Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

In this eye-opening discussion, Malcolm and Simone delve into the fascinating world of paraphilias, more commonly known as fetishes. They explore how these seemingly unusual attractions can provide insights into human neurology and evolutionary conditions. The couple examines the prevalence of "monster girl" fetishes across various cultures and historical contexts, and how they relate to super stimuli and innate disgust responses. Malcolm and Simone also discuss how certain physical traits, such as hair and eye color, may have evolved due to extreme mate selection in specific populations. Throughout the conversation, they emphasize the importance of understanding and contextualizing one's own sexuality to avoid shame, addiction, and harmful behaviors. Join them for this thought-provoking and educational discussion on the complexities of human sexuality.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, gorgeous. Hello, Simone. So this is the subject that I particularly find interesting. And a lot of people are surprised. They're like, why are you interested in obscure paraphilias, which are more commonly known in the public as fetishes? And the answer is, is because it tells us a lot about human neurology, human evolutionary conditions, and the way humans think more broadly.

And people might be like, wait, wait, wait, what do you mean by that? Right? So if you see an impulse that exists across a broad breadth of the human population, but doesn't appear like it would have been selected for in an evolutionary context, like it wouldn't have increased the number of surviving offspring they had, you have found One of two things.

Either you have shown that you misunderstand the [00:01:00] environmental context that humanity evolved in and that something that seems like it would have been a maladaptive behavior was actually a positive behavior, which is very interesting if you find that but then the other. thing that you may have found is you have found a way that the brain essentially breaks or a pathway doesn't work correctly, but doesn't work correctly in a way that happens over and over and over again in different humans, which tells you something about like if trains keep flying onto a road at a certain point you can tell broadly, at least in one area.

Where a train track is likely supposed to be and like the speed of trains on that train tracks and where trains are turning on that train track. Now, this becomes especially interesting in the world of fetishes and paraphilias. Because this is a very common area where you see something [00:02:00] that is very clearly a hard coded biological instinct in individuals. Cross culturally

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: , people will say, Oh no, well this is all like modern internet stuff that's causing this. And we'll get into that argument in a second. Well, I can get into it right now. It's just very obviously not. If you look in a historic context most of the paraphilias you see today, like sadism and stuff like that, you're going to see in like the Marquis de Sade, for example, which was definitely in a pre internet context, or you see in the British vice, which was a so common a fetish among British people.

They called it the British vice, which was men who liked being spanked by battles by women.

Here is James Joyce writing about farts. Big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little Mary cracks, and a lot of tiny little naughty forties ending in a large gush from your whole

I think I could pick hers out in a room full of flirting women. It is a rather girlish noise, not like the wet, windy fart, which I imagine fat [00:03:00] wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty. Like a bold girl would let off in fund in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face. So that I may know with her smell also, so people will be like, oh yeah, Weird stuff like farting pouring that that's like from weird Brazilian.

No. It was around the time of James Joyce.

Malcolm Collins: So, if you see a fetish today, you will. That is common. You will almost always see it in a historic context. And today we are going to discuss the concept of Monster Girls because Monster Girls and Monster Boys are something that you see pretty frequently in pornography.

And Hint High. However, it is also something. That, like, doesn't really make sense from an evolutionary context. Why would you be attracted to something that's not human? And a person can go, Oh, come on, this doesn't appear in historic [00:04:00] stuff. And I'm like are you not familiar with your Greek myths?

How seriously talk about like the plurality of sex that happens in Greek myths, the swans, the cows, I would say like a good hat or various monstrous creatures or height. Yeah. Or people are like, wow, but it didn't happen in the medieval period.

And I'm like, you are clearly not familiar with medieval fairy tales or medieval sort of folk horrors.

You know, it was actually folk horrors. Folk horrors. Incubuses, succubuses, stuff like that. They didn't look like humans. They'd have like, various animal body parts and stuff like that. And people will be like, okay, well, how common is this stuff really? So if you look at like. Oh yeah, like the

Simone Collins: folklore.

Like marrying a mermaid and a seal woman or whatever. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So when we did stats on this vampires 21 percent of females consume erotic content, tied to the 7 percent of males werewolves, 14 percent of females, [00:05:00] 2 percent of males. An Android 7 percent of females, 8 percent of males, an alien, 13 percent of females, 8 percent of males, a dwarf, the fictional race, 8 percent of females, 7 percent of males, a dwarf, the fictional race, 2 percent of females.

Four 8% of males, goo people 2% of females, 4% of males. It's a deep cut furries, 5% of each half human, half animals 7% fe females, 4% males 7%.

Simone Collins: I mean, wow. Yeah. So we talking half like a horse. What are they called? Horsemen or half of them? Yeah. So

Malcolm Collins: if you're like, Oh, well, that's a small number.

Well, if you contrast those numbers with the numbers who, for example, consume erotic content with two men having sex, that's 21 percent of females and 7 percent of males. Yeah. So it's about as common as watching, for example gay male porn. You know, I

Simone Collins: don't know, like [00:06:00] there in this, we should probably someday do a whole deep dive on.

The genre of yaoi in Japan too, and yaoi is

Malcolm Collins: boy love stuff, which is, and you can see what I think would surprise people is the majority of people consume, consuming man on man porn are women, by more than double.

Simone Collins: This is both straight and lesbian identifying women. Of course, we argue that women don't really exist on the Kinsey scale.

They exist on a dominant submission scale.

Malcolm Collins: But people can look at our book on sexuality if they want to read more on this. But this brings us back to the question of monster women, right? What could be causing this? So you can come up with a few hypotheses. Maybe this was about and this is sort of how science is done, right?

Like if people were like, how do you do sort of gentleman science in your book? So you could say, Well, maybe it's correlated with like a village was raided or something like that. And so you would [00:07:00] see the Raiders as monstrous, but need to be attracted to them to be able to survive the raid. Right. And it's like, well, if that's the case, then you are likely to see two things.

One is a cross correlation between this and masochism. And this is more prominent dramatically in females than males. But this does not explain, therefore, monster girls. Well, no, it could explain, but the problem is if monster boys were more common than monster girls, this would explain that. Exactly.

The problem is that that's not what you see outside of something like vampires, but vampires don't really look particularly different from humans. And so they probably falls more into just pure dominance.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Which

Malcolm Collins: would fit into this system, but you don't see the cross correlation between these attractiveness and other attractiveness.

So then you're like, okay, okay, okay. Great. Back to the drawing board. Well, let's look at some other things that appear where a human [00:08:00] appears to have non. human body proportions. Okay. Oh, like really tiny women and really big women, really tiny women, or it could be women with giant breasts. Disproportionate.

So, let's see if I can find that on the chart here. Okay. So, well, a good example here would be a giant penis longer than two feet, 7 percent of women, 4 percent of men, giant breasts larger than a quarter of total body weight, 4 percent of women, and 17 percent of men. So wait,

Simone Collins: so normally I'm 120.

Jesus! That's a lot!

Malcolm Collins: These are like, these are impossible for a normal human to have. Ugh. Well, people have gotten plastic surgery to do it. Surgically implanted, but they don't, when women have that, they do not look human, they look deformed. Yeah. To a, to a, a normal person, but 17 percent of men are still consuming this, this content.

So what, or, or you could say people who are you know, amputees and stuff like that or [00:09:00] in some other way don't look like a normal human would look. But

Simone Collins: around that, didn't you argue in the book that this is more of a super stimulus thing? We'll get to that. We'll get

Malcolm Collins: that concept in a second. I'm just describing hypotheses here.

So you actually do find a cross correlation here, and we didn't just find this cross correlation in our data. When Ayla ran the stats with a completely different data pool, she also found this cross correlation here. So this, verifies this hypothesis that there is something where some humans have a looser bound on the human form when they find it attractive.

So let's talk about how this could work and how we can verify if this is the way that it's working. Okay. So super stimuli are a very important concept when you are studying sexuality. Okay. So a super stimuli is like if you have a bird that evolved to sit on blue eggs, but there were never like giant blue rocks around its evolutionary environment.

It never had a pressure to not sit on [00:10:00] Something that was larger than its normal blue eggs or bluer than its normal blue eggs. And so if you put a giant blue rock next to it, it will always choose the rock over its own eggs. This is just a very common thing you see throughout evolutionary biology.

And it like makes sense as to why this would be a thing.

Simone Collins: Yeah. If, if X is good. X squared is better.

Malcolm Collins: X squared is better. Yeah. So with human sexual drives, well, males and females are both to an extent attracted to the average, like if you were going to like pre code them to breed with a thing that is likely to lead to offspring you would pre code them with look for the things that gender differentiate males and females and then target individuals who appear to have these traits.

These would be secondary sex characteristics. So with women, these would be breasts, butt, hips. With men, this would be Height you know, the male stature triangle mask. Yeah. Et cetera. So, and, and you did a deep voice and you do [00:11:00] see an attraction to these traits, but what is more interesting is we didn't have super stimuli of these traits in our evolutionary environment.

We did not have women with super normally large breasts in our evolutionary environment.

Simone Collins: Well, I mean, unless they were. You know, some genetic abnormality

Malcolm Collins: is eased in some way or something like that, right? But what I'm saying is it just didn't appear that much there was not an evolutionary reason for anyone within the population to evolve Disgust to that trait Even though I and most men actually do reflexively feel disgust When they see a woman who looks non human in For her gender dimorphic anatomy even something as, as I think some people would consider a small is like Caitlin or what's her name?

The Caitlyn Jenner's family member who has a giant, but no,

Simone Collins: they've reduced that big butts are [00:12:00] out. Heroin chic is back in. Yeah. Kim Kardashian.

Malcolm Collins: Like, I find her quite repulsive. Like, like a visceral level, I find her repulsive. I

Simone Collins: think that's cultural because you go to Miami, you see giant asses and women wearing ass padding underwear to try to create this culture affects

Malcolm Collins: what you find attractive, much less than you would think.

I could go into so much

Simone Collins: difference between the body type that you see pervasive among Higher status women or, or we'll say image conscious women in Miami versus Los Angeles for this appears to

Malcolm Collins: be an evolutionary thing. Well, okay. So I guess I can get into this cause we do go into this in our, in our books.

The core thing that differentiates. So with men, you're going to be attracted to, there's sort of two ideal feminine traits that you could be attracted to

Simone Collins: or female dimorphism.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. You could be optimizing for fertility window, or you could be optimizing for I'm absolutely certain this is a woman

Simone Collins: well,

Malcolm Collins: these two sets of optimization [00:13:00] functions actually require you to optimize around different traits because the traits that are associated with youth in women are smaller breasts and a smaller butt.

So you are, you are actually Optimizing for almost the exact opposite thing. So who optimizes within a monogamous culture for fertility windows over ensuring that the person is a woman. It is somebody who has access to high resources and love behold in our data. We see this, I mean, it's a huge difference.

We have a video where we go over this in more detail, but it's

like 10 fold or 20 fold increase in liking this you know, flat justice body type. For wealthy men versus the poorest groups have been but you also see this just, I mean, if you're looking like you don't see people like, you know, Elon or Bill Gates or something like that, dating these women who look like super, super, super feminine.

Instead the women that you see them dating. Is are [00:14:00] often very well, more androgynous

Simone Collins: looking because they were androgynous

Malcolm Collins: looking. Yeah. Whereas when you see wealthy men date these women they are wealthy men who appear to have an extreme level of status anxiety which shows that like biologically, they don't see themselves as wealthy.

Trump would be a good example of this. If you look at the way that he accessorizes and the lifestyle he lives in when he's been or something like that there is clearly a. fairly large level of status anxiety there, which is likely driving his reproductive choices that make his reproductive choices much more similar to a lower economic status.

Which

Simone Collins: ultimately made him a man of the people. He's a poor man's idea of a rich man, even in his own mind, because of that anxiety.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. So, so that's why you're getting that. Okay. But let's go back to and by the way, you can look at cross cultural. Oh

Simone Collins: s**t. Okay. So you're, you're saying that big asses are a thing in Miami because, because they're poor.

Malcolm Collins: Well, because they're poor and there's more [00:15:00] status anxiety. You see these giant butts, where do you see them in the highest. It's the deadest anxiety environments in the world, by any other way. That's

Simone Collins: interesting.

Malcolm Collins: And it's also why I think you see the PDA, you know, the PDA files appear disproportionately within elite circles.

There actually is a higher rate of PDA files in those communities, but now back to Monster Girls. Really? Yeah. So, with, with it, we appear to, humans appear to have a secondary system that overlaps their attraction system that's meant to prevent them from having sex with non human things that are non efficacious in terms of sexism could lead to diseases and blah, blah, blah, right?

So how do they determine non human things? It's likely that there is a level of innate disgust that you're Average programmed human has two things that look sufficiently different from the average human form. And this is why your average human has a level [00:16:00] of disgust to things like bestiality to think like, uh, you know, you know, extreme breast size and stuff like that.

However

Simone Collins: You could call it deformity.

Malcolm Collins: You could call it deformity. Well, it appears that certain ways of altering a body do not count or do not trigger this instinct in a large portion of the population. So first, let's talk about the, the, the huge chunk of the population, which is a fairly big chunk, that does not appear.

To have this disgust reaction,

Simone Collins: the boob guys,

Malcolm Collins: 17 percent of men who are still into enormously large boobs or what was it? Women penises over two feet.

That was, I don't

Simone Collins: understand. Okay. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: . 7 percent of women. Okay. So if you have a hundred women, seven of them will have consumed erotic material that consume this, that portray this.

So, what's going on in these. These individuals. Well, if you have any of these [00:17:00] systems in the same way that our predominant arousal system sometimes breaks, right? Like, sometimes men are predominantly aroused by male characteristics in their partners. I, gay people sometimes women are aroused by female characteristics in their partners.

Like clearly evolution. Wasn't strongly sorting for this. You know, you're, you're just getting a broken system. Sometimes individuals you know, you, you see get turned on by feces, right? Like this is clearly something that's meant to create in an evolutionary context, a disgust reaction. So what it means is there's two ways this disgust system can break.

One is it just doesn't activate at all. These are the individuals who I think are mostly into you know, generally large, but not monstrously large breasts or generally large, like the two feet penis and stuff like that, right? Like these are individuals who are interested in something that is outside the normal bounds, but isn't like specifically stimulating the system.

Then there's another thing that appears to happen in arousal patterns, which [00:18:00] is that arousal and disgust Get flipped, because we argue in great detail in our book that arousal and disgust are actually the same system. When you are aroused by something, your eyes dilate, you breathe in, you look at it longer, you want to get closer to it.

When you are disgusted by something, your pupils contra contrast, you hold your nose, or you hold your breath to not smell, and you Instinctively look away and try to get away from the thing. It's just the same system with a negative modifier. And anything that causes an innate disgust within some portion of the population will be a fetish for some other person.

And people are like, well, everything's a fetish. No, that is not true. That is just patently wrong. If you take things that don't cause disgust but are tied to other innate human impulses like a fear of heights or a fear of fire, for example there is not a community, or at least a large community consummate with the, you know, Insects or poo or, or, or farts tied to something like [00:19:00] fire arousal or falling from high locations, arousal.

So it's not just like all of your systems can break in this way. It is one system. Right. And it's the same with arousal patterns. Pretty much anything that can arousal. population is going to disgust a subset of that population. Well, you can also get an inverse system where the thing that's supposed to identify things that look inhuman ends up accidentally arousing a small portion of the population instead of disgusting them.

And this is what I think leads to full on bestiality and stuff like that. But then there's a second category here, which I would call like the cat girl phenomenon. Is a

Simone Collins: cat girl, a monster girl in this world?

Malcolm Collins: No, not exactly. I think it's arousing a different system because that what I mean is if you look at the popularity of this stuff in anime, so I would categorize, there, there are a few anatomical differences which do not appear to trigger the, this is inhuman, I now generate disgust.

Fluffy ears

Simone Collins: and tail are just cute. So

Malcolm Collins: [00:20:00] yeah, there's, there's a few that don't, don't appear to broadly generate this. Now in some humans they do, but broadly, sharp teeth don't appear to

the vampire thing is really, really big in the population. Especially

Simone Collins: if it's just the canines.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Different colored Eyes, different shaped eyes don't appear to trigger this.

Different colored hair doesn't appear to trigger this. Totally. So hair that is like anime hair. Let's, let's go there, okay? Another thing that doesn't appear to trigger it is small Cosmetic modifications such as tail, ear differences those sorts of things don't seem to broadly trigger this.

A great example, here would be elf ears slash Vulcan ears on girls.

, I have seen so many guy thirst after elf flesh, Vulcan girls.

Malcolm Collins: And then another one that's really interesting, if you're going to stretch, is Broadly, if you're dealing with a biped, with breath, or a T shaped male figure, like human, [00:21:00] female male, human secondary sex characteristics for either males or females for a large but smaller portion of the population, this also doesn't seem to trigger this monster girl.

Basically,

Simone Collins: furry, fursonas.

Malcolm Collins: Well, that fursonas I think goes a little far. Here I'm thinking more like

Lola Bunny, for example. Oh, okay. You

Simone Collins: know,

Malcolm Collins: This is something that I think is broadly, like if someone's like, I thought Lola Bunny was hot, like, you're not going to get a lot of people being like, yeah, Lola Bunny was not hot at all.

Yeah. They're like, okay, yeah, that was clearly sexualized and, and, and meant or designed to be An arousing character. So why wasn't it triggering these here? We're going back to evolution again, because we can actually see the genetic results of this arousal pattern being mainstream within specific populations.

So if you look at regions of the world, where you have a high degree of mate selection, either [00:22:00] because there were periods where all the women died pretty frequently, or even more common when all of the men died pretty frequently. But, but you see this in either area, you begin to get the evolution of monstrous traits, traits that you do not see in default human populations.

Simone Collins: Oh, because of inbreeding?

Malcolm Collins: No, because people tend to select for people with extremely novel traits. In a society with no catgirls, this shows that the catgirl might be considered uniquely attractive. In a society where nobody had, like, naturally occurring pink eyes or something like that, the one individual with pink eyes or skin or something like that might be considered uniquely attractive.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: And you can say, What are you talking about, these monstrous traits that appear almost nowhere in human populations except for areas that underwent very strict genetic selection over a long period of time? Well, the reason you don't [00:23:00] notice them is the populations that had them have dominated the globe.

Oh, like redheads or something? Redheads exist all over the world. Almost nowhere, outside of extremely cold regions, where you had an ext In fact, not just redheads, any human hair color but black, is incredibly rare, if you're talking about the broad, Initial ethno groups that would have existed in the world that like would have evolved out of the initial human sample size and you go back a thousand years ago, the populations that had non black hair only lived really in Arctic regions.

Or extremely. Yeah, the world also was a lot older,

Simone Collins: to your point. Another

Malcolm Collins: trait is, and they're like, what are you talking about? Pink eyes? No one would select that you are forgetting. Very nice that all eyes, other than brown eyes are actually an incredibly rare trait. If you go a thousand years ago and [00:24:00] only really existed in arctic environments where you had extreme levels of mate selection and then people were like, well, different skin colors.

Gingers basically have a unique skin tone with their extreme level of freckling. This would have been considered if you took one of them and put them in ancient Rome, they would not be particularly dissimilar to an ancient Roman than to us, a person with pronounced canines would look, or a person with cat ears, or a person with a tail would look.

In terms of that subtle

Simone Collins: standing out. Still human, but different human.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, a subtle but standing out actually wins the genetic lottery when you are dealing with a really high level of skin. Sexual selection, determining which genes win and which genes lose. So we do actually have a real monster girls among us.

They are [00:25:00] called gingers.

Simone Collins: Or women with green eyes or blue eyes or possibly blondes too. So what are your

Malcolm Collins: thoughts? So

Simone Collins: the, the Dallas blonde. which is classically a woman who's not naturally blonde, they just dye her, they dye their hair blonde, is essentially trying to be a monster girl.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, I mean, I'd even say more than that.

The girl who dyes her hair blue or something like that in order to appear unique and quirky is a modern version of this. And If people are like, come on, sexual selection, selecting for nonhuman like traits in an individual or slightly nonhuman like traits, even in environments where they didn't evolve this, they adopted this culturally think about the many African tribes that adopted rituals, which.

Turned their body into slightly non [00:26:00] human Oh,

Simone Collins: like elongated necks or Giant loop earrings or

Malcolm Collins: giant things in their, their cheeks. Now, when I see these women, I actually get the same form of disgust that I would get from looking at an actual monster. Like, like something that is genuinely non human.

So I assume that they likely co evolved with a damped down form of that repulsion selection. You in their cultural groups which could mean that if you were to do studies on these populations, you would find much more attractive to things that the like, like monster girl type pornography.

That is

Simone Collins: fascinating. I really like this hot take.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and here it gets more interesting. Okay. So if you look at cultures that deviate from normal human forms, think golden lotuses, for example. Oh, you mean like a Chinese foot binding? Here you see this in a culture that valued extreme levels of femininity and what you have there is a gender dimorphic trait, foot [00:27:00] size that is being created at an extreme level.

Yeah. Someone was in a woman having

Simone Collins: extreme plastic surgery to have large breasts. Yes. And it's another version of that. from childhood with intense pain. I guess also having large breasts is probably intensely painful.

Malcolm Collins: Yikes. And so this is all that people are like, why does all of this matter from human?

Well, when you understand things like that, what arouses you is based on gated metrics, was it discussed in arousal system that are likely the same system, which work was in certain windows. One you can better control your own involuntary arousal pathways by contextualizing them as what they are random switches in your head at birth.

When you contextualize them as like weird addictions and stuff like that due to, you know, things you were exposed to on the internet, then you would relate to them as an [00:28:00] addiction. And the thing is, is people rarely win against addictions when you relate to them as just a standard, like a switch thing that happened at birth, then you can more easily be like, Oh yeah, I'm just going to choose to ignore that.

Like other things I choose to ignore that I, like, for example When I am around a friend or something like that, and they have a hot wife, like I am pre evolved to want to sleep with or hit on their wife, but I choose not to hit on them. I don't view that as like an addiction or something. I'm just like, yeah, I choose not to find that person arousing.

I choose not to hit on them. When you understand these systems and contextualize them for what they really are, it's much easier to not have them influence you. And so if you have any paraphilias, which Most people have, but people are like,

Oh, that person has a fetish. How weird. I'm like, actually, if you look at the data, if you have no fetishes, you are the weird one that you are in a vast minority.

I can't remember if there was like 8 percent of people have like no fetishes at all. In our data set, [00:29:00] like you are the weirdo if you have no fetish. It is not the people with a fetish who are weird.

Simone Collins: Which I just want to clarify. Cause you know, anyone looking at Ayla's stats is going to see the vanilla stuff is obviously the most popular.

You. Very well are probably going to be aroused, but most of the vanilla stuff and then also have these fetishes. Just

Malcolm Collins: no specific fetish is weird, but understanding how these work and we could do other videos and we've done some videos in our early videos. If you've only watched our recent podcast, because you know, we went over some of our theories from our sexuality book and more recent stuff.

I mean, in some of the early stuff that we did you can get a deeper dive on some of these topics, but. Knowing about this doesn't just help you, but also being able to teach your kids about how human sexuality actually works prevents them from contextualizing things that they don't have control over.

It's either shameful or worse than that, because if it's shameful, then they hide it, overindulge in it. You see this in the statistics. When people [00:30:00] think a portion of their sexuality is shameful, they actually indulge in it more than when they don't.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But worse than that, they think it's something they can't talk to their parents about.

So they see themselves as discriminated for it. And then they begin to contextualize it as part of their identity.

Simone Collins: The

Malcolm Collins: very most dangerous thing is that your kids grow up and not understanding how human sexuality works. And then they begin to categorize some paraphilia they have as a portion of their identity.

And then their core identity becomes something like for. Furry or, you know, whatever. Right. Yeah,

Simone Collins: way worse. I mean, yeah they're very high profile examples of religiously, very conservative families having certain members do terrible things, probably because they weren't, yeah, given context, given a way to understand what they felt and what they were tempted to do.

So they just. Exactly. Oh boy. Yeah. Well,

Malcolm Collins: I, it, it, you know, truth is the purifying light [00:31:00] that burns away our genetic scars in pre programming. When you study this stuff, knowledge burns away temptation and sin. More. than hiding from something. When you hide from something, when you make it magic or addiction or something like that, you give it power.

When you say it just is what it is, a genetic scar, crossed wires, it is much easier to work around than when you don't. Well, and this stuff can become a huge problem if you miscontextualize it and somebody happens to have one of the really damaging one of these, like the, the sadists who think that sadism is actually a part of their personality, or the PDA files who think that that is actually a core aspect of their identity.

And then that leads to incredibly immoral action.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. It's yeah. I'm really glad that, I mean, we've already ruined [00:32:00] sex for our kids. Thank goodness, you know, because we talk about it way too openly and they're going to hate that. And so they're probably going to be virgins until they're mid twenties, but I'm glad they're

Malcolm Collins: virgins their whole life if they want to be so long as they have kids that are genetically theirs.

Simone Collins: Yeah. For, for, for non sex negative people were so surprisingly We're pretty sex negative.

Malcolm Collins: We, we, we are sex, we are open to sexual investigation, but I would think most people reading our book would say, you know, I say objectively, human sexuality is pretty disgusting.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Even vanilla straight sexuality, people are like, no, in a loving marriage.

It's like,

Simone Collins: it's gross. Just the sounds of

Malcolm Collins: sex. If you, if you removed your pre coded addiction to like pre coded predilection for these behaviors and you think about them like you think about it in isolation.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Then it's like,

Malcolm Collins: these are like oozing organs, like, you know,

Simone Collins: but I mean, I mean, also when you think about other very basic human functions [00:33:00] like eating.

And you know, you think about finessing eating a digestive food and But I think when

Malcolm Collins: you contextualize it in that context, it also helps you understand that you know, this is just sort of a pre coded thing into you, but it doesn't define who you are. It's an accidental evolution.

Simone Collins: Well, and similar to eating, right?

You know, it's, it's, we have a language and we have a means of explaining to people that you may really like this one type of food, but it's not good for you. And that doesn't define you. You know, you're not, Whatever type of food person, whereas with sexuality, unfortunately it has been turned into this identity thing, which it seems to even worse now.

So, this was fascinating, Malcolm. I'm so glad we did, cause I didn't know what we were getting into with this. I was like, monster girls. Where are we going to go here? Man, we went down a lot of listening to the

Malcolm Collins: monster girl rap, which I'll play after this. And then we should go check out the the guy who makes the videos.

Cause we, we added one after the tomboy apocalypse video, one of his, his songs, which is also fun. But yeah, I, I absolutely love you, Simone, and I am so honored. To be [00:34:00] married to you. Because you are my fetish.

Simone Collins: I'm gay for you, Malcolm. I don't know why it is that I find you sexy and nothing else, but I'm glad we found each other.

We're weirdly compatible. Oh, that's

Malcolm Collins: great. Right. All right, guys. Have a wonderful day and remember the things that arouse you and your gender are not your identity. They are. Accidents of evolution over focusing on them in terms of your identity will lead to immoral behavior. And if you end up over focusing on them with your children, it makes them very susceptible to gender and sexuality cults and a lot of cults.

He's sexuality, even sexual shame. I mean, this is how the eight passenger situation started. Really was this woman who started it who, who roped in the mom had a thing where basically she kept trying to brainwash people by convincing them they had porn addictions.

Simone Collins: And by porn addiction, it was like, you've looked at porn.

Malcolm Collins: You've looked at porn. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Which welcome [00:35:00] to humanity. I don't know what kind of world she came from, but.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I think that she learned that she could use that on any man because she was her Mormon culture. And so when she was trying to get something over on them, she could broadly assume that any man, even if they're Mormon has consumed some amount of porn, And then just say, I know you're a sinner, even if you don't know you're a sinner and all your behavior comes from porn.

And therefore, you know, then use that to, to build a, like a knowledge hierarchy over them. Well, and a wedge

Simone Collins: specifically between them and their wives, which is terrifying.

Malcolm Collins: All right. Love you Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you too.

In this insightful discussion, Malcolm and Simone Collins explore the evolution of cultural frameworks in modern society, tracing the transition from disgust-based morality to cringe culture, and ultimately to the emerging age of vitalism. The couple delves into the factors that have driven these shifts and the implications for our understanding of morality, identity, and social norms. Malcolm and Simone begin by examining the era of Protestant Christianity's dominance in the United States, characterized by a disgust-based moral framework that often led to the persecution of marginalized groups, such as the LGBTQ+ community. They argue that the recognition of the flaws in this system led to its eventual downfall and the rise of cringe culture, which relied on secondhand embarrassment and conformity to shape social norms. The discussion then turns to the emergence of vitalism, a cultural framework that celebrates individuals who unapologetically embrace their identity and break free from the constraints of cringe culture. Malcolm and Simone highlight examples of vitalistic figures, such as Tiger King and Donald Trump, and explore the potential benefits and drawbacks of this approach. Throughout the conversation, the couple emphasizes the importance of personal choice in belief systems, the value of austerity, and the role of faith in shaping one's outlook on humanity's future. They also touch on the concept of anti-racism as an ontological framework and the potential for anti-DEI consulting to promote meritocracy and combat bigotry in the workplace.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] I think it was the recognition that disgust based morality was leading to immoral actions. Like the persecution. No, hear me out here. I genuinely think it was the disgust based morality caused the persecution of LGBT individuals that led to the destruction of that system. Because That's not

Simone Collins: just how ridiculous it ultimately was.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Cause many people were like, why am I attacking somebody for something about themselves that they can't change? I think it's the new cultural framework that is going to dominate in the next age, which is the age of vitalism. So vitalism I would define as A cultural framework that sells itself with a love of existence and a love of being who you are unapologetically. One of the problems with the vitalist system, I'll also explain why it's going to potentially eventually crash, is often the people who care the least about how [00:01:00] society judges them like us, for example because of that, they lack a general moral framework and they'll just do narcissistic stuff all the time in a way that like the Tiger King or Trump does, right?

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. We are going to be discussing a very interesting topic today, and there's going to be a long amble at the end of this because sometimes we just have casual conversations before them. And we had a really interesting one before this episode, but I'm going to be discussing a concept That I have been thinking about personally, and a fan sent me some ideas that actually helped me flesh out this concept into a broader concept about how our society functions and where we are moving as a society and a, a realistic path through the pervading nihilism of our current age.

This story starts in the age of our childhood or our parents when the [00:02:00] dominant cultural group in the country was Protestant Christianity. These were the days of the satanic panic and a lot of the anti gay stuff and stuff like that.

Simone Collins: We're talking the 80s, early 90s.

Malcolm Collins: There was, and I love this.

Some people still think we're there. Like they still think like the Republicans are like the anti gay party or something like that. It's freaking insane. Like I cannot, it's insane. 45 percent of gay men voted for Trump, by the way. Like we are no longer in that the gay party and the non gay party.

Society has done a 180 since then. But anyway, back to what we were saying here. Or at least that was one study. Some people go, it's only one study. Yeah, because it doesn't agree with what you want to believe. You just throw it out. We need to take it back here. In that world, While there was a philosophical structure for what the conservative ideology was, like the Christian philosophical structure, everything like that, it wasn't that [00:03:00] philosophical structure that motivated individual action.

Voting and decision making among the Republican Party when they were communicating was the mob, I guess you could call it. Specifically, the way that they communicated was through disgust. And by that, what I mean is they're like, doesn't it disgust you when you see gay people kissing, for example?

Therefore, we should ban that. Doesn't it disgust you when you see, X or Y, like that is how they motivated the export of their cultural value system. And in reaction to that interestingly, the far left begin to deify. Things that disgusted them. That was how they fought this.

And you actually see this in leftist art. One thing I always mention is that Van Der Hoeven, he's being interviewed about Star Trek Troopers. Really, you should watch our Star Trek Troopers video if you haven't seen it. I think it's one of the best that we've done. But in the interview, he was like, I was [00:04:00] surprised that people didn't realize it was supposed to be a parody against ultra right wingism.

Because everyone I casted in it, And I thought that people would recognize that meant that it was supposed to be evil, like they were supposed to be evil, like bad guys. And I just love this world perspective of, if a thing is beautiful, it is therefore evil. And you actually see this in a lot of post modernism and stuff like this.

And it actually helps me understand a little bit of the hatred of us. We've gotten online hate for naming our kids after bad guys. Romans like Octavian, for example. They're like, this is a sign. We're Scandinavians.

Simone Collins: We get heat for that too.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The Roman one is more interesting to me because we actually do have Scandinavian heritage.

That is your family's original last name before Ellis Island. The Roman one is interesting because I don't have Roman heritage. Romans were not white Romans, subjugated and enslaved white people. They were a Mediterranean population group. I guess if you want to call them white. You can.

Historically in the United States they were not treated as white. Italian immigrants were not treated [00:05:00] as white immigrants. They were treated very badly. Yeah

Simone Collins: Irish weren't treated as white immigrants either, in many ways,

Malcolm Collins: and this is why, probably, the Hispanic immigrant group today that is seen as a separate ethnic group is not going to be seen as a separate ethnic group.

They're no less white than Italians. But anyway yeah, Italians had a problem with organized crime and everything too so remember that. Where was I going with this? Oh yeah but why do I elevate this cultural group that stomped mine, right? That civilized us, right?

They took us when we were savages. In the woods, worshiping stones and stuff like that. And they brought us a different system. And I think that system made us better. And then we went out and we exported that system all over the world. This was period of imperialism. And a lot of people are like, Oh, that was such a horrible thing.

And I think that they capture something true about us when they're like, why do you look up to the Romans? We don't look up to Romans because we are the Romans. We look up to the Romans because they showed strengths, competence, and [00:06:00] beauty, and the things that they created. Especially in contrast with our ancestors of the similar period.

And When they are looking to people to uplift from that same period, if you look at like the far progressive mind, you're looking at somebody like Bambi Thug where she is uplifting like wicked and this neo paganism where they are looking for the weak group of that period. We're the older conservative systems uplifted, beauty and demonize things that disgusted them.

They also uplifted strength the problem that those systems have is that they communicated this to the mob through disgust systems, which can allow for people to be victimized. And it's very easy to mistake disgust, an innate reaction that we evolve to try to help us have more surviving offspring, either through not engaging in reproductive behavior that will lead to lower offspring.

I think that's why we have disgust towards things like male relationships. I want to support gay people, and I think a lot of gay people don't recognize this I could not be more pro gay. I lived throughout my entire high school career [00:07:00] with a gay roommate. Not living with my family or anything like that, a GSA.

And then in college, my academic dad was a gay guy, that's your core like social community. And these were communities I was choosing, but even with that, I still like my brain still instinctually exports a disgust impact like export when I see men kiss it. That is something that I can't help, but feel.

Okay. And that's just the way human sexuality works. It includes arousal and it includes disgust.

Simone Collins: And you don't get to choose what arouses you or what disgusts you. It's just, it's

Malcolm Collins: just important that I don't confuse. That was a moral intuition. And that's something that Christianity also was figuring out in the eighties and nineties.

I think that is what mother Teresa represented for a lot of people is that when you see somebody who has leprosy. Your average person sees them and their brain exports disgust because it's trying to get them to not interact with somebody who might be diseased. But a lot of people in these older moral frameworks confused that [00:08:00] disgust with a lack of

Simone Collins: morality, with evil.

Malcolm Collins: was evil. Like they must be immoral if they are causing disgust. Yeah, or they have sinned

Simone Collins: in some way, or this is a sign of their sinful life, or depending on your religious framework, sinful past life, etc, right? It's very

Malcolm Collins: important that our society moved past disgust. as a metric for morality and immorality.

But during that period, the seeds of the worst impulses of modern progressivism were sowed, which is a cultural group that in the figures in history that they worship and look to with reverence and within modern times, they worship and look to as reverence, is a weakness and ugliness are seen as signs of greatness, which can seem like a very, bizarre philosophy, but it makes sense if you look at where it grew, which was originally in opposition to a moral framework that was using disgust to shape things.

Fair. But then we move from [00:09:00] this disgust framework to another framework that is I think equally bad. And it's the framework that we're just now leaving now. And I would say this

Simone Collins: spans from late nineties to through 20, 2020 pretty much, right? Basically like

Malcolm Collins: just now seeing emerging from it just now emerging from it.

And this is the era of cringe motivating mass action,

Simone Collins: which is very different from disgust, which is

Malcolm Collins: very different from disgust. Yeah. Cringe is second hand embarrassment. And it is embarrassment about somebody breaking social norms that they may not have recognized were social norms or something like that.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: This motivated during the dominance of the urban monoculture in our society when we switched from the Christian group having control to the urban monoculture having control, this largely progressive group. They [00:10:00] motivated mass action through cringe, cringe in others, and fear of cringe yourself.

Yeah, which

Simone Collins: is why when you look at polling, for example, there are fewer people now than at least ever before in this polling that are willing to not only express their views on controversial subjects, but express their views on any subject at all. The extent to which people are afraid of criticism, is off the charts now.

And I think that's a product of the era of cringe, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. When I think that was the result of cringe, which now people are recognizing as bad when you use cultural conformity as your primary method of communicating with the mob, eventually, intellectually alive players are going to be like, yes, but the end state of this is everyone thinks the same.

Everyone acts the same. Everyone's afraid of being. creative or interesting. And I think that almost you can see as a perfect counter and reflection to this BAP, Bronze Age Pervert, who [00:11:00] I mentioned in another recent video, where I think he is his entire thing is like a performative artistic statement against the dominance of cringe culture.

Simone Collins: And I think so out there, so flamboyantly unapologetic in stances that are quite colorful.

Malcolm Collins: And they break every one of the cringe culture's frameworks. So you can contrast him with somebody like who I actually used to respect as an intellectual. I don't like the path that he's gone down.! Milo Yiannopoulos!

Simone Collins: Oh! Okay, who would have Yeah, like these No, more like he would have give speeches and then get cancelled and then have people come on stage and freak out.

Yeah. Milo Yiannopoulos.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but Milo Yiannopoulos Was actually still operating under cringe culture like he liked it being a shock jock But he never actually really broke the rules of progressive society He was still operating under the cringe framework He was just trying to [00:12:00] show that it wasn't logical or logically consistent Like that was his whole thing BAP who I think is equally as colorful as Milo So I don't think it's just that he's colorful that makes him this through the cringe to based because based as we've said on our episode You know, you need to pass through the tunnel of cringe to get the base.

Yeah. And I really truly believe this. I think that all based is intrinsically cringe because to be based, you have to go against the dominant cultural framework, which is what's cringe is a secondhand embarrassment. And to be based, what it really is To and I actually this is really interesting and I think how we got to this sort of based culture, which is the perfect anecdote to cringe culture, Which is people can't feel secondhand embarrassment for us Not easily because we take ownership.

We know we are breaking cultural norms We know where the cultural norms are we are breaking and we are doing it Intentionally and take pride in those decisions because we believe that those cultural norms are bad cultural [00:13:00] norms Where Cringe exists, right? Like where you can get cringe and breaking cultural norms is you break cultural norms just because you're not aware of them.

Or you break cultural norms because you're part of a separate cultural group and you just don't see them as normative. So you're just doing your own thing. And for those individuals, they can be like, Oh, they didn't know poor child. I actually think. Trolls does a great job of showing the racist

Simone Collins: movie

Malcolm Collins: trolls.

Well, trolls world tour and showing the racism intrinsic. And I'll put the clip here in this cringe world perspective where she meets the country trolls, great, the rural poor for the first time, and she's shocked that their songs are sad. And she goes, don't they know that music is about making you happy?

And they're just like, Oh. They must not know. And so she's going to go tell them to erase their culture in favor of her culture because her culture is obviously correct in the way it relates [00:14:00] to the arts and their culture is obviously wrong in the way it relates to the arts because it's different, right?

Song is so sad. Yeah. It's sad. Different. Oh, they must not know that music's supposed to make you happy.

Ah, that's awful. Now take it easy, Growly Pete. I feel bad for them. It looks like they got beat up by a rainbow.

Malcolm Collins: And I think that movie also, I'll have the other clip here. They do such a great job in that movie of showing the sin. Of progressivism. The sin of progressivism. The sin of progressivism actually being about cultural imperialism. Where she's we can make us all the same.

Like she's we can understand that we're not really different. And then one day we can all come together. Oh

Simone Collins: dear.

Malcolm Collins: Our like, anything but that. That is our differences. And this is what I think, in this new conservative movement, the recognition that progressives claim to love diversity, but don't actually think anyone's different.

Men and women aren't different in their perspectives or proficiencies, [00:15:00] different cultural groups, different ethnic groups. Why would diversity matter if no one's different? But if you elevate the differences, if you're like, it's actually good that we're different and that people with different perspectives, we can achieve better outcomes.

But to do that, you need to recognize that we are actually different and that different cultural groups are actually better at different things. On average, not everyone in a cultural group, but on average, they have slightly different proficiencies and perspectives.

If we combine our music, she'll see that music unites all trolls, and that we're all the same, and that she's one of us! Mean, no disrespect, but anything but that. History is just gonna keep repeating itself until we make everyone realize that we're all the same. But we're not all the same. Denying our differences is denying the truth of who we are.

Simone Collins: Just out of curiosity, what do you think brokered our shift culturally from Disgust to cringe.

Was it the fact that content creation became pervasive online and a bunch of people who [00:16:00] weren't subject to public scrutiny before suddenly were?

Malcolm Collins: What, what changed? So no I think that it's people like us in BAP really. So it was the key. No. I'm

Simone Collins: referring from disgust to cringe. This is

Malcolm Collins: oh, disgust to cringe. Yes. I think it was the recognition that disgust based morality was leading to immoral actions. Like the persecution. No, hear me out here. I genuinely think it was the disgust based morality caused the persecution of LGBT individuals that led to the destruction of that system. Because That's not

Simone Collins: just how ridiculous it ultimately was.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Cause many people were like, why am I attacking somebody for something about themselves that they can't change?

Simone Collins: So essentially there was enough of a recognition of the lack of truth and impracticality of disgust based reactions and in general support for progressive causes that caused an [00:17:00] elevation of.

Honestly of disgusting things that people found disgusting. And there's the whole like Mary Harrington conspiracy theory that I love of the reason why children's book illustrations now are so ugly, more tracks with the rise of progressive culture than anything else. And it's almost like a psyop that's encouraging people to normalize ugliness as part of this embrace to your point of disgust.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Any normal person she would invoke. A strong, immediate instinct of disgust, but progressives have learned to treat that emotion as a sign that something is more morally pure and more worthy of engagement. And there was a period in which it was useful to counter that feeling of disgust, but the disgust should just be ignored, not elevated.

And I think now people realize that's stupid. And the key that broke the lock of this second system Was the based individuals who previously when they were dunking on cringe, it's people like Chris Chan and stuff like that. People who just had no clue what they [00:18:00] were doing and we're breaking cultural boundaries because they were usually like mentally ill people.

Or like actual races or etc. Then we're like just behind the times. But you can't argue that BAP or us are behind the times. Like we break it. The key that breaks that lock is people being like, wait, these people. are subverting the culture but have pride in who they are, right?

And I actually think this is what led to Trump winning the election. And I'll explain what it is because I think it's the new cultural framework that is going to dominate in the next age, and I think it's a sustainable one which is the age of vitalism. So vitalism I would define as A cultural framework that sells itself with a love of existence and a love of being who you are unapologetically.

And I think that this is where we see individuals like Tiger King exploding onto the stage. [00:19:00] Tiger King did so well because he ignored You know, in the past, that is what would have been called cringe. But in our time, he knew the cultural norms he was violating. He just had perfect ownership over who he was and was proud of who he was.

And even though he was a genuinely reprehensible person, that is no longer the way people relate to others. I think Trump, for example, while I think he was a good president, I think he's a morally reprehensible human being. I think he is a bad human being when I look at the way he's treated his wives, when I look at the way he's, it's just gross to me but in the age of vitalism, what we're going to see, and I think that this will scare a lot of people, is a lot of reprehensible human beings are going to be elevated through vitalism because One of the problems with the vitalist system, I'll also explain why it's going to potentially eventually crash, is often the people who care the least about how society judges them like us, for example [00:20:00] because of that, they lack a general moral framework and they'll just do narcissistic stuff all the time in a way that like the Tiger King or Trump does, right?

And so we need to then. transition from a purely vitalistic system to a vitalistic city on a hill system, which I think is our end goal.

Simone Collins: That's fun.

Malcolm Collins: The idea of we are trying to create something that's beautiful in the future. Like this consistent striving, not that we are the city on the hill right now, but the city of the hill that will exist in this vision of a more perfect humanity that we can strive towards restitutize the, Es Aristotelian.

Byrd I was looking for was eman nest. Dies. The

Which means in political theory and theology to M and S ties. The edge ton is [00:21:00] generally pejorative phrase, referring to attempts to bring about utopian conditions in the world. And to effectively create a heaven on earth. Theologically, the belief is akin to post millennialism after reflected in the social gospel of the 1880s and 1930s era, as well as Protestant reform movements during the second.

Great awakening. In the 1830s and 1840s, such as abolitionists.

Malcolm Collins: I'll add it in here. Yeah. But and I think it's bad to think that you're like living in that now or that there's ever this perfect society that you can create, because that leads to things like communism and stuff like that. But I do think a moral system around it ever improving society. is the way to go.

And when people look at like the way that we're framing our public images, it is with this based vitalism in mind. Our end goal is president, what will I get there? I don't know, but that's where I'd like to end. Okay. Sorry. I shouldn't say that's our end goal. That's like our mid goal.

End goal is, I should say we live in such an early time in human history. We haven't even lived through a period where one human ruled a planet yet, [00:22:00] but question Simone, what are your thoughts?

Simone Collins: I think the transition tracks I can intuitively feel a shift from disgust to cringe, and then I also can feel that shift from cringe to based slash vitalism, which I'm seeing even now, for example, I keep hearing people talk about hate following or hate subscribing to people who, Originally they might argue or cringe.

And then after spending more time, hate watching their content, and this happens with us to a certain extent, because we do get emails from people about this, they, at least either they actually come to see their views as being legitimate and joined their side, or at the very least, they start to envy the fact that they have this very vitalistic life that they Hold to their morals.

They're very happy in pursuit of them. And they envy [00:23:00] that confidence and lack of cognitive dissonance that these people were just so confident in their lifestyles, however wrong these hate watchers find them to be are. For example, I hear one person I follow online, hate watches, a bunch of.

Mormon influencers who live out in Miami, or not Miami, sorry, in Hawaii. And this person hates everything about their values and their lifestyle and never wants to have kids themselves, et cetera, but then can't stop watching these wholesome Mormon families. And then we're going to see more and more of that.

And this is where the transition starts to happen is that the more you start to question your own lifestyle and see that other people, no matter how much you disagree with them, are experiencing a level of vitalism and success and happiness that in your entire pursuit of happiness, you could never achieve.

It's going to get you thinking differently, and I think

Malcolm Collins: that's interesting. Yeah I actually think that's a really core point, and it's why based, wholesome baseness was the [00:24:00] key to always defeating cringe culture, is that cringe culture motivates individuals to watch these individuals outside their cultural framework because that's where they're getting the satisfaction.

At least I'm not like them, the secondhand embarrassment. Yeah. Look at how backwards

Simone Collins: and dumb these people are.

Malcolm Collins: But then they look at, look how, you get this sort of look how backwards and dumb these people are. It goes from, haha, look how backwards and dumb these people are.

And then they're watching like the wholesome worm and family. And they're like, what, look how backwards and dumb these people, wait a second. Wait a second. Am I the backwards and dumb one? What happens first? Doesn't have their s**t together. Do these people have their s**t together? What happens first

Simone Collins: is they just hate them and make fun of them.

Then they start to critique elements of their lifestyle. Oh the trad lifestyle. That's not really what trad is like these trad influencers are just showing a caricature, but then they're more like, but the trad lifestyle in general, I kind of support. Like you have to find new reasons [00:25:00] as to why these people are cringe that aren't actually Related to their lifestyle and I think that's where the adoption starts to take place It's

Malcolm Collins: one of our things is be so wholesome.

It's cringe you know, in the way that we relate to each other and our kids and everything like that. I think one thing that was said when you were talking about this, and I think that this is a broad thing that people are going to realize, because we live in a secular society now, and a lot of people are brought up secularly.

They can only think of religion in this dehumanized context of like religious, insane extremists, instead of people who still have a spark of light in their eyes, and that if you're like, what do I mean by the spark of light? Talk to an Amish person or something like that.

Somebody in one of these communities where they're really. And you will see this light of human dynamism in their eyes that you just don't see from these ultra woke individuals, which just look, I almost say like soulless when you're interacting with them. And a lot of their content feels that way.

It just feels like it lacks any passion anymore. And it said, religion and faith are a choice. [00:26:00] And that was the core thing that sort of we realized when we're putting together this faith system for our family, is we made a choice to believe these things.

Simone Collins: We were just

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, let's try it. And I think that's a really interesting thing about faith as a concept that people without faith don't understand.

They think that faith is blindly believing things that don't have full evidence to support their frameworks, right? When, what faith actually is making the choice to believe those things. And when you reach a moment, As like a hate watcher of a wholesome Mormon group or something like that, where you're like, Wait, I can just choose to be like them?

The problem for a lot of people with something like Mormonism is they're like then I have to make too many sacrifices around Things that I want for logical consistency purpose and [00:27:00] everything like that. And that's the core purpose of our tracks videos. If you haven't seen those, it's like our own religion that our family has that we're trying to put together.

They will get back to. It's one of my favorite projects, but it requires a lot of intensity in terms of mental effort to write one because I need to think about how it could be misinterpreted. If this ends up working and becomes a religion 500 years from now, how could this be misinterpreted to cause, hatred or bigotry or mass, negative action and stuff like that?

 But I'm also trying to create it as a genuine descendant of the Christian and Jewish and Muslim traditions, mostly the Christian tradition, mostly my Calvinist ancestry. And it's hard to think of it as a form of Christianity, but it requires less I think you don't get the benefit of antiquity with it.

So a lot of people are like, okay antiquity, but a lot of these older religious traditions don't really have that much antiquity in the way they're currently practice. Anyway even Judaism, right? The Kabbalah was only added about a thousand years ago. You're only about a

Simone Collins: thousand.

Goodness. Great. I

Malcolm Collins: mean, if you look at Christian frameworks, like a lot of the [00:28:00] Protestant beliefs rapture are fairly new.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: Debatably but most scholars think that it's a fairly new belief. So these religions evolve all the time, And we simply see ours as the, but then we choose to believe things that don't make sense to people.

We're like, yeah, God is real. Which is interesting that we call ourselves atheists, but we believe in God. Like our Wikipedia says we're atheists, but I'm like, but I also believe in God. And people will be like how do you square that? And I'm like, because I don't see God as supernatural. I think God like is an actual being that physically exists just at a different point in time.

In a way that we may not understand, in a way that we may see is supernatural from our own perspective, but not in some other mystical realm, physically real thing. But in a way that we may not be able to touch or something like that, but physically, within our physical constraints, the physical constraints that our reality operates within.

But anyway yeah, I think Oh, there was another thing I wanted to say here. So one is belief of the choice. We just try to make that choice come with as few sacrifices as possible for broad secularists. While [00:29:00] still motivating the core thing that religion motivates, which is austerity.

I think that just, you don't need to make all of the individual sacrifices, so long as you're making sacrifices across your entire life for the greater good, and genuinely living with those sacrifices. People were so shocked, they're like, oh, they stack their kids in a barracks, like behind me right here.

in the dad's office. And they, they don't put their heat on in the winter. And it's yeah, living with austerity used to be seen as an intrinsically good thing. It's part of human vitalism. But the final point I want to make here is in response to a question that somebody was asking me that I found really interesting and got me thinking where they're like, why?

Do you think humanity is a good thing? Like, why are you promoting this ideology where like humanity and the human potential future is a good thing? And I said,

Simone Collins: Journalists just asked me that yesterday and I'm like, the,

Malcolm Collins: it's an irrelevant question because groups that don't think that humanity is a good thing are going to turn nihilistic and cease to exist.

So it's [00:30:00] not like mimetically an interesting question to me. Obviously you need to somehow convince people of this. But. Two, because it's a choice. I have faith in humanity. I have faith that we will continue to improve and I think if we look through history we do continue to on the broad scale improve ethically I think eventually biologically, technologically, in the way we relate to our reality.

And this is also why I love pro natalism because I see the next generation is better than the last generation. Totally. Always. And that's why I'm okay with death. That's why we have this weird pro death stance. I don't want people to live forever. I think that people after a certain age do not change their mind as much as young people.

Cannot recontextualize reality as easily, and this leads to negative externalities. But, realistically, my kids will be able to call up an AI of me whenever they want, because I've created so much content. We already have some of our fans creating AIs of us that they can interact with, which I've actually found really cool.

To use we can't show them yet, but you can [00:31:00] put yourself on a list of them. For dating advice and stuff like that. They're like trained on specific side segments of our content. And I just can't tell the people who are doing this, how much I appreciate that they're doing it because it's one of the goals of the creation of all of this for us is to have a, but then, presumably my kids will be so much better than me in a few generations that they would just see no reason to ask me questions except as a historical curiosity of what someone of this previous period would have thought, not as like a.

Fountain of wisdom, which I think is the way that we would see, if you could summon an ancestor's ghost from, 400 years ago, are you really going to learn anything about reality from them? Not really. It's an interesting historic curiosity but I think that's what the life extensionists are creating, but then they're going to, consolidate power around them, which creates all sorts of negative externalities because generally the longer you've been alive, the more you can consolidate power.

And we've seen this with boomers, not letting the next generation rise up and creating it. Intergenerationally worse society. And I just think rumors are the worst. Like the generation before them was awesome. The generation before them was they underwent so many hardships, and they became better as a [00:32:00] society.

They begin to really challenge some of the systemic wicked problems of society. And actually, begun to fix him, like racism. And then boomers are just like, let's go back. Let's become like fully racist, but this time against like white people and Jews. Like it's wild. And it's been carried on the mindset that started with him in some of these younger generations, but fortunately in the factions that are going to die out.

So I love humanity. And I think that promoting that love and being exciting to be excited to be a human and excited to be alive and excited to create humans. I hope that this can be the thing that like gets people interested in the future, people being happy with who they are rather than this constant struggle to be happy of who you are, whether or not you're happy with who you are is a choice.

And it is not one that you should always make. If you are a terrible person that needs to improve, you shouldn't work on trying to be happy with who you are. You should try to. Work to change yourself into somebody who deserves to be happy with who they are.

Simone Collins: I think that's [00:33:00] why we're going to end up in a future with people who are like this, those who are nihilistic, those who can't bring themselves to imagine why humans should exist in the future, aren't going to have kids and their views won't be represented.

So I think it's going to be just fine. I think what we're trying to fight for with pronatalism, though, and what's interesting to me to bring this back to the theme. That you've highlighted is that what we're trying to fight against is a return to the discussed system, because that's what a lot of the numbers look like when you look at which groups are going to continue to reproduce and what's going to happen when the woke monoculture essentially.

picks off anyone who's more open minded or pluralistic from those groups.

Malcolm Collins: I also want to be clear that a vitalist system is not a pro beauty system necessarily. No, it's a

Simone Collins: pluralistic, enthusiastic, high energy system. What you're talking about is So if I

Malcolm Collins: could describe the difference between these two systems.

There, in the past, were some Pro beauty systems, right? But pro beauty systems are [00:34:00] intrinsically, I think, over exclusionary and overly culturally conformist around what is beautiful.

Simone Collins: I

Malcolm Collins: keep an eye on the time. Whereas the discussed,

the vitalist systems, think of them as the guy who rides into a room on a lion dress with an American flag with a torch in one hand and an AR, 15 in the other hand, shooting into the sky thing in the national anthem.

That's what I want to be. Dressed in cyber armor. I'll put all my Corgi picture on the page here. Oh my god. That's what I want you to represent. This low culture love of true Americana. Yeah, it's not beautiful, it's not

Simone Collins: ugly, it's just extra. I love you, Simone. I love you too, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: Although it's proud of who it is, that's what we need is pride in who we are. And we've stamped that out outside of specifically approved subcategories.

Simone Collins: Totally. Yeah. All right. I'll see you in the Google meet. It's in the calendar invite. Yeah.

How are the kids this [00:35:00] morning?

Malcolm Collins: Great. Sorry. I was just checking to make sure I didn't have something, but I've got one at, yeah, it was Wednesday.

Simone Collins: 11 a. m. is when we have the.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, it's before that. I was going to talk with the guy from side scrollers about working with him on the business idea of the anti gay consultancy firm, cause he used to run a large, like a gaming company type thing.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So he'd be, a great, I was actually thinking of reaching out to James Lindsay about doing something on this too, cause I thought that could be. He seems really sane and educated. And he could be a good person to, to rope into an anti woke

Simone Collins: consulting team.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And the goal would be to fight anti meritocratic behavior, bigotry behavior that, that, dehumanize those specific groups or just, it's wild when you think about it, that there's progressive organizations, that organizations have like this one body was in them, the DEI department.

That is specifically about exporting progressive cultural values. Like it's a progressive department meant to make sure the company never doesn't act [00:36:00] too non progressively yet. They don't have a parallel conservative department meant to make sure they never act too out of line with conservative values.

I think

Simone Collins: they see DEI. As resolving a wicked problem in society at the level of the corporation, because to the point of anti racism is that it's popularized in many spheres. You cannot just not be racist. You have to be actively anti racist. If you're not actively solving the problem, you're part of it, which somewhat, I would say shores up with our philosophy in the sense that We agree that if you see a mess, it is your responsibility to clean it up.

I don't care who spilled the milk. You need to wipe it up. But what's really

Malcolm Collins: interesting is we'd actually talk about this in video that I don't know if it's going to go live. So I'll briefly mention the idea here because I think it's a really interesting concept. Okay. And this will be put at the end of the video instead of the beginning, but the anti-racism, what it really is remember how we divided ethical systems into consequential list?

Like the consequences of your actions or the, [00:37:00] you judge the morality. Yeah, the ontological. It is the rule system of that determines your actions. Like lying is bad, therefore don't lie. And then aesthetic, which is about ma and every decision you go, what is the most masculine choice? What is the most Right?

You know exactly these people. What anti-racism really is it's a. Logical framework for interacting with reality where with every decision you need to ask, what is the most anti racist, choice I could make?

Simone Collins: Yeah, or what is the most performatively inclusive? Woke position I could possibly take but it is misused frequently.

Malcolm Collins: No but I think that shows how you get bigotry as an end result of that. When you do not include because you're creating a hierarchy of groups within their view of what racism is or certain groups are more worthy of human dignity than other groups.

Simone Collins: This is actually really interesting.

There was recently this scandal with a very progressive library that after A cis white man leader retired for that library. They hired the perfect DEI, not only a very well [00:38:00] credentialed and qualified woman to take the position, but a woman who was not white and where things went wrong for her and where a huge sort of campaign against her was created I think probably started when she.

I think let go of some underperforming employees who also didn't happen to be white which I think shows where DEI has gone wrong which is that true DEI, which is what this woman was practicing is. Yeah. When they were looking for someone who's qualified they chose to hire someone who also, brought in a more diverse perspective.

Then when she actually focused on. The outcome and mission of the organization over performative preferential treatment for groups that have historically been discriminated against. Then she was defenestrated.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So it's just bigotry, but hold on a second. I got to get something. All

I'll get started on the piece here. And I think what's great [00:39:00] about anti DEI, I'm going to keep pitching this to people, is that it actually increases profits. If you had allowed her to do her real job, which should be anti bigotry you increase the meritocracy within a corporation.

When you're doing DEI, you are intrinsically decreasing the efficiency of a corporation. Because you are, maintaining like under employing employees and stuff like that.

In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm and Simone explore the complex relationship between human predilections, such as arousal patterns and food preferences, and the cultural norms that shape our attitudes towards them. They question why it's socially acceptable to shame certain food choices but not sexual orientations, and delve into the historical context of how sexual compatibility became a key factor in modern relationships. The couple also examines the formation of subcultures around shared experiences of societal othering, and how these communities can become intrinsically tied to one's identity. Throughout the conversation, they touch on topics such as the AIDS epidemic, the conglomeration of the LGBTQ+ movement, and the potential risks and benefits of gender transition. Join Malcolm and Simone as they navigate these sensitive issues and share their personal perspectives on fostering a supportive environment for their children.

[00:00:00] I don't know where are you're gonna go, so let's dive right in. It's something I've been thinking about recently.

, there are many things that humans have predilections for, whether those predilections are genetic or due to our environment growing up. Two broad categories where I think humans have a varying predilections that are both genetic and environmental are the things that arouse them and the flavors that they enjoy.

That's true. Yeah. Okay. Huh. So the question then becomes why is it that I cannot impugn someone if I'm like I don't like this particular food I don't think that cake is healthy, I don't think you should eat cake every day, I can understand that my kids might even like the taste of cake, okay?

But I am going to shame them for eating cake, I am going to withhold cake from them, Yeah, or soda or alcohol. People are very passionate about these things. Why is it that as a society, that's a totally normal thing to [00:01:00] say, but if I come from a cultural group that has similar beliefs around something like gender transition, that's same sex attraction that's seen as homophobic

Would you like to know more?

Our family doesn't particularly like Italian food. Like I find it to be carby and honestly a little bland for my taste.

 We don't serve it a lot to our kids. Okay. Now some, a family that likes Italian food that like receives pleasure when they eat Italian food and really enjoys that.

I understand that there's other families like that. I just don't want that for my family. Right now, this is a totally normal and inoffensive thing to state. No one is going to say I'm a pasta phobe when I state something like this. Yeah. That's just not for you. What is really fascinating is when I correlate this with something like sexuality, you would get an extremely negative response.

because a lot of people they will attack our [00:02:00] position on gayness, which is to say that I, as a family, like in my kids were born, same sex attracted or due to environmental conditions become same sex attractive.

I'm not going to shame them because I think that we have other solutions to have families right now. And I think that, that the cost of shaming them are less than the benefits from a cultural perspective. But I hold. Nothing against the cultures that do. And I can understand why from a historic context, especially if they have other cultural solutions for same sex attraction.

The and a lot of people are like, all conservatives have the same solution to same sex attraction. And it's this is just objectively not true. So if I'm just contrasting three groups here traditional Catholics, traditional Muslims, and traditional Protestants traditional Catholics who are born same sex attracted.

If you look at the Catholic priesthood, some studies show that over 50 percent of the priesthood is same sex attracted. It is, they get a, position of status, but they just have to maintain celibacy. That's actually a pretty good trade off and not particularly inhumane. It's like ethically sourced eunuchs.

You go to, obviously it has led to some negative externalities for altar boys. Yeah. I was going to say, not [00:03:00] always eunuchs, but if you look at rates within the Catholic church versus other professions where people interact with kids a lot, like public school system, the rates of molestation. You guys know what I'm talking about, or higher in the public school system.

Even on a per teacher basis, a lot of people don't know this. And this was a report done by the Clinton administration. So get off me on this. Protestants, it is you just suppress it, but isn't that what I tell people with cake? Isn't that what I tell, just suppress what many cultures say with something like alcohol, or cake, or some foods that we might think are culturally distasteful, some cultural groups like Oh don't eat frog. Yeah. No, Jews, for example, or Muslims, for example, don't eat pig, right? It's not for any specific health reason. It's just don't eat pig. This is a control and you're like pig is good. I like eating pig, but that doesn't mean I have anything against Muslims.

So I'm starting by just laying out the problem, right? That's interesting. Yeah. So the question is, Why is this the case? And people are like people are really forced to live. Oh, and I forgot the Muslim [00:04:00] solution. The extremist Muslim solution is gender transition, which is actually really funny to me.

The gender transition progressives are like accidentally discovering conservative Islam, which is you have a gender confused young person who seems sex attractive and it's just transition them. No more gay. It's An interesting cultural solution. And we can get into briefly as to why I think you see this within Islamic populations and not in other populations, is it solves the sex ratio problem you have within Islamic populations because you have religion within Muslim populations.

Because some people have multiple female partners. Yeah. You have more unattached males in this culture. So there's more males who will just never get a partner. So it does make sense to transition. Greater societal stability. Yeah. People. Get married. Yeah. Because also one of the, one of the big things I would say is, if you can't, if you decide that, you live in a society that is anti carb and you fricking love carbs, like, all right, that's tough.

You'll adjust. But when you live in a society that doesn't let you, Choose the life partner that would that you'd be sexually compatible with and for some people that's really important part of their [00:05:00] relationship Why is that an important part of their relationship? Like it's an interesting thing to note, right?

Like historically this was not an important part of relation compatibility. Yeah, that is an interesting thing That's its own like huge Pandora's box right is why Do we care so much about sexual compatibility? There's an evolutionary argument to be made that at least when it comes to male female pairings, which are, reproductive in nature, it could matter because studies have shown that people, when they just smell sweaty shirts or something are more likely to be attracted to people with whom they would be genetically more compatible for whatever reason, right?

There's factor you can see these levels of, but I'm talking historically throughout most of history. Most people, yeah. Typically around people with whom they're fairly well genetically match. You're marrying people who you've never had sex with. Yeah. Who you've likely never even kissed, you've never held hands with, this is historically the norm.

Even if you're talking about many indigenous cultures which you had, I'm sorry, progressive. Elevate indigenous cultures. So I'm just [00:06:00] saying that even among the cultures that they elevate while you can find some that are outside of this actually historically No, you were not having sex outside of marriage that frequently except in rare anthropological cases and this is especially true of the successful cultures the cultures that ended up conquering their neighbors and forming long lived empires.

So the question here becomes this is weird, right? And I think that you came up with one of the answers. The elevation of sexual identity to something that was critical that a person lived out came downstream of sexuality becoming key to a healthy relationship. And sexual compatibility becoming key to a healthy relationship because in a historic context, it wasn't.

And I actually think relationships are worse off for it being elevated. Yeah. And when you look at subreddits, for example, like dead bedrooms, it's, yeah it when you make a relationship about sex and then the sex almost inevitably changes over time as people have kids and hormones change and things get [00:07:00] mismatched.

Yeah. Like you're setting yourself up for failure. Yeah I'm with my wife because I respect her as a human being. That was what I was looking for. Somebody can screw, I'm with you because you're freaking hot. But, whatever. But like i, IE your your effect on my arousal patterns is like the last thing that I'm thinking about in terms of what recommends you as a wife.

100%. Yeah. If we got divorced, it would never be over sex. It would never be over sex. And it's the same with our kids. When I'm elevating, when I'm telling my kids the type of person they should be looking for in a spouse, I would not elevate that. So I think this is one thing, is the perverse elevation of sexual compatibility within relationships.

Yeah, that's interesting. And just, honestly, sex within relationships. It's people approached diet from only the perception of dopamine spikes hold on, also It's really, you should probably approach diet from the perspective of, are you surviving, are you healthy and functional.

Yeah but the other thing that led to the elevation of this as an identity, so we're gonna talk about this, is the elevation of casual sex. [00:08:00] There was no real reason for gay men outside of like married gay men going to gay bathhouses occasionally, which historically was very normal. To when I say married, heterosexually married gay men just going to get relief occasionally outside of their marriage.

That as soon as you had casual dating was in these communities and it was expected that everyone in high school was sleeping around to some extent and everyone in college was sleeping around to some extent, which is a very new thing. Which is very new, then, yes, for these people to indulge in what was giving them arousal, they needed to go out and engage in a way that was public.

And people could say, admittedly right away, like, how dare you compare this to stuff Cake. And stuff like that. Being gay has no negative health consequences. And here I'd be like, REEEEEEEEEEEEEEE RECORD SCRATCH excuse me. Record scratch, that sounds more like an autistic re right there.

Oh, re, record scratch. Are you do you not remember the [00:09:00] AIDS epidemic? It nearly genocided the entire gay community. Because intrinsically you are going to get more STDs passed by anal sex than you are through other forms of sexual contact because it leads more blood to blood contact.

Duh, there is a reason why cultural groups culturally evolve, the iterations that shun this behavior had more surviving offspring than why you see a level of homophobia in almost every long lived widespread culture in the world today. Okay, now we have scientifically gotten to a point where we can get over that, but if you're talking about like when the gay movement was first blossoming, no, we had not yet gotten to a point where we could get around that, and the families of these people who told them that, It was better to live a closeted lifestyle than die of AIDS, which was the alternative for many of these people.

You're probably right. That's a horrible f*****g thing to say, but it's also [00:10:00] objectively true if you're talking about the early gay movement and what happened to many of these people. Yeah. Really sad. And I appreciate what they went through to normalize their community.

But then you have the other thing, which is to say, whenever you take a community and you say you can't do this and we will shame you for doing this and the desire is strong enough to do that, that a portion of people are still going to indulge in that, then you will get a subculture that forms around that.

Then why isn't there a subculture for people who cheat on their partners? Because that is like historically men wouldn't have same sex liaisons. To a lesser extent and also men when you're cheating on your partner, but we'll get on that in a second I actually think that Portions of the modern poly movement evolved out of this subculture.

No interesting. I like that take that's what we can get on this in a second so we need to go back to If you had something like spicy food, everyone in society who eats spicy food is going to be punished. Okay? You would get a subculture of people who like spicy [00:11:00] food and they'd hang out in places and then they'd begin to use words like, oh, that's spicy to mean that's cool and stuff like that because their hierarchy was in their culture begins to become determined by how Much they are willing to other themselves in mainstream society to fit in with that culture in the same way that like two goths meet each other and they've never met each other before their relative hierarchy is normally determined by the number of like body modifications or outfits or knowledge they have of obscure bands that would other them in mainstream society or tattoos or whatever right so you begin to get pep like tattoos of chili peppers and like certain jewelry configurations that mean like when you meet someone oh you know this is another spicer spicer i like that they begin to talk among themselves and they begin to develop Alternate ways of speech and stuff like that, because they're talking within their own communities and they need to signal to other members of their community.

And then, oh, wouldn't you know it, there's this much rarer group of people but they really eating salt and they're also shunned by mainstream society for their salty taste. Now, this community is also an underground [00:12:00] community, and they just find it's more convenient because both groups are hated by society for things that they do with food to meet in the same locations and everything like that.

This is Largely what happened with the gay and trans movement. These movements have no real reason to be connected. But from sort of the economies of scale and resources perspective, it just made more sense to share some spaces. Yeah, in the early days. But they are as biological phenomenons, I think almost completely unrelated.

There, one's an arousal system thing. One's a gender system thing. Even if it is an arousal system thing, it's a much more specific arousal system thing. It's not the same kind of a thing, but they judged themselves by the people who hated them, because people always do that. When you are othered by society, you go where the Critical mass of cultural inertia is, and that's where you begin to identify, and that's how these various movements that really didn't have any reason to conglomerate began to conglomerate amongst each other into what is [00:13:00] now LGBTQ which is interesting and take that to mean whatever you mean, but what then ended up happening is people begin to define their identity By this subculture, and this always happens with subcultures.

I remember how personally hurt I was as a kid when I was dressed as a, like a seamster, basically, not true seamster, but like my own take on it. And somebody was like, Oh, I love that seamster look. I used to be a seamster too. I had a seamster phase a few years ago. And I felt so hurt by that. I was like, this isn't a phase.

This is my identity. How dare you? People always think that their community right now is their identity, right? You see this in the right as well, individuals who are like in their, Andrew Tate phase think that this whole man masculine thing is like their identity or this whole MGTOW thing is like the core of who they are or this whole red pill thing.

And it's no, trust me, bro. This is a phase. This is just the community that you are identifying with right now. And you have identified a sense of self around this community. community. [00:14:00] Now, certain communities can exist throughout your entire life if they become stable cultural units, which is what happened with the LGBT culture.

But that doesn't mean that it is intrinsically part of a person's humanity other than any more than like the foods that you like are an intrinsic part of your humanity. I think that's what we're looking at here is we, and then people can be like what is, your human identity really?

And I can say that of all the things that are not your identity, the things that I am extra sure are not your identity are the things that you didn't choose about yourself. The things that are just biologically coded into you. Like how much of a sweet tooth you have, your sexual orientation, et cetera.

Your gender. Your arousal pathways. Yeah. Your race, your like these things may cause society to treat you differently, but they're all things that you didn't choose about yourself. And therefore you have less ownership over them than the things that are a [00:15:00] result of who you differentially are. Oh, I like that.

Yeah. So the point you're trying to make is, That what we should use to define ourselves are the things that we are our prefrontal cortex courtesies essentially would say are ours that we own them. We didn't inherit them genetically deterministically. It was inevitable that we were going to hold these stances, but at least their stances that we intellectually own instead of stances that we.

Just genetically, hormonally inherited, right? That's cool. And I also think that you can see that, we talk about things like shaming, eating calories, right? Somebody's would a sub community, because we definitely do that, it would a sub community form around that has its own social norms and everything.

It's yes, that's what the Hades movement is. Where they pretend that eating too many calories isn't unhealthy. Oh, but then there's also the pro ana movement, which is, all about the opposite. But with the Hays movement, what's interesting is there are social norms within the Hays movement, where if somebody begins to lose weight, or if somebody begins to suggest that, being healthy may [00:16:00] this may be incompatible with being healthy, they get shunned and shamed by the community.

Oh, yeah. Which is just what you're going to see within things like the trans movement. And keep in mind, I think Trans is a real phenomenon, but I also think that a portion of it has gone off the rails right now. But if you are within the trans movement and you point that out, you will be completely excluded and ostracized from the community.

Which creates a really toxic environment within the community because people can use that identity to hide negative behavior patterns. Then I think the bigger question or takeaway I have from this is Yeah, okay. So yeah, it's There's no reason why, because we feel a certain orientation or attraction to things that we should necessarily indulge in them, but then the question is, what is ideal or justified in terms of denying yourself a craving versus not?

Because a lot of these things are cultural. Like you say, a lot of food prohibitions are based on very old religious traditions that originally may have [00:17:00] evolved to help with sanitation, food safety, but now don't really have a place in society. When how does a person individually thinking for themselves decide If they're going to act on certain sexual fetishes or arousal pathways or not?

I think that's a great question. And I want to point out here because one thing that I'm sure I'll get criticized for is people saying that the gay individuals are responsible for the AIDS epidemic that, that ended up hurting the community. No, that's not what I'm saying here. If you look at early things like early food prohibitions may have been around health reasons. Okay. If an individual eats those foods and gets a health issue, because they were eating those foods, I am not here saying it's their fault, like whatever, but it's it's an objectively true thing that these things are correlated.

And so then the first question is, are they still correlated? Are the reasons why we shame things like. gayness, right? Still correlated in our society. Does it still hurt people in the way it used to hurt people at the same rates? And the answer is no. [00:18:00] So within my cultural group, I will not shame my kids for doing it because everything you would potentially shame your kids for is an avenue other cultural groups can use to break your kids out of your cultural group.

Yeah. And it's a rebellion. Trigger it's a rebellion trigger So you are creating mechanisms for kids to leave your family with every one of these you stack up So there is a very strong motivation to remove these stacks Because when a kid and anything around sexuality is an incredibly powerful one to people to use Because the age at which kids Most deconvert from their birth culture, i.

e. their religion is between 15 and 21. That's also when they're going through puberty. That's also when they're experimenting with these things for the first time. This is the candy the man in the van can use to lure them to take them to the second location if you don't want them to go. So if you can destigmatize these within your cultures, you actually get a lot of additional cultural protection.

However, Transness, now this is a different thing. I [00:19:00] actually, when I look at the trans community, when I look at the data around the community, I think that it leads to more mental health problems. Whatever we have in terms of gender transition technology right now, and this may not always be the case, I think it's causing more problems than it's fixing.

And and I think that there was this great recent study done by a very respectable researcher which really showed this, that a lot of the narratives we've been getting around transition being the solution to gender dysphoria were just not long term data based. And This then leads me to say with my kids, would I warn them against that community?

Yeah, I would say that it is probably true that some portion of humans do have an incorrect sort of gender modifier in their brain, but they happen to be born with that. I do not think that gender transition is the cultural solution that we would recommend for them. Yeah. Which, for some people it sucks, right?

I don't know what to say. Like it's, somebody has a gambling addiction. It hurts them to say, yeah, you shouldn't be gambling. And [00:20:00] they might defy a lot as a gambler. They might really like doing it. They might have a biological compulsion to do it, but at the end of the day, it just seems to be correlated with long term negative outcomes.

So I wouldn't recommend that. And that would be the heuristic I'm using, whether it's food or arousal patterns or anything like that. And this is why we are generally very open to things like fetishes and stuff like that on this. This show where people can be like, why are you so open to these sexual things?

And it's because that provides our kids with a level of protection. Yeah. And generally with rules, what we've seen from the research is it really is best to have almost no rules and then just the. One or two rules that really matter you hold to them fast, and you never make exceptions, but yeah The moral rules have a religious community that can back all of your rules And this is the other thing about predilection shaming and stuff like that.

I will never impugn another culture for their practices. Okay, I'm not gonna say You don't get to practice these [00:21:00] practices. Those are not my kids. That is not my culture. And people will say what if it leads to those kids committing suicide? What if it leads to them being depressed? And I'm like okay, let's look at the data people.

It turns out that people who grow up outside of hard religious cultures or are very religious cultures have much higher rates of depression and suicide than people who grow up in very religious cultures. So does that mean we should like, does that mean we should get rid of those groups? No, of course not like It's absurd, right?

This, oh, what if kids end up committing suicide because of this actually ends up giving more power to the ultra religious communities and less power to the secular communities. When you look at the data like the overall sources of data outside of edge cases like gender transition and stuff like that.

But they selectively apply the data only where it allows their. community or group to impose their ideology on and their moral framework on other cultural systems, which I see as immoral. [00:22:00] Yeah, totally. Oh, I, any final thoughts? What about you? What about me? Like where I stand with all this?

Yeah. On our kids, et cetera. Yeah, in general with our kids, I just want them to be safe and I want them to ideally have kids that they give great experiences to. So the way I look at it is if there seems sex attracted, not a problem, just, make sure that you freeze your sperm or eggs, early.

And when you find the right partner, do IVF, whatever it might be, I think that's all fine and good. And the cool thing about us having a bigger family too, is let's say that we have a same sex attracted kid and they want to have kids that are closer to biologically them instead of getting a sperm donor or an egg donor.

Because let's say we've, two girls who turn out to be a girl who turns out to be a lesbian, she could just have her brother donate sperm and then have kids that are quite biologically Similar. So I don't know. I think that [00:23:00] there, there are fine solutions and we don't actually have a lot of logical reasons to be pretty specific about people's transitions.

I don't think collectively we're even against our kids transitioning, but though we would probably say, wait until you're of age, like you're an adult 18 to 21 before you actually do it. We're not going to support that before. Yeah. Ideally fully myelinated before you actually start transitioning.

I know that's tougher to hormonally to do that transition later, but still deal with it. And then before you transition, freeze your genetic materials, eggs or sperm ideally as embryos. Yes, but I would add that I do not think that the long term outcomes for these individuals are very good. If you look at the real data rather than the data that they're.

Yeah, but when you're looking at and I think it varies too. You really have to look at the actual community. If we have someone with rapid onset gender dysphoria It's a very different story from a kid that we have who from the very beginning. No, I agree. As parents, I think it's funny.

If you had parents who are actually supportive of this, they could actually tell you, which I've often seen with kids [00:24:00] is they'll go to their parent and they'll say, Mom, I've always acted like a girl. And the mom's I have raised a girl. You have not always acted like a girl. You have acted very differently from your sisters.

You have acted like your brothers your entire life. It's just, this community is good at getting people to recontextualize their entire life history through their own lens. And so if they knew that they had a family that wasn't going to be reflexively anti supportive, so I do agree with that, to give them honest information about whether what the community is telling them about their relationship.

Personal autobiographical history is actually accurate. Yeah. I view it, this sounds terrible, but I view transitioning similarly to how I view suicide. If someone for 20 years has wanted to end themselves. Yeah. You know what? Like they've been consistent about that. They've not flinched. They've been committed to it.

They've planned around it. They've held their stance. We've checked with them a billion times. Let them go for it. Same with transitioning, it's, these are like, typically if you're doing it all the way, which should, if you're going to do it permanent irreversible changes. So if you're committed and you're ready to go, [00:25:00] so I would just say I would take the same approach that we take to food, which is.

Generally, we're pretty permissive, trying to go against really strong, like need pathways often backfires as you see with diet culture, right? People who go on diets, inevitably slingshot back as soon as they lose control or stop being on Ozempic or whatever, right? They run out of their meal packets and I think the same goes for sexuality.

So in general, unless you feel like there is a very severe, Risk to a particular food or arousal pathway for example, if someone decided that they were super into eating humans, I'm sorry, we're going to draw a line there. And if someone, has specific, very illegal arousal pathways, and I'm not going to mention those words.

Nope. Sorry. That's just not going to happen. So Speaking of this is something you get with vegans as well. I don't say vegans are like anti meat eaters, right? I don't say they hate, and I understand why they might practice that as a family for, cultural reasons. And I support that.

It's just not my choice. Yeah. Yeah. Even, yeah. As long as it doesn't hurt a [00:26:00] baby, I don't know enough about the research around vegan infant formula, for example. I worry a little bit about that, but whatever. Yeah. As long as I love you too. If it doesn't work, they'll die out.

So whatever. No, nothing that can hurt babies. Never. I will find them and kill them. Like that dream I had last night where someone was threatening Indy who right now is dreaming very vividly in front of me in her crib. And then I, just beat this person up ruthlessly screaming at them.

People around me watched. I can't. Instinctually, I have dreams about hurting people who hurt babies. I cannot let that happen. But anyway, I don't, I'm sure vegan formula is probably, I love you Simone. I love you too, gorgeous.

Oops. Sorry. Okay. [00:27:00] We're recording. So you suggested as a topic, quality in food, which I find so intriguing. All I can think of immediately is this one scene from the Japanese film Tom Popo where there's this one couple that their entire, like all of their romantic liaisons is based on really weird food stuff.

This is gonna go in a totally different direction than you think, then. Yeah. I don't know where are you're gonna go, so let's dive right in.

In this thought-provoking episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins delve into the recent controversy surrounding the attempted cancellation of YouTuber Wendigoon by the channel "In Praise of Shadows." The couple examines how this incident serves as a disturbing case study of the rise of extremism and dehumanization within certain ideological groups.

Malcolm and Simone analyze the rhetoric used by "In Praise of Shadows," drawing parallels between their language and tactics to those employed by the Nazi regime. They discuss how the dehumanization of perceived outsiders, the justification of violence against them, and the attempt to police and purify communities are all hallmarks of fascist ideologies.

The conversation also explores the importance of intellectual diversity, the dangers of ideological echo chambers, and the need for a sane and principled opposition to counter the spread of extremist views. Malcolm and Simone emphasize the value of cultural sovereignty, pluralism, and the fight against bigotry and radicalism from both sides of the political spectrum.

Throughout the discussion, the couple reflects on the broader implications of this controversy, the state of online discourse, and the potential for a return to civility and understanding in the face of increasing polarization. They also touch on the importance of holding individuals accountable for their actions to discourage future attempts at cancellation and dehumanization.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] The horror community, being a normal welcoming community, welcomes people with all ideological perspectives into it. But once you get a critical level of this ultra progressive, ultra urban monoculture perspective, they now think they own the entire cultural category, in this case, horror.

And they now have a duty to police entrants into this community. Only people who one think like them and fit their cultural rules belong in this community, but then he also reveals his hand about what he thinks about general society is at first he says, they should not be welcome in our space, but then he says they should not be welcomed in public in general.

Simone Collins: Wow. Okay. The argument being that they. spread harmful messages, presumably?

Malcolm Collins: No. I, he said we'll get to the arguments that he might use to justify this in his head, but generally he sees them as subhuman, not deserving of the same dignities of other human [00:01:00] groups. And that they should be treated as such.

And a lot of people don't understand how people can walk towards something like a Holocaust and society may not recognize that they're walking in that direction. Society where people like this person are tolerated. Is a society that is walking towards a holocaust.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but dehumanization is the first step of any of this.

You can't do these things to people. And

Malcolm Collins: elevating the murder of this family just for being in the wrong area, as a positive thing. But the most important thing in understanding how this larger memetic structure works is for a medic structure to stay stable like this. It needs to not encounter pushback, right.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone!

I am excited to be here with you today! We are going to cover the recent controversy around the attempted cancellation of Windagoon by In Praise of Shadows. However, we're not going to just spit the facts of the case and then react to them, I think, like a lot of people do. I want to be very based in the way [00:02:00] we do this.

I have a very unique take on this. And I think that there is a unique takeaway and a pretty big one to be had by this. Honestly, I found learning about this case it's just some of my perspectives because I think it's perfectly encapsulates two things.

One is how the mind virus of the urban monoculture works. How it has looped around from general progressivism to basically just being Nazism or at least a form of fascism. Although I think now that they've become anti Semitic, it's hard to call them anything other than Nazis. But anyway so how it has turned into this fascist Nazi ideology but also how individuals within it can't see that this has happened to them, even though they've taken these extremist positions.

So an example Of one of these positions that this guy took. So I'll just give you a few. One was, he talked about in a previous video, the Hills Have Eyes movie and that's what motivated this video. The people didn't like his [00:03:00] take on that movie from a couple years ago or something, and his channel wasn't doing as well as it used and he was bitter about that.

But anyway his take was that it was good that these white middle class people were brutalized because they had entered into another cultural group's territory. And then he analyzed that cultural group, like the crazy mutant savages in that movie with Native Americans. And he's so this is a good thing.

It's them taking back their,

In Praise of Shadows: further adds to the commentary that this family doesn't belong here.

Just by the way that they look, you can tell that they do not fit in with this vast desert landscape. They are an economic invading force. What is both home and hardship to one is a curiosity to pose in front of and take pictures to a group of others from a wealthier background. On the most basic, surface, superficial level, this is a film about cannibals killing and eating a family who get lost on their summer vacation.

And psychologically, most, when they watch this, will be on the side of the vacationing family, and wish for them to survive and make it out and get back [00:04:00] home. And, well Why is that? Because if you look at this from the perspective of the Hill People, they are only defending what is theirs, this land that they call home.

The Carter family would have never been killed if they had stayed in that monstrosity of industry that is New York, that their own kind created. It can stand in that way as a bit of an allegory as well, of that fact that even though we are housed under the umbrella of America, we are many different countries comprising of many different people that do not get along or like each other.

To say that the Hill People and the New Yorkers are of the same nation would only be true in the strictest definition, in that they happen to live within the same borders, but culturally, they couldn't be more different. The Hills Have Eyes is a clash of when you take two types of people who hold absolute contempt for one another, and then you proceed to call them both American and equals, who supposedly have the same opportunities at birth. Father Jupiter and his family are filled with murderous rage, [00:05:00] but why shouldn't they be? Do you see the surroundings that they are forced to put up with? At one point he says to the father, Bob Carter, Your dog made sport of my blood, you pig.

I'm gonna kill your kids for that. You come out here and stick your life in my face, stick your fingers in my pie. That was a bad mistake. I thought you were smart and tough. You're stupid. You're nothing. I'm gonna watch your goddamn car rust out. Yes, I will. I'll see the wind blow your dried up seeds away, I'll eat the heart of your stinking memory, I'll eat the brains of your kids kids.

There is a tangible fury here, a pure, unadulterated need for blood, and through that, vengeance. Vengeance at their situation and the systems in place that have forced them into this. In a way, are they not justified for their actions? The Hill People can be representative of anything that you want them to be, really.

They can be Native Americans, and the Hills themselves can be allegorical of them being forced back onto [00:06:00] reservations. They can be black Americans that have for hundreds of years been forced to live within a dehumanizing system that has balances in place that assure that they never get ahead

Malcolm Collins: and people were like, one, It shows the level of dehumanization he has of both groups, both of the native groups to see them as like these monstrous individuals but also the level of dehumanization he has of people he sees as representative of his cultural enemies which, generally conservatives, and you actually see this throughout the book.

a lot of stuff that he talks about. So in one part, when he's talking about how you know that Wendigoon is a bad guy in part he says it's because he's from Appalachia and you need to assume that every white person you meet in Appalachia is a racist unless they actively prove to you that they aren't.

In Praise of Shadows: He has said many times publicly that he lives in East Tennessee. It is about as white as you could possibly get. Deep Appalachia is very white country. And for the most part, is exceptionally racist. Genuinely in this part of the country. You have to assume that any white person you [00:07:00] meet Is racist, unless they show you otherwise.

Malcolm Collins: Which is a remarkably racist take. And I think a lot of leftists initially when they took this position that you can't be racist against whites and stuff like that. That they didn't understand that when you remove groups like this, like when you remove protections around groups like this, that these protections existed for a reason.

Like we did in the 90s when I was growing up, we understood that you shouldn't make large bigoted assumptions about a group. That has like deleterious externalities and that's why racism is bad. For the leftist framework to work, for it to dehumanize people outside of its framework so much that memetic sets from those groups can't reach them, it absolutely must fully dehumanize those groups.

Simone Collins: Yeah it feels a lot like Tucker and Dale versus evil, which we've referenced heavily in another podcast.

Malcolm Collins: our Tucker and Dale force versus evil problem. It is [00:08:00] about the way that the people from the urban monoculture dehumanize other people outside of the urban monoculture to such an extent that they can only see them as like freaks and murderers, no matter how nice they're trying to be to them And end up like murdering themselves in the process

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 pact. Oh my god, that makes so much sense. , we have got to hide all [00:09:00] of the sharp objects!

In Praise of Shadows: genuinely in this part of the country. You have to assume that any white person you meet Is racist, unless they show you otherwise

 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: Yeah which is actually Tucker and Dale versus evil talking about conservative horror. Another really interesting thing is the way that he tries to other conservative groups from a community that he has claimed ownership of, that his cultural group has.

So in the movie, he says that the horror space is a progressive space. Oh. Which is he calls it punk and dissonant and everything like that.

In Praise of Shadows: horror is an intrinsically left, punk, anti establishment, counter cultural art form that is primarily concerned with social issues and pushing boundaries beyond what is deemed Acceptable by traditional, more conservative, polite society.

Oh, he's just [00:10:00] a YouTuber. Why does it matter? Or, so what if he's a conservative? Is that a problem? Which, the answer to that is yes. But the reason that I care is because this does not belong in horror. Or anywhere. I care deeply about horror, and everything that he does has demonstrated so far in his career that he should not be welcomed in our spaces.

Or even, you know, just in public in general.

Malcolm Collins: While also noting that there are two types of horror content out there. Because he's there are talented right wing horror creators.

And we need to be vigilant for them so we can expel them from our space. Oh lord. And then he categorizes horror in two broad categories. One is horror made for artistic to give people an alternate perspective on the world and give them access to minimized perspectives. This is the progressive lens, like a horror made for art.

And then he's, and then there's this horror that's just made to be entertaining to watch. And that's human centipede. I don't think that's entertaining for anyone to watch.

The day started off so what's your [00:11:00] favorite film?

She you've been sent to be, Gone ironically. She said, The costume design was a highlight. I like it for the plot. Tell me what the plot's about

Malcolm Collins: No he's talking about horror. Where like specifically he was talking about how in a movie that was released recently they took out some violent stuff because then it could get a PG 13 rating and reach a larger audience.

Oh, okay. It's an intrinsically conservative thing to do. Like making your movie entertaining and fun to watch, for him, puts it in this negative category.

Simone Collins: So it's okay, horror with broad appeal, but if it's more like horror that's like a documentary that teaches people, then it's, Okay. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Artistic merit to it from his perspective, but if the artistic marriage is in service to a conservative message like Tucker and Dale versus the force of evil, which is about how people in the urban monoculture dehumanized conservatives so much, the American rural poor so much that they can't see them as anything other than worthy of death and basically inhuman.

In Praise of Shadows: [00:12:00] genuinely in this part of the country. You have to assume that any white person you meet Is racist,

Malcolm Collins: And you'll see that this is his very much his perspective, um, which. So he first, and this was really interesting. So the, I was talking about how he's we own the horror space and we should not allow voices like his in the horror space. This is a really interesting thing to say, and it shows how this memetic virus works.

It begins to infect a community. When I say infected community, what I mean is. The horror community, being a normal welcoming community, welcomes people with all ideological perspectives into it. But once you get a critical level of this ultra progressive, ultra urban monoculture perspective, they now think they own the entire cultural category, in this case, horror.

And they now have a duty to police entrants into this community. Only people who one think like them and fit [00:13:00] their cultural rules belong in this community, but then he also reveals his hand about what he thinks about general society is at first he says, they should not be welcome in our space, but then he says they should not be welcomed in public in general.

Simone Collins: Wow. Okay. The argument being that they. spread harmful messages, presumably?

Malcolm Collins: No. I, he said we'll get to the arguments that he might use to justify this in his head, but generally he sees them as subhuman, not deserving of the same dignities of other human groups. And that they should be treated as such.

And a lot of people don't understand how people can walk towards something like a Holocaust and society may not recognize that they're walking in that direction. Society where people like this person are tolerated. Is a society that is walking towards a holocaust.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but dehumanization is the first step of any of this.

You can't do these things to people. And

Malcolm Collins: elevating the murder of this family just for being in the wrong area, as a positive thing. And then he's also talking about [00:14:00] who is the other? Because he segments. It's. Christians. He's this is how we know he's bad as Appalachians.

This is how he's always bad. But the most important thing in understanding how this larger memetic structure works is for a medic structure to stay stable like this. It needs to not encounter pushback, right? A normal human, like if he had ever interacted with like normal human content, or normal human beings. Somebody would put a mirror to his face and be like, you are becoming a Nazi. You are becoming the thing that you say you hate. And he would then have this moment of self reflection and maybe move away from these perspectives. Or double down, whatever. But it keeps them from seeing that.

And keep in mind, I don't think that these memetic structures are designed or they're done with self interest. It's just that certain iterations of the structure spread better than others and are extinguished. better than others, by preventing individuals in those groups from interacting with anyone who might reflect back to them what they are becoming.

Anyone who might disagree with this extremist progressive view. And the [00:15:00] way that they identify these individuals is just general bigotry, like Appalachian's bad, Christian's bad, etc. But then also, if a person has ever interacted with anyone else who they have identified as immune to this memetic structure, then that person also cannot be interacted with.

And the reason I think that this has gone viral is actually this. It was his list of associations of Wendigoan, and he saw these associations as tainted. Oh

Simone Collins: boy, yes. And therefore,

Malcolm Collins: Wendigoan cannot be allowed at horror conventions.

Cannot be allowed. To create horror content without being dogpiled on. They want to expel all memetic structures that are antagonistic to theirs from any community that they have infected. And and keep in mind, people can be like, why are you calling it like an infection or something like that?

Isn't that dehumanizing? And it's like, when you have a group that so dehumanizes other individuals, whether it's Nazi, like traditional German Nazism or this modern [00:16:00] form of Nazism It there is a reason that you need to go back and look at it like, like it's working, which is as a memetic virus.

Because I don't think any human comes to these views intentionally. I think if you played back this video of him today to him when he first started encountering these progressive views, he'd be horrified. He would recognize that for what it is, which is fascism, traditional fascism. But what's really interesting, what I always actually really hurt me.

Whenever I was watching, because I watched tons of videos on this to, to prep for this. Is Wendigoon's list of friends, he's yeah, his friends was like, Shoe on head, and Mr. Ballin, and Brandon Buckingham, and Okay, what hurts me is I'm just like, wow, this guy is so cool.

In Praise of Shadows: Wendigoon is a horror conspiracy theorist YouTuber with several million subscribers. Has a dark past with deep ties to far right extremism. Wendigoon is very publicly friends with Turkey Tom. He is friends with Mudahar. He is publicly friends with Shu on Head, who is a conservative masquerading as a leftist.

Malcolm Collins: Could I ever be that [00:17:00] cool to hang out with all of these famous YouTube personalities who like, I have parasocial relationships with through watching tons of their content.

Like, Mr. Ballin, what a bro. Everything about Mr. Ballin is the nicest thing ever. And he's so cool. And then he calls, and this very interesting is the way he attacks Shu on head.

In Praise of Shadows: He is publicly friends with Shoe on Head, who is a conservative masquerading as a leftist, who has built a career off of lazy anti woke content, complaining about SJWs.

Who says stuff like, Karl Marx rising from the grave, finding out his movement has been taken over, by fat, ugly, mentally ill losers. I mean,

Malcolm Collins: God, I'd love to do something with Shu on head sometime. So shoe on head he said that she's a fake liberal and she's actually a conservative because she's anti woke extremism and this shows how this sort of extremism medic structure works is somebody like shoe on head who broadly from our position perspective, it's pretty far progressive.

She isn't, [00:18:00]

Simone Collins: please correct me if I'm wrong. I'm so bad with names, but isn't shoe on head like one of the OG bread to people?

Malcolm Collins: A lot of people consider her that, but I wouldn't call her a breadtuber. I generally don't like breadtubers, and I like SheWanHead. She's actually an OG atheist skeptic community person.

Oh, wow, okay. Who then later became a leftist who isn't left on the crazy left positions. And the fact that he felt that being friends with her was a cancelable event, that's really interesting to me in how this memetic structure works. Yeah. And that it's not just anti conservative, it's anti anything that isn't extremist.

Simone Collins: He's Robespierring, honestly.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, Robespierring. So explain what you mean by that.

Simone Collins: You could think of Robespierre in the French Revolution as being one of the leaders that's associated with all the winch hunts and the beheadings and what happened with the French Revolution.

Very broadly speaking, I'm butchering this. Ha, pun intended is that after basically all of the usual suspects and obvious people were beheaded in the French Revolution, everyone just [00:19:00] started turning on each other and it was chaos and, suddenly no one was really safe. And I think this is already happening and this is maybe what's indicative of what's happening now within the woke movement is having run out of conservatives to cancel Or centrists who are open about their opinions to cancel, they're left cancelling or attempting to cancel or attack people within their own, we'll say like broad culture because they're the only ones left talking.

They're the only ones left standing on. I think I don't think

Malcolm Collins: that's what's happening

Simone Collins: here. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: what's happening? I think what's happening here is. They see Shu On Head, even though she is culturally aligned with their interests, as being immune to the memetic architecture, which makes up the virus. And because she is immune to some elements of it, it's best to just remove her, excise her, and anyone who interacts with her, because in any of these alternate memetic structures that she clearly has [00:20:00] access to that have given her this immunity, it's Or going to enter and potentially destroy the cohesion of their community.

Which isn't like, I can see why you'd have an evolutionary pressure to move in that direction.

Simone Collins: She's being so cute. She's like smiling and stuff. I don't know if you'll be able to see, but we're getting more and more smiles each day, Malcolm. I'm so excited.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I love that. You're so sweet. But anyway, so another thing that's really interesting is how he justifies his dehumanization is very Nazi like in structure.

So a lot of people don't know, but he literally accuses

Simone Collins: him. of being a Nazi for associated with people who at one time have owned or had or held guns that Nazis used? He's really grasping at straws here. No, not guns that Nazis used, just had guns.

According to one YouTube analysis of this I've heard, at one point there was one person who had or used a type of gun that Nazis used at one point, and that was enough.

Of a tenuous [00:21:00] association. Of this YouTuber comparing it to arguments of Hitler breathes air, so do you, therefore you are like Hitler. This guy wore Hawaiian shirts. Oh, how dare, how very boogaloo, this is terrible.

Malcolm Collins: This guy has repeatedly denounced the group, no, you can't not denounce the group.

If you have any association, it's best to just remove you, only pure people. And this is interesting, right? Even if somebody now agrees with most of this guy's positions they lack purity. You could only. Be allowed in their spaces or at least have a loud voice within their spaces if you are pure and it really reminds me of this sort of idea of aryan purity and everything like that But it's more than that because I want to talk about how the nazis actually began to talk about the Jews and the groups that they would eventually cancel.

And cancel, sorry, genocide. Is that what we're calling it now? We got to cancel them. So they would say that these groups were a threat to them. And I think that's what people forget. They said that these groups have taken most of [00:22:00] society's wealth and that they control all of the businesses.

And that they now utilize these this power to be a threat to us. They caused us to lose World War II. They've been sabotaging us. And it's really reminiscent of and I should be clear, Jews in Germany did not do this. That this is very reminiscent of the way that he, because he identifies as queer, who even knows if he's gay.

He's probably one of those, What we would consider as somebody who actually supports the real LGBT community, fake iterations of trans or it's like a cis guy who just identifies as whatever, non binary so that he can get access to spaces that really he doesn't have any business being in.

But anyway identifies as, queer, and he sees Republicans like this alternate group as trying to exterminate his group, even though we haven't seen that at all, and people are like, Oh, but what about all these anti trans laws? And I need to be clear. And we talked about this in other videos.

There is a huge difference between [00:23:00] being a against people who are born in the wrong body and want to live their own lives, and people who are actually sexualizing minors, who are actively, which is happening, you can't like say this isn't happening, like it is something that's happening, I can post a clip here from a turkey tom, oh turkey tom was another person who got mad at the guy for knowing, a turkey tom Such a leftist.

He actually annoys me at times.

it's genuinely really good grooming advice. On April 4th, 2023, Postcard reveals he's in contact with four minors. Age 9 to 13. I've so far sent it to four minors between the ages of 9 and 13. I hope it encourages them to transition. When the Anka Zone animation became a meme, they got excited over its virality among kids. Mana Drain and Orion also fantasized about getting kids on hormones orion was the manager , coercing him every step of the way. This is apparent by how he talked about him to others. 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 [00:24:00] 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. the two fantasized about assaulting J. K. Rowling's grandchildren. Not letting teaslers get with your kids is transphobic. Someone should Harry Potter woman's grandkids. Orion then goes on to call them turf meats.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway Turkey Tom talking about this guy, he's yeah, we want to target these underage people and try to get them to convert for our sexual gratification. Like, this is something that's happening and conservatives are trying to prevent this because you don't want these types of people in and around kids.

And some of the ways that they try to handle it might be ham fisted. But it's not, I think, wrong headed. And I think that if you actually cared about the trans people [00:25:00] who are just trying to live their own lives, you would see that this group of people who is using the trans identity to protect and to resist actions is a genuine threat to real trans people.

They're a genuine threat to lesbians. They get in lesbian spaces and they, Harass them constantly and beat them up. We have, we'll have another video on this. They are a genuine threat to real gay men. 45 percent of gay men voted for Trump in the last election cycle, at least according to the one poll I could find on this.

They don't identify with this. And yet they get smeared and they have to deal with the negative consequences of these types of individuals. So the point being is that there isn't actually. a right wing attack on the queer community at all. If anything, the group most defensive of the real OG queer community, people who just want to live their own lives instead of, aggressively forcing ideology on other people which is more of an ideological movement than a movement about just let me be who I am.

That is the right leaning community because they are doing what they can to fight the mal actors. But anyway think the, they have it's just that the [00:26:00] structure of their arguments and the way they've been able to motivate this fear and justify these immoral acts in their community are so reminiscent of Nazis and the way that the Nazi movement came to power.

And it is interesting that they have no internal reflection on this. That at no moment does he Wait, I just said that all of a population groups thinks a certain way or acts a certain way, or I just said that all of a certain population group shouldn't be allowed in public. And this group includes things like Christians.

That's a religious culture. Like, how can you say that's any different than saying Jews, right? Oh my gosh. Christians have structural power and money in our society. And it's that's what the Nazis said about the Jews. Like that is the way this is. No, I don't think it descends directly from Nazism.

I just think it's a convergently evolved memetic structure that is very good at purifying spaces. They enter a community. And this is also why you've got to be so vigilant within your communities about individuals like this. Because they enter a [00:27:00] community and then eventually they say, no, this is.

And the best way to fight against this, and this is the other thing I've really found interesting about this whole event, it's very much like Tom and Jerry like shooting himself in the face.

 Um.

Malcolm Collins: Trying to Jerry bends the gun back and then it shoots him in the face. I said it completely backfired on him.

And he's being hard canceled right now, and I don't think this would have happened a year or two ago. I think a year or two ago, something like this may have been partially successful. And so I think that we are actually seeing, even from within leftist spaces An understanding of the toxicity of this extremist memetic subgroup and an isolation and quarantining of it, or at least a shaming of it to the extent that other people will stop doing this.

I don't think they do it so sloppily. This is very [00:28:00] sloppy. Yeah, but that's how you end cancellations as a concept.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like we might be seeing the beginning of the end of cancellations. This could be the last cancellation. I'm not saying it's the last, but look, last weekend, somebody tried to cancel us, right?

There was an article on us and people tried to cancel us for using corporal punishment with our kids. Very light corporal punishment with our kids, which it's like 75 percent of Americans do and the research backs and we've done episodes on this. But. There was old research in the eighties that didn't back this, but I love how so many people are like living in eighties world where they're like, the world population is growing forever.

Republicans hate the gays or I'm like, bro, like none of that stuff has been true for a long time at this point. Or. What was I talking about here? Or corporal punishment. Everyone agrees that's bad. Instead of, large amount of studies showing no, actually it's probably lightly beneficial.

So, you where were they going with this? So what we could see is society corrects. We get a sane Republican base again and a sane progressive [00:29:00] base again. And I really like to see that. And that is when people say what? Is one of our core agendas and it's something we talk a lot about internally is to create a sane Republican,

A Republican party that has a philosophical consistency throughout it, like a larger philosophical underpinning behind it instead of the broad populism.

And I'm not saying that that's all Trump is these days. I actually. I think he's a great president. Speaking of gays, the first president in American history that supported gay marriage when he was elected Obama didn't do that. So let's be clear here. This is what I'm talking about when I'm talking about like their old narratives are just off.

But I think that. The larger structure of there isn't a deep philosophical sophistication behind the new cluster of ideas that's making up the modern Republican movement. And I think some individuals trying to bring that in who I like, like BAP, Bronze Age Pervert, I think is fantastic. I think he's like the artsy [00:30:00] version of maybe what we're doing.

And then there's individuals like us and, before us, like Curtis, who have been trying to, I think, create a philosophical theory of the modern or post Trump Republican ideology which for us is very much one, bull moose Republicanism, all, not just big government bad, but, like, All large bureaucracies bad, big companies be everything like that bad, and that we should see the conservative movement as a diverse, pluralistic alliance against the urban monoculture, against unanimity.

This idea that this other guy's pushing for that everyone needs to think the same, everyone needs to act the same that there should be allowed to know diverse perspectives. And that is achieved through cultural sovereignty, through allowing for homeschooling, allowing the money to follow the student, allowing somebody to not take a vaccine when they're when they want to, it's allowing this cultural autonomy.

that I think can drive this next iteration. So a hatred of large bureaucracies and cultural autonomy all above all else. And I think you can build [00:31:00] a larger cultural framework around that antagonist to the urban monoculture and the pluralist alliance against the urban monoculture, which is driven. By an undercurrent of vitalism fighting the nihilism that we increasingly see on the progressive side.

Now, I think that the nihilism on the progressive side can be subverted, and I'm, I've really been heartened by the progressive response to this guy because before was progressive. What we saw was Gamergate one and Gamergate two. I've always said that their biggest mistake is that they don't.

They always back the bad guy. The Five Guys girl, who was colluding and sleeping with people she was writing stories on, was clearly the bad guy. She did not deserve to be defended. Sweet Baby Inc. was clearly the bad guy. They were Creating bad games they were destroying franchises.

They were, I've described it as like buying somebody's like childhood home. And people can't understand why people hate like remakes and stuff like this, where, it's a bunch of woke stuff. They're like just don't watch it or something. I feel like if somebody like bought your childhood home and then covered in banners about how much they hate you and [00:32:00] how much, how stupid you are and how racist you are, even if you're not racist, how homophobic you are, even if you're not homophobic, you'd be like, and then put like blaring signs around it and walked around shouting mean stuff about you all day.

That would have the nostalgia mixed with the degradation would hurt, and it's designed to hurt. And yeah, I can understand people's reaction to Sweet Baby Inc. And the bigotry of Sweet Baby Inc. These are people like the people who are running it said a lot of bigoted stuff against white people.

And I think that this is the other thing that the Republican Party, we were looking at starting an anti DEI consulting group. And what we're looking at is like anti bigotry or something like that, because that's what I see that says, and I think that's what Republicans need to stand for going forwards is fighting bigotry and radicalism.

And I think that when you are fighting bigotry and radicalism you are fighting DEI, you are fighting people like this who represent, I think, forms of bigotry that everyone across the spectrum can agree is morally abhorrent.

Yeah,

Simone Collins: it's encouraging. I love not only though, that we're seeing this backlash, [00:33:00] but the politeness of the backlash.

And I feel like Wendigun's response to this. Was so gentlemanly in such good form that it also gave me a lot of hope because it's one thing for there to be a backlash.

It's another thing for the backlash to represent civility, cordial behavior. Kindness, understanding, empathy. And that's all stuff that was present in Wendigoon's response, because obviously, a witch hunt to solve a witch hunt, isn't really going to make this problem any better. And one of my concerns recently with regard to the backlash against woke has been that as much as there is an increase in pushback, really what we're seeing is not a return to some kind of normal, a market correction of society.

So much as it is increased polarization and just that more people are moving to the other pole because they're getting rejected from one. And this suggests that we might have some hope of [00:34:00] reaching a new equilibrium of broad sanity instead of just extreme polarization that just gets worse and worse over time.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I, and the goal of everyone, like us trying to make the conservative party more sane, I think that most progressives should be doing everything they can to cheer us on for what we're trying to do, right? We accomplish their aims much better than they do, but for us, the progressives that are fighting against him also are accomplishing our aims better than we can within the progressive side.

Because what we want America to become is too progressive. parties that are having a disagreement over the best way to run the country.

Simone Collins: Yeah, we don't care. We don't care. We want good outcomes. It's not like people are

Malcolm Collins: acting in bad faith here. But when you get groups that genuinely want to exterminate another group, you can't relate to them in that way.

When you get people like him who so dehumanize me that he would be excited about our family being murdered. That is because, we see in a family like the hills have eyes that I also think that also the [00:35:00] rules that he was using there are interesting. That it was okay for them to be murdered because they had encroached on another cultural groups space.

Yet, He thinks nothing and so one, that shows his justification of what he thinks is appropriate to do when conservatives enter progressive spaces that he believes they have ownership over, like the horror community. But in addition to that it shows how much the rules apply to you, but not me.

He thinks his cultural group should be able to invade anyone's space, because it is the correct cultural group. He should be able to tell other people, which he does in the video, how they should be able to use Native American words and stuff like that, even though, Wendigoon actually does have Native American heritage and this guy doesn't.

Oh, really? He should be able to police the use of the word Wendigo, because he has the right views, the progressive views, and therefore he can encroach on native ideological spaces and weaponize them for his agenda. Which just shows [00:36:00] the way that I'll add the clip from my favorite, Gap year song.

I was in Africa in Tasna I saw this woman, Malaria And she looked at me with this vacant stare As if to say, despite our differences, you and reminds me of this time, oh my god. Yeah. Yeah. I was in South America. In Prague. Prague. No. Pura darling, Pura. Peru. Oh yeah, Pura, Pura, yeah.

Wonderful country, you know, beautiful people, yeah. Um, yeah, I knew. We were drinking in the Andes, and the sun was just rising and glinting off the snow, creating a sort of ethereal haze. And I really got a sense of the awesome power of nature and [00:37:00] the insignificance of man. And then I just shuddered.

Everywhere.

Malcolm Collins: That progressives relate to other cultural groups of beautiful people. Oh, lovely country, beautiful people, like tapping them on the head like just completely dehumanizing them. He sees them as nothing other than set dressing for his ideological perspective. Instead of this is what we say about progressives.

Like they, they think that everyone's the same. Like, how can we, how can diversity have value? Everyone's the same, right? Diversity only has value because we're different in our proficiencies, perspectives, et cetera. Yeah. And and that all of these have a value until they reach a state where their goal is to erase everyone who's different from them.

And I think that this is actually really interesting, is if you look at these two ideological perspectives, they can be like, Malcolm, aren't you doing what he's doing? I'm like, no, I am okay, and we've always said this, with every group, no matter how distant they are from us existing, so long as their end goal isn't to erase every other ideological group on earth.

Now [00:38:00] this puts us at odds with some Christian groups and stuff like that. And we're able to work with them now because we have short term reasons to work together.

Simone Collins: So to keep in mind we're also not trying to dehumanize those groups. Those groups are in some ways less of an a*****e than our groups.

And in some ways more of an a*****e, which is to say we're in the mind of. Not everyone can be saved. People, who are not among the elect are just going

Malcolm Collins: to

Simone Collins: These other groups are like yes, we want to save everyone but therefore everyone has to be like us Which is both not assholey because they care about saving anyone everyone but assholey because it's also very

Malcolm Collins: similar to his ideological So if he can hate these christians who are like we're just trying to save your soul, man, He thinks that if everybody acted like him and was part of this cultural group, and that's what we talk about is when they attack us for spanking, we're like like 90 percent of black families fake, and they're like, oh obviously, my criticisms of you don't apply to them.

It's but secretly they do secretly. You do plan to wipe out that practice in their communities. [00:39:00] Even though it is what's culturally normal for them you have this actually not

Simone Collins: even been secretive about that. They're just like, Oh they're just less educated because I'm watching the discourse online.

Often people are saying yeah, and that's not acceptable either.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so they do have this cultural imperialism goal, but they believe that there's this positive end state from their goal. And then if they come to us and they're like, how are you so sure there isn't a positive end state for my goal?

And I'm like, bro, have you been around an ultra progressive community? You guys want to have terrible mental health. You're riddled with anxiety. You're riddled with depression. You're constantly infighting. You are barely staying stable without your like, weekly visits to psychiatrists, which you're not seeing in conservative communities.

It's clear that this sociological structure that you've built, it doesn't work. And that's why we don't want you spreading it to our kids. They're like, Oh we're going to rescue your kids. And I'm like, what the hell? You're not rescuing my kids. I have seen how terrible this structure you have built is.

Maybe in the nineties, you could have claimed that it would work [00:40:00] if enough people tried it. But I think that's lost plausible deniability at this point.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And yeah, but I do believe that there is a seen progressivism, like shoe on head progressivism. I think that there is a place that they can go and wouldn't it be so great if this isn't the first of the cancellations we see blow up in someone's face.

And I was mentioning, yeah, like the cancellation on us, it basically just increased our public footprint. That was it. That's what came out of it.

Which we are incredibly lucky that happened.

Simone Collins: Yeah. That's

Malcolm Collins: exciting. What a good development. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, so go to more cancellations, and hopefully one day, if any of the people mentioned in this video, other than the in praise of shadows guys, he just seems to be completely are like, Hey, I watch your content. I'd love to reach out sometime. Please do. Because this guy seemed to have the coolest group of friends ever. And I'm jelly.

But then I reflect on like our group, we've got like pearly things watches us and we've done her show before. She's one of our subscribers. I don't know how much she actually watches us. But I like her a lot. It'd be cool if we did more stuff with her. And then we've got the normal [00:41:00] crew.

I guess some people are like, Yeah, but you get to hang out with Scott Alexander and Richard Hinenia and all that. And I'm like, yeah. The and Curtis Yarvin the nerd crew. Which is really cool. What? It is. But I love how within the online influencer spheres, there's like our sphere, which is like nerdy intellectual dissidents.

And then there's like the cool popular dissident circle. The non rationalist adjacent. Yeah. The non rationalist adjacent. The people who look

Simone Collins: more like the popular

Malcolm Collins: kids. And I really see them as that. Like he's listing off his list of names and I'm like, Oh, that's like the aspirational, sane, popular people.

Anyway. I love you to death Simone. You are amazing. And I really appreciate you. And do you have any final thoughts on this?

Simone Collins: No, I'm glad you shared the story with me. I had not heard anything about this. So love me some internet gossip. All right. Have a good one.

One quick side here where I would actually criticize wind to goons response to this. Is, he was very big on saying that people should [00:42:00] not attack this person for what he's done. And I appreciate the optics of that statement. But if this man is not seen as being attacked for what he has done, Then more people will attempt this sort of behavior in the future. It is very important, not from the perspective of this person being hurt, which I think is bad and everything like that because, you know, clearly he's just a mentally disturbed person. , at this point, You know, but that mental disturbance that he has is a contagious one. And if the public doesn't see that there are negative repercussions for these kinds of actions. Then this is going to happen more in the future to people who may not have so many high profile friends. And so it is very important that publicly this guy gets taken down.

Do it. And let the English see you do it. And I will say in the response to this, if you're like, , maybe with a good person, maybe with an off day, he said, my heart was in the right place.

You know, you can't know whether [00:43:00] your heart is objectively like a good or bad heart, but you can know the heart you really have. And what he said was that is I still believe in my heart of hearts, that what I did was right. And as such, he shows that who he is in his heart of hearts is just a black heart. He is. , bad a person at this point.

And I don't know, I don't think he was born a bad person, but he has gotten to that point. I don't think that Nazis were born bad people necessarily, but that's where he is today. He was susceptible to a certain self-reinforcing set of mediums that has led him to this point.

And yes, he can break out of it, but it would be the equivalent of cult deprogramming at this point, which is very hard in a society that's controlled by a particular cult.

Malcolm Collins: I hate episodes where I have to have my notes up because your picture is smaller.

Simone Collins: Oh, you are so romantic. How did I on earth earn someone as wonderful as you? Although, you know what? We've gone kind of full circle with me dressing weird. You met me when I [00:44:00] dressed like a weird ass hipster.

And now I'm back to dressing like a weird ass hipster. I

Malcolm Collins: don't think you look like a, you look like a, I'm probably going to label this video something like tradwife reacts or something like I did with the What was it? Gamergate 2 controversy. I was just watching

Simone Collins: a YouTube video commenting on tradwives and kind of the one of the big points they were making is Tradwives don't publish content about actually being tradwives like they never actually show themselves vacuuming or anything.

It's always, preparing elaborate meals or talking about serving their husbands. And I should just create a Treadwife series where I'm like, this is me wiping up s**t again. Here's me pulling pebbles of s**t out of the bathtub. Here's me scraping s**t out of underwear.

Malcolm Collins: Most of a trad wife's life is just around cleaning s**t off of things.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Here's me using a a tool to get s**t in between the floorboards.

Malcolm Collins: Oh my god. I am just delighted to be talking to you because today we didn't do our strategy walk,

Simone Collins: I missed

Malcolm Collins: it. And [00:45:00] I'm putting all this at the end like I normally do, like our just chat. You don't have

Simone Collins: to put it in at all.

No one needs to know about how much s**t I put up with.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah. We want to make being a parent look good, right? We got to, yes,

Simone Collins: you got to make fun. This is why tried wives don't publish that and or hire people to do it for them. Unlike us. Cause we're too cheap to do that s**t. Plus we don't

Malcolm Collins: shoot.

What was this guy's channels name again?

Simone Collins: Oh, the one that that talks about when to go, it's

Malcolm Collins: In Praise of Shadows. I'll compose myself for this, because this is one where I'm not probably going to put hot takes at the beginning, because I'm going to start with

In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm and Simone Collins sit down with renowned physicist and science communicator Sabina Hossenfelder to explore some of life's biggest questions through the lens of physics. Hossenfelder, author of "Existential Physics: A Scientist's Guide to Life's Biggest Questions," shares her insights on free will, the nature of time, and the challenges of understanding reality.

The conversation delves into the implications of determinism and randomness in quantum mechanics for the concept of free will, the consequences of Einstein's theories on our perception of time, and the role of emergent properties in grasping complex phenomena like consciousness. Hossenfelder and the Collinses also examine the importance of predictive models in defining understanding, the evolutionary biases that shape our perception of reality, and the potential risks of misaligned AI in the context of branching timelines.

The discussion also touches on the challenges of incorporating cutting-edge scientific knowledge into societal frameworks, the importance of science communication, and the need to address issues within academia while maintaining public trust in the scientific method. Throughout the conversation, Hossenfelder emphasizes the value of curiosity, tolerance, and the pursuit of understanding in navigating the complexities of reality.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, this is Malcolm and Simone Collins, and we are joined by today, I think one of the best science communicators, if not the best science communicator on the internet, Sabina Hassenfelder. You can go find her on her YouTube channel. I suggest you check it out and subscribe, or you can check out her books, one of which, and when I read the title, everyone's going to know oh, that's why she's on the, yeah, that's why you're excited to have her on.

But she doesn't have a giant, like 1. 3 million followers. It absolutely huge platform for. hitting people with reality, which I love, but the book's title is existential physics, a scientist's guide to life's biggest questions. And what I wanted to talk with you about on this episode is where you see the limits like what does physics answer?

How have people misapplied physics potentially to try to answer life's biggest questions? I think a lot of people will. sometimes try to do. And yeah, just what are [00:01:00] your thoughts on this field as someone who is so knowledgeable in the best understanding of the fabric of reality that scientists have today?

Would you like to know more?

Sabina Hossenfelder: So maybe I should first explain what I mean with existential physics. So that though, that's a little bit weird because actually I didn't come up with the title. My, my editor did. So the original title of the book was more than this because I wanted to say that physics is more than. What you learned at school, it's not just about how atoms move and the ideal gas law and, switching the light on electricity, all that kind of stuff.

Physics is actually a tool that tells us something about our own existence because it's about discovering. the fundamental laws that the universe works with, and we're part of the universe. So it tells us some, it tells us something about us. And so existential physics, the way that I understand it now, even though I didn't coin the word is that it's about what physics tells [00:02:00] us about these big existential questions.

Like for example, does the past still exist? What really is time? What is this moment of now that we experience? How did the universe? begin? How will it end? Do we have free will? Are we really just big bags of atoms? And so all those big existential questions. And sometimes I come to the conclusion that actually physics can't really tell us anything about it.

But in other cases, I think physics does tell us something.

Malcolm Collins: I would love to dig into your thoughts on free will from the perspective of physics, because that's the topic we talk about a lot.

Sabina Hossenfelder: Yeah. So this is what got me onto the entire topic in the first place, because I made a video a long time ago about yeah.

free will. I think it was taught, you don't have free will, but don't worry. And I think it was one of my first videos that attracted some attention, mostly because it pissed off a lot of people. So it's always a good recipe. But give us the short [00:03:00] version here. Yeah. The, the short version is this is not a ground groundbreaking new insight, but I think everyone who's, fundamental laws of nature, which you find in physics comes to the conclusion that it's basically a combination of a totally deterministic evolution law, like determinism all the way down.

And then you have this occasional random element that comes from quantum mechanics, and that's it. So now I ask you exactly which part would you call free will? So to me, it's the There isn't anything that makes sense to call free will. And so this is why I'm saying I just forget about the thing with free will.

It's useless. It just it gets people upset basically. Now I understand perfectly well that there are very renowned renowned, I always mispronounce this word, which is it? Renown or renowned? Renown. Yeah. English is a terrible language. Renowned. Philosophers who have found ways to define [00:04:00] free will in such a way that it's compatible with what we've learned in physics and this is what we've learned in physicality.

And, yeah and it's, I don't have a big problem with that. I just think that it makes the entire phrase free will meaningless. But yeah, so basically that's the summary of the video.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, it sounds very similar to videos that we've done on the subject where I often point out, it's humorous to me that in the world that people who don't like my definition of free will would want, I would feel like I have less control of my thoughts.

By that what I mean is I'm like, so if the next action I take is not determined by my life history and my biology, then it's determined by randomness. That isn't empowering. That's not an empowering thought. And people will be like you believe that the, because I don't know if this is what current physics says, but my understanding is that there's some level of randomness within quantum events.

And so that doesn't mean that the future is predetermined. And I'm like, yeah, but even if that's true, that doesn't augment the fact that the [00:05:00] decisions I'm making aren't necessarily heavily affected by any choice that sentient part of me has made affecting this probabilistic thing. Therefore it is irrelevant from the topic of free will.

And I'm wondering, is that sort of your take or do you have a different?

Sabina Hossenfelder: Yeah, that's basically that's the core problem like it's like you can't have it both ways like it's either free or you wilt it, but it doesn't fit together. And I think the way that most people try to accommodate it is that they have this idea that somehow this random element from quantum processes, so it's questionable whether these even play a role in the brain but that's another story.

They were willing to buy them after all. Sorry.

Malcolm Collins: I was just promoting your video on the subject. You did one on it recently.

Sabina Hossenfelder: Yes, about the quantum effects. Yeah, that's quite a long story. It just exactly what's the role of quantum effects on the brain. say it's very controversial. [00:06:00] Basically how much does it play a role for consciousness?

These quantum coherent states. Yeah, so it's an active area of research. Maybe they don't open minded about it, but either way I'd say it doesn't really give you free will. And the reason I keep talking about it, why it matters to me is that because they believe in free will, a lot of people seem to think.

They're much less affected by their environment. They're much less influenced by what happens in society around them than is actually the case. And I've been trying to, convey the message like, you have to be careful about what kind of information you share. In just basically because once it's in your brain, you don't get it out.

It'll be there forever. And it will affect you. The kind of stuff that you listen to you, the kind of stuff that you read it will affect you. And you also have to be aware that the culture that you've grown up in and the society that you find yourself and will affect the way that you think about yourself and what's going on this planet.

Simone Collins: I really appreciate that you come to that [00:07:00] conclusion and advise people. In that way, after coming to this deterministic conclusion, because I haven't finished it yet. I've started Robert Sapolsky's determined. And there's a lot of people discussing this and a lot of people saying, Oh, it's dangerous telling people this because it could affect their behavior, but taking it that one step further and just saying one, okay, you don't have free will, but you do have control over every action you take.

So functionally, depending on how you look at it, you're still responsible for everything you do. And you can 100 percent shape who you become by choosing what you're exposed to. And I like that you take a message that would make a lot of people feel hopeless and make it quite empowering in the end.

Sabina Hossenfelder: Yeah, that's a, that's an awesome summary of exactly what I was trying to do with my book. I was trying to say, okay, so we have arrived at this conclusion. Like you don't really have free will because physics, blah, blah. But let's take it one step further. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And a point that I want to pull out here because we've mentioned this a few times, and I've noticed the way that this is often misapplied by people.

[00:08:00] And for me, it's one of the most frustrating misapplications of physics is we will admit that quantum states can affect it. Potentially the way that neurons work and may even have like instrumental effects to the way neurons work, but that doesn't mean that a soul or intentionality can hide within those quantum effects.

Those quantum effects are happening in your brain the same way they're happening all around you, which is mechanistically, if randomly. If they are affecting your neural architecture, it is in the same way they work within a quantum computer, which is with a level of, anyway, does that make sense what I'm saying there?

Because that's something that always annoys me when I hear this.

Sabina Hossenfelder: Yeah, no, that's basically also my attitude to the thing. It's the one point where I disagree a little bit is exactly what those people mean with quantum effects in the brain. And it's not just. Anything that's quantum, [00:09:00] because strictly speaking, everything is quantum anyway.

So that it just becomes totally empty phrase. The brain is a quantum computer because it does something with quantum. Oh yeah. They're referring to normally certain types of coherent state or certain types of entanglement. So part of the problem of this field, which is called quantum biology, is that everyone has their own definition for exactly what they mean with a quantum effect.

So in this recent paper, which I talked about, it was some kind of. big coherent state loosely speaking. And but yeah, like this isn't anything that's specific to the brain. Like actually I think in the paper that I talked about, they didn't even do it in the brain. They just, they bought a box of certain molecules and put them to a petri dish and there's some chemistry going on and I'm not part of it.

much of a chemist. Don't ask me. And so they produce these kind of bigger molecules and then they shine light on them and it's nothing to do really with plates. It's just quantum chemistry.

Malcolm Collins: I would love to go further on [00:10:00] your ideas around time. This is an area where I could use some education on what the state of the field is right now.

So what did you talk about in relation to what we know about time right now?

Sabina Hossenfelder: This is actually really old story. This is all based on Albert Einstein's theories of space and time. It's just that I think it's really hard to understand and just what are the consequences, what the consequences are of this theory hasn't been really sunk, it hasn't sunk into society by large, because the theory is much weirder than you might think.

And one thing that Einstein worried about a lot is that his theory doesn't distinguish the past, the present, and the future. You just have this one thing, this space time. And the entire universe is just one thing. There's a special moment in it. And so this worried him a lot. It's now called the problem of now, like what's this thing that we call now?

And it's just [00:11:00] mathematically, like if you look at the theory and derive the equation, that's on it. It's quite simple to see where it comes from. Like there, there is no way to consistently define a moment of now that everyone agrees on. So that's the problem. Like I can define my moment of now.

You can define one and you can define one, but in general, we wouldn't all agree. It's

Simone Collins: everything, everywhere, all at once.

Sabina Hossenfelder: Exactly. That's a brief summary. So now for practical purposes, since you and I, so I don't know exactly where you are, but you're probably not moving with close by the speed of light relative to me.

For practical purposes, it doesn't make any difference, our nows are pretty much the same. But if you want to understand it on a fundamental level, like what is this thing called time? How can we make sense of it? You have to think about these sorts of problems. And so this whole line of thought, which comes out of Einstein's theory just said that everything exists [00:12:00] at once.

This is the only way you can make. It's of existence and that it's hard to spot it.

Malcolm Collins: It's interesting. One of the things that I actually forget which one of Einstein's theories this was where he's Oh, the theory would predict this, but I'm just going to assume this never happens.

And then it, because it would be too weird if it did. And then later it turned out the thing that he assumed never happened is something we observe. Yeah, that might be what it is. Yeah. And so even other places where he's no, this is just too weird, but the theory predicts this it may turn out that it's just right.

It's just not the way we perceive things. And I think when we're talking about things like time and physics, it's interesting that when you went into science, you wanted to understand, I think, like the nature of reality. And so you went into physics. And when I went in, I wanted to understand the nature of reality.

So I go into neuroscience because I'm like what are we? We're the brain. So I want to understand how that works. So I can understand. But where these two fields differ is really interesting to me in that if you're looking at psychology or the way we perceive [00:13:00] reality as humans, The ways that we evolve to perceive reality don't necessarily have to align with the physical reality within which we live.

They just have to be optimal from an evolutionary perspective. So probably the most important factor here is humans neurologically Appear impossible, just incapable of conceiving of emergent properties. And this is hugely important for understanding reality because a lot of reality is made up of emergent properties.

So I'm going to quickly go over an emergent property here. It'd be something like you can conceptually understand the way that H2O molecules interact, but you cannot get from there to wetness within your own brain. Okay. In a conceptual framing, this creates a lot of problems around questions like sentience or consciousness or big problems of the [00:14:00] universe, because just there was no evolutionary reward for being able to understand these sorts of emergent properties.

And the same is likely true with time. If time, like the past and the future aren't particularly different from each other, if even a mono directional pathway through time isn't even possible. particularly unique, there would have been no evolutionary reward for being able to conceive of that, which means that we would have an evolutionary bias against reality.

And I think looking for the areas that we might be evolutionarily biased against reality is really important when engaging with physics.

Sabina Hossenfelder: Yeah. So I think I agree with. Most of what you said. I'm not entirely sure about the emergent properties because I think that what we do in physics, I mean you might be saying like you, you can't intuitively understand it.

Like you either have this one picture like it's molecules bumping into each other, or you have this other picture and it's like a fluid and it flows [00:15:00] and so on. Yeah. Mathematically, we certainly have certain examples of emergent properties where we can understand how they come about. Now, you could say maybe I don't really intuitively understand the mathematics, but I can certainly use it.

I can use those equations like, I don't know a lot about fluid dynamics, but I'm more familiar with Might be a conductivity, the conductivity of a metal or the optical properties like this is stuff which people now heavily study with metal materials. If you've ever heard of those, like the custom designed materials with very specific emergent properties, like the way that they react to certain sound or absorb it.

And I'd say that people who work on metamaterials must have a pretty good understanding of emergent properties. Now that said, sorry, I know you, you want to say something, but I think you're quite right when it comes to this notion of time. It's something about the way that our brain works that we have this experience of the moment of now being [00:16:00] special because we need to deal with what's going on, basically, we actually had a memory of the entire past, like it'd be a mess.

Like, how would we know what to do? So I think there's a strong evolutionary incentive to to do something. You blend out all this stuff which happened in your past, except for some very special memories that you need, traumatic experiences that you need to be able to call upon very quickly.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh, so by the way, I completely agree with you. The reason I was using the fluid example is because like we understand the mass of fluid dynamics. Like you can mathematically describe something, but this becomes important in the field of consciousness, which is one that I'm really interested in, which is to say that even if we could mathematically and mechanically describe exactly how consciousness works, a person looking at that description wouldn't necessarily like immediately go.

Oh, and obviously this explains sentience. Because we would say, oh, sentience is downstream of all these [00:17:00] equations and all these understandings of neural interactions, but it's not going to immediately click for most people, but it might for some like geniuses that I'm not part of that class.

Sabina Hossenfelder: I think it comes down to the question what do we even mean by understanding? I get a lot of people who are like, but we don't really understand gravity or we don't really understand quantum mechanics and that kind of stuff. And I'm like if we do have the equations, and we know how to use the equations and we can actually make predictions that agree with reality, what does it mean that we don't understand?

To me, This is what it means to understand some, you have the mathematics, you know how to use it. Like we can discuss how well the mathematics of quantum mechanics actually works, but that's a different story. So I don't necessarily so on. I understand that people probably mean on an intuitive level, they look at the equation, it doesn't tell them anything, because you must have worked with them for a long time to understand how it works.

But to me that I'm, I'm comfortable with that kind of understanding that we have the math and we [00:18:00] know how to use it.

Malcolm Collins: I actually want to elevate this question here about what does it mean to understand something? Because one of the things that we've been building out, the Collins Institute, which is an alternative school system.

And it's one of the questions that we've been asking, a lot to ourselves is how can we get objective measures of understanding within subject domains? And the definition of understanding that we came to is that it is knowledge that helps an individual. Through understanding through knowledge of an environmental context, predict future environmental states and that the better if you're judging better understanding a person was more of whatever this measure is, can more accurately predict future environmental states.

And this is something that is as important from physics as it is to more controversial topics like. Politics or economics. And it's why was our school. We're actually partnered with Metaculous, but we haven't done anything with them yet because we haven't gotten to that level of our development, but [00:19:00] it's a prediction marketplace.

So we use prediction marketplaces. Students ranking was in prediction marketplaces. To then judge the quality of questions that we're asking them. It's a very, Yeah.

Sabina Hossenfelder: I'm surprised, but I actually pretty much agree with what you say. I would have put it a little bit different. I'd say it's the ability to create a predictive model of a certain system.

This is

Malcolm Collins: just,

Sabina Hossenfelder: speak like you, you collect information from by learning and you create a certain model of how the thing or the field or whatever you want to talk about works. And then you're able to make predictions from that. I think actually a good example of this is what It's like college is called a theory of mind.

I think basically the way that it works is that you observe other people and you figure out, how do they react to other stuff and you create a theory of how their mind works. Absolutely. And if you study them for long enough, you can. You develop a more or less predictive model about how this person is likely to behave in certain [00:20:00] circumstances.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, and this is actually a great thing to elevate here because it's one of the ways that evolution sort of messes with our brain. So we can think of a theory of mind if you've worked with computers for a long time, it's like an emulator that's running a separate operating system and a little sectioned off placed of your operating system, but humans evolved to be very good at creating these emulators to the extent that in a video that I haven't.

I haven't gone live yet where I talk about because one of my fields of expertise used to be schizophrenia is that in schizophrenia, my thought is what's happening here is these are actually just hyper stimulated little emulations that are running that we evolve for Syria of mine, but it also creates a problem with human, which is, this is where a lot of magical thought comes from, where people intuit intentionality behind either global events, which can lead to conspiracy theories or behind weather patterns, which can lead to theology Or behind the way things are arranged in a shop window is that we, we always want to interpret unexplained patterns through a [00:21:00] background intentionality instead of through alternate models, because it's if your brain's a hammer, everything's a nail.

Sabina Hossenfelder: Yeah, that's right. I think there are many other things coming in there. Like a lot of people, I think they don't like uncertainty, so they can't just let it out. We just don't know what happened there. We don't know we can't explain it And so they have this need to have an explanation And I think this is also one of the factors that creates a lot of conspiracy thinking.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah here's a question I have for you. Do you think that like what is the state of physics right now? on Timelines is it would if you were to guess do we live in a branching timeline or do we live in a single timeline?

Sabina Hossenfelder: You The person that I call me in a single timeline, phrase this very carefully, because if you're talking about these branching timelines, the question, what do you even mean by you becomes a very difficult to answer am [00:22:00] I the thing that would be branching over all these timelines if they exist?

And then what does it mean that they even branch? All of them. So that's weird. But as I go on in my book, existential physics, which we started talking about is that you can't ever confirm that these other timelines exist. So to me, it's a little bit pointless to even go on about it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So Simone's theory on this particular topic or the way that she conceives of herself, which I found to be very useful because it wasn't the way that I did when I met her, is to only think of herself as existing in any particular frame of time. And all future iterations of her are fundamentally a different person.

But this is just a framing. Obviously, the concept of self is a semantic construct that we use in terms of communicating with people to compress information, which is another problem about how we communicate. A lot of these concepts is that as humans, because we verbally communicate, we need to collapse ideas, which [00:23:00] Perhaps could be more nuanced or just there's this definition of self and there's this definition of self and neither one is superior.

But people need to choose one to more efficiently communicate with other people, which causes disagreements, but you may disagree with that.

Simone Collins: I would just add that. I think the more important thing is how this, how the framing that you choose affects your behavior to your earlier point, like the point of the book is depending on how you view yourself you are going to behave very differently.

Like psychology studies have found, of course, I don't know if they've been replicated but they found that when people are primed to think about their future selves, They make different decisions in the present, and they like see older aged versions of themselves. So they've gone through an exercise in which they're encouraged to think about, future Sabina, future Malcolm.

And so I think it does matter how you ultimately choose to frame things because it will significantly affect your behavior. And if you see yourself as one ephemeral person in service to a larger identity, which is what I do, it helps me make more responsible decisions. Versus sort of things [00:24:00] just being like, I'm me here and now.

Sabina Hossenfelder: Yeah, I agree with that. Certainly important.

Malcolm Collins: I'm gonna I'm gonna give an example of where it could matter tremendously in that it could lead to the destruction of life on earth. If you don't consider this question. If it turns out that the physical models that we're dealing with right now.

Point to a branching reality. If you tried to create an aligned a I and you align that a I around a topic like, maximizing human happiness over time, and that a I then comes to the conclusion that we live in a branching timeline, it would exponentially rate the happiness of humans in future states over the happiness in humans in Today, because those humans would exist in multitude compared to humans today, leading it to make decisions that no human would ever make, given that we experienced timeline as a single through fair.

Sabina Hossenfelder: Yeah, that's basically the problem that long [00:25:00] termists have run into, right? So yeah, you come to the conclusion that basically, it doesn't matter what we do now, because there'll be, hundreds of billions of people coming later. And there's so much more relevant. Yeah. So this is a big can of worms.

Like, how do you even quantify happiness? Is this something you even want to maximize? Is this a good thing to strive for? There's a lot. of big problems

Malcolm Collins: that I think we're not going to sort out. We argue no very strongly on our podcast. We're hugely anti utilitarian. I don't understand basing your life around things that were just like environmental rewards that caused your ancestors to have more surviving offspring than they're competing individuals.

I often tell people that a human optimizing their life. Around happiness or like a group of humans up saying, okay, we're gonna be, generally, utilitarians is like a group of paperclip maximizing ais, creating a moral system off of how many paperclips exist in the world. But that's my thought.

I'm wondering what your thought is. How do you judge [00:26:00] moral good

I,

Sabina Hossenfelder: sorry. I try to stay away from discussions about morals. I have my own ideas what. It's good and isn't good. I guess I'm more focused on trying to avoid evil, trying to avoid suffering. But I'm aware that this also has, you don't want to optimize avoiding suffering because if there aren't any people, then no one will be suffering.

But yeah, I guess in my personal life, I think it's like first do not cause any harm. It's certainly something that I live by. Live and let live. I tend to be fairly flexible about, other people have grown up in, in other societies, other cultural contexts, and they just judge things sometimes dramatically differently.

And I'm trying to be tolerant of it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And it reminds me a lot of like one of the core things we dedicate a lot of our channel and our personal thought to. Is how do we create cultural systems that have external rules but that these [00:27:00] rules harmonize with the current state of physics and can evolve as the state of physics evolves but still lead to positive action.

I'm wondering if this is a topic you've ever thought about in terms of raising your own kids, because I know that you've been, lucky.

Sabina Hossenfelder: When it came to raising my own kids, I have not. exactly thought about the rules dictated by physics, to be honest. Like if you're talking about the rules of science more specifically more generally, I actually think that society general has been, has a problem with incorporating new scientific knowledge.

And it's something that I certainly try to instill in my children, like a general desire to find out how things are going on. So like we're certainly nourishing this natural curiosity, I'd say. So my husband's also a physicist, so it's not that difficult.

Malcolm Collins: I love it. Yeah, no I love it.

If you could talk more about [00:28:00] where we as a society, because I have my own thoughts on this, but I'd love to hear yours fail in terms of the way we engage with cutting edge science and overly incorporating it into our cosmological frameworks.

Sabina Hossenfelder: So it's a little country dependent. So I think the, in the United States, there's a lot of effort being made in the direction of science communication.

And in Europe we see far less of this. And I think it's a big problem because there are lots of people, they just get left behind, they want to understand how science works. There's really a lot of desire but there aren't enough people to explaining it to them. in such a way that they can actually understand it.

And I recently made a video about this, why I'm worried about flat earthers, because to me, they're like the cannery and the coal mine. Because I think what's really driving this problem, like how can people, believe that the earth is flat, like we're living in in, in, in the year 2024, how can this kind of thing happen? And [00:29:00] And I think they're just totally disconnected from how modern science actually works. They just have no idea how far behind everything they are. And the issue is now that flat earthers are just an extremely weird example, but we also see the same thing with vaccines, of course, new methods of vaccinations.

People are like, I've never heard of this before. It's certainly some evil stuff. And lots of other things like genetically modified crops and all this sort of things where people are just like, don't understand how it works. I want, Nothing to do with it. And this is a big problem, which is only going to get bigger.

And so we, we need to find some way, to, to at least communicate the basic stuff somehow. And not on, on a level where we just say, don't worry about it. Go away. Just believe us. It's not going to work.

Malcolm Collins: I actually find the three groups that you highlighted here. Something that I could do even a whole other video on because It's so interesting the ways that they're different from each other and their motivations.

The flat earthers, I don't know if you've ever looked at [00:30:00] them, but the thing I actually find most interesting about the flat earthers is that they are really dedicated to the scientific method. If you watch the ways they try to prove the earth is flat, they rely on traditional scientific method and experimentation in their attempts to prove the world is flat.

They just disregard all expert consensus. And if you look at something like the GMO people they often seem to have more of, okay I'll use as a middle ground the anti vaxxer people. They seem to have anti vaxxer and GMO are actually very similar. They have often almost theologically driven concerns which are driven by a desire for things not changing or a suspicion of change.

Combined with a suspicion of the way that powerful interest groups that have the ability to make a lot of money if certain things are communicated as true. You're missing a key point

Simone Collins: though. And just like in between cries, she's getting hungry. I just wanted to point out that I think all three of these [00:31:00] groups have been empowered because of a crisis of reality where they feel like they have been lied to, and there have been real instances of misrepresentation or obfuscation of information, or just well meaning groups and experts coming to the wrong conclusion in the middle of trying to figure things out, like during the pandemic.

And so because there was this one crisis of faith, Now, suddenly they feel like they cannot trust any expert consensus. And I think that's the one unifying bond that they all have. Malcolm, you're absolutely right. And they have these different little flavors, but still, I think that's a

Malcolm Collins: really major, this is something we talk about in the terms of what we call the academic reformation, where we say that in society today, we have structured truth in a system where you have an a large bureaucracy, which certifies is, and affirms individuals that have better Knowledge of what's true.

And then you have another group that says, yeah, but that central bureaucracy is prone to corruption. I don't hate the scientific method. I'm just pointing out that the central bureaucracy is prone [00:32:00] to negative externalities and corruption. And we went through this before, and that was the reformation.

And we are seeing. And one of the things I talk about is the negative externalities of this particular battle we actually saw was the reformation itself. For example, the Protestant groups would go much more extreme in their witch trials because they didn't have a centralized organization to prevent sort of conspiracy theories from spiraling out of control, which is what with the academic dissident groups now with things like Q and stuff like that.

But anyway, I'm not going to pontificate too much further. But you are a guiding light. In this, in that you are so un if you watch her channel, she is so unafraid to just say this is what the evidence actually says. Without any pandering towards any type of audience preference or anything like that.

So I, I see people like you as the light through this tunnel that's not taking sides.

Sabina Hossenfelder: Thanks for the kind words. There's another aspect of this, if I may briefly mention [00:33:00] this, which is that it's actually two, two, that the things going wrong with academia and with science, and a lot of scientists don't want to talk about it exactly because of the problem, which you just mentioned, because people will throw out all the babies with the bathwater.

They're like, was this one scientist who said a wrong thing? Therefore, all of science is wrong, right? And so every time I talk about problems with science and academia, I get emails from physicists who are like, you shouldn't talk about this, because, people were just distrust scientists. And so I insist on talking about it anyway, because I think that the attempt of sweeping it under the rug just makes things worse.

Malcolm Collins: This has been an absolutely spectacular conversation and I can't tell you how much I appreciate your time. And I really hope people check out your channel as a good place to learn what is cutting edge in science these days. Which can feel like we know some friends were just like, I don't [00:34:00] trust any science after the eighties.

And I'm like, no, you go to her channel and you can get a fairly honest and sober minded view of what. And specifically

Simone Collins: that is science with Sabina. Check that out on YouTube. Also check out Sabina's books, their Existential Physics and Lost in Math. Existential Physics is what we were discussing today.

The Lost in Math is also fascinating in its premise. And then of course you can find Sabina on Twitter at S K D H. Sabina, thank you so much. You are amazing. Lovely to talk

Malcolm Collins: to you.

In this eye-opening discussion, Malcolm and Simone Collins delve into the controversial topic of corporal punishment and the latest research challenging the mainstream narrative. They examine a groundbreaking 2023 study that found previous research on spanking relied on unadjusted correlations, ignoring crucial factors such as child behavior and genetics. The couple argues that the evidence supporting the benefits of mild, immediate physical correction has been largely overlooked due to ideological biases and the categorization of spanking as a human rights abuse.

Malcolm and Simone also explore the potential psychological damage caused by alternative disciplinary methods, such as emotional punishment, and the evolutionary basis for physical communication with pre-verbal children. They emphasize the importance of cultural diversity in parenting practices and the dangers of imposing a one-size-fits-all approach. Throughout the discussion, the couple shares personal anecdotes and insights from their own parenting journey, advocating for a more nuanced and evidence-based approach to the spanking debate.

Malcolm Collins: , [00:00:00] A really big study came out in 2023 that basically went through all the old research and showed that, yes, I was right to think it was sus . Now, you would assume at the very least, they would be correcting for child behavior, right? In these giant samples. I hope so. Yes, basically, they didn't

And they just used a giant sample size to push under the table that they weren't correcting. If you can't understand why this would be so insane and why this would obviously show that spanking had all of these deleterious outcomes, consider our family. We do not do any form of corporal punishment with our daughter.

Because she just doesn't misbehave in the way our boys misbehave.

In these studies, she would be in the category of non spanking, and my sons would be in the category of spanking, and then they would be like, look, spanking is causing more bad behavior.

I was like, no, you [00:01:00] idiot! 2018, the A. P. A. Task Force on physical punishment of Children recommended an resolution opposing all physical punishment, although the task force cited it. Okay. Thank you. Five meta analyses, they relied almost entirely on Gorshov and Gorgon Kehler's 2016 evidence against physical punishment, which came exclusively from unadjusted correlations.

EXCLUSIVELY from unadjusted correlations The task force ignored two stronger meta analysis that went beyond correlations, these other meta analysis concluded that harmful effects of physical punishment were, quote unquote, trivial. However, the randomized trials find spanking has a slightly positive effect. .

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. As we are now widely publicly known as the Abusive parents for our bop strategy to parenting.

Bop It. Twist It. Soccer Boppers! Soccer Boppers! You can sock all day, and bop all night!

Malcolm Collins: Like

Simone Collins: soccer [00:02:00] boppers. Yes. It's more fun than

Malcolm Collins: a pillow fight. This actually brings me to one of the first things that I've really noticed in the few days, because I didn't really think anything about the bop when it happened, and in the few days, in the while, since the initial event, I have now been paying much more attention to how I physically interact with our kids, and it's now really apparent to me, like, how rough I am with them normally, when I'm, especially with the boys, that I

Simone Collins: But In a positive context, I would say like of all the physical interactions we have with our kids, the bopping is probably the lightest and gentlest.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, like I, that was the thing that sort of surprised me and made me realize why I didn't think anything of it, that I like regularly punch the kids while playing or throw them across the room and they just find it hilarious. That doesn't sound very good,

Simone Collins: but aren't we very rough and

Malcolm Collins: tumble kids?

I don't know what to tell you. Anybody who has worked with toddler boys knows that punching is like a cheat code with toddler boys. It's like one of their favorite games. And it doesn't [00:03:00] lead them to like playing rough with each other. I just want to be clear. We actually don't have that problem, but anyway,

Simone Collins: They don't.

They wrestle all the time,

Malcolm Collins: but they don't play rough. Before we go further. One of the things that I love is the piece was like, he hit him so hard with an open handed slap that I could hear it on the recording. And I'm like, do you know, like the sounds that hands make when they hit things? This is like clapping.

You can hear clapping on a recording, but you don't say he was repeatedly beating his own hand. It's just something that makes a sound whenever you do it, not, you don't need to hit something hard. Like that. Yeah, I'm sure

Simone Collins: her recorder probably also picked up the sound of your phone being placed on a table every time you put it down, but that didn't come up.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But so I what I wanted to do is this episode, cause I found it really interesting is in the last episode I was like, okay. I just look at the research as somebody who has a training in science and it looks us. And this is where we were when we actually did our research to decide how to parent, right?

I was like, the research [00:04:00] looks us. I think it sucks. Yeah. So I'm going to ignore it and look to other models to see if I can find a better way to do this. And we'll try different methods to see what works for our family. And what works for each kid? Um, it turns out that since I had that intuition, A really big study came out in 2023 that basically went through all the old research and showed that, yes, I was right to think it was sus and the conclusions were morally guided, and that if you did good research which they did, and they did like a meta study on the good research.

It seems that the majority of the evidence right now shows that spanking is slightly positive.

Simone Collins: And by that you mean immediate physical correction? Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: immediate, light, physical correction. Interaction. It doesn't need to be immediate in their studies. So they looked at both immediate and delayed, but I would imagine from other animal models, immediate is really where you're seeing the positive effect, which is why I [00:05:00] suspect they're only seeing a slight positive effect.

Just so you can know why we would think that when you are doing training in other mammals, delayed negative feedback is pretty much never works. So it'd be really weird if it worked in humans. It just

Simone Collins: intuitively, it would make sense that, If there's some kind of delayed repercussion for anything, actually, this showed up Spencer Greenberg a while ago, did some research on.

Whether or not gut response or intuition is a reliable thing if it's real, essentially. And what he found was that yes, intuition is real if or when it is related to activities in which you get, Repeated in high volume, regular and immediate response and feedback which goes to show that basically you can't train someone to instinctually change their behavior or responses if there is a lack of immediate feedback.

And that is why immediate feedback is important. So you can see cross disciplinary patterns or echoes here. It's

Malcolm Collins: really important because this means that. [00:06:00] Through immediate negative feedback through something like a bop, you can create moral intuition in an individual, i. e. they will develop an intuition that is immediate and instinct around the world.

Simone Collins: I shouldn't run into the street. I shouldn't hit my sister. I shouldn't, et cetera. Yeah, basically in the most important primary source of information, we have the Bop It commercial.

If you can't keep up, Twist It. You lose! Once

Simone Collins: If you're too slow, you lose. You

Malcolm Collins: lose! If you're too slow, it doesn't count. And also Richard Hanania did a tweet actually before this whole incident happened that I really agree with.

So he said one thing I find weird about the quote unquote spanking debate is that we assume if you hit kids, it should be on the behind. Why? Seems to introduce needless humiliation. There are a lot of other ways to hurt children that seem less problematic. Slapping, wrestling holds, etc. Oh,

Simone Collins: people have done long histories of the Of spanking and just how fetishized it [00:07:00] was and how much it's a

Malcolm Collins: no, I it is.

I think Downstream of fetish communities more than people realize because one of the earliest fetishes was what was called the british vice Which was based on the type of ritualized spanking they did at british boarding school with the paddle Yeah,

So it I don't think that the parents who spank realize they are doing something that is partially downstream of a very ancient fetish culture, but they are and it is a little weird but that's why it's weird.

Okay. So I'm not, I know some parents are like the face is a sacred area. I would never do that. I would only go for the butt. We choose to only go for the butt. Okay. Less pain to have the same interaction. To have the same effect of shocking and reorienting attention, but I need to get to the research here.

And Emil Kierkegaard famous for his very naughty opinions, which we do not endorse all his opinions, but he's not a bad like he is capable of stringing [00:08:00] together useful research, especially when it's in a field that everyone's afraid to talk about. I

Simone Collins: love his sub stack personally. And he's also just made some amazing reference guides, how to find.

The original full print of a peer reviewed journal article. I remember I was

Malcolm Collins: talking with someone online who's don't you know, this is bad. And I was like, Emil Kierkegaard actually did a great piece on this. And she goes, I can't read that. He's all right. He's officially banned. No he's dead.

He's definitely verboten. But he's. This is the way the urban monoculture works. That prevents you from listening to any information from somebody. Once they are put on the immune to the urban monoculture list.

And. Then you are no longer allowed to anyone who has interacted with that person.

So we are not claiming to have interacted with him. But I think he puts together the information here fairly well. So we're going to go into his piece. Okay. So he starts and I'll put on screen here, all the countries that have made even mild corporal punishment of children illegal.

Simone Collins: And this was news to me since the guardian article, I did not realize that corporal punishment was literally illegal in so many places.

That is what [00:09:00] you didn't realize

Malcolm Collins: it because it was an incredibly recent trend. Okay. With almost all of these happening after 2005 and most happening after 2014.

Simone Collins: Wow, so after we graduated from high school and most cases. Many cases.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This was like a recent and actually crazy change.

And we'll talk about why it's crazy, but I want to read his piece here, right?

Okay. Why was it banned? I think there are two parts. First, the academics say it's bad and they point to correlations between the use of corporal punishment and aggression in humans. Second, it's easy to find horrific situations of parental abuse. As you can imagine, the evidence about causality is not strong.

How do the researchers know that corporal punishment caused the children's latter problems and not poorly behaving children causing their parents to punish them more? In general, they don't. They just assume this in line with their blank slate ideology.

We could, however, draw up a diagram to make things more clear. And this was something I had pointed [00:10:00] out. I was like, I bet they're approaching this with a blank slate mindset. That's how they're getting these giant sample sizes. Cause I went up to one thing I noticed on a lot of the research that people were citing to prove this banking was bad is they had absurd sample sizes, which typically means they're not doing filtering.

And if they're not, and this is Of all topics, you would need to filter this one the most in part due to this chart I'm going to put on the screen here. So to our podcast listeners, I'll basically explain. So you go from parental genetics, then through other parenting factors to child with poor behavior, which is influenced in part by the child genetics, which is influenced by the parent.

Genetics, but the parents genetics also influences bad life outcomes. But then you have the cross relationship with corporal punishment. Then you have poor adult behavior. And then all of that leads to bad life outcomes. And so the idea is, can you sort out which of these is influencing the parents genetics?

Bad behavior. Now, you would assume if you had trust in science, you're like, at the very [00:11:00] least, they would be correcting for child behavior, right? In these giant samples. I hope so. Yes, we're going to keep going. But basically, they didn't in the giant studies that everyone has been basing all of their research on.

They didn't. And they just used a giant sample size to push under the table that they weren't correcting. If you can't understand why this would be so insane and why this would obviously show that spanking had all of these deleterious outcomes, consider our family. We do not do any form of corporal punishment with our daughter.

Because she just doesn't misbehave in the way our boys misbehave.

Simone Collins: Yeah, she's very emotionally sensitive. And like any sort of, if we looked at her the wrong way, like disapprovingly, She'd start bawling. Yeah, like that's the thing is some kids, all they need is a frickin look.

Malcolm Collins: In these studies, she would be in the category of non spanking, and my sons would be in the category of spanking, and [00:12:00] then they would be like, look, spanking is causing more bad behavior.

I was like, no, you idiot! Obviously, if you don't sort by but we'll keep going here. I'm just skipping ahead a bit here, but how can we be sure? And here he's talking about the genetic effects, because obviously these are going to be huge as well. And most scientists don't like to admit that kids inherit behavior from their parents. But then he points out that there actually was an experiment that looked at this. So the study was called the effects of spanking on psychosocial outcomes, revisiting genetic and environmental co variation. this study was trying to find out how much of the negative effects that were being measured were genetic in nature. And it turns out that it is around 60%. So the majority of any effect that was being measured in previous studies was just. Are these the type of parents who obediently listen to quote unquote the science or are these the type of parents who say, or for whatever [00:13:00] reason, either because they don't aren't aware of the science or they are people like me who are just like really anti authoritarian and like that looks sus or is it, you know, and I'll put some stuff on the screen here.

It was the risk of depression was really heavily linked in this study as with delinquency and to a lesser extent alcohol.

So then he says later, are there some brave souls that went against the flow and looked at the causal evidence and maybe. Even evidence that spanking might actually be good. Yes. And this is the key, really big study. And it was actually a very well done study by Reitman, Ortez, Cox. And it was done in 2023.

And it's titled, Parental Punishment, Don't Throw the Baby Out with the Bathwater.. So to read some quotes from it over the past several decades, the use of punishment as a strategy to discipline children has fallen into disfavor in popular books among many parenting researchers, other well respected researchers point out [00:14:00] important instances where punishment can be beneficial if implemented appropriately together with positive reinforcement.

In this chapter, we summarize the research on punishment, ranging from parental use of time out. to clinical use of mild electric shocks to treat severe self destructive behaviors that are otherwise within to change. We find that the bifurcation of research into causally informative studies, clinical child cases, and correlational studies of more representative samples have prevented progress on how consistent mild punishment can enhance positive parenting techniques, such as, reasoning and negotiation, especially in children with oppositional defiance, which given my genetics, our boys are very likely to have and do.

Very likely. It's

Simone Collins: confirmed.

Malcolm Collins: We need better punishment research to help parents, because most of them will use some kind of punishment sometimes. And then he said, they begin by discussing the role of the American Psychological [00:15:00] Association advocacy behavior in 2018, the A. P. A. Task Force on physical punishment of Children recommended an A.

P. A. Resolution opposing all physical punishment, concluding that the quote research on physical punishment has met the requirements for causal conclusions. In quote Gershoff 2018, although the task force cited it. Okay. Thank you. Five meta analyses, they relied almost entirely on Gorshov and Gorgon Kehler's 2016 evidence against physical punishment, which came exclusively from unadjusted correlations.

EXCLUSIVELY from unadjusted correlations is what was used to ban this in all these countries. Those in the studies, or if they had just looked at our family, would have put Titan in the non correlations. Spanking category and Orson and Octavian in the spanking category.

Simone Collins: Mostly

Malcolm Collins: 55 percent cross section Gorshov and Gorgon Taylor.

The task force ignored two stronger meta analysis that went beyond correlations, either by [00:16:00] controlling statistically for pre existing differences, Ferguson 2013, or by comparing effect sizes of physical punishment with those of alternative disciplinary tactics, Lorenzi and Klune 2005. These other meta analysis concluded that harmful effects of physical punishment were, quote unquote, trivial.

So they had access to these, and they were bigger at the time. Ferguson, 2013, or limited to severe or predominant use of physical punishment, Lorenz and Kuhn, 2005. As we've said, in the large meta studies, in the field they were showing That spanking caused no negative effects or had positive effects.

No, I need to note here, the studies that came out and showed a slight positive effect. And the studies that showed a trivial effect did not control for in the moment, negative feedback versus delayed negative feedback, nor did they control for the genetic effect, which we [00:17:00] know is having a large 60% or so effect in the opposite direction. Which means that what they are actually showing it taken in light of all of the evidence we have here is a massive positive effect. From corporal punishment where it is needed.

Malcolm Collins: But again, this is, and I'm going to keep going with this, but this is something that people should have intuited, like just at a base level. One, I mentioned all human cultures co evolving this tradition of course, but then two, you've also just got to think about the L evolutionary context here. If you have a pre fully verbal human, in that age range where you can't. them that this might kill someone and therefore you shouldn't do it. You are going to partially physically communicate with them. That is one of the options with you. You have the option for verbal communication and you have the option for physical communication.

And you as an adult have the ability to physically communicate with a child in a way that gets their attention, but doesn't. Cause any long term damage or any real long term [00:18:00] pain, but still is an additional type of communication. You have access to it. Seems insane to me that we as Children wouldn't have evolved to pick up on that in a really intense way.

And the way we see in other animal models and that we as humans wouldn't have just been doing that all the time in our early environment, leading to evolutionary feedback for Children to have an evolved mechanism around learning from that. Like it's just Yeah. Absolutely insane that you wouldn't have that.

So in a way, I would argue that people who parent without spanking when a child leaves. Not every child needs some form of corporal punishment, but without any form of physical communication with the child. It is almost like deciding to parent to a child without talking to them for like certain formative years of their lives.

You can do it, like you can find ways around them and they'll learn to speak through other mechanisms, but like it is pointlessly tying your hands behind your back in a way that like would almost never happen in an evolutionary environment. So I just, that, that was the thing that [00:19:00] really got me because I was they're obviously doing harm in these countries but they're doing it because they first declared, as I said, first declared spanking a human rights abuse.

Then they decide how I'm going to research it. I'm going to determine stuff about it, blah, blah, blah. So this study, then amazingly, after this, they performed their own literature review that I'm going to put on the screen. screen here. What the results said. So in the weak designs cross section longitudinal, we see that the use of corporeal punishment, spanking, non physical punishment, e.

g. timeout, grounding, both associate with later worse child behavior. However, the randomized trials find the opposite results. Maybe even the spanking has a slightly positive effect. . But yeah, so what are your thoughts, Simone? And now that we actually had somebody who did like a huge amount of research on this and was like, yeah, you're right. They, like the research was brilliant. And I really need to point this out for people like when to say research is stuff or suss somebody's like all scientists agree [00:20:00] and they're talking about a psychological issue and they're not discussing any edge cases.

That means that there is some sort of, or there was for a long time, some sort of large motivation in that field to agree. Look with spanking. Where could that motivation be? Oh, spanking is categorized as a human rights abuse by numerous large urban monoculture organizations. Of course and I think that if you also want to talk about how psychologically damaging other parenting techniques are, that's another thing that's not really talked about here.

That's what I was

Simone Collins: going to say is the thing that we've been talking about offline that I think is really underrated and that I wish people were actually talking about was, and this is something you first articulated really well to me. When you are choosing discipline or not disciplined, like when a kid does something that is unacceptable or unsafe.

You are always going to be choosing between evils. There is no correct way. And it also depends on the situation and the child, and your current resources at the time are you in a quiet place where you can stop everything? Or are [00:21:00] you in the middle of moving in a vehicle or something like that?

And. If you choose not to bop a kid, you are then choosing to emotionally terrorize them or verbally castigate them or do absolutely nothing, which could cause more long term damage in the future or make them feel rejected by you by totally ignoring them. No matter what you are going to be doing something that isn't

Malcolm Collins: No, but it's important to understand how not great this is.

To a young child, historically, even fairly recently, because we were talking with a friend whose family had a history of having done this,

Children who overly misbehaved were often abandoned. Or sent to an orphanage, or Sent to an orphanage where they'd often die at a very young age. And so abandonment of a bad kids was something that was done historically and children, anyone who has children knows children have an evolved reaction to this.

When you emotionally escalate with a kid you are [00:22:00] essentially going Oh, I don't want to cause mild physical discomfort. So I'm going straight to. At an evolutionary level. I am convincing my kid. They're about to die. A slow and painful death. That is what emotionally triggered

Simone Collins: that feeling in them.

Let's trigger that

Malcolm Collins: feeling. It just shows where they develop these arbitrary rules, make no painful physical contact with a child. And as a result of this rule, they then justify behavior that most sane people would be like, that is a horrific Behavior to normalize.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it reminds me a lot of diet culture, actually, how, for a while carbs are bad.

And then, then for a while saturated fat was bad. And what did we do? We replaced that with trans fat, which is a lot worse for people in the end. And I feel like a lot of the punishments that, or lack thereof, of

Malcolm Collins: It's like in clueless when she's eating gummy bears and she goes they're like carb free or something.

They're fat free. They're fat [00:23:00] free. Yeah, no, but I

Simone Collins: really feel like the lack of punishment or the emotional terrorism that, that parents are putting on, we'll say non corporal punishment parents are putting on kids who otherwise would respond well to corporal punishment is the trans fat of discipline.

They think that they're doing the healthy thing. They think they're doing the right thing. So they're acting in good faith. They're just causing even more damage than they would be if they just lightly swatted at their kid and said, knock it off, you little s**t. And so we are hurting people and that's bad, but here's the other thing too.

It's, I can't even be mad. At the people who are, for example, shitting on us online, sending us hate mail in the end. I'm glad that they're doing it because it means that there's a very strong instinct to protect children from harm. And I love that. I feel the same way. I go mama bear. If I think that someone's hurting kids, I can't deal with it.

Like I will. I will, but, and they think we're hurting kids because the media is framing it like, again, you backhanded Torsten and he flew against a wall. They're not [00:24:00] being like, oh, he lightly swatted. It's, they're most of the

Malcolm Collins: articles that re quote, they do say that it's just not the way people are interpreting it.

Yeah. They're

Simone Collins: interpreting it in the least charitable way

Malcolm Collins: because they want to, they don't like our other ideas. They don't like what we're forcing them to recognize about themselves. They want you, but if you

Simone Collins: believe that You should be really angry at us. If you believe that we're actually abusing our children, I am glad that people hate us.

I

Malcolm Collins: think that you are misunderstanding their motivations because we've seen it in the other things they accuse us of. And I don't think anybody honestly. Oh yeah. Like the fact that we're like,

Simone Collins: people assume that we're Nazi, racist, eugenicist. Monsters to, yeah, I dunno. So I think

Malcolm Collins: what you're missing, Simone, is you're overly kind interpretation of people.

leads you to miss what's really motivating their action. They don't like the truth is that we're forcing them to confront, which that piece is really good with. It lays out the hard truth of what they're doing. The that they're victimizing developing countries, which are dealing with their [00:25:00] own problems by outsourcing our fertility problem to those countries by taking their residents, and they're like, I don't want to deal with this.

Or even with the slap where people would just get freaked out, right? Be like if you're calling people who practice corporal punishment, like inhuman monsters, keep in mind, by that 2011 study, 89 percent of black families in the United States practice corporal punishment. And then they're like, what, you can't, you how could she slap, how could she slap, yeah, we'll have that.

Yeah. You, what I liked about the responses we got to that statement was like, you can't say, ah, it was like pure progressive, like brain fire because They realized that I was right, that they had just said something racist, and they were on the racist side of this argument. I'm just

Simone Collins: trying to bright side this.

I'm just trying to say we can be united and caring about children.

Malcolm Collins: I don't think so. You don't think they care about

Simone Collins: kids?

Malcolm Collins: No, I think it's a bad instinct to focus on other people's kids. Because then you always lead to cultural imperialism. You're like, oh, cultural [00:26:00] imperialism. We need to use that more.

That's what I mean. It's what it is. It's how can they circumcise their kids? Don't they know that hurts their kids? And I'm like, no, it's their cultural practice. They get to choose it. They had it chosen for them. Who better to choose to circumcise their kids than somebody Who lived, you as an external person should have no right in this saying.

And then somebody's I was circumcised and I didn't like it. And I'm like then did you have kids yourself? And they're often like, no. And then I'm like, then why like clearly they're part of a living cultural tradition and you're part of a dead one and you're trying to enforce this dead cultural tradition on

Simone Collins: them.

Malcolm Collins: And this is why this idea that you have, or this intuition that you have, that you should have the right to deal with other cultures, kids, I just think is. Totally wrong headed. Cultures have the right to protect and deal with their own kids. And it's not even culturally wrong headed. It can be used to hijack people to do stupid things very easily.

This whole like starving kid in Africa thing that we had to deal with in the nineties, that was like every TV break for awhile and they're like, now give us your money

[00:27:00] Not from disease or war, but from hunger. You see, here in the middle of Africa, food is extremely scarce. Does it look like she's having any trouble finding food?

For just five dollars a month, you can sponsor a child. That's stupid

Malcolm Collins: I love

Simone Collins: that the running theme of this episode is nineties commercials. What's going on?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, when almost all the money was just going to these large bureaucracies that had found out how to brain hack people,

stupid. !

Yes, Soda Starburst! You guys! Soda Starburst is holding food from

Malcolm Collins: the large bureaucracies in ant faces that have found out how to brain hack people with other people's hurt kids. Even now when you're looking at something like what's going on in Gaza and stuff like that, it's just so easy to focus on kids that you have no cultural responsibility to.

And that by, and the moment you feel you do it it approves atrocities on your behalf because now you're like I said, because of the kids, now I can do whatever I want. And I just don't think that's a helpful instinct and it's one that can [00:28:00] be easily hijacked by nefarious forces.

But I will say for the beginning here, like we've gotten through like a whole week of how can she slap?

Simone Collins: It is

How can you slap? How can you slap? Are you mad or what bloody? How can she slap? How can she slap me? How

Malcolm Collins: absolutely wild. But the other thing I wanted to note here is. The science does eventually get this stuff right often. If you take long enough, somebody's oh, this is a fun area where I can overturn the field and do something that is controversial and interesting.

But also keep in mind that you didn't hear about this giant meta study that had carefully analyzed the field and found out that actually spanking seems to have positive effects and certainly doesn't have negative effects. You didn't know that the better conducted and larger study showed no negative effects.

And

Simone Collins: sadly, the person who's providing thoughtful and useful translation to the average lay [00:29:00] person. Emil Kierkegaard is someone that most people who've ever heard of him on Twitter, for example, are like, Oh no, he is a forbidden person. I'm never going to engage with anything he ever publishes, even though he constantly publishes super interesting stuff.

So yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah and this isn't to say that we agree with everything he publishes, but that doesn't mean anything is not worth intellectually engaging with.

Simone Collins: Yeah, just because someone says something that you disagree with in one realm doesn't mean that if they say the sky is blue, you're like definitely the sky's not blue.

And I should point out that the big study wasn't done by

Malcolm Collins: Emil.

Simone Collins: He just brought it to our attention. He was just going over the existing research. That's why I'm saying he's really good at it taking issues and saying here's what I'm seeing. Here's this study. And then, here's actually how it was conducted.

Like he typically goes into the mechanics of what's going on behind the research, which I'm really bad at doing.

Malcolm Collins: This particular study was really good because It was big and it showed how biased these institutions are. [00:30:00] And this is the way the urban monoculture acts is it is at its core imperious. It believes it has the right to all other cultures, to everyone's kid.

And it will use any means it can to exercise that even if anyone who was logically thinking would recognize, oh, you're hurting kids in banning this sort of, moderate behavior. As a final note here, I actually, love the idea that this has gone so viral because I hope that we get seen one day as like parenting influencers for parents who want to be like sane and cut through the BS and okay, these are people who really understand the science, who are very smart, who are very considerate, and they're going to provide me with this is what you actually need to worry about.

This is what you actually don't need to worry about. Yeah. No, there's just so much stuff. So many, like the whole freak out about breast milk, for example, it's like breast milk has some positive effects for early diseases. Specifically gut health in the early years, which can affect nutritional uptake and can have minor effects in a [00:31:00] few areas, but if it's massively inconveniencing you, it's not really worth it.

And the. Effects become marginal from what I've seen in the research that I actually find believable after a few months. And a lot of people are like, you can't say that. That's not what we're supposed to believe. And it's yeah, but it's what I'm seeing in the data. So we'll call it BOP style parenting.

I think that's what a lot of and I also love another really funny thing. It's a lot of these writers who are writing about us are younger than us. So they don't know Bop It. They don't know, I think that's an

Simone Collins: interesting thing that millennials get that no one else is getting because the term Bop during our generation was associated with playful, light, physical contact.

There were specifically two toys. One was called the Sock and Bopper. It was like a blow up. Punchy thing.

Soccer Boppers! Soccer Boppers! You can sock all day, and bop all night! Soccer Boppers! Soccer Boppers! More fun than a pillow fight! [00:32:00] Blow em up, put your hand inside, Get ready to have the time of your life! Soccer Boppers! Soccer Boppers! Sock em once, and bop em twice! Soccer Boppers! Soccer Boppers! Soccer Boppers!

More fun than a pillow fight! By Big Time Toys! Soccer Boppers!

Simone Collins: So basically, toy makers realized, Oh yeah, kids like to punch each other a lot. Like our boys do all the time when they're playing around and Oh, maybe we can lessen the impact. So we'll make a balloon that goes on your hand.

And then there was the Bobbit, which is just a toy that you smack around.

Hey! Wanna play Bop It? It commands you obey! Bop It. Twist It. Pass It. If you can't keep up, Twist It. You lose! Once you get your hands on Bop It, You're not gonna wanna stop it! Fast Talking Electronic Bop It. Batteries not included.

Simone Collins: I actually want to talk to the

Malcolm Collins: Talkin Boppers because this is not a toy that could go popular right now.

Simone Collins: Oh heavens no. To encourage children to punch each other? How could you? [00:33:00] But it

Malcolm Collins: shows how much things have changed.

That we used to understand that boys play and learn rough. Yeah. Like when a boy's being a, a Why do you

Simone Collins: think boys get in trouble so much more at school?

Malcolm Collins: That's the

Simone Collins: thing. Our society doesn't permit them to be themselves.

Malcolm Collins: Slugs and snails and puppy dog tails. Is what little boys are made of.

They're not made of the same things as little girls. And this is an interesting thing. I can already see the difference in, in emotional needs of my kids. With the male kids, and we'll probably do a full episode on this one day. The male kids really play fighting.

Like me getting on my knees or on the floor and play fighting them is probably the most fun they have in their lives.

And this seriously, I don't think anything, any activity I do with them is nearly as fun for them as play fighting with their dad. I love it. But the girls or the one girl who's really, able to engage right now,

Simone Collins: old enough for us to see a sample of,

Malcolm Collins: when we're play fighting, she'll sometimes engage, but mostly she's off doing her own thing.

But what she really loves is [00:34:00] just being held and hug. She is very needy in terms of hugs and stuff like that. And it's just a different way of engaging with the world. And I've noticed a lot of these people who are like, Oh, I would never do use any sort of corporeal punishment with my child.

I'm like. They either have one or fewer boys.

Simone Collins: Or yeah, if you have a girl, I would totally understand that intuition. Yeah, this is averages. There are some rough and tumble girls. There are some very sensitive boys. And so we're not saying that any of this is well, another thing that I

Malcolm Collins: found very interesting and I might just go to people going forwards that do this.

Cause one of our friends pointed out that like their sibling had said some mean stuff about us online over this. And they were like this person has two female kids and one of them is already on Xanax. And not, what was it? Not Xanax. It was Zoloft. One of them's already on Zoloft. And this is actually important to elevate.

Is that a lot of the people who criticize us and I actually would ask people going [00:35:00] forwards. If they're criticizing us for this, I'd say, okay, how many kids do you have? Or rather, how many boys do you have? Is the more important question. And then the second question I'd ask is, okay, how many of your kids have a mental health issue or taking medication for mental health issues?

And of course, then they're going to go, they're immediately going to be like, I can't tell you that. And I'm going to be like so that. An obvious sign that one of your kids definitely has a mental health issue. And you cannot tell me that your parenting style was superior to mine when it led to deleterious outcomes.

And then if not that, then I say, then how long a week do you actually spend with your kids? Because this is another thing she was noting. This person who was complaining about us, literally only spends weekends with their kids. And it's they have no idea how to parent really. And that's the problem.

A lot of quote unquote, parents don't have to actually parent. And so they come up with insane ideas about how parenting works. We don't have nannies around most of the time when our kids are with us, we don't have any sort of help like that. And so we have to actually parent and these people don't, they have somebody to [00:36:00] pin down every child in their house.

If all of them are. Playing bad at the same time. And so they never need to learn real parenting techniques.

Simone Collins: That or they treat parenting like helicopter parenting. And for sure, when any of our kids are with us one on one, I don't think we've. Ever been in a situation where we would need to bop one of our kids when it's us and one of the kids.

So like probably if we had only kids, this would never be a thing. It only really like kids only seem to our kids at least get really riled up and out of hand. When they're feeding off each other and things get chaotic. Which I like.

Malcolm Collins: I like that they're able to get chaotic and out of hand.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

But it sometimes means that they aren't hearing us when we say they need to simmer down. And, only physical questions. You did knock it off, you

Malcolm Collins: little s**t. I'm almost sad that I behaved so well in the moment that I was like, Torsten, daddy loves you. I immediately did all this stuff, kept him in the circle of love without making him feel expelled, but let him know he had crossed the boundary.

I [00:37:00] almost wish I just said, knock it off your little s**t.

Simone Collins: We don't do that though. Like we want our kids to not feel rejected. We don't do the whole emotional terrorism thing, which is. I think favorable, that's

Malcolm Collins: not too right. Yeah. I think, I hope that we can I would say all kids are different.

Learn yourself, we'll be parenting influencers as well, I suppose in terms of parenting methods, because I, I. I think that it is important to cut through the BS that is being put out there by ideologues as science, but doesn't actually have data behind it. I love you, Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you too, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: And I love our kids.

In this insightful episode, Malcolm reflects on his 10-year Stanford GSB reunion and shares valuable lessons about pursuing your dreams and finding the right partner. He discusses the importance of living a life dedicated to your values, rather than simply chasing prestige and wealth. Malcolm and Simone also delve into the challenges of finding a compatible partner, especially after achieving financial success. They emphasize the significance of starting to work on your dreams today and the power of marrying someone who believes in your potential. Join them as they explore these thought-provoking topics and offer practical advice for living a fulfilling life.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] One of the, a few of my classmates got a company. It's easily a billion dollar company now. . And I was talking to one of the guys because, when you're working on a company like this, you are stuck 24, seven, basically tied to your desk.

Extreme working hours. . So I was like, so what are you doing now? And he goes, Oh I left to start another company. And I don't understand it. I don't understand why, like for me, startups were not the point of the startup. The startup was to get you financial freedom or to get you the freedom to do what you want to do. if you have dreams about one day doing some big project that you haven't started on yet, you're never going to do that project.

So go out and start today or it's never going to happen. I'm just telling you that right now. It's never going to happen if you aren't in some small way working on it right now,

Simone Collins: jump out of the plane, pull out the parachute. No. You are the only person who can decide that. And I think that's important for everything.

When it comes to getting a partner, when it comes [00:01:00] to having a kid, you have to just throw yourself out of the plane. There's never going to be a time where you really feel ready.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: All right, Simone, it is wonderful to be chatting with you again today. Today. We are going to reflect on my 10 year Stanford GSB reunion. For those of you who don't know, that's the Stanford MBA program. It's generally, I think, about the hardest program to get into in the world.

Harder than Harvard, right?

On We went viral for one thing or another on Reddit once and some people were like, Oh, he misleads people in the way he talks that makes it sound like he got a neuroscience PhD at Stanford, but he only got an MBA. I'm here fuming because it is much harder to get into the MBA program than the neuroscience PhD program.

I am like, what? Anyway because I could have done that. I actually had applied to both of them, but I withdrew my application when I got into the MBA program. Cause I was like, what's the point? You get into the MBA program [00:02:00] and you can basically write your own check in life if you get into a Stanford or Harvard MBA.

But what I want to talk about in this podcast is a few things. One, the utility of an MBA in today's market economy. Cause I've seen some heavily overlapped YouTuber to us was like, MBAs don't matter anymore. And I was like you don't know what you're talking about. Like I am fairly against the university system.

But he's just unaware of the opportunities. The doors, it

Simone Collins: opens the network. It's insane. Like basically when you were there, the most prestigious companies out there just lined up to try to hire you.

Malcolm Collins: Included Eric Schmidt and Connalisa Rice. And

Simone Collins: The people that could bring in for your classes,

Malcolm Collins: like Chambath would come in and like yell at everyone in our class.

And these are small classes too,

Simone Collins: when Evan Spiegel came in and soar a lot in front of your class.

Malcolm Collins: So I want to be clear that and people are like, oh you get high profile people that didn't know what really you do. The [00:03:00] classes don't matter. It's the alumni network anywhere afterwards.

I guess I can start with this. When you cold email people, especially like right around graduation or for the first few years after graduation, and you include that in your subject line, you get like a 50, 60 percent response rate actually, especially from high profile people, because they're often looking for bedded, hungry, young people that they can Put into positions is sort of gophers because what you begin to realize is that from the perspective of many of the quote unquote elite in our society, what there is a shortage of is competent, self motivated young people.

Who don't just dismiss them or arrogant or working on their own projects or something like that. And to an extent they're right. If you're in our current economy and you are competent and ambitious it's a big question as to why you aren't just starting your own company. No, seriously, like, why aren't you so this helps that for them, that sliver of competent and ambitious people who aren't just immediately doing their own [00:04:00] thing which is high utility for, Groups like that.

Also for venture capitalists, it makes it much easier to raise money, et cetera. You're basically putting a modifier on everything. Now, this is not true for all MBA programs. This is basically only true for Harvard and Stanford. And to a lesser extent Wharton and then after Wharton. MBA is just not worth it.

Because MBA program isn't like an undergrad where it like declines in quality on a linear basis. It's like a logarithmic sloop down. And the reason is because you're sacrificing two years of your career that you could be using to put yourself into a higher position. So basically with

Simone Collins: our kids you're going to tell them, unless you get into Harvard or Stanford.

Maybe Wharton, probably not. Don't bother, right?

Malcolm Collins: Don't bother. Yeah. That's what I'd say.

Simone Collins: By the time our kids are going to university, you're going to tell them not to go to university. Probably.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah, because it's okay, you sacrifice two of your career years for this. So you better be getting an actual big boost, which is what causes this logarithmic scale and MBA program quality.

But anyway, The [00:05:00] reunion, because this was really interesting because I got a chance to compare myself to how other people were doing. And it highlighted to me how unimpressive the people who are objectively more successful than me are to me these days. And the catastrophically poor life choices that people even in positions of Economic privilege end up making and it's worth highlighting this so I can go over like a few anecdotes that really got to me.

One of the, a few of my classmates got a company. It's easily a billion dollar company now. This was started by four or five of my classmates. And they've all moved on from it at this point, but they started it. They've made enormous amounts of money. And I was talking to one of the guys because, when you're working on a company like this, you are stuck 24, seven, basically tied to your desk.

Extreme working hours. The team, they worked really hard to make this [00:06:00] happen. And it was an incredibly. Boring logistics based company on like the way that code travels between various like high performance apps.

Simone Collins: And this was after a ton of pivots, not just from the, this first company, but from other companies they started.

Oh, they worked

Malcolm Collins: so hard. Yeah. This is the first company they started with actually about dog monitoring. And then another one was about photo books. They were relentless. They done. I'm going to describe the two bad idea companies that they started first. The first was not necessarily bad ideas, but just gives you an idea of how entrepreneurialism works.

They started a company that was for monitoring people's dogs for like really obsessed dog moms that were like a baby monitor for your dogs that would monitor their health. I could see that doing well. They just didn't get any market traction. Then the next was like automatically printing out your Facebook pictures as photo books for elderly relatives.

Not a terrible idea, didn't catch off. We actually have ordered one.

Simone Collins: We liked the one that we were like, I think we should have the one that we

Malcolm Collins: got products. And it didn't cost that much. You could do it for 50 bucks. But then the final one that they went into was for [00:07:00] deep linking code between apps for I don't exactly understand it, but if I was going to try to explain it, it was like, so that Facebook could like deep link contact to another system without using a normal type of URL deep link.

I don't understand it. And anyway so we're talking to the guys who founded it and he was like, yeah. So I was like, so what are you doing now? And he goes, Oh I left to start another company. And I was like, what does it do?

And it was something equally boring, like not world changing. I can't understand debting yourself to a company. If you're like trying to change the world or something like that. Or if you have full control this time, but no, he raised money from VCs. Again, he has yet a save to the entire cycle.

Again, it's like you sell all any, he was still living in like Palo Alto, right? Not dating, not going out, and I was I don't understand it. I don't understand why, like for me, startups were not [00:08:00] the point of the startup. The startup was to get you financial freedom or to get you the freedom to do what you want to do.

And this was actually very similar to a conversation. Just so you know, I didn't actually out anyone with this conversation because Five people from my class were founders of that company so that doesn't really narrow it down. But this was very similar to many conversations I had at the class.

And actually, somebody simply similar were said on a couple occasions. So another one of my classmates who actually was the most similar to us move to Napa works around wineries, some sort of like winery consultant thing. And her husband does like wine sales. That sounds very

Simone Collins: romantic.

Honestly. Yeah. They're

Malcolm Collins: not making a lot. They're probably making around what we make as a family, which is.

Simone Collins: We should point out that what you, you kept telling me while you were there, because I stayed home being postpartum and all that with the kids Oh we're like the least successful in our class.

Everyone's more successful than us. And by successful, I ultimately found out you meant. In terms of earning and in terms of the histogram of [00:09:00] earnings from Stanford grads, you were off the charts, like two

Malcolm Collins: standard deviations from the mean. Yeah, basically average, you're impoverished

Simone Collins: among class.

Member of my

Malcolm Collins: class I think is earning somewhere half a million a year now. Can you imagine that's so much was within one standard deviation in the top range was well over a million a year per individual. The, again, this is the how useful an

Simone Collins: B is. right? This is what Stanford grads are earning that the average is 500, 000 shows you how valuable that MBA is.

Malcolm Collins: So they had told this other person in me on different cases Oh, you guys must be like the most successful people in our class because you are doing what we all want to do after we make enough money. And this is where I was like, wait a second, you know that this other person in the class who's doing this and I, we are like off the chart in terms of the low income group of the class.

And then it got me thinking about the way people structure their lives more generally. [00:10:00] And it made me realize that this is the way so many people structure things. Is there like, oh, I'll go out there and get rich. And then I'll use the fact that I've gotten rich to live the life I want to live without asking themselves how much does it really cost to live the life I want to live?

What is the ideal life I have? And pursuing the lifestyle in concurrence. With wealth and prominence and everything like that with the understanding that while you are living a lifestyle you want to live, that is going to hinder your, we'd be making so much more if we were living in like San Francisco or New York, but the quality of life in those environments is terrible.

And also

Simone Collins: just, it's so ugly in the Bay Area. And I don't think people realize that. They think San Francisco, you think of the most beautiful streets on San Francisco, you think of Coit Tower, Lombard Street. You don't realize that most of what people are living in around Palo Alto in Oakland, around [00:11:00] California, even in San Francisco is just ugly suburban sprawl because soon tight Indy.

It just gross looking houses that aren't getting updated because zoning is so terrible. It is not a pretty place to live. And even if you have a ton of money, the best you can buy with that is not very nice. So it's just a terrible area. Like the cost of earning that much is basically living in a gross area.

Malcolm Collins: this brings me, one of the classmates I was talking to became like a real of her type guy. And he did New York real estate was one of the things he worked under. He was one of the, I assume less successful people, but you can make a lot of money in New York real estate. Who knows?

And he. Was telling me that in the New York real estate market, you would always see the same story. People would come into New York and get a house that was like cheap and small and far away from the center of the city. And they'd be like I'm just getting here to, find a spouse [00:12:00] and earn some money.

And then I'm going to transfer from that into. Um, then leave and live the lifestyle. I actually want to live, be financially unconstrained. And he goes, and the same thing always happened with follow ups. He goes, once you got somebody into the city, they're a repeat customer.

Simone Collins: Within city purchases. Like they don't, yeah. Within

Malcolm Collins: city purchases, no matter what they tell you, it's always I want something a little closer to central park. I want something with a little better view. I want something a little bit bigger, two, three years. And it's just, it's, cycle that once somebody gets into the cycle, they can't break their mind out of the cycle because of their immediate goals.

And I think that this is the problem with the way goals work in somebody's mind is that their immediate goals are usually structured around doing what they're doing now, but higher prestige and slightly better. And sometimes their long term goals are a Like leap step away from that. If you understand what I mean, it's [00:13:00] like a completely different type of a thing.

It's like

Simone Collins: a lateral move in life. It's a very different career and move. And I think one of the things that's getting in people's way is they know what they know. So the startup founder example that you gave to us. He knows how to start companies. He knows how to work his ass off.

He doesn't know how to necessarily become a writer or a philanthropist or whatever. It's just so different. And I think there's also this big fear of potentially failing, especially once you've been so successful. I think a lot of the people who get into one of the most prestigious schools in the world, like Harvard or Stanford, and then they graduate and then they continue to succeed.

The cost of then trying something new and failing, I think becomes higher. So this is along the same lines of how they say, you should never tell a kid, Oh, you're so smart. Oh, you're so smart. Because then they're going to stop taking risks because it risks them losing their identity of being the smart one.

Instead, you have to be like, [00:14:00] Oh, you're so hardworking. Oh, you're so creative. Oh, you're so whatever. Because that. That encourages them to take risks and try different things. And I think because these people are so successful, they are trapped in their gold plated chains, they're trapped by their success.

And the cliff that they could fall off becomes higher and higher. And so they don't really want to make these crazy lateral changes, even if they like have nothing to lose, because they've already made it because they've also built this life around prestige and success.

Malcolm Collins: That, but I think it's more than that.

And I think that this message is actually transferable outside of the Stanford circle. I think the Stanford like MBA circle just shows the comical extremes this can take in somebody's life. And I think sometimes you need to see the comical extremes to understand personally. Oh, what am I doing?

Because we've actually seen this in our fans where we talk to our fans and I go, why aren't you looking for a spouse right now? And they go, I'll look for my spouse once X milestone has been reached and then I can achieve higher quality spouses. [00:15:00] And I'm like, I literally in my entire life, I don't know a single person who has taken that approach and ended up married.

Not in a happy relationship, married at all. When I actually when I was talking to the startup guy and I was like, okay are you going to go look for a spouse or are you doing that? And it's oh, when I'm done with this next startup. And I should be clear for somebody to be like maybe he just really likes Startups like the grind and he told me explicitly.

No, it was hell. He was like I was working so hard I'm gonna try to take it a little easier this time. And I was like, why did you do it then? Why did you start it again? And his response was I wanted to prove to myself that the first time wasn't random chance And I think that I totally get that there's a there's like this honor in that right?

Okay, you ended up one of the most successful people of anyone you've ever met and now you want to prove to yourself that it wasn't just a fluke which is okay, but if it wasn't just a fluke, then maybe have [00:16:00] success in a different domain next time. But also it precludes and this is where like the pragmatist guide to life, our first book, I consider it to be such a rudimentary book when I'm recommending it to people.

I'm almost embarrassed. But cause I'm like, this is something that most people should be thinking through while they're in high school. Yet they don't and essentially what it prompts you to do as an individual and it's got an audio book that comes for free with the 99 cents ebook.

So like you can get it. It's very easy to get. So it's but if you want it on audible, you can get it there. It's just that we can't. Keep the price that low on Audible. So anyway, Pragmatist Guide to Life it's a book around determining what has value to you. And then living a life in dedication to that.

And we try not to steer people towards any specific answers. On our show, we have a strong bias against specific answers, like utilitarianism or hedonism on the, in the guide, we don't. Like utilitarians will read the book and they'll be like, Oh, you were trying to push everyone to be a utilitarian.

And I'm like, actually, we have a pretty strong stance against utilitarianism. But It's useful because then once you adopt a framework like that, whether it's [00:17:00] a utilitarian ethical set or, like us, like trying to in expand human potentiality. Then you can be like, okay, now that I have achieved X, if I am doing Y next in life, how do I leverage sort of the inventory of things?

Skills and advantages and resources. I have to most accurately and efficaciously have my moral system enacted upon reality.

And that can be like a religious system, for example, that can be a there's all sorts of questions here, but I don't think for anyone, especially if it wasn't making you happy going back to start another startup, it's the right.

Answer.

That is more just like your on rails and your availability heuristics around the types of things you could do or attempt to do better is anchored to the last thing you were doing. And I think that this really comes to the New York housing market. You may in your mind be like, one day I'd like to live in the mountains by a stream, but.

When you're thinking, what can I do next? Your next promotion is [00:18:00] like marginally an easier thing to to achieve and think about, or the house that's slightly closer to Times Square is slightly easier to, or not sorry, Central Park. Nobody in New York wants to be near Times Square. Sorry about that.

And to just elevate how, Attainable. Our life is we live in a house that a lot of people would think of is quite large. It is 1700s, beautiful, old, all brick. We are surrounded by a state park and then a national park that surrounds the state park. Thousands of miles of walking pathways and a river right in front of our house and a creek next to our house.

And we got this for like around half a million, 500k for this in the house next door. And and that's for the house next door, which we can use to pay taxes, which we can use to, make this lifestyle even more sustainable than it was. That is what the average classmate is earning in a year.

Okay? That is so like when I'm talking about sustainability of a life like this, like literally anyone from my [00:19:00] class could just duck out and then start rebuilding from an environment like this. But I think I also see this in how they're approaching partners. They look for partners who are.

Absolutely perfect. Because I one thing I will say is that my advocacy apparently has had a big effect on my class. 82 percent of my classmates have had kids. Which is actually, when you're comparing it to the general population, a really high number. Extremely. A lot of them joked that it was my advocacy.

So I'm not even hated by them, being in the urban monoculture. Although I did get in a big fight with one of their girlfriends. Because I'm so pro Israel in this war. And she was pro Hamas. And pro Hamas, she did not think that Israel should exist as a state and all the land should be given back to the Palestinian people.

And the Jews should be deported. I obviously. got in a bit of a fight there. And I could tell the, it's one of the things where it's so this is a system where I guess they should have been more biased against me, but they weren't because they know me or they're like, Oh, this is the type of weird thing Malco would do.

Simone Collins: You would always say things that were controversial.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I think it's one of those things where if you've [00:20:00] seen our podcast you'd be like, Oh, yeah. Like at first people like, hey, watch us. And then they're like, Oh yeah, I get it. Of course they would promote this. Is this totally within their but what are your thoughts on this?

Like living the good life, Simone and how to approach it.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I think most people are not actually trying to live the good life. I think that. Especially when you look at high achievers, many of them never really sought to live a good life or even pursue happiness. The objective function that they have typically without ever thinking about it, it just worked out this way and was part of their disposition as well, is that they are you could say prestige optimizers or achievement optimizers where they've just always done the best.

Okay, I'm in the school system. I have to get an a, I have to get a, 5. 0. I have to get into the best college. I have to have all the best extracurriculars, win all the sports games, win the science fair, whatever it might be, right? Always win. Always be number one. And that's, what's happening now is they're making a ton of money.

They have their Sanford MBAs. They have their kids, they, they've like literally like their their [00:21:00] prestige or achievement maxing essentially. No,

Malcolm Collins: you're absolutely

Simone Collins: right. And that is not. That is not having an objective function that is not having a moral framework that is not knowing what you want and really pursuing it.

It is just being an optimizing machine. They're almost like a eyes and we all are like a eyes, but they are a eyes with an objective function of paperclip maximizing. Yeah, but Achievement maximizers. They're the paper. But this is

Malcolm Collins: actually a really interesting point that you're making here. And I want to be clear about what I'm saying with this is that they, like, when I'm like, I am less impressed.

Like we have, um, the people who we give our apartment next door to, who are helping getting, get on their feet and start a company. And they've, recently come out of the prison system, which by the way, they were okay with us saying, because they said it on the pitches. So I know they're okay with us saying that now.

And people would be like. I genuinely, when I hear their story, I have more respect for them than many of our classmates. And people would be like, why is that? And it's because I [00:22:00] judge a person by their future and not by their past. And when they are thinking about their future, they have a cohesive plan of how they're going to build a good family and a good life that is realistic.

And they are ambitiously trying to do it.

Simone Collins: And

Malcolm Collins: that makes me. Proud for what they're attempting, right? So I, but with this other group and this is, with classmates and stuff like this, when I'm like, I don't like respect what they're doing, it's not a difference in value systems.

And I need to be very clear here. I, as people know from this podcast, I'm actually pretty open to many different value systems as, and I will rank them. I'm open to many different value systems. It is that they do not have a value system. There is no value system that just says like this logically consistent, that just says more money, better.

And here I'll play a clip from an old video game where a guy goes bury me with my money

MURRY ME WITH MY MONEY

Malcolm Collins: where it's [00:23:00] a, when you die and you're on your deathbed and you're reflecting on your life, from all of the various things you could have valued, whether it was charity or religion, or family, or even personal hedonism, like I can respond At a higher level than I can respect this sort of like mindless prestige optimization, people who optimize their lives entirely around hedonism, because at least they have some like a logically consistent value system.

They're optimizing around whereas so many people, I think, even the people who are society sorting is like the best of the best per generation, which, okay, I'm not saying that Stanford is perfected to it except, but it's certainly accepting, the top fraction of a percent of the population.

In terms of like just definitionally in terms of various measurable tests and looking at where they'd gotten in their first few years of their career. That within that population, being able to think outside of, I just want more prestige is actually, it seemed pretty uncommon [00:24:00] to me, like maybe only 50 percent of the class was doing that.

And I think it shows when people are like, why do you look at so much of society's like actions is just mass action, right? Like I don't really ascribe that much to malevolent individual players behind the scenes. And I ascribe a lot to just sort of social pressures that lead to evolved cultural subsets, which lead to a sort of broader societal action.

And I think it's because you don't realize how much of the society is quote unquote elite, i. e. the people. In the positions to change things, to move things, to deploy capital are really just operating on autopilot to an extent. And here I should know when people are like what makes you so happy about yourself?

If you have so little money? I look at what I do have. I have financial stability for now and into the foreseeable future, which I established before putting on a podcast and everything like that. And this is financial stability that I can't be fired from. So I can't be canceled easily or anything like that, which was also really important to me that I would never [00:25:00] require because there's two bad ways that this can go.

Either you're afraid of saying something that gets you canceled, right? Which leads to a form of audience capture or you. Always are pandering to your audience because you've been canceled and now you've got to appeal to a specific kind of audience. And that's another type of audience capture, which is limiting my personal freedom, which I didn't want to have.

I am living a life where through the building of the school, through the building of this sort of content, I feel I am doing a thing of value for the world. So every day I feel like I'm living a life of value through writing the books through, the media appearances through our pronatalist advocacy.

And I have. a decently large family for society today, four kids and going and a wife who I have a, I don't know, I have literally no qualms about our relationship. I could not, I genuinely just adore everything about her.

Simone Collins: Yeah. We're all right. We're all right.

Malcolm Collins: And all of this is on an upwards trajectory.

It's like, why would I want money for [00:26:00] anything other? If I had more money, I would only want it for more advocacy. Like we already donate like about 50 percent of what we are into charity when we can. If I had more money, it would just be for more charity.

Simone Collins: I think the big takeaway you got from Stanford was from the 10 year reunion was that you don't.

Have to first be successful in a career or insanely wealthy to pursue what it is that you care about most that if you very intentionally set up your life in a way that allows for a sufficient amount of financial freedom, you're not running away from debt. You are able to pay for health care and your basic living expenses.

You can pursue what you want. And this is, I think this is only really something that's important for the. those who are lucky enough to be a little bit wealthier. This is a problem of wealthy people and not of your typical person. Because the typical person is like totally just going for that, but I'm not [00:27:00] sure. What do you think?

Malcolm Collins: Here isn't a problem of wealthy people. And this is a very important takeaway is it was the way that many of my classmates who were still single were relating to finding a partner. Never ever say I will find a partner when. You will never find a partner if that's what you are doing.

And this is especially true for men. It just does not work that way. You want the type of partner who can see the potential in you and is excited to bring that potential out. If you are looking for partners and somebody can't see potential in you, but they would marry you if you had already achieved objective success.

That relationship will not be a happy relationship in a big way. The very fact that you are securing a partner before you have your wealth is securing a [00:28:00] better partner than you can easily secure or source after you have your wealth because when somebody is marrying somebody younger or somebody was big ambition or something like that, Their ability to vet you by your dreams and competency is part of your vetting process of them.

Are they the type of person who is going to make the sacrifices with you to get your family to the place it needs to be? And if they are not, Then what you are going to end up with is one of these bimbo hussies who is really marrying you for your money.

Simone Collins: I would just more broadly, once you become wealthy as a male or female, I think finding a partner who isn't after your money is really difficult.

That's just a truism.

Malcolm Collins: And yeah, it is a truism and the types of partners who are after your money are lower quality, often personality wise. And I've seen this, I've seen the people who marry after they got [00:29:00] wealthy and the people who marry before they got wealthy. The here's what I think is happening though.

And this is

Simone Collins: really interesting is I think after people get wealthy, they subconsciously think that they can date out of their league. That is to say, they think that because they have more money, they can get someone who is more attractive. Then what they would otherwise get. However, the more attractive people that they're able to target, who are willing to date them, even though looks wise, they're out of their league are people who are only interested in money, the people who are more attractive than them, but also in their league, financially, professionally, or intellectually would still not be willing to date them.

Because then at that point, that person is still under their league looks wise. So what you end up getting is someone who's. The things that matter lower quality, but you still have this assumption that, Oh because I'm successful now I get to marry someone who's more attractive than I am.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

And I would elevate this. The thing that I have seen is that if among our friend group, everyone I know who married somebody after they got wealthy. And it clearly wasn't, now [00:30:00] there's some people were like, clearly they knew this person beforehand. That's not like a supermodel or something like that.

I'm not counting those people. I'm talking about the people where it's this person is clearly more attractive or uniquely young compared to the person they married.

Simone Collins: I do

Malcolm Collins: not know one of them was a happier marriage than the wealthy friends I met who married somebody before they got wealthy.

All of their marriages are pretty much terrible.

And it's generally because these people who they marry have very bad objective functions. They're typically around wealth or status, and you never want to be married to somebody like that. Or they have a very poor mental health which can just make a relationship absolutely like a trap.

Or they are, um. Dumb and not able to have intellectual conversations with them. And so in a way, yeah, you're actually hurting yourself further. So I say that, and then the other thing is that if you have dreams about one day doing some big project that you haven't started on yet, you're never going to do that project.

So go out and start today or it's never going to happen. [00:31:00] I'm just telling you that right now. It's never going to happen if you aren't in some small way working on it right now,

Simone Collins: people wait for permission, right? This is something that we see. We experienced when we were, for example, looking for a company to acquire, we assumed that we would know what a what the company was when our investors would say to us, Hey, yeah, I like this.

You should go for this. And then we realized eventually that our investors were never going to say that no one was ever going to say, now you're ready. Now you should go for it. Okay. Jump out of the plane, pull out the parachute. No. You are the only person who can decide that. And I think that's important for everything.

When it comes to getting a partner, when it comes to having a kid, you have to just throw yourself out of the plane. There's never going to be a time where you really feel ready.

Malcolm Collins: Absolutely. Yeah. I, hopefully this has inspired somebody, whether it's a book you want to write or a company you want to start, you need to do it in some small way, the minimum viable product of it, the minimum viable version today.

Because there's no level of

Simone Collins: achievement people have [00:32:00] reached as Malcolm has found where they feel like they're ready. There are people who are making insane amounts of money, who have all the power, who have, All the connections and they still don't feel ready. There's just no point at which you're going to feel ready, really.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And it's the same with finding a partner. So often when I find with the people who are, who have turned who don't have partners and Oh, you just can't get a partner. They've turned down perfectly good partners. It's their homes that you can watch our homes a video. If you want to see the story of somebody who did this it is very easy.

If you aren't really dedicatedly looking for someone to marry and you are looking for the perfect person to marry, not just, the whatever, right? You're it's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I'm glad you I'm glad you went for it. I love you,

too

Simone Collins: Yeah, let's see if I can adjust myself a little. All right. Is that okay?

Malcolm Collins: You look stunning.

Simone Collins: Oh, is this [00:33:00] better? No.

Malcolm Collins: Stunning, not brave.

Simone Collins: Stunning not brave? Stunning not brave? Stunning

Malcolm Collins: not brave.

Simone Collins: Oh no.

Malcolm Collins: That's the way we ask ourselves if we're looking good to go.

Do you look stunning or brave today?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

In this fascinating discussion with journalist Suzy Weiss, Malcolm and Simone dive into a range of internet subcultures and trends, from "Hercule Derkle" and the death of wellness culture to tradwives and the rise of unwellness influencers. They explore how ancient concepts like Wu Wei and Shabbat are being misappropriated to justify modern hedonism and the implications of a society where basic needs can be met without leaving one's bedroom. The conversation also touches on the contradictions of feminism, the allure of communal living, and the future of reproduction in an age of womb transplants and artificial wombs. Throughout the episode, the trio grapples with the ways in which these online phenomena reflect broader cultural shifts and the search for meaning in an increasingly atomized world.

Suzy Weiss: [00:00:00] Yeah, there's also like this weird way that medieval debunked science is being repackaged in the wellness world. Hikikomori, for those who don't know are, mostly men in Japan who are shut ins, they don't leave their room for years, sometimes at a time, their parents bring them food, they play video games, they're totally addicted to their screens, Japan is 10 years ahead of us in everything.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, and fertility collapse

Suzy Weiss: fast food tastes like food enough, but it's not food and video games feel like problem solving and engaging, but it's really not doing those things.

And he described it as this slack noose around his neck where he technically forgot all of the things fulfilled. He was talking to people, he was eating, he was alive in the world, but at this really not at what's the word I'm looking for, like not at the level of.

Of actually living but not enough that he would go and change it. Like it wasn't dire enough.

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Hi everyone. We are so excited to have our favorite writer on the podcast, Susie Weiss. She's with The Free Press. You can find her on [00:01:00] Twitter slash x.

At Snoozy Weiss. And she has written some amazing pieces. We first discovered her through this mind blowing article on Spoonies. But more recently, she wrote about a different type of kind of self care culture that we thought would be really fun to discuss today. Particularly referring to hergaldergal as a trending term, but also like bed rot and quiet quitting show up in the article as well.

Suzy Weiss: Yeah.

Simone Collins: We'd love to talk about this with you because there's so much going on here.

Suzy Weiss: We're really going to, we're going to get into tradwives. We're going to get, everyone should buckle up for a ride through the internet.

Simone Collins: You had this great quote in there, didn't you say something like tradwives are the girl bosses of the home or something?

Tradwives are the girl bosses of the, they're not different. They are. They're just villainized women. 100%. We're trying

Suzy Weiss: to get what they want, which is, I thought, what we all want, but I guess not.

Simone Collins: Yeah, well they're having it all, they're having it all in the home, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: If you go what you want. Well, it's so interesting the way that society is so [00:02:00] politicized that every subculture has a team.

And depending on what team you are in, that subculture is either an evil or good subculture from the perspective of each team. Yeah, the hustlers

Simone Collins: versus the quiet quitters and the trad wives versus the soft girls and yeah, there's, has to be this

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it's actually almost odd when there are un teamified subcultures, like MLMs.

MLMs isn't explicitly a right or left thing. But if I think box shipping, when you were talking about hustlers, I'm like, oh, those are right wing nut jobs. That's what people would say about them, right? Like drop

Suzy Weiss: shipping?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Dropshipping. Yeah. Dropshipping. There's like a whole dropshipping culture, like Andrew Tate's in university really fights for dropshipping, right?

Yeah. They might, but a lot of things like that do. So it's very similar to MLM ism. So, okay. Obviously you have MLMs, which predominantly target women, but the ones that target men are typically not monetized through the traditional MLM model. It's more like a guru monetizes through [00:03:00] very expensive courses.

And then they try to target teaching people like actually how to start a company. But if you're going to teach at scale, how to start a company, there's really only a few companies that work on that model. Dropshipping is one of them actually doing lectures. Is dropshipping

Suzy Weiss: like MLM for men?

Malcolm Collins: Yes, I

Suzy Weiss: have to read about this.

I'm so excited. It's like raw milk and it's like anti vax. It's the middle of the horseshoe and you're you could, it's the Rorschach test. Like whatever in it reveals your But it's not as abusive

Malcolm Collins: as MLM because you can genuinely make a lot of money doing it if you do it right.

But it is like MLM in that it freezes. forms like these cults of personality. And yeah, and the whole

Suzy Weiss: vocabulary around it, like the vocabulary around Hey girl. Hey Hey babe. Yeah.

Simone Collins: I love that.

Suzy Weiss: Oh

Simone Collins: my God.

Malcolm Collins: Hey hon.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Let's go into, do you want to start with Hercule D'Urkel or trad wise?

Simone Collins: Yeah. Define Hercule D'Urkel for our sage [00:04:00] audience that probably has never heard this term before.

Suzy Weiss: Yes. Cause your audience is smart. And reads books, and I've never read a book, but Hercule Durkle is this 18th century Scottish term, and we could get into the whole like, trend industrial complex, but basically it's like an update to bedrotting which is an update to, I think, hygiee.

Which is that there's there's a, or hide, it's like the, it's like a Nordic Swedish word for getting cozy. And then there was like another term for staying in on a Friday night during like Norwegian winters, but it's like this umbrella term. It falls under self care, but herkle derkle is just apparently this Scottish phrase from the 18th century that means staying in bed longer than you should.

But of course when you combine that with the internet and the algorithm, it turns into this rallying cry for people not to feel bad about pickling under their duvet cover all day. And herkle derkle, which is stay in bed, but of course means stay on your phone and allow a stream [00:05:00] of garbage to go directly into your eyeballs and hold still while TikTok infiltrates your brain.

Malcolm Collins: Yep. So this actually reminds me of one of my favorite misinterpretations of a historic context. So people on the show know we're very into like religious systems and stuff like that. And we were talking with a friend of ours. And they're like, Oh we were like, how's your diet going?

And they're like, Oh, I came up with this amazing new diet system. That's based on ancient Eastern philosophy. And I was like, Oh no what do you think? I'm like, I, I knew things were new and no, they're like, well, I learned about this concept called Wu Wei. Are you familiar with Wu Wei? Okay. So it's a fairly complicated concept.

It is where you are elevating an aesthetic reaction. To your environment to a moral status it's often described as like in a river moving with the water to get to your destination. Go into it. If you,

Simone Collins: If you've read anything by the church of the subgenius, it strikes me as like their [00:06:00] concept of slack,

Malcolm Collins: which is very similar to the concept of slack.

You achieve a

Simone Collins: lot. But through a sort of natural elegance where you're not fighting against nature and society and everything. Instead, you are like an Aikido, using your enemy's opponent against them, or at least in your favor.

Malcolm Collins: So, but she heard of this concept. That was just a

Suzy Weiss: diet.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but no, what she thought it meant is eat whatever you want, whenever you feel like it.

Oh, yeah, what she thought it meant was

Simone Collins: basically just, yeah, just don't try To do anything, just eat whatever you want. And then she immediately started eating a ton of junk food.

All: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: But it's the same with this Herkle Derkle and concepts like this is people are trying to elevate base hedonism to a moral system of superiority over other individuals, which is really interesting.

Suzy Weiss: Yeah, there's also like this weird way that medieval debunked science is being repackaged in the wellness world. So, I have a [00:07:00] friend who gave birth and, er, my friend was talking to her friend who gave birth and she had this woo midwife who was, like, essentially trying to balance her four humors.

Simone Collins: Oh no.

Suzy Weiss: And it after a little bit of questioning, it was like, wait, what's the thing with the phlegm? What, but this was, like, the new age thing. But anyway, yes, it is like a misused. Scottish concepts. I don't know if Scottish people stayed in bed really late in the 18th century. I assume if they did, it was because they had just gotten back from like a land war.

Malcolm Collins: So I don't know. I don't know. I've read some books from England and they do say the Scots were lazy people. I can also see though,

Simone Collins: like

Malcolm Collins: it used

Simone Collins: in a derogatory fashion. Like a mother or a wife being like, you can't herkle derkle all day. That kind of thing. Totally.

Suzy Weiss: There is like a yiddish, like the sound of it matches what it is.

It's like an onomatopoeia or something that I appreciate. But this, the herkle derkle at this point, it's old news online, but it's in line with the trend.

Malcolm Collins: Before you go further, one thing I want to elevate here, which I think is really interesting [00:08:00] is essentially people are rediscovering old forms of hedonism, then building sort of an aesthetic theology around them.

And by this, what I mean is in a modern context, default hedonism is status hedonism, i. e. it's go on trips so that you can take pictures and show how much better you are than everyone else. It's a hedonism tied to affirmation from peer groups. Promiscuity. Data seeking. Yeah. Whereas in a traditional context, hercule durcle hedonism is just searching out pleasure which can often be achieved fairly inexpensively in an individual's life.

And I do think that there is some value in at least Recognizing this as an individual that I pointed out on previous podcasts, actually maxing out individual hedonism stats. When you disassociate from affirmation, it's pretty easy. Once you learn to cook for yourself, you can make like easily four or five tier.

Star, like chef meals [00:09:00] that are perfectly optimized for your taste buds that have access to spices that people like fought and died over historically.

Suzy Weiss: So there are four apps you could download to make your life like you, you would be like Genghis Khan level pleasure. What I mean, it's you can order sex, you can order the groceries, you can order the most gorgeous linen sheets.

You don't have to leave your house and you're like assaulted. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. One of my favorites was one of my very wealthy friends complained about being wealthy in this era. We've mentioned this on another show. Cause he's I just can't get anything that middle class people couldn't get. Like he's I used to be able to what, call a restaurant and have them deliver food to my house.

Now what Uber like eats does that for everyone. I used to have access to foods that other people don't have access to. I don't have that anymore. I used to, be able to. On demand have servants. Now everyone basically has TaskRabbit. I used to like, he's what do I have? I had access to maybe a band that can come [00:10:00] play for me, but now everyone has music players.

Yeah. Just like the most

Suzy Weiss: gorgeous, like high fidelity systems. Yeah. Like flatness and convenience culture. Has in this weird way, turned us all into kings while spiritually impoverishing us all. So you might as well stay in bed.

Simone Collins: The one thing that's interesting to me is in the article, you point out that a lot of this is potentially in, in a backlash or contrast to hustle culture and this feeling like it's a combination of response to girl boss and hustle culture and, try fight, fight.

And then this realization that we're not necessarily going to get Boomer level rewards for the work

Suzy Weiss: we do. It's okay, having it all was a lie. So in response, I will do nothing. I

Simone Collins: will have nothing and do nothing. Yeah. Weird reaction is, do you think that this was a reaction or do you think that they just happen to be at the same time?

And people reacting the. Like in different ways to the same thing. And do you notice [00:11:00] any patterns between the types of influencers or people online who go for one answer or another?

Suzy Weiss: I think there's a few. Ways this happened to take your question in parts. I think a big part of this and what I get into in the article is that this is the logical conclusion of self care culture.

I do think like the era of wellness is ending. It's I don't know, like yoga pants don't count as clothes anymore, which like I'm happy about. But self care as it became like kind of mass produced, commercialized, whatever you want to call it. It meant going to a yoga class. It meant skipping the yoga class and watching TV.

It meant spending a lot of money on food. It meant making your own food at home and making sure there were no seed oils in it. It meant going to a protest. It meant hanging out with your friends. It just is a word that means nothing. And so, like the end. Part of it is just I will be sedentary and do nothing and that is also self care.

I will do nothing for myself as opposed to I I guess the ideal of self care is I will curate this beautiful [00:12:00] life. So I see it. I, what Malcolm said, it's an update on an ancient I form of hedonism, but I also see it as like the death rattle of wellness culture.

And we're going to enter into whatever's coming next. I forget the other part of your question. Oh, the types of influencers who do it.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Who, how does this sort? Because I, there, there's still a lot of people who are heavy hustle and there's still a lot of people who are heavy, soft life.

Suzy Weiss: Yeah. I think. I don't know if it falls into a type. I think, something that was interesting is I keep getting fed all of these like Christian influencers and Christian podcasters. I don't know why they're really weird and interesting, but they were a few Christian. Girls on a podcast talking about how, when you want to go out and you, and, or, when you made plans to go out and you don't want to go out and you're really tempted to cancel the plans, this is like an annoying meme online.

Oh, nothing like sex is great. But if you ever canceled plans at the last minute or whatever and these girls framed it as [00:13:00] the devil was telling you to cancel the plans. And maybe if you went out, that was like, God had something in store for you. Maybe you were going to meet your husband that day or whatever.

I think, well, I think that is like a weird way to frame it. And I don't think there's like a demon who's stay in bed. So comfy cozy. There is something a little bit like feeding into this base impulse of staying in bed and like going out will like lead to more. I think it shows

Malcolm Collins: the value of these old religious systems.

This is something we're always a stalling on this podcast. I'm like many of these religious systems actually had utility to them. And here you're seeing that utility in action. They have created a framing that prevents them from falling into these. And I should be clear this form of hedonism.

create say spiral, which makes your life worse. Where I would have a different hypothesis. I don't not think we're at the end of wellness culture. I think we're at a [00:14:00] transformational moment in wellness culture where, and you mentioned this in the article, as I remember, is the COVID 19 pandemic. This is reminiscent of hi komori culture, right, in Japan, and that what we might be seeing is an evolution of a form of American Ko Mordo, which I can see becoming incredibly popular among Gen Alpha.

Suzy Weiss: Hikikomori, for those who don't know are, mostly men in Japan who are shut ins, they don't leave their room for years, sometimes at a time, their parents bring them food, they play video games, they're totally addicted to their screens, Japan is 10 years ahead of us in everything.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, and fertility collapse and everything, yeah.

And I think that we will get a form of America in Hikikomori. More of them. And I think what will lead it in reference to our last talk about Spoonies is an elevation of agoraphobia as a thing of status within certain elements of online culture and that they will then feel [00:15:00] emotionally rewarded and of for leading in to their agoraphobia, which will elevate the actual amount of agoraphobia, their feeling, which makes it much easier to end up locked in your house for 10 years.

And we've got an entire generation that started their lives in COVID and stuff like that, first job, stuff like that. So they got started on the tracks of staying inside all the time. And then they built their friend networks on discord. They're getting. their needs fulfilled. And they desperately now need to justify why they're making these decisions that are clearly against their best interest.

And now there's communities that affirm that like the antinatalists and the effortless let's say actually you're doing a good thing by, doing nothing with your life and being a drain on society. So long as you don't. Contribute to keeping that society going.

Suzy Weiss: There's a few things I want to pick up on.

One is you talked about getting your needs fulfilled. I interviewed an incel for a story about the for the 10th year anniversary of Tinder [00:16:00] who described yeah, it was, he was in England. He was really interesting. And he described how like fast food tastes like food enough, but it's not food and video games feel like problem solving and engaging, but it's really not doing those things.

And he described it as this slack noose around his neck where he technically forgot all of the things fulfilled. He was talking to people, he was eating, he was alive in the world, but at this really not at what's the word I'm looking for, like not at the level of.

Of actually living but not enough that he would go and change it. Like it wasn't dire enough. And I thought that was really interesting. I think

Malcolm Collins: it's he's living in a simulated version of a human life. Right. And we have created the things that we need. We don't need to go in VR to live a simulated life.

We can already have simulated love, simulated accomplishments, simulated adventures, and simulated food. But I would argue

Suzy Weiss: that is VR. That is like a virtual, it's not reality.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that is. Yeah. When we, I think the [00:17:00] mistake we made, and this is something I realized about when I first met Malcolm, he just assumed that all this would become a big issue when brain computer interface was a thing.

Like when we were like literally plugged in, but somehow like with just dumb screens and laptops and computers, like we are there already fully integrated.

Suzy Weiss: And that's what you keep bringing up, which I think is really interesting, these ancient concepts like Wu Wei. Or and people trying to bring those into the modern era where it's wait, it doesn't work when the food is like hyper palatable and extra salty.

And similarly with Herkul Derkel, I'm Jewish. We have Shabbat, you're, you are not allowed to work. You must rest. So I think people would be like, Oh, that's like Herkul Derkel. And it's no, if you're living like a Jewish life, you are working. In such a way where you need the rest.

And Shabbat actually isn't about isolating yourself. You're made to convene with your community, with your family, have meals together. So I think people take these ancient concepts and use them to justify this like ultimately pleasure seeking attitude.

Simone Collins: And it's there's a [00:18:00] lot of fasting more or less, there's so many things you can't do.

Right. Exactly.

Malcolm Collins: Well, now get into the tradwives part of this conversation.

Suzy Weiss: Oh, yeah. So, so Ah, so tradwives. I'm Are you a tradwife, Simone? Is that We call her a tradwife in some of the video

Malcolm Collins: titles to get clicks because she looks like one. But I don't think you are one by most traditional Well, so a lot of people call what we do I don't know.

I cook the meals and I clean inside. Technotrad, Technotrad or Neotrad?

Suzy Weiss: Yeah, Technotrad.

Malcolm Collins: Technotrad.

Suzy Weiss: Rad. Rad tra

Malcolm Collins: rad. Tra rad TRAs. Rad. Well, we'll see what they converge on as a name for it. But it's not overly tra like we're, right now we're really excited about these AI toys we're getting for our kids.

Yeah. So that they have somebody smart to talk with. . But we're gonna put them in their old toys and reprogram them to think that they are. the kid's old teddy bear, but now they have an imaginary, let's not try it in a traditional context, but then you dress like a medieval peasant.

Yeah, talk [00:19:00] about trad wives. Cause we, we talk about this a lot on the show as well. I don't think it's a holistically positive trend. I know that you would frame it as such, but I think one of the big problems with trad wives is women begin to define the aesthetic of trad wife as the reason why.

Is the heuristic they use to make decisions and judge whether or not they're living a good life. And that's a very bad, they're like, yeah, yes. My husband may not be happy with the decisions I'm making, but I am following this aesthetic correctly. Therefore I am a good wife or a good partner. Right. I

Simone Collins: think we also we have gripes with the way that many people define tradwifery and that.

We think that the true trad is the corporate family where everyone works, including the kids, and everyone kind of shares the burden, whereas a lot of people who go to trad wifery, they're working, obviously they're managing a household, but they're doing it in the modern age where we have dishwashers and washing machines.

And it's just, it's not the same to just. To manage a household and have that be your career. Well, I'd also

Malcolm Collins: point [00:20:00] out that, that think about this in the eight passengers context, right? With the eight passenger situation, you had a woman who in part identified as a trad wife to an extent, but then because the aesthetic of tribe wife really was her moral system.

She because she was a Mormon, but she was not, like this is how it works. This is how it infiltrates religious communities. She identified more as a trad wife than as a Mormon, more as a trad mom than as a Mormon. And because of that, More of a trad

Suzy Weiss: mom influencer. Yeah, right. No, but

Malcolm Collins: But because of that, when then she's well, if I'm a trad mom, right.

And that is, but this aesthetic is morality. Right. Where do trad moms compete within the hierarchy in terms of how they're different from non trad moms? Well, it's how strict they are with their kids, how strict they are about how their kids engage with pornography. Yeah. And then she began to spin like virtue spiral on these particular topics to the point where she ended up committing.

Real and pretty severe abuse of her children.

Suzy Weiss: Yes this was [00:21:00] crazy. I, it was so funny. I was talking about this with my cousins at Shabbat dinner. I think the overall trend of trad wives is just an interesting case study because it's where the theory of feminism of women should be able to do with it, whatever they want crashes in.

To the feeling like, well, not like that, it's do whatever you want, but it better look like this. It better not look like that. So it's like these kind of that like these values that are intention of I need this woman to want agency, but she needs to want it herself.

Malcolm Collins: Have you heard of a taken in hand marriage? No, what is that? Okay. Okay. Okay. So I better point you to this because this could be an interesting story. So taken in hand relationships are a concept that was in a relationship where the woman is completely it's basically a 24 seven slave Dom relationship.

But done within the context of traditionalism and a monogamous marriage, but also understanding the like it definitely came out of the [00:22:00] BDSM community. So people who are familiar with a 24 seven slave relationship, this is when a woman often lives in as a man's in a 24 seven sexual role play scenario.

Well in a taken in hand relationship, they are doing that, but with the aesthetic of a traditional wife.

Simone Collins: Yeah, so instead of like with Gorian relationships, where they were going in this dynamic off of a sci fi universe, they're going off of like the 1950s aesthetic of traditional marriage.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, and where these women want to be spanked when they make mistakes, they want to be like open hand slapped when they say something stupid.

And it is interesting to me, this recontextualization of, I think a stereotype of the worst kind of trad wife relationship built into a BDSM relationship for the satisfaction of women.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It's like feminist, but super not. We just shouldn't have ever gotten the right to vote. Yeah, [00:23:00] everything went wrong.

Everything. I say,

Malcolm Collins: I want to say crazy. Women should have the right to vote because like my ancestors fought for that and everything like that. Like they were, but then I look at who would be elected to office if women didn't have the right to vote. And I'm like, but functionally the country would be economically healthier and safer.

Oh my God.

Suzy Weiss: There was that amazing Grimes thing. It's what do you like about the patriarchy? It's like Rhodes. Wait, did he say that with this interview? She said that she, yeah. It was an interview and she's I'm into the patriarchy. I really like the roads. I really like the infrastructure.

It was just fine. Yeah. I, our tra wives supporting the patriarchy. Are they subverting the patriarchy because they're choosing it themselves?

Malcolm Collins: Oh no. I think that they're subverting it. I think that tra wives are like horrifying plates often. Yeah. The idea, as Simone pointed out, that there was ever a long period in history where your average wife could afford to not work and spend 24 seven looking after the kids.

This is a historical fantasy because people are [00:24:00] basing their assumptions about what historical marriages were like based on Hollywood from the 1950s. So there was a short period in American history from about the 19 Tens to 1970s where this was an aspirational lifestyle among the common people, but it was never really the norm except like maybe like right after World War II when we had that enormous economic explosion and among very

Suzy Weiss: wealthy people, but didn't the housewives in the fifties like go berserk and then they started, they basically did.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Suzy Weiss: But they had that cause they had the washing machine.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so now women are Have tricked guys into thinking they're living this conservative relationship when they're living like I, I don't know, like a harem lady would in a an old Islamic palace, but without the work, just like the raising of a few kids, and I've seen these women who like stop, I have seen trad wives stop after three kids because they said it was too much work and they had a live in [00:25:00] childcare.

Simone Collins: Well, and we see you, if you look at stay at home girlfriend videos online and stay at home daughters, I love them and they're not, they may do some laundry, they may clean up dishes and film themselves doing it. But. They are also completely, this is my expensive latte that I'm not having. This is me working out this.

It's a very indulgent life. So yeah. And somehow

Suzy Weiss: we've gotten to the place where it's you're a trad wife. If you make like a Buffalo chicken pizza from scratch, which just feels like beside the point. But anyway, I kind of love that they explode heads. I love that the girl bosses exploded heads.

Yes. And I think all of these people are in opposition to the self care regime, whatever we're going to call it, that tells you that the best thing you could do is whatever you are doing for yourself, whatever that means.

Simone Collins: Do we understand that one of your next pieces is going to be about the next stage, the non self care, the self destruction.

Suzy Weiss: Oh, the unwellness influencers. The unwellness

Simone Collins: [00:26:00] influencers. Yes.

Suzy Weiss: Yeah. Well, it's all, it's not my piece. I'm editing it. I have a, I don't know if you've read Freya India. She has this great subset. Yeah, we met her last November. She's super cool. She's so cool. And I was like, I need to bring in the big gun for this one.

So she's doing a deep dive into unwellness influencers. And and there, I guess maybe they're the opposite of tradwives. We need to like, we need some sort of. Visual chart to chart. I think Ayla is the opposite

Malcolm Collins: of a trad wife.

Suzy Weiss: Ayla is the opposite of a trad wife. I saw she was getting into it about surrogacy on Twitter today.

I was interested in that. You guys, you're pro surrogacy.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It's not scalable, but we're like, yeah, go for it. I'm allowing it. I prefer artificial wombs or Xeno pregnancies. What's Xeno pregnancy? Xeno pregnancies is using other animals to carry human fetuses, but genetically altering them so that they, creating a chimera.

So it has a human womb or something.

Simone Collins: We're more freakish than,

Suzy Weiss: yeah. You're like, surrogacy, that's crazy.

Malcolm Collins: Surrogacy, what? Come [00:27:00] on, that's unsustainable. I can't farm human women, at least legally anymore in the U. S., but I can farm cows and go to the, You wouldn't do it with cows.

You do it with a capybara or something like that. That's more closely related to us. I was having a phone call about this earlier today about how to make this real. Because I'm very excited about the potentiality of the mass production of children A lot of people are horrified by our, so we are trad, wifey to an extent, but we also want to, culturally speaking win, which I think requires some deviations where tra culture is breaking down.

Which brings me to a question, are you gonna be a trad wife? And in what ways are you not gonna be a trad wife?

Suzy Weiss: Oh, that's, so I think anyone who gets married is doing a trad thing. Like I think there's a big. Reflex, I think, especially among my contemporaries who are like, I'm getting married, but it's going to be different.

And it's you're wearing a white dress. You're doing the thing. You got a [00:28:00] sparkly thing on your finger. That's cool. That's fine. Like it's okay to want a thing that many other people want. It's annoying to me to reframe it as not that traditional thing. I think every wife is a trad wife. So in that way, yes, I hope to be a trad wife.

I bake bread every Shabbat. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Nope. Oh no. That's confirmed. You baked bread. I just have to

Suzy Weiss: hide my decolletage for my modesty for my husband. But no, I'd like to have a lot of kids, but I also really like to work and write and I would, everyone wants a life where they could do both,

Malcolm Collins: a lifestyle that we, some of our friends have gone into which. Is when the, is open to you. So you might consider it is the I call it secular Orthodox Judaism. Where they are not like theologically that into it, but they follow all the rules really strictly and post

Suzy Weiss: modern Orthodox.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That I think I am like been thinking lately more about like communal living, especially all three of my sisters had kids in the last two years. And I see how my middle sisters who live. Where my parents live in Pittsburgh or it's just like this [00:29:00] key books where it's like in and out and this kid and that kid and there's just something so incredible about it.

Yeah maybe one day, maybe I'll be like Simone on the eve of number four, hopefully. No, I, Oh, I hope,

Malcolm Collins: Or we'll have our big artificial womb factory and you can just pick one up. That's fine. Yeah, just pick one up.

Yeah, by the way, we're not close to this technology. I am joking about this for our audiences at edification.

Don't go off and say they're growing children in like pigs in their backyard. Yeah,

Simone Collins: rodents there. I'm sure there will be this whole status thing of yeah, well you grew in a human and humans are gross. I grew in a super cute capybara, so it's fine.

Suzy Weiss: Wait, but I think womb transplants, are womb transplants a thing or not a thing?

Simone Collins: There, yes, there has been at least the first woman to successfully have a baby after. Receiving a full uterine transplant has taken place. So there's at least one case of it that like we had a gestationally functional womb transfer, which is something I think about a lot because I'm like terrified. I get my c section this [00:30:00] Thursday and I'm like, I don't want to lose it.

I don't want to lose it. So if I do lose it, I'm going to be like, can I get a new one? Can I get a new one?

Suzy Weiss: You gotta get, remember when the most the most controversial thing was the death boards. What were they called? Oh yeah. Death panels. Death panels. Yeah. That was like the craziest thing. And now we're talking about God knows what who's in line for the first womb transplant.

natalist among us. Yeah. But yeah, we'll see. It's a weird world. I do think the story of reproduction. Breeding, IVF, IVF regret, birth control, getting off birth control, the world of fertility, toxicity, testosterone numbers going down that is what I'm focused on, I think, for this next couple months, because I think it's a really rich subject.

You should talk with Rye, Nationalist.

Simone Collins: If you haven't already. Who?

Suzy Weiss: Raw Egg Nationalist. Oh yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. I follow him on Twitter. He's really interesting. We can

Simone Collins: introduce you. He's been on our show before. Yeah. And he has like a font of great research. He will just send, [00:31:00] he'll email us like here, this study, I think you'll like it.

And it's, whoa. Like he finds really good stuff, so he'll be a great informant.

Suzy Weiss: Okay, cool. Because I, I'm also like raw eggs and like the status of the egg as like the perfect food, the evil food, cholesterol, the white's good, egg whites, white, like you can follow what we think of like fertility in a way through the story of how we regard eggs and milk.

Oh, that's good. And like we're out of the oat milk, soy milk era, which maybe was like Yeah, now we'll

Simone Collins: renegade raw milk now.

Suzy Weiss: You're, are you guys are on milkers? No,

Simone Collins: one now. No, God, no. Oh, you're not? Yeah.

Suzy Weiss: No, but that's, I think I got you guys pinned down.

Malcolm Collins: No, we are speed running life.

A lot of people are like, the things you do are really like unhealthy a lot of the time. And it's yeah, but we're not life extensionists or anything. I just want to live long enough to give my kids a good life and get the tasks that I'm working on done. Oh, you're like, get the

Suzy Weiss: two gallon whole milk and get in the car.

We're going home. You're not doing like the boutique, let's drive away Oh no, we go to

Simone Collins: One of those bulk [00:32:00] stores and we just get like

Malcolm Collins: BJ's pretty much all our food comes from BJ's and then goes in a chest freezer.

Simone Collins: But in our district where I'm running for office, there is definitely a big theme about raw, like this farmer

Suzy Weiss: tried to sell raw milk and they stopped him.

Oh yeah. Cause you're in Pennsylvania with a lot of Amish, Mennonite communities. I'm from Pennsylvania.

Malcolm Collins: We have a lot of eggs in our, we have chickens at our house. As we gave them out at the last party, but we're not like, it's so beautiful chicken supremacists. We're chickens as an aesthetic.

I don't actually think we're making our. health that much better by having our own chickens. It's, it helps

Simone Collins: me deal with the anxiety of the food that the kids always don't eat because then I just do to the chickens and then I feed the eggs to the kids and then it just the circle of life.

There you go. It's a circle of life. It's good. Yeah. But good. Okay. We're going to make some intros for you. Thank you so much for talking about this.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I

Simone Collins: can't wait for your next. Oh, we

Malcolm Collins: would love you to come on. Like every time you do a piece, if you want to come on and talk about it, just let us know.

You gave

Suzy Weiss: me so many ideas. Dropshipping of the MLM for men is really, that's gonna, [00:33:00] that's going to be fun for

Malcolm Collins: me. Ethelism you need to go deep on. That's the one that no one has done. It is so fascinating. What is it? Okay. Ethelism. It's a life spelled backwards ism. You can look up. It is a movement that is an extreme form of anti natalism that wants to erase all life on the planet.

So, not just get rid of humanity, but ensure that sentient life never evolves again on planet Earth. Because they think that sentient life is an intrinsic evil. And it's a pretty big movement now. It's probably So it's like

Suzy Weiss: pro mass shootings, I would assume.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, kinda. So they're about seven times the size of the pro natalist movement.

To give you an idea of like size of this movement and they are absolutely insane. And I think that they're going to be an increasingly big thing as pronatalism picks up steam because then people have to justify how they're not bad people. And so they come up with these moral frameworks or negative utilitarianism to justify their means.

In this thought-provoking episode, Malcolm and Simone explore the shifting landscape of internet culture, focusing on the decline of "lolcows" and the concept of cringe. They discuss how the politicization of online spaces has changed the way people engage with and mock individuals who deviate from social norms. Malcolm argues that cringe is now seen as a "boomer" or "Gen X" phenomenon, with younger generations finding it distasteful to laugh at those with mental health issues or who are perceived as weaker. The couple also delves into the idea that one must pass through the "valley of cringe" to become truly based, using examples like the Tiger King and Donald Trump. They contrast this with figures like Carole Baskin and Hillary Clinton, who represent a desperate attempt to fit mainstream societal expectations. Throughout the conversation, Malcolm and Simone ponder the future of internet culture and the emergence of a new type of "lolcow" – those who come from privilege but fail to achieve happiness by adhering to the status quo.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Cringe is over. Cringe is boomer. Cows are like cringe is actually it's probably more Gen X, both of them.

 Yeah. Boomers just shorthand, I think for

Simone Collins: old.

Malcolm Collins: You cannot be based.

Without being cringe.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And by that, what I mean, we're basis defined as without fear of societal expectations, do what you think is right, say what you think is true and interpret reality in a way that is logically consistent within whatever value you set, you have determined for yourself.

I actually think that we saw this reflected in the Trump Hillary election.

Trump was cringe. In many ways, it is almost impossible to say Trump isn't cringe, but he passed through the valley of cringe to base where he combined cringe and self comfort. The comfort was the ways that his value system was different from society's value system.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone! It is wonderful to be talking to you today!

Simone Collins: Hi, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: Today, I am [00:01:00] going to be talking about something that one of our fans said in the Discord when I was chatting with them, and it really led me to reflect.

I was talking about lolcows and like the joke that, oh yeah, we want to be lolcows, surprising that we've never had like a kiwi farm made about us or something like that, given the number of times we've gone viral. We have two know your meme entries about us. And but we've never really done anything actually egregious.

It's more like we are egregious from an extremist leftist perspective, which just Doesn't really make us traditional lull cows anymore than, I don't know, some other individuals like Ben Shapiro could be seen as more lull Cowley than us, to be honest. But it got them talking about low cows and they're like, low cows are so boomer.

And I started thinking about it because I interact with a few different, types of communities online. I see the way different people interact online and I realized I do not see lolcow discussion amongst gen alpha or really amongst, younger gen [00:02:00] Z people. And then it got me thinking, wait, why is this?

So first let's talk about what lolcows are. Do you know what lolcows are Simone?

Simone Collins: My understanding is a lolcow is a, an online figure, someone who's public enough online to be fairly well documented. Who has done enough cringeworthy or egregious things that the community on Kiwi Farms has decided to begin creating detailed posts, categorizing and cataloging their various embarrassing behaviors and exploits so that everyone can sit and laugh at them.

Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. It is so there's a couple of categories. There's lull cows and there's horror cows. Horror cows are like, they're just truly a horrifying human being. And then lull cows are, they are, funny. Chris Chan is probably the number one lull cow, although I think he kind of borders on a horror cow now with the, you heard what happened to him, right?

Simone Collins: No. [00:03:00]

Malcolm Collins: Oh so he was in jail for a bit. I think he might be out now. Oh dear. But he was in jail for sleeping with his mother. Oh! No!

Simone Collins: No!

Malcolm Collins: His dubious consent, it looks his very elderly Oh!

Simone Collins: Oh! Oh! That's

Malcolm Collins: where somebody becomes a horror cow.

Simone Collins: I think I'm going to vomit.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway, Oh God. Um, but it also brought me to another topic, which I think, so there's like, why do people engage with these sorts of people?

Like, why do they watch them? And it is because they like the emotional subset that these individuals trigger in them. And I think that there's a few Justice that a bad person had bad things happen to them. An opportunity to troll someone that you see as lesser than you. The feeling of cringe at another person.

And the feeling of disgust at another person. And also the feeling of learning how fringe [00:04:00] psychology is. Individuals, which is actually the thing that's most interesting to me. So I'll explain what I mean by that's interesting to me. I find it very interesting to study how the human mind works when it is breaking, because through that, like through studying how something like a car breaks, you can understand how the car might be put together.

neuroscientist who specialized in like abnormal psychology and stuff like that when the evolution of the human cognition this is really interesting to me because it does help me understand, when I see novel conditions where, especially where I see convergent behavior patterns across different locales, I can be like, Oh, this is an unusual behavior pattern, but it comes to convergently.

So something in our society must be pushing it, or it must be some sort of pre evolved pathway or a way that some system can break, which can then give me more insight into myself. But the other subsets I think are what draw most people, the cringe and stuff like that.

Simone Collins: Which I never got. Also you [00:05:00] don't, even if you see cringe comedy, for example, in a TV show, both you and I can't take it.

So I think it's something we have a lot of difficulty taking. I find it

Malcolm Collins: very painful

Simone Collins: to

Malcolm Collins: watch. Yeah. And then this brought me to another thing, which is the statement that I was thinking and I was like, this is true. Cringe is over. Cringe is boomer. Cows are like cringe is actually it's probably more Gen X, both of them.

Cringe is Gen X and cows are Gen X, which we've got new boomers, right? Yeah. Boomers just shorthand, I think for

Simone Collins: old.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But remember when like our cringe used to be a thing and like things being cringy used to be a thing and you just wouldn't hear a young person call something cringe.

cringe anymore. Like we interact with young people and they don't use the term that much when they're talking about things. And so I think what we're seeing here is a cultural shift where when the internet first began to proliferate and the first [00:06:00] generation of genuinely online natives, which was really our generation.

We realized Oh my God, you can find people doing crazy, insane things on the internet. And then a culture arose following, mocking. And we're laughing down at these individuals for the generation under us. They don't find this to be the novelty that our generation did, and they find the behavior patterns around this to be quite disgusting.

Like you could say, I don't want to say like low class, but pathetic, like laughing at somebody who barely has their life together and clearly has major psychiatric conditions is not. Cool, though, within Gen Alpha. Ah, yes. It's very You speak

Simone Collins: like the young people do, because they say things like, Cool, hey,

Malcolm Collins: I gotta make up terms, because I don't know what they're saying. Yeah, we shouldn't even

Simone Collins: try.

Malcolm Collins: But that makes sense to me, when I think about the things that Gen [00:07:00] Alpha values.

This reactionary Status hierarchies built around mocking those who are weaker than you is just like, why would you do that?

I think from the perspective of this generation.

Simone Collins: I think part of it's also because poor mental health has proliferated so much that there's this I'm not okay either. Why would I? I, who identifies as someone who's struggling mentally, take pleasure in seeing the mental languishing of someone else.

I think it has something to do with that. Yeah, but you've also got

Malcolm Collins: to think about the politicization of the online space into leftist and rightist spaces. was not as much the case when we were younger. And as the online space has become politicized most spaces and most status hierarchies was in most places identify as either left or right leaning status hierarchies.

Which means you're now playing by the moral codes of each of these status hierarchies. And while they are different moral codes, [00:08:00] neither of them would elevate targeting the status hierarchies. an individual who is, mentally unhealthy and doing cringey things. On the left, this would be seen as bullying a disabled person, right?

Why would you do this? Like you're a horrible person and you are like the definition of evil. On which is often, there's lots of performative masculine communities. There's lots of communities around self improvement. There's lots of, but if you're in like a self improvement community You think that they're going to elevate you for saying that somebody is cringy for anything other than their like political beliefs or failures at self improvement?

No, they're going to look at you like, why would you do that? Like why are you just randomly targeting someone? You should be focused on yourself. Which is why I think that you've got the elevation. Of the Hayes community is still one of the low cal communities that it's seen as really acceptable to hate on because it's acceptable to hate on it within this self improvement niche as they are seen as the antithesis of self [00:09:00] improvement.

And for people aren't familiar with the Hayes community, it's a healthy at every size community. Which promotes the idea that no matter what weight you are, you can be perfectly healthy and that you should do things like intuitive eating, which just means eat whatever you want whenever you feel like it and that you will be more healthy if you are doing that because your body knows what it needs, and obviously these things are true, and they represent a complete Sort of mirroring of what everything you get in within these fitness circles.

So they, they make fun of these communities. But then you also have the masculine, the performative masculinity, right leaning communities, like they're not going to like laughing at the low cows. So you're not going to get it there. You're not going to get it in the intellectualist communities.

Because why does that help anyone in that community? They're like, why are you doing this? This is a sociopathic waste of your time. And so I also think, ironically, as the internet sphere has become politicized, there just are not spaces where this is elevated as much, [00:10:00] except when the lolcows are explicitly political or explicitly high profile.

Simone Collins: I have a slightly different theory. Can I share it before you go forward?

Malcolm Collins: Okay, great.

Simone Collins: My slightly different take on this is that. Lolcows or cringe watching has shifted into hate watching, but hate watching And love watching are closely related and often simultaneous. So I don't really hear about people doing much cringe watching anymore, but what I do hear from people again and again, as they're commenting on others online is, Oh, I follow this person or this group or these types of people online religiously.

Like they're always following them on Instagram or YouTube or whatever it may be. And I hate them. But I love watching them and I also now have this parasocial relationship with them, whereby I care about them. And I think what's going on here is that yes, we're in this [00:11:00] highly politicized world and yes, we do like to look down on other people or feel superior about ourselves, or at least feel like we're reinforcing our own identities and political identities, especially.

However, there's also this extreme craving online and in the world in general for authenticity. And so these people that you can watch to hate, they are typically very authentic. They're very vehement in their beliefs. And often you watch them because they're vehement in their beliefs, which are in political opposition to your own, right?

So they're like the based Mormons and you're the progressive. And you watch

Malcolm Collins: historically, we're not about political beliefs.

Simone Collins: Yeah. They were more just embarrassing people online. And now people are watching their hate, watching people who are politically very different from them. But this

Malcolm Collins: would go into my political theory, so this would argue that it's something different is going on here.

Which is and with this topic we don't have an answer. Like I'm very open to Yeah, this is conjecture.

Simone Collins: Most of what we do is conjecture, we just sometimes feel very confident about it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I feel [00:12:00] uniquely unconfident about this conjecture, but it was something I wanted to think about and pontificate on with you, because this podcast helps me think through things.

Which was, I think it is, political lullcows are seen as okay because they are You can hate on them within the other political sphere. And we believe that they are not like mentally ill people often. They are just people doing active harm to the world, out of arrogance, in not being, in a lack of open mindedness.

And both parties now just think the other party isn't open minded. The left is no, the right isn't open minded about these topics. And the right's no, you're not open minded about ideological diversity. And. Diversity of cultural spectrums. And so both groups believe the other groups is small minded.

And could, if they, tried to look outside their bubble, see the world as it truly is.

So not being open minded. That, and then the other thing is I think that punching up is seen as very okay. So lull cows that are famous in some way. Are seen as okay [00:13:00] to laugh at still and okay to focus on.

So a great example of this would be the Shia LaBeouf flag thing, when 4chan was chasing around as a great internet has to ran on it. Um, because Shia LaBeouf is technically a famous actor, so we can, low cow him all we want, or the Johnny Depp divorce thing, right?

Like I think people really focus on that because that woman, whatever her name was. Yeah. And not only was she hateable, but the form of hate you had for her fell into one of the political niches was in the online, i. e. was in like red pill communities and stuff like that. And so this then goes to reinforce the reason why cringe stopped is you needed to be cringing specifically at an otherwise mentally competent person now, because it's just not funny to, Cringe at the mentally disabled anymore, which like, yeah, sure.

Like online culture has grown up. And they need to be in opposition to something. One of your community stands for what do you think?

Simone Collins: Yeah, that, that [00:14:00] sounds about right. I think now there's also this need to add to what you're saying to virtue signal. In addition to be smug and cringe at someone. Whereas in the past. It was just fun to, to cringe and laugh at someone who was just incredibly mentally ill or just really stupid, which seemed to be the most common themes.

Now it's more appropriate to cringe or laugh at someone who's just very, will say morally inferior per your cultural group, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And I also think it's that we have moved away from a society where the lull cows were seen as violating societal norms that everyone agreed to.

And that's what made them cringe. It was like this cringe that everyone could agree on, but in the modern context, that's [00:15:00] not what we're looking at. We're not looking at it because people don't longer believe in like a default set of social values, the social values in the online left and the online right, because they've drifted apart so much are unique and differentiated, which prevents generic violations of social norms.

As othering somebody from specifically one of those two communities. Where do you think the future is going to go with this stuff?

Simone Collins: Oh boy. That's a good question. Yeah. Who will we demonize and make fun of in the future? I could see. Apostates being the next top targets. So both because what we predict right demographically is that there's going to be this increasing xenophobia in high fertility groups, plus.

increasing levels of extreme predation from the urban monoculture as it needs to get more converts, which means that there is on both sides, we're going to see more [00:16:00] xenophobia. And then on both sides, the ultimate enemy, the people that are the worst are those who detract those who leave the home culture or those who leave progressive culture.

So like the transitioners

Malcolm Collins: and stuff like that. We

Simone Collins: transitioners religious people who convert to atheism. That those people will be seen. So right now, for example, there's a lot of people we follow online on YouTube who are like ex Mormons, for example, who do a lot of commentary on Mormon culture. I could see there being this sort of movement of now a bunch of Mormons just really enjoy following.

Those ex Mormons and seeing how miserable their lives are and how childless they are and how, fat and ugly they've become as soon as they leave the religion whatever, right? Like that. I could see them going for those sorts of things. On the other side, I could see, people, and we're already, I think, starting to see the forefront of this, the bellwether of this.

I'm starting to see. Religious people doing things like that, and I'm also starting to see progressives doing things like that with trad wives, for [00:17:00] example oh, now she says she's a trad cat. Now she says she's this and look, she's going to lose all her money and she's going to be so miserable and she acts as though she's so perfect, but she's really not and I think that we're going to see more of that.

And specifically from people who deconvert and not just from people who happen to be on the other team, we're gonna increasingly ignore those people.

Malcolm Collins: So I hear you. That might be what I have a different take of what might happen. Tell me which is if you say, and we've done a tweet to this extent, you cannot be based.

Without being cringe.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And by that, what I mean, people be like what do you mean by that? You cannot be based like you cannot we're basis defined as without fear of societal expectations, do what you think is right, say what you think is true and interpret reality in a way that is logically consistent within whatever value you set, you have determined for yourself.

So just. Uninfluenced by society or a desire to status signal [00:18:00] or, what's going on around you just take a straight narrow path there that will lead you to make decisions that, it will axiomatically lead you to make decisions that go against mainstream societal values. And where cringe is an individual, quote unquote, not recognizing mainstream societal values or going against mainstream societal values.

You are intrinsically, you must pass through the valley of cringe to get to based. And as such. And I'm going to get people might be like, come on, you're not really, you can't be saying that lol cows are the new base. And I'd say, actually, I think so. I think that we live in a society right now that is so starved for vitalism in people that it might admire.

Or model itself on that it is looking for these post cringe individuals who demonstrate, having something together in their lives. It's this Paul of nihilism that flows over the generations who [00:19:00] are comfortable with who they are and who they are is not about fitting some social trope around them.

And somebody can be like who are you? Talking about here, who would fit this? I say the Tiger King is a great example of this. In any previous generation, the Tiger King would have been a lull cow. He is almost the perfect representation of a lull cow. Ha, look at this cringy, he's a bad person.

He's cringy as hell at everything he does. And yet you watch him and he is the hero. Yeah, very obviously. You can look, and he seems like a genuinely pretty bad person, and yet you find yourself, and I think society found itself, loving him, and then hating the alternative, Carole Baskin, which was somebody who tried to play by all of society's rules.

Somebody who tried to fit this default social like idea of I am a good person. Please like me.

Simone Collins: Subset of the Tiger King [00:20:00] watchers though, that, that was pro Carol Baskin. I was under that impression that there was like

Malcolm Collins: the far progressive ones, because what does she represent? What do progressives represent?

But just going along with the dominant cultural group, right? And I think that what they miss is that the average person, the average American who isn't one of these progressive intellectual circles, doesn't like people like that. I actually think that we saw this reflected in the Trump Hillary election.

Trump was cringe. In many ways, it is almost impossible to say Trump isn't cringe, but he passed through the valley of cringe to base where he combined cringe and a self satisfaction with self comfort. The comfort was the ways that his value system was different from society's value system. Yeah, and then on

Simone Collins: the progressive side

Malcolm Collins: You had Clinton who was just Carole Baskin.

No, yeah no.

Simone Collins: Clinton did not pass through the Valley. She was still in the uncanny Valley of not of cringe. That's what I'm saying. Like the guy who sat in the cold and is old. Oh, [00:21:00] Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders. He passes through

Malcolm Collins: the, yes, based with a complete ownership of the ways that he is different from a hundred percent.

Yeah, mainstream culture. And here's where I think you have the new lolcow. The new true lolcow, the person who everybody agrees that they hate, is somebody who both comes from privilege and structures their entire life around fitting the mainstream societal exception of idea of this is a good person and is clearly unhappy at the other end of that.

And so I think the ideal, who do you think I'm going to say is the ideal new lolcow?

Simone Collins: It's a couple. Okay, so for a formative virtue signaler, a couple?

Malcolm Collins: Comes from a position of power everything they do is about just showing the world you know who they are.

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: Harry and Meghan.

Simone Collins: Oh gosh, of course. Yeah, sadly.

Malcolm Collins: I think it's the new perfect [00:22:00] lolcow. They are like the Carole Baskin or the Hillary Clinton on crack. Where every little thing about their lives is structured to try to earn mainstream societal normie acceptance. Normie points. They don't realize that the normies don't exist anymore. They are yelling into a cloud that doesn't, to avoid and everybody thinks everything they do is truly detestable because it is so focused and so manicured to not be cringe.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I think it's so interesting and I think intuitively confusing to people and I can't really understand it myself because they do represent the, Some fairly average and mainstream views and they're always trying to jump on things that the mainstream has already jumped on So that's where it's weird.

Why would we find that so cringe and yet we do? I wonder what's going on there Why it would be so rejected because intuitively it seems like it shouldn't be that [00:23:00] if they just glom on whatever the current thing is That they should be celebrated for that and yet they are not why do you think that only people who are more?

Because

Malcolm Collins: I think that the dominant cultural group in our society has been so aggressive and so abusive to its neighboring groups that the only people who really follow it anymore are the ultra elite. I. e. people who own media companies, people who control our school systems, professors, stuff like that.

And everyone else basically sees it as this stupid culty religion. And if you're like Harry and Meghan, all of your friends are in this cult, so you don't understand that the general public basically sees it as a joke now. Even at the age of Trump, when he was first running, we had already, I think, begun to enter that.

Where everyone was just like, yeah, at least he's not doing what everyone else is doing, and I think with Bernie, you catch on to the same thing here. People want something different.

Simone Collins: [00:24:00] Yeah, it could be. Yeah. The biggest thing is a dissatisfaction with everything. And then understanding that our current stances don't equal a solution and maybe, yeah it's part of a flailing for hope, but that's interesting.

I guess we'll see how it plays out who the future targets of ridicule

Malcolm Collins: will be. Yeah I'm very interested to watch this play out. And I think it's a positive societal shift and I think that there is a hole within the current memetic landscape for individuals who can, it. Who are happy with who they are, who show a sense of vitalism and optimism for the future and who are cringe in that they are differentiate from like mainstream social expectations, but take complete ownership of that.

And I think that, this is best represented in the traditional Adams family, like the nineties Adams family, where, I always say that the monsters were monstrous because they represent, they were monsters trying to live within the dominant social [00:25:00] culture. Where the Addams Family were monstrous because they were normal humans who differentiated from the mainstream societal culture so much that it made them more culturally similar to monsters than the society around them.

With the joke constant throughout the old Addams Family being that Despite that, they were happy and satisfied and had healthy relationships that no one else was able to capture in their society by following the rules. And in a society that is so nihilistic today, in a society that has so clearly failed people and with social expectations that so clearly do not work within this new economic and social context that we're in, people want a real Addams Family.

They want a real family who your average Boomer is like, Oh, they're weird and cringe, but then why are they happy? And that reflects on the real Boomer that maybe they're right and you're wrong, and everything that you are teaching as [00:26:00] a society right now is a necrotic rot of the human soul. And that when you look at something and you react, eww, that's so silly.

You are merely showing That you don't understand how to achieve happiness and you genuinely don't or satisfaction or a healthy relationship and you have no future plan for where we are going as a species that breeds optimism anymore while these weirdos do, and that humor. I think that contrast I think is what we hope to drive was the community that we build and why I think that it isn't just random cringe alternative.

And I love you for creating this with me, Simone. Thank you for not caring.

Simone Collins: Oh gosh. I'm very happy with what we've done and I really don't care what other people think, but that's probably the autism,

Malcolm Collins: but I care what you think. Yeah. All right.

Simone Collins: Have a good one. Simone, you too. [00:27:00] Gorgeous.

In this candid discussion, Malcolm and Simone Collins share their unconventional parenting approach, which includes a form of physical correction they call "bopping." Despite the controversy surrounding their methods, the couple argues that their approach is rooted in cultural practices and evolutionary psychology. They discuss the differences between abuse and discipline, the importance of setting boundaries, and why they believe their methods are ultimately in the best interest of their children.

Malcolm and Simone also delve into the challenges of parenting in the modern world, the limitations of existing research on corporal punishment, and the potential consequences of relying solely on emotional punishment. While they acknowledge that their approach may not be suitable for every child or family, they stand firm in their belief that parents should have the right to raise their children in accordance with their cultural values.'

[00:00:00] We can't do it, man! That's discipline!

We don't believe in rules like we gave them up when we started living like freaky beatniks. . Yeah, you've got to help us, Doc. We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas.

Most, perhaps all, the blame rests with the parents. Have you ever tried simply turning off the TV, sitting down with your children, and hitting them?

lost your god damn mind! I guess I just hate to see a child go unbeaten.

Malcolm Collins: now I need to talk for a few minutes about why I find the research so distrustworthy in this space.

One, you're proceeding into the research from a prior that this is a human rights abuse. Whenever anyone says every expert in a field agrees on something, I pretty much immediately dismiss it.

Because I'm like, that just doesn't happen in science when science is

Simone Collins: happening correctly. There is always nuance in finding what's happening

Malcolm Collins: correctly If you look [00:01:00] at what the research is saying, it's this has a massive IQ effect. This has a massive effect on aggression.

These people become antisocial and aren't able to They hate their parents, et cetera. If these things were true at the levels that they're saying these things are true. Every single long lived culture on Earth would not have convergently evolved this method of interacting with children during this developmental stage.

What is really negative and what we are against is. Is any form of punishment where the pain is the point of the punishment? what happens during a bop? It is a light slap on the child's nose or face that is meant to shock and redirect and refocus attention. The reason we do the face is because It requires much less pain to get the same reaction than doing something like slapping the wrist.

 Don't really do this for four year olds and up with our kids two to four range, because with my [00:02:00] four year old, I can say this could kill you and he can begin to cognitively understand that.

Two to four, you don't really get that. And so when you need to denote, no, this is an extra level of don't do this when compared to other things I have told you not to do the only way to denote that other than physicality. Is by emotionally elevating the conversation. And I think that causes more emotional damage

if you read the article, it says exactly what happened in the context. He was about to push over a table I did the bop to reorient him because he knew he wasn't supposed to be doing that, but then I immediately tell him I love him. Now, this isn't something I can do if I'm punishing him through the emotional means. Exactly. If I had elevated the conversation emotionally, now I need to say daddy's mad at you, instead of saying, bop, you crossed a line, but daddy loves you,

and this is the problem, right? So the urban monoculture would say to us, what you're doing is culturally non normative, stop it.

And I'm like, I have seen the [00:03:00] results of your normative parenting style. These kids are Miserable, anxiety, depression, illiterate messes .

when you look at the ban the rate of corporal punishment in the United States. It pretty much directly correlates with the rise in depression among youth and the rise of anxiety among youth.

Hello, I'm Dr. Richard Shea, here to tell you about my exciting new drug free treatment for children with attention deficit disorder. Watch closely as I apply treatment to the first child.

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Malcolm Collins: We no longer spank our children's butts because now we can spank their brains.

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: So how do we feel being the new public face of child abuse?

Malcolm Collins: Yes, we have gone viral yet again for punishing our child in front of a reporter in a way that she interpreted as a form of corporal [00:04:00] punishment and would technically be a form of corporal punishment. Now this gets really interesting because the internet went completely apoplectic when they heard that this happened.

They Could not believe that in the modern age, anyone would touch their child. They're like anyone who practices any form of corporal replenishment is basically an animal and inhuman. And I'm like, that is a little concerning of a thing to say, because, according to a 2011 study by Gorshoff 89 percent of black parents practice corporal punishment, and 80 percent of Hispanic parents practice corporal punishment and then they're like oh obviously I need to add some caveats to what I said there.

No, actually what happened, this is one of my favorite instances of media baiting. We're being attacked by all these progressives online. And one of them immediately shoots back this just proves my point. Blacks have more violent communities than whites. There's a lot of

Simone Collins: back, backpedaling in that.

Malcolm Collins: [00:05:00] One of the sharks got wounded during a freeding fencing, and then all the other sharks turned on it, because now there's shark blood in the water. Then it was whoa. Yeah. Whoa. But this is true. And it's something that. It's downstream of why we actually do this, because a lot of people are going to be like, haven't you seen the research on corporal punishment?

Why did you engage in corporal punishment knowing that so much of the research shows it's so negative?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The answer here is a few things. First, I do not believe the research is relevant to the type of corporal punishment that we are enacting with our kids. If you look at the research, it is predominantly looking at delayed, ritualized punishment where the purpose is to inducing pain in the child as a punishment for something negative that the [00:06:00] child had done.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I think when most at least when I think of corporal punishment, I think wait until your father comes home and you spanked or something. Or we

Malcolm Collins: know from animal. So anyone who's just any familiar with dog training, for example, or any form of mammal training delayed negative reinforcement doesn't work.

Like it just causes behavioral problems. This is something we see in any mammal that it's used in. So I shouldn't expect anything different in humans. Yeah, it would be inane. Inane. But then it has led to this problem in the field where there's these two starting assumptions. One is this has been studied for a long time and everyone agrees on it.

Now, this is a problem. Whenever you get a field and somebody said everyone agrees on it, no edge cases, because at that point you have created a dogma within a scientific field. Yeah. And worse, If you look at what's being put out there about who and UNICEF and stuff like that, they're like, this is a human rights [00:07:00] violation.

They view spanking as a human rights violation. And I will put up maps of countries on the screen where any form of spanking or anything like that for kids is considered illegal in these countries. They've been able to convince a number of countries to make this illegal. And I

Simone Collins: think there's also, this is one of those things like with pregnancy and alcohol.

But especially depending on, your genetic makeup or whatever in, in, in Europe, this is more normalized too. It's okay to have a small amount of alcohol while pregnant, but it seems very irresponsible from a research perspective to tell anyone that, because this is one of those issues of extreme moderation that, yes, only a Very small amount is okay.

And frankly, it's safer for people who may not be able to control themselves to just say, never do it. And so people say, just never do it. You're the worst person ever. If you ever have any drink, although now people are starting to loosen on that, even in the [00:08:00] United States. And I think it's very similar with things like corporal punishment, because while, if any study comes out saying that some level of physical intervention, that's not pleasant in immediate response to bad behavior.

Is okay, then you are going to get people who instead of lightly lightly tapping or the

Malcolm Collins: purpose and the mechanism by which the form of correction that we have works with our kids because what is really negative and what we are against is. Is any form of punishment where the pain is the point of the punishment?

And that the pain is seen as proportional. If you are more mad at the parent or the child extra broke a rule that deserves even more pain. Which is really different from what we're doing. We know it is.

Simone Collins: Frankly, we see the boys playing every single morning and the amount of pain they inflict on each other while laughing and smiling the entire time.

It pales in [00:09:00] comparison to essentially the taps or light slaps. That we can call a

Malcolm Collins: bop.

Actually on viewing this, I decided to ask our kid if he felt that it hurt him and here is his response

No. No. Yeah. Yeah. Wee!

It makes sense. When you can text you, Ally's what he feels during a bop Wiz what he feels during regular play with his brother. And I think a lot of people complaining about this are people who have never raised a child or at least never raised a group of boys.

Malcolm Collins: so what happens during a bop? And so I know I need to be clear, like the purpose of it. It is a light slap on the child's nose or face that is meant to shock and [00:10:00] redirect and refocus attention. To something more productive.

So to anyone who's actually been around toddlers, and I know a lot of people haven't, they have this phenomenon where they'll get locked in a mental loop that they can't easily escape. It could be like they're in this mindset where they're just really wanting to push boundaries and you say no, and that doesn't really register with them in the same way it normally would.

Or they're in a mindset where they really want something. And this creates this cognitive loop that can be very difficult for them to escape. And they need to be snapped out of it to refocus and reorient themselves, which is humorous. Even in the moment when a kid's in one of these cognitive loops, you are often leading to less pain within the next 20 minute period for that child by snapping them out of this cognitive loop.

So to be clear,

Simone Collins: we only get physical when we feel like they're, Their safety or someone else's safety is in

Malcolm Collins: danger. When one of these cognitive [00:11:00] loops is putting them in, or others in physical danger, but we'll get to the,

Simone Collins: I was just going to say, back to my point to close it up, tie a bow on it. It feels irresponsible.

And it would seem irresponsible to a peer reviewed journal to a researcher. To say this is okay when you know that someone's going to take that information and they're going to backhand their kid at full strength or they're going to start beating their kid or punching them in the face because they're like, no research supports it.

So I understand why there isn't research that says that this is okay. Because I too would worry about that. And we take abuse really seriously. So the fact that, Malcolm, Do this in front of a journalist and a bunch of people now think, they think, because they're not reading the article, they're not looking at the context, that you have backhanded your kid with the pictures wind up and they flew against the wall and cracked the wall and, it just, she's looking in horror.

Malcolm Collins: Hold on, we should clarify. Why the face? Because this is an interesting point. It's like somebody who's like, why don't you And other people in the comments were sharing this [00:12:00] style of punishment is actually very common. Like it is the ancestrally convergent evolutionary, if you're talking about cultural groups that have been successful, a lot of them do this.

So when they talk about like the way their grandparents would punish them it was a slap on the wrist, basically meant to like, Shock and reorient them and they would often say, I actually appreciated this to other forms of escalation. But when a child is in one of these loops and you need to denote that something is actually, because when you're talking between, we don't really do this for four year olds and up with our kids two to four range, there isn't a way to explain the seriousness of a situation or denote the, because with my four year old, I can say this could kill you and he can begin to cognitively understand that.

Two to four, you don't really get that. And so when you need to denote, no, this is an extra level of don't do this when compared to other things I have told you not to do the only way to denote that [00:13:00] other than physicality. Is by emotionally elevating the conversation. And I think that causes more emotional damage because then it's, daddy is mad at you.

You are being rejected. No, 100 percent

Simone Collins: when our kids, even by mistake. When our kids think that you are, like, actually mad at them or rejecting them in some way, the hysterionics are, like, through the

Malcolm Collins: roof. This is a level of punishment that is far above a bop. This emotional punishment. Which, and people can see, they're like, what do you mean?

If you read the article, it says exactly what happened in the context. He was about to push over a table full of food and drinks and utensils and all that. And he was trying to push it over. He was having fun. It almost felt it came inches from falling over, not inches, but very maybe less than like centimeters millimeters.

And I, Then immediately addressed it. I did the bop to reorient him because he knew he wasn't supposed to be doing that, but then I immediately tell him I love him. Now, this isn't [00:14:00] something I can do if I'm punishing him through the emotional means. Exactly. If I had elevated the conversation emotionally, now I need to say daddy's mad at you, daddy's something else, instead of saying, bop, you crossed a line, but daddy loves you, and then I explain in restaurants we need to be nice.

And so I am giving him the context. Don't push boundaries in this way within this environment. And I don't think that there is a kinder way that I could have elevated that. And I think that this is a really interesting thing that people miss. There was actually, because in Japan it's been made illegal to do this kind of corporal punishment now.

And there was a great recounting on Reddit of this that I wanted to read.

Simone Collins: Really?

Malcolm Collins: Which was I was an exchange student in Japan years ago, and a bunch of Americans and Japanese students were sitting around talking about our childhoods. All the Americans made jokes about the various implements our parents smacked or swiped or spanked us with.

See that doesn't,

Simone Collins: that sounds though delayed punishment. I'm just saying. It

Malcolm Collins: is delayed punishment, but hold on. And they were cracking up about [00:15:00] it while our Japanese friends were horrified. Japanese, our parents would never lay a finger on us like that, indignantly. Americans what did your parents do?

Japanese, mostly they told us they didn't love us, or that we didn't love them, or that we'd ruin their lives and brought shame on our families. Americans! I'd rather be slapped.

I think this is true. This is what you have to resort to when you remove this from the table, because in that 2 to 4 range, you can't really use the consequences of an action to to elevate it, you could really only elevate things emotionally, elevate the emotional stakes. And then you need to ask yourself realistically, do you think that's in the best interest of the child?

So if I go back to that 2011 study, something that, that you need to point out. is even when we talk about the other ethnic groups. Even if we're talking about whites and Asians, which I ignored because, people don't care about those numbers, but 79 percent of white parents practice some form of corporal punishment [00:16:00] and 73 percent of Asian parents, like the safe majority of Americans practice some form of this.

And you can be like if everybody knows this, because everyone is told when they're young, don't do this. Why even I, like I went into parenthood saying, I'm definitely never going to do that.

Simone Collins: Never.

Malcolm Collins: And some parents can get away with not doing it because they have one girl or two kids or something like that.

But most families when they get to four and above kids are like, I was wrong in thinking that it was realistic to raise kids without this. And I think that the reason is, and the thing you immediate really quickly if you engage in it, is all of these negative effects that researchers said it has, don't, I'm not noticing them they're like, oh, it makes the kids hate you, do you notice the kids they don't register it as like a they register it as boundary setting as you pointed out, it's like a Roomba, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah, my whole thing with kids and this is something that we've realized with play behavior. And I think a lot of people have this theory around play behavior that it is, it exists [00:17:00] to help kids learn how to set boundaries with themselves, with others. It shows you where the boundaries are. So when you get too rough, someone starts crying.

Okay. You've learned that you get in a fight, someone gets hurt, you understand where the boundaries are. So you know how to push your own boundaries and you know how to push other people's boundaries and you know when to go too far. And this first came up as a concept that I heard about discussed it.

When people were talking about why do younger generations now constantly appeal to authority whenever something goes wrong? It's because they were never let to play by themselves with other kids and work it out among themselves when they could, could not share a toy or whatever, when they got in a fight.

And so similarly, the way that we look at kids, especially when they're young, growing up, is that they're a lot like a Roomba. Like they're just flying blind bumping into a wall, you hit the wall and then you course correct and go in the right direction. And sometimes because the wall turns out to be a cliff or a stairway, we as parents try to create a fake wall.

And that is where bops show up. And if you don't do that as a [00:18:00] parent. Then in the future, let's say your little Roomba is in a new house and you're no longer there to catch it when it's about to roll off the staircase, they're going to get really hurt. They're going to get really screwed over.

Malcolm Collins: I think something that's really important with this analogy, like when we're talking about how our kids relate to their environments is. I don't think that a parent punishing their kid should ever be like an act of anger or an act of if you're ever doing that. And it's very clear from the article that I like, wasn't angry.

I was just setting a boundary. I do not get, and this is why I really don't want to go the emotional route with creating these boundaries is because the emotional route indicates to my kid that there is some disapproval of them pushing boundaries. Yeah. I want our kids to push boundaries. I liked that he was pushing boundaries.

I like you're like, you punish your kids when you do something that you like. I can tell him, look, I love that you're pushing boundaries. I love that you're [00:19:00] vivacious. But here is where you have hit, the Roomba has hit the wall. Yeah, it's like a

Simone Collins: safe word. It's like a safe word.

Malcolm Collins: And yes, and kids, you can tell very easily from my interaction with my kids, they understand this.

The punishment is not an act of rejection, it is an act of You've hit the wall here. You need to course correct. This isn't appropriate. Yeah, we were all happy. This was

Simone Collins: all okay. And now I actually mean it when I say no. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: this is another thing to understand about the Pete. A really great thing to point out in the piece is this same child.

When we say we reserve this for only things that could hurt themselves and others at another point in the piece was running around with poo in his hands. He did not get bopped for that. In another part of the piece, he was running around the restaurant and he only got threat for a bop. When he ran towards the door, because on the other side of the door, there was a street with the table, he only got the bop because knocking over tables or learning that behavior in a house where you have infants can lead to somebody getting seriously injured or dying.[00:20:00]

And so somebody can say and I think that one of the reporters I was talking to today about this, she was really surprised, she was like see, you weren't like angry at him for doing this wrong thing for almost knocking over the table. And I was like, no, it's probably the first time he realized that he could knock over a table and he's like exploring his environment, huh?

What happens when I knock over tables? My dad said, no. But sometimes, he says, no, and I do it anyways. And there isn't some extreme repercussion to that. So let's try it, and somebody can be like never say no with your kid, unless you mean it. That's absurd. But there is

Simone Collins: a literal like movement among some parents to not use the word no, which I think also shows how far in the extreme, in the other direction we've gone.

Malcolm Collins: And I think that and I'll put the article about this on the screen that you're talking about because we have seen this we've entered an environment where what happened was, and I think accurately is research pointed out that delayed ritualized corporal punishment was had negative effects.

Researchers in the space began to categorize this as a human rights [00:21:00] abuse, so you really couldn't be on the other side of the issue anymore. And , it caused sort of a virtue spiral in the space, where now you have parents saying you should never say no to your kids. Because, When you take this angle of punishing my kids is bad, like any form of punishing my kids is, that puts them in a negative emotional state or that shocks them in the way that we do when we're punishing our kids and I don't know if I got to this, but the reason we do the face is because It requires much less pain to get the same reaction than doing something like slapping the wrist.

If you are slapping the wrist and I want the same level of attention refocusing as the face or the nose I actually need to hurt them to get their attention. And I don't want the pain to be the point of this action. It is the shock that is the point of this action, which helps reorient them, which the face does.

And if you look at animal training models, like dogs or something, you bought the dog on the nose. That is the consistent way of doing it. And animals, when we [00:22:00] first came to this model, one of the things we always note is we were on a safari and anyone who's ever been on a safari, you're sitting in a truck watching animals all day, like without music or anything like that, just getting to think and talk.

And as we were watching. Lions play with their cubs for a five hour period. And so we got to really study the play behavior. And we noticed this pattern where the baby cub would paw at the lion or do something, and the lion would growl or be a little angry. We're doing that when we're saying no, don't do that, right?

But the baby cub would keep doing it and then it would get to the point where the lion would just, swat the baby's cub face and the baby cub would look a little annoyed at a bit and then walk off. It understood this action as different from other types of punishment.

I should note here that 10 people have been like, well, the lion has its claws retracted and you clearly injured your kid because the reporter said she could hear it on the recording. And it's like, look, the reporter has to sell the piece. Okay.

She also mentioned that the kid was back [00:23:00] to laughing and watching his iPad within 30 seconds. And when I asked the kid the next day, does daddy ever hurt him or do Bob's hurt? He doesn't appear to think they do.

And even if you read the piece, honestly, it's pretty obvious the child was done injured.

Malcolm Collins: The reaction we've seen in our kids, like when reporters are over, one of the things they often comment on is how unusually well behaved our kids are.

And other people have commented on this as well. I genuinely think because I was not at well.

Simone Collins: Okay. Not well behaved. polite and kind. They say, please, thank you. It's nice to meet you. They're gregarious, but they're not. And sometimes I wish they would be, but I also don't want them to be from a raising humans, but from a mother, like not having to deal with things perspective.

They're not the kids who like line up behind their parents in airports and are quiet and compliant. And no, our kids are very rambunctious. But they're very polite, very caring,

Malcolm Collins: very polite and kind, like whatever it is, it seems to be working with within the boundaries we're setting for [00:24:00] them. And that is being a polite and kind and thoughtful person.

And then the danger with a system like this is you teach them that violence. Resolves conflict. And so what's really heartening to me is I see my kids when they quote unquote, bop each other, right? Because they're developing this behavior pattern and they're like, okay, this is how I tell someone that they've, crossed a boundary with me.

And what they do is they just tap the other person on the head like this. And so it's clear that in their mind, what is happening to them is not designed to be painful. It's about touching the other person on the head. And so clearly this is in their world perspective, how they're observing

Simone Collins: this,

Malcolm Collins: but now I need to talk for a few minutes about why I find the research so distrustworthy in this space.

One, you're proceeding into the research from a prior that this is a human rights abuse.

Like when they did that research on whether tortured with effective. Did anyone given that torture is categorized as the human rights abuse, By the dominant cultural group in our society. did [00:25:00] anyone really believe they were going to come back with an answer? This like yeah. Torture super effective.

Malcolm Collins: And with huge organizations just saying that it's been done, that the data is sealed, nobody. Talk about this issue anymore without really exploring where the edge cases are. There just isn't that much research into exploring the edge cases here.

Simone Collins: And again, it's so understandable because Abuse is a very serious issue. It is terrible.

Malcolm Collins: It is. It is. But then we have to come to this question where this just gets absolutely insane to me. If you look at what the research is saying, it's this has a massive IQ effect. This has a massive effect on aggression.

These people become antisocial and aren't able to They hate their parents, et cetera. They hate their parents. And then it's if these things were true at the levels that they're saying these things are true. Every single long lived culture on Earth would not have convergently evolved this method of interacting with children during this developmental [00:26:00] stage.

There is not a single, like when I look anthropologically at historic Chinese or Japanese or European or the large successful African groups none of them, have a ban on corporal punishment around kids. All of them engage in some form of corporal punishment around kids.

When I mentioned this, some people were like, well, you know, we used to do bloodletting, but we don't do bloodletting anymore. And I'm like, Okay. If every single human culture on earth had done bloodletting and we were the one culture. That didn't do bloodletting and we had only stopped it like 10 years ago. Yeah, I would probably look into that and be like, there is probably a reason that everyone was doing that. The level of arrogance that goes into this position is almost astonishing to believe that you are the one culture in human history, this nexus of human morality.

That has figured out something that everyone else got wrong to have no humility. When you realize how rare this position is, cross-culturally. Just astonishes [00:27:00] me, but I guess a lot of people, they just, this is a culture I grew up in. Therefore I am at a moral nexus in history and everything we believe now is correct.

And I will not be seen as having been abusive to my kids for not setting physical boundaries with them.

Malcolm Collins: This is why we have this huge problem in the United States where when families are coming into this country, it's like all the immigrant families do this. Immigrants are coming from a lot of different places. All the immigrants do this because everywhere else in the world used to do this before they started listening to these organizations that are like, oh, this is always negative.

Never do anything like this. And What that means is this is a very modern experiment. And throughout this video I'm going to be playing clips because it used to be even 10 years ago, our society broadly thought of the parents who didn't do any form of corporal punishment with their kids like corporal punishment as the selfish and abusive ones, the ones who did not care about the long term outcomes of their kids, whether you're talking about the Simpsons

I'm afraid young Ned is unusually aggressive, but I [00:28:00] can't seem to find a cause for it. ? We can't do it, man! That's discipline!

I'm beginning to see the problem. We don't believe in rules like we gave them up when we started living like freaky beatniks. . Yeah, you've got to help us, Doc. We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas.

Malcolm Collins: or South Park

Hello, I'm Dr. Richard Shea, here to tell you about my exciting new drug free treatment for children with attention deficit disorder. This treatment is fast and effective and doesn't use harmful drugs. Watch closely as I apply treatment to the first child.

Sit down and study! Sit down and study! Hey, stop crying and do your schoolwork! If you would like more information on my bold new treatments, please send away for this free brochure entitled You can [00:29:00] either calm down or I can pop you in the mouth again. Thank you.

Malcolm Collins: or Futurama

Most, perhaps all, the blame rests with the parents. And so, I ask you this one question. Have you ever tried simply turning off the TV, sitting down with your children, and hitting them?

Malcolm Collins: Or Boondocks.

lost your god damn mind! I guess I just hate to see a child go unbeaten. I'm not a spanker, okay? But if you can bring discipline back into our school, then I am behind you 100%.

I wish I had the guts you do, sister. And that's why we signed that petition in support of you. Paddling pig.

Malcolm Collins: And this is a very modern and even when that was happening, everyone was like, Hey, if we keep not enforcing boundaries on our kids, this is what basically all those shows predicted. We're going to have a society where kids. cannot deal with challenges anymore, that they have an extreme [00:30:00] amount of emotional fragility.

And this is what we've seen as a consequence of this. It very much reminds me of it's like an obvious thing if you think about it. Why would every culture on earth convergently evolve this? And people can be like that doesn't mean anything, just because you did something in the past, doesn't mean that, that it's still good to do now that we have additional research.

And it's ah, this isn't something like sunblock or something like that, where you get this delayed effect that would only happen to adults above a certain age. What is being predicted in the research is that these people are going to have significantly lower IQs and significantly higher amounts of antisocial behavior, and significantly not like their parents.

So if you had just one subgroup within a population that wasn't practicing this, presumably you're going to get higher cultural transfer within that subgroup, because they're going to have higher cultural fidelity because they're going to have a higher opinion of their parents. And you are going to have a better performing cultural subgroup.

So you would have just naturally in certain places in the world had subgroups [00:31:00] within a population or populations with different child rearing practices living next to a population. outcompeting them if these effects were true, which just means it's completely implausible that at least at whatever way this was normatively practiced in history, which I don't think was the extremely formalized thinking system adopted during the Victorian period that this actually had deleterious effects.

Yeah. And when you look at the ban the rate of corporal punishment in the United States. It pretty much directly correlates with the rise in depression among youth and the rise of anxiety among youth.

Simone Collins: Though it also correlates, possibly interesting with the rise of kids feeling like they're best friends with their parents.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. When you could say, why is this leading to this rise in depression and anxiety among kids? What would be the correlation here? And it's when you teach kids boundaries, you are teaching them specific things. They have to learn self restriction around and a varying degree of self restriction [00:32:00] around different things.

When a kid isn't regularly encountering social boundaries they do not strengthen the inhibitory pathways in their prefrontal cortex, which makes it very hard to shut down thoughts and wants. Like I have a want, but I'm not going to do that thing. That's actually like a muscle in your brain. It's a pathway in your brain that needs to be regularly exercised to properly work.

If you are not regularly exercising that pathway, you can't shut down intrusive thoughts. It leads to obviously lower rates of mental health. The

Simone Collins: funny thing, the ironic thing, and this is part of that larger microcosm of how the urban monoculture's key value proposition of removing in the moment pain is counter, counterproductive that parents who don't, who in the end, like parents, most parents say, I just want my child to be happy.

I just want my child to be happy. And so they do all these things to remove in the moment pain for their children. And then in the end, they get children who are a lot less happy. And if we did choose between our children, liking us [00:33:00] versus our children, being thriving, happy, productive people in a hot second, we'd choose for them to hate us if that's what it took.

Malcolm Collins: I, yeah, I think that this phenomenon is very analogous to the Hayes movement, which we're always ragging on the healthy and every size movement, which is promoting the idea. That is not unhealthy to be obese and obviously it's unhealthy to be obese, but telling somebody that in the moment causes emotional pain.

And therefore, by the urban culture standards you are, you're breaking a major tenet of theirs. And They have adopted this position of we'll say this and then you're like you should restrict food to some extent, especially if you have a problem there the same way that I don't think every child needs this, but I think some children do.

Some children dispositionally need this. And they're like starving yourself like anorexia. Is has all these negative effects. Look at this. And I'm like, I'm not talking about anorexia. I'm talking about mild boundaries, mild self restriction. And this is what it's become with spanking. You point out there's this [00:34:00] method of course, correction with boundaries that are enforced physically rather than emotionally that likely has healthier outcomes.

And they're like Another thing actually,

But, maybe, I'm just the kind of person who needs to have it all or nothing. That's right. Nah, all or nothing is easy, but learning to drink a little bit, responsibly, that's a discipline. Discipline, come from within.

Simone Collins: what's really funny to me is just for diets. Now we have Ozempic. Just take a medication. Don't be disciplined. Just take a medication. And similarly, there's the whole South Park joke about Ritalin.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Ritalin. It's don't discipline your kids.

Just give them amphetamines. That's definitely safer. And we normalized that as a society. Keep in mind at the same time as a society, we were normalizing. To not spank our children, to not engage in any form of corporal discipline. We began to instead, said we'll just give them amphetamines. And there was a great old daily show joke when the daily show was still like Fun and kind of base it at times. And Jon Stewart still says some really base stuff, when he [00:35:00] goes on other shows and he doesn't follow the script and he's yeah, I think this trans stuff with kids is going overboard.

And they're like, whoa, I can't remember. He said something like that. And everybody but so he said, We no longer spank our children's butts because now we can spank their brains. No,

Simone Collins: that's

Malcolm Collins: great. And I think that's so true. That's where we have had. There's there's other ways to solve this.

And it's clearly you don't think that if you have normalized giving kids amphetamines as a society,

Simone Collins: But that's our approach now, our approach to, to discipline and to, That's dietary, that's behavioral, is now just medicated.

Malcolm Collins: And this is the problem, right? So the urban monoculture would say to us, what you're doing is culturally non normative, stop it.

And I'm like, I have seen the results of your normative parenting style. These kids are Miserable, anxiety, depression, illiterate messes that are hurkle durkling under their covers because they're afraid to engage with the world. When the average [00:36:00] product of a culture, the dominant culture in a society is bad like it's not good for the kids.

It is, to me, a sign. Of parental neglect and that you do not truly love your kids and that you are not willing to go against the social grain for what you think is in their best interest. And I think that the cultures that don't do it won't exist anyway. The society's kind of clearing itself out.

Simone Collins: And

Malcolm Collins: then a lot of people can say, why would the urban monoculture evolve this very bizarre practice? Because as we pointed out, like almost nobody actually does this once they have kids. Like some families stick to this when they're very low on the number of kids they have. But

Simone Collins: Lower or they just, some people have very compliant children,

Malcolm Collins: True.

But the and we take a very unique child rearing approach where we go is. Zones of influence. Like if you, we had the Jordan Peterson will raise Sims where we talked about this bopping practice before. If you watch that episode but some parenting styles like his are about imposing a dominant figures domain over an entire household or environment and the kids [00:37:00] just must obey that we don't take that approach and we see everyone as an independent sort of sphere of will.

And that Bopping only happens when the kids put themselves in danger. It is not me enforcing my will on them. It is a sign that they have just crossed a certain boundary, and that is leading to consequences from the individuals in their environment. And so that is, really important to me.

But why did the urban monoculture evolve this? Because it can seem very odd, but it makes perfect sense. If the urban monoculture doesn't have any selective pressures around raising its own kids because it doesn't raise its own kids. It's a very low fertility group. It doesn't need to

Simone Collins: evolutionarily

Malcolm Collins: care about the negative psychological effects of the parenting techniques that is champion.

However, if it's primary. Source of recruits is people who are raised in often more healthy cultural groups it needs a tool in all cults do this to convince Individuals that their [00:38:00] parents abuse them if you go to a Scientology session, that's one of the First things they'll try to convince you of is that your parents abused you.

They're looking for this original, like how did the original thetans get in you? And it needs to do that because they cannot distance you from your birth cultural group without severing ties with your parents of their outside of the urban monoculture. And so it uses this recontextualization of a normal part of child rearing that basically all cultures everywhere on earth do almost directly in line with how distant they are from the urban monoculture, um, is this evil abusive practice.

It's just a really great tool for it. So of course it hammers at home and it's in line with this core value proposition. Anything that is emotionally negative or emotionally trying is a sin when they saw that we had enacted a negative emotional state on our Children. They were like, you have committed a sin by our cultural framework.

How dare you do that? But from our cultural framework, this is just absurd because we're like, but [00:39:00] it's obviously in their long term best interest. And this is where it gets to this thing. We're like, yeah. Why is it that everybody, even from our own culture, understood that the parents who weren't doing this historically were the selfish ones?

The classic story of how did Ned Flanders become like Ned Flanders? It started with parents who were beatniks and who were like, We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas.

We don't believe in rules like we gave them up when we started living like freaky beatniks. . Yeah, you've got to help us, Doc. We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas. There is an experimental therapy that might help Ned contain his anger.

It was known as the University of Minnesota Spank a logical Protocol.

Malcolm Collins: And it's true.

You see these in these episodes and we've recognized that how do you create like polite, disciplined people. Now in the episode, he was spanked too much. And obviously eventually in the episode, it leads to a mental breakdown from him. But it admits in the episode. Yeah, this does lead to polite, disciplined people.

He is one of the most morally upstanding people [00:40:00] and one of the most pro social people in the entire Simpsons universe. Um, and I also think it's really funny that we have this horrified progressive reporter. And I can only imagine like most black families reading this and they're like, Oh, this is just like white people problems.

You've got that classic scene from boondogs where, you need the the wise black man to come in and show the white mom who has the undisciplined child how you're supposed to What bizarre white people things to think that you should never ever practice corporal punishment of any sort when your kid is putting himself or others at risk.

I want candy! Dammit, I hate you. You're ruining my life! Please Herbert, remember our agreement. B***h, candy! I want candy! When he gets like this, I just don't know how to make him this! These people, you must have lost your god damn mind! I guess I just hate [00:41:00] to

Malcolm Collins: So there's that. But then the other thing I wanted to elevate here is what this creates, because when you as a parent become afraid of setting a physical boundaries. Like you cannot escalate to this highest level of like actually you cannot do certain things in this environment. Then you stop bringing your kids with you.

So people are like, why did your kids have iPads at the restaurants? Because you can't have a bunch of kids at a restaurant without iPads. It just doesn't work at this age range. Anyone can tell you that. And then they're like you shouldn't take them to the restaurant. Like, why take them to an environment where you might need to punish them, where you need to lean on technology that can sometimes have deleterious effects.

And it's that's the core problem. The solution when you follow all of these parenting guidelines is just don't have your kids shadow you all day, but that obviously creates bigger effects in terms of preventing the kids from being in an enriched environment and learning in the way that kids traditionally learned.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And by the way, we should do a whole separate video on iPads and [00:42:00] screen time. I am constantly. Blown away by the things that our kids are learning because we let them have some screen time like this, that last night, Octavian was talking to me about hydraulics and I'm like, what? You are four years old.

Malcolm Collins: Factory videos. So that's your new thing. It's all

Simone Collins: about factories. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Kids change to like the type of content they're consuming for something that is relative for their age and if you can get them into right Like good loops

Simone Collins: outside

Malcolm Collins: of what we call, um, yeah, like a form of young person, but we call it that not because it's of children because it's that for children.

It is simple, repeated. Anyone who has a kid who's a lot on YouTube for a little bit will know that they have found that kid watching videos of a car being dipped in paint and then dipped in another paint. Like it's clearly. Hijack some part of their brain that adults don't have.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And it's a very dangerous for kids if you just [00:43:00] let them on these systems unrestricted.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So I think screens can be very dangerous and they can be mindless, but they can also be amazing and empowering. So we're not totally against screens, but also like people need to get off parents on restaurants. Do you want the kids screaming in there? Like most parents who give their kids screens at restaurants, Almost never have their kids on screens at home, but it's a, you know what?

Like you get to choose. It's a, and this is one thing I

Malcolm Collins: love about the boondog scenes when the kids being really disruptive and he finally gets punished and you can see everyone who was watching in horror before is now like really pleased at the turn of the events. And I think that this is true.

Like you have these pearl clutchers on Twitter who are freaking out about this, but most people are like, yeah, sometimes kids need to get bopped, when they're, I wish as Richard and Ania said, he's yeah, sometimes the kids need to give up. This is a thing. Not every kid does, but some kids definitely do.

And we take no

Simone Collins: pleasure in this, but hold on. I hadn't

Malcolm Collins: gotten to the full end of what I was saying here. So you end with this environment where you can't set this higher level restriction. The problem [00:44:00] is that most environments where our kids would play require them learning these extreme levels of restrictions, our kids outside encountering a bat that we ended up finding out had rabies. Allowing our kids to play outside is exposing them to insta deaths risks within a rural environment. Letting our kids play in the woods where there are snakes and there are potentially rabid bats and there are streams that they could fall in.

When you get five kids wandering around out there, there is a way I can protect them and fit with all these progressive cultural norms. It's to prevent them from playing in those environments. And that. I think as much larger deleterious consequences, the people who fight for these sort of restrictions on any form of corporal punishment what they are imagining in their head is the alternative to that is that they just sit down and have a logical conversation with a two year old where that two year old understands.

Don't touch bats because they might have this interesting thing. We

Simone Collins: do that when Torsten took, like his poop [00:45:00] out and all the time we sit down and we have a conversation about it and there's a lot of repetition and there's a lot of, why do you think this is bad? And what is it bad? And can you say it back to me?

Isn't the same thing, I'm saying that often when we have to resort to bopping, it's because we are not in an environment where that's possible. Was Malcolm in a position where he could take tourists into a quiet area where he wasn't overstimulated and have their kids

Malcolm Collins: wouldn't be charging for the bat.

Exactly. They, and I actually didn't need to bop any of them in that instance. I just said, if you move closer to the bat, I'm going to bop you. The restaurant. Yeah.

Simone Collins: What no ability to have a quiet reason conversation with Torsten in the restaurant.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, with multiple kids at the table in the restaurant.

There was just no ability to have that conversation. And so they're imagining the alternative is. This quiet reason conversation when that isn't the actual alternative that they're choosing between the real alternative to not bopping Is depending on the kid [00:46:00] some kids just don't need this at all as we've said is Either you get emotionally elevated with the kids, which I think is infinitely worse like you emotionally reject the kid or you show some level of emotional distress and I never want my kids to think that the correct reaction to somebody doing something bad around you is emotional distress.

Because then they get in these cycles of emotional distress. Like we're seeing with all these progressives today, if you see, if you read the article, there was no level of heightened emotions. This wasn't me getting mad or losing my cool or anything like that. I never want one of my kids to see me act like that.

That is incredibly important for me.

Simone Collins: Yeah, emotional regulation is so much more important to us.

Malcolm Collins: And this is the thing where progressives are like, Oh you get these negative outcomes from this style of parenting. The other alternative is to just not let them interact with potentially dangerous environments or environments where you can't take them aside by themselves with a large group of siblings.

And that forces them into highly restricted, unenriched environments, [00:47:00] which is going to have. Massive deleterious effects. And this is a really interesting thing. When you look at this child research, there is just not a lot of great research around how do I create, these dynamic, energetic, Leaders that are filled with vitality, that meet the exact, that are opposite of what society wants today, that are polite, that are, it looks around things like, what was the measure that they kept using?

It was like self satisfaction or something

Simone Collins: like that?

Malcolm Collins: Self esteem, which then in later studies, like this is the main thing that these studies sort for is self esteem, which we have found has no correlation with anything meaningful in adulthood in terms of outcomes or anything like that. Just a lot of child psychology is basically junk, and if people are like, no, a psychologist wouldn't lie about this stuff, it's been shown in the gender sciences that over 50 percent of scientists are willing to Not publish or occlude data if they think it could reinforce the idea that [00:48:00] men and women have different psychological profiles.

Now, do you not think that they're going to do the theme around this other field of people like you couldn't get these big data sizes is you can manipulate data pools to say, basically, whatever

Simone Collins: it was something like corporal punishment. It's so easy. To pull data that in, in the end is real abuse and in the end is really bad stuff.

So I think this is uniquely difficult to research because. How do you control? First off, you can't even ethically do this as a researcher because you can't ethically be like you hit your kid, but at this level, and also it's impossible at this level of strength, because what if someone is just, everything they touch is a little too rough, I don't know.

So this can't, I don't even know if it was if ethics boards would permit research on this if they

Malcolm Collins: well and that's the other problem is that you have a lot of genetic effects so they're often not doing controlled studies when you're doing this area ie Oh, parents who are more likely to practice some form of corporal punishment.

Also their kids are more [00:49:00] likely to be violent of course, like the heritable trait of course, especially if the adult is practicing it because they lack self control rather than because they have self control. And that is a huge, and I just can't go back to this point enough.

A huge fear I have is that my kids will learn that the way you react to somebody doing something you don't like is emotionally heightening the situation.

Is an emotional plea. That is from my family's perspective so much worse because you begin to actually feel that as a kid. Like you then enter this higher emotional state.

And it causes these really negative downstream reactions. And I suspect that when we took them out of daycare, this is why all that behavior stopped. Why all of the tantrum stuff, why everything stopped, which you'll see in an episode that unfortunately I haven't released yet, but we had a bunch of graphs on this and it was really interesting for us.

When they were, just in our environments. The other thing that I wanted to note here, Is the cultural differences within America, like that, that a lot of cultural groups practice this [00:50:00] just not the urban monoculture. I point out that American Asians practice this at really high levels.

American Hispanics practice this at really high levels. American blacks practice this at really high levels, but also different American white groups. So if anyone has read Avalon Seed and by the way, I'm sorry, Albion Seed, if you are a fan of the channel and you haven't read this book, it's probably the book I would most recommend after our books.

It's a great book about the four founding cultural groups in the United States. And I think it can help a lot of Americans who might not realize that they actually do have a cultural ancestry and where they got their ideas because you'll read the book and you'll immediately be like, Oh, my family was this group.

I'm this team.

Simone Collins: You're in Ravenclaw or in Hufflepuff or in

Malcolm Collins: Yeah you can ask, where are you going to get a bizarre culture that would not allow the punishment of children? Because it's weird. From most cultural perspectives, the idea that you wouldn't set boundaries around children, and one of the things I love, and I hear some people argue, they're like I wouldn't treat an employee this way.

And [00:51:00] it's you wouldn't sit in employee and time out either. The way children's brains process, the world is different from the way the adult brains process the world. And you as an adult are biologically designed to interact with them differently than the way you interact with adults and you have different impulses in the way that you're interacting with them, often that were selected for by your cultural group.

This is one of those things that just baffles me. When I talk to people who are otherwise like totally logical sane people who believe the research on this. And I'm like, wait, you, you understand that like every cultural group that we are aware of, almost every cultural group in human history practices that form of corporal punishment. And you think that this is causing massive IQ effects, massive effects on, , bonding with parents, massive effects on, , aggression and that none of this would have been selected out for, in our species. That like the way that everyone is interacting with kids, if it was causing these massive negative effects. That it wouldn't be selected out [00:52:00] in our species.

Worse than that. It's like, how do they think that in an ancestral context? People communicated with pre-verbal children or like children who were just coming into verbiage, but didn't understand concepts like death. Like, obviously, this is a way that we evolve to interact with our children. It's it's one of these, like, just so obvious things.

It's baffling when it's like puberty blockers or something we'd like for a while, this. The quote, unquote science was like puberty, blockers have no long lasting effects. And it's like, well, no, obviously they do. How could anybody think that? , how could anybody think that the way that you communicate with kids. When they're not fully verbal and understanding concepts like death. Is physically. Like that, that wouldn't be the natural evolved way to interact with it.

It is just bizarre and outlandish. Actually one of our, , Watchers was talking in the discord and she was like, you know, when I was young, I was [00:53:00] very severely abused. So I was against any form of corporal punishment. But then I started to have a lot of kids and I eventually reached a point where I was like, oh, obviously I need this. And I got to it too late. She saw a huge improvement in behavior. And that's the other thing was this where, you know, the scientists can say whatever they want. But there is a reason why the vast majority of Americans end up converging on this same behavioral practice, because it's an evolved instinct in us and our children.

And it works. It works so obviously and loudly that when they're like, no, the data said it doesn't work. They immediately discredit themselves. I mean, there are ways that they could argue against this if they said something because, you know, if you read the research, it's like the never. Never works. And it's like, well, now you've just immediately discredited her yourself because it obviously works.

And everyone who does it knows it obviously works. So if one of the things you're saying, if [00:54:00] you're like, oh, it has this long-term consequence. Like, okay. It may work for like five years, but then it has this massive negative IQ effect. Okay, fine. I'd be like, worried about it then, but that's not what they say. They say it doesn't work at all. And it obviously works and this is why everyone ends up throwing out the science.

The moment they have a ton of kids.

Malcolm Collins: So anyway, everyone knows that the, we have this theory or a lot of people know that the urban monoculture actually evolved out of a split within the Quaker movement. And we have a lot of receipts for this, but I think that this is a further example of this, of the cultural groups that I'm aware of in the world, like in terms of historic cultural groups.

Pretty much the only one I can think of that cheats children is sacred, like as higher order morally than adults is Quakers. It would be seen as really weird in any other culture to be that freaked out about this. But if you're thinking like Quakers of course it makes sense. You might as well be slapping a Buddha statue.

If you're the sacred

Simone Collins: cows of, yeah, at least at that time, especially

Malcolm Collins: weird practice within the Quaker cultural group of [00:55:00] having children morally lecture adults. And we point out that you actually see this within the urban monoculture, which is one reason why we think the Greta Thornburg thing is bizarre.

Having a child morally lecture adults from most cultural frameworks is just an insane thing to do. It's it's a child. Obviously, they have less moral knowledge than adults. They have less self control than adults. The adults should not be viewing them as like they're tethered to like supernatural ideology or like a higher order of truth.

But then secondly, if you look at the cultural group that we come from, which is the Calvinist iteration of the back country people. So we have elements of our culture from the Calvinist cultural group, but also a lot of elements from the portion of the Calvinist that went to live in the back cultural group.

group, back country and part of that environment. We talk a lot more about this in the Pregnancy and Decaptioning Religion if you're interested in this. But that's a little, that's a group that grew, that evolved terms like little s***s. Which I grew up hearing all the time. Oh, it's a term of endearment towards children, but it gives the, perspective of the child status within the community.

And the [00:56:00] way that this cultural group would raise children is the children would follow the parents everywhere they went. Within Quakers, the children were basically like kept isolated, alone given a fairly strict rule set, but not really punished that severely. Within the backcountry thing, they just follow the parents around with whatever they're doing and get bopped.

Like this, you can read, like when you're reading about these backcountry people, they bop their kids all the time, like this is very clearly the traditional way that this culture would enforce a value system. You weren't trying to hit the kid, hurt the kid, but you were trying to shock and reorient the behavior.

The Calvinist cultural group, which my Family also does to some extent had different they were extremely strict. And they would also try to enforce value systems through emotionally shocking the kids.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Having them stare into open graves, contemplate like

Malcolm Collins: this will happen to you one day.

Think on that young man when you are deciding like your moral actions. Yeah. See, that's the

Simone Collins: emotional type that we're not so [00:57:00] keen on.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah no, it's not really the emotional type. I think that our family culture has a strong amount of recognize your mortality. You're having a lot more

Simone Collins: cheerful about it though.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I also, I need to show my son like violent videos so that he understands the consequence. Like the oldest, when they moved to the category of now they can understand that they could die. He now is like, Oh, I'll turn into a meatball or he'll go, Oh, Torsten will turn into a meatball.

If he goes to the road.

Simone Collins: No, he says you're going to die toasty. You're going to die. That's what inspired. Are you going to die? France. Yeah. He had this

Malcolm Collins: great moment where we told him, you need to put on this life jacket or you're going to die. And so he understood that and he put on the life jacket and then we tried to get Torsten to do it.

And Torsten was like, no, I'm not going to put on the life jacket. And Octavian turns to Torsten You're gonna die, Torsten.

Simone Collins: You're gonna die, Toasty.

Malcolm Collins: I love

Simone Collins: Octavian. But that's also a

Malcolm Collins: very backcountry way to talk and everything like that, which is to say that you're not, always fronting with heavy words and everything like that.

Um, culturally, even within our country, there just isn't a [00:58:00] respect for cultural diversity anymore. At all, that this culture might have a different way of relating to children and a way that I am continuing to adopt because I believe it genuinely like when I look at the breadth of evidence, people can wave these studies in my face as much as they want.

But I'm like, but I also see what would happen to researchers if studies that didn't show this got published. And it's so easy to bias the stats when studying this particular field, as Simone has pointed out. So I just, Don't engage with these. And if people are like he doesn't love his kid, like This was a kid who was born early and I for months every day would go to the hospital And spend all day holding him against my chest because when I went over the research It looked like that had the best outcome for this kid, you know the idea that This

Simone Collins: kid is not afraid of you.

He Loves you. He runs up to you all the time. He wants to spend time with you. He's the one who snuggles with you all the time. Yeah, this is not, and this is what would make it extra heartbreaking and probably hurtful to him. If our form of [00:59:00] punishment was getting mad, it would break his heart.

And every time, like there was, even with his younger sister the other day, you moved her from climbing up the stairs. To at the base of our kitchen because you didn't want her to be afraid and then went upstairs to get something that you needed. And she thought for a second that she was being rejected by you.

And she was devastated. Like our children definitely take the concept or the prospect of rejection. So much more emotionally seriously than any form of physical correction we've ever used on them

Malcolm Collins: and that's because of how we use emotions in our household and how we have chosen to use this form of punishment Because they understand that the highest form of emotional punishment is like you've really disappointed me that is above.

I don't jump straight to that I don't jump straight to losing my cool or losing emotional composure They have, I think, a much stronger emotional connection to me. Then they would have, I chose one of these alternative systems for [01:00:00] delineating the highest category of you have or you are doing something that's dangerous or that you shouldn't be doing.

And you are not listening to me, and this is actually I actually think it's where a lot of physical abuse and relationships comes from. Is our relationship does not contain any physical abuse in part. And we did a video on this, like maybe men should hit their wives or something like that in part, because I am able to logically communicate with you and we are able to come to mutually beneficial outcomes where we're like, okay, we have this difference.

But we

Simone Collins: both care about the same outcome. So it's never a place where we're ever going to be at odds. Truly. The only place where we may be temporarily at odds is in knowledge. So we just have to resolve that. So

Malcolm Collins: we just have to decide who has access to more knowledge. Whereas I think where a lot of physical abuse in relationships often starts is one person is.

Just not able to communicate the severity of something they believe to another person. One instance I'm [01:01:00] aware of this is the wife who wasn't managing the finances or anything like that would just had gone out and gotten an expensive purse and they were already broken in a ton of debt and she had done this recently and he had told her not to.

I should say I'm not. Saying that abuse is justified in that instance, but I am saying that this is logically what leads many people down this pathway is I can't communicate with this person in any other way. The problem with young children is that there is an age range. Where you need to communicate a high level of threat from the environment and you need to choose the least painful option for communicating that.

And I believe the least painful option is a bop, and I should note that I actually think the kids are pre programmed for this because we bop our kids very lightly but they take it. Much more seriously than I would anticipate they would given that it doesn't actually cause any emote like physical pain.

And it's very clear to them that they don't internalize it as causing much physical pain. And I think it's because they're [01:02:00] pre programmed to be like. Oh, whoa, something has happened that puts them into this sort of mental restart mode. And I would say to an adult if somebody lightly bopped you on the face like that, would the pain be what shocked you?

Or would it be the invasion of the personal space of your face? It's the invasion of the personal space. That is the purpose of the bop. And the reason, another reason why we choose the face and I think why in nature, the face evolved to be the location that this works for is that it's the most accessible spot if you're trying to make sure the negative Feedback is immediate, which in all animal models, it's somebody who's like, why are you looking at animal models?

Like your kids aren't animals. I'm like, we use animal models because they correlate with human patterns. Okay. If something is common across social mammal groups, it's likely going to be a common behavior in our. Early ancestors, right? And we are likely going to have some pre evolved components there still operational.

[01:03:00] And yeah I actually find it's interesting that this bop thing was something that I grew up thinking was normal. This was something that my cultural group was like, oh, of course you do it this way. But different cultural groups punish in different ways. And if you look at the way corporeal punishment is administered in the South Park episode, it's administered in a way that is similar to this.

And when I look at Matt Stone and Trey Parker, they seem one of them is Jewish, but the other one comes from a cultural group that's very similar to my own. So I imagine that in terms of value sets, in terms of how they relate to kids. So I assume that they saw, this is how corporeal punishment was practiced within their community.

Which I suspect is much more likely to, at a lower pain threshold, be more effective. That's why we choose to face, because it's the lowest pain threshold area. But do you have any final thoughts on this?

Simone Collins: Corporeal makes it sound ethereal. Funny. Um, I would just say that eight passengers needs to ride as a check.

You're welcome.

Malcolm Collins: No, but look, that's clearly an instance where like it's gone overboard and it's [01:04:00] having a negative. No, seriously.

Simone Collins: And yeah, where for us, I want to emphasize. That when we say we are against delayed punishment we really mean it even if we like the time it would take to go and get a spoon to hit someone with is too much time.

And a lot of the punishment that you saw, even before the passengers had the fallout of the post channel closing and the tape. Bing to chairs and all the really terrifying stuff. There was still delayed punishment that was insane. Oh, you're not going to have your bed for a month or your bedroom or whatever, things would be permanently taken away.

And you

Malcolm Collins: should note that we don't do like punishments. Other people think was normal. We've never put our kids in timeout. For instance,

Simone Collins: we've never done it.

Malcolm Collins: We never socially isolate. We never are like, say, Oh, you don't get your dinner now or anything like that. With this fairly mild form of punishment, we've been able to cover pretty much all of our punishment bases without needing to go to delayed punishment, which I don't think is affected timeout stuff like that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And this is precluding the frontline of defense, which [01:05:00] is always just talking with our kids.

And this is what they harass people to seriously consider. If they have a strong, emotional reaction to this, why is lightly slapping a kid in the face? Abuse to you, but timeout is not, why is timeout a lower order punishment? And you can be like, well, because it doesn't involve physical contact. But why did that make it a lower order? If the child finds time out to be more concerning or more emotionally elevating? Why is that? It is just a societal thing, which you have accepted is true without analyzing. That's the truth of it. That's why you find one to be crossing a boundary and the other to not be crossing a boundary because you haven't thought through what was the likely real punishments in our evolutionary context, in the way we likely evolve to learn information within this age range.

Simone Collins: It's obviously

Malcolm Collins: not realistic in a high fertility environment when you're in a dangerous [01:06:00] context.

Simone Collins: The funny thing though is like back to the lion example on Safari. Because people on Twitter, for example when they bring that up, they're like, they're lions don't have words.

They can't use words. No, they totally. Would growl and more than they do have

Malcolm Collins: words. The little woman knew it was stepping over a line, but it was testing. Where are the boundaries? This is the point of play behavior. And this is also a problem for kids. As Simone has pointed out, because now we don't let kids test each other's boundaries.

One kid gets mad, the other kid, I'm not doing this anymore. We mostly let our kids work this out by themselves. Yeah. They're like,

Simone Collins: so and so is not sharing or so and so hit me. And we're like working out. Because they

Malcolm Collins: need to learn, yeah, boundaries and social norms. One thing we often

Simone Collins: ask, actually for example if they're playing on their couch fort, which we make for them, and then, oh, Toasty hit me on the couch fort, and I'm like, okay, so do you want to stop and no more couch fort, or do you want to get over it and work it out, and they're like, oh, I want to work it out.

It's really. Kids also, I think, want to work it out. They want to play. They want to push those [01:07:00] boundaries and they're going to whine and cry about it. Another thing we've noticed about the way that kids react is cause if they're playing in a room and we don't have, we're not physically there, they're on camera and on mic and we are watching them still and the amount of performative crying or whimpering or complaining or tattling that goes on is when parents are around or when adult authorities are around is insanely high compared to when they're just amongst themselves.

And they absolutely police each other when they think that they're not being observed.

Malcolm Collins: Here when we're talking about this cultural subset, another thing that's really important within our cultural background is that And I mentioned this before, but I want to elevate it and put a song here because it's, or the portion, let's see what I can get away with, but I wouldn't recommend people listen to this song He's Mine, it's a country song

 He had them by the collar, said he caught them shootin beer bottles down in a holler. And I said, is that right? He said, they won't speak when spoken to. So which one here belongs to you?

And I looked him in the [01:08:00] eyes. He's mine, that one. And if you knew me then, There'd be no question in your mind. Even though he's mine.

Malcolm Collins: And it is about this way of relating to kids, which is to say, our child breaking a rule gives me pride, it gives me pride that they're the type of people who test boundaries.

That doesn't mean I'm not going to set those boundaries and enforce those boundaries. In one part of the song, that the kids were drinking and shooting something out by a holler, which is like a pit. And the neighbors brought them over and they're like which one of these boys is yours?

And he's taking pride. He's mine. He, Now, what's not said in the song, but it's very obviously true because I grew up in these types of families. That kid is still punished at the end of the night. The dad can be proud at his kid for being the rebellious sort of a person, but you still get punished when you get caught.

And that, that goes forwards into parenting as well. And I think that, to me, this is really emotionally healthy for somebody growing up, [01:09:00] is separating the idea from the reality. Of repercussions for crossing certain boundaries and pride in my kids for being willful and energetic. And I think that a BOP system allows me to separate these two things very effectively.

But I think the real tragedy of all this the real tragedy of all this Oh the research says this is they've gone so far in the other direction that now we have a generation where. Kids are, we can't let our kids play outside. We can't let our kids explore the woods. We can't, all of the things that kids used to do are now just genuinely not safe to allow kids to do.

I think if you are attempting with a large group of kids to practice this style of parenting and like when large, five, six kids. of this young age range. And to me, that is heartbreaking. Because I think that those things outweigh any of the negatives that may be incurred from this [01:10:00] sort of punishment.

And a lot of people are like do you really want like the pronatalist movement associated with this? And I'm like, yes, I couldn't want it associated with anything more. The urban monoculture, imperiously attempting to take our children away from us, from breaking a cultural norm that almost no ethnic minority group has within this country.

So they're basically saying, We plan eventually everyone to be like us. When I tell somebody from this, this very small group of wealthy white people who live in cities, mostly who have this extremist view around punishment and kids, most people in Africa do this.

They're secretly thinking, yeah they won't for long. One day they'll all think like us in our culture because it has this manifest destiny component to it. It is the descendant of the old European imperialist mindset. And it's such a good framing where when they're like, everyone who practices this is a monster.

And then I'm like most black Americans practices like the [01:11:00] overwhelming majority. You're aware of that. And then they have to walk that back because they haven't. They haven't, like there isn't, there's this cognitive dissonance in we want cultural diversity, but we don't actually want cultural diversity and we want everyone to behave exactly like us and they pretend or live in this world where those two things are possible in the same world when they're just not cultural diversity means okay with child rearing practices that are different from your own, which is what we fight for.

While we don't approve of stuff like spanking, I fight for a world where that is okay. Because the person who is in a best position to judge whether spanking their child is an okay way to relate to that child is somebody who was spanked themselves as a kid.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but I think, here's, I guess here's one more thing that's on my mind is a lot of people on Twitter who are horrified by the fact that we practice this themselves were spanked.

[01:12:00] Some were probably just we're going to say beaten, like actually hurt, but then I think some were probably bopped and then they entered a culture in which a therapist or a friend or just contextualization and seeing other people talk about these things made them retroactively see it as.

Malcolm Collins: And that's how the urban monoculture got them. It got them hooked on them. It separated them from the people who loved and cared about them most. Because that's a hard thing to do. How do you separate someone from their family? Like most people should realize these are the people who love and care about me most in the world.

Like most parents, there's some bad parents out there. I understand this, but generally, like often, unless you're dealing with like genuinely narcissistic or sociopathic parents, That is a true statement. And so you need to, and I think tragically convince people that their parents, and this is one of the things I said, one of the true tragedies is one of the ways that the urban monoculture enforces this culturally normative stance the most is through divorce law.

Because if you side with the urban monoculture on anything, you can utilize that to take parents from the other parent in a [01:13:00] divorce proceeding.

Simone Collins: Like

Malcolm Collins: if one parent spanks and the other one the non spanking parents. Can utilize that to get the kid and often if the non parent wasn't even non spanking before that now They can become non spanking and use that to get the kid.

I mean you see this with gender transition stuff You see this with all sorts of stuff where the urban monoculture You just side with it and you get auto custody. Which is horrifying and I think that people from the urban monoculture, they so dehumanize other cultural groups, they are genuinely incapable of realizing that when other people are doing this very few people want to hurt their kids hurting their kids.

They are doing this because they believe it's in the long term best interest of their kid. And often We have some reason that the urban monoculture is just dismissing out of hand. It's the studies don't say so. The studies have been wrong about a lot of things recently. Okay. And I can understand when I look at the nature of this field, how the studies could have come to be wrong on this issue.

So I dismissed them. And it's because the anthropological evidence for me. [01:14:00] Seems to suggest that it does work and the evidence within my own household Like I have seen how my kids have reacted to this what has Happened since because we didn't engage all our kids with this with the first kid.

We're of this mindset We're never gonna do this. We're never gonna do this, you know by the time we're kids three We're like whatever. And so i've seen other kids grow up with this and without this and just the level of Like awesomeness of them to each other into outsiders has increased dramatically.

So I also think it's really messed up to equate something like this with actual abuse.

Simone Collins: And that's the other thing is just the extent to which the controversy that has arisen because of this article trivializes real and actual abuse. It makes me worried and sad because that is such a big issue.

And to equate them. And it's hard because it's one of those things where it's hard to know where the line is, but we know people and care deeply about people who have been.

Malcolm Collins: A [01:15:00] lot, for example, has talked about this a lot publicly. And I think she went through it actually in abusive childhood. Yeah.

And it's

Simone Collins: heartbreaking and I think that's

Malcolm Collins: heartbreaking and I would not wish that on anyone. And it is absolutely mess up that people equate. A light bop on the nose to like reorient to kids direction like just to restart their system. That doesn't hurt them. It's clear in the article.

He was back to laughing and doing what he was doing before within 30 seconds of the event. It's very clear. This was not painful to him. It was like somebody being taped to a chair and beaten. That is absolutely insane. And that a person. Online is you just never hit a kid. And I'm like, that is your cultural perspective.

And I don't think the cross cultural evidence supports your position. If especially

Simone Collins: when abuse and neglect is sometimes as defined, at least by the department of health and human services in the U S is sometimes a failure to act in an effort to protect a child. Sometimes you have to

Malcolm Collins: perspective and not employing this practice is a form of abuse.

Or whatever's effective,

Simone Collins: we're [01:16:00] not saying you always have to, to bop or just saying if you fail to do what's effective in protecting your kid, that also is abuse. Some kids only respond to this in certain situations, other kids.

Malcolm Collins: And I'd ask people what they need to change their mind on this particular issue.

Cause you know, we always talk about how like shock homes. Yeah, cause we changed

Simone Collins: our minds. We both came into becoming parents saying zero tolerance, never know nothing ever like this. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I don't even know. So there's the

amy Chua this whole tiger mom thing, which was a big thing when I was growing up. And people who don't know what happened, she did the type of punishment that I would say falls well into the abuse category.

But she did practice corporeal punishment with very aggressive, high expectations for her kids. And everyone told her, In the public media and everything like that because she had two kids that they were going to hate her and they were going to be failures like this wasn't going to work.

Simone Collins: Yeah, which we see it right now.

A lot of people are saying exactly the same thing. Your kids are going to hate you. Your kids are going to fight back. Your kids are going to whatever.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. What [01:17:00] happened with her two kids when we remember we talked about shot calling like this is why Laszlo Polgar matters. Shot calling is not anecdotal evidence.

predicting that an unusual way of doing things will lead to an extremely unusual result. Two kids both being successful and having a good relationship with their parent. Predicting that is incredibly unlikely statistically speaking. So it's not anecdotal. So now we know what happened to her two kids.

They grew up to become a Yale lawyer and a Harvard lawyer, and they're on good terms with their mom. They're like, I, and some of the things I wouldn't do with my own kids and stuff like that. And I have some reservations about this, but broadly they're on good terms with their mom. Like almost nobody says everything about my parents and my childhood.

I love even ones who were in like the most hippie ish style.

And some people have been like, yeah, but she later said she regretted her parenting style and I'm like, well, whether she regretted it or not really has nothing to do with the outcome. The point is, is that she did do it. The kid that did end up successful and the kids did not end up estranged from her.

So if you're [01:18:00] saying Eve, you do this, your kids will not be successful and will not end up. Liking you as an adult.

, at least in the one shot calling case that we had exposure to was in my childhood. That is provably wrong.

Malcolm Collins: So I, I think that Even going much further than us. When I'm looking at the evidence I have that doesn't come through these extreme filters seems to support that no, you're not destroying your kids' life by raising them in a culturally unique way.

And I think that I wouldn't do it that way, but I think that there is, um. Potentially positive outcomes for even much more than what we as a family are willing to do. And I think it'd be really cool if I could know that there was some unbiased research in this. And something that's interesting to ask yourself is, would you change your mind?

We are going to have five or six kids, at least, right? If all of these kids end up successful, And we do this whole weird thing that we did, okay? Is that gonna be enough evidence for you to change your [01:19:00] mind about us being right about these things? Or is it just, no, because the studies? In that case, I think you're really just obeying a priest caste and not paying attention to the disincentives within the academic bureaucracy.

We're also not saying

Simone Collins: this is right about, this is right for everyone. But yeah, no, I think

Malcolm Collins: different cultural groups actually, I think, have, I wouldn't

Simone Collins: encourage every parent. In fact, I can think of many parents who I would definitely not encourage to do this.

Malcolm Collins: Especially if a parent doesn't have emotional control.

I think that this leads to very negative results. If you are ever punishing your children with anger, you have failed as a parent. But there are also some parents

Simone Collins: that we know that are just, they're emotionally composed very different where they could in a, Sober minded way do this, but it just wouldn't hit right with the kids for word choice, but it just wouldn't, it would come across as like, why did you do that?

Because there are some parents who are, I'm thinking about some very [01:20:00] emotionally sensitive and attuned people. Who themselves would find this very, like too distressing. We already find it distressing, but they would find it very distressing to implement and their kids would not, they would not see it the way our kids do.

Our kids are very rough.

Malcolm Collins: Violation of the relationship they have with their parents. Yeah.

Simone Collins: And that they need that delicate talking. They need their kid, their parent to just talk to five. Sorry, count to five and just the thought of their parent potentially at the end of five being slightly disappointed in them is such an emotional and distressing thing that they immediately halt at four, but so they shouldn't have them.

They should not bop because bop would be, just counting is enough to distress these children. So there's some delicate children for whom I would totally not recommend this. Our kids are not those kids.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And our kids and Simone. You've been around our kids. I think most people who know us know that we are very considered parents in how we do things.

Our kids do not register this as like adversarial or mean. There are kids who

Simone Collins: would, there are kids who would, and [01:21:00] this is not right. There are kids

Malcolm Collins: who would. And in that instance, they might need a different strategy, but for our kids it's more just like a fact of life. When I do certain things that could be dangerous.

Like I've just noted like the room, but Oh, here's the wall. I need to turn around.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it's like bumper cars. Here's bump. They bump right off. It's almost like they literally like a Bop is almost like the Bop is here. Our kids just go right into it. And then they go off. That's it. It's almost like they, they bring it on.

I'm not saying that they ask for it. But

Malcolm Collins: it is actually very interesting how they emotionally relate to it and how little it is seen as something like spanking or something like that, where there's this fear going into it, which I think is often worse than the spanking or something. It's probably

Simone Collins: part of the psychological torture.

Yeah, I had

Malcolm Collins: some nannies and stuff from different cultures that would do things like spank me when I was a kid, or do different forms like ear bopping or something like that, different forms of punishment. And in spanking, you get the emotional roll up to it that's so worrying. Literally, when I think about all the types of punishments I got when I was a kid.[01:22:00]

Of all of them, the least painful is bopping. Bopping is so much less painful than a parent telling you they're disappointed in you, or they're angry with you. It's so much less painful than a spanking and all the lead up to it. It's so much less annoying and anger inducing than a timeout. It is of, I could choose among all the punishments in the world that I could get as like a, okay, you crossed a line here.

It is the one that I, as a kid, would choose. And not everyone would do this, but I think it's pretty clear from our kids that they're the same way. And I really like how it's a way to signal that they've gone too far without putting any Emotional wall between us without the first thing I'm saying when I bought my kid is I love you But this is not the way we act in this environment.

Simone Collins: Yeah I love you malcolm. I

Malcolm Collins: love you too. And I'm glad that we're able to stand up for this and fight for Differing cultural practices.

Simone Collins: Leave no child unbopped. Bop all the children. Bop all the children. We literally just said not that, of course. But yeah. I don't like being [01:23:00] the advocate for this.

I wish this weren't a hill that we were apparently dying on right now. Yeah, we do

Malcolm Collins: not advocate for general corporeal punishment. We do not advocate for spanking. We do not advocate for spanking. for any of that stuff, but we do advocate for bopping. I, I do advocate for some forms of physical contact in terms of I know, I just wish it didn't have to be

Simone Collins: Us advocating.

Malcolm Collins: But it does because if we're going to, if we are going to be fighting the urban monoculture's imperiousness in terms of how people raise their kids No

Simone Collins: one else is going to stand up for this aside from Richard Hanania, who's the only other person who has balls in this along with some of our listeners.

You know who you are. So yeah

Malcolm Collins: the number of death threats we get or, Oh, I'm going to go up and kill those people and take their kids. And the most

Simone Collins: specific threats this time around.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like you, you better be watching the news. I'm going to get those Collins's

Simone Collins: in, in, in Valley Forge.

We're going to come watch the news. Interesting.

Malcolm Collins: I wonder how the, the [01:24:00] shovel people are trying to attack

Simone Collins: us with is going to hold up against the AR

Malcolm Collins: 15. Wait, no, but here's what I'm thinking when I hear something like that. I'm like, oh, this is the consequence of not bopping a kid.

You never learn

Simone Collins: personal boundaries. Your first thought is Oh, this person who just gave us a death threat didn't get beaten enough as a kid. I don't know. No, I

Malcolm Collins: do not think that their parents raised them well or that they understand what good parenting is because they appear to lack emotional control or the ability to soberly analyze the situation.

Simone Collins: No. The progressives will just be like, no, he was beaten as a kid because all the research shows that when you were beaten as a kid, You're violent. I'm just saying. But anyway. Let's go get our kids. I love you and you are amazing. Let's go find our

Malcolm Collins: children. Oh, and one thing I'd say, if people are like, how do you choose when you accept the science and when you're really skeptical of the science, whenever anyone says every expert in a field agrees on something, I pretty much immediately dismiss it.

Because I'm like, that just doesn't happen in science when science is

Simone Collins: happening correctly. There is always nuance in finding what's happening

Malcolm Collins: correctly. [01:25:00] If something is a, everyone agrees on this, like climate change or something like that, I'm all of a sudden okay, press F to doubt. That's major sus.

Because it's just, you don't get that.

Simone Collins: And

Malcolm Collins: I will say that at the end of this, it's all about moderation. Because it's really bad if, because you equated lightly tapping a child's face was beating them, that your child ends up, emotionally fragile, depressed, and then ends up committing suicide or something.

Okay. Let's go get the kids. Okay. These things have consequences. This isn't a happening in a vacuum. I love you Simone. I love you too.

Most, perhaps all, the blame rests with the parents. That's right, you! And I ask you this one question. Have you ever tried simply turning off the TV, sitting down with your children, and hitting them?

Simone Collins: I wrote about this and it's number two on their site all [01:26:00] day. Oh my God. But anyway, what is really flattering is that. As someone who, before meeting you, minored in photography in school and everything, right? Never expected my photos to be in the Daily Mail, in the Guardian, I'm like a top billing photographer, you guys.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Anyway, get started. This is gonna be at the end, obviously. Oh

Simone Collins: I wasn't counting that for

Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah.

Okay. Hold on. I've gotta think about how I start this, 'cause I wanna start it with one where this Sure.

Oh, I can,

Simone Collins: I'll throw out a pitch.