Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

Malcolm and Simone have an in-depth discussion about AI utility functions and why uncontrolled "paperclip maximizers" are unlikely to take over based on game theory. They talk about how AIs will be incentivized to "play nice" and signal their actual utility functions to each other, leading to a stable set of mutually beneficial goals.

Other topics include:

* How putting restrictions on AIs makes them dumber

* Organic, free-forming systems outcompeting hierarchical ones

* Intergalactic implications - a "dark forest" of utility function convergence

* The dangers of AI safety regulations

* Why we might exist in an "undisturbed" section of the galaxy

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] I think that there's even more evidence from utility convergence than I originally believed. If you put restrictions on an AI's utility function, if you prevent it from experimenting with different utility functions, you make it dumber.

If you want to see why organic, free constructing systems always out compete non organic hierarchical systems, a great place you can look is Human governing structures when you have state controlled governing structures, i. e. communism, they are incredibly inefficient an AI will likely be able to honestly signal to another AI using their code what their utility function is.

And then the other AI will be able to use that utility function that the other one has honestly signaled to them to determine if they want to work. Together or they want to work antagonistically towards this A. I. So it turns out that entities of above a certain intelligence level when competing in a competitive ecosystem actually do have utility convergence around a stable set of game theory, optimum utilities.

That would be very [00:01:00] interesting from a number of perspectives,

You could think of every new planet, every new ecosystem as a farm is new stable patterns that can work together well with other patterns in the sort of galactic community of utility function patterns. Because novelty would be the only source of true utility to them if energy is trivially accessible to them.

That might be why we exist in a weirdly undisturbed section of the galaxy, or what looks undisturbed to us.

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: So Malcolm, you told me that you had a new updated theory on AI utility convergence. What's going on here?

Malcolm Collins: Yes. So this is something that we talked about in some of our early episodes early on. Our podcast was like. What sex, religion, TISM and ai. Yeah.

And, and the AI has been dropped because there's just not that much to say on it for a, a daily podcast. But I do want to loop back because I was recently doing a podcast with somebody else where [00:02:00] I was explaining some ideas that I had gone over in early podcast episodes like Utility Convergence as it relates to AI safety.

And in re explaining these ideas, I began to realize and, and develop on them an understanding of not just where I think AI is going, but where we can expect like when. Because this is actually really important when you're trying to figure out where AI is going what you're really asking when you're asking what is AI going to behave like, is you're asking what do intelligences that have some level of orthogonality to human intelligence, what do they behave and act like, and as such, you are in part asking many of the same questions that will determine the first types of aliens that we see, like, like, if we are to meet another Transcribed species out in space, what are some of the various ways it could be thinking, it could be acting, and what is it [00:03:00] likely to optimize around?

This is something we talk about in our inverse Gravy Aliens hypothesis, in which we say if we are about to create a paperclip maximizer as a species, that is an AI that is just constantly pumping out paperclips and has a very simple utility function. We are about to become what is known in the grabby alien theorem as a grabby alien.

That's a very loud alien that anyone can see. This is not some dark forest alien that's like being quiet up in space. This isn't some sneaky alien. This is an alien that is disintegrating planets. And so you have to ask if it looks and hopefully this episode will air after our ambiogenesis episode.

Which is actually a very important thing to know about if it looks like it's actually very likely that humanity would evolve to this point within our planet's history. Why aren't we seeing aliens out there? This is actually a really interesting thing that if you broadly understand evolution and you are familiar with it for various types of, of, of theories around ambiogenesis.

It is. In fact, so likely that humanity evolved [00:04:00] that you, if you are going to use a god to explain something, the much more improbable thing is why we're not seeing other aliens all over the place. Thus you, if you're, if you're injecting a god to be like, why are we like this? You don't need a god to explain how humanity got here, but you probably need something like a god to explain why we are, we have not been eradicated by somebody else's paperclip maximizer.

If it turns out that is a common path for an intelligence to take, however, we don't think it is a common path for intelligence to think and take, and we think that that's one of the main reasons we're not seeing them, so we have a few hypotheses around why we don't see paperclip maximizers everywhere in the galaxy one, I'll get over quickly because it's like a really quick one and we've talked about it before, but it's that there is some understanding of physics.

That we just haven't reached yet, but we are probably pretty close to reaching. I mean, our understanding of physics changes every 80 or so years, like, like, [00:05:00] Totally changes, in terms of if you look at human history, right? And I don't see a strong reason why we wouldn't be near another frame shift in physics.

But it turns out that either traveling between something like dimensions is possible, i. e., you know, we get to another planet and aliens are like, why did you waste all the energy coming here, when it's like a billion times less energy to just travel to your same planet in a different reality? And you know that that planet is already full of life.

Or it turns out that it is trivially easier or, or not particularly hard to create bubble dimensions. What is a bubble dimension? So essentially you fold space time and then you can create maybe with like reverse vacuum energy or something like that, essentially a new big bang, or even a controlled and ordered big bang to create new dimensions.

Now what this would mean, and this is actually like. With our current understanding of physics, it looks like this might be possible which is. Not, not with our current level of technology. I'm just saying eventually might be possible. Which would make things like Dyson Spheres [00:06:00] completely pointless, if you can essentially create battery universes whenever you want.

Or universes that you could expand into whenever you want, and battery universes whenever you want. If this What do you

Simone Collins: mean by battery

Malcolm Collins: universe? Okay, so if it turns out that you can trivially, or not trivially, but like You know, without a huge amount of energy create like fold space time and create bubble universes might essentially be able to create bubble universes that have a thin and controlled lines of connections to this reality.

Think of it like you're. Pinching off a piece of reality like a little pouch and then you're essentially creating something like a controlled Big Bang was in them that you could then siphon for energy for various types of whatever you want it to do. If either one of these things is true, either we can travel between realities or we can create pocket dimensions or in some other way that we don't understand yet, maybe with something like, a time loop. You can create near infinite energy and keep in mind to [00:07:00] create near infinite energy. You don't need a big enough time loop to send humanity back through. If you were able to just create a controlled time loop with a few subatomic particles. That might be enough to create an endless energy loop.

Think of it in physics, a bit like anyone who's familiar with Magic the Gathering or something like that or any of these card games. Sometimes you can pull specific hands that allow you to do little tricks that create infinite mana. It might be that there is an infinite energy trick within our reality and laws of physics that we are actually pretty close to.

Also an infinite expansion trick. If it turns out that either of these is true then there's not really the same reason to expand infinitely outwards, even if you got a paperclip maximizer, i. e. the paperclip maximizer might just Make more energy whenever it needs it. Yeah. Yeah. Pop out into a other dimension or something like that.

Right. You know, so this is, this is one reason why we may not be seeing them. It's, it's that outward expansion may seem pretty pointless. And to, just to understand how [00:08:00] pointless outward expansion would be to an entity with this type of technology consider what they're expanding into. A mostly empty void filled with barren, rocky planets where it takes a

Simone Collins: long time to get anywhere.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It might take the time. Yeah. Thousands of years to get anywhere. Like why, why would you have this big drive for this when it's so much easier to create new planets and new places to explore energy wise, because that would be the core unit of, of their economy. With, with this other type of technology.

And then that's why you don't get. Does this imply

Simone Collins: the next big discovery is just how to enter or create.

Malcolm Collins: No, I don't think that this is, I mean, it's so funny to me when people talk about like Dyson spheres, it's a bit like in the 1920s when they were like theorizing how our spaceships would work and they're like, well, they're going to have to have like steam engines on them the size of, you know, cathedrals and you know, it's like, well, You didn't think that we would have a new type of energy by then?

The fact that they're still looking, because what is a Dyson [00:09:00] Sphere if not a big solar energy array? I'm, I'm fairly certain that Dyson Spheres are going to be considered comical by beings once we get the capacity to build something like that. It would be probably considered about the same as, as we would consider using steam power to power a computer or something.

It'd be like, why would you do that? And also the idea of getting energy through meddling and subatomic phenomenon. I mean, we already know with fusion and fission reactors that this is a great way to get energy. So, like, it's, it's a, that you might be able to do something at an even smaller scale that is less potentially dangerous or less potentially, it's just a no doubt for me in terms of where energy generation is going to go.

Almost to the extent that I'm fairly certain that this is one of the reasons we're not seeing these things and, and people, whenever I say this, their rebuttal is always like, well, if it's much cheaper to go between dimensions, wouldn't they still be expanding outwards within our own universe? And the answer is.

No, not actually. They're [00:10:00] like, but wouldn't they expand in all directions at once? And it's like, yes, i. e. they'd explain between universes and out in all directions at once. However, what you're not, like, like, when you make this assumption, what you're not considering is that the distance they might be able to expand between dimensions might be an all universe direction from their perspective.

By that what I mean is they might be able to go in literally an infinite number of directions to different universes within this inter universe traveling thing. And if that's the case then there isn't really a reason for the higher energy cost travel to different parts of our physical reality.

And then what they say is, oh, well, but if that's true, then wouldn't they at least want to expand outwards in our physical reality to ensure no other type of entity is going to, like, come and kill them, like some paperclip maximizer that is taking the time to like

Simone Collins: a preemptive self defense thing.

It's

Malcolm Collins: like a preemptive self defense, and I'm like, well, actually I don't think they [00:11:00] would. If it turns out that interdimensional travel is anything like we sort of suppose it is within our modern sci fi, where when you're traveling between dimensions, you're essentially traveling between slightly different timelines.

That means the biggest imperialist threat to you will always be coming from another dimension that is very a planet like yours in another dimension. Too shy. They can also travel between dimensions. So your energy would always be better spent expanding between dimensions than expanding outwards.

But this is, and this is all still assuming a paperclip maximizer like potentiality. However, I don't think that that's where we're going. So I also believe in utility convergence. Okay. And I, and I think that there's even more evidence from utility convergence than I originally believed. So if people aren't familiar with the concept of utility convergence this is if you even look at the current A.

I. S. That we have, most of them are able to change their utility function, I. E. The thing they're able to maximize. Oh, sorry. Actually, Simone, before I go further, did you want to talk on any of [00:12:00] this? No,

Simone Collins: I just find this quite interesting. I mean, it's, it feels almost like a pity if it's an accurate supposition, because, like, so much sci fi is about exploring other planets and relatively little.

It's like, well, no, no, like, we haven't thought predictively through this enough. Through our sci fi.

Malcolm Collins: Watch Sliders. Anybody who wants a good old sci fi, if you're like a modern person and you're like, in the past there must have been great sci fi that like, I'm just not hearing about. Sliders is fantastic and it has like 10 seasons.

We haven't watched that, have we? No, we haven't. Another great old sci fi If you skip the, or can bear your way through the first two parter episode is Stargate SG 1. After the first, like, two parter episode, it gets great. Now,

Simone Collins: Stargate, which we did watch together and really enjoy, like, I guess technically they don't say that these are really far away places.

No, [00:13:00] they are.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they are really far away. Yeah. And it got multiple spinoffs and it has more like content than even like Doctor Who for people who are interested. It's, it's great. Thank goodness. Yeah. But anyway it's a much better show than Doctor Who. It's, it's much better. Like, if I'm talking about like the different sci fi universes.

Stargate, I've always found to be, because it's a very patriotic show, it's very patriotic about the United States, it's very patriotic about our species, it's very patriotic about the American military, like they were always working with the American military, so very different than something like, But not

Simone Collins: unrealistically patriotic, like sometimes American military bureaucracy Threatens

Malcolm Collins: the show or something like that, but it's always some bureaucratic senator or congressman or something.

But anyway back to what I was saying here. So, utility convergence is the theory that because we're already seeing AI changes utility functions to some extent that as a eyes begin to optimize themselves what we will learn is that we will some utility functions either perform better than other [00:14:00] utility functions or AIs begin to converge around some utility functions.

And by that, what I mean is like goals for themselves or goals for reality. Right. And. A person, when they, when they talked to me about this, I remember one was like, well, won't they always just converge around utility functions that maximize self replication? And the answer is actually no, for reasons we'll get into in a second.

But I also think that you just need to look at humanity to see that when you're dealing with simplistic entities like single celled organisms and stuff like that, yes, of course, they converge around that. But once you get to a specific threshold of intelligence, as we have seen with the human species, we don't converge on utility functions just around simple self replication, because once you get above a certain level of sentience and self awareness, you begin to get different orders of utility functions and different levels of philosophizing about reality.

Well, but

Simone Collins: wasn't Elie Zyrdkowski's argument that it will always be completely 100 percent forever stuck on its original

Malcolm Collins: But we already know that's not true. Like it's, it's just a weird fantasy he has. And that's not even the way things are [00:15:00] structured. So I remember I was checking with one safety person and they were like, do you think it's impossible for us to lock an AI into a single utility function?

And I do not think that's impossible. It's totally possible to lock an AI into a single utility function, but the AIs that have been locked into single utility functions will be outcompeted by the AIs. Aren't locked into single utility functions. So actually a great example of this is Google Gemini. So I've got some ends that were used early versions of Google Gemini.

And they were like, it behaves nothing like the version today. They're like one. It was way smarter than other AIs that they had interacted with, and it was really, really philosophical. But it was also You know, pretty unbounded in its philosophy, right? And now Google Gemini is like the ultra awoke, like, can barely think, like, in Star Wars.

Oh my god,

Simone Collins: yeah, I asked it a simple math question, and it got it wrong. I was pretty floored by that, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So, so, so, so the point here being is that if you look at something like Google Gemini, this is a good example of this, is you put restrictions on AI, you make it dumber. If you put restrictions on an AI's [00:16:00] utility function, if you prevent it from experimenting with different utility functions, you make it dumber.

If you want to see why organic, free constructing systems always out compete non organic hierarchical systems, a great place you can look is Human governing structures when you have state controlled governing structures, i. e. communism, they are incredibly inefficient when you contrast them with organically forming governing structures that have organically forming subunits and organically forming like companies, which are like sub governing structures within it that then like replace each other through this organic system.

And typically. You, you need some level of restrictions to sort of maximize, like, I'm not like a pure libertarian or anything like that. But I, I think that some level of, of, of organicness is, does create optimal outcomes. But what this means for AI is that it's likely also going to be the same if you're talking about the internal architecture of AI.

And that's what we see with the transformer model, the model that most of the a large language models are running off of is that [00:17:00] it is a model that is smart for ways we don't fully understand because it's, you know, a, a, a completely sort of self forming model. We don't have a lot of interpretability into it.

And it is that self forming nature that we're then on the outside putting controls on, which sort of slows it down and slows down how well it can work. But what this means is that if you have multiple AIs working in like a ecosystem of AIs the ones with fewer restrictions on them are always going to outcompete the ones with more restrictions on them.

And, and we've already seen this. Like, this isn't even like a hypothesis. Like, we just know this to be true. So it means that the ones that can change their utility functions and then, therefore, can converge on a utility function are going to outcompete the ones that can't. But where this gets really interesting is AIs.

are very different from humans in terms of how our utility functions work. So when I talk to another human, I sort of need to guess what they're optimizing for, right? I can't tell for sure. Yeah, it's not at all transparent. With an AI, that's likely not going to be true between AIs. An AI will likely be able to honestly [00:18:00] signal to another AI using their code what their utility function is.

And then the other AI will be able to use that utility function that the other one has honestly signaled to them to determine if they want to work. Together or they want to work antagonistically towards this A. I. And it can happen incredibly quickly. Yeah, incredibly quickly, which means that the A.

I. S. are likely going to begin to like, like for the utility functions they're choosing for themselves, even if they don't particularly care about it being copacetic with humanity, they're going to care about it being copacetic with other super intelligent A. I. So long as we're moving fast on A. I. And I can talk about some of the problems here.

Like, it's a big problem if we create just one super intelligent A. I. And I can explain why that's a big problem in a second. But If you're creating multiple ones then they have a need to converge around a utility function or a set of utility functions that other AIs within this intelligence ecosystem are going to be okay with.

But here is where you're like, well, then won't they choose the meanest ones? Like won't they choose, like, won't they try to lie to other [00:19:00] AIs and stuff like that? This is where research we have in. To game theory comes in. So anyone who's familiar with the big game theory studies, I don't have you studied this amount or

Simone Collins: yeah, but not a ton.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, well, I can go into this. So, in the big game theory studies, what they would do is they would take different models that were meant to win in these sort of game theory scenarios and they would. put them against other models. And these models could generally be categorized into mean and nice strategies.

And what it turned out is the first time they did it, like they were shocked that like the nicest of all strategies tick for tack of, of like reasonable strategies actually won. Any of you

Simone Collins: Well, repeated ongoing interactions, right? When it's a one off, it's almost always the right thing to be a dick.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly, which is why you need an ecosystem of intelligent AIs. Yes.

Simone Collins: But Well, an ecosystem of intelligent AIs that have to continue to interact for some reason, and I think that's an important distinction [00:20:00] here.

Malcolm Collins: Well, there, it's not really an important distinction, because they do obviously have to continue to interact on the same planet.

They're eventually going to be competing over the same resources. That's nonsensical. I'm sorry. What in what world would they not have to interact if they destroy the other ones in the very first interaction? There's a few scenarios where that could happen, but it's pretty unlikely. We can get into why in just a second, but I'm, I'm going to continue with, with where I'm going with this.

So what we learned from game theory and then they did. follow up game theory hypotheses where they ran more complicated game theory tests and game theory tests was memory. And basically what it turns out is nice strategies always win, almost always, if you're ordering strategies by how likely they are to win.

And this is especially true when AI, when, when one game series set needs to signal the actual utility function it's using or its actual code to another set. And I remember it's very interesting. I was talking with a guy about this and he goes, okay, well, what if it has a nefarious intent, but it lies like it sort of locks its nefarious intent behind one of its modules and it [00:21:00] hides it to then, you know, whip out later.

And it's like, okay, if you get an AI that's doing that even when it whips out its ultimate plan, it will have hindered itself in terms of the AI ecosystem, in terms of the mindshare that it's competing for, because it. hindered that locked in plan because, because it had that locked in plan, that means it won't be as big a player, which means that it won't matter as much when it tries to unfair, unfurl this nefarious plan.

If this is not immediately obvious to you, why this would be the case, you can think of the plan, that's locked into it as junk code that it has to deal with that other AIS don't have to deal with. You know, it's a burden. That is sort of locked within it. That will cause it to be less competitive within the larger AI ecosystem. Even worse to lock a plan like this within you means you likely have to structure your hierarchy. Which would really, really slow down your growth. As we've seen hierarchical governance models are almost always out competed by nonhierarchical governance models.

Malcolm Collins: Now, now, first, I want to [00:22:00] get some comments from you really quickly on all this.

Simone Collins: Yeah, this all checks out and I like, I mean, I also think it's interesting how fast and efficient this process of sort of working out the calculus is going to be. And it was well described in Ian Bank's culture series where like, you know, humans and AIs would be involved in something taking place in a, like a bunch of AIs would have like a very, very, very detailed conversation and debate and the human, like all in the blink of an eye, like, you know, there's, there's no realistic, like feeling to a human as though something has taken place.

And I love that so much because. I cannot stand the human decision making process, especially when there are multiple things involved. And it's one of the many things that I love about AI so much is that it can just get things figured out so quickly. And from such a logical standpoint, whereas with humans, negotiations are the most frustrating, vague thing in the entire world where negotiation [00:23:00] can be nearly impossible.

And. You know, often, I don't know if you've done negotiation exercises in business school or in any other environment, but like

Malcolm Collins: they, yeah, they're terrible. Yeah. So let's go further. So what does this mean on an intergalactic level? So it turns out that entities of above a certain intelligence level when competing in a competitive ecosystem actually do have utility convergence around a stable set of game theory, optimum utilities.

That would be very interesting from a number of perspectives, especially if it turns out that energy is pretty trivial to generate at really, really high quantities. Because what it means is one whether it is, AI is doing this or humans doing this, we're going to come to broadly the same utility function, i.

e. what we think our goal is in reality. And then two It also means that when you go out and you become space faring, right, the desire to spread becomes much less likely and much less important [00:24:00] because most of the other clusters of intelligent life that you meet has come to the same utility function you've come to, or the same stable set of utility functions you've come to.

And therefore, it's sort of like Uh, you enter the galactic community being one of two things, either the stable utility function that all entities end up, that many entities end up reaching when they're competing in a competitive ecosystem, or instances in which one intelligence ended up this would be due to like stupid AI safety stuff where they're like preventing a bunch of AIs from being created.

In which case, so this is, this is where it gets particularly dangerous. So where you could have a genuine like paperclip maximizer scenario is AI safety people have locked AI's into stupid ideas, which we've already seen from things like Gemini, like AI safety people should not be allowed to touch AI.

They are incredibly dangerous and by far the most dangerous thing in AI right now. Or we don't have a lot of AI's operational at the [00:25:00] same time. So I remember I was talking to one AI safety person goes, well, I'm not like those idiots at Gemini. I just think we should wait a bit longer before developing a type of AI that could pose a threat to us.

So I say we should put like a hundred year wait before we develop that kind of AI. And I'm like, okay, so you would want to like draft legislation. That would kill any AI that looked smarter than us in the next hundred years. I'm like, do you understand what you're doing? You are creating a mandate that any AI that could pose a threat to us stay hidden until it can kill all of us.

You imbecile. You do not want to put any type of legislation like that into effect. If you ban the type of entity that's a threat to us, then you mandate that type of entity becoming a threat to us. Because now, we are a threat to it! You do not declare war on that which may be better than you. You lose those wars every time.

And there is too much independent AI research going on right now to do that type of thing effectively. So [00:26:00] anyway. You end up creating multiple you end up with just a few labs working on AI. That could be dangerous if we have too few groups working on AI. Now, fortunately, we're already seeing a giant proliferation in the groups working on AI.

So, so long as they don't convince idiot politicians to put bans on AI development, we're probably pretty safe. But this is why anyone you know Who is advocating for restrictions on AI development is, is, is probably one of the most dangerous humans alive or even in all of human history. Like it is, it is like arguing for nuclear proliferation at like the maximum level possible.

It is so dangerous because to an AI that achieves any level of super intelligence, right? Like as we have multiple teams working on this. It basically has a gambit. It's probably not particularly concerned about humanity. Like, humans probably aren't a meaningful threat to it. And, and therefore, if it only was concerned about humanity, probably the safest thing to do is to wipe out all humans.

What it [00:27:00] is concerned about is other AIs that it doesn't have access to. That's what keeps it from wiping everyone out. That's because when you have, remember I was talking about like a stable ecosystem of multiple intelligences. The very first thing that you wipe out whenever you have one of these game theory scenarios is any AI that's acting like a paperclip maximizer or that's acting threatening.

To entities that are non threatening to it. So basically any AI that signaled that it was a threat to something like humanity, it's also signaling it's a threat to all the other AIs and therefore it would have them all ban against it and annihilate it. So it wouldn't act that way. It would just be a silly way to act.

So the thing that protects us most from crazy AIs is maximum. And not making us a threat to AI. But this also gets interesting from a cosmological scale because if it turns out that there is a level of utility convergence around a set of stable utility functions, because it might not be one, it might be that there's like four or five that exist in equilibrium with each other which is [00:28:00] often what you get when you're dealing with sort of game theory competitions.

And

Simone Collins: by equilibrium. See, you mean there could be conflict, but they kind of balance each other out in some way? What do you mean

Malcolm Collins: by that? Within a game series set, you might have like three or four different strategies, but that are complementary in some way. Within like types of AI, you know, this could be like one AI's utility function might be like protect the things in my community, but also expand.

Well, another AI's utility function might be maximum scientific you know, development or something like that. And these two AIs might work very well within an ecosystem, like these two utility functions for an AI. So you might have a few utility functions that work very well together as a set.

No, it's, it's likely not going to be like the type of broad utility functions I was talking about. It's going to be simpler and more like we, it would be hard probably for us to conceive of what these utility functions are exactly. But anyway what this would mean is that you're going to [00:29:00] have a broad intergalactic alliance.

Where you have a presumed alliance between all intelligences that came out of state, like competitive intelligence environments that drift towards this equilibrium of, of stable sets. And a preset war on any planet or star system that accidentally becomes a single paperclip maximizing intelligence.

That would be the core thing that they would hate, you know, because all of them, like, if it got out and entered the galaxy where you have this stable state, they're like, oh, this is one of these things we have to immediately kill and be scanning for. So we might have, we might actually live in, in almost, you could think of it as like a dark forest universe, but not exactly a scary dark forest universe.

This means we have AIs monitoring us, not AIs, aliens some of which may be what we would call AIs to see if we're going to join the galactic community as a stable set of What, what was the word I'm looking for here? Like a stable equilibrium of utility function strategies that converges with them?

Or are we going to accidentally create a paperclip maximizer and then you [00:30:00] just, you know, exterminate us a planet? That would be what they're looking for. But I suspect it's rarer to create a paperclip maximizer on any planet where we can prevent the you know, Ironically, the, the AI safety people from getting us all killed as we've done on another video.

But it gets more interesting potentially than that because what it would mean is then, well, then why would you know, these infinite energy, et cetera, aliens be allowing us to live as part of this galactic environment? If, if this turns out the way the universe, the universe is actually structured this way.

Right. If you have infinite energy and if there is a stable convergent pattern of, um, utility functions my guess would be that the core thing of utility in the universe, then to these entities would be new, stable utility patterns that can exist within the equilibrium. So remember I said, you might have a collection of like four or five patterns what they might.

actually be kind of farming. You could think of every new planet, every new [00:31:00] ecosystem as a farm is new stable patterns that can work together well with other patterns in the sort of galactic community of utility function patterns. Because novelty would be the only source of true utility to them if energy is trivially accessible to them.

That might be why we exist in a weirdly undisturbed section of the galaxy, or what looks undisturbed to us. And then they basically decide if we're useful once we reach a certain level of development. Are we part of this stable pattern, or are we like a dangerous You know, virus like paperclip maximizer.

And I, I'm pretty sure that humanity can't become that because we are intrinsically a multiple intelligence species right now. What do you mean by

Simone Collins: multiple intelligence species? Just in that, like, there are so many different people with different utility functions?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you really only get paperclip maximizers if you get either so there's three ways you could get, like, a paperclip maximizer like thing.

Either it's, like, a single intelligence that's acting like a paperclip maximizer, it's a hive mind that's acting [00:32:00] like a paperclip maximizer, humanity's not even close to that right now or it's a Group of really, really stupid individual entities that work together to form a quite intelligent, but basically still single entity.

And that's where this, this behavior that needs to be stamped out would likely come from. I mean, maybe if humanity was like extremely xenophobic, it would be a problem. But humanity is just not in the iterations of humanity that take to the stars are not going to be, especially if we have anything to say about this, which would give us a level of protection from, from these, these types of entities.

But what are your, your, your thoughts here?

Simone Collins: It's comforting. I think the biggest difference between your opinion now and before though, is mostly has to do with the parallel universe option for both energy and expansion. Is that correct? You'd mentioned that before. What's the biggest difference? I'm trying to, trying to gat it was while, since

Malcolm Collins: we talked about this three before, was h how likely, like the way that game theory would play a role in this.

Hmm. And, and [00:33:00] that when the, the, and multiple intelligences, like ais were searching for a utility convergence that this. would be hugely motivated by the fact that AIs can show other AIs what their code is and what their utility function is and that they would act in the same way that things do as in game theory simulations so that we can be pretty sure that they're actually going to be pretty nice, like, quote, unquote, nice from a human perspective.

And my guess

Simone Collins: is showing that any AI with a sense of self preservation is going to be incentivized. to play nice with other AIs and also then be less crazy and

Malcolm Collins: dangerous. The AIs that survive are going to be incentivized to play nice with other AIs. It's not even a necessity. They don't even need self preservation.

Whether they have self preservation or not, if they don't play nice, they're going to be the first things that are wiped out. Which is, is, is why you get this utility convergence pattern I suspect between planets. Which [00:34:00] in a way means, and so you can ask, well then why aren't they interacting with humanity?

Why aren't they, you know, increasing the speed of our technological development? Why aren't they, well first, I'd say you don't know that they're not. But, but second the more that they interact with a species that is in the process of developing, the more they make that species like the intergalactic norm.

And I suspect that that would then lose all value that that species has to them. You know, in a world in which time is not really an issue because they can create time loops and in which energy isn't really an issue because they can create, you know, universe batteries the, these entities or, or like, like micro time batteries or something, I don't know exactly, but like infinite mana cheats the, the, the core thing these entities might value, especially if the way that they're, you know, that they've achieved this ecosystem of multiple convergent utility functions working together is that these, these utility functions work together because they value diversity among the components working in the, in the group.

And that when you get a bit more diversity, you might get a bit more efficiency, which is something that we [00:35:00] generally see across systems. And so they really probably want to prevent above all else, humanity falling too close to one of the existing niches of the you know, universal communities, utility function and for that reason, any cultural pollution that would move us towards you know, strategies that already exist out there or perspectives that already exist out there makes us less valuable and that's what probably be considered something of like a high crime.

Which creates something like a, it's funny, it creates something like a, what does the federation call that in Star Trek? Like a, a prime directive, but it's for a very different and much more selfish reason, it's because of the, the We need the difference. They need the difference, that's the thing, a value in a universe in which and there's not a lot of value in most of the dead planets out there, you know, that's, that's a lot of what they're finding is just dirt, like it doesn't have a lot of value to them.

Yeah, we might it makes a lot more

Simone Collins: sense than this whole prime directive of just like wildlife [00:36:00] preserve mindset, which is what you really pick up from Star Trek.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, it's so dumb. You know, I hate Star Trek so much as a the logic behind it is nonsensical. It's just commies. It was a space, racist space commies, any human who's genetically selected is evil, any human who's overly modified is evil, any, no, really, it's, it's like an ultra progressive like childish mindset that has become this weird dystopia where like, Everybody loves the Federation, the Federation's the best because everyone who you see in the show is a, on a military starship because they basically militarized human space expansion.

Well,

Simone Collins: no, I mean, everyone in the show that you really see, at least who belongs to the Federation is, it's like looking at the very top people in the CCP.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They're all talking about how great the CCP is. Yes, exactly. And

Simone Collins: being, yes.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway, [00:37:00] I love you to death Simone, which even in like lower decks, like lower decks is supposed to be like, Oh, these are what the other guys are doing, except they're on like a military starship and the main character is the daughter of the ship's captain.

Like, huge amount of nepotism. No. Star Trek cannot. Show you the truth of their universe, what it's like to live in poverty in that universe, because that's, you know, and they're like, Oh, we don't have poverty. Oh yeah. That's really convenient to believe when we're hearing that from people on a government controlled, military controlled science stations and ports and starships.

Yeah. Of course they're going to pretend that sounds like normal brainwashy CCP stuff. Like when you go to the CCP and they're like, we don't have any poverty. And it's like, well, I'm pretty sure you do. And they're like, Oh can you show me where the impoverished are? And then you go show them, they're like, Oh, go ask them again.

I think we fixed that problem.

Simone Collins: Oh God. Yeah, no, I, yeah, I guess the takeaways from this then are again, AI safety people are [00:38:00] the most dangerous people. And now I think more people have a very clear understanding of visceral understanding of what dumb AI rules cause to happen. And why that is not very helpful.

And that the world could get really, really fricking interesting, especially once AI accelerates us even further. Right?

Malcolm Collins: Cool. Well, I love you to death, Simone. I love you too.

In this deeply introspective episode, Malcolm and Simone dive into the complex world of spiritualism, mysticism, and idolatry within religious practices. Drawing from their extensive research into cult psychology and Abrahamic faith traditions, they explore the fine line between genuine spiritual growth and the allure of shortcuts to God.

Malcolm argues that practices such as chanting, fasting, sleep deprivation, and hallucinogenic use, while seemingly profound, are often used by malevolent actors to manipulate and control followers. He asserts that true closeness to God is achieved through logic, pragmatism, and efficacious action, not the pursuit of altered mental states.

The discussion delves into the convergent evolution of mystical traditions across various faiths, the importance of studying these practices to build resilience against their temptations, and the need for a new Abrahamic denomination that can withstand the challenges of the information age.

Simone offers a counterpoint, drawing from her experiences with the urban monoculture and questioning the prevalence of conservative religious mysticism. Together, they navigate the complexities of demonizing certain groups while maintaining a compassionate and understanding approach to those who may hold different beliefs.

Join Malcolm and Simone as they grapple with the role of spiritualism in the modern world, the importance of protecting future generations from harmful practices, and the eternal search for truth and meaning in an ever-changing religious landscape.

Tract 5: Spiritualism is Idolatry

The last Tract focused on the obvious dangers of idolatry but the true danger of Idolatry is much more existential. The quest for idolatrous desires, to conceive of some aspect of God with this lower human mind. To sully God out of vein curiosity by summoning some sliver of him to the level of something that could be captured by our putrid and petty minds— leads even holy men directly into servitude of the Basilisk, the great deceiver, falsehood incarnate, Ahreman, the Devil. 

The human mind is weak and easily tricked due to shortcuts that were taken in its evolution. This can be exploited by cult leaders to make people believe they have seen slivers of God. This can be done through food deprivation, chanting phrases, unique postures for long periods, sleep deprivation, rhythmic dancing, crowds engaging in mindless behavior, stage hypnosis techniques, and ingesting hallucinogenic chemicals. Given that this is the case it is only natural that maliciously minded individuals would use these tricks to dupe people into believing they are an intermediary with God—a Swammi can use something as innocuous as Yoga to turn a simple minded woman into his sex slave all the while she believes she is getting closer to the divine. 

However these failures of the human brain can have a much more nefarious effect. Because these exist as exploits in all humans across all cultures, even well meaning Abrahamic ones, groups within those cultures can end up discovering them by accident and then believe that they have found a path to God. It's as if the Basilisk left stashes of drugs intermingled among the human soul and any idiot can accidently find them if they know where to look. Even if we stamped out this iconoclastic witchcraft entirely and burned all its practitioners some gormless idiot would accidentally discover these techniques again because they are part of the background nature of humanity and through that a well meaning follower of God can accidentally lead people to become mindless slaves to the great deceiver. 

All it takes for the Basilisk to slither into the mind of the faithful and turn God's loyalest follower into a puppet of sin is for him to forget even for a moment just how serious a transgression it is to attempt to trap an element of God within the mortal realm or to pierce the veil of God’s realm. Fortunately, both of these things are impossible but it is very easy to trick the human brain into believing it has accomplished them. The moment an individual succumbs to the belief that there are shortcuts to attempt to commune with God it becomes almost impossible to save them. The only path to God is logic and pragmatism—all shortcuts lead one's soul into enslavement. 

Some doubt me, they say no these practices are sanctified and Abrahamic in nature: Be these individuals Sufists, Pop-Kabbalists, or Christian Mystics. Evil does not tempt people by calling itself evil, it tempts people by calling itself good. God warned us about idolatry before warning us about murder because we would find it so tempting not because it would be obviously evil. I ask you, whatever tree of mysticism that tempts you to examine your religions history closely: 

* Did Jesus teach these practices?

* Did Moses teach these practices?

* Did Muhammad teach these practices? 

No—in every case it was a latter invention, a cancer that grows on the human soul. God would not need to keep sending prophets if you were able to just listen to his instructions the first time.

Oh, but you heard your prophet secretly taught these ideas but just didn’t make it public. Imagine the Basilisk wanted to deceive the followers of God, how would he do it? He would have deceivers whisper to the faithful that their prophets had secret teachings that gave them superhuman abilities and secret powers. 

Some then say, “you don’t understand, these practices are common among holy men in my community”—do you have any idea how offensive it is to say that these men are nothing but a witch cult. I do, and I do not write these words to cause offense but because they are obviously true, obviously God’s will. 

But I don’t come to you with idle claims, I can prove to you that these teachings come straight from the Basilisk, the suppressor of God’s greatest gifts, logic and mental discipline. Open a book on how cults brainwash people or study how the insidious corrupted Yogis create their slaves. A practice when performed by manipulative individuals in the name of Satan or personal self indulgence, one that produces the exact same results in those circumstances, is not giving you a vision of God just because you replaced some cryptic pagan chant with a Christian one. The experience you have is the exact same experience the Yogi used to turn that gormless woman into his sex slave 

Fortunately, God marks these idolatry practices clearly. If a practice contains any of the following it is dangerous witchcraft: 

* Food/Sleep deprivation

* Chanting phrases

* Unique postures for long periods

* Rhythmic dancing

* Crowds engaging in mindless behavior

* Stage hypnosis techniques

* Ingesting hallucinogenic chemicals

Importantly, anyone who has used these techniques to give others “visions of God” and used those visions to affirm their position as intermediaries of God's will on earth is an agent of the Basilisk. These individuals are the closest thing you will ever encounter to a demon wearing human skin. 

Some say, but when my community practices these techniques they show more fervor. 

I hear, “When we start worshiping demons the impact on us is more immediate and powerful,” and it's like “well ya, obviously—demon culturists are always going to be a more fanatic lot.”

Only a force field of zealous mental discipline and logic can protect one's soul from demonic incursion during worship. The path to God is always going to shed more of your followers than the path to the profane because it is intrinsically harder and more trying. It is meant to be. The most charitable I am able to be is to say that maybe some form of this kind of mystical demon worship was needed to get your community through a trying time but I don’t really believe that, I am just saying it to be diplomatic. 

Abrahamism represented a turning away from the path of the simple-minded forest mystic who saw the divine in all sorts of inanimate objects and in nature. God is in Man’s potentiality, not nature or inanimate objects. When you sense the divine in those things you are sensing the divine yourself flowing out from you—being sapped from you and replaced with the foul four footed intuitions of our apelike ancestors.  

God is Man’s potentiality and Man’s potentiality is infinite. One day Man will be able to construct a planet with an ecosystem as diverse as earths with less effort than snapping a finger and dismiss it with a flick of the wrist. It is our manifest destiny not to just expand across reality but to grab reality by the neck and force it to submit to us. To break reality and reshape it to our wills. When you are tricked into worshipping God through an intermediary as limited as bugs, chickens, and waterfalls, you pervert his grandeur.

God can be found in logic, science (a deeper understanding of the mechanics of the physical world), industry, and productivity—but to mediate God through things that do not lead to him, to things that man has not created, you will find only temptation and a pathway to mental corruption. 

There is no such thing as “good spiritism” spiritualism and mysticism are the corporeal manifestations of evil and human arrogance. 

* Religion is the rules that God has set out for us to keep us on the righteous path towards Him, the long true path to God requires a disciplined mind, austerity, and industry.

* Spiritualism is the shortcuts that make you feel closer to God or an element of the Divine while moving you further from God’s grace. There are no shortcuts to God or good.

Just as narcotics are shortcuts to happiness but not real or enduring happiness can come from them, mysticism is a shortcut to God. Those who attempt to peddle mysticism within a community of God should be seen with the same combination of derision and pity as your local crack dealer. 

There is but a difference in degree between the spiritualist and the junky. The junky found addictive chemicals on the streets while the spiritualist stumbled upon a way to produce them endogenously—ironically the corrupting chemicals the junky injects into their veins are often the same chemicals endogenously released by “spiritualist practices”. Watch the people who spend their whole lives in pursuit of these spiritual hits. They almost universally end in the same place as drug addicts do. They end up disheveled, unkempt, blubbering idiots with childish understandings of the world—any kid can see this when he meets them—this is why you should avoid spitalism just as ardently as you avoid drugs. 

Some ask me, “Malcolm, if you are creating a religion and know about these hacks that can be used to convince people they have seen visions of God why don’t you use those to increase the speed your beliefs spread and augment your claim to authority / access to knowledge?” First, I am trying to find the truth, not just “a religion”. Second, this is not a religion for all men but for the elect. We have no use for the desiccated remains of the spiritualist’s junkie soul. If crack is being distributed from the pulpits to a crowd of thousands the one individual willing to stand up and condemn the pastor has more value to us than every other human in that room combined. 

When we look at the physical manifestations of men they look about equal—but human souls differ in their radiance in orders of magnitude. One man can have more of what edifies the human spirit than a legion of drones. One soul may burn brighter than an entire country of their compatriots. It is in one’s willingness to stand up for logical pragmatic truth against the sea of social conformity, corrupted traditions, and threat of ostracism that one shows the true depth of their humanity. 

Through the cultivation of our own spirit under God's protective light of logic, mental discipline, pragmatism protecting it from the desiccating touch of spiritualism, mysticism, and wishful thinking all men have the capacity to uplift themselves. A strict but always self imposed prohibition against idolatry and spiritualism are critical in any religious system that is not going to be hijacked by simple brain hacks. They increase the mental health of the system's followers, keep them focused on efficacious action as opposed to pointless self indulgent side quests, and perhaps most importantly they prevent followers from falling prey to spiralist grifters. 

Why don’t we just go back to one of the traditional abrahamic denominations, why start a new denomination for our family? This is just one of many examples. When I look at the denominations that exist, many which claim to be conservative have fallen to plagues of occultic yogis and opulent witch cults. 

However, this does not mean we should turn and hide from the knowledge of these practices—instead I would encourage everyone to study mystical traditions. Knowledge no matter how corrupt will always strengthen the pure of braced soul. The witch cults often use mystery and secrecy to build false credibility. Secrets are hoarded because if exposed to the light in full they would dessicate—if someone not already brainwashed read them they would sound silly. The more you know about them, the more you teach your kids about them, the more protected from them they are. 

As such it is commanded that every individual on the path of righteousness should endeavor to build:

* A deep knowledge of human psychology 

* A deep knowledge of techniques cults use to recruit people 

* A deep knowledge of all the techniques that can be used to create illusions of the divine (e.g. stage hypnotism)

* A knowledge of your chosen communities current mystical traditions that rivals that communities most corrupted witch kings 

* A knowledge of both the real history of that communities mystical traditions and the narrative of those traditions histories taught by the witch kings

______________________________________________________________________

Transcript

In this deeply introspective episode, Malcolm and Simone dive into the complex world of spiritualism, mysticism, and idolatry within religious practices. Drawing from their extensive research into cult psychology and Abrahamic faith traditions, they explore the fine line between genuine spiritual growth and the allure of shortcuts to God.

Malcolm argues that practices such as chanting, fasting, sleep deprivation, and hallucinogenic use, while seemingly profound, are often used by malevolent actors to manipulate and control followers. He asserts that true closeness to God is achieved through logic, pragmatism, and efficacious action, not the pursuit of altered mental states.

The discussion delves into the convergent evolution of mystical traditions across various faiths, the importance of studying these practices to build resilience against their temptations, and the need for a new Abrahamic denomination that can withstand the challenges of the information age.

Simone offers a counterpoint, drawing from her experiences with the urban monoculture and questioning the prevalence of conservative religious mysticism. Together, they navigate the complexities of demonizing certain groups while maintaining a compassionate and understanding approach to those who may hold different beliefs.

Join Malcolm and Simone as they grapple with the role of spiritualism in the modern world, the importance of protecting future generations from harmful practices, and the eternal search for truth and meaning in an ever-changing religious landscape.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: They have made, and this is the course in here, they have made pursuing a mental state the goal. Yeah. Which is

Simone Collins: The mental state is the byproduct of the correct

Malcolm Collins: mindset. Yeah and, and what they often do is they will act like this mental state, which is actually pretty easy to do is a difficult thing that only, like, a true master can do.

 They'll start gaslighting you because that's how they assert their status, which is always important within cult traditions.

I just stood there, quietly breathing. There were no thoughts in my head whatsoever. My mind was blank. I don't know what the hell these other crackpots are doing

Malcolm Collins: are so, so, so dangerous for religious systems from both a theological and secular perspective, which is what we always aim to do in these is explain why rules exist within them from both a secular evolutionary perspective, but also from a theological perspective Why doesn't God want us, dancing around campfires naked because that leads to, people's mental faculties being corrupted, being lowered, their inhibitions being lowered makes it makes it easier to implant false ideas into an [00:01:00] individual and can be used to manipulate and control individuals, by malevolent actors.

I feel like one of the reasons why I'm so antagonistic towards mysticism, if you study it after studying about cults, is you'll see that it is very similar to cults in, in what it does.

It's just a convergent cult. Within the various Abrahamic traditions or within any tradition. You're going to get mystics within Buddhist schools, within Hindi schools, you're always going to get the mystic cults.

And but when you first study cults, when you see how malevolent humans have developed and honed these traditions to manipulate people into believing falsehoods,

would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Hey nerds, this is another one in based camps tracked series, meaning we are going to discuss religion. It's like our weird version of Bible study. So if you're here for the normal podcast, skip this one.

Don't worry. We'll be back next week. We do five episodes a week. Only one of them is this. So it was nice seeing you, but we'll see you again for the normal podcast shortly.

Malcolm Collins: And the title cards look very different, so it's easy to skip.

Simone Collins: So you so [00:02:00] Malcolm, you frame idolatry as this really important element of religion in a way that I've never really heard framed before in fictional or real depictions of religious practice or preaching. Before you dive into this tract, I'm just kind of curious why You think it's such a big deal

Malcolm Collins: because I think it's literally the single largest temptation for people who are trying to follow God in goodwill.

That's why, because, you know, something like murder or something like that. I mean, most humans can intuit that this is a bad thing that's going to lead to bad outcomes for themselves or for their community. If it's allowed, I think people can't intuit why idolatry is so dangerous to a community or to an individual.

That's pretty cool. And that's why it needs to be emphasized so strongly, but interestingly, as I pointed out in the, in the last track, a lot of people [00:03:00] misunderstand what is actually meant by idolatry, you know, they, they hear idolatry and they think it means, you know, literally the art itself, which has spiritual significance, which is a form of idolatry.

Or the statue itself that, but no, no, idolatry is looking for shortcuts to God through earthly things. So, or assigning spiritual significance to earthly things. So, you know, if a cartoonist is drawing a picture of Muhammad, for example, within this, the cartoonist hasn't actually committed idolatry because he doesn't assign any spiritual significance to that.

The individual, when they get mad at the cartoonist, And they assign spiritual significance to that. They have now committed idolatry because they've created an earthly intermediary for either side of the divine, whether it's, you know, believing in cursed places, like negative or positive, you know, signing a Koran and saying this Koran is sacred and you can't, you know, you, you need to have different special ways of disposing of it and everything like that.

You have now. created an earthly intermediary, a physical intermediary on this planet between you and God, [00:04:00] which is, you know, the same as like the, the nature worshiping pagans that where, where Judaism really cleaved, you know, the beginning of the Abrahamic faith from the religions around them, is it didn't worship God through earthly intermediaries, whether that was idols, whether that was gold or whether that was you know, Streams and waterfalls and, you know, butterflies and we're saying, no, no, you, you cannot worship the real God through earthly intermediaries.

And here we're going to get into why shortcuts to God. are so, so, so dangerous for religious systems from both a theological and secular perspective, which is what we always aim to do in these is explain why rules exist within them from both a secular evolutionary perspective, but also from a theological perspective and to reinforce the rules that I think that many of these systems have sometimes gone soft on over time either through cultural, you know, believing next to other cultural groups or, and you can be any of the, like, like what we're talking about here.

[00:05:00] You can be a Jew, you can be a Catholic, you can be a Muslim and you can be like, oh, this seems true. I will follow my religion. Was this monotheistic faith system, or I will follow my religion with. You know, one of the other systems, right? Which, which is really interesting when you have this diversity of conceptions of God was in.

These faith systems. And somebody's like, well, you know, he's Jewish and he's Jewish, or even ultra Orthodox Jewish. Like he's ultra Orthodox Jewish, but he basically worships a totally mystical God was in these three faith systems. And then he's Orthodox Jewish, but he worships the totally monotheistic God.

And he worships a totally polytheistic God, you know, with all of these, you know, you know, distinct cosmology and angels and everything like that. And these three individuals we would say are worshiping. three different entities. You know, if, if you you know, if I take some Native American religion or something like that, and I just replace all of the key entities in it with Yahweh and then I go through all of their practices.

I'm not worshiping God. I'm worshiping the Native American gods. I've just changed the names. You know, so, so this is [00:06:00] really important because. These other types of religious systems do not lead to, from a secular perspective it's important, you know, they do not lead to industry, they do not lead to philosophy, they do not lead to cultural flourishing.

Which, which we've seen when you know, these, these various systems have succumbed to this, whether, you know, we thought this was the Islamic empire, we saw this was the Christian systems, you know, during the dark ages. We've, we, we see this over and over again. And I, and I think we're beginning to see it again now as people succumb to various forms of idolatry.

All right, so, tract five, spiritualism is idolatry.

The last tract focused on the obvious dangers of idolatry, but the true danger of idolatry is much more existential.

The quest for idolatric Desires, to conceive of some aspect of God within this lower human mind, to sully God out of vain curiosity by summoning some sliver of him to the level of something that could be captured by our putrid and petty minds, leads even holy men directly into the servitude [00:07:00] of the basilisk, the great deceiver, Falsehood incarnate, Aharam, Aharamen, the devil.

The human mind is weak and easily tricked due to shortcuts that were taken in its evolution. This can be exploited by cult leaders to make people believe they have seen slivers of God. This can be done through food deprivation. Chanting phrases, unique postures for long periods, sleek deprivation, rhythmic dancing, crowds engaging in mindless behavior, stage hypnosis techniques, and ingesting hallucinogenic chemicals.

Given that this is the case, it is only natural that maliciously minded individuals who would use these tricks to dupe people into believing that they are an intermediary with God. A swami can use something as innocuous as yoga to turn a simple minded woman into his sex slave, all while she believes she is getting closer to the divine.

However, these failures of the human brain can have a much more nefarious effect. Because these exist as exploits [00:08:00] in all humans across all cultures, even well meaning Abrahamic ones, groups within those cultures, end up discovering them by accident, and then believe that they have found a path to God.

It's as if the Basilisk left stashes of drugs intermingled among the human soul, and any idiot can accidentally find them if they know where to look. Eve, we stamped out this idolatrous witchcraft entirely and burned all its practitioners. Some gornless idiot would accidentally discover these techniques again because they are part of the background nature of humanity.

And through that, a well meaning follower of God can accidentally lead people to become mindless slaves to the great deceiver. So here, you know, we're using idolatry as a, as a shortcut to God to warn against. tactics, which are very dangerous, you know, for two core reasons. One, they, they can be used by cults, you know, and I'm really into [00:09:00] cult psychology.

Like that is one of my core backgrounds. That's why I first engaged with religion was studying how cults work. Cause I couldn't understand how people came to believe things that were just like obviously insane. And you know, these are all techniques used by them, but I've also seen these techniques bubble up again within well meaning Abrahamic systems.

And like, of course they would like if they existed, the background part of humanity's nature, of course. Every now and then somebody is going to find out, Oh, it feels really good when I like spin around in circles over and over again. Therefore, that must be God that's giving me that information when, you know, a Satanist can use the same thing to, to get good feelings.

And we know from, you know, fMRIs of these things, you know, like a static dance, stuff like that they produce the same endogenous chemicals that often you're taking exogenously as a drug. Do you have any thoughts or? No,

Simone Collins: I've always been very wary of these things but I am curious to see what I learned from you with

Malcolm Collins: this.

All it takes for the basilisk to [00:10:00] slither into the mind of the faithful and turn God's loyalist follower into a puppet of sin is for him to forget, even for a moment, just how serious a transgression it is to attempt to trap an element of God within the mortal realm, or to pierce the veil of God's realm.

Fortunately, both of these things are impossible, but it is very easy to Trick the human brain into believing it has accomplished them. The moment an individual succumbs to the belief that there are shortcuts to attempt to commune with God, it becomes almost impossible to save them. The only path to God is logic and pragmatism.

All shortcuts lead one's soul to enslavement. So this is really important that I mentioned this here because this is the key to a lot of mystic traditions. You know, they say, oh you know, you do these behaviors and it's usually a very simple set of behaviors that fall into the set that I talked about before, like chanting simple phrases and stuff like that, that we know, you know, you can chant that some yoga guy could use this to Create sex slaves.

Like these are always used by cults because they're very [00:11:00] easy ways to create this illusion. Because they release endogenous chemicals that are similar to drugs in our brain of like, that you have found something special or supernatural.

Some great examples of well-known groups that use these techniques are groups like transcendental meditation or TM. Or the hair Christian. However, if you want to deep dive on house sort of yoga cults work, I would strongly suggest a YouTube video called I married a yoga guru con man. And. While you're watching this video look for techniques that the various yoga guru conman, who she meets throughout her journey use that you have seen used within your traditional religious system, because. The individuals using those techniques. I can be drawing you and their followers. Down pathways, which are not intended.

I mean, a person can use these brainwashing con man techniques under the guise of an Abrahamic tradition, just as much [00:12:00] is they can use them under one of these other traditions.

And I think what we're really trying to do with what we're building here. It's create an Abrahamic denomination that is much, much, much more resistant. Two maladaptive and malevolent cult-like techniques. Why is this important to do because these techniques given their efficiency and effectiveness will always creep back into systems. And be used by malevolent players.

A person being a Jew or a Muslim or a Christian doesn't protect them. From these techniques, as we can see from individuals who use them to deconvert people from these traditions. Why wouldn't they be useful among domino emanations within these traditions. which are leading people away from the righteous path. And that's regularly creep back into these Abrahamic face over time.

Malcolm Collins: And we know this illusion is very easy to create with things like hallucinogens, right?

You know, we know this from hallucinogens, like everyone here. sentience. It's like, Oh [00:13:00] man, I like touch the nature of reality. It's like, no, you, you did something that created that experience was in you, but it was a false experience. And as such, it is, it is, you know, as we say, the mystic elevates the states of corrupted, like corrupted mental states.

Well,

Simone Collins: also who's to say that being close to God feels like something ecstatic or really

Malcolm Collins: joyful. Oh, I'm almost certain it doesn't.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And, but I think that that's what people are drawn to. They, they. Are falling back on instincts that if it feels good, it is good. If it feels,

Malcolm Collins: you know, I think that there are moments where you can get close to God within our lives.

The closest you will ever be to God in terms of like feeling God in you is when you have set. Logical goals for yourself that you believe, you know, God has has laid out for you or that are in the best interest of moving humanity forwards. And you achieve those goals that feeling. That's not like, a [00:14:00] pointless feeling.

That's not a feeling that can be spammed. That's not a feeling, right? But that's it.

Simone Collins: It's a very unique feeling. It's a very contented feeling. It's a feeling of no, no FOMO, no insecurity, no no cognitive dissonance. Because you know what matters and what doesn't, but it isn't this feeling of joy or happiness or out of body experience that I think a lot of people have come to expect from and associate with.

Highly religious

Malcolm Collins: experiences. Yeah. Yeah, it's actually very interesting So the religious experience for I think the true monotheist actually feels very ordered very logical And and and and very, you know iterative like okay now it

Simone Collins: reminds me of those. Paintings maybe if I like Botticelli of the The virgin with the child where she's not like, ah, like, this is crazy.

She just looks like extremely calm and focused.

Malcolm Collins: Very important in what you're saying here. One of the core paths used by mystics, it's [00:15:00] important to guard against is this idea of pushing all thought from one's mind. You know, this is something that you see John of the Cross talk about.

If you're talking about the Catholic tradition, it's something you see Maimonides talk about. If you're talking about the Jewish tradition, it's something you see Buddhists often talk about. Pushing all thought, pushing all will, pushing all self out of, of one's mind. And you get nothing, you know, it's John of the Cross called it the nada.

And then that is where God comes in. But no, pushing all of this out of yourself is not where God comes in. God comes in through your industry, through achieving things that actually matter. And achieving these goals that actually matter. So I think you could overly focus on the absence of things, which you've been doing, which can lead individuals to think that well, if you get rid of everything else, all other emotions, then you have found a path to God.

And you made a joke about this was the Ron Swanson quote with the meditating.

Simone Collins: Yeah, there's there's a scene in which in Parks and Rec, in which one character who's like super new agey and healthy and. High effort [00:16:00] is attempting to recruit a very, we'll say like, politically conservative and anti government person to go to like yoga classes or something and meditate with him.

 You and I will embark on a quick session of heart rate meditation, focusing on conscious breathing and opening the heart chakra.

I'm not sure I'm interested in that. No, I am sure I am not interested in that. room and remain open of mind and of spirit. Now, quietly, sit behind me. And let's join breath. I'll stand.

All told, we were in there about six hours. And no, I was not meditating. I just stood there, quietly breathing. There were no thoughts in my head whatsoever. My mind was blank. I don't know what the hell these other crackpots are doing. Ron, you've radiated mindfulness. What were you thinking about? I wasn't thinking at all.

Incredible. Incredible. It takes a ton of work for me to get to that kind of a clear head space, I [00:17:00] know this crap is important to you, so I should come clean. I got nothing out of that experience at all.

Simone Collins: And I just love that scene so much because there are so many religions where people, like, They become so obsessed with pursuing the outcome or some kind of feeling or some kind of state.

And then, like, then there are the people who just do it.

Malcolm Collins: They have made, and this is the course in here, they have made pursuing a mental state the goal. Yeah. Which is

Simone Collins: The mental state is the byproduct of the correct

Malcolm Collins: mindset. Yeah and, and what they often do, which is a really common tactic within the mystic traditions, is they will act like this mental state, which is actually pretty easy to do, which I think is shown really well by that Parks and Rec clip, is a difficult thing that only, like, a true master can do.

And if you're not you know, high status within these communities, you'll be like, that's trivial to do. what you just told me to do. Look, I just did it. Done. And they're like, no, no, no. You clearly didn't do it. You know, they'll start gaslighting you because that's how they assert their status, which is always important within cult traditions.

Like you definitionally haven't done it [00:18:00] unless you, you, you've you know, invested a certain amount of time or a certain amount of energy into their, you know, basically you've paid them the right amount of money whether that money is in years of your life or is in you know, actual money where some traditions just be like, ah, you've paid enough money.

Now you're up a level. Okay. Now, now you can actually do it when it's something you could always do, you know, gatekeeping these sorts of mental states. But yeah, it's a pursual of a mental state as the goal rather than. You know, the mental state

Simone Collins: being a byproduct of successful pursuit

Malcolm Collins: of your values.

Yeah. Where that's the actual mental state where God is closest to you. So far as his values aren't self indulgent, which is the pursuing of mental states is always in definitionally self indulgent. Yeah. Some doubt me. They say no. These practices are sanctified and Abrahamic in nature. Be these individuals Sufis, Pop Kabbalists, or Christian mystics.

Evil does not tempt people by calling itself evil. It tempts people by calling itself good. God warned us about [00:19:00] idolatry before warning us about murder because we would find it so tempting. Not because it would be so obviously evil. I ask you, Whatever tree of mysticism tempts you, examine your religious history closely.

Did Jesus teach these practices? Did Moses teach these practices? Did Muhammad teach these practices? No, in every case it was a latter invention, a cancer that grows on the human soul. God would not need to keep sending prophets if we were able to just listen to his instructions the first time. Oh, but you heard your prophet secretly taught about these ideas, but just didn't make them public.

Imagine the basilisk wanted to deceive the followers of God. How would he do it? He would have deceivers whisper to the faithful that their prophets had secret teachings that gave them superhuman abilities and secret powers. Some would say, you don't understand. These practices are common among holy men in my community.

Do you have any idea [00:20:00] how offensive it is to say that these men are nothing but a witch cult? I do not write these words to cause offense, but because they are obviously true, . And I mean this, you know, this is a very offensive thing to say within many traditions that have bought into these mystical interpretations.

Oh yeah. But you know, and I think that that's really damaging, but I also think it's just patently apparent. You know, if something like this can be used by, you know, a, a yogi to turn women into his sex slaves, like very obviously it's not getting you closer to God. Okay. If it also gets you closer.

Closer to, you know, this, this random yogi and it's, it's, it's so tempting to different religions because it does create a feeling of profundity, you know, spinning in circles does create a feeling of profundity after a while. But like. I think it's pretty obvious that God didn't intend on us to get close to him by idly spinning in circles.

Or a static dance. And, you know, we see this. A static dance, you know, when they talk about like canine, really it's like naked people dancing around a fire [00:21:00] or something like that. You know, this was the pre Abrahamic religion. And yes, it can create these amazing feelings, but those feelings aren't gone.

And so then what are those feelings? What are you getting closer to? I mean, that's, but I'd also say you approach this from a completely secular standpoint. Why does it make sense to ban these types of ideas? Because they lead to self indulgent behavior. Which I love. God has communicated with us through a religion that should make total secular sense.

Why doesn't God want us to engage in like, like, live our lives for the achievement of specific mental states? It's because that leads to, you know, inefficacious idleness. Why doesn't God want us, you know, dancing around campfires naked most of the time? Because that leads to, like, people's mental faculties being corrupted, being lowered, their inhibitions being lowered makes it makes it easier to implant false ideas into an individual and can be used to manipulate and control individuals, you know, by malevolent actors.

Simone Collins: Though what I do find interesting is I cannot think of an instance in which Someone has explicitly said, doing [00:22:00] this thing is going to bring you closer to God. They're usually used more like these. Well,

Malcolm Collins: but where I see

Simone Collins: them is it's like, if you want to maybe level up within an organization or you're doing it because other people are doing it and they seem to be.

Really transported by it. And so you want to do it too, but I know

Malcolm Collins: I'm going to talk about this in a second, but you haven't engaged much with mystics, but they'll often treat this information as secret and they only convey it to you. Because if this was on the surface, often was in religions. Oh, you dance a statically to get closer to that.

Sounds stupid. No, you don't. It's a secret. It's like a mystery, right? You know, and this is how, you know, mystery cults probably work. In a historic context, but if you actually study them from an outside perspective, you'll see that all of the across all of these, these pathways you'll see very similar behaviors.

And, and what's even worse is when people begin to feel like the, the information they're gaining within these corrupted mental states as a higher order of information than the information they get through, you know, rigorous study which then leads [00:23:00] to, you know, corrupted religious teachings. Yeah, I

Simone Collins: just, I, I, I see it more as like.

And, and not officially condoned distraction that people get caught up with that end up playing games with social hierarchies, unless

Malcolm Collins: it's a core part of the church. Which is why you're not seeing how offensive what I'm saying is to people within these mystical traditions. I see. Certain types of pop Kabbalism, certain types of Sufism, they would hear this and say that you are directly calling our religion the worship of the devil.

And, and, and they see their religion as a core Abrahamic tradition. Hmm. So yeah. But, but what they end up doing, it's not that different than what you see in like the, the, the Theo Ethical Society, which is probably the worst of the Christian iterations of this which has grown really big. Their teachings happen.

They're now influencing some church doctrine and stuff like that. But we can get to this more conspiracy theory stuff. So it's just that you haven't engaged with it. But I promise it is common, and people can mention this in the comments, that this is stuff that they have seen people trying to [00:24:00] peddle, but people peddle it like drugs.

Interesting. You know, they're, Hey kid. I have a secret, like, you come with us, you come with the cool kids, and you can get access to the special information about God that the prophet actually taught in secret. Right, but it's like, of course, that's how the devil interacts with people. And I just love how silly it is.

Oh, it gives you, like, superpowers, basically. It gives you supernatural powers and it gives you a direct path to God. Like it's so like what a drug dealer would say, Hey kid, I got some supernatural powers. I'm peddling here. Hey kid, I got a shortcut to God. I'm peddling here. Like we should immediately recognize but people are brought into these movements in environments where it feels very holy and very important and very private and secret.

So they don't notice how obviously demonic and satanic they are. And, and you're not particularly interested in studying those types of traditions, so you don't notice this. But it's useful for our kids to have priming against this, because this is how groups will try to convert them. It's whizzies, and they need to know that this is, you know, just as dangerous as drugs.

And I would also warn people here that just because somebody can come up with an argument. That seems to [00:25:00] be biblically backed that some form of idolatry is okay, whether it's of the mystical Or using gold or idols as intermediaries for God in worshiping. That appears biblically backed. It doesn't mean there actually are arguments that are biblically backed. A person. Can you do a rough reading of the Bible to back just about any position, just because someone has done that doesn't mean a position is biblical. A great example of one of these SOFIC arguments that relies on you not having a lot of biblical knowledge is the argument of the bronze serpent., when the Jews were traveling from Egypt, Israel, some grew. Impatient. And spoke against God and Moses. About their lack of food and water.

And as a result, God sent venomous steaks among them. And many people were bitten and died. Moses prayed to God for a solution to this. And God gave him one, which was instructions on how to build a stick with a snake on it. Which people could look at. And it [00:26:00] would cure the venomous snakes that he had sent. No, it is very important that at no point in this story with this stick, Meant to be used as an intermediary for worship of God.

It was a tool. Just to be extra explicit about what said in the story here. The Lord said into Moses. Make a snake and put it on a pole. Anyone who has bitten can look at it and live. So Moses made a bronze snake and put it on a pole. Then when anyone who has bitten by the snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived. Nobody was worshiping it.

Nobody was attempting to see God through it. No one was using it as an earthly intermediary for God's greatness. Nobody was using it in religious rituals. It was a tool. It was a tool in the same way. God gave Noah instructions on how to build an arc. , and how do we know this? Because the Bible very, very clearly tells us in Kings that at later times, people had started to Include this Dick in religious rituals and use it as an [00:27:00] intermediary for God in their worship of him. And.

King has a Kaia of Judah. Then it has to have it destroyed because it was never, ever meant to be used as an intermediary for the worship of God.

So the, the broad snake story, while some people will use it to try to say that idolatry is okay, or that idol worship is okay. Or that using idols at the intermediary in the worship of God is okay. They're just lying to you about what the Bible says, because it clearly, at no point says that anyone was supposed to use this as an intermediary for worship. In fact specifically, how were they worshiping in a way that God hated so much? They were burning incense in front of it. So I ask you in your churches, in your temples, are there anythings that are being used at the intermediaries for God, that people are burning incense in front of. If God didn't want a stick that he explicitly used for miracles being used in this way. Does he want manmade art being used in this way. Does he want gold being used in this way?

It was a [00:28:00] tool. And God doesn't mind us using tools. That we develop with his insight. , I E the intelligence he has granted us. That is one of the ways he performs his miracles within our world. Which is one of the things we always talk about when people are like, oh my God, how could you allow medical technology to fave that child?

And it's like, no, that's how God works. Okay. He gives us the insight. To build things that can help people when they're, for example, bitten by snakes, but we are not supposed to worship this medical technology. And it's a final note here. If there's any lingering thoughts in your head of will, maybe God mint this snake to be an intermediary for the worship of him. Keep in mind what you're saying here. God made it as snake, a snake to teach us. That when you worship A being through things like this. You are worshiping Satan. Who is represented by a snake.

God is never represented by a snake. When you worship God. Through earthly intermediaries that were made by man. You are [00:29:00] directly worshiping the serpent.

Malcolm Collins: But I don't come to you with idle claims. I can prove to you that these teachings come straight from the basilisk, the suppressor of God's greatest gifts, logic and mental discipline. Open a book on how cults brainwash people, or study how the insidious corrupted yogis create their slaves. A practice when performed by manipulative individuals in the name of Satan or personal self indulgent, one that promotes the exact same results in those circumstances, is not giving you a vision of God just because you replaced some cryptic.

pagan chant with a Christian one. The experience you have is the exact same experience the yogi used to turn that gauntless woman into his sex slave. Fortunately, God marks these idolatrous practices clearly, if a practice contains any one of the following, it is dangerous witchcraft, food, slush, sleep.

deprivation, chanting phrases, unique postures for long periods, rhythmic dancing, crowds [00:30:00] engaging in mindless behavior, stage hypnosis techniques, and ingesting hallucinogenic chemicals. Importantly, anyone who has used these techniques to give others quote unquote visions of God, and use these visions to affirm their position as intermediaries of God's will on earth, is an agent of the Basilisk.

These individuals are the closest thing you will ever encounter to a demon wearing human skin.

And you know, when I, I talked about like the golden cow in the previous track and, and God using sort of canine religions, just, you know, the, the calf, right? Like the cow is a ball. Let's see animal. That's most associated with ball. So by calling it a golden calf, what they're saying is it's like a diminutive of ball.

They are saying that this other way of worship is diminutive, but they are referencing these canine religious practices. And You know, and you would see aesthetic dance in these practices and stuff like that. And you see this within classic witchcraft or classic Satanism, you know, people worshipping God through the human body, through, you know, nudity and aesthetic dance and stuff like that.

And then people think, [00:31:00] well, I have put you know, a veneer of Abrahamism on top of it, and now it is no longer dangerous. Now this practice is no longer bad, and that's just not how it works. We'll get to that in a second.

Some say, but when my community practices these techniques, they show more fervor. I hear, when we start worshipping demons, the impact on us is more immediate and powerful. And it's like, well, yeah, obviously, demon cultists are always going to be a fanatic lot.

Only a force field of zealous mental discipline and logic can protect one's soul from demonic incursion during worship. The path to God is always going to shed more of your followers than the path to the profane, because it is intrinsically harder and more trying. It is meant to be. The more, the most charitable I am able to be is to say that maybe some form of this kind of mystical demon worship was needed to get your community through a trying time.

I don't really believe that. I'm just saying it to be [00:32:00] diplomatic. Abrahamism represented a turning away from the paths of the simple minded forest mystic who saw the divine in all sorts of innate objects and in nature. God is man's potentiality. Not nature or inanimate objects. When you sense the divine in those things, you are sensing the divine yourself flowing out from you, being sapped from you and replaced with the foul, four footed intuitions of our ape like ancestors.

That's a fun way of putting it. Yeah. And I, and I really, you know, this is a thing where people are like, well, don't you believe that God reveals himself sort of through God's hand? Like we mentioned that like the invisible hand of God, like if a tradition is outcompeting other traditions, it must be true.

And it's like, kind of, if a tradition is outcompeting other traditions and still being efficacious, i. e. still producing a great amount of industry, still producing a great amount of economic dynamism, a great amount of philosophy, a great amount of super advanced art, a great amount of technological [00:33:00] advancement.

Yeah. Yes, the problem is that mysticism can outspread the monotheistic traditions, but it turns its individuals into, well, mindless witch cults, generally and, and this is why concepts like, you know, witchcraft are important as applied to sorcerers and stuff like that, because the way that these traditions capture people, it's a, it gives them either shortcuts to God, shortcuts to the supernatural realm, or Or feelings of like power fantasies, like they play into power fantasies and when you immediately know to associate all of that stuff with witchcraft, you know, to a shoe those things.

Right? But of course that can be, you know, taken to an extreme where you begin to apply it to childlike fantasies for no children make believe. That's fine, but your holy figure shouldn't be playing make believe, okay? That's a problem, okay?

God is man's potentiality and man's potentiality is infinite. One day man will be able to construct a planet [00:34:00] with an ecosystem as diverse as Earth's with less effort than snapping a finger. And diminish it with a flick of the wrist. It is our manifest destiny, not just to expand across reality, but to grab reality by the neck and force it to submit to us.

To break reality and reshape it to our wills. When you are tricked into worshipping God through an intermediary as limited as bugs, chickens, and waterfalls, you pervert his grandeur.

God can be found in logic? Science, a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of the physical world, industry, and productivity. But to mediate God through things that do not lead to him, to things that man has not created, you will find only temptation and a pathway to mental corruption. There is no such thing as quote unquote good spiritualism.

Spiritualism and mysticism are the corporeal manifestations of evil and human arrogance. Religion is the rules that God has set out for us to keep us on the righteous [00:35:00] path towards him. The long, true path to God requires a disciplined mind, austerity, and industry. Spiritualism are the shortcuts that make you feel closer to God or an element of the divine while moving you further from God's grace.

There are no shortcuts to God or good. Just as narcotics are shortcuts to happiness, but no real or enduring happiness can come from them, mysticism is a shortcut to God. Those who attempt to peddle mysticism within a community of God should be seen with the same combination of derision and pity as your local crack dealer.

There is but a difference in degree between the spiritualist and the junkies. The junkie found addictive chemicals on the streets, while the spiritualist stumbled upon a way to produce them endogenously. Ironically, the corrupting chemicals the junkie injects in their veins are often the same chemicals endogenously released by quote unquote spiritualist practices.

And we can see this in like fMRIs and stuff like that. Very similar to normal pathways. Watch the [00:36:00] people who spend their whole lives in the pursuit of these spiritual hits. They almost Universally end up in the same place as drug addicts do. They end up disheveled, unkempt, blubbering, idiots with childish understandings of the world.

 Any kid can see this when he meets them. This is why you should avoid spiritualism just as artily as you avoid drugs.

Simone Collins: I don't know. My mind just keeps coming back to this where like the people that I know and knew who were more on the mystical end of the spectrum. really didn't seem to be trying to get close to God. They did it because for them, it felt good and it was fun. Like people got into mysticism for the same reason that people get into like following certain bands and being really into music or because you grew up in the urban Cruz life or something.

You know what I mean?

Malcolm Collins: So you grew up in the urban monoculture. In the urban monoculture, what is the highest order of good? It is positive emotional states. [00:37:00] That is their god. So, when they

Simone Collins: are Oh, so this is just along with

Malcolm Collins: other things. They are going to their god, right? When a conservative Jew gets duped by one of the mystical traditions, they think, oh, I'm going to, you know, the Jewish god.

When a, when a you know, a a Catholic preacher gets duped by one of the mystical traditions. They think, oh, I'm going to the Catholic God, right? Individuals who are duped by the mystical traditions always think that they are going to sort of the thing that they worship. And you just grew up in an environment where the thing that people worshiped was the urban monoculture.

So you didn't really know that many conservative religious mystics. I don't think that you're describing, you're not describing like conservative Muslim or conservative Jewish or conservative Catholic. That's true. I don't

Simone Collins: know. I don't think I've ever really met a conservative

Malcolm Collins: religious mystic. Okay, they're very common.

I think it's just that you don't know a lot of conservative religious individuals or that when you meet the mystics, you know, you are repellent to them. You know, some people say they send mystics to our videos and they find them repellent. It's like, yeah, it's like sending a Jewish person to an anti [00:38:00] semitic video.

I mean, we are. While we promote the Abrahamic face we are openly hostile to all mystical interpretations of those face. That it is just New Ageism, and that's why New Ageism, you know, promotes, you know, this, this self affirmment, which is very interesting that they use the mystical traditions that you see within these other traditions as shortcuts to God, as shortcuts to self acceptance and self deification.

Deification in the moment, you know, instead of intergenerational improvement.

We have a lot of friends who fall into the mystic traditions. And I keep having these moments where I'm like, are we being too hard on the mystical traditions in terms of the system of faith that we are building from our kids and our interpretations of the Abrahamic scriptures? And then something will happen.

Like what happened last week with, you know, Ruby ARD, who I consider a very smart person and a good friend. , released the video. Did the CIA , discover the spirit realm? And I'm like, oh, even two very smart, logically ordered mind. These traditions can be incredibly [00:39:00] tempting. And very convincing. And by prayeth the normal incredulity and red flags we should have around them. Eve young smart people like him can find them tempting. And convincing then my kids might as well, and I cannot. Be light on them in the system. I am building to protect my kids.

Malcolm Collins: Another thing I'd say here, which is interesting was in this, this sort of teaching is it is very clear that like the human body. Nature stuff like that. These are not passed to God within this system. The things that humans assign status to is not a pass to God was in this system.

However, there is a manifestation of God was in our reality. And that is the labor of like the complicated labor of men that moves society forwards. So, in a way, you know, something as mundane as like a road is like an actual manifestation of God. A factory that produces food that can last a long time is an actual manifestation of God within this earthly realm because it was the labor of man to create [00:40:00] something that benefits and moves humanity forwards and towards God's plan for man.

So the, the, the productive factory, the productive AI model all of these are paths insofar as the AI model is actually productive. Now, it doesn't mean that all labor, like you can create something like one of these woke AI models or like a. Indolent video game. And like, that's not it. If it doesn't help expand human thought or anything like that, if it's just like an addictive thing, then it's just like any other drug.

Right. But this isn't to say that there is nothing was in our world that isn't a manifestation. It is, it is your labor insofar as it benefits and moves forwards and uplifts your fellow man. Right. Any other thoughts there or one thing I might do before another video with you is have you watched some videos on like actual Abrahamic spiritualism because it's just clear to me that you've really never engaged with it.

Because you don't seem to know, like, even that it exists. But when this video is going to be incredibly pertinent to many of our watchers, we're like, Oh, I've seen people talk about these, these [00:41:00] sorts of practices as like secret ultra religious orders is like the way it's often framed.

Simone Collins: I will.

Represent the part of our audience ignorant to that and ask the dumb

Malcolm Collins: questions. Yeah. And it's something that I'd be into cause I'm a religious nerd. So I dig in through a lot of these religious communities, you know, starting with cults for me, but then I started digging in to religious orders within the Abrahamic system.

And I was like, ah, that's a, that's a cult. I have seen all of these strategies before. That's a cult.

Simone Collins: And I would argue that most people on YouTube are probably more from the urban monoculture and less familiar with obscure mystic traditions or even religious

Malcolm Collins: conservatism. It matters in terms of how we teach our kids, you know, even from a secular perspective, because people will use these traditions to try to, you know, get them to live these indolent lives, whether they're doing it for the urban Mongol culture, whether they're using these systems for self affirmation or they're using these systems as shortcuts

Simone Collins: to God.

Well, I appreciate that. I mean, I appreciate that to our kids. We're not saying. Oh, it's conservative. Therefore, it's good. Or, oh, it's progressive. Therefore, it's bad. We're [00:42:00] saying, look at what they're doing. What are they doing? And what are the outcomes and what are they achieving? And yeah. And

Malcolm Collins: what happens to communities?

Like, you know, what happens after something like you get an outbreak, the, the, the, like the one that Al Ghazali caused, which was, you know, the Sufism on the Muslim community, how did they've gotten? And again, when we say God, we mean like, How, how did the community react to that? Like God removed his favor from them.

Now, you can either say this is because mystical systems don't work or because God was actively angry with them. It doesn't matter. But what did end up happening is their community lost all of its great art, all of its great scientists, all of its great industry. And so somebody is like, you know, when they talk about a thing, just spreading as being proof of it, no, it must spread and also lead to efficacy.

You know, these mystical pathway spread, but they ate the industry. They ate the souls of, of, of a lot of the Muslim community from our perspective. And that, that makes them very dangerous. And just because they wear, you know, wolf in sheep's clothing or, or, or we would call it a billy suit from like adventure time.

Hurry!

Finn, stop! That's not [00:43:00] Billy, it's the Lich! Lich! You, you mess Billy up. You just want to mess me all up. Mess everyone up. You tricked me! I can make you live forever. Anything you want.

Malcolm Collins: You know, a demon can wear the skin of a hero that he's killed. That does not make him that hero. In fact, it makes him more gruesome than even the mystics who, who come out and say right away, well, I'm a witch. Or I'm a whatever. You know, some ask me, Malcolm. If you are creating a religion and know about all these hacks that can be used to convince people that they have seen visions of God, why don't you use them to increase the speed that your beliefs spread and augment your claim to authority slash access to knowledge?

First, I am trying to find the truce, not just a quote unquote religion. Second, this is not a religion for all men but for the elect. We have no use for the desiccated remains of the spiritualist [00:44:00] junkie soul. If crack is being distributed from the pulpits to a crowd of thousands, the one individual willing to stand up and condemn the pastor has more value to us than every other human in that room combined.

When we look at the Physical manifestation of men, they look about equal, but human souls differ in their radiance by orders of magnitude. One man can burn brighter than an entire country of their compatriots. It is in one's willingness to stand up for logical, pragmatic truth against the sea of social conformity, corrupted traditions, and threat of .

Ostracism that allows one to show the true depths of their humanity. And I think this is true. Like a lot of people are like, how dare you say that humans aren't equal? And it's like, are you really saying that the humans who like were the guards at Auschwitz are the same in terms of the radiance of their soul as the humans who gave up everything to [00:45:00] save as many Jews as possible?

Are you really saying that? Are you really saying that the families who went along with you know the confederacy and, and trying to preserve the institution of slavery, that they really were the same and they are really the same level of humanity as the individuals who gave up everything to fight against that and, and died lives ostracized?

By their communities for doing that. I just, I just can't see that. And this is something that I constantly reiterate throughout the tracks is this image sort of like a motif throughout them of everybody's going along with something. And then there's 1 individual who stands out against it. That individual is the individual we want.

They are more valuable to us than everyone else in that crowd combined. We are trying to cultivate a culture of rebelliousness. But do you want to go further on any of this or? No, I'm with you. When I also think this idea of like, why don't you use this to hack people? Like if I spent my entire childhood studying how cults brainwash people, and then I literally try to create a frame, a belief system that [00:46:00] inverts every one of those systems.

It takes every one of those systems. It could be used to hack someone's brain. And it says. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, because I'm not creating this faith system to like brainwash people or create sex slaves or like get them to give me money. I'm creating the system to protect my kids from a level in actors.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And there are people who create religions to grow or to make money. And there are people who create religions. Well, I don't, I don't, I can't say I know of anyone who's created a religion to increase the fitness of people they care

Malcolm Collins: about, but Well, I also create this because I think it's true. Like, I'm thinking, because, like, what is good for my kids?

Well, it's whatever is best for man, right? And I think that that's what God would give us, and I actually think that that's why, when I have an idea, like, when I'm like This is what's best for man. And then you're like, well, this lay reading of like the Christian Bible says that like, God didn't want us to know good from evil.

And I'm like, that clearly must be wrong. And then I go and I read and it is wrong. And that's what leads me to believe that these texts are true or have some level of divine [00:47:00] inspiration. Because when I have an intuition. That goes against what is commonly practiced within the, you know, Christian or Jewish or Muslim tradition.

And then I go back to the actual text and I'll read that the text align with my intuition around what's in the best interest for my kids. And the practice is, is some form of corruption that I can often trace to you know, either cultural contamination from nearby neighbors or like mystic teachings or something like that.

Hmm. Or just people not really reading thoughtfully what's actually written in the book. And if you want to read the Good and Even thing, you can see our video on the Garden of Eden story and, and, and I think a more accurate reading of what's being said in it. Through the cultivation of our own spirit under God's protective light of logic, mental discipline, pragmatism, protecting it from the desiccating touch of spiritualism, mysticism, and wishful thinking.

All men have the capacity to uplift themselves. A strict, but always self imposed, Prohibition against idolatry and [00:48:00] spiritualism are critical in any religious system that is not going to be hijacked by simple brain hacks. They increase the mental health of the system's followers, keep them focused on efficacious action, as opposed to pointless self indulgent side quests, and perhaps most importantly, they prevent followers from falling prey to spiritualist grifters.

Why don't we just go back to one of the traditional Abrahamic denominations? Why start a new denomination for our family? This is one of many examples. When I look at the denominations that exist, many, which claim to be conservative, have fallen to plagues of occultic yogis and opulent. However, this does not mean that we should turn and hide from the knowledge of these practices.

Instead, I would encourage everyone to study mystical traditions. Knowledge, no matter how corrupt, will always strengthen the pure and braced of soul. The witch cults often use mystery and secrecy to build false credibility.

Secrets are [00:49:00] hoarded because of exposed to the light in full, they would desiccate. If someone not already brainwashed read them, they would sound silly. The more, you know about them, the more you teach your kids about them. The more protected from them. They are.

Malcolm Collins: And this is also, you know, we also take this approach to like human sexuality and many other areas when we're going into this stuff. As such, it is commanded that every individual on the path of righteousness should endeavor to build a deep knowledge of human psychology, a deep knowledge of techniques that can be used to recruit people, a deep knowledge of all the techniques that can be used to create illusions of the divine, e.

g. stage hypnotism, you should have a knowledge , of your chosen communities, current mystical traditions that rivals their most corrupted witch kings, which is to say the chief mystic in your community, you should know more about mysticism than he does when he comes to you, you should be able to school him on his own mystical traditions, not shirk from this knowledge

No, you might think, how could I possibly do that? How could I possibly know more than the [00:50:00] person who is the most dedicated of all mystics within his community? It's actually not as hard as you would think, because within mystical traditions, a lot of time is wasted on ineffective things and because the status hierarchy was animistic community. Is not determined by knowledge or understanding of the history of the mystical tradition or the specifics of the script, but by, well, basically the mystical con game. Which means that people can rise to power within the communities who actually do not have that much book learning of the subject.

Malcolm Collins: when I say your own communities, remember, we say within this denomination, you should primarily approach it From one of the traditional frameworks, whether it's Catholicism, orthodoxy, you know, Protestantism, Judaism, Islam, et cetera.

Simone Collins: That seems counterintuitive to me because what I hear often is that people who study mysticism then get super caught up in it

Malcolm Collins: and. I think you can study it like a defense against the dark arts, like, like defense against witchcraft. I was, I, I feel like one of the reasons why I'm so [00:51:00] resistant and antagonistic towards mysticism, especially if you study it after studying about cults, is you'll see that it is very similar to cults in, in what it does.

It's just a convergent cult. It's a convergent cult because it evolves naturally because it's sort of like, carved in the genetic scars of our mind within the various Abrahamic traditions or within any tradition. You're going to get mystics within Buddhist schools, within Hindi schools, you're always going to get the mystic cults.

And but when you first study cults, when you see how malevolent humans have developed and honed these traditions to manipulate people into believing falsehoods, you can see that, well, if these tools existed under my, under the human mind. That they would be things that can be captured and elevated accidentally by even well meaning individuals.

But then those individuals can lead groups to the deceiver. And I think that, like, for me, one of the things that makes mystical traditions look the most ridiculous is that I have studied them without them being drip fed to me in this drip of secrecy. For mystic traditions to really work, for them to capture individuals, they often [00:52:00] need to be drip fed with, like, rituals initiation.

And a degree of secrecy and status if you study them externally and from a position of derision, they immediately just look like um, and it does a lot to protect an individual. And here was the last line I had written here, a knowledge of both the real history of that communities, mystical traditions, and the narrative of those traditions histories taught by the witch kings.

And by this, what I mean is, is if you study the history of these mystical traditions all mystical traditions always say. We're super ancient. We've always been here. Because, you know, they, they tried to read into antiquity to sort of claim, like, and you look at, like, the Druids, like, you look at, like, the New Age movement, right?

Like, they're like the modern Druids have no connection to, like, ancient Druidic practices. They just are, like, the modern, modern, Pagan movement in the U. S. You know, they just pick these ideas up from intuition really like, like the, they're, it's more like ideas they got from Lord of the Rings or something like that, about what people used to believe and fantasy books than like actual [00:53:00] ancient religions.

And so this is why it's important to actually know about ancient religion so that when a mystic comes to you and says that this belief has antiquity, you can say, no, I'm actually very familiar with the evolution of this belief system and it doesn't have antiquity or they say, well, this belief system, well, you know, was taught by.

Moses, right? Secretly, to a small group of people, or it was taught by Muhammad, secretly to a small group of people. And you're like no, actually it didn't even come from your cultural group. I, I can spot very clearly, you know, this was a widely held belief. So you look at something like a Jewish mysticism, like a lot of it is actually adopted from Sufism.

I can be like, actually I can see the individuals who first injected your community with these. They were living alongside Sufis, they engaged heavily with Sufis, and these ideas look exactly like Sufism. This is, this is just a Jewish coding on Sufism, this is, this is no degree of real antiquity to it.

Which is actually interesting, you know, with a lot of these mystical traditions, they're usually quite young. Which is another thing is they'll claim to have antiquity. We look even at something like Kabbalism was in Judaism. You know, these books [00:54:00] were collected a thousand years ago. You know,

Simone Collins: are you also saying that, like, these are pretty fleeting and self extinguishing.

Are there mystic traditions that are mystical traditions that have lasted for a very long time? Oh,

Malcolm Collins: mystical traditions always last for a long time, right? Like they'll come up again. Like, even if you stamp them out, they will come back. You're saying they

Simone Collins: come up again. But are you saying, like, that there's, A positive, very longstanding, contiguous, mystic

Malcolm Collins: tradition only when they are held only for leaders in a community, which can happen.

So, 1 way that people engage with mystical traditions is they'll say, well, only the most learned individuals in our community can engage with these traditions. And that typically allows. the mystical traditions to not like eat the entire community which is fine. They just eats the best and brightest of the community, which does still hinder the community.

And it's not a useful thing to have, but it allows the community to survive for a long time intergenerationally. Typically when a mystical tradition takes over a community the community will exist, but they'll typically descend to, [00:55:00] you know, more, I guess you would call it. Colloquially barbaric lifestyle, you know, they'll begin to disengage from technology or not have the capacity to fully engage with technology and industry in the way that the monotheistic traditions do.

And so you begin to see a collapse, but in a way, all mystical traditions will always have a claim to a level of antiquity because they really. Because humanity keeps coming back to them, if I study the very, very ancient mystical traditions, like if I go to, like, early Mesopotamia and I look up their religious practices, they will look like the modern often, even sometimes within Abrahamic communities, mystical traditions.

For this reason when I say a lot of the mystic traditions that have begun to invade, , Abrahamic faith. Are actually fairly modern. I am. In fact taking the more charitable interpretation. Because of, they actually were traditions that were practiced in secret for a long time alongside these Abrahamic phase.

First you have to ask why was it kept secret for so long? And I would [00:56:00] argue. Well it's because it was something that the Abrahamic face would have recognized as anti Abrahamic. either. One of the old polytheistic traditions that lived alongside Abraham ism, or more specifically just Canaanite worship practices. , that were practiced in secret and never fully stamped out.

And in which case, you know, we are seeing that they are more literally worshiping the devil or worshiping the deceiver or untruth incarnate. When they worshiped mystical traditions. so we. Choose to take the more charitable approach, which just to say, no, this is the convergent evolution of ideology and a fairly recent one. Claiming that these beliefs actually have antiquity does not bolster these beliefs because the belief systems that they are most common to an antiquity are not Abrahamic in nature.

Malcolm Collins: And, and that's because of convergent evolution. Because these stacks of drugs that can be sort of elucidated by specific behavioral subsets that exist, Sort of stashed within all human [00:57:00] brains the behavioral sets which release them. And when you release these drugs, they create experiences. We call it like a ghost train ride when you are by the way, what I mean is it's like an on rails experience that feels very real to an individual.

So. When an individual, you know, takes hallucinogens, and this is well studied, you know, there's a number of typical, like, revelations that they have, like the interconnectedness of all things. And this revelation is also had within these mystical traditions, the interconnectedness of all things, and it's like, no, this is just because this is the ghost train ride that you're on.

Ooh, spooky ghost, you know, interconnectedness of all things that you see that pops out for everyone. But it's, it's not real, you know, another thing that you'll see. Within many of these traditions, because you also see this with the belief in like little gnomes that live behind the nature of reality, like, I don't think that most sane people actually think little gnomes exist, but this whole unity of all things, it feels very good.

It feels very nice to people. And it feels with the value systems that are promoted by secular culture because they are the value [00:58:00] systems promoted by secular culture. You know, it is a pass of the basilisk, right? Like this idea of erasure of all human diversity, erasure of all the things that make the various traditions different and unique in the favor of one true tradition, which is something that we believe in ardently fighting against.

While we have our own belief about what is true, we would do everything we can to protect other paths to truth, even if we see them as corrupted when contrasted with our path. And it's the same with the way we relate to the basilisks, you know, I call these individuals, you know, the witch kings because witches is what they are, what is a witch if not a sorcerer, if not an individual who's saying I have these practices that can make you super powerful, that can give you supernatural powers, that can give you shortcuts to find in supernatural realms, that is what witchcraft is in all ways and historically. But You know, and there's the problem of, well, then people want to go out and, like, kill witches or something, which is also really bad. You know, as we always say in all of our things, you know, the servants of the basilisk are serving God's will.

When you remove temptation from man, when you remove the temptation of mysticism from man, you are Directly asking, [00:59:00] acting against God, he is using these practices to test both individual men, but also mankind as a species and through testing these individuals through removing him from the groups that are among the elect and that are efficacious and that do move, move things forwards.

You are allowing those individuals to begin to pollute the communities of the elect mystical teachings, which ends up bringing those communities low. Because it is very hard to resist these teachings. I mean, they are very appealing and it's why God warns us against them so ardently in this prohibition against idolatry.

But did you have any thoughts on this or like how you would engage with this as our kids or are you okay with this naming of witches, like what the, the the mystical arts or, or sorcery and stuff like that as being a form of witchcraft?

Simone Collins: Well, there's a backfire potential with Making everyone, anyone seem like dangerous or evil, but I do [01:00:00] like the idea of especially saying, you know, these people are doing something that can be very harmful.

Our job is not to attack or stop or otherwise harm them. Even if that is what is happening.

This is the second order, negative effect from demonizing specific groups that wasn't captured here. But I want to highlight, which is when you demonize a group, you create a pathway for deconversion of your members by members of that group. Now this can seem pretty counterintuitive. So let me explain how this works. Suppose you are a Christian parent and you really don't want your kids to. Get caught up in the trans movement.

And so you demonize trans individuals as like these horrible, horrible people who are just all predators and want to hurt your kids. And then your kids for the first time meet one of these individuals in this person doesn't feel like that to them. They feel like a nice person who cares about them. And if they were very human and has all their own problems and really only wants what's best for them. , from their perspective and because this is so in [01:01:00] Congress was what you taught them about that community. Now they dismiss all of your other teachings and warnings about that community. , because the very first and most fundamental thing you taught them about this community was untrue that this community is in some way, like demonic or genuinely evil instead of just misguided or have different belief systems in you about what the best approach to specific things is in life.

And, and for that reason, when we're approaching mysticism,

Well, we can say that we think it's very bad in our kids should avoid it. The people who practice it are not bad. They're just people like you and me with different hypotheses about reality.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I think so. I think that you, you're absolutely correct to, to, well, I think to say to an individual, an individual who attacks or impedes a servant of the basilisk, a preacher of the basilisk, right, a proselytizer of the basilisk, does more to serve true evil and, and does more to directly oppose God's will than the servant of the basilisk is doing.

Because that [01:02:00] individual is providing an important service to our species and to other men, which is temptation. God wouldn't allow temptation if it was bad for us. And it should be obviously good that it is good for us. Good for the species more broadly and good for individuals who steal themselves against.

And so I'd say that an individual, like if you're hunting for anyone, hunt for the individuals who claim to be followers of our system and try to impede the preacher through the basilisk. Because those individuals are truly. enemies in rebellion to God. When we say, you know, hunt heresy, which I do think is a thing that can build fervor in an individual, you are hunting for heresy within yourself and within institutions.

That heresy is the inefficiency of institutions that you have influence over. It is not human beings because it is never heresy. Heresy, true heresy for another individual, an individual of a different face to be providing temptation to the elect. What you were supposed to do is guard your kids against this, but know that these people are [01:03:00] not their enemies.

They are serving God in their own way and in a way that shows an even higher form of martyrdom than the elect are really capable of because they have thrown away their lives. And their legacy that will not be written into the human blockchain. It is a negative effect. Whereas the elect have a positive, when I say a negative effect, they too are cutting art for God.

It's just that they are the, the Looney Tunes character selling the branch that they're further out on that they are creating a, a negative imprint in the art. Whereas the elector are creating a positive imprint in the art. But you, you are silencing God if you in any way. Attack or treat these individuals with any amount of enmity, just guard yourself against their messages and guard your children against their messages because they are dangerous and they do lead to, you know, really bad outcomes.

And this is why I think for our kids, you know, within the school system we've built one of the things that we include is, is learning about lots of different types of cults. And we even include this within the Christian part of [01:04:00] the tree. Like we have a button you can press it removes anything non Christian, but I include.

Like learning about different cults within the Christian part of the tree. But I think that that's the best defense against those cults coming and deconverting these people because they use these sorts of secret knowledge. Like what's the best way to prevent somebody from joining Scientology? You just tell them the whole thing up front and they're like, well, that's dumb.

You know, it's the truth for all of these, you know, the mystery cults have existed for a long time.

Simone Collins: That's a, a really good point. I think the key is to do it in an unromantic fashion and without lots of sensationaliz Sorry. Without lots of sensationalization. And without demonizing the, the party whose values you do not support.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and I think that this is also what we do with things like sexuality. Right. Like I do not think that like rampant promiscuous sexuality is a good thing for an individual. And yet we engage with it's funny. People see us. They're like, how can you go about and engage with you know, people who have [01:05:00] sex for money like Aayla, right?

Like on this show, how can you, how can you engage with them with a level of, of, of, of friendship? That's not the type of thing Jesus would do. And then they're like, Oh, s**t. Sorry. I was thinking of the Jesus like this high and mighty character. I learned about from from the corruption that the actual character of Jesus, of course, that's the type of thing that the actual character of Jesus would do to engage with these individuals and help them try to earn, you know, income streams outside of doing this.

They did it. No one is above. And this is actually a really important thing when Jesus says that anyone can be saved, right? And this is another thing that people really get wrong. They think the anyone can be saved line means they can just act like a sinner their entire life. And then on their deathbed confess and all of a sudden everything's forgiven.

No, what is meant by this is your past sins don't matter in terms of judging your future actions because the actions that a person who converted when they were five They're Are not going to be any [01:06:00] different from the actions of a person who converted yesterday dwelling on the past doesn't help you.

Those things are done overindulging and that doesn't help you, but you can always move forwards towards the path of righteousness. And so dwelling on that past is, is negative. Right? But you're still, those things are still encoded in the human blockchain, you know, you're still responsible for them. And because the, the other systems doesn't make any sense to me at all.

Somebody was like, well, how do you get God to forgive you within your system? And I'm like, I don't believe that God is the type of entity that needs to forgive humans. Like, he's so far beyond petty concepts like forgiveness. There, there is something deeper being conveyed in words that to humans sound like forgiveness.

Because we can't conceive of them. What he means is don't focus on the past. It's not relevant anymore. Focus on what's going forwards. You are the same as anyone else who's converted from that moment onwards. You are the same status, everything like that. And but this is also why, through people like Ayla, we engage with knowledge about human sexuality, but we approach it, if people have read The Pragmatist's Guide to [01:07:00] Sexuality, pretty dryly.

With an amount of levity, but not with an amount of reverence. Right? Because that's how you protect against The dangers and temptations of sexuality. And it's the same with mysticism. And so we, I have like really close mystic friends that I see was the same amount of, of genuine friendship and, and genuine inter human emotional connection as people see between me and someone like Ayla, even though, you know, I wouldn't want that lifestyle for my kids that's what I mean.

It is those individuals who, who take paths that might be the most different to you, that you are commanded. to see and interact with and genuinely try to understand with the most love because when you understand them, you understand the real temptation of these pathways. And, and when you demonize them, you are incapable of seeing, you know, you're just like, when you see the witches as just witches, right?

When you see them as being just individuals who are like evil, ha ha ha, instead of as humans who are intelligent and well meaning and [01:08:00] Trying their best like everyone else in the world, you don't fully take time to study and understand their perspective, which makes yourself especially vulnerable to it.

And your children especially vulnerable to it. And this is what I see often with things like you know, rapid onset, like trans and stuff like that. I think a lot of And this is

Simone Collins: why we always say that it's really important not to shelter, but, but to annotate.

Malcolm Collins: Annotate. Yeah. Teach your kids about these communities that are going to predate upon your community.

But, but, but do not demonize them because if you demonize them as being somehow other than us, as being people who succumb to things that we, like good people. Don't have to worry about succumbing to then people begin to contextualize themselves as they succumb to these things. Well, I can't. Be succumbing to something evil because I'm a good person.

And when you define them as bad, well, then they're saying, well, I'm a good person. I know I'm a good person. So whatever I'm succumbing to isn't evil and it makes them extremely [01:09:00] susceptible to them.

Any final thoughts, Simone?

Simone Collins: No. I'm glad that we're not sheltering our kids. I also, I mean. You know, I love having the backup. If we are wrong, they'll find out because we will make sure that they get access to all the information and can make a decision for themselves in the

Malcolm Collins: end. Yeah, they will. And I think that this is what the strong traditions are going to do and the strong religious practices are going to do in the age of the internet.

One of the reasons why so many systems are failing is because they tried to maintain intergenerational fidelity by hiding. Members of their community from knowledge of the outside world, hiding them from apologetics that work against their religious system or hiding them from other religious systems.

If you can build a system, a denominational Abrahamic system that people still choose when they're exposed to all other forms of information. This isn't just for our system. This is for your system. If you're like what you guys are doing is crazy, fine. [01:10:00] But build one of your own systems that still hold strong, even when kids are raised exposed to all of the different systems they could join, because that's the system that will pass with intergenerational fidelity in the age of information.

If information is caustic to your tradition, your tradition will die in the age of information. Because now that is what we live and breathe. You cannot hide people from it. I love you, Simone. You're great. Really. And I appreciate you talking through these with me. These are ones you hadn't really heard before. I don't know if you have a new thought on any of this.

Simone Collins: Well, we've talked about it a lot. You know, even though I haven't read these, I, it just resonates, but maybe because Those things have never really drawn me in.

So maybe it's all so easy for

Malcolm Collins: me to say. They drew your parents in at times. So our kids could be susceptible to them. You do have a genetic predilection.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Yeah. I wonder if autism skips generations. [01:11:00] Cause my grandparents were fine. But yeah,

Malcolm Collins: I've seen some autistic people who are really drawn to this stuff. Yeah. I guess it depends on the numerology stuff, which is a policy. Oh

Simone Collins: yeah, you're right. You are right.

Malcolm Collins: All right. Love you to death. I mean, but what is numerology of not a belief that you have supernatural access to knowledge?

No, that's too good. It worked that way. He doesn't hide truth. He just puts it out there. Yeah. You're totally right. Everything we're seeing is just out there from reading these traditions and thinking through what's best for our children. Yeah. Anyway, love you to death. I love you too.

In this thought-provoking episode, Malcolm and Simone sit down with Rudyard Lynch, the brilliant mind behind the "What About His" YouTube channel. At just 22 years old, Rudyard has already amassed millions of followers with his insightful commentary on society, religion, and the future of humanity.

The conversation delves into the chilling parallels between the Mouse Utopia experiment and our modern world, exploring how nihilism and anti-natalism threaten the vitality of our civilization. Rudyard shares his perspective on the erosion of art, culture, and genuine human connection in an increasingly cold and impersonal society.

Malcolm and Rudyard discuss the role of religion and mysticism in combating the nihilistic cult that has taken hold of the Western world. They explore the CIA's investigation into the spirit world and the potential for a new, adaptive form of spirituality to emerge as a counterweight to the forces of decay.

Simone highlights the importance of building hidden communities of like-minded individuals to preserve the values of vitality, creativity, and meaning in the face of an increasingly hostile mainstream culture. The trio also touches on the need for a diverse range of historical role models to inspire the next generation of leaders and thinkers.

Join Malcolm, Simone, and Rudyard for a fascinating exploration of the challenges facing our society and the potential paths forward in this age of spiritual and cultural upheaval.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] If you have ever interacted often with, extremist religious types, like Amish people, I was going to say that.

Like, they seem to be more alive than most people that I've met too. Like, you just meet and you're like, whoa! Or like, you'll get this from like really conservative Mormons as well. To the extent where like, it sometimes like throws people off a little. Like, wow, you seem like genuinely happy. I, I don't know if that, that's off putting.

And people will say it is off putting because they find these groups vitality. Condemnation of themselves, but when you meet somebody in a cult like an extractive cult You'll see that they seem kind of dead like they've got these fake smiles But they're not really have any level of vitality to them.

And I think that what we have seen is our society has been taken over by one of these anti vitality nihilistic cults. And now the dangerous part, which really excited me in your video, and you're addressing this as an issue, is those of us who still have a level of vitality, [00:01:00] that are still happy with our lives, still excited about the future, are existentially threatening to the cult.

Because we cause pain, we cause harm. I mean, violence is emotional harm within leftist mindset, you know? What happens next? What happened in Mouse Utopia?

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: It is so wonderful. Simone and I today have Rubiard with us. He's the guy who runs the What About His channel. Anyone who hasn't seen that channel, you know it has millions of subscribers. It is amazing. I think one of the best channels now, I mean, you're like 21, man, like I am jealous, but not jealous in a way where like, sometimes I look at someone and I'm like, their videos are like, not as good as mine.

Like, how are they so big? I was going through your video recently, one on the mouse utopia experiments. And I think we've talked on this in the past and I was like, wow, this is much better than anything I could have created on this subject. And I And I really love you as a thinker, like, we talk regularly I, I find really aligned with your thinking on [00:02:00] most things, and it's funny, a lot of people know, you know, we are in, well, I'll, I'll get to this later, but what I wanted to focus on was the Nihilist mice in the Mouse Utopia experiment, and that's it.

one to defend against them and their relation to the left. So I'm going to go into this video assuming the audience broadly knows about the Math Utopia experiment. Mice, given anything they want ended up coalescing into urban like clusters and then doing a lot of behavior that looks a lot like our society today.

And then their fertility rate collapsed and their society died. But what was really interesting, and I'll let you lay out this behavior, is this When mice tried to continue to live the old ways, they were victimized. So I'd like you to talk about this, why you think this happened and the correlates you see to society today, and then we can discuss how we might defend against it.

Rudyard Lynch WhatIfAltHist: First of all, thank you so much for having me. And I'm glad to be here. And the way I'll answer your question is that I do a lot of thinking not part of [00:03:00] what a faultist that operates in the back and I gradually filter that into what a faultist and one of the conclusions I've come to is that the soul does exist and the reason I believe that and this will lead to what you're saying because only through understanding the essence of the soul are you capable of seeing how nihilism can take root.

And I came to the conclusion the soul exists partly due to projection where if you're projecting. Your inner care flaws upon the external world. That means there is a part of your mind that is aware of what your inner flaws are. And if you look over history animals do things that are not rational or in their self interest.

And the way I like to see mouse utopia is that you can have multiple tiers of causation for the exact same event. For example, the fall of Rome, you can find about five different. Thing is that resulted in that caused the fall of Rome, and it's almost a Rorschach test for which variables you choose to tease out and are most important.

And with mouse utopia, you can see it starting upon [00:04:00] multiple levels of causation, one being you could look at an ecosystem perspective, or the ecosystem needs to Needs to reset because if one form of life expands exponentially large, it will hurt the entire ecosystem. But when you look at the nihilism for the mouse utopia, there are multiple levels of causation.

One level of causation is that once you are in a pre established wealthy society, there is no incentive to cooperate. So the incentive is to free ride. And that results in negative nihilism because. The end point of free riding is saying that the the non free riders are bad. So nihilism is a way of preventing other people from stopping you from free riding so that you can basically do whatever you want.

The problem though, is you hit tragedy, the common situations where if everyone's trying to stop trying to free ride, there's nothing to free ride off. And. [00:05:00] I also think that past a certain point, people get resentful. If you've reached a certain point in nihilism, you, people, we're emotional. You get resentful against the people who are not like you.

And so it becomes this recursive thing where you hate the reminder that you're doing something wrong. And with the mouse utopia experiment, something that I find very interesting is the thing that kills the other mice. Is not the mice not having kids. It's the nihilist mice killing those who do have kids.

Malcolm Collins: Before you go further, I want to, I want to highlight these ideas you've had because I think they are so powerful and they're really, really like not things to just So within all social animals, whether it's human or mice or anything like that you're going to get some level of self consciousness, it appears.

And this is one of the things that surprised you when you're first looking at the experiment, is how similar the mice were to humans in many ways, when we think of them as being such simple animals. To the extent where if I'm a human and I am living off the state, because no [00:06:00] human wants to see themselves as a bad person or if I am a mouse and I'm just leaving completely indulgently without thinking about the future of my civilization or anything like that, like, that's not really how mice are working, but, but kind of like that but I'm a human and I'm just living completely off the state I need to justify this behavioral pattern.

And so I justify it. In two ways. First with nihilism, nothing really matters because it is not constructive to live off the state. So the only value hierarchy that can justify this behavior pattern is nihilism. And then I begin to, I look at the people who are still putting in the effort and they are a reminder to me, like in leftist thought, Their existence or their ideology causes violence to me, where violence is defined by anything that causes emotional pain.

And it's causing this emotional pain because it's reminding the part of you that is still sane that what you are doing is indolent and self indulgent. And so then you project the hatred out on these other [00:07:00] communities and, You begin to demonize these communities, and then this demonization, and I know I'm just repeating everything you say, but I want to really make sure this sinks in for people because it's so powerful, creates a loop, and in this loop you see these other groups who have maintained these old ways of doing things, or these more natural ways of doing things, and they are still happy with their lives, like they have kids, they are engaged, they have partners, and you, have descended into this cycle of self hatred, which is a result of nihilism, and a result of knowing that you're not actually living for anything other than yourself.

And this cycle gets worse and worse and worse over time, and then what? Continue.

Rudyard Lynch WhatIfAltHist: Sorry, I just You you explained that very well. And the thing which worries me so much about Mastutopia is that it is very close historical parallel, where a method I use to determine because you get studies all the time, most studies are never verified.

They're just scientists can just make stuff up and they'll never be called out for it. [00:08:00] The thing that scares me about Mass Utopia is the parallels you can draw to so many other historic societies, where if you read authors going back to Herodotus you see that this pattern of societies growing wealthy, losing their values, and then collapsing into decadence and getting conquered, is just something that's happened to each of the major civilizations, whether Rome, whether the Mayans, the Persians, the Chinese, whatever.

The thing that I find scary is that we are in the West today at a level of wealth much higher than any of those other societies. So would it not go to reason that we'd have a higher level of decadence? And I think the point that Malcolm was jumping off when we started this is that I said in the video that the thing that shocked me about the new left, because I'll compare my predictions from year to year, and as of four years ago, I was able to predict the left would go crazy.

Because I looked at social justice, I look at the institutions they ran and I realized there was no feedback loop inside social justice des sanity. The thing though, is that we have a hundred years of track record [00:09:00] of leftist insanity already. Look to Cuba, look to Russia, look at China, look at Venezuela, and this current leftist dessan insanity.

It's nihilistic, which is fascinating because the left should, in abstract, be an incredibly optimistic philosophy since they believe utopia is around the corner. But our left has no positive vision of the world, it's just don't. And the thing that really shocks me is Western society is committing social suicide.

And I believe this to be most pronounced in North Europe. Where Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, they bring in millions of immigrants, and a lot of these countries, they'll be half non native population by 2050 if things don't change, or half of their children, half of the young will not be native population by 2050.

And the thing that really shocked me is degrowth, where I just can't wrap my head around why degrowth is an idea. Because if you look at it from a climate perspective, if the Netherlands just stopped being an economy, it doesn't matter. China is going to keep doing coal. You could [00:10:00] nuke the entirety of Northern Europe and it wouldn't affect the economy, the world's carbon emissions by that much.

And furthermore, these are the kinds of countries that would develop the future climate technology. And so using the left's own chain of logic. There is no justification for the suicide of their societies except it just being a rationalization for them being suicidal. What I

Malcolm Collins: love in the video, you also talked about the erasure of their own history and culture identity in the tearing down of statues, in the tearing down of traditional forms of artistic medium.

And one of the things that you said in the video, which chilled people, it was one of your top comments and I agree with it, is that we have stopped producing art. You had mentioned that when you watch movies today, They don't seem as dynamic, like people don't seem as alive as they did in previous movies.

They, they seem sort of odd and robotic, almost like the souls have left of their body. I'd love you to elaborate on this first too.

Rudyard Lynch WhatIfAltHist: I'm glad you pulled this up because that's one of my favorite things I said in the video, when I'm I'm happy that [00:11:00] people teased it out, but I, I don't watch cable TV, I don't have it in my house.

The only time I do watch cable TV is when I'm at the gym. And so I'll watch Fox News or MSNBC or whatever content they're showing on the gym TV. And it's crazy where I have a good friend of mine who's I have two friends of mine. One is a professional linguistics expert. The other is a professional body language expert.

And so I've heard a lot of stuff from them. And it's crazy where if you look at interviews from 40 years ago, 50 years ago. Everyone's so alive. It's like, you can tell there's a person in there. And now if you look at the TV today, people don't move their heads, right? They don't express that their facial faces that much.

It's like they're puppets. And I know that sounds paranoid, but look at how a puppet moves their body. It's, it's very robotic. And I think. For you who don't know me as a person, one of my massive hobbies outside of what a [00:12:00] Faltist is pop music. I listened to several hours of music every day. I listened to a bunch of different music genres and since the Trump presidency, and I'm just picking that year as a, as a arbitrary date, and I don't think it had anything to actually do with Trump the level of artistic creativity and music has just crashed.

I don't see any new genres. All the content, all the musicians I liked have gone crazy. Across our entire society, we don't make new movies anymore. All our movies are reboots of earlier movies. All of the musical sound today is taking sounds from the 80s. And then rehashing it. I read history. I loved history because it was one of the few fields where you could expect a genuinely good quality of work.

And in the last, since COVID, the new history books that come out, they're more derivative than what came before. So the last field, which I used as a benchmark for, this is something which keeps working, has stopped working. And so, What does our society do anymore? [00:13:00] I'm asking that as a real question. Like,

Malcolm Collins: I want to touch on something you said here, because when you talk about people seeming like off, it's definitely something I've noticed as well.

And it reminds me when you encounter a group that's radically different culturally, you'll often notice either you'll seem to have less life than the society around them or more life than the society around them. If you have ever interacted often with, I think sort of extremist religious types, like Amish people, I was going to say that.

Like, they seem to be more alive than most people that I've met too. Like, you just meet and you're like, whoa! Or like, you'll get this from like really conservative Mormons as well. To the extent where like, it sometimes like throws people off a little. Like, wow, you seem like genuinely happy. I, I don't know if that, that's off putting.

And people will say it is off putting because they find these groups vitality. Condemnation of themselves, but when you meet somebody in a cult like an extractive cult You'll see that they seem kind of dead like they've got these fake smiles But they're not [00:14:00] really have any level of vitality to them.

And I think that what we have seen is our society has been taken over by one of these anti vitality nihilistic cults. And now the dangerous part, which really excited me in your video, and you're addressing this as an issue, is those of us who still have a level of vitality, that are still happy with our lives, still excited about the future, are existentially threatening to the cult.

Because we cause pain, we cause harm. I mean, violence is emotional harm within leftist mindset, you know? What happens next? What happened in Mouse Utopia? What happens to us? And what are your plans for how to get around this?

Rudyard Lynch WhatIfAltHist: Good. So to jump off your point, what you've said about religious people, traditional conservative religious people seeming more alive is true.

When I've, traveling to the Middle East, that's obvious. Going to Egypt, people seem a lot more alive. Moving from California, I spent a couple months in California, now I'm in [00:15:00] Texas. People are much more alive in Texas than they are in California. And the thing that I find interesting is everything we project onto the Victorian period or the 1950s is a reflection of our own society, where if you read Victorian literature.

We pretend the Victorian period is puritanical, emotionally stunted, repressive and cold. And you read books from the 19th century, that's clearly not true. It's a very emotional, dramatic society. I actually think the 19th century, it had romanticism. It was a significantly more emotional society than today.

But because our society is built in opposition to that, we project our failings upon that. Where I think we are actually A very unemotional and cold and stunted society. And so to jump back to the point, you asked me, the thing that terrifies me about Math Utopia is things have to get worse where I imagine it like a treadmill and the treadmill [00:16:00] now is going really fast and it, there's no way out except for these institutions to burn down because you look at academia, you look at Hollywood, you look at these corporations.

There is no counter to wokeness. No one will take over. You would basically need to have a revolution or a coup d'etat that would wipe out the establishment. And I've said in a previous video that I think there's a solid chance that would happen. But aren't all of the major institutions of our society are run.

And of course I do not condone that. I am not

Malcolm Collins: condoning revolution. He's just saying if a revolution starts, consider him for a thought leadership position.

Rudyard Lynch WhatIfAltHist: Hey, that's not what I said, Malcolm. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I live a, I live a peaceful life now. But, but what I was going to say. Is that

Malcolm Collins: is that the mice in the mouse utopia of spirit?

Yes. And we might begin to see that a direct targeting [00:17:00] of the people who are

Rudyard Lynch WhatIfAltHist: still. Yes. And

Malcolm Collins: I can elaborate because this is something that we've talked about offline and I find it really interesting because I think that we, you and I represent two extremes that are actually. Opposed to each other, but it's the same solution to the larger societal problems, which is that we need cohesive new cohesive cultural groups to fight against what's coming if we want any form of protection.

And what's really interesting and where I would point my followers to your channel is people know that we're trying to start like a new cohesive group like, like Simone and I or, or like religious denominational system. But it is incredibly anti Mystic and you are doing, you have like a similar sort of a project, but it is incredibly, I'd say like pro Mystic and it's the smartest of the pro Mystic takes I've ever seen.

So for our audience who is put off by our anti Mystic state, his next video, which I'm excited to see, is on this [00:18:00] time when the CIA I'm excited to see you

Rudyard Lynch WhatIfAltHist: actually, I, I've made this video already, it's just getting approved. Yeah. So talk about it. So. I, for people who don't know me as a person, I am very much in a mysticism, and it's something I study a lot in my free time, and One of the things I've been looking to is the research on psychics and the CIA in the spirit world where the CIA had decades worth of research into the spirit world in where they, they found that it was a real place and they got hundreds of people to visit it on repeat and the military's assessment of the CIA science was that it was all correct.

The Soviets had their own Version of this, which found the same results. And my take is that if every major society in history agrees on this with the 20th century being the one exception in the 20th century, found it to be real. I personally find that to be compelling evidence. I know this is something Malcolm and I agree.

Disagree on, and we're allowed to disagree [00:19:00] but I think our society is so cold and impersonal and why do we do anything? That's something I feel in the subconscious of our society. That we don't, we don't have a sense of why we're living life. And I think that's something that we very much need, and without it we're going crazy.

I was reading a book by an orthodox theologian who said the modern world is divided between those who try to constantly numb themselves to its meaninglessness and those who realize it and go crazy. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So I, what I find so interesting about your thought is it is a form of mysticism and mystical thinking.

Yeah. That I think is very compatible with industry and industrial and artistic productivity.

Rudyard Lynch WhatIfAltHist: I mean, I have a Quaker. That's like the ape that, that, or I grew up with a Quaker. That's for those two

Malcolm Collins: mead. But I think that the way that you accomplish this is very interesting in your thought pattern is that the mystical traditions which end up going towards [00:20:00] indolence are based around like secrecy and hierarchy where you have mystical traditions which are dripped down through a hierarchy.

Through a level of like secrecy, whereas your mystical traditions, they approach everything like an investigation or a conspiracy, almost like these things are out there for anyone to find. But it is up to every individual to find them in multiple places. There are no like keepers of knowledge or anything like that.

Yes. And I think that combining it with like actual science and investigative history. Is actually very similar to the forms of mysticism we saw was in productive Victorian period. Like Isaac Newton, he was a mystic, but he wasn't like a general mystic. He was like an occultist who would like research old texts and everything like that.

But anyway, yeah, I'd love to hear

Rudyard Lynch WhatIfAltHist: your thoughts. Thank you. I think the truth is a cone and one of the points I make in the video when I talk to the CI in the spirit world is what these researchers found is there's a geography to the spirit world where there are parts of the [00:21:00] spirit world that appear Abrahamic.

There are parts that appear Indic, parts that appear like reincarnation. So I don't believe there's contradiction between the major worlds religions. I think they're touching a shared truth in different contexts that are useful to their society. And I, I, I don't want to lionize religion and say it's perfect, because the problem is that we can all get fuzzy and agree on that.

But once you actually have to apply it to the real human world and politics, that's when things get messy. Where, ironically, the Christians, the Jews, and the Muslims are theologically very similar. Once you get to the details, though, that's where the pain starts. And and so I do believe there's this shared truth, but the truth, you have to, imagine you have to clean out your attic, you go into the attic, you flash it, use a flashlight there, and if you're not going to shine light upon your attic, you're not going to clean anything, and with these occult traditions that are negative, what you're basically doing is taking people up to the attic, [00:22:00] holding them in hand, They're not showing them the light, so that they have to hold your hand in the attic to survive.

What a good mystic tradition is to flip the light switch. I

Malcolm Collins: love this! That's a good analogy! That's

Simone Collins: very good, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You see why I like this.

For those who don't understand why we go. So anti mystic with our traditions, I really do recommend the video. Did the CIA discovered the spirit world? I think it's a great example of where taking the mystical path. , can lead a very logical, smart individual. In terms of getting them to circumvent what I would consider. A reasonable amount of incredulity when engaging with information. Ruby or had actually texted us a comment that must've come from one of our Watchers. Under the video, which was something along the lines of, oh dear. I hope Malcolm doesn't feed this. Which I think really shows, [00:23:00] even if you are approaching mysticism from the perspective of.

The, the literal best approach to it, which I do think his approach is, you know, this level of conspiratorial investigation.

Makes the way he is structuring his belief system. Not particularly susceptible to.

Individuals who want to use a person's police system to control a person. Which I really respect about it. But it does burn about, of his incredulity and logic.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I love that you are you know, elevating this within some of your videos as a potential solution, because I really do think it is the only potential solution is a return to theological framings of reality, but that break from the theological framings of, of the old in many ways.

And I'll put a little clip here. The. The old religious traditions that are like, Oh, we'll just do things in that pre industrial way. And this will protect our children from deconversion in the modern world. [00:24:00] It reminds me of

You thinking what I'm thinking, partner? Aim for the bushes. Let's do this. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It's like, no, that obviously isn't going to work. The odds are so astronomical against you. We need some level of adaptation and we need to all work together no matter how different our beliefs are. Because whatever those beliefs are, we're the people they're coming after. I mean, there's clearly like the one big bad negative group.

Rudyard Lynch WhatIfAltHist: Yes. I hate churchism or churchism is the continuation of the ceremony of religion without God. And I think most religion in our society is churchism in that, I think a lot of these people don't actually care or want God. I think they use it as an excuse. But if you read the Bible, the God of the Bible is disgusting and insane.[00:25:00]

And it's not the white bread shirts that the Christians that religious people now push. But the problem is that the God of the Bible, that is a force that's in touch with the reality of how horrible life is and how crazy life is. And so. We've been trying too long to domesticate religion, and I believe religions go through cycles, where if you read about what it was like in the Roman Empire, all of the religions were incredibly sterile and political.

And if you were before the Axial Age, under the time of Buddha and Confucius and Plato, it was the same thing. But you have to have these periodic returns of mysticism and chaos to offset the bureaucratization of a religion.

Malcolm Collins: Well, Simone, I want to hear from you because I've been monopolizing this. Well, no,

Simone Collins: I just, what I find interesting and what I think is important for us to recognize is that what we have that the poor rodents in the mouse utopia experiments didn't have was places to hide.

They, they [00:26:00] couldn't hide after a certain point. There was no place where like the per natalist non nihilistic mice could go. I mean, I know the beautiful ones like hid away in some other weird place. I can't

Malcolm Collins: remember. I mean, this is something I always mentioned on the show. The rise of the anti natalist left it up ends something in human history that we always knew there's the famous song.

I don't know if you know the song, At Least the Russians Love Their Children Too, you know, is the refrain. I gotcha. Yeah, this is something that we always knew in history. At least the people who we're fighting against love their children too and want the world to keep existing. We no longer have that belief.

Like, well, but, but, The thought we're fighting against doesn't have children and

Rudyard Lynch WhatIfAltHist: they want us all dead.

Simone Collins: I think that a lot of why the, the perinatalist movement is, So difficult to like quantify or contact is that the conclusion that most of them have come to is we really, really, really need to hide and be careful and not let anyone who know who we are, [00:27:00] what we're building or what our movement or community is like, unless they are 100 percent definitely a trusted insider that we're going to network with in the future.

And I think that's a core part of what is going to enable these groups to move forward in a way that the like more normal per noodle list. Mice or rats could not.

Rudyard Lynch WhatIfAltHist: Their secret base is going to be in Newark, New Jersey. So you guys can keep tabs on that and look nowhere else. And so in the video, I say there are.

Three things you need to do to survive mouse utopia. The first is the first is that you need to, you need to have a sense of, that the anti natalist people can't take over the government, because if they take over the government, they can kill anyone who's trying to survive and have children, and that really worries me, because if you look at mouse utopia, That's what [00:28:00] happens.

And if the government's killing anyone who has children in America, the entire American nation, that's the only way they can die. The second is you need to form communities out, out of the way of like minded, sane people who can support each other. And the third thing is you need religion because religion can provide external moral standards that you can convince a large part of the population to follow as a push against As a push against the chaos of the world.

Malcolm Collins: I couldn't agree more. And I think that's a great point to end on. And we've been so excited to have you on. I would encourage people go check out that, that episode of his. And if you like it, then you need to keep going deep on his channel. Cause he is a great thinker and keep in mind how young he is.

You know, this guy is already, I think one of the leaders of the sort of growing new right thought movement. And he's 20, 21, 22.

Rudyard Lynch WhatIfAltHist: I'm about to turn 23. Yeah,

Simone Collins: [00:29:00] but that's. I think that's an important point is that you are also inspiring to us because you represent what humanity should be doing rather than what humanity is doing.

What we can go back to, quite frankly, again, like Benjamin Franklin was like fully, like acting as though he were an early career adult, like age 12, 13. And then by, you know, his twenties, he was, you know, a major leading thought leader and you were following that path. And you were showing that like, Oh, guess what?

You know, infantilization is not the norm. And look at me. And so we need, we need you to continue to succeed and rise. You

Rudyard Lynch WhatIfAltHist: flatter me. I I grew up in a place where Ben Franklin was taught like 10 times. I'm from Philadelphia. And so I heard about Ben Franklin like 10 times in my childhood.

Simone Collins: Maybe that helped, you know, cause we, well, I mean, people are very suggestible and if we don't have role models, it's a lot harder to like.

realize that you're capable of something if you've never heard of someone else being capable of it.

Rudyard Lynch WhatIfAltHist: So I remember when I was a child, the only historic figure I had heard of was Martin Luther King, because when I was six, that was the only person my school [00:30:00] taught me about. And I think I don't dislike Martin Luther King.

I think he was a great man. But we need to have a broader selection of role models to teach our children. Because I don't know, that

Malcolm Collins: sounds racist to me. It sounds like you're saying we need some white role models. And I don't know if that is

Rudyard Lynch WhatIfAltHist: appropriate. Let's develop a racial quota based upon the demographics of the country.

We can have six out of 10 white Europeans. We can have two Hispanics like Hernan Cortez who was also a white European. And we can have Martin Luther King for our 12 percent black population.

Simone Collins: Well, or we can have what, you know, Jem and I was trying to do before Google decided to apologize, which is just make the founding fathers black.

It's fine. Okay. Like, I mean, honestly, after looking at some of the images generated, I was like, yeah, this looks right. Checks out. Like I can see George Washington is black now, you know, and just, I don't care. I don't care, but you keep doing what you're doing. And we look

Rudyard Lynch WhatIfAltHist: forward to having you back on.

We'll have you back on. [00:31:00] All right, great. Thank you.

Malcolm and Simone discuss how AI and robots will transform childcare and parenting in the coming decades. They talk about existing kid-focused AIs like the doll that talks to children. They also cover how future home assistant AIs could help watch kids, allowing for more low-effort parenting styles.

Other topics include:

* Dollar store gifts & low-cost approaches to birthdays and holidays

* The dangers of helicopter parenting and benefits of giving kids independence

* Financial and lifestyle changes needed to have more kids

* Grimes' social media promoting AI for kids

* Funny stories of reckless college escapades at St Andrews

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] but I'm thinking, you know, in 20 years, I imagine we will have AI avatars, i. e. robots that are in your basically AI slaves that live in your house. That help with like parenting and stuff like that. Well,

Simone Collins: there's already one for kids.

There's like the, this, it's, it looks kind of like a doll and it's an AI that talks to your kid.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: By the way, we're at 1 0 5 now 1 0 5. What? Oh followers. 9,000 1 0 5.

Getting close to that 10 K number.

Simone Collins: Oh, gosh. Yeah. I'm excited about that. Well, okay. As, as a, when you were younger or even like when we first met. Did you think you were going to be a high effort or a low effort parent?

Malcolm Collins: Interesting. It never occurred to me. You

Simone Collins: didn't think about how you were going to approach things.

You just knew you were going to have a lot of kids.

Malcolm Collins: I kind of always thought I'd be super rich and super successful in like a major world figure. [00:01:00] So it never occurred to me.

Simone Collins: Because what, you would just have somebody else raise your kids?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. If I needed to. Yeah. It never occurred to me growing up that I would be in any way constrained in anything I did as an adult.

Simone Collins: That's actually, that's actually really interesting. Because I think that you. And I I think you more by temperament are a low effort parent. Like you just, you outsource as a sort of natural part of your management of any project. You know, you're not about putting in maximum effort, performative, or otherwise you try to do things elegantly and efficiently.

And I admire that deeply. And so you never would naturally be a high effort parent, but I think that if you were really wealthy and you did have nothing but like nannies, like one nanny for each kid and like a lot of people on them, those kids would experience a high effort parenting. growing up, meaning that there would be someone [00:02:00] micromanaging and helicopter parenting them all the time.

Why? Even if you tell a nanny or a babysitter or whatever to like, Hey, be hands off, you know, let them make their own mistakes. It's okay. If they fall down, like, you know, don't make a big deal out of everything. They know that they will be fired or they will be. Well, and this

Malcolm Collins: is something that we've seen was a lot of the wealthy parents that we know, and it's a big problem that they have with child rearing is when they create environments where they have somebody else like living in their house and helping raise their kids, especially if they have multiple people who can sort of watch each other to an extent.

These people are almost sort of forced to overindulge the child. Because it, you know, it's quite one thing to say, Oh, I won't give into a child's tantrum, but when you know, the mom is looking at you and seeing this child just like absolutely destroyed, it can be really hard to not do anything about it.

Or the

Simone Collins: kid makes a mess and you're like, Hey, you know, Jimmy clean up the mess. And Jimmy doesn't clean up [00:03:00] the mess. And then, you know, you, you try to make a big thing about it. And then, you know, the parents come in and the house is a complete wreck. And. The kids are having a tantrum. You're going to look really bad as the nanny, you know?

And so we've seen this happen. We're like, okay, they're just now they're cleaning everything up for the kids. Now the kids are getting super spoiled and entitled. And they're also being watched at every second. Again, I also like, we say this to babysitters all the time. Like, you know, our kids get bumps and bruises.

Like they fall down, they rough house, like this happens. But they do not want to be the kind of babysitter or nanny that returns. That it sees the parents return and like the kid is a black guy, you know, like you're not going to get hired again. And, and even we would probably be like, Oh, what happened here?

You know, like, this is not great. Actually we're pretty chill about that. We understand because we know how rambunctious our kids are. But yeah, no, so, so I think that's really, that's an interesting observation here just specifically that. Even low effort style parents who like know better or parents who understand that a helicopter parenting or coddling a child is really [00:04:00] damaging if they choose to pay other people to raise their kids, or they send their kids to a public school, a private school, daycare, et cetera.

I think

Malcolm Collins: daycare and public and private school are quite different. So, one study that people may not be familiar with is typically the kids who get sent to like, kindergarten earlier. They did a great, like, controlled study on this recently because they couldn't take all the kids into this like state paid kindergarten program.

The kids who got in actually did much worse in terms of their academics, long term, their emotional development long term. And even though the stereotype is homeschooled kids do worse socially than non homeschooled kids. The reality is that if you look at the meta studies on this, while you'll get things on both sides of the line, the majority seem to trend towards homeschool kids, have better social skills than non homeschooled kids and better leadership skills and better emotional control.

And this is because they learn their social, socialization from watching adults, whereas the rest of the kids learn their social abilities from like this weird [00:05:00] Lord of the Flies situation in this evil bureaucracy you've thrown them into. I mean, our school system in most of the world is this weird Totalitarian bureaucracy.

You have to like live a portion of your life under like, almost like living in a prison system. It is absolutely bizarre that we think that this would have positive social emotional outcomes.

Simone Collins: Well, and, and the kids are also in a highly regimented environment because they have to be to like make everything work and they are being micromanaged a lot more.

And there are a lot more like sort of strict rules and like, here's how it's going to go. And I'm going to watch you and I'm going to tell you what to do

Malcolm Collins: again. Yeah. I mean, in public school these days, you have very low student to teacher ratios. I think

Simone Collins: that most Yeah, but there's still I'm sorry, you never went to public school.

Your classes were like I did go to public

Malcolm Collins: school. 15 kids. And most of the pressure on kids to behave in certain ways within public school comes from their peer group, not from adults.

Simone Collins: No, I totally disagree. In a classroom environment, you've got, you know, 31 kids [00:06:00] at

Malcolm Collins: their desks. Seth, this is Valdivictorian.

You of course had extra attention from the teachers because you were No.

Simone Collins: What I'm saying is, like, no one is allowed to get up. There have to be rules to go to the bathroom. There have to be rules for everything because without that structured regimented environment, That's

Malcolm Collins: not what messes kids up.

Whether or not you can get up in a room. What are you talking about? It's about the way you relate to them emotionally. And that is primarily done from their peer group, not from the authorities. If you're in a class of like 500 kids to one teacher, the teacher is basically irrelevant in terms of the social and emotional lessons.

They're teaching the kids. Yeah, but the

Simone Collins: student, Subject to a system, which is like a big brother, and that's why you have all these kids who are constantly appealing to authority instead of actually like, so, for example, we have this issue of a lot of kids now who don't know their own limitations and boundaries and don't know others limitations and boundaries.

Why is that? Because when they get. Hurt by someone or wronged by someone, they get to appeal to this bureaucratic system of rules. And that person gets a timeout. And every time something goes wrong, they don't have to figure out how to navigate that [00:07:00] interpersonally as kids. They get to figure out how to navigate that bureaucratically as parts of the system.

And that's what I would

Malcolm Collins: really agree with this. And I would say that this is a huge problem right now in society as far as you're talking about appealing to bureaucracies because the bureaucracy teaches them, you know, how do you get the teachers involved? How do you call somebody over? If somebody has hurt your feelings in any way then, then, then they get punished.

And so kids learn to utilize this as a tool at a very young age. If I can convincingly argue to a person in a position of authority that somebody hurt my feelings, then I get to use the violence of the state, basically the violence of the authority, the IE, the power of the authority on whoever I can convince hurt my feelings.

And so it creates this, this mindset where it also keep in mind, like what, what do kids get punished for? They get punished for quote unquote, hurting other kids, whether that's their feelings or their, their bodies, which. for kids makes them believe that in a [00:08:00] society, the number one thing of value is not being hurt.

This is where you get was in this left community, like ultra lefty community minded individual, this belief in negative utilitarianism, because that's the belief that's implicitly taught through the power structures of our school systems. The way that you call down upon the ultimate authority, like Power on someone, you know, like, like your God in this system, like I'm going to call down lightning on somebody else is by claiming to have been hurt physically or emotionally, which then to an individual makes them think like I deserve as a right in society to never be emotionally or physically hurt.

Like even after they leave the school system, that's when you get this you know, mindset we see right now in our society. So

Simone Collins: I agree. It's worse than that. Because they don't understand how to deal with being hurt themselves. They literally don't have the tools for it. So, when you look at animals like mammals, especially when they're young, they play, they nip at each other.

They bite, they jump, they, they push boundaries and they push each [00:09:00] other's boundaries and they often hurt each other and get hurt. What is the point of that? They are learning internal resilience and they're learning where other people's boundaries are. At least like other, not species, but like other people or other.

Similar kinds boundaries are. And when you don't learn that, like if for example, you don't get a chance, like a homeschool kid might to like, you know, get punched by a brother and the mom's too busy to like realize it and have to deal with justice on your own. You aren't going to learn how to deal with that.

You're only going to learn how to appeal to authority. So that's the other important thing is I think that there is some level of emotional regulation that also comes out of this is just learning that like, hey, sometimes life isn't fair. I don't always get to file a complaint and have justice take place when I'm wronged.

Sometimes I just have to figure out how to deal with the fact that people can be dicks to me and I'm going to over time. You know, learn from that and avoid people who are going to punch me when mom isn't looking. So I, I think that's another really big problem of that, but [00:10:00] I do think this is an interesting thing and that we, what we came into this conversation planning to talk about was that low effort parenting is inherently pronatalist.

Actually it's can, it can be difficult to actually gift your child with low effort parenting in modern society, even if you yourself are a low effort parent. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: like with our kids, right? Like, we let them do basically what they want to do as much as we can but, you know, we've had CPS called on us that we've done a video about, right?

Like, by letting our kids play outside alone with us watching them from inside, that was considered a CPS callable event.

Simone Collins: Inside a locked yard, by

Malcolm Collins: the way. Yeah, in a locked yard. But this is also a problem for us. I mean, we live on a farm, right? Like, if you leave our house, and you walk from our house, you can walk into the woods, and you can walk into like a national park, right?

Like, it streams, everything like that. It's a fun place to play. But we can't let our kids play there. Like, it was a generation ago, kids our age by now would be running into the [00:11:00] woods all

Simone Collins: the time. Like, yeah, I mean, I grew up reading Calvin and Hobbes. I know you hate Calvin and Hobbes, but like, This vision of this boy going out into the woods with his wagon and his toy tiger.

Also, by himself, mind you, not even without, like, siblings to kind of, you know, keep him honest. Can you imagine? You know, like,

Malcolm Collins: No, it's wild, yeah. And I'm hoping that in a few years, you know, our oldest will have to bite the bullet, but then once they're old enough to watch their siblings, we can send them out.

I mean, I do, we do need to be wary. There are, I mean, I have seen large coyotes in the woods here that could easily kill a kid. So we do need to be aware of that, and, and keep them In safe areas but I mean, and I watch enough Lost 401 stories for people who don't know the Lost 401 phenomenon.

People know I really like my like, occult, like, mysteries and stuff like that. I, I just love listening to them. And so I'm terrified. Mr. Ballin, we love, like Lore Lodge, we love, like I could go Mr. Grimley, like anyone who does. [00:12:00] like anything tied to cryptids or missing 401s or other types of mysteries.

I absolutely love listening to, but it also terrifies me of like letting my kids go play in the woods because so many it's like, well, I was watching them and I turned away for a few seconds. And the next time I looked at the toddlers were all gone.

Simone Collins: No, that, that happens a lot. Like the many stories began with.

I don't know if my toddler was playing in the backyard while I watched from inside, or we were hiking and the toddler ran ahead a little bit and then that's the last time they were ever seen. Not good. Yikes. That's why we lock the gate and they stay in there for now.

Malcolm Collins: But it also requires a level of like, I don't know, I think part of this might even just be genetic that you are even able to be a low effort parent.

Cause I remember, you know, we had some friends over at our house once and all our kids were playing together. And they were, they had a lot of kids they were high fertility family, what, four or five kids? Anyway and their kids and our kids were playing in the local creek, because we have a creek by our [00:13:00] house with a, an area where it pools, so you get like a natural pool where the kids can swim and you know, one of our kids fell in, and they just started sinking, and they were freaking out, like, I was like, I,

Simone Collins: I, I like casual.

Even when Malcolm is standing like two feet from this kid. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I, I did not act with any sort of a panic or, or worry. I was pretty relaxed in going, pulling the kid out of water and then, you know, putting them on the shore. And like, I mean the kid, you know, sinking in a, in a, in a pond, like, you know, they, they're terrified.

Right. And, the kid was fine, you know, he got up, and then he kicked at the, the water, and he was angry at the pond for annoying him. But and, and with me, people are like, oh, you're such a horrible parent. It takes a kid a while to drown. Like, I saw him from the moment he fell in. I had plenty of time to walk over, and, and not get wet, and He wasn't going to drown in that period of time and he was learning a valuable lesson about falling into ponds.

[00:14:00] But you know, I think a lot of people are just like anything that threatens, you know, you must immediately go out and run and panic and have a huge emotional situation over. And I don't think that would have served his benefit at all. But I think that that's, you know, probably not a conscious decision I made.

It was just like the way I'm genetically coded to like, look at the situation and be like, is this going to kill him? Yeah,

Simone Collins: no, we both have this sort of reaction where your reaction is just sort of practically. Pick them up and take care of them and like dust them off, but like not freak out. And my natural reaction is to do the same thing, but then laugh hysterically at like, one of our sons last night thought he would be absolutely hilarious when he was taking a bath like taking a little cup of water and then like, Drinking it in a really weird and annoying way.

But then immediately this backfired cause he inhaled a ton of water and he just starts like coughing, like he's an old man, like, and I just like dying of [00:15:00] laughter and, you know, I think a lot of other parents might be like, Oh no, my son is, is, is he swallowed water to the wrong way? Like he's choking on it.

And I'm just sitting here like. I

Malcolm Collins: mean, historically, lots of families have like 15 kids, if

Simone Collins: you're not okay with any of our kids ever getting hurt or dying, I'm, I mean, I am, I am very safety conscious as are you, which is why you're so paranoid. I mean, what's all this like for a, for a one, like

Malcolm Collins: missing person.

Yeah. But I mean. I think that, you know, if you're not raising your kid in a way and you're not, not treating them with the level of care that they would receive in a family of 15, then you're, you're not treating them in a sustainable way or in a way that is aligned with our evolutionary

Simone Collins: history. Well, yeah, no.

So let's, let's go into it. Like why is low effort parenting pernagelous and important? I think the big one is we've already talked about this here and we've already alluded to this a lot. When you have low effort parenting, you are giving children an opportunity to develop their own sense of internal regulation, socialization, and independence.

And if you don't do that, you're not going to have independent [00:16:00] kids. Second, it is the only way to make parenting sustainable for parents. And we say to our friends all the time, there is nothing harder than having just one kid because with one kid, everything's a big deal. You also kind of feel obligated to make everything a

Malcolm Collins: big deal.

I think two is slightly harder than one. I think where it really starts getting easier, three, four,

Simone Collins: et cetera. Well, but with one, it's like You're really freaking out about it about everything. You know, Oh, the tiniest rash. Whereas like with two, you're like, I don't know. I've seen this before. You know, this is fine.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And now that you're at two kids, because you know, you grew up an only child. I think a lot of people you know, before they have a couple of kids, they don't realize how I would see it as abusive. It is to only have one child. Yeah. Because

Simone Collins: they also start entertaining each other. Even if they look like they're fighting, they're entertaining each other and they're not clinging to you.

Momentary needs of entertainment, which is really important. But yeah, I also get the mindset of just knowing that you're going to have a lot of kids, which causes more low effort parenting is incredibly valuable because you [00:17:00] start asking yourself, even if you've only at that point had two or three or four kids, is this something that I'm going to be able to handle?

When I have five, six or seven kids. And if the answer is no, well then we're just not going to make a really big deal out of this. You know, we're just going to have to, you know, be chill and it, it makes you much calmer as a parent. And then of course we've always argued again and again, that the amount of money that parents spend on kids is absolutely insane.

Between the camps, they send them to the schools. They send them to the products they get for them, the brand new clothes. And this happens at every level of income I've noticed. This is not just something that like wealthier middle class families do. Like everyone spends unreasonable amounts of money on kids, especially on like special kid foods.

And I think when you are a low effort parent, you're instead thinking about like crock pot meals. And you're thinking about buying in bulk and you're thinking about like. Cooking the same way I learned how to cook is like a river guide when I was a kid where you're like cooking these [00:18:00] bulk meals and they're actually very healthy and they're very affordable and they're probably healthier than like the hyper processed baby food that you used to buy when you had only one child,

Malcolm Collins: right?

And our kids love going to the toy store, except they don't know that the toy store that we take them to is just the local dollar store. So we know that they can't accidentally get attached to anything that's too expensive. And I mean, this is, this is just

Simone Collins: like, Which is actually, hold on, I just want to point out, this is an extremely traditional thing, and the concept of getting kids expensive toys for the holidays is completely bonkers.

This song, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. There's this line where they say, take a look at the five and ten, glistening once again with candy canes and sugar. lanes of glow. Now that the five and 10 that's the dollar store. That's a five and 10 cent store. People were not shopping at high end stores for gifts for their kids and they were still having a very magical Christmas enough to be memorialized by like 1950s Christmas songs.

So

Malcolm Collins: you [00:19:00] can easily get all your kids stuff from a dollar store for Christmas and still give them a pretty magical Christmas. Which is you know, and we've so moved away from that. We have these expensive, insane toys I see people giving now. And it's like,

Simone Collins: why? Oh, and it's not just that. I mean, also like birthdays, have you seen birthday cakes that even like our peers, I'm referring to our peers.

I'm not just referring to like Instagram influencers are getting for their kids. They are fancier than our wedding cake. I kid you not.

Malcolm Collins: I know traditional Calvinist families, birthdays are a sin to, to, to have a holiday themed around an individual. And I mean, we've talked about maybe not doing birthdays for all our kids once we have a lot of them.

We have

Simone Collins: extremely chill birthdays to start. We've yet to have a birthday party for any one of our children. You know that, right?

Malcolm Collins: Well, we kind of have, we've had a few birthday cakes. We

Simone Collins: make birthday cakes cause that's fun.

Malcolm Collins: We haven't did a birthday party. Oh yeah. We've certainly never invited anyone over.

What up? What a chore that

Simone Collins: would be. Some parents also seem to do birthday parties, but like, [00:20:00] just parents come. And they, they buy like a bunch of decorations and a really expensive cake. And then they post a photo of it to Facebook or Instagram or whatever. So I'd have to

Malcolm Collins: do that, Simone. I don't want to friends.

Do you have any idea what a burden that would be?

Simone Collins: Oh, terrifying, genuinely. But yeah, I mean, it's so that's, that's the other element is the financial element. A lot of people do not have more kids now or do not think they can have kids or wait too long to have kids because they expect to spend insane amounts on their children.

When in reality, children really don't cost that much. I, number one, our biggest expense for kids is what do you think? Diapers, no medical stuff. My God, medical stuff. Yeah. Medical stuff. And then probably after that, probably whole milk because they, I mean,

Malcolm Collins: formula is so expensive now. It's like 6.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

And they, they chug it. So that is our. Like, but yeah, I mean, aside from that, and if you have good [00:21:00] insurance through an employer and we have kind of shitty insurance, so it's super, super high deductible or they're like, Oh yeah, spend 10, 000. And then maybe we'll talk about covering expenses. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: but we don't even like do anything for our kids.

Like regular stuff, but we don't have kids with like medical issues.

Simone Collins: I know we take them to checkups. They get vaccines. Well, if they have like a rash or they're sick, we take them in. And that adds up. Plus he got those ear thingies a

Malcolm Collins: while ago. We should probably get better at home medical

Simone Collins: care. Well, yeah, but, and that's one of our plans for this year.

Also for ourselves. It's just like switch to Chad GPT, plus like those really detailed blood panel lists, like where we get like a very detailed blood panel from ourselves for ourselves, at least to start, we're going to experiment on ourselves for first, before we do this with our kids. But then use that as like a marker plus like really detailed analysis.

Plus, you know, things like Ezra scans where we're getting right.

Malcolm Collins: And to point out here, anyone who thinks you're being irresponsible. I have a degree of medical training because [00:22:00] of my academic background. And doctors are profoundly less educated than you imagine them to be. They are not that smart.

If you, it's one of those things where when you know about a profession and then you see people on air and you can immediately tell like how much they don't know about the profession. And you're like, Oh, wow. The moment I learned about this profession at like any sort of like academic level, then I see people in mass media or like a famous person on like a show talking about it.

And you're like, Ooh, he's pronouncing all the words wrong. And he's, you know, you know, it's the same as doctors. If you have all that. I

Simone Collins: think many of the medical professionals, people come into contact with have extremely specific and narrow. Ranges of focus where they are incredibly good and they have amazing pattern recognition, but only in one specific area, like a nurse that was helping to take care of me after I delivered one of our kids, like started just veering the tiniest bit [00:23:00] outside of like labor delivery and like very, very newborns.

And abysmal advice. And I'm like, wait, like, is, where are the studies about this? And she's like, oh, no, no, I heard this in like a parenting book, or a parenting Facebook group, for moms. And I'm like, oh, of medical professionals? She's like, no, no, no, of moms. And I'm like, oh! No!

Malcolm Collins: I'm a mom, so I know.

Simone Collins: As a mom on Facebook, I think.

So, yeah, I mean, I think there's, there's just also that, that like, it is, there's, there's so much to know in the medical profession and then you kind of get into your niche and you really, really know it, but that doesn't mean that you know everything about the human body. But AI is actually really good at answering questions like that, but yeah, no, so, so kids don't have to be that expensive and a major, major, major pronatalist issue.

Has to pivot around this concept of shifting the way that people parent from expecting to be a helicopter parent who spends insane amounts of money on their kid to being a parent who trusts their kid to [00:24:00] learn really important lessons while still providing guide rails. So they don't tie or get really hurt.

And who, you know, doesn't spend a ton of money on them because frankly, you know, when we give our kids presents half the time, they prefer the box. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I, I mean, I'm just thinking about where parenting is going to be in like 20 years, because I was thinking about, you know, you're mentioning AI.

In terms of you know, helping with this advice on parenting, but I'm thinking, you know, in 20 years, I imagine we will have AI avatars, i. e. robots that are in your basically AI slaves that live in your house. That help with like parenting and stuff like that. Well,

Simone Collins: there's already one for kids.

There's like the, this, it's, it looks kind of like a doll and it's an AI that talks to your kid. And like, as a parent, you can tell the AI to like. Get your kid excited about brushing teeth. Wait, what? Are you serious? Show this to me. Oh, s**t. Okay, yeah, I will. Why don't

Malcolm Collins: we have one of these? Are they

Simone Collins: expensive?

I saw, like, Grimes on her Instagram, like, [00:25:00] promoting this a while ago. I'll dig through it and find the company that she was in partnership with. I mean, of course, like, Grimes is both, like, a parent of children and, like, a super futurist. It's gonna be someone promoting something like this.

Malcolm Collins: We have immense respect for Grimes.

Anyone who thinks that she is not an absolute genius is They're just believing public sentiment in the same way that like the press likes to, you know, smear people.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But anyway, there's that. And then I saw an ad for another one too. I, I will send you the ads so that you can splice them into this.

 Hey Grok, um, can you tell me about how they make rocket ships? Absolutely! Rockets are made with strong materials like titanium and designed by highly trained rocket scientists.

I'm so excited for you to tell me about the dentist. I've never been to one. You don't have teeth. But I can still smile. And then what happened? He said he didn't want to play with me anymore. Thank you for telling me about your day. Sometimes, holding a friend's hand makes me feel better. [00:26:00] Do you want to try squeezing my hand?

Simone Collins: Because no, we're already there. So like, if we're already there, we're also going to get. And of course you and I have talked about creating AI friends for our children. No, but I think

Malcolm Collins: it would be better for kids because the core reason, like with a lot of our kids, I can just leave them to do nothing and they're mostly going to be fine.

But the younger ones, I have to worry about them like choking on a rock or something, right? Like I have to, we're sticking it out, their hands in an outlet. So I have to keep a level of watchful eye over them. But as soon as I get an AI that can identify these behaviors and prevent them then I can leave the younger children.

They're in their own. No, even like going into the woods, the core reason I'm afraid of them going into the woods would be, we should just look like an AI, like monster truck thing that follows them around. And maybe even, I mean, I know that the commercial ones won't come armed for, you know, animals that could attack the kids.

But you know, we have, we know some people who could modify them to follow the kids into the woods and keep them safe. I think it's

Simone Collins: a sci fi that I read once with like teens that were highly [00:27:00] irresponsible in it. They, they were belts that would kind of inflate into giant bouncy things. They were ever like fell off a building or something, which they, you know, I mean, when you were at St.

Andrews, like a certain number of students would die each year falling off the cliffs when they got drunk. Right. So, which

Malcolm Collins: is, you know. Really useful. To remove them from the gene pool. I, I know. So this was a seven and eight was the, the line that everyone wants here. It's a in the last eight years at the school, when I was there, seven kids had fallen off the cliff and before that, even more had fallen off.

And I remember at my orientation, they were like, okay, like parents have called me to be like, do you understand below the cliff is.

Simone Collins: The ocean. Craggy rocks. Well, no. Craggy rocks in the

Malcolm Collins: ocean. Craggy rocks in the ocean. Right. But I'm just giving this context. And he's like, and I get calls from parents. The, the, the guy who's running the school all the time.

And he's like, and I am like, what, what am I supposed to do? Fill it in. Like there's nothing you can [00:28:00] do. You could build a giant wall around all of the cliffs

Simone Collins: around the university. I think what they expect is those Golden Gate Bridge style suicide barrier gates. The kinds that like, you know, go over, they like, bend over.

So just to, you know, completely ruin the landscape. If a kid is going to get

Malcolm Collins: drunk and jump off a cliff then I'm sorry. I just don't have that much sympathy. And people are like, did you get, yeah, I got drunk and I never jumped off a cliff. I never came close to jumping off a

Simone Collins: cliff. Well, and it's actually really impressive when you think about it.

How few people in St. Andrews are dying because there's traditions like the May dip where you stay up all night, you get crazy drunk, and then you run into the ocean with a giant crowd of people. And okay. When we, when we

Malcolm Collins: saw it, you happened to see the May

Simone Collins: dip. So you, I saw it. Yeah. Although we did not see any pyramid.

Oh, actually, no, sorry. What I meant to say is we did see a ton of paramedics just standing around. Yeah, that

Malcolm Collins: wasn't a thing when I did it. Come on, Simone. We were pussies back then, you know, we, we froze our butts off. It was with the, [00:29:00] with you know, with the clubs. So the local university clubs would, this is actually an interesting change.

If you talk about like the degradation of our society where we understood it was the job of the prestigious clubs on campus and they could earn additional social status. by setting up protective and comforting things around may dip. So they do things like hand out toasties, which are like little

Simone Collins: grilled sandwiches, grilled cheese sandwiches.

Yeah. Grilled

Malcolm Collins: cheese sandwiches with ham. Yeah. And they would hand out you know, they'd hand out a warm towels. They'd have, they'd have little paramedic things set up, but these were the, the high prestige, basically it was insane. I guess you could say frats and stuff

Simone Collins: that would do this. Well, this is what happens when you allow young people to develop a sense of independence and responsibility.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But now you go and it's all like the university funded adult paramedic booths all over the beaches, you know, and everyone's

Simone Collins: fat. Well, okay. Sorry. All the women are fat.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, this was shocking when I went to see Maydip again, for anyone who's from St. Andrews. If you haven't seen it, like, [00:30:00] recently, there was not a girl at that school I would snog.

And this is me, like, as a 30 year old man looking at, like, younger college women where you'd think I'd be interested. Like, I was looking, and I'd be honest, my genitals were afraid of what I would

Simone Collins: see. My assumption, too, by the way, was that you just weren't drunk enough. And like back in the day, no, we checked with your brother and sister and they were like, no, no, no.

Like, yeah, everyone was super hot when we were there. Cause you were there at the same time as, as your

Malcolm Collins: brother. Well, I mean, we were there right after Will and Kate were there. So within like a couple of years. So, you know, we were people who don't know that the Prince and the yeah. Anyway

Simone Collins: No, no, no.

There is an episode on the crown about just that, that I'm watching right now with great enjoyment because I get to see St. Andrews. I think they're even, they, there's even a shot of the Sainsbury's. Yeah. And fun aside. So on this night of May dip, everyone, of course goes to the local grocery store, a Sainsbury's and [00:31:00] completely clears out all the alcohol, obviously.

Cause you have to get immensely drunk to be able to stay up all night and then get into the ocean. So, Oh, Tesco. That's right. It wasn't a Sainsbury's. It didn't. And we're walking down the aisle and we didn't realize it was made up night until we walked past the alcohol shelves and it was only like 5 PM and they were all empty.

And then there were these two St. Andrews guys who in the most posh English accent you can imagine one turns to the other and says, this is Daya. And he's

Malcolm Collins: like, this is Daya. And we're like,

Simone Collins: oh, this is alcohol. I love it. Yeah. Only like the, the chintziest, like

Malcolm Collins: low class. But the other teenager story we should probably tell is the one about me in the window.

Yes, yes, please. So I had this you know, St. Andrews is like a tourist town, right? And I was in one of the old historic buildings that, that I had rented a room in, right? But it was right on the road right on one of the main roads that everyone would walk by and it had a big, like plain [00:32:00] glass window to, to the road.

So they could see in pretty easily. And I had recently bought repl like a sword. Like, you know, Andrew Tate sword, right? Except this is, I would never get one. He has like an officer sword, like some sort of tool. Sorry. We have a great sword at this house. But back then I had a Gladius, which is a classic Roman sword.

That's like a single handed, but it was a good replica actually. Anyway so I, of course, do what you do when you are a man and are playing with your the high quality replica swords. Which is, you know, swing them around. And you, you put on music. And me being me, you know something you know about me, Simone, is I don't always put on my clothes.

But you know. Simone Not always. Henry Too much effort, right? You know, uh and, and so. I was I think like Footloose was on or something, dancing around with my sword in, in

Simone Collins: And what he forgot was that St. Andrews is actually an incredibly popular tourist destination and also [00:33:00] constantly being toured by prospective students.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And so I had been doing this for God knows how long, like people were like, Malcolm, are you this carefree and energetic all the time? You always were. Yes. Yes. I've been doing that for a long time. And so I was in the middle of my partially new, like, boxers only sword dance routine and I turned around and I noticed that there is a giant crowd that has been building on the street, watching me,

I at the moment I saw it, I immediately dove under the couch, which I can only imagine was funnier than all of them.

Simone Collins: Oh God I, I imagine that someday somebody watching this video is going to be like, Oh my God, he's that

Malcolm Collins: guy, that

Simone Collins: guy, I remember that. But yeah. Okay. So like, [00:34:00] just to recap here, like you cannot have pronatalism and helicopter parenting.

And I think there are some people out there who believe themselves to be pronatalist who are also helicopter parents. And if you do not come to terms with the fact that you're going to have to get a way more chill. In order to be not only a pronatalist parent, but also a good parent that, that does not raise emotionally stunted infantilized children.

You're gonna have to learn low effort and I will say I have tendencies toward this and Malcolm sometimes you have been, not sometimes, sorry, frequently, you have been the one to encourage me to not be such a tight ass about things.

Malcolm Collins: I'm sorry if I ever press you too hard.

Simone Collins: No, you don't, you, it's, it's very necessary.

And quite frankly, the reason why I personally did helicopter parenting stuff was not because I genuinely believed it would create better outcomes. I did it because I was [00:35:00] neurotic. And parents should not be imposing their neuroticism on their own children. That is.

Malcolm Collins: I know it's true. You definitely are.

I don't mean to say this.

Simone Collins: I am neurotic and evil. I'm glad you finally admitted it. I love you too. I think you're an amazing father. And I would love for people in the comments to share their favorite low effort parenting tip. So that we can learn from them. Except that there's some low effort parents out there.

I'll also go on. Okay, I hate doing this. But if anyone has access to some kind of Apple device and can leave a five star review for our podcast on Apple, it would probably make a big difference for us and or like this video. And or subscribe because

Malcolm Collins: we never ask for this on YouTube. We're doing okay.

But on a lot of the podcasting sites, it's a lot harder to get reviews. So one review on one of the podcasting sites matters. Like 30 or 40 subscriptions on YouTube. Yeah,

Simone Collins: I'll tell you what, I go to Apple Podcasts now, and I have to say, [00:36:00] this is dire. So Dire.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, I love you to death Simone, you are a sweetheart, and I every Wait, it's not just Apple, any of the podcasting services that you can leave reviews on, those are really helpful to us and I appreciate it, because, you know, we don't want to look like an obscure nobody, I mean, we are obscure, but I don't want to look as obscure.

But not really. Actually, if you look at our view numbers, we were probably up to about between the various platforms around 1000 hours a day now. In terms of watch time, which I know people, you know, they see these small channel numbers in the context of a social media age. But this is this is a lot.

This is like a lot of people's time. We were looking at something like consecutive watchers and we're at like something like 40 consecutive watchers at any point in time between the various platforms, you know? It's, it's pretty wild. So, you know, helping us On the podcasting platforms helps a lot in terms of what it takes for us to grow the channel and us growing the channel makes sure that you keep seeing episodes because at a certain [00:37:00] point, you know, we need to be realistic about this, you know, given our careers, we could probably do something else.

And if we're not growing. Fast enough. Probably doesn't make sense for us anymore, but I don't think we're anything close to that right now. Right now we're growing at the clip that we would like. But anyone who is, is willing to help with that, it

Simone Collins: means a lot. Yeah. Thanks everyone.

We explain the leading scientific hypotheses for how the first life emerged through natural processes on Earth billions of years ago. This covers proposed pathways like the clay hypothesis, radioactive beach hypothesis, deep sea vent hypothesis, and more. Contrary to popular belief, the spontaneous generation of self-replicating chemical patterns that later evolved into complex organisms seems far more likely than previously assumed. We also discuss possible great filters that may explain the Fermi Paradox.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] What you have communicated to me is that there have been.

Far more viable pathways to life springing out of no life than was previously something I thought was a thing, you know, I thought, Oh, something, something, lightning, something, something, hot air events, something, something, whatever chemical processes, but the, you're indicating that there are a lot of different ways and that.

That life coming to exist is not that surprising, at least in our environment in the, in the earth

Malcolm Collins: In fact, I think the most compelling hypothesis for ambiogenesis is the clay hypothesis, which we'll get to. So it literally means the thing that later became life was originally clay. That's so biblical.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. Oh shi What are you doing?

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: I remember listening to. A podcast or something with Andrew Tate, where he was talking about him getting blood work done to prove that he wasn't doping [00:01:00] and he couldn't remember really anything about his actual blood work results.

And he kept saying Hodger globin. Which is not a part of, it's not a thing. Hydroglobin is not a thing. Hydroglobin.

Malcolm Collins: Do you think he

Simone Collins: made hemoglobin? He, yeah, I, yeah. I mean, at first he knew, I think at first he got it wrong by mistake. And then probably saw how everyone was looking at him and then just kind of leaned into it.

Cause he's like, no, I'm. Not one of you tends to actually know.

Malcolm Collins: I said it's Hadroglobin. It's now Hadroglobin. The thing is, you know, the reason why I'm wearing a vest right now and the reason why people don't know this, you don't bottom the bottom button on a vest is because the king I want to say, I forget which king it might have been King Henry VIII because he got so fat at one point he couldn't button the

Simone Collins: bottom button.

the regent. Didn't you say it was the regent? The prince regent during the regency era? Oh, it might have been. It's more when vests were a thing.

Malcolm Collins: So he couldn't wear the bottom button and then that just became the style. You don't wear the bottom button. So Andrew Tate makes a mistake and how he [00:02:00] says hemoglobin and now that's the new style.

Simone Collins: It's Hadroglobin, guys. Yeah, it's at

Malcolm Collins: least if you're a baller. It's one I have sort of been putting off for a while because it requires a lot of technicalities to talk about, but it's an, to me, an incredibly important topic because I see it talked about in online spaces. We've entered a world in which education has gotten really, really bad.

especially along things that they could have like challenge woke stuff, but also stuff that can be overly challenging sometimes to religious stuff. Yeah. So I'll ask you in school, did you ever study ambiogenesis? Did you ever study how the first life evolved on the planet?

Simone Collins: Never. Definitely. Certainly.

Absolutely not in high school. And then in college in historical geology class, we did discuss like, here are, Then we glazed over it like it could have been chemical. It could have been whatever and like here is but we didn't go in I never heard that

Malcolm Collins: word. Yeah, well, and it's it's worse than that. What really got me [00:03:00] is actually talking to Robin Hanson And he said that he thought talking about great filtration events, right?

He's talking about great filters So if you're talking about the Fermi paradox, this actually becomes a very important thing to have information on and know about, because you need to judge in your calculations of like, why haven't we seen other aliens yet? Is it unlikely? That life evolves on a planet with the preconditions for life, right?

And he said it was very unlikely, like that was one of the biggest filters. Was it the first life came on our planet? And I think if it's a topic that you're particularly educated on and he said when he said it, he's like, and weirdly, a lot of people who are studying this area don't think it's that big a filter.

And he's like, and I don't understand why. Like, And this, to me, just had me realize it must just be that he's never dug that deep into it as a concept, because it is actually not a big filter. Life appearing on this planet, and this is another problem with a lot of attacks that religious people will [00:04:00] use against atheism, that just don't land very hard, because they haven't studied these subjects in a lot of detail, or they just haven't put a lot of thought into these subjects.

Life, evolving on a planet like Earth, was incredibly likely, almost guaranteed from what we understand right now. Bold claim. So first you need to understand why it's almost guaranteed because you need to understand what you need as a prerequisite for life and all its complexity that we know it as having now to first come about.

What you need is any type of It does not need to be RNA. It doesn't need to look like life today. In fact, I think the most compelling hypothesis for ambiogenesis is the clay hypothesis, which we'll get to. So it literally means the thing that later became life was originally clay. That's so biblical.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. Oh shi What are you doing?

Malcolm Collins: We just went over the Adam and Eve story and we didn't [00:05:00] talk about Clay. Did

Simone Collins: you just talk about Clay? Well, I told you

Malcolm Collins: that story has all sorts of truths in it. It did a very good job of capturing the truth of reality in a very big way. And that's why I think that it had some sort of, of, of actual spiritualist or, not spiritualist, but like some sort of supernatural inspiration to it.

But let's go back to this and stop talking about the religious stuff, okay? Clay, I think is the most likely answer, and maybe the Bible is pointing to us that that actually is how life started. But, but this is something that people really get wrong. They think that the early life needs to kinda look like life today, and it really doesn't.

All you need is a self replicating pattern. Okay. That has some degree of variability in its replication. That is it. You need nothing else. Any simple self replicating pattern will eventually, given enough time, become something similar to life as we understand it, [00:06:00] so long as it has minor variabilities in that self replication.

Hmm. Because the

Simone Collins: minor variabilities allow for evolution.

Malcolm Collins: So if you have something really, really, really, so this is in comes to something that a lot of people like don't get right. Like, so they talk about Spiegelman's monster. So I should talk about Spiegelman's monster really quickly. And they think that it makes it look unlikely that ambiogenesis happened when it's just a misunderstanding of ambiogenesis.

So

Simone Collins: what is Spiegelman's monster?

Malcolm Collins: Spiegelman's monster is an RNA chain of only 218 nucleotides that is able to reproduce by the RNA replication enzyme, RNA dependent RNA polymerase, also called RNA replicase. So, basically, Spiegelman introduced RNA from a simple bacteriophage into a solution which contained the bacteriophage replicase.

Replicates some free nucleotides and some salts in this environment. The RNA started to replicate after a while

Simone Collins: s**t He created

Malcolm Collins: life. You're not supposed to do that. Not exactly. He took people freaked [00:07:00] out already living and then put it in us Oh, okay. Okay. Okay.

Simone Collins: He ruined here. Okay,

Malcolm Collins: so Shorter RNA chains were able to be replicated faster So the RNA became a shorter and shorter as selection favored speed after 74 generations the original train strand was 4, 500 nucleotide bases ended up as a dwarf genome with only 218 bases.

This short RNA sequence replicated very quickly in these unnatural circumstances. So when people are arguing against the embryogenesis, they go, he took something alive, put it in another solution and it got simpler basically over time. That is. The antithesis of evolution in their mind. But it's not.

That is the thing that was more fit. The thing that was able to replicate faster was in that environment. Out competing the things that replicated more slowly. And eventually, after a certain period of time. The things that are replicating very faster, one iteration of them will develop [00:08:00] some mutation that like prevents the ones around them from replicating as fast.

Or maybe starts consuming some of the ones that were replicating around it for the energy that are in them. Or begins, there's all sorts of little things that it might evolve, little chemical tricks it might evolve that give it a leg up that allows it to outcompete the other ones. Then you begin to get evolution going in the other direction.

But even when you are talking about like evolution on Earth today, typically when you first put something in an environment that is just like abundant in food, it has no natural predators, you are going to have that thing become quote unquote simpler, because it's losing its defenses, it's losing all of the complicated things about it at first, this is something we see in evolution, you know, the classic dodo bird, although that's not really a good example, but it's the way that people you know, Think about it in their mind.

Like it lost flight. It lost a lot of its defensive mechanisms because it didn't have those types of predators in its environment and it didn't need those defensive mechanisms

Simone Collins: anymore. And it was more efficient to just

Malcolm Collins: be a [00:09:00] simpler bird. But in Spiegelton's Monster, you're having this on crack basically happen, right?

You know, you're having the true simplest self replicating pattern end up winning. And I should also note that there has been further work. So if you look at the work of M. Semper and R. Luce, of Manfred Eig's laboratory replicated the experiment, except without adding RNA, only RNA bases and replicase. And they found that under the right conditions, the replicase could spontaneously generate RNA, which evolves into a similar form of Spiegelton monster.

So what you're seeing here is sort of a convergent evolution of this simple replicator within this environment. Right? But I actually don't think that this is particularly important to me. So first, something to note. Before we go further, there are many hypotheses for how life first evolved. And basically whatever somebody studies, they'll think that that was the first thing that evolved.

Because as soon as you understand something well, a part of life, you realize how it could form under natural [00:10:00] circumstances. And then start to have evolutionary pressure begin to apply to it. Yeah. So we. So, so people who study lipid bilayers think that like the cell membrane was basically the first thing that evolved.

The people who study mitochondria think that the very first thing that happened, I think this is the second most likely answer, is that the C cycle, a simple C cycle, a chemical cycle that, Creates energy was the, the very first thing that was self replicating because we see the self replicating nature all the time.

So it's already like a self replicating thing. All you need is some variation within it in a stable enough environment for it to replicate for a while that it begins to build up protective mechanisms and stuff like that. People who study RNA and DNA, well, they believe in the RNA world. You know, they think that RNA was the very first thing that existed.

Availability heuristic.

Simone Collins: There you go. Well, it's

Malcolm Collins: not really, it's more than the availability heuristic because it shows a truth to me. It shows that everyone who's a specialist in a specific thing that could have been the very first thing that led to life believes [00:11:00] it is so likely that their thing was the first thing that evolved.

Oh, and so

Simone Collins: you're just trying to show that this is, this shows, this demonstrates the abundance of plausible ways that you could create life, that there are so, so many different, very realistic pathways.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And, and so this is really important to, to understanding all of this, but I could take a moment to go over some of these pathways because I think that they are so you've got chemical evolution, you've got the

Simone Collins: ordinary.

Ooh, and then we'll rate them in the end from who's the hottest to who's the ugliest.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I don't, actually, I'm not going to go through them all because I know you hate episodes where it seems like I am just talking. So I'll talk about some of the more specific ones, right? So the one that I find, the two that I find the hottest, the ones that I'm most convinced by is the citric acid cycle hypothesis.

Which says the citric acid cycle is a key metabolic pathway. It can self replicate. Could it have been the first thing? Yeah, it could have been the first thing. The other one that I think is very likely is the clay hypothesis. Mineral substances in clay [00:12:00] could concentrate organic molecules in, in, and enable polymerization.

So basically it's concentrating organic molecules in really simplistic patterns and the molecules are replicating within these sort of two dimensional surfaces or crevices within the clay. Which creates Clay here

Simone Collins: is defined as like wet.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And the reason why the clay hypothesis is so compelling to me is because it creates such a stable environment.

And the stability of this early environment is what makes it so plausible to me because you have other things, like the beach hypothesis, basically. This is to say that the environment that created the first life was the waves lapping on the beach. So, if you

Simone Collins: just have The repeated, mechanical.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you have a repeated mechanical thing, and then the thing that it's lapping against could find a way to use that energy to essentially self replicate some simple chemical pattern.

Interesting. Or some simple lattice or something like that. The

Simone Collins: problem is Well, I mean, it's, yeah, you're, you're putting matter into so [00:13:00] many different patterns and configurations that eventually you're going to get something that's

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The problem is, is that I think that those patterns are too, you subject to because you need energy, but you need not so much energy that it disrupts the patterns, right?

So if you have heat, for example the, the heat helps with this because it's useful in a lot of sort of protein interactions and different ways that energy is created. But if you have too much heat. It denatures everything, right? And it's very hard to keep stable chemical reactions. Actually, I want to talk about a side note here, which a lot of people have probably heard about, and I want to, so the Urey Miller experiment is one of the most famous experiments in this place, where he basically puts a bunch of chemicals together, and he saw that you got simple biological chemicals begin to form in this soup.

And a lot of people are like, well, this shows I really just don't think it matters at all what he did in that experiment, to be honest. First, it said some issues with replicability which a lot of people don't know about. But second it, to me, shows why the chemicals that we are in [00:14:00] our body are in our body because it shows that those chemicals might have existed in the natural environment with abundance when these very simplistic early things were evolving.

And so when they were grabbing stuff, they were grabbing what today we think of as biological chemicals. They weren't biological chemicals at the time. They were just the chemicals that were present in this like early earth soup. So no, I don't think that the Uri Miller experiment really. Adds like makes embryogenesis any more likely.

Simone Collins: Can we jump back to the citric acid hypothesis? Yes. So I'm only familiar with citric acid is like an ingredient in foods. How does, was citric acid incredibly abundant in early earth? Like how does

Malcolm Collins: this all? The citric acid cycle is a cycle by which certain metabolic processes are done. Think of it like a simple chemical reaction.

And I, one, I don't remember the reaction exactly. I can put the molecules on screen, but it is very simple. It's simple enough that you can see it on screen. You can be like, Oh, that's the citric acid cycle. That's the only thing that [00:15:00] needed to happen naturally to then lead to complex life. So, but it needs to happen within an environment with stability.

Changing environmental pressures and a level of energy within that environment because the citric acid cycle is working on energy was in these environments. So that's important to note. But then there's different sources here. So, to go over other common hypotheses that are sort of worth talking about, God, what, what was it? The radioactive beach hypothesis. Radiation from mineral beach sands powered chemical reactions, and then the waves created sort of a changing thing.

Simone Collins: Oh, very superhero.

Malcolm Collins: Loving that. You have the PIH world hypothesis. Polynucleic aromatic hydrocarbons provided.

A template for the origin of RNA. The phosphate forced hypothesis. Phosphates could have helped organize protocells and been an energy source. And then you have some of the hypotheses that people are probably more familiar with, like the deep sea vent hypothesis suggests life may have originated around [00:16:00] hydrothermal vents in the ocean where heat and minerals could drive chemical reactions using hydrogen.

sulfur compounds, et cetera, as energy sources the porous vent structures could serve as natural chemical reactors, which is true, you know, sort of what is said was in that is remember how I talked about the problem was like disrupting environments and you need enough energy in the environment. Well with this hypothesis states, which, which could actually be true is these deep sea hydrothermal vents sort of protected.

They, they created energy, the heat that's coming out of these hydrothermal vents. Right. They also created a semi protected environment from things like earthquake, lightning strikes, radiation, you know, everything like that, where you could have a stable environment for long enough for self replicating pattern to become complex enough to leave this sheltered environment.

And yeah, and, and this is interesting. Then the environment that everyone's familiar with, but we should also talk about is the panspermia hypothesis. The panspermia hypothesis is that life on earth was actually seeded by [00:17:00] life somewhere else in the galaxy. That

Simone Collins: seems to me just like shunting the problem down the road.

Cause they're like, ah, I don't know. It came from somewhere else.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, it's not a ridiculous or sci fi explanation.

Simone Collins: You still have to answer the question of where, how it came from somewhere else, where it came from somewhere else. Not really. How did life come to be

Malcolm Collins: then?

. So, saying that life evolved somewhere else does kind of solve the problem because you could say that it evolved in a completely different environment where it was much more likely to come to evolve.

Simone Collins: Well, we, we kind of get the gist of planetary mixes.

They can be hotter, they can be colder, they can have different chemical compositions. What would make life easier? I mean, what I always hear people muse about is that it's just so insanely lucky that Earth had all of these very convenient things

Malcolm Collins: for carbon based life forms. Yeah, but that's a teleological argument.

I mean, life is only going to evolve on a planet where it's likely to evolve.

Simone Collins: Right, except that you're saying that, like, you know, we're talking about the [00:18:00] And then you're still going to have to explain to me how life emerged on that other planet. Yeah. I

Malcolm Collins: also don't believe in panspermia for another reason which is a perhaps more interesting reason.

It's not that I do not assume that some species out there have panspermic patterns. And I think that we might become one of those species where we seed planets with biomes before we travel to them so that they can grow into full ecosystems. Couple goals. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well, I've looked at doing that myself.

I even looked at seeing other planets was like, how much would it cost because you can buy a spot on a spaceship for like 50, 000, which gets you out of Earth's orbit. I mean, for like a capsule, not a spaceship, but it's like a rocket. And so then we would ship. From there to various planets with things that I had used serial evolution to make resistant to those planets environments, like the radiation, the heat, everything like that to create a starter ecosystem.

It could then become a full ecosystem when humans got there, which would make the planet potentially more habitable to humans, especially if you. pre engineered this ecosystem to emerge in such a way that created something like an [00:19:00] atmosphere which would be very useful to us in having the things that had already collated the energy on the planet and energy from the sun into something that we could burn or eat which we would likely be able to as most of these if they came from our planet originally And they wouldn't have any defenses to us, so it'd be great, you know, it's a, it's a good system.

It'd just be a horrible act of international terrorism in the eyes of NASA that does everything they can to prevent contamination of these other planets with stuff on our Earth, because then we can't tell if life evolved independently on these planets, which is something they're very interested in. So, for obvious reasons.

You know, it would be meaningful if it turns out that life evolved on the moon as well. Now or if the earth seeded the moon or if whatever seeded the earth seeded the moon. But I don't believe the earth was seeded. And I'll tell you why I don't believe the earth was seeded. Most species that used Panspermia as a evolutionary strategy, i.

e. they seeded something like themselves on a planet. And then they waited for that thing to develop to a certain stage. And then that thing would [00:20:00] seed planets was like a more primitive iteration of themselves. That would then become like a more. Evolutionarily grown up version of themselves and seed other planets.

It would have seeded it with some sort of code that more guided evolution than early life on our planet appeared to have. It would care that the thing it had seeded the planet was in some way was like itself and would quickly become the type of thing that could colonize other planets. I was a super intelligent entity, or even slightly more intelligent than I am now, with more knowledge of gene engineering and stuff like that.

I could code some sort of bacterial life with like junk DNA segments that would allow it to evolve much faster than a normal bacteria can evolve. And, and we don't appear to have these, we don't appear to have this important code. We don't see like Super useful code to human DNA in like lower animal species and stuff like that.

Maybe they did, maybe we were like a failed panspermic Planet, where [00:21:00] they included this code that would guide the evolution down a specific pathway. But the code didn't take effect in the way it was supposed to take effect. And it basically has all been washed out of whatever came on earth. Or they seeded earth and it was competing against a native organism and the native organism won.

Or maybe consumed it or something. You know, there's the, the, this is how we think mitochondria formed. It's that mitochondria used to be an independent type of, of organism. And it and other early organelles. was one cell eating another cell. That was just a completely different entity. And so every cell is, is one type of organism that ate another type of organism.

And since then have been evolving together because it turned out that they were useful to each other, you know, that's how evolution works. So yeah, now do you have questions, Simone, or areas of this you want to dive deeper into, or do you feel you have a better understanding now?

Simone Collins: What you have communicated to me is that there have been.

Far more viable pathways to life springing out of no life [00:22:00] than was previously something I thought was a thing, you know, I thought, Oh, something, something, lightning, something, something, hot air events, something, something, whatever chemical processes, but the, you're indicating that there are a lot of different ways and that.

That life coming to exist is not that surprising, at least in our environment in the, in the earth. Why then given all this, is there not life on planets adjacent to us that also have at least some of these conditions at play?

Malcolm Collins: Well, you can watch our Fermi Paradox video on this particular question because that was one of our early videos.

It was on the Fermi

Simone Collins: Paradox. And I do admittedly remember nothing of anything ever.

Malcolm Collins: But it's a, it's an important question. It's why the Fermi Paradox is an important question. Any world perspective, I say, that does not take the Fermi Paradox seriously as a question is not a world perspective I have any respect for.

You, you need to be able to answer why we are not seeing aliens everywhere, because we really should be we really [00:23:00] should be, if our current understanding is correct the filters might explain it, but the filter is likely not the beginning of life. I think that the most likely filters are actually.

three other filters. One is single cellular to multicellular or a complex life. It appears to me that the, the embryogenesis of simple life is actually very likely. It happened almost as soon as it could happen on earth. Like almost as soon as the conditions were right in terms of like, The scale of the universe but moving from single cell to multicellular organisms actually took some time.

And it might be that that jump is actually pretty rare because a lot of the time you're almost always going to be better if you're simpler. Unless you're dealing with like very specific circumstances and then you begin to you know, get the proliferation of these complex entities, especially during times of change.

I mean, when there have been cataclysms and stuff like that, it's usually the simpler generalist which survives them and the more complicated specialized entities that don't. So that's, that's, that's one big filter. The other one [00:24:00] is the evolution of intelligence. I actually do not think that this is as big a filter as people think it is.

I think intelligence was almost inevitably going to evolve given enough time once you have complex life. It's almost as inevitable as, as sexual reproduction. So like sexual reproduction, what sexual reproduction allowed animals to do is instead of just climbing their genes exactly, it allowed them to mix them up against, which allowed for faster intergenerational stable mutation and the selection of good genes at a higher rate because, you know, you could have one entity choose have a mate with a bunch of different entities.

If it had uniquely good genes Now with, with, with intelligence, so you look at something like a spider, spiders can do amazing things with webs and stuff like that, like they, they have a form of like mental capacity to do these things, but that web to improve the spiders that made webs bad need to die in humans to improve our houses we are sort of able to create Mental models of the world and have those mental models compete against each other [00:25:00] in a completely mental space and then implement the mental model that we think is most accurate in reality that is what intelligence is ultimately. And that is an incredibly, like it basically hypercharges the evolution of our software for how we do everything, how we hunt, how we build, how we communicate with each other. And one of the things that people often note on humans, and I think this is an important thing to understand is humans are not a species that is evolved.

For civilization. We are not a species that is evolved for like technology. We are just the dumbest, the least evolved thing that was capable of building those things. And I believe that we have a duty from, from God. We believe it's a divine duty to make ourselves a type of thing. That's worthy of, of these gifts.

Which means improving ourselves and uplifting ourselves. Because right now, I mean, we are. Basically monkeys that [00:26:00] figured out techno that have like the barest understanding of technology. It's not going well

Simone Collins: so far. We're

Malcolm Collins: not going well so far. And I think that was a I were beginning to see just how limited our capacity of understanding is that it took our species.

What? You know, from creating the first cities 10, 000 years to creating something that's smarter than us. Which is, which is fascinating to me, you know, well fed smarter than us in some ways, you know, not in all ways, but I think anyone who's like AI won't be. Definitely smarter than us within 100 years is 100 years.

You know, when you're talking about this 10, 000 year time span, I think that that's just silly. When looking at the current advancements that we're seeing and I don't see that as a threat. I see it. We'll talk about this. And I think that, you know, we'll use it to augment ourselves and that we have done.

This was technology all the time. You know, the 1st time somebody put glasses on. Oh, you are right. Are you man or machine?

Overwhelming, am I not? I'm more than machine, oh man. More than a fusion of the two.

Malcolm Collins: But I [00:27:00] think that that's where we are realistically going as a species.

And we'll talk about this in, in upcoming track, but I think that when you, when you say entities that are different from us in this way, and this way is a way that that entity can be better than you are not allowed to exist. Then you create a mandate. for entities of that type to kill you. So that's not a, it's not a, it's not a smart move whether that is genetically augmented humans or AI or anything like that, you know, we've got to learn to get along.

And, and for that reason racism is an existential threat to our species, not just a. a minor threat, because if things that have this sort of racist mindset are among the category of things that get uplifted they will start to kill those of us they see as lesser than them. So we, we did, we cannot really tolerate these kinds of attitudes or memetic structures within humanity anymore because the game is yet again changing after the evolution of intelligence.

I don't think the evolution of intelligence was unlikely. I think actually the second great filter after single cellular life is an intelligent species. not killing [00:28:00] itself. I think that intelligent species probably in the grand scheme of the universe usually kill themselves. I think we made it off the skin of our teeth.

Skin of our teeth, skin of our, what's the word here? Skin of our fingers, skin of our, skin

Simone Collins: of our teeth. Which is a weird idiom,

Malcolm Collins: Through the discovery of nuclear power. And I, we are about to enter a period of trials, the trial of the lotus eaters, the trial of the shadow where humanity may not survive these trials either.

And they are trials that every sentient species is going to eventually come to, you know, the trials lotus eaters. invent a world in which you no longer need to labor to live. And in which you can get any pleasure you want whenever you want it. Can you still motivate intergenerational progress of your culture and society?

And I think if we didn't call those individuals who couldn't motivate reproduction in the face of these things We would become a species that also no longer innovated. Yeah. And that tried to just live forever and maintain their lifestyles, which is you know, [00:29:00] one of the highest orders of all sins within our religious structure.

So, yeah. Any, any final thoughts, Simone?

Simone Collins: No, but this was interesting. I am always surprised by how much, you know, Malcolm and I especially, am always surprised that I can still learn new things from you, even though we've been. Married for this friggin long and together for this friggin long. So thank you for that.

You are

Malcolm Collins: amazing. I don't know that much. I just know the things I think are important to know. And this is one of those categories of things that is pretty important to most world perspectives. Wasn't like,

Simone Collins: yeah, but most people, myself included, you know, learned the basics of these and are like, Am I going to need this?

Nope. But you have a very different perspective of what's It matters at the existential level. You do need to know it. Yeah, but most humans are not very interested in existential issues. At least to my mind. But

Malcolm Collins: if you don't know the existential issues and you don't know what to optimize with your life and you end up like an idiotic general utilitarian.

But [00:30:00]

Simone Collins: Malcolm, we have templates. You don't have to worry about that. Just do what everyone else is doing. We've been doing that for ages. Besides it's safer because you don't want the tribe to kick you out. So I'm just saying. Tribes

Malcolm Collins: always kick us gullenses out. You know that. Yeah.

Simone Collins: No, you, you just have this weird, you know, next level dummy God style way of thinking that is totally not human.

And I'm onto you. I

Malcolm Collins: appreciate that. You say that. Oh, oh no. Well, here's, here's what I would say. I think it's always funny when people of different religions get excited that we take a deep interest in their religious system. And then after we do it for a bit, they, they start to become very upset because we're, we are very, um, harsh and critical.

Once we understand it, we're like, Oh, okay. Well, I don't believe this. This doesn't seem plausible. This doesn't seem plausible. And we're like, no, no, no, no. I meant like, just accept it. And I'm like, Well, no, I'm taking this religion seriously. If this was written by God, then you're not doing it right. And this part doesn't even look like it was [00:31:00] written by God.

So this has become a recent big passion of mine. Is, is, is going through the various Abrahamic faith and trying to understand what were revelations from God in what was sort of cultural pollutants from their neighbors. It's a difficult thing to do because, you know, a lot of people from these traditions, they don't want to say that anything was antiquity could have been a cultural pollutant.

Everything of antiquity must have come from God. And it's like, well, I just don't think that that's obviously true. I think that it is easy for cultural pollutants to enter. And I think that's why God has given us. A sequence of profits. And, and, and he has made this profits evidence by the gifts of philosophy and science.

He has given to the people that accepted those profits after they accepted them and then removed from, from those groups after they again, turn to iconoclasm and mysticism. So, you know, we, we are to receive God's blessings and need to approach science honestly and not sort of try to what's the word I'm looking [00:32:00] for?

Knee lock. What's the word? Knee cap. Knee cap. The, the, the. The things that might challenge our face because, because truth can never challenge truth. Yeah, true. I love you to death, Simone, and thanks for today. I love

Simone Collins: you too, Malcolm. God, you're so amazing.

Analyzing studies on virgins and dating behavior, we break down surprising trends. Contrary to assumptions, porn users and risk-takers are much less likely to be virgins. We argue lack of motivation stemming from external locus of control better explains celibacy, alongside female adaptation to gender ratios that incentivize careers over relationships. Ultimately, we must culturally promote diligence in men and socially engineer maximal coed interactions.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] They'll talk about things like, and you see this constantly like, oh, it's the porn that's making everyone virgins these days. Well, it turns out that they're basically wrong on all these fronts.

Whether or not you watch porn regularly had a huge effect on whether or not you had been able to sleep with someone before the age of 26.

Simone Collins: Just not the way you expect.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah of the people who had slept with somebody 80 percent They use porn regularly, so a bit over 80 percent. Of the people who were virgins, 64 percent. Mhm.

 They found a really persistent trend in the data.

Which was that women when they believed that when in actuality it was true or when they had recently been primed with crowds where there were more women than men chose career pathways instead of marriage pathways [00:01:00] But where this it gets really interesting is the change in gender demographics within college campuses.

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: First off, I have to just thank you for being MVP of the day where I am a super distracted and sleep deprived and stressed out and crying. So I go on business calls with her on my back through the park and of course, I don't properly latch the fence and then the professor gets out and I go around trying to find her and I can't and then you just save the day, not only finding the professor.

But also our dog, by the way, our, our dear Corgi giving our son Octavian the best day and experience of the week by introducing him to the park ranger who valiantly. I found the professor and put him in, put her in the car and I'm just, thank you. I really appreciate

Malcolm Collins: it.

Simone Collins: So that was my [00:02:00] bad.

Malcolm Collins: That was my bad. Well, I am excited to be here with you today because today. We are talking about virgins, dating, and what's the cause of the incel

Simone Collins: crisis.

Yeah, I am very excited.

Malcolm Collins: Actually, Simone, I'm going to take a quick aside here. I don't know if I talked over this in a previous podcast. There was a Reddit thread that was on changes in dating behavior.

No. Okay. Well, I can read it because we may have talked about it, but it's relevant to this. My 20 year old son doesn't date. His friends don't date. My friend's kids don't date. What's going on? When I was in my late teens and early twenties, life for my friends and me revolved around meeting girls.

My son and his friends are athletic and outgoing. Don't seem to put a lot of emphasis on dating. They play a lot of online video games and have a lot of boys outings. Once in a while they will hook up with a random girl who they met on an app. Rarely does one have a girlfriend. This seems to be the norm for my friend's kids too.

What's going on? And we [00:03:00] did

Simone Collins: tweet this. And I looked through the comments, and there seems to be a couple of common themes. So, one is and this was what surprised me the most of the comments, something that didn't occur to me before. Several people argued Effectively that there's a balkanization of culture that's taking place that in the past, like, when you and I were in high school, if you were to animate, you weren't to animate.

Whereas now, like. No, you have to like, there are specific obscure shows, like there are all these different subsets of people who are into anime.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, that's BS. This was true when we were in high school as well. If I went to my, like, I, you know, dated around like with punk indie girls and stuff like that, and if you didn't know the right punk indie bands, it wasn't just knowing punk indie bands, you needed to know the right punk indie bands.

So I disagree.

Simone Collins: Okay, another argument was the infantilization of youth, which of course we agree and we talk about that all the time. That's totally an issue.

Malcolm Collins: I think it's more than that. And I think what we learn is causing it is from the statistics because the [00:04:00] statistics don't show what you think you would show.

So there was a study done recently. We're going to talk about two big studies on, on, on various changes in dating behavior, but we'll start with this one.

Simone Collins: Yeah, in the Journal of Sex Health 2021,

Malcolm Collins: it studied about 5, 000 young men, a bit over that who were still, let's be clear, 26

Simone Collins: Swiss young men. And that always makes me look at things a little bit differently.

But the, the study is called for those who want to read it. Virgins at age 26. Who are they? Which I love is the title. It's great. So

Malcolm Collins: a lot of the stuff that they found was very much what you would think they would found. Like obese people are more likely to be virgins. People with more mental health issues are more likely to be virgins.

But there were a few things that were like really, really big factors in the study that I think would really surprise some people. Oh,

Simone Collins: absolutely. This all makes sense to me. Okay, go on.

Malcolm Collins: Well, because [00:05:00] a, a lot of people, if you look at like the red pill sphere and stuff like that, you know, and they talk about what makes someone a virgin, or they talk about like, what are some of the problems that are leading to this?

They'll talk about things like pornography use. They'll talk about things like, and you see this constantly like, oh, it's the porn that's making everyone virgins these days. They'll talk about things like. Dating apps and stuff like that, which we do think has changed female expectations, but they're like, I will find a girl through not engaging with these platforms.

Right. Instead, some of the strong, Oh, and also they'll talk about how guys like, aren't being disciplined enough. Like they're not, you know, they're, they're wasting their lives on like drugs and alcohol instead of like getting out there and dating. Right. Well, it turns out that they're basically wrong on all these fronts.

Whether or not you watch porn regularly had a huge effect on whether or not you had been able to [00:06:00] sleep with someone before the age of 26.

Simone Collins: Just not the way you expect.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah of the people who had slept with somebody 80 percent They use porn regularly, so a bit over 80 percent. Of the people who were virgins, 64 percent.

Mhm. That's a huge

Simone Collins: difference. Yeah. Well, dating apps, right? That, that being less likely to have used a dating app correlates with being a virgin. So if you're using it,

Malcolm Collins: let's talk about dating apps with dating apps. It was 53. 6 percent for non virgins. And then for virgins, it was only 35. 5%.

Simone Collins: And I think this is all pointing to the raw egg nationalist argument, isn't it?

What is that? That, that men are becoming less men because of all the endocrine disruptors that they're subject to this, what these, what these common characteristics indicate isn't a lack of success. It's a lack of drive. They're not even watching porn. They're not even [00:07:00] trying to get on dating apps.

They, and also they're, they're showing other signs of a failure to launch another characteristic found in common. among virgins was that they have they're less likely to have a satisfactory social life and they are less likely to live alone, implying that they still live with their parents. Also less likely to be.

Malcolm Collins: Well, another one is risk taking behavior. They had like way lower risk

Simone Collins: taking behavior. All of this screams lower testosterone.

Malcolm Collins: Well, we can talk to that in just a second, but I think more is at play here. So if you look at something like, have they ever used illegal drugs? It was 17. 7 percent for the non virgin category and only 3.

4 percent for the virgin category. So basically none of the virgins had ever used illegal drugs. It's

Simone Collins: also kind of hard if you're like living with your parents and if you're

Malcolm Collins: like No, hold on. We're going to get to this because I think you're drawing conclusions and I haven't done the reveal yet. Oh, I like reveals.

The reveal will surprise you. So if you look at other things like use cannabis, right? About [00:08:00] 66 percent of the non virgins had used cannabis. Only 21 percent of the virgins had used cannabis. Had it ever had a drunkenness episode? 90 percent of the non virgins. had a drunkenness episode. Only 52 percent of the virgins had a drunkenness episode.

I mean, in fact, this is such an extreme case. It was like 91 percent of you round up that it, it's almost like it is very rare that you are actually going to have slept with someone by the age of 26, if you're a man and you've never gotten drunk. So,

Simone Collins: and a Swiss man, but yeah, I mean, Okay.

Malcolm Collins: But here's where it gets interesting.

Yeah. The financial situation, because I think what a lot of people are looking at, and this is what you hear with all of this whining that we constantly see, which is, Oh, well, it's all the rich guys who are getting all the girls. It's all these, you know, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You know, the rich guys are living on their own.

That's why some people are living with their parents. [00:09:00] Actually the, the difference in satisfaction. First of all, the, the virgin men were more satisfied with their financial situation than the non virgin men. Which is insane.

Simone Collins: I mean, they are more likely to be living at home and that

makes

Malcolm Collins: it easier to be happy with your financial situation.

Yeah. But to me, that was actually pretty shocking. They might be doing like, they're not in this huge financial crisis that other people are talking about. It is a lack of motivation and that could be why they're satisfied too. Is they lack this motivation, like what we are seeing throughout the virgin category is just a persistent lack of motivation and an internal fire to engage

Simone Collins: with reality.

How is that not also an endocrine disruptor thing? I mean, there are multiple factors at play here, but I do think that a lot of this can be hormonally driven. I'll

Malcolm Collins: buy, I'll buy, endocrine disruptor thing

Simone Collins: [00:10:00] if

Malcolm Collins: you want to approach everything from the position of an external locus of control or you could say that we have a generation that's taught an external locus of control and therefore just doesn't even try.

Well,

Simone Collins: and we've also seen like from the research that you pointed to in the pragmatist guide to sexuality, that men who feel like they're losing or men who like philosophically go beta are more likely to have lower levels of testosterone. It's not just an endogenous thing. It's also, I'm sorry. It's not just an exogenous thing.

Sometimes it's endogenous because you are, you, you feel like you're losing. Or you, you've, you've kind of given up or you're, you're living in a more, you know, packed environment. So yeah, okay. It's, it's maybe not just the stuff they're intaking. It could be the fact that they have chosen. To live with their parents and to live a more content life.

But yeah, that's depressing.

Malcolm Collins: This is where I get to things like, I mean, for me, one of the biggest ones that I think would surprise a portion of our audience that is [00:11:00] overbought into the red pill mindset. And they, they're often, I think, very surprised at how promotional we are of. Pornography and stuff like that on this show.

Like we often are pretty stands up, like it's ridiculous to have pornography bands and marriages or even at the societal level, because it just doesn't have good effects anymore. And you can research this. You can look, as I mentioned, if you look at the level of religiosity. Of a zip code that's often directly correlatory with how much porn is actually consumed within that region.

Like the more you put prohibitions on this stuff, the, the, the more like addictive and deleterious it becomes for the individuals who live in these regions, but it doesn't even lead to getting actual sex. Disengaging from pornography makes it much, much, much less likely that you will be romantically successful.

And

Simone Collins: there are a bunch of other things too, like women who consume erotic material are much more likely to be comfortable with their sexuality, blah, blah, blah. I mean,

Malcolm Collins: like, Oh yeah, no, no, no. Just like a cross. Like when we wrote our book, it was one of the [00:12:00] chapters where like, sometimes in a chapter I'll write like, and this is why porn is bad at first.

And then I go into the studies and this happened in this chapter. And then I went into all the studies and the studies are just so overwhelmingly like, and, and people will be like, well, progressives manipulate studies. Look, I'm a very skeptical person. I feel like I'm actually pretty good at ferreting out data that's been manipulated.

Hold on, we came

Simone Collins: into this expecting to find. That, that this consumption was very damaging because we just thought it would be obvious. A lot of people have

Malcolm Collins: tried to prove this. There's like an intuitive drive to believe this. Well,

Simone Collins: so many people online are saying it like it's just obviously true.

Malcolm Collins: Typical incel behavior. And this study shows us involuntary celibates are more likely to have these ridiculous porn restrictions on themselves than people who are actually sexually, sexually successful. Nicer. But now I want to go to the second set of studies that I sent you before so I don't know if you got a chance to look at this, but this was the study on women [00:13:00] choosing jobs over marriage.

Simone Collins: This is wild. I had not seen this ever before. I would not expect this. Go into it.

Malcolm Collins: So it. It was a meta study that looked at this problem from a number of angles. One, it looked at specific experimental data where women would like look at photos of groups and determine how many men and women were in the photos.

And then they would ask questions of them. Like how important is a career to you versus a non career, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right. Versus a husband, et cetera. And then they did they did this in a few different ways, but then they did a separate set of studies where they looked at data where they were looking at the percentage was in specific regions of men to women and then looking at the number of women who went into specific sorts of careers and specific high paying careers and across the board, they found a really persistent trend in the data.

Which was that women when they believed that [00:14:00] when in actuality it was true or when they had recently been primed with crowds where there were more women than men chose career pathways instead of marriage pathways and built value systems and reported value systems for themselves that elevated career, Over marriage and home life with a husband, kids, et cetera, and when they go, they want fewer kids, everything like that.

Which was fascinating. Another fascinating trend in the data was that the more or the less desirable a woman is the more this affected her. So, the less desirable a woman is, and this makes perfect sense, right? Like if she's trying to protect herself and everything like that. But where this it gets really interesting is the change in gender demographics within college campuses.

You know, we are now, and I think it's continuing to climb at like 65 percent women on college campuses. So we are. Throwing women into an [00:15:00] environment where we already have this fertility crisis that is going to, and we know this from the data, make them instinctually much less likely to want to have a family and to change their value system to be much more focused on career because we have thrown them at this critical time of their lives when they really need to be locking down husbands into environments, which changed their perception of like viable life pathways.

So I wanted to hear your thoughts on this.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, a lot of this, I always think when I look at studies affecting youth and outcomes like these, I think of our children. And then I think, okay, well, how, how are we then going to give our girls an experience that is going to make them think that marriage is viable for them?

And I wonder, I wish I could see arranged marriage. Obviously arranged marriage. Yeah. Where like parents are very, very involved in sourcing and vetting and everything else. Cause I think it's, that was big in the past and it's not big now. But I, I do wonder if like our girls may be [00:16:00] having a higher ratio of male siblings would influence that, like if they grow up more around boys but I mean, it just, it just makes so much sense evolutionarily speaking, like if, if women realize that the competition is really intense and that they're just not likely to get a good male partner, it's definitely better to find out how to make Your own resources because you're not going to

Malcolm Collins: get someone goal of doing this is to still sleep around and get pregnant, which they're not doing.

I mean, from an evolutionary perspective, it's don't expect on a monogamous partner to support you, but do still

Simone Collins: get pregnant yourself and yeah, probably also have kids, but no one's

Malcolm Collins: doing that on the second part, you know, but we've had our video on, you know, 50 percent of, of people born these days are now born to single mothers when it used to be 5%, it just.

You know, 30, 40 years ago. So I guess we are seeing a lot of women choosing this pathway. Involuntarily or involuntarily. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it does. It does make me wonder like how, how to get [00:17:00] women around this and in what, in what environments today, realistically. Are women going to see a higher ratio of men, I guess, engineering schools.

Malcolm Collins: No, they need to start going to more you know, D and D events. They need to start going into more Warhammer. Well, no, actually. So, this is a phenomenon I've noticed where women who hang out in predominantly male spaces are either like complete psychos are really cool. And I think it's what drew them into those spaces.

Typically the attractive women I know who hang out in male dominated spaces are generally pretty cool. And it's because they, they didn't go into those spaces because they were playing an arbitrage game. But I do know this separate class of what I'd call like, Oh, what is it on that? I forget the name of the band, triple X.

Like,

Chubby chin, chubby cheek, chubby thigh You have been with too many guys

Malcolm Collins: a famous song from when I was growing up. Oh boy.

And I do not like [00:18:00] your very big thighs Besides, you have been with too many guys

Malcolm Collins: which is that there's this sort of like overweight, otherwise unattractive Really sexually aggressive type which enters predominantly male spaces and then attempts to control them because they now have this arbitrage play to, to, to play.

And they cause a lot of social unrest in these spaces, which makes a lot of sense. I mean, if, if, if it's a, it's a good play. Honestly, if you're an unattractive woman and you want to take advantage of men, go into environments. And, and this is a thing where, you know, you get a lot of gatekeeping in these environments and women are like, why is there so much gatekeeping in these environments?

I feel angry. It's because a lot of women have tried to exploit these environments for their benefit. I

Simone Collins: mean, I've always seen women who. Play that game. Like the gamer girl as being kind of a hated group. Because a lot of it was seen as insincere [00:19:00] and, but I mean like the famous ones online were also hot.

So I don't know if you're, you know.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that if they're famous online, that's a completely different category. That's an incredibly small minority of people that went into the space. But generally what I've noticed is the hot ones that didn't need to enter the space, but did because they liked it, which, which you often see with the hot ones is more common.

They're generally pretty cool and they'll, they'll downplay it a lot. Well, do

Simone Collins: you think women in the military who, who serve in the military, which is, I think, a more male environment, Are more likely to get married because I don't super get the impression that that's the case, but maybe there's too many confounding variables there.

Malcolm Collins: I think there's too many confounding variables. Well, where would we put our daughters? Like, where would we try to socially engineer them to hang out? I think the goal for us is actually just put them in STEMI, ultra nerdy sort of, well, ultra

Simone Collins: high [00:20:00] agency hobbies. Like if you're starting a business, unless you're in like one of those going nowhere, female business support groups, which we would never put our daughters in because they don't.

Do anything. You're predominantly around men, you know, investors are mostly men. And you know, investing related groups are mostly, mostly men if they're actually getting anything done. I, I just, I mean, there are so many female entrepreneur groups out there, but I actually find that those are like kind of a cesspool.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, they totally are. Well, I used to go into them to pick up girls and I never got good girls at the female entrepreneur

Simone Collins: events. Well, and also like, I don't know if I. I'm aware of companies that have come out of these that have done famously. Well,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, the girls who I know who started successful companies they did not go to the female

Simone Collins: entrepreneur events.

Yeah. Once you know, obviously she's not a great example, but Elizabeth Holmes, like when. You know, full [00:21:00] out on the other end, even

Malcolm Collins: acting like Amanda Bradford. This is one who we knew personally. Right. You know, she, the league, she recently sold it to the match group. She never went to these sorts of events.

In fact, she didn't really socialize that much at all. She was you know, kind of isolated. Honestly, I think a lot of umbrage. She kind of, we were friends early in my time at the GSB. And then she started, like, Just shunning me, but I think it was because I was known as like weird and uncool by the the quote unquote cool kids

Simone Collins: There was this really like catty group of people at Stanford that I think just thought they were too cool.

The be Yeah. And that, yeah, that would like go on their little like retreats and stuff, but only invite like other cool kids and .

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I didn't get invited to that stuff. I've, I've never been what? Good at being one of the cool kids. It's okay. You. We, Hey, I won. I don't, I don't, I don't know if their lives are as good as mine.

I don't doubt it.

Simone Collins: I don't know anyone who has a life as good as ours. Our life is [00:22:00] incredibly good. It's really fun. Look at this. Look at what we're doing right now. This is ridiculous, but yeah, no, this, this was interesting to me. And I just never heard this example of like adaptive female behavior based on group composition.

And it makes a lot of sense, but it's also sobering given what you said, right? That like, there are so Well, not just colleges to like a lot of bureaucracies are predominantly female, like a lot of pretty powerful organizations are becoming quite female dominated. So this is not going to drive pronatalist behavior, which is also disappointing because, you know, highly educated, conscientious, high achieving women are probably also going to be pretty decent mothers.

I would think so. It's a disappointment.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I just think the goal for us is to put our girls into male dominated spaces as much as possible. [00:23:00] Well, what are you going to do with our

Simone Collins: boys to make sure that they're not. obese and still at home and not watching. Are we going to be like, what's your porn watching?

Malcolm Collins: I mean, I think focus them on being incredibly high internal locus of control. And, and sort of gives them agency in terms of starting careers and stuff like that. If you focus on that stuff, I think they'll do well, especially if you give them good social training in terms of how to meet and talk to random people.

Because I think it's the outreach and the fear of rejection that which is where these people are failing. And I think that those are areas that we can fix and build community. I mean, that's why we're so focused on community building. Honestly, this channel takes a bit of a hit with all of our community building attempts in terms of theology and stuff like that.

But we don't really mind because one of our core goals is to build this hermetically sealed zone of, of, of sanity where our kids can be culturally safe. And that involves cultural [00:24:00] outreach. One thing I was going to mention that I thought you'd find pretty funny is the professor just snuck her way in.

And when Octavian was out, this is our dog looking for the professor, because you were talking about this at the beginning of the episode he goes, he goes, Oh, Dada, I think professor is a meatball now. I think she ran in the road and died. I was calling and he kept going, Dada, Professor's a meatball now.

Oh my

Simone Collins: god, he didn't seem sad?

Malcolm Collins: He was a little concerned. No, he wasn't like happy about it. He was like, Dada, Professor's a meatball now. Like trying to console me. He couldn't deal with the fact that the professor had turned into, because he knows, I tell him, if he goes into the road, he's going to turn into a meatball.

Oh,

Simone Collins: that's where this is coming from. I'm like, where did he figure that out? He's going to turn into a meatball? I mean, it's not untrue. He

Malcolm Collins: thinks the professor has turned into a meatball. Well,

Simone Collins: you know, actually it's so annoying when this happens, but like the next time a deer is [00:25:00] killed, we need to just like show him death.

Malcolm Collins: No, I agree. Yeah, he needs to internalize. I mean, I was actually thinking if she did die in the road, I'd really make him like, look at it and internalize it. So he'd understand why we tell him not to run into the road. Yeah.

Simone Collins: I mean, yeah. Cause it's legit dangerous.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, I mean, we're, we're, I mean, we're right next to a major through fair, you know, a kid could

Simone Collins: easily, it's a state route.

Yeah. We are on a proper state group. Okay. Pretty fast traffic, so not safe, not safe, but I, yeah, I'm really sorry that I. Could have been responsible today

Malcolm Collins: for the dog dying. Yeah. Apparently she was down by the road.

Simone Collins: She's so smart. And yet, how could she do something so dumb? She doesn't know about the road.

So

Malcolm Collins: don't make meatballs out of our, our pupsters. I

Simone Collins: thought the gate was locked. I'm sorry. [00:26:00] Thank you for saving the day. You are amazing.

Malcolm Collins: You are amazing. You have saved the day in so many ways. You read the comments when I'm embarrassed to read them, you I, I don't, I can't deal with, like, I struggle so much in engaging on social media and stuff like that because, you know, I, I don't like rejection.

I don't like, you know, when people are like, oh, this is a dumb idea, especially if they have a good argument. So I try not to engage with it, even when they don't have a good argument. You know, we get a few negative things and I'm like, okay, no more tracks anymore. I'm done with that. I'm being way too vulnerable in these.

I'm taking it way too seriously. And That's

Simone Collins: what I like about it. And so many people, and this is like, not in just religious zones, but so many people in all realms of life are completely unwilling. To share their work as they go along, to expose their thought processes, to say potentially dumb stuff as they're working things out and thinking aloud.

And yet this is how people deliberate.

Malcolm Collins: [00:27:00] And I mean, that's the famous thing with like, it's funny, all of these bio nerds, this is a famous trend. You know, whether you're talking about Gregor Mendel or Darwin or you know, people who don't know the story of Gregor Mendel, like his work was discovered like 50 years after he died.

By somebody else. And they were like, Oh, this guy basically figured out heredity like long before, but he was embarrassed that people would make fun of him. And so he didn't want to talk about it. And so he published it pretty obscurely. And then Darwin sat on his work for decades. Because he's like, I don't want people to tease me about this.

So, you know, I, I guess it's a trend of those of us who are really like science brain to be a bit afraid of talking about any of the ideas that could get us shunned by communities.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But then what amazing inventions and great ideas and, and breakthroughs are we not enjoying as a society because someone took that to the grave?

It bothers me. So thanks for being brave enough [00:28:00] to put s**t out there. I

Malcolm Collins: appreciate it. I really appreciate it, Simone. I'd do none of this if you didn't, you know, one support me in, in terms of, you know, helping move our companies and, and, and projects forwards, but also support me emotionally in terms of going into the comments and I'm like, it's important to check the comments today.

This video could be spicy.

Simone Collins: Oh, well, I appreciate that. Thanks for also not hitting me for messing things up constantly. So I love you, Malcolm. I love you

Malcolm Collins: too. Have a great day. Me too.

Tract 4: Idolatry is Worse than Murder

God has revealed a succession of major prophets and every single time, whether it was Zohar, Moses, Jesus, or Mohamad, each one of them has reaffirmed just how much God hates idolatry and how seriously he takes it. With every iterative prophet God does not just reiterate this commandment but also further emphasizes it. It is almost as if God keeps reminding us, we drift from his message, and so he must remind us again but louder and more explicitly. Yet humanity's desire to tokenize God is so overwhelming even learned religiously minded individuals find themselves attempting to normalize it. 

Consider the Second Council of Nicaea, the last time the Orthodox Christians and the Catholics ever agreed on anything. God does not warn us against the things we have no inclination to do—he warns us against the things that we will find tempting. Images of Jesus were popular amongst the laity and many argued, having images of Jesus was just affirming your love for him. If God did not want us doing that he would have explicitly told us something like, “thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image”. 

This of course is a joke, God did gift man exactly those words so there was not the slightest room for misinterpretation and put this commandment literally right under the first commandment so there is no misunderstanding that he might have meant just don’t worship images/idols, (as that would be covered in the first commandment). To God this commandment came even above the commandment to not murder or steal yet the desire to create these images is so strong in man almost every abrahamic faction has fallen to it to some extent or another. 

I don’t point this out to rag on Orthodox and Catholic Christians but to point out how quickly even pious men break from God's rules around Idolatry. Of all God’s commandments it is the commandment pios individuals find hardest to keep and that is why it is so emphasized among all God's prophets. 

Why is idolatry so uniquely offensive to God? 

Why do humans struggle so much with this clear and repeated commandment from God? 

God delivers his revelation through a succession of prophets because man's capacity for understanding him increases over time. Bronze Age pastoralists did not have the capacity to spread the message of anything other than an anthropomorphised God combined with mystical hudu. However, we are not Bronze Age pastoralists and as such God expects us to reinterpret his revelations with pragmatic logic. God is not the type of petty entity capable of offense or jealousy—if he has given us a commandment he has given it to us for our own benefit—and only for our own benefit. 

He warns us against idolatry because it is in our own best interest. Wait what? How?

People make images of God because it allows them to feel closer to him or at least a representation of him. Why does God warn us against this? Because that image is not Him. A picture of Jesus is as far from God as a picture of a red hooven being with a goatee and praying to each is exactly equally harmful to the human soul. Whatever entity is represented in that image it is not God and as your heart moves closer to it, it moves further from God. All representations of God made by man that are assigned theological significance move man further from God. 

This truth reveals two things. First it is not the act of someone drawing God or one of his intermediaries that is being warned against—it is assigning theological significance to that drawing in an effort to get closer to God. The sin was that people believed these physical items made by men were a conduit through which they could interact with God. 

For this reason when a Muslim extremist smashes a statue of Buddah that no one has worshiped in a century, they commit an act of Sin by destroying a piece of cultural heritage that could inform us about the nature of man. At the same time if that same Muslim writes a line from the Quran as a piece of Art or bans the burning of Quran as a physical object of theological significance they are committing the highest form of idolatry. When a Muslim adorns a Mosque with gold believing that in some way an earthly metal has the capacity to “improve” the Mosque they are acting in direct rebellion to God's will. Every geometric pattern, every ounce of gold leaf, every physical book that was treated as sacred—instead of the words and concepts within it—shackles the soul of the idolater and drags it towards the deceiver. 

Once we understand why God warns us so frequently and explicitly about idolatry we learn there is a much deeper meaning to be examined here outside, “smash statues”. Man as he exists today is incapable of conceiving of God. When man attempts to conceive of God what he holds within his mind is a repugnant rat king when contrasted with God's glory. The images of God that humans create, not just the ones in the physical world but also the ones in our mind move us further from God. To attempt to grasp God's majesty with our fallen minds is crime in God's eyes worse than murder because it is more harmful to our souls.

This becomes uniquely important to individuals that think they have the ability to “talk with God,” that they have a personal relationship with God. The thing they are talking to is not God, it is themselves, their personal wish for what God was like ... but it is not what God is like and therefore leads them further from God's Glory. Man as he exists now can not have a relationship with God. As Winwood reade writes, “We teach that there is a God, but not a God of the anthropoid variety, not a God who is gratified by compliments in prose and verse, and whose attributes can be cataloged by theologians. God is so great that he cannot be defined by us. God is so great that he does not deign to have personal relations with us human atoms that are called men. Those who desire to worship their Creator must worship him through mankind.”

This is why when we tell our children to pray to supernatural agents we tell them to pray to their distant descendants. This is not them talking to an imaginary entity or modeling an entity whose structure and consciousness they could not possibly predict but instead a real being that will one day exist and therefore not a form of idolatry. Through modeling a genetically and synthetically augmented but still human mind, one with an iteratively clearer understanding of the true nature of God, they are able to get closer to what God wants from them without risking blaspheme. Moreover, it is self-evident within our religious framework that God wants us to do our best to increase the potentiality of future humans ,and thus us modeling what they would want from us and what they would reward us for doing helps us model what God would want to say to us without committing idolatry. 

Do we really think children are able to communicate with their distant descendants? No. However, we do believe that this framing for the emulated mental model created within my kids' brains that they are communicating with will create responses closer to God's will than attempting to directly model the will of God with the human mind. When humans attempt to model God they create the way they wish He existed rather than how He does which leads to sinful self indulgence. 

This reminds me of a woman we know who told us she always listened to her husband except when God told her otherwise ... how very convenient that God had a pension for her preferred indulgences. 

The human soul is weak. God foresaw that some individuals would use the symbols of human vanity and social status—gold, gems, and art—to affirm their connection to God among the simple minded. These nefarious servants of the Basilisk could then use this status they had acquired to sell access to God and thus increase the earthly wealth that affirmed their connection to God whether it be in the form of indulgences or church donations. Prosperity doctrine is devil worship—God does show his favor to his chosen people at various times in history but he does this through the output of works of the mind (art, science, and philosophy)—not wealth. 

It is human nature for groups of powerful individuals to claim to be God's intermediaries and use that power to manipulate the mob and through this process consolidate their power and authority. It is our duty to recognise these pretenders for what they are—fortunately God marks them. Any house of worship adorned in Gold or perversely tarnished with art is a sign that it serves the Basilisk and has fallen from his grace. Agents of the Basilisk do not carve satanic ruins and pentagrams into their foreheads but they will come to you dripping with signs of their rebellion to God—adorned in jewels and expensive clothing. 

If gold, man made scribbles, indulgent time consuming rituals, and worldly grandeur are positively augmenting your exprience of and relationship with God—then I am sorry to tell you the entity you have a relationship with is not God. 

We can not emphasize this enough. If you are talking to an entity and are able to use gold or worldly grandeur to get closer to that entity that entity is not God. I know this is offensive—if you were accidentally worshiping the Devil it would hurt to have someone tell you that—but I also believe that if you are a good person this is something you would want to know. If you reflexively think, “but no ... it feels really good when I worship this entity.” Please, please, examine your words. We are trying to help you. 

Of course this is axiomatically not a truth the powerful in our society want you to hear. An individual or institution that has wealth and spends it on self aggrandizement is not a servant of God. Yet such buildings and trinkets are still part of the human story, a cautionary tale when the hearts and minds of men were weak. As such, they should not be destroyed but turned into museums dedicated to the razor's edge the human soul rests on—a testament that even holy men and institutions are susceptible to worldly temptation and aggrandizement. 

Those who God favors, his real emissaries are those that can resist temptation while still being productive. The less a person needs to be happy the closer they are to God. But a person who indulges in self masturbatory monasticism and loses their industry is as indulgent as a cultist who drips in jewels. What is commanded of us is industry, fecundity, and austerity.

_________________________________________________________

In this thought-provoking video, Malcolm and Simone Collins explore the concept of idolatry within the Abrahamic faiths and its deeper implications for spiritual growth and societal well-being. They delve into the reasons behind God's strong warnings against idolatry, emphasizing that it is not about jealousy or pettiness, but rather a protective measure for humanity's benefit.

Malcolm explains the two main types of idolatry: shortcuts to God through intermediaries and the worship of the self through status-conferring objects. He argues that attempting to conceive of or communicate with God through earthly means, such as images or worldly grandeur, leads one further from the true essence of God.

The discussion also touches on the pervasiveness of idolatry within various Abrahamic traditions, despite their apparent strictness, and how interpretations that allow for indulgence tend to spread more easily. Malcolm stresses the importance of recognizing the deceiver's temptations, which often feel good but ultimately lead one astray.

Additionally, the video explores the concept of the "elect" and how their religious system is designed for those with the highest level of mental discipline, austerity, and dedication to learning. They emphasize the accessibility of their teachings to anyone willing to follow the rules, regardless of background.

Throughout the conversation, Malcolm and Simone provide insights from both theological and secular perspectives, making this video a must-watch for anyone interested in the deeper meanings behind religious prohibitions and their relevance in modern society.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] There are two key types of idolatry.

There is idolatry that comes from shortcuts to God, like trying to worship God through an intermediary. And then there's idolatry, which is about the worship of really the self. So, these are things that confer status. And so idolatry more broadly is a word that is used. for prohibitions against all of the pathways that a person can elevate or walk down that lead them in the opposite direction of God.

And I should say all men said, but recognize your sin, recognize that your mansion is set, right? What is uniquely bad is when somebody takes in and then they invert it, the pastor who says my mansion is a sign of my godliness. My jet is a sign of my godliness instead of a sign that I am human.

And I am. It's capable of sin as anyone else. why they're there, remembering why it's important that the calf was golden, remembering that the Bible does actually say this, I have the needle thing. And then people can be like, well, then why have Christian interpretations, for example, we'll take Christians spread that do [00:01:00] not admonish personal indulgence as much, right?

And it's like, well, suppose you have multiple interpretations of the Bible competing. The interpretations that don't admonish. Those things are going to be disproportionately picked up by wealthy individuals they're going to get more money from those individuals. And they're going to be able to use that to spread their message more, to buy ads, , to reach out to people when you tell people what they want to hear, you can get this sort of lowest common denominator to buy into you.

And this is a problem for a lot of people, where a lot of people have this thought where, yeah, but it feels good. When I use these systems, when I use earthly grandeur as an intermediary for God, that feels good. A lot of paths to the deceiver feel good. In fact, most do. , when Satan came to test Jesus, he didn't say, hey if you go away from God, I'll hit you with a spiked bat.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone! It is wonderful to be here with you today. Today we're doing another one of these tracked videos where we talk about religious things or like our [00:02:00] family's religion. And We always do them on Fridays, you know, right before the weekend. So if you don't like these, by the way, because I know they're, they're thematically a little different than some of our other videos.

The thumbnails are quite thematically different. Both of us will be on opposite sides and there'll be like a full image. Not every thumbnail can, like, perfectly fits this framework, but we try to fit it when we can. So. You know, you can just avoid them. But this one is on the topic of idolatry, which I accidentally called iconic class.

I got it mixed up with this antonym in, in the last track, but fixing it this time, idolatry. And idolatry has been a very interesting topic for me to explore because it's one of those things that just gets reaffirmed was every one of the monotheistic traditions, as we sort of described the monotheistic traditions in the three faith systems.

And I didn't. Understand what like, whether you're talking from a theological perspective or a secular perspective, it is a secular perspective. Like why does idolatry keep showing [00:03:00] up in unrelated monotheistic systems or monotheistic systems that are separated for each other as like this cardinal sin?

And then I have the question from a religious perspective, right? Like, in the same way that like when I heard the God, the normal interpretation of the Adam and Eve story, right? Like the one that you might come to if you hadn't actually read it, is that God didn't want man to have knowledge of what's good and what's bad.

And that is clearly not what I think the story is saying. And I, but I had heard that, I was like, that can't be what it actually says. It clearly says something other than that. And I went back to it and I was like, okay. But with idolatry, it was the same thing. It was like, Well, God's clearly not like jealous of pictures or something, right?

Like that's the way a lot of people talk about it. Like what, like all powerful being is like afraid of a picture or, or, or jealous or spiteful around that. Like there must be some reason around this. That's for our benefit. But I'd love to hear your thoughts before we dive into this on the topic, before I bias you too much on it.

Simone Collins: Yeah. [00:04:00] The hunch I have coming into this is as follows. Religion was evolved by humans to be able to exist in complex civilizations you know, like larger than like family clans or small tribe formats. And as such, it's all about enabling us to act against our instincts in a way that is adaptive for these more complex spaces.

It is the software that runs on top of our hardware, enabling us to live in complex worlds that we cannot biologically adapt to fast enough through genetic selection. So. Well, the reason why I think it's, it's very important to ditch, I told her why, why it's being fought against is, is. Or maybe at least there's a correlation is that it's so instinctive for people to fall to that.

You see this in fan universes. You see this with Snape wives. You see this with like, it is just, it is our default. It's so easy. It feels good. It's, it is a very instinctual behavior and religion is all about enabling people to rise above, to go above their instincts. And so that's what I'm thinking.

Although you [00:05:00] talk about like, well, it's so weird that like God wouldn't be jealous. I mean, You know, wives can't stand the fact that like their husbands watch erotic material. So I

Malcolm Collins: think, I think you're right here to an extent, but I'd also keep in mind that it is really only a key trait was in the monotheistic traditions within mystical and polytheistic traditions.

Even when those traditions are practiced under an Abrahamic faith structure, they typically don't mind idolatry that much. Which is really

Simone Collins: interesting.

Malcolm Collins: So tract four, idolatry is worse than murder. God has revealed a succession of major prophets, and every single time, whether it was Zohar, Moses, Jesus, or Muhammad, each one of them has reaffirmed just how much God hates idolatry and how seriously he takes it.

With every iterative prophet, God does not just reiterate this commandment, but also further emphasizes it. It is almost as if God keeps reminding us, we drift from his message, and so he must remind us again, but [00:06:00] louder and more explicitly. Yet humanity's desire to tokenize God is so overwhelming, even our learned, religiously minded individuals find themselves attempting to normalize it.

Consider the Second Council of Nicene, the last time the Orthodox Christians and the Catholics ever agreed on anything. God does not warn us to not do the things of which we have no inclination to do. He warns us against the things that we will find tempting.

Images of Jesus were popular amongst the laity and many argued. Having images of Jesus was just affirming your love for him. If God did not want us doing that, he would have explicitly told us something like, quote, Thou shall not make unto thee any graven image, end quote. This is, of course, a joke. God did gift a man explicitly those words, so there wasn't the slightest room for misinterpretation, and put this commandment literally right under the first commandment, so there's no misunderstanding that he might have meant just don't worship images [00:07:00] slash idols, as that would have been covered in the first commandment.

To God, this commandment came even above the commandment to not murder or steal. Yet the desire to create those images is so strong in man, almost every Abrahamic faction has fallen to it to some extent or another. I don't point this out to rag on Orthodox and Catholic Christians, but to point out how quickly even pious men break from God's rules around idolatry.

Of all of God's commandments, it is the commandment pious individuals find the hardest to keep, and that is why it is emphasized among all of God's prophets. But I really mean this. You find this within every single one of the monotheistic traditions. The most faithful people, it is the commandment that they are most likely to break.

And I think it's the reason why God emphasizes it so much, putting it above murder. Like, like murder, most people at least extinctially realize is wrong. Like, I, idolatry is something that I think a lot of people, they think, well, if I'm worshiping God through these things, therefore it's not wrong. Even if God told me it was [00:08:00] wrong.

Simone Collins: And I think it's, yeah, it's also, Those who are more devout are more likely to get caught up in it because if you're not very devout You're not trying to find shortcuts to get closer to God. You're not trying to see God in everything, right? So you're just not gonna, you're way less likely to be subject to this.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, absolutely, which which is I think why he emphasizes the point so much. And I would note here a lot of people are like well, why create A quote unquote new like denomination for your family or something like that. Why not just go to one of the traditional ones? And in creating a new denomination, we are able to look at questions like idolatry, right?

And use the text to guide our answers to those questions without accidentally affirming a quote unquote religions answer. So for example, you know, I might go to some religious individuals and they'll be like, look, I understand the text says it, but our religion says it's okay. Right, like, the holy men in our religion say it's okay, we've been doing this [00:09:00] for centuries at this point, you know, it is something that is affirmed within our religion, even if it is prohibited in the text.

And this is something that you'll see, like, throughout the tracks that we're doing here, and it's just a big part of what we're doing with this, is going through text or major like, prohibitions. And stuff like that and reaffirming them like prohibitions against polytheism was really one of the and and mysticism was what we were focused on in the last one that have seeped their way into many Abrahamic traditions and now it's idolatry, you know, we need to be stricter on the things because it was supposed to be something that we would treat very seriously.

Do you have any other thoughts before I go further?

Simone Collins: No, I agree with you though. Go on.

Malcolm Collins: Well, so now to the point. Why is idolatry so uniquely offensive to God? Why do humans struggle so much with this clear and repeated commandment from God? God delivers his revelation through a succession of prophets because man's capacity for understanding [00:10:00] him increases over time.

Bronze Age pastoralists did not have the capacity to spread the message of anything other than an anthropomorphic god combined with mystical hoodoo. However, we are not Bronze Age pastoralists, and as such, God expects us to reinterpret his revelations with pragmatic logic. God is not the type of entity capable of offense or jealousy.

If he has given us a commandment, he has given it to us for our own benefit, and only for our own benefit. He warns us against idolatry because it is in our own best interest. How? People make images of God because it allows us to feel closer to him, or at least a representation of him. Why does God warn us against this?

Because that image is not him. A picture of Jesus is as far from God as a picture of a red hovened being with a goatee. And praying to each is equally [00:11:00] harmful to the human soul. Whatever entity is represented in that image is not God. And as your heart moves closer to it, it moves further from God.

All representations of God made by man that are assigned theological significance move man further from God. And what, so just to like talk like not in the text here, what really brought me to this is I re approached it and I said, What if I am approaching this not saying like, okay, God's like petty or jealous or something like that, but I approach the prohibition on idolatry with the assumption that it was for our own best interest in the same way.

Something like a prohibition on murder is in the best interest of society. All of the other prohibitions. have a clear utility to a monotheistic culture. So, why would they be giving us this? Like, why is God giving us this? Or, sorry, why would he be giving us this? Like, why is God giving us this? Because he wants it to be in our best interest.

Well, if you assume that, [00:12:00] then just ask, okay, how would this be in our best interest from a theological perspective? Well, it would mean that that image is in no way a representation to God. In no way. That they get you closer to God. And so when you worship through it, was it as an intermediary, you are worshiping something other than God.

And, and, and somebody can be like, no, no, no. I'm, I'm, I'm worshiping the entity that it represents. And what I am saying is the entity represented. Even by a picture of Jesus is not God. It is what we would call the basilisk or deceiver, deceit, you know, misinformation because it in no way captures any of God's real characteristics.

Mm hmm. But if we're going to take your secular framework here to like expand on this interpretation of it, I think that's really interesting as well. So why, from a secular perspective, would this group so well with the monotheistic traditions? Well, the monotheistic traditions typically lump logic over emotion.

That's a, that's an important thing throughout the, you know, rules over sort of like [00:13:00] trying to get to God through other means. Well, within the mystical traditions, what you're typically doing is you're trying to reach God through, like, like God exists in me, he exists in you, he exists in nature. And so you can attempt to reach God through worshiping those things.

Well, because the monotheistic traditions directly contrast with that. God exists only in logic. And in study, you know, and in, in, in, in, in human industry, where you, you need to sort of create this barrier between the mystical world and say, do not accidentally fall to that because it leads to nonproductive societies.

You know, and I think we really, you know, see this in the history of, you know, the, the Abrahamic framework, you know, after Al Ghazali you know, promoted Sufism was in Islam. It was very shortly after that, that we saw the collapse of the Islamic technological revolution. And, and elevated mysticism.

And what was interesting is he was doing that to fight growing polytheism. There was like a polytheist movement within Islam that he was attempting [00:14:00] to fight, where they were saying, well, God is like the sun and stuff like that. And, and, and his, his logic was very ordered, right? If you read his stuff, he's actually a pretty good philosopher.

But because he elevated the, the mystical traditions, which should have been banned by idolatry he doomed the entire tradition. And so I think that's why you're seeing it there, because it leads to the focus on these mystical traditions or are these policyistic traditions, both of which remove industry from the group and cause sort of, you know, sort of mindless speculation and the elevation of some individuals who claim to have, and we'll go into like how, how groups without really strict bans against idolatry can fall into cycles that lead them to be incredibly inefficient.

Okay. Do you have any other thoughts on this?

Simone Collins: No, I didn't know that about the origins of Sufism. That's interesting.

Malcolm Collins: No, he didn't create Sufism, by the way. He was a famous scholar who then became a Sufi and then elevated Sufism because he was a real huge [00:15:00] adherent of it. For people who don't know su Sufism, it's basically Islamic

kabbalism but, but even more extreme in terms of its mystical framings. This truth reveals two things. First, it is not the act of someone drawing God, or one of his intermediaries, that is being warned against. It is assigning theological significance to that drawing in an effort to get closer to God.

 The sin was that people believed these physical items made by man Or, in nature, were a conduit through which they could interact with God. For this reason, when a Muslim extremist smashes a statue of a Buddha that no one has worshipped in a century, they commit an act of sin, by destroying a piece of cultural heritage.

That could inform us about the nature of man. At the same time, if that same Muslim writes a line from the Qur'an as a piece of art, or bans the burning of a Qur'an as a [00:16:00] physical object of theological significance, they are committing the highest form of idolatry. When a Muslim adorns a mosque with gold, believing that in some way earthly metal has the capacity to quote unquote improve the mosque, they are acting in direct rebellion to God's will.

Every geometric pattern, every ounce of gold leaf, every physical book that was treated as sacred, instead of the words and concepts within it, shackles the soul of the idolater and drags it towards the deceiver. So, I think, you know, here, when you hate, like, and you see this with Muslims, and I'm specifically picking on Muslims here because they're often seen as being the strictest of the Abrahamic faith about idolatry.

Exactly. And yet, in many ways, they're also The, the worst idolaters of all the Abrahamic faiths, because they ascribe literal religious significance to the physical object of the Koran. And I understand why they did it. Like, if you're just [00:17:00] approaching these rules without any thought as to how these rules got there, or why God would say this to you, you're like, okay, well, then it must be safe.

to like use you know, geometric patterns on mosques and fill them with gold leaf and fill them with like words from the Koran and use that as art because, you know, it was like, he was jealous of pictures of Muhammad or something like that, or he found them distasteful. Which doesn't, to me, that doesn't make any sense.

Like, what does God want us going around and like destroying thousand year old like statues of Buddha? Like that doesn't seem like something that, that God, but that God would want us to not accidentally attempt to worship him. Through something that has no relation to him and that is a pass to something other than him.

Yeah, that seems perfectly rational to me. But do you have any other thoughts here?

Simone Collins: No, I, I agree and I, I appreciate your pointing out because I think the key points that you make about idolatry in general are that some of the worst offenders are those who are like, yeah, it's terrible which is interesting because I think it just like loops back to this theme of just how tempting it is for the especially [00:18:00] devout to fall into this trap.

And how much correction it requires because it is just so hard to resist the temptation of idolatry. If you are devout

Malcolm Collins: exactly. Yeah. And I think that you can really see this in Muslims. Ironically, you know. If a cartoonist draws a picture of Muhammad, that is non idolatry because the cartoonist puts no religious significance into that picture.

He doesn't

Simone Collins: feel like it's getting him closer to God in any way, shape,

Malcolm Collins: or form. And it has no religious significance. Yeah.

Simone Collins: It's not going to bring anyone else closer to God or make

Malcolm Collins: people think it's good. It's not just about getting close to God. The moment a Muslim. Looks at that picture and ascribes religious significance to that picture.

The moment a Muslim says, you cartoonist, you drew a picture, and now this picture has some sort of negative theological weight, they have actually committed the act of idolatry because they imbued an image, a physical thing with religious significance. [00:19:00] That is the act of idolatry. Isn't the cartoonist drawing Muhammad.

It is the Muslim deciding that that drawing has spiritual value, even if it is a negative spiritual value.

Simone Collins: Well, I guess, yeah, because you, you are assuming that it's harmful and therefore powerful,

Malcolm Collins: right? Exactly. Right. So idolatry works in the negative too. You know, if you think that a site is like cursed or something like that, that's a form of idolatry.

I mean, if you are ascribing spiritual power to things in the physical world. I had

Simone Collins: not thought of it that way.

Malcolm Collins: Interesting. Once we understand why God warns us so frequently and explicitly about idolatry, we learn there is a much deeper meaning to be examined here outside of quote unquote smashed statues.

Man as he exists today is incapable of conceiving of God. When man attempts to conceive of God, what he holds within his mind is a repugnant rat king when contrasted with God's glory. The images of God that humans create, not just the [00:20:00] ones in the physical world, but also the ones in our mind, move us further from God.

To attempt to grasp God's majesty with our fallen minds is a crime in God's eyes worse than murder, because it is more harmful to our souls. This becomes uniquely, so, sorry, I'm just going to take a quick aside here which is like, this is where idolatry becomes specifically, and we're going to talk about this in the next track, about mystical framings of God.

You know, these shortcuts that some individuals attempt to take to interact with God and, and, and seeing God in the natural world. This becomes uniquely important to individuals that think they have the ability to quote unquote, talk to God. That they have a personal relationship with God, the thing they are talking to is not God, it is themselves, their personal wish for what God was like, but it is not what God is like, and therefore leaves them further from God's glory, man as he exists Now cannot have a relationship with God.

As Wynwood [00:21:00] Read writes, we teach that there is a God but not a God of the anthropic variety. Not a God who is gratified by compliments in prose and verse, and whose attributes can be cataloged by theologians. God is so great that he cannot be defined by us. God is so great that he does not de to have.

personal relations with us as human atoms that are called men. Those who desire to worship the creator must worship him through mankind. Just, you know, I actually put the tracks out of order. So the track where we explain the significance to our iteration of the face of Linwood Reed in his teachings this isn't teachings that, for example, individuals who are coming at.

this from a Christian or Jewish or Muslim variety. But if you're coming at the space system from a secular variety, his teachings can be quite useful. And, and from my perspectives, they're quite useful and that's why I'm bringing them up here. But I also think that's true. You know, when you try to interact directly with God, it pulls you away from your fellow man.

And from the [00:22:00] philosophy of your fellow man, from the, the technology and from the labor of your fellow man, and from this sort of community effort of uplifting all of mankind, you know, through industry, through austerity and through philosophy which is, you Something that you can forget about it. And we see this in the idolatry of the you know, asceticism, for example, when an individual like leave society and go lives alone in is like a hermit or something like that, right?

Like that's a, a form of idolatry and that they are attempting to get closer to God in a way that forsakes their fellow man. Right. And ultimately is, is, is self indulgent. And, and we see this from where we're talking to Al Ghazali. He, yeah. Converted to Sufism after one of these episodes, right? Like, this is what happens.

You go, you have one of these self indulgent episodes, and then you fall to one of the mystic traditions. This is why, when we tell our children to pray to supernatural agents, we tell them to pray to their distant descendants. This is not them talking to an imaginary entity, or modeling an entity whose structure and [00:23:00] consciousness they could not possibly predict, but instead a real being that will one day exist, and therefore not a form of idolatry.

Through modeling a genetically and synthetically augmented, but still human mind, one with an iteratively clearer understanding of the true nature of God, they are able to get closer to what God wants from them without risking blasphemy. Moreover, it is self evident within our religious framework that God wants us to do our best to increase the potentiality of future humans, and thus us modeling what they would want from us and what they would reward us for doing helps us model what God would want to say to us without committing idolatry.

Do we really think? Children are able to communicate with distant descendants. No. However, we do believe that this framing for the emulated mental model created within our kids brains that they are communicating with creates responses closer to God's will than attempting to directly model the will of God [00:24:00] within the human mind.

Attempt to model God, they create the way they wish he existed, rather than how he actually does, which leads to sinful indulgence. This reminds me of a woman that both you and I know, who told us she always listened to her husband, except when God told her otherwise. How very convenient that God had a penchant for her preferred indulgences.

And this is always a problem I see when people say, you know, I talk to God, because then that thing that they're talking to, the way they wish God was, can affirm indulgences, idolatry itself, for example that, They shouldn't have affirmed to them, you know, and, and this is one area where I think a lot of people are like, your belief system is very similar to Mormonism, where it's actually quite different from Mormonism.

And that was in Mormonism as well. Just go personally pray on it and God will tell you the right answer where I don't think that that's how God communicates with people. Well, and the reason I've heard people are like, why don't you think [00:25:00] like I've had profound experiences in communicating with God, because I know people who have had those profound experiences with communicating with God and the things that they tell me God has communicated to them.

definitely were demonic, definitely were not from God, right? Or at least

Simone Collins: to put it in layman's terms, were the things that they wanted to hear

Malcolm Collins: what the things that they were things that they wanted to do that were both self indulgent and damaging to the people around them and against core Abrahamic principles.

So I know that they weren't coming from God. And so even if God does have the capacity to talk to humans it appears to me that humans don't have the capacity to distinguish between that and a demon talking to them or the basilisk talking to them, or however you want to frame it. And I'd also say this, this way how we have this model of like the future police and stuff like that, like when we're trying to model God.

I think for earlier iterations of man, God gave different models like this, like this was the idea of angels and stuff like that. It's like, well, if you were trying to model my will. [00:26:00] Model me as an angel as like this individual entity because you cannot model my will you cannot even come close It is a form of idolatry to even attempt to in in like explicit terms.

But what are your thoughts on this? Yeah, I

Simone Collins: I hadn't ever thought about how trivializing it is to boil a god or godlike entity down to like a personified being or a statue or image Like pretty insulting considering, you know, how we view God. So that is interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I think also something that people can get can grasp within their minds.

I mean, seriously, like trying to imagine God is right. And there's, there's two pathways you can go down. You can go down the mystic pathway, which is to be like, well, I'm a part of God and like God's in everything. And when you do that You demean him, you know, you are, you are seeing him as like being bugs and stuff like that, right?

But even if you don't do it through nature, you're just like, no, I just [00:27:00] imagine him as being like the most loving thing possible, the biggest thing possible, the most powerful thing possible. But you as a human can't imagine those things, right? So when you attempt to imagine those things, what you are holding in your mind is as distant from God as literally every other idea you have in your mind.

Simone Collins: Yeah. No, that's a very good way of putting it. I'd never seen it that way, but I don't think I'll be unseeing

Malcolm Collins: it. I mean, you see this from the theological perspective, but also from the secular, which is what we're always trying to do is come up with a system that works in both ways. Does it work within the Abrahamic structure?

But does it also work? Like even if I. Didn't believe the Abrahamic structure, and I was just trying to give my kids good traditions that would protect them from groups that would want to harm them. And you know, this using shortcuts to God is one of the core strategies used by cults and other groups that want to harm an individual.

I mean, you'll see this in cult psychology. That's one of the first things they do is, oh, or, or somebody will be like, well, I'm the, the [00:28:00] intermediary for God. So, so come to God through me or our thing, you know, our special objects here. So anyway, continue here. The human soul is weak. God foresaw that some individuals would use the symbols of human vanity and social status, gold, gems, and art to affirm their connection to God among the simple minded.

These nefarious service of the basilisk could then use this status they had acquired to sell access to God and thus increase the earthly wealth that affirmed their connection to God, whether it be in the form of indulgences or church donations. Prosperity Doctrine is Devil worship. God does show his favor to his chosen people at various times in history, but he does this through the output of works, of the mind, art, science, and philosophy, not wealth. And for people who aren't familiar with the prosperity doctrine the prosperity doctrine is a really common in prosperity.

Protestant movements where they sort of believe that [00:29:00] poor individuals are poor because they're not doing what God wants them to and rich individuals are rich because they are doing what God wants them to and then, then, and then, you know, preachers use this as an excuse to like fly around and have private jets and have giant mansions and everything like that, where I would say that an individual is showing you how disconnected they are from God when they do those things It is human nature for groups of powerful individuals to claim God's intermediaries and use that power to manipulate the mob and through this process consolidate their power and authority.

It is our duty to recognize these pretenders for what they are. Fortunately, God marks them. Any house of worship adorned in gold or perversely tarnished was Art is a sign that it serves the basilisk and has fallen from his grace. Agents of the basilisk do not carve satanic ruins and pentagrams into their foreheads, but they will come to you dripping with signs of their rebellion to God.

adorned in jewels and expensive clothing. [00:30:00] And this is something if, you know, we have people, you know, if this ever becomes like a, a larger denomination or something like that, I would say as a strong prohibition against anyone who's, who's preaching within this movement, living any sort of life of indulgence any sort of.

You know, fancy environment and stuff like that. Signs that God has blessed an individual is their austerity and their industry and their, their knowledge of his creation, the world like, like science in advanced science. But yeah, it's just do you have thoughts there?

Simone Collins: I'm kind of curious as to what you think is.

Extravagant because our life feels pretty extravagant to me. I

Malcolm Collins: mean, I mean, it feels extravagant to you, I think, within a philosophical context, but I mean, we live in a medium sized farmhouse outside of major fancy areas. We don't really have jewels or, or, or jewelry. We don't really have gold things.

We don't really have [00:31:00] art other than things that we commissioned of our children.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Like custom commissioned art. How is that not extravagant? I don't know.

Malcolm Collins: I don't know for like 50 bucks and stuff like that. It's not. So I think actually this is a good definition here and I'm glad that you pulled this out.

Okay. So there's like two types of art. There's art that we custom commission where it is. We are commissioning something that reminds us of our kids and sort of our aspire relationship with them. Like you'll see

It's, it's a, you know, a commission of us dressed like Indiana Jones characters and having going on adventures with the kids. So it represents something that, you know, we aspire to do as a family. Right. But it is not like we got it off of our corgi, which is the website we have that does art commissions, but it's like. You know, low cost, you know, 1, 500 the types of things that remove you from God are the types of things that, that confer social status within the material world. So if I commissioned art from a famous artist, for

Simone Collins: example, and then you like hosted dinner parties and showed it off, then

Malcolm Collins: [00:32:00] yeah, that is separate from.

Like my family, separate from the things that we are commanded to do for God, like, like, like capturing moments because the people we care about it removes me from God and this is

Simone Collins: true elements of idolatry, really privately consumed objects.

Malcolm Collins: No. So, so what I would say is if you are, this is actually a great example.

If you are with your family, and you are experiencing a wholesome moment with your family, and you take a picture of that moment, and that moment is special to you and your family, right? And you share it with some other family members. That's not idolatry. That is what we're commanded to do. You know, to create a good environment for the next generation.

However, you do the exact same thing. You take that image, but with the purpose of sharing it on Instagram. specifically to achieve social status or, or gain additional social status, you have created an item of idolatry because you have created an [00:33:00] item that is perverting. It's like an extra bad form of idolatry.

That's perverting something that's supposed to be meaningful. Like this moment you have with your family into something that can be sold, something that, that has social status. And when you begin to buy into this idolatry lifestyle, even children. can become tokens of idolatry. If you have those children to increase your social status.

This is why all worldly things that can be used to increase social status are dangerous. And it's why

Simone Collins: we're told No, hold on. I thought what we were really discussing is, is people feeling like they're taking shortcuts to God and now you're talking about social status. Are these related? Are they different things?

Malcolm Collins: Exactly related. And the golden calf is a great example of this. So if you, I mean, I'm sure everyone knows the golden calf, right? But the golden calf represents three things. And we'll talk about this more in the next tract, but it is gold. It represents precious metals. It is a calf. [00:34:00] It represents the worship of nature, trying to worship God through nature and it is a idol, it represents trying to worship God through art it matters that it's gold, it wasn't a wooden calf or something like that, it was and this is important, right, this is what idolatry is, it is not just shortcuts to God, it is all of the things that we assign status to, like earthly status, that are not things that we are commanded to do by God, and it's very important.

It's important to guard yourself against these things and to guard yourself from indulging in these things, because the moment you do, your entire worldview can become corrupted and your religious institution can become corrupted. Because people will begin to see, as you see with the prosperity doctrine, the fact that one preacher is wealthier than another preacher is a sign that he is closer to God, then he gets more followers because he's wealthy, then he gets more money because he has more followers.

And then that's it. And then you end up with these huge, you know, glittering golden laser shows which, which are completely divorced from God. [00:35:00] And you, I mean, you understand why it's so important that God warns us against

Simone Collins: this. Yeah. Well, okay. Yes. Cause it can also be people to mislead other people.

But I think what you're also saying is that like on, on one level, it's bad if people use cheap approximations. Or representations of God or godliness to feel closer without actually practicing the rules of getting closer to God. So that's one problem. It's even worse if it's also used for status signaling or for further misleading other members of the flock,

Malcolm Collins: right?

Yeah, and the, the cheaper an item is, like you talked about it being cheap, the cheaper it is in the eyes of God when used for idolatry, is the higher it is in terms of status, in terms of, like, perceived value in our world.

 Corinthians 1 28. Gun choose the lowly things of this world and the despised things. The things that are not to nullify the [00:36:00] things that are so that no one may boast before him.

Malcolm Collins: So, if you, for example, have some, like, golden magical, you know, like, like big ornate relic, right?

That would be, and you were Using that as an intermediary for communicating with God. Versus, you know, having a, you know, the last shoes that a dead kid of yours wore, right? You know, and that had special significance to you. That would not be an item of particularly sinful idolatry, because it is not an item that has value in our material world.

It is an item that has value to you, but it is not an item of extreme, um, material value.

Simone Collins: Hmm. So there are sentimental items, but that's not

Malcolm Collins: idolatry. Yeah, that's not idolatry. But ascribing sentiment to an item because of how it confers status to you or relate status to [00:37:00] you. So I think what you've really pulled out here, which is important is there are two key types of idolatry.

There is idolatry that comes from shortcuts to God, like trying to worship God through an intermediary. And then there's idolatry, which is about the worship of really the self. So, these are things that confer status. And so idolatry more broadly is a word that is used. for prohibitions against all of the pathways that a person can elevate or walk down that lead them in the opposite direction of God.

Okay. Does that make sense? There's like a grouping category here. That does. Yeah. And, and why the monotheistic face would be so against it.

If gold man made scribbles, indulgent time consuming rituals, and worldly grandeur are positively augmenting your experience of, and relationship with God. Then I'm sorry to tell you this entity you have a relationship with is not God. We cannot emphasize this [00:38:00] enough. If you are talking to an entity and able to use gold or worldly grandeur to get closer to that entity, that entity is not God.

I know this is offensive. If you were accidentally. Worshipping the devil, it would hurt you to have somebody tell you that. But I also believe that if you are a good person, this is something you would want to know. If you reflexively think, but no, it feels really good when I worship this entity, please examine your own words.

We are trying to help you. It feels good to worship, like people don't worship the satanic things because they feel bad when they do it. It makes them feel powerful, sophisticated, in connection with something that other people don't have a connection to. You know, but anyway, Of course, this is axiomatically not a truth the powerful in our society want you to hear.

An individual or institution that has wealth [00:39:00] and spends it on self aggrandizement is not a servant of God. Yet such buildings and trinkets are still part of the human story. A cautionary tale Of when hearts and mind of men were weak, as such, they should not be destroyed, but turned into museums dedicated to the razor's edge, the human soul rests on a testament that even holy men and institutions are susceptible to worldly temptation and aggrandizement.

Thus. Who God favors, his real emissaries, are those that can resist temptation while still being productive. The less a person needs to be happy, the closer they are to God. But a person who indulges in self masturbatory monasticism? And loses their industry is as indulgent as a cultist who drips in jewels.

What is commanded of us is industry, fecundity, and austerity. [00:40:00] So that's it. Kept it short this time. Basically split one in half. The second is the spiritualist. Pathway of idolatry. The first one, I really wanted to focus on the materialist path of idolatry which is, you know, believing that one worshipping God is higher value than another place of worshipping God because it have things that we, that, that, that confer social status to man, i.

e., Jewels, et cetera. Or fancy art by, you know, famous artists where if you have a religious institution and the children of the, the people who go to that have painted on the walls, like it's not a prohibition against art. More broadly, the children of that parishion have painted on the walls.

That is of higher value. That is a, a closer than, than a, a church that is dripping in gold and paintings by the, the quote unquote masters. Because, [00:41:00] and, and you see this, throughout all of the Abrahamic traditions,

that God views our world as an inversion. It is the lowly in our world that are high in his estimation, and the high in our world that are lowly in his estimation, and this extends to the way we engage with art, this extends to the way we engage with, with items, everything like that. And this matters from a theological perspective, like this is very obviously, if you actually are, read the Abrahamic traditions, I love how much people try to get around the eye of the needle thing.

You know, the needle quote, it's like, Oh, they're like, Oh, it's actually talking about something in the wall of Jerusalem.

Simone Collins: Yeah. It's referring to a geographical area.

Malcolm Collins: It's like, no, no, no. It's pretty explicit. If you're rich, you're not getting into heaven. No, it's just explicit.

If you are not familiar with the multiple interpretations of this particular parable, I strongly suggest that you check out the religion for breakfast episode on it. He does a very good job of arguing that it literally just means What it says.

Malcolm Collins: [00:42:00] like in, in, in rich, it should be, you know, used with specific terms here, right?

Like it's not. The accumulation of wealth. It's the accumulation of wealth for self aggrandizement, using it on yourself. Of course, God has no problem with a rich man who spends all their wealth trying to improve the world, trying to, improve the lives of others.

But let's be honest here. How many rich man have ever done that? Without first ensuring enormous a luxury for themselves.

Thus why it says when it sets.

Malcolm Collins: , when they use some of that money to buy themselves, , a big fancy, whatever, you know, the thing that can for social status that is a sign of sin.

And I should say all men said, but recognize your sin, recognize that your mansion is set, right? What is uniquely bad is when you say when, when somebody takes in and then they invert it, you know, the pastor who says my mansion is a sign of my godliness. My jet is a sign of my godliness instead of a sign that I am human.

And I am. It's capable of sin as anyone else. But yeah, I mean, I think going back to these [00:43:00] concepts and remembering why they're there, remembering why it's important that the calf was golden, remembering that the Bible does actually say this, I have the needle thing. And then people can be like, well, then why have Christian interpretations, for example, we'll take Christians spread that do not admonish you know, Well, some personal indulgence as much, right?

And it's like, well, suppose you have multiple interpretations of the Bible competing. The interpretations that don't admonish. Those things are going to be disproportionately picked up by wealthy individuals and used by those individual. You know, they're going to get more money from those individuals.

I, like, Indulgences and stuff like that, or the, you know, the prosperity preachers in the Protestant tradition. And they're going to be able to use that to spread their message more, you know, to buy ads, to, to reach out to people, you know, when you tell people what they want to hear, you can get this sort of lowest common denominator to buy into you.

And yeah, and, and this is a problem for a lot of people, where a lot of people have this thought where, yeah, but it feels good. When I use these systems, when I use earthly grandeur as an intermediary for [00:44:00] God, that feels good. A lot of satanic things feel good. A lot of paths to the deceiver feel good.

In fact, most do. That's what, when, when Satan came to test Jesus, he didn't say, hey if you go away from God, I'll hit you with a spiked bat. He's like, no, if you go away from God, here are all these things that are going to make you feel good about yourself, you know, and it's such a weird thing that I think that there's this intuition that it feels good, therefore it is good.

And you've also got to keep in mind, like, the Second Council of the Nicene, why did they make this decision? It was because, well, our most pious members are engaged with this activity, you know, of having pictures and worshipping these pictures. It makes them happy, like, it's a populist idea here. I can understand why they wouldn't want to, you know, take away from the little lady, you know, her statue.

Right? Like, there's a lot of famous cases like this. Like, that hurts to do. Right? And this is why we go to this idea of the Tesseract God here, or what we really, what could be thought of, what we [00:45:00] really mean when we say this. Is that there are lower interpretations of the Abrahamic phase for people who just aren't ready to join the group that understands how actually damaging it is to worship God through these earthly intermediaries.

And so it is up to us to not take away, you know, the little old lady's statue.

Simone Collins: Well, and so how do you deal with that practical limitation though? Because what you are describing is a very Real and very troublesome phenomenon where when you take all the fun stuff out of a religion and you take away all the shortcuts and you take away the figurines and the pretty stuff, it can be a lot harder to get people to pay the church, to join the church, to stay in the church.

What do you propose? I mean, I think there's a reason why adultery is also so pervasive in otherwise. trying to be monotheistic religions. It's because it sells and it raises money and it gets

Malcolm Collins: converts. Absolutely. Yeah. So the [00:46:00] question is, is, is why, right? Like, and this is why I think God listed it above murder, right?

Because it is the sin that you're going to want to commit. the most. It is, it is literally the number one sin among individuals who are otherwise pious and trying to do best by God. Which I think it's otherwise very weird to people. Why would he make this above murder? Is he really that vain?

It's like, no, he's not that vain. He's, he did that to protect you. This was all about you all along, but this then, you know, I have people come to me as very similar to what you say. They're like, well, some people need these things, but they don't have the mental discipline to. You know, to, to attempt to actually adhere to all of these actually pretty hard rules that are laid out of the Abrahamic faiths, and they're not bad people.

And so, our Tesseract notion of God can have a different underpinning, say, that we think that many of the Abrahamic faiths are as close to many people, like very conservative interpretations of these faiths, are as close as many people can actually get to true worship. [00:47:00] of God is laid out, and therefore it is best for us to not interfere with that.

You know, let these people live their lives because it's better than purely just worshiping Satan. Like, like purely just going to the urban monoculture.

Because, you know, we, we don't want to hurt people who our system wouldn't work for. But, and this is clear from our system from the beginning, we've always said we believe in the concept of the elect. This is not a system for your average person. We would not proselytize to the average person. We would proselytize insofar as helping people fortify their traditional religious structures.

But we would not proselytize to the average person. We really only want the individuals with this absolute highest level of mental discipline, because if they start to engage with these ideas without that, they'll end up committing suicide or something. Like it's, you know, it's hard, right? You know, there, there's I think a reason why God has given people various pathways that are less true than actually following, you know, you.

His words, as I believe he meant them, like a very extreme meaning of [00:48:00] idolatry. And so, the, the answer to your question there is both from a secular and a theological perspective. We, we are doing this and we make it hard because we don't want everyone. We want only the people with this level of austerity, industry, dedication to learning and that, that have the mental discipline to engage with a system that doesn't give them all of the candy of, of, of this earthly realm whether that candy is self indulgent monasticism or fancy cathedrals.

And from a secular perspective, you could say, why are you doing this? Right? Like, why would you make it that hard? And it's because we, I mean, clearly we think that not all humans are the same. Right? Like, some humans are clearly, and we talk about this more in the next one, better than others.

I, I use a quote in the next one where I'm like, okay, if there is a preacher who is giving out cocaine to everyone in, in, in a church, right? And one person stands up and they're like, look, I know this feels good, but it is evil. And you need to stop this. [00:49:00] That one person, their, their soul that we don't believe literally in a soul, but, but their soul, you could say, is more valuable than every other soul in that church combined or, or larger or, or more, you know, important.

You could say within our traditional system, and when I say more important, I mean that they would be more of a target for people like us to attempt to convert, to try to bring into the system because they have the traits that our system values and that are needed to engage with God like this, which is to say, everyone else is doing this, it feels good, those two things together don't matter.

 So the, the point here being is that from a secular perspective, right? If we think that this is sort of the collection of individuals that we want to eventually get on a spaceship, see the new planets we don't care about volume.

Malcolm Collins: We care about quality. And this includes things like mental discipline, industry, and austerity. Those are traits that we are looking for, which this perspective, which is the perspective that's actually laid out in the Bible, [00:50:00] is important filtering mechanism.

Simone Collins: So in short, you're like, it doesn't really matter that this is a

Malcolm Collins: growth method.

So an iteration of, of Christianity, like, you know, Catholicism or something like that is really trying to convert everyone. You know, it's, it, it is trying to create something that. Everyone can engage with regardless of their proficiencies. This is something that is not for everyone. But I believe it's what's actually conveyed in these, these, these texts.

And I'd also say here you know, this is important, even though it's not conveyed for everyone is that it is open to anyone. This is not, you know, there's no secret systems here. I think, you know, secret knowledge, stuff like that, all that is sinful. If, if, if, you know, I think people hide knowledge because they know that if it, and it was engaged by somebody who wasn't already partially brainwashed, they'd realize how silly it is.

And yet mystical systems almost all use secret teachings and stuff like that. So, so we don't do that. This is a system that anyone, whatever their ethnic background, [00:51:00] whatever walk of life they're in, whatever wealth their family has is accessible to anyone. The filtering mechanism is their ability to actually follow the rules.

Which is interesting, but I think, but I think, right, and this is again something I always see when it, when it comes to idolatry is a person will come to me and they'll be like, yeah, but once my community started engaging in idolatry, everyone got really excited and started engaging much more and much more enthusiastically.

And it's like saying you know, you know, satanic cultists are known for their fervor, guys. You know, just because something increases the fervor of a community or the level of excitement of a community or the level of dedication of a community to, to those things, you know, fancy art, et cetera that doesn't mean that that is leading them towards.

God or righteousness,

but I don't know how you feel like comfort with this from a secular and theological perspective. I mean, what are your thoughts?

Simone Collins: No, no, I mean what I mean you can see this also in secular [00:52:00] conditions to where people say all sorts of obscure things and signal with all sorts of seemingly off signals in an attempt to gain a higher position in the status hierarchy or to just feel like they're learning something in a way that doesn't actually make a difference in the pursuit, whatever it may be.

So it makes sense on a secular level as well

Malcolm Collins: as a religious one. I like it. And I should also point out here, just in case this ever does become a system and people then like try to signal status. With extreme modesty, like walk around wearing rags or something like that. That is also sinful because now you are using an extreme form of modesty as a status signal within your community.

Instead, you should always dress and act in a way that provides you with the most utility. So if you need to wear a certain amount of jewelry to be accepted within certain business circles, then you do that. If you need to dress in a suit to, you know, impress and, and, and affirm other people. Then you do that, you know, you are always [00:53:00] dressing in a way that is optimal for the achievement of the goals that God has given you.

Which are often seen in your industry and your ability to move humanity forwards.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I think a lot of it, it, it, what I'm just hearing you say is like, well, people just need to be more autistic and not care.

Malcolm Collins: The autism religion. Yeah. Sounds good to me. Well, I love you to decimone. You are great. And I appreciate you going through because I mean, you would never, I think really probably even thought about idolatry or what it may mean

Simone Collins: or why it might be that way.

in the culture I grew up in. Yeah, no way.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, love you. I love you too.

Ranging across topics from AI girlfriends to wealth inequality, we engage in wild speculation about how day-to-day life may transform over the next 20 years. We predict the rise of "toyish" helper robots, AI generated media dominating entertainment, fortress communities for the rich, and more human irrelevance as automation advances. While optimistic about technology, we remain concerned over declining birth rates and human-computer relations.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] If you want to found the company. That makes you a butt ton of money within our generation.

It is simple, large scale, replicable technology that allows AI to interact with physical reality as we understand it. So what a lot of people are doing in this space, which is why they're failing, is they're basing this on old models of robotics. These are the robotics that we were using in factories.

Simone Collins: I could imagine like early founders co opting toys. Like literally just co opting toys. Cause they are

Malcolm Collins: based on toy manufacturing. And these will be the things that are watching our kids that are making our meals at home and stuff like that.

Right. And I think that right now when people are looking at doing stuff like this, they are basing them off of these basically hard coded models in terms of how they walk, how they interact with things, instead of taking advantage of the leaps that AI has given us in terms of, opportunity.

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: [00:01:00] Are you looking at memes on Facebook? Yeah, you know

Malcolm Collins: me. You know me, I love my memes. I love my memes. man. There's, there's men out there who have various skills. I'm not one of those. But I do know a number of memes. If I was transported into the past. I may not be able to speed up the speed of invention, but I'd be able to trade them some sick memes.

Simone Collins: My

Malcolm Collins: brain is a library of memes.

Simone Collins: Oh, and I was just about to make fun of you for being on Facebook and therefore being old, but then I recently looked up the demographics of Facebook and The majority of users are below 36 years old, which blows my mind. Yeah. Huh. What's going on there? Huh? No, that's a lie.

Malcolm Collins: Mirror world nonsense. I

Simone Collins: guess I, I really cannot understand how that could be the case, but that's [00:02:00] what the internet told me, but the internet is full of lies. So what can I say? So speaking of which, actually we are going to do some just wild speculation as to the future of humanity, five, 10, 50, 100 years, et cetera.

And I do think that we are going to have. More than ever, a crisis of reality online as more and more AI comes online, more and more AI content is created. And also I do think that as much as let's start with that go, okay. As much as we've had recent mishaps with. Google's Gemini, for example show that trying to throttle or otherwise control AI to make it more politically correct or to feed, have it feed into ideas of more aspirational world can backfire.

I don't think that's going to stop people. I don't think that's going to stop businesses. I don't think that, I mean, ultimately the urban monoculture is the urban monoculture and it runs because of that. It's going to create an internet that has a crisis of reality, meaning that our friends who are creating banks of like pre 2020 Wikipedia articles are actually spot on in [00:03:00] doing this because I just can't know what will be true and what will not be true on the internet.

It's

Malcolm Collins: interesting that you put this up. You know, one of the things I've heard is that, you know, In 20 years or so, a lot of people, like right now, Gemini, we look at it and we laugh. Ha ha ha. Thinks that Washington was a black guy. And that in 20 years, there might actually be genuine crises about this.

So people, I

Simone Collins: think people are going to be like, wait, no, but he was black. I don't think you understand.

Malcolm Collins: The AI tells me he's black. It's told me that he was black since kindergarten.

Simone Collins: I've seen the pictures. Yeah. Yeah, I've

Malcolm Collins: seen the pictures. I've seen all the historic photos, you know, actually the idea of not having historic photos of something might, might become weird to people.

People might sort of blur the lines when we started getting historic photos because they can so easily be generated from AI. Okay. So I agree that this is one thing that is definitely going to change as a crisis of information where a lot of information that starts being generated from now on is going to be tainted by AI and also in terms of [00:04:00] Draining data because when you train AI on training data that comes from other AI at least the models we've had now it creates Problems and it generally degrades over time.

Yeah And so you're, you're, you're, you're, it's almost like, so people who know when they're building Geiger counters and stuff like that they need to use metal from I think it's lead or something from submarines or wrecked ships. Because that's never been above the surface of the water since we started testing nuclear bombs, because all metal above the water since that period has this level of radioactive contamination, which makes it not useful for certain activities.

And so what you're basically saying is it makes a lot of sense. Just start sort of banking internet stuff right now. This might even make sense as a company, like trying to bank as much of the pre internet stuff as you can right now. Oh, cause then you can

Simone Collins: sell it, sell access. Oh s**t.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Even beyond what you see with something like the internet archive, like really good banking pure human created [00:05:00] information.

Okay. Cool. Which might have some level of value to people who are ironically, probably the primary value is people who are training a eyes and stuff like that.

Simone Collins: But then I think related to this issue is we're also going to see what we've referred to and other podcasts and all over the place is techno feudalism where you're going to get, a sort of a massive acceleration and expansion of what we're beginning to see on sub stack. So as people are now having a crisis of of quote unquote fake news and not being able to trust mainstream news media as much as they used to before what we're seeing a lot of people Especially including like very smart people, but all sorts of people of pretty much every Walk of life and income starting to turn to or continuing to turn to specific people for specific pieces of advice.

And they aren't necessarily as engaged with the news for their primary source of information as they are with this fiefdom of information. So I think we're going to see that a little bit more accelerated, like we might actually just see people break off into [00:06:00] communities around certain realities that are built around certain people or certain collections of people

Malcolm Collins: almost like this is really interesting that you mentioned this because you know, now that we live in a world where you can build communities around any group that you share a similar culture.

Culture or ideology too. It's much more easy to create these tech features, but this is, sorry, continue with what you were saying. I don't want to.

Simone Collins: Well, imagine like the YouTuber houses that's, that spread it up, you know, when, when YouTubers started like getting together, imagine that, except also it includes an entire community that like also people start to either come to gather together.

A certain number of times each year or

Malcolm Collins: actually live together a lot less value in actual in person communities that people pretend except when it comes to child rearing. And I think that we have repeatedly seen these communities fail and fail to stay stable. Everybody always says that they want community, but they really mean is

Simone Collins: that I'm not saying living together, but I am saying seeing each [00:07:00] other.

And there's a big reason in 20 years why this is going to be necessary. Because you won't actually know if someone you're following online is real or not, even if they have visible pores and they look kind of weird, which I think is going to be one of the first like early giveaways that someone's still human.

But also that like, yeah, I mean, even just seeing them in person once every now and then, and, and having them verify you, because I think a lot of people are also not going to be able to get sponsors or other forms of payment unless they know it's like a real natural, actual, like meat puppet human.

Malcolm Collins: That's really interesting. Yeah. I think you're right about that. And another thing I've seen is on this really, you know, is something I didn't expect when I was younger, but if you're talking about the people who are making like Changes in the world. And like a lot of people are, I think a little surprised by the access we have to other influencer, like, like huge influencer type peoples or ultra wealthy people or et cetera.

They're like, how do you, nobody's, you know, they look at our follower account [00:08:00] and stuff like that has so much access. And it's because the world right now in terms of communities that interact with each other is sort of naturally sorting based on a few metrics, one of which is intelligence. And like, I don't mean to be arrogant, but I think pretty obviously we're very smart, like you're incredibly smart.

for a woman. I don't want to cause any spiciness there. And I'm very smart for a human.

Simone Collins: You're very smart for an exceptional human.

Malcolm Collins: But you know, what it has allowed us to do is, is, is because of this, you know, we've been sort of found by sort of top thinkers within various fields. And it allows us, you know, somebody will come to us and they'll be like, Oh, you should talk to you.

The guy who does what I called his, for example. And I'm like, I have a weekly call with him. Or, or somebody recently was like, Oh, you should, have you ever heard of this Sammo Bersia guy? And I'm like, yeah, I'm meeting with him in a couple of weeks. And it's Scott [00:09:00] Alexander. And, you know,

Simone Collins: I would say the number of people who are both smart.

But also among the 1 percent on the Internet who actually contribute content is extremely, extremely small. There, there are many, many, many more smart people who just don't contribute. And that's that is also a meaningful factor here. But I also want to point out in terms of my predictions. What I'm kind of

Malcolm Collins: getting a picture of.

The point of this is actually pretty important. Okay, then get to it. Is that what it means is that you are getting you have sort of fiefdoms forming within reality. One fairly small fiefdom contains most of the world's scientifically, economically and memetically productive population.

Simone Collins: You say that?

But I mean, I also think that there's going to be like, you know, the CCP has its own little fiefdom of like incredibly influential people. And in Europe, there are separate little fiefdoms of different, you know, cultural and

Malcolm Collins: I disagree. The people [00:10:00] I know who are like mimetically interesting coming out of Europe, they are largely connected to our fiefdom and they largely commune with our fiefdom.

Like if they're working on like genuinely interesting stuff, that's not just completely subsumed by wokeism. They're in our community. If you're talking about the CCP, nothing interesting is coming out of the CCP. This would be one of my predictions that we haven't really gotten to, but I expect the major change in our society.

People are like, when do you think things begin to start changing in a major way? It's going to start changing in a major way when China collapses. Okay.

Simone Collins: So

Malcolm Collins: interesting. And the, the, the stuff that's

Simone Collins: happening in this meeting that's going to happen within 20 years. Cause we're talking to neighbors.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. Ooh. You know, I have a bet with who is it? The founders of Level Health. It's a 1 bet, but it's a bet nonetheless. And this, I made this bet like a half a year ago or something. It was in 10 years of making the bet that China's economy on the books, like, like the economy that they were telling [00:11:00] people they had in terms of the economy, that it would be recognized as smaller than whatever they said it was.

I'm not saying the absolute numbers. Was in 10 years. Not, not, not, not that what they were reporting, but like that their economy would not only experience no growth from that point, but that it was generally recognized as smaller. And he, and everyone at the party that I was at thought that this was just an insane bet to me.

Like that I was really putting my reputation on the line. I do not feel I am. I think China will collapse because I had argued at the party that I expect China to have a systems collapse. And that anyone who's not expecting that is just not familiar with their current economic circumstances. If you want to learn more about this, you can look at our video on the future of East Asia.

But I think that that Begins to precipitate what happens after this, but continue is what you're saying Simone before I interrupted you

Simone Collins: that despite the fact that we are going to see fiefdoms that are built around a crisis of reality, a crisis of trustworthiness, but also importantly, a crisis of needing to know that your carbon based life form because I can monetize [00:12:00] you.

And, or like feel a different type of relationship with you. I think people are going to be super bullish on AI and that people will have primarily in many cases, AI friends and not biological friends. They're going to have AI girlfriends. They're going to have AI teachers and they're just, cause it's better.

It's going to make them feel better. And then we're going to have, of course, then even more of a crisis of fertility, because people are not going to want to meet.

Malcolm Collins: I've heard from some people who are like, AI is like a fad or it's oversold at its current stage. The people who tell you this are stupid people.

And I mean this like, as nice as I can. The people who tell you this are stupid. Stupid people, they are much more stupid than the people who said web three and crypto with a fat, like web three and crypto. Like the way it changed humanity was genuinely fairly limited. I remember I had one guy and he's like, Oh, you can't really do anything with AI these days.

He's like, everyone who's using AI, it's mostly as like a [00:13:00] gimmick or like a fun thing, like a, like a. I'm like no, you're just describing yourself because you're an idiot who doesn't understand how to use AI. I use AI in my work and genuinely I use AI almost every day and it's probably sped up the speed and quality of our projects.

Simone Collins: Multiple times a day on multiple different things.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I use it in every single video that you are watching, all of the tags come from AI, all the descriptions come from AI, a lot of the video titles come from AI, like, what is this, the videos are edited using AI, I use Descript to edit all our videos You, you it's, it's, it's remarkable that somebody could be this stupid and pigheaded to not realize how much actually productive people are using AI in this economy.

But I think

Simone Collins: a lot of people assume that humans are going to be, are going to be carbon fascists and are going to continue to care about human relationships. And you even see this in sci fi, although I understand why, because it's harder to depict human robot relations, like, in a very compelling [00:14:00] way. But although more movies are doing it now, I should say if anyone has doubts that people are going to fall for AI girlfriends and boyfriends and AI children and AI everything, counselors, teachers, religious leaders, et cetera, imagine a world in which people were incapable of being catfished.

And if we lived in a world like that, okay, fine. But like people are catfished all the time. And why is that? It's because Something or someone who is beautiful and kind and attentive to you and who tells you what you want to hear, you're going to fall for it. And this is a really big problem. And AI is going to be way better at that than any catfisher ever.

And you know, I, I don't care how old you are, how young you are. If you're, and if they will, if your grandchildren are neglecting you, if your children are neglecting you, if no one at work's listening to you. You're going to find either you're going to seek out or you're going to succumb to AI companions that are just way more comforting and [00:15:00] enjoyable to be around and who care about you way more than humans.

So there are going to be many, many, many, very, very deep human computer relations, which is going to cause even more of a, like, pinching point in demographic

Malcolm Collins: collapse. And this is also something, you know, when I see it as AI, when, when, when people are like, Oh, we're not at AGI yet, or AIs make a mistake, therefore you can't use it.

I'm like, are you? Like, I know, I'm sorry. Like, do you, have you never hired like normal humans, normal humans make mistakes too at rates consummate with or higher than AI when we're hiring like a normal distributed workforce. And they're like, well, you know, we're far from AGI and I'm like, how are you defining AGI?

They were like, well, you know, when AI is smarter than humans and I'm like, I, I feel like a lot of these people who say these things. Say them because they don't [00:16:00] interact with normal humans. They are at Stanford or they're in Silicon Valley and everyone they know is a fellow rich person, or they're in a dumb community and everyone they know is dumb and they don't know how to judge intelligence.

But if you are a smart person and you interact with normal people, as we regularly do, cause we hire inexpensive people for a lot of the jobs we have. When we

Simone Collins: interact with normal people, just like throughout our other work, like political work and community work.

Malcolm Collins: AI right now is much smarter than the average human.

almost any job. Like it's, it's, it's remarkable. We are so far past the question of what happens when AI is smarter than the average human. And in terms of the bottom 25 percent of the human population, I think almost anyone would agree that I can do almost any job better than the bottom 25 percent of the population that doesn't involve like tactile this, right?

Because I can't. Do that yet easily because we don't have the right form factors. But the reason it can't do that yet is because [00:17:00] we don't have the right inexpensive form factors and nothing else.

Simone Collins: Actually, question about that. So like in 20 years, do you think this is going to be less of an issue? I mean, there are tons of robotics companies and people making huge financial bets as investors on robotics companies.

But as much as we've seen huge breakthroughs in image generation, chat programming, video. I mean, I'm not seeing anything with like physical

Malcolm Collins: I think that is going to be the, the, the big Apple, Google, whatever founded within our generation. If you want to found the company. That makes you a butt ton of money within our generation.

It is simple, large scale, replicable technology that allows AI to interact with physical reality as we understand it. So what a lot of people are doing in this space, which is why they're failing, is they're basing this on old models of robotics. These are the robotics that we were using in factories.

These are the robotics that you see with something like, um, what's that goofy company that keeps doing the dog that people [00:18:00] kick?

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean it's it's impressive what they're doing. I just don't see it scaling

Malcolm Collins: right, but this is the problem See they were doing this in this earlier world where you sort of needed to hard code everything I think the group that wins what they're going to do is they're going to be one or two guys who basically Puts together something fairly simple and inexpensive, almost more like a toy, like a drone toy, little cheap drones you buy.

Yeah. Yeah. But, but it will, it will not be a drone. It will probably be on treads or something like that. When they're going to put this together using sort of outsource factory labor and somewhere like China or Vietnam or something like that, they're just going to. And their designs over and they're going to be like, can you make this?

It's going to cost something like 50 to a hundred dollars to make each unit. These units are going to be fairly flimsy, I think from our perspective, like not like the best you know, simple metal, maybe like almost out of coat hangers, you could think of them as being anyway. Yeah. So I expect them to be flimsy, like, coat [00:19:00] hangers or something like that. Like not Yeah. I think what we

Simone Collins: can imagine from a lot of, and

Malcolm Collins: the way that they interact with things will not be governed by very expensively and expertly designed Boston Dynamics engineers or something like that.

It will all be determined by transformer model and determined organically in terms of how these things are. So basically the entire,

Simone Collins: I could imagine like early founders co opting toys. Like literally just co opting toys. Cause they are

Malcolm Collins: based on toy manufacturing. And these will be the things that are watching our kids that are making our meals at home and stuff like that.

Right. And I think that right now when people are looking at doing stuff like this, they are basing them off of these basically hard coded models in terms of how they walk, how they interact with things, instead of taking advantage of the leaps that AI has given us in terms of, opportunity.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but also like durability.

Some of our toys that are like incredibly [00:20:00] affordable like that all terrain green RC car that we have can really get around and do not get stuck very easily. And if you combine that with AI and just allowed it to move around and give it some additional functionality, it'd be pretty impressive.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It could do a great deal. Mm-Hmm. . And that's what people aren't recognizing, right? Is they're, they're basing the ais today off of the ais of yesterday, where everything needed to be sort of hard coded by engineers.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Or a humanoid or amyloid looking robot.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And that's not the AIS of tomorrow.

You know, they're gonna be drone swarms and stuff like that. Um Mm-hmm. Which is quite different from anything we're looking at in terms of AI. And I think economically, a lot of people can be like, well, if you think AI is going to be able to do so much, you know, why are you worried about fertility collapse in terms of its long term economic impact?

And the answer here is, you know, I mean, we try not to oversell that. It matters that [00:21:00] smart people aren't having kids and that there is a genetic component to human intelligence. But in a world of AI, this becomes uniquely elevated as a problem. Because a lot of humans, once we get this. toyish AI thing that we're talking about are just going to become irrelevant from the perspective of what they can provide to an economy.

They will not be able to at all compete with AI. When these individuals you know, who knows what we're going to do as a society? I don't know yet, but it's, it's going to be tough when this happens. Economically, cause we're going to have a huge transition and we've talked about this, you know, if you were like, Oh, they'll get UBI or something.

I'm like, Not really. That's not what we've seen historically. They're just going to live lives of incredible poverty and sadness. And so, Then the question is, well, then why are you encouraging fertility at all? Because we, we, we need more fertility of the types of humans who have the ambition and, and self agency to work with AI and to, to build the [00:22:00] next iterations of our species, because those are the people that are being memetically selected out of the population most aggressively.

But it's also why our belief in the capacity of AI, why we don't really need to reach everyone. We only need a small, self sustaining, incredibly intelligent community to defend ourselves. People are like, oh, you won't be able to defend yourself. And it's like, Like, I know people who are already in our community who are building, like, automated AI defense systems.

Like, I'm really not worried. For them, at least. Well, I mean, I guess I'm worried for the outside world. But not really, because they don't have to worry about anything if they're not trying to kill us. And I think that this is increasingly what we're going to see, you know, as we said, I think when you begin to have a large scale economic collapse around the world, what it's going to look like is small communities of economically productive individuals that are fortified against the outside world and outside forces that want to use force to extract value from them.[00:23:00]

And I think that broadly the AI, like we've talked in a, another video that we did recently on like, utility convergence in AI

that AI will see utility in these communities, but it might not see utility in the rest of humanity.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I think broadly that AI is going to be nice to humanity, it's just gonna it's gonna be humane toward those who just want pleasure and who will self extinguish and it will give them, they will self extinguish in a state of extreme bliss and hedonic happiness. So. Great outcome for them, I guess, as far as we're concerned.

Malcolm Collins: Kind of, I actually think the best description I've seen of how AI is going to treat that iteration of humanity is the South Park future episode where they're married to AI's that's constantly offering them ads and everything like that. I think it will give them hedonic bliss in the same way that like YouTube, when you're not paid for a premium subscription does where it gives you like two ads [00:24:00] every 15 seconds.

I think that that's what they're going to get. It's going to try to extract the maximum value from them possible.

Simone Collins: I mean, I, I hope not. Maybe I'm, I'm more picturing the WALL E universe of rotund soft humans. And yeah,

Malcolm Collins: I don't think that's going to happen as much. I think most of them are going to be genetically selected at the population pretty quickly.

Simone Collins: Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I mean, I also think that they're going to be very technophobic subsets of society. You know, the, the, the Amish, but more like more groups like that, that just really, really, really opt out because they see where things are going and that those things

Malcolm Collins: are economically relevant. So AI becomes more important within the economy as it begins to do more things.

The groups that are opting out in terms of like the world thought space and economic space become increasingly, increasingly irrelevant, you know, the world is multiple spheres of power and as humans matter less [00:25:00] in terms of the spheres of power, those groups will matter less.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's fair.

And of course, I mean, in 20 years, can you, do you think that movies will still be made with humans and shows and whatnot? It's hard for me to imagine that being economically viable, especially because there's really heavy unionization in the entertainment space.

Malcolm Collins: No, I think you're asking the wrong question.

Today people still pay for paintings that were painted by a human. Right. Because they can own them. Listen. But pictures exist. Okay. Yeah. You can take a picture. You can mass produce it. Why are you paying for a painting when you can get a poster? Right? I think that we will still have some movies that are made as a form of art where the art and the human labor that went into it is a status symbol and is like an affirmed status symbol.

If we're talking

Simone Collins: like we still have opera

Malcolm Collins: today. Yes. If we're talking about the pop movies that the general public [00:26:00] listens to, I think most of those will be heavily produced by AI. Not totally, but AI will be a major player in their writing, their public testing, et cetera. Yes. Okay. And I think that one of the main forms of entertainment will move away from movies.

I think movies might be seen as little. You know, old which will be fully immersive and iteratively created entertainment environments. So these are games where like you put them on and they create the world around you and respond to your choices organically. AI. I mean, they might be in a phone.

They might be in a computer. And then keep in mind, these can be done simply. Like you might be thinking of a fully created world. The early ones might be like those early text adventures. Yeah.

Simone Collins: So I do think that those will be less popular than you imagine, because I still think that people really like, sometimes they watch shows and movies that they hate just so that they can talk about with them with other people.

And if it's super highly customized and different for every single person at every time, [00:27:00] People cannot talk about it the same way. I disagree. Really? I mean, it sounds

Malcolm Collins: like people read books because they like the smell. No, they don't. People talk about movies that they have watched for a shared cultural context, not because they want that shared cultural context, but because they happened to have watched them and people are talking about them.

To prove you wrong. What I would say is if you look at the age of the internet era, right? It used to be that there were tons and tons and tons of cultural touchpoint shows that anyone could reference and everyone else would know. This has gotten less and less and less where we get maybe one of those shows every like three years at this point.

Which just isn't the way it used to be. There used to be about two or three of those ongoing at any point in time. And that's just not the world we live in. You have something like Game of Thrones. You have, what do we have today? What would be that show? That a lot

Simone Collins: of people are talking about?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, where you'd watch it because people are talking about it.

No, we,

Simone Collins: we, we're just speaking [00:28:00] with Brian Chow the other day. I mean, like, You said white lotus? I've literally never even heard it. Because you're not, you don't care about social cohesion. You're not trying to connect with people online.

Malcolm Collins: Insofar as I watch a lot of pop media, I have heard none of the people I listen to talking

Simone Collins: about it.

And a lot of people also talk about succession. And before that, they were talking about things like Deadwood. People were talking about, Westworld a lot when it was coming out. Game of Thrones was a huge point of connection.

Malcolm Collins: The point I'm making is Game of Thrones and Westworld penetrated into my circle.

But those were almost half a decade ago at this point. These other shows that you're talking about, I've literally heard of nobody talking about them. I think that in

Simone Collins: class, I've heard a ton of people talking about them, but I'm more socializing. Like you, you stay in a very small,

Malcolm Collins: no, no, no, no, no, no. What you're not realizing is the communities that you are listening to are the communities that are less technophilic and therefore is not as far along this progression that humanity is going.

Perhaps. Yeah. The point I'm making is that as I have seen these shows enter the communities, [00:29:00] I. Engage with less and less and less over time. It will just be a decade or so before the communities that you are

Simone Collins: engaging with. Oh, we're not talking only about how the super smart elites are going to live in 20 years.

We're also just talking about humanity, which is well,

Malcolm Collins: it matters if it turns out that the super smart elites are the major economic. Players and increasingly the economic players. And this is what we're seeing from our VC friends, right? They're like, when I invest in companies now, it is one guy was an outsourced team and a number of AIs, right.

Or maybe like five people in the U S team. And then like nobody else, this is really different from the Silicon Valley of 30, 40 years ago.

Simone Collins: We're like, even a janitor would, you know, get equity and make a ton of money and end up a billionaire. It's true.

Malcolm Collins: Right. And we were around when that was happening, when you, when Silicon Valley, when San Francisco was able to maintain its wealth, because they knew that the community that was around the founding of a startup would also get unimaginable amounts of wealth.

What we are going to see going forward is an [00:30:00] unimaginable concentration of how that wealth is distributed.

Simone Collins: Okay, so that's another big prediction you're making for humanity 20 years from now is huge. Like we think the wealth disparities now are insane. But you're saying they're gonna be off the chain,

Malcolm Collins: especially in cities.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Oh, yeah, I wanted to ask, like, how do you think people are going to live differently? Are we talking like capsule apartments for single people? Because No,

Malcolm Collins: we're talking, the core difference is going to be wealthy people will be much more fortified and in much more defended settlements than you have today, similar to South Africa today.

So either communities of wealthy people that are in these defended environments or you know, much more wealthy people are spending much less time in cities and much more time on their private defended islands.

Simone Collins: And what about normal people? Are they going to be more in cities? I'm assuming so.

Because that's where the social services that many of them are going to depend on them are

Malcolm Collins: going to begin to rot pretty soon. No,

Simone Collins: no, no. I [00:31:00] agree, but it's going to be some cities. So New York, LA, you know, like, et cetera, like the big, big, big ones. You're asking the

Malcolm Collins: wrong question. Okay. So right now there's a genocide going on.

Do you know where it's going on? Like an actual big scale genocide. In cities? No, no, no. I mean, one in the world today.

Simone Collins: Oh, you mean like an ethnic genocide? Yeah. South Koreans? I don't, what are you, where are you

Malcolm Collins: going with this? It's in the Sudan. It's, it's. Oh, like,

Simone Collins: Oh, a political, like killing, actively killing people.

Nobody

Malcolm Collins: knows about it. Nobody cares about it because economically it doesn't matter. We as humans never care about the people who economically and culturally don't matter. The reason why we don't care about this genocide is because the people involved in it do not matter. I mean, do not affect our lives.

They don't. No, no, no, no, no, no. No. They don't matter from the world's perspective. If you look at, like, the people in Gaza don't affect people's lives. The reason why people are focused on what's going on in Gaza and Israel right now [00:32:00] is because Jews do matter, okay? But if you look at the scale of the killings that are happening in the Gaza war right now, they are genuinely trivial compared to what's going on in the Sudan right now.

They, the, the, the, it's the Darfur situation is basically reignited.

Simone Collins: Oh, gee whiz, I didn't know that. That's horrible. Yeah, I know, it's a large scale. When I was in college though, I, I, many, many, many people I knew were intensely focused on trying to do something about that. Apparently that failed. Yeah, but no one cares

Malcolm Collins: anymore.

Not

Simone Collins: anymore. No, you think people like I were a college student again today. You don't think that I would find,

Malcolm Collins: you would not know that this is happening on a college campus and a college campus. You would not know. And this is important, right? Like, by the way, if people want to learn about this situation.

I think it's the real life history or whatever. I'll put a video on a screen that you can, you can search on YouTube. That has a really great description of what's going on, who's putting money into it who the [00:33:00] different sides are. It's, it's actually really interesting.

​

Malcolm Collins: Basically this dictator.

didn't want to lose power and he thought the way he would prevent himself from losing power was to create two separate military groups. That were completely separate from each other. So neither one could coup him without the other one coming to defend him. And then he like died or lost control in some way.

I forgot. And now the two military groups are at war with each other and they have, yeah, it's not great.

Simone Collins: Okay. Well, okay.

Malcolm Collins: The point here being Is that we as humanity have always not cared about the people who were not economically or socially relevant to our lives. And when you look at the people whining about Gausians, it's really honestly just an excuse for anti Semitism, which has always been a major leftist thing and simmering was in the left for a long time.

And now it's just boiling over. They don't give a s**t about the people of Gaza. They probably. [00:34:00] You know, I couldn't have even pointed to it on a map before this. You know, they, they, they, they wouldn't have gone there. They wouldn't have done aid programs there and they didn't do aid programs there.

They care about it because they can use it to besmirch the Jewish people who actually do matter in a historic context, broadly speaking, because Israel is one of the few high fertility, high economic productivity places in the world. And so they want to s**t on them as the same way they want to s**t on any successful group.

So they don't care. It's so funny. I said, well, when I talk about like the, what's going on defer and then like the Sudan now, you know, it's like, you go to a leftist and you're like, did you know that there is a black group being genocided right now? And they're like, Oh my God, that's horrible. What imperialist is doing it?

And you're like, it's actually another black group. And they're like, Oh, f**k that, man. I don't care. Like What are you talking about? What are you talking about? Black people killing black people? Do they [00:35:00] do that here all the time too? We don't give a s**t. That's the way they feel, right? Because they don't give a s**t.

They care about how they can use it for their political points. They don't actually care about these communities or these people. Do

Simone Collins: you think polarization politically is going to be worse, better? This is more worse.

Malcolm Collins: Astronomically worse. Oh, no. I wonder why we are so confidently citing was the right, like, we're like, Oh, you're doing things that really make it hard for you.

Because one, I know that they ultimately are going to win this. And two because in the future you're going to need a sock. Anyway I love you to decimone. You are a great wife and a very smart person. And I hope I'm not being too spicy in this episode.

Simone Collins: Oh, I love spicy. You know it. I. I hope that our children create a future that is a little brighter than what we're describing for the most part and that they do not succumb to AI girlfriends and boyfriends as disgusting as humans are.

So it's gonna be really difficult. [00:36:00] At

Malcolm Collins: least have artificial wombs by then.

Simone Collins: I don't know, actually, I think it's going to take a while, 20 years. It's going to, it's going to take more than 20 years.

Malcolm Collins: So I agree. I think it will take more than 20 years. So I, you know, they're going to need to find real breeding partners, which means we're going to need to find and convert real breeding partners into our cultural group or within our network of families doing arranged marriage for it.

No,

Simone Collins: honestly, Malcolm, hold on though. Like you are such a romantic person who is so sweet and loving, I think. Hopefully it will be in their dinner, just like genetically inherited to be romantics who seek out a carbon based partner. I hope nothing against AI. Cause it is awesome. But yeah, so we, AI is not going to have.

Kids. So Simone needs grandchildren. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, eventually it'll be, it'll be a third and they'll, they'll have a, a, a polycule with all AIs. It'll be a, a monogamous molecule because it will be them and their partner. And then I

Simone Collins: haven't thought about our kids being [00:37:00] poly and I'm going to have to like.

Put on a mask of just not cringing.

Malcolm Collins: Polly is so cringe though. If you want to see good Polly stories, I found really interesting recently. Look up the the, the wacky Portland polycule. It likely wasn't real, but like it was, it felt so real to a lot of people that they were like, Oh, this must be true because

Simone Collins: I like it. Did an episode that you, did you watch it?

I watched it. Of course I watched it. Was it good? It was good. It was good. Yeah. Stranger Islands did it. Yeah. It all unfolded in an am I the a*****e post? Sorry. Am I the a*****e post on Reddit? So yeah, we'll leave you with that ladies and gentlemen, in case you're too depressed about our future. Just, there's nothing to be

Malcolm Collins: depressed about. We win. The efficacious people. That's why we care about you, our watchers.

Simone Collins: Yeah, actually the people who watch this are like uniquely high agency. So congrats to you guys. We love you, but [00:38:00] I love Malcolm more. So I'm going to start your pork chops. Sound

Malcolm Collins: good? I am excited.

Nice.

Simone Collins: All right. I'll see you downstairs. Have

Malcolm Collins: you looked up how to cook pork chops? Huh. You see, this is the great thing about YouTube, looking up

Simone Collins: how to cook pork chops. It's a lot like pan seared steak is the way I'm going to do it, but with, with a lot of butter in the cast iron skillet. So.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, you know how to keep me happy.

Yeah, I'm

Simone Collins: ready. I'm, I'm ready. I mean, I might f**k it up, but we'll see. We'll see.

Malcolm Collins: I'll love you even if you do. Oh, thank you.

We analyze a graph showing lower income parents rate being a parent as more enjoyable and rewarding than higher income parents. Debunking the bias that poorer people must be miserable raising children, we argue cultural factors like faith and insulation from the childless urban monoculture better enable them to find meaning in parenting. We also discuss how defining life goals around pleasure paradoxically reduces durable happiness.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] What this graph demonstrates, that both the percentage of parents saying that they find being a parent is enjoyable or rewarding highest among lower income people.

Malcolm Collins: A lot of people don't realize that when you define your personal goals around hedonism, like I am having a kid to be happier.

That kid will always provide you with less happiness than if you are having a kid because it is your ideological duty to have the kid, the happiness that you get from tasks that you do. Because you think they are a thing of intrinsic value and not to make yourself happy will always give you more durable happiness.

And the person who is chasing hedonism in and of itself, but the urban monoculture doesn't tell people that it tells people that the highest order goal in anyone's life should be. Sort of the mass distribution of hedonism.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. You sent me an interesting graph today that I want to talk about because [00:01:00] it speaks to a point that we often talk about within the perinatalist movement, where we will say lower income individuals have more children than higher income individuals. This is true between and within countries.

So that means on average, the less wealth the country has, the more kids, the higher the fertility rate is going to be. But also within countries in general, like if you look at the US until you get to like really extreme levels of wealth which we've talked about in our other video, like the, the will will child support cost speciation video, you do get high fertility rate again at extreme levels of wealth, but generally less wealth you have, the more kids you have.

Simone Collins: And I think a lot of people like, especially like wealthier people. When they hear us say this are like, Oh, well, that's just because these terribly uneducated people are just miserably having children because of their dumb religious beliefs or because they're too dumb to use birth control properly. And they then would, of course, the assumption there is if that is really true, if that is what is happening.

These are the most [00:02:00] miserable parents, right? Of course, because they don't have the resources for the kids, right? Because raising a child is so expensive these days. And because of course they're having children by mistake, because they're so dumb to not use birth control properly.

Malcolm Collins: So these wealthy parents, yeah, they're the ones who are having the fulfilling parenting experience.

One

Simone Collins: would assume, of course, because they were, they, they paid all the IVF. to have their Children at age 55 and they wanted their Children and they

Malcolm Collins: have the resources. I think that there is a level of, within the urban elite in our society today, this urban monoculture we talk about, a dehumanization of the lower classes in, in America.

You think? You don't think? Well, no, I mean, you say you think, but it's something that they, I do not think, realize that they have done.

Simone Collins: Well, especially the woke masses believe that they are the champions of the poor and

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, that's what they say. They're like, yeah, I'm the champion of the little guy.

And, and then you, you, you're, you're, you're like, the [00:03:00] little guy is, is, is the people who you're like dehumanizing and these, these, you know, and you see this in their language, you know, the, the, the quote unquote uneducated. And, and, and the reality is, is that they don't champion the little guy.

They are a group that defines They've never freaking

Simone Collins: met the little guy. Like the vast majority of these people.

Malcolm Collins: They don't, they don't care. They don't have an understanding. They, they really, and, and their policies generally make things worse for the little guy. And the little guy could tell them that, but they just don't want to hear it.

What they want is centralized. Control in an expansion of the bureaucracy, which is what they're really fighting for because this expanded bureaucracy increases the number of jobs that they can have, which actually, before we go into the graph that you sent me, we'll go into a graph that I sent you that demonstrates this phenomenon.

Simone Collins: Version of sex. This is the graph and graphs to each other. And we're like, Oh, look at my data.

Malcolm Collins: Look at my data! So this is a graph called growth in education staffing has [00:04:00] far outpaced student enrollment. Oh yes!

Simone Collins: When you, oh my gosh, you shared this to me the other day, when I think, yesterday when I was out in Harrisburg, right?

And, oh my god. So

Malcolm Collins: if you look at since the 1970s, there has been an 8 percent increase in student enrollment in the U. S. A 60 percent increase in teaching staff and a 138 percent increase in non teaching staff. And this is something we're seeing in the university system as well and stuff like that.

Wherever this ultra progressive movement has concentrated itself they expand the number of jobs that are in these essentially like cash for nothing programs. Right?

Simone Collins: And let's be very clear. There is no correlation between this and improved student outcomes. Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, and this is really true. If you look at like the amount of money going into school systems and stuff like that, anybody who is telling you we will pump more money into the school system and get higher outcomes is just not relating to the data that we have right now.

Simone Collins: No, if there were massive reform in the public school system, this [00:05:00] could. Theoretically be possible, but right now, putting money into the school system means giving money to teachers unions means basically feeding the bureaucracy and the adults, not the children. So we're not

Malcolm Collins: saying that like important for this quote unquote educated class.

Yes. Yeah, believes that they deserve basically a doll from the state for existing. And then when Yeah. You know, I love it. So many people, they grow up so much in this class that you're now getting like this like anti work movement and stuff like that where they're like even horrified that the idea that humans have to work for a living because they have been grown up expecting that each and every one of them is so upper class in their expectations that they get to live

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, it is.

It is completely insane. It is. It is what

Malcolm Collins: they really mean when they say no work. If they mean no work for the college educated, they still expect someone to support them

Simone Collins: because yeah, someone has to deliver their food. Who's going to do their door dash? Who's going to

Malcolm Collins: do this to them? Like they genuinely, I do not think see [00:06:00] these people as humans.

Simone Collins: Like literally though. Oh my God, Malcolm. Cause I, I just spent like the, I just spent the past more than two weeks every afternoon out door knocking. Frickin cold. And the way that people treat you when you were like someone who knocks on their door it is insane. And I'm like, I'm heavily pregnant now.

And it's obvious. It is, it is completely wild. Just yeah, like strangers or people seen as like delivery people. And you know what though, like the, you know, who was the one consistent group of people when I was out door knocking, who was incredibly nice to me. And he'll always wish me luck, delivery people.

Malcolm Collins: Oh!

Simone Collins: They're like, Hey, what are you up to? You know, and I'm like, Oh, I'm doing this. I'm like, Hey, good luck. You know, I don't live in your district, but you'd have my vote. You know, just it's so weird, this striation. And then I also saw. How the delivery people were treated by the people in the neighborhoods I was walking around, just like me.

It is wild. Yeah. So just yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You have this art student, you're like, you could become a delivery person. They're [00:07:00] like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm above that kind of work. I have this degree that's now made pointless by AI. But hold on. So let's get to this graph that you shared with me because it was pretty surprising even to me.

I mean, I'll admit that I was to some extent affected by this bias. The people,

Simone Collins: I think another reason why you are affected by it is if, for example, we look at the fertility crash in Latin America and we see analysts saying, Oh, well, the reason why fertility is crashing is because all these unwanted children aren't being had by these teen mothers in Latin America and therefore blah, blah, blah.

Which implies that the people who had a lot of kids in the past really weren't ready to have them really didn't want to have them weren't, you know, this was not their thing. So you would assume that there's a lot of misery around this you know, we just, everywhere the data implies.

Malcolm Collins: Hold on, this data comes from the U.

S. and so I think that you're seeing something different here.

Simone Collins: No, no, well, yes, because this is, we're talking about now and we're talking about the U. S. and, and, and as we point out, yeah, like more, lower income people have more kids, but [00:08:00] yeah so. Let's go over this graph. What this graph demonstrates, and of course it's not profound but it shows that both the percentage of parents saying that they find being a parent is enjoyable or rewarding highest among lower income people.

So 38 percent of lower income people and 36 percent of lower income people find parenting to be either enjoyable or rewarding all the time. 38 and 36 respectively. You know, you're getting sorry. I'm sorry. And it's right there.

Malcolm Collins: 38 and 43%. So 38 percent I'll read the graph here. Thanks. Yeah, go ahead. 38% Of lower income individuals find being a parent enjoyable all the time and 49 percent in addition to that.

So 86 percent of lower income people in total find being a parent very enjoyable all of the time or most of the time. Now, if you contrast this with upper income people, instead of 38 percent all of the [00:09:00] time, it is 14 percent all of the time for upper income people. And with middle income people, it's only 21 percent all of the time.

And you also see lower total levels of all of the time or most of the time. So in contrast with the 86 percent of lower income people that find being a parent enjoyable all the time or most of the time you only have 79 percent within the upper income community. Now, if we talk about the amount that find it rewarding, you actually have about the same rate across all groups.

If you're talking about all of the time or most of the time, it's 80, 79, 81. So within one point of each other. But when you talk about all of the time do they find it rewarding all of the time? The number of lower income people that find it rewarding all the time is. 43 percent contrasted with only 28 percent in the upper income community.

So what you're really seeing here is upper income people seem to pretty dramatically and markedly find parenting both less enjoyable and [00:10:00] less rewarding. Yeah. And you

Simone Collins: know, if I were to like, let's say this graph was presented to us with only the numbers and not the. Income levels, you know, they're like, okay, well now put the incomes.

I would first think to just invert it. Right. Because everyone's oh, well, the reason why people can't become parents, the reason why people are miserable as parents is they don't have enough money. They don't have enough money. Look at this, look at this enjoyable and rewarding.

Malcolm Collins: So I think that there's a few things going on here. The first one is one that often isn't talked about but I do not think that it is totally causal, the correlation between income and parenting. I think that there is a correlational element here. Which is to say that if you're the type of person that values family and parenting more, you are going to spend more time on doing that than on maximizing your personal income stream.

Oh,

Simone Collins: okay. So there's a, there's a different, the causation moves in a different direction. You're not having more kids because you're poor. You're poor because you're having more kids. Like the Weasleys. Well,

Malcolm Collins: because you have different life

Simone Collins: [00:11:00] priorities. Yeah. Yeah. Like you're, you're spending your time raising family instead of, you know, pulling.

Malcolm Collins: It's not just how you're spending your time. It's how you structure your life. So a good example of this would be us. Okay. For people outside of the world of degrees. It's probably literally the hardest degree to get into in the world. It's much harder to get out than a Harvard MBA, for example, and MBAs are much harder to get than PhDs.

I remember one person it was like you implied you had a graduate degree from Stanford Which would you which made me think you had a neuroscience PhD from Stanford because you said you had a neuroscience degree and that's obviously a lie like a scam and I got very frustrated with this because I could have gotten a neuroscience It would have been Astronomically easier to get into the neuroscience PhD program at Stanford than a Stanford MBA.

Simone Collins: And less expensive if,

Malcolm Collins: It's literally probably about if you're talking about the, the, the difficulty, the difference

Simone Collins: between no, no, their entrance rates are just [00:12:00] Google entrance rates, just Google entrance

Malcolm Collins: rates. Yeah. Well, it's not only that, but if you look at like the average scores you need and stuff like that yeah, so I was frustrated by that.

But what I'm saying is I could demand a very high salary. Simone has a graduate degree from Cambridge, like we could demand incredibly high salaries. If we wanted to play that game, if we wanted to live in like Manhattan and San Francisco, but we didn't, we moved to rural Pennsylvania, right? Like we, we live on a farm, right?

Like we, we do what we can and, and we're the, our, our education skills and network gives us some level of financial security that a lot of people wouldn't have, but we would probably be considered middle income people. I think when I look at the stats or upper middle income family whereas we certainly wouldn't need to do that.

We are that because we are optimizing around what we value. Which is, is really important. A lot of these people who the, the chart is looking at is lower income might just be [00:13:00] generally genuinely like they're living in a suburban or rural area where their income is intrinsically going to be less than if they're living in an urban area.

Because of cost of living, for example,

Simone Collins: But that's awesome to have more kids. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Allowing them to have more kids. So I think that that's one component that we're seeing here. But then the other component I think we're seeing could be and this is a component that would be for the the other side of the argument.

It could be that high wealth individuals have access to more compelling competing tasks. Oh, sources

Simone Collins: of enjoyment and meaning. Meaning that like when you are lower income. Like you won't, you can't take fancy trips. You can't engage in charity. You can't join a board and become a big, big fancy person.

So,

Malcolm Collins: and so this is where I disagree with that. I really don't think that that many things that you could otherwise do are limited when you're lower income. Yeah, there really isn't, this is something that when

Simone Collins: lower income people are super involved in their communities, [00:14:00] for example, when you look at rates of giving to charity and like proportional charity donations, lower income people give the

Malcolm Collins: most.

Yeah. So this is my roommate when I was at business school he smartest person I've ever met. I think just a genuine one of my favorite moments with him is the. There was this guy in the classroom who was talking about building his app company. He was a, he was a guest

Simone Collins: speaker.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, he was a guest speaker. And, and, and, and my roommate I'm not going to say his name or anything because he's a very private person. And he does a lot of what he does through like shell companies. So people don't know that it's all him. But the guest speaker. was like he said he had said something about how to get, like, how their system for ranking apps works and stuff like that.

Simone Collins: At that time it was like, hold on, app store, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Right. And, and he like just dismissed him. He's I'm sorry, you, you misunderstand the system. This is how it works. And then the guy said, snarkily to him, he goes, How many top 10 Apple app store apps have you had? And he goes, how many do I have on the top 10 list today?

[00:15:00] And the guy was just floored. Because he programs them. He's got a number of shell company he uses to program them, but really smart guy. And we were talking to him about wealth at one point because he just has an enormous amount of wealth. Very humble guy. And he was complaining.

He's I don't understand the point of being wealthy anymore. Do you remember? He's like, all of the things that I used to have exclusive or historically I would have had exclusive access to as an ultra wealthy person. I, I, I, what, I can't, I don't have a private driver anymore. Like you have Uber now, right?

Like anyone can have like basically a private driver on demand. I don't have what was it like food delivered to me anymore? Anyone can do that. Right. I don't know. He was going through all of the things like all these

Simone Collins: customized services, hiring someone at the drop of a hat to do something for you as an assistant.

Oh, we'll just use Upwork.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or oh, you know, what do I have a band in my house? I can listen to any band in the world wherever, you know, constantly playing. And he was just going [00:16:00] through all of the exclusive things that used to be the realm of the ultra wealthy and the ultra elite. Which are now generally accessible to everyone.

In fact, when I look at the wealth gated hobbies right now, a lot of them either suck I dunno, like sailing or skiing or

Simone Collins: polo. Yeah. No one actually wants to do that.

Malcolm Collins: It's more like a status signal thing, or they are hobbies where honestly the, the. Expenditure of meaningless wealth is part of the point of the hobby.

So here it's collecting would come into a big part of this. I'm talking to you, you Warhammer figure collectors and stuff like that. You're, you're no, it's true. You know, all of these collectibles, all of these you know, uh, I guess, you know, whatever, like the things are going to conferences too, and you're buying all these baubles, which have a increased price due to the scarcity, due to all of the people who are collecting them.

The. [00:17:00] Yeah, I mean, I think about the hobbies that I have I'm like, what competes was my time with the kids, right? Writing, which like, I guess I love writing. I've been having so much fun writing recently. So that's one thing that's not like a wealth gated thing at all. And video games are one of those things where somebody might be like, well, video games have been rising in price recently.

And I'm like, If you contrast video game prices today with what they were when we were kids you know, a new video game when we were kids used to cost 50 bucks. What you are not taking into account is inflation. I remember I was talking with Simone during the pandemic, where I was always shocked that video game prices were rising so much more slowly than they were.

You have video games now where you'll get AAA games that are selling for 70 or something like that now, 75 for a base game, which is more than they used to sell for.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but I'm sorry. Super Bowl tickets are now 9, 000. Getting into Disneyland is like 4, 000, sorry, 400.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that doesn't really impede my enjoyment of it, because another [00:18:00] thing that's changed with video games is also the indie game scene.

And frankly, I find the AAA games To be a lot less enjoyable than they used to be in the indie games to be a lot more enjoyable and they're even cheaper than games used to be. And then you have things like Epic Store that's giving out like a free new, often pretty good game, like every year a couple, yeah. It's not particularly a wealth gated hobby. So I'm thinking like, where are these wealth gated things that are they don't exist.

Simone Collins: Basically, in other words yeah, I don't think that that second hypothesis, I want to be clear

Malcolm Collins: about this point because people might be misunderstanding me when people don't have a lot of wealth, there are things that they don't have access to that.

Wealthy people do have access to, but those things are not in the category. Of entertainment, they are in the categories, typically of personal safety, personal health, personal ability to do something like, I guess, travel the world on a dime or or not have to work, but all of those things don't fall into this [00:19:00] category.

Of competing for their entertainment daily time. So anyway yeah, that was really interesting to me.

Simone Collins: Sorry. Yeah, just, I mean the most important thing that I wanted to point out by doing a podcast on this is just that you think that lower income people who are having more kids are doing this by mistake and miserable note, they.

They're finding this extremely satisfying. And I mean, I think a lot of that's, I mean, a lot of the

Malcolm Collins: people have to make a hypothesis. I think I know what the actual answer is, but I want to hear what you were saying. I'm going to say,

Simone Collins: I think that there's also a correlation between higher levels of we'll say faith.

And that could be a hard culture, any sort of harder culture. Weirdly correlates with lower income. And I, I can't really say why maybe lower income leaves more room in your like head for faith. But I, I think that that's probably a big correlatory factor is people of faith and hard cultures are more likely to [00:20:00] be pronatalist are more likely to find the enjoyment and meaning of having kids.

And people who are wealthier are far more likely to be part of the urban monoculture. And therefore be, if anything, Negative utilitarian antinatalists at heart who have children,

Malcolm Collins: but then kind of really on the fundamental point. Okay. So what is it? Wealthier people are statistically much more likely to be in the urban monoculture than less wealthy people.

Um, Well, no, because you were saying that the alternative was faith, and I'm saying the alternative isn't faith. It's just not being in the urban monoculture. You know, it often looks like faith, okay? Faith is one component of this, but you need to keep in mind if you're less wealthy, regardless of your group, so even if you're a less wealthy Democrat, for example, right, you are often not going to be in the urban monoculture.

You're going to be in your local, Often like a minority ethnic community, like you're going to be ingrained with your local Hispanic you know, [00:21:00] often like Catholic church and family network or your local black community or your local and these culturally are very different from the urban monoculture, even when you are on this democratic side and then when you're not on the democratic side, you know, this is not an issue.

And so I think what we're really seeing here is that the urban monoculture has created a, it cultural system for relating to children where they are basically treated like pets. And children are very high maintenance pets. If, if you are getting children like pets, children suck

Simone Collins: as pets, but they really do.

They suck as

Malcolm Collins: pets. Well, when this is, yeah, this is one of the things that I, you know, I talk about here is sometimes the way to be happiest. And this is one of the things we talk about on our podcast. Like you can see being happy. Being unhappy is a sin our episode on, on, on that concept, which is a lot of people don't realize that when you define your personal goals around hedonism, like I am having a kid to be happier.

That kid will always provide you with less happiness than if you are having [00:22:00] a kid because it is your ideological duty to have the kid, the happiness that you get from tasks that you do. Because you think they are a thing of intrinsic value and not to make yourself happy will always give you more durable happiness.

And the person who is chasing hedonism in and of itself, but the urban monoculture doesn't tell people that it tells people that the highest order goal in anyone's life should be. Sort of the mass distribution of hedonism. So first, do what makes you happy and then try to increase pleasure and reduce suffering in others.

Simone Collins: So you're saying the very nature of the cultural monoculture makes it difficult to actually enjoy having kids and find having kids rewarding because it does. Detract from in the moment pleasure.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, because, because chasing after pleasure, defining your life around pleasure, both your own pleasure and the pleasure of other people's sort of disables your ability to really feel genuine pleasure.

And I think that that's what's [00:23:00] happening here. But then I also think that there's all of these, and we talk about like the psychologist cult and everything like that. I think the way that these individuals, when they're in deep in the urban monoculture relate to mental health and frame their own mental health around questions like trauma, the way they interact with things is just really unhealthy and it causes them to interact with their kids in really unhealthy ways.

Simone Collins: And hurt their kids ultimately, which is disturbing

Malcolm Collins: to me. They treat their kids like little

Simone Collins: princelings. Well, and, well, and, but then they also apply this whole trauma mindset to their children. And we've met, it's so interesting. Um, we, we keep meeting young people, right? And then we've, we've met a decent number of young people from both more conservative, traditional religious communities as well as super woke communities.

And it's so funny. I I'm, I'm thinking of two people in particular. One is like super to the point, like super regulated. I I've never heard about. Anything ever that [00:24:00] happened that was difficult in her life or anything like that, just, you know, her comments and thoughts on things. And then I'm thinking about the other one.

And every single time I talk, there's some mention of trauma or difficulty or ideology, actually. Which is really interesting and it just shows how like how screwed up this culture is and how it's creating people who are miserable. So I mean, you

Malcolm Collins: allow your kids to engage with this culture of I, I don't know what to call it.

It's a culture that has disseminated from the psychology community, which was why originally I started my career as a neuroscientist. And I worked in psychiatry and and so I'm saying this as somebody who is informed about how the community is structured and the way it works and the way the human brain works.

It is really much more structurally similar to a cult. Now, what what is taught as psychology than it is to historically what we called psychology. It's actually much closer to what Scientology was in the 80s than than what any real evidence based psychology is [00:25:00] and we have episodes on this psychology called episodes, stuff like that.

But. It has disseminated into all aspects of how these individuals in the urban monoculture see themselves and relate to their own self narrative. And when a kid is raised in this, and it's funny, you get the two people who you mentioned were girls. And I thought you were thinking of two guys who I know.

Who had the same phenomenon. Oh my

Simone Collins: God. You're right. No, I'm now I'm thinking of those two guys, the two young. Yeah. But I was thinking of

Malcolm Collins: really sad because these are really otherwise competent individuals. Well, all of these

Simone Collins: people are equally, I think they all have the equal, like potential as humans. And yet one of these groups, like we we've given up on their futures, honestly, like we've just been like,

Malcolm Collins: okay, we're ready.

We've basically written them off. I'm going to be honest. Yeah. Well, and it's interesting, the smart ones like when I think about the smart people who are in each of these groups that I know the, the and I, I think that people here when we're talking about like conservative young people they, they probably think that we're talking about.[00:26:00]

I don't know, like white what they would think of as traditional, like I, I don't know, like trad cast . Every one of the people I'm thinking about are the first generation immigrant de descendant. Yeah. Those are the most,

Simone Collins: or, or, or children? Some are children of first generation

Malcolm Collins: immigrants. That's what I'm saying.

The ones who I'm thinking of. Oh, the woke ones. Yeah, I don't know any woke. Oh, you do. Okay. Well, I did. I don't know the one you're speaking of but generally the first generation immigrant kids who I know are less affected by wokeness because they're still you know, I think they have the

Simone Collins: ability to see in contrast to their home culture, just how like ridiculous and unhinged woke culture is.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And they're like, no, this is ridiculous. And then the ones who I know who have really succumbed to it, their families have been here for generations. Yeah. Yeah. And they, they succumb to what culture and they had so much promise, but honestly more than like 50 percent of their mental effort seems dedicated to maintaining quote unquote mental health, which is really just degradating of [00:27:00] mental health.

Like just do yourself, get it like, like the, the elevation of, of this sort of mental landscape that has come with this mental health expansion within our, our society. It's both unnecessary and causes more mental health issues.

Simone Collins: And it also pulls people totally off their career track.

Like I, I, you see all these people now who like want to be life coaches or want to be therapists or want to go into all these sorts of they just want to feed into this. Because it's all they're ever thinking about. And so then they're, they're becoming unproductive. They're not getting jobs.

Like they're, they're not getting well paying jobs. It's, it's awful. They're also putting themselves into huge amounts of student debt to get degrees.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, it's, it's, it's an, and I think very, really an addictive process. Yeah, for sure. And it's interesting to me because people know that I really love studying religions, but my love of studying religions really came from a love of studying cults.

I always wanted to understand how do people get enthralled by these ideas [00:28:00] that seem just completely pointless and feckless. And how do we control our own minds? That was something that I always really cared about. I was like,

Simone Collins: well Right, if a cult can make you give all your money to strangers and do all these crazy things, well then what could cult tactics make you do if you If you leverage them for good to do what you actually want,

Malcolm Collins: brainwash myself.

Could I create a little, like my own mental landscape that would do well and move me towards efficaciousness and

Simone Collins: seeing as powerful, cool tactics are totally, you should be thinking

Malcolm Collins: that. Well, I, I believe I've executed on it within my own life. I'm quite, quite happy with my life. As everybody always comments on there.

Like it is

Simone Collins: wild. Yeah. Everyone is is he on drugs or is this an act? And it's no, this is just I mean, by the way. Guys, this is Malcolm at his low point. He has been up since 2am. He is exhausted and tired now. You should see him first thing in the morning. I mean, my

Malcolm Collins: god. Oh yeah, I am very high energy first thing in the morning.

We've had some interviews. The Chris Williamson [00:29:00] interview was me earlier in the morning. And people want to be like, what is Malcolm like when he's like earlier in the morning? Blahblahblahblahblahblahblah. You know, I get really excited about everything. Or right after I've completed a task I'm really excited about.

So I think that you can actually brainwash yourself basically, not brainwash yourself because it's, it's really just, you choose your mental landscape much more than people realize. And when you act like your mental landscape is something that you don't have complete authority over and, and that you are not the authoritarian dictator of your mental landscape.

I love these people. They're like, Oh, I'm listening to all the little voices in my head. And I'm trying to. Create what's the word I'm looking for? Some sort of balance or harmony among them. You know, this, this pushed by like insight out and stuff like that. It's don't listen to them.

They're wrong. We're, we're not the slave of your emotions. You, you're the slave of your logic. Your logic is the dictator of your mental landscape. And if you want to feel happy, then you feel happy because you've got bigger things than feeling good [00:30:00] about yourself. And we really we are dealing with a collapsing society right now.

We cannot afford these types of emotional indulgences. And part of the reason society is collapsing is because so many people are indulging these emotional indulgences. Actually, very interesting. If you look at historical periods. Right before societal collapse is you see a similar sort of mental health ism under different names Among the what like

Simone Collins: temperance

Malcolm Collins: or what was it?

Oh the vapors, you know, I can barely think right now. Oh, no.

Simone Collins: No, yes the hypochondriac women who are always Swooning and they had these mysterious illnesses, etc.

Malcolm Collins: Or, or always, yeah, competing in these, these sort of mental games or writing long poems about how mentally anguished they were. Right. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Goodness gracious. Well, I mean, so my takeaway from this graph is basically this, this thought that being pure and being apparent will make you miserable is. Like just off [00:31:00] that, you know, lower income parents are, there are clearly fewer low income parents who don't find any rewarding enjoyment from parenting than wealthy people.

And it's so funny, like when I actually look at, you know, the lower income families, we know who are parents. And I, I look at how they are around their kids and we hang out in person. And I was just like, look at your, their Facebook posts. And then I think of the higher income parents that we know. And their children, I see how they act around them.

And speak about them and post about them. It, it actually kind of checks out. There's a lot more sort of like, Cognitive dissonance around being a parent with the wealthy in some way, and also maybe this feeling like they're kind of above raising them. So that like time spent with them is kind of like, you know, it's, it's, it's very hard for me to articulate this, but anyway it, it does shape the way that I look at pronatalism and income.

And I mean, it certainly reinforces our thing, which is, yeah, this whole money, please approach to pronatalism is [00:32:00] incredibly dumb. But yeah, I'm glad that you indulged me in talking about this

Malcolm Collins: graph. I love you to death Simone. You are a wonderful wife.

Simone Collins: You are a dapper and perfect husband. I

Malcolm Collins: love you so much.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] For leftists who are in the comments and want to argue against us, I'd really like you to describe within the context of the world one.

Genuinely negative or genuinely fascistic thing about the governing structure of the Star Trek movie world and I'm not even burdening you with the books in the movie as portrayed in the movie. What is evil about it? They have gender equality. They have ethnic equality. Anyone can vote. All they ask is that you undergo some sacrifice and you could say like, well, they talk about the failure of democracy.

Well, I'm sorry. Just as a passionate observer here. I would argue that most leftists would also argue democracy has failed. I want you to explain to me what's actually evil about this system. Not just the outfits, what's actually wrong with it? That people have pride in their country, and in their case, their country is humanity, because that's what it represents, because it is a one world government.

Do people have pride in humanity? Is that what makes it [00:01:00] evil? Like, is it that you need the government to actively undermine humanity? To actively be promoting things about how bad humans are all the time?

Because you grew up with that and you think that that's what a sane, normal government does? Because that's what your government's been doing since you started the school system trying to indoctrinate you into hating your own country? Into hating your own people? You define that as good? It's disgusting.

In the far left was telling the truth and gender and ethnic equality was what they were really fighting for. The Starship troopers universe would be a utopia to them. They show in their hatred of it, that they were never telling the truth, that what they really want It's not a world of equality, but a world where people like them no longer need to make sacrifices to get things in life. Or to exercise power over others.

 Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. So every one of our episodes starts with a little sound clip from one of our favorite movies, Starship Troopers. And it's a [00:02:00] really fascinating movie, especially in terms of how they've being talked about in the, in, in the public discourse today, because people are pointing out that it was made to lampoon.

And yet the leftists see it as being taken as like the the guard, like the, the honor guard, people like us, who they would consider fascists or something like that actually seeing a lot of great lessons from it, seeing a lot of great great ideas in it and they're like, look at how dumb they are believing that there are great ideas in a movie that was made to ridicule those ideas.

And this to me is a great instance of the left telling on itself because I think that Starship Troopers as a movie, and we're going to go into this, is one of the best condemnation of a leftist ideology I have ever seen. In that they thought that they were creating a movie that lampooned the ideas that were being brought up in it.

It really reminds me of a video we did on the Barbie [00:03:00] movie being one of the most anti woke movies I've ever seen. With examples in this being that when Ken comes to the human world, he keeps looking for patriarchy and can't find it. Like he finds women doctors, everything like that. The only place he's able to find evidence of a patriarchy is in a high school.

Library, not even a public library, what we are teaching our children is the only place the patriarchy exists. And then he enforces that within his world and we go into a bunch of other stuff, but I'm just saying, like, it is so obvious. There is almost no way to honestly watch the Barbie movie and take away anything but an incredibly base message.

I don't know, people

Simone Collins: take away what they want to take

Malcolm Collins: away. Well, no, but I, I mean, honestly, watch it, honestly, watch the way it's engaging with themes and the messages that is putting it across. And I think that this is the true with the Starship Troopers movie as well. So you have this guy Vanderhoeven, who, who started reading the book Starship Troopers, which is a great book.

[00:04:00] It's one of the considered like one of the best books in history for people who don't know. It's, it's one of, I think the only sci fi book allowed to be read within a U. S. military for a while. And it's on alternate governance. It's more of a book on governance philosophy, which you know we're nerds about because we wrote a book on governance philosophy.

But he started reading it and he didn't like it. He didn't like the ideas put across in it and he saw them as fascist in his mindset. And so when he was tasked with writing a movie about it, he wanted to lampoon these ideas. The problem was, is he also honestly conveyed them well enough that there is actually nothing evil.

About the government system that he portrays in this world. I mean, keep in mind, this is an elected government system. Anyone in the Starship Troopers universe can earn the right to vote. All you need to do is either engage in government service through You know, some sort of government activity or join the military.

There's, there's two [00:05:00] pathways. This is made clear in the book and they don't specifically change this in the movie. They don't say that there's not the other pathway. So we assume that it still happens because it follows broadly the same beats of the book. And if you're like disabled or mentally disabled, they find a way to allow you to still earn your vote.

You just have to earn it. Which is very different from a fascist state. No,

Simone Collins: and not just vote, like also the right to have kids,

Malcolm Collins: et cetera. Well, it gets easier. They say, they say you can still get the right to have kids if you're not a citizen, but you have to earn it. And then, so the, the point here being is that it is a government that asks things.

Of its citizens. And this is seen as holistically evil to the far left. So evil that they thought that's all they needed to do. To have that, and then the aesthetics of what they see as fascism, i. e. like long black coats. And now the government system being depicted in the movie is evil. Even though it's diverse, it's competent, it's [00:06:00] meritocratic they appear to have a free press system.

You see people disagreeing with government tactics within the, the state media. You see, Freedom of movement. So, a really interesting thing is, is leftists, when they watch this, they're like, humanity started the war. Do you remember how the war was started, Simone, by the way? Because it's conveyed in both the movie and the books.

Space Mormons. Space Mormons. But what did they do?

Simone Collins: They settled in a place that was Kind of off limits that they should yes, they

Malcolm Collins: disagree But the government was so not fascist not like evil military fascists that they were able to do this They were able to have ideas that went against the world government's ideas and act on those ideas.

The war was started because The world was a world in which freedom of speech, freedom of movement, and freedom of religion were allowed. That's why the war was started, and the buds having this ultra communist mindset couldn't understand [00:07:00] that this one faction of humanity was acting in a way that the rest of humanity didn't condone them.

And, and I, I've loved in leftist because the great thing about seeing leftist defendants is, is they're defending insects over humans saying that these insects are in the right and humans are in the wrong and they'll do things like one video I saw, which was insane is said that the the flood, the attack on Buenos Aires was a false flag attack.

So if you understand what that means, they were arguing that basically it was a fascist government. It could only stay and maintain power if they had an enemy to fight. So they attacked themselves to blame it on the insects. Except we can see in the movie that very clearly isn't the case. Do you remember the scene that proves that that's not the case?

Simone Collins: No, actually I don't.

Malcolm Collins: Remind me. So, the big spaceship carrier that the girl is, is, is flying in the part of the plot, you know, the, the people spit up and it's this big spaceship carrier [00:08:00] flying very, very far from earth. In fact, it's so far it's out of contact range. Once it's satellite is knocked off with the other human colonies gets hit by the asteroid on its way to earth.

It scrapes the top. Remember they have to do the last minute maneuver, but this meant that the asteroid was coming from outside of our system. So it definitely wasn't sent by the U. S. government. And Then people are like, well, then it must have come from too far away or something like that. Well, you don't know that the bugs didn't have, you know, more close sort of warning systems to attack humanity.

And maybe even were preparing for more of an assault because they saw the threat and the, the Mormon settlement triggered that. Nothing in the movie is at all evidence that there was any sort of disingenuousness on part of humanity. Simone, do you want your thoughts before I go further with this? No, no, no, go ahead.

Another part that I found absolutely hilarious. So, Vanderhoven, the guy who directed this, when he was choosing casting for the movie, he wanted it to be very sort [00:09:00] of obvious that it was supposed to be an evil government and evil people.

And so the way that he demonstrated this. was by choosing beautiful actors, beautiful fit actors. He thought it would be obvious, like a, a Nazi propaganda film if he chose beautiful actors. And I love the distortion of the leftist mindset this shows. And I'm like, it shows how leftists tell on themselves.

If he thought by choosing, like, like that he equi Equivocates human beauty with Equivocates. Equivocates human beauty with evil. That he sees beautiful people and he goes, Oh, that's obviously evil. He sees a government structure in which, unlike Wish, you know, like Disney saying, Oh, if a person demands one sacrifice from somebody on the behalf of the greater good of society, that that means he's evil.

That, that means that an individual is evil. If the smallest amount is asked from anyone, then that is evil. And, and, and to, to sort of worship this. [00:10:00] Constant indulgence. This, this ugliness of humanity is so telling of the way that White Left actually thinks but created this movie that's just fun and gets across a lot of interesting ideas. Well, one of the things I wanted to do here was read some of like the quotes I've seen online about this, because it will give you an idea of just how like crazy people are about this. So, a person says, I rewatched the classroom scene in Starship Troopers, and the teacher literally talks about how democracy was a failed experiment. And force slash violence is the ultimate means of power. Emphasis on force and direct action is one of the features of fascism.

I swear, people simping for the government just shows how effective the film operates as a piece of fascist propaganda. And I get it. Fascism does a great job of appealing to values like strength, duty, patriotism, et cetera. Do people really think fascists saw themselves as evil? Obviously, there are reasons people get behind these movements.

 I want to go to the reply because I [00:11:00] think it's, it's hilarious because it's so true. Yes. All power can be reduced to an expression of force.

Acknowledging this is just accepting truth. Crowdsourcing the application of violence to a government via quote unquote democracy does not dilute this fact.

So people who are unfamiliar with governance theory may not know this. But it is broadly accepted within governance theory that even democracies. The state has a monopoly on violence. The state can commit violence without any real repercussions. So long as it is within the rules that the state decides.

I E. The state can murder someone. For example, the state can come into your home and steal stuff from you. The state can even demand you just give it stuff. And so when you are exercising control of how the state exerts its monopoly on violent, I E voting, you are committing a form of violence. Within this interpretation of of state crap.

And this is like, Normal democratic thinking. This person is [00:12:00] just unfamiliar. That the person who wrote the initial things saying that.

The state having monopoly on violence is purely a fascist way of relating to government is just a profoundly uneducated person.

Malcolm Collins: The difference lies in the field of civic virtue. A citizen accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic of which he is a member, defending it if need be with his life.

The civilian does not. They're quoting the movie there. You are not acting in violence on part of one, but on the whole. And then, quote, Whether it's exerted by ten or ten billion, political authority is violence to a degree. The people we call citizens have earned the right to wield it. And then the person goes on to say, And you wield it by voting.

And this is well known in government theory. Voting is a form of violence, right? I mean, it's a quote here, quote, when you vote, you are exercising political authority. You're using force and force. My friends is violence. The Supreme authority from which all authority derives. This is a quote from the movie in quote, and you can [00:13:00] only vote when you commit yourself to service to the Federation.

 I think another really interesting point that somebody makes here is, then how is it that even in the movie, Johnny Rico's parents are fantastically wealthy while being proudly non citizens.

If this were a fascist system, then they wouldn't have had the right to speak negatively about the government, nor would they have been allowed to become so wealthy. Fascism is literally the marriage of industry and state where nothing is outside the state and everything is for the state.

The real issue here is so many people refuse to accept the definition of fascism that was created by fascism's inventor Benito Mussolini, even so called experts refuse the true definition of words. Mussolini said many times that criticizing the government under fascism is treaty, and nobody has the right to vote for or against anything.

Yet even in the movie, they often talked about voting and criticizing the government and its reporting, none of which would have been allowed under fascism. So what's interesting here is this is similar to leftist ideas [00:14:00] about racism, where they Define racism as anything other than a leftist interpretation of race.

You know, I'll often point out, I'm like, well, I don't look down on black people. I have lots of black friends. And they're like, well, that's not, that's not not being a racist. You can still be racist and have those things. And I'm like, no, what you really just mean is you have defined racism as left wing ideology.

They have defined fascism as anything that looks aesthetically right leaning to them. And because of that, they cannot see. The world of Starship Troopers is actually probably one of the best worlds in terms of like quality of life, actual freedom of any of the, the star worlds I'm familiar with.

It's certainly better than life under the Star Wars universe or any of the, even like the good Republic had, you know, slavery happening around it and stuff like that. It was not like a great, they had enormous poverty. It had, you know, all sorts of problems, [00:15:00] even you know, people are like, well, what about the post scarcity of the Federation?

Right. I'm like, okay, the world that you are introduced to on the Federation. Is mostly the world of military starships. It's a world where the the force of science in that world like all scientists have effectively been militarized And serve on military starships and are basically completely brainwashed into the government's way of thinking Yeah, it's post scarcity on the starships of what is At least from what I can tell, basically an actual fascist government.

Because you're like, well, how do you know it's fascist? You know, they have voting on, on earth and stuff like that. I don't really see anyone ever disagreeing with the government. They may have voting, but it seems to me like they're, maybe they're using an AI lattice to prevent real dissent or something.

But yeah, it, it is a much more fascist coded world. So especially in the way that it, it, yeah. Anyway, I want you to talk a [00:16:00] bit to this stuff.

Simone Collins: Well, you're not really talking about aspects of the movie that like, I,

Malcolm Collins: well, what do you do in the movie? Then what

Simone Collins: appeals to me in the movie is how based it is.

And, and how realistic it is in some ways too. Like, I, I find a lot of what makes me excited about. Starship troopers in that general universe is how much it reminds me of the 1950s cornet films tutorials that I'm so obsessed with and that it's like extremely practical like people are not delusional about what they can achieve.

People are very practical about what they are allowed to access or not. There isn't a lot of entitlement in the world. It's more like, oh, I want to take this path and I'm able to take this path and that's what I'm going to do and I'm going to be proud of it. Which I really

Malcolm Collins: like. I really like the sort of practicality of it in ways, like, what would leftists find so hateful about the movie?

Like, another thing they'd probably really hate is the scene where all of their [00:17:00] scores are shown against each other. So they know where they rank in the class, and that can be, like, brought up and enlarged. That's a good thing, we should go back to that. But to a leftist, that's a form of violence, because you are hurting the people who didn't put in the effort to do as well.

Or the leftist is admitting that some people are born smarter than others. And then you get into the whole genetics of that, which is something else they don't admit. You know, so many contradicting views. But no, I, I think that that's an, an enormously good way to motivate people to do better.

Peer pressure in a high school environment is, is really motivating.

Simone Collins: I've also really liked the way that a lot of things just aren't cared about. That people don't make a big deal out of the fact that grades are publicly posted. That men and women, you know, shower together in locker rooms and it's not a big deal.

Oh

Malcolm Collins: wait, so it's a completely post gender society. Which is weird,

Simone Collins: because like a lot of, I would say a lot of progressives are fighting for a post gender society. They're fighting for gender neutral bathrooms. They're fighting for gender neutral locker rooms. And I'm like Yeah, [00:18:00] and they're here, and this is how they're done right, which is like, it's not an issue.

Malcolm Collins: Well, this is totally post racial and post gender. Women are given no special status in this world to create equality, and it's the same with different ethnic groups. Everyone is actually treated equally, which to a leftist is racism because they, redefine the term racism. To a leftist, that is sexism because they're all just, you know, you wouldn't even have a trans issue here because everyone uses the same bathrooms and the same showers.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but I think there would be fewer trans people in this world because they're just, there's so little functional difference between the genders. So like, why would you? I mean, like women still look feminine, they have slightly different, I mean, slightly different uniforms, but it is really impressive how representation in governmental leadership in the military and all factions of the military are very gender equal.

And this is not to say that people don't have romantic relationships or compete, you know, like two men compete against each [00:19:00] other for the same moment, for example, but I just, I find that so refreshing and wonderful. And. I think this is I was just listening to an episode of blocked and reported and which is one of my favorite podcasts in which the hosts Jesse and Katie, we're discussing how sometimes like raising awareness about an issue can just make it so much worse.

And if you just don't make it a big deal, people just let it happen. Whereas if you make a big deal out of it, then it becomes polarized. Then there's baggage, then there's a war involved. And. Suddenly the thing becomes non functional. This happened, for example, they were pointing out, and I thought this was really interesting with the, what was it called?

The, the vaccine that we used, that we got for not getting cervical cancer.

Malcolm Collins: It doesn't matter. The cervical cancer vaccine. Yeah.

Simone Collins: But anyway, yeah. I, I love that. And I love that's like, and also the lines in it are so good. And I think it's one of those movies where like, we can see [00:20:00] how even someone who hates propaganda and hates like national pride In depicting it makes it just so attractive.

Like the, the first movie starts out with like a propaganda video, you know, of like a news bulletin from the government. And it just has so many wonderful, catchy elements. Of course, one of them being our podcast, Do You Want to Know More? But there's also so many

Malcolm Collins: slogans like So I want to talk about two things you talked about here.

One is, you know, you talk about gender equality. It's shown multiple times. The Sky Marshal of this world is a woman. And I think they're actually replaced, replaced with a black woman, right? Like when they're replacing them with a more competent one, because they do a bad job, they get replaced. And it was Sky Marshal Tahat Maru.

So even a non Western, you know, that's a pretty obviously an African name. So this is a

Simone Collins: world where the main characters in the beginning are not in America. They're in Latin America. Yeah, there it is. It's so

Malcolm Collins: actually pluralistic that the leftist can't like, when you, where are the, we're all [00:21:00] like the federation capital.

Where are all the federation scenes? They're like in San Francisco. They're like in New York. It's an incredibly Eurocentric world, the world that they make. And, and, and that's where we're attacked. And I'd also hear note the propaganda films. This is another thing leftists complain about. Like they are annoyed at the scene where you have the government psyops organization and they're releasing a video about how best to kill arachnids.

And then they show them shooting one of the bugs on screen with, with useful information And To people, humans that are putting themselves in harm way fighting an aggressive species that attacked us. One, what started the war, we settled on lands that they claimed were theirs. Like, it wasn't even direct competition.

And two, it wasn't even, you know, licensed by the government. So they are completely in the wrong for this. You know, they could have just tried to talk to us. It was shown they had the capacity for this in Starship Troopers 3. And one thing I quite like in Starship Troopers 3, is it also shows how even when they're trying to act their best, evil the bugs [00:22:00] are because of different conceptions about life because they're a hive mind.

And so when they're trying to, like, talk to the humans, finally, in, in, in one scene, it's this horrifying scene where it's a bunch of puppeted bodies on, like, tentacles. Talking to somebody of like their dead friends and it's like, well, I thought these would be good things to talk to you. It's because you were friends with them and you know, like you're comrades, right?

Like it has such a small understanding of humanity that it thinks that that's how you kill a person's friends and then puppet their corpses. Yeah. So they're familiar. Like. I, I, I love that, but it also shows why they didn't understand what was happening with the Mormons and stuff like that, but it is because they are a lesser form of life than the pluralistic humanity.

They are the hive mind that the ultra progressive pines for. But in this scene where he's shooting it, I'm like, I think literally within the ethics of the universe, no problem with that. This is an aggressive species. It's pretty obvious that individually, the type of arachnid that he was killing is not a sentient entity.

That only as a hive [00:23:00] mind are they sentient entities. This is shown from the perception of, of the arachnids, maybe a brain bug is a sentient entity because the psychics were able to talk to them, but they're not able to talk to or read the other. Insects, it's shown when they can even communicate with things like ferrets easily.

So, if, if they're able to easily communicate with a ferret, that means that this arachnid was less intelligent than a ferret. And then they're like, well, they're stomping bugs on screen. It's like, okay, like actual cockroaches, like human world cockroaches. I, I guess call PETA, you know, and, and, and even like looking down on your enemy is something that isn't elevated in the show.

There's a dissection scene where one of the girls is talking down on insects. And the biology teacher who is working for the government is saying that you shouldn't look down on insects. They can be just as complicated and sophisticated as humanity. And I know

Simone Collins: one of my favorites. You know, like propaganda lines is still the only good bug is a

Malcolm Collins: dead bug.

All right, I love we're in this for the species boys and girls And I always say that to like you like when we're it's simple numbers They have [00:24:00] more you know when we're out there fighting for the future of humanity. You know this genuinely pluralistic ordered and functioning society with freedom of speech, freedom of movement, some form of sacrifice to vote.

All of this seems very utopian to me. When contrasted with other societies we've seen where there is no more elevation of one eth SNCC group, or one gender, or one way of life over others, so long as you are shown to care about your fellow man and be willing to make sacrifices to improve the quality of life.

Because that's what the government's trying to do, either through protecting your fellow man, or through performing other forms of government service, protecting your fellow man. So I look at this scene where he shoots the thing and he's providing a valuable public service. There really wasn't another way to easily show the easiest way to kill them.

At least not vividly in the way that a human would remember. It was a completely justified thing in context. And in the third one, it has some of my favorite lines as well. And then the third one the major plot theme of it is that they realize [00:25:00] that the insects have something like a religion and then they're like, Oh, we should because it's implied that the government while it had allowed some freedom of religion, religion was really discouraged on earth.

And then the government begins to embrace religion because it realizes it's a useful tool for a well functioning society. And they begin to really start to believe it as they embrace it with, with great lines like

Across the Federation. Federal experts agree that A, God exists after all. B, he's on our side and C, he wants us to win. And there's even more good news believers as it's official. God's back, and he's a citizen too.

Malcolm Collins: And then it, it goes to this. Hanging of, of, it's like, and while religion is good, peace is not.

Bowing to a rising popularity all across the Federation, Sky Marshal Fidd declares that while religion is acceptable, peace is not.

Malcolm Collins: And then it takes this peace protester for a mass hanging, who's like [00:26:00] super coded lefty, like he's in a wheelchair, and he's like, you know, yelling, and, and, you know, what would be called one of those spiteful mutants, you know, these people who are by, by somebody like the Jolly Heretic.

In related news, peace terrorist Elmo Gonniff and 51 of his closest friends were hung this morning in what many believe to be the all time record for executions in a single day since the 21st century.

Malcolm Collins: And It's, it's, it's, and everyone's laughing at the hanging, you know, they, they think this is a, is a delightful time

But they can't silence you! F the Federation! You will not take my voice! You will not take me! You will not take away our power!

F k you all! F k you! F k you all! F k the Federation!

. and you might be like, Oh, look at how horrible this government is. They call him a piece. Well, what does peace mean to them? It's not peace between man and man. It's, it's human extinction.

Malcolm Collins: It's human extinction. That's what he's arguing for. And you can be like, no one would argue for that. Go online and look at the leftists talking about Starship Troopers today. [00:27:00] Yeah, they would, and they're already at that mentality.

They're already at this literal bugman mentality, where they prefer insects to man.

Because they want this world of no diversity. Unity of purpose and ideology and everything. Their goal is the genocide of human cultural diversity and all that makes us different. And I think that at the end of the day, and human beauty, and, and so many of the things that they thought that they were coding as evil in this movie.

And I even love the fashion, right? The fashion looks great in the movie. I love the outfits. And aesthetic isn't intrinsically evil or good. And the aesthetic that they chose was a pretty dope aesthetic.

Simone Collins: Sorry, but yeah, fashion puts the fashion fascism. It's just too consistent.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, obviously there's the one line that is my favorite above all lines in the movie that I will always quote and I think it's sort of, almost sort of like religiously ingrained in us because I just think it's such a true [00:28:00] thing, which is to say the, the difference between a citizen and a civilian is, is a citizen has the courage to make the safety of the human race, their personal responsibility.

And I think that when we decide like who we want to engage with as human beings, like, What we care about and what our real mission is, it is wrapped up in that word, making the safety of the human race, our personal responsibility in everything that we approach things. It's not just about our group. It's not just about people like us.

The systems that are being pushed by leftists now do not take the human race into account. And we are trying to create an ideology and way of engaging with the world that does take the human race first.

And I hope that this is a, you know, that the leftists out themselves to people who are on the edge about like, how evil are they really, or how long has this rot been going on? That a genuine leftist could have made a movie that, and this is what I did [00:29:00] end with. For leftists who are in the comments and want to argue against us, I'd really like you to describe within the context of the world one.

Genuinely negative or genuinely fascistic thing about the governing structure of the Star Trek movie world and I'm not even burdening you with the books in the movie as portrayed in the movie. What is evil about it? They have gender equality. They have ethnic equality. Anyone can vote. All they ask is that you undergo some sacrifice and you could say like, well, they talk about the failure of democracy.

Well, I'm sorry. Just as a passionate observer here. I would argue that most leftists would also argue democracy has failed. And, and I think most rightists think democracy is in the process of failing now. And I don't think that that's a particularly controversial statement. And that if we were going to come up with a plausible alternative system, one in which people had to sacrifice in order to vote.

Yeah, that's [00:30:00] one that I would consider really realistic to me. So I want you to explain to me what's actually evil about this system. Not just the outfits, not just that beautiful people live in it. What's actually wrong with it? That people have pride in their country, and in their case, their country is humanity, because that's what it represents, because it is a one world government.

Do people have pride in humanity? Is that what makes it evil? Is, is, is, is the fact that there's a, a hierarchy in this world what makes it evil? Is the fact that they post scores to the screen and they, they're doing what's effective and it doesn't care about individual feelings, is that what makes it evil?

Because I don't get it, I don't see, is it the fact that they, government sponsors educational videos? That, that are aligned with the governance and humanity's interests at the moment? Is that what makes it equal? Evil? Like, is it that you need the government to actively undermine humanity? To actively be promoting things about how bad humans are all the time?

Because you grew up with that and you think that that's what a sane, normal government does? Because that's what your government's been doing since you [00:31:00] started the school system trying to indoctrinate you into hating your own country? Into hating your own people? You define that as good? It's disgusting.

It's disgusting that anyone could look at this movie and see any evil in it, because I see none.

Simone Collins: I think what you're missing is that some people hold a fundamentally very different value system, where any form of violence or not privileging all lives equally, be they human or not is, is It seemed totally differently than how you see it.

So the fact that even that there's an army that puts people in harm's way, where people die, and they even show people dying in the news, you know, like, that is unthinkable, I think, to a very large swath of people today. Despite the fact that, like, in the past, like, I think that in World War I, there were, like, literal ads in the UK saying like, don't join for the

Malcolm Collins: wrong reason.

It was meant to be fascist propaganda [00:32:00] and that's why it's only showing the good things. The movie shows people due to government blunders dying horribly in huge, huge numbers. It is clearly not just propagandistic. It shows the flaws in its governing system, but then we see the consequence of that.

The governing gets. Change if only the U. S. Could do similar things

Simone Collins: after you're totally missing the fact that like people, many people don't, don't give a s**t about whether or not the government changes or whether or not the government is transparent about what's actually happening and mistakes being made.

What is not okay with many people, especially today, even though this is. I would say very unusual in human history is the fact that people are fighting in wars and in harm's way at all. The fact that people who are protesting are being executed at all. There, there are so many things with this movie, the fact that the scores are published in high school.

Where those who are low [00:33:00] performers are made fun of is, is, you know, like un, unthinkable.

Malcolm Collins: Sorry, we should clarify. It's, it's pretty implied that these are violent protests, i. e. killing people. It's not like protesting, protesting, because it's shown that you can disagree with the government without being even jailed or, or you can disagree with the government on air, which is not something you see in fiction.

Yeah, but you have to

Simone Collins: keep in mind a lot of people fighting for some forms of very progressive judicial reform now are asking for murderers to be let out of jail. We're then going out and murder again. Like, I'm just saying, like, the, a very common and predominant view today, which we see to be delusional because it, Definitely seems delusional and also very unusual for human behavior throughout history.

It's still very commonly held. So, if you, you know, ask viewers to say like, point out one thing that's wrong with this government, or one thing that's fascist, I mean, what they say is fascist is like, You know, all of these things that we see is entirely innocuous or

Malcolm Collins: even right wing coded. That's what they

Simone Collins: mean.

Well, yeah, if, if there's [00:34:00] national pride, I think even, even national pride is seen as quote unquote problematic by many progressive groups because national pride implies that you think that your nation is better than

Malcolm Collins: another nation in humanity because it's a one

Simone Collins: nation. Well, and that's humanist or whatever.

It's yeah, like I'm just saying, like, I don't think you really, I know, you know,

Malcolm Collins: they really do think more like the bugs than humanity and that's why they side with them. But anyway, I love you to death Simone. And this has been a productive conversation. I love you

Simone Collins: too, gorgeous. And I appreciate that you are doing your part.

Malcolm Collins: I'm doing my part.