Christian traditions where the expectation is that it goes through church infrastructure before reaching the poor, which is interesting. But continue.

Sarah Haider: Yeah. So I like that about it. I like that it was an expectation, almost like a tax, but Islam thinks of itself as very much a state religion.

And not. Not even something that you can pull apart and say, this is the state and this is the church. I think even that conception it reveals a kind of Western approach to politics and religion. And so [00:20:00] that, I, that whole infrastructure is not something I support.

Malcolm Collins: But it is worth elevating this concept because it's one that I would definitely talk about when you're trying to understand Islam as different from the other major religious traditions. Whereas I think Judaism is also pretty unique in this regard in that Judaism is really structured to be an ethno group slash state slash religion.

And. Not necessarily,

Sarah Haider: Ethno group, yes. But would you say state? So it depends on the

Malcolm Collins: period of Jewish history. If we're talking especially about a second temple period Judaism, it was structured ground up to be a state system. And what happened to Judaism was how a culture evolves when a religious system that is really meant to be operating a state no longer has a state to operate.

That's why the destruction of the second temple. Was so existential for the Jewish people and every exodus period was so existential for the Jewish people. And then it has obviously heavily modified itself since that period, but I think it's re Pulling [00:21:00] on now is the state of Israel. It's restructuring itself in that older fashion.

With Islam as you pointed out, but it is worth elevating here is it is a religion that is designed to be the state religion. And it doesn't function as effectively when it is not the state religion. And when it is not the state religion, it's always searching to become eventually a state religion.

Which can have positive and negative consequences depending on the, you might think only negative consequences, but

Sarah Haider: I think it's just as somebody who grew up, now I was raised primarily in the, I was born actually, I was born in Pakistan and I remember coming here, but it was quite young, still seven.

But a As, being raised in that religion that has all these instincts of a majority religion, that's the instinct of Islam. And that is part and parcel of even some of the celebrations, like Eid is supposed to be this public thing, that you all do together. The whole community is involved and it is happening publicly.

And for [00:22:00] Eid to be something like in the West where it's very private now, it's like you visit, you go visit somebody's house and then you take a drive and you visit somebody else's house. In Pakistan, it's In the streets, and then, and Bakra Eid, which is the one where they sacrifice the animals that's happening on the streets everywhere, it's a very public spectacle, and that's part of it, it's part of the thing, the celebration that this is public to be driven, into kind of a private, the private sphere.

I don't think Islam really thrives. And that's part of the reason I think diaspora communities that are Muslim feel a sense of like disorientation. Because I think that they're the instincts of the religious tradition that they have been brought up and do not fully and easily comport to being a minority in a country that has very different majoritaries.

Majority values and traditions. Judaism, I think it's, they don't struggle in the same way. I think that just because their history has for so long been in that position, I think they [00:23:00] tend to take it a little bit more. I did thrive actually. I think they thrive in that environment.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and now they do.

They thrive as subcultural groups was separated often like legal systems and stuff like that, which is really

Simone Collins: it's so interesting. The idea of a religion and culture that's optimized on a societal level rather than on an individual level, because I'm so used to growing up with the extreme opposite end of the spectrum.

Not that I was, my parents were, they called themselves born again, Buddhist. I really, they were like the most. Non religious people in the entire world, but they came from basically a Calvinist kind of background or Protestant background, which is just it's so individualistic that of course they would end up calling themselves born again Buddhists after a certain number of generations.

Like just doing their own thing. And their metaphysical beliefs were like a mixture of inspired by Scientology and other science fiction books and Buddhism and like whatever they saw on TV recently. And that. That was all just so on the local level, whereas here you're looking, with Islam at holidays they don't really make sense if it's not [00:24:00] literally on a community, not just a block party, but like the entire city, and that makes it really hard, I think, for you to try to replicate some of those things that worked well for your own kids, because

Malcolm Collins: they're not going to have that community.

Did you find the most utility in it?

Sarah Haider: Yeah, sorry, repeat that first bit.

Malcolm Collins: Which holidays did you find the most utility in? If you were going to practice them for your kids, and you could have them practice at a society wide level, which ones would you be like, this partakes a good value or is a useful social technology?

Sarah Haider: I wouldn't do any of the Muslim ones. I wouldn't. I like Christmas. So I think that is what I would do. There's only two in Islam and one is from a kid's perspective, I didn't think either was spectacularly interesting unless you went outside and then you had a blast.

The one where you kill all the animals, that one was actually traumatizing. I remember I, when it was, when I was young, I was taken to a slaughter of a cow and I saw it happen and I remember the blood, I can't forget. And I don't even have a fantastic memory, but I remember everything about that.

I [00:25:00] remember the, like the butcher son playing in the blood. Cause he was just like for him it was just whatever. I'm just having a good time. Yeah. Yes. And I was just like, dad, I want to go home. I need to go home. Remember just all these animals on the streets. It was not.

Maybe it's something you come around to as you grow, if you grow up in it, and then you're an adult, and then you have all these great memories associated with it, but just as a child, it wasn't it wasn't my favorite.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, what's the other one?

Sarah Haider: The other one is it's like Christmas, but you get money.

At the end of it, you get money instead of presents, you get money. But I like presents better because I think it's personal, like I, I like that somebody is thinking of me rather than just handing me a 20 bill

Simone Collins: and for kids. Oh, you would probably like our religion. We'll have to have a separate conversation about that at some point, but I think that's better for her podcast, but I was going to say,

Malcolm Collins: It's a great thing because it's like people are always telling us, Oh, a constructed religion.

That's meant just for the best interest of your kids with, unique holidays that would never catch on. And I'm like, Christmas and Santa Claus. What are you talking about? Obviously this stuff can catch on. Yeah.

Sarah Haider: [00:26:00] But Christmas is also one of those holidays that works when it's done publicly.

When it's a season, when it's the colors, and it's the warmth, and everyone's making those cookies, and you have the smells that are associated with Christmas.

Simone Collins: Although, our kids talk about The future police, which is like the Santa of our weird holiday, our flagship holiday, more than they talk about Santa.

They proselytize our religion more than we do. Like they'll a babysitter will come over and they'd be like, the future police got this for me because I did this. And like the future police might do this or that. And they keep our babysitters are giving us the side eye. And we're like it's a thing.

I don't know. You brailed it, Simone. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Another question I wanted to ask, which is one, or I actually wanted to talk to a Muslim scholar about this. Okay I'm the wrong person then

Sarah Haider: for it. I can tell you that right now. Yeah, you're

Malcolm Collins: probably the wrong person, but you might be just the right person because you have lived in both cultures and you're from outside the community.

is I have never fully gotten the animosity affiliated with the Sunni Shia split. When I look at something like the Catholic Protestant [00:27:00] split, for example, I can understand why there's animosity. There's two completely different systems for how to determine what's true. When I look at splits within Jewish communities, I can understand where that animosity comes from.

But the Sunni Shia split doesn't seem to be a thing. Theological split it seems to be a purely governance system split And so my thesis is that the and you can tell me if I'm wrong about this is the animosity is Actually because Islam is designed to be a state system So the government split matters so much more than it would in another religion Is that it?

It

Sarah Haider: is. Yeah, the politics can't be separated and it was a political difference and it was a meaningful political difference. And then the two sects are, they do practice differently. And I mean it, it differs a little bit from country to country. Like I, I was talking to this.

ex Shia from, ex Muslim from Saudi who was Shia, but in her experience with Shiaism is not mine. My, my experience with Shiaism was as a minority religion within a majority Sunni population. That's how Shiaism has developed as well, [00:28:00] actually. So there's like layers to all of this.

But I get getting back a little bit to the local and individualistic aspect of Christianity. I think that's key to, it's key to how well it has functioned in this, specific modern liberal kind of societal context. And I Why it has just worked in tandem with developing so many interesting and innovative, like not just technologies, but social systems and ideologies and ways of thinking about the world.

I think that has been, it is key and without it, you end up in a completely different space, but I will add that it's not the case that, Islam is just like centrally controlled. It's actually not really centrally controlled at all. Yet there is this, high culture, like this high Islam that matters.

There are folk traditions, but those tend to be the the remnants of whatever the, [00:29:00] that, that region used to believe in before it was conquered by Muslim army. So that, those sort of folk religion of Bangladesh looks very different than the folk religion of, Bangladesh.

the turkey. Having said that, I feel as if that those are disappearing. And that's, that is what you would expect over time as, literacy, increases everywhere. And then you're able to look at the book and determine that, okay this is the originalist interpretation of Islam is actually the true one.

What I've been practicing or what my grandmother has tattoos on her face. I didn't know that was not acceptable. I didn't know that was a local, Tunisian tradition. And in fact, it's not Islamic at all and I have to get rid of it. So there is a kind of a coming together flattening almost of Islam as it looks And as it's practiced worldwide, which is a little troubling and a little sad, I think.

Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: I definitely feel sad losing that, that cultural diversity. I, okay, so another question I have for you, because you're talking about like the Christian system, which I will admit has led to a [00:30:00] tremendous amount of technological and economic growth, but there was a period Where a form of Islam caused, one of the greatest technological leaps in human history, during the Islamic golden age.

Do you think that was so a lot of people will say that was just serendipity, like the libraries were destroyed, the area became less economically powerful, and that's why. Do you think that's why? Or do you think that there was a shift in the theology of Islam that made it harder for modern Islam to match the technological greatness of its ancestors, or a shift in underlying technological trends?

Sarah Haider: I think there's a lot of historical reasons that are just like, that is how it played out and that is why it happened. And I, it is. Also the case that the, this is the benefit of having kind of a religion in which the political rulers do have spiritual power and spiritual leadership positions, because if they happen to be liberal and if they happen to be tolerant and interested in technology and innovation, which is what That is what [00:31:00] I would put as the central factor in why the Golden Age looks so different than other times.

However, I'm not prepared to in detail give you, a

Malcolm Collins: thesis on this, and you can tell me if it sounds wrong to you or right. So I think there were two key factors. One is I think that Islam pushes a drive towards a form of academic study of stuff like math as a way of understanding God. And so long as math and chemistry didn't directly contradict Islamic scripture, it could be seen as a theological pursuit.

And that is why during the period where before, technology got so hard that it started, Contradicting scripture. It, it really synergized very well.

Sarah Haider: Isn't it? Isn't the but, but that was the Catholic church. Oh, the Catholic, what? We never did math

Malcolm Collins: like Muslims. I mean it No, but I mean in the sense

Sarah Haider: of that, that's how they approached the study of the natural world as a study of God because you were studying his creation.

Yeah. So it was all part and parcel of the same [00:32:00] thing. It, the this science as something oppositional. Yeah. You probably, that's

Malcolm Collins: a good point. You've got all the Blake, Gregor, Mendel and everything like that, and all the study outta the. monasteries. So yeah, it's basically

Simone Collins: closer to God until it doesn't, and then it's not okay.

But then

Malcolm Collins: The secondary thesis that I had which could also be wrong, but it's one that informs my thinking a lot is it was the spread of Sufism that ended up collapsing the culture among the elite circles that allowed them to look for sources of knowledge in what we would argue is corrupted mental states.

I. e. emotions and visions are a better source of truth than study of the natural world. But you could say maybe that's wrong too.

Sarah Haider: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know about that. I would have to give that one a little bit of thought. I'm not automatically dismissing it in the way the first theory makes me think I don't know how

Malcolm Collins: to

Sarah Haider: distinguish it.

I do think

Malcolm Collins: it's worse than studying these things. If a culture was productive at one time and not productive at another time, and you can isolate what elements changed, then I can know what elements are useful to build into my own family's culture. Good [00:33:00] point. In a world where fertility is collapsing, we, those of us with high fertility, could end up having a disproportionate play in the future.

So

Sarah Haider: Let me I think that at least in modern times, this is not a deeper going back to the core of what Islam might be a point. But I think that it, what it is in the modern world, at least. The example of the West definitely played a part in how Muslims viewed science and technology in general, because they were able to look across the pond, and see where science took all these guys who thought that they were going closer to God.

But now we know that they aren't close. Yeah. And how did that go? Yeah. Yeah. So there's that example that they can always point to and they can say, no, they looked at. They approached the world in this fashion. They abandoned the revelation and instead started using their reason to make out all kinds of things.

And now they have strip clubs. [00:34:00] This is, it was just this explicit example of, you don't really have to think through it. You don't really have to, you just see it play out and I think that has a huge impact on how Muslims think of even modernity, right? Like modernity is a bad word.

Capitalism, like all this consumerism, like that all just goes together really. But in the Muslim world, they really do. Modernity really is. Atheism,

Malcolm Collins: And they're not, if you're looking at it from the perspective of evolved cultural traits designed to increase fertility rate of cultural members, it is a successful memetic package.

Sarah Haider: Yeah. To be to be good enough to be to reproduce on a societal level in long periods of time. I, Hey, I, Could never disagree. And I think the apostasy taboo really does help there. You easy in easy end but it really difficult to get out even if you want it. So I think there are, there, there's lots of [00:35:00] Islam and the taboos and the traditions, like there's so many ways in which it really is a, it's a great name.

If just living, just surviving is your most important it's the thing that you are. focusing on. However, I would also add that I don't know if what has worked for the Muslim world up until now will survive our most recent leap. I don't think that, we talk about all these things with, social media is creating social alienation and isolation, da.

But if you look at, the research for, in Muslim, Places where you think they would have a healthy sense of community. In fact, the same kind of erosions are happening, but they also don't have running water. So like it's the combination of two horrible things that are coming together.

I am not sure it might be, they might be finding a way through it with their strong social networks. I think that maybe they won't, like maybe they'll get the. wrong end of the stick in both ways. I am, at least I'm concerned about that in any [00:36:00] case.

Malcolm Collins: No, I think you're absolutely right. And this is something we regularly see, if you're studying fertility collapse generally cultures that have had some cultural hack that has acted as a bulwark to fertility collapse.

When the dam breaks, it breaks very fast and all at once. But then of course that leads to downstream, especially negative consequences because, within, for example, these already conservative Muslim cultures, if everyone who is open to using a cell phone has been medically sterilized, that means only the most extremist iterations are going to get through.

As we call it in, cause we do some like pseudo religious stuff. We say, you've got to walk through the Valley of the Lotus Eaters. That's what our civilization is doing right now.

Sarah Haider: That is so much harder to do given the way that they're, given their level of development, it is actually, it's easier to procure a smartphone than it is.

To have a laptop or a computer, so there's, from a literal functioning perspective, cell phones have become a really important part of the way that their world works. I would say, [00:37:00] we're just used to them for a longer period of time, but I actually think because we have the our foundations are quite strong, our institutions are quite strong.

We can get away from technology and. Survive in a way that is becoming increasingly harder for them to do because they're in this crucial, like mid, like bizarre stage of development. And so that's just something that it's something to think about. And I think that the way that cell phones in particular, smartphones in particular, and the internet, And the, their connectivity to the internet, the way that has pierced through the social fabric, because you have, okay, you have these, you have societies, you have a lot of this meta control over people and what they're thinking and what they're thinking truly, because you're talking to each other and all of that is very control and bounded, but now here's this escape hatch.

I have a lot of social controls here. I think, the world does this and this is how it works. And this is what truth is. But now I have something in my pocket where in, in which once I joined that place, I can be as [00:38:00] individualistic as any American, and I can access all of that information that they have.

I can see what they're doing and it will impact my brain too. So that the social control that you have, just, it's hard to maintain in that kind of environment. They're watching a lot of porn there too, right? They're virgins they're

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And a lot of people are unaware of how significantly Muslim fertility rates have fallen.

In, in, in even non wealthy Muslim countries, it has been Yeah, and when you think about the

Sarah Haider: fact that they don't have regular access to birth control in the same way that we do, that is it's also, it's more striking when you think about it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah and as we always point out on the show is one path that some groups will take to get through the Valley of the Lotus Eaters is blinding themselves.

By that, what I mean is completely like we will kill our kid if we catch them with a cell phone. And you're going to find this in some communities but if you blind yourself to get through at the other end, if you're then coming out and telling everyone else you're going to, kill them and they have to follow your system.

You're still blind. Okay. And they have automated kill drones. You don't have the same amount of cultural power that you [00:39:00] would have if you got through using power of will, that was reinforced culturally. And so the question is, how do you do this? I can give you an answer. It sounds like Simone really wanted to tell you about our future holidays.

So why don't you do that and get her reaction to it.

Simone Collins: We the very gist of our attempt at this is we practice descendant worship. So we tell our children that essentially our God, our family's God is their descendants, thousands, millions of years in the future, who plausibly even have the ability to travel through time and intervene to create the future that should come.

Cause we also have this sort of weird deterministic, but you still have free will view of how the world works. Very mechanical. And so for future day, for example, we steal toys. The future police steal through us, of course, toys or things from their lives that cause bad behavior, addictive devices, games, things like that, iPads, whatever.

Last year, we just took all their toys. We just, yeah. All their toys disappeared because we're like, Oh, Let's make this really dramatic. And then, but they loved it because in their [00:40:00] place, we left like scorch marks with a bunch of different things and like weird future, like evidence, and they're like, Oh, what happened?

And then they have to make a pledge in this family book that we're using as a time capsule slash heirloom. To how they're going to make the world a better place and how they're going to become a better person for that year and for the longterm future. Upon making that pledge, of course, then the future police will see it and receive it.

They received their toys back plus some additional toys. And if they achieve those things that they committed to at some point in this year, they'll get an even bigger gift is a reward. So there are gifts involved. There's, there's photo opportunities involved and the kids.

Just freaking love it. And we started to though, this wasn't part of a plan for the holiday is throughout the year, as they are moving closer to their goals, they do get not just one future police gift, but a couple of things. Cause their goals weren't like, Oh, I'm going to start a business or I'm going to graduate high school, or I'm going to ace algebra,

Malcolm Collins: but

So not exactly cognitive processing.

Yeah

Simone Collins: They're very young. So it's more I'm [00:41:00] not gonna, I'm going to be nice to my brother kind of stuff. So like they are getting things from the future police as reinforcement and they just They love it and they know that the future police are watching. So it's affecting their behavior, but it's also a fun, cute thing.

But the idea here was

Malcolm Collins: this in most of our holidays is we had a specific value we wanted to convey the idea of having agency over the future and long termism.

Sarah Haider: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, I think that's great and remarkable and very inventive of you. I've been thinking myself about what to do and what to adopt and how lazy to be in that respect.

In terms of creating your own thing though, do you think about there's the one, the problem of does this take away the magic when it is so articulated also on your end, like you, you're like you're telling them the purpose of the thing that they're doing in a kind of, in an explicit way that people don't, people normally don't.

And do you think that will, Take away from the experience or make it less effective or anything? [00:42:00] No. Or just, no. No. Okay. I can explain why.

Malcolm Collins: So even within the theology of the future police they are to a child, right? In the same way that like a God changes the conception. People have a God when they're young.

It's like Zeus. It's like a guy in the clouds. And when they're older, they're like, oh, it's like them in Capal. We would say a, there, changing like small probabilistic quantum fluctuations, which have a butterfly effect, which has changed larger behavior. And if they were going to create this holiday and convince us to do it, they would have had it appear in a way where we thought it was our idea and we were doing it for their best interest.

So in a way, unlike Santa Claus or something like that, even to an adult, the future police really plausibly did create the holiday and really are gifting them things.

Sarah Haider: We were being manipulated

Simone Collins: all along.

Sarah Haider: Okay. Okay. All right. Okay. That's. Um, do you think it, do you need converts now though? Because it's a, it's not going to be a community thing though.

Exactly. And the thing

Simone Collins: is it doesn't need converts, but [00:43:00] what we really. What we really want to fight for and why we're so excited to see your tweet. And this brings it all back, which is good because the kids just got back home from the park, Malcolm, and they're about to storm the castle. But so what we really want people to do is what you're doing, which is I want to culturally innovate from.

A very thoughtful perspective and maybe it's a little religious and maybe it's not a little religious. It's whatever. And we want as many people to take a whack at this as possible because there will always be people who choose to go with the traditional religion like that is being tried. So it's not an experiment that I'm concerned about.

What I'd love to see more of is essentially that Startup seed investment where 99 percent are going to fail. That's fine. But a couple are going to become unicorns and become additional viable religious traditions that may create additional thriving alternatives to people, because we need thriving alternative religions that can make sense in a post globalization, post internet, post smartphone [00:44:00] world.

And so I'm happier. Yeah, if someone chooses to do their own thing, like what you're doing. We

Malcolm Collins: should elevate the larger theological structure of this system is if God is communicating with us through which cultural systems succeed and don't succeed, then he can only talk if there is a diversity of cultural systems to compete against each other.

So this is the theological framing to it. The logical framing to it is to say if we're entering this period of mass cultural die off. We're going to need as large a diversity of people to make it through the Valley of the Lotus Eaters unblinded for human civilization to survive and not become some sort of like large fast fascist monoculture.

And so the more cultural experimentation we have, the better off we're going to be because the more robust our species is going to be on the other side of this, where robustness is correlated with a diverse group of. Cultural system surviving to the end of it.

Sarah Haider: They wouldn't, might not be necessarily diverse by the end of it.

Like it might be that, that there's one. It took a long time for [00:45:00] religious systems to, to get to where they are and to be, they're still not that robust. So if we're just inventing them on the fly or like trying to reason our way into them, which is, I think, I wonder about that as a method, regardless.

Which is crazy to say as somebody who's, this is all I have. This is what, this is the thing that I hit. If I don't even know how else to go about in the world, but it, a certain amount of serendipity and just like chance encounters formed some of the experimentations. Cause I think that might've been like throughout history, because I think they, the reason would have rejected them, reason might've said, this is never going to work.

This is not, we shouldn't do this. But for whatever reason, it just so happened that they did it, and they tried it, and it worked.

Simone Collins: I think a lot of it's right time, right place. Jesus was not the first apocalyptic Jew, right? It's just sometimes it clicks. Right time,

Sarah Haider: right place.

And there's an underlying logic that you didn't understand right at the moment. But it worked and so you keep doing it so that's I think it's it's that's interesting. Yeah, and I actually [00:46:00] in we need so much more diversity than is maybe possible, but

Simone Collins: we'll fight for it anyway.

Sarah Haider: Yeah, sure. Yeah. Great.

Simone Collins: No, we'll have to we'll have to brainstorm more about this. But I yeah, anyway, I'm so glad you're thinking about these things. We're taking such a thoughtful approach.

Sarah Haider: I'm in a boring, I'm in dc which is boring. I was just talking to, you're not far from us. Yeah, you're pretty close.

How are you guys? We're in

Simone Collins: Pennsylvania,

Sarah Haider: oh, okay. I'll have to stop by and say hello

Simone Collins: at some point. Sure.

Sarah Haider: For sure. If you're ever near nearby, let me know. Yeah I was actually thinking I need to be in like California or New York. In order to meet like-minded people, but maybe not.

Simone Collins: Okay. Not at all. All right. You're in a really good, like in the a Actually, some of the most thoughtful parents, like from a cultural standpoint that we know are in DC. Yeah. So you're in a very good zone and yeah. But okay. So everyone check out Sarah haters work. It just like basically everything I've encountered that you've written or done, in terms of like podcasting has been fantastic.

So Sarah, the hater on Twitter and check out Sarah hater on sub stack as well. [00:47:00] Thank you so much for coming on and we'd have to have you back at some point.

Sarah Haider: This was great. Thank you.

Simone Collins: Thank you.

Sarah Haider: Do you guys have guests often?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Sarah Haider: On this podcast. Not that often.

Malcolm Collins: But it's harder to keep good consistency when you're doing guests, as you probably know.

Sarah Haider: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Because sometimes they're boring. But you're super fun. You're super fun and

Simone Collins: super cool. You just don't post

Malcolm Collins: them then.

Simone Collins: Great. Yeah. That's, when we don't post them, it's typically because the people have never been on podcasts before and they like answer questions with yes or no,

Malcolm Collins: and it's not great.

Simone Collins: That's

Malcolm Collins: not it. It's not it. You're just hedging in case she's boring.

Simone Collins: You're not going to be boring. You're not going to be boring. I'm hoping that, yeah. It's going to be good. I'm excited.

Indy's being pretty good today. So I'm not worried. It's good that I'm feeding her though But look, I mean look so the doors behind you they're pretty thick If we just shoved two bookshelves in there that are suspended from, it's like a barn door where there's an [00:48:00] overhead suspension. So there are two suspended bookshelves and like they can part to create a small doorway and they're probably too much of a hassle, but

Malcolm Collins: where are we to go?

You said right between

Simone Collins: the playroom and the bunk bedroom in the thick double door area. Behind you? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, you mean, oh, what a secret bookshelf?

Simone Collins: Yeah, like a bookshelf that then opens into a door, or

Malcolm Collins: you make that whole wall there. Bookshelf.

Simone Collins: A bookshelf. Uhhuh. .

Malcolm Collins: Oh,

Simone Collins: A suspended bookshelf.

Could be pretty cool. Someday. Secret bookshelf.

Malcolm Collins: I don't know, it would take up room.

Simone Collins: It would. Honestly, your house is so perfect. What are we going to do with it? Like you said, like some of the dumb lands Fatlands, I

Malcolm Collins: could do that, Simone.

Simone Collins: Yeah, Fatlands probably already has one. But whatever, it's sold, Malcolm.

It's sold.

Malcolm Collins: And we

Simone Collins: can buy it!

Malcolm Collins: We can storm it! That's why we have [00:49:00] guns!

Simone Collins: I don't want that. I'm not vacuuming fatlands. Okay. I'm not cleaning those floors. I'm not doing it.

Malcolm Collins: That'd be such a nightmare to vacuum.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Can you imagine cleaning all those toilets, vacuuming all those floors, heating all those rooms?

I at least that one haunted house that we looked at, the one that was like super creepy, that had the super old house attached to it. At least you could just cordon that off and be afraid of all the ghosts. That's what they did. How's this? Is this

Sarah Haider: better?