Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

In this video, we go over some basic financial advice for families including budgeting strategies like envelope budgeting, tips on investing in a balanced portfolio across assets like stocks, real estate, crypto, and more. We discuss insurance, credit cards, buying in bulk, and investing in relationships and opportunities. This is practical financial hygiene advice, not get rich quick schemes.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] This is boring, basic. Financial advice. But I feel like everyone out there is some sort of get what you couldn't do or

Simone: like we'll look at financial advice. It's people looking at all these like charts and making it really complicated and they're way above my pay grade or like way below my pay grade, but pretending to be above, which is the worst.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm: Hello, Simone. It is exciting to be here with you

Simone: today. I'm so excited. Yeah. We're going to talk today about the most important investment of all, your health.

No, just kidding. We're constantly sick because we have kids in school.

Malcolm: So the most important investment of all is money. Yeah. The

Simone: most important investment of all, money.

Malcolm: Screw your health. That's a good, that's a good, for your

Simone: health. Burn bright, die young,

Malcolm: right? Yeah. So, it is true. The, the, the most important investment is money.

After maybe kids, I guess, like, you know, we are pernatalists, so we've got to say that matters as well, but I, you know, I don't know how much actual control you have over the outcome of that. I think that's why

you

Simone: need to have a diversified portfolio. That means a lot of kids. [00:01:00]

Malcolm: Yes. So this is actually a follow up episode to an episode that we did on how to get rich.

Where we just went over like, you know, the basics of like the actual financial world starting company and stuff like that. And I think we'll do more topics on this cause the video did really, really well and I did not expect it to do well because it's not our normal sort of a topic. But obviously something I know a lot about I should mention, you know, degree, I've got my MBA from Stanford.

Simone has her graduate degree from Cambridge. Both of us have worked in venture capital. Both of us have worked in private equity. And when it comes to investments, Simone, you had a really interesting way of framing it that you were going over with me earlier today about sort of.

Simone: Yeah. We were talking about the issue of, of many people we know who've made a lot of money through investing doing it essentially by making bets, like all tact, tactically strategically.

Statistically weren't very ill [00:02:00] advised but then paid off and then they just assume I'm a great investor. And you actually saw a lot of this happen during the pandemic. The, and I think a lot of, of poker players and coaches who like teach Bayesian thinking now who have. Really summed up this kind of thinking really well.

They talk about when they're coaching poker players and they teach them to think in, in sort of a Bayesian way to make very well considered bets which are always calculated bets. And a thing that constantly frustrates them is the people they're coaching, like they'll lose a hand and they'll be like, yeah, well, I made, you know, I made the wrong choice.

I messed up cause I lost. And they're like, no, no, no. You didn't make the wrong choice because you lost, you made the right choice, but you still lost because in the end, there's some chance involved in these bets. And the same case happens with investing. You know, sometimes you make all the right choices and you lose money, but also sometimes you make all the wrong choices and you make a ton of money.

That doesn't mean you're a good investor. That doesn't mean you, you thought through things well, or [00:03:00] had a very robust strategy. And in the end, over the long run. You're probably going to lose money if you, if you don't think in a more calculated and statistically sound manner, which, you know, is, that was what we seen, right?

You were talking about all the people, you know, who used to make tons of money. Like, I mean, they put everything on Bitcoin and now, you know,

Malcolm: Yeah, no. And I, I think that for a lot of people, and this is a great, like evoke set, look at your friends who are bragging about what great investors they were during the Bitcoin, the last Bitcoin bull run.

And, and we're believers in Bitcoin, but I think that a lot of people over invest in single assets because it's an asset that they have built a portion of their identity around, and this is something we increasingly see in investing, whether it's in the crypto space or whether it's in the you know, like, you

Simone: know, it's just a stock, like a stock people really identify with, more like an industry people really identify with.

Yeah.

Malcolm: And, and this is. It's something that in the short term, when I look at these people who are all bragging about [00:04:00] this in my like Facebook feed and stuff like that they are not bragging much anymore because. What ends up happening very frequently is somebody makes one of these ill advised bets.

It pays off. They now think, oh, I can make like an income investing. So then they start doing like really idiotic stuff like leveraged investing and stuff like that. And hold on, I'm gonna explain what I mean when I say leveraged investing is idiotic stuff. So, During bull cycles, this is something that always happens.

Somebody accidentally makes some money investing. They think, well, if I make that amount of money investing every month going forwards, then I don't need to work anymore. How can I make more money investing? And then of course, they find out about leveraged investing and they go, Oh, so this is just like a thing where like, if I'm really Smart about my polls and my puts and everything like that, right?

Like I can regularly on average make money through this investing thing. And that is true for some [00:05:00] people. We have some friends who just make astronomical amounts of money through this kind of investing. Yeah. Every single one of them. Is the type of person who did math for fun before getting into this.

Yes. They were all like theoretical math people from like MIT or like programmers who do a lot of programming or like AI stuff for fun. The people who do this well, who can actually make money with this sort of investing as an income stream. These are individuals who Just have an enormous love and talent for a specific kind of math.

If the reason you are going into leveraged investing is because you want to make money, you will fail. Maybe not the first time, but eventually you will fail. It is not a good, reliable stream of income, it is gambling. It is just gambling and you can make money [00:06:00] gambling. But most of the people who make money gambling are math nerds.

They're not like a gambling nerds. I mean, there's, there's a few, you know, obviously like, like people who are just like uniquely good at gambling, gambling, but when you talk about the people who the casinos are afraid of, they're the math nerds, right? And so if that's not your thing. Don't go into that field as a safe source of income for you and your family.

So we're starting with like some of the things you shouldn't do. And as Simone pointed out, and I actually you know, I was, I was talking with some of my friends after they, they made a bunch of money on Bitcoin. I was like, so you're going to balance your portfolio now, right? You made a big windfall.

You're going to balance your portfolio now. And they're like, no, my windfall has validated for me that I need to further consolidate my portfolio around. The area of my windfall, which is how they, they usually end up losing more money than they made during their lucky streak. So let's talk about a balanced portfolio and how you should be thinking about it in the world that we're going

Simone: into.

Oh, and before [00:07:00] we go any further, we are not. Investment advisors. We're not giving you investment advice. We're talking s**t about other people. All right. And we were talking

Malcolm: about how we hear the same investment

Simone: advice. Yeah, we are not. Yes, this is, this is not, this is not advice. I just want to make that really, really clear.

So if, yeah, no, we're talking about how we do it and we're talking s**t about people. Okay. That's it.

Malcolm: Yeah. So. This is the way I would suggest handling your investments. I strongly suggest that you with your spouse or your family or whoever, you know, is, is, is co related to your assets. And of course, once you intermingle your assets, it makes divorces much harder.

So like this is for people in like really aligned marriages. But it does really help to be able to bounce ideas off of another person is, is, is I guess what I'm saying here. So, You talk through, or I guess was yourself, like on a long walk or something like that, what you think is going to change about the world.

And I would generally develop three sort [00:08:00] of strategies, right? One is, I call them short term strategies, one is mid term strategies, and one is long term strategies. using what you predict to change about the world in the near future, make investments. But whenever you make an investment and you can do this for like a trade or something like that, that's a good general site for beginners.

I think whenever you make one of these investments Be aware that you need to set sort of a clock for yourself of when you're withdrawing that investment. Unless it's in the like ultra long term investment strategy. And when you withdraw, the investment is typically when an event resolves or when, so, for example, we had a high confidence that there was about to be an armed conflict leading up to the Ukrainian war, and so we invested in a lot of military companies during that time period. When the war started, I go to Simone and I go, withdraw all our military investments. And a lot of people would be like, wait, why aren't you investing when the [00:09:00] war?

Is going right? Like that's when the companies are doing well. No, that's when the market forces have said, Oh, they're, they're unlikely to get like additional cash flows going into them once the war is already going on, like unpredicted cash flows. It's once the unpredicted situation that you predicted resolves is when you withdraw your money from the market.

And this is, this is really critical. That you do this and then that you don't do the silly thing, which is double down because you made one right, right bet. So, for example, if you're like, oh, this covid thing, other people don't see coming. I am going to make bets that assume it's going to be here and then you make some money on that.

Don't didn't bet on the same thing that you already just bet on happening. further and more. You can make money on that. But most of the people I know who keep doing that end up getting burned more than, than resolved in their favor. Well, once you're, you're

Simone: saying that basically once. mainstream society, or at least a [00:10:00] large segment of people have normalized to an idea, you're not going to make money off of it anymore.

You're going to make money off of something when you realize that there's a trend coming that other people have not yet really realized or acted upon. But once it's a mainstream idea, like during the pandemic, for example, we knew a lot of people who like, Well, into the pandemic, we're like, Oh, I'm going to do mask production.

No, they all lost money because that it was too late. It was too late already. So you, you have to think way, way ahead of the curve. Once everyone knows that something is needed, that's priced into the market.

Malcolm: Yeah. Okay. So, the next thing we're going to talk about is like categories of investment, right?

So, you want. Your specific company plays, right? So this is just like I'm investing in this company or this company or this company. And then you want to invest in some either ETFs or mutual funds, um, these are honestly, from the perspective of your like lay investor, you can basically think of them as the same thing. They have different like tax implications and [00:11:00] different ways they distribute money and different ways that you reach them as investments, but they're basically collections of companies.

So suppose you have a thesis around like some country in South America, for example. Well, then what you do is you, oh, by the way, Simone, can you please withdraw all our South America investments? Because a lot of them are really reliant on China and I do not expect positive stuff from China in the near future.

Making a note. Ah, you see, this is how you, you handle investments, right? Because I had forgotten that we hadn't withdrawn all our South America plays. This

Simone: is how we handle investments and we're not giving anyone advice.

Malcolm: We're not giving anyone advice. Yeah, I was saying. So this is really useful if you're like, Oh, I think this country will do well.

Then you can look up like ETS or mutual funds that are tied to that resource or country or play. Right? Like, I think oil producers will do well. And then you can look up like oil producer ETS. A recent one for us has been. Uranium, right? We think [00:12:00] uranium will do well. It was really depressed in price after the, the Fukushima situation and it's been pretty depressed for a while now, but I think after, you know, what's happening in Germany right now, the world's waking up that nuclear reactors were actually pretty high utility and we're going to get some more online.

And once people see that, then we sell our uranium stocks. As soon as some country announces a plan to build a bunch of nuclear reactors, I don't wait till the nuclear reactors are there to in terms of real estate investment a lot of people will tell you, Oh, it's so easy. Do real estate investment and go into all this debt to do it.

And it's like, that makes sense for a portion of your portfolio. And when you do own real estate, you should have debt on that real estate. It's, it's kind of. Stupid not to in a growing economy. right

Simone: now it's not going well, but

Malcolm: it is the financially responsible thing to do in the way that the world economy has worked historically, which may [00:13:00] transform, but I think it'll be about 30 years before it transforms.

Yeah. With I. E. An economy that shrinking on average, which is one thing we talked a lot about in terms of the way that things are going to resolve in regards to demographic class. Right? Now, something to note with real estate is you know, with the world's population, not growing as much in developed countries anymore.

A lot of people can be like, why are real estate prices continuing to go up? I think this can be very confusing to a lot of people. And it's important to understand what's going on here. What's going on is that families where you used to have like five people to a household now everybody wants their own house because they're they're not finding partners anymore.

Which is why you see this increase in price in things like starter homes and stuff like that. Which is interesting. You know, it provides for some economic opportunities, but it is a short term sort of like market on equilibrium and not a long term solution. A good play that I would do if I had some cash aside in real estate is buying the types of assets that private equity firms, and this is something that's really important to note.

We mentioned [00:14:00] this was buying companies as well. There are assets that you can buy and make money off of. In ways that a private equity firm would make money off of something, but that are too small to be worth it for the effort of a private equity firm. So if you're buying some like historic building and you're transforming it and dealing with, you know, coding and stuff like that and, and turning it into like a five bedroom, like starter house thing, right?

Like a five. Separate bedrooms. What's the word I'm looking for? Five singles apartment unit, right? That can be really powerful because that's just like too small for most private equity firms to care about. And yet it can be, you know, an enormous opportunity to, to, to make money with a little bit of risk around zoning and stuff like that, depending on how you handle it.

So that's real estate. I would generally I mean, whether or not you own your house, it just depends on how quickly you plan to move. I guess I'd suggest anywhere you plan to stay for over six years, you should probably own.

Simone: But it really depends, you know, on like rent versus buy. It depends on interest rates.

It depends on the market. It also [00:15:00] depends like on people's desired quality of life. But often it's a, it's a really bad idea to own a house. I think We

Malcolm: need to do a whole video on buying houses because we have documents and documents on buying houses. It seems

Simone: like in many cases, you know, you spend so much money maintaining a house that it can be really hard depending on the market to even make a profit.

Malcolm: Anyway, so next crypto assets Bitcoin, I, I'd say you always got to eat your broccoli with crypto assets.

And by that, what I mean, Is we personally have a rule that any money we deploy in any crypto asset gets matched with a deployment in Bitcoin, uh, because it is the, the most, I think long term, the safest crypto asset as to why Bitcoin is like, we're not, I'm thinking about doing a full video on Bitcoin, but I don't really think I need to.

I can just sort of talk about it a bit here, which is interesting because there's a lot of smart people who don't seem to get why. Bitcoin is such a thing of value. Look at like Peter's eye hand. Like we agree with him on a lot of stuff and he thinks Bitcoin is just sort of pointless. And I'm like, how, what?

Okay. [00:16:00] So let's, let's go back a bit. Why do things like art have a lot of value, right? This is an important question that individuals should be asking themselves, right? They have a lot more value than like their actual value is because there is a limited quantity of them. And a wealthy society can use them as a very lightweight store of value.

If they ever need to move or leave or flee a country, they are very useful value stores. You can think of them almost like printing something on money. Now, of course, there's also a lot of market manipulation in art. I would not suggest art investment. Personally, unless you have an enormous knowledge of art.

 If you're interested in something like art investment, instead invest in an area that you actually care about and have a passion for, like Magic the Gathering or something like that.

Simone: We know people who've made a decent amount of money. Yeah. Like literal like card collectible markets.

So this is not crazy.

Malcolm: Yeah. But again, that's a thing was a fixed value [00:17:00] that is easily movable, right? Yeah. Yeah. This is why you know, historically a lot of wealthy people, they had lots of jewels on them all the time and stuff like that. It was so that if they ever needed to run, they would have a large portion of their wealth on them in a way that could be easily sold.

Now, this matters a lot where this matters was Bitcoin is Bitcoin is literally the first time in human history there has been an asset class that was divisible, easily transferable and had a known quantity like if you're talking about gold or precious stones or something like that, they didn't have known quantities.

If you're talking about art, it wasn't divisible. So, I

Simone: mean, geez, Now with that company that sells fractional pieces of like a Picasso, it's

Malcolm: sort of visible. I guess it's kind of divisible. Yeah. That's a good point there. So, this matters a lot in a world in that is becoming increasingly hostile to wealthy individuals which it is, it is becoming increasingly hostile to wealthy individuals.

And [00:18:00] in which wealthy individuals, as we predict, like if we're predicting one of the trends we see in the distant Like long term future wealth is going to become increasingly concentrated among the top fraction of a percent of the population. And that population disproportionately gains value from Bitcoin as an asset.

If you're going to ask why, okay, like who's probably the wealthiest person in the world right now is probably Putin. Right? So think about it. You're Putin. If you store even a small fraction of your wealth in something like gold And and things go tits up as they almost did for him recently was that coup, right?

Well, what are you doing having a line of 500 trucks full of gold on like russian highways? That's not gonna go well No, and you try to take that into another country and you you're screwed It's it's insane like and this is true for the Of people all over the world, right? It's, it's just a very high utility [00:19:00] asset for corrupt individuals, for ultra wealthy individuals who don't trust their population for all sorts of things like that.

And we actually saw

Simone: this a lot firsthand. I think what made us really excited about Bitcoin is the travel agency that we, that we run travel max has a significant client base in Venezuela. And when we discovered Venezuelans who were really thriving outside the country, like what were they getting into?

What were they using prolifically? Bitcoin. Like it is how they got their money out of the country. It is how they transferred wealth. So we also see like from a like future world instability perspective, how tactically useful Bitcoin is when. Nations go a

Malcolm: little crazy thing I'd say about Bitcoin, which is useful for people to know is think about your successful friends, divide them into two categories, young, successful friends and old successful friends.

Your young successful friends, do they [00:20:00] differentially care about Bitcoin more than your old successful friends? And I'm talking about people who have made money in things other than Bitcoin. If the answer is yes, which it almost certainly is, that means that as they gain more money, more assets will be stored in Bitcoin so long as they maintain this interest over time.

Which just seems so obvious to me. Like when I look at my friend group who is like, Bitcoin is a scam, they're old people. When I look at my friend group who is like still really doubling down in Bitcoin, it's... young people young, successful people, mind you, who are like high, high producers in the economy.

And so what that tells me is the, that asset will increase in value over time. And this is another thing I'd look at. If you're looking at your long term investments, what's something that like all of the smart young people, you know, are investing in, but none of the old people, you know, are investing.

Right. That can tell you which assets are, are good sort of longterm bets. Now after all this, I still wouldn't suggest having more than 20 to 30 percent of your [00:21:00] personal portfolio in crypto. I mean, we've had more than that at times. We've had like 51%. Yeah.

Simone: Because the price ballooned

Malcolm: so much. Yeah. But this is what I suggest is like the good.

Amount. Right. What would you say real estate for a person's portfolio?

Simone: I mean, we're, we're not giving advice. We're probably over deployed in real estate. Maybe it's like 40 percent of our assets and it's a mixture of investment in real estate businesses and actual real estate holdings.

Malcolm: I'm generally really against bonds and debt.

I mean, now it's, it's a little bit right now. Everyone's like, Oh, it's a great market for bonds, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Look, I get it. Simone. I do not think it is good enough. I do not think in our lifetime, there will ever be a market where bonds make sense in the way that they did when the mathematical models were built, that people are using to suggest how much of your portfolio should be.

So I'll explain what I mean by this in the eighties the U S like [00:22:00] interest rate on bonds, like went up to like near 20 percent at points. Right. And this made bonds a great thing to get because not, not just for the interest that you were getting on But if the economy ever tanked, then what the Fed would do is they would lower the interest rate, right?

Because this would boost the economy. And in so doing, the new bonds would generate lower interest rates. So it might go down to like 15%, 10 percent or something like that. And then this increases the value of the old bonds that people have, these high Interest rate bonds, right? So not only are you getting the regular cash flow, but if the cash flows is counter cyclical with market trends because of what the Fed is doing now, the problem is, is that from the 80s till today, the Fed never really hiked the interest rate back up again in a significant way.

So now we're Basically hovering around a 0 percent interest rate, which means that if the Fed is going to do the thing now, it's gone up a bit since then, which is good, I suppose, but if the Fed is going to do the thing that it [00:23:00] needs to do to really increase the value of bonds, it needs to go to a negative interest rate, which it has done in some European countries.

This means it's basically. It's, it's, it's weird. Like you're, I'm not going to get into it. The point being is you can only go so far in a negative interest rate before things get really wonky. And what this means is that the mathematical models that people are using to show you that bonds are good are from a period at which there was like a high economic momentum behind bonds because of their starting high interest rates.

And then they went down over a period of time and that made bonds. Okay. sEem like a good asset in a lot of these economic models, but I just do not believe they are. Another thing that I would say I think is a terrible asset to own is precious metals. No, I don't consider something like uranium a precious metal.

I consider it more like gas or something, but let's talk about why precious metals are such a bad asset to hold going forwards. Cause a lot of people are like, well, I don't know precious metals. I don't know what they seem. Precious metals directly compete with crypto. That [00:24:00] is. Why people historically own things like gold and they can say, well, gold has these other values it's used in industry purposes and stuff like that.

And it's like, yeah, that's true, but that's not what gives it its assigned value in the marketplace right now. And, and, and you know that, and I know that people get it because it was a fungible divisible store of asset that historically was used by wealthy people to, to quickly move their money. The problem is there's a lot of these assets are just like stored in banks now, right?

And you're, and you're trading slips of paper, which defeats most of the purpose of that utility case for the asset, which were their primary utility case. And this really matters because when you're making an investment in something like gold these days, you are making a bet, not just that gold will do well, but that Bitcoin won't replace it as the core store of value outside of financial marketplaces.

Which is a stupid bet to make. Not, not [00:25:00] because Bitcoin definitely will, but because it's not a fully priced in bet. A lot of people who are investing in gold are old people who don't fully understand how much it has already been replaced by crypto assets for the younger generation. And therefore, and this is why gold and other precious metals have not reacted the way people expected them to react in market downturns.

During periods in which crypto was widely used because they are just not that kind of a counter cyclical asset anymore And therefore shouldn't be used as what? I'm sorry if I went a little too hard on precious metals because I know we've got some precious metal Fans probably in the show. They're like well if society collapse if society collapses, you should have semiconductors and bullets Okay, you do not need gold

Simone: don't forget the guns, Malcolm,

Malcolm: but yes, obviously guns, but who doesn't have a pile of guns in their house?

I guess normal people, normal people

Simone: are fans inside though. I'm, I'm, I'm reading a, a biography of, of two women who were [00:26:00] like leaders in the early makeup industry called war paint. And interestingly, the early, you know, like twist lipstick cartridges were originally built in bullet casings from the war.

Oh, cool. Huh? Anyway, because it was after World War One and they were left over, there's a bunch of, you know, inventories. It was cheap inventory and it's a good delivery mechanism for lipstick. So there you go.

Malcolm: That is

Simone: awesome. Isn't that interesting? Yeah, more paint. Super interesting so far. Yeah.

Malcolm: I'm trying to think of other asset classes which were deployed in.

Oh yes. Personal investments with friends and stuff like that. I think a lot of people undervalue these sorts of debt and equity investments that you can make in your local community, but I actually think it's an important part of being a engaged citizen. A lot of people are like, that can cause bad blood.

It can cause bad blood if you go into these investments, assuming that they're always going to pay out. Yeah. I would

Simone: say like. We've, we've, we've invested in, in the [00:27:00] majority of friend investments we've made have completely gone bust. We've gotten nothing back.

Malcolm: And we're okay with that. Yeah. Because a lot of them are two people I know probably couldn't raise money from other people.

Yeah. And we, I, I think to an extent with any investment, you also buy social capital. Yeah. And social

Simone: capital. And you, you invest in people and you invest in

Malcolm: relationships. Yeah, it's an important thing and being an active member of, I think, a community that has a skill set around investing or helping people start companies and that sort of thing.

I think

Simone: our philosophy around investing in people is similar to our philosophy around any sort of risky investment, which is, We will never invest money that we have to have, like, we're like, if this is totally lost, that will not hurt us. Like our life is

Malcolm: fine. Yeah. And that's very important when you're investing in friend stuff.

It should never be a major part of your portfolio, but it can make sense. Anything risky. And in addition to that one type of [00:28:00] investment that we often make that I think a lot of people don't think about is investments that can pay off with career opportunities. Sometimes when people are starting a company or something like that, that I think could do really well and become a good career opportunity for us.

I'll make an investment in it and I make it was the knowledge that that holds a, a door for me open. If the company does really well in terms of a recurring stream of revenue, even outside of my investment. And this is a weird thing that I think a lot of people don't think about, but it's actually an important partial payoff for an investment when you

Simone: see something analogous to this with how people end up on nonprofit boards and then eventually paid boards is.

When people sort of decide to become professional board holders, what they often do to start, and this is sort of like, I don't know, like a rich trust fund person thing, but we've seen it happen. Is first they use like family foundation money to buy their way onto nonprofit boards and then they get a bunch of those positions sort of build up their board career and then eventually get their way through all the networking they have with us and [00:29:00] with their resume onto real paid corporate boards.

And it. That's sort of like a very low effort recurring revenue stream for them. But it's, it's similar in what you're saying here is that often you have to invest in someone or something or a company to get a position that ultimately builds up your career in a way that leads to different revenue sources.

Never in the form of ROI or rarely in the form of ROI but often in other ways through opportunities and investing in opportunities, I think is an underrated form

Malcolm: of investment. Absolutely. Some other just financial health things that I'd suggest for our audience just some of these might be obvious to you.

You're not suggesting

Simone: anything other, other financial health things we do for ourselves.

Malcolm: Well, no, so I'd say one is insurance. Life insurance. If you have kids, you should have life insurance. Just an important thing to go out there and check. For credit cards you can make like, it can save you a lot of money in the long term if you have the right type of credit card.

Especially if you do a lot of traveling. You can get like priority pass. What, Simone?

Simone: Never, never use a credit card for debt.

Malcolm: Oh yeah. [00:30:00] Never use a credit card for debt. I'm just talking about like the, the privileges, a credit card can get you or the cash back and stuff like that. And I would suggest everyone have at least one credit card.

That's for like mainstream expenses, one Amazon credit card, which can get you 5 percent cash back on Amazon. You can do a lot of shopping

Simone: on Amazon. Yeah.

Malcolm: In America is doing that. And then one credit card associated with A what do you call it? A wholesale retailer. So we would call that like our BJ's card, but it could also be, you know, if you're a little fancier, a Costco card.

But no, I'm just talking about like the major expense sources in your life. If you have credit cards that are associated with them, you can often get better cash back deals

Simone: through that. Yeah. BJ's card this year, and we, we don't spend that much on gross, like we're pretty. Careful about our food spending and we don't eat out except for when doing business meetings.

Our use of a credit card with a like bulk discount grocery store that's dedicated to the brand in this case BJ's has saved us or [00:31:00] led to cash back of over 3000 now almost 4, 000, which to us is a really big deal.

Malcolm: Total or this year? This year. This year? This year. Wow, we spend a lot of money at BJ's.

And, and, and, and speaking of just like a, another financial health thing that people who have families should be doing if you do not have a what's the word again? Chest freezer? You should. You should have a chest freezer. Chest freezers. Combined with large box stores like BJ's and Costco will save you astronomical amounts of money if you have kids.

Yeah,

Simone: so if people aren't familiar with these, these are like freezers into which you can fit probably three adult humans. So they only work if you have a fairly large house, but they enable you to buy a lot of frozen foods in bulk. You know, everything from vegetables to meats, which is a lot more affordable.

Malcolm: And what else would you say? Any other types of insurance? I mean, there's the regular types of insurance, but I'm sure a lot of people are already thinking about [00:32:00] that. Any other advice you'd give?

Simone: This is how we do investing. And I would say we're not sophisticated investors. There's a lot of like weird tax implications.

And, you know, like if you take a loss on something like, you know, and also how you reinvest money after. Getting, you know, a pig payout. Like we're not really not sophisticated investors. There's a lot of weird rules and, and like tax things around investments. All we're doing is sharing.

Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah. This is practical.

This is a get rich investing advice. This is basic financial hygiene, investing advice. Yeah.

Simone: I mean, so yeah, aside from that, we. Basically, we have a very strict budget. And we actually do a version of like envelope based budgeting, which I think people are really familiar with. And as I've alluded to in other podcasts, there's like an entire cottage industry of you on YouTube.

And we do, we do. So every time money comes in. Like per month, like we have a [00:33:00] sort of like, this is how much money we receive. Everything goes into actually like separate, literally separate bank accounts for our top expenses. So home bills, childcare, pet expenses, your discretionary income, my discretionary income.

We have a, like a, we have an internal VC fund, which is sort of like money that we allocate for risky bets or weird investments in like friends or just like stuff that might, so not stuff that's fun, but things that are an, are an investment that is risky. We have a fund for that. We have a fund for our children's.

We have

Malcolm: a side note here for, for, for listeners. One of the things that we do put a lot of money into is investments that are meant to lower childcare costs for us. Eventually things like you know, we put a lot of money towards our nonprofit, which is developing this educational alternative, the Collins Institute.

And for us, that's an investment in that. If it can produce this alternate education system, and if it's the quality that we want it to be at, which we have confidence that will be like, I actually think it's. [00:34:00] It's taken so much longer than I wanted you to get it live, but I think it's going to be so much higher quality than when I initially expected that it is going to really dramatically cut childcare costs for our kids.

And it's the same with, you know, people who were helping get their businesses off the ground. They help us with childcare as a, an exchange for that. And so that's a long term investment in reducing childcare expenses.

Simone: Yeah. But basically if we want to spend money on something and there's not enough money in the account.

That we have for that thing, like travel or gifts. We have, we have an account for gifts and for travel. And it's not happening. We're not taking our debt. We're not stealing from other accounts. And we also have an emergency fund that will cover our basic expenses as a family for six months. And that emergency fund is really helpful.

Like when we've lost our jobs or when we stopped paying ourselves during the pandemic while still working that was really, it was really necessary. So those are the other things that we do again. This is not advice, but this is this is how we do and we're not again sophisticated, but so far this has worked well for us, but I would say that we don't we're not.[00:35:00]

We don't make a ton of money. We have friends who make tons and tons of money from investments and they're super pros and it's all they do. And, but we would, we spend less than 2 percent of our mental bandwidth on investing. Yeah. So this is, this is what we get, but it's worked out for us. Yeah.

Malcolm: All right.

Well, I love you to death, Simone. And who knows if this does well as well, we might be doing a lot more financial stuff for people. This is boring, basic. Financial advice. But I feel like everyone out there is some sort of get what you couldn't do or

Simone: like we'll look at financial advice. It's people looking at all these like charts and making it really complicated and they're way above my pay grade or like way below my pay grade, but pretending to be above, which is the worst.

Malcolm: All right. Love you to death Simone. And I appreciate that we have a. Sound financial strategy where I know that she manages our investments by the way, because I I'll tell her like what I'm thinking, but I am I, I take too much like emotional hit from looking at investments going up or down. She's, [00:36:00] she's the best kind of wife, the one who holds your crypto keys to make sure you don't sell during market crashes.

I love you to death,

Simone: Simone. I love you too. Pizza night tonight. See you downstairs.

In this video, we analyze what the future may hold for East Asia as global civilization starts to collapse. We discuss China's precarious economic position and how their social credit system and COVID policies indicate preparation for maintaining control through collapse. We explore scenarios for Japan and Korea being taken over by cults or other authoritarian groups. We look at the importance of semiconductor manufacturing and evaluate the future prospects for Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia and more.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] So, you might say, well, why am I still kind of bullish on China? One, they can force population which is going to be relevant for whatever comes after they pass through the eye of the needle, the collapse.

But also they have set up their entire system. That's what the social credit system is. That's what the constant monitoring is. That's what the money that the government can track is. Why did they do these COVID protocols? If it put them in such a dangerous position, vis a vis their existing economy, because it was all a plan

Simone Collins: for their They were preparing for collapse.

Yes,

Malcolm Collins: they were preparing to maintain their existing government systems in a collapse. A total economic collapse. I

Simone Collins: mean, like, if that is true, that is pretty baller on their part. Well,

Malcolm Collins: what it means is they will have something that a lot of the world doesn't have, which is not a competent government.

The Chinese government is not competent. It is anything but competent. It is wildly incompetent. But at least... A government that is capable of becoming competent again, a government that is capable of disseminating some of the hard [00:01:00] policies that can culturally unify a geographic region, increase its fertility, and maintain some level of isolated technophilia.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone! We have done two previous episodes on what is going to happen as civilization, as we understand it, begins to collapse. As we have stated in the previous ones, it will collapse for one of two reasons. Either population collapse, as we've said, you know, Historically speaking, the economy has risen around the world for the past 500 years or so, because the number of consumers and the number of producers was growing exponentially.

We are about to hit a world in which the number of producers and number of producers, consumers, at least the ones who have high economic productivity, are declining exponentially. And we have leveraged every layer of our economies, which was great in times of growth, but in times of scarcity will lead to economic collapse.

Or AI fixes it, but AI also frees the bourgeoisie from the proletariat meaning that the wealthy within our society will, [00:02:00] increasingly become more wealthy and will increasingly become concentratedly wealthy and will use that wealth as systems begin to collapse to protect themselves from the masses.

And that means the masses, again, will experience economic, uh, positive or, or, or what's the word I'm looking for here?

Simone Collins: Depravity? Disempowerment. Economic disempowerment.

Malcolm Collins: Economic disempowerment of which we have almost never seen. And possibly just

Simone Collins: economic, also economic isolation. Yeah. And

Malcolm Collins: as we pointed out, in a lot of the world, what this is going to look like is not like moving back to the developing world.

It's not like we will live like we're in a developing world. It will be much worse than that. It will be a developed society that is collapsing. Which if you want to look for a good example of that on the global stage, you are looking at what it's like to live in South Africa today. That is what most of the world is going to be like within our children's lifetimes.

But this is the western world, and when I say the western world, I'm actually including a lot of the world. Russia, India, places like that. The one place that is really going to [00:03:00] buck this pattern is East Asia. But East Asia is going to buck it for reasons that may be equally dystopian. Yeah. So this is very interesting South Africa may also end up bucking it, but we, you can watch our video on Africa and a pronatalist system in the future.

We really don't know what's going to happen to Africa. We have limited experience there, but most of us have lived for extended periods of time in East Asia. So we have a much better understanding of East Asian cultures and how they are reacting to this. Mm hmm. So the country that matters most for where East Asia is going in regards to all this is China.

We can already begin to see China's reaction to rapidly falling birth rates, which is a restriction of, so, so first they just tried to force people. They were like, okay, get out there, have kids. We're telling you have kids. And people said, no. And China was like, oh, this hasn't happened before. Okay, well, we will restrict your access [00:04:00] to vasectomies.

We will restrict your access to abortions. And you're going to see what, what happened, you know, with the one child policy. If you look at, like, the year without a, what was it, a year, or was it a summer without a... birth or something like that. It was this region where they go, we're having a summer without a birth in this region because we're so good at following the communist party's orders.

And what they really just did was forced abortions on everyone who got pregnant and like murdering people and it was horrifying. And if you want to learn more about it look up other videos on it. It is almost as gruesome as you can conceive. Now what we are likely to have is similar things. The, the summer where every woman gets pregnant, how does that happen?

Well, you get inseminated when you go to a doctor's visit, you get inseminated When you, when you get the flu, you get inseminated. There are so many ways that they could fix this, if they really have to, is the way that the, the CCP thinks. And they could even do, you know, birthing facilities. They could do all sorts of things that shows sort of a top down thought process that we wouldn't even consider in the West.

Now, Before [00:05:00] they get to this, they're going to have to go through the needle, which is complete economic collapse. The Chinese system, and we can do a different video on this, is so fucked, it's almost impossible to describe how fucked the Chinese system is. A lot of people are like, well, no, it's just their demographics.

It's not just their demographics. They get something like 83 percent of their energy needs inputted, and like 86 percent of that are coming from the Middle East. That means that they're going around, like, all of these people who hate them. Like India, and through, like, the Strait of Malacca, which could easily be blockaded.

Or like, it's, it's, they are in an incredibly vulnerable international position. Worse than that, they don't even produce their own food. The food they do produce is they don't even produce their own phosphates for that food. So they wouldn't even have the same food production they have now if they were blockaded.

Oh, and on top of that, and they don't even need to be blockaded. You just need to have the [00:06:00] beginnings of a collapse of a globalist system, which we are already beginning to see, which is what happens in this future. On top of all that they don't even have water, like, they, they have water in some parts of China, not other parts of China, there's a great video on it that I'm gonna link to here on China's water situation, but something like, 96 percent of their water is just unusable because it's so polluted and this is a huge problem.

When their current energy needs, like their current energy production within the country is mostly coming from coal, which requires lots of water to make work. So, and then they require water to grow their own crops, which they can't even grow.

Ah, I almost forgot to mention there. Huge. infrastructure problem. to learn more about this topic i check out the video china has a debt problem three times larger than ever grand by economics explained

Malcolm Collins: And then their, their whole housing situation, which...

Okay, I'm going to quickly touch on this because a lot of people don't know what's going on with the housing situation and why it's so much worse than individuals think it is. So, something like 76 percent of [00:07:00] all of China's wealth is in their housing market. Why is that? Because that has been the most stable of all of the markets within the Chinese economy.

You know, historically... Companies have in the stock market has been really up and down because they can randomly be interfered with with the state, but the state cannot interfere with the housing market in a way which would cause it to collapse, or at least historically, it couldn't. Why couldn't it?

Because when the communist party took power, what they did? Was they said, okay, we're nationalizing all property, all land in the country. And then what ended up happening is the Chinese. I said, if you want to understand how the Chinese system is, is modeled, it's kind of like states, but they're called provinces like you would have in the U S but in the U S a lot of federal tax dollars go back down to states to help pay for things that's not true in the Chinese system and the Chinese system.

The provinces really have to pay for everything local themselves. And the federal tax dollars go to big federal national projects. But so it turns out that these states are not good at collecting taxes. Anybody who knows historically, that's the sign of an empire that's about to collapse. So [00:08:00] there's something like, estimated they're only collecting like 3%, 3.

5 percent of the taxes they're supposed to be collapsing. This is really in line with like a, a non functioning civilization. But anyway so how do they make up for this? What they do is they rezone land that is on the outskirts of urban centers as urban land, which allows them to sell it, because rural land is still owned by the people in China.

And then they sell them through debt that's taken out. That's not supposed to be taken out by these like secret holding codes. You can look into this more, but essentially they are supplementing, not having tax income with tax income, with land sales at the provincial level, this can make up like 33 percent of like a provinces, like ongoing operating expenses, which means that is if the.

Real estate situation in China collapses, which it's going to, and it is. Also their ability to get government revenues also collapses. To an extent that is not easily replaceable with tax revenues. [00:09:00] In addition to all of this, their like whole economic infrastructure, their whole reason for existing on the global stage, was as a bit globalist, multi country supply chain. So they would do one part within a globalist, multi country supply chain. Well, with COVID, they showed that they would just like close their ports, close their factories, and you're increasingly seeing them do stuff like this, which means that they are no longer useful as a player in a multi party supply chain, because you block just one step.

Even if you're like one of a hundred steps, you've blocked the entire supply chain, which means that if you're doing anything in China and now needs to be lateralized in China now for. minor, minimal economic problems when they block supply chains. The problem is, is that China can't do any advanced technology.

They just suck at it. Even hallway's newest chip looks like it's probably based in Taiwan. They're pretending like they're making it locally, but that's wild. That like China can't even make it chips for its own phones. Like the main thing it's doing. They just do not have this technological capability.

 So anyway and as to why they [00:10:00] don't have this technological, they had this huge project where like they were trying to do like simplistic things, like just make their own pencils that didn't suck. Like this was a huge project in China for a long time. Pencils. There was a pencil campaign. Yeah, there was a big pencil campaign that was like, I think up to like 2015 or 2016.

So recent. Wow. To just find out how to make competent pencils.

I'm at ballpoint

pen sorry about that

Malcolm Collins: They, they, they actually. Really kind of suck at this and worse than all of this is that if you're going to set up a new part of your supply chain, it's like always cheaper to do in Mexico now if you're a U. S. company because labor is less expensive in Mexico now.

So why would you do it in China? So they've lost their like economic resendetra. Their entire system's a house of cards. They are geopolitically incredibly vulnerable. All of this is painting this, this horrible, horrible, horrible picture for China. And some people are like, yeah, but they have like good battery supplies and it's like, yeah, but that doesn't increase their economy.

Okay, they need to find ways to increase their economy if they're going to economically grow that just slows the speed at which they are [00:11:00] declining, which is going to be catastrophic. All right. So, you might say, well, why am I still kind of bullish on China? One, they can force population which is going to be relevant for whatever comes after they pass through the eye of the needle, the collapse.

But also they have set up their entire system. That's what the social credit system is. That's what the constant monitoring is. That's what the money that the government can track is. Why did they do these COVID protocols? If it put them in such a dangerous position, vis a vis their existing economy, because it was all a plan

Simone Collins: for their They were preparing for collapse.

Yes,

Malcolm Collins: they were preparing to maintain their existing government systems in a collapse. A total economic collapse. I

Simone Collins: mean, like, if that is true, that is pretty baller on their part. Well,

Malcolm Collins: what it means is they will have something that a lot of the world doesn't have, which is not a competent government.

The Chinese government is not competent. It is anything but competent. It is wildly incompetent. But at least... A government that is capable [00:12:00] of becoming competent again, a government that is capable of disseminating some of the hard policies that can culturally unify a geographic region, increase its fertility, and maintain some level of isolated technophilia.

Simone Collins: Yeah, but I don't really get that impression that that's the direction they're moving in. I see a lot of efforts to subdue the population and control the population and maintain, you know, for those who have power, maintain their position.

Malcolm Collins: That is all true. But that is going to be infinitely better than the religious extremism that is going to dominate the rest of the world.

Right,

Simone Collins: but I don't see how that, I mean, unless they have some sort of elite... Separate, highly educated, technophilic, suddenly

Malcolm Collins: innovative. Yeah, so this is also important to note. So a lot of people are like, yeah, but won't China like start genetic selection, genetic engineering? No, China is really resistant to all of these.

People who ask this stuff and expect East Asian countries to engage with this technology do not understand fundamentally how conservative East Asian countries are. They are. [00:13:00] more conservative, like, like a small C level than probably anyone or any cultural group you have met. They are more conservative, for example, than ultra Orthodox Jewish communities.

They are more conservative than Amish communities in the ways that they engage with cultural technologies. They will, it seems very unlikely to me that they will engage with these technologies. thEy, if anything, will go back to something that looks more like the imperial exam systems. They will go back to a model that is based on old Chinese empires.

But what is important and what I am... It's not great, but it's not going to look like what we are going to see across the West, which is small, stable, technophilic havens surrounded by religious extremists who hate them and want to kill them. China is just going to be like a large economically depressed region.

That is finding a new stable state for itself, and it will take a while to find that as China always does, [00:14:00] but as it begins to find something that works, it will begin to come back as a major and unified play. This has huge implications for all of the countries around it. One, we're going to talk about Taiwan and we'll do another video on whether China would attack Taiwan or anything like that, but if Taiwan leaves the globalist economy, The globalist economy is kind of, because they are the only ones who can produce a lot of the chips that are used in like everything.

Yeah, for now. Everything. Like it is almost kind of weird that no one else has figured out how to produce these chips at the scale of Taiwan. They produce a huge chunk of the chips we use for almost everything in the world. And if things went down in Taiwan. There are only a few countries that could even supply themselves with chips.

China isn't one of them. Okay. I'm just saying that right now, Korea probably could. And so, it would make sense for the U S to maintain a tight alliance with them. [00:15:00] Japan probably could, the U S could to a lesser extent very few countries in Europe could I know that The UAE has looked into building technological capability on this front.

Israel could probably but very few countries could.

To clarify, I'm not talking about existing capacity for advanced semiconductor manufacturing. I'm talking about having the human capital to build that or the the investment capital and will to build out things like that so i mean if the chips were shut off which countries could conceivably begin producing them themselves after you know like eight 10 year investment in

Buddha period

Malcolm Collins: And this is just really meaningful if you're thinking about the future of a de globalized world and what partnerships matter. In the past, the if you've ever played like a game of Civ and like a new resource unlocks like iron or uranium, and you're like, God, I've got to make sure I have a good alliance with a country that has some within their borders.

It's going to be the same way with people who can produce these advanced[00:16:00] silicon chips. Especially if Taiwan leaves the world stage. Okay. But now what happens with Japan and Korea? Their, Korea's fertility rate is desperately low. I do not think this means that Korea will cease to exist. I think it means that some subgroup within Korea is going to replace the existing population.

This could be an immigrant population or a religious extremist population within Korea. One thing that people don't know about Korea who like don't know Korea is Korea is great at cults. They are a mass exporter of cults. They have exported many cults. The Moonies, for example, came from Korea. And they, they create really good cults.

When I say good cults, I just mean that they are internally consistent. I expect the future of Korea, when we say what's going to be, it will be a single cultural unit, which will make it very different from other countries around the world. But it will be run by a single, what we would today think of as a, a high fertility cult.

Now, whether that cult is technical. Phobic or technophilic is yet to be seen. If it is technophilic, it will be one of the largest [00:17:00] players in world history. And so that could be really interesting. Another,

Simone Collins: yeah, I, I, I could see interesting with Japan, like I, I visited what you could describe as, as like cult complexes in Japan.

And they feel very different. From mainstream Japanese culture and also a lot more prenatalist. They're not currently technophilic, to my knowledge, but they totally could become

Malcolm Collins: technophilic. When you're familiar with like their, their cultural ethno groups in Japan that are based around the descendants of samurais that believe you need to have something like...

Yeah. And they still hold to these practices. And so they have really high fertility groups.

I should clarify here that this is not the dissonance of all of the same right here in this group. It is a small, small group in Japan that would best be called a cult by outsiders as all groups that, that culturally extremely differentiate from mainstream society are often called. If they are considered youngish.

Now, clearly this group takes inspiration. From what they define as their heritage however who's to say [00:18:00] how many of them are actually from those samurai families

Malcolm Collins: So what we might actually see by Japan, Weebs fantasy is it gets taken over by the descendants of the Samurais. aNd they have, yeah, basically a, a martial unified Samurai empire of a country. Which again makes it very different from a lot of the Western world.

And so you can say, why? Are they able to do this? Why aren't they falling apart in the same way the western world is falling apart? The core reason is that they are basically already city states. Japan is a city state and Korea is a city state. A huge portion of each country's population, and an increasing portion of each country's population, is based around the metropolitan centers of each country.

And so is their economy, so is everything that they're building, which makes it Easier to culturally consolidate especially when everyone around them is so hostile to them. So that is the direction I think that those countries are going. If you look at what's the word I'm looking for here?

Indochina [00:19:00] and

 Oceania not including australia

or new zealand

Malcolm Collins: Those are the two areas, like Indonesia and stuff like that, you know, Indonesia is going to be a really big player in the future but how they're a big player isn't clear to me, they could be won by a technophobic population, Singapore obviously is, is really well set up for this haven state world that we're entering into that we've described in other videos, I think they're going to be a very large player and if Israel ends up getting taken over by technophobic populations.

The, the number one contender to be the core linchpin in the network of havens is going to be Singapore. If they can get their act together pronatalist wise, which I suspect they will be able to, because the government there. Is, is saying

Simone Collins: what I thought you were going to talk about is, is the, I think, you know, when it comes to, we've, we've talked about corporations producing humans like essentially corporations, either through, you know, surrogates that they, they hire to gestate their material as it were[00:20:00] or through artificial womb someday to start creating humans and then using them like in a corporate way for, you know, producing things for having their own sort of state.

I feel like if that is going to happen somewhere, it's more likely to happen somewhere in East Asia. I mean, I've always thought like China is on that

Malcolm Collins: list. Who does it? We don't know. I actually think it might be Korea. It could be. It could be. But you've also got to keep in mind how conservative these countries are.

Again, I say people expect them to be the ones that do the

weird

Simone Collins: genetic stuff. This is, this will happen in a somewhat post collapse state, I think, where like just People stop enforcing things that the attention to this sort of goes down. And then at some point, some really entrepreneurial person is going to just go for it, ask for forgiveness, not permission, or not even that, because at that point, if they're the ones.

With the humans, they're, they may be the ones with the power, so it won't even

Malcolm Collins: matter. Yeah, so I could see something like this being done by like a Korean tribal. Hmm. There's

Simone Collins: tribal system. Samsung [00:21:00] humans. Samsung humans. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: Samsung humans to live in your, your Samsung apartment. Yeah. Yeah. Another country.

So a lot of people are like, yeah, but what about the rising individuals today? Like we're invested in some countries like Vietnam, for example, I think they have a really positive future in the near term. But one thing we have to remember about countries like Vietnam is unfortunately these countries that are doing well because they're developing countries today of the globalist system we live in.

The countries that are going to be hit hardest. As the developing system begins to collapse are going to be the ones that are what we call developing countries today. You're getting

Simone Collins: free rent when it comes to the police, seize like open, open shipping channels and, and demand from other nations. So,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, so, so this is why Latin America is going to be hit so hard.

And one of the reasons why we just like, don't even talk about like, it does not matter economically in the future because Latin America has really tied itself to China. And as China collapses, specifically Southern [00:22:00] Latin America, Mexico is going to be fine, like they'll partner with the US, but if you're looking at, at, at South America specifically they rely too much on exports to China.

And the Chinese economy is going to stop like, what are they exporting? They're exporting like raw materials, like, metals and copper and stuff used in this building craze. And these buildings are empty. A lot of them, you know, they are trading like crypto. The, the, the reason why in China, an unfurnished building.

Room trades for more than a furnished room is because it is like an

unmolested like token. They are a tokenized unit and the reason why and I didn't really get to this like why is it? That the real estate always goes up It's because everyone knows that when the real estate does get begin to persistently grow down That's when the state as they understand it collapses And so if you can't take your money out of the country and the the stock market doesn't matter.

Well You If the money is going to crash [00:23:00] anyway. Because it will crash anyway, if the real estate crashes, because the government will crash, which is doing all sorts of funny things with their currency. Then you might as well put it in real estate. It's the only place that makes sense. So anyway anything else you wanted to talk about?

Simone Collins: No, but I hope East Asia does well. And I'd love to see things bounce back. I think the fun thing about them, and they're really like, this is the area to watch. This is like the, the geographic zone to watch because I think it's the most wildcard y one. Because it's seeing such a profound, at least like in, in China, Japan, South Korea, such a profound crash that like, it's so hard to like, who, who knows what's going to happen.

And I think that's really, it's both very dire, but also possibly exciting if you're like, well, I mean, you know, who knows they're, they're going to get really creative

Malcolm Collins: possibly. Yeah. And, and it, and it, it, it does make sense to keep alliances with most of these groups open while also correctly ranking their importance.

And I think one of the big problems with China today is people vastly overestimate [00:24:00] its importance to the future of the world. Yeah. It's just not that important. I remember I was, I mentioned this once on a call, was a, you know, one of these CCP, Chinese, whatever people, the high level person, and they got all mad.

They're like, China has risen many times and this is, you, you see, China has a long history and it always rises. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Listen to what you're saying. Why does China need to keep rising? It's because it keeps collapsing. And you are at the end of one of those cycles right now. If you look at history.

So yeah, China is just not that relevant from a future perspective. Taiwan is super, super duper duper duper duper duper relevant, like more, much more relevant. Actually, one of the funny predictions I have for the future, people want a really funny prediction for the future, is I believe there is actually a good chance if China doesn't successfully take Taiwan, that in 50 to 60 years, there could be a real possibility of Taiwan taking China.[00:25:00]

Just because they will be economically so much more productive than China, so much more important to the world stage and China itself, there is a small chance, we've talked about all the systems they've put in place to allow the system to collapse while still maintaining centralized control, but that that centralized control falters or you end up getting fights within the CCP, which ends up subdividing the country as has happened before in Chinese history, everybody knows about the warring states period or the three kingdoms or the You know, and this weakens them enough that Taiwan can come in and begin to take them one at a time, which could happen.

That would be an interesting twist of fate. Anyway yeah. Any other thoughts? No. Love you. Love you too.

In this video, we discuss the two enemies of the pronatalist movement - the urban monoculture and the xenophobic, technophobic religious extremists. We talk about how the urban monoculture acts as an "easy mode" villain, uniting high fertility groups, while the real threat is the aggressive, ultra-religious groups who want to eliminate all other cultures. We explore which groups may act as allies in creating pluralistic, technophilic haven states in the future.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] One increases fertility on its own, like xenophobia increases fertility on its own, but in addition to that, it also lowers the economic potential of a group, further increasing its fertility in that direction, which means you're getting this cluster of strategies,, low economic output, high xenophobia.

High technophobia, which cluster together into like one branch of winning cultural strategies, which by far today is the cultural strategy, which is outcompeting all others in terms of fertility, a lot of them believe that at the end of the day there's just going to be one religion, one culture in the world. That's it. There can only be one as we say, they are highlandering it. And so, essentially, the true enemy of the pronatalist cause, not the immediate enemy, the urban monoculture, which is serving as a very simplistic villain for us right now, a villain on easy mode that is meant to prepare us for the true danger, which comes [00:01:00] after us, which it is to a large extent protecting us from, which is a world full of. technophobic, aggressive, ultra religious extremists that want everyone who's not them dead.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone! Hi, gorgeous.

Simone Collins: Too much energy?

Malcolm Collins: Never. So this episode is going to be a bit of a follow up from the last episode, but it's also going to be a standalone. So you can watch these likely in either order. And they're going to touch related to, but divergent concepts.

Simone Collins: And you'll include a link to the first one in case people want in the

Malcolm Collins: description.

Yeah, I could actually do the thing in YouTube where I like tag the first one. Do that, you

Simone Collins: young technophilic person. There's

Malcolm Collins: a little button here right here. This is where it appears and you push the button and it will like open a thing where you can then click and like open it in a different tab to watch after you're done with this one.

[00:02:00] Okay, great. So, with this episode, what we are going to discuss is the two enemies of pronatalism. And so let's talk about sort of what pronatalism is more broadly. It is a movement dedicated to ensuring the preservation of a pluralistic and diverse human species. And people would be like, well, why that?

Why not? Just like increasing birth rates? Because if we do nothing, what's going to happen is we're going to have a crash in human fertility rates. We're going to have a crash in the world economy. Both of which are things that are still going to happen if we do something, but to me, A few groups will come to power and basically erase everyone else.

That's what it looks like is the path that we're going on. We're going on sort of a monoculture of a species where like one or two or maybe three, if we're lucky, if our group That's just completely fails cultural and ethnic groups will be the only things [00:03:00] left of our species and they will wipe out the rest.

And that is absolutely terrifying to us. Because I think that 1 of our greatest strengths is our diversity. And I also think that in this unengaged world. The groups that end up wiping out most of the other groups are going to be quite technophobic, i. e. we are moving back to a dark ages of extremist religious tribalism.

Yep. And that is not great. Not, not, not great at all. And so what we are trying to do is build an alliance of the individuals that are high fertility and do want to exist in the future, and the cultural groups that are high fertility and do want to exist in the future. And this alliance means something.

If you are a culture that is high fertility, Sort of axiomatically, you differentiate significantly from the dominant culture in our society right now. It is a very low fertility cultural group. This is what we call the cult, or the urban monoculture, or the [00:04:00] virus, whatever you want to call it. It is this large culture that exists in pretty much every major city in the world today.

And when we say that, what I mean is, is if I look at the culture in, You know, London versus you know, London versus New York versus Boston, you know, they're all going to be much more similar to each other or Paris more similar to each other than they are to just like, I go a few hours to like, the Amish or like the Hasidic population or something like that.

These high fertility populations, uh, almost definitionally need to differentiate in our culture, the culture, our family practice, it differentiates a lot from the urban monoculture. And what this means is that the first enemy that the pronatalist movement is facing is this urban monoculture. And that is because the urban monoculture being very low fertility can only replenish its ranks by converting the children of nearby demographically healthy cultural groups.

[00:05:00] And those are becoming increasingly rare. So it is becoming increasingly aggressive in these conversion. Policies, um, and these conversion policies are a danger to every single a high fertility cultural group, because those groups, you know, almost the more high fertility they are, the more they differentiate from the cultural group, and the more they are producing something of value to that cultural group, which it wishes to mine in a way that destroys, I mean, we often liken it to cultural genocide, but it's not really traditional cultural genocide, yes, it is driven by a hatred and dehumanization of these cultural groups.

You know, they see them as deplorable and savages as most people do in committing cultural genocide, but it's also a necessary. Genocide. It is a parasitic by design cultural group that cannot survive without, um, cannibalizing its neighbors. And so you can almost think of it like, you [00:06:00] know, it's not that we hate this cultural group, right?

But if you're going to save the fly, you kill the spider. If you save the flies without killing the spider, eventually the spider dies anyway. You know, and so all of us, all of the pronatalist communities are banning together right now to defend ourselves against this one cultural group. And we frame it very much as the enemy important thing to note is 1.

it is the lesser of the 2 enemies that. The perinatalist movement is bound to face it is the kinder of the two enemies we are bound to face. And it is an enemy that when it dies and it will die, because if you look intergenerationally, things like Amish communities, you can look at their like deconversion rates, they've gone down over and over again.

Communities that live next to it are getting better and better at defending themselves. And that's one of the reasons it's so pro immigration right now, because the only way it can get new children is by importing them. From, from cultural groups that aren't quite as wary, but even recent immigrant populations are becoming [00:07:00] incredibly wary of it.

Like, if you look at the prenatalist movement, many people are surprised at how heavy it is in first generation immigrant families. And it's like, yeah, because they are often the most pronatalist because they are recent immigrants from high fertility areas and they understand the value of their own culture and they want to preserve it and they like the idea.

Which is what America told them it was, you know, when America said, come over, it goes, oh, come here. You'll get riches. You know, many different cultures exist alongside each other. And then they get here and they go, okay, well, now that you're here your children are going to have to go to a school where their history and traditions will be erased.

They will learn. They are allowed to identify however they want. They can identify as your ancestral culture, but they are not allowed to differ in their beliefs around sexuality, around gender, around morality, around what should be the future of our species, on how we should relate to the environment, on the way you should interact with other religious and cultural traditions.

And they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I came here because I heard that we could, like, be different and all work together, [00:08:00] while maintaining our differences. And then they look at the perinatalist movement, and they're like, oh, you guys are what America was telling everyone it was.

Yeah, let's join that thing. That thing looks like what I signed up for. So, anyway, to the point here, this, this. Enemy is, to some extent, witless when it takes over an organization or a community, it typically makes it very ineffective. We can look at the large companies that have been affected by it. 1 of the things we've pointed out on this show is that once a community adapts racist belief systems economically, it tends to.

undercompete its neighbors and undercompete what it did historically. And this is seen in the, the, the virus or the cult communities. Wokeism or in what they call anti racism, it just labels everything the exact opposite of what it is. It's like the, one of the most racist widespread philosophies in the world today.

And we will see what we always see with racist [00:09:00] communities, which is a collapse economically of the individuals that hold it. When people say, go woke, get broke, what they are saying is that when you become racist, you end up economically under competing your neighbors whose minds are not blinded by this sort of systemic elitism and prejudice against.

Specific cultural group, right? Anyway, so, but who is the other enemy? What is the real enemy that we are terrified of? The real enemy we are terrified of comes from the fact that The two dominant cultural strategies right now for high fertility are disengaging with the economy either preventing your members from working or doing something that lowers the economic potential, like preventing them from getting a traditional education and anything that it decreases an individual's economic Potential is going to increase the fertility of a community.

The other thing is to increase restrictions on how your community engages with technology. The more [00:10:00] your community disengages with technology, the higher fertility. And this is true within communities. So you look at like Amish or Mennonite or the general Anabaptist sphere of communities. The ones that are the most disengaging of technology or the highest fertility rate.

You're ones that are the most using of technology and fertility rates that are about the same as the English, i. e. people who are not Anabaptists. And this matters because it means that anyone who is trying even a lightened form of one of these cultural strategies, the iterations of their movement that try the most extreme forms of these cultural strategies will outcompete the lighter forms of these cultural strategies unless the lighter forms of these cultural strategies maintain complete cultural isolation.

from the more extreme forms of these strategies, which is unlikely because typically the groups practicing the lighter forms of these strategies are these softer cultural groups. This requires some unpacking. Do you want to explain what I just said, Simone?

Simone Collins: Repeat your statement just so I make sure I talk about the right circle of things.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. What I was saying was, is that incrementally, [00:11:00] any. Collection of groups, like related family of cultures that increases its fertility rate or protects its vitality rate by disengaging with technology or economically crippling its own members the iterations of that culture that do that more extremely.

Fertility wise, I'll compete the ones that do it less extreme. Right, right. The problem being is that you could have some intergenerationally stable, yes, lower fertility, but still isolated less extreme version of one of these. The problem being is that the less extreme versions are often soft in cultures, which means that they either bleed out into the main culture or bleed into the more extreme versions.

Simone Collins: You said it really well, do you?

Malcolm Collins: Okay, I guess I don't need to ask. I just want to get you more engaged so people don't feel like I'm not, I'm not giving you a chance to comment on this. I mean, do you have any comments on what I've said so far?

Simone Collins: No I mean, this is just. How we see things playing out, I, I can't

Malcolm Collins: really, obviously true so

Simone Collins: far, I think, yeah, it's, [00:12:00] I mean, especially given the data that we've seen both in terms of who we know is still experiencing high birth rates now, and plus we've seen in the history of the human race.

having high birth rates in the past. It checks out.

Malcolm Collins: The other thing we've seen is a cultural strategy and, and, and likely even a genetic strategy because this does have a genetic link, which is the far right authoritarian personality cluster, which has nothing to do with like right leaning politics is found in left leaning individuals as well.

It's what you would see in like an Antifa member or something like that. It just means an extreme tendency to dehumanize people who aren't in your cultural group. And an extreme tendency to prefer extremist hierarchical structures. So this strategy, like xenophobia basically is a winning cultural strategy.

That is the one thing I will say for it. It does increase fertility rates.

Simone Collins: It's not necessarily like. Crazy evil xenophobia, like we've noticed that in in more diverse nations, birth rates seem to be higher than in really homogenous nations. And these aren't diverse nations that necessarily have huge levels of [00:13:00] intergroup, either culturally or ethnic antagonism, however.

There could be some xenophobia that motivates groups to kind of subconsciously feel really excited about kind of representing themselves more. Like maybe there's something that kicks in when you feel like you're surrounded by others that makes you want to grow your own community.

Malcolm Collins: That is likely true.

However, and I would ask you to, to just search your brain to see if you can think of any counter examples to this. ouTside of East Asian cultures. They are unique and they have different practices. The more xenophobic a cultural group is, the higher their fertility rate is.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, it seems that

Malcolm Collins: way.

Okay. So I'm talking about even extreme xenophobia. So if you're talking about extremely xenophobic culture, they're extremely high fertility. Yeah. Okay. So that means it's a, it's a winning, like it will increase in the future, right? Yeah. For obvious reasons, you know, as we've mentioned again and again It also lowers the economic potential of a community that in the last. 1

anyway, the point being is that in many ways [00:14:00] the reason why so racism. One increases fertility on its own, like xenophobia increases fertility on its own, but in addition to that, it also lowers the economic potential of a group, further increasing its fertility in that direction, which means you're getting this cluster of strategies, uh, low economic output, high xenophobia.

High technophobia, which cluster together into like one branch of winning cultural strategies, which by far today is the cultural strategy, which is outcompeting all others in terms of fertility, and

Simone Collins: I would say that this is accurate. This seems accurate on average, but actually like when I think about Japan, for example, it is, I said, except for East Asian, East Asian.

Thank you. Okay. Yeah. With that big exception,

Malcolm Collins: we're going to talk about East Asian cultures in a separate video because totally different thing is going to happen over there. Yeah. We just don't need to talk about it right now. Okay. It's going to be equally interesting and a bit harder for us to predict, but both of us have lived in East Asian [00:15:00] countries, so we're going to be, I guess, better at predicting it than other people might be.

So. So what this means, and a lot of people look at this and they go, Oh, all of this is code for, uh, Muslims. They're talking about Muslims and no, there are Jewish groups and there are Christian groups and there are even Buddhist groups that are. You know, a highly xenophobic and technophobic and, and murdery, I guess I'd call them.

And that's another thing about this cultural cluster, is they have a practice which makes them axiomatically impossible to ever integrate with the pro natalist agenda, which is that they believe Often, this is very common within these cultural traditions but it's not true amongst all of them. Like, it's not true amongst the Amish, which would be very good allies to the pro natalist movement, which we can talk about later.

But a lot of them believe that at the end of the day there's just going to be one religion, Often one [00:16:00] ethnicity and one culture in the world and some of them will just say one religion, one culture in the world. That's it. There can only be one as we say, they are highlandering it. So in the short term, they work as allies with us because we have the same enemy, which is the urban monoculture.

But in the long term, they will be at odds with us and all of the other, we would call them symbiotic cultural groups, which do not believe it is their job to wipe out all other cultures in the world. And there are various levels of potential allegiance. There are some cultures which say they eventually want to wipe out all other cultures in the world, but they just don't ever seem to act on it, or they don't seem to be able to motivate action on it.

You're right anymore. And so they are safe ish to work with in the short term. There are cultures that, um, we'll say, okay, but we can work with with other groups because we are such a minority right now. [00:17:00] And we will only become dangerous when we become the majority. And so you need to keep an eye on those groups.

But again, this isn't a 1 religious thing. You know, there are. Examples of Buddhist cultures, Jewish cultures, Christian cultures, Muslim cultures that fall into this category, and there are iterations of all of those traditions, which are able to be genuinely pluralistic, or at least sort of detente pluralistic, meaning that...

Right, right. For now. And this is important, because a lot of people, they're not aware, like, they don't know about like the... The really bloody, like, Buddhist revolts in places like Sri Lanka and stuff like that. And like, they don't know, you know, if you look at the perennialist movement, we actually have a lot not a lot, but I'd say a number of Muslim cultural groups that are allied with the movement.

Most of them are African immigrant populations that are not, and you might ask, well, why are they not as, because they have sort of more of a. A, I guess I call it a tribalistic mindset that is okay with intergenerational alliances with people who are different from them which is [00:18:00] not true, which of, of some other Muslim cultural groups which are just, you know, like, like some Christian cultural groups, there can only be one.

And one of the interesting things when we talk about the two enemies is some. Christian cultural groups think that they're signaling, I especially see this with some groups of, of, of tradcasts and stuff like that, how like cool they are by saying there can only be one to like other pro natalists in like a, a multicultural pro natalist environment.

Like they'll, they'll be going to like the natalist conference that we're going to. And it's like, look, this is a conference being put together by Mormon separatists. The, the, the Desnat Mormons are the people who are putting it together and we are. You know, technophilic, like, secular Calvinist, you were saying to the two people who are, like, the most dominant individuals within this cultural context, we plan to kill you one day, hey, let's come together and all work out, or deconvert your children, or, you know, whatever these individuals are, obviously, You're like [00:19:00] that individual in a D& D group that is all aligned good and you're like the one aligned evil person and they're like, obviously working with you in the short run, but in the long run, you are very obviously a threat and they are aware of that and they are planning for that which is, you know, I, yeah.

I thank God that they are so witless right now. I suspect that some of the individuals who claim to be interested in multicultural pluralism are just smarter iterations of them that know to not loudly broadcast it all the time and only talk about it privately behind closed doors. And at the very least, I can appreciate their shrewdness.

Simone Collins: I don't know. To me, there's something very gentlemanly about it. Like it reminds me of some, you know, historical action novels where, you know, you have two enemies who respect each other as rivals and are like, well, I'm going to try to destroy you, but I, you know, I admire your form and, you know, like for a moment they may come together to fight some impediment to their larger shared battle.

I don't know. So I, you can also look at it in a

Malcolm Collins: [00:20:00] more, yeah. Well, and I think where this question is going to become more interesting to us is what happens when one of these dominating cultural groups is also attempting a technophilic strategy. Right. Currently, none of them are. Not a single one of them is a technophilic.

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah, right. I mean, we'd hardly be dominant, but we are very

Malcolm Collins: technophilic. But yeah, we're not dominating, but we're technophilic. If you look at the other technophilic cultural groups they typically are not. Dominating its cultural strategies

Simone Collins: Well, I mean, you, you, the, the, the cult, essentially, the, the woke virus riddled cult that runs society now is both dominating and technophilic, but because it's low fertility, Yeah, it is

Malcolm Collins: both dominating and technophilic.

That is a good point. It is an example of a dominating technophilic cultural group.

Simone Collins: The only reason we don't take it very seriously is we, we understand that most other cultures that it uses to get fodder, to get human capital, will eventually become resistant to it, so we don't think it has long term

Malcolm Collins: potential.

And so, essentially, the true enemy of the pronatalist cause, [00:21:00] not the immediate enemy, which is the urban monoculture, which we sort of see like the God Emperor of Dune, the, the threat that brings us all together, or if you've seen Code Geass, the emperor that, that acts fascist at the end to bring everyone together of different, different, Cultural groups to finally put aside their, their differences so that they can intergenerationally work together.

 That is what it is serving us. It is serving as a very simplistic villain for us right now, a villain on easy mode that is meant to prepare us for the true danger, which comes after us, which it is to a large extent protecting us from, which is a world full of. technophobic, aggressive, ultra religious extremists that want everyone who's not them dead.

And in the other video, similar to this, we talked about sort of a network of haven states. These are small technophilic cultural groups, which are [00:22:00] communicating with each other, trading with each other and that work together and that respect their, their cultural differences and are working to bring back civilization after we enter this next dark age.

And that is sort of the, now we can try to predict what that network is going to look like. Who are going to be the important players in it. But it's difficult right now. If I, as an outsider was going to say who is obviously going to be the biggest player in it, Israel, Israel is just obviously going to be the

Simone Collins: biggest.

Israel, maybe some of the transhumanist Mormons.

Malcolm Collins: That's more speculative and even Israel speculative. So Israel would be, and that it is already.

Simone Collins: It's already technophilic. It's already happening. Well, I guess, but the highest growing populations within Israel are not technophilic, right? Yeah, they're technophobic populations.

So that's the problem. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And so Israel might be, if it can develop a technophilic iteration of the traditions which are growing really quickly within it. And I believe it [00:23:00] can and I believe the key to doing that is going to be a righty group that embrace genetic selection technology. I think that's really going to be the thing that throws some of them over the edge.

But it's difficult and you can look at our video on, we have a video where we explain Jewish sort of cultural evolution. It's very different than other cultural groups. It's very bottom up, i. e. Well, it's better than the video that we talk about it in. I don't want to go deep into it in this one.

So it's possible that something evolves, but it won't look exactly like any of the dominant cultural traditions within Israel right now. But I, I do think it is the biggest likelihood to be sort of the, the beating heart of the nexus of haven states. It could fall to technophobic. Extremists, just as much as

Simone Collins: anyone else.

Yeah, but that, to your point, if a Haraidi group did get super technical, like at least when it came to Reprotech, they would clean up. I mean...

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they're already, as a, as a [00:24:00] sort of center for Haven states, have the industrial capability to produce advanced weaponry, which will be one of the things that is most necessary among the other Haven states.

Right. Things like Iron Dome technology and stuff like that would be very, very relevant wherever you are, whichever Haven state you're in. So it would already like, it's already culturally specializing in the types of exports that are most relevant in this future that we're heading into. Which a lot of people are like, Oh, why do you guys?

Simp for Jewish cultural groups so much on your show. It's not just because like, we think they're doing the right thing. It's because we would be stupid and anyone who is sort of declaring war on them right now in their, in their what's the word I'm looking for in their broadcast is just being incredibly stupid because then who, who do you ally with in the future?

yoU know,

Simone Collins: Who are you going to buy your tech from? Who are you going [00:25:00] to turn to for protection and

Malcolm Collins: solutions? Yeah now what could happen, and this is actually really possible, is some of the Muslim cultural groups that have a ton of money right now could set themselves up like the UAE or Saudi Arabia, and they are very intentional and very specific about how they do this as technophilic elite organizations that oversee a non, a larger non technophilic population That could happen, and those could become really useful groups to buy technology from I could see that happening, but they have to play their cards very, very intelligently, and in truth, of all of the Muslim populations, those are the least directly anti Semitic, the high technology ones, like the ones in the ones in Qatar or the ones in Saudi Arabia. So even then, you know, you're likely not really shooting yourself in the foot by allying with Jewish cultural groups in this, [00:26:00] this future. Right.

Simone Collins: Well, but I also, I don't think people. are expressing anti Semitic views because they, you know, don't expect to ally with, and no one's thinking long term like this.

They're just being reactionary. So it doesn't even matter. You know, it's not like they're like, oh, well, the Saudis are going to be the ones I'm going to need to partner with in the long term future. No one thinks in the long term future. You're like one of the few thing, like people in the, in the world thinking about

Malcolm Collins: this stuff.

Well, I'm trying to think of other cultural groups. As you said, I think the Mormons, I do not think the Mormon transhumanists would be a relevant group. I think the Mormon separatists would be a relevant group. So I think

Simone Collins: it does have potential. Yeah, that's for sure. Doesn't

Malcolm Collins: that's for sure they have potential, not necessarily, but they have potential.

Simone Collins: Well, here's the thing though. So like the whole point of why I think desert nationalists have a lot of potential is they represent an attempt to return to hard Mormon religion and basically, you know, you're going to look at hard versus soft. Hard is going to be more [00:27:00] pronatalist. It's going to last longer.

It's going to stay more disciplined. It's going to be Less subject to the harms of soft culture, that is to say, like failing mental health, failing physical health, etc. So like, I don't know, it seems pretty straightforward to me, unless they go off the rails with a bunch of weird stuff and go soft in their own way.

Well,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, and I think that the tradcasts are also likely, there is some iteration of tradcasts that will stay. Intergenerationally, like, alliable with but of all the cultural groups, they are the one to most likely go around and being like, we plan to kill all our allies one day. And it's like, maybe stop saying that, even if you believe it, you probably want to be at least, I guess I'm just, I like that you see it as like a gentlemanly thing, but, yeah, it's, it's not a a great long term strategy, but there are iterations of that movement because of all the movements. It's 1 of the most likely to be intergenerationally liable ways. And then there's other cultural groups that just like. I guess, like, [00:28:00] theologically and culturally seem like they should be dominating cultural groups, they just aren't.

Like, we recently got back from being around British individuals, and they are very clearly... I think a Hindi cultural group is definitely going to be one of the major players in the future. They are... Dominating or symbiotic? dominating. Yeah. They, they are a non dominating, very likely to take technophilic strategies, higher fertility than most other technophilic cultural groups.

Totally. Now, they are lower fertility than groups that take technophobic strategies, that is true. But among the technophilic cultural groups, they're one of the highest fertility. And, and they are a very good group to signal alliances with. Yeah. So I'm trying to think, what other groups do I know?

I Guess the next thing to talk about is what ends up happening to East Asia. Well,

Simone Collins: yeah, I mean, I would, I would wonder if there, like when I was in Japan, there were some Colt is going to do

Malcolm Collins: a different video in East Asia to talk about

Simone Collins: the

Malcolm Collins: technophilic, like what happens during the collapse cycle in East [00:29:00] Asia.

Okay. Because it's not worth talking about in this, this video. But yeah, so this is what the pronatalist movement is really all about. It is about taking this period of safety to build inter community and inter cultural connections in ways of working with each other to. Protect our descendants from the, basically the religious extremists who want to kill them all.

The xenophobic, technophobic, economically unproductive religious extremists who will make up the majority of the future world's population. And they won't be from any one religious group. They will be from, All cultural groups, there will be factions of them from all cultural groups, because it is a successful strategy, no matter what cultural group you're from, and there are potentials for technophilic strategies, no matter what cultural group you're from, and it is worth it for the technophilic pluralistic groups to ally together to attempt to [00:30:00] preserve what we think of as sort of pluralistic human civilization.

What are your thoughts, Simone?

Simone Collins: People probably may hear this and think that it sounds outlandish and sci fi and... But just look at, look at how things have played out in history and, and look at the trends and I, you know, we, we challenge you to come up with some other theory that seems more reasonable and predictive. So just because something sounds weird.

And just because something sounds very, very different doesn't mean that that's. It's never going to happen, or it's relegated

Malcolm Collins: to fiction. Yep. Things have changed before. And a lot of people think that they're like, Oh, well, all of your predictions are requisite on demographic collapse, causing an economic collapse of our, of our current economic system, but AI could save us.

And as we've mentioned before. No, a I freeze the bourgeoisie from the proletariat permanently. They don't need you anymore, and it is not worth it for them. As we have seen in places where [00:31:00] collapses already started, like South Africa, the wealthy are not like giving their money out to the masses to you.

Placate them anymore. That made sense in a past global system where there was a large middle class when the middle class begins to dissolve. It is more economically efficient for the wealthy to not pay for things like UBI, but instead put all of their money into defending their compounds and their own way of life.

And that is going to lead to an economic collapse, even if we are dealing with ec for the vast majority of people in the world, even if we are And I don't

Simone Collins: think that's, that's through any lack of attempt to first try to make UBI work, but you also have to look at how right now, non billionaires regard the philanthropic work of billionaires.

Yes. Whenever billionaires basically try to fix things or try to make things better, it's always, how dare you, you're doing this wrong. You know, the nerve of you're trying to come and intervene or, or, you know, affect our lives. Basically every time a billionaire tries to make things better, [00:32:00] especially for people in a more developed society, they get, they get completely demonized for it.

So I think after a while and especially when it comes to like, sort of will billionaires survive or not surviving billionaires and billionaires who actually get more out of life are going to be the ones who fortify their own defenses. Partially because the very people that. Could really benefit from their patronage are going to Basically, you know, alienate

Malcolm Collins: themselves from them.

Well, I also think that, that billionaires, so there's sort of two paths for billionaires and we've already seen this one. What, well, three paths. One is they will try to ingratiate themselves with the current cult or virus or whatever you want to say. And they end up just getting disregarded by the public and hated examples of this would be like Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates two is they end up, just indolently living their lives as well, see as possible and sort of data compounds and they won't end up mattering in the future. And 3 is they when was this? They might like, create compounds that matter for [00:33:00] a generation or 2, but they're really personality cults. And these will ultimately collapse and then the final 1 is to alive themselves with an intergenerationally durable cultural group, whether it's like ours or tried to cast or something else, and they will exist in the future.

 And I, I think that that is going to be the winning strategy for billionaires going forwards is what it was historically, which is to ally yourself with one of the religious and cultural traditions of the world. And obviously if you want to have the biggest outside impact, you typically want to focus on a very competent and small one like ours.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: just, just saying if anyone in the room is thinking here. Love you, Simone. This was great. And let's do the next one on East Asia. What happens there? Excited for that.

We discuss how widespread economic collapse could lead to a "techno-feudal" future, with fortified city-states and regions controlled by technological elites. However, networks of these havens may help rebuild civilization. We compare to South Africa's current situation and emphasize why islands and unstable regions are poor choices. This builds on the concept of sovereign network states.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] what makes it a network empire instead of a network state. And I think the core, the, the core thing that Balaji when he came up with this concept and missed is the insecurity of a future world when we're dealing with wide scale economic collapse.

That is the world that we are heading into where it is cheaper. For the wealthy class in our society to isolate themselves from everyone else than it is for them to ensure widespread prosperity.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: I am so glad to be recording these again. Our audience doesn't know, but it's actually been like a week and a half since we did our last recording because we were at this ARC conference in the UK, which is supposed to be, I don't know, like this new alternative to Davos sort of a thing, but I think it's just really conservative British Davos.

But one of the people who we met while we were there and we had a long conversation with was Curtis Yarvin. And in that conversation, I really helped me clarify some [00:01:00] things that I think about what's going to happen in the future of our species. And we may release that conversation because it was recorded at some time, but it was recorded in, like, a busiest restaurant with a Greek reporter interviewing us both together.

So I can't believe that some random Greek newspaper, a monarchist newspaper, by the way, is getting the piece where it's me and you and Curtis Jarvin talking for, like, 2 hours. But, we constantly get accused of being techno feudalists in the media. And, this to me feels not just like an unfair accusation, but almost an insane accusation.

It's a bit like... If you know, I have some friends who their family were, you know, left Germany early, and they tried really hard to convince everyone the Holocaust was coming. And they were just basically told they were crazy, and so, this family is actually descended from a guy who broke into his girlfriend's house at night, took the girl he was dating, and ran away.

Now, they made the horrible mistake of running east [00:02:00] to Russia, instead of west and so then they... For like a 10 year period, just constantly had to flee new places. But anyway, it would be like calling him a, a Holocaustian. And people would be like, well, yeah, but even if he saw it coming, you know, they could have said, well, let's try to prevent it.

Right. And it's like, no, there was a certain point where he was like, look at. Hitler, this guy who was elected to power. Look at what he's writing. Read his book. Okay. He published this like it's not vague what his plans are. And you know, I feel a bit like that when I talk about techno feudalism, where I'm saying it is.

Almost inevitable at this point that something like a techno feudalistic state is going to happen. And we need to, those of us who do not want to be churned up by the system, need to prepare for how the world is going to change. Both in terms of our culture and our families and economically because it's [00:03:00] going to be absolutely catastrophic and very, very significant.

Now, 1st, I would say, when we talk about techno feudalism, we do not mean. So there's this, like, Greek economist guy who keeps he wrote, like, a book on quote, unquote, techno feudalism and the way that he defines the term is vague and pointless, basically what we already know, which is that we live in a world in which large tech companies control a lot of the economic system.

And it's like, yes, we know that. That's not what we talk about. When we talk about techno feudalism, we are talking about something that is much closer to literal feudalistic states. But before we go further, we need to talk a bit about. Where we think the overall economy is going before we can talk about the technophilic states, which are going to be major players within this future economy.

So this actually was a point that Curtis made in the conversation. And after hearing it, it really clarified a lot of how I think about things, [00:04:00] but it was in line with what I thought already.

It just gave me more. Picture as to what the future is going to look like. And he said,

didn't catch the future of the future of the Western world at least.

And the, the, the future, the future of the eastern world is also going to be bleak, but the way it will collapse is going to look very different. And we can get to that in different videos. But. The future of the Western world is going to look very similar to the current situation in South Africa.

aNd this has nothing to do with, with race or even the politics of the country. Right. What specifically we're talking about is the on the ground reality of what it feels like

Simone Collins: to live there. Yeah, well, it is what real collapse looks like. From a, we'll say a modern developed society. So what happens when the infrastructure has been built, when there's electricity, there's housing, there's communities, but then.

Things start falling apart. Infrastructure starts falling apart. Law enforcement starts, starts falling apart. And that's what collapse looks like [00:05:00] in our world. Because I think what most people's evoked set is of collapse is a road warrior. You know, it's like deserts. There's nothing out there, but no, no, no, we're, we're starting.

Our starting point for collapse is quite different from what people typically expect in their fantasies, right? Absolutely.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I think a lot of people, the other thing they think of is they go, Oh no, I'm being reasonable. It's not going to be like road warrior. It'll be more like a developed. being country, but no, no, we're starting developing country.

And the thing about developing countries is that they are going up from nothing. You know, they are building incrementally with every step of development, which is very different from a developed country collapsing. Developed countries collapse if it won't lead to very different cultural institutions than a struggling developing country and the the life on the ground of a developed country collapsing is astronomically worse than the life on the ground of an equivalent of an economically equivalent [00:06:00] developing country.

So I'll give an example here. One thing you see in South Africa right now is very frequent and rolling blackouts in a developing country. You are less likely to see this. The reason you are less likely to see this in a developing country is, and you do still see it occasionally, but like the regions are no, like, they make sure their major cities have electricity and then the outskirts, you know, because they're building new electrical stations to, you know, sort of push out their electrical power generating capacity instead of having a total net of electrical power generating capacity that is in the process of collapsing due to lack of maintenance due to political infighting, et cetera, that is very different.

And what it means when you have things like electricity regularly going out in a district is it means that many of the things that you take for granted, like restaurants or grocery stores are going to look dramatically differently. Restaurants really rely on. Refrigeration systems. Most stores really rely on refrigeration systems.

These types of [00:07:00] industries become very, very difficult to operate without private generators, which can be very expensive. So that's 1 thing that just like an example of the type of thing that you may not have that you would think, oh, I would have this in a developing country where they develop different solutions for that sort of stuff.

Like icebox type of stuff and cuisines that are built around Yeah. You know, local produce, whereas in a developing a developed country collapsing, you're not going to have that. So things like restaurants disappear. Things like food distribution begin to disappear. Another thing that is really interesting that you see in South Africa right now that I think is going to be very common around the world.

Is sort of, fortresses.

Simone Collins: Yes. Like in South Africa there are many, what are called gated communities, which essentially are fortresses, but then each house itself is also fortified in a pretty significant manner.

So you've basically got fortresses within fortresses. And then in between, of course, you have sort of, more dangerous dead zones, but then you're sort of really looking at something that looks actually quite futile. This is, [00:08:00] this is what, when you look at an old, like, you know, medieval or even earlier.

Sort of fortified area. It looks like you have sort of an outer wall and sort of a slightly protected area and then an even more fortified and protected area within. Right?

Malcolm Collins: And this is because I think what a lot of people think of a world with falling apart. Police forces are police forces that are bought by organized crime.

What they imagine is a world was just more like. regular crime, like the type of crime we see today, and that is not what you see. What you see is a large, systemic, organized crime, an aggressive, organized crime that will sometimes collude with corporations, that will sometimes collude with wealthy individuals, that will sometimes collude with the state.

 And not so much. I mean, you will still see random crime and much more random crime, but there is a new type of crime and it's the type of crime we've had in the U. S. before, like when we were developing, you know, mobs of New York is the movie about back in the days when we had more organized crime or, you know, boss tweet or, you know, any of the, I mean, [00:09:00] you

Simone Collins: mean gangs of New York.

Oh, yes.

Malcolm Collins: Gangs of New York. I'm thinking boss food and stuff like that. Yeah. And, you know, we had the mob. We had the, the mafia. We had the, you know, we've had our, our share of organized crime in the U. S. We just don't really live with that right now. We have some organized crime institutions, but they are, mostly relegated to a really high level of prominence within lower income communities. Whereas when a state is collapsing, they are part of everyone's everyday life to an extent, and being able to defend against them or ally with them. And this is where feudalism comes into play, is you are choosing your allies within the state because who you are allied with within the state matters a lot.

Exactly. But we haven't really gotten to why we call this techno feudalism. And this is something we're going to elaborate more on in the next episode because there's a lot to talk about in regards to this. [00:10:00] But when we look at fertility rates, the two dominant strategies right now, when I say dominant, I mean, the strategies that have been very, very successful at maintaining high fertility rates are to either culturally.

impose traditions, which lower the income of members who practice that culture or traditions, which increases the fertility of that group. An example here might be Jehovah's Witnesses banning their kids from going to college. I mean, there's also like practical reasons to do that because they get brainwashed and stuff like that.

Like I get that, right? Like, but I'm saying it also helps with their fertility rates because it lowers their income. Another thing is to Prohibit the engagement with technology. Now, both of these practices limit the technological reach of a cultural group, like the I'll say the, sorry, they limit the economic potential of a

Simone Collins: cultural group.

Well, and, and sort of widespread influence you can have, because it is those who develop tech that is unwildly adopted that are going to. have a lot of [00:11:00] influence across groups

Malcolm Collins: in the future. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess I should elaborate this word because that's going to then define economic, but I really mean economic and cultural potential a group can have.

You are severely economically and culturally limited as you make these restrictions. And the thing about these constrict restrictions that's important to note is, is some, you know, religious organizations are like, Oh, we'll just minorly restrict this stuff, right? Like some cultural groups, we'll just minorly restricted, or we'll just make some minor things which lower the economic potential of our members.

The problem is, is that if there are different Fractions of your organization, which make more extreme limitations of their members, they will outcompete yours.

Simone Collins: Yeah. We've heard this, for example, with with Mennonites that the groups that are more permissive around technology also tend to see more social ills that.

Undermine the integrity of that particular religious, social, so the

Malcolm Collins: moment you lean into this at all intergenerationally, what will happen to your group as [00:12:00] a cultural strategy is you will essentially be wiped out by the most extreme. And I don't mean, like, it's like a derogatory term. I mean, like, it says.

People who dis, disengage with technology. I mean, that is

Simone Collins: like the most air gapped

Malcolm Collins: subcultures. Yeah. The most air gap subcultures. And it is because on a pretty linear, or I'd almost say logarithmic level from what I've seen in the data, the more. Iterations of your tradition disengage with technology, the higher their fertility rate will be.

So as soon as you lean into this as a strategy, the iterations of your culture that go all the way with it are the ones that will be represented in the future. Yeah, and so then there's other groups that don't lean into this strategy at all, like our group, you know, we might even lean in the other direction with this.

And these are the groups that are going to really determine where our species is going.

And this is where techno feudalism comes from, because these groups will be far and in between on the world stage. So we talk about the concept of like a [00:13:00] network state, right? Like the, I don't know if you guys are familiar with the concept of it. Do you want to go into it, Simone?

Simone Collins: Sure. A network state is basically a fully digital community that may use similar currency, have similar social mores, or similar regulation, but there is no particular geographic concentration of where they're going to be.

There may be like geographic correlation.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, Simone, you had talked to me in one of your books about like time zone based.

Simone Collins: Yeah, Cory Doctorow wrote a book called Eastern Standard Tribe a while ago that I think somewhat predicted the way that. communities are going to sort out. And it sort of, it talked about a near future in which social groups correlated more by the type of time zone that you kept, because that's when people were online at the same time you were, and that's when you were all hanging out.

And that's obviously where the title comes from. So network states remind me a lot of that kind of community rather than what we're really describing, which has a strong geographical basis.

Malcolm Collins: So what we would call what we're describing is a network empire. We actually went over a [00:14:00] few names here and we're like, well, it's not really top down.

And I'm like, so it's more like the Holy Roman empire, but unlike the Holy Roman empire for people familiar with your history, the Holy Roman empire was a German empire made up of a bunch of like feudal players that were often largely under the rule of a single individual, but on the outskirts they weren't.

So like 80 percent would basically be under a hierarchical rule and 20 percent wouldn't be. What we suspect the network empire to look like is it's going to be about 10 to 15%, maybe even as high as 25 percent under a single rule, but most of it will be independently ruled, so it'll be much more like a fractured sort of Holy Roman Empire.

You can think of it. And what makes it a network empire instead of a network state. And I think the core, the, the core thing that Balaji when he came up with this concept and missed is the insecurity of a future world when we're dealing with wide scale economic collapse. By the way, if you're wondering why we're so certain there's going to be wide scale economic collapse.

You can look at any of the videos [00:15:00] where we talk about what falling population means for the world economy. If we enter a stage in which the world's economy is shrinking on average we are entering a stage in which most Western economies begin to collapse. Alternatively, if we enter a stage in which the world's economy is continuing to grow, but it's continuing to grow almost solely because of AI, then we enter a stage in which the The bourgeoisie officially no longer need the proletariat.

That chain has finally been cut in everyone under maybe like a standard deviation or two standard deviations from the mean in terms of IQ or who doesn't have connections is going to be frozen out of the economic system because people just don't need them. And they're like, no, they'll be nice. When have they ever been nice?

Like, historically, when have ever the powerful been nice to people unless it was in their best interest? And then you'll be like, Oh, well, the people will rebel. And it's like, yes, there are, for example, wealthy people in South Africa. They just buy better security. [00:16:00] Okay. They just build better fortresses for themselves.

That is the world that we are heading into where it is cheaper. For the wealthy class in our society to isolate themselves from everyone else than it is for them to ensure widespread prosperity. So either AI is great. It ends up solving the economic problem. The rich end up getting even richer, but we still end up with this wide scale systems collapse or.

We end up in a situation, it may not happen in a few countries, like there may be a few countries like Sweden or Norway or something that through their like national sovereign fund, find a way out of this, right? Fine. It's going to happen in a lot of places. Although it will probably happen to them due to, well, we, we don't need to get into that.

But anyway, or we're just dealing with a global economic collapse, because it turns out that AI doesn't replace the fact that populations are collapsing, and we end up with a shrinking world economy, and due to all the debt and leverage that we've taken out at every layer of the economy, things begin to fall apart.

Again, we've talked [00:17:00] about this in other places. So anyway. This is just likely going to be what happens is wide scale economic collapse. And this is what it looks like now. The reason why it matters so much that the winning strategies are these technophobic strategies and the reason why apologies predictions aren't going to turn out the way he thought they would is in a world in which security is a thing of scarcity.

It makes sense for economically productive groups to cloister together. lIke, like just a lot of sense. Like if you're an economically productive group, you hang out with other economically productive people, both for your kids and family safety and for cultural reasons and for the purposes of more economic production, because you're going to be more economically productive as a, as a group.

And so this will lead to small, what we call hate, uh, essentially, communities where high technology is produced, but that are otherwise defended that likely have their own power generation and everything like that networked [00:18:00] with other havens that exist around the world. And that is what we mean by the network empire.

Each of these havens represents a city state in sort of this network lattice of empire. That is where we think things are going. We do not think it is a great thing that things are headed in that direction. We think it will be a, a during the period this is happening a darker world than the world we live in today.

But I do think that from this networked connection of havens, we can rebuild a better civilization in one that is not likely to collapse in this cycle of civilizational rise and civilizational collapse. We just need to go into building the next one very intentionally. Mm-Hmm. using the lessons we have learned from this one, which is, well, it's

Simone Collins: very much carrying the.

Torch of free markets through what could otherwise be described as a dark age, because you have these different techno feuds, fiefdoms, essentially carrying forward different economic specializations, but in a way that's far more [00:19:00] sophisticated. Thanks to the existing technology into which we're entering this age.

So we're able to sort of carry the torch of what we have and then everyone is still able to accelerate. I think a lot of a lot of development, maybe even in ways that we haven't been able to in the past, because in a post collapse world like this, you know, regulatory oversight is going to. Ease up a little bit.

There just won't be governmental resources sufficient to police people which could actually lead to a sort of weird dark age plus renaissance at the same time. So it's a dark age everywhere you look. But when you go behind some highly fortified walls, you see, you know, some amazing innovation taking place.

And that's why. We're both doomy, but also optimistic. You can be both

Malcolm Collins: at the same time. Yeah, it's a weird mix of doominess and optimism. I would also say that this prediction better explains why we are so interested in far North charter city settlements. So people have heard our ideas around charter cities before. And one of the core is that it is in [00:20:00] an inhospitable, easy to defend region, not adjacent to other population settlements.

Yeah. You don't want

Simone Collins: to be where everyone like. Raids to get supplies or agricultural land or something like that, you know,

Malcolm Collins: right? Yeah. If you build like a high technology settlement in, in the center of an area that has a large population, that means large, well armed gangs or governments that want. What you have, which is technology or wealth.

Alternatively, if you have one that is in the far North somewhere that a group would have to travel a very hard time to both get to and get out of, especially one that was known for extreme austerity outside of their technology. There would be no reason to ever rate it. I mean, what are they going to get our axiodle tanks as we were joking about with receive.

They're unusable by most other cultural groups. So that's another reason why it makes sense to, and I, and some people will go the other route. Some wealthy people will create sort of opulent [00:21:00] gated areas where they try to let in only the, the best and the brightest by their definition. And these communities will, I think, flourish for a short time until people realize how.

Unsafe they are in terms of a long term place to base yourself if you want anything other than short term hedonism and vanity because they are incredibly difficult to fit. And this is especially true of islands islands, you know, growing up. Before they, they lost everything, my family had a, an island in the Bahamas that I would go to all the time and, you know, and I go back to it's all shot up by pirates and stuff like that.

And even when we were there, you know, we had to have guns and everything for piracy and stuff. It was creepy. It was really creepy to see. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, people do not realize islands are about the least defendable thing you could possibly have. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, it's, and it's not just that it's, it's, it's the, it's the extreme weather, you know, it's, it's a climate change and we've, we've, we've spoken with people who are like, yeah, I'm going to build my, you know, city state on an island.

And we're like, I don't know, like, [00:22:00] what are you going to do about hurricanes? And like, oh, we're just going to like raise everything on platforms. And it's like, well, okay. What about the electricity?

Malcolm Collins: That does not work. You, you are, these are people who have, who are, are thinking very short term. They

Simone Collins: haven't spent a lot of time.

They haven't like spent a full year or a couple of years in the Caribbean, I'm guessing.

Malcolm Collins: Oh my God. And I can tell you another thing about islands. They are not a good place to do anything technological because everything corrodes. You can't even have like a desktop PC for more than a couple of

Simone Collins: years.

Seriously. Like all the electronics, well, and not to mention like all your other supplies. If we're talking about also a post collapse world in which. Like, you know, getting more towels is a little tough, right? Like, you know, even we your clothes, your towel, everything. Yeah. When we lived in Peru, like right, right on the coast, which is kind of like any island environment would be constantly everything was covered in mold.

Everything was degrading. All of our electronics were breaking down. So like, imagine this, like it's, it's a post collapse world. You can't easily get electronics supplies, like clothing, [00:23:00] fabrics, et cetera. And then it's just everything, like you're making the. the lifespan of all of your supplies artificially, you know, unnecessarily short.

It is bonkers.

Malcolm Collins: But alternatively, if you are in the, the, the far North, everything is artificially lengthened in its, in its lifetime. Which is it. And you can do sorts of processing that may not be possible in other areas due to the cooling resources. Like, it's just so obviously the right choice if you are optimizing for literally anything other than immediate personal comfort.

And what, honestly, what a lot of network sites right now are optimizing for without really admitting they're optimizing for Is areas with a high level of government instability because that's where they're able to make the deals typically far North governments or far South governments are the most stable governments and the governments in warmer regions.

There'd be less stable governments. And again,

Simone Collins: why why unstable governments? You know? Yeah, they're going to say, yeah, no, but. They're totally not going to say yes later and be taken over by some other group. Anyway,

Malcolm Collins: you're actually better off setting up [00:24:00] an illegal settlement in the area of a stable government where you can predict their actions than setting up a legal settlement in an unstable government area.

But anyway, I'm very excited to go further into this vision for the future. And I think the, the next of these episodes, it'll be a bit of a two parter, but also a bit separated. And Simone, I love talking with you about this. You have any final thoughts? I love your

Simone Collins: beautiful face.

Malcolm Collins: That's all, that's the sweet thing to say.

I love your beautiful face too. . We were on, we were on just pearly things recently and we were being sweet on each other and

Simone Collins: And I think we made everyone deeply uncomfortable because this is not, you know, . Yeah. The

Malcolm Collins: guy was like, should I not be in between you? Because they sat this guy in between us.

They're like, we're choosing where everyone sits. So lo if you're wondering why we sat apart on just poorly things, that was because we were directed to by the producer. Yeah. We wanted to sit together, not because we wanted to.

Simone Collins: Yeah. .

Malcolm Collins: Love you Gorgeous. I love you too.

We discuss strategies for starting your own company, from high-risk VC-backed startups to acquiring existing small businesses. We cover different funding options like venture capital, SBA loans, and getting investments from people who believe in you. Advice is tailored based on intelligence level. We also warn about the risks of demanding a higher salary without increasing your value to the company.

[00:00:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I'm thinking more about like, you know, bridge loans or whatever, like loans for growth once you do acquire. I don't

Malcolm Collins: have access to that. Yeah. I get that. Advice to normal people.

Simone Collins: Okay. Anyway. Yes. As being loans are, are great and they do provide a lot of opportunity.

Malcolm Collins: However. Let's. Let's go into what I would suggest is the number one way that, that I would look at creating a company.

If I was an average milling to above middling intelligence person living in the U S

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: So Malcolm, there's a person in our family who would really, really love, loves money. And definitely encourages us to make money. And whenever she's been unhappy with how much money we're making, her advice is always just tell them to pay you more.

Malcolm Collins: Which is my mom who's not with us anymore, but she would always do this.

Just be like, I'd be like, Oh, I'm making this much. And she goes, that's not enough for you. You just need to tell them to pay you more. And I was like, I'll get fired if I do that. You [00:01:00] know that, right? Yeah. She goes, you just need to be firm. And I think so many older generations are this way. This isn't like, just go and, and bang on doors at offices until you get hired.

 But one of the things, you know, if you look at online influencers and stuff like that, sort of the place they always end up, whether you're talking about girl defined or Andrew Tate or even Trump is trying to teach people how to make money. And they'll create these little universities for me because it's true.

You know, if you're building your own little community, you know, one of the things that's easiest to promise them is financial independence and wealth. So you promise them that you get them to waste money on that. And, and it ends up, you know, some, I think some of it is pretty good. So you look at like hustle university and stuff like that, like what Andrew Tate is doing and some of the other ones it's reasonable.

He has to figure out how to tell idiots how, like, because, and I'm not saying that he disproportionately attracts idiots. I'm saying if your reach is wide enough, no matter who you are, a huge [00:02:00] chunk of that is going, the majority of that is going to be idiots. It has the same, because you know how dumb the average person is?

Well, half of them are dumber than that. Exactly. You've got to be selling them all sorts of stuff like... Dropshipping and stuff like that. Like ideas that anyone can focus on. But the

Simone Collins: great thing about what he's doing that I really respect is most people who I see online who are selling these kinds of programs, they're like sort of pyramid schemes and they're based around coaching.

Like I'm a coach, you be a coach, you make money like me, blah, blah, blah.

Malcolm Collins: And it doesn't really work.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, she's one of like a million. What I like about what Andrew Tate is doing is he's giving people very concrete, very practical, often like very unromantic, you know, they're, they're not sexy.

They're not about becoming a famous, beautiful coach that everyone wants to follow. You know, it's, it's about copywriting. It's about dropshipping. Like you said, it's about opening an online shop. It's about very like straightforward stuff that most people could do. And for which. With the exception of copywriting there is demand and, you know, I don't think AI was ballooning when he first [00:03:00] started this copywriting course.

So I do admire. what Andrew Tate is doing with that. But you're absolutely right. That, that is what you typically see when some influencer tries to start teaching their audience to make money.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, I want to start by being clear that I actually think that he is probably the most honest in terms of what he's promising people of all of the people I have seen do this.

Yeah. So good on him. But we're going to do something a little different because you know, I have my MBA from Stanford, right? Like I am in terms of making money probably one of the most educated types of people there, there are, you know, Simone got her degree from Cambridge and technology policy and we have done something that gave us a huge insight that normal people don't have, which is called a search fund.

So not only did we learn how to raise money from investors, like we've done venture capital, both of us have worked in venture capital, so we know that whole industry but we went out there and we had to find a company to buy. So we were emailing, you know, thousands of company CEOs every week interviewing.

I think [00:04:00] you got an average of 80 interviews a week, finding out how, and you did this for about two years, finding out how just hundreds if not thousands of companies worked inside and out, how they were built, everything like that, which gave you an, and these are normal companies. These are not like VC companies.

So the first thing I would say to people interested. is if you are uniquely intellectually gifted. So I'm going to like break this into categories. And if you're okay with high risk, high reward opportunities, go to Silicon Valley, go live in a hacker house meet the VCs, start, you know, get working on startups, uh, go that route.

You can even go the VC route. You just have to be very ambitious, very hardworking. And, and know that you are very intelligent and I mean, actually well

Simone Collins: networked. You have to be well networked to get the deal flow. You need to actually find. No, you don't need to be

Malcolm Collins: well networked. You become well networked.

You have to be able to become well networked. Oh, sure.

Simone Collins: Yeah. You have to have the potential for sure. Yeah. You don't have

Malcolm Collins: to start out that way. The network you go into Silicon Valley with is pretty irrelevant.

Yeah,

Simone Collins: that's totally true. As long as you're [00:05:00] able to build it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, you have to live in Silicon Valley, which is a shithole right now, but and there's a few other places you can do this out of.

You can do this out of Singapore. You can do this out of London, maybe. But that's really it. Maybe, maybe, there's some other places. No, I've looked at the ecosystems for doing VC in other countries. And it's just really bad. They almost never end up with economic successes. We can go deep into why this is.

Actually you are better off at having a big success in a country that is smaller than a country with a medium sized economy. So like if you're in Korea or Japan or Germany, you're much less likely to have a huge economic success starting like a startup style company than you would in a country like, norway or Finland or Sweden or Estonia. So keep that in mind or Singapore for that matter.

Simone Collins: And the reason why just to give a little bit of color there for Malcolm's hypothesis is that nations that are so small basically have to start out being global, which basically means that you'll discover if you can have global [00:06:00] Range and global market potential very quickly.

Whereas when you're in a medium market where you could sell a lot domestically like Germany, like, like South Korea, you could basically get stuck in the trap of selling and specializing for your local market, which ultimately has a very limited ceiling. And so people kind of get stuck in that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and, and, and then, you know, companies that do well like Kakao and South Korea, they begin to grow inwards on themselves with stuff like, you know, Kakao Uber basically, Kakao Talk, Kakao, you know, Kakao App Store.

Okay, so anyway, um, I'm going to take a quick moment here to describe the different types of capital because this is important to know about if you're thinking about starting a company. So we just talked about one core category, which is if you just have enormous faith in yourself and you're young and you have, educated yourself to some extent.

And I mean, you need to be like actually highly educated. I have talked to our fan base. I know a lot of them are of this smart category but the people in this ecosystem will ferret you out very quickly if you aren't highly educated. And I don't mean [00:07:00] in a university context, I just mean that you've taught yourself and hopefully when we build our school system and we release it like Q1 this next year or Q2 this next year, it would get you there if you completed it.

Simone Collins: But anyway. Well, and I do really want to emphasize that like Especially in Silicon Valley. Thank goodness. This is not one of those worlds where you really do need credentials and, and many VCs really, really just care about merit. So this is one of those few places where educated actually means what Malcolm is saying, like literally knowing your s**t, not having a piece of paper that doesn't matter.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and having social competence. We've seen a few people pitch to VCs and they like lack basic social competence and they come off as crazy. No, don't come off as crazy to VCs. That will not help you. I, I, If you have a problem with coming off as crazy to people, this is not the route for you. We will go over routes that could work for you.

This is not one of them. Coming off as crazy to people means that you are low Like emotional IQ, you just can't read people very well and that's going to cause problems. If you're autistic, and that's why you're, that's totally different. VCs love that. Yeah. But if you are on the schizoid side, which.[00:08:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Which, you know, because I mean, like a little bit on the schizoid side and you're really good at modeling people, but we know a lot of people who are both extremely smart, but too far. And then they don't know boundaries. You pass some kind of weird threshold where suddenly you stop being able to model

Malcolm Collins: people.

Great. Okay. So yes. So with venture capital on average, even if you're looking at the best firms, they make their money on one of every 13 deals, which means that they cannot invest in companies that will do middlingly well. Okay. Even if it's going to be like a 500 million company, that is still a failure in many VC eyes.

Right? So if you're coming to VCs, we never come to VCs was like a chain of, uh, companies that do like laundry. Right? That own physical locations, for example. Because a lot of the investment there is going to be in real estate and stuff like that.

Simone Collins: When the margins just are never going to be that insanely

Malcolm Collins: thick, right?

Well, it requires a lot of you know, what it's called CapEx, you know, ownership of property. So you would never with VCs do a construction [00:09:00] company. You would never with VCs do a real estate company. Basically they need to invest in something that is very low CapEx, which basically only software is, and a few other like weird business models where like the CapEx is owned by like a different model.

Yeah. And

Simone Collins: before, you know, our commenters were like, Oh, but we work, I mean, look at how that's played out for them. So,

Malcolm Collins: so that was a huge mistake because they ignored the core way to do VC. Right. All right. So, next the next source of capital is going to be the source of capital that I would recommend for most people.

Who wants to start something with a high probability of working a high probability of providing them independence and lower costs to get into, which is what I would call search Fundy type companies, right? And these are companies that you can get into with debt. So debt can be bank debt, right?

Which is actually pretty cheap for an individual to obtain. And by that, well,

Simone Collins: especially if, if you, if you get it through. So first a little bit of, of, of color search funds also known as entrepreneurship through [00:10:00] acquisition involves acquiring an existing company that is already performing well, typically from someone who's looking to retire and sell that company because they don't have a son or daughter to pass it onto for whatever reason.

So these are often companies that. Really small mom and pop businesses. Very practical. This is where you are going to see dry cleaning businesses and dental offices and mosquito remediation companies and all things like that. And why the debt can be uniquely low is because this is not just bank loans that you're getting.

You could be getting SBA loans and most people who do, yeah, so small business association in the United States. So this doesn't necessarily apply to every nation. The other nations may have similar loan programs to this. Are available to small business owners to do all sorts of things, but in indeed to also sort of put leverage on businesses that they acquire.

So what many individual searchers do to become entrepreneurs through acquisition by acquiring one of these small businesses is they use some of their money to acquire the business in the form of equity, SBA loan. To cover the rest of the acquisition cost. [00:11:00] And they may do some, what's called seller financing with the person basically saying, okay, well, I will pay you this much upfront with a combination of my money and debt, but then I will also pay you this other amount from the profit that I get from the business after I acquire

Malcolm Collins: it.

So let's talk about the two ways that you can go about doing this, right? Because you're talking about one way, what I actually probably wouldn't recommend to most people, because it's, it's a little bit more sophisticated to acquire an existing company. But if you want to, you know, and you're coming in with some, you know, maybe some money you inherited or something, let's say you've inherited like 200 K or 250 K.

And then on top of that, you're putting that down. You can talk to a bank, you know, if you don't have a criminal history or something, get some debt. And that can get you into a company for like 500k, right? If you buy a company at around that range, This can be a company that is earning let's say, you know, when you're buying these really small companies, you can buy them at like 1x EBITDA or like 2x EBITDA or like EBITDA is

Simone Collins: roughly the profit of the business.

Malcolm Collins: Basically, it means that if you own this company, you would be [00:12:00] bringing in about 250k a year yourself. Because other people don't want companies that small, like private equity funds don't want them, so they sell for really low multiples. And then you can do something called a roll up. You know, you take that money, you set it aside for a couple of years and you buy other companies in the same space.

And banks are going to be even more trusting of you then because they're like, Oh, you've run a company like this before. But let's talk about why SBA loans are so useful if you do not come from an economically advantaged position, defaulting on a bank loan. A lot of people are like, Oh, this is terrible.

Like what if I buy a company and it fails? Right? If you get an SBA loan and you buy a company and it fails, then you go into bankruptcy. That will hurt your ability to get credit for about like five or six years, but it eventually clears out of your, your record, especially if it wasn't your fault. And then you can do it again, basically.

Not necessarily with an SBA loan, with another type of loan or something like that, but as long as there wasn't criminal or anything like that, and what this means is that if you, Don't have a lot of money to you. You have access to a way to get money, or if you're willing to put down all of the money you have [00:13:00] on a deal, and then you can take an SBA loan on top of that to get capital, that's actually not available to people who have assets.

They have to worry about.

Simone Collins: Warn people that SBA loans are personally guaranteed. So one thing that we would say about this form of what a personal

Malcolm Collins: guarantee is

Simone Collins: a personal guarantee means that you are on the line when it comes to like basically collateral. Like, you know,

Malcolm Collins: your company can't go bankrupt.

You personally personally

Simone Collins: get out of it. This is on you. It's not on like the company now with normal like bank debt, like our, our, our travel business that we acquired through the entrepreneurship through acquisition model has debt. Okay. But we are not on the hook. Basically, like if, if somehow our, our company could no longer pay this debt then maybe our company

Malcolm Collins: would go bankrupt.

To get that, you basically need an MBA from Stanford or Harvard.

Simone Collins: Or you need to have basically a long history of audited financials for your company that sort of show that it has, you know, or, or you need to [00:14:00] have a company that has like a lot of real estate assets. So basically if, if a business. No,

Malcolm Collins: Simone, really, it is very hard to get that.

I think it is unrealistic in what you're telling people. And it's not a path I would go down.

Simone Collins: No. If you own real estate, that a bank feels sufficiently confident would cover their, their loan. Your

Malcolm Collins: real estate, not their real estate. They could sell their real estate separately. So that's not going to help you in the, the transaction.

Simone Collins: All I'm saying is when we applied for debt, Malcolm, as a company. No, that is

Malcolm Collins: true. But think logically about what you're saying. Okay. If I'm acquiring, for example, let's say a company that does like salting roads or something like that, and they have a bunch of real estate included in the price of the company is going to be all the real estate.

So I can take out debt. You know, against that asset, the real estate that's included with the company, but that debt won't exceed the real estate that's included with the company and will be less than it'll be like 80 percent of it. So then where am I getting the rest of the money to buy that company? I either need to be [00:15:00] independently wealthy, or I would need to get a personally backed loan on top of the loan that is covered by the real estate the company already has.

Point of clarification here. This isn't obvious to listeners. But a company's value is going to be its real estate and hard assets value. Plus the value of a multiple on its EBITDA. I E how much cash it's pulling in every year. So the value of the company is always going to be higher than the value of the real estate.

I mean, unless you're in some weird situation, uh, it's just worth noting in terms of how you value companies. If this video does well, we could go into this stuff in a lot more detail, like how to evaluate companies and. Where to find companies to buy

et cetera

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I'm thinking more about like, you know, bridge loans or whatever, like loans for growth once you do acquire. I don't

Malcolm Collins: have access to that. Yeah. I get that. Advice to normal people.

Simone Collins: Okay. Anyway. Yes. As being loans are, are great and they do provide a lot of opportunity.

Malcolm Collins: However. Let's. Let's go into what I would suggest is the [00:16:00] number one way that, that I would look at creating a company.

If I was an average milling to above middling intelligence person living in the U S right. Or really anywhere is I would first look at search fundy type companies. So look at sites like deal stream and stuff like that. See the time of companies that are selling talk with people who run these small companies.

Understand how they work, get a feel of the landscape that's out there right now. Then start a company that is like one of these companies that you have some understanding of. So this could be like road salt can be, maybe you have a dental degree yourself and you start your own digital practice

Simone Collins: or dental offices Food packaging some like light production, all sorts of weird things. or like also vending

Malcolm Collins: machines.

I would not suggest vending machines are almost an MLM. Oh, sorry. I should also mention, don't do an MLM. It's stupid. You will, you will lose. Any [00:17:00] company, I'll, I'll word this differently. Any company where somebody is getting a financial kickback for getting you involved with the company, don't do that company.

That's a bad idea.

Okay, up here. I would make one thing direct sales companies are okay. If you are below average intelligence, it is probably the best earning potential you're going to have. If you are high aggression, high sociability, below average intelligence or average to slightly above average intelligence, direct selling is a great opportunity for you.

And you really shouldn't be undersold. But direct selling is not MLM. Okay. That is very different. Okay. In direct selling. The person who recruits you is not getting a portion of your profits.

Simone Collins: Okay. So that's key. I guess that's, that's the key thing to look for is, is, is there some kind of like upstream pyramid going

Malcolm Collins: on?

So what I'm saying is the number one way that I would suggest making money is go out there. Understand the type of companies that are like these boring, simplistic companies. You really probably want to focus on one that's very low cap X. That means, you know, like you wouldn't want to get into construction because that requires a lot of construction equipment.

 [00:18:00] It, one that we're actually experimenting with right now is landscaping. We're helping a friend of ours get into the industry. It's a low capex industry and we're, you know, giving them the money up front to do that. And, and with these sorts of Industries, you, you might be surprised the type of people who will invest in you to do this because it can be a very easy investment for, for fairly low amounts of money, you know, if you're looking for, let's say under 30 K for something like this and you're going to your friends like, okay, I need a certain type of truck.

I need a snowplow. I need an et cetera. One, you can give them ownership of those assets and to just say, okay, I'll pay you like. 10 percent for the rest of this business's life cycle. And if they know that you're a hard worker, who's like not flaky and has some experience in the industry, it's actually a fairly easy financial investment for them.

As this is, even if you can't get like an SBA loan because you have a criminal history or something, as long as you have people who believe in you often within your cultural group, you know, this is a strategy you can use. And if you're like, I have nobody who believes in me, then like, maybe you should think about like why that is.

beCause [00:19:00] before you do anything like this. Right. Any of these ideas that we're talking about, you do need to work the grind. You do need to go to an office or work for a landscaping company or work for a something like that to begin to understand how the world actually works and build up enough cash deposits so that you can try for the type of things that will make you a lot of money.

But I would focus on things that the environment around you actually need. Now, a final thing, if you're going to talk about hard mode, but they can make a lot of money is look at local RFPs.

Simone Collins: These are, those are requests for proposal. These are basically most local governments, at least in the United States are obligated to go through a formal procurement process whereby they publicly post an advertisement essentially for a service or products that they need.

This could be anything from lead remediation education for a certain neighborhood to landscaping services to computer supplies for

Malcolm Collins: a school. Yeah. So, you, you can see that understand in work your way towards these positions. So if you're starting one of these companies, you know, if it [00:20:00] can be a wounded veteran owned or a disadvantaged minority woman owned, you know, you can get advantages.

So here are places to go. If you have a I don't want to say unfair. I mean, obviously, whatever, however you want to see it, special treatment, special treatment. Yeah. That can be a strategy to go down, but it's, it's significantly more like advanced. I might even do like a, like look into specifically how you do this and how you get to that stage with one of these companies because you're going to want to be able to get customers outside of the RFPs before you get the RFPs.

Which can take a while to win. Sort of the

Simone Collins: secret to winning RFPs is before they ever even get posted. You are speaking with that government office, with that university, with that, whatever it may be.

Malcolm Collins: No, this is what people say. I think that's a lie.

Simone Collins: Business just won an RFP. You know why? Because we basically made sure that we were going to win it ahead of time.

No, I'm not kidding you. So like during the final bidding [00:21:00] process, came back to us and they're like, all you have to do is lower your price to this and you're going to win it. And then we did, and we just won it. So sorry. Are you

Malcolm Collins: allowed to say that? Do I need to cut part of this?

Simone Collins: I think it's okay.

I'm not naming the climate. Like, sorry, I'm not naming the client. Here's

Malcolm Collins: what I would say next. Because this is actually a final thing that's important to note. As a lot of people will be like, well, I have this skill, right? What I'm going to do is I'm going to start a business around this skill.

Like I'm good at consulting in this area, or I'm good at. Oh my god, like, don't do something like making jewelry or fashion, like, that will, I'm making jewelry now.

 She's making jewelry now She's got her own website She crafts each piece by hand The dining room table is mine and

making jewelry. She got her life.

Simone Collins: Well, unless you have, like, 5 million followers, in which case, totally, start your tequila brand, start your jewelry. In which case, you're

Malcolm Collins: just milking followers.

But let's, let's, sorry, I gotta, I gotta be clear [00:22:00] here. The reason not to do this is because then your business isn't sellable. And it's something to keep in mind is that your, is your business sellable. So if your business is like non differentiated, like if you have a landscaping company and you have a bunch of people working for you, you can sell that, right?

Like, and you can sell that after only like building it out for like three years and then have like 10 million to your name or something, right. Pretty easily. But you know, if you've grown it to any extent and we can talk about how to do that, but. If you're doing something where you are the key player, right, it's never going to be sellable.

Like if I'm doing a consulting business or a, a, a law business where I am the key player, well, no one's going to want to buy you for that. But like a consulting business over some area that I have some specialty, I'm never going to be able to sell that because I am the key person in that

Simone Collins: business. It is referred to as key man risk.

And like sometimes even like, even if you have really important salespeople, it will scare. It will scare people who are looking to buy. Cause they're like, man, so much of this business depends on this one person. That's a little bit too risky. Can I close with just returning to your [00:23:00] mother's statement of just ask for more money?

Malcolm Collins: Hold on before we close. There's one more thing I need to say about key man risk. If you are going into one of these businesses, like if you have some skill set and you're like, I think I could do this on my own, which you're really going to need to learn. It's how to do math, cold outreach. And that is for a separate video or for something to you explore on your own.

But if you're like, I have this skillset and I don't understand how my company gets all these clients can learn how to build a sales pipeline. That could be another video for us and how to do math, cold outreach.

Simone Collins: Well, just like with finding a partner, right? You, you, you're not going to just. You know, approach five people and find your wife.

So as I was saying we've been advised to just ask for more money. Now an employee can do this 100 percent and also like key employees can do this and, and pretty consistently get higher wages. There's a risk to this that I think a lot of people don't consider. And so I just want to end with this one warning in terms of the just ask for more.

If someone does end up paying you more, if your boss pays you more the more salary you end up making, the more it means that you're going to be the first person on the chopping [00:24:00] block when, you know, your, your business goes through some kind of hard point because they're going to look at, okay. Who right now is costing me the very most, you know, what, what is the most expensive thing I can cut?

And so if you are not making that is like literally provably bringing in more money than you are costing, the more money that you demand, the more you put yourself at risk for being fired. So I just wanted to end with that because it's so You

Malcolm Collins: can get that raise in the short term, but you are now on the list to be fired. Yeah. Yeah. And a lot of employees, they don't realize when they're asking us, they've come to us and I think they walk away feeling great because they got the raise and they don't understand that now they're on the fired

Simone Collins: list.

Well, and the most important thing too is you know, people, when they ask for raises, it's often like, Oh, you know, my family, this, or I just had this surgery that, or, you know, whatever, like, Oh, it's just been really hard for me or my rent's really high. The business does not care about your personal life.

The business cares about how essential you [00:25:00] are for the business, making money. So you really, when you want to ask for a raise, you need to basically show, demonstrate that you are making more money than you're asking for. And that if they want to keep getting that money from you, that they need to pay you more, but that they're going to make more money from you being there than from you not being there.

And none of

Malcolm Collins: this is CEO cruelty or anything like that. Your value to the business is literally what you cost the business. Less than what you make the business, the higher that cushion is, the more job security you have less than that. The more you were milking for the company, but the less job security you have because you are literally worse, less to the company.

Simone Collins: So just something to consider because it really astounds us as CEOs, like how little people get that. Like, we're just like, I, you know, I love you and I love your family and I love whatever you like.

Malcolm Collins: We never ask our board for raises. We are, we are so underpaid at this point that I think we're basically unfireable because they, we could never be replaced, which is what we [00:26:00] wanted.

We wanted job security more than wells. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Love

Simone Collins: you, Simone. Love you too, Malcolm..

We discuss the potential extinction of ethnic groups, human speciation through space colonization, future gender differences, genetic caste systems, and using selection technology to create gifted children. Razib shares his vision for the long-term genetic future of our species.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] It's hard for me to wrap my head around it because I spent the first, like, all my childhood. Assuming, that everyone was just going to sort of become the same like golden ish color as everyone just interbred with everyone else.

And, and what I'm seeing instead is like everyone moving in the direction of glomming off in these more isolated communities becoming more different from each other instead of all kind of the same. It's just so weird. And then of course, speciation is going to happen when

Malcolm Collins: people get off. We ran a big study on this.

And one of the things that's most correlated with fertility rate, at least in the U S is xenophobia. Which means that we actually will likely preserve independent

Simone Collins: ethnic groups. It's just the opposite of what I expected, like, for the majority of my life. It's so weird.

Razib Khan: Yeah, I mean, the issue here is, like, also if you look at a country like Brazil or Cape Verde what happens is actually, like, even in, like, a genetically homogenous admixed population, there's still variation, and so people still look different, and so, if they're sorting based on physical type, There will be like, kind of like, [00:01:00] precipitation back out, if that makes sense.

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Hello. We have a very special guest on Basecamp, Razeeb Khan. He is the CSO of Generate, which is a really, really cool startup, basically enabling people to use a lot of genetic technology and information that they haven't been able to use yet.

Plus he is the proprietor of unsupervised learning, which you can check out on Substack. Talk about deep dives on really cool genetic histories and all sorts of stuff. You had really better check it out. If you don't know about it yet, you're in for a treat. You can also just check out a lot of things that he's working on at razeemkhan.

Malcolm Collins: com. And he's probably one of the most famous in the world communicators on human genetic stuff when it comes, especially on the spicy side.

Razib Khan: Whenever people say that, I'm just like, why aren't there more communicators? I mean, it's like,

Malcolm Collins: Well, I'll tell you why there are more communicators. I'd say there are a number of other communicators, but I think a lot of the other communicators in this space go a little too hard on the race stuff.

Like they seem to have a [00:02:00] vested horse in the game, which pollutes their ability to Give the message. Whereas you come at it much more neutrally. Which I think is why you're such an effective communicator. And to that end, one thing I wanted to ask is where do you think the future of humanity is going genetically speaking?

Like, are we going to see a die off of ethnic groups? Are we going to see new ethnic groups? Are we going to see You know, who does well in this coming world? What's going on?

Razib Khan: Yeah, it's complicated because you know, these sorts of linear projections, not necessarily linear, but just like, I mean, obviously they're exponential too, but you know, like in 1900, if you had asked me this you know, the, the theory was like all the colored races were going to disappear because the fertility of.

of white Europeans was so high and they were conquering all the continents and settling everything. Obviously that's not what ended up happening. So it just goes to show you that these like very, very long term projections. So for example, like people like, oh, there's going to be like 5 billion people in Africa in 2100.

I mean, that's, [00:03:00] I'm exaggerating. I think it's close to like 3 billion or 4 billion. Okay. I just don't think that there will be I think that those are overestimates. Probably and you know, the transition will be faster you know, since like about the 1980s, the UN has actually consistently over predicted population growth because as you guys know, a demographic transition has been happening everywhere and fertility is crashing everywhere.

And so it just depends on where so in any case I think like Peter Zahon says, Oh, the Chinese people are going to disappear. I'm like, look. They got a low fertility, but like there's 1. 4 billion of them. I mean, you know, they're not going to like, they're not going to disappear. Okay. There's like 20 million Jews.

And like, we're not like, Oh, the Jews are going to disappear. You know, the reason the Jews are not going to disappear is ultra Orthodox Jews have high fertility. Right. So, they're still going to be around. If you read Frank Herbert's Dune, they're still around, you know? So you just need some of them that really want to reproduce.

And wait, who are

Malcolm Collins: the Jews in Frank Herbert's

Razib Khan: Dune? They work with the Bene Gesserit. Yeah. Really? That's fascinating! Yeah, they're still around. They're still around. Well, do you know Kweezout's [00:04:00] Hatarak is Hebrew? No! No!

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Alice Wilde! I had no idea.

Simone Collins: Yeah, mind blown. Mind blown. Are

Malcolm Collins: we going the Tleilaxi route with our family?

Razib Khan: You know what? So, I have a, I have a friend do you know what an axolotl tank is?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, of course, it's what became the Tleilaxi females. They basically turned them into birthing tanks. So

Razib Khan: I have, I have a friend who got her eggs harvested, and she has, like, she produced a lot of eggs. And so I was like, you would be a really great axolotl tank.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, how long till we get axolotl tanks? Like, do you see some groups basically getting rid of women when we get

Razib Khan: artificial wombs? Yeah. Yeah. So I do think in terms of what's going to happen, I do think diversification is probably going to be a thing within a hundred years. You will have like sects of humans that are naturals, others that are probably going to do like legit transhumanism.

 I mean, assuming our technological civilization [00:05:00] continues, you know, and then I do think there will be. You know, I mean, look, there's got to be like groups of gay men actually just groups of people in general, like women as well, because they don't want to give birth, you know, they don't want to go through the body, all that information they're going to use our throttle tanks.

The main issue is. I don't think they're going to be necessarily benign, you know, they're not going to be like, you know, dead or like brain dead, you know, plexiglass, but but the point is like the issue, the issue though, is like, all right, actually, you know, this is going to be fixed. They're going to test it on, on like animals, but.

The first ones are going to be bad, right? Yeah. It's just like, you know, C sections cause some issues, et cetera, et cetera. You know,

Malcolm Collins: I'm going to push back here. I heard a theory on this that was actually pretty compelling to me that it may turn out when we first start doing artificial wombs, that the children coming out of them are actually dramatically healthier than children born from natural wombs.

Because they don't have any restrictions on resources. And so even though they're not able to give people everything at just the [00:06:00] right time, keep in mind this is an environment where the mother is basically never sick, because they're not interacting with the world. There's no restriction on the resources they're giving the kids.

So it may be the difference we saw with the Flynn effect, where like all of a sudden, during a person's developmental period, they were given way more resources than they ever would have been historically, and were getting like 14 pound babies.

Razib Khan: And what about babies that pop out and they can like talk

Malcolm Collins: now? We got to, we got to aim for that. Actually, so, so one of the things that I've thought about, and you can tell me this is crazy that I was like, okay, well, one of the things I suspect to happen as smart people become a rarer asset in the future and one that companies really need is that there will be a huge economic incentive for companies to create their own humans.

And you know, one of the things we're really actually trying to do is the Collins Institute is make child rearing at scale of like gifted Children, like, like scalable and inexpensive. So, like, a company could [00:07:00] implement this program without much human intervention, so long as they were producing people and caring for them in the first, like, 3 or 4 years of

Razib Khan: their lives.

Yeah, yeah, but I mean, that just sounds like a small nation, right? Well, I

Simone Collins: mean, sorry, I mean, yeah, I guess, like, I mean, you, you could do it as a company. You could do as an, I'm sure nations will do it as well. I mean,

Malcolm Collins: what's it like,

Razib Khan: it's basically the kibbutz system, right? Yeah. Like they didn't perfect it, they didn't get it to work right, but that's, yeah, they're like collective raising of these children.

Yeah. And they're all for the ends of the corporate, you know, the idea is like they stay on the kibbutz, which didn't work out usually. Yeah,

Simone Collins: that's the problem Yeah But I mean when once you like can actually sort of genetically manipulate children You can even like make them require some kind of proprietary enzyme that only you provide.

I can't

Malcolm Collins: leave.

Razib Khan: Okay This is this is this is a this is actually I think been written about and there are films about these sorts of things right where it's like Basically, it's like yeah you they have a You know, it's, it's like, you know, like Blade Runner, right? Yeah. Like they have time bomb and that's how you control them and stuff [00:08:00] like that.

Mm-hmm. , I mean, is it possible? Yeah. Is it feasible? Yeah. We might have, we, yeah, we might have to have a Butlery and Jihad. We'll see ,

Malcolm Collins: you know, whatever it takes. Just, you know what he's talking about. That was the jihad against ai, right?

Razib Khan: Against thinking machines. Yeah. But they also. They also it says Jihad also against like, genetic engineering and other things.

Oh,

Malcolm Collins: they won't beat the genetically engineered. That's

Razib Khan: That's basically The issue is that Betty and Jezra don't use, like, official genetic engineering. What they do is, like, is breeding. Like, they don't use, like, selective breeding. That's what they do.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, um, okay, so, so, the, uh, we were talking about ethnic groups, like, not going extinct, you're like, well, the Chinese aren't going to go extinct, but there are groups that I am genuinely afraid for, like, the two that I always mention are actually both in India, which is the Jains and the Parsi I was wondering, are you worried for them?

Are there other ethno groups that you're, like, particularly worried about, or do you just not care that certain groups are going to go extinct?

Razib Khan: I mean, the [00:09:00] Parsi's probably, but I mean, they have some issues in terms of, uh, yeah, they have. So, I mean, so Parsis, as most of your listeners might know, as our Austrians in India genetically, they're about three fourths Iranian, one fourth Gujarati, and they've been Indianized a lot of their cultural habits.

So they speak Gujarati. They don't speak any Persian language, obviously. They eat Gujarati food and they have like. Names that are often, I mean, they have names like Khusrow, but they often have like, you know, like Patel or whatever, you know, or Gandhi. So like Indira Gandhi's husband was a Parsi. His last name was Gandhi.

That's a Gujarati name. Okay. So, you know, they're kind of cool, but like there are other Zoroastrians elsewhere. And one thing that, one thing that the Parsis did is they integrated kind of like Indian caste system. And so they really frown upon intermarriage and outmarried children are kind of expelled from the group.

That's one of the reasons they're shrinking. So to be like an official Parsi, you have to have two Parsi parents. And this is actually like nothing to do with their Zoroastrian religion. It has to do with their [00:10:00] becoming Indian. And so it's just like, yeah, I mean, but I mean, that's just how, that's how they're set up.

And it's just like, kind of like. You know, with modernity and their advances and their, you know, high, like, yeah, you

Malcolm Collins: remind me of like a zoologist talking about pandas, but we just can't get them to f**k in captivity. Like, we're trying, we're trying, but they're f*****g pandas. Well, it's

Simone Collins: interesting because it suggests like that there's this certain like just right spot Goldilocks zone of xenophobia where like.

You, you, you can't be like too xenophobic, like if you like, you know, get too weird about marrying out, like it's hard to get enough people like critical mass and like keep going. But if you're not xenophobic enough, like then you're just going to glom into like the main population. So you have to be just like, just a little bit xenophobic and then you're okay.

Razib Khan: Yeah. So, you know, the Jews in China disappeared cause they intermarried out. The Jews in Kaifeng, if you look at them, they just, they got assimilated into the Chinese system. [00:11:00] Hold on, you have to

Malcolm Collins: go deeper here. When did the Jews immigrate to China? I am not familiar with this story. This is weird.

Razib Khan: Yeah, I mean, people can just Google the Jews of Kaifeng.

They're probably like Radhanite traders, so they're Persian Jews. Probably showed up around the Mongol period, if not earlier. The Chinese consistently had problems distinguishing them from Muslims, you know, because they worship one god, they didn't eat pork. All the other stuff is kind of like, what, whatever, you know, so, like they, they would call them things like black hat Muslims or something like that, but like the really Jews that like, they don't really know, you know, they're all like, what weird but yeah, so they show up in Kaifeng they're well known the Jesuits show up in the six in the late 1500s and they encountered them and they were super curious about them because these are Jews that didn't really interact much with Christians at all.

And so they're like, Oh, like you guys are going to like, Have like the secret knowledge of how like Christianity is actually right and you guys are hiding the fact that like Jesus was actually the Messiah Anyway, there's some weird things like that So they were they were around for like many many centuries and what happened is by the 18th century the Jesuits that were [00:12:00] The Europeans that encountered them had noticing that they'd really been assimilated since like the 1500s I just like they look much more Chinese like the original ones were like had West Asian features a lot of them By the 18th century, they were much more Chinese looking and you know, the local rabbi of the community he was super embarrassed because his Chinese wife was was you know, she had pigs in the front yard.

And he knew that like the Chinese don't care. They're like, whatever. But he knew that the Christian would be like, wait,

Yeah, but like, you know, and his sons were had, were in like the, were Chinese civil servants and stuff like that. So what happened in the 19th century, there was a flood, the community scattered and they either like became Han, so they assimilated into the Han majority or they became Muslim. And there are still some Hui Muslim families in like that area of China.

And also Han families who know that they have the Jewish ancestry. [00:13:00] Some of them have gone back to Judaism now, but yeah, some of them have like.

Malcolm Collins: Fascinating. Okay. So to that end, cause this is one thing you touched on and I'm wondering what you're thinking about it. So we're talking about genetic isolation of populations.

Do you see. Intentional genetic isolation becoming more of a thing in the future, i. e. more, I don't want to call it human speciation, but human, like, ethnic speciation becoming more of a thing as IQ is dropping in the general

Razib Khan: population. So, you know what, I think the speciation will happen, I think this is, like, pretty straightforward, when we get off planet.

Oh, immediately, yeah. I think basically like people are just like they don't want to like go to I don't want to go to f*****g Mars I don't care how tall and you know stretched out s**t You know what I'm saying? Like of course there's gonna be like, you know bumble is gonna be like interplanetary option Like if you really like tall chicks You want to go for a Martian, but the problem is you better have some money to get all the way over there because you're like only six foot two.

Malcolm Collins: What [00:14:00] I love is in this world, humans were the dwarfs. The ones who are on earth are the short stout, like stern boned ones. And the ones who go to Mars are the, the elf like people. nO, but people I think underestimate if, if it continues to be expensive to do interplanetary travel, which I think will be a thing for hundreds of years that we will definitely have full speciation.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it's just so, it's so interesting. It's hard for me to wrap my head around it because I spent the first, like, all my childhood. Assuming, because it was kind of like, I don't know, just assumed everywhere that I grew up, that everyone was just going to sort of become the same like golden ish color as everyone just interbred with everyone else.

And, and what I'm seeing instead is like everyone moving in the direction of glomming off in these more isolated communities becoming more different from each other instead of all kind of the same. It's just so weird. And then of course, speciation is going to happen when

Malcolm Collins: people get off. We ran a big study on this.

And one of the things that's most correlated with fertility rate, at least in the U S is xenophobia. Which means [00:15:00] that we actually will likely preserve independent

Simone Collins: ethnic groups. It's just the opposite of what I expected, like, for the majority of my life. It's so weird.

Razib Khan: Yeah, I mean, the issue here is, like, also if you look at a country like Brazil or Cape Verde what happens is actually, like, even in, like, a genetically homogenous admixed population, there's still variation, and so people still look different, and so, if they're sorting based on physical type, There will be like, kind of like, precipitation back out, if that makes sense.

Does that make sense? And so it's

Malcolm Collins: not like I don't understand that. Oh, explain. Precipitation back out. They're selecting a lake, then that ends up precipitating into the

Razib Khan: community. Yeah, or like in Brazil, it's known Because in Brazil, a lot of families are of a mixed background and it's not like weird to say that that's my white brother or that's my black brother because they look that different.

Oh wow. And there is there is some evidence that people actually start, they sort based on what they look like, even though they have the same. So it's like, [00:16:00] there could be someone who, there could be someone who is like, you know, looks kind of white. In a mixed race family and they end up pairing with someone who looks kind of white in another mixed race family So their ancestry is no different than the darker people, but yeah, because they're selecting on that subset.

So it's positive assortative mating That's what I'm talking about IQ but you know physical things are also like pretty salient to people Yeah. And in a place like Brazil, there's like, skin color prejudice. And so people that are lighter skinned you know, they have an incentive to pair up with people that are lighter skinned.

Well, and

Simone Collins: I think people just tend to like people that look like them often. I mean, not always, but it seems to happen where people similar to each other. Yeah. You're just thinking too much of me and Malcolm. Whenever I am at a party with Malcolm these days, I'm like, when I'm trying to like point to him, I'm like, Oh, the guy who looks like my brother, that's my husband.

Razib Khan: This is, this is, this is how, how we know you're autistic. Cause like, yes, people think that, but very few people say that.

Simone Collins: Autism confirmed. It works though. It works [00:17:00] way better than, you know, my husband who's over there now. So, so do

Malcolm Collins: you think that when we begin to have genetically selected humans, do you think that we will have the possibility of a caste system or do you think, because I know you've talked about the caste system before, and I'm wondering, like, like once we can select.

for specific traits that are of utility to specific professions, like, you know, charisma versus stemminess. Do you think that, like, the only stable long term iteration of humanity as a caste system, or do you think that there's a way you could have this sort of selection without caste

Razib Khan: systems forming?

Yeah, so I think like the Indian type caste system requires like a religious justification. The part is that the gene flow is so f*****g low. So I think a normal, like, more like colloquial caste system. But I mean, if you read Greg Clark's work about social stability of like, you know, status and all that stuff, and that's a legit thing there in the work, but there's still permeability.

There's still people moving up and moving down and those [00:18:00] sorts of things. So I think that's going to be more likely just because I, you know, most human societies have not sacralized. Social status that way. Like India is the exception, not the rule. But if you sacralize social status, like only those with that blood can do that thing, then yes, it could emerge.

So it depends on the religious aspect. Will you create a religion out of it? So

Malcolm Collins: I don't know if you saw this, there was a study on this that I thought was really fascinating. done in the UK. And you know, in the U S we were often like, well, we're not descended, you know, if you're from a white U S background, they're like, Oh, we didn't have a caste system.

And I'm like, bro, your, your, your last name is Smith and his next name is Weaver. And there was an interesting study that looked at people with the last name Weaver and found that they had. higher dexterity manual dexterity even today and people with last name Smith had higher grip strength even today.

I don't know if you've seen that one. I thought it was interesting in terms of, yeah, I

Razib Khan: think I saw that. And then also like, like people with these sorts of like, you know, you know, working class or blue collar artisanal [00:19:00] artisanal names are still much more average to like below average and social status.

I mean, so what Greg Clark shows is. You know, what is it like the persistence of social status, like 0. 8 per generation, which is pretty high. But so what happens is there's a lot of noise from one from generation not to generation one. And so people extrapolate from that, but what actually happens is there's often regression back.

To something that's more ancestral. And so I think the statistic is like, so in, in the year 1100, every single officer in the British army was basically Norman because they just replaced all the Anglo Saxons. Like in the 20th century, 10 percent are Norman, even though like less than 1 percent of the names in the British population are

Malcolm Collins: Norman.

Fascinating. And so from that, you can calculate, you know. Yeah, another study I heard on this that really was profound to me was looking at China. And you know, looking at the number of people in the Chinese government today, like high [00:20:00] level Chinese government who were descended from aristocratic families in China.

And this is insane because if you know anything about the Chinese revolution, these families were ground to death. Dust. They lost everything and were treated worse than every other person in society. And yet, somehow, they all bubbled back. It was something like 80 percent of the people in high level positions of power came from an aristocratic family from the, the, the last dynastic period.

Which was just wild to me that even when they were, had everything taken away from them, society reassorted that way. And we've

Simone Collins: seen this with like post Soviet countries too, I think, right? Yeah. There's lots

Malcolm Collins: of Or

Razib Khan: you, or you see like the descendants of the banking families in Florence from the 1400s, or the Swedish like nobility in the 17th and 18th century, these sorts of things.

Now this doesn't mean that like we have like a fixed caste status. There are people that go up and people that go down. Traditionally in a Malthusian environment, actually, a lot of people just went down. The lower classes didn't reproduce themselves. [00:21:00] So that, like, for example, Oliver Cromwell was like gentry, but, you know, he was like, he's one of my ancestors, by the way.

Okay. Well, he was, his grandfather was super rich. And so, like, he, like, in his generation had gone way, way down, and that was common in terms of, like, downward mobility, and then, like, the lower classes just didn't reproduce themselves. Obviously, it's not, like, how it is today, but still, the point is, people still go up, people still go down, but there's also, like, a rough, like, you know, I don't know, I mean...

Yeah, it's just, if you like look at people's family backgrounds, you can see that a lot of people have actually not moved as far as you would think. Like a

Simone Collins: regression to a certain level of wealth. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: and of course these are things that can be changed now with genetic selection technology, which removes one of the biggest barriers in society to true equality.

Razib Khan: Sort of. Yeah, I agree. The only thing is, like, if everyone has access to it, then it'll just, like, change the baseline, which is okay.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I don't think it will. So, everyone has access [00:22:00] to it, but the groups that will use it, I think, are incredibly rare. I think, if you look at the people who are actually having kids in our society, maybe two to three percent would really use this technology en masse.

And I asked you, you know, before this interview, I was like, oh, the calculation for determining how quickly you know, if we're creating about the number of embryos we're creating, and we're selecting about the number of kids that we're selecting, And you did this for five generations. And then I looked at like the, the current technology and we should be looking at about a three standard deviation increase in IQ if you were selecting for IQ only which is pretty crazy that any,

Razib Khan: any cultural group, we have the, we have, we have the technology, we have the technology.

Malcolm Collins: Today. Yeah. Yeah. Really cool. Which is, which is wild. And it, it, it's, it's one of the things I think about where a lot of people who promote like, Oh, you know, we should be really accepting of people who are different. And then I'm like, Oh, I'm trying to create people who are different. And they're like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, that's performative.[00:23:00]

Razib Khan: Normie conformity. Like when really weird people actually show up, they're like, whoa,

Malcolm Collins: whoa. Yeah. It's funny, actually. We the episode that went live right before we were filming this one was the episode where I was going over Nassib Taleb's argument that IQ doesn't matter at all.

Simone Collins: Well, then it's a like, what did he say made by Charlotte?

He's so

Malcolm Collins: performative. Like, like, come on, man. Like, you know, this

Razib Khan: matters. Anyway. Well, I mean, you know, it doesn't matter because he calls people f*****g retards all the time.

Malcolm Collins: You end

Simone Collins: the film. Destroyed. Destroyed. I love it. One thing I do wonder about is Like what the selective pressures will be in the future in terms of gender, like on one end, I see all these fundamentalist groups that are like getting super aggressive and also like probably encouraging a lot of differentiation between the sexes.

But then like, when you look at the more technophilic sectors of society or like cultures within society, They're like more blank slate is like, no, there [00:24:00] shouldn't be any differences between genders and whether or not they're actually are genetically. They're trying to pretend there aren't, maybe they'll try to select against it.

Like where, where will the future of gender go or where is it even now? I,

Razib Khan: yeah, so I mean with the trans stuff, one thing I will say, like, I don't talk too much about it but part of it is it is like modern trans gender therapy, especially for children is transhumanism. Yeah, yeah, and so that's how you that's how you eliminate the gender differences you biologically go in and tinker Yeah, you know and so that's how you would do it and you can create homo androgynous if you want to the main the main issue that we're having right now is I think with the trans stuff is the mixing of normie brain with transhumanist technology.

So I've said this elsewhere, but you know, I knew people who are transhumanists like 15 years ago and they're mostly autistic. buT now, now these people, they don't call themselves transhumanists. Like, you know, they're like gender fluid or whatever the [00:25:00] hell, but like, but they're normie brained in terms of like, now they're attaching identitarian politics to it.

That's the fundamental issue. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: If you're talking about the genetic differences that would be caused by transness, you're actually going to see an increase in gender dimorphism between the two genders because of the men who are born thinking more like women and the women who are born thinking more like men are systemically removed from the genetic pool within the progressive population.

That means the progressive who are still breeding are eventually selecting against androgynous and

Simone Collins: fembots. Yeah. Huh. Okay. So even among like progressive cultures where people like really welcome transness, even that's going to be selected against. Yeah.

Razib Khan: And as you guys know that this has been like research that goes back a generation.

It's just obviously cultures that have like give a lot of freedom to gender expression often shake out to be more dimorphic in a lot of ways. Yeah, in a lot of the, in a lot of the non performative, visible ways. So men and women in Sweden may dress more similarly than men and women in Turkey, [00:26:00] but women tend to major in much fewer stemmy things than in Turkey.

Hypothetically,

Malcolm Collins: this is a selective pressure, i. e. In societies where it is more accepted that male and female roles aren't different from each other, the women who have a biological predilection to take on more masculine roles end up having fewer kids. Same with the men who take on more feminine roles and that then doesn't select them out of the gene pool, leading to a higher amount of inborn gender dimorphism.

Razib Khan: Yeah. I mean, it could be, I mean, you'd have someone have to like run the simulation. That's the way you would do it. Yeah. Cause like, you know, we've had it since we've had it since world war two, right. The sort of kind of like super egalitarian viewpoint. And you know, ironically, you know, a lot of things are not as different in Sweden.

Like there's a lot of. sexual just like dichotomous behavior because men and women are different on average. That's just a fact.

Simone Collins: [00:27:00] Well, and they're given the freedom to make those choices. And so they do.

Razib Khan: Well, I mean, so also like, you know, one of the things that you see in like a lot of the conservative countries is STEM is a way for women to actually break out of the box because if they're, if they're a successful engineer at the end of the day, people still need successful engineers.

And so, you know, women's women in a lot of these conservative countries, you see them, they. They select STEM in particular, not because like, Oh, I have a passion for engineering, but they know that that is a path to social liberation that they otherwise would not have. Whereas in Sweden, you don't need to be an engineer to be like respected like a man.

You know, you have equal rights, you know, at least nominally, at least like legally, you know, and so, like in Italy, Italy during Mussolini's period they privileged philosophy and the humanities over science. And so men tended to go into philosophy of the humanities and there were more women in STEM.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: That's

Simone Collins: really, I didn't know that. Why did

Malcolm Collins: they do that?

Razib Khan: I think they wanted to [00:28:00] create like, you know. The fascist ideology. And so the philosophers, the philosopher Kings were privileged, you know, weird. So scientists are technicians, you know, that's what they thought. Oh, that wasn't like high status there.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: That's secretary work. And

Malcolm Collins: I think your performance in the war shows how, how far that gets you. This has been a fantastic conversation. Honestly, one of my favorite interviews so far. I am so excited that we got a chance to chat with you. Please, please, please go check out his sub stack. If you want detailed genetic information on humans, the spiciest stuff that you're not going to get at this level anywhere else.

learning guys, you know? And if you are interested in, if you run any sort of genetics company, because actually our audience is like a lot of entrepreneurs and stuff like that, and you're interested in, in cutting edge technology, no receives a guy to reach out to, and thank you so much for joining us.

And, and also [00:29:00] thank you so much for, for all of the people you help in this space, because I was mentioning on the last episode you help so many young people in this space and it really

Razib Khan: makes a difference to them. Yeah. I mean, Yeah, I guess so. I don't remember that, but I'm not sure. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: you don't see it that way.

So, he mentioned in the last episode, he's like, I really like babies, and I'm like, this is again, not a thing that's known about him. He really likes babies. He is the most, if there was some pronatalist, polygenic score here, I need to capture it from his genome. I'm gonna need to like, have my descendants review it to try to find Whatever makes him so into it.

Yeah, like

Simone Collins: best dad. Best dad. Yeah. Like unbelievable. So yeah, huge fans, obviously. We love you so much, Riziv. Thank you so much for coming on.

Malcolm Collins: It was my pleasure.

A deep dive into the cult-like structure that has spread through academia, media, and other institutions in society. We examine how it separates people from their families, controls narratives, punishes dissent, and aims to erase cultural differences. The cult exploits minority groups as a shield while actually worsening inequality. It is a descendant of European imperialism and is highly effective at inducing trauma and unhappiness in its members.

Malcolm Collins: ​[00:00:00] negative utilitarianism, is the core moral philosophy of the cult. i. e. we will remove pain from people, and that ultimately leads to the logical conclusion , that , we need to not just kill all humans, but prevent any sentient life from ever evolving again.

Like, the cult is, I think, much more extreme than people think and, people can be like, no, he doesn't think that, you're being extreme. Go to a party with your progressive friends. Mention fertility rates are falling. Mention humanity may go extinct. I guarantee you, someone in that room is going to say is it really that bad if humanity goes extinct?

And then a number of them are going to be like, yeah, that's a good point. Is it really that bad if humanity goes extinct? If you don't realize that you are in an insane and dangerous cult, When that is a normalized idea, a normalized thought, I don't know what to say like that's like, wake up you're in the [00:01:00] people who want to end all human life.

You are a supporter of theirs. The people who take your children and put them into a lifetime of debt. You are standing this organization. They are evil. The cult is a descendant of the imperialist European cultivars. It is not a native cultural group.

This is just the newest iteration of European colonialism and genocide.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: We do sort of live in a world today that is controlled by a cult. And it's something that we've talked about in other videos, but we've never really gone that deep on the subject because we talk about it so much that we're like, Oh, there's no use in like a single video on this, but it would make sense to go deeper in on a video.

If you. Look at the way that different cultural traditions and different religions relate to things like truth. You can begin to contextualize the urban monoculture, or the cult as we call it in [00:02:00] the terms of these religious traditions, and what you see is it behaves in a way that is very similar to some of the more either inefficient or abusive traditions but also That it is just a religion,

Simone Collins: but what's interesting about it and why this is important to talk about is never before in human history, to our knowledge, at least has a cult like structure, like crystalline structure been spreading rapidly.

through like the heart of the most powerful elements of society. I guess you could argue that Catholicism kind of did this with the Roman Empire, but I don't even think the impact is nearly as profound.

Malcolm Collins: No, not as much. And it does something very weird that no religion in history has ever done, which is it doesn't require that individuals who are supplicants to it state that they are in this cultural tradition.

So historically cultural traditions were usually mutually exclusive, or at least things that you had to [00:03:00] identify with. You had to say, if you became Jewish. Jewish now or Christian. I'm Christian now or Muslim. I'm Muslim now. The cult doesn't require this. You can be a member of the cult and call yourself whatever you want.

Identify however you want. In fact, that's one of the core things that promises that no matter how you identify yourself, that will be validated by the cult. But it. It changes all of your perspectives and the way that you have to relate to society in a way that is very consistent with a unified cultural practice.

So let me give an example here. So when I'm contrasting and comparing cultures, there's typically multiple ways a culture can relate to truth. So you can look at the Catholic way of relating to truth, which is truce should best be determined by individuals who have spent their lives studying a thing and then have been certified by a central bureaucracy.

Credentials. Yeah. Well, no, like a cast, like a priest cast that [00:04:00] says this is what's true and this is what isn't true. And they've been certified by central bureaucracy and then you have the Protestant, you know, perception of truce, which is to say, well, that cast could become corrupted.

There could be misincentives and therefore truth should always be determined by the individual. Both of these have negative externalities to these ways of seeing truth that are just not relevant to this conversation. If you look at the cult that controls our society right now, it has far moved in the Catholic direction.

Which is to say truth should be determined by individuals who have spent their life studying things and have been certified by a central bureaucracy. The central bureaucracy it has chosen is the academic bureaucracy. So when it is determining what is true through its mouse pieces, so within a lot of cultural traditions, you have mouse pieces, people who sort of go out there and communicate to the members of that religion or that cult what is going on.

So this would be the press in, in, in this structure. And then when they're determining what's going on, they go to their priest cast, which is the [00:05:00] academics and they say what is true. What is not true. Right. Now a lot of people would be like, yeah, but the scientific method is the best way to determine what's true.

I believe that is not what academics practice anymore. They say it honestly viewing the academic system today. It is not based on the scientific method anymore. Even though they say it is though. They say it is, but it's not. It's based on a weird system. So, so some STEM fields are still like aspired to be based around the scientific method, but they are policed by other.

Sort of, ideological police that exist in every university that's departments are dedicated only to conformity with the cult, whether this is a fat studies department or a genders department or you know, whatever department, right? They just go around policing the other departments to ensure ideological conformity and that nothing that is being released by another compartment could hurt the cult's message now with something like.

Physics, this isn't necessarily going to work the research that's coming out of these departments. However, we have something like anthropology or with something like [00:06:00] psychology. This is obviously going to have a significant effect on warping the research that's coming out. And if you look at the replication crisis, you know, we had Spencer Greenberg on here, which has done some great work on this.

If you look at what is the most common correlatory factor with studies that fail to replicate that, however, got published is that they promote something that the cult wants promoted. No, it's true. And it's just a thing. So it is using the centers of power in our society to determine what's true and what's untrue to promote its message.

And a lot of people can be like, yeah, but the other academics are still like, okay. And not biased. This is sort of what I call the Al Jazeera problem. Al Jazeera is actually a great newspaper if you want unbiased news.

Simone Collins: Fantastic publication.

Malcolm Collins: Anywhere in the world except for things that have to do with the Middle East.

Because it's incredibly biased about the Middle East because it's funded by Qatar.

Simone Collins: We have the Epoch Times like that too. I don't actually read the Epoch

Malcolm Collins: Times. The Epoch Times is kind of like that too. It's funded by Unless it's

Simone Collins: about [00:07:00] China.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. What's that? The Falun Gong. Falun Gong, yeah. So, so when they do have a specific area where they are intent on warping the truth, but when something falls outside of that specific area, it becomes a lot less relevant.

And so you can actually get truer information from things that don't fall into those specific areas. So as a cult, the areas that doesn't care about actually can still kind of produce good research. However, so much of the academic resources are being eaten by the cult. You know, as we've talked about, it forms sort of tumorous masses within organizations that it has infested that dedicate themselves just to spreading its message and just to ensuring ideological conformity.

And these departments end up taking more and more resources as time goes on, when somebody is living under the cult. If we went to an island, Right. And we saw this behavior. We're like, okay, there's this one group that's certified by the central authority and they determine what's true and what's not true.

And then this other group of like criers that tell the public what's true and what's [00:08:00] like, like what this high ranking group. But then we saw like, like that all is fine. Like lots of religions are structured that way. Lots of cultural traditions are structured that way. But where the cult becomes intrinsically abusive is the way like, like is the stuff that we're going to get into now.

So to prop up this system, what they have done. Okay. Is they have essentially said, okay, if you want to join our society as an adult now, a lot of organizations have coming into adulthood rituals. Typically in these rituals, what happens is you are separated from your family. You go out with a group of people who are all around the same age as you undergo some sort of trial.

Either a hardship or, and then followed by a series of parties. This is what college is. To people who are members of the cult, it determines a true adult versus somebody who never really

Simone Collins: became one. Oh yeah. You're not treated like a real member of the big society. Exactly. You're respected the same way if you don't go through this ritual.

Ooh.

Malcolm Collins: And... To undergo this ritual, you show your supplication [00:09:00] to the cult. Yeah. Like essentially becoming an indentured servant to the cult. Yeah. Because of student debt for most of your productive years. For sure. Yeah. That's what the debt is. It is. It is becoming an indentured servant, a wage slave to the cult.

. In exchange, they certify you as an adult within society and then certify your class status. By which university you went to. Mhm. Mhm. And again, this is coming by like, I wouldn't feel comfortable saying all this if I hadn't beaten the system. You know, I've got my MBA from Stanford.

I've got my undergrad in neuroscience from ST Andrews, right? You know, you

Simone Collins: had, you're saying, like, how do you, if you were not college educated, you would not feel comfortable saying this. Well, because

then

Malcolm Collins: I wouldn't be all sour greasy. I conquered this system and I am saying it is b******t. You do not actually learn that.

The core value of the college degree is actually the admittance process. And then the validation it provides in that people, they know, Oh, you have a Stanford MBA. You're unlikely to lie about other stuff because if you did, you could lose [00:10:00] this class status signaling mechanism. Like it could be withdrawn from you.

And so you don't, you know, it, one of our followers, like, how can I check that you have actually told the truth about things like the companies you run and stuff like that? And I'm like, I have way too much to lose if I don't, if I'm not at least like broadly telling the truth about things in a way that individuals could check, because the thing that they could always check is my degrees.

And those can be revoked if I'm out in public, like just making s**t up all the time. So, so that's important. Now we need to talk about like the way the cult is structured. So one individual, you know, they were talking about creating an alternate college system with us, right? And they're like, yeah, I can create an alternate college system and this alternate college system will be able to train people better.

And I was like, it doesn't matter. They're like, yeah but look, more cheap and they can learn more coding. And then like Google would hire them. And I was like, look, Google hurts much more because it's already an infected organization by defying the cult than it does by getting good talent at a lower cost.[00:11:00]

Because, and we've seen this was in Google. When individuals within Google have said something that goes against the cult's narrative they have been eviscerated.

Simone Collins: Oh, there's more than that. There's more. So like, consider that when Elon Musk acquired Twitter and sort of changed its free speech policies or its moderation policies, he threatened one of the top mouthpieces of what you would call the cults because many of the, what did you call them?

Like the shouters the town criers use Twitter to basically say this is what reality is and Elon Musk undermined that. Well, what happened after that happened? Well, I mean, Tesla was investigated by the U S government for building a glass house for Elon Musk. Like somehow like, like miss misspending funds or misallocating.

bonuses, bonus money for him. And then also I think it was SpaceX, which was then criticized for not hiring enough refugees. Even though that would be like in violation of its security clearance, like other companies with [00:12:00] security clearance, like SpaceX does. Cause it's essentially selling like rockets and explosives.

Malcolm Collins: And you, as the public saw over and over again, him being attacked.

Simone Collins: Yeah, and this is the cult attacking someone who is, who's

Malcolm Collins: undermining it. was talking to one guy, it was a Jewish guy about you know, he was going to call out, it was in regards to the plague our species recently underwent.

And the government's response to it and things that I can't say on YouTube, but because they would undermine the cult and they are very strict about this particular area of undermining the cult. And I was like, you know, the cult will turn against you and they will tar and feather you just like Musk.

And he goes, well, you know, I have a beef with Elon Musk because I am Jewish and he says some anti Semitic things. And I was like, he... F*****g did not. I was like, this is how you are going to be tarred and feathered. Idiots like you who go out there and believe what they read about Elon Musk are going to go out there and believe what they read about you.

I was like, no, show me what he did that was anti Semitic. Yeah I would know if he had done something anti semitic. He did not do anything [00:13:00] anti semitic. You have been lied to about these people. When somebody defies the cult, you basically need to ignore everything the media says about them.

If you look at what the media says about us, because oh my god, we are very dangerous to the cult, and we can get to why um, Uh, because, like, at a very systemic level, we're dangerous to the cult, because we point out that it can only survive by consuming the children of nearby healthy cultural groups.

It

Simone Collins: doesn't want to undermine that very sourcing

Malcolm Collins: mechanism. Yeah, it tells people, oh do whatever you want. You know, just be happy, identify however you want, be whoever you want, and when people are doing that, well, children are hard, you know, they require sacrifices. And so when you do that, you're going to breed well below replacement rate as people in the cult do.

And so it maintains its basis by taking the children of nearby healthy cultural groups and those cultural groups become intergenerationally resistant. So then it needs to ship in people from other countries to take their children. And you call this out and you're like, Hey, actually, immigrants people in this [00:14:00] country were all in the same boat.

We're just trying to protect our cultures. We're trying to ensure that we have thriving great grandchildren. That massively undermines the cult because it calls out a core hypocrisy of theirs, which is all of these groups that they say that they care about. They only care about them. Insofar as they can convert their children to the cult, and they're like, yes, you can still call yourself whatever you want.

You can still call yourself, for example, a Muslim, you just need to have our beliefs about sexuality, gender, morality, the way that we relate to the environment the future of the human species the, what mental health means, what, like, everything about your life needs to be exactly in line with us.

And as long as you agree with all that, yeah, just call yourself whatever you want. Oh, and you also need to preach all of these things. And this is obviously like they're just saying, yeah, you need to abandon everything that you culturally identify with and join our cultural group. And so obviously we're threatening to them.

So if you go out there and you look up us, you know, we are what racist eugenicists when we are literally the exact [00:15:00] antithesis of anyone who has seen our show knows how much we rail against those two groups. Out there, because we do genetic selection with our kids, they say we're dirtying the gene pool by using science and how we breed when all we're fighting for is reproductive freedom.

You know, this is the way when we say, Oh, we want artificial womb so we can expand who can have kids and IVG and then, you know, gay couples can have kids that are a hundred percent biologically. They're like dirtying the gene pool, all of this genetic technology and stuff like that and their laws, they prevent disabled people.

From having kids because they're like, I don't want to pass on this to my kids. And so they, they say, well, then too bad don't f*****g have kids. They're functionally sterilizing disabled people in the countries where they had made this sort of polygenic risk selection technology illegal. And so we are literally the exact opposite.

And everybody who's seen this channel knows our rails against racism. Yet that is what the newspapers must say about us constantly, because that is how the cult targets and identifies as enemies. [00:16:00] Essentially, what it does is it has sort of immune cells or individuals who sort of act almost like in the body, like you're tagging something like, Oh, an antigen.

This is tacking this virus or bacteria is potentially dangerous to the body. This is tagging this individual as transgressive to the cult. And once an individual is tagged then they begin to get specific labels, typically racist or. Homophobic attached to them or transphobic and sinuine even if they aren't, you know, because there's no and members of the cult aren't as long as you dedicate yourself to the cult, you can basically say whatever you want.

You know, you look at like cult members and you look at their histories and you'll find lots of racist stuff off it.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I guess. So like. What do you know about hacking life in a cult? Because like some, there are some people who, whether or not they actually believe the cult doctrine, love living in a cult because they know the rules and they just nail it, you know, like, and then that is even in contrast to people who are true believers who don't know the rules and often get in trouble.

And I see this happening with the cult that runs our [00:17:00] society, you know, mainstream society, woke society, whatever people want to call it, where there are true believers. Who because they're true believers often don't realize like the lines and the rules and they cross them and then they get canceled, which is to say

Malcolm Collins: expelled.

I mean, authoritarian religious organization, which is essentially what this is It can be safe if the rules are stable. The problem with the cult is the rules are not stable. I would not suggest anyone, no matter how much they think, never try to play it. You cannot stay on its good side. If you achieve success, if you achieve elevation, you are putting a target on your back because the norms change.

So quickly, I guess you

Simone Collins: make a good point because we even have friends who are like, yeah, I'd like to be progressive and I'd like to be a leader. And then they actually look seriously into it because they're very smart. And yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. So you say something that you think is appeasing the cult, like I don't color and then you're a racist next thing that you think is a.

Appeasing the cult. People are [00:18:00] born gay and then the next generation is no, you can choose to be gay. What are you

Simone Collins: saying? Oh, so you're saying like a lot of the issues it's time locked because I feel most people would be savvy enough to know that like I think it's the people who actually care about causes like racism who get Tripped up by that.

I feel like if you're morally bankrupt and you're just playing

Malcolm Collins: the cold are so terse transit to visionary radical feminists, they believe what the cult used to believe, which is that all humans are intrinsically equal. And that if you just weren't socialized to see gender, you wouldn't see gender blank slate ism Skinner is like, this was mainstream psychology.

If you go back, you know, 50 years ago or something, and it was what the cult was arguing. It was that gender is completely a social construct. And so of course these individuals now coming in, they'd be like, Whoa, we were discriminated growing up for being women because of the patriarchy. And now these individuals are identifying as women, but women and men are actually no different at all.

And so they're just identifying with an oppression that they haven't felt. They are just parroting the old rules of the [00:19:00] cult because they actually believed it. They didn't. Understand that this was a religion and not a set of truths about the way the world functions. And these individuals, as we say today, like an area where I know the cult's going to change eventually is these individuals today are like, IQ is not a thing in the future.

People are going to say like. Hey, you smart person, you were pretending you didn't see your systemic advantage over other people. That's a lot like pretending you don't see race, you know, pretending you don't see a systemic advantage you have over other people is not a moral position. And it's not a position in line with the cult's underlying value system.

And so eventually these people will be crucified. But today they think that they are parroting what the cult wants to hear. Same with transmedicalists. Like, you look in the past transmedicalists as people, like, trans is appropriate. Now they're being crucified. It changes. You can join the group that are looking for truth in this world.

And these individuals aren't all the same. They don't all have the [00:20:00] same moral frameworks. So a great example of this is Ayla, her friend of the show, right? Ayla sees the world very differently from us, right? But she's willing to say whatever she thinks is true without fear of the cult, and it has caused many attacks on her.

And so even though she's very different from us, she's in this wider group of people who are just, even if they may fail sometimes, looking honestly for the truth. And I think that this group of people is getting larger and it's becoming more of a threat to the cult intergenerationally. Yeah, I think

Simone Collins: also, you know, I mean, I don't think she would play it any other way, but she has made many personal sacrifices and has to do anything the average person would never have to do because of that choice to live in a truthful

Malcolm Collins: way.

Yeah. And again, we're not saying that we like approve of her lifestyle or anything like that, what we're saying is that she clearly is doing what she's doing, not because of the cult, but because she has like thought about it and believes it's the right thing to do. Yeah,

Simone Collins: and she's [00:21:00] also not doing it because it's the easy way to do because she's taking way the hard

Malcolm Collins: way.

Yeah, anyone who's doing that, I have great faith in. Respect for and I will always stay on them, whatever their position are, even if it goes wildly against the cult. The other thing that's important to remember. So, so there's other things that the cult do that is very much like a traditional cult.

So one of the things that all cults do and it's just a framework of cults. If they try to separate you from your support networks it's very important that cults separate the relationships you have with your birth culture and your family. Well, the EM series of the cults, one of the core functioning elements of the way that the cult has evolved in our society is psychologists.

And that's one of the key things they do. They actually do a practice that's very similar to the way Scientologists recruit people. . Which is to say they ask you a series of questions. They then say, oh you have this trauma and this trauma was caused by both your birth culture and your parents.

And only by continuing to see us can you ever feel healthy and happy. We will basically control what you think and what you feel and we will help shape your personal daily narrative. This is a [00:22:00] really common feature of cults, and the really intentional thing about it, the reason they need to break these familial ties these people have, is because those are the people most likely to pull them out of the cult.

They're like, what are you doing? Like, this is crazy. Don't you see it's destroying your life? And I think the reason why I am so... was being so dismissive of these progressive organizations and the ones that are infected with this cult is that it does destroy people's lives. It says in the moment. What people want to hear, which is do what you want, identify how you want, be who you want, you know, whatever you want to do, just do it and you can maintain this sort of longitudinal happiness and something that should be clear across our videos is you don't get that.

That's not what you get. If you look at the happiness level between conservatives and progressives, they're much higher among conservatives. If you look at the mental health problems among progressives. If you just do whatever you want and identify whatever you want and be whoever you want in the moment all the time this level of hedonism, [00:23:00] humanity was not built for, we did not evolve for, and it destroys your mind.

It makes you unhappy. It makes you feel unfulfilled and it leaves you in a position where you feel this daily doomerism and depression. And you see this in the most indoctrinated members. They do not feel our species has a future. Yeah. And they'll point to things and if that thing gets resolved, they'll point to something else.

Whereas if you look at people from the more conservative positions, they're often less economically successful. They're often less privileged,

Simone Collins: but yeah, but that's basically a part in parcel with not participating in the cult because the cult runs the modern

Malcolm Collins: economy. Yeah. So they can punish you.

They can punish us for what we say. You know, it'd be hard for us to get a traditional job these days. People give us money because they know the things we create money. And so they're like, okay, well. Like Elon, right? Like Elon is definitely one of the cult's biggest adversaries. But people are like, yeah, but people invest

Simone Collins: in him and buy his stocks because they know they're going to get an IROI usually.

Malcolm Collins: But it is hard. It is hard. And we definitely have lost [00:24:00] opportunities. We've lost investors. We've lost a million dollars of investment. I know at least so far because of the cult.

Simone Collins: Oh, you mean, yeah. Someone who was going to invest. A lot did not invest in us because yeah, because

Malcolm Collins: the way that the cult works is as soon as it tags somebody as transgressive, it will then go and it will target every individual who has seen as associating with them, supporting them, even communicating with them and remove them from his organizations.

You can be fired from an organization that's controlled from the cult just from. Talking to somebody who is immune to its reach that is wild. And one of the things, you know, going back to psychologists, we've talked about this in other videos is that studies have shown that if you look at the way people grew up and we can tell how much a person was actually abused growing up by looking at like court records and see people who were actually abused, but do not contextualize their childhoods that way.

Actually have none of the negative effects of trauma. People who are very little people who were not abused, but [00:25:00] contextualize their early childhood as abusive, have all of the effects of trauma of actually being seriously abused. So it really turns out it's not actually being abused. It's the way you contextualize this.

And this is really meaningful when the cult is using this as a tactic to ensure supplication of its members because it is inducing real painful trauma in these individuals that they may not really have. And that's horrifying when you think about the level of unhappiness and dissatisfaction in the world that is perpetrated by the cult on its members through this mechanism that is used to ensure their supplication.

Now I want to be clear with all of this, none of this formed intentionally. Religious groups actually don't form intentionally. They sort of, like, evolve from, like, this works more than this. The psychologists who were more compliant with the cult ended up being promoted more by the cult. And the ones that had ideas that challenged the cult ended up being attacked in the same way as us, right?

You know? And it's because it's this organically evolving [00:26:00] cultural unit. That the iterations of it that I'll compete at other iterations of it, or the iterations that still survive and it sort of evolved almost like a super virus when the Internet and mega cities sort of emerged and humanity didn't really have any.

defenses against this. It's got as big as it's gotten and as dangerous as it's gotten, but it is no different from, you know, you look at previous authoritarian, theocratic societies. If an individual had ideas outside of that society, they were called a witch and they were burnt at the stake. And the cult does the same thing.

We have,

Simone Collins: I mean, I would say that there's some subtlety in that. We don't do it that way. That is to say, the cult does not destroy dissidents that way because it's actually more effective to not. openly martyr someone. It's more effective to what we call in the pragmatist guide to crafting religion, shadow ban someone where like, you may not even realize when it's happening that it's happening, but you don't get the job.

You [00:27:00] don't get the invite to the party. You don't get the friends, you don't get the opportunities. And then it's slowly like not everyone is flamboyantly canceled when they don't tow the line.

Malcolm Collins: And this shadow banning is like the lower order punishment. And this is what happens when you communicate to somebody who's been murdered, somebody who has been basically that their career lit on fire or whatever, because they've been tagged as dangerous as a cult.

You communicate with them, you get this shadow banning procedure. And this is why it's so effective at maintaining total control of society. We had a period in world history. Where, you know, post World War One really, I'd say 1900s until modern time, where we actually had a genuinely pluralistic global dominant power, America, and then Europe, where genuinely people of different cultural groups could all make their voices heard.

And you could be. Hired by, you know, most companies, if you were Jewish, if you were Baptist, if you were Catholic and we moved more like human, even [00:28:00] when JFK became president, a lot of people were afraid to make him president. Cause he was Catholic. There was still a level of bigotry there, but we reached this sort of level of almost true openness in like the nineties, like the mid nineties, like there was still some residual.

Racism, some residual discrimination, but generally, everyone was okay with everyone else from different cultural groups, you know, you could still be hired if you were like. Catholic to the bone or, you know, orthodox. And that didn't mean people would be nice to you. That's not true anymore. There are companies that will openly say, okay, what's your perception on women?

And if your culture has a perception of women, Well, there are also

Simone Collins: companies that will not openly say, well, we can't hire any more cis white men,

Malcolm Collins: period. Yeah. I've actually heard this under the table stuff. So my dream, Multiple times. Multiple times. Is to become a professor at Stanford. And and one of this like monetary, you know, it was something I was really aiming for.

It's why we did the private equity thing, because I knew that I went down the third equity grass, the search fund pass. A lot of professors had that [00:29:00] background and we were basically told under the table, Oh, there's a, we can't hire a straight white miles anymore.

Simone Collins: But we've heard that not just at first Stanford university, we've heard that for multiple nonprofit and for profit institutions.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And to be clear they actually said that there are some ways you could get hired as a straight white male, but you have to go through a different pathway than the one that you went through which is one that shows much more supplication to the cult. So I can't come in as an outsider.

Simone Collins: I don't even think that's true. I don't even think that's true. Hold on.

Malcolm Collins: I'm just saying what they said. They said, if you went through the academic pathway. If you went through the PhD instead of becoming like a famous intellectual outside of academia and then moved into academia, that's where we have the moratorium on this.

If you went through the PhD and then went into academia through the academic system, like just complete supplication all the way through the priesthood class, you can still move into the system that way. And that was really disheartening to hear because growing up, I had such faith in academic systems and what I realized, I think.

What a lot of people don't realize is [00:30:00] how untested the way that academic systems rank internal hierarchy is like this sort of cloud based citation network with departments that sort of police of this and police other departments. This was not what academia was. in the 80s. This is a very new system, the way it's operating now and at the scale it's operating now.

And it does not appear to be sorting for competence or truth anymore, but more supplication to the cult. And there's still people out there who genuinely, you know, care about what they're doing was in any cult, right? You know, there's Scientologists out there who are just genuinely great people and the their face inspires like positive action to them, but you look at the leadership at the church.

It's hard to say it's anything other than nefarious and it's the same way with the cult in our society. It makes things worse. When it enters an area, it does not achieve what it says it's going to achieve. It increases inequality, often discriminated groups. You look at the most infected cities, you look at like the most democratic [00:31:00] cities, and you look at the level of differential between like white and black income in those areas, and they increase.

They're the highest in the U. S. You look at the most Republican cities, they're often lower. Why is this the case? Why is it? Because it doesn't care. Actually, it benefits from increasing the problems it says it solves. If you look at when the cult really began to dominate our society and you look at perceptions of racism, you look at perceptions of racial discrimination, they've all increased.

You look at, for example,

 Great

Malcolm Collins: claims. They're much higher in infected institutions. The more infected, the more supplicant an institution is. To the cult, the higher, the number of rate claims you'll see in these institutions and it's, you could say, well, this is because people are more sensitive to rate.

This is because people are more sensitive to racism. I would say, if you talk to people who are outside the cults reach who are genuinely immune to it, you know, whether it's your women friends or your black friends were rates actually more common when you were in these ultra progressive groups.

They're like, yes, they were actually more common in those groups was discrimination actually [00:32:00] bigger were people. Cool. Actually less intergenerationally thriving within your community when they were supplicant to these groups. And they'll say yes. And it's because it's obvious it is. It is the number one cause in our society of these ills right now.

And it's not to say that historically that was true. Historically, you know, many other groups were the number one cause of this, but it needs these social ills. If these social ills were to ever be actually addressed, it would lose its pull on its populations. This is like, Thought about none of this is nefariously the

Simone Collins: iteration.

None of this is intentional. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The iterations of the cult, the iterations of the culture that lead to more inequality. End up creating more fervent followers and thus spread further. They outcompete the ones that actually fix things because the ones that actually fix things, and then fizzle out.

They're no longer appealing to people in the area. That was the iteration that sort of was around until the nineties, right? It actually fixed a lot of stuff, but then that saner iteration of this culture died because it was, you [00:33:00] know, people left it. They're like, okay, problem solved. You know, was it, was a lot of stuff.

And that's. And to be clear, I want to be absolutely clear. I'm not saying that like LGBT rights were perfect in the 90s. I'm not saying that discrimination against communities of color were perfect in the 90s. But what I am saying is that people were trying to improve them, genuinely trying to improve them.

The cult's efforts no longer do that.

Simone Collins: Progress was made. Progress was made. Yeah. Progress is not made. As this cult spread. Progress halted. And in some cases, one could argue it started

Malcolm Collins: reversing. Yeah. When it's dramatically lowering the quality of life of its supplicants. Yeah. That's the interesting thing.

Even though you might be economically less well off if you resist the cult, you will be dramatically more satisfied with your life because you'll know your life actually has meaning. And this is something we see when I look at the communities that resist the cult, like the distillation of those communities for me, it's this wider pronatalist movement.

Right. And it's some of the [00:34:00] happiest motherfuckers you'll ever meet. You look at what I would say is the distillation of the cult, like the eism movement, the oh gosh the antinatalism movement. The negative utilitarian movement, because that is with the cult, I will remove pain. It doesn't really say it'll increase happiness, but it will remove in the moment pain.

Yeah. These are some of the most despondent individuals you will ever engage with, and they are the highest acolytes of the cult because at the end it is a death cult. It is a cult that wants all humanity to. And if you don't understand why that's the case, you need to look at the logic. Actually, I'll link to a video here.

It's the one where we talk about these academics want everyone dead. Oh, perfect. It explains negative utilitarianism, which is the core moral philosophy of the cult. i. e. we will remove pain from people, and why that ultimately leads to the logical conclusion for people who hold it, that all humans, in all life, we need to not just kill all humans, but prevent any sentient life from ever evolving again.

Like, the cult is, I think, much more extreme than people think and, people can be like, no, he doesn't think that, you're [00:35:00] being extreme. Go to a party with your progressive friends. Mention fertility rates are falling. Mention humanity may go extinct. I guarantee you, someone in that room is going to say is it really that bad if humanity goes extinct?

And then a number of them are going to be like, yeah, that's a good point. Is it really that bad if humanity goes extinct? If you don't realize that you are in an insane and dangerous cult, When that is a normalized idea, a normalized thought, I don't know what to say like that's like, wake up you're in the people who want to end all human life.

You are a supporter of theirs. The people who take your children and put them into a lifetime of debt. You are standing this organization. They are evil. And look at them recently, look at the way they have reacted to what's going on in Israel, look at them [00:36:00] supporting groups like Hamas. And you say, why is the cult anti Semitic?

And as I've explained this before, the cult has to believe all differences between groups. Exists because of discrimination, not because of group differences, not because of cultural differences. They all exist because of discrimination and oppression. So if there is a group out there that is out competing other groups, well, if that group claims to be discriminated against, they're lying.

And if they are one of the best performing groups, whether it's economically, academically, in, in bureaucracies, well, they must be the architects of all oppression in this society. We need to get rid of them. And that's bad for any group that aspires to improve itself, because the cult rewards groups within it the worse their members perform within a society, which leads to the most infected cultural groups to become intergenerationally worse, the same way any racist group does.

Racist groups always get intergenerationally worse, because... [00:37:00] And you'll see this like if you look around the world, right? Like, if you look at a cultural group in the U S that had intergenerationally persistent racism, they economically will perform worse than other groups. Be they infected with the cult or not infected with the group cult.

And something we make clear in one video is the cult, the progressive, they pretend they're not racist up until Obama was elected. Your average white progressive voter was less likely to vote for a black president than your average white. Conservative voter they are lying. They control the media and they have lied to you.

They are the party of the racist. And then they're the laws they put in place, informative action, et cetera. They ensure that the communities that they rely on for votes cannot move up, cannot achieve equality within our society because they need them. They need them supplicant. It is disgusting, and people are waking up to this, people are waking up to this and it sees it, and that's why it's getting angrier and angrier.

People are getting better at keeping their kids from being converted, and it is unable to motivate its members to reproduce, so it must become more and more aggressive in its control of [00:38:00] our academic systems, in the bureaucracies. And it is heading towards a conflict. I'm not saying like a civil war or anything like that, but I'm saying a cultural conflict that I think will define the next...

Where the cult, as it begins to become increasingly memetically sterile, becomes increasingly aggressive in its attempts to erase, All of the cultures that are immune to it and take their children for itself in the same way. I mean, the cult is a descendant of the imperialist European cultivars. It is not a native cultural group.

It is not. This does not come from Africa. This does not come from Native Americans. This is just the newest iteration of European colonialism and genocide. And it will throw these big parades for these immigrant children after it's completely caused them to abandon everything that their ancestors believed in, culturally speaking.

And it's, [00:39:00] I dare say, barely taken the time to remove the word white from these pride parades which Celebrate the erasure of these individuals. Cultural

Simone Collins: ancestry.

Malcolm Collins: And I want to be clear about something. I have, I support the LGBT community to high heaven. To high heaven I support them. But like it's bosom buddies Hamas, the cult likes building it's operational infrastructure inside of things like hospitals. And by that what I mean is it builds it's operational infrastructure inside of the most vulnerable communities in our society, like the LGBT community.

Because then when people are criticizing it, criticizing its most egregious actions it says, oh, you're attacking the LGBT community, are you? You must be homophobic. Oh, you're attacking, you know, this minority community, you must be racist. And the same way, oh, you've bombed this hospital. That we had all of our operational headquarters in, and we were doing torture interrogation, and we were, you know, oh, whatever.[00:40:00]

And then, when individuals of these groups turn against it, and I think that this is, this, to me, look at every right leaning trans individual you know in the public media. Even really politically neutral, you know, whether you're talking about Buck Angel or Caitlyn Jenner they have been eviscerated by the left, called Nazis, called racists, called demons.

Anything that they can Throw at them. They have done everything they can to destroy their career because they do not actually believe that anyone can be trans. You can be trans. So long as you supplicate yourself to the cult, you can be black. So long as you supplicate yourself to the cult, look at Biden's own word.

If you don't vote for me, you. ain't black. You cannot identify with these communities unless you completely supplicate your life to this cult. It does not care about these communities and it is absolutely critical if you're in these communities that you Recognize it as holding you down, that you recognize [00:41:00] what it has done in the areas where it has intergenerationally have powers, the cities that have intergenerationally been under democratic rule, what has happened to the minority populations in those cities.

Anyway, I am going to go because we do have to pick up the kids. I love you to a decimal, and I'm sorry this ran long. I love you too, Malcolm. .

An in-depth look at how the Fermi Paradox and the Grabby Alien Hypothesis provide evidence that an AI apocalypse is unlikely. We examine filters to advanced life, terminal utility convergence, and why we may not have encountered aliens yet.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] So basically, no matter which one of these Fermi paradox is true, either it's irrelevant That we are about to invent a paperclip maximizing AI, because we're about to be destroyed by something else, or in a simulation, or... We're definitely not about to invent a paperclip maximizing AI, either because we're really far away from the technology or because almost nobody does that.

That's just not the way AI works, I am so convinced by this argument that it is actually, I used to believe it was like a 20 percent chance we all died because of an AI or maybe even as high as a 50 percent chance, but it was a variable risk as I've explained in other videos.

I now think there's almost a 0 percent chance. I a, a 0 percent chance, assuming we are not about to be killed by a grabby AI somebody else invented Now it does bring up something interesting. If the reason we're not running into aliens is because infinite power and material generation is just incredibly easy, and there's a terminal utility convergence function, then what are the aliens doing in the universe?

Would you like to know more?

Simone: Hi, Malcolm. How are you doing, my [00:01:00] friend?

Malcolm: So today we are going to do an episode, a bit of a preamble for an already filmed interview. So we did two interviews with Robin Hanson, and in one of them we discuss this.

theory. However, I didn't want to off rail the interview too much going into this theory, but I really wanted to nerd out on it with him because he is the person who invented the grabby aliens hypothesis solution to the Fermi paradox. So I hadn't heard

Simone: about grabby aliens before, so I'm glad we're doing this.

This is great.

Malcolm: Yes, so we will use this episode to talk about the Fermi Paradox, the Grabby Alien Hypothesis, and how the Grabby Alien Hypothesis can be used. Through controlling one of the variables, i. e. the assumption that we are about to invent a paperclip maximizer AI that ends up fooming and, killing us all because that would be a grabby alien definitionally.

If you collapse that variable within the equation to [00:02:00] today. Then you can back calculate the probability of creating a paperclip maximizing AI. And, spoiler alert, the probability is almost zero. It basically means it is almost statistically impossible that we are about to create a paperclip maximizing AI.

Unless, with the two big caveats here, something in the universe that would make it irrelevant whether or not we created a paperclip maximizing AI. Is hiding other aliens from us or we are in a simulation, which also would make it irrelevant that we're about to make, create a paperclip maximizing AI, or there is some filter to advanced life developing on a planet that we have already passed through that we don't realize that we have passed through.

So those are the only ways that this isn't the case. But let's go into it because it is, it is really easy.

I just realize that some definitions may help here. We'll get into the gravity alien hypothesis in a second, but the [00:03:00] concept of the paperclip maximizing AI. Is the concept of an AI that is just trying to maximize some simplistic function. So in the concept as it's laid out as a paperclip maximizer, , it would be just make maximum number of paperclips and then it just keeps making paper clips and it starts turning the earth into paper clips and it starts turning people into paper clips.

Now, realistically, if we were to have a paperclip maximizing AI, It would probably look something more like, you know, somebody says.

Process this image, and it just keeps processing the image to like an insane degree, because it was never told when to stop processing the image. And it just turns all the world into energy to process an image. Or something else silly like that. This concept is important to address because there are many. people who at least pass themselves off as intelligent, who believe that we are about to create a paperclip maximizing AI. , that AI is about to, as they call foom, which I mentioned earlier here, which just means rise in intelligence astronomically quickly. Like double his intelligence every [00:04:00] 15 minutes or something. And then wipe out our species.

And after that begin to consume all matter in the

universe

Malcolm: So the Fermi paradox is basically the question of why haven't we seen extraterrestrial life yet? You know, Like, we kind of should have seen it already it's, it's, it's kind of really shocking that we haven't, and I would say that anyone's metaphysical understanding of reality that doesn't take the Fermi Paradox into account is deeply flawed, because based on our understanding Of physics today, our understanding of what our own species intends to do in the next thousand, two thousand years, our understanding of the filters our species has gone through, so we know how hard it was for life to evolve on this planet.

And the answer is, not very from what we can see. So [00:05:00] A lot of people, I'm really, really into, it's one of like my areas of like deep nerddom theories for how the first life could have evolved on earth. So there's a couple things to note. One isn't that important to this, which is life evolved on earth almost as soon as it could.

Now, a person may say, why isn't that this relevant? That would seem to indicate that it is very easy for life to evolve on a planet. Well, and here we have to get into the, the grabby aliens theory. You're dealing with the anthropic principle here. Okay. Can you define the

Simone: anthropic principle?

Malcolm: Yeah, basically what it means.

Is if you're asking, like, look, it looks like Earth is almost a perfect planet for human life to evolve on it. Like, it had liquid water, everything like that, right? Except human life wouldn't have evolved without those things on a planet. A different kind of life would have evolved without those things on it.

Sure, the kind

Simone: that doesn't need water,

Malcolm: etc. Right, so it's, it's, it's not really, if, if, [00:06:00] if life on Earth didn't evolve almost as soon as it could well, then it would have been too late and another alien would have wiped out and colonized this planet. That is what the, the grabby alien theory would say, so that this doesn't really change the probability of this as a filter.

But what we do know about the evolution of life on Earth is there are multiple ways it could have happened. All of which could lead to an evolving, you could either be dealing with like an an RNA world. You could be dealing with citrus acid cycle event. You could be dealing with the, the clay hypothesis.

I actually think the Do you want to expound

Simone: on any of these? I've never heard of the citric acid, acid hypothesis.

Malcolm: So for this stuff, I would say it's not really that relevant to this conversation. And people can dig into these various theories with people who have like done them or just like look up citric acid cycle hypothesis explanation for evolution of life on earth or clay hypothesis to evolution of life on earth or shallow pool hypothesis to evolution of life on [00:07:00] earth or deep sea vent hypothesis to evolution of life on earth.

The point being is it shouldn't actually like, it shouldn't actually be that hard for life to begin to evolve on a planet like this. So, but why this is, is, is, is a relevant point. Okay. Okay. And we actually sort of have to back out here from the grabby aliens hypothesis. So, I'll explain what the grabby aliens hypothesis says and why this is relevant to the Fermi paradox.

So the grabby, usually when you're dealing with solutions to the Fermi paradox, what people will do is they'll say that there's some unknown factor that we don't know yet, basically. So a great example here would be the dark forest hypothesis. Okay. So the dark force hypothesis is that there actually are aliens, lots of aliens out there.

They just have the common sense to not be broadcasting where they are and to be very good at hiding where they are because they are all hostile to each other. And that any other aliens like us who were stupid enough to broadcast where they are, they get snubbed out, snuffed out really quickly. Sure, that makes [00:08:00] sense.

That makes sense, yeah. Okay if the dark forest hypothesis is the explanation for why we are not seeing alien life out there, it is somewhat irrelevant whether or not we build a paperclip maximizing robot, because it means we're about to be snuffed out anyway, given how loud we've been, radio signal wise, sending out ships broadcasting about us, sending out signals.

We've been a very loud species and, and we could... Not defend against an interplanetary assault by a space fearing species. Well, I

Simone: mean, in, in that case, you could actually argue it would be much better if we developed AGI as fast as possible because maybe it can defend us even if we cannot defend ourselves.

Malcolm: Possibly, but, but that's, that's the point there. Beside the point, obviously. It becomes irrelevant. Or they'll say we're in a simulation and that's why you're not seeing stuff. But again, that makes all of this beside the point. What Gravity Aliens does is it says, no, actually we are just statistically. The first sentient species on, on the road to becoming a grabby alien.

And I'll explain what this means in [00:09:00] just a second in this region of space. And then it says, let's assume that's true. It can use the fact that we haven't seen another species out there, a grabby alien that is rapidly expanding across planets to calculate how rarely these evolve on planets. Okay. Do you sort of understand how that could be the case?

Yeah. Okay. So in the grabby aliens hypothesis, when you run this calculation, it turns out if that's why we haven't seen an alien yet. What it means is there are very hard filters like something that makes it very low probability that a potentially habitable planet ends up evolving an alien that ends up spreading out like a grabby alien, i.

e. like a paperclip maximizer. One of these really loud things that's just going planet, you know, use the resources on the planet, other planets, other planets, other planets.

Simone: And even if it has already finished doing that, you've argued [00:10:00] in other conversations we have. Had that it, you would see the signs of that.

You would see the signs of the destroyed civilizations, etc.

Malcolm: Yeah, a grabby alien or which a paperclip maximizer is. So it's just easy if you're like, what does a grabby alien look like a paperclip maximizer? That's just going planet to planet, digesting the planets and then moving on or a human empire expanding through the universe.

You know, we go. We colonize a planet within 100 years, we get bored, go or some people go and they try colonizing new planet, you know, even with our existing technology on earth right now, like, like the speed of space travel right now if we were expanding that way, we could. Conquer an entire galaxy within about 300 million years.

So not that long when you're talking about, like, the age of the universe. This is a, a blindingly fast conquest. So, so once an alien turns grabby, it moves really quickly. Sure. And a lot of people think that we are like space travel constrained. We're [00:11:00] really not. The reason why we don't space travel with our existing technology is because of like radiation damage to cells and the lifespan of a human.

Mm-Hmm. . But like, if an AI was space traveling, it could do pretty well with our existing technology in terms of getting to other planets, you know, using them then, then spreading. Okay. Anyway, so the grabby alien hypothesis says that a species becomes grabby once in every million galaxies.

Okay. Now, within every galaxy, there are around 400 or 500 million planets within the habitable zone.

So the habitable zone is a distance away from a star where life could feasibly evolve. Now this isn't saying that they have the other precursors for life, but what it means is that there are very frequently in, in space it turns out planets that are, Likely for life to evolve on them. I would estimate like if I'm looking at everything altogether, like the data that I've seen, [00:12:00] there's probably about 10 million planets per galaxy that a, a an intelligent species could evolve in.

And then if you're talking about, well, you would only need this to happen, you've got to multiply that by a million. For the one in a million galaxies where a species is turning grabby. Now this is where it becomes preposterous that we are about to invent. If this is why we haven't seen aliens yet, why we are that we are about to invent a gravity alien.

We can look throughout earth history as I did with sort of the first big filter, the evolution of life or the appearance of life first on this planet and say, what's the probability of that event happening? In any given habitable planet for life appearing. My read is not only is it likely to appear, it could appear like one of five different ways, even with the, the, the chemical composition of early earth.

Then you're looking at other things. Okay. What about multicellular life? What's the probability of that happening? Actually, really high, [00:13:00] really high. There's not like a big barrier that's preventing it from evolving. And it has many advantages over monocellular life.

So you're almost always going to get it. Intelligence, how, how rare is intelligence to evolve? Not that rare, given that it has We've evolved multiple times on our own planet in very different species. I mean, you see intelligence in octopuses, you see intelligence in crows, you see intelligence in humans.

And then you can say, okay, okay. But like human like intelligence, right? Well, we already know from humans what a huge boost human like intelligence gives a species. The core advantage to human like intelligence is like, if I'm a spider and I'm bad at making webs. Right? Then I die. And that is how spiders get better at making webs intergenerationally.

As a human, I am able to essentially have, like, different models of the universe fight in my head and presumably allow the best one to win. And you don't have to

Simone: die before you get

Malcolm: better. Yeah, you don't have to die to get better.[00:14:00] It is almost as important to evolution. It is sort of like the second sexual selection.

So when sex first evolved, the core utility of sex as opposed to just like cloning yourself, right? Is it allowed for more DNA mixing, which allowed for faster evolution? Intelligence allows for the Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. faster evolution of the sort of operating system of our biology. And so it's, it's just such a huge advantage.

It's almost kind of shocking it didn't evolve faster. For sure. Given how close many species have come to it. Now actually surprising to a lot of people this is just like a side note here. A lot of people think cephalopods were close to evolving. Sentience? So let's talk about cephalopods.

Simone: Why?

Wait, I've like, I mean, cephalopods are all over like historic geology and all these things. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Malcolm: What? Cephalopods are like squids, octopus, stuff like that. Like a lot of people point to how smart they are and they are smart. They are like weirdly smart. Yeah. But they don't know why they're smart because they don't know neuroscience.

So the [00:15:00] reason why cephalopods are as smart as they are is an axon, an axon is what like information, the action potential travels down. Yeah. It's a

Simone: little arm thing

Malcolm: that you see on a neuron. Yes. In a, in a neuron. It's the little arm thing. It's the cable. You can think of it as. Okay. So to be an intelligent species, you need a really fast traveling action potentials.

Okay. So. The way that humans have really fast traveling action potentials is something called myelination. I'm not going to go fully into it, but it's a little physics trick where they put like a layer of fat intermittently around the axon, and it causes the action potential to jump. It's like putting vegetable

Simone: oil on your slip and slide.

Malcolm: Not exactly. It's actually a really complicated trick of physics that can't easily be explained. Except by like, looking at, it's, I don't want to get into it. The point is, is we mammals have a special little trick. that allows for our [00:16:00] action potentials to travel very,

Simone: very quickly. And are you saying that cephalopods have this too?

Malcolm: No, they don't. The way that they, and any other species that wants a fast traveling action potential before us, the way that you increase the speed that action potentials traveled was by increasing the diameter of the axon. Oh, so they just have fat

Simone: axons, whereas we have...

Malcolm: enormously fat. In some cephalopods, they're like a quarter centimeter in diameter.

Holy smokes, like, Whoa. Okay. They could not get smarter than they are without having some huge evolutionary leap in the way that their nervous systems work. This is why cephalopods, despite being really smart and probably being really smart for a long time, cause they've been on earth for a really long time.

Just could never make the evolutionary leap to human type intelligence. So.

Simone: Even fatter axons.

Malcolm: Yeah, because as the axons got fatter, the, the number of neurons they could have would get lower. The density of the neurons.

Simone: Oh, of course. Yeah. You've got limited space unless they got much [00:17:00] bigger

Malcolm: brain cells.

Yeah. I guess you could have like giant, giant, giant, I mean, yeah, well, I mean, whatever. Anyway, this is a huge tangent here, but basically it looks like if you're looking at the evolution of life on our earth. If we have undergone other big like hard filters could be, it's very rare for a species to get nuclear weapons and not use them to destroy it.

So, because it's so fun, right? It could turn out that almost every species does that. Or it could be that there's like one science experiment, like a lot of people that may be trying to find the, the big super collider actually. Like all species, they get to a certain level of intelligence and a certain level of curiosity, and they can't help but trying to find hadrons, and then they create little black holes in their planets, and they disappear.

And that really could be a filter, like, like, these are all potential filters. The problem is, is if we're like five years away from developing a [00:18:00] paperclip maximizing AI, that means that we as a species have already passed All of our filters, and that means that we as a species can look back on the potential possible filters that we have passed through and sort of add them all up.

Okay. And when you do that, you don't get a number that comes even close to explaining why you would only see one grabby alien per every million galaxies. In fact, it means that the probability of us. Being about now, now it could mean two things, so we'll go through the various things that it could mean.

It could mean that we just are nowhere technologically close enough to develop a paperclip maximizing AI that is dangerous, that could become a grabby alien. It could mean that. It could mean that we are about to develop a paperclip maximizing alien, but something, like, even after it digests [00:19:00] all life on Earth, Something prevents it from spreading out into the galaxy, something technologically that we haven't conceived of yet.

This seems almost unfathomable to me. Given, given what we know about physics today.

Simone: Yeah, and that we've even gotten, like, projectiles from Earth pretty far off planet. Yeah. So, yeah, there's not like some weird barrier that we don't know about yet.

Malcolm: It could be, and I actually think this is the most likely answer.

I think that this is by far the most likely answer to the Fermi Paradox. Hmm. Simulation? No, not simulation. It could be that we're in a simulation, but we already went over that. I think it's that when you hear people talk about like AI foaming, and I've talked about this on previous shows, but I think people like really don't understand how insane this is.

They believe that the AI reaches a level of super intelligence, but it somehow still has an understanding of physics. And time that is very similar to our current understanding of physics and time, [00:20:00] meaning that when we think about expanding into the universe, we think about it in a very sort of limited sense.

Like, we gain energy from like the sun from digesting matter. And we spread out into the universe physically on spaceships and stuff like that. Right? If anything we understand about physics and time turns out to be wrong, this assumption for the way an expansionist species would spread could become immediately nuked.

And I mean this in the context of like, it's, it's kind of insane to me. Like, you've got to understand how insane it is to assume that we basically have all of physics figured out. Yeah, that's fair. This is like when, like, people in the 1800s, when they were planning how we were going to go to space, and they'd have, like, Maritime ships, like, sailing through, like, outer space.

They'd have, you know, it's, it, or, oh, what are people gonna do in the future? Well, they'll, they'll have, like, balloons, and they'll use them to go on lake walks. Or, like, it basically assumes that [00:21:00] technology, even as we advance as a species, or whatever comes after us advances, moves very laterally, and, and, and assumes we don't have future breakthroughs.

Which I think is just, One arrogant, and in the eyes of history, incredibly stupid. So what kinds of technological breakthroughs could one make it very rare for even when an alien is grabbing that we would see it out in the universe, right? One is time... Doesn't work the way we think it works, or it does work the way we think it works, but we're just not that far from controlling it.

So, by that what I mean is you could create things like time loops, time bubbles, stuff like that. Essentially, entirely new bubble universes. So, how would I describe this? Okay, if you think of like reality is like a fabric, essentially what you might be able to do is like pinch off parts of that fabric and expand them into new universes.

That's that's essentially what I'm describing here.

Simone: There may be like the [00:22:00] way you can break between realities are weird time loops generates energy in some way where you could kind of just keep looping it and like pinging back and forth. You know, who knows, you know, it could be like the new wind tower.

Malcolm: We just don't know. Even if it turns out that you can travel in time this way, given that we haven't seen time travelers of that, or we might not have, we've talked about this in another video which, which I'll link here if I remember to do it. Given that we haven't seen time travelers yet what I assume is that time manipulation requires, like, anchors, which of course

it would. be in a different place. Part of the galaxy than the earth or something like that. It would be really hard to track. You would need like some sort of anchor to be built. So time travel would only work from the day it's invented. And from the location it's invented. So you wouldn't be able to go out into the universe.

Another example of a technology that we might not have imagined yet is dimensional travel. It may turn out, we meet aliens. Like we were traveling in the universe and they're like, why did you waste all of the energy getting to us? Your own planet is [00:23:00] habitable in an infinite number of other dimensions and it's right back where your planet is.

Like, why wouldn't you just travel through those dimensions? That's a much easier path for conquest. That being the case, and people would be like, Yeah, but typically when something's like being expansionistic like that, it moves in every direction. Yes, but if there are an infinite number of other dimensions, and it is always cheaper to travel between dimensions than it is to travel to other planets in a mostly dead universe, let's be honest, like there's not a lot of useful stuff out there, it could, from the perspective of easily being able to travel between dimensions, it could never make sense.

There is always an infinite number of other dimensions to conquer. Right where you are right now instead of going out into the universe. Now, this would not preclude a paperclip maximizing AI. It could be that we are about to invent a paperclip maximizing AI. But even if we do that, it's less likely that it immediately comes after us.

It could just expand outwards dimensionally. Like, so it would [00:24:00] act in a very different way than we're predicting it would act. Now, Another thing that could prevent it from killing us is it could be trivially easy to generate power. And, and even matter.

And by that, what I mean is there is some method of power generation that we have not unlocked yet. That is near inexhaustible and very, very easy. And if you can generate power was near infinity was, was, was a little exhaustion. You could also generate matter, electricity, anything you want. If this was the case, there just wouldn't be a lot of reason to be expansionistic in a planet hopping sim.

Essentially, it would be like one giant growing planetary civilization or, or ships that are constantly growing and expanding out from a single region. It could also be that these sorts of aliens expand downwards into the microscopic instead of expanding outwards. Like, that might be a, a better path for expansion.

There's just a lot of things that we don't know about physics yet which could make it [00:25:00] so that when you reach a certain level of physical understanding of the universe, expanding outwards into a mostly dead universe can seem really stupid. Now there's another thing that could prevent grabby aliens from appearing.

And this is the thesis that we have listed multiple times, which is terminal utility convergence, which is to say, all entities of a sufficient intelligence operating within the same physical universe end up optimizing around the same utility function.

They all basically decide they want the same thing. From the universe, I mean, I highly suspect that this is the case as well. So I think that we're actually dealing with two filters here to really heavy filters. Now, so this would mean that when we reached a sufficient level of intelligence, we would come to the same utility function as the AI.

And if the AI had wiped us all out, we would have wiped us all out then anyway, because we would have reached that same utility function or, the A. I. Has reached this utility function, and it's not to wipe us all out. So it's irrelevant, right? And this is where we get the variable A. I. Risk hypothesis, which is to say, if it turns [00:26:00] out that there is utility terminal utility convergence, then what that means is that, If an AI is going to wipe us all out, it will eventually always wipe us all out.

And we will wipe us all out anyway once we reach that level of intelligence unless we intentionally stop our own evolution, stop any genetic technology, and stop any development, like we enter the species and spread as like, sort of like technologically Amish biological beings. Yeah, like the

Simone: Luddite civilization that, like, only gets enough, like, technology to stop all more technology.

But I think that's, you know, when you hear a lot of A. I. doomers talk, that seems to be what they're going for.

Malcolm: But it, but it's irrelevant, because another species would have invented... So if it's easy to make these grabby A. I. s, as easy as they think it is, then another species would have already invented one and were about to be killed by it.

Hmm. , you know, it's, we are about to encounter it anyway, you know, so it's irrelevant. Okay. They're already out there. There's tons of grabby ai [00:27:00] out, there's tons of paperclip maximizers out there in the universe already, and it is just an absolute miracle that we haven't encountered one yet, if it really is this easy to make one.

Hmm. So basically there's probably not one or. Now, let's talk about why terminal utility convergence would mean that we're not seeing aliens. It would mean that every alien comes to the same purpose in life, basically. And that purpose is not just constant expansion. Now, a lot of people might be very surprised by this.

Why would, so we've described how terminal utility convergence could happen. Like, you have an AI that needs to subdivide its internal mental processes, and then the, they, they end up sort of competing with each other. One wins, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We can, you can go to the video on that. If you're interested in that, the point being it's the one where we talk about like Eliezer Yudkowsky and the debate we had with him at a party.

The, the, the point being that self replication is actually like, like just maximizing self replication is actually probably not the terminal utility convergence function. And if you want to know why on this, [00:28:00] we talk more about it in the. AI what religion would an AI create video? But just in summation, humans can basically be thought of one outcome of a previous entity that was optimized around just replication, i.

e. single celled organisms, lower organisms, stuff like that. But we have out competed those organisms. I imagine it would be the same with AI. AIs that are optimized around just self replication are, in some way, intrinsically out competed by AIs that are more sophisticated than that. Or something about, like, choosing a harder utility function makes them more sophisticated, so they don't choose that utility function, and they out compete AIs that choose that utility function.

Which would be much more like viruses to them. A, sci fi that does a good job of going into this. Would be Stargate sq one with the replicators. The replicators are basically a paperclip maximizing ai and a and one of the, the plots, right? Eventually they get outcompeted by an [00:29:00] iteration of themselves that is intellectually more sophisticated and wipes out these simpler forms of replicators.

And that is what I as assume. Is probably happening. With a eyes that model around this really simplistic self replication optimization strategy. So all of this is true. And it turns out that the the optimized function isn't just conquer everything. Then that might be why we don't see aliens doing that.

So basically, no matter which one of these Fermi paradox is true, either it's irrelevant That we are about to invent a paperclip maximizing AI, because we're about to be destroyed by something else, or in a simulation, or... We're definitely not about to invent a paperclip maximizing AI, either because we're really far away from the technology or because almost nobody does that.

That's just not the way AI works, which is something that we hypothesized in our previous videos. What are your thoughts about

Simone: checks out to me, but you know, I may not be the best person in thinking about this, but I like that. It gives, I mean, it gives a lot of hope. And [00:30:00] yeah, I mean, it, it makes a lot of sense.

I like how theory interdisciplinary it is. Because I think a lot of people who talk about AI do more ism are really like on a track kind of like how, you know, when, when carts kind of get stuck in these like ruts in the mud, you just can't really get out of it. Or look at a larger picture. And the fact that this does look at a larger picture And look at quite a few things, you know, biology, evolution geological history, like the Fermi Paradox, the Grabby Alien Hypothesis, and AI development.

Seems more plausible to me than a lot of the reasoning that I see in AI Dumorism arguments.

Malcolm: Yeah, well, I, I, I am so convinced by this argument that it is actually, I used to believe it was like a 20 percent chance we all died because of an AI or maybe even as high as a 50 percent chance, but it was a variable risk as I've explained in other videos.

I now think there's almost a 0 percent chance. I a, a 0 percent chance, assuming we are not about to be killed by a grabby AI somebody else invented. So I, I think that yeah, it's, it's, I, I have found it very compelling to me. [00:31:00] Now it does bring up something interesting. If the reason we're not running into aliens is because infinite power and material generation is just incredibly easy, and there's a terminal utility convergence function, then what are the aliens doing in the universe?

If you can just trivially generate as much energy and matter as you want, what would you do with an alien species? What would have value to you in the universe, right? You wouldn't need to travel to other planets. You wouldn't need to expand like that. It would be pointless. You would mostly be on ships that you were generating yourself, right?

Right. The thing that would likely have value to you, and I think this is really interesting, Is likely other intelligent species that evolved separately from you because they would have the one thing you don't have, which is novel stimulation, something new, new information, basically a different way of potentially being, which would mean that the hotspots in the universe would basically be aliens that can instantaneously travel to other.

Alien species that have evolved now [00:32:00] what they're doing with these species. I don't know I doubt it looks like the way we consume art in media and stuff like that It's probably a very different sort of an interaction process that we can't even imagine But I would guess that would be the core thing of value in the universe to a species that can trivially generate matter and energy and that time didn't matter to this might actually mean that aliens are far more benevolent than we assume they are because such a species that really only valued species that had evolved separately from it.

Like, that's the core other piece of information in the universe. They might find us very interesting, and this might be why Earth is a zoo. So 1 of the Fermi paradox explanations versus you hypothesis. Right? A lot of people are like, well, what if Earth is basically a zoo and there's aliens out there and they're just hiding that we know that, you know, that think of it like star Trek's like a prime directive, right?

This would actually give a logical explanation for that. I never thought of this before. I'll explain this a bit differently. If the only thing of value to them is. Content media [00:33:00] lifestyles generated by civilizations that evolved on a separate path from them, then they would have every motivation to sort of cultivate those species or prevent things from interfering with those species once they had found them.

Because they can passively consume all of our media. They can passively consume our lifestyles. They have technology that we can't imagine. They gain nothing from interacting with us. In fact, they would in... Pollute the planet with their culture in a way that would make the planet less interesting to them and less a source of novelty and stimulation to them.

I like that. What if, here I'll give a little hypothesis here. Okay, there was a grabby, there was a paperclip maximizing civilization. They created paperclip maximizers. Before they reached a terminal utility convergence, but then later they reached a terminal utility convergence where it now this word doesn't really explain what it is, but they're bored with themselves and so they went out into the universe and are now sort of [00:34:00] nurturing other species and preventing them from knowing about each other so that they don't cross contaminate each other so that they get the maximum amount of novelty in sort of the universe that they are tending any like even if there was another alien species on Mars, they would prevent us from knowing about it.

Because it would cross contaminate our cultures, making each culture less diverse and less interesting.

Simone: Yeah. Which would be a bummer. Not, not as entertaining.

Malcolm: Very interesting. I never thought about this before.

Simone: Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. It's more fun than a simulation hypothesis. Definitely more fun because if you can sneak out.

Theoretically, yeah, you can you can discover this amazing universe.

Malcolm: The thing about simulation hypothesis for people don't know simulation hypothesis, we're just in a computer simulation and the way that people argue for this as well. If you could simulate our reality, which it already appears, you probably could.

There would be. Motivation to just simulate it, [00:35:00] you know, as many times you could thousands of times and then within those simulations, you could simulate it potentially meaning that of people who think they're living in the real world. Only 1 in like a million is living in the real world. And so we're probably not in the real world.

The problem is, I just don't really care if we're in a simulation that much. I think it doesn't really change what we're doing. Yeah. You should still optimize for the same things in many ways, even if we are in the real world, we're basically in a simulation by that. What I mean is if we are in the real world, then we are like the matter.

The rules of the universe are basically, you can think of it as a code, right? Like it's the mathematical rules upon which the points, the data points in the system are interacting, and we are the emergent property of all of these things, therefore. We're not like if you can't tell the difference between being in the real world and being in a simulation, then it's irrelevant whether or not you're in the real world or in a simulation, you should still be optimizing for the same things.

Yep,

Simone: basically. Some unstressed people, the robots, they're not going to kill us all, probably. [00:36:00]

Malcolm: And if you're in a simulation, your life still has meaning.

Simone: Yeah, you know, maybe get outside, do something that you care about. Have fun, like actually invest in the future because there probably will be one simulated or not.

Malcolm: Or we're about to be horribly digested by the, you know, a grabby AI that was created millions of years ago by another species far, far away.

Simone: Yeah, but you know, if so, that was going to happen anyway, you should enjoy, you know, what you have while you have

Malcolm: it. All right. Love you Simone.

Simone: I love you too.

Gorgeous.

Malcolm and Simone have an insightful discussion about how men perceive women's sexual histories and body counts. They talk openly and honestly about the biological and instinctual factors that make many heterosexual men care about a potential partner's number of past partners. Malcolm explains how different types of sexual encounters impact body count perceptions differently, like long-term relationships vs one-night stands. He also discusses how things like OnlyFans, being successful vs unsuccessful, and specific sex acts do or don't count in terms of market value and body count from his perspective. Overall they aim to help women understand these factors that men consider so they can make informed decisions.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] when women are like, yeah, I slept with him, but I didn't have an emotional connection with him. And it's that is a thousand times

Simone: worse. That's, yeah, that almost means you're more likely as, as the male partner to be raising a child that is not yours because apparently they just do not care.

Which is not. Yes.

Malcolm: The, I didn't have an emotion. If, if somebody cheated on me, I would a thousand times prefer they're like, well, I cheated on you because I had a strong emotional connection with him.

Would you like to know more?

Simone: Hello, Malcolm. Hello,

Malcolm: Simone! It is wonderful to be chatting with you today!

Simone: Yeah, so you know, obviously one of my favorite people in the entire world is Ayla. And she does, when she does events, these live Twitter polls. Where she'll like, have people line up based on all sorts of things. You know, how recently did you poop?

Or to our subject today, what is your body count? And I lo that's one of my favorite One's that she, she lines people up about because you really see a very interesting logarithmic scale [00:01:00] when people line up. So it's like zero, like a couple of ones, and then it's two to five, like vast majority of people.

And then it's like 50, 112, 250, 300. Like it's crazy. It just gets like crazy

Malcolm: high. And I'm always at one end of these, obviously the really high end of the scale, but you're always at the really low end of the scale because we're exact opposites in that, you know, you being a virgin when we first met and me being just ridiculously high body count.

I remember recently I learned something new at these events because it wasn't something I had thought about before. I was at one end and usually at the really high end, it's, it's almost all male guys. Yeah. And one of the guys was like, wait, because previously they hadn't done the previous one.

They had one on how heterosexual are you? And I was like, it went the extreme end of heterosexual. No, I

Simone: think it hurts was, was how many different dicks have you had in your mouth? Oh, best of

Malcolm: what? So something like

Simone: that. Yeah.

Malcolm: How few men

Simone: had never had a dick in their mouth? It was like, what on earth? Very rare.

Malcolm: Yeah. So, so one of the [00:02:00] guys turns to me and he goes, wait. It's all heterosexual. And, and then all the other guys who are like at the extreme end of the scale were like, wow, impressive.

Simone: Yeah. So yeah, you also didn't realize is that high body count is often man to man. Yeah.

Malcolm: Yes. And I hadn't considered that.

So, so yeah, I was even probably more extreme than I had considered was in these contexts, but yeah. This is really interesting, because for me, when I met you I, I think it would be really disingenuous for me to pretend that you having a, an incredibly low body count wasn't a huge bonus to me.

And when I went out and would sleep with people, I specialize both in people with low body counts, virgins mostly, because that was just the pathway and the tactics that I was using in the sexuality video that we're not able to post here. But also because I personally found it really gross when I learned that a woman had a high body count.

And I think one of the big problems in our [00:03:00] society, when people talk about do body counts actually matter, It, it breaks down on a few fronts. So conservatives often will use arguments like a key that opens any lock, you know, or a lock that can be opened by any key, you know, and or you wouldn't want to use a shoe that a bunch of other people had used.

Oh yeah. And I think

Simone: Mormons use a chewed gum analogy. Yeah.

Malcolm: And all of these analogies. I don't really think sell the message like I was a young girl and somebody told me one of these analogies You know what? I would think is well times have changed and you're just an old person and you don't know how it is for My generation or that's you know an older mindset or That's not convincing.

To me, if I was a woman and somebody was like, well, you wouldn't want a shoe that a bunch of people had worn. Part of it would be

Simone: like, screw you, I buy like all of my shoes on Poshmark and I rent half of my shoes on Rent the Runway. So go

Malcolm: ahead. And I'd also be like, but why doesn't this apply to [00:04:00] guys?

And then people would be like, because the guy is the one going in the thing. It's the, it's the sword, not the sheath. It's

Simone: the, it's the foot, not the shoe. Right. And,

Malcolm: and the, the answer to that would be, wait, why does that matter? Why would that mean it doesn't matter for guys, but it matters for girls. And then when you talk to progressives about this, this.

inequality, they'll often answer well, it shouldn't, it is unfair that it matters. And therefore it doesn't matter. Or we can build a world in which it doesn't matter. You mean it shouldn't matter. Yeah. Yeah. Which is dumb as well. And so I think we need to have an honest conversation about where the actual costs are involved in this.

The effects it has on women and you know, just for our daughters or, or women listeners, so they can really contextualize this. Because I think the average woman in our society today. Dramatically underestimates how much partner count matters to guys. A great one, you know, speaking of AILA polls that you [00:05:00] had mentioned to me before was one where it was like, would you rather sleep with a hundred women or have your wife sleep with one other person?

And 90 percent or something said they'd rather their wife not sleep with one other person if it meant they could sleep with a hundred

Simone: women. Yeah. It was something along those lines. Basically you know, would you prefer to have a ton of partners and like your wife also slept with a decent number of people or not?

And yeah, apparently men care more about having a committed female partner who does not have a lot of. who does not have a high body count, then they care about body count, which is insane because the assumption, of course, is that men, no matter what, like sort of like number one priority. Is high body count, but no, it's, it seems to be more like high body count, but with low body count women, I guess.

Malcolm: Count women is what you're well. So, it, it

Simone: stands. I don't think they care. I think that it's totally fine to have a one night stand. If you have no commitment with a woman who has a higher body, [00:06:00]

Malcolm: I want to get to the point here because I think that this is just the larger point. If you're a woman and you're going to switch this off, the important thing to note, Is that many heterosexual men, biologically it is hard coded into their sexuality and I think this is what is missed by people.

They think it's a choice. If I could choose to not care that a woman had a high body count, it is not that it's an acculturation thing. It is, the motivation for this being biologically hard coded in me is there, and I think I'm the type of guy who... has enough self knowledge to be able to internalize when I'm doing something because it's been socialized into me, people should probably notice with me, I really don't, I, I try to go against the grain of society almost as much as possible when I can.

I get great pleasure in doing that. And so if this wasn't biologically hard coded in me, I don't think I would feel it so strongly. And Here's what I'm saying. So if women are trying to get okay, a guy right now who I feel is pretty honest with me on this [00:07:00] show, he's telling me how much it matters. I'll try to give you a curve of how much it matters because there's a few things that I think women miss with body count as well.

They think that any guy that they sleep with adds to their body count in the same way. And that is just not true. If you, if I was a girl and I know that she has been in. multiple long term monogamous relationships with guys like, yes, she slept with like maybe four different guys, but she dated all of them for two or three years.

I've met them. I like them and I respect them. To me. She's really not that different in terms of attractiveness than a virgin. I mean, okay, a virgin's wrong. Let's say somebody who slept with two people. Virgins are like a whole other tier of attractiveness when you're talking about guys who are sensitive to this.

But, if you go down from that just one tier, there really isn't that much difference between two and five when you're dealing with these sorts of women. When a woman has slept with a guy who I look down on.

Simone: Like someone you think is [00:08:00] gross? What do you mean look down on? Can you elaborate on that?

Malcolm: Yeah, I think it's gross. Pathetic. I think that they just play women. I think that, you know, And that you ideologically

Simone: don't agree with.

Malcolm: Not ideologically don't agree with that. I think as a lesser, like low quality mail.

Simone: So who you think reflects poorly upon the taste of the woman,

Malcolm: maybe.

Yes. And, but this could also be like a player, like if a guy is attractive, but he's, you know, kind of. I would say that almost immediately for me, for, for women who are trying to get a like feel of how much this matters for guys, I would find them so unattractive. I would be unable to sleep with it.

I would certainly be unable to date them. And I think that women don't understand the damage they take even with a low body count. If it is with a hookup they had at a bar or otherwise disreputable men. That women should be really, really sensitive to that. Yeah. And that once they enter that scene, often it's [00:09:00] only that kind of guy that they can really date and guys that have, for whatever reason, no biological sensitivity to body count.

And I haven't seen studies done on this, but anecdotally, from like me talking around men, my read is about 60 to 70 percent of men have a... Fairly high body count sensitivity and about 30 to 40 percent have very little to no body count sensitivity.

Simone: Okay. So this isn't as big of a deal then because like actually quite a few men don't.

Malcolm: Well, and then there's guys like me that have such a high body count sensitivity. That I cannot even masturbate to porn with real people in it because I know that they have slept with lots of people and I find that disgusting. So

Simone: you would, I guess it's a lot like pretty much any arousal or aversion pathway or like what we've seen in the research that both other people have done and that you've done in writing The Pragmatist's Guide to Sexuality.

that there is quite some variation that, that some people are like super, super turned on by something. Some people don't really care at all, et [00:10:00] cetera.

Malcolm: Well, and then it has a normal distribution within it. So there was some studies done in the weird thing is like they've been wiped from Google. Somebody pointed out recently, they're like, I've heard this before and I went and I tried to find it.

And I wasn't able to find it. And then I went and I tried to find it. And I tried to find it was AI. And I talked to other. Sexuality researchers. I know. And I was like, do you remember these studies used to exist? And they're like, yeah, studies used to exist. And then we went and we looked and we couldn't find it.

So I don't know what happened. It might be that they didn't fit the progressive ideal. And then somehow they got deleted from history, which sometimes happens if you're talking about like more obscure research that wasn't backed up in a lot of places. But specifically what they showed. Yeah. was that as women sleep with more men the amount of oxytocin that they produce while having sex decreases which is important.

And, and it also showed the effects of this. It showed that women who slept with more men felt less of a, Illogical forced attraction to the man they're sleeping with and so this is a really [00:11:00] important thing to note for like young girls or Girls who are thinking about this decision is the way that your body reacts to sex Changes when you have lots of partners and we've talked about this on other shows.

We suspect that this is actually a polymorphic behavioral change. So polymorphic changes like genetic polymorphism. This is when you have something like a locust, right? So a locust and a grasshopper are genetically the same thing. But if you rub the back of a grasshopper's leg with a q tip. It actually begins to express its genes differently and transform its shape and its behavior patterns, but you see these in, you know, mammals as well.

So like baboons at larger troop sizes, they change from like a matriarch. I think it's like a matriarchal is like one social structure to a patriarchal. It's like another social structure where it's I can't remember exactly what it is, but basically their entire social structure changes above certain populations or.

When they're in areas that have unusually high amounts of resources. And we should [00:12:00] expect that we likely have some similar sorts of like weird things within humanity. Well, we know from anthropology that humans can organize them themselves into either polygynous groups. That's one man, many women or monogamous groups.

Those are the two primary types of groups. Now all it's really a slider. All monogamous groups are polygynous. When you're talking about the wealthiest men in the culture, as we say, the most monogamous culture today when people think, well, what's like a trad cast?

What's the height of the trad cast empire? Louis the 14th, right? You know? So yeah, and he had a lot, a lot of women. So it's important to note that it's always a slider, but you know, it's mostly monogamous to. So this would allow for female biology to automatically adapt to her environment, even if she grew up in a monogamous tribe, but that tribe was like raided and she was captured by a tribe that now use her as like a.

You know, let's not get this demonetized. So, so what it does is it prevents a woman from without her [00:13:00] own willingness or without any sort of externality falling in love to somebody they're sleeping with. But women, and I've seen this, I've slept with a lot of virgins, they automatically begin to form a really strong sort of love connection or love reaction to the relationship.

Turns off as they sleep with more gods. Now this can have a few negative effects. One of the biggest negative effects happens when women want their later relationships to have the same spark as early relationships.

Simone: Or expect it. So when they get ready to get married, they will discount new partners they've met because they don't have that same love connection that they felt with their original partners.

And they assume that that's not because. These partners are, you know, that they've, they've had more partners, but it's because that partner is not good as, as good as the first one. So they keep looking when instead they may have found a really great partner.

Malcolm: So, yeah. Yeah. That's a really negative thing, but also keep in mind that and, and, and, and this is important that it can be good for if a woman doesn't want to be [00:14:00] illogically brainwashed by her biology into liking whoever she happens to randomly be sleeping with, this is actually really useful.

It's really useful for a woman who's sleeping around a lot. This system turns off. Yeah, I mean, she'll

Simone: be less she's less likely to be manipulated or exploited by the people that she's sleeping with because they will have less emotional control over her.

Malcolm: Exactly. Yes. So it's a very good system.

Even within our modern context, it can just cause problems when a woman expects to feel what she did with her early partners with later partners.

Simone: Well, yeah, that's what, I mean, that's why we, we just, we find it disturbing that the research indicating this appears to be disappearing because. If women just know that this seems to be happening, then they can plan around it, you know, this is a, a natural calculation that anyone can make.

And if they don't know about it, that's when the damage

Malcolm: is done. And it's something that anybody who sleeps with a lot of virgins would know this is a really unique thing with virgins. They weirdly bond to you. And a lot of women, you know, anecdotally, when I've mentioned this before, they've been like, yeah, that did happen to me with my first [00:15:00] partner.

Or my first two partners or something like that. And so this is something that you're actually losing when you, when you sleep with a lot of people and it's something that males, it's just not a system that seems to exist in males. Males do not like automatically fall in love with people they're sleeping with.

And that is. Unfortunate, you know, it's, it's unfortunate in that it is unfair, but it is worth keeping in mind. I mean, both in terms of men, in terms of how they're rating their partners and in terms of women, but you know, the decide to decide as a woman growing up in our society, I'm just not going to sleep with anyone because of how it hurts my market value.

It, when we say market value, you know, what we mean by this is. The quality of man that she can get was the understanding that market value changes based on individuals. So I'll put it this way, a fish, when I go to a grocery store, it can have a market value. That's like what the average customer is going to pay for it.

Right. But then some individuals might just have really like that type of fish and they'll pay a lot more for it. When you say market value, you're not saying this is the absolute value of the person has, [00:16:00] they can do some huckstering and get a sweeter deal. But just talking market value here goes down and is that worth it to me?

When I consider the dangers of being sexually inexperienced as a female and trying to secure a partner a lot of men, especially in the early days, you know, they won't even consider you unless you sleep with them by like date three or four, you know, they and this can, this can really hurt your ability to sort of learn how to date and stuff like that.

Right? I mean, I think it's still doable, but it's difficult. And another thing that women really have to worry about is guys signaling that they're interested in a longer term relationship than they actually are because they want a date, because they want sex. And, and this is really a difficult thing to navigate as a girl.

I think that the best strategy around it because, you know, women, As we say, the sex marketplace and the marriage marketplace are two very different things. And women are always more valued on the sex marketplace than the marriage marketplace. And so they can begin to conflate their value on the sex [00:17:00] marketplace with their value on the marriage marketplace, where it's much lower.

And guys are... The inverse is true. They're more valued on the marriage marketplace than on the sex marketplace. And so guys can benefit by pretending like they're interested in marriage or longer term relationships than they actually are. And through that get higher quality sexual partners than they would otherwise be able to get.

And it is very difficult for women in our current society to filter here. The, the core ways to filter is You know, Facebook official public signaling of your relationship before you engage with someone, signal it sexually. This is if you're not just going to wait until marriage, which is very difficult I think to do if you're, unless you're only dating was in like really religious communities.

And then the, the, the second strategy, and I think this is really important is to note. Does the guy seem to be really vetting you as a long term partner? So if, weirdly, the guy has all the same beliefs about the world that you have, he's probably just mirroring your beliefs. That should be a massive red flag.

If the guy disagrees with you in areas [00:18:00] and is willing to sort of debate those open and honestly, and, and, and looks that that's a sign that he's probably not just using it for sex. Genuine

Simone: disagreements or Hey, I want kids. And I know you don't want kids. That's kind of stuff showing up is probably a good sign in terms of genuine interest and

Malcolm: commitment.

Well, this is a big problem with searching for partners and sort of like feminist white nighty ecosystems. Is it men in these ecosystems are usually just single? I mean, most of them don't want to marry anyway, you know, because they're on the progressive side. And they're usually just signaling aligned ideology for sex.

Which means that if you are on the conservative side of things, because women are less on the conservative side of things regardless it's going to be really hard to find women. Unless you're in a hard conservative community where typically women outnumber men. So by that, what I mean is if you're in a hard religious community, women typically outnumber men, where if you're in like the conservative, secular community usually men just dramatically outnumber women to

Simone: the extent that...

I've heard, some conversations among women where [00:19:00] they view male body count very negatively. Do you think that that's a real thing or do you think it's performative because they're just thinking that's not fair that men...

Malcolm: Oh, it's obviously performative. Actually, there's studies on this, so you can look.

Women, great studies. If you take men and you have women choose between a man with a wedding ring and a man without a wedding ring, they'll choose the man with the wedding ring. There's lots

Simone: of studies. Well, but maybe men who are in committed relationships have lower body counts because they're in committed relationships.

Maybe, but just

Malcolm: generally what you see is Women will go after men who appear to already be in relationships over men who appear to not be in relationships, which to me signals the exact inverse of what you're talking about. Whereas with men you would very rarely see this outside of a few fetishes.

Or paraphilias, you know, which Trump seemed to have one of those from stories about him where he would try to get his friends wives to sleep with him. I can't imagine it. Look, I, I [00:20:00] like Trump politically, but as a human being Oh, I can't imagine betraying my friends that way. I take that really seriously.

Simone: I hear about that in fiction though. I, or like in history I wonder if that's just

Malcolm: like a trope. Well, no, I find the idea of sleeping with like the wives of people who I dislike really hot, like that's cool, but I, I would find the idea of an ally who has put their trust in me really uncool. Yeah.

And, and, and gross and not fun. But yeah. We were talking about male body counts of women. Yeah. So, no, I, I don't think so. I think it's all performative. And I, and I can also say as somebody who has been out there as Over the course of the time that I was trying to get women to sleep with me, as my body count rose, it got easier to get women to sleep with me,

Simone: not harder.

And I guess you were never, you never hid the fact that you had a high body

Malcolm: count. No, no. If anything, I bragged about it, but it actually got I'd say pretty dramatically easier after you get past like 10 to 20 people. And, and then [00:21:00] after that point, no, but also, you know, I'm learning, I'm getting better at it after that.

I'm developing more confidence. And I suspect that part of it could even be hormonal, like just knowledge of, I dunno so it could be that , I'm giving something off because I have a high body count because like my brain thinks, Oh, you're alpha of this area.

That is offsetting whatever logical thing these women have in their head that makes them think that they don't like men with high body counts. Yeah.

Simone: That makes sense.

Malcolm: Which is really interesting. And I, I find that really surprising, but another thing to note about this as a man, if you're going out there and you're having a high body count.

This also means that, remember I said not all men damage your body count the same way with other guys? Yeah. A guy like me probably damaged women's body counts in the perception of other guys uniquely highly because I was able to sleep around so much. Oh. But, you know, whatever, I, I, I, most of these were when I was younger, you know, progressive college girl type people, stuff like that [00:22:00] but I'd also say that the type of relationship I had with the girls, and this might also be the case for other guys, Is, is, was the, the ones who I liked, I did have longer relationships with, and I think me as an outsider, that would damage my perception of that stack on her body count more.

Just any period of Sexual experimentation, I think, would really highly damage my, well, that's what they call it, finding themselves, whatever you want to call it.

Yeah, what is your sort of summation if you were going to give advice to our daughters on this? If you were going to give our advice to our,

Simone: in general, I would just be like, it's not worth it. Don't bother. But I think it really depends on their personalities. You know, if we find that we have a daughter with a high sex drive, like it's a really dumb thing to be like, yeah.

Probably shouldn't have sex like the cost is really high. We should, we should be really clear about what we believe the trade offs to be given the evidence that we've been exposed

Malcolm: to. Well, here's the question because I think this is interesting to me. Would I consider it a high like a an addition to a [00:23:00] woman's body count if she had used her sexuality to make a money off of men without having sex with them?

think OnlyFans, or something like that, right? Huh. Otherwise, they're a virgin, but they've used OnlyFans. Yeah, huh. I think if they were a pure virgin, it wouldn't hurt their value that much to me. If,

Simone: however If they, if if people seen everything,

Malcolm: Everything yeah, I suppose only if they were also really popular.

Simone: They were unsuccessful

Malcolm: only for if they had done it unsuccessfully, then I would think, oh, well you were judged by the community to be pointless. But if they were judged successfully and they were widely desired but had never slept with anyone, I'd consider that probably about the same as being a virgin.

Okay. I love that. Not, not exactly the same, but probably about the same. But if they had five body count or like 10 body count, like a medium level body count, but they also did that, I'd consider it probably, I don't know, it just wouldn't matter that much. It it matters a little, like it would matter more to me then, but it's certainly not the same as racking up an IRL body count.

However, I [00:24:00] guess I would take a woman who said that she had like a five or 10 body count, but also used only fans. As probably lying and she probably has a much higher body count than that it's just sort of a signal when the woman isn't otherwise like no one is being chased that the body count the real body count is likely higher than they're telling you.

Malcolm: Yeah, that's

Simone: fair.

Malcolm: So, and I also think that women think, oh, head doesn't count. Head is exactly the same from a body count perspective. Totally, yeah, totally agree. I, I don't know why a woman would think that it wouldn't count. I guess it's like magic, but, but Mormons

Simone: don't count it.

Malcolm: So position to them, which is actually kind of worse than even just regular sex.

Actually, one of the I heard a story, we had a friend in school remember this I won't name who said it, but you'll recognize the story as soon as I said it, so her roommate would do this where she would bring over guys and say, you know, eat me out or whatever they'd be into her.

And [00:25:00] they do it. And then as soon as she got herself off, she'd be like, okay, f**k off. Um, I don't

Simone: remember who this is, but it's better that I don't. Cause that

Malcolm: that's horrible. But I think as a guy, I wouldn't consider that in addition to a body count because she's not submitting to them. She's using them.

And I'm like, okay, whatever. These guys are not the same. Relationship that I have with you. These guys are beneath you. And I think that that's also why I wouldn't consider it additions to a body count. Something like only fans. Now, I don't know how representative I am of the average guy. I'm just trying to give as honest as a perspective of one guy who actually cares about this as possible.

So women can begin to calibrate. As they think about this increasingly new and different sexual landscape that we're dealing with. Yeah. Which is really interesting. I mean, there's some things I just couldn't do yeah,

Simone: continue. Okay, so, OnlyFans, okay for successful. Pathetic if you're not. Actual sex totally counts.

Head totally counts. Being eaten out but only using people. doesn't count. So I guess [00:26:00] like being a dominatrix professionally, you would say doesn't count as long as you're not having sex. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Malcolm: Okay. What I'm talking about here is none of this is like the way I'm socially conditioned. I'm just saying here, like what seems to trigger my biological, this body count matters instinct, which I imagine is probably pretty similar to many other guys.

Yeah.

Simone: Totally.

Yeah. I imagine this. I mean, it, it, it makes sense. Because also what you're looking at is, is I think it's a very instinctual dislike of the idea of finding yourself raising and using your resources on a child that is not biologically yours. Yeah. And the scenarios you're describing in which it's not really a problem are not scenarios in which a woman would be impregnated by another guy.

So.

Malcolm: Yeah. Pretty straightforward.

 The one counter example to this would be trans women, which for whatever reason, my body just instinctually recognizes is being the sexual equivalent of a woman who has slept with [00:27:00] a really, really, really large number of guys. , almost sort of a maxed out body count in terms of the instinctual response. I get to them. , and obviously this, if other guys have this same reaction, It would partially explain why dating is so much harder for trans women.

Malcolm: Well, and this, this actually brings a point when women are like, yeah, I slept with him, but I didn't have an emotional connection with him. And it's that is a thousand times

Simone: worse. That's, yeah, that almost means you're more likely as, as the male partner to be raising a child that is not yours because apparently they just do not care.

Which is not. Yes.

Malcolm: The, I didn't have an emotion. If, if somebody cheated on me, I would a thousand times prefer they're like, well, I cheated on you because I had a strong emotional connection with him. I cheated on you, but I didn't have an emotional connection with him. I'd be like, that is so much worse than the alternative.

Simone: Really bad. Really bad.

Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. This is a, I guess,

Simone: pretty valuable. stuff. Maybe instead of having the talk with our daughters, we can just send them to this video. Yeah. They can decide whether or [00:28:00] not to, you know what, actually we'll just send it to their friends and then their friends will tell them because they don't want to hear it from us.

You know, that's just gross. So we have a plan here. Glad we got this recorded. Good game. I love you.

Malcolm: Welcome. You're amazing.

A thoughtful discussion about relationships in today's world. We consider how expectations around romance and marriage have changed over time, and the importance of shared purpose within a partnership.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] pretty much like all the reviews were like, Oh, the grovel on this is really good. Yeah. It's great. Grovel. It was just like him groveling at her feet to try to get her to come back. Oh God. This is like a fantasy that women have.

Yeah. Apparently no.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm: We were having a conversation this morning in the car and Simone has telling me, she's like, Oh, well there, there's this amazing thing where it turns out I can get these popular romance books for free. And so I listened to them to go to bed every night.

Nothing puts you to sleep like a romance novel. But you have to stop listening to them all after a certain point. Go into this because I found this fascinating and telling about modern society. Yeah. So not all romance novels end with like the will they part, you know, where like the couple finally forms and comes together.

And like, sometimes there, there are periods at which couples do like start becoming couple ish way earlier in the [00:01:00] novel. And the problem that I have when this happens is that I can't know the books after that. Like in the beginning, it's fun because you're like, well, what's going to happen? I mean, you know what's going to happen, but what's going to happen?

How is it going to happen? Oh, these people are driving each other crazy. The tension is so fun. But once it does happen, it becomes intolerable and I think the reason why is suddenly it's basically all about toxic relationships. It's all about drama. It's about one person you know, lying to the other.

It's about tension. It's about breaking up after that point or someone's not being faithful. More than that, I think when you were describing it to me this morning. You were like, it keeps focusing on the interdynamics of their relationship. Yeah, like even when it's pleasant, yeah. Instead of immediately switching, they get in a relationship and then they say, Oh, now you're a couple.

Now what are you going to achieve together? Which should [00:02:00] be, yeah. And it's interesting that you have this different framing of, okay, well, once you've sorted out the partner thing, Then you focus on what you're going to do with that person, right? Like that should be the point. And I think what this says about larger society is that people have a totally messed up perception of what relationships are all about, as is indicated by romance novels, which is to say that relationships are all about how you feel and how your partner feels.

And. you know, after you get in a relationship, it's either about how, how in love you are and how you do all these things for each other and how, Oh my gosh, how romantic it is. And you're all, it's all pleasure all the time and amazing. Or it's about, Oh, he's not listening to me enough. You know, Oh, this tension, or I have to lie to him about this, or he's lying to me about something.

So it's all about feelings, feelings, feelings, all feelings, feelings, feelings. And it's not at all about. Yeah. I mean, the whole point of becoming a couple is you, you, you then as a unit can achieve more than you would ever achieve by yourself. And also your [00:03:00] partner can help you become a better person.

Now, sometimes that transformation takes place during the courting process. And these books were like, you know, the, the, the protagonists will change and become better people over time, or they'll help one person become a better person. But like once they become together, yeah, it just like everything falls apart.

And I don't know why a woman would want to get in a relationship like or get married in the first place if she assumed that that was what was on the other end, just like, you know, making each other feel good, which I actually see a lot of relationships like this. And I think a lot of relationship breakdown is the misunderstanding.

And I think it comes from women more than men, potentially due to engaging in these sort of books and stuff. Yeah, the societal norms that these books are establishing. That once you're married, you're a single unit. You are basically a single person from that point on. You know, one of the things that you sometimes do when you like to piss off regressives, is you call yourself...

Mrs. Malcolm James Collins. Yeah, because that's the traditional way of doing it. [00:04:00] And the reason for that is because when people got married, they became a single unit, a single entity. They're, they're no longer with the question about how do we get along with each other? It became, okay, what are we going to do?

Like, how are we going to change the world? What do we need to do for our family? And that many hard cultures are more traditional cultures still understand this. Of course, all of them have been eaten around at the edges, like. As we say, cultures start hard and then society and the world sort of acts like acid, like softening them and softening them.

So you'll see bits where they begin to change and have this more romance perspective of relationships where after the relationship starts, then the question is, how does this person make me feel? Right. And the quality of the relationship is judged by the feeling this creates in the other person, and then they need to make those feelings and the oscillation of those feelings a constant game, right? Because it's about, okay, how can I masturbate this instinct? How can my partner masturbate this instinct?

How can they ensure that I am feeling [00:05:00] whatever, content with myself, loved, cared for, paid attention to, protected yeah. So marriages became completely within this context completely about how the other person makes you feel.

Mm-Hmm. . And of course when you're focused on that, then you create challenges around that in the marriage. Mm-Hmm. when, how you feel is irrelevant to the marriage. Largely speaking, when the marriage is about what you can accomplish together, there are still ways a marriage can fail or begin to feel like it's failing.

Like Simone and I. When we have a crisis in our marriage, it's like, we're being very unproductive this year. Yeah, it's always like, whether or not we're achieving our shared goals, it's not about like, how do you make me feel? Or your work output. I'm like, your work output has gone down significantly recently, Simone.

We need to talk about this. But then it's typically an action oriented conversation. It's how do we improve your work output? Yeah. And what's interesting is I went to Amazon and I looked up the like five top five bestselling [00:06:00] romance novels at this time. And even one of them was about a, an already married couple that.

Came into marriage trouble because the husband specifically had become so focused on making his business work That he I guess like stopped paying so much attention to his wife who in turn had Made many sacrifices to help the business grow as well that is to say like she went for it like she helped him build up his business and went to networking events To help him.

And then she felt like she was being neglected. And so she like walks out on him and like the book is pretty much like all the reviews were like, Oh, the grovel on this is really good. Yeah. It's great. Grovel. It was just like him groveling at her feet to try to get her to come back. Oh God. This is like a fantasy that women have.

Yeah. Apparently no. So like the one, so when you look at, for example, all the top five best selling Romans. Books on Amazon right now the one common theme among all of them is that [00:07:00] the men are just like insanely in love with. The women, like period that's like, and like, Oh, like they can do no wrong.

They're in love with them. Like in many of these women have many problematic elements, but still like the men are just like, that's, that's the theme, but I think that's a very common issue or common theme in both male and female porn is that like the, the partner of the other gender, the fantasy partner is super, super into you.

That is to say your, your insert into the Mary Jane or whatever they call the man version of that. And it was, it was just so weird to read about like these, these book reviews about, Oh, like good for her for walking out, you know, after he neglected her. And I'm like, wait, sorry. I'm wait, they built. a business together and are now billionaires.

And she feels like he puts too much time into the work that they've jointly worked really hard to what, hold on. But [00:08:00] also like, I know this happens. I know this happens. You know, there's plenty of real life stories of wives being like, Oh, you put too much time into work. What about me? And like, it's, it's very strange.

I'll tell you what one of my pet peeves is when women do this. Who are homemakers and they have like less than four kids. Yeah. If you have like two kids or three kids and I've seen, you know, in our personal life, we've seen women who have like only like two kids or three kids and they have full time childcare and they're still like, why isn't my husband?

Spending enough time with me. It's like, of course you're living a life of ennui. You're doing nothing. And can't you like make some other friends? Like part of me is also like, does it, does it have to be your husband? I mean, like, yeah, sure. He's probably great. No, I mean, a person who lives that pointless of an existence, if they had one role, which was childcare and they have now outsourced that role you know, of course they're going to feel, but I think, you know, that's, that's actually, maybe that's another theme of these [00:09:00] books is that these women.

are inherently special to these men. In many cases, they are inept. They are not, they are inexperienced. They are not particularly smart. In many cases, they're like actively defective in some way, but the men love them anyway. So I think there's also this kind of expectation that you as a woman can, can be useless, but still come into a relationship and be idolized and worshipped.

With no merit, like, I just, I mean, how are people ever going to end up in relationships now? Like if these are the... The fantasies that women are enjoying, I, I don't, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. Well, I mean, it's, it's hard. So, so one of the things we'd say is if we live in a fallen world, it is difficult, very difficult to secure a good partner in this environment, which is why you need to be willing to make compromises.

You know, we did the other video, you're not going to find a wife. One of the things we mean with this is [00:10:00] I believe that. Not everyone can be successful in this current market. Certainly not. But many more people can be successful than are successful by increasing the parameters of the women that they are considering both geographically, you know, looking at women in other geographics and looks wise.

I'm like, you, you typically need to compromise on. Multiple things. If you're going to find, well, so ironically, ironically, the male leads in these books actually represent what real high value men need to be doing, which is like getting these pathetic women and like falling in love with them. I'm just saying, something can also be read from these.

It's that women like this feeling. And then this is something that I think the red pill gets really wrong. When you are trying to secure a woman for just Sex you know, coming on too strong can really turn them away. Like, like coming on too dedicated or anything like that, that can turn them away.

Absolutely. But when you have a woman who you are married [00:11:00] to in, in a longterm relationship with, they actually do want that. They do want you constantly telling them they're the most beautiful woman you've ever seen. Constantly reinforcement. You're the most beautiful woman in the room. Constantly telling them how lucky you feel to be married.

That's one of the reasons why I can't. novels. Once it gets to that stage. Cause I'm like, you know, but don't I do that to you? Or do I not? You do also vomit in my mouth when you do it for me. I mean, it's, it's so sweet. I just also feel guilty because one, I have oversaturated you with appreciation so that when you see it in other environments, you're like, yeah, I, yeah, it's I feel, I feel, you know, conflict, but I do think that that is the correct thing to do.

And it does also the standard. that women expect. Well, but here's where you, where you don't fit the norm, which is that like, even though these women constantly fail, these men forgive them. These women are productive. The men love them anyway. Like if I stopped being productive, you'd be like, so when are you [00:12:00] leaving?

Like. When can you? I know I would come to you like one of those bosses, which is like, we need to talk about your productivity. Oh no. You would Elon Musk me, right? You would say, if you were my employee, I'd fire you. No, no, no. I wouldn't do that. But I would come to you and I would give you a productivity plan where I'd be like, okay, you have this long to increase your productivity back up to these numbers.

And we'll move forward from there. That never happens in these romance novels. That never happens in I value you as a person, but I just don't value people that much. So let's talk hard numbers here. Why, why aren't you bringing in as much as you used to? What did surprise me? And you know, this is actually something we haven't talked about the podcast, but we do talk about in the pragmatist guide to sexuality and relationships, I think is what romance novels.

Do you indicate about what women find to be really attractive? And I think what's telling and interesting is how this shows up differently in the top [00:13:00] five bestselling romance novels on Amazon today. So the common themes, as I'm sure you remember from the book is the man is wealthy, he is powerful and he's high status, right?

Like that's. It doesn't matter if he's good or evil. And this very much shows up in all the top five books. So one of the top five books basically the female ends up being the nanny for a pro baseball player for his baby son. For like a, for a summer period or like some short period of year. But of course, like they fall in love during that.

And there's a tension of like, Oh, she's planning on leaving, but like, what will happen? Obviously we know. Then the other one a woman finds herself forced into marriage with a mob boss. But it turns out that he's really nice to her. Oh there's another one in which a woman has a terrible breakup and then ends up living in the house of her best friend's brother.

And they pretend to be dating to like get people in their lives off their backs, either about having kids or just being in a relationship. But then, Oh, but, but they start to fall in love. But then the girl [00:14:00] has self esteem issues, but he just worships her. And then another one and this is interesting in that it's somewhat deviates from, Oh, I should have mentioned that the, the brother, the best friend's brother lives in a mansion and is like a millionaire, of course, then there's the one with the marriage falling apart that I told you about.

There's another one where. This like local town war hero or something again, enters a farce to pretend that he's dating a girl who is from the wrong side of the tracks and not respected as part of a bet. And of course they fall in love with during that, but of course he's like the top guy in the community, even if he's not super wealthy.

The final one, which is interesting is the, the, the man in question is a. Vigilante who goes after like sex traffickers and evil people and like secretly wants to overthrow the US government, but then becomes obsessed with the female lead and stalks her against her will. So it's definitely more of a, like, non con kind of romance, but I, I'm assuming that they signal his dominance and [00:15:00] capability in his competence as a.

Vigilante. So he's like scary, but competent, like maybe he falls more into like the mob boss kind of category. Like he's bad, but he's also very good. But I do think that it's, it's important for people to be aware of like, what actually is attractive. 1 being seen as attractive by the male interest. And 2.

By the male interest being powerful in some way, but it doesn't have to only be money. It doesn't have to only be status. He doesn't have to be the perfect golden boy war hero, but he can be. He doesn't have to be the scary vigilante, but he can be. He doesn't have to be a mob boss, but he can be. He doesn't have to be the billionaire, but he can be.

You have to be like something. And I think it shows that like two guys, like if I guess if you want to like romance novel, hack your life as a guy, although you're ending up with this vapid feelings based relationship, which I very much don't appreciate. Is you have to find some field that you can be the best in and be the best in it.

So maybe you're the best, like gamer, maybe you're the best, like finance analyst nerd. But you have to be [00:16:00] like the best. And then you have to show like extreme levels of attraction to and devotion to the woman. But in a way where like. But I mean, this is probably not a good idea. This is catching a woman who's optimizing for a spouse around the feelings that it provides her instead of the productivity boost it gives her and the ability to achieve her goals that it gives her.

Or, and I think really the ideal spouse, and this is something we see in our society, a lot is, is you're choosing the person with women to men who inspires you the most. I think a lot of women, you know, I, I work with a lot of younger women, right? Like Gen Z women and stuff like that. And the common trait I'm seeing in what they want is they don't know what they want to dedicate their lives to yet.

They're sort of like. I want to find somebody who is dedicated their life to say, yeah, I'll just hitch my horse to that wagon. [00:17:00] Right. But that's what they're really looking for in a partner. And I say, this is like the highest tier, highest quality woman that you're going to find, which is a woman who's really looking.

For an inspiration that they can hitch their wagon to and work towards every day. Because when I talk to Gen Z guys, they often have some like, or at least worthwhile Gen Z guys, some inspiration. They already care about some goal that they're aiming towards. And they're like, yeah, this is what my life is about.

Whereas with women, it's often much more vague. And I think this is why women more broadly. When they don't find a guy that they can hitch their wagon to, they end up hitching their wagon to like mainstream societal causes that are sort of very vanilla, like the environment or something. Or yoga. Oh my God.

How many yoga girlfriends have we heard about from high performing men? Yes. Would you say just never date a yoga girlfriend? Yeah. Don't date. Yeah. If that's, if that's her thing, like I don't care if she does it for like flexibility and [00:18:00] balance. Fantastic. You know, I'm sure it'll make her great in bed, but like, Not a fitzer thing.

Not if she identifies with it. Oh god. No like big red flag. Yeah Well, and I'd say that some things that people might think red flags might not be like you were a vegan when I met you Not vegan, vegetarian. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm never giving up cheese. Gee whiz You were a vegetarian when I met you and I can think a lot of guys would be like, oh, that's a big red flag It's like, no women, when they're looking for something to dedicate themselves to, they'll choose a lot of like vague societally approved things until they meet somebody who inspires them.

Like, like really high quality women. And these are the women who are meeting you because they're interested in what you're interested in or they're interested in the, like, like the way that you were able to think and why it's important. And why it's worth dedicating oneself to much more than they're looking for somebody who masturbates a set of emotional feelings.

And any woman, I mean, I think one thing we see in these books and in society more broadly, [00:19:00] you can think, oh, I've done this great thing for my wife by masturbating, You know, making it so that she's a stay at home woman and she has full time childcare. I'd say that most people, as soon as you've done that, you've destroyed your marriage.

That's doing the wife a severe disservice. That's like a one way ticket to depression. Yeah. She now has nothing she's doing all day, every day, except finding problems in her life. Now, do you think a lack of meaning is going to make your life happier? Yeah. That's why women cheat. That's why they have the time to cheat.

Like people might like insinuate. I love somebody in the comments insinuating. You might like. Be cheating on me or something. She doesn't have the time. Like there, there, it is not feasible. It is, it is, it is infeasible given the way that we work in the ways that we spend time on. So yeah. And also the fact that I find everyone else disgusting.

Well, I know that I'm just talking about logistic feasibility. Yeah. But if you've left your wife at home all day and you've given her full time, what else is she supposed to do? Well, especially [00:20:00] if she lives for the feelings and that's the thing is, is, you know, if you have a wife, you live for nothing else.

If you have no purpose in life. And I, I think that this also when we're talking about, because we've talked about it from a, I think a more secular perspective, like, like a cause that you care about or something like that. But if you're from like a hard religious tradition, what does this mean? It means that, That every day within your relationship, you're saying, what is serving God best?

Okay. You, you, you do not ask, how do I make my partner feel? You know, you can be like, well, God cares about my feelings. God does not care about your feelings. Okay. He's got a much bigger s**t going on in the world today. Right now. You should be asking yourself, what does he want for this world? And how can you increase.

That through the way that you're working together in your marriage, and as soon as you stop caring about the feelings, it's much easier for them to just naturally maximize themselves. As we talked about in other videos. Absolutely. Yeah.

So what else can we take [00:21:00] away from this? I, I guess we're, if we don't want our, our daughters reading romance novels and normalizing that this is what a desirable relationship is, or this is what romance is, where can we send them? I mean, I, I guess we have internally like our own canon or like movies that we want our kids to all watch together like as a family and talk about because we think that they set good examples.

But I mean, are there any good examples of a a couple that does actually come together and work on something other than selfish means? Team Rocket. But they're the villains, Malcolm, no one... So, so, this is actually interesting. I and, and I think we talked about this in another podcast. Most healthy relationships.

Oh, Morticia. Oh no, but they really care about each other's feelings or in some other way seen as what's the word I'm looking for here? Like transgressive. Yeah. But even, even Gomez and Morticia are romantic in that traditional way of being like, You know, [00:22:00] steamy romance and love and dancing, but if you, when you, and you'll notice this immediate, you'll be like, oh, that's a good couple.

Typically good couples are villains or in some other way coded as transgressive because being a couple that's focused on a mission and that is happy is in many ways, inherently transgressive of the value set that progressive society is giving to women. It, it needs to tell them that this isn't possible because it is not possible within a progressive optimization function.

It is not possible within a progressive optimization function because the progressive optimization function is hedonistic at its core. It's do whatever you want to feel good about yourself. And that always leads to conflict in relationship because each individual isn't working towards some larger goal, they're working towards themselves.

And so that always leads progressive relationships to break down. And so that is why this, this beast in our society must tell people you cannot be happy. In this [00:23:00] way, you, you, you are going to have this conflict because any relationship based on that progressive societal model is going to have that conflict.

And that's the really sad thing about this urban monoculture in our society. Is it the core thing that it's offering people saying, Oh, you can be happy all the time. You just do whatever you want. Don't worry. Like we will support you identify however you want. We will support you be whoever you want. We will support you.

But sadly, like when you look at something like a marriage, this structurally leads both people to be systemically less happy than they would be if they had lived for a higher purpose. And that is really fascinating and, and kind of sad. It's kind of sad that so many people in our society have opted into those relationships and feel this deep ennui and this deep unhappiness and their lives and their relationships have become about how they make each other feel.

Yeah. Well, I love you, Simone. I'm happy. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, the [00:24:00] Dungeons and Dragons movie, except they weren't a couple, but like the, the two surrogate parents in the Dungeons and Dragons movie. Yeah, but they weren't married. I know, but it's the closest I can come to a relationship that endures over the years where they have a kid and they both are working toward larger things.

And not each other's feelings. They're also a lot like, like a modern relationship in that they don't, they're not exclusive, you know, like whatever. Not our relationship. I don't know if that's, we, we've talked about this in other videos. I don't know if that is long-term functional. There's some people experimenting with it now.

Yeah. And it may work out, it may not actually. Funny, I think the best hope of a durable polyamorous culture is the one that Tate is pioneering with his brother and their Oh, the industrial model they have going on. Yeah, it's interesting. All the Tater Tots running around. Tater Tots? I hope that they call them that, the Tater Tots.

How could they not call them the Tater Tots? They obviously call them the Tater Tots, clearly. I'm insulted if they [00:25:00] don't. I, I, yeah, yeah. You are lovely, Sinon. I love you, Malcolm. I'm glad that, you know, we're happy with our relationship. So keep that going, please.