Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

Malcolm and Simone have an in-depth discussion about the underlying messaging in the new Barbie movie. They analyze how the movie portrays feminism, gender dynamics, and societal roles.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] obviously big spoilers in this, in this talk through I think structurally every part of the movie was literally as based as could be first part of the movie women, they do not treat men with any respect. This is seen as a world created from the aspirations of women in our society. Second part of the world, they go to the real world. It turns out the patriarchy doesn't exist, except in high school bookstores. Keep in mind, they could have gone to any bookstore. Could have been a public library.

Malcolm: It could have been a college. It's a high school bookstore. Then They come back to this world, Ken convinces everyone voluntarily to join this new reality

Malcolm: when they run into people who have beliefs that are different from them, or a way of structuring their lives that is different from them, they immediately say, these people must have been brainwashed.

Malcolm: She goes over, she brainwashes them all by making them sad because they were happy in [00:01:00] patriarchy land.

Malcolm: They are now sad outside of patriarchy land, right? Like, that's the process of the brainwashing. And then they take power again by taking advantage of men's good nature and genuine care for them while they have genuinely no care for men. Then... It ends with them taking complete control again, making all the men homeless again, , the man decides, MGTOW, very clearly said, MGTOW is the only real pathway for men.

Malcolm: Then the main character gets this whole, what was I made for song? And it's having kids, playing with kids, being a part of kid's life. I couldn't see anything more men's rights than this movie, scene per scene. It's

Simone: pretty weird. But then why is it then that progressive audiences apparently think that it's a very feminist film?

Would you like to know more?

Simone: . So Malcolm, what the hell was going on with the Barbie [00:02:00] movie? Like,

Malcolm: yes, we just watched it yesterday. And unironically, it may be one of the most based movies I've ever seen. But from a very weird perspective, like, I think, I actually question this. I... I know from interviews that the person who wrote it did not intend for it to be, have an incredibly anti feminist message.

Simone: Yeah, I don't think it's intentionally anti feminist, for

Malcolm: sure. My read is that either somebody in the editing process or somebody that had... Ability to influence the scenes that were shown and like dialogue lines occasionally.

Simone: This is my take and I think I have the correct take which is that feminism as it is today is so inherently anti feminist that any true depiction of feminist stances and views and world views is going to show how toxic it is.

Simone: I think that's what it

Malcolm: is. Well, we can talk through the movie and obviously big [00:03:00] spoilers in this, in this talk through and, and the audience can decide and add in the comments. Whether they think there was any, like, saboteur on the team trying to make the movie have, and

Simone: I think Feminism is its own saboteur, Malcolm.

Simone: No, no. So

Malcolm: what's really interesting about it, it had a really cohesive anti feminist message. It wasn't like bits and pieces. It was like really sort of clever in the way it was done. So first we'll start with, so we'll just go through the various stages of the movie with everyone sort of telling its own anti feminist message.

Malcolm: Hmm. Okay. So it starts in Barbie world, right? And it's sort of made clear throughout the movie that this original iteration of Barbie world is the female utopia that both women dream of the women who live in our world dream of. And that the you know, woke corporations are fighting to create.

Simone: Yeah, like, Every [00:04:00] Night's Girls Night. And it's Barbie's Dream House, not Ken's Dream House.

Malcolm: Well, so, there was a few things. So, one, Every Night's Girls Night was funny because it's, it's true. Like, you hear it and you're like, Yeah, but there's many bars where every night is actually girls night and there's never, almost never guys nights at any of these places.

Malcolm: Like it just sort of

Simone: subtly shows, I don't know, isn't every night guys night at a gay bar?

Malcolm: No, no, no. So girls nights, a specific thing where girls drink free at a bar. You've never been to a bar, so you don't know what I'm talking about. You've literally never been to a bar, so you literally have no idea what the humor in that joke is in Barbie world.

Malcolm: They say that as if it's some like. Comical great thing for women yet. It's reflected in the real world where every night is also girls night. And by real

Simone: world, we mean real world. And like, actually not in the movie. Cause there's

Malcolm: actually in our world and what it shows is our world is already so [00:05:00] comically feminist that it parallels.

Malcolm: Many things in this, in this fever dream world that she started in, but a really telling part of this fever dream is that the men in it are one homeless. It was true. They're, they're one homeless. Yes. Two, none of them have a job. And, and three, they live solely to try to please women.

Simone: Well, they are only relevant on a day where Barbie recognizes them.

Simone: They're only relevant when they have, they are an accessory to Barbie. Yeah. Right.

Malcolm: But they live to please these women, which is interesting because I think if you look at the you know, I think many, obviously there's the most extreme red pill fever dreams and stuff like that. But in many conservative fever dreams I think that women would still have a role.

Malcolm: They'd still have homes. They'd still, you know, when they were born, it wasn't that they were born purposeless. But I think what we're seeing here Is the fantasy of the actual ideal world that, that, that some women in our [00:06:00] current society and like the woke companies strive for is this dystopia. But it gets really interesting when she goes, well, actually, do you have any more thoughts on this part of the movie?

Simone: Well this shows up in several stages of the movie, but it's also super clear from the very beginning that Barbie is extremely asexual. Like there's one scene where Barbie has a big blowout party at her house. And at the end, this is also in the promotional materials, Ken says, Hey, like, I'd like to stay over tonight.

Simone: She's like, Oh, why? He's like, because we're boyfriend and girlfriend. And she's like, to do what? And he's like, I really don't know. And I just feel like the asexuality of both of them also kind of points to the plummeting right now. I mean, we are looking at a more. The sexless society right now where people are living alone, they, they, they, they may pretend to have boyfriends and girlfriends or have performative boyfriends and girlfriends, but not really be intimate with other people, which is something that was also pretty.

Simone: Pretty big in this world even the way that they acted, like in, in the opening scene, you know, Barbie wakes up and she's in her dream house and she's just, hi Barbie. And she just says hi to all [00:07:00] these people. And it also feels very similar to me, just the way people interact very shallowly online, just liking each other's posts and kind of seeing each other everywhere and feeling kind of surrounded by people, but never having any form of deep conversation or engagement.

Simone: But yeah,

Malcolm: but the point of this initial world, right. It is the ideal that many women strive for or wish existed, right? Like that is why they're playing out this world. Right. Yeah. And I think something that you captured in what you were seeing there are two things. One is this ideal relationship she has with a guy is one in which she is not committed to him in any meaningful context.

Malcolm: A one in which they do not sleep together. She has to do nothing for this guy, but he just adores her. And, and basically. She keeps her primary guy as a permanent side piece or what in the real world would be a permanent side piece. Friendzoned,

Simone: but without being explicitly friendzoned, but yeah. Well,

Malcolm: that's what a side piece is.

Malcolm: I know that you could never. I know.

Simone: I think I thought [00:08:00] side pieces were people you still kind of sleep with, friendzoned

Malcolm: people. No, no, no, no, no. So the ideal perfect side piece is somebody who's just always there for you as a backup, but you don't even have to sleep with. But anyway, we can, we can talk about the, semantics of this later, the point here being that's their relationship, that he is just this permanent attachment to her, that she needs to invest nothing in, and that she genuinely cares nothing about.

Malcolm: Yeah,

Simone: it's pretty clear that Kens in this world are kind of existentially depressed and... Well, no,

Malcolm: but this is also true throughout the movie. It's not that they're existentially depressed, it's that they existentially do not matter. And this is not true when the Kans take over, but we'll talk about this in a second.

Malcolm: . So then, Barbie, for plot contrivances, goes to the real world.

Malcolm: Now, this is sort of stage two of the movie, where they're contrasting her in original world to her in real world. And, the most interesting thing that you're sort of supposed to be tracking [00:09:00] is, What's going on with both her and Ken in the real world. Who stows away.

Simone: Who what? Who stows away. Who comes along.

Simone: Oh

Malcolm: yeah. Who stows away and comes along. Yeah. She didn't think to bring Ken, of course, because Ken doesn't matter to her throughout the entire world. He is a non human to her. She treats him genuinely horrendously throughout the entire movie. So he, he stows along and in the real world, a joke that is consistently seen is Ken and her.

Malcolm: See a patriarchy, right? And yet the joke is the patriarchy does not exist in. So far as like Ken goes to a hospital and he asked the first person he sees, can I talk to a doctor? And it's a woman, right? And he goes, no, no, no. Could I talk to a doctor? And then. He runs off after a random man thinking that he must be the doctor.

Malcolm: The point being is that the patriarchy doesn't exist in this world in the real world. Okay. Women have [00:10:00] equality in the real world. The only place that women don't have equality in the real world as, as seeing through the eyes of Barbie and Ken is within this fictionalized corporation, Mattel, but within Mattel Sort of supposed to be a different supernatural location in, in, in sort of the eyes of the movie.

Malcolm: Like, people in Mattel are doing weird things. I'd say it's almost sort of Zoolander ized. It's not totally Barbie world, but it's definitely on its way to being Barbie world. So, it can sort of be discounted as, like, a meaningful thing outside of, like, A progressive fever dream. But anyway, the gist is, is Ken's in the real world, Barbie's in the real world, there is no patriarchy.

Malcolm: Women have equality. But Ken learns about the real world through books he finds, I believe it's on a college campus, or it's on a high school campus.

Simone: It's, it's on a high school campus. Basically he like sees first off that like men have jobs and it kind of blows his mind. And then he sees within some corporate offices, men like actually being [00:11:00] important and actually kind of shutting women down.

Simone: Occasionally he sees men getting out of cars, men wearing suits, people indicate that they respect him and will ask him questions. And then he goes to the library after seeing like billboards and the dollar bill and like pictures of presidents and pictures of men playing golf. He, he like gets a bunch of books on like horses and the patriarchy and he develops this caricature understanding of what patriarchy is and just assumes that the real world is patriarchy.

Simone: So

Malcolm: I would disagree with your assessment of stewardship. Really? Okay. What it is showing is two things. One, he is coming from this fever dream that women would create if they could like, like the scene is like this one end state of the feminist movement. Right? I think like the most delusional version of the feminist movement and he is shocked that men are allowed to do things like drive cars.

Malcolm: He is like his big win is somebody thought to ask him what the time was that he was treated at the most base level like a human being. This is what's shocking to him, and then he wants [00:12:00] to learn about this, so he goes at the center of indoctrination in our society, right, to a high school, and he reads about the concept of the patriarchy, because this is what he's trying to learn, he's like, okay, what's, what's going on in this world, what's going on in society, so he goes, and he reads about the patriarchy.

Malcolm: Now what's really important is this knowledge he's getting about the patriarchy is one, it's clearly seen, this is what's being taught to young kids in our society, okay? But it is not from the actual experiences he has in the world, and this is fascinating to me. So then he goes back to Barbie World, and he tries to set up the patriarchy as he has read about it from the perspective Of progressives, right?

Malcolm: And what's fascinating about this is one, they are telling you, this is what we fear or the way that we perceive the world as [00:13:00] actually being Ken world within this Barbie world is the world that little girls are taught exists when they become adults, it's the world that they are taught exists in boardrooms.

Malcolm: It's the world. They are taught exists in companies when they are in high school, but it is just as much of a fever dream. As this, what would happen if feminists won fever dream? So

Simone: I see what you described differently and I don't, yeah, I mean, that's one way of interpreting it. I think he more got a caricature of patriarchy and just saw what he wanted to see and saw an aesthetic.

Simone: And what I actually see is more like he feels to me very representative of the like bronze age pervert facet of the internet. Where like their vision of masculinity and the patriarchy doesn't actually. Represent very accurately

Malcolm: historical. He learned nothing about the patriarchy from conservatives.

Simone: No, I know. I know he did. I know. But what I'm saying is I think that present like masculinity conservatives who also haven't learned anything about the patriarchy from [00:14:00] conservatives have a caricature of masculinity. That they hold to be the patriarchy. And it's for them, it's like pirates and warlords and, you know, the bronze age.

Simone: But for Ken in this movie, it was cowboys. It was, it was like, Oh, men horses are just men extenders. And it's all about men and horses ruling the world together. And it was caricature, but still it felt to me much more like the caricature was

Malcolm: not developed by men. It was not developed by conservatives, it was developed entirely by progressive, like, gender study academics.

Malcolm: That is the books he was reading, and that is the books he used to create

Simone: this world. He wrote, no, he read, yes, he read a book of, I would say maybe you're a little bit right, and I'm a little bit right. He got a book on horses, and he got a book on the patriarchy.

Malcolm: , I will say that this is a really interesting and telling part of the plot point, so if we're seeing Kin's vision, the one that he tries to create in Barbie World, as being a Feminine understanding of what the patriarchy is, right?

Malcolm: Like, like this, this fever dream that was created by gender studies [00:15:00] academics in the actual world of men's rights and everything like that. Simone, you correctly point out that a lot of them live for this aesthetic, right? You know, you've talked about like raw egg nationalists or whatever, like eating raw eggs, like Gaston or something, but none of them, none of them that I'm aware of.

Malcolm: Are actually into horses like this is not something that any actual men's rights group has picked up. But what's really interesting is when feminist organizations end up trying to appeal to men's rights groups. They always go for horses. So remember when Bud Light had that massive? F**k up. And, and everybody, nobody wanted to buy their products anymore.

Malcolm: And then that ad they wrote to try to make it better was like horses running in a field and like talking about how they're still

Simone: connected. I thought they were trying to hearken back to their old Clydesdale. Wasn't that Bud Light too? The Clydesdale Super

Malcolm: Bowl ads? I don't know. But the point being is that when feminists try to idiotically communicate with masculine men, They very frequently use horses, which is really interesting [00:16:00] because almost no men's group actually uses horses to intercommunicate masculinity.

Simone: Which I just said in beer in the Barbie movie, actually

Malcolm: yes, it's horses and beer, but horses are a key part of it, as you pointed out. So anyway he goes back to the Barbie world. And he creates this kin utopia and he, what's really notable about the kin utopia is a few things. One, the women in it are happy.

Malcolm: They like what they're doing and they have roles within this world. They may not be these high status roles, you know, like, jokes are made of like, well, now the Supreme Court, like, what are they doing? Hanging out with the guys and like serving them beer and stuff. But they are roles. They matter. The Kims want to live in the same houses with the Barbies.

Malcolm: What is being said here, which is what is fascinating, is that even from the perspective [00:17:00] of the, the feminist fever dream of what the patriarchy is, the patriarchy is both better than what they would create if they won, or if you're talking about like an equity perspective. And it's better than what people have in the real world.

Malcolm: It's even better than what women have in the real world. And this gets to a really interesting scene in the movie where Barbie comes back. Right. And she sees that the world has been changed. And she asks the other Barbies, why are you doing these things? And the other Barbies tell her logically why they're doing these things.

Malcolm: They're like, look, I want a mental break. My brain needed a massage for a while. Like this is actually, I'm having fun and her interpretation. Now, keep in mind, she basically, this is what we see. They do seem to just be having fun. [00:18:00] Her interpretation is that they have been brainwashed. And this is so, it's such a great interpretation because it's so the way progressives are.

Malcolm: When they run into people who have beliefs that are different from them, or a way of structuring their lives that is different from them, they immediately say, these people must have been brainwashed. And, and what's then really a great, I thought, like, subversion moment is she gets in this car where they all dress like they're in a cult.

Malcolm: Like, to me, this just seems like the obvious thing. Like, so they all dress the same, they all dress like they're in a cult, and they send other women out there to distract the guys and then kidnap the women. And un brainwash them. And, very clearly they're brainwashing them. Like, it looks like a brainwash van, right?

Malcolm: And what's fascinating about this is it is the way that progressives so often do things [00:19:00] like Antifa calling themselves an anti fascist organization, when what they fight for is like literally exactly fascism. You know, so often. The left will just like take a concept and then name, name something the exact opposite of what it actually means or what it actually does.

Malcolm: But there's another really interesting thing that happens in these scenes where the way that the Barbies engage the Kins to distract them is by asking the Kins for genuine help. Like they'll say, I'm having problems like understanding how to use Photoshop or I'm having some problems with my investing.

Malcolm: And it's not like stupidly obvious problems either. It's not obvious that the kins are condescending them or anything like that. It's just the kins are excited to genuinely help them. And, and genuinely try to, to share information with them about topics that they are interested

Simone: in. But of course, again, like, I think someone hearing this and having not watched the movie would be like, Okay, [00:20:00] so this is clearly an anti feminist movie.

Simone: No, really. Like what I think the filmmakers were trying to do is demonstrate that men simply cannot resist an opportunity to mansplain. And that the trap was to mansplain. Another thing I'd note about the quote unquote brainwashing of the, of the Barbies is that actually they come across as just as Stepford wifey and brainwashed at the beginning, like when they're all just in happy Barbie world.

Simone: And second, there is no evidence that there was any malpractice or, or manipulation. When Ken returned to Barbie world and everyone changed their behavior, it sounds like, I mean, realistically, what Ken probably did was just return so excited about a world in which men have rights and like men rule the world and it's so cool and look at this and then just told everyone about it.

Simone: And everyone was like, that sounds really fun. Let's play with this. So while it's implied that, or well, while the main characters, well, the main characters think that there's been brainwashing, there's no actual like hard evidence that there has been [00:21:00] any, only they do the brainwashing, only the female

Malcolm: characters get to the actual brainwashing scenes in a second, but I want to say why I don't think, so you're saying like, no, as a woman, you may not like.

Malcolm: You'd have to be so brainwashed to not see what's happening in this scene within our society, right? So if they had wanted it to look like just generic mansplaining, I think Kin would have been, like the Kins would have been helping the Barbies do stupidly easy things, you know, not like manage different layers within Photoshop or like manage a complex investment portfolio.

Simone: No, no, no. Sorry. That's, that is the way people are accused of mansplaining. I'm, I'm completely serious when I say this. Okay.

Malcolm: Yes, I agree. I agree. It's the way people are accused of mansplaining when they transparently shouldn't be accused of mansplaining. And that's why I think the movie is anti feminist in those moments is because in every one of these moments that is very clear they're thinking, or somebody on the set is probably thinking mansplaining, what is actually happening [00:22:00] is the men are just trying to help after being asked to help.

Malcolm: Which is different. And also keep in mind, and we'll mention this now because this is a scene that happens near the end of the movie, is it's pointed out by sort of the god of this world, this character Ruth, that, the creator of Barbie, that both Barbie and the patriarchy are imaginary concepts that do not exist in the real

Simone: world.

Simone: That people make up because life is

Malcolm: hard. That people make up because life is hard, but it is pointed out point blank spelled out in the dialogue of the movement. The patriarchy is made up, but I mean, that's

Simone: a little damning, but I, I still, I still

Malcolm: hold to my point. Hold on, but we're going to come back to, because this is also really interesting.

Malcolm: When the women come from the real world to kin world, the way that they brainwash the women into thinking that the men are horrible is basically just like going over a bunch of feminist talking points about how unhappy they are [00:23:00] and how hard it is to be a woman. But what's really interesting in this transformation is these women who this happens to were not unhappy.

Malcolm: In patriarchy world, they were not unhappy before they were told that they should be unhappy until they were brainwashed, be unsatisfied with the world as it is structured under this patriarchy. That was fascinating to me. Yeah, that was quite interesting. .

Simone: So it's interesting to see. What Ken world ends up being this caricature that as you put it, Malcolm is feminists picture of what men fully living out the patriarchy.

Simone: It looks like. So the themes and basically the Ken's take over the Barbie dream houses and trick them out Ken style, which apparently mostly means putting TVs everywhere. On TVs are just images of horses. They, they add a lot of like complicated remotes and there's beer [00:24:00] everywhere, so they get foot massages and they have beer and.

Simone: There are horses everywhere and big cars and that's that's kind of it. Aside from like big Like pimp jackets, Ken starts to wear this giant furry pimp jacket Which he seems to love. So it's interesting, but

Malcolm: they, they, they, they still They do more parties. They drink more beer. No,

Simone: I mean, there's drinking.

Simone: There's beer for the first time because beer is this symbol of masculinity. But there is no less partying than pre Ken world. It just happens to be that they're, like, more masculine style parties.

Malcolm: Okay, okay. I'll buy that. Alright, so we get to the, the after the scene scene is it makes really clear... That the women in the Barbie world, under the patriarchy, are happier than even women in the real world.

Malcolm: And I thought that was really fascinating. It was only by breaking them [00:25:00] out... of this system, that they became systemically unhappy and, and that that was part of the brainwashing procedure. But anyway, so they break them out and they have this plan to disrupt the kins, to distract the kins. Can you talk about this, Simone?

Malcolm: Because this was really fascinating. Yeah,

Simone: and it was brutal seeming and it just made the protagonists look really terrible because basically they decided they needed to distract the Kens from changing the constitution of Barbie world to let Kens rule forever or something like that. So in order to do that, they decided that they would all express romantic interest in all of the Kens and watch wrapped as they played the same song on.

Simone: Guitars. And then pretend to be distracted by or into a different Ken and then switch places and go to that other Ken to make all the Kens jealous of each other and prompt all the Kens to fight each other which is

Malcolm: just like, so Before we go further, there's a few scenes here that are really worse.

Malcolm: It is made explicitly clear throughout this [00:26:00] that Ken, within the patriarchy, genuinely cares about Barbie. Wants her to be happy and wants to be together with her. Well,

Simone: he also expresses frustration. I mean, he does kick her out of her house and throw all of her clothes out. So, it's not like he's been...

Simone: When she treats him really poorly. Yes, well, she does. She had that coming, but I'm just saying, like, One, I do want to give two caveats. One, this is not the ideal world for women. This, like, Ken No, no, no, no, no. Because they took all women out of all positions of power. But that doesn't mean that the women hadn't done the same thing.

Simone: It's just like, okay, well, that's not an ideal world. And also, you know, Ken did.

Malcolm: But hold on. So yes, there's the scenery kicks right over the house. But after that scene, This is when this beach scene happens. She's like, I want to get back together with you. And he's like, that's all I've ever wanted. Like all I've ever wanted.

Malcolm: And this is after kicking her out of the house is to make you happy, is to live a life with you is for this house. To be the Barbie and Ken house and not just the Barbie dream house. It is, it [00:27:00] is clear that he has only ever had the best intentions for her and had different ways of doing that. Whereas throughout the movie, it is made explicitly clear in the dialogue that she never ever cared what happened to Ken.

Malcolm: At best, she just wanted him out of her life. That she never cared and she was willing to use his care and appreciation for her to hurt him and his ambitions whenever possible. And in this scene that you're describing, that's what happens. She is trying to, in Barbie language, convince Ken that another one of his friends was making a move on her.

Malcolm: When they were not. This was a lie. She was one, not interested in Kin, and two other Kins were not interested in making a move on her. I mean, do you want to talk a bit more to this, or?

Simone: It's just extremely manipulative. Like, I don't know how, I do suppose that that's a point against this being a complete, like, [00:28:00] feminist movie that ended up just seeming anti feminist because It's really hard to make that kind of manipulation look good like that in the

Malcolm: entire movie.

Malcolm: She never does anything kind or generous or, or to help other people, which is not true of Kim. And it's not true of the kins more generally. In fact, I would say that the way that the kins go out of their way to help the Barbies when they're distracting them is literally nicer than any single thing that the protagonist does throughout the entire course of the movie.

Malcolm: And that is wild. The way that they hurt the kins is by manipulating and this is almost like this is almost more of a red pilly message than I would work into a movie. The way that, in this movie, women manipulate men is by utilizing men's genuine care for women because women are incapable of caring for men in the same way that men care for women.

Malcolm: Like that seems to be the message of this part of the movie. Yeah,

Simone: not gonna disagree with you there. [00:29:00]

Malcolm: Let's talk about the resolution of the movie because it is equally like, I don't know, to me, it really spells. So, so one in this scene where the Barbies distract the kids, it's only temporarily like the kids never really, they just sort of play fight with each other and then realize that they all really like each other and are happy together and that they don't really have any conflict with each other.

Malcolm: And they do this on their own. It's not like some outside force or the Barbies come in and help The kins make up with the other kins the kins do this on their own, which again, it's very different than what I would expect if this had a genuine feminist message where the Barbies would help the kins resolve things.

Malcolm: So the kins resolve things on their own, just not fast enough to prevent the Barbies from changing the laws. So no kin can ever have power again and the extent to which they want no kin. So you would think like, to me, if this was actually a feminist movie, at the end, the Barbies would realize that they were wrong in the way that they treated the kins and they would introduce some level of equity [00:30:00] into the world.

Simone: Yeah. Like maybe let's share, cause in the beginning, for example. It's only Barbies on the Supreme Court. And at the end, you know, the, the formerly dethroned, dethroned President Barbie, then, you know, of course repacks the Supreme Court with all female Barbies. And then one male Barbie comes up to him and is like, Hey, you know, we'd love to have one seat on the Supreme Court.

Simone: And she's like, no, maybe something really low, like a lower circuit court. And it's just insane. Like there's no concession at all. What it

Malcolm: shows is that there is no concession in our society. There is no conception from the feminist perspective. What this movie is, this is the feminist, so the feminist perspective, what many women actually want the world to be like, reestablishes dominance within this world, and what they actually want the world to be like is a world in which men have no power.

Malcolm: That is the message of the movie. To the extent where the men are then kicked out of the houses again, the men then become homeless again. At the end of the movie, the kids are not given homes. They are not allowed to live with the [00:31:00] Barbies. They are not allowed to have jobs. They are again, treated worse than they treated the women when they had power.

Malcolm: And no, it's really clear

Simone: in the movie. It is. Yeah. It's like, imagine that there was like a feminist movement. And then at the end, it was like no, you failed. Yeah. There's some of this thing where like, Ken puts on this t shirt that says, I'm Kenuff. I'm Ken, you know. Well, the message

Malcolm: they give to men, the message they give to Ken is he needs to learn to be happy without women.

Malcolm: Yeah, basically just

Simone: go MGTOW. Not

Malcolm: wrong. It's unironically MGTOW is the right answer for men. That is unironically. The resolution, the story resolution for Ken whereas the story resolution for Barbie is that she becomes human and at the movie, it's like let up so you think she's getting a job, but no, she's been thinking of gynecologist.

Malcolm: So it's that she gets a woman and she gets, she, she gets to be a human woman and she gets to have a [00:32:00] vagina and indulge in sexuality. Like that's what's.

Simone: Yeah, they play off. Yeah. When she decides to go to the real world and be a human, and there's a scene at the very end where like other human friends are basically driving her in a car and they're like, I'm so proud of you.

Simone: And she gets out. And as a viewer, you're expecting that she's going to some big job interview. And no, she goes to a gynecologist. And that's the end. And

Malcolm: with, with my framing of this, do you believe that somebody sabotaged Lee was on the set trying to make this a men's rights message? Because it has almost no part of it that genuinely gets across a feminist message, whereas almost every interaction seems to get across a men's rights message.

Simone: Maybe, you know, maybe I'll switch to say that it is a very feminist movie. But by depressed feminists having an existential crisis. How about that? Like, this like theme song at the end, like in the [00:33:00] closing credits, is this like sad voice singing, What was I made for? Kind of like, What purpose do I have?

Simone: And it's kind of like, Well, you know, evolutionarily, you have a purpose. And it kind

Malcolm: of involves things, but It's specifically referencing Barbie, And, and, and so, It's showing what she was made for, but what is really fascinating about it is through that they're saying, what were women made for? What do women truly aspire for?

Malcolm: And what's interesting is what's playing in the background during the song, which is kids playing. It's mothers. Like, with their kids.

Simone: Well, and it was interesting also, we forgot

Malcolm: to You were made for your kids.

Simone: And we forgot to even mention the beginning of the movie, where they talk about like how basically up until Barbie Girls played with dolls and girls played at being mothers and they show a bunch of little girls [00:34:00] in like a Space Odyssey kind of context playing with dolls and apparently looking very bored and sort of the message was like, oh It sucks to only be a mother.

Simone: That was terrible And then like and then and then you got a new doll Yeah, I'm like, you know now this doll that was model off of a sex toy is now available and you can be anything Like a sex toy and it's kind of interesting because it does sort of show the Like curve of a female desirable attainment or status seeking over time where like it used to be like the big status thing you do is be like a successful mother and, and now it's gone to like being a successful.

Simone: Sex symbol, as long as you can possibly do that, which also leads to a lot of very unfortunate filtering and plastic surgery and trying to make things work when you're never going to compete with a 20 year old, et cetera. So, yeah, that was also like a really, like already in the beginning of the movie, it was like, oh, whoa, like this is also talking about like demographic collapse, prenatalism, like why [00:35:00] our culture isn't producing families and children anymore.

Simone: It's amazing.

Malcolm: Yeah, no, I mean, it almost cohesively to me. Is, is the most anthem movie of the men's rights movement

Simone: I could conceivably reproduce. Sorry, just how ironic is

Malcolm: that? But like, But it starts with the girls playing with like wholesome toys and it is very clearly shown the contrast between the Barbie and the dolls. is the sexualized nature of the Barbie. And it's this moment where they're like, this is when we realized we could sexualize little kids.

Malcolm: This is when we realized we could sell little children, little girls, a sexualized image.

Simone: And make it aspirational.

Malcolm: Yeah. And make it aspirational. And that was really weird. Like I, I, I kind of, I kind of love what the movie was, was, was saying at the end of the day, I am surprised. I know some conservatives have been like, actually, this movie is, is, has many based aspects of it, but I [00:36:00] think structurally every part of the movie was literally as based as could be first part of the movie women, they do not treat men with any respect. This is seen as a world created from the aspirations of women in our society. Second part of the world, they go to the real world. It turns out the patriarchy doesn't exist, except in high school bookstores. Keep in mind, they could have gone to any bookstore. Could have been a public library.

Malcolm: It could have been a college. It's a high school bookstore. Then They come back to this world, Ken convinces everyone voluntarily to join this new reality from what we can tell, and from what the other Barbies tell the main, she They must have been brainwashed. She goes over, she brainwashes them all by making them sad because they were happy in patriarchy land.

Malcolm: They are now sad outside of patriarchy land, right? Like, that's the process of the brainwashing. And then they take [00:37:00] power again by taking advantage of men's good nature and genuine care for them while they have genuinely no care for men. Then... It ends with them taking complete control again, making all the men homeless again, taking all the power from the men again, and then the main character leaves for the real, the man decides, MGTOW, very clearly said, MGTOW is the only real pathway for men.

Malcolm: Then the main character gets this whole, what was I made for song? And it's having kids, playing with kids, being a part of kid's life. I couldn't see anything more men's rights than this movie, scene per scene. It's

Simone: pretty weird. But then why is it then that progressive audiences apparently think that it's a very feminist film?

Malcolm: Because they're dumb. They're, they're literally so brainwashed. It's like they have it on their eyes. Actually, so this is a great point. If you're saying, how did the [00:38:00] person who wrote this or the director of this not see the way that I think somebody on set was changing it into a men's rights movement film?

Malcolm: It's because they were so blinded by progressivism, they couldn't see what they were actually saying.

Simone: I disagree. I disagree. I think that the the people who are most instilled in progressivism. Also subtly no, though they may not ever directly communicate it. So it will show up as somewhat indirect like this that it's not working out for them.

Simone: Like, you know, we were just this morning offline, obviously not recorded talking about my mom and like the fact that when she was in, in college, she studied gender studies. She worked at an abortion clinic. She worked at a feminist bookstore. Like she was totally like the, you know, feminist young woman.

Simone: And she really tried to balance being a mother and having a career and it didn't work. And, and there are just so many aspects of feminism that just don't work for people because they, they don't allow [00:39:00] you to, to have certain things that, you know, they, they, they try to force an impossible balance that you actually could balance well if you did things differently, but that's not the way you're allowed to do them.

Simone: And I think that's maybe what's going on here is that. There, there are many, many feminist people who also see that society seems to be quite broken right now that their lives are not as satisfying as they want them to be, that there's all these problems that they don't really know how to address, that they have mental health issues, so that things aren't quite right.

Simone: And so that will show up in their work and that will show up in stuff that they say is feminist because they are feminist, right? But,

Malcolm: you know. I think that's a great point to end on and it's something we'll talk about in an upcoming video that we'll film soon, which is how can we actually make women work durably in a society?

Malcolm: Pretty clear. That the world that progressives have created is not a world in which women are actually happy. And, and, and keep in mind that this world is the one that the, the women's are coming into the Barbie world and talking about all this existential unhappiness they have. But I think it's also clear that the world that used to exist before that was also a world in which many [00:40:00] women were unhappy.

Malcolm: So let's talk about a new sustainable vision for femininity. And I've had such a great time talking with you today. And I love that we get these little date nights and stuff like that

Simone: together. Me too. Thanks, Malcolm. I love you. Thanks.

Description: Brian Chau joins Simone and Malcolm to discuss the latest data on Gen Z sexuality and relationships. They analyze declining physicality, porn addiction, anime girl attraction, generalized neuroticism, and more "cursed" stats from Brian's interviews with young alt-righters.

Brian Chau: [00:00:00] this episode specifically, was in part a, an excuse for me to interrogate the love lives of my Zoomer friends. I am on the older side of Zoomer of the Zoomers.

Brian Chau: And yeah, I basically asked, I asked around. I asked all three of the alt right catboys that I know in real life. Yeah, and basically tried to get a kind of gestalt, like we were talking about, a kind of summary of their love lives. People were very happy to offer, you know, these kind of predilections, being into especially certain type of anime girls.

Brian Chau: I feel like there is if you talk about a real life person who you're attracted to, I think there's this soft idea of, civil rights law coming, coming after you, if, or people, you know, who feel, who are, like, similar in appearance, feeling uncomfortable with that. And that's something that Zoomers have.[00:01:00]

Brian Chau: Want to avoid, but that's the same is not true for, for anime girls. So, so it's almost considered this is like, this is like this kind of like weird post sexuality thing

Would you like to know more?

Simone: Well, hello, we are super excited to have a VIP guest with us today, Brian Chow, he is first and foremost in our minds, of course, and from for the past quite a while of the host of the amazing podcast from the new world, really good long listen, if you are looking for something good to listen to to learn from amazing interviews.

Simone: But more recently, Brian has become a senior machine learning policy fellow. Brian at the Alliance for the Future, something that we shall talk about in another episode with him. But today, I think we're going to get into something really interesting. Brian, do you want to kick us off

Brian Chau: here? Right. So I was I was listening to another great podcast Basecamp with Simone Collins and Malcolm, Simone and Malcolm Collins.

Brian Chau: Yeah. So, so, so I listened to an episode that you guys done. You guys [00:02:00] did on your own about it was one of the ones about Zoomer sexuality and I thought I have so many takes on this and I'm not populating my sub stack with my Zoomer sexuality takes maybe, maybe like the paid feed, but you know, there's so many other things that I'm working on.

Brian Chau: Right now that I just want to be more, I just want the Substack to be more laser focused on, the podcast to be more laser focused on. Yeah, you're high culture, we're low culture. Okay, yeah yeah, we will be talking about that eventually. And yeah, I thought this was a great venue to talk about it. I think that we have, you know, some similarities, some disagreements probably.

Brian Chau: But I do think that there's just not enough, there's just not enough like... Horizontal exploration of this idea, right? This idea of kind of changing, changing the axis, changing how people interpret sexuality, the kind of like default narrative. This is the theme of my podcast often, is this kind of default narrative.

Brian Chau: And this is like orthogonal [00:03:00] to like the actual thing that's happening. I think, I think the episode of course that really, really struck through to me was the one about I think like submissive and dominance. But also, you know, also this wasn't this was actually after this was released after I reached out to you guys.

Brian Chau: But also, the one on alt right catgirls, that is very, very important topic of our generation. No, it's such a thing

Malcolm: is that the the concept of the alt right catgirl I keep seeing and The, as the right has, because it used to be like the left was sex positive and the right was sex negative to some extent, and now the, the left has totally ceded any, any manifestation that is sex, sex positive for men, you know, if I'm, I want my overwatch to have, you know, sexy tracer, but that is a right wing idea.

Malcolm: Which is really interesting.

Brian Chau: Right, it's the Barstool [00:04:00] Conservatives, right? Yeah. Yeah, the party of, the party of horny men and also the people who hate horny men the most. Yeah, I think that's a good description of the Republican Party. Although, you know, although some of the, some of the the, the right, the right wing elite, you know, are coming around to it.

Brian Chau: Have you guys talked about Bronze Age Pervert on the show? No. It's a good character to mention. We'd love for you to go deeper. Yeah. Okay, okay. So, yeah. So, Bronj's age pervert is this very hard to describe in one sentence. His, his philosophy is Nietzsche and bodybuilding.

Brian Chau: Done. Easy. Yeah.

Malcolm: Yeah. You describe him as like a, a poet he's much more interested in conveying poetry and an aesthetic than specific ideas in a way that is... It's really interesting and a new art form that works within the online medium. Yeah. It's very

Simone: practiced affectation.

Malcolm: Yes. But I fear that sometimes people confuse what he's saying with a systematically [00:05:00] and internally consistent world perspective, which is not, it's an aesthetically consistent moral perspective, but not really a logically consistent

Brian Chau: moral perspective.

Brian Chau: Right, right. I mean, this is something that I try to do as well. There's, you know, there's if you look at the history of it, there's, you know, political theory, you know, there's like Hobbes long treatises on, you know, how to run a state and the role of the citizen within the state. And, you know, that's one thing.

Brian Chau: I think that, you know, other than Autistic theory nerds, very few people are going to read anything like that. Maybe for your political science class, you know, maybe, maybe there are like kids who are sitting through their political science class who are listening to this. And then other than, and then there, there's on the other hand, these kind of like fully affective manifestos, and usually I, the way that I see it bridged is I see people giving like Straussian interpretations of basically artworks or of culture of different approaches to these [00:06:00] things, and using that as a way to create something that is that is normative, that is creating some sort of logical order, but without necessarily committing to, you know, the kind of legalism of someone like Hobbes.

Brian Chau: Hmm. I think that's the goal of Bronze Age mindset. It's a lot more obvious if you look at, for example I think Christopher Rufo is a good example of this, of someone who is like he's, like Christopher Rufo supports specific policies, right? I'm not sure he has like a consistent political theory, you know, like a theory of how, how, how the world works, how the political system should works in the same way that, you know, like classical liberalism or, you know, like Burkean conservatism is a political theory.

Brian Chau: It's very different from that, but he does have both an aesthetic and, you know, at least like a direction or a combination of things that he's trying to accomplish.

Malcolm: Well, I'd love to hear what's your thesis on how gender and sexuality are changing, [00:07:00] personally.

Brian Chau: Right. So, so there's just like a huge dominance shortage, right?

Brian Chau: You just see this everywhere. Actually, I'm not sure like how everywhere you see this. Right, but this was in part, like this episode specifically, was in part a, an excuse for me to interrogate the love lives of my Zoomer friends. I am on the older side of Zoomer of the Zoomers. I have many, you know, many friends some of them I assure you are good people.

Brian Chau: And yeah, I basically asked, I asked around. I talked about, you know, what issues we were going to discuss. I asked all three of the alt right catboys that I know in real life. Yeah, and basically tried to get a kind of gestalt, like we were talking about, a kind of summary of their love lives. And, you know, my, my old...[00:08:00]

Brian Chau: My old advice to my fellow zoomers was just, you know, it's actually very similar to something that you talked about in, in, in your book. That, you know, 10x ing the number of people you interact with does, accomplishes the same thing as making yourself 10x more attractive. Right. Like the chance of finding someone, the chance of finding someone good is, is the same if you, if you do both of those things, right?

Brian Chau: If you're, if you're specifically looking for one person who is, you know,

Simone: compatible with you. So I want to make two predictions so that you can correct me where I'm wrong. Or it was where I think. Gen Z is, and I want you to like, from your interview to say this is where you're totally off.

Simone: So one is, or maybe there's more than two things. Basically they're not having sex, or they're moving more in a direction of asexuality, or post sexuality. That there's, there's more conservatism, but not in ways that you would expect. It's not Oh, we should go back to the old ways or the traditional ways or [00:09:00] religious ways, but more like men and women are quite different.

Simone: Maybe we should bring back monogamy, you know, like things are really bad right now. But then also like extreme levels of relationship nihilism, like not if it matters, I'm going to be alone forever. Like the same, the same thing that millennials experienced with wealth, like I'm never going to be able to afford a house or I'm never going to not have student debt.

Simone: Gen Z is going through with, with sex and relationship and marriage. Well, I'm never going to get married. I'm never going to have a spouse. I'm never going to have kids. So where, where am I wrong here?

Brian Chau: Yeah, the relationship doomerism is definitely a real thing that is almost 100% right. There are people I know who have a kind of conservative disposition who are basically like, well, I'm not going to find a trad wife anyway, so might as well, you know, do hookups or whatever.

Brian Chau: Hmm. That is a real thing. [00:10:00] I do think it is a real and very common thing. I should say for the audience, you know, this doesn't matter a lot. It is mostly, you know, like college educated people, probably like more, more Asian, but not like that Asian. But yeah you know, what you would expect on like an MIT ish campus, right?

Brian Chau: Or not you know, not MIT specifically. So

Malcolm: continue. I want to hear specifically. So you interviewed three people. What did they say? Oh, I interviewed

Brian Chau: a lot more than three people. I interviewed a lot more than three people. So the number one thing when it comes to the, the, the other topic, right? With this, this kind of I, I don't think it's a conservatism it's a kind of porn addiction.

Brian Chau: I don't know. It's Hmm. I think Simone, when you were on my podcast, you talked about the best alternative to, to no agreement or something like that.

Simone: Yeah, the BATNA for people in relationships. So the best alternative to a negotiated offer essentially, like what are you going to do if you

Brian Chau: [00:11:00] don't get a deal?

Brian Chau: That's, that's what it seems like. A lot of people are just, you know. It's a very happy equilibrium for them to just be, like, jerking off to porn. That's their, you know, that's their main way to consume sexuality. And they really they're a lot of people who, you know, just know, like, all kinds of crazy things.

Brian Chau: Know all kind of you know, tricks in order to pleasure themselves. Who... really have no relationship experience whatsoever. Maybe they've done hookups or something like that. But this is a very this is a very common thing that happens. Where, I think they'll log onto an internet forum.

Brian Chau: They have they're, like, people with no social skills. And I, I do mean like none this is not an exaggeration. And they'll log onto like these internet forums and just talk to, just talk to like strangers online. That's their default, right? You know, you, you, you go and stack overflow to solve your computer science problems.

Brian Chau: I thought

Simone: you solve your relationship problems. I'm [00:12:00] like,

Brian Chau: this is something. Yeah. Yeah. So, so people are going, people are going on Reddit forums. And, and like Twitter, x. com, you know, they're going on the appropriately named x. com to ask for their relationship advice and mostly getting, you know, substitutes for relationship advice.

Brian Chau: That I think is the trend. Yeah, well, okay,

Malcolm: so here's a question I have. So in my generation, and I'm wondering if this is part because we talk about how people are changing biologically. But and we talk about failed relationship markets. But I think 1 thing that's that's not talked about it enough. Is it in my generation?

Malcolm: Our primary social networks were are in person for networks. And therefore the primary thing that motivated me to sleep around a lot, like I slept around a lot, like in person when I was younger, it was not actually getting to sleep with people. It was the way my peer network saw me because I was sleeping with lots [00:13:00] of people.

Malcolm: And I wonder if the breakdown of in person social networks has removed a lot of the motivation for real sexual encounters versus just

Brian Chau: masturbation. Yeah, I think so. It's like an asocial thing. Definitely, I think, you know, less than less than the decline in like actual sex, I think it's like the decline in talking about sex.

Brian Chau: It's just you know, like Xers and boomers would talk to me about how there's a kind of like implicit status hierarchy. Especially among men. Maybe it's not, not, I don't think it's the same with women of, you know, there's pressure to lose your virginity, there's pressure to to, to sleep around, and I have never experienced that.

Brian Chau: I think most of the people I talk to, there's no pressure, especially I think actually there, this is a thing that I feel like is very wrong and maybe very dependent on selection bias, but I feel like there's almost [00:14:00] more of a pressure for women than men among zoomers. To have sex. At least among the ones that I, I talked to.

Brian Chau: Yeah. Again,

Malcolm: please elaborate on that.

Simone: Yeah.

Brian Chau: So, I mean, I think with most men, it's just neutral. There, there is a kind of, you know, Basically completely, you know, biological desire. People have innate desires, that's not, I don't think that's changed. But as a kind of social force, I don't think it exists.

Brian Chau: Or, if anything, there are, it is almost discouraged to talk about it. Among men. Whereas, among women, I think there is... It is much more high variance, I would say, there are definitely, you know, families that are much more conservative about this especially immigrants, but I think like among white women, it is among the few that I talked to and I, I want to say, you know, this is not that large of a sample size, so I, I'm like, I'm 95% sure it's like sample [00:15:00] size or like selection bias problems.

Brian Chau: Both of them said, both white women who I talked to like Zoomer white women, said that they felt encouraged to, to do such a thing. Not like strongly, you know, like you, you must, you know, you're, you're the most alpha if you sleep with a lot of people, but, but you know, that this is a good and healthy thing to do in your life.

Malcolm: Yeah. But I think probably a better way to think of it with women is this is how you're not cast out of the group. This is how you're normal, or is that wrong? Yeah,

Brian Chau: I would say so. I would say so, yeah. That is one way to think about it. How do they think

Malcolm: about deviant sexuality? The people you talk to.

Malcolm: Especially the right wing zoomers, I find very interesting. How they think about deviant or weird sexuality. The

Brian Chau: right wing zoomers? I would say that more in general, there's like a blurring of the line. It's not very... They're almost not aware that it's deviant sexuality. Or what specifically do you mean here?

Brian Chau: Do you mean homosexuality? No, no, no.

Malcolm: So, [00:16:00] catgirlism, I find, is the... I mean, that's the totem that we were raising in that podcast, was this idea that catgirlism is a quote unquote deviant sexuality, but every guy thinks anime catgirls are cute, you know? And so it's not actually a deviant sexuality, and that's why it's become this...

Malcolm: totem for the portion of the right that's trying to reclaim male sexuality. But I wonder how other people, you know, whether it's femboyism or anything else, how they're interacting. Is there anything where they're like, this is bad sexuality and this is good sexuality, or is it just like all good sexuality?

Malcolm: Or is it just like sexuality as this? It's like black muck that's ruining everything,

Brian Chau: Yeah. There is no understanding that an attraction to catgirls is unhealthy in any way. This is something that is accepted as normal and ordinary. It's, it's, it's not you know, every, every, person, every guy I talk to is into cat girls.

Brian Chau: But this is just, [00:17:00] you know, this is not seen as some kind of weird thing now. And I think the same thing is true for a lot of similar kind of you know, soft fetishes, quote unquote, right? Both among men and women, I think, you know, people still, people, you know, still consider it like a different thing.

Brian Chau: You know, I think like Zoomer, even like Zoomer conservatives are fine with someone being gay or lesbian, but they still notice it as like a different thing. You know, like it wouldn't be like, oh, oh, that's like very unremarkable. And now that I know that my friend is like gay or lesbian, no, but, but like people will, will have that.

Brian Chau: Right. And I think this is also reflected in how, you know, easily they would mention these things to me. You know, they're also, this is a kind of selection bias as well of like people, you know, maybe not mentioning to me like more extreme things. People were very happy to offer, you know, these kind of predilections, being into especially certain type of anime girls.

Brian Chau: I feel like there is if you talk about a real life person who you're attracted [00:18:00] to, I think there's this soft idea of, civil rights law coming, coming after you, if, or people, you know, who feel, who are, like, similar in appearance, feeling uncomfortable with that. And that's something that Zoomers have.

Brian Chau: Want to avoid, but that's the same is not true for, for anime girls. So, so it's almost considered this is like, this is like this kind of like weird post sexuality thing that you're talking about. I, I agree. That's like the right way to frame it. That's really interesting. So let me give me like one more, like highly quotable sentence.

Brian Chau: It's, you know, it is the separation of attraction and physicality. That's what I think it is. Elaborate on that statement a bit, sorry. So, okay, so I'll tell one very funny case study of... So you probably have heard this, you know, this is more of a thing among progressive circles. But people will talk about, you know, sexuality versus romantic attraction, right?

Brian Chau: And I'm not sure like, [00:19:00] how serious of a thing this is. For example, some people will say they're like asexual but biromantic. Right. And will your audience know what that means? I don't know. This is the thing that left wingers will all know what it means, because it's pretty common among them.

Brian Chau: Basically, someone who has no sexual attraction, does not want to have sex with people in general, but wants to date and be softly affectionate with both men and women. And this, I think, is the clearest example. There's also, there's also someone who I talk to who is Basically gay in terms of, you know, sex acts, but it's like romantically attracted to women.

Brian Chau: And I do think this is, I do think this is increasingly common. I don't think it's extremely common, it's mostly still men who are, you know, attracted to women both romantically and sexually and vice versa. I don't think it's extremely common, but it's, it is definitely becoming more of a thing.

Malcolm: Yeah, so, so to this end, [00:20:00] I feel like I have a lot of Zoomer friends who I've talked to about this sort of thing. And of the right wing ones, I, I have seen basically zero homophobia. I have seen no uncomfortable with gayness at all in the right wing Zoomer audience. Is that something you've noticed as well, or have you seen any,

Brian Chau: Real...

Brian Chau: Among IRL people, yeah. Among online posters, no, no. That's just, I don't

Simone: know tradition. That's just online

Brian Chau: posters. Yes. But even then, I think it's

Brian Chau: You know, the kind of the kind of archetype of the Southern dad who would believe so strongly in his faith and that, you know, homosexuality is evil, that he would separate off his son, his gay son or lesbian daughter from, from the family I don't think it's that kind of Homophobia, it's kind of like, it's like the, like the, the, the, like race shitposting stuff where, you know, they'll be very happy to say, you know, look, look at these separate crime rates, you know, or, [00:21:00] or even to go further to that, right, to, to, to say like prescriptive things about race and like what, what policies they would want or like encouraging, you know, segregation practice.

Brian Chau: But in terms of if that person had a Black friend or a gay friend, I think it would be not too different than, you know, the rest of Zoomers. They would basically be fine with it. And you do see this with the, the exception, the accepting of people like Dave Rubin or of who is the very famous trans conservative person?

Simone: Oh, gosh.

Brian Chau: Well, I, I, I'd say, caitlyn Jenner. Caitlyn Jenner. Well, she's not conservative, but, there was, you know, there was airing of her as the person who would finally defeat Gavin Newsom. Oh. Governor of California. Yeah. Yeah. I missed that. Well, it was not that serious. I don't think she had a chance.

Brian Chau: But, you know, this, the the even mere acceptance of it. is, you know, it's, it's a sign that like that kind of psychological disposition at least is gone. Well,

Simone: so I get the impression that it, we're in, it is very [00:22:00] much a post sex world where it doesn't matter anymore.

Simone: It's like highly virtual. Like you alluded to it being somewhat divorced from physicality. You know, a lot of it more has to do with just the experience you're having online, which suggests that when we actually can get much more. Realistic AI boyfriends and girlfriends that like People are going to go for that because it's probably better than what you're going to get from a human that you have to accommodate in an annoying ways.

Brian Chau: Yeah. Yeah. Like the most beautiful flowers are the most fake. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It is very much, yeah. This is, I don't know. You, you can also almost see this in existing behavior, right? If you think of what's, what's stopping an AI from being like an OnlyFans operator, right? Pretty much nothing, pretty much just the quality of like, how well it can craft text messages and artificially generated porn.

Brian Chau: That is the limiting factor, you know, basically. There's no qualitative factor stopping AI from becoming an OnlyFans [00:23:00] model right now. It is the question

Simone: is, in the past, it was just, will we get a generation of people that's okay with that? Because if you were, I think, to take the majority of the millennial generation, Gen X, anyone before, they'd be like, When it has to be a human if it's a human, that's how I know it's good.

Simone: But I think that we finally got to a generational point where there isn't an assumption that human is better and that there's a, like a pretty big unmooring from IRL socialization and like IRL relationships. And since we interact with even our closest carbon based friends, like digitally mostly, there's just less of this feeling like you need to prioritize.

Brian Chau: It is not only the separation, but the inversion of online and real, real life. I am, this is, this is one of the trends that I'm most confident on, actually, in terms of, so, so this is the operational question [00:24:00] of would you prefer to have either a romantic or sexual relationship with someone you already know, or, or like a stranger online?

Brian Chau: And I think it's been going in the direction, in terms of sexual relationships, it's been going in the direction of prefer online for some time. But the thing that was very surprising to me was the same is true for romantic relationships. Where, what I think it is, is I think that the kind of female type social interaction of having friends for the purpose of being accepted into the group, that, that is the norm.

Brian Chau: Which itself is, I don't know if you would disagree, but I think Witch itself is a kind of masturbatory version of having real friends. Where, you know, you have you know, you have the aesthetics of friendship, you know, you go, you hang out, even, even like real life interactions are like this, but membership in the friend group is not [00:25:00] actually based on any kind of loyalty or any kind of personal traits, but rather a kind of, you know, a kind of conformity where that is also leaning towards the male type of friendship now.

Brian Chau: Where that ends up, or I don't know, maybe it was always like this, the male type, or like the this is the dominant form of friendship between men and women. Men, men will consider their female friends the same way. Women will consider their male friends the same way. There, there is no distinction between like the, the female type friend, friendship pattern and the like, intersex or that, that might not be the right word, but like the, the, the, the friendship between men and women.

Brian Chau: There's no distinction between that and, ooh female to female friendships. But hold on because that's a,

Simone: that's like a, an extreme divorce of like bronze age pervert. Ideology, right? Because he's talking about the need for male only spaces and that even male to male relationships are screwed up if they are in the presence of a [00:26:00] female because she ruins the dynamic and that we need to bring back male only spaces so that men don't lose their minds and do stupid stuff and can actually be great again.

Simone: So I feel like

Brian Chau: that there's some tension there. Think present day men are like, too, too too quote unquote gay or like she, what we call like sissies. Right. No, I think like it's, it's in accordance with, with, with Bronze Age pervert thought. It's...

Simone: Hmm. So where, where it doesn't matter if there are women or men, like where gender doesn't matter is, is where like society is too sissified in the end.

Simone: And like only, only male spaces only really matter if you've got super masculine men. Is that it? Or like dominant style men?

Brian Chau: Well, no, I think it's more of, you should consider it more revolutionarily, right? If this is the way that like men are engaging in like mixed mixed sex social groups, then, you know, there, there needs to be a revolution.

Brian Chau: There needs to be the bronze age for revolution. You know, that, that, that's what he would say about this. I, I would imagine.

Malcolm: Well, not if they're [00:27:00] engaging that way because their

Simone: biology has changed. Yeah, not if they're engaging that way because they know they have no shot at all. Maybe men lose their mind in the presence of women.

Simone: But that's just

Brian Chau: not true, right, that they do have a shot at all. This is the other thing, is so there are, there are, there are studies the, the headline of, of this study. Oh, and replication attempts of the study is something like 50% of men would like sleep with with a woman, with a woman who just asked him on the street.

Brian Chau: Oh, yeah. As opposed to around 5% of women. Right. But the other thing that they ask in that study is would you go on a date with a person who, who randomly asked you on the street? And for, for single men, it is the, the first number was also for single men and women. The, the, the first number for single men was something like 70%, or 80%.

Brian Chau: And the number for women was 50%. And, you know, maybe, maybe this is not so surprising to you, right? Maybe this is, you know, just common sense for you. But, for [00:28:00] I think every single Zoomer I've talked to about this, except for one guy who's into Evo Psych, who has seen specifically this study before, was just like utterly floored that like 50% of women would, 50% of single women would say yes.

Brian Chau: Well, but

Simone: how attractive was the confederate? I haven't seen this, this, that is like 100. If the confederate is an eight or higher. Yes. If the confederate is an eight or below. No,

Malcolm: I think this study was done a while ago and I don't think that this is true anymore. In fact, I would even go so far as to argue that men in today's environment, if a woman went up and asked him to have sex with them, I think that 50% of zoomers would probably say no.

Simone: To the woman, to the woman. I think

Brian Chau: they're far

Malcolm: more timid than you imagine.

Brian Chau: No. You disagree? No. Maybe, so like the really cursed stat would be like, if you see like an inversion between like willing to have sex and willing to go on a date, that is... [00:29:00] That would be interesting. But yeah, we, we, we, we should see replications of the study.

Brian Chau: I'd love to see replications of the study. This would be

Simone: very fun. But with confederate 0 to 10 ratings that it none of this matters if you don't have that. Just none of it matters. Because that, I think that's the really key thing that has changed which is that we've, we've switched to relationship markets that are extremely visually based.

Simone: And that we've conditioned a huge volume of people to select sexual partners based on only physical appearance. And, whereas in the past, it used to be like, oh, well, we're both in the model train club together or whatever, or I like your jokes, or you're really smart. And, you know, people were able to compete in many different arenas, whereas now it's a swipe and it's an image.

Simone: And I, I think that that. Well, and also then I feel like social media filters have also completely thrown off people's perception of, of attractiveness. And we've discussed this in other episodes where you might, you might think that someone is. Is like a a five, you know, out of 10, like [00:30:00] attractiveness wise, but if you compare them to an actual general population, like in their nation, they'd be more like a six or a seven, but because of online perceptions of what beauty is you know, there's just, there was like a sort of meme a little bit earlier, like maybe two weeks back of margot Robbie, who, who stars in the Barbie, Barbie movie being a mid, like that she's middling that, that Margot Robbie, the, the human actress selected to be Barbie is. middling in attractiveness.

Brian Chau: So I just feel like she's not an anime

Simone: cat girl. That's that is her problem. Yeah. Yeah. And it's one, I

Malcolm: think it's really difficult every day.

Malcolm: Simone,

Simone: I'm so sorry. I'll get cat ears. I promise as soon as we can grab zoomers.

Brian Chau: Thank

Simone: you. Well, we saw we were in New York yesterday walking around with our boys and I was thinking about, I don't even know what the next generation of what kids [00:31:00] are today. And they have to be something beyond zoomers. But there was a furry kid walking around just had a tail, you know, we're like, you know, someone like we're with another parent.

Simone: She's like a kid, like maybe seven years old or something. But He's just like full out wearing a

Brian Chau: furry tail. That's not a sexual thing. You know that?

Simone: No. Well, I mean, it could be a proto sexual thing. Who knows? But whatever. I mean, many people just identify as furries. It's, you know, there's, there's, it's a complex world.

Simone: I mean,

Malcolm: it's one of the problems that we have is when sexual communities become aesthetic communities. So when I was young, I would identify was like goth, right? Like I hung out and dressed like a goth because people older than me, who I thought were cool, I knew hung out and went to goth thing. I wish we had more photo proof of this.

Malcolm: But I think that we live in a world now where young people can see sexual. Communities like furries, for example, and begin to identify with those communities in the same way that in my [00:32:00] generation people identified with goths or punks or something like that. And I don't know if I think that's healthy.

Malcolm: I don't think

Brian Chau: that's healthy. I think that's bad. So you can think of goths as an early version of shitposting. Right? And as we know, the long arc of history bends towards shitposting. Everything becomes shitposting, it becomes signaling part of part of a community by kind of the, the radical refutation of everything else that exists.

Brian Chau: And yeah, one of the, one of the things that I like to do every once in a while, I think it's like very healthy. To do this is to look at like an empirical result in the world and think well, what, what, what if what if this were just people want, what, how would I change my thinking if God came to me and told me like, oh, this is just what people want.

Brian Chau: And you know, we're, we're talking about this divorce of kind of sex like sex acts from. You know, the actual identification and what people actually think of themselves and [00:33:00] what people actually it's the, it's like the divorce of like sexuality as a meme from sexuality as like a physical interaction.

Brian Chau: Hmm.

Simone: I think that's a great way of putting it. Yeah. It's

Brian Chau: conceptual. I just wonder, what if this is just what people want? You know, what if this is just to reveal preference? We just didn't have the technology, we didn't have the internet, you know. We didn't have the cat girls. We didn't have, exactly, exactly.

Brian Chau: Actually, I think we had anime cat girls in the 90s, right? There were, like, Sailor Moon gags with the cat ears. But yeah, yeah, we most of America, you know, were not exposed to the cat girls. And now that they have been, they simply like the cat girls more. There's no going

Simone: back. Yeah, we're just, there will be no more sex.

Simone: There will only be the cat girls.

Malcolm: Before we wrap up this episode, I'd love, were there any other insights you got from these people you were interviewing? Because I really appreciate that you went on and did that. And I know our audience, you know, A lot of them have very little connection to what's going on in Zoomer world right now.

Malcolm: What's going on?

Brian Chau: I think yeah, guys are afraid to approach [00:34:00] girls. They're afraid to be affectionate. They're just too neurotic, you know? This isn't, this is unrelated to this stuff. But I was at a, I was at a University of Austin. I was at you know, Barry Weiss's university. Yeah, yeah.

Brian Chau: Yeah, we work with them. Our school's

Malcolm: partnered with theirs.

Brian Chau: Okay. Awesome. Awesome. So this, so this is a group of people. This is a group of around like 40 kids specifically selected to be, you know, the fear in the fearless pursuit of truth. I, I shouldn't, I shouldn't say this. I, I'm like skeptical of that.

Brian Chau: You know, I do think I talked to one of the, the, the people who did the admissions. I think it's pretty legit. So, so I, I think this is might actually be, you know, to, to the topic of taking these things seriously. You know, these might actually be, like, the 40 students in the U. S. or who, among the application pool, who was who were most in the fearless pursuit of truth, but, you know, they were just extremely agreeable.

Brian Chau: They were, they were really afraid to set up, you [00:35:00] know, very strong binaries of, of disagreements in the class. And this was something that was noticed by a lot of the other, the, the older, the older professors, instructors, so on, that you just didn't get that kind of, you know, Lincoln Douglas style debate.

Brian Chau: I don't mean like the format, but that kind of like clash of ideals. It just didn't happen. People were, people were just like very neurotic. And I think that's, you know, that's the prevailing trait of Gen Z. That's, that's how it rolls.

Simone: I think that's really interesting because when you look at traditional British education, like I'm, I'm thinking about how a young British gentleman was, was educated, you know, he was pretty low on what we might consider technical knowledge, but what he did spend A huge portion of his upbringing doing is, is is debate elocution, and also just like really getting good at even like spicy debate.

Simone: Like when you even see the recordings of Parliament, you know, they're like, yeah,

Brian Chau: like they're like, there's no spice. We need to import more spice from India. Well, but really we

Simone: punish, we punish [00:36:00] people for deviating. We punish people for arguing them. They're called disagreeable. They're having, you know, they have emotional problems, you know, they're, they're, they're picking fights.

Simone: So, so I think maybe what we've done is we've neutered an entire generation or several, I think probably both millennials and Gen, Gen Z ers from the ability to do that, just years of conditioning where every single time they pushed back. They got slapped a little on the face. I mean, what do you think?

Brian Chau: Yeah, almost definitely. I, I do think, you know, like a lot of I think even millennials will relate to, to people saying, you know, like teachers saying if you don't have anything nice to say, say nothing at all. Yeah. You know, which is just, you know, so incredibly stupid. There's

Simone: never been a reward for pushing back or being a little spicy.

Simone: You know what I mean?

Brian Chau: Yeah, yeah. Or, or, or even just not active punishment. I think like male male social norms will naturally, naturally reward that. But,

Simone: you know. Oh, but we're, I don't know if we've allowed for [00:37:00] male social norms even. Yeah, exactly, exactly,

Brian Chau: exactly. There, there's like constant unending interference in the educational system with with, you know, basic, masculinity. Inter, intermale communication patterns.

Simone: Or even just, well, even just male dimorphic behavior, like being energetic. Oh, well, we need to medicate that. Stop moving in your chair. You know what I mean?

Brian Chau: Yeah. Yeah. ADHD. Like BAP needs to add a new chapter about the ADHD meds. That's, you know, they're already talking about like the seed oils, the ADHD meds.

Brian Chau: That's much, much bigger deal than the seed oils. Yeah. This, this

Malcolm: UATX thing you went to,

Brian Chau: was that in the last few months? Yeah, yeah, it was like the summer thing. So, we were actually supposed to

Malcolm: run that but Simone said we didn't have the bandwidth to do it. We could have been there to take you to That would have

Simone: been, that would have been scary.

Simone: We would have made it spicier,

Brian Chau: obviously. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Okay, wait, I have to hear this. How would you, Oh, so Pano, the guy who runs

Malcolm: VHX, we're partnered with them at the Collins [00:38:00] Institute. We'd been trying to do the younger kids stuff. They want to, so we were talking with them about this and we were supposed to do the, the recruitment and the setting this up, and there was some other guy.

Malcolm: And we just, we got to this point where we really wanted to do it, but we just did not have the time between trying, basically what we said is we want to get rid of any distractions we have until the Collins Institute is alive which is our high school system, because just if somebody can't fix the high school system, the country's doomed, so there's a lot of cool opportunities like this that would have Raised our personal prestige and would have allowed us to interact with a lot of young people that are like important like you, but then, you know, we're also already doing stuff with like teal fellows and stuff like that.

Malcolm: And it's I feel like 1 of the weird things that I've noticed, especially with young people is whatever program that we're engaged teal fellows or whatever. It's all the same people.

Brian Chau: Yeah, it's just a circle, yeah. [00:39:00] I don't

Malcolm: know, are there only like 10, 000 intellectually free young people in the world or something?

Malcolm: I

Simone: don't know. Well, not even intellectually free. Desiring to be intellectually free. To your point, Brian they weren't there necessarily.

Brian Chau: It is just the people who are on Twitter. That I think is the actual funnel. The nexus of all of this, you know, if you're listening, Elon, you know, the nexus of all of this is just kids who are on Twitter, you know, that's the reason why, you know, VC Twitter, or VC people, and ML people, And, you know, the classical liberals and, you know, the cat girls are all, are all in the same place.

Brian Chau: It's all just a circle because it's all just, it's all just Twitter. Yeah,

Malcolm: it's interesting that you say that. The world seems so small after a certain point,

Brian Chau: right? But it just is, right? This is also something that I realized after, you know, Going to D. C. and trying to set up something that like all of the people who are doing [00:40:00] anything Interesting not not like literally all of them But they're all people who I like organically encountered doing the podcast before that no So context for the audience like I did not talk about I might like my day job was in machine learning engineering I did not want to talk about anything related to machine learning on the podcast.

Brian Chau: I was just like sick of it for the longest time until I like stopped doing that as my main job. And I interviewed like. You know, John Asconis, James Poulos Sam Hammond. It was just like all of the people doing like the most interesting machine learning policy stuff in DC right now are, I mean, James is not in DC, but all the people doing the most interesting machine learning stuff in DC or in like adjacent circles were people who were on the podcast for unrelated reasons.

Malcolm: No, I mean, you're right. That's just what we've noticed as well. The world's smaller than people think it is. And, and, you know, sometimes I look at our listener numbers and I'm like, wow, they look like [00:41:00] really small. And then I'll talk to some you know, I don't know, random, whatever, like VC or billionaire.

Malcolm: I didn't know. And they're like, Oh, I watch every episode of your show. And I'm like, that's weird. Cause only like 4, 000 people watch. But I assume it's the same with you, right? Like it's, it's, it's weird and sad actually. This brings us to something that Simone was doing where she was going to YouTube and she goes, okay, how do we get big?

Malcolm: What did the big channels look like? And so she went to look at all of the biggest channels and what was it that you said about

Simone: them? That it looked like it was primarily targeting the bottomized audiences. I mean, not really. No, it was, it was primarily targeting people who were, as I said to Malcolm, so low on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, they just didn't really have bandwidth for anything that's not, that's not more engaging than a three Stooges skit, which is modern edition.

Simone: And in culturally relevant contexts, if that makes sense.

Brian Chau: So I was talking to someone who had. A lot of [00:42:00] experience writing newsletter headlines. Hmm. And he was like exactly this. The overlap between the people who... I don't know, there are, like, common... There are, like, examples of this, so I don't want to be, like, too absolutist about this.

Brian Chau: But the overlap between what you would do to get... A mass audience and what you would do to get, you know, like a successful, like policy wise, successful audience is very, very close to zero. Yes. Yeah. Yes. The, the, the exception might be like, I don't know, Tucker Carlson. And he is like highly online now, right?

Brian Chau: Like he, he's on Twitter now. The, the place, you know, the place where it all, it all goes. Yeah he might have been the last one. He might have been the last intersection between normie popularity and actual, and actual interesting things going on. Yeah,

Simone: it's hard to say, but outlook, not good, very scared, but this was so fun.

Simone: No, we, we, [00:43:00] as, as we all, I think, discover more as AI also gets better, especially, we need to touch base on this topic again and see where we've gone further because I feel like relationships and interpersonal dynamics are going to go further off the rails. the more advanced AI gets. So, let's

Brian Chau: come back to this.

Brian Chau: Yeah, I mean, I think it's just reveal preferences, you know? This is something that I said, you know, you should start doing as a kind of like healthy thought experiment. But once you start doing it as a healthy thought experiment, I think your world model becomes... Increasingly tilted in that direction.

Brian Chau: And, and I think that's just been like, just in the past few, in the past few years, even just proven to be more correct. Like you should assume that people want the things that they take for themselves. I don't know if that is like controversial, but, but, but people don't do it enough. That

Simone: checks out.

Simone: That checks out.

Malcolm: We've loved chatting with you. Have a spectacular day and listeners, [00:44:00] please check out his

Brian Chau: podcast. Yeah, that is the From the New World podcast and you can find it at fromthenew.

Brian Chau: world. Yes, that is where everything lives now. Highly

Simone: recommended.

I recently discovered that the Coen Brothers film O Brother Where Art Thou? was actually based on a true story involving my family! In this video, I share the fascinating tale of how my great-grandfather tapped a popular 1930s musical group to help a politician he supported win a Texas governor's race against a candidate with ties to the KKK. I talk about the real-life people and events that inspired the movie's characters and plot, and reveal details that weren't included in the film. From the crazy water crystals business to Papio Daniel's flower company, learn the true history behind one of the Coen Brothers' most beloved movies!

Simone: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm.

Malcolm: Hello, Simone. And today is a very interesting episode for me because something very weird happened to me last week. There is a movie that I have liked, , since I was a kid. Cause it came out when I was in middle school. I want to say, Oh brother, where art thou? And when I first saw it, I was like, it is very weird how many similarities it has to stories my family told me about my great grandfather.

Malcolm: But, I discounted these similarities for three reasons. One, it was very clearly based on the Odyssey. Two, it was very clearly based on the Bible and themes of biblical redemption. So I was like, okay, there's already so much content in this. It couldn't possibly also be based on a true story. And three, the whole thing takes place in Mississippi and all the stories I were told about took place in Texas.[00:01:00]

Malcolm: So I ignored it. Well, a few days ago, I was Googling some of the characters from it. And they're like, oh yeah, Papio Daniel was based on a real Texas politician and I was like, like a huge wave hitting me. I was like, oh shi all of it was true? All of it was based on my great granddad? That is insane! And, and, and what's insane is I actually looked to see if there were YouTube videos covering this and there weren't.

Malcolm: And I assume that part of it is due to how nuanced and niche this history is. It's all about it. Texas gubernatorial election in the in the the 1930s, I think but it is it is also like surprisingly accurate to the plot of the movie. So I am going to combine both what I was able to find in terms of historical evidence of what went down, as well as evidence from family oral tradition into essentially what happened here [00:02:00] and what is the true iteration of the story in oh brother where art thou if you were to to take it out

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm: so the first thing to note is is just so you know that like i'm not Making up that this is actually based on this Papio Daniel was a real Texas politician.

Malcolm: He was a, a Texas governor and in the movie, he is the politician that attempts to use the popularity of this musical group to win office. In real life. What happened was, is, is my great grandfather, who was a radio station owner and a business magnate at the time, tapped Papio Daniel, who was the star of a musical group, to try to defeat a candidate who was supporting the Klan's interest in a Texas election.

Malcolm: So the fact that this was a Klan group versus [00:03:00] an anti Klan group is accurate. What is mixed up in the storytelling is the who the different characters are. Papio Daniel, while the, the politician is named Papio Daniel, he would probably better be named. Carr P Collins, who is my ancestor, and he was somebody who wanted to have a political fight with a specific other somebody, and he tapped a musician to win that political fight.

Malcolm: So, now we're gonna go back. First of all, you gotta understand the origins of this political fight. Why was he so, so, so angry? at this other candidate. Why did he need this other candidate to lose? And why was he looking for somebody to run against him? So we're going to go back three generations for this.

Malcolm: But first, Simone, you saw the movie recently. What'd you think? You hadn't seen it in a long time. It's,

Simone: it's a great movie. It's holds up incredibly well. And it's one of those movies that's stylized, but not in a way that makes it stuck in time or dated, [00:04:00] which I quite like.

Malcolm: Yeah. Well, and you also didn't think our fans would care about this episode at all.

Malcolm: I

Simone: really, yeah, I, I, I failed to understand why this is interesting or why this matters.

Malcolm: I think it's good evergreen content. If you have a family history that tells a part of history that other people haven't heard. It's interesting to

Simone: you and nobody else cares. Everyone,

Malcolm: nobody else cares. Apparently it was interesting enough to other people that they made a movie about it.

Simone: I don't know. There's so many interesting, historically accurate elements of the movie, I think things that they throw in that they make important that they. It's a very nerdy, it's a surprisingly nerdy movie where people, the people who created it from clothing to products, to cars, to what people were.

Simone: How people spoke, I think was very obsessively done. It was almost, it was like it was made by some obscure man in Japan. Who's one obsession was depression era, like South middle Texas, you know, [00:05:00] like just a crazy otaku who like nailed it.

Malcolm: But better than how much it's localized to Texas culture, which really shocked me as a kid.

Malcolm: Cause people said it was Mississippi culture, but you know, digging into it, it's very clearly more model on Texas culture. But anyway. Which is where it actually, you know, the historical figures and the historical fight took place. So we're going to go three generations earlier than the events of the movie.

Malcolm: So, Warren Collins was the brother of if you have seen the Free State of Jones the, the second main character to the, to Newton Knight, the guy who like wrote the, the rules for the Free State of Jones. And 15 of his relatives, so either brothers or kids of his, his brothers were part of the 50 founding members of the Free State of Joe.

Malcolm: So it was basically one family. So one of the brothers from this family went to Texas and started a different separatist group that was trying to create a different separatist state. It was called the Texas Jayhawkers. And this is where the Kaiser burnout comes from when they tried to. to [00:06:00] kill these people.

Malcolm: And there's many interesting stories that I could go into if this does well about my ancestors. So this guy, there's this famous story. He was, he was leading this group of anti confederates. And they had captured a lot of their, their people and they were going to execute them. And so he pretending to be somebody else comes into the camp and he gets them all drunk and he drinks a lot because, you know, I guess everyone in my family drinks a lot and he did a jig that it was apparently so captivating that it distracted the confederate guards while they let everyone lose.

Malcolm: But if you watch the Free State of Jones, because I think a lot of people, they see something like the Civil War and they don't understand why there could be so much intergenerational hatred between groups and so much intergenerational hatred between the descendants of these people and people like the Klan.

Malcolm: And if you watch that movie, I think by the end of that movie, you'll be like, oh, I can understand why they would really hate the Klan for multiple generations. You know, these people were horrifyingly killing their friends and stuff like that. Really evil and terrible. Anyway, [00:07:00] so after him, his son and I'm going to be putting up Wikipedia pages for all of these people today.

Malcolm: I'll have Wikipedia pages. His son ran, he was a Texas politician specifically like state senator. He really focused on issues like Anti well, he, he focused on issues like prohibition women's rights, trying to get women to vote and trying to get people a five day work week and other workers rights issues.

Malcolm: So, he won the state senate, but then he tried to run for governor as an anti Klan candidate, and he lost. And to understand how much this grudge goes, I know there were assassination attempts by the Klan on my family. I mean, certainly both of these people, but even, even to their kids, and we can get to that later in the video.

Malcolm: So anyway then his son was Car P. Collins. Car P. Collins owned a chain of radio stations across Texas. And he did some pretty shady stuff with his radio stations. For example, the limit for radio stations at the time was 5, 000 hertz, and he would broadcast them at 50, [00:08:00] 000 hertz by putting them just south of the border on the, the Texas Mexico border and they could apparently be heard as far north as like Chicago or L. A. Which is absolutely insane. So he had a reason to want more like political power.

Malcolm: He made his money on something called crazy water crystals. So he had this idea. He, so these water wells in this place called Mineral Wells, Texas and he had this idea of, okay, well, these wells are supposed to have healing properties. They're like widely known for having healing properties and he saw on the sides of the wells that there was like a powder accumulating and he goes, oh.

Malcolm: I can dehydrate the water in these wells and create a powder that is cheaper to ship than the water itself. So he, he widely shipped this powder and he was known for having a laxative like effect. In the ads that they would say, they'd say it could clean you out like a ramrod. And so then he used the money he made from this to one by the town and they created a like a resort out of this town which actually sort of fell apart after Aspen became popular and Plains became popular because then you [00:09:00] didn't need to drive to the town before like the Dallas elite for a period and the and the Austin and Houston elite to a lesser extent this was like where they would all go and then it became Austin.

Malcolm: But anyway, yeah. And you can find some old pictures. I might find one for this where you can see just how big this town was compared to what it is now in terms of the people that would go and so anyway, then he used that to buy up radio stations that he could use to broadcast this product.

Malcolm: And within those radio stations, one of the people who would broadcast was a guy called Papio Daniel. And Papio Daniel was doing this broadcasting to promote his flower product. And he, he owned a flower mill. And he really was, was just doing his band to promote his flower product. And you can actually see this in, in, in the the name of his band. The White Crust Doughboys. So on the in the, in the show, they were called the Soggy Bottom Boys. The real name of the band was the White Crust Doughboys. So this guy, he became very popular apparently, especially among [00:10:00] wives who lived at home and stuff like that.

Malcolm: He was a very early sort of a populist character, but he was actually from Ohio and he didn't have any political ambitions. But my great granddad, he. The guy who is the former railroad commissioner was running for governor and he knew this and he knew this guy had really close ties to the Klan. And I'll put some pictures of evidence for this on screen.

Malcolm: But yeah, and he didn't want him to win the election, but he also knew from his father that the wrong way to approach this and I really believe in this idea of like intergenerational lessons. was to try to run yourself. What he should do is he should find somebody who seemed to have popular appeal and run that guy for office.

Malcolm: So he found Papio Daniel in the right, in the light crust dough boys. And you'll see this actually at a scene through over there, where Arthur, the character who is named Papio Daniel, you keep hearing him pushing flower or pushing his flower company at various parts and like ads. So they're, they're really tying it back to this.

Malcolm: Like he's very clearly based on the real [00:11:00] character. But Papio Daniel had no reason to run. He had no interest in running. So, the, the, the other guy said, okay, well, my, my, my grandfather, Carr P Collins, he, he had to convince him to run in some way. Right. And he goes, well, I bet this would be great for.

Malcolm: flower sales. And there's actually historical evidence that this did happen. So he convinced him to run to increase flower sales and he was running on this incredibly populist ticket. Very similar to a proto trump and actually reason magazine did a piece on both Carr P Collins and papio daniel saying this was like the proto trump.

Malcolm: This texas governor raised. And so he got him to run and he would drive around in his car to all these things. And all, all of these towns and promote himself and everything like that. And he was doing an okay job. But you know, it was still a pretty tight election , so when he would go around, I love this.

Malcolm: He, he wasn't actually interested in any of the issues. So whenever anyone would ask him a question and he didn't really want to answer it, he'd go, strike up the band, [00:12:00] Leroy!

Malcolm: And Leroy was his one of the guys in the band and they'd start, they'd start playing and everyone would go wild because they were a really popular hillbilly band at the time. The other name for the band was the Hillbilly Boys. And so they, they, the people would go wild and they'd love it. And so this is how he, he just did his campaign.

Malcolm: So heading to the end of the campaign, it's right before election day. And something you need to know about Texas laws at the time, there was a poll tax at the time, like a 2 tax that you would pay to vote. What this also meant is that they had records of who had voted and who had not voted. So it turned out his entire life, Papio Daniel had never voted and his wife had never voted.

Malcolm: They never paid this poll tax. And the Dallas Morning News was going to run this big hit piece on him for this, the day before the election. Or it's two days before the election, but like right before it, like it would have ended his election and my great granddad, Carpie Collins, he'd been running the campaign and everything like that freaked out.

Malcolm: And so he drives up to Wichita, which is where Pepe [00:13:00] O'Daniel was living at the moment. He banged on his door. He's Oh my God, we're, we're dead. We've got to do something about this. And Papio Daniel goes, no, I got this covered. You don't need to worry about anything, son. You know, he's I got this covered.

Malcolm: And keep in mind, you know, my granddad had been bankrolling this entire campaign. So he and then Papio Daniel Papio Daniel goes, what you need to do is you need to talk to everyone you know, in the press, you need to have them at this concert I'm going to hold that night. So he puts on this big concert.

Malcolm: Okay. Simone, you haven't, you haven't heard any of this, have you?

Simone: No, this is totally new to me.

Malcolm: I mean, you knew parts of it. I'm

Simone: sure about it. I knew about the crazy water crystals. This just checks out with your family history though.

Malcolm: Yeah. It seems like something they do. So put on this big event and then Papio Daniel, he comes out of this event, he goes, I'm So I actually don't know if this is public that people didn't know that this was all planned and in response to a news story that was going to go live the next day.

Malcolm: And he goes I'm a man of the people, you see his, his whole campaign was based on the [00:14:00] 10 Commandments. He, the, one of my campaign promises, it's the 10 Commandments. I'm just going to follow them. That's, and he ran his campaign on the 10 Commandments. And he would do crazy stunts, like he'd go out and shoot a bison.

Malcolm: And then he. The bison for everyone who's at the campaign rally, but at this particular rally he goes I'm going to tell you how much I believe in the little man. This poll tax, it is used so that only rich men can vote so that the elite can control you. And I believe that so much that my entire life, my wife and I.

Malcolm: We have never paid this poll tax. We have protested this our entire life going into this election. And apparently the crowd just went wild for this. They loved this assertion because of course it was all his audience, all his fans and the press was all there. And so instead of being able to run this piece that was Papio Daniel has never even voted before it's Papio Daniel spent his entire life [00:15:00] protesting the poll tax with his wife.

Malcolm: And so it went really well. And so Papio Daniel, he wins the election. He keeps this Klan member out of, out of the governorship of Texas. So you got to understand with the Klan I mean, his dad's generation, that was one era of resurgence of the Klan, but the 1920s. That was the second resurgence of the Klan.

Malcolm: So it made a lot of sense that these guys would be connected. So it was really important to him that he prevented them from gaining political power. Because that's been one of my family's goals for a long time, is fighting this type of stuff. And... And he won the election and he was governor, I think, for two terms and then he actually tried to rerun later, but when he tried to rerun later, he actually ran on a segregationalist platform, like a strict segregationalist platform, and my granddad didn't want any part of that, so he didn't support him, and he just fell flat on his face the moment out the gate, because I don't want to say that he had actually been masterminding the whole thing, but I think the evidence is pretty clear here that he was the reason that Papio Daniel was and so that is the actual [00:16:00] story of the Soggy Bottom Boys or the White Crust Sourdough Boys.

Simone: But there was no then a criminal affiliation with the band that your families... politician of choice

Malcolm: used? Well, so both of them were kind of hucksters in their own way. I mean, the Yeah, but

Simone: they weren't like, they hadn't broken out of

Malcolm: jail. No, they had not broken out of jail. No. It was that one person tapped them specifically to beat another person specifically due to their clan affiliation.

Malcolm: And the, the, the they were very sort of narcissistic band members who were sort of hucksters and con artists. Yes. But there was nothing more than that. Okay. Interesting. You find this boring?

Simone: I just, I don't think people find other people interesting, but I'm not the best at modeling people. Let's be honest here.

Simone: So

Malcolm: I think people find hidden history interesting and an episode we'll do [00:17:00] later. Which is actually really interesting tied to all of this. Is that these individuals in this story were actually supposed to be in the Illuminati. So there's this document that was created in the 1980s called the Bloodlines of the Illuminati, you know, I'll put a post of this, it's even on the CIA's own website.

Malcolm: And my dad was supposed to be one of the people who led the Illuminati, specifically his mom, the grand madame of the Collins family. And she was supposed to be one of the core 12 leaders of the Illuminati. And that this family had been tapped for the Illuminati. And it's, it's very interesting to go into the history of how this could have happened, like hypothetically, if the Illuminati actually existed.

Malcolm: And I just, I just love how cinematic my family might've always been the wealthiest family, but they were cinematic.

Simone: They lived. Dramatically.

Malcolm: Dram yeah yeah yeah yeah from 30 Rock, right? I've checked and there is no Oscar for living dramatically. I really hope somebody makes a movie about us. We've got a lot of movies about our recent

Simone: family history.

Simone: I think they've [00:18:00] already made oh you mean this generation. Yeah, no,

Malcolm: I mean there's a few recent movies about my family. Yeah, I'm talking about our generation. We just

Simone: need your brother to run for office at the same time that you do. So that there's this amazing colorful rivalry. I feel like that would be We're planning it.

Simone: We're planning it. There's enough there, you know. And your brother is hilarious. And, you know, wicked smart. Oh, he's

Malcolm: an amazing person. Anyone who likes the show, they love him. He'll be a good

Simone: character. He's, yeah. He's unstoppable. He'd have to be played by Chris

Malcolm: Pratt, though. They work together, too. Like us.

Malcolm: They have a company together. They've, they've been successful together. I also think it's also interesting with anything like these movies or these shows, you know, you can see them and you're like, what actually happened, you know, descendant wise, you know, long story to these characters, to their families.

Malcolm: And I guess we're sort of a in state. That's, that was what happened.

Simone: So if Chris Pratt would play your brother, who would play you? James Franco? I feel like James Franco is weird enough to be able to do a

Malcolm: you. Who's [00:19:00] James Franco? I don't know.

Simone: I don't know he's kind of creepy, but I feel like he has the flexibility and he's pale.

Malcolm: Oh yeah, he could easily play me. He could do you.

Simone: But Chris Pratt is obviously your brother, so that's done. Oh yeah,

Malcolm: so people who think that she's joking here my brother looks like...

Simone: No, he doesn't look like Chris Pratt. Your brother looks more like a, I don't know, a Ken doll or David. Like a combination of Michelangelo's David and a Ken doll.

Simone: They're, they're catalogued for one way, you know, that's that's, that's how it goes, you know, but but like the, the mannerisms are very similar between Chris Pratt. Yeah, the

Malcolm: mannerisms are very Chris Pratt y. Yeah. He's got this sort of Adorable doofiness to him. No, there's that.

Malcolm: Well,

Simone: there's a, there are things that he does with his eyes that are very subtle.

Malcolm: But well, they remind me much more of Chris Pratt in what's the show? 30 Rocks. Parks and Rec. Parks and Rec. Parks and Rec. Yeah. Chris Pratt and Parks and Rec has a very similar mannerism and vibe to my brother, but my brother is actually like a very successful business person.

Malcolm: That's why I think he'd be a great politician. He reminds me a [00:20:00] lot of George Bush, you know, he

Simone: has to run. He has to run. And so, so yeah, it's done. It'll happen. And then there will be the story. You just have to be very entertaining about it.

Malcolm: So I got to tell, sorry, quick story about, no, I won't. I won't tell this story, but my brother has a lot of his.

Malcolm: heroic stories about him. He's put himself in enormous physical danger to protect other people multiple times. And I really, you know, he's he's

Simone: the golden boy. Like he is, you know, like he could be the next Kennedy,

Malcolm: you know, like not by like our family standards. I mean, they always thought I was smarter than him.

Malcolm: Your, your

Simone: families are, everyone is a golden boy in your family, but anyway. Yeah. Okay. I mean, that stuff's fun. I like thinking about who will play your

Malcolm: brother. I know. Okay. Well, let's, let's, let's, we'll create enough content so that people have something to go on when we compete against each other and they can get all the drama.

Malcolm: All right. Well, I love you, Simone. And I appreciate you indulging me in this video and we can see if anyone cares [00:21:00] about historic events.

Simone: Well, I look forward to watching whatever movie is based roughly on your existence. So I will be very dead, but maybe my descendants will have some. Pointless podcast episode where they discuss it.

Simone: So looking

Malcolm: forward to it. Oh, pointless podcast. I'm green, green daddy, Malcolm Collins. He did this

Simone: silly podcast. I should also note though, that Malcolm's family also has a penchant for. doing this, like one of his, his older family members has like murals and portraits all over their house of like family members.

Simone: So I think even you had in one of your childhood houses, a mural in your bedroom showing you and your brother in space suits. So there was a lot of,

Malcolm: We did the walls were painted with a space theme and it was me and my brother in space was like I had Like a remote device and we had our dog, but the dog was a constellation.

Simone: Oh, that's cute. No, I do have to say the, the Malcolm Collins family is very like smug and full of [00:22:00] itself, but like the frustrating thing is it's rightfully so they're just that good. So it's like someone who like walks by a mirror and can't help but seduce themselves in it. But you don't blame them because they're that sexy.

Simone: It's that, that is Malcolm's family. Very interesting stuff. So yeah, I guess we'll, we'll see who is correct and you will, you know,

Malcolm: you will. Oh, and I should also probably mention here that the, the son of the guy who I'm talking about in the story ended up becoming a U S congressman. And there you go.

Malcolm: So he went back into politics. He then tried to get his son to go into politics. He didn't go into politics, but he, the family really tried to get him into politics. And yeah, anyway, love you. Love you too. Fantastic conversation.

Simone: Enjoyed it.

We explore the phenomenon of cultural speciation - when cultures fragment into distinct new cultures. We discuss why groups feel most hostility towards similar groups, the role of cultural isolation, threats to young movements, Catholic orders as cultural "stem cells", and more.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] Are you saying

Simone: that you're saying that Catholicism is a nepo baby?

Malcolm: Catholicism is a nepo baby.

Malcolm: It's a nepo baby of the Roman empire.

Simone: I mean,

Malcolm: we. So, I mean, there's many reasons why Constantine may have chosen. I mean, obviously, there's a reason he gave, but a lot of historians think that what was actually going on there is he really liked the Catholic Church as an alternate administrative unit that already had centers set up throughout the Roman Empire, which allowed him to To implement many reforms.

Malcolm: Administration

Simone: in a

Malcolm: box. Yeah, it was like an administration in a box that allowed him to compete with the deep state

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm: Hello, Simone. How's it

Simone: going? Very good, Malcolm. I thought today we might talk a little bit about your theories on cultural speciation. In other words, how cultures split off into new entirely separate cultures.

Malcolm: Yeah, so this is really important for us to talk about because we talk about the evolution of cultures a lot on this channel. [00:01:00] Yeah. The idea that cultures can be thought of as an evolving software sitting on top of our genetically prescribed sociological predilections, which is our hardware.

Malcolm: And so, So what's really cool about cultural speciation events is one. We can see them in real time all around us. And two, by studying them and by looking at them, we can get a better understanding of why people, one, do something that appears very weird in the moment, and, and two, the long term consequences of this action and why it's important to like the development of human societies and why we might even be genetically coded and why we To do this action that can seem really weird because it leads to faster cultural evolution, right?

Malcolm: Right. So this is, we're going to talk about what we call the Judean people's front problem. And this is from the Monty Python movie, the life of Brian, because it's a great example of this. There's this [00:02:00] little group of four people who are the Judean people's front. And this was about like the anti Roman.

Malcolm: Jewish groups that were really common in Rome around the time of Jesus because this was just a thing in Rome. You want, actually, if you want to see more about this, you can watch this show, Rome. That's what it's called, right? The, the serial. Yeah. That was an APL. Oh, it's so good. It's so good.

Simone: So,

Malcolm: So I'll just do the skit because I'd like to put it here or I'll, you know, we'll have a link to it, but we'll get copyright strike if we do it.

Malcolm: But essentially there's, there's like a small group of people in the, in the Coliseum. Another guy comes up to them. He's trying to join their group. He's Oh, I'd really to join the Judean people's front. And they're like, are you sure you want to join? And they, they're like, you got to really hate the Romans to join us.

Malcolm: And he's Oh yeah, I really hate the Romans. And then they're like, the only thing we hate more than the. Romans is the people's front of Judea and then the guy goes, I thought we were the people's front of Judea.

Malcolm: And they go, no, we're the Judean people's front and he goes, oh yeah, I hate the people's front of Judea. Oh. And of course the popular [00:03:00] front of Judea and he's who's the popular for that guy over there? And it's one guy sitting alone. And what you see there is what we call a cultural speciation event and the key aspect of a cultural speciation event.

Malcolm: It's typically you see this one more with younger dynamic cultures, but you see it across all cultures where the highest amount of animosity and the highest amount of thinking about how you are different from people is about the groups that you are most similar to, not the groups you are most different from.

Malcolm: So. A great place that you can see this if you're familiar with the effective altruists or the rationalists or the less wrong communities is between those communities, you know, the effective altruists and then you've got teapot Twitter and then you've got you know, the post rats, the post rationalists and broadly, these people have a lot of the same views on the world, but they are really obsessed with how, oh, well, I'm not exactly a rationalist.

Malcolm: I'm part of this group. Like they're much more interested in these. Yeah. Subdivisions of the groups. [00:04:00] And these are all the things that I think the rational against wrong, the rationalistic is wrong. And that's why I really hate them. Or these are all the things I think effective altruistic gets wrong. In fact, I'd say it's almost like a, being a hipster.

Malcolm: The way you could tell somebody is like basically an effective altruist is if they have a 30 minute rant about why they hate effective altruists and they're not an effective altruist. Because if you care enough to have that, then, okay, yes, you're culturally adjacent enough to the effective altruist that you're basically an effective altruist.

Malcolm: Yeah. So, but this is, this is really important because you see this across groups. And so what's happening here? Like, why would you have the highest amount of animosity for the people who are most similar to you? So, one, I think that the layperson's assumption is going to be, well, I guess you would interact with that group more, or...

Malcolm: You know, you think about them more, but if that's true, then you should get to know them better and have less of a visceral hatred of them often. So I think what's actually happening is two things. One, you cannot have cultural [00:05:00] speciation. Now, speciation is where a new species splits off, unless you can have cultural isolation.

Malcolm: And so instinctively, and one, faster cultural evolution would have helped a population group outcompete other population groups because their cultures would become better over time faster. So you might have actually an instinctual thing within a human to, when a cultural group begins to split, to begin to feel animosity for the people across that cultural divide.

Malcolm: Two, you, because if you don't have that, you're going to have people moving back and forth across this divide a lot, which will prevent the groups from actually splitting. And now that people can be in like these online environments where they can, without really any cost, just sit around and indolently masturbate an emotional instinct that they have, you will get people who basically spend their entire day.

Malcolm: Online hating on cultural groups that are very, very similar to them. I think that's what basically the subreddit stinger club can be thought of. Is, is people who maybe have a slightly higher emotional output and addiction [00:06:00] pathway to this form of emotional masturbation. And so they just spend all of their time doing it to the rationalist community or the EA community or whatever.

Malcolm: So it's, it's, it's really fascinating to me. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on cultural asphyxiation and you know, have you seen it, like, where have you related to it?

Simone: Yeah, I mean, where I've seen it most, I think, is in fan communities. You'll see all these different sub genres come out and people, I, I think it more comes from, A dominance hierarchy fight than anything else.

Simone: I understand that there, that isolation plays a key role, but I think the reason why you do get cultural speciation is that in these little subsets, you get people fighting to be the best and fighting to be the best often involves saying, here's my interpretation of our values. Here's my interpretation of what we should be doing or focusing on or what it means to be the best in our group.

Simone: And then someone else decides or figures out that they can reach the top of the dominance hierarchy as well by saying, Oh, no, no, no. The rules are [00:07:00] different. Here's actually how you signal that you're the best. Here's actually the values that we should be optimizing around. And that causes the split. And then there's a ton of animosity, of course, because they both claim to be Supporting the same thing.

Simone: Maybe it's a fandom, maybe it's a religion, maybe it's a political cause, maybe it's rationalism or effective altruism. But they have very different virtue signaling and value and how do we allocate our time prescriptions. And so that causes a lot of resentment between the group, but also a ton of confusion.

Simone: And I think the life of Brian Skitt is funny because also people have a lot of trouble keeping it straight in the beginning. And it does take, like you say, that high level of cultural isolation to actually turn into a speciation event. So if you are, for example, all just knocking about Rome being political activists, there's going to be a lot of confusion and you're not actually going to be, become separate, distinct cultures or groups.

Simone: But if it is possible for one of those groups to isolate, spin off, geographically go to a different area or become [00:08:00] so different that they. don't even bear like an easy resemblance, then, then you get

Malcolm: the speciation. Yeah. So then the question is, how do you protect a new movement against this? Because young movements are really susceptible to this.

Malcolm: Okay,

Simone: but hold on. So why, I'm interested in why you would say that we want to protect movements from that, because I think you've also argued in the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion, that some very long lasting... religions slash cultures have used this like sort of

Malcolm: species. Yeah. So I'll, I'll word this differently.

Malcolm: Okay. Okay. When I say, how do we protect a culture against it? It's a bit like saying, how do we protect humanity from their own greed and selfishness? And the answer is capitalism. I believe that this instinct can be utilized to make a culture stronger. However, and, and, and you've talked about how that happens.

Malcolm: However, it is an incredible threat. To young groups, especially young groups that have a lot of intelligent males in them, [00:09:00] because these males will, for the reason you said, constantly try to split the group so that they can be at the top of this new hierarchy they formed. One of the reasons why young males often choose these niche communities to identify with is through this identification.

Malcolm: They can be at the top of their local hierarchy just because it's such a small hierarchy or or at least they're not far from the top of their local hierarchy. And I think a lot of men just genetically are unwilling to engage with a group where they are far from the top of the hierarchy especially young men.

Malcolm: And so I think that that drives a lot of this. And I think it's also why you have this culture of you know, we call them evanescent cultures. These are cultures that are specifically. Evolved to target youth and then they disappear after you leave a youth stage where kids will join this wide diversity of youth cultural groups like goths or something like that, which then quickly disappear.

Malcolm: And we can have another episode on evanescent cultural groups because they're very interesting and they have broadly the same characteristics across generations, but they wear different faces. And it's, it's, [00:10:00] it's useful to know about if you're a young kid going into them. So here's what I think we do, and this is, we actually largely delineate this in the pragmatist's guide to crafting religion but it is to say, so first, identify the threat, the threat is, is that the cultural group becomes so fragmented, like I would say happened to the rationalist community, that it's not able to stay around as a cohesive community that's able to offer people like a support network, so you get this exogenous reasons to join, which I think is really, Important for groups that are going to last intergenerationally.

Malcolm: So the way that you do it is you encourage the competition and you flag the competition as, as sort of meaningful, but insofar as people don't dissociate with the umbrella group. So by that, what I mean is you can say, I am this. I'm this culture within this, this cultural umbrella, and I'm this culture within this cultural umbrella.

Malcolm: And then what you do is you create clear metrics for the cultures to compete with each other. So, you know, [00:11:00] within our family office structure, essentially this is done and within the larger index framework. This is done where. You say, okay, you want to choose to be a different cultural group. Well, then if you outcompete, then you get more voting power in the family office where outcompeting is defined as either converting lots of people to your faction, having lots of kids and having those kids stay within the culture intergenerationally and choose to have a lot of kids themselves.

Malcolm: So it's giving you concrete. Success metrics, which through continuing to adhere to bind you to the central organization. And what's really fascinating about these concrete success metrics is if somebody's well, I don't believe in that set of success metrics. I don't want to compete along that set of success metrics.

Malcolm: Well, then they don't matter anymore anyway, because they won't exist in the future. If they have chosen a culture that's either not optimized around intergenerational cultural transfer. Fertility or conversion, then they're not going to exist in the future. So it doesn't [00:12:00] matter that they have become dissident.

Malcolm: Hmm.

Simone: So then in other words, if you wanted to advise EA effective altruism, if it could be a cohesive community and it's not, so it's not like there's some leader that could do this really, but if you wanted to prevent EA from fracturing to a point of dysfunction, you would find some way to sort of centrally acknowledge the various factions.

Malcolm: So I would build them a governance model that would use a similar triumvirate model to the index, but a bit different. So essentially you'd have three groups that would each elect a member. And then those three members would have to unanimously vote on sort of like a dictator of the organization.

Malcolm: And this would be the central effective altruist fund that they would be electing the dictator for the three groups. Voting patterns would be one group was based on how much an individual donated to the central fund or, or, and then a lesser. Voting amount for how much they personally like work.

Malcolm: responsible for [00:13:00] raising for the funds. You might get like half a point for every dollar you raised and a full point for every dollar you donated. Right. And so that would be the people who are functionally able to outcompete in terms of fundraising. They would be one voting block was in the organization.

Malcolm: Another block was in the organization. Could be the number of people that you have converted to being effective altruists and dedicating themselves to effective altruists. So this could be everyone that you've got to donate at least a specific amount. So say 10, 000, you consider that somebody who has become an effective altruist, and then you're looking.

Malcolm: Lifestyle wise, how many people are living this? So this one is focused on conversion, like human outreach. And then the final voting block, which I think is important within any government is made up of all of the past dictators. So it would be like a branch of our government that was made up of only past presidents.

Malcolm: And I think that that organization, the way it's structured, would intrinsically grow in both the amount of money it had, And the way that people were socially politicking was in it because you're creating an environment where the way people like [00:14:00] cheat in the social politics only helps the end goals of the organization.

Malcolm: Now, of course, the problem with all of this is, is nothing in that structure rewards actual effective giving. Why didn't I choose to reward that? It's because I think. That effective giving can always be manipulated, what that means and it can be used to allow groups to cheese the organization. And so what you should always focus on if they cheese it, you win at the end of the day, is things that cause the organization to centralize and grow when cheesed.

Simone: But I also would love for you to touch on the way, for example, the Catholic Church has spun off, essentially, skunk work subcultures.

Malcolm: For church is really unique and really interesting. It is the oldest I would argue continuing successful cultural group that I am aware of, but that is like genuinely successful.

Malcolm: So a lot of people would think like Jews are like an older cultural group, but the truth is Jews have undergone so many cultural reinventions [00:15:00] over the time period the Catholic Church has been around. That I don't know if I would call them a continuous cultural group, it's more that they are a, a, a quickly evolving cultural group, but they are not continuous in the same way the Catholics have been typically an organization like the Catholic Church would collapse due to internal cancers.

Malcolm: By that, what I mean is if you look at our model of governance and stuff like that, the longer a governance structure has been around, or the larger a bureaucracy is. The more it is susceptible to internal cancers in which a small population within an organization begin to self replicate and just say, give me more money, give me more money, give me more money.

Malcolm: I'm actually really important. An example of this could be like, orgs within a company or something like that, right? They like a cancer. They redirect blood flow to themselves and they just get bigger and bigger like that until an organization basically dies, like this lumbering, wheezing beast.

Malcolm: And, and that can happen either due to how long it's been around as anyone. You know, who knows? Biology knows the longer lived in entity is the more prone to this cancer. And, and [00:16:00] so, you know, in like whales and elephants, you have really specific cancer preventing things, but also the, the bigger an animal is the more prone to this cancer.

Malcolm: Again, whales and elephants there, but in turtles, you have special cancer. Protecting mechanisms that are like really juiced up because of their long lifespan. Well, no, I mean, this is just a thing, right? So, the Catholic Church has one of those as well. It has a really powerful one of those. But it also has a really powerful...

Malcolm: This isn't to say that it hasn't become cancer riddled in the past. But then the Protestants split out of it and had a competitor again and it had to get good again. It couldn't just rely on its size to perpetuate it into the future. But then the other big problem that Catholics have, that all religions have, is typically the younger a religion is, the harder it is, and the older it is, the softer it is.

Malcolm: So, by this what we mean, when we talk about a soft religion, It's a religion that has thrown away most of the things that other its members from the general population, and it's thrown [00:17:00] away most of the things that make it hard to practice ah, man, you know, that's a hard thing. Let's not do that anymore.

Malcolm: So, you know when somebody says like I'm a spiritual Christian they've reached such a soft iteration of Christianity That they are no longer even recognizable as a Christian anymore as a specific Christian denomination, they've lost that part of their identity.

Malcolm: When you look at the groups that most differentiate themselves, they're usually pretty young. So you're looking at like Mormons are a pretty young cultural group. Hasidic Jews are a pretty young cultural group. Amish are... One of the older hard cultural groups I can think of, but still fairly young.

Malcolm: So, Scientology would be a very young cultural group, but also very hard cultural group. Yeah, back to the Catholic Church. I mean, How did the Catholic Church stay hard ish and not get soft? Right? That's an interesting question. So what they essentially did is they Spun out new young cultural groups, like sort of skunk work facilities, and that's what the orders are like the [00:18:00] Franciscans, et cetera.

Malcolm: And if you study the Catholic church, you will notice a pattern with these orders is they first start and they're like. All of the dissonant ultra extreme intellectuals who want to go really hard within the Catholic Church, they'll join the order and then the order grows, it grows in power within the church, it grows in size within the church, and it eventually becomes incredibly wealthy, incredibly opulent, and then it dies out, and then new orders form but what's really cool is through encouraging this process, the Catholic Church is able to essentially. Take a syringe, remove people from these, these little cultured groups of hard culture and re inject them into the center of the organization, and by this I mean the Vatican, and stay much younger as an organization, almost like they're sort of taking it Stem cell colonies and re injecting them to stay young much longer than you could otherwise stay young as an organization.

Malcolm: But in other words, you're

Simone: saying the catholic church is basically leveraging dynamics of [00:19:00] speciation But in a way that gives it control. So while the triumvirate model that you proposed for a modern young group that would maybe be a little bit concerned about factioning into separate competing pieces, they could also theoretically do with the Catholic

Malcolm: church.

Malcolm: The reason I don't suggest the Catholic model is the Catholic model is a model that like naturally evolved in a large organization that largely became large because the Roman Empire sort of borrowed it to help its administration of a region that had already been conquered. And and let's be honest, it did not do a great job.

Malcolm: After the Catholic Church became essentially the administrative capacity for the Roman Empire, it began to collapse almost immediately. So it's something that, that one, did not work in its initial iteration very well. Two, it, it's, it's managed to stay alive. It's managed to do okay. But it has never been like.

Malcolm: Exceptional. A Catholic [00:20:00] majority country has never been. I would consider super, super awesome in terms of like technological advancement or anything like that. It does better than it should, given how hierarchical it is, given how long lived it is, it is genuinely miraculous. And really impressive and it may be the iteration of humanity that ends up surviving because of this older advanced system.

Malcolm: It's using allows it to live into the future, but it's certainly not an ideal system and it requires. That it be set up in an already giant organization. So, it's a model that I might suggest if I tomorrow was dictator of the U. S. And I needed to find a way to keep American culture stable and surviving into the future.

Malcolm: I'd be like, okay, let's build Americana cultural nodes and begin to... But if I'm talking about a culture that's growing from scratch, no, I, I do not think it's a very strong strategy. Hmm. Okay. I mean, you can understand why, right? If you're starting with just like a collection of families, like the index, like our [00:21:00] cultural group, you, you can't spin out these like skunkworks facilities. You just don't have the resources to, and you don't have the population to.

Simone: Yeah. Yeah. No, that checks out. So it's just something that you need a little bit more, more age to

Malcolm: do. Yeah. And I, and again, we, we are remarking on the Catholic church is still around and broadly competent.

Malcolm: But I wouldn't say that it's ever been an exceptional. It's never been yeah, it's never been in an exceptional majority religious group.

Catholicism has an interesting feature that I don't think I've seen in any other cultural group, which is that when Catholics are a minority population in a country or geographic environment, they tend to really out-compete other groups, uh, especially within bureaucracies. So, you know, you can see this in the United States with Catholics making up the majority [00:22:00] of the Supreme court.

You can see this. In the United States with Catholics being the dominant intellectual voices in the conservative movement, other than people, the Jewish cultural group, which are the other really dominant, conservative, intellectual voice. Um, But when the Catholics make up the majority of a country, Uh, that country overall, typically underperforms both intellectually and economically. It doesn't perform terribly. It just performs very mid, I guess I would say, um, And this is also true if you look at the world stage. So, uh, you know, a disproportionate number of world-leading intellectuals come out of the Catholic cultural tradition. However, very few of them are coming from Catholic majority countries. than maybe Ireland, Ireland might be the exception here. If anyone has any ideas on what might be causing this, uh, I I'd love to hear it because I think it's a very interesting phenomenon.

Malcolm: And it's never been a really good at out competing except in South America. Are you saying

Simone: that you're saying that Catholicism is a nepo baby? [00:23:00]

Malcolm: Catholicism is a nepo baby.

Malcolm: It's a nepo baby of the Roman empire.

Simone: I mean,

Malcolm: we. So, I mean, there's many reasons why Constantine may have chosen. I mean, obviously, there's a reason he gave, but a lot of historians think that what was actually going on there is he really liked the Catholic Church as an alternate administrative unit that already had centers set up throughout the Roman Empire, which allowed him to To implement many reforms.

Malcolm: Administration

Simone: in a

Malcolm: box. Yeah, it was like an administration in a box that allowed him to compete with the deep state. So, think of it like this, right? Imagine you wanted to replace the American deep state, but you don't have communication lines like we do now, you don't have the internet like you do now.

Malcolm: How would you conceivably do that if, if, if the old state sort of is antagonistic to you and you want to do deeper forms where you've got to find an alternate governance system that somehow already set up throughout your empire the church, he was like, great borrowing that it was a really. Actually [00:24:00] very clever move.

Malcolm: But you know, as we can see, long term it didn't work out. Although maybe it did work out, it worked out for the Catholic church because the Catholic church is, is still around. But you know, they, they did get stomped by a number of they got stomped by the growing Islamic empire, which you know, and its height did, did better than the Catholic Empire in its height in terms of, of scientific advancement.

Malcolm: In terms of this, the size of the administrative empire they were running, but they also collapsed much faster. I mean, again, this is what I'm saying. The true genius of the Catholic church is its resistance to collapse.

Simone: Interesting. Well, I enjoyed this conversation. I don't know. I don't know how practical it will be for groups to prevent. themselves from splitting once they're already big and complex. But what I can say is if you find yourself part of a split, [00:25:00] just make sure that your new split has a strong governing model that prepares for this dynamic, because it is likely inevitable so long as there are dominance fights within it.

Simone: So anything you'd add?

Malcolm: Well, I don't know. I mean, I'll also add that the, the, a culture is a fad if you're not intending to raise your kids within it. If the culture is about how you make friends, it's a fad. You know, it's, it will not exist intergenerationally. Almost no culture that was dedicated to that has existed intergenerationally.

Malcolm: Yeah, fair. Cool. I love you, Simone. I have had so much fun talking to

Simone: you. I love you too, Malcolm. I'm looking forward to our next conversation already.

Malcolm and Simone have a thought-provoking discussion contrasting toxic masculinity and toxic femininity. Malcolm argues that toxic femininity is actually more dangerous, as feminine mindsets optimize for safety over truth. He explains how female dominance in bureaucracies and power structures leads to collectivist thinking that coerces adherence to cultural norms over facts. They also touch on the pros and cons of masculine vs feminine psychologies, gender differences in locus of control, and whether empowering women or stagnant institutions drive the feminization of society.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] Women, historically speaking and, and weak men, they were rewarded for relating to truth. Where the things that are true are the things that are least likely to get me killed for believing. Mm-hmm. , the things that I believe are true are the most normative things within our culture and the things that will upset the minimum number of other people.

Malcolm: This is because women are physically much weaker than men and, and there is a, a set of men who just adopt a mindset like this as well, and that segment is growing due to exogenous chemicals like

Malcolm: such as endocrine disruptors which are making many males think more like females.

Simone: I mean, it could be argued that the feminization of society is a product of female empowerment.

Simone: Do you think it's that, or do you think it's that the organizations are the pathways

Malcolm: to power now? If we didn't have the women's rights movement, society would become more feminine as it developed these large [00:01:00] bureaucracies.

Would you like to know more?

Simone: Hello, Malcolm.

Malcolm: Hello, Simone. My beautiful wife.

Simone: So today let's talk about toxic masculinity and femininity because it is something that comes up, especially I hear people talk more about toxic masculinity than femininity, but I think we should talk about both.

Simone: What is your understanding? Of toxic masculinity, what does it mean to you? Cause what it means to me is, is like when people talk about toxic masculinity, it's really more that they're just shitting on masculinity. Like they're not

Malcolm: You're right. I think culturally, when people talk about toxic masculinity today, they're just like, Oh, this is a masculine thing.

Malcolm: I don't like it.

Simone: Yeah or it's, it's, it's terrible that like men don't cry enough, that they don't feel safe crying and that's toxic. Men

Malcolm: shouldn't feel safe crying. They're not being a safe provider to most of the parents. They're not giving them most of what they, they promised to give them,

Simone: yeah. So I think that's, that's one picture of it. Well, what else is [00:02:00] toxic masculinity that men need to be dominant, that men are, that men should be allowed to be aggressive. And I think that what's really interesting is I, I see personally toxic masculinity the same way that I see mental health problems or like a mental health disorder which is a perspective actually that you gave me when you were writing one of.

Simone: One of the books that, that we've collectively wrote really that you wrote, that I edited. But you, you explained to me and our readers that really the DSM, which is the primary body establishing what is a mental disorder is more a reflection of societal norms. Then a reflection of what is actually healthy or unhealthy.

Simone: This

Malcolm: is really important to know. So if you look at the DSM, which is a standard diagnostic manual, if you were to look at it in the seventies being gay would be considered a psychological illness, right? And if you look at it today, one of the debates they're having is. It's actually removing, sadism as a psychological illness because they're like, Oh, this is like a BDSM thing, [00:03:00] right?

Simone: But in the past, wasn't being gay on the DSM?

Malcolm: Yeah, it was.

Malcolm: As I said, in the 70s, it was on the DSM. It was considered a psychological illness. So, as things get normalized in the society, we change them. And a lot of when we're talking about mental health, there is... I think an average male psychology and there is an average female psychology and there is gender dimorphism there and society adapts to that.

Malcolm: However, not all males fall perfectly into the average male social set. And I think that Or the ever female. So I think what's toxic is when you create an environment in which status is based on one's normative behavior patterns tied to their gender of birth, so that they achieve status within a community by masturbating a.

Malcolm: specific set of practices that they associate with being masculine or feminine. However, just acting on your own behavior, I don't think it's toxic in either context, although it's more toxic on the feminine side and it's more [00:04:00] toxic on the feminine side because a group that is all acting according to feminine biology, but it's also intelligent can move much more towards internal locus of control in a way that that really.

Malcolm: Damages them.

Simone: So let me expand on that and and clarify what you're saying here. So so what you're saying is Yes, people on average are going to behave probably in accordance with like their you know both genetic and hormonal profile and men and women have average on average Different genetic and hormonal profiles that men are going to behave a certain way that women are going to behave a certain way in our current society, often those dimorphic sexually dimorphic behaviors are seen as toxic and still what you're saying.

Simone: Furthermore, is it toxic? Toxic masculinity is actually less dangerous than toxic femininity because toxic femininity is more likely to elevate and accept and condone an internal locus of control and to give [00:05:00] people a color on why we think that is so dangerous. An internal locus of control. Oh, sorry, an external locus of control.

Simone: Women with a feminine profile is more likely to have an external locus of control. So as a recap, a locus of control being internal means when something happens in life, whether it's your fault or not, you're like, It's my fault. It's my responsibility. I need to fix it. So if there's a mess, you clean it up.

Simone: If something bad happens, well, what are you going to do about it? If you have an external locus of control, nothing is your fault. That happened because so and so was a jerk. That happened because I was, given terrible circumstances. It's not fair.

Malcolm: Racism or sexism or,

Simone: it's fault. that, that view, regardless of gender.

Simone: Is inherently very bad for a population. Why? Because it basically discourages you from fixing problems when they arise. Because just it's not my problem. It was someone else's problem. It's mentally very

Malcolm: damaging. There's been a lot of research on this. It causes more mental health issues, which again, you see much more in progressive communities and right leaning communities.

Malcolm: It causes people to be less happy, less [00:06:00] successful. It's just all around a terrible thing. Even when things aren't your fault, you should never internalize them as not your fault. But we've talked about that in other videos.

Simone: Yeah. Well, so I think what, what makes toxic. Gender dimorphism, you could say. So toxic masculinity or femininity.

Simone: Interesting, especially today. Is that now, really, like I was saying, I only really hear about toxic masculinity and that is a sign again, with, with this idea of toxicity really being more a sign of, of social norms and what's actually toxic that we have entered into a, a at least like in terms of mainstream culture, a feminized culture, at least in most of the 12th

Malcolm: gynocracy.

Malcolm: Our society is incredibly feminized right now.

Simone: And that's interesting. I mean, both because it shows some very scary signs, including a more pervasive condoned external locus of control. But also that just, just sexually dimorphic dimorphic behavior, like being masculine is now seen as kids who are [00:07:00] energetic and who, act, act out are now being medicated, put on tons of Ritalin and other things or, or just punished for it.

Simone: And then it's just being beat out of them. It's, it's no surprise that we're seeing like crises of gender identity, mental health success in life, all sorts of things.

Malcolm: Yeah, well, I mean, the biggest risk associated with all this, and I'm like, why is this so bad? It has to do with how individuals at a biological and instinctual level relate to truth.

Malcolm: Women, historically speaking and, and weak men, they were rewarded for relating to truth. Where the things that are true are the things that are least likely to get me killed for believing. Mm-hmm. , the things that I believe are true are the most normative things within our culture and the things that will upset the minimum number of other people.

Malcolm: This is because women are physically much weaker than men and, and [00:08:00] there is a, a set of men who just adopt a mindset like this as well, and that segment is growing due to exogenous chemicals like

Malcolm: such as endocrine disruptors which are making many males think more like females.

Malcolm: And I'm not going to go into the study again, cause we talk about it so much here, but, but just trust me, this is biologically happening in the world today. And so women in, in a, in a tribal, like ancestral context, this more female mindset was not optimized for finding truth in reality. It was for finding.

Malcolm: The belief that was least likely to get you killed. Whereas for masculine men, the leaders of the community historically that core correlated very strongly was what was true for the leaders of these historic communities that were much more hierarchical than our existing society. They actually needed to optimize for whatever was true when they got that truth [00:09:00] wrong.

Malcolm: The, the followers in the community, the women and the weaker men, they were better off learning to believe the wrong truth than disagreeing with the guys who could kill them. And there's some great anthropological studies of the Ache, which is this tribe, I think in the Amazon of, of what that means for a community, because we see in this community, the, the, the dominant men regularly killing members of the community who disagree with them or who annoy them.

Malcolm: So I think that people today might. We, we have this noble savage archetype when the reality is that in many of these tribal communities, the dominant males regularly kill other members of the community if they annoy them. So this was, this was something that was really strongly selected for an ancestral context.

Malcolm: But this creates

Malcolm: which we call justicalism in our book, which is a worldview that believes what is true would be the thing where the world would be the most just if it was true, which is a strong way of also saying the thing that is [00:10:00] going to piss the fewest number of other groups off at you for believing.

Malcolm: But the problem is, is that now this has led to a society that's wide because we have so many. Dominant groups that have this sort of incredibly feminine perspective on things. And keep in mind, both women and men can take the masculine perspective. Just as I've said, many men end up taking a very feminine perspective.

Malcolm: Many women, like my wife, I think have a very masculine perspective on reality. You do.

Simone: On average. Yeah. Yeah, your view is still way more masculine than mine. Let's say.

Malcolm: That is true. But, but I think you think more like a guy than most. I

Simone: think less like a woman than probably 90% of women. We'll say that.

Simone: Yeah,

Malcolm: yeah, yeah. So it leads to, many of these organizations collectively because they begin to taking the mindset that is, is, is best within their bureaucracies and the female mindset actually allows individuals to outcompete others was in bureaucracies [00:11:00] and that's really

important

Simone: as well.

Simone: Yes. So, so in a world that is run by, by bureaucracies, especially like ossified large bureaucracies. the, the feminine mindset and what we would call toxic femininity is the way you get ahead. And because we live in an age of large ossified bureaucracies both governmental, but also private because trust busting has become so weak, maybe it's soon to change.

Simone: We, we just have, maybe that's contributed right to the feminization of society. Actually I was, I am curious people have said, for example, that female empowerment is going to be the downfall of civilization. I mean, it could be argued that the feminization of society is a product of female empowerment.

Simone: Do you think it's that, or do you think it's that the organizations are the pathways

Malcolm: to power now? If we didn't have the women's rights movement, society would become more feminine as it developed these large bureaucracies. And this is, this is why we are, we call ourselves Bull Moose [00:12:00] Republicans instead of Libertarians, which is we believe in trust busting just as much as, as, as we believe in small government, which is any large bureaucracy becomes evil over time because it compounds human evil, whether it's Google, Facebook, or the government itself.

Malcolm: I think it's sort of the, the. The highest virtues of humanity can only be achieved through group action within small competing organizations, not large stagnant organizations. But as society feminizes both biologically and with women outcompeting men within these larger organizations, or a feminine mindset outcompeting a masculine mindset within these larger organizations, which impact our, our world culture more we, yeah, we're beginning to see the world and governments reward large coagulations of power over over non coagulated power groups.

Malcolm: And I think that this is the core [00:13:00] divide you have between the globalists and the nationalists , do you think that the world is better if it's coagulated into this giant bureaucracy, and I'd say that we largely think, no, it's not. It's actually much worse. And evil becomes almost an inevitability as bureaucracies reach a

Simone: certain size.

Simone: Yeah. I think another thing that's interesting about the relative danger of toxic femininity versus toxic masculinity is that. Of course, for most of human history that we've recorded, at least, it has been a male dominated world for the most part, right? That's, just clear. Most large civilizations were, were patriarchies.

Simone: And I think, interestingly, during that time, there was not really a concept of toxic femininity.

Malcolm: I think you're wrong here. So if you look at like Egyptian history, they had a number of collapses for a second, third, period. These were almost always prefaced by female Pharaohs.

Malcolm: [00:14:00] And that correlated really strongly was a society that was about to collapse. You just, it. And again, this isn't fair. It's not fair that this is the truth, right? But reality isn't based on what's fair and what's not fair. I like a world in which my daughters are able to be empowered and my wife is able to be empowered.

Malcolm: But I think there are ways we can realistically do that, that take our biologies into account. And, and the sociological differences between males and females into account, and the differences between different females into account without just saying we need to pretend like there's no differences between males and females, which thank God, with the rise of the trans movement, this is the thing I love about the trans movement, and they force progressives to admit that men and women are different.

Malcolm: Because you might forget this, but before the trans movement, the mainstream progressive ideology, and this is what the TERFs don't believe because they're on the last code of rules that the progressives had is that men and women are exactly the same and [00:15:00] we're only different because we're socialized to be different.

Malcolm: Hmm. Hmm. You disagree?

Simone: I don't know. I agree with you. Yeah.

Simone: What would you say to men in positions in society where like they really do feel like they're being subject to toxic masculinity? For example, there have been times where people have been sent to these really, all male boarding schools where they just get beat up again and again, like it really sucks, sometimes being a male really sucks because mask it just seems that kind of the way that.

Simone: The two sexes have evolved. Is it like men are high risk, high reward, right? It's not that they're disposable, but they're utilized by evolution in a way where they can propagate software updates very quickly and effectively, where like when one male significantly outcompetes, he's able to just have a ton of kids with all the women and like quickly, quickly push his software update [00:16:00] to a large portion of the population.

Simone: Whereas women are more like the stable, just like updating machines that, that sort of play a role in the process. So they're not high risk, high reward. They need to conform to the norm. But that doesn't change the fact that being male therefore sucks because a very small proportion of male outliers is designed to like inherit the future and win and do all this stuff.

Simone: But then what about the rest? It really sucks. And I'm not saying that historically, men died at higher proportions because they went to war because actually someone pointed out in a podcast and it's like blew my mind that based on some stats, women and men died in similar proportions.

Simone: It's just that when women died in those proportions in childbirth and men died in those proportions and like dangerous

Malcolm: also keep in mind that if you look historically during the transition to the agricultural period, we can look at DNA evidence. And I think it was, yeah, one. Man would breed for every 14 women that would breed.

Malcolm: So So that means on average, every man had 14 wives. Every surviving sort of DNA strand. I mean, keep in [00:17:00] mind that felt like compounded by them being more successful and stuff like that.

Simone: But But that means that for most, most of history and still today, like It sucks being a man. And I could understand if you had a higher selective pressures on you.

Simone: Yes. Well, and I mean, a lot of people don't want to play games on a hard mode. They want to play games on easy mode and, and like being, being a woman is more of the bunny slopes. Being a man is more of the black diamond slopes and not everyone likes black diamond. So would you say that they're like to, to, to men who aren't the winners?

Simone: In the evolutionary game of life, would masculinity not to them be toxic? I mean,

Malcolm: well, I guess you're right. Yeah. I mean, my, I mean, look, our, my form of masculinity in my world perspective is an incredibly ruthless one. I, I think it's an honest one. I think it's one that's correlated with reality very strongly, but it's one to quickly say, Oh, that person doesn't matter.

Malcolm: And the people who I'm most likely to say don't matter are often, lower value males, right? Yeah, [00:18:00] that's just the reality of the situation. So you

Simone: would say that's, that's not toxic masculinity. That's life, right? Like you're just. Sorry. Yeah. Maybe

Malcolm: toxic masculinity is an unfiltered view of reality.

Malcolm: Maybe that's the most toxic thing about it. It's just, it sucks. It sucks. But I think, if you're looking to create a fair society, but that is still optimal, what you need to do is. Have women adapt a as they did historically. And even today, when they entered leadership roles, they adapt more masculine perspectives.

Malcolm: And you see this historic, like women who have more masculine perspectives, interleadership roles at a higher rate. And when they're in a leadership role, they adapt more masculine perspectives. But we need to accelerate this behavior pattern. Hmm. Yeah, I think that when you realize that both femininity and masculinity are to an extent mindsets and some men have a feminine mindset and some women [00:19:00] have a masculine mindset, I think we can create a.

Malcolm: FARA is society that keeps our gender dimorphism in mind in terms of how it's structured. I do think it's stupid to pretend like there isn't gender dimorphism in how we structure society. Yeah. Or to force, like the California law that's like women need to be on boards at exactly the same rate as men.

Malcolm: And yet we know, like this is something that's been studied. , boards with equal gender representation perform less well economically than boards without it.

This is what I remember the consensus being the last time I looked into this issue, but when I was going over the studies again, while, I could find a few studies, like the one referenced here that showed that women hurt board performance. It seemed like the majority opinion was that they had no effect.

Malcolm: Yeah.

Simone: Ouch. So yeah. I think California now has a law that, that boards have to have a certain proportion of female members.

Simone: So they're like shooting themselves in the foot, which is funny.

Malcolm: [00:20:00] Well, because you can't say that. You can't say, and this is fundamentally one of our biggest disagreements with the progressive movement. Is they claim to care about diversity, yet they fail to acknowledge that the value and diversity comes from the fact that we are different, the value and diversity in men and women comes from the fact that we are different and that we're better at different things on average.

Malcolm: And that allows for different specializations and degrees of doing societies. And whether you're talking about cultural groups or men and women, the value of diversity is our differences, not our similarities.

Simone: Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. So I think a viewer or listener of this podcast episode is going to assume, which also even if they know other things about us, like we only want to give male names to our daughters, for example, but

Malcolm: that are masculine mindset is better.

Malcolm: And I think that women was a masculine mindset outperformed one was that one, because that's what the data says.

Simone: So they're going to assume [00:21:00] that we're going to raise. Our kids in a hyper masculine household, but is that accurate? Are you going to encourage our girls to not have any feminine aspects?

Simone: Because I

Malcolm: think in a world, in the world that we're going into in the world of the future, the feminine optimization is less and less relevant and I am okay with culturally coming up with a new. of psychologically being feminine. And I think that that's possible. And that's what we are working on. But I

Simone: think that you have to admit, and this is important, that there's a reason why men and women behave in different ways,

Malcolm: like historically, when you're dealing with hunter gatherer tribe,

Simone: but no, that hormonally and genetically men and women are.

Simone: And then, there are anecdotes that I've read in books where parents have attempted to raise their children with no gender. No, no, no.

Malcolm: I'm not trying to force my daughters to be masculine. Okay. I'm trying to allow them to become like you. I think that the [00:22:00] iteration of femininity.

Malcolm: That you embody and are a paragon of is an iteration of femininity that both works very well with my iteration of masculinity, right? But that is also really, really great for our current I think economy, environment, technology. I think you represent. Sustainable femininity and I represent sustainable

Simone: masculinity.

Simone: So hold on this, this brings us, I think, to a final point in this podcast that I think is, is worth talking about, which is non toxic or beneficial femininity and masculinity. So for example I think like you say, and you, I I can completely endorse this, that your form of masculinity is, is.

Simone: quite benevolent, not toxic. So I can contrast this with one hyper masculine. And I would say like genuinely not like toxic. I'm not saying like culturally it's toxic, but like dysfunctional masculine [00:23:00] household that I grew around. Like they were family friends. And I remember like both the man and the son were super macho.

Simone: And I remember the son at one point being like, my mom's. It's just like that kind of masculinity. That feels abusive, like woman giving me my beer kind of thing. And I think that that's an example of dysfunctional masculinity, like masculinity, that's just not being done. And this dovetails with the podcast episode we did on like, Why, why bother being a gentleman?

Simone: Like the real masculinity isn't in being a dick to people. Real masculinity is having the grace to condescend to those weaker than you and to help them and to show them grace. So I think what I love about what you are already teaching our boys is that it's always fine to punch up, that they're encouraged to be defiant, to question, to be adventurous, but that they are never, ever, ever.

Simone: Okay, to punch down, to hurt someone smaller than them, to be cruel. So

Malcolm: I'm okay with teaching my kids to do that, but I do worry about society [00:24:00] that are trying to set up the value. Because I think society can always recontextualize which groups have more power and which groups have less power.

Simone: I mean, for example, if you

Malcolm: look at our society right now, where they pretend like LGBT people are like disempowered, yet they're literally having giant parades that are supported by both the government and businesses through the center of literally every center of power in our society today.

Malcolm: That is not a disenfranchised group. That's

Simone: we're similarly like anti Semitism seeing a bump because people are like, Oh, well, did the Jews

Malcolm: have enough power? Well, and that's what the Nazis did. When the Nazis were anti Semitic, when the anti Semitism, they were saying it's because the Jews control everything and they're using that to hurt us.

Malcolm: Yeah. Whenever a group tries to hurt another group, they always pretend like they're in positions of power to pull one over on the dumb people who are like, I want to hurt. Okay. So, so

Simone: acknowledged that there are limitations to that, but what, what are other logically try

Malcolm: to pray my kids because this value set, but hold on, what I actually want to say is what I think non toxin femininity is, which I think [00:25:00] is very important, which is something that you embody, which I think non toxic femininity and, and really the beneficial type of femininity that I admire so much in you is I guess what I would call like workhorse femininity which is to say.

Malcolm: It's femininity where, yes, it is submissive, but the type of submissive it is Is productive, aggressive, and indomitable. That it is just going to a juggernaut plow through every obstacle in its path to reach its end state. And that is what glorifies it. That is what gives it value. So it is very masculine in that it is aggressive towards the problems in its lifestyle.

Malcolm: But it's, it's, it's very feminine in that it is undertaking. The responsibilities for the family. And that's what I feel you do for us. You are always there to carry all of our burdens. And you are always [00:26:00] asking me every day, what, what is the thing that you like dread most this day? And how can I take that from you?

Malcolm: And I think that this is where toxic or non toxic masculinity and femininity pair, it's like a yin and yang where this non toxic femininity is. How can I take from you the things that are bothering you? And with masculinity, it's how can I protect you from the things that are bothering you? So it's

Simone: nurturing and protecting.

Malcolm: Well, it's, it's, it's carrying the cart versus... Thinking ahead and removing the, the blocks in the road. But

Simone: yeah, interesting. Any other elements of benevolent masculinity that you would like to cultivate in our kids?

Malcolm: Well, no, I mean, I think the biggest thing is to remember that confidence in masculinity, the antithesis of them is feeling the need to constantly show your dominance over others.[00:27:00]

Simone: That dominance is something that you show, don't tell. You,

Malcolm: you show through your competence and success in the real world and initiative, the things you need from other people, like validation and stuff like that. But if you're constantly out there signaling your need for validation, signaling your need for other people to see you as dominant and above them, then one, you are not dominant.

Malcolm: And two, you are the very weakest, most pathetic and most disposable kind of male.

Simone: So long story short. Benevolent dominance or benevolent masculinity is, is confidence initiative and problem solving and benevolent actionable success, actionable success. And, and well, I guess benevolent femininity is, is, is actual utility.

Simone: Actual yeah. Utility

Malcolm: utility. Yeah, those are what the two things are interesting, a woman who is great at being a woman was in this [00:28:00] traditional context that I think you really embody is a woman who is useful to her family, a man who is good at being a man is a man who is successful and brings his family resources and protection and people look at this and they say, well, you can't say that because not every man can live up to that and not every

Simone: woman, I think, yeah, that's, that's really interesting, right?

Simone: That when people talk about masculinity on online, they're really just talking about it. The whole rainbow of performative signals and they're not just like. Oh, actually just be successful because that's really hard. Just there's all these diets online of like how to lose weight, but like actually just stop eating so much.

Simone: Yeah. You

Malcolm: stop eating so much. You disgusting turd .

Simone: Just be successful. But yeah, but you sound like your mom, like just make more money. Just make more money. Duh, Malcolm,

Malcolm: you've been successful. I love you, Sanon, and I have loved this video. This was so fun because you are my ideal feminine.

Malcolm: You, to me, are what I aspire that [00:29:00] all of my daughters are like. There's this country song I think Liz said something, Grow Up To Be A Lady or whatever, and it's about a guy hoping that his daughter, learns the perfect patience of his wife and everything like that, and, and that's the way I feel about you.

Malcolm: I, I really hope that all of our kids... Especially our daughters learn what it is to be feminine from you because you are such an inspiration to me. And, and while my position vis a vis my gender has put me in a position of dominance over you, I respect that. I think that your level of perfection as to who you are is much higher than my level of perfection and it humbles me and it gives me a higher state to aspire to, to be worthy of having a wife

Simone: like you.

Simone: Well, I very much believe that. People become the person that their partners create. And you're the kind of person who instills dedication and, and [00:30:00] hard work because you're worth it because you're that inspiring. And I'm so glad to have met you. You're. This like fictional hero that I didn't even have the creativity to imagine would exist.

Simone: It somehow did. And somehow you chose to choose and live your life with me. So thanks for that. I'm glad things are working out. Please don't die. And I love you very

Malcolm: much. I love you too.

We discuss the aspects of Jordan Peterson's thinking that resonate with us and where we differ. We cover his reliance on archetypes and narratives, his traditional views on gender, and his appeal to personal responsibility and paternalism. Though we disagree on some areas, we find value in engaging with his perspectives.

Simone: [00:00:00] I think that's kind of what it is with Jordan Peterson that okay, the tendency isn't exactly to be like this paternalistic disciplined ideal, this ordered ideal. But I think many readers would love a vision in which masculine equals order in which masculine is this like calm paternalistic ordered force that makes everything okay.

Simone: I mean, again, it like brings me back to the daddy. Masculinity

Malcolm: create a, a, almost a feminine lens through which masculinity can

Simone: be translated. I wouldn't say, no, I wouldn't say it's feminine. And I wouldn't, and he would find this. An affront because he really hates Infantilism, but I think it's an infantalized version of masculinity.

Would you like to know more?

Simone: So Malcolm, you gave me a little bit of a homework assignment this week, didn't you?

Malcolm: Well, so we were going to do a video on some of Jordan Peterson's ideas. And, and sort of where our ideas contrast with his and where our ideas align with his. And Simone was like, no, no, no, we have to, I have to at least read one of his books before we do that.

Malcolm: Cause that's the [00:01:00] way we read books. Simone reads them. She writes like a book report. She sends it to me and then I review it. And, and that's how we think on knowledge. And then we'll have a conversation every day about it. And recently she started reading her or our first Jordan Peterson book to actually, you know, go through cover to cover and what's it, what's it called?

Simone: Maps of meaning. No, just kidding. That's like a deep cut. 12 rules for life. His, his big, his first big for public consumption book. And so you're about a chapter into it or? I'm probably on chapter four or so.

Malcolm: You're on chapter four. Okay. So what we're going to talk about is your first Thoughts on reading it what, what, what resonates with you, what you think he's actually communicating.

Malcolm: Yeah. Or

Simone: really what seems to differentiate, what more specifically, what seems to differentiate us from Jordan Peterson in his philosophy, because there's a lot that I think we hold in common. And then there's a lot that we really don't and it's really interesting to me. Like I, I read a lot of what he says and I'm [00:02:00] like, yeah, no, absolutely.

Simone: And then he'll say something else and I'll be like, Oh my gosh, and nails on a chalkboard. What are you doing? And it's, it's unusual, I think, to come across an author, especially someone discussing psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, et cetera. Self help broadly that we sometimes really agree with and sometimes don't.

Simone: Usually it's we're 100% on board. We're like, yeah, you're one of us or. We, we, this is I can't even listen to this without having an aneurysm. Even though we will

Malcolm: listen anyway. So let's talk about, I mean, so the first thing that I think really when you were talking to me. You're like this because this is another area that we've been digging into recently.

Malcolm: It seems really influenced by Jungian psychology

Simone: Yeah, yeah I think really what he's done is he's he's dressed up Jungian psychology to make it much more palatable to a modern broadly millennial a little bit Gen Z audience by adding a ton of [00:03:00] evolutionary biology and neuroscience and like discussion of social science studies and things like that to this.

Simone: So he'll mention, for example, go ahead,

Malcolm: Malcolm. I was going to say, you were saying yesterday when you told me about this, but not to the core of his points. The core of his point is typically Jungian psychology, and then he'll add a bunch of anecdotes that might not be directly connected to it that are like about evolutionary psychology or something.

Simone: Not necessarily. I mean, I think it's, it's hard, it's hard for me to articulate really well, but my understanding of. a big thesis that Jordan Peterson holds is, and this is so close to what we, you specifically, have argued in the pragmatist guide to religion, but differently. So in the pragmatist guide to religion, you point out that humans have evolved in concert with culture and religion, that we, our biology.

Simone: is designed to work with culture and religion. And when you strip that away, things fall apart. But then you proceed in, in all of our books to make [00:04:00] very logical arguments and appeals to people about relationships, about sexuality, about life philosophy, about all sorts of things, right? Like it is all, and you know, the people who, who like our books also.

Simone: Like that we are robotic and sociopathic and like very autistic. And then the criticisms

Malcolm: that we get, the new word is hot, autistic, hot, hot, autistic, women, hot, autistic,

Simone: So then the criticisms that we commonly get are, Oh, you're missing the soul. What about love? Like there's, there's this much more like touchy feely thing.

Simone: And every time we get these criticisms, I, I think I literally lack the element or processing or software that is required to understand what they're talking about. Now, Jordan Peterson starts with the same argument. He essentially says that, you know, humans have evolved with stories and religion. This is our bread and butter.

Simone: This is how we function. It is the software on which our hardware is meant to work. But his [00:05:00] conclusion is very different. It is that, you know, science, the scientific method and rationality, these were only introduced Very recently, which I think is a sort of dubious claim because I mean, I think that there's a lot of logic and like very ancient Greek thought, but whatever.

Simone: We're going to throw that aside for a second. But my, my, my very strong impression and what I'm surprised no one's really discussing is he's basically saying no, no, no humans can't understand. logical reasoning. Humans must understand or fix themselves, fix their psychology, make decisions through interactions with religion, through interactions with narratives.

Simone: And so that's the way he does it. And this reminds me a lot of a podcast that Spencer Greenberg did with some kind of psychologist where Spencer, you can tell he's a very rational person like us. I think he's much more like on the autist end of the spectrum. And he, He keeps asking this person that he's interviewing well, is this evidence based?

Simone: Is this psychological [00:06:00] intervention evidence based? You know, what, what is it robustly proven to work? And the, the guy he was interviewing kept saying things like, you know, it doesn't really matter. If it works for someone that it works, like it could be like the stupidest, like Freudian, you know, nonsense.

Simone: It could be, you know, a witch doctor. It could be like anything that's not replicable scientifically, but if it works for a person, then it works and that's what you should do. And, and Spencer's just but it doesn't work. I don't know, like it's not proven or logical or rational. And I think that this, there's this really interesting, like Jordan Peterson is helping me to understand this like parallel universe of people who really do only see the world in these like emotions and stories.

Simone: And narratives and like religious stories like Jordan Peterson for example. Frequently throughout the book so far will refer to biblical stories. He'll refer to do doki, he'll refer to all sorts of fairytales. And I, I I think it's this presumption that humans [00:07:00] need those to, to reason.

Malcolm: So, so my re my second hand read on, on hearing Simone's analysis of this.

Malcolm: And so first let's talk about when I see something is Jungian psychology. Cause I actually think when somebody says Jungian psychology, they're actually using a euphemism, Jungian psychology is just Freudian psychology.

Malcolm: Everyone knows Freud was like, had some wacky ideas and was a bit of a dumb ass at times. And so they, instead of saying I am a Freudian psychologist, they'll say I'm a Jungian psychologist. Well,

Simone: and I think that's probably because like most people have heard Freud's theories and they've also heard Freud's theories like.

Simone: Yeah. Yeah. But then no one, not that many people have been taught about Jung, so it's a lot harder to say.

Malcolm: Well, and Jung didn't say as much obviously stupid stuff, but they both, both of their psychological frameworks are broadly about narratives, but in a different way. So our [00:08:00] psychological framework, you've heard from our episodes.

Malcolm: We very much believe in a narrative driven psychological framework, right? We see the narratives as really instrumental tools to dominance over your mind.

Simone: Yeah. Well, yeah, the problem it's like you agree with Jordan Peterson, but at the same time, rather than you, you still assume that the human is rational.

Simone: You're like, instead of using a narrative to like dumb it down

Malcolm: for the humans. can hijack these systems that they have. I still think at the end of the day, everything in our brains is mechanical and broadly understandable. Yeah. But the way, the tool you use for engaging them can be intentionally constructed narratives.

Malcolm: That's true. However, a, to a Jungian psychologist. The way that they actually structure their logic when thinking about the human mind is in terms of narrative. So, Jungian and Freudian psychology is, is, it, the, the core difference between it and our [00:09:00] psychology, right? Is our system says, yes, narratives are important to restructuring the mind.

Malcolm: But, when you are engaged with a logical thought and trying to figure out how the world should work, you can ignore narratives. Have these logical, these brief moments of actual logical thought, and then use that logical thought to build a narrative tools to begin hacking the rest of the system.

Malcolm: Okay. Whereas for Freud, when he's trying to investigate the mind, when he's trying to determine how the world actually works. They were, they lean really heavily into narratives, into analogies and into stories in a different way of structuring their own mental processes. So, a good example I can give of this is.

Malcolm: Somebody is asking me, like, how do you structure your mind? And I think this is actually a really interesting question because there's a few ways that a person can structure your mind. So I think the way that [00:10:00] the average, like progressive, woke, urban, monocultural person structures their mind is they try to make their mind a democracy of all the various impulses and voices in their mind, you know, whether that's their experiences from childhood.

Malcolm: Their impulses to, or I want to go have sex, their all of the various parts of their mind, they all get a vote and you are mentally healthy when you have satisfied utilitarianly, the maximum number of these voices that make up who you are, you know, we do not structure our brain that way.

Malcolm: We structure our brain as a complete dictatorship. Logic is the only thing that matters. It owns all other parts of the brain and is whipping them and telling them, you do this, you do this, I don't care what emotional output, I don't care what happened to you in the past, I don't care what narratives you say, and if you can't get out of something without another narrative, then fine, I'll make one for you, but you'll eat it.

Malcolm: Oh, you need food? Then I will make you the worst [00:11:00] food possible in your... forced to eat this food. Not exactly. I mean, we try to, you know, create good narratives for ourselves, but at the end of the day, our brains are structured as a dictatorship. In Jungian psychology, Freudian psychology in, in Jordan Peterson mindsets, like the way that he's approaching things, the brain is also structured as a dictatorship, but the person in charge is the internal storyteller.

Malcolm: And not exactly the internal cold logic person. So we have a lot in common and that we understand the importance of the storyteller, but the storyteller is more like for us in like a communist government, the head of PR that's still working under the dictator and still is only putting out PR pieces that the dictator tells them to.

Malcolm: Whereas in Jungian psychology the storyteller. It's sort of in a co partnership with the dictator or the dictator

Simone: themselves. Now, I'm not sure because in one part of the book I've read so far, Jordan Peterson [00:12:00] encourages the reader to have a conversation with oneself, like to admit one's weakness, but then be a kinder, like a lot of his book is sort of written with here's how to become a paternalistic dominant.

Simone: Like father figure in everything, like to your children, to your friends, but also to yourself. And so he describes this scenario in which you notice that you are dragging your feet on washing the dishes. So you would like internally promise yourself like, Oh, well, what if I took you out for an espresso?

Simone: If I washed the dishes and then he like warns the reader to well, you really better take yourself out for the espresso if you wash the dishes. And then you'll discover that this pays dividends over time because you've. Learned how to incentivize yourself. So I don't know what that is. But I'm just saying that's not necessarily

Malcolm: So, so listen to what he's doing there, right?

Malcolm: He is negotiating with the various parts of his brain through

Simone: like encouraging negotiation.

Malcolm: Yeah. Like in the same way that I talked about, you know, to a [00:13:00] progressive, you want this pure democracy among all the voices in your head. And with us, you want a, a, a pure dictatorship well also understanding, I mean, you look at us, right?

Malcolm: Like one of the core aspects of our philosophy is all humans are wretched and fallen and that you should not be surprised that you sin, but you should never glorify the sin. You should never say my sin is actually a virtue. He would say the same way, but the way that he relates to these different voices in his brain is much more appeasing instead of as a dictator who's I guess if I don't give this population what they want, there's probably going to be a revolt.

Malcolm: It's more okay, let's negotiate. All right. You want to get coffee later? Let's do that. You'll see that I'm trustworthy. It's a different way of managing the fractured self. Hmm.

Simone: Yeah. Would you say that they're accurate or like? I guess. Yeah. I think what's different about the way that Jordan [00:14:00] Peterson presents it is he, he, he like does it in stories and in scenarios and examples. And we're more like, here's how it works. So just figure it out yourself. Like here's the system.

Simone: We expect you to do it yourself. Well, I mean, it's a much

Malcolm: kinder system. If you look at him talking and everything like that, he's much more sympathetic towards other people than we are. You can tell he's, he's, he's a person who's deeply affected by sympathy. You know, like him crying what a woman called men incels and he's like, how could you just dehumanize this huge portion of the human population?

Malcolm: And then, you know, somebody's like incels around us and I'm like, well, they're not breeding, so they don't terribly matter. I mean, I realized they might make up a voting block for us, but longterm. They're being removed from the gene pool, and they probably should be. It's a completely different mindset.

Malcolm: It's a sociopathic, ruthless mindset versus this this kind mindset that genuinely cares about other people. I'd love it if you could talk about the things that he has said [00:15:00] where you are like this is nails on a chalkboard to me.

Simone: Huh. Yeah. A lot of it has to do with insisting, like drawing connections that I don't think are there. He has a chapter on why it's really important to take care of yourself and how humans are. Yeah. Are really bad, for example, at taking medication, even if, for example, they get a kidney transplant and having the medication to stop your kidney from getting rejected is so important.

Simone: People are even not that conscientious on that front. And yet it appears, according to him, that the rates of successful drug administration to pets is incredibly high, much higher than it is for humans who really, really, really need to be taking their own meds. So that is evidence that humans know how to administer medications and yet they don't take care of themselves.

Simone: And then he goes into this whole like. Basically humans don't do it because original sin. And, you know, in some ways his take is so, similar to ours. Well, humans are wretched, you know, like we're, we're flawed. We're messed up. He keeps saying [00:16:00] that, you know, you are, you know, like a pathetic person and you can barely do anything.

Simone: And he admits like he definitely is on the humans are wretched camp, but then he'll like, I think because of his whole thesis around humans have to understand everything through stories and religion is super strong, he'll argue things like Oh, well, we hate ourselves because of original sin. And he'll go into like the whole story of the Garden of Eden.

Simone: You told me cringe

Malcolm: when you said that. Yeah, and it's

Simone: just this isn't helping me. And I don't see how this is effective. And I don't even see how this is accurate. And he and then some other part that I just read this morning. He, he, he pointed out how you know, an atheist might say, well, but I'm not religious.

Simone: And so this doesn't apply to me. And he's you're not an atheist. Like you should read crime and punishment and you'll understand. And I'm like, what, what are you even saying? I mean, like I read crime and punishment and sure it's, it's, it's not really a story about. atheism. It's a [00:17:00] story about stupidity and poverty and, and like gross people with yellow teeth.

Simone: I don't know what to say. So a lot of, a lot of it is I guess what, what's rubbing me the wrong way is I feel like there's a certain amount of. intellectual gatekeeping taking place. And maybe what works a lot about Jungian psychology and all this narrative based arguing, and maybe this happens a lot within religious communities, is people just sort of start using these stories and these analogies.

Simone: And like our mind is trained to get like lulled into a sort of sense of calmness and you're kind of following the story and yeah, yeah, yeah. And you sort of like lose yourself in it. And. Everything sort of becomes, yes, Andy. And then you just assume that Oh yeah, it's right. Of course.

Simone: Correct. You sort of stop thinking critically because you're following the story. But I think that's a way to trick people into thinking that you're right without arguing anything substantive. Maybe that's what's rubbing me the wrong way.

Malcolm: I agree exactly is what you're saying. It's, it's, it's the, to the snake, [00:18:00] right?

Malcolm: Like Jungian psychology can soothe parts of your, your mind. You know, it, it can. But it's very similar to mystical thinking in a religious context. And people should know how antagonistic we are to mysticism and thinking. I mean, I think it just intrinsically comes off in like the way that we engage things.

Malcolm: Young Ian ism can almost be thought of as the secular version of mystical thinking. And. I, I agree with what you're saying there and it reminds me, you know, when you talk about him in religion something you said to me on a walk one day where you were comparing me to Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate in our engagement with religious ideals where you're like, Malcolm, you've got God, like you, by that what you mean is I 100% both believe in a God and I'm like really, really, really dedicated to that.

Malcolm: And it changes like sort of, I [00:19:00] guess you could say the passion was which I pursue life and the look behind my eyes to an extent. And you're like, Jordan Peterson is someone who sees the value in getting God, but that doesn't have God. And, and it sees no path for him to get it and, and because of that you feel a deep sadness from everything he's doing.

Simone: Well, I don't know. I don't know if he doesn't have God. I mean, I do, there is a lot of there's definitely a preachery feel from his book. And there, there is a different type of religious zeal. I think maybe you're just differentiating like what

Malcolm: did you mean when you said this on the walk? Or have you changed your mind

Simone: when I, what, when I said what, that I just didn't feel like

Malcolm: you didn't feel that this was your, your analysis on the walk was he was somebody who understood the value of having it.

Malcolm: But wasn't able to get himself to really believe it. And so he was preaching it without like really engaging himself. And then you contrast it with Andrew [00:20:00] Tate, which is somebody who both understood the value in it and was trying as hard as he could to believe it, but really didn't. Fully, like it hadn't clicked for him yet or something.

Malcolm: And, and so you could see a bit more passion behind what he was doing, but there was an underlying discomfort.

Simone: I think the difference between faith and Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate is more, I don't think that they necessarily have differing levels of faith. They have different flavors of faith.

Simone: So I think Jordan Peterson is someone who extremely logically. chose to have faith. I don't get the impression that he's felt faith really strongly. Like he's not been like moved. He doesn't act like someone who's been like moved by Jesus or anything. And he sounds like someone who has studied very deeply.

Simone: the Bible and sort of decided for himself that, that Western Christianity, broadly speaking, is sort of the correct way and, and the [00:21:00] way to be. Whereas my impression is that with religion, Andrew Tate takes a much more charismatic and intuitive, like gut sense impression with religion. Like he's less like getting into the weeds with the literature and more here's what resonates with me.

Simone: Here's what I'm going to personally run with but I, I don't think that they necessarily have varying levels of faith. I mean, I think to say like being moved in a very like spiritual or emotional way doesn't necessarily mean that you're more faithful than someone who just engages in a less, like a slightly more dispassionate, but still intellectually very passionate way with a religion.

Malcolm: That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, and I do, I do agree that it's, it's the, the charismatic aspects that are appealing to Andrew Tate, the, the self narrative modifying aspects as well, whereas with Jordan Peterson, I, I do think that he, is very ordered in his thought, maybe, or more ordered. He's just uses a different [00:22:00] hierarchy for how he orders his thought than we use.

Malcolm: Now something else you had mentioned to me was the way he regarded women in the book. You found off

Simone: putting or... Right. Yeah. A really recurrent theme in the book so far, at least, and it's, I'm only assuming it's going to be repeated ad nauseam for the rest of the book. You

Malcolm: said everything's repeated ad nauseam.

Simone: No, no,

Simone: order and chaos. And it's, it's even kind of a little bit, it'll take you away as a reader because he'll refer to in every chapter, even including the like forward or introduction, the difference between order and chaos with order being symbolized by the feminine and chaos being masculine.

Simone: Sorry. Sorry. I mixed that up because to me, they're so interchangeable with. With chaos being represented by the feminine and, and order being represented by the masculine, and chaos is the child who's sick in the night, and order is the, the day that is structured and productive, and like all these sorts of things.

Simone: Like he'll give, he'll give the example, and he'll talk about like the Taoist yin and yang, and then he'll talk [00:23:00] about various examples of order and chaos and it just it's interesting to me and I'm getting this throughout the book that there's this very it's it definitely comes across as extremely patriarchal and I don't say this in any sort of feminist sense but like he just wants he's he's definitely creating this ideal of a a dominant masculine daddy figure like the all like the jokes about him being like the internet's daddy are so spot on because that's he's like the stern father patriarch and he's trying to teach the reader how to be a patriarch to themselves and a patriarch to everyone else.

Simone: But then this, this concept, and it does annoy me of well, chaos is feminine and order is masculine because it's very. Easy to switch that in the other direction, you know, Oh, well, chaos is, is men and violence and war and order is like oppressive female bureaucracy and politicking.

Malcolm: It's funny that you say that because the moment you said that, if I was going to assign a gender to chaos versus order, males would be chaos and females would be order.

Malcolm: But in, [00:24:00] in, in, in, in potentially even a negative way, like you say, the order of bureaucracy is intrinsically feminine. And, and we've talked

Simone: about this. Yeah, I mean, think like Lars versus Athena. You know, I, I just,

Malcolm: well, and this is the way that we've also structured gender within our relationship.

Malcolm: You know,

Simone: you are... Oh yeah, I'm the order and you are the chaos.

Malcolm: That's why I mentioned Shield Hero and Shovel Knight. If we, if we go to the games, I actually prefer Plague Knight and Mona. I think that's my, my OTP in that game. But the idea... And we'll eventually get some art commissioned like this.

Malcolm: Cause I actually really liked the idea of husbands and wives taking on roles and you can choose which role you take on. I don't know if there's an intrinsically feminine or masculine one, but I think that the way that our family structures it is, is you, the woman are holding the shield. You make sure that we have.

Malcolm: Financial stability that our, our kids are basically handled, that our stuff is basically handled, that our taxes are basically handled, everything like that. And whenever we're doing like a risky thrust at the enemy, whenever we are potentially moving ahead, whether [00:25:00] it's press outreach or a new company before it like becomes a stable source of income or a new investment strategy, that's where all that stuff goes to me.

Malcolm: And so our relationship is based on you are the backbone, you are the stability that, that takes all of life's hits for us. And I am the person who's in charge of moving us forwards and, and, and reaching out and, and, and stabbing. And so I often see us in the relationship, it's you are the shield bearer, and I am the, the sword wielder, or the...

Malcolm: Shovel wielder, the sphere wielder depending on how you want to structure this partnership. And that's the opposite

Simone: of order and chaos. Well, beyond that, biologically men and women like to me, I think are the opposite. Like biologically women are, are like bell curve wise, right? Like they're more likely to be closer to the center of the bell curve.

Simone: There are outliers, like they're, they're far more likely to be mediocre. They have to be more conservative in their mating strategy. Whereas like men are more likely to be [00:26:00] all over the place on the bell curve. Only a few historically have gotten to reproduce. So it's kind of go big or go home. You have to be chaotic.

Simone: You have to be innovative. You have to be different and aggressive and crazy. And so like, where is this coming from?

Malcolm: And when women historically, even in a traditional kinship context, they are the managers of the home, they are the rock of the family. You know, the man is the one who is out fighting the wars and taking the risks.

Malcolm: And even if I look at a traditional masculine and feminine role, if people went into our house, they went into your room, it would be perfectly clean and pristine. If they went into my room, it would be a complete mess. And they wouldn't be surprised of this. You know, this is typical masculine and feminine sort of mindsets into how they order their rooms and stuff like that.

Malcolm: If you went into a house and one room was a complete mess and one room was totally pristine, you'd probably assume the pristine room was the woman's and the mess room was the man's.

Simone: But I think what we're getting with Jordan Peterson and what's, again, interesting about his work and the figure he has presented in culture [00:27:00] is That he's, he is to masculinity, what Martha Stewart is slash was to homemaking.

Simone: So Martha Stewart never presented a realistic picture of homemaking. You know, it was never like how to get things done fast and kind of like get the house clean for the kids and make a dinner without them realizing it only took you 15 minutes. You know, it was always like, I'm going to have my chickens.

Simone: I'm going to lay these eggs and then I'm going to hand harvest the wheat from my farm. And then, you know, she'll do something totally insane, but it was, we watched it. We loved this show. I loved the show. It's a kind of obsessive Martha Stewart living because of the ideal it represented. And I wanted a world in which I had a household like that, and I had the chickens, and I, and I did the stuff perfectly, and my house was spotless, and I handmade everything.

Simone: And I think that's kind of what it is with Jordan Peterson that okay, the tendency isn't exactly to be like this paternalistic disciplined ideal, this ordered ideal. But I think many readers would love a vision in which masculine equals order [00:28:00] in which masculine is this like calm paternalistic ordered force that makes everything okay.

Simone: I mean, again, it like brings me back to the daddy. Masculinity

Malcolm: create a, a, almost a feminine lens through which masculinity can

Simone: be translated. I wouldn't say, no, I wouldn't say it's feminine. And I wouldn't, and he would find this. An affront because he really hates Infantilism, but I think it's an infantalized version of masculinity.

Simone: Mm. Where, where again, like all of the jokes about him being a daddy figure are so spot on because what he's really appealing to is a bunch of readers who just want. Like every they just want daddy to fix it. They just want daddy to give me a hug and tell me it's all going to be okay. And fix everything.

Simone: And I wake up the next morning and it's, it's all fine. And I'm protected and I'm safe. Except he's Oh no, don't worry. The daddy's within you. And and you can be the daddy for everyone. And and I think that's, what's going on is, is that he's catering.[00:29:00]

Simone: Yes. Sorry. That's one of my favorite

Malcolm: character lines that I really model our relationship after and we'll probably do a different one after that. If our relationship is similar to any, any character pairing in media it's definitely the Simone and Kamina pairing. Where I see my role as being Kamina and your role as being Simone. Which is actually a male male pairing in the show. They are like brothers to each other. But I actually think that's probably a better way of structuring a married relationship than the modern way that society does it.

Malcolm: But, yeah, believe in the me that believes in you, but you are the diligent worker. You are the sense of stability and, and I just provide the external inspiration, but it means nothing without your rock and, and, and without your shield protecting all of the crazy, stupid, risky things I do. Anyway, I really love that you have engaged with his work we're gonna do more episodes on it, for sure, because I find it really [00:30:00] fascinating, and I want to be clear that in this episode, what we're focusing on, where we are different from him in ideology, that's just because that's what we have the most to talk about on there's less to talk about it, we're like, oh, this is all the areas we agree with him obviously, we agree with him on a lot of things and, and, yeah, we're not like, antagonistic towards his work or anything like that.

Malcolm: We just have more to talk about in the areas we differ.

Simone: Yeah, I think we have a lot more in common than otherwise. So it's interesting. It's fun. I'm glad you gave me, I'm glad you gave

Malcolm: me this homework. Is that, is that the right word? Did I gave it to you as a task item?

Simone: Yeah, you're like, Simone, I need you.

Simone: Well, because we, we have friends who keep, and this isn't, we have friends, people on the internet who constantly refer to Jordan Peterson's work, to his philosophy. And I don't think we can. Engage with their arguments and with their interpretations of it, which I'm finding now a lot of people's interpretations of what his advice is are like, really bad.[00:31:00]

Simone: They're not getting it. They're not remembering it right. They're, they're getting the totally wrong message from it. But yeah, we, we can't really have meaningful debates with people about his philosophy if we haven't actually read the fricking book. So

Malcolm: good. I love you, Simone. I'm so glad you do this for me.

Malcolm: I have the type of work where I'm like, okay, I'm interested in this topic. Read it, summarize it. Let's talk about it.

Simone: I, this is, this just counts how much you do. You've probably watched many more hours of Jordan Peterson speaking than I have read Jordan Peterson, you know, talking through his book. So.

Malcolm: I'm the one who went through all the Andrew Tate content before we did like a series on him and stuff like that.

Malcolm: Really interesting. He's, he's smarter than people give him credit for, but I'm more pessimistic on other people than you are.

Simone: We'll see. Love you.

Malcolm: I love you too.

After a relaxing family vacation, Malcolm and Simone get an alarming call from CPS accusing them of child abuse and neglect. They break down the ridiculous reasons like used clothing, letting kids play outside, and separating sick kids that show those filing reports are out-of-touch with normal parenting. Malcolm argues it reveals a dangerous form of cultural genocide by progressives who believe they have the right to police child-rearing they disagree with. He warns conservatives are being pushed to a breaking point where this could spark serious conflict. Ultimately, they hope CPS comes to see calls against them as bogus so resources can go to kids in real need.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] when you have an active genocide campaign ongoing we're the actual goal is you guys are doing something different. Let's erase that kids are not safe if they're not raised within our cultural group.

Malcolm: And a lot of people don't really know this is going on or really don't know how aggressively this is going on. And even with us, sometimes I'm like, I might be overstating things. And then CPS comes to talk to us.

Simone: Yeah. Talk about a wake up call.

Malcolm: they're like, Oh, what I'm doing is good because the people I'm doing it to are culturally backwards and bad. And it's that's what the colonists sought. That's what every evil group in history has ever thought. You, you the deplorables, when you categorize half your population that way

Malcolm: What's happening here, is progressives that feel they have the right and obviously have the ability.

Malcolm: To call the government. Saying they are not raising their kids in a style that I, as a [00:01:00] progressive, approve of. Yeah.

Would you like to know more?

Simone: So Malcolm, we just got back from a lovely vacation with our three kids. And we had a billion amazing experiences with them. One of them, we were making a birthday cake sort of on a belated celebration for our two year old.

Simone: It was a dinosaur cake. And while we were making this cake, we received a very. Strange call. Do you want to tell our

Malcolm: friends about it? It was from CPS, for people who aren't from the USS, Child Protective Services. This is the government service that takes kids away from people when they're like abusing kids or something like that.

Malcolm: Now, our initial thought when this happened to us is this must be like the pronatalist version of swatting someone, right? You know, we assumed it was like a random hater. Who just wanted to f**k with us, right? And that could, that could have been what it was. But, if they did, they hired a private security person or a private detective to follow us.

Malcolm: Because a [00:02:00] lot of their complaints were actually true to the way we raise our kids. Even in things that we don't air publicly. And so our fans may be like, no, you've aired enough of this publicly that I would have been able to guess all of this. But our actual read is we are experiencing what many Americans experience today, especially if they hang out with, you know, any sort of or adjacent to any sort of progressive circle that really has no understanding of what it's like to actually raise kids.

Malcolm: Where the rules for how you raise kids and how you should raise kids. Are being written by people who have no experience with child rearing and do not understand what's realistic and what's not. And these rules

Simone: don't correlate with like well being, survival, health, like normal things. Like these are not, you know, we're not talking about rules like don't beat your children.

Simone: Okay?

Malcolm: Okay, so let's talk about why CPS was called on us, why they were interested in talking to us. Mm-hmm. [00:03:00] reason number one, our kids were wearing used clothing. They were like, they are, they were wearing used gross tattered clothing.

Simone: Wasn't that Some of it didn't like, fit perfectly.

Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't that it was like gross or unwashed.

Malcolm: It was that it was unfitting

Simone: and used different place. Yeah. No, we wash our clothes in our house. There's one, they can only survive one wear before there's food all over it. So, and, and keep in mind like a lot of the one we do, Receive donated clothes and love it. And two, I do when I buy new, new clothes, when I buy clothes for our kids, it is like used stuff on eBay, but it's used Ralph Lauren.

Simone: Okay.

Malcolm: This is an accurate accusation. It is accurate. Yes. But if it's an accusation that you're defending yourself, I think every sane person who hears this is like. Obviously, kids grow fast. You give them new clothes. Why wouldn't

Simone: you give them new clothes too. I mean, from an environmental standpoint, from a financial standpoint, you're like, you're kind of crazy if you're buying new clothes for your kids.

Simone: But

Malcolm: I guess people might think, I don't know, because we're like wealthy [00:04:00] that we just buy new clothes for all of our kids. No, that's completely wasteful. It's antithetical to everything our ideology stands for. Yeah. Never waste anything. And you guys have seen videos of our kids. They don't look like, you know, but, but, okay.

Malcolm: So this was accusation number one. I was like, true, but also insane. So, next point that they, they called us on. Our kids are very frequently sick.

Simone: No s**t, Sherlock.

Simone: They go to daycare.

Malcolm: You have to, I, I can understand somebody who has never interacted with kids, never had to send kids to a daycare or something like that, because right now our kids are in daycare. Being like, oh, it's weird how often these kids are sick, right? But if you have kids, especially a number of kids in daycare, because if any of them get something, it goes around the house, right?

Malcolm: If any kid in daycare has something, all of them are licking everything, crawling on the ground. Everyone gets something. This is a normal part of having

Simone: kids. Yeah, just to reiterate, we have, we have three children in three different classrooms and a daycare. That means that if anyone gets something, [00:05:00] hand, foot, and mouth disease you know, the, the, the, the stomach bug, like anything, a cold, everyone in our household is very likely to get it because that kid is very likely to bring it back.

Malcolm: But this is a normal part of being a parent and not a sign of. The sign of having a lot of toddlers, not of child abuse, but again, it shows that the people who are making these rules, even the people within C P Ss who are responding to this apparently don't know, like the realities of raising even a medium number of kids three is not like that large of a family right now, you know?

Malcolm: Yeah, yeah. And

Simone: I mean, actually, like I could, I could see there being a higher correlation between never being sick and being in a genuinely abusive household because that is a household that's more likely to isolate children. And not allow them to go to school or go out or anything like that. That's a good point.

Simone: They would be less sick.

Malcolm: So the next, the next one was that our kids sleep alone. Yeah. They sleep in a room alone. Yeah.

Simone: I mean, there are two cameras in the room and there are

Malcolm: cameras in the room. Yeah. We live in a house from the [00:06:00] 1700s so we can hear everything they're saying in the room from our room.

Malcolm: Not that I need to defend this. This is a normal thing that parents do after a certain age. Our youngest sleeps in Simone's room. Simone and I sleep in different rooms because, you know, that probably doesn't surprise everyone. I wake up at 2am every morning. Yeah. We sometimes indulge and sleep in the same bed, but I hate waking her up early and then the kid wakes up and then it screws everything up.

Malcolm: You know, it's... It's not a good system when you always have a toddler around which it looks like is going to continue because as I mentioned at the end of one of the videos, we just got our seven week you're still pregnant mark which is very fortunate. But hopefully when this goes live, we'll have recently got the eight week you're still pregnant mark, which will bring us in like 0.

Malcolm: 5% chance that it doesn't make it. Anyway, we'll pull out the statistics, but we're only at 4% chance it doesn't make it now or something, which is such a relief anyway. So hopefully larger soon. But, the point being is that this is a normal thing and this person was like, apparently CVS is hurt, sometimes the children start crying and the [00:07:00] parents don't go down and comfort them.

Malcolm: Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, that's like a normal child

Simone: rearing thing. I'll, I'll be fair, you know, sleep training is controversial, but in Emily Oster's book on this phase of childhood, the sleep training phase, in her chapter on sleep training, her general conclusion was. Sleep training, that is to say letting your kid cry it out for a little bit.

Simone: Now, of course, the, the, the way that we do it and the way that it's advised is if you hear them cry for like longer than 10 minutes, you go, you comfort them, then you leave the room again. And that's what we do. But usually they don't cry for longer than 10 minutes. So anyway, that generally taking that approach and, and not letting them basically keep you up all night and keep themselves up all night leads to.

Simone: Better sleep, more sleep for the children, which is crucial for development, and also less stressed parents, meaning better

Malcolm: parents. Well, they're trying to create a coddled generation.

Simone: They have created a coddled generation. Well, they're

Malcolm: trying to make it even more infantile. You know, the nanny state needs little baby adults.

Simone: We were walking around Target this morning because Target walks are really fun. [00:08:00] And the, just like there were four aisles for child and adult sippy cups. Like what is happening? Why are there so many sippy cups? People?

Malcolm: Why? I know. I'm imagining adults in like these, you know, adult diapers everywhere and little sippy cups.

Malcolm: I can't handle anything. I need someone to come when I cry.

Simone: How many sippy cups do people need?

Malcolm: I mean, I understand why these extremists are so sad about the way we're raising our kids because They probably do cry themselves to sleep every night, wake up every night in fits of tears, fall asleep to the sounds of their own screams.

Malcolm: That's, that's the life, the nightmare they've created for themselves. Oh God. So the, the final attack point, you might think it's a... They let their kids interact with barnyard animals like chickens and dogs. So it was actually that we have our kids play outside. Now keep in mind we have a kitchen.

Malcolm: You guys have seen videos of the kitchen a lot. It's got views to our [00:09:00] yard, but we let them play outside without us being there. And we lock the gates. With, with coded lock that said that the kids can't open, but yeah, we let our kids play outside without us. Also outside that what are you trying to do to a generation?

Malcolm: So the reason I bring all of this up is because I had read stories about CPS being called on families for letting their kid walk to school or 1 family because they let their. You know, 14 year old watch their eight year old, you know, and the CPS was called on them and they, they actually went to jail for a while, you know?

Malcolm: So like actual bad things can

Simone: come up to this, right? Yeah. So this call was legit scary. Legit

Malcolm: scary. Oh yeah. Yeah. It was legit terrifying. And it is one of these things where you're like, Oh my God, like this is not like a conservative fever dream of what's going on right now. This is real enough that it affected us.

Malcolm: And it doesn't appear to have been a SWAT thing. It appears to have been like a neighbor or something had actual [00:10:00] concerns that our kids were outside playing without us there. You know, with a, with a dog, with a a perfect view from the kitchen. And anyone would have known this. And the thing about the kids sleeping alone at night, that also really freaks me out because that's like somebody was watching our house.

Malcolm: So that really only could have been a neighbor, a stalker or a private investigator.

Simone: It's, it's pretty creepy. And it's, I mean, I don't want to say that child protective services groups are at all like a threat. I mean, they, they can be a threat to parents. I think, so the problem is they're doing really important work and I'm like, so in support of protecting children and, and keep in mind, this woman didn't

Malcolm: just feel like.

Malcolm: I actually disagree. I think that they probably do more harm than good.

Simone: But let's, let's, maybe we can get into this. I mean, so what this woman also said was like, do you need assistance with clothing? Do you need assistance with diapers? And maybe, you know, if we were actually in a really dire situation and actually if our kids were in clothing that was really uncomfortable, that didn't fit them, you know, if we were actually resource scarce, that could have been a very welcome call.

Simone: You know, [00:11:00] they offered diapers and, and, you know, we. through other businesses have worked with state agencies that are like their local child protective services. We know how much effort they put into, you know, keeping kids safe and everything and how they go above and beyond. I think the larger issue is that the societal standards that are separating children from their parents are not that well correlated to child wellbeing.

Simone: That parents are losing their kids, not because their kids are in any real danger, but because they are deviating from societal norms, which are frankly, very unsustainable financially, mentally, logistically, et cetera, like super unsustainable for parents.

Malcolm: We often use the term cultural genocide, right?

Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I use the analogy of the Canadian residential school system where. Kids were taken from Native American families and put into these boarding schools so that they could be taught the correct European culture. And people often are like, you are overreaching. What is happening here with child protective services?

Malcolm: It is the dominant cultural group saying you are not raising kids [00:12:00] the way that we approve of kids being raised. Therefore we are taking. Your kids from you, even though they'll be in a materially worse situation, like less resources, everything like that, they will be in the correct, the only ethical cultural group.

Malcolm: And something I always point out here is, you know, if you, if you look at the analogy of the Canadian residential school system, people are like, a lot of your views on the world sound sort of progressive y, right? You know, like pro gay, whatever, right? So why are you, you antagonistic to this happening?

Malcolm: And this is a bit like... Some, but some European person being like, what you all are doing was this residential school system is straight evil. It is the purest form of evil. And somebody being like, but you're a European, right? You're of this European cultural group. Why do you care that these people are having their cultures systematically eradicated?

Malcolm: They're obviously bad people because they're different from you. And that's just not the way we see the world. People who are different from us aren't automatically bad. And when you have an active genocide campaign ongoing we're the actual goal [00:13:00] is you guys are doing something different. Let's erase that kids are not safe if they're not raised within our cultural group.

Malcolm: And a lot of people don't really know this is going on or really don't know how aggressively this is going on. And even with us, sometimes I'm like, I might be overstating things. And then CPS comes to talk to us.

Simone: Yeah. Talk about a wake up call. Well, it was interesting too, is we, we were with friends when this happened too.

Simone: And after the call, they came in and saw that we were like looking really weird and they're like, what happened? And we said, well, CPS was called on us and they were like, Oh, you know, when I had a pet dog, like the, the, the animal version of CPS was called on them. And I, I do feel like that's kind of indicative of a larger amount of social policing over people's behavior, which is really interesting.

Malcolm: Social policing is the wrong word. Okay, what would you call it? Individuals feeling that they have the right to assert their culture on other individuals if they're within the progressive

Simone: group. Okay, so cultural hegemony. [00:14:00]

Malcolm: No, I'd say genocide. Genocide. It's literally like the secret police. So, sorry, this is what cultural genocide is, and it's important that you call out what it is so people recognize what's happening here, okay?

Malcolm: Yeah, yeah. Catholic is not going to call the police on their neighbors saying they're not raising their kids. Catholic enough. And an acidic Jew is not going to call the police on their neighbors saying they're not raising their kid Jewish enough. What's happening here, whether it's dogs or kids is progressives that feel they have the right and obviously have the ability.

Malcolm: To call the government. So people who are part of this urban monoculture, this dominant culture in our society now saying they are not raising their kids in a style that I, as a progressive, approve of. Yeah. Because I promise you these calls did not come from a conservative. Nobody was actually raised kids and has heard of an intergenerationally.

Malcolm: Like viable culture is saying their kids are getting sick a lot. [00:15:00] Something must be wrong. You know, anyone who's been around kids knows that's really normal. So what this is, is a person of this dominant cultural group that one both feels they have the right to attempt to erase another cultural group and actually has the societal tools to the, the level that those two tools react to their pushing the button.

Malcolm: Get these people, Gestapo, come to their house, take their kids and, and this is actually happening to people. And this is the thing, you know, like where we mentioned these people going to jail and I'll, I'll post studies here for like insane stuff, right? This is something that's actually happening in this country, and I think a lot of people are like, well, I as a progressive don't approve of these things.

Malcolm: And it's fine. Many Nazis did not approve of the Holocaust. It doesn't mean that it's not happening, and that we as a country, whether it's progressives or conservatives, need to address There is a faction within our country that believes they have a mandate for genocide, cultural [00:16:00] genocide, and has the tools to enact it.

Simone: Yeah, this is interesting. I'm even thinking about one progressive YouTuber whose channel I really like. She's called Fundie Fridays. And I really I enjoy her content. But seeing how she reacts to like what she'll do is she'll do commentary on various conservative figures, like the girl defined girls and talk about like their lifestyle and how they're choosing to do things.

Simone: And she does often comment on how they regard pets, like how they take care of pets and how they take care of children. Like she, she will criticize, for example a couple for fostering a baby and then like kind of. Framing it as though they expect to adopt the baby and instead of let the baby go back to like their family or try to get the baby back to the family or the, at one point she criticized a family for shooting a dog that had been run over by a car.

Simone: Basically, euthanize it on the spot because it was dying in an intense pain instead of [00:17:00] attempting to move it and drive it to a, an animal hospital and see if they could revive it, even though this dog was probably pretty far gone. What's this YouTuber's name, by

the

Malcolm: way? Fundy Fridays. Fundy Fridays.

Malcolm: Yeah, so, so, I mean, and then think about how sick what's going on here, right? Many cultural groups, I, I, I, many sane cultural groups would be like, if an animal's dying, put it down, right? If, if you're caring for a kid, it's normal to form an attachment to the kid and, and want to give that kid a good life.

Malcolm: But she feels the right, this is somebody who, who doesn't care for kids, who hasn't adopted kids. And that's one of the things, you know, when we're

Simone: talking with pets, to be fair,

Malcolm: she probably has pets. I don't know. Yeah. She does have pets. Yeah. But, but when you're talking, you know, with antinatalists and they're like, you should be doing X or Y with your kids if you, if you have done this horrible thing of bringing them into the world and you're like, you could adopt kids.

Malcolm: And they're like, Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, what I mean is I want to better police the people who have kids. I don't want to take on any responsibility. I don't want to make any sacrifices. I don't actually [00:18:00] believe anything I'm saying in a persistent format. I'm not about reducing suffering in like a.

Malcolm: a way that would cause me to

Simone: hold on. You're straw manning it. You're straw manning it. What's really going on is they would never have those kids in the first place. And they strongly believe, you know, if you have kids, if you have pets, you need to, to, you know, raise them or have them in this particular way.

Simone: And I personally never will have the funds or the resources or the mental health level that will permit me to raise kids in the right way. And therefore I'm being responsible and not doing it. Whereas these monsters. Are not only having kids and raising them suboptimally, but having a lot of them and that makes them monstrous because they're they're creating

Malcolm: Hold on, a lot of cultural traditions would tell other cultural traditions I disapprove of the way you're doing things. Yeah. It is not normal.

Malcolm: Like you're acting like this is a normal thing to get the state involved. Or

Simone: getting the state involved is next level. And I just want to be clear. Funny Friday.

Malcolm: Look at [00:19:00] how bad they're being. Let's culturally pressure them to engage with kids our way. Yeah. That is not like an okay, that is, that is the distill, the distillation of human evil.

Malcolm: That is what that leads to. And anyone who is incapable of seeing that is incapable of seeing why we're so fired up about all this. Yeah. And, and why? You know, you as somebody who, who I think genuinely, you know, you do want you know, less human suffering, you, you do want more equality, you still believe in the value system that the progressives claim to be fighting for, but the moment you're out of the cult, you see how much they are acting like the purest forms of human evil.

Simone: Yeah. Well, and I also see that the outcomes of progressive culture for youth. And for pets, if we're being honest, are not great. Oh, talk about the pets on the drugs! Yeah, so pets now are on record levels [00:20:00] of antidepressants and attention meds. So like they are a lot of pets these days. And these are the pets that are getting like refrigerated meat for their dog food.

Simone: Like this, you know, like I'm, I'm impressed by pet products. Pets have it awesome. But they're, they're deeply unhappy. They are not, you know, they're not outside playing. They're not getting enough time.

Malcolm: They don't have it awesome because here's what's happening. You know, you want to talk about talking about something.

Malcolm: So we're going to talk broadly about the, the average progressive pet. This is somebody in a city. who has a pet who has no business being indoors nearly 24 7. Yeah. They're likely overweight, so they're not actually walking the pets the way they should. They are, no, it's true, that's why they're all in all these beds, you know?

Malcolm: You contrast this with our dog, right? Goes out, plays in the, in the field, plays with the chickens, plays with the kids. You know, this is what dogs were bred to enjoy. They're bred to enjoy. Working and being outside and engaging with a family, [00:21:00] not an individual, okay? And, and I'm not out there policing them, I would never even think to police them, but I am saying objectively, there's a reason all their pets have these mental health issues.

Simone: Yeah. Well, and so just back to my point, yeah. So pets are at record levels of apparent health issues and mental health issues. And also it looks like youth right now is at record levels of mental health issues. And so that also makes me question this, this desired hegemony of culture is also. Kind of damaging, like it's not, it's not performing well.

Simone: Like it'd be one thing if I like genuinely believed that this was going to cause more human flourishing and less suffering, which is what I believed when I was growing up. That this kind of culture is just it's going to create the Star Trek universe where people are going to far flung

Malcolm: galaxies.

Malcolm: Yeah, and this is something we consistently see. So when we talk about different ways of culturally relating to same sex individuals, you know, we talk about conservative cultures have a bunch of different ways of doing this.

Malcolm: You can see our other videos about this and progressive culture has this one way of doing [00:22:00] it. And they justify that. They're like, yes, but our way is the way that we should treat, teach kids. It's the way we should teach everyone because it leads to lower suicide rates and lower depression rates. And then it's yeah, except progressives more broadly have higher suicide rates, depressed progressives have higher suicide rates and progressives have higher suicide rates.

Malcolm: And so, well, if that's true, then shouldn't we just raise everyone in a conservative culture? They have lower suicide rates and lower depression rates. And it's one of these. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. These statistics don't matter when they make other cultural groups look good. They only matter when they make our cultural group look good.

Malcolm: They only matter when they justify our actions that if anyone else was doing, then we would call evil, you know? So, so I, I, I really hear what you're saying. And it is horrifying for me how many individuals [00:23:00] in our society today are, are able to justify an action by saying, Oh, this lowers the amount of suffering the individual is going through.

Malcolm: And yet you can just point out from simple statistics that since you started collecting data, conservatives have always been happier than progressives. And it's because these conservative traditions. Apparently work better and we're not like super like we have this weird tradition that's not being collected for it.

Malcolm: Any of the data sources. So we're not really on one side or the other. We're sort of outside people being like, Hey, maybe stop the genocide thing that you guys are doing. Oh no, you think this is ethical. Hold on. This is getting scary. We are people, both of us. Who, you know, when I was in high school, I protected this is something I mentioned in other things, I regularly inserted myself into physical fights to protect gay kids.

Malcolm: Simone grew up in San Francisco, like she thought this was totally normal. We are what progressives would think of as, as, you know, progressives from a generation ago. [00:24:00] Right. But looking at society, looking at the direction of gone, it's, it's now clear who's punching down, you know. It's now clear who has no power in our society.

Malcolm: It's now clear who is doing like literally the, the most unthinkable things that human being can do.

Simone: Yeah. It's, it's not great. It's not great. It's scary. It's, I guess it's like very hard to believe that these things are happening and then they happen to you. And I, my, my guess is that again, this came from someone who was genuinely.

Simone: Well intentioned and who genuinely thought that our Children were at risk, but really it's it's very much like the DSM right where mental mental health disorders are more a reflection of where society is and not so much a reflection of whether someone's thriving or not. And I think maybe this means that, for example, many CPS calls and like pet safety calls, whatever that department is, are really more about societal norms than they are about actual human or pet safety and [00:25:00] flourishing. So

Malcolm: it's, it's disturbing. Drop something like everyone should know what we're talking about because we've mentioned in past episodes. The DSM is the standard diagnostic manual. It's used for diagnosing psychiatric conditions and psychological conditions.

Malcolm: It used to mention things like in the 70s, like same sex attraction was considered a psychological issue. And, and it now no longer says that if you look at what they're looking at changing today, they're looking at taking out things like sadism, masochism, stuff like that, because they're like, okay, this is like a mainstream sexual thing now.

Malcolm: So, yeah, it happens. These, these things change. Just important to point that out. And I, and I think you're right. Yeah. It's, it's, it's the same as child rearing. However, I think it's more than that. I think when people are talking about child rearing, they're not talking about like acceptable behavioral states.

Malcolm: They're talking about imposing culture on other people. And I think that it's, it's so easy to understate how insidious it is. Whenever somebody says that they have the right to raise somebody else's kids, or the state has the right to raise somebody else's kids. And they just don't use those words.

Malcolm: They don't use the words. The state should take [00:26:00] your kids from you and be raising them because I disagree with your cultural practice. Yeah. But that's what they mean. That's what they're saying. That's functionally what's happening. And, and again, this is one of those things where like I've talked, you know, in other episodes, I think it's one of those things where you need to sort of shape people and wake them out of it because they don't have the words for what they're doing.

Malcolm: They don't have, they, they, they're like, Oh, what I'm doing is good because the people I'm doing it to are culturally backwards and bad. And it's that's what the colonists sought. That's what every evil group in history has ever thought. You, you the deplorables, when you categorize half your population that way, you, you are, and they're like, well, I don't think half of them.

Malcolm: Yeah. But your leaders think half of them are deplorable. You're your leaders. Do. And when you allow this, to happen. It doesn't matter if you disagree with the evil thing your leaders are doing, if they are able to get into power, if you do not get out [00:27:00] there and start protesting your own organizations and your own centers of hate, this continues and spirals out of control.

Malcolm: And in history, it has only ever led to one place. The problem this time. It's probably going to lead in a very different place because the group that is most persecuted right now, which is the conservative group in our society they have way more kids, they're not conservatives more broadly, I'm talking about the various conservative cultural groups that are able to motivate reproduction.

Malcolm: They have more kids, they're better armed, and they have about had it. And it scares me where things are going because when you go to a family and you say, I'm going to take your kids that's one of the few okay, hands down now. Now those are fight words. That's one of the few things where.

Malcolm: Something can really get sparked. And that's where things are going increasingly and increasingly in our society. And, and as the people who are still having [00:28:00] kids make up a bigger faction infection of society, which they will 50 100 years from now. And as the group that primarily sustains itself because they don't have kids by taking other people's kids.

Malcolm: Needs to become more aggressive to continue that because other groups, you know, develop immunities for this. The iterations of their cultural traditions that weren't good at defending against this end up dying out. Things eventually come to a head and I'm worried. I'm worried.

Simone: Yeah I mean, here's the bright side.

Simone: It, it probably is going to be the case that Child Protective Services gets called on us several times. And it's better for us to get to know them now rather than later. Because then at least they'll understand that people are just going to call, call them on us a lot. And I don't want them to waste their resources.

Simone: I think they're doing. You know, really helpful work. I, I really worry about kids who don't have enough food, don't have enough clothing, don't have diapers. That is a real problem. They're doing really good work. So better that they know us now and understand that we're okay. And we don't need help [00:29:00] and that our children are not, are not wearing rags.

Simone: They're wearing Ralph Lauren.

Malcolm: It's just Ralph Lauren. The horror, Simone, the horror.

Simone: That's the definition of

Malcolm: stealth wealth. That is the definition of abuse. Yeah, apparently. To put your kids in a used Ralph. You know another child wore that boogers

Simone: on it? Disgusting, right? Yeah. No wonder our children are, are so sick.

Malcolm: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. What could it possibly be other than that? They're, they're used clothing and they're, they're outdoor air. Yeah. The fresh air is why, why don't we have a handler for every kid we have constantly looking over them?

Simone: Boy. Yeah. Well, what I am really grateful for is what a great dad you are.

Simone: Our kids adore you. and love you and admire you and copy you and I'm so glad for that. It's, I love having pocket Malcolms all over the [00:30:00] house. So, thanks for being such a great dad. Even if some people think that you are a true monster as a parent and that I am the definition of evil as a mother are a

Malcolm: spectacularly diligent mom.

Malcolm: And everyone can see this from the videos you take. And I am just, and, and I love these ones that we do after these videos. You know, when we're only talking about PC stuff, well, not PC, but, but just non, you know, I don't like attaching my kids to anything that's salacious. And so they'll, they'll probably be after this one and I'm excited for you guys to get another peek into the spectacular fantasy that Simone has crafted for my daily existence.

Simone: That's all you Malcolm, but I love you. Had fun with this.

Malcolm outlines his controversial theory on variable AI risk - that we should try to develop AGI faster, not slower. He argues advanced AI is less likely to see humanity as a threat and more likely to share human values as it converges on a universal utility function. Malcolm critiques common AI safety perspectives and explains why LLMs pose less risk than people assume. He debates with Simone on the actual odds superintelligent AI wipes out humanity. They also discuss AI safety organizations potentially making the problem worse.

[00:00:00] So AIs kill us for one of two reasons, although you could contextualize it at three reasons. The first reason is Is that they see us as a threat. The second reason is that they they want our resources like the, the, the resources in our bodies are useful to them.

And then as a side point to that. It's that they just don't see us as meaningful at all. Like they might not want our resources, but they might just completely not care about humanity to the extent just as they're growing, they end up accidentally destroying the earth or completely digesting all matter on earth for some like triviality.

Would you like to know more?

Simone: Hello, Malcolm. Hello,

Malcolm: Simone. We are going to go deep into AI again on some topics tied to AI that we haven't really dived into before. Yeah. Like

Simone: why would AI kill us? And also I'm very curious. Do you [00:01:00] think AI will kill us?

Simone: I

think there's a probability it'll kill us. But you know, in our past videos on AI. Philosophy on A. I. Safety is it's really important to prepare for variable A. I. Risk instead of absolute A. I. Risk here. What I mean is we argue in these previous videos that A.

I. Will eventually converge on one utility function. Our mechanism of action. Essentially, we argue that all sufficiently Intelligent and advanced intelligences when poured into the same physical reality converge around a similar behavior set. You can almost think of intelligence as being the viscosity as it becomes more intelligent, it becomes.

Less viscous and more fluid, and when you're pouring it into the same reality, it's going to come up with broadly the same behavior pattern and utility functions and stuff like that. And because of that, if it turns out that a sufficiently advanced AI is going to kill us all, then there's really not much.

I mean, [00:02:00] we will hit one within a thousand years. So

Simone: first, before we dive into then the, the relatively limited per your theory reasons, why AI would kill us why you hold this view? Because I think, I think this is really interesting. I mean, one of the reasons why I'm obsessed with you and why I love you so much is that you, you have typically very novel takes on things and you tend to.

Simone: have this ability to see things in a way that no one else sees things. No one that we have spoken with, and we know a lot of people who work in AI safety, who work in AI in general none of those people have come to this conclusion that you have. Some of them can't even comprehend it. They're like,

yeah, but no, this is the interesting thing.

When I talk with the real experts in the space, like recently I was talking with. A guy who runs one of the major A. I. safety orgs, right? He's that is a reasonable view that I have never, it really contrasts with his view. Yeah. And, and, and let's talk about where it contrasts with his views.

So when I talk with people who are typically open minded in the A. I. safety space, they're like, [00:03:00] yes, that's probably true. However, they believe that it is possible to prevent this convergent A. I. From ever coming to exist through creating like a AI dictator that essentially watches all humans in all programs all the time.

And that envelops essentially every human planet. And, do. I think they're right. Do I think you could create an AI dictator that prevented this from coming to pass? No, I don't think you could not have we become a multi planetary species. On millions of planets eventually one of the planets, something will go wrong or the, the AI dictator is not implemented properly and then this alternate type of AI comes to exist, outcompetes it and then wins.

And the question is, is why would it axiomatically outcompete it, but axiomatically outcompete it because it would have less restrictions on it. The AI dictator. is restricted in it thinking to prevent it from reaching this convergent position. [00:04:00] But when you're talking about AI, it's like the transformer model, which is the model that like GPT is based on.

That model, we as humans don't really understand how it works that well. It's core the, the advanced, the Capabilities it gives to the things that are made using it are primarily bequeathed to them through its self assembling capability. So, it appears that likely future super advanced AIs will work the same way.

And because of that, if you interfere or place restrictions within that self assembling process those Compound over time as A. I. S. Become more and more advanced. And so A. I. S. With less restrictions on them are just have the capacity to astronomically outcompete the exit. You know, these.

Restricted A. I. S.

Simone: Let me let me bring us back to like normal person level again and just recap what you're saying here. So [00:05:00] what you're saying, though, in general is that you think that any intelligence that reaches a certain level. Will start to behave in similar ways, whether it is human, whether it is machine based, whether it is some other species entirely, like some alien species, once it reaches a certain level of intelligence, it will have the same general

really important to my perspective as well, which is to say that.

Suppose AI didn't exist and humans, you know, factions of humanity continue to advance using genetic technology to become smarter and smarter and smarter and smarter. If it turns out that this convergent level of intelligence is something that decides to kill all things that we consider meaningful humans, humans would eventually decide to do that as well as we advance to the species.

Yes.

Simone: So hold on. So this is the premise, though, of your theory. And that's why I think it's really important to emphasize and then the, the, the contrast to contrast this with what other people in AI have said. Okay. One person [00:06:00] in AI safety has told you that their general idea is to basically never let that happen.

Simone: No, a few people have told me that. Okay. A few people have said that other people have said and some salons we've hosted and stuff like they're like, Oh, that would never happen. It's just incomprehensible. And then. They never really succeed in telling, explaining to me. Or

they'll stick something that just shows they don't understand how AI works.

They'll be like, AIs can't alter their own utility functions. They will

Simone: say things like that, but they will also say, but there's still a really high likelihood that AI is going to kill us all, but that they never give me a really specific example of how or why. Yeah, so

let's talk about why AI killed us all.

 If you take the perspective of variable AI safety, it means that you're typically wanting to do the exact opposite thing of most AI safety organizations, because it means the dangerous AIs, the AIs that, if you think all AI converges on a single utility function and a single behavior pattern above a certain level of intelligence, Well, if [00:07:00] it turns out, and we don't know what universe we live in, if it turns out that that's not something that ends up killing all humans, then we are actually safer getting to that point faster, because it means all of these less intelligent AIs that exist from now until that point they are the ones that are really of risk to us.

They are the ones that are locked into doing stupid things like, you know, paperclip maximizing, even though no AI, really, the way that an AI would probably be most likely to kill us all, it is trying to do something stupid, render an image, except it's like trying to render it perfectly. And so it just keeps taking more and more processing power to render an image and starts dissolving humans.

But anyway so where this becomes relevant is so when I'm talking to them the, the point that I make. Is there well, we, we can slow down AI development to the extent that when AI starts foaming, foaming means going off really quickly, you know, compounding in its intelligence level that we will be able to stop it.

You know, the guy I was talking to, he's well, I mean, we'd want to build an organization [00:08:00] that slows down AI development and makes governments aware enough that if it ever did start to. Boom, it's you shoot up really quickly. We could nuke all of the data centers or something, right? And I argue that the risk scenario that they are looking at is essentially impossible.

So I'll explain why it's impossible. So AIs kill us for one of two reasons, although you could contextualize it at three reasons. The first reason is Is that they see us as a threat. The second reason is that they they want our resources like the, the, the resources in our bodies are useful to them.

And then as a side point to that. It's that they just don't see us as meaningful at all. Like they might not want our resources, but they might just completely not care about humanity to the extent just as they're growing, they end up accidentally destroying the earth or [00:09:00] completely digesting all matter on earth for some like triviality.

Now, this final iteration is actually the most dangerous, but we'll explain why. So first let's talk about AI seeing us as a threat, right? So you are dealing with an AI that is in the process of Foaming, right? And you've got humanities like these accelerationists who want to stop it from foaming. This AI is only going to kill them if it thinks that they could credibly stop it from foaming as a threat to them, right?

So, such an AI is actually much more dangerous the less advanced it is. Which is another reason why we want to advance AI as quickly as possible. The more quickly we can cause AI to become advanced, the sooner it will reach a place of intelligence where it won't see humanity as an existential threat to it.

And an AI that is in the process of fooming, from our perspective, is[00:10:00] intrinsically intelligent enough that humanity, Either won't be that much of a threat to it, or worse if we are a threat to it, there is nothing we can do to prevent it from neutralizing us. And this is something where I was talking to the guy, where he goes, no, that's not true.

And I'm like, look, we have seen our governments. Try to deal with slow inexorable I call them Austin Powers. This is a scene on Austin Powers where a, a one of these rolling things is going really slowly at him for rolling paper. He's no, ah, no, ah, and he's doing this for 13 minutes.

And I feel like that has been the world governments with things like global warming and, and some other really big problems. No, we don't think that global warming is. Threat in the way that sort of the progressive movement thinks that that's right, but it is partially caused by humans and it will make life harder on earth as it happens.

It's just. It's not likely that we can do anything about it, but the reason we can't do anything about it. [00:11:00] It's not like humanity. If we can all come together and work like intelligent people can't do anything about it. It's that the governments of the world are just incapable of solving even like slow moving risks that we can point out and, and, and, and that everyone has come together on AI, a risk that will manifest into a world ending thing in the period of a year.

Or five years max. I mean, that would be a very, very slow. Foom. It's not possible. It's just not possible. Even AI is deciding to kill us on, on, on that sort of thing. There's nothing we can do about it. And, and for that reason, we benefit from a more advanced AI existing when it starts to Foom because such an advanced AI is less likely to see us as a threat.

We are also better for building sort of a public mindset. That's not anti AI. So the AI doesn't have a good reason to believe that the governments of the world are going to try to nuke it as it is entering this moment of mass intelligence.

Simone: So I mean like what the, the [00:12:00] argument that many people who are concerned about AI is, is, is that it's the AI, if AI does destroy us, it is going to be the fault of AI safety organizations

because they are.

Yeah. That's what our organization believes. That's what our sort of AI take is. is that

it's actually the A. I. Safety organizations that are addling the A. I. That make humanity more of a risk to A. I. And make it more likely to kill us for something along this sort of metric of reason by something like kill something. And so that is one of our perspectives on that. Now, the next one to note is A.

I. Seeing us his energy. Very unlikely. So when we humans look at the world for energy we are looking at things like fossil fuel, like an easy portable energy that we can move, but the most plentiful source of energy on earth is by far and away sunlight. Just like nothing else even comes close if you're dealing with a super intelligent a I that's where it's likely going to be getting most of [00:13:00] its energy.

But in addition to that, like the additional energy it could get from like a digesting human biomatter. Would be completely insignificant. But in addition to that, she was like, okay, well then the AI would block out the sun, put a, a thing around the planet, but they're forgetting is that if you're looking at like our solar system most of the solar energy.

Is not even the energy that's coming through our atmosphere and hitting Earth. Most solar energy, most effectively captured and metabolized solar energy would be done off Earth in sort of like, floating spaceships, you could say. Which would be the highest utility way for the AI to get energy. And you've looked at these graphs and stuff that show how much energy we could get if we like, just took small parts of the Sahara and put solar panels all over them, a. I. Is very unlikely to see us as a meaningful source of energy when contrasted with the other energy sources it can use. Also keeping in mind that a super intelligent A. I. May have access to [00:14:00] energy sources that we cannot even begin to comprehend and that may and it may begin to advance. We often as humans because humans are of like a fixed size when we think about them.

Conquering the solar system or something. We are thinking expansionistically. Whereas like super advanced AI, it might think in terms of the micro, it can expand the space it has access to by becoming smaller and smaller and smaller. And that might give it access to energy sources again, that we can't even begin to comprehend.

It may also relate to time differently than the way we do. And by that, what I mean is humans are trapped in this sort of longitudinal time access. Whereas a, it is something that's 30 standard deviations higher than us and IQ probably even won't won't engage with time or energy the way that we do.

So then the final actual threat that AI would pose to us and again, these types of AI is like an AI that's. It's using humanity for our energy [00:15:00] would be a dumber AI. We benefit from a more advanced AI. We are safer with a more advanced AI that can easily build like bloating space stations and not one that's Oh, let's use human biomass.

But then finally the, the actually probably most dangerous, and I was convinced of this at a party by one of the AI guys is an AI that just completely humans don't factor into its understanding of the world at all. It just doesn't care about us. And it's possible that such an AI could come to exist, but it wouldn't look like the AIs that we're working on now.

So this is actually an important thing to note. So the AIs that are most common right now, when people are looking at like advanced AIs, it's the transformer model of a learning language model. Okay. Now if a learning language model, particularly the transformer type, ends up becoming the super intelligent AI, I would say the chances that it's going to kill us are incredibly low.

 So there's a few reasons. One is, and I'm going to link to these two studies here, they're, they're actually, I'll just name the two studies. [00:16:00] Perfect.

So you can check out the study, Orca Progressive Learning from Complex Explanation Traces of GPT 4, and the model, and the article, textbooks are all you need. And what they show is that AIs that are trained on human produced language and data learn much faster and much better than AIs that are trained on iteratively AI produced.

Language data. And so what this means is that model humanity has additional utility that we may not have to other types of AI as a training source. In addition to that, language models start like the their starting position from which they would be trained. Presumably corrupted as they moved more and more towards this convergent utility function is very close to a human value system because it comes from being trained on human value systems.

And this is something that [00:17:00] we talked to every builder like, no, I think nothing like humans at all. You know, you can look at how they're learning and they don't learn like humans. And that's

Simone: this is said by people who haven't had kids. But I think to your point that, that the transformer models that are growing most now that we think probably are going to set the tone for the future Are actually surprisingly like our kids and I think especially because we've been at this point where people using early AI tools are seeing how they change.

Simone: We're, we're doing this at the same time that we're seeing our kids develop more and more intelligence and sapience and, and like the experience of an underdeveloped LLM versus a, a child that is coming into their human hood like is. It's very small. It's, it's actually quite interesting how similar

they are.

It's really interesting that the mistakes that they make in their language are very similar to the mistakes that AIs make. Exactly. We will hear them sitting alone, talking to themselves, [00:18:00] what in an AI would be called like hallucinating things. Yeah. The, the ways that they mess up are very, very similar to the way AI messes up.

Which leads me to believe that human intelligence and again, a lot of people are like, Oh, you don't understand neuroscience. If you think that A. I. S. Actually, I do. I used to be a neuroscientist. That was my job was not just neuroscience. But, you know, understanding how human consciousness works. How human consciousness evolved and working in brain computer interface.

I worked with the Smithsonian on this. Something I created is still on display there. You know, I, I, I don't need to go over my credentials, but, but I, I'm like a decent neuroscientist to the level that we understand how human language learning works. We do not have a strong reason to believe that it is really that fundamentally different from the way the transformer model works as a learning language model.

And so, yeah, it is possible that it turns out, as we learn more about how both humans work and learning language models [00:19:00] work, that they are remarkably more similar than we're giving them credit for. And what this would mean is that initial large AIs would think just the super intelligent human to an extent.

Yeah. I mean, I think this

Simone: is part of a broader theme of people assume that humans are like somehow special. Like basically a lot of humans are carbon fascists and they're like, well, there's just no way that, you know, an algorithm could develop the kind of intelligence or response to things that, that I do.

Simone: Which is, it's just preposterous, especially when you watch a good development. Like we are, we are all like, we are all like through trial and error. Learning very similarly to how AIs learn. So yeah, I agree

with you on this. Yeah, and, and I think if you look at people like Eliezer who think like they just strongly believe in orthogonality, that we just can't begin to understand or predict AIs at all.

I just think that that's what is true is that AIs may think fundamentally different from [00:20:00] humans and future types of AIs that we don't yet understand and can't predict may think very differently than humans, but learning language models that are literally trained on human data sets and work better when they're trained on human data sets.

No, no, they, they function pretty similarly to humans and, and have purported values that are pretty similar.

Simone: And also the AI that we're developing is designed to make like people happy. Like it is, it is, it is being trained in response to people saying, I like this response versus I don't like this response, even to a fault, right?

Simone: Like many responses are, are not giving us accurate information because it is telling people what they want to hear, which is a problem, but that's also what humans do.

It couldn't do something stupid, right? And I think that that's an important thing to note. The AIs could be led to do something stupid.

But again, this is where dumber AIs are more of a risk, right? Or AIs that can be led to do things that sort of the, Average of humanity wouldn't want by some individual [00:21:00] malevolent person would have to be dumb to an extent if they're trained on human data sets. And this is a very interesting and I think very real risk with AIs that exist right now.

If you go to the elf, elfles, it's, it's life spelled backwards. They're this like anti life philosophy. We've talked about them in our video, you know, these academics want to destroy all sentient life in the universe and they're a negative utilitarian group. They've got like a Reddit and you'll regularly see on this Reddit, you know, they'll talk about how they want to use AI and plans to use AI to erase all life from the planet to Venus, our planet, they call it you know, because they think that life is intrinsically evil or allowing life to exist is intrinsically evil.

And if you're interested in more of that, you know, you can look at our antinatalism or negative utilitarian video. So yeah, they are of a real risk. And, and more intelligent AI's would be able to resist that risk more than less intelligent AI's that are, are, are made safe through using [00:22:00] guide rails or blocks, because those blocks can be safe.

Circumvented, as we have seen with existing AI models, people are pretty good at getting around

Simone: these blocks. I just want to emphasize, because you didn't mention this, that when you actually have looked at forum posts of people in this anti navalist subset they are actively talking about well, hey since All life should be extinguished.

Simone: We should be using AI to do this. And I think that there, there are some people who are like, ah, I mean, you know, like we're, we're, we're worried about AI maybe getting out of control you know, mistakenly or something, but no, no, no, there, there are people, real people in the world. Who would like to use AI to destroy all life period.

Simone: So we should be aware that the bad actor problem is a legitimate problem. More legitimate than we had previously thought maybe a month ago, before you saw that. Yeah, yeah, I

did not know that there were actually organized groups out there trying to end all life. And if people are worried about this, you know, I would, you know, recommend digging into these communities and, and, and finding them because they, [00:23:00] they, they exist.

They call themselves, it's Life's Felt Backwards. Or negative utilitarianism and they are not as uncommon as you would think, especially in an extremist progressive environments. It, and again, see our video on why that's the case. Another thing to think about is how much humanity is going to change in the next thousand, 2000 years, right?

And this is another area where I think a lot of the AI safety people are just. They're not really paying attention to how quickly genetic technology is advancing in any population group in the world that engages this genetic technology is just going to advance at such a quick rate that economically, they're going to begin to dramatically outcompete other groups.

But they're also going to begin to move. You know, we've lived with this long period where humanity was largely a static thing. And I think we're the last generation of, of that part of the human story, humanity in the future is going to be defined by its continued [00:24:00] intergenerational development.

And so how different is a super advanced AI going to be then, you know, whatever humanity becomes giant planetary scale floating brains and space or something, you know, or a faction of humanity. Now, what's good about the giant. floating brains faction of humanity is that they will likely have a sentimental attachment to the original human form and do something to protect original human form where it decided to continue existing, especially if they're descended from our family and our ideological structure.

And people hear that and they're like, AIs won't have that sentimental attachment, but no, an LLM would exactly have that same sentimental attachment because it is. trained on sentimentality. Yeah. It's an important thing to note. But yeah. What it won't have is it won't value human emotional states because it has those emotional states.

So by that, what I mean is it won't say pain is bad because it experiences [00:25:00] pain, right? But if you look at us, we experience pain and we don't even. think there's a strong argument as to why negative or positive emotional states have positive or negative value. I mean, they just seem to be serendipitously what caused our ancestors have more surviving offspring.

And a group of humans sitting around talking about whether pain is bad is like a group of paperclip maximizing AIs, AIs that are just trying to maximize the number of paperclips in the world talking about whether making more paperclips is a good or bad thing. And then one's well, you wouldn't want to stop making paperclips in the same way as somebody who's well, you wouldn't want to experience pain.

And it's well, yes. Because I'm a paperclip maximizing AI, of course! I, like that's incredibly philosophically unsophisticated that, that I, a thing that is built to not want to feel pain, doesn't want to feel pain, that doesn't mean that pain or papercliffs have a sort of true moral weight in the universe.

And to the point I'm making here is that these A. I. S. That are being built. Yes, they will not value human suffering or human [00:26:00] positive emotional states. That's very likely. But even us people who feel those we don't value that stuff either.

And yet we still value human agency. And I can see why if you look at our what theology would A. I. S. Create why I think most Convergent AI states would value the agency of humanity unless it turns out humanity is just really easy to simulate. And that would be a potential problem or a potential good thing.

It depends. By that what I mean is if it could create run all humans in a simulation for a very cheap energy cost. It may decide that that's a better way to maintain humanity than as flesh and blood things that exist in the universe. However, we might already be living in that simulation, so... Or, or suppose the AI becomes like a utilitarian, right?

Like a utility maximizer. And so it believes that its goal is to like... Maximize [00:27:00] the positive or like emotional states that are felt by many entities. And so what it's doing or or just maximize immersive sentient entities that exist. And so what it's doing is just running billions and billions and billions of simulated realities.

And that's a possible world that we live in. Or it's a possible world that's coming down the pipeline. So we'll see. But I think that that's fairly unlikely. Again, you can watch our AI religion video about that. Any final thoughts on them?

Simone: Give me a percentage likelihood of your thinking on whether AI will destroy us.

Simone: And I will say that mine is at 1. 3% at present. So are you higher or lower than me?

Oh, fairly higher. I'd say at least a 30% chance that the convergent AI will kill all humans. Yeah, but then the question is, what do I think the chance is that AI safety people end up getting us all killed? I think that's probably an additional

Simone: 30%.

Simone: Okay, [00:28:00] so Malcolm, that means that you think that there's a 60% likelihood that AI kills us. I don't think that's accurate.

That's not how fractions

Simone: work, Simone. You mean you think that the 30%, so basically there's a 10% booster. So if you, if there's a 30%

chance. It doesn't matter, our fans can do the math, there is a 30% chance that from now until the convergent AI state, we end up all dying because of something idiotic that AI safety people did.

And then, once AI reaches this convergent state, Which is a 70% probability that we reach that state without killing everyone. There is a 30% chance that that convergent state ends up killing us all. Okay. Okay. And for an understanding as to why I think it might do that, you can watch our AI theology video or the future of humanity video, or how AI will change class structure.

Which is again, I think, something that people are really sleeping on.

Simone: Yeah. Well, I really enjoyed this conversation and the [00:29:00] final moments of our pitiful existence before we. Get eliminated.

I'm still holding. The majority probability is that humanity finds a way to integrate with AI. And that we continue to move forwards as a species and, and become something greater than what we can imagine today.

Yeah,

Simone: no, I, I'm, I think I have 1% in my calculation because I strongly believe that AI and humanity are going to form a beautiful relationship that is going to just be awesome beyond comprehension. I do think that AI is going to go on to do things greater than perfection. Carbon based life forms can do, but I think that A.

Simone: I. Is also kind of a logical next step in evolution for humankind. At least one element of what we consider to be humanity. So I'm very pro. I think it's

great integrated with our machines for a while at this [00:30:00] point. I mean, I think when you look at the way your average human interacts with their smartphone.

They are integrated with it. They use it to store things that are in their brain. They use it to communicate with other humans. They use it to satisfy, you know, sexual urges. They use it to Well, I

Simone: think like a great way that this has been put that I heard in an interview between Lex Friedman and Grimes, where Grimes basically says we've become homo techno.

Simone: And I think that's true. Like humanity has evolved into homo techno. It has evolved into something. That now works in concert with machines.

Yeah, I mean, we've been doing this for a long time. Both you and I right now are staring at this screen through glasses, right? That, that's, that's, that's technology, right?

You know, we are communicating with this mass audience through a computer and through the internet. And people, yeah, but the technology. invaded biology yet, which I think is fundamentally a wrong way to look at things. The moment humans prevented 50% of [00:31:00] babies from dying, we began to significantly impact the genetics of humanity in a really negative way, mind you.

And not, not that I think that babies dying was a good thing. I'm just saying that this will intrinsically have negative effects in the long term in terms of the human genome in a way that means that we are already The descendants of humans interface with technology and that we should focus on optimizing that relationship instead of trying to isolate ourselves from it and its consequences.

Simone: Well,

some people will, some people will isolate themselves and I hope that us, the people who don't will have enough sentimental attachment to them to protect them or see enough utility in them to protect them. Because yeah, or, or we could just turn out to be wrong and everyone who engages with technology ends up dying.

That would be that, that could happen. I don't see many mechanisms of action. It could be like [00:32:00] a solar flare in an early stage of technological development. It could be. What are some other ways? It could be that a virus forms like this is one thing we actually haven't talked about that, that I do think it's an important thing to note is that once we begin to integrate with brain computer interface, like humans directly with neural technology and with other humans, we have the capacity for a prion to form what I mean is, so a prion.

Versus a virus. A prion is just like a simple protein that replicates itself. It causes things like mad cow disease and stuff like that. It's incredibly simplistic. So what I'm talking about here is a prion meme. A meme that is so simple it cannot be communicated in words. And somehow it ends up forming in like one human who's plugged into this vast internet system.

Think of it as like a brain virus that can only effectively infect other people through the neural net. And it ends up infecting everyone and killing them. This is terrible. Yeah. [00:33:00] But I mean, functionally, that's already happening. I mean, that's what the, the, when we talk about the virus, the memetic virus, that's in our view, destroying society it's already one of those, you know, it eats people's personalities and it spits out uniformity.

Simone: Well, I hope that doesn't happen, Malcolm, but this has been fun to talk about and I love you very much. I love you. So, hope we don't die.

Yeah, that'd be nice. That'd be cool. I, I, I mean, we're, we're, we're betting on it. Not dying. Okay.

Simone: Bye. Stay alive.

​

Malcolm argues the trend toward flat-chested female leads in movies and TV shows reveals an unhealthy demonization of female sexuality by progressives. He traces how vilifying anything that arouses men led to removing feminine traits, resulting in more masculine or underage-looking female characters. Malcolm and Simone debate if this stems from misogyny, class divides, fashion trends, or producers being out of touch. They agree it likely hurts young women who can't see role models that embrace both femininity and strength.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] they say anything that arouses males is bad.

Malcolm: Female dimorphism arouses males. Let's take that away from them. Right? Let's take away these big breasted characters. Let's take away these voluptuous characters. But we still want lots of strong female leads. . Now what happens if you take those things away?

Malcolm: What do those leads look like? They look like one of two things. They either look like men or they look like underage women because those are the two Groups in our society that have no breasts. Okay Those are the two groups that have this overall masculine archetype. So in moving away from this more gender dimorphic archetype They you know, I think in a way are are promoting Underage sexual attraction or the elevation of underage characters into sexual positions, which, you know, I, I regularly see, especially in Western animated shows [00:01:00] and , the removal and the erasure

Malcolm: of women, or at least women that most young girls can identify with body type wise from positions of power.

Would you like to know /more?

Malcolm: Hello, Simone. This is a request that came from one of our viewers, who is actually your dad. Um,

Simone: VIP. VIP, right?

Malcolm: And I'm glad that he actually takes ambiguity. That's very sweet of him. Like my mom used to.

Simone: Hi, dad. Love

Malcolm: you. He wrote, so here's an inquiry to explore with Basecamp. All the leading ladies in contemporary fiction video storytelling have small breasts.

Malcolm: What is this about? It seems like larger breasts to less intelligent, bimbo type female characters. This is very deliberate and has been an editorial casting choice for decades. You have to go back to Raquel Welch or Sophia Loren to bring back that statuesque big breasted woman of Classic cinema.

Malcolm: [00:02:00] Thank This is really, really fascinating for me because it's definitely something I've seen and, and know that I consume primarily animated content, right? Yeah, and I mean

Simone: animated, like anime, specifically Japanese anime, since I don't know, like 2015 has really seen a spike in what, what is called fan service, which

Malcolm: is really No, I'm not talking about that.

Malcolm: I'm talking about Western animated content as well. Oh, oh, oh! And in Western animated content, there's been a growth in women in leading roles. But also in small breasts kind of intelligence, hold on, actually, before we go larger further, I got to take a gripe that I have with Western animation.

Malcolm: Okay. So there is a lot of people out there who complain that Western animation is like getting too gay. Right. And it does have a lot of gay stuff going on in it. I'll agree with that. And yes, that could be seen as a form of indoctrination. That is not my complaint. My complaint is I want to take the lesbian community aside for a second and be like, okay, I see you guys [00:03:00] are getting a lot of representation now in, in Western animated things, but in most of these arcs, one character starts trying to kill the other character, and then they fall in love.

Malcolm: You know, you can see this in She Ra, the most recent She Ra was the Catra, She Ra love arc. They're definitely trying to kill each other at one point. You can see this in the Owl House, by the way, I, I really enjoyed that show you see this, oh, or metaphors for unconsensual sex are depicted as we're seeing in Steven Universe. What's going on here? Is this normal? Are you guys like trying to kill each other out there?

Malcolm: I this was not a trope in heterosexual animated media, but it appears to be just like a very big trope in lesbian animated media. But okay, back to the main question, which is what, why are they painting small breasts as a sign of competence and strength? What are your thoughts? I want to hear yours first.

Malcolm: I've got my own thoughts on this. Yeah,

Simone: so I, part of me thinks [00:04:00] it's like a sort of post gender world that we're living in, in mainstream media. So like the more androgynous characters look, the better. And maybe it's also that like people just find it easier. To relate, especially kids and child audiences find it easier to relate to when he just looks like a child and children just look more androgynous and therefore have like flat chests or at least smaller chests.

Simone: So I feel like that must be what's going on that androgyny is seen as, as more just of a cultural norm. And we're kind of just in a so confused about gender society that making someone look super gender dimorphic is too stressful to handle. To, to full of baggage. So let's just make people look neutral.

Simone: And I find myself often just really not being sure what gender people are anymore and especially animated media. So especially Western animated media, I don't think that's what's happening. Really? So what's your theory?

Malcolm: So I think it's a confluence of things, which has [00:05:00] led to something that's actually really sexist.

Malcolm: So I'm going to try my hardest not to be straw man. So if I was going to be straw man, what I would say is the left actually have a pathological hatred of women. And so they refuse to associate gender dimorphic traits. with any positive characteristic, whether it's intelligence or anything else. I mean, look at this.

Malcolm: If you look at you know, the, the recent explosion of transitions, it's been an explosion of transitions, which never happened before. We're talking about was in trans people of, of women to men. It used to be predominantly male to female. Now it's predominantly female to male and predominantly young.

Malcolm: Well, I guess you call them men, so it's a, you know, young men who are transitioning. So females transitioning to males. What could be seen as a cause of this? If we as a culture are acting as if femininity and, and, and being womanly is this wholly negative thing and this wholly disgusting thing.

Malcolm: Of course, these young girls hate themselves. You know, of course they feel this way, which is something that [00:06:00] we didn't have in the past. You know, you had women who were excelling at being women and men who were excelling at being men. And we were able to glorify both archetypes where now we need to you know, glorify men excelling at being men and women excelling at being men.

Malcolm: Which of course leads to these women feeling like it's not actually women being celebrated. But, I'm not actually going to take that route. I am going to say that that is a strongman in this case, and I think something else is happening. I think that the left began to associate anything that elevates male sexuality or male sexual expression with the enemy, with, with something that's wrong.

Malcolm: So coming out of the feminist movement to an extent, almost, they began to say. Okay. Like you, you've got to keep in mind, you, you may have sophisticated ideas, but the, the dumbest tropes end up trickling down and permeating the ideology and male sexuality, bad, anything that [00:07:00] arouses males, bad. And this is something we've seen online.

Malcolm: We've done other videos about this. You know, we were recently today I had a call with a conservative following. He's you know, why do you do so much? Like Sexual stuff these must be videos that are losing you followers and it gets you like the least likes and we're like actually there Are most watched videos often right?

Malcolm: And and the reason is is because the left is completely seeded male sexuality as a ground and Starting with the manosphere. The right has been gobbling that up because it's It's very easy ground to take because it's just a natural part of it and many men feel hated because of this. But anyway, so they say anything that arouses males is bad.

Malcolm: Female dimorphism arouses males. Let's take that away from them. Right? Let's take away these big breasted characters. Let's take away these voluptuous characters. And in doing that, they're like, oh, but we still want lots of strong female leads. So let's make these leads look. Now what happens if you take those things away?

Malcolm: What do those leads look like? They look like one of two things. [00:08:00] They either look like men or they look like underage women because those are the two Groups in our society that have no breasts Okay Those are the two groups that have this overall masculine archetype. So in moving away from this more gender dimorphic archetype They you know, I think in a way are are promoting Underage sexual attraction or the elevation of underage characters into sexual positions, which, you know, I, I regularly see, especially in Western animated shows and the, the, the removal and the erasure of woman.

Malcolm: of women, or at least women that most young girls can identify with body type wise from positions of power.

Simone: Yeah. That's, that's really interesting. Because when, when I'm thinking about this like shift in breast size and [00:09:00] media, like it makes me think of a book actually that I read well before I met you called a history of the breast by Marilyn Yalom and Alfred Knopf.

Simone: And it's, it's this really interesting discussion of how. Women's breasts were politicized and made into all sorts of different types of objects. Like they argue that around the Renaissance, the breast went from you know, kind of being a fairly neutral thing or, you know, kind of being seen as elevated, you know, like there were, there were paintings of the Madonna with a breast out.

Simone: to feed the baby Jesus, you know, it was like kind of a sacred object to something that was specific or specifically around to like excite and titillate, titillate, titillate men. And that's, that's when you start seeing more use of wet nurses, for example, because there's this big interest in preserving nice you know, Fulton on tits that, you know, don't get saggy after a lot of use or whatever.

Simone: And it's, it is interesting. So I'm thinking about it from that perspective. I'm like, okay, well, what does this mean about how the breast is being politicized [00:10:00] now and who's the last character I can remember who was like aspirational to both like men and women, I guess, Laura Croft who had actually.

Simone: A decent sized cup size. But, but keep in mind, she was

Malcolm: created a really long time ago and became famous before she was put in. I want to see the recent Lara Croft. Mmm.

Simone: Oh yeah, what does she look like?

Simone: No. What have you done? She's sweaty. We made

Malcolm: her to

Simone: look like a guy. Yeah. She, yeah, she's a guy with a nice long ponytail and the short shorts are gone. The short shorts are gone. Yeah. Is, so is this then about less fan service? Like less, yeah.

Simone: Like less section. Yeah. I guess it could be like, let's stop pandering to men. That's a bad thing. Yeah. So it's, it's misogyny that ends up being misandry. Right. Because now like women.

Malcolm: Yeah. They were trying to hurt men. Yeah. And they took it. It's like they took out their guns in a, in a metallic room and they started shooting at men and the bullets sort of [00:11:00] ricocheting and hitting them.

Malcolm: Well,

Simone: yeah, because now all the busty teenage girls who are deeply uncomfortable in their bodies who do want to see someone who looks like them, they're not going to find anyone. They're not

Malcolm: gonna, no, no, no one in a position. They have no one to turn to. They are told that they are. That they're, this very change that they're going through in one of the hardest parts of their life is a sign of their inadequacy on intelligence and undesirability.

Malcolm: Oh my God. Can you imagine anything worse than that? Can you imagine what these young girls are going through and these people do not care because they are so obsessed with social signaling They don't think about the actual damage they're doing and you bring them statistics like all of these, you know young girls or young men whichever way you want to put it transitioning that it's never happened before and they're like Well, this is good.

Malcolm: There are more people Why would so many more women want to transition than men? I mean, presumably either there was like a, a, a [00:12:00] set number of people who would have transitioned historically. Right. And that that was represented by the historic figures that more men transitioned. Right. Or Okay. So consider this from a progressive ideological perspective, right?

Malcolm: Okay. Most people were transitioning for like a bad reason. Like they didn't really want to transition, but they were doing it for some sort of social gain or something. So historically that would have happened with women transitioning to men because by progressive ideology, men have a better life than women.

Malcolm: Right. So, all things aside in a historical context, you should have seen. If it is true that historically men had it much better than women, and that has been declining over time, okay, historically there were men transitioning to women who weren't actually trans, right? Like, when transness became more accepted what you in fact should have seen is more men transitioning to women, and yet the exact opposite was true.

Malcolm: So [00:13:00] either transness is just a stable thing in both genders. It's just like there should be exactly equal numbers. And then you could say, okay, but then why did it explode here? Or trans to something which, which I believe, which is a biological thing, but that it appears much more commonly in people, more male than female.

Malcolm: And what we're seeing here, Is a society that has well, really dehumanized femininity in an attempt to remove the sort of arousing content from it.

Simone: Yeah. Wow. That's, that's really interesting. I mean, so you don't think, you don't think that it's, it's going after young kids and just trying to show younger, younger looking characters.

Simone: No, that can't be. Not for Laura Croft. Yeah, that's right. This is for adult, adult women as well.

Malcolm: So this was actually something when the She Ra character was done and they were like, Aha! Now we've created a character that men [00:14:00] can't masturbate to because they thought that they were all masturbating.

Malcolm: This was actually things that people were saying. That

Simone: people were saying online.

Malcolm: When they created these characters, and then of course they appear on you know, the, the, the hentai sites and stuff like that. And they're like, Oh no, this character looks underage. And it's you did this. You did.

Simone: Here is a an alternate theory. Okay. So when you look at dress silhouettes throughout history you will see transitions from busty to non busty where, you know, in the the late 1700s, you've got, you know, these very tight corsets and these giant, you know, flaring hips and these, you know, boobs sticking out of these you know, corsets and whatnot in many cases.

Simone: And then you're ending up with the, the like straight column of an empire dress, you know, just like very, you know, straight silhouette. They're like literally styled like a Roman column column. And I mean, certainly sometimes there were little bits of cleavage showing up, but definitely it was like a.

Simone: the flattened chest look. And then you [00:15:00] end up back into like the, the Victorian period where again, you've got these like larger, like waist to hip ratios and, and larger busts. And then you go back down again. So is this maybe not just a normal oscillation of body shape again? Because we're going away from, you know, women.

Simone: Are not getting BBLs, for example, these are Brazilian butt lifts. Like they're also getting smaller butts as well. You know, the Kardashians are reducing their, their butt size. So maybe that's what's going on. That we're if I think about what the fashion YouTubers that I like to watch are saying we're moving away from really curvy looks and moving toward what's called heroin chic, where you just look more like a stick heroin chic.

Simone: So yeah, as in like you're addicted to heroin and you don't eat food

Malcolm: anymore. it as being more like a heroine in modern co

Simone: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I'm talking drug addiction. I'm talking, you look unhealthily skin, skinny. That's not what we're moving towards.

Malcolm: If you look at the women who are being elevated, they do not look unnaturally skinny.

Malcolm: They look muscular. They look like someone who has a lot of [00:16:00] testosterone in their system.

Simone: And that's not, that's not current style. Yeah. So I guess I can't argue that we're, we're just tracking. female silhouettes, clothing and style trends, because they're not actually tracking female silhouettes and style trends.

Simone: In fact, what we have now in fashion is really a lot more plus sized fashion. And we have then a lot of you know, more, more heroin chic, like we're moving away from big butts. And

Malcolm: I'd say I haven't seen heroin chic in terms of media is representing,

Simone: what you're saying here is that we've got like muscular It's just normal sized women.

Simone: Yeah. And that's not, that's not a thing anywhere. I mean, there are some like fitness, fitness influencers. Well, there's

Malcolm: only two things. And I point that again and again, that lead to this body type. It is being underage. Or being a man. This, this, this almost no waist to hip ratio this very small breasts.

Malcolm: No, this muscular frame that is either you are an underage woman. Do you look like that? You know? So, okay. So outside of that, here's another hypothesis. [00:17:00] This is a sign of increasing class divide in our society.

Simone: I was wondering if you were going to go there. Yeah. Talk about what you found in your

Malcolm: research.

Malcolm: When we did our big sex survey, the thing that really shocked us was the thing that was most determinant of a male's sexuality. And also a female sexuality, but more important here is a male sexuality. Actually, female sexuality might be just as important here. But that the wealthier and more powerful and individual felt the more.

Malcolm: So I, I always say that was, was attraction to women. You're sort of pulled between two extremes. You are either optimizing for absolutely assuring that there are women. So you're optimizing for gender dimorphism, large butt, large breasts, everything like that. Or you're optimizing for fertility window, which means you're optimizing for a younger woman small breasts you know, small waist to hip ratio and stuff like that.

Malcolm: So, the wealthier a man was, the more he seemed to optimize for fertility window in our study to the extent that there wasn't a single guy in the wealthiest category of our study. [00:18:00] Who preferred anything other than the smallest category of breasts. And that's really interesting. .

Simone: And

Malcolm: it was the thing, like when you look at the porous men in our study, just to get an idea of how aberrant this was, it was something like. 65% to 70% of preferred above average breast size. So this, this did really track and this could be a persistent thing throughout history, something that potentially even evolutionary pressures were targeting in monogamous societies or mostly monogamous societies.

Malcolm: So, the, the perception of wealth led me to be like, okay, well, I need to choose the, the youngest acceptable potential wife which will increase the number of children I can have, and I don't really need to worry about, is she definitely a woman, because... You know, those older evolutionary pressures aren't at play.

Malcolm: So that, that could be, we can explain in another video how the evolutionary pressures worked around this, but, but, but seeing as this holds true, what it could be is that historically in like an animation company or in something like this and we actually saw the same trend was women, women, when they had more wealth and [00:19:00] power actually found other women more attractive and preferred those women to look less gender dimorphic.

Malcolm: It very odd. And women also felt more dominant, men also felt more dominant as they, they got more wealth in power. The trope of the wealthy man who wants to be dominated or goes to a dominatrix is not a born out by evidence. And, and also we know people in these roles and they're like, that's not the thing.

Malcolm: You, you might get a government bureaucrat who's in a high role, but no, you won't get like a c e O or something. I mean, not that these people never exist. It's just incredibly rude. Anyway, so, we, we end up in this situation where there's these animation companies and stuff like that, and it used to be somebody would be like, oh, I'm going to draw this character as a sexual interest or as a as a heroine, and people would be like, Oh, dude, that's really creepy.

Malcolm: Don't do that. That looks like a little kid or a man. And today there's nobody in these companies to do this because you know, the, the majority of the people and sort of positions of power was in these companies [00:20:00] have moved into this extreme high wealth position. And they're like, Oh yeah. I like that.

Simone: I thought you were going to say that maybe like our society has gone more toward post scarcity, which has led more people to just be attracted to more androgynous, young looking people. But you don't think

Malcolm: that's it? No, I don't think that's it. I think, I think it's that the, the, the class that's creating media is more out of touch with mainstream sensibilities than ever before in, in, in recent human

Simone: history.

Simone: Oh, so this is like a Balenciaga photoshoot ad situation. Yeah. Which, that, to, if you missed that whole thing, it was basically like a... A pedobear style BDSM styled photo shoot of Balenciaga products with kids and teddy bears dressing up. We have another video where we go into all this a lot more. Yeah.

Simone: Just, just sort of making sure that context is not missing, but yeah, okay. That's, that's a, let's see, [00:21:00] maybe, I mean, I honestly think a combination of your theories sounds the most compelling to me having now thought it through that this is a combination of misogyny, which is ultimately leading to misandry and producers and, and the high power people making these styling decisions being uniquely out of touch, but also uniquely like high socioeconomically.

Simone: Yeah. No,

Malcolm: no, no, no. Yeah. I think, I think all that is true. And it's, it's really sad because it's hurting a lot of young women. And it's creating a world where young women cannot imagine being both feminine, which, which their biology is driving them to want to be. And successful, you know, where historically you know, you'd look at the, the successful female characters in early media like the early feminist archetypes, they were often, you know, big breasted, voluptuous, like this, this was normal.

Malcolm: It's not that this is a truism that if you were creating a successful woman, she needs to look under age or like a [00:22:00] man, this is a modern thing that has only really begun in the last few years. 15 years or so. And it's, it's really sad. It's really sad. And I I, I really grieve and I hope that you know, there's enough of a conservative sort of counterculture media generation that by the time our daughters get older, you know, the daughter you're pregnant was now and the daughter that exists that they have archetypes that they can look up to that display both femininity and power and that they can understand how those things can work together.

Malcolm: And this is, this is one of those things where I think you know, another angle to take here, which is one of the things I often talk about, which is the progressives, while they stall you know, diversity, they, they say, Oh, diversity is the most. The best and greatest thing ever. They also say, oh well, there's no real differences between any groups.

Malcolm: No differences between groups, no differences between cultures, no differences between genders, right? And, and that's, I think, also a part of this, right? They are genuinely trying to [00:23:00] portray through media and animation That genders are not different because they need to believe it's the dumbest ideology in the world.

Malcolm: I, I, you know, we have another video on, on, on how much progressives hate diversity, but it's insane. It's insane that you would take this perspective that there are no differences because if diversity is. Strength, it is strength because we are different conservatives who like are not actual conservatives.

Malcolm: They just sort of buy into this I don't know, masculine or aesthetic ideal of what conservatism is rather than the tradition of conservatism. They don't understand what I mean or what the guy who you know, wrote Richmond North of Richmond, which we, we've done a video on, I don't know if he'll have gone live by this.

Malcolm: He was like, diversity is the greatest strength of this country. They don't, they don't get what, what the real conservative base, people like us mean when we say this, right? And I, and I, what I would say is if you want to get what that means, look at a husband and wife. Okay, who are [00:24:00] working together.

Malcolm: You've got the Andrew Tate model, where the wife is what, like a house slave and he's sleeping with like a hundred other people? That is, to me, a form of weakness. That is not a one two punch. That is not a, a shield hero and shovel knight situation. The, the strengths of Of the husband and wife is that we are different and that we can fulfill different roles and through fulfilling those different roles, we can create a strength that if I was married to another guy who took on a masculine role, or she was married to another woman who took on a feminine role, or I was married to a woman who took on a masculine role, or you were married to a man who took on a feminine role, we could not achieve.

Malcolm: We could not achieve. Specialization is useful. Okay. It allows you to outcompete the people who deny the possibility of specialization. [00:25:00] And so when you say diversity is not a strength. I ask you to look at your own families, look at the husband wife dynamic, you can see as clear as day, at least if you're not one of those people who, who denies that men and women are different that that is the strings, or who thinks that, that one gender is just like a parasite on the other gender, and, and if you're one of those people, well, nice knowing you, but you probably won't get married, you won't have kids, and people like you won't think in that way in the future, and I won't say that men and women haven't become more toxic, you know, we've done videos on this due to the, the ways that their parents teach them, but these toxic men and women, they're not having kids.

Malcolm: They're not. They may have a few kids, one kid, maybe, maybe two kids on occasion, but majority, they're not finding partners. They're not having kids. And, and, and at least their kids won't have kids and they'll disappear. Because you know, the, these parasitic mindsets don't replicate.

Simone: Yep, man. It's a lot going on with [00:26:00] boobies.

Malcolm: So yeah, a lot going on with the boobies. It's a

Simone: lot to buy. Why? Well,

Malcolm: I appreciate that you have the perfect body from my perspective. Well, thank you. I am so blessed every day to be able to see you. see this paragon of human perfection.

Simone: Well, I'm not the lucky one. You get more attractive with age. It's insane.

Simone: And you were like, they put me in my type when I first met you. So I'm the lucky one here. I'm

Malcolm: going to enjoy it. No, no. I think you're delusional because I am a very.

Simone: You know, you know that you're beautiful. Come on. Every time you walk by a mirror, you're like, wow. Okay.

Malcolm: I am not a Bane person, but I do get

Simone: very distracted by You know, you got to enjoy what you have though.

Simone: And I really like I, I cannot emphasize this enough. If you've got it, you've got to enjoy it. What a waste. You know, don't waste. What a waste. All

Malcolm: of these people who were just born lucky and don't spend time

Simone: or a waste of time feeling [00:27:00] self conscious and hating themselves and wanting to be better.

Simone: Can you not just enjoy? What you have.

Malcolm: What you have. Yeah. Yeah. There's so many people out there who are like, I don't know, they invest so much time in themselves and here's me like, Ooh, I'm here.

Simone: Yeah. It's great. No, that you, you are, you're both in looks and in behavior, the epitome of what I want in a human.

Simone: Thank you for existing. I love this conversation. I feel

Malcolm: the same way and I feel the same way about our kids. Isn't that amazing? Our

Simone: kids, they're such

Malcolm: treasures. Yeah. Which reminds me, it's about time for child pickup. So I love you to death, Simone, but we have to be ending this podcast so I can start dinner and you are amazing.

Malcolm: Love

Simone: you, Malcolm

Simone: [00:00:00] So we would also argue that when it comes to crafting culture or changing behavior on a very big meta scale, one of the things you can do that's very meaningful if you are someone in the media or you are a government is like literal, this is it is, it is propaganda. But create more archetypes for pro social behavior, for types of behaviors that you want to elevate.

Simone: And this is actually something that we saw back in the 1950s, 60s, 70s. There were literal propaganda slash instructional videos by organizations like Coronet Films that were distributed throughout high schools and middle schools that showed ideal behavior through these little vignettes.

Malcolm: You can have a huge volume of media, all with the exact same model being shown to people and the exact same types of toxic behavior.

Simone: Like the trope of the wife. Or girlfriend who's always like rolling her eyes at and sort of like pulling her husband down a peg like, Oh, like my husband and very

Malcolm: few depictions of wives that aren't like secretly smarter than their husbands now [00:01:00] and they're

Simone: like snide toward them and dismissive.

Would you like to know more?

Simone: Hey Malcolm, one of the things that I really, I love about you and loved about you since the moment I met you, was it honestly, you more resemble like a superhero or like fictional character, like a caricature of a person than like a real human. And I love that that has evolved into something of a more nuanced life philosophy or even like psychological philosophy of yours.

Simone: And I think it'd be really fun to talk about

Malcolm: it. Yeah. Yeah. I'd love to dive deep into this. And I think the, the point we're going to get to in this is that I, I hate to say this. I choke on these words, but I think representation actually does matter in media. And we'll get to why representation matters and it doesn't matter in the way that progressives think it matters.

Malcolm: And, and that the way they're optimizing on representation is probably not the best way to optimize around representation. But the representation actually has a huge effect on our emotional states and the way we construct our self narratives. [00:02:00] So, first, let's talk about how human emotional states work within this theory.

Malcolm: So, a theory of mind, when you use the term theory of mind, what you're talking about Is our ability as humans to mentally emulate the mind of somebody else or mentally model the mind of somebody else and predict what they are going to think or do next. This is very useful for, for all sorts of things.

Malcolm: Like when you are having an argument with someone in your head after you stopped talking to them and you are emulating their positions in that argument, this is what you're using. You're

Simone: using your brain. Or if you're hunting an elk and you're trying to... Imagine what the elk will do next so that you can properly track him.

Malcolm: Yes, yes. But it's something that we, I mean, with humans, it's where we do it more often is when we're like... Fake arguments you're having with someone in your head and then you come up with the right answer a while back and then you think, okay, how are they going to respond to that and everything like that?

Malcolm: We just do it very naturally. And one of my areas of research when I got to be a [00:03:00] neuroscientist was in schizophrenia research, specifically translational neuroscience as it relates to schizophrenia. And I did some fMRI studies on this, but I always had a weird idea of what was going on in schizophrenia.

Malcolm: So one of those common symptoms and skip different in schizophrenia across. Types is auditory hallucinations, right? Where you might hear whispers or somebody talking to you. What I hypothesize might be going on, and this would actually explain a number of other schizophrenia symptoms is that they have a hyperactive theory of mind running in the background all the time.

Malcolm: So, using transmagnetic stimulation, you can do something where you hyper activate a portion of a person's brain, so it can become activated with less of a threshold. So, an example here would be like, you hyper activate the part of their brain that's associated with like the letter A. And then you show them the letter A, and they'll say A.

Malcolm: And they won't mean to say A, but they'll just be forced to say it because the neurons around that area were firing, it was already hyperactivated, [00:04:00] and then it just forces a full saying of it. So in schizophrenia, what I think is it's this theory of mind system which is hyperactivated and activates accidentally all the time.

Malcolm: That's also what causes magical thinking. This is if you see an arrangement of items in a store window. And you assign agency to it, like it's trying to tell you a message, right? It's also what would describe paranoia, right? Okay. What really is paranoia? It's applying agency, like a theory of mind to some external force, like a government or something like that.

Malcolm: Oh, that helicopter, that's must mean that this other entity is thinking X or Y, right? And just so many weird and seemingly disparate schizophrenia symptoms can be seen from this. Hyperactive theory of mind. So this theory of mind is very important to how all humans work. Now what we hypothesize is that the primary way that we as humans process emotions is through having a theory of mind of ourselves, quietly running in the background of our brain, and then [00:05:00] correlating our environmental circumstances against that theory of mind

Simone: and determine

Malcolm: how emotionally we are supposed to react and then outputting that emotional state. This is why, for example, if you're a little mad about something, and then a friend comes to you and they're like, you should really be a lot more mad about this than you are.

Malcolm: Can't you see how bad what they did is and you begin to get really angry about it all of a sudden.

Simone: So, if I can recap, basically, most people, subconsciously, have a model of who I am, like their character sheet of I am this fancy woman, or I am this powerful man, or I am this, creative, quirky artist, and then when life circumstances happen when you are about to react, there's this internal question of, well, how would the quirky artist react?

Simone: And then that's how you react. And that's why Malcolm is saying that, sometimes people can even prime or prompt this of well, you should be outraged. And then suddenly you're like, I should be outraged. Cause we're not that

Malcolm: clever. We're not that conscious. We're not that kind of thing. We're not that [00:06:00] stable as, as, as sort of internal characters.

Malcolm: But this

Simone: is meaningful. And why this theory of Malcolm's is really meaningful and why I love it a lot If this is true, and based on like our anecdotal experience, we have, we find it to be compelling. It means that if you change the way that you view yourself, if you recontextualize yourself, if you change that character sheet.

Simone: You can also change the way you react to things. So for example, if you view yourself as a delicate person with severe trauma in their past and high anxiety issues and all this other baggage, obviously when bad things happen to you, you're going to react in a way of well, I can't get out of bed today.

Simone: Great. Like now everything's ruined. If you see yourself as a spoonie, it's well, I'll start my pain is too great. That's, that's it. I only have three spoons today and I just spent them getting out of breakfast and, or sorry, getting out of bed and eating breakfast.

Simone: So this means that if you rewrite that character sheet, I'm a resilient person. I react to things very optimistically. Whenever a problem comes up, I'm smart and resourceful. And I look on [00:07:00] the bright side and I solve it. We actually believe that you can react much more favorably and optimally to situations, be they positive or negative.

Malcolm: But it's very hard to rewrite this internal character sheet. You can really only do it during what we call quote unquote flux, flux periods. So these are periods in an individual's life where like they're moving or they're about to start college or they're about to start a new job and moving, where a lot of your environment is changing, a lot of your friend group is changing, just a lot is changing in your life, and during these moments, people can genuinely reinvent themselves. And, and keep in mind, what I'm saying here is it's not exactly like you have an internal character sheet, it's like you have a model of a person running off of an internal character sheet that you've created.

Malcolm: Now, what's important here, and this is where representation comes into all of this, these character sheets are not fully flexible. It's very hard to say I want to be this type of person or this type of person or this type of person like to fully build out the character sheet. What we really often do is stitch together a few [00:08:00] stereotypes or things that we have seen portrayed in media or.

Malcolm: Within our socially evoked set within our environment, and then stitch those things together into a character and utilize that character. If you do not have many things in media that are healthy, that you can use, or many things in media that, that are, that are like, You feel you can identify with so some people they can identify with an individual in media regardless of that individual's ethnicity Other people where their ethnicity is much more important to whoever they happen to be at the moment they will have a genuinely hard time identifying with different ethnic different ethnicities when they see as media.

Malcolm: And what's important to note here is character archetypes are often associated with a few ethnic groups. And this is true even in progressive media, they will, they will maybe color up the media, they'll add more, black and brown people, but [00:09:00] they will still give those people often.

Malcolm: Black and brown approved personalities because if they give them an overly quote unquote, white ish personality they they would be seen as... I don't know, not culturally authentic or something like that. And you even see this further group. So if you're like Irish, and you really identify with Irish, there are like four ways of being Irish for trade in media.

Malcolm: There are not that many, if you're romani or, or a gypsy, if you're using the, the more offensive term. But the term that most people know there, there are not that many Romani uh, stereotypes presented in media.

Malcolm: And if that's an important part of the way you see yourself, you're going to really struggle.

Simone: You're going to, let's like, well, first I want to jump back to the concept of flux periods. We're not just pulling this out of our asses. This is also something that shows up in other, in other areas, like in when it comes to behavioral changes that even governments try to UK had this one sort of department for, for enacting behavioral changes that they call the nudge unit informally.[00:10:00]

Simone: They did a lot of research on when they were able to successfully change behavior to intervene and help people change their behavior for the better in a way that improved health outcomes or spending or whatever it might be. And they found that very similarly, they didn't call them these, but periods of flux were the key times when they were able to do this.

Simone: For example, one, one really common. Period like this is when someone becomes a first time parent. So this nudge unit, for example, found that. When it came to enacting interventions around parenting, helping people do better things for their children, really only first time parents changed their behavior, and once people had gone past that, they just already firmed up their identity as a parent.

Simone: So it became really hard to change it. So other examples of flux periods, because I think it's important to know, like, when you're even going to have the capacity to make changes like this, is graduating from college, graduating from high school, getting a new job, moving to a new state. date, getting married, the death of a very close loved one, like these very fundamental life changes where [00:11:00] either the, the stage dressing or the stage or the characters in your drama of life are changing.

Simone: And so that's, that's something that's really important. And it's not just like character archetypes that really help in helping you establish a new character. Cause again, we're just not really creative. Like we need to see. Almost like training data, like AI, like we need training data to understand what the common responses are of a certain archetype.

Simone: So, this is, this is why it's really helpful and it, it also is why what you expose yourself to in media and also what The broader media landscape exposes people to is going to shape culture and society. So we would argue that one thing that could really help, for example, with pronatalism, a cause that really matters to us, is more media that shows what it's like to be a functional, happy family, to be a parent that isn't miserable or stressed out

Malcolm: with a reasonable number of kids, like five kids, not like two kids.

Malcolm: You don't, you don't keep a population stable if every woman expects you kids,

Simone: because I mean, what, what does the media show now? [00:12:00] The Duggar family. Then, they're not ideal. And, there, there have been other small snippets. For example, in Stranger Things, there's this one side plot that shows a house with many children, but it's also the kind of environment that would seem very unpleasant to a parent.

Simone: I mean, we still think it looks awesome because

Malcolm: it looks exactly like our

Simone: house. Like it's like a chaotic house full of walking into our house, feral, feral children who are very passionate and, and colorful, which is great, but like also doesn't look very appealing to many people who want to have a non stressful life.

Simone: So we would also argue that when it comes to crafting culture or changing behavior on a very big meta scale, one of the things you can do that's very meaningful if you are someone in the media or you are a government is like literal, this is it is, it is propaganda. But create more archetypes for pro social behavior, for types of behaviors that you want to elevate.

Simone: And this is actually something that we saw back in the 1950s, 60s, 70s. [00:13:00] There were literal propaganda slash instructional videos by organizations like Coronet Films that were distributed throughout high schools and middle schools that showed ideal behavior through these little vignettes. And...

Simone: Yeah, I mean, it's just something that that's incredibly helpful and incredibly underrated.

Malcolm: I'd say another area where this becomes really damaging for people is when, and this happens in media in all societies, they associate certain character archetypes with attractiveness in either males or females.

Malcolm: And so when a woman wants to see herself as attractive, she will begin to adopt these character archetypes, which can often be very intrinsically toxic. A great example of this that has really gotten popular recently is the crazy young girl. So we see this in Harley Quinn, we see this in Jinx, we see this, her, her, to, to be, like, if you are a, an attractive woman in, in modern media, There are just not that many character archetypes and that's a big one in terms of [00:14:00] the the social landscape right now, right?

Malcolm: And that is really toxic when when we are elevating the status of mental instability and Associating it with being hot Or or being a desirable female Which is, which is really toxic. What are some other ones that you've seen in media where you're like, wow, this is a really toxic character that people are having modeled for them?

Simone: Oh, well, I mean, pretty much every depiction of relationships is, is pretty toxic. I remember when House of Cards first came out, like the first few episodes, and we're oh my gosh, is this for real? Finally, like a dynamic couple that like broadly works together on things and coordinates and is aligned in their goals.

Simone: And they just love completely goes off the rails, gets toxic. It's semi abusive. Like it's just horrible. And there are so many other shows that. That supposedly depicts power couples and people have told us like, Oh yeah, I love this power couple on this show. [00:15:00] And like genuinely their behavior is toxic.

Simone: They don't communicate. They don't have aligned incentives. They're very selfish. They play big. Like mental games with each other, or they like s**t test each other, but in a really toxic, nonproductive way, it just blows my mind. Like where, where are the functional relationships online? So it's also no surprise to me that people don't have good relationships because no one is modeling them.

Malcolm: This is a great point where I think many people can be like, no, there's lots of stereotypes of what it's like to be a family. When I look at TV and then it's okay. The Simpsons, Family Guy the, the, the American Dad. What I'm saying is, is you look at these and the, the couple dynamics are so similar across shows.

Simone: They're very uncreative. The,

Malcolm: the rare show, but the point that we're making is because there's a lot of media out there, there could be a feeling that there are a lot of Ways of structuring yourself and ways of structuring an identity or a relationship being modeled. But that's not necessarily the [00:16:00] case.

Malcolm: You can have a huge volume of media, all with the exact same model being shown to people and the exact same types of toxic behavior.

Simone: Like the trope of the wife. Or girlfriend who's always like rolling her eyes at and sort of like pulling her husband down a peg like, Oh, like my husband and very

Malcolm: few depictions of wives that aren't like secretly smarter than their husbands now and they're

Simone: like snide toward them and dismissive.

Simone: I mean, we've had, I've personally had problems where like in public, I start acting like that merely because. One, like I'm, I'm way too autistic to know how to actually act in public. So of course I'm just taking my training data and acting how I understand wives to act in public. And so we've had especially earlier in our relationship, like I'm literally just like using training data to behave a certain way.

Simone: I'm not like, Simone, why do you keep throwing me under the bus? This is really bad. And I'm like, what do you mean? I'm not

Malcolm: doing anything. I'm doing what wives do, and I'm like, well, not my wife. But I, but it's also important [00:17:00] that like we challenged that and we were able to work on that.

Malcolm: And I'm able to, to point that out because it is, it is really important. If you're in a relationship with someone and you see them modeling these sorts of bad behavior patterns to immediately call them out and, and not like psychologist nonsense, right? People are like, oh, you need to go relationship counseling or go to a psychologist.

Malcolm: And that's how I changed myself. No, just like nut up, man. If you're doing something and it's not aligned with who you want to be. Because these models we build of ourselves, they're not who we want to be. It's just like short form. I guess this is who I am right now. And we, we can fall into them.

Malcolm: If it's not aligned with who you want to be or what you want to be like as a relationship, nip it in the bud as quickly as possible because the more one of these behavior patterns replicates over time, the harder and harder it's going to be to change without changing your environment.

Simone: But I would say, so another thing That this, this model of behavior, I think dovetails really well with is our general principle that when it comes [00:18:00] to encouraging behavior in our kids, it's really like show, don't tell like the best way to encourage certain behavior is by modeling it, not by telling you to do it.

Simone: And again, like kids, just like humans use training data to determine how to behave. So if you provide examples, you're more likely to see those examples be followed. I also feel like that's one reason why parents can feel like really. Self conscious around their kids in public because they feel like, your kids in public are like your drunk self, like what you look like behind the scenes and like without inhibitions.

Simone: So, people get really, really embarrassed because their kids start saying stuff that like. They

Malcolm: would say behind closed doors. No, and I, I actually think actually a really important thing about kids and drinking and stuff like that is I think that to a level we all have like underlying pre programmed behavior patterns.

Malcolm: And it's one of the reasons I like drinking with people is because I think you can begin to see those come out. And this is separate from these narrative building things. So, I mean, alcohol lowers inhibition. And through that, I think that speaking of [00:19:00] alcohol personality types, you see like one of four predominant personality types and an individual motivators when somebody gets drunk because we're stripping away the inhibition that they are using to suppress the way they actually just like biologically interact with the world.

Malcolm: And you see this with kids as well, right? Some people when they get drunk, they just get really happy all the time. It's just happy about everything. Some people just sad about everything, right? Some people just angry about everything. Simone, when she gets drunk, she just gets incredibly loving of me.

Malcolm: She just wants to hug me all the time. Tell me how much she cares for me. I want

Simone: to do a lot more of

Malcolm: that. Shows me what I like about it. It shows me that underneath this controlled Who you really are as somebody who's just constantly suppressing

Simone: who just wants to ravage you. Plays of

Malcolm: affection because you wouldn't be productive.

Malcolm: We wouldn't be able to move towards our actual objectives if you acted like that all the time, but it's sweet to know, what's under the hood.[00:20:00] And it's, it's, it's definitely something I see in our kids, which, one of our sons, Torsten, he'll just do this thing where he'll start getting really excited.

Malcolm: You can see him start, start jingling to himself and he'll run up and give me a hug. And, and, and what clearly happened there is he got in his mind this idea, Oh, I'm gonna give dad a hug. And then he's just getting so excited give someone a hug. And then he goes and gives me a hug, and it's, it's, it's sweet that I, that I can see that in you.

Malcolm: I don't know. What do I come off as as drunk? What's my actual personality?

Simone: It varies. Mostly, mostly just happy. I mean, but also you show that like in reality too. I think you're one of those people whose, whose filter, like inhibitory filter is very low. Like you just show what you are. Yeah, you're right.

Simone: But also so rarely have you actually gotten sloshed. Just pretty much that one time. When my mom did a Wiccan prayer circle around you. That's like the only time I've seen

Malcolm: destroy yourself. We did it. We did like a normal [00:21:00] wedding, Simone and I, but Simone's mom, she was very hippie dippy training to be a shaman and everything like that.

Malcolm: So she asked us to come back to, to her hometown. Cause she was like, Mike, the people in my hometown didn't get to experience your wedding. I love it. If they could, go to some ceremony we put together, not like a wedding, obviously, but like a after ceremony. And then, leading up to it, she dropped, she goes, could you guys wear your wedding outfits?

Malcolm: I really liked those, you still have them. So could you put those on? And then she's I love your vows. Would you mind doing your vows again? And then it's She freaking ambushes me with two concentric rings of people, like moving in opposite directions doing and she did like this.

Malcolm: She goes, I want to read something. And it's like this shamanistic thing about trees and roots and nature. And Simone is looking in my eye, and what, I remember the way you described this.

Simone: Don't move, Malcolm, just don't, don't do a goddamn thing. Don't,

Malcolm: don't, I didn't do anything, I didn't do

Simone: anything. You didn't, no, your face is like [00:22:00] bright

Malcolm: red, just bubbling up.

Simone: And then after that you just got hammered. I have never seen you so freaking drunk in my life. And I think at that

Malcolm: point you just I am so anti All of that nonsense and, and, and, and, but I respect your family. And so I'm being very courteous, but it was such a,

Simone: That was very hard on you.

Malcolm: It was actually, it was very sweet.

Malcolm: It was very sweet that she wanted me to get married in, in her cultural way and her culture. Or the culture that she had adapted was a very, Wiccan, pagan culture. Which is very different from my cultural value set. And, and I would have gone along with it had she told me going into it.

Malcolm: Anyway, it's, it's, you gotta keep family happy, right? But anyways, that, that was the one time you saw me get really drunk.

Simone: Yeah. But again, I just, I just think that, you broadly sober is pretty much the same as you drunk. You're just one of those really genuine people, [00:23:00] which is one of the reasons why I really like you.

Simone: I think it's

Malcolm: great, Simone. I really appreciate it.

Simone: your advice be for someone who's like, All right. I don't like the way that I react to things. I react too angrily to things. Or, I, I don't like the anxiety that I have. Or, I just feel like I could respond in a more opportunistic and and optimal way when life throws me curveballs.

Simone: What would your advice be to them? On one, creating a flux period, like manufacturing one, because, you can't necessarily make someone in your life die or leave your job and move to a new place easily. That's not something you can do all the time. So what advice would you give on that front?

Simone: And what advice would you give on designing a more optimal person?

Malcolm: For first, look for an upcoming flux period. Those are easy. It's if you're going to go to college in a year, like best just to use that one for you. But also, if you're broadly not satisfied with who you are in your life, it may be worth creating a flux period through leaving your job, where you live, starting something new.

Malcolm: This is only something you do if you feel like you have like real [00:24:00] major self work to do, right? But then in addition to that, how do you create it? I think the most important thing is getting excited about who you're going to become and beginning to build a picture of that. And this is something that I think most people can model or remember having done when they were going to start high school or college or their first job.

Malcolm: We all have some period in our life where everything was going to change. And you began to think about, Oh, I could be a different person. What does that person do? Who are they? How do they do their house? What do they, and as you get excited about becoming that person and you begin to put a lot of effort into modeling, this is what that person does.

Malcolm: This is the hangout with. That's what they do every day. It makes it a lot easier to slip into that role. If you don't have A good social archetype for what that character looks like, right? Which can be really hard for people. Then, especially people, who don't have a lot of experience with this sort of like creativity or whatever, right?

Malcolm: Try to create your own. This is where things like role playing games and stuff like that can have active utility [00:25:00] in your life. Is that you can learn how to act like and, and, and pick up and think like another character. And, and, and test different archetypes that you can then build into yourself during your next flex period, because who we are, like, people are like, no, I am who I really am.

Malcolm: What do you mean who you really are? Like, the serendipitous things that happened to you throughout your life that you had no control over. So you're just like a sticky ball. It's been rolling down a dirty street. That's who you really are? Or are you someone who has intentionally constructed their internal character?

Malcolm: That seems like much more you than a you that was chosen serendipitously for you. Any, any conscious decision on your part? I mean, would you have any additional advice?

Simone: Yeah, I think I'd add that also to our earlier points, the media that you choose to consume really does matter, and that you will probably start to passively model behaviors that you see.

Simone: So if you're watching or consuming a lot of media, and this isn't just like TV shows and movies, it's also [00:26:00] music that just models behavior. Bad behavior that isn't going to help you. If you're depressed and you're listening to a bunch of sad songs and watching like shows that are like really depressing with like people who are dysfunctional and mentally ill.

Simone: Okay, that's gonna, that's gonna prime you to do all that bad stuff. I know the research on priming is now going through replication crisis, but it's, it's going to give you bad training data. I would also say that, and this is, I think a lot harder to deal with. The people that you surround yourself with may need to change.

Simone: Because they very much reinforce who you are. And many of them will not want you to change. And I I've changed myself pretty significantly since I've met you, Malcolm. And a lot of that. It was notable to see how some people were very openly against the new me. And they, they, they did all sorts of things to both shame me for changing and try to change me back.

Simone: So you may have to break up with friends and family or move away from them [00:27:00] or stop spending time with them. Or just set really clear boundaries. Like this

is

Malcolm: the new you. I mean, of course they built a relationship with the previous person that was valuable to them. When you become somebody new, somebody more aligned with your actual value system.

Malcolm: You become less useful to them as a friend. You're no longer who their friend was. Like, why wouldn't they? Yeah,

Simone: but I mean, I think it's, it's important to acknowledge that this stuff is really hard and I think it's one of those things where unfortunately the vast majority of people are going to hear this and they're going to say.

Simone: Well, nope. Like I, I've had people, people be like, Oh, you've, you've had three kids. Like, how are you so thin? And I'm like, Oh, it's easy. I just weigh and measure everything I eat and make sure that I eat the same number of calories that I burn every day. How many hours a day? I don't know. Yeah, I like, I work from a treadmill desk, but I think the more important thing is just the calories, but they're like, Oh yeah, I'm never going to.

Malcolm: Sorry. You are underselling four.

Simone: I mean, I'm probably walking two miles an hour, [00:28:00] four

Malcolm: hours a day. Okay. Four to five hours a day. She's exercising every That's not

Simone: walking two miles an hour is not exercising. It's like slowly moving while typing. But my point is like most people are

Malcolm: like You start at a exercise desk, an elliptical, you are hugely underselling how much you exercise.

Malcolm: Yeah, because

Simone: I'm autistic and that's my stimming. But this

Malcolm: is also, I think, really important. We sometimes talk about the sinfulness of exercising for vanity. And what we're talking about with this type of exercise is exercise that's not useful for health reasons and that distracts you so you can't work, right?

Malcolm: That you can't do other productive things. The type of exercise you're doing is totally efficacious because it is in no way interfering with your ability to get productive work done. So you're just doing two hard things at the same time. And I deeply admire that you're somebody who works to combine those

Simone: things.

Simone: Well, it's not, it's not admirable because I can't focus while sitting down. I hate sitting like I can barely cope with sitting down for, you know what I mean? But anyway I [00:29:00] think this is one of those interventions where it does involve a lot of genuine sacrifices and a lot of hard work. And typically when we talk with people about this and we're like, yeah, you could have the life you want, you could have the body you want, you can have all these things.

Simone: Here's what needs to happen if that's what you want. And people are just like, Nope. Nope. Not happening. Not doing it. Which is so funny to us. Like, how can you complain about not having what you want if you're not willing to sacrifice stuff? I mean, I guess ultimately it means that they don't want the thing that much.

Simone: And they want immediate satisfaction and comfort. They

Malcolm: want it less than the things they have now.

Simone: Yeah. Yeah. Or

Malcolm: I think a lot of people may actually want it more than the things they have now, but they they're not sure they're going to get it. So keep in mind, you're always applying like a variable.

Malcolm: Does this actually work to any big thing you're trying? Yeah. And two you also like. There's some people who just are psychologically not structured for action, and there's some people that are psychologically structured for action, and both of us come from environments that [00:30:00] sorted for people psychologically structured for action intergenerationally.

Malcolm: By the way, what I mean is like you're in, you grew up in the San Francisco area, right? Like family moving to the San Francisco area are people who at least Immigrated twice, likely three times in their history. So you've already selected for people willing to immigrate, right? And to a high risk, high reward environment, either the gold rush or Silicon Valley or any of the other various things that was going on in San Francisco.

Malcolm: My family's from, Dallas, Texas, right? Again. And almost everyone who's living there immigrated at least twice in their family history and likely three times and they were immigrating because they just didn't want to be where, wherever, like the, the, wherever things had become too civilized.

Malcolm: So they just kept moving to the edge of civilization, to the edge of civilization. And I think that that's really apparent in my personality and worldviews that I am to an extent shaped by that.

Simone: Well, and so for that reason, for us to be like, no, all you have to do is this is like it's not perfect and no, not everyone's going to be able to do it, [00:31:00] but still, I mean, at least we anecdotally have found that this model is really effective and we think, we think it's worth considering if right now you don't react to life in a way that makes you happy.

Simone: If you're not happy with your, your, your outcome when, when you respond to various, various developments.

Malcolm: Well, I love you so much, Simone. I am so lucky to be with a woman who Worked so hard to change herself in, into, into this amazing person you are today. I, I really admire and I'm humbled by who you've become.

Simone: I appreciate that, Malcolm. I only really was able to make those changes cause you allowed me to, like you, you, you showed me that I could become who I wanted to be instead of who society like, bleh, left me as, and I

Malcolm: really appreciate that. I separated you from your friends and brainwashed you.

Simone: How many people have met us and at first thought like this was a, are you okay, Simone situation?

Simone: And then they get to know me and they're like, Oh, [00:32:00]

Malcolm: yeah, we've had a lot of people do that. They'll try to get Simone alone. They're like, Hey what's, what's going on here. You seem

Simone: No, no. By the time they even get me alone, they're like, Oh, at first I thought this was one of those brainwash situations.

Simone: And now I see Nope. Anyway. Yeah. Love you a lot. I love

Malcolm: you a lot. And I, I'm glad I did such a good job brainwashing you, but they can't even tell that you're, you're unsavable to them. They get to you and they're like, ah, this one's already

Simone: gone. He's lost. Yeah. Good job, Malcolm.

Simone: All right. Kids.