Are video games the most efficient sin? Malcolm and Simone Collins rank modern sins by their real-world damage — from video games and sports gambling to shopping addictions, plastic surgery, skydiving, OnlyFans, kinks, and more. They break down how to evaluate sins by time cost, financial drain, health risks, negative externalities, addiction potential, and alignment with long-term flourishing.

This episode offers a practical, first-principles framework for thinking about hedonism, temptation, family traditions, and moral trade-offs in the modern world. Topics include gambling vs. heroin, why some “harmless” hobbies are more destructive than others, rechanneling vices into virtues, the value of different lives, and techno-puritan views on self-defense.

Episode Transcript

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to have an interesting conversation around ranking the severity of various modern sins so that we can understand which ones are worse for an individual in, terms of, well, just broad effects they have on your life.

Like, as I’ve pointed out in other episodes, sins are basically a list of things, you know, like don’t cheat on your wife, don’t be mean to people, don’t murder people, like listen to your parents. Stuff that’s just gonna F up your life if you don’t follow it i- in a, in a general format. It’s like a big list of don’t piss on the electric fence and then a- some humans are just like, “But if I just goon all day every day, that’ll feel fantastic, right?”

And it’s like, no, it won’t. Maybe for like a half a day you get to year two of that and you’re living the life of Anna Valen. See our episode on what happened to her life, right? Like going through her [00:01:00] private diaries in our Life of the Sinabyte episode.

Speaker 5: you were an interesting study. Must, greed, deception, fertile ground, but rather mundane.

Speaker 6: Doors to the pleasures of heaven nor hell. I didn’t care, which I thought I’d gone to the limits I hadn’t. The center bytes gave me an experience beyond the limits pain and pleasure.

Indivisible.

Malcolm Collins: it is not happiness at the end of the hedonism maxing tunnel.

As I often point out, if you look at the people in our society who have access to everything they could possibly want, your movie star, your music star, when they indulge in that, when they indulge in the, you know, endless chain of, of women and drugs and everything like that, they often crash out as some of the least happy and satisfied humans alive.

Whereas people who often do not have much, and I’m sure many of you, you know these individuals pious [00:02:00] individuals who just work to give back to the community they’re often some of the most fulfilled people you will ever meet.

And so this is, this is paid off to us, but whatever religious teaching you’re using, and I’m gonna try to keep this, while this is one of the track series, I’m gonna try to keep it useful to not just Christians or Orthodox Jews or anyone, but just broadly anyone because- the, the set of laws that, like, Christians follow seems to generally be useful for other people as well.

That’s why they seem to perfectly overlay with, like, the Noahide laws when Jews are like, “Well, I just want everyone to follow the Noahide laws.” And it’s like, all observant Christians already follow all of those. Like, why are you making this a separate thing? It’s just good rules for life and, and being a member of a community.

But we’re going to start, because where this came up was in a fan call which we have for our paid fans who get [00:03:00] our extra weekend episodes. If you don’t know about that, that, that’s a thing. And they somebody was talking about the relative sinfulness of video games, right? And we’ll be using the Romans quote that’s in here, which is like anything you don’t do for God is sin.

Basically anything you don’t do that you can’t be like, “This is something I am doing for...” whatever for God means to you. Like, for goodness, to, to, to promote humanity, the, you know, moving forwards. Whatever you wanna, you talk, it’s, it’s, it’s something that’s an object to that. Like, purely selfish action, right?

And they were like, video games is a very, very expedient sin. Like, of, of the various sinful things you can do. And, and to give an example of what I mean for this, let, let’s contrast two things, okay, here. Let’s contrast the relative sinfulness of video games versus watching sports, right? Like, both of these things are things you’re fundamentally doing for yourself, for your own self-gratification.

But they have [00:04:00] different impacts or potential impacts on your life. Now, obviously you can engage with either too much in a way that just completely destroys your life. We all know the person who crashed out on Warhammer for five years and then came out of a hole one day and was like, “Ugh.” World

Simone Collins: of Warcraft, not Warhammer.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, War- World of Warcraft. World of Warcraft. That was like a thing- Yeah ... that if you lived through that- In a- ... a bunch of us nerds-

Simone Collins: In a college dorm, like in a certain period of time, there was at least one kid.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Or, and, and, and here I’ll add another one here. Magic: The Gathering card collecting.

Or, or, or no, no, well, let’s just say, yeah card collecting more general. So like non-playable card collecting. No, we’ll use Magic: The Gathering ‘cause it allows us to talk about a, a, a variety of things together. If you are really into, let’s say s- sports, and so you have to, you wanna watch the games the moment they come out.

Now, that already makes it relatively more bad than a video game that you can play at any time, day or night, right? [00:05:00] Because now you’re having to, even if you’re spending the same amount of time on it, that time is not variable, and therefore is going to be more intrusive on your ability to do things that are actually like a net benefit for society or God or whatever, right?

Like you’re, you’re, you’re going to have to maybe not go to the thing with your kids, or not go to the things that you can slot in at any time, day or night. The, the flexibility of a sin is really important to that sin. Then you have the cost, the relative cost. But this is where something like trading cards can get really big because the relative cost of entertainment hour per dollar spend is of, of just about anything you can be into I think the lowest on video games.

Now this is assuming that you are into single player video games rather than either loot box type games, which can be incorporated in single player video games if you are [00:06:00] susceptible to loot boxes. Now note, not everyone is susceptible to loot boxes. Some people can play a game with loot boxes forever and never spend on them.

I think that this is something that you have to ask yourself and, and, and from your own historic behavior. If you know you are susceptible to loot boxes don’t, don’t engage with them. Right? Like d- d- don’t engage with any game that has them. And I’m sorry if that’s like taking things out for you, but one of the most dangerous you know, of all the various things we’re warned not to do, gambling is I think one of the most dangerous.

And the reason why gambling is w- I, I put gambling above something like heroin. Oh

Simone Collins: yeah. It’s just so quickly and easily ruinous.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It’s- While heroin can kill you in a day, it’s much less likely to, like even, even if it does kill you, like your assets are still inherited by other people, right? Like [00:07:00] i- i- it, when gambling ruins your life, it typically, one, it can ruin multi-generations of life savings just like that.

But two, the people who have an issue with it often borrow against other people when they do it. And the happiness you get from it doesn’t feel very long-term satisfying. It’s like not a good... Like this is the other thing I’ll keep into account when we’re like rating sins is how good is the happiness you get out of it?

The happiness that you get out of gambling is

Incredibly low-grade, superficial most basal of hungers. There isn’t any sort of deep satisfaction like you may get out of beating a really hard video game or something like that, right? And so that’s where keep in mind is the pastime that like when you’re judging the potential sin of a pastime, what other sins come attached to this pastime?

So if you look at something like being into [00:08:00] sports gambling is very commonly attached to being into sports.

Simone Collins: Oh, so what, what, what is also the constellation of related things that you might get into?

Malcolm Collins: Right. So like this is when it comes to something like hur- Yeah,

Simone Collins: like if you really like going, like clubbing, the odds of you getting a drug habit, non-trivial, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, explode. Yeah. Which is

Simone Collins: like- Or like developing alcoholism ...

Malcolm Collins: if you go into a bar- Yeah ... this is why we would aga- tr- even if it’s the same amount of time- Mm ... even if it’s the same amount of cost to both go to a bar or go to a nightclub, the nightclub has a much higher probability of leading to an escalatory cycle that is going to do more deleterious impact to your life.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Gosh

Malcolm Collins: But also, but by the way, so an interesting, but I find this to be an interesting, like, broader conversation here. Yeah because it’s something that, that’s, that’s not often thought about, but the moment you begin to frame things like this, you can be like, “Oh, this is a good way for me to think through.”

Also, like, whether you want to engage with something to begin with.

Simone Collins: You’re [00:09:00] also looking at, like, uniquely male habits too. I think that,

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, let’s, let’s elevate some

Simone Collins: female habits ... travel could be one of them for women. Plastic surgery is one of them for women. Wait, what did

Malcolm Collins: you, what was the first one you said for women?

Simone Collins: Travel, plastic surgery, and shopping are, are- Travel, plastic surgery- ... very big ... and, and shopping. Absolutely

Malcolm Collins: Very

Simone Collins: big. Because plastic surgery is an incredibly, for many women, addictive thing. And it is an endless money hole. Also, like, you get to a point where after you have a certain number of procedures done, you have to keep doing more procedures to either fix or maintain procedures.

And that is incredibly expensive. Plus, you just start to look terrible, so that’s not good.

Malcolm Collins: And if, if we’re putting out any sort of teachings around jewelry, I would strongly suggest that individuals treat jewelry the way I did with my wife. Which basically, when you get married, you ask her and you lay out, what is all of the jewelry you want in your, your life?

You know, be greedy. If you, if you had the maximum look, what does that look look like? It is X many pearl [00:10:00] necklaces. It’s X many earrings of these various sizes and styles. It’s X many rings. You create that list for all of the variable ways you could piece together jewelry, and you say, “Okay now with this list, this is where, like, I’m gonna be getting you presents from this list for X many years, and when we get to the end of this list, that’s it.

No more jewelry.” Right? Like, this is all of the jewelry you could ever imagine yourself wanting.

Simone Collins: Yeah, like, you, you can’t develop a, like, “I’m a jewelry collector.” Like, that, that is an incredibly sinful hobby, right? You, this- ‘Cause that is an endless money

Malcolm Collins: hole ... there’s this point where you’re just spending money on more jewelry for the emotional state you get when you spend the money on jewelry.

And like-

Simone Collins: And we, we say this ‘cause we, we know people who’ve had this habit who literally have, for their retirement, owned, like, a condo that they, it was supposed to be part of their retirement portfolio, and they sold it to buy jewelry. Like, this is... So you know, we talk about men’s gambling addictions a lot, I think.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah

Simone Collins: But I don’t think we talk [00:11:00] enough about some problems that women have, I, I’m not really sure why. Maybe it’s, it’s

Malcolm Collins: harder to detect Well, I think that society’s changing more, ‘cause, “Oh, how dare you put rules on women?” But let’s, let’s do th- let’s go through. Like, I think that the same thing that goes with jewelry can go with travel, right?

Like lu- Oh,

Simone Collins: yeah, luxury, and luxury travel is an endless... Like, just one business class flight can send you back... Well, n- sorry, the last time I tried to look at business class flights just ‘cause I was curious was well before oil went crazy with the Iran war. This was like maybe two years ago. Yeah, but, but let’s, let’s talk about- And, like, one flight across an ocean was $20,000 for one person

a

Malcolm Collins: good way to handle travel, right? Because it is an endless money pit, as you say.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: If you are the type of person who goes on the same vacation every year assuming that’s not, like, a drive from your house or something like that, right? There’s likely no point to that. You are not picking up any new additional information on trip number 10 to Hawaii that you didn’t get on trip number one to Hawaii.

You’re not getting any new perspective. You’re not getting any new... this is [00:12:00] purely a hedonistic thing to do and an extremely expensive hedonistic

Simone Collins: thing to do. I mean, I think there’s, there’s something to be said for cultural family traditions. Like, some families, like, every year will all gather at this one place, and that’s a big part of their culture.

Well,

Malcolm Collins: and as I was saying, the important thing about cultural family traditions is that they are not pointlessly orders of magnitude more expensive than an equivalent tradition the family could do. Oh. So, by this what I mean is our family could every year go to Hawaii, or we could every year go to a lake house Airbnb a couple hours from here.

Or we could every year go to the Jersey Shore and rent a place, or even buy a place and have it there, right? As an, as an asset. If we make the active decision to do the thing, like marginally how much better is Hawaii than the Jersey Shore, yet it costs orders of magnitude more. [00:13:00]

Simone Collins: Yeah. No, that’s fair.

Yeah, and even just like food in Hawaii costs so much more that it’s, you have to consider that.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and if you’re like, “Oh, the Jersey Shore is gross,” okay, drive a bit further to Connecticut. I think Connecticut is strictly better than Hawaii. Like the ocean, ocean side- Oh

Simone Collins: my gosh. Yeah, hands down.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah,

Simone Collins: Or Rhode Island.

I mean, if you wanna be fancy, you know, you could do the Hamptons. You could do... Well, not the Hamptons, ‘cause that’s ridiculous. That’s Hawaii level. But maybe like Martha’s Vineyard or Cape Cod or something. Cape Cod’s great. You could go camping in Cape Cod.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And this is what I’m talking about.

What I’m talking about, like I do think that people need some degree of hedonism. You know, the, the, the family traditions you have, the things that you do to entertain yourself. I think if you remove all of those, while some people can live that way, I think Simone essentially lives that way I do not think everyone can live that way and still be an efficient human being.

I, I know I personally can’t. Mm-hmm. And so I do engage with things like video games. But when it comes to something like gambling, it falls into [00:14:00] that category. When we were listing out like really big sins, the trying something just to see if you like it, gambling is probably the biggest red flag.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh, yeah.

There’s

Malcolm Collins: no reason you need to know if you like gambling. No- That’s

Simone Collins: so true ... appropriate reason. Yeah, it’s like, “Hey, I should try this extremely addictive narcotic. Let’s see if, how it goes. Maybe I’ll like it.” Do you think you’ll like it?

Malcolm Collins: Well, and when you know you do have a problem with something, and this is where I you know, people know I take naltrexone, which is an opioid agonist, which is just fantastic for helping curb the types of addictive impulses that you may have, whether it’s alcohol or masturbation or anything like this, right?

Like, an, i- i- a... The place that it had the biggest impact on my life that I didn’t expect was checking the news every morning when I first woke up, and then checking my Facebook feed and checking the latest comics and checking the, That behavior just went away, Oh ... after I started taking it. And a lot of people can say, “Well, you shouldn’t be removing the sins from yourself like, the temptation from the sins.”

And I’m like, “Bro, like, Jesus was literally the guy who was like, [00:15:00] ‘If your eye leads you to sin, tear it out.’ Like, ‘If your arm leads you to sin, cut it off.’” Like, he obviously didn’t mean exactly that in context, but if you’re going with the vibe of the message naltrexone would fit perfectly in this. Now, obviously this doesn’t work for Catholics because Catholics know that the church actually had to once rule on priests who were castrating themselves to not be tempted by sin.

And the church ruled against doing that, which seems very weird to me in the line with, you know, the Bible’s teaching, but whatever, right? You know.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The point here being you don’t need to expose yourself to something. Like, we have the technology, and as technology advances, I think one of the areas I want to see it advance the most is on the mitigation of sinful impulses.

Like, imagine a society where people don’t feel these impulses to the same degree anymore. You know, you literally cut out the eyes, right, of society moving forwards. And we’re beginning to see that with stuff like Ozempic, right? Like, is, is Ozempic not a, a category there that we’re seeing? And this is where something like gluttony can be extra [00:16:00] bad because when we’re looking at sins, another thing we need to keep in mind in sort of the grand ranking of sins is the probability that it’s going to kill you.

Because that has enormous externalities on everyone that’s counting on you and your ability to do anything in the future, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And anything that falls into the category of actively leading to your death which can happen in two categories. One can be something like gluttony. Another can be where it’s, like, just literally unhealthy or something like orgies, right?

Where you may get diseases and stuff like that and you need to be- Yeah,

Simone Collins: or like before I met Malcolm, I liked BASE jumping. I liked

Malcolm Collins: skydiving. I liked- Well, I’m, I’m gonna put that in the second category.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay.

Malcolm Collins: So these are things that are just actively unhealthful. Yeah. Then there’s things that come with a risk of severe injury or death.

Simone Collins: Oh, okay. So there’s sort of the chronic bad health, which I would also include, like, habits of just staying up incredibly late and not getting enough sleep. That’s really bad for you.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, ‘cause you’re trying to push me to work less right now.

Simone Collins: Yeah, Malcolm, duh.

Malcolm Collins: No, but I, I agree with that. You can [00:17:00] be indulgent in your work, and I need to be aware of that because- Yeah, your sin,

Simone Collins: you

Malcolm Collins: are sinning

it is killing me and dying.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: Which it could really at this point when you look at how much I work.

Simone Collins: Yes

Malcolm Collins: Hey, but look at how much RFAB has improved.

Simone Collins: Guys, tell him to go to sleep, please. Ugh. Anyway, go on.

Malcolm Collins: Gluttony, where was I, where were they going was, was gluttony

Simone Collins: There’s the

Malcolm Collins: two categories Gluttony.

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah, yeah There’s the one

Malcolm Collins: that’s chronically bad- But then there’s the category of- ...

Simone Collins: and

Malcolm Collins: then

Simone Collins: there’s the one that’s acutely bad ... the risk

Malcolm Collins: of death or severe injury. Yes. And this really matters when it comes to, like suppose you’re in school and you’re choosing your sport.

Something that you should be very aware of in that choice is what is the chance that this could give you a life-changing injury? So, if you’re considering between extremely high injury sports like, say, crew or cheerleading- Wait, crew? Crew has incredibly high... Because you can catch crabs, which basically means your, your row hits the water at the wrong moment vis-a-vis everyone else moving forwards.

Yeah. So the forwards motion of your boat catches your oar and throws it into your [00:18:00] face.

Simone Collins: Oh.

Malcolm Collins: Um, With all of the momentum of everyone on the boat- Oh ... and the speed of the boat.

Simone Collins: God. I didn’t know that. That’s horrible.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Easy, easy to become paralyzed and stuff like that. Oh.

Simone Collins: Dude, okay, guys, if you wanna do, just do outrigger canoe racing.

Really fun and you don’t have- but yeah, outrigger canoe racing, really great. If you like crew but you don’t wanna die- ... outrigger canoe racing, I mean, your boat might flip, ‘cause, you know, they do that And

Malcolm Collins: this is what we’re talking about here.

With any of these, there are variable things where you could get an equal amount of pleasure or whatever satisfaction you’re getting- Yeah ... that don’t come with the same negative externalities.

Simone Collins: Totally. And

Malcolm Collins: in the categories of sins, actively choosing not to look this stuff up falls in the same category.

Mm. You

Simone Collins: should,

Malcolm Collins: you should, before you sign up for an extracurricular, look up the risk of death or serious injury from that extracurricular.

Simone Collins: Yeah, for real. Like, in high [00:19:00] school, I was on an outrigger canoe racing team, and then I looked at joining crew in college. At no point did I have any idea, ‘cause I almost joined GW’s crew team.

I didn’t know that could happen. The only reason I backed out was I was like, “Oh, I will have no life if I join this team,” because it’s so-

Malcolm Collins: Well, and that’s the other thing, is how much of your life does it consume? Like, that is-

Simone Collins: Totally,

Malcolm Collins: yeah ... you are almost certainly... And this is the thing. Even if you’re doing sin for hedonism, there are some times where you’re just doing a sin that is absolutely pointless- Yeah

in terms of the amount of hedonism it’s getting you. Yeah. Like, going to Disneyland is f*****g pointless. There is no way that that was the best use of that money.

Simone Collins: No, fair. Yeah, and one, I think one thing that we discovered too when we took our kids to places before we were, like, really thoughtful about it and taking a first principle’s approach, was like, “Well, okay, what are our kids actually obsessed with?”

And it’s never, like, the concept of Disney or the concept of whatever it is that’s happening. It’s like they hyper-fixate on, like, “I like to throw rocks in this thing,” and that might [00:20:00] not even be what they’re supposed to do, right? And so you can just replicate that most likely at home. And you know, that’s-

Malcolm Collins: Right.

Like, consider the alternative, like what I do with the kids, right? Is I get a little inflatable boat with a small motor, and we drive around the lakes around here, and we go around the water, and we catch crayfish and little fish and throw rocks, and they build dams.

Speaker 16: Hey, where are you guys going?

Malcolm Collins: And that is almost certainly for kids their age as fun as waiting in lines, ‘cause that’s what Disneyland really is, is a, it’s a line simulator.

Speaker 8: so then there’s lines for fast pass. You stand in line to get a take it to stand in line later. Then there’s lines for the bathrooms, lines for the drinks, lines for can, and [00:21:00] cans.

Malcolm Collins: A- and you could be like, “Well, what about the novelty?” Okay, well, even if it’s about the novelty, there’s going to be a local park to you that’s going to have about the equivalent of Disneyland, maybe 20% less or something like that. Oh,

Simone Collins: you mean like an actual theme park.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Like Hershey Park for us or something. Like

Malcolm Collins: Hershey Park or something, right?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It’s gonna be strictly personally, I don’t think it’s any worse, but i- i- you know, assuming, like even if you go to Disneyland, I still think Universal’s a better studio.

Simone Collins: Yes.

Malcolm Collins: But, but what I’m saying here is, is to apply all of this with a degree of intentionality.

And then to look at this with the risk of injury, also risk of any other sort of long-term negative effect on your life. So like if there is a Magic: The Gathering’s a good example of this, right? Okay. If you end up getting addicted to card collecting, which a lot of these people do, Magic: The Gathering can just siphon money from you endlessly.

You c- you can never have enough decks. You never have enough cards. You [00:22:00] never have enough, you know, much more so than something like getting really into, to Dark Souls or something like that. And then the next thing we need to consider and, and obviously the highest category of sin within these activities is anything that could just kill you.

Like, in terms of BASE jumping, parachuting out of an airplane, hand gliding hot air ballooning a lot of these things are just like Oh, personal plane flying. Like is there really not some other activity that you could get the same amount of marginal enjoyment from that doesn’t run the risk of just killing you?

And also isn’t worth tons of money. All of those are also enormously expensive hobbies.

Simone Collins: Yeah, there’s that. Yeah.

Actually, just recently I think eight people died in a skydiving plane accident. They’re rickety planes, so it doesn’t surprise me. I remember thinking when I sky dove for the first time, the only time, [00:23:00] like, “Oh, th- this is probably how I’ll die.”

It was- ... like held together with tape. So.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, but these things, like just recognizing, because I, I think a lot of religious traditions, ‘cause people in the past didn’t randomly do stuff for fun that could get them killed for no reason. This is like a modern invention of sinfulness that we just invented out of the ethos.

An- anyone historically would be like, “Why would you do something that could just get you killed?” Right? Mm-hmm. Like, we invented an entirely new category of sinfulness that the Bible didn’t even know it needed to warn us about. Therefore, that’s why I’m, I’m doing this. That’s why I’m putting this together.

Speaker 20: Now I need to be clear here. This isn’t out of line with passages from the Bible. You know, if you look at something like Proverbs 22:3, “The prudent see danger and take refuge, but the simple keep going and pay the penalty.” Or Proverbs 14:16, “One who is wise is cautious and turns away from evil, but the fool is reckless [00:24:00] and careless.”

Or Ecclesiastes 7:17, “Do not be over wicked and do not be a fool. Why die before your time?” , And, and so you can see this isn’t out of line with what the Bible is teaching, but it just never explicitly says, because I don’t think anyone around the time any of the biblical books was written would randomly risk their lives over simple thrills.

, People back then simply weren’t that indulgent and stupid, so it didn’t need to be laid out like this

Malcolm Collins: But now I wanna go into, to the next category. That cruising

Simone Collins: is crazy.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Ugh.

Malcolm Collins: Is thinking through the negative externalities of the type of sin that you are engaged in. So a good example of here could come down to something like corn, right? If you were going to rank, because obviously if you’re masturbating, well, I don’t think it’s like enormously sinful when contrasted with other things that you might do.

It’s still clearly not something you’re doing for God, which makes it [00:25:00] sinful, right? If you are now considering the various ways that you can engage with not-safe-for-work material I think obviously the highest form of negative is hiring a prostitute to cheat on your wife, right? Like, that, that’s where you get it the highest level of, of, of negativity.

Or I guess also- Because

Simone Collins: of the money spent or what?

Malcolm Collins: Well, because it has money spent on something that’s completely pointless from a f- family perspective. Two, you are creating a negative externality for the woman you’re paying, not just for your wife, not just for your family, because you could, one, get a disease from her, which creates more of a negative externality than other ways you could go out and, and do that.

But also you have now created a profession that can ruin this woman’s life, right? Like, a lot of these women who get into this, they end up speccing into this OnlyFans build, I guess you wanna say, right? While they’re young, not building up their skills, not building up a real job record. Then they lose their looks, and now they’re [00:26:00] kind of screwed.

Although I have heard, did you know this? That older women at, like, nightclubs and strip clubs and stuff like that actually get paid more than younger women?

Simone Collins: That makes sense because I feel like they would put in more effort.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, effort, experience, and I don’t know, maybe guys. I, I don’t know the full, but apparently this is also somewhat true on some not-safe-for-works. I, I don’t, I don’t know all the mechanics of this. I, I’m not gonna go deep i- into it. But there is a point after which you’re just not gonna get anyone and you’re gonna be completely screwed and no guys wanna marry you, and so you can’t settle down.

You can’t have a family. You can’t easily... You know, it, it’s gonna be much harder after that, right?

Speaker 22: That, that chair with the garbage bag taped over it looks pretty good. Meg, you look pretty next to her.

Malcolm Collins: And so, a- and this, this matters, like, building this sort of internal ranking. Like, if you’re gonna have... Like, let’s just suppose you’re engaging with content online, right? The, the lowest category in terms of sinfulness would be purely drawn [00:27:00] or...

Well, no, AI-generated content would be the lowest because no other human was ever even engaged with that. Then the next would be drawn stuff because it, it, some woman isn’t making this her life work. Then you move into actual photos and videos of real human women. You have to shut up. You have to stop it.

Because now you are promoting an industry That creates these negative externalities. Then one step up from that is OnlyFans. Because now you are actively lowering, because remember, it, your time, like the time, effort that you could be spending on attempting to contribute to whatever you think has intrinsic value is competing not just in terms of time, but in terms of money.

Because money, in a capitalist system it, it, it can buy time, functionally speaking. Not perfectly, but, but that’s what you spend your time on. You generate the money. The money can be translated for time. That’s what we do this for, right? So when you are s- actively spending money on an OnlyFans account or something like that, especially if you’re in a [00:28:00] relationship or married, because now it’s money that should be going to your kids, should be going to your wife.

That, that puts that and yet a higher tier. And I think that this is useful to think through, right? Instead of just bucketing it all as being exactly the same. In terms of the orders of magnitude worse I would put something like OnlyFans at 10,000 times worse than AI-generated content in terms of, like, the active scale of badness.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, because of the, especially the ROI. Like, if you put the, the, the amount you can get of value from AI token-based purchases versus what you’re getting with OnlyFans, was, which isn’t, in I would argue, 90-plus percent of cases, unless you’re going after, like, very- ... very low-ranked people you’re not interacting with the actual model anyway.

So like, so you’re paying this much to interact with someone in, like, India or Pakistan [00:29:00] or Vietnam, or I don’t know who, who knows where, right? Who’s not the woman. You’re, you’re paying a, a huge amount of cup and it’s not, you’re still affecting someone’s life, so.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and worse, you’re entering an environment that falls into the earlier sin category we were talking about, where the woman has a motivation to attempt to addict you.

Mm ... a lot of the OnlyFans pipelines are really heavily AB tested to try to get you addicted to them. That’s the point. They want you as a permanent customer. It’s the same way where, like, if you are paying money to someone for sex that person has a motivation to attempt to break up your existing relationship, right?

Like any sort of long-term stable fications for society relationship you have, they now have a motivation to disrupt that for you.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And- I suppose Yeah, yeah. So I, I think that that is a ca- and this is worth thinking about. Like a- again, something like let’s consider categories here. Video games versus skydiving.

The, the [00:30:00] relative negative externality to your life, assuming you don’t get addicted to video game gambling is I, I might say a millionfold less bad. May- maybe more than a million. I, I might literally say it is a... No, no, I’d actually maybe a billionfold less bad to spend a night playing video games than it is to skydive or free climb or any of those things that have these giant externalities to your life.

Because there is no chance that I accidentally kill myself playing a video game, right? And when you think about all of the downstream effects of your death for something that in terms of the pleasure that you can harness from the two events I, I’d honestly be very surprised if somebody gets more acute pleasure from skydiving than they do for video games, which makes it even worse Well,

Simone Collins: I, I don’t know.

I’m incapable of garnering pleasure from- ... playing video games, as we’ve discovered, much to your-

Malcolm Collins: But you [00:31:00] gain pleasure- ... dismay ... from watching your romance shows. Do you enjoy- Yeah ... those more than skydiving? Like, it a- the f- the, the three or four hours it takes to make- So it’s- ... a full skydive ...

Simone Collins: it is, it’s hard to...

Yeah, I mean, it, like, it’s a specific high. It’s the adrenaline. Like, that’s why I like jumping off things. And it’s not, you would think, oh, well you’re only enjoying that for, like, the few seconds that you’ve jumped out of the plane. That’s actually the least interesting part because falling from the sky, as it turns out, just feels windy.

Like, if you’ve ever leaned into a heavy wind that can hold you up when you lean into it, you have experienced what it feels like to skydive. Congratulations.

Malcolm Collins: But- So is, is it literally just an addiction to a chemical reaction your body

Simone Collins: is producing? No, yeah, it’s, it’s the buildup. It’s the waiting in the hangar.

It’s the getting on the plane. It’s the going up. It’s the harnessing up. It’s the leaning out of the plane. It’s the deciding to tip out. Like, that, that is where that high comes from, and it’s unique. It’s not something you can get from a video game. The same with, like, jumping off high things, like bridges into water or-

Malcolm Collins: But

Simone Collins: does it feel-

cliffs into water ...

Malcolm Collins: good? Or does it [00:32:00] just feel different?

Simone Collins: You feel alive in a different way. Yeah, it just feels different.

Malcolm Collins: Which I think is really pointless. Like-

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and I think, I think what a lot of people have come to realize is that, like, you, you can get a very similar kind of high from, like, a cold plunge.

So I think when, when we’re talking about, like- ... the crew versus outrigger canoe racing, like, if you want that wind taken out of yourself, like, oh, like you, you feel alive-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah ...

Simone Collins: get a bucket of ice water. Like, it’s really not that hard. Like-

Malcolm Collins: And that generally has positive health effects from what I’ve

Simone Collins: heard.

It does, yeah. Like, there seems to be, like, an evidence-based argument for cold plunges on a regular basis. It, it, and, and the, the thing is they’re unpleasant in a way that, I guess skydiving is too. Like, you’re waiting in a hot hangar. You’re paying money. Like, you know, it’s... So yeah, I think i- if you want that kind of feeling and you really need it, just get a cold plunge and enjoy the additional health [00:33:00] benefits, ‘cause it’s aligned with probably your objective function more presumably, ‘cause your objective function should probably involve being able to do a thing which you have to be alive to be able to do.

So-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah ... there’s that. Well, and this is where... Because I think it’s, it’s important to think about when we hear something’s sinful, we just think, like, “Don’t do it.” And why it’s useful to create these, like... When, when we’re looking at various sins and temptations in our lives and we think about their relative negativity to us, right?

We often don’t fully think through how relatively negative they are. Yeah ... consider something like- me so let’s, let’s consider my desire to socialize, right? Mm. I, I could have that- What desire? ... exercised in, in multiple ways in my w- life, right? Like, I could go to parties, I could go to bars, I could go to cities.

And if you look at the way that Simone and I actually have ended up doing that in our lives [00:34:00] what we’ve done is we said, “Okay, what we’re gonna do is once every few months, like maybe every four months now, go to New York or DC, rent out a place, invite all our friends over and people we don’t know as well, just famous people in the area and be like, ‘Hey, you wanna come over?

You wanna come to a party?’ You know, interesting for socialization, so we’re still top of mind, everything like that.” And this prevents us from having to do a bunch of other things that may be involved in a choice like, where do you live? Like, we’re able to live in a location where it was very inexpensive to buy a house, very inexpensive to buy groceries, very inexpensive to live, and that frankly is healthier.

You know, you’re not in the city smog and everything like that. And nicer looking. I look out my window and I see a jungle every day, right? Than, than living in Manhattan or living in, in DC. But I still get the socialization because I very intentionally cluster it all. But then even more than that, if I’m just looking for...

If you’re like, “I couldn’t get away with just doing this once every four months,” there are ways [00:35:00] you can socialize that have positive externalities as well. So an example here would be my Leaflet streams. So on a Leaflet stream, I’m doing a 10-hour conversation with Leaflet typically, right? And you can find these recorded on like Twitch and Kick and everything like that if you’re interested in watching them.

But these streams often get over 20,000 views. You know, so not only am I there having a conversation with somebody and masturbating the social part of myself, right? Like, I’m doing the social thing, which does feel good to do, right, to, to, to talk with somebody who you enjoy speaking to and who shares similar interests than you, without having to get in a car, go out and interact with strangers, risk getting sick.

Keep in mind, you’re doing that every time you leave your house.

Simone Collins: Oh my

Malcolm Collins: gosh,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Risk y- you know, it, it, you, you risk being killed when you go out. That’s the other thing to remember. If you go to like a nightclub district, people always get shot in the, you know. Well,

Simone Collins: but also like every time you get in your car, don’t forget.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. [00:36:00] Every time you get in a car, you’re risking your life. And, and that’s, that’s why I think it’s generally good to like cluster those things, and to, when you think about, like, the car you get, it’s upon you to research what is the riskiness of this car to your life. Any closing thoughts here, Simone?

Simone Collins: I don’t know. You’ve, you’ve, you’ve given me a lot to think about actually. I hadn’t thought before about Even looking at sinful behaviors and being like, “Okay, what is the thing that I’m getting out of this and how do I do it better?” I mean, we, I obviously did this, or with the help of my dad and his advice, did this with a sin of mine that was really damaging, right?

Like, I loved controlling how much I ate, but that involved dying. And so she didn’t eat anything. Yeah. Yeah. And so he’s like, “Okay, I see what you wanna do here is control and feel that form of a high. So here’s another way you can do it without dying.” And so instead we just balanced calories in and calories out, and had me weigh and measure and enter into a [00:37:00] program everything I ate.

And then suddenly I wasn’t dying anymore. And I think it’s a really good idea to take a look at things that we’re doing that are problematic, and I’m just gonna be thinking for the rest of the day today, “Okay, what am I doing now that is not good for us? What do I actually want when I’m doing that and how can I do that better?”

Ideally in a way that just helps everyone in the family, that actually contributes to us. Like, the idea- Mm-hmm ... of, of taking like a skydiving or BASE jumping addiction and turning it into a cold plunge addiction, right? You’re taking a vice and turning it into a virtue while still getting the thing, like most of the thing out of the vice that you liked.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. Oh, and consider something like intermu- mural sports as a sin, for example, like in school. Your parents, the people who already have to drive you state to state for competition. Oh my gosh. You know, you’ve gotta g- go to these regular practices, which again takes up the time of the people who drive you.

They’re just enormously sinful, and we don’t think about them as sinful things. Mm-hmm. They can eat up huge amounts of your life that could be spent on self-improvement or attempting [00:38:00] to use the, the instrument you have honed yourself into to improve society for something completely indulgent.

Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Well and, and one person’s sin could be another person’s perfectly good thing. Like, if for example for one person, participation in a sport requires their whole family to sort of derail their lives and spend a lot of time driving, but then the other person, like, happens to live right next to, to a, like, major gymnastics gym or whatever, where all they have to do is walk over and it’s a really good place for them to be, like, then maybe it’s not.

I think everyone has to consider for themselves what the cost is and what the alignment is.

Malcolm Collins: So. Yeah, yeah, and to be honest with yourself around wh- what- Yeah ... the things that you spend your time doing on any given day, on any given week. Like, if one of your core tasks in life at that time is finding a partner, unfortunately you have to do social things.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Th- like that, that becomes one of the things that you just have to do. That was the primary reason I did anything social ever in my life, was trying to find a [00:39:00] partner.

Simone Collins: Well, that’s done. Maybe.

Malcolm Collins: No. Once, once you get a good wife, that’s the great thing about a good wife and kids, you don’t need friends anymore, right?

You can just cut all that nonsense out.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, I guess you have to still play the field in case I die, but whatever

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, I, I, I gotta know some people. I, I’m just gonna honestly reach out to fans. I’m sure there’s some fan who wants to marry me.

Simone Collins: Oh, God.

Well then, there you have it, ladies and gentlemen.

And with that, we will leave you. Well,

Malcolm Collins: especially if the fan’s like a widower, too. That would be super easy

Simone Collins: No, you would be the widower and they would be a

Malcolm Collins: widow I... No, they could be a widower too if they’re, like, still my age No,

Simone Collins: no, no. A widower, Malcolm, widower is the name for a man who lost his wife.

What

Malcolm Collins: is a

Simone Collins: woman? Widow is a woman who lost her husband Oh, a widow.

Malcolm Collins: Okay.

Simone Collins: Unless you wanna enter a- Gay relationship ...

Malcolm Collins: gay

Simone Collins: marriage, that’s fine. The, the, the people who hate you will love that so.

Malcolm Collins: But I- It’s- But I think that this, this can be applied to sexual, like, in, in regards to, like, kinks.

‘Cause I think in our [00:40:00] society we frame kinks as being, like, hugely sinful. Whereas I would point out that a lot of kinks that you may engage with have literally no negative externality but the time you waste.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, like- Like- ... that, and this, this came up when we were discussing Byron, Byron Nome, Christy Nome’s husband, who had the- Yeah

femmification interest. Had he just, like, found a community that would, like, exchange this stuff and talk about it or whatever, and, like, he, he got his big boobs and everything and, like, did his thing without spending tons of money, I would not have really seen it as sinful. It’s like, you do you. Like, that’s fun for you.

I get it. Go ahead. Like, have... This is great. It’s very common, okay? Like, it’s an extremely common thing. But instead he spent, I think, over $20,000, maybe even over $16,000 on just, like, one person, and that’s where, okay, like, this is, this is to your family’s detriment. This is to your financial detriment.

Like, this is money that could have kept you stable in retirement. This is money that you could have contributed towards something that’s aligned with your [00:41:00] values. ‘Cause I doubt his values were-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah ... supporting women who- and, and this is where, like, okay, so, so suppose a kink, like, we’re gonna rate kinks here ‘cause this, this is useful to, to, to, to be aware of.

If, if you’re engaging with it in an entirely fictional context, like an AI-generated whatever thing the negative externalities it can have to your life are incredibly low, especially if it’s on a local encrypted thing like RFAB or something like that.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So

Malcolm Collins: I put that at, like, the lowest category.

But if you’re talking about, like, actually acted upon things you know, at the low end you have things like, say, rope binding or something like that, right?

Simone Collins: Shibari.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, which is just whatever, right? Whereas at the, the very highest end you have things that are going to make you sterile. These are things like testicle inflation that’s become, ballmaxing it’s called now.

Oh

Simone Collins: my gosh, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, no, no. Or orgies or y- you know, something can be very ta- like, a choking fetish is a very tame fetish. Oh,

Simone Collins: yeah, don’t. Yeah, don’t, don’t.

Malcolm Collins: But if it can cause severe injury- Don’t do it ... don’t engage with it [00:42:00] with another human, right? Like- Don’t do it.

Simone Collins: No. No, no, no, no, come on.

Lots of people die doing it to themselves. Don’t do, don’t say

Malcolm Collins: that. Oh, to... No, I, I meant, like, use AI or something like that. Just don’t actually do

Simone Collins: it. Oh, imagine doing it. No, I think it’s one of those things where you have to feel it. Get, again, if you’re into that, get into cold plunges. Y- you know, again, just I feel like so, so many things.

A cold plunge. Do it.

Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah. With, with all of this, I don’t think we think about, we think of all depraved things as being at the same relative level of depravity often. And when we talk about the negative externality on other people, this is where something like being a PDA file, like immediately enters the highest category if, if you’re doing that with another human being.

Yeah. Whereas something like

Lo- l- like el- elcon artwork, which is a very you know, whatever topic online about whether this is immoral or not immoral because it doesn’t involve real underage people. Yeah. But I’d put it in the category of we all know it’s not the same level of immoral. Yeah. If it could tempt you down a [00:43:00] path where the end state is that, then it is extremely immoral for you.

Yeah,

Simone Collins: in the same way that you say, like, well, getting into, like, team sports can be a, a, a gateway to sports gambling, in the same way that content could be-

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that it can be extremely immoral in that way.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I guess what I would say is if any... O- one is, probably my biggest question with this is is there not something else that turns you on just as much or more?

Yeah,

Simone Collins: can’t, can’t we, yeah, can’t we go with something else? That there... Yeah ‘Cause, yeah, typically most people have a basket of things. Let’s go with something else in the basket.

Malcolm Collins: Of all of the various things that turn you on, there probably is something, but I wanna point out that how much worse is an art of this versus it happening to a real human or you consuming content- Oh

of it happening to a real human.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. I, I would say it’s, again, one billionth as bad.

Simone Collins: Well, of course.

Malcolm Collins: One, yeah, easily less than one billionth as bad probably.

Simone Collins: Yeah, which is why people are like, “Why are you [00:44:00] questioning me?” When people are like, “Look, I think that, you know, synthetic versions of this are, you know, not so bad.”

But,

Malcolm Collins: but, but- ‘Cause compared to- ... do I think that if you’re a fan of Rev Says Desu, the next day you’re gonna be into underage kids or something like that? Like, no, I don’t. Do- Yeah ... do I think that Leaflet fans, ‘cause her character looks very young. She’s very old in the lore, but it looks young. Yeah. Do I think that the next thing you’re gonna be out there- You know, elves, elves

Simone Collins: are quite old.

I guess that’s how, isn’t that how, like, anime gets around it? It’s like, well, but she’s like a 200-year-old vampire girl, so

Malcolm Collins: it’s fine. Sometimes anime doesn’t care about getting around it, I’m gonna be honest. Okay. Okay. And like Japanese people, we all have our regional temptations. Yeah. You know, it might be Mormons and cucking and Japanese and underage in, you know, my region, and I’ve talked about that before.

Yeah

Speaker: So if we’re just gonna put things next to each other in a line here, , I might say something like, , furry or anthro corn might lead you to getting into the furry community if you are susceptible to temptations like that, and then that has a high probability of making you become trans, which can have a lot [00:45:00] of negative externalities on your life.

So it can be put in a category that is strictly worse than, say, maybe non-furry content, right? , Or if you say something like, , PDA content, right? Like, , l- LCON content that we’ve been talking about here. , It would be strictly worse than the, , anthro content because, , the end state that it might tempt you towards, , being a PDA is way worse.

,

Speaker: But a lot of things in a drawn context might be morally equal to neutral corn, , outside of maybe it motivates reproduction less. So let’s say like fart content, or, , you’re into pregnant-looking chicks, or you’re into, , breeding fantasies, or you’re into,, being demeaned by people. , All of these would be...

Like there’s, th-th-there’s just not that many negative externalities that can lead from this stuff.

And while sex that is [00:46:00] purely recreational, , but done with it being understood that the person might get pregnant, in a way where they might get pregnant, and you will keep the baby if they get pregnant. Now keep in mind, it is really bad to have sex where a person might get pregnant and you would never keep the baby.

, Or even question it. That’s extremely, extremely bad. But if we’re talking about sex with kinks involved, purely for recreation, worse than sex purely for reproduction, but probably better than any category of corn, no matter how kinky it is, unless it risks killing you, like certain types of choking or something like that, right?

But when it comes to totally fictionalized content

where all of these fall in relation to something else. So if I was gonna say somebody who had never gone extreme with their temptations in any other thing in the past where I would put LCON content with them, it would be at a dramatically lower level of immorality than, , a prostitute.

Or, , I’d even say than potentially OnlyFans, because, eh, that’s having an impact on a [00:47:00] real person’s life, , whereas yours has the potential, and likely very low potential given your past, possibility of impact of having another person’s life. So it’s important just to take all of this in context with the negativity of something like this coming from the multiplied probability of, in your case, what it has on somebody else, and then that somebody else’s negative context

Speaker 26: Finally here, I’d note categories that regardless of a person’s, , susceptibility to temptation that almost never lead people to temptation. An example here would be something like, oh, what falls into this category? Oviposition, I guess. , This is being aroused by putting eggs in someone.

As far as I’m aware of, no one has ever actually been seriously, like, done this in a criminal way or in a way that has made somebody else infertile compared to something like putting hamsters [00:48:00] in someone, which apparently has tempted a lot of people. People are like, “Oh, that’s not a real thing,” and then you can look up, like, actual reports from hospitals of it happening, and they’re like, “Well, I mean, I guess it happens.”

It’s like, bro, there’s multiple hospital reports about this. This is a real thing

Malcolm Collins: but anyway.

Simone Collins: Well, I think we’ve- The- ... we’ve given people a lot to think about and I, I hope

Malcolm Collins: that they- The no, hold on. I’m gonna d- talk about a final one, which is murder. Ooh. Murder. Is all murder equally bad?

Simone Collins: Wow ...

Malcolm Collins: so here, if you believe... A- and for people who say life begins at conception, I think they intuitively, even if they believe this, I don’t know any of them who if told there’s a six-year-old child in this room, and there’s 10 just fertilized blastocysts in this room in cold storage, right?

You can either unplug the blastocysts in this room or unplug something in this room that painlessly kills the six-year-old child. I don’t think anyb- anybody, any Catholic is going to choose the [00:49:00] 10 blastocysts over the six-year-old child. Because I think we all intuit even if those are 100% human lives, it’s not the same thing as a 10...

A six-year-old or a 10-year-old, right? Like, and we need to investigate morally where does this intuition come from. And i- and it’s an intuition that I think feels incredibly strong for people, right? One is, and I think the, the first thing that, that people go is, is they’re like, “Yeah, but realistically, for me to turn those six blastocysts into a six-year-old kid with all of the emotions, experiences, connected lives that that kid has, and potentiality that kid has, requires a willing woman,” right?

Right now with the technology we have. Now, this is why I think we have a huge mandate to develop artificial wombs, but with the technology we have, there is some intermittent step which makes the blastocysts more morally equivalent to [00:50:00] 10 people on life support who have a doctor’s diagnosis of 10 days left to live, but if you spent a billion dollars, you might be able to save them, or one healthy six-year-old, right?

I think that that’s the moral equation that they’re doing in their heads. But now, now we have a moral equation here where we can say, “Oh, the life of somebody who’s about to die and on life support does not have the same value as the life of a healthy child,” right? Because the potential future of that life without external intervention of a type that you cannot afford to do yourself, is significantly lower.

And now this leads us to the second thing, which is this says, okay, now you get to choose between lives. The life of a six-year-old versus the life of a baby versus the life of a 70-year-old, okay? [00:51:00] Now, if anybody is, you know, you can, you can put $10 million down and save one of these lives, and you don’t have more money than that Or increase the probability of saving one of these lives.

The moral intuition that comes out of this I actually think is quite different than what most people would assume. I think a lot of people are gonna assume, well, baby first, then six-year-old, then elderly person, if you’re just doing a str- a straight utilitarian calculation. But the reality of mor- moral intuition is that I actually think the calculation is m- very obvious in most people’s minds.

It’s 10-year-old first, then baby, then elderly person. And the question can be, why do you put the baby below the 10-year-old, right? And the answer is, is because outside of the fact that it’s a sickly baby and probably gonna get sick again, but there are a lot of things that could randomly end up ending that baby’s life and that makes it reliant on another [00:52:00] person before it becomes that 10-year-old ready to jump off and make all of the potential impacts that they’re about to make on the world that make the baby’s life, like not, not much worse to save.

I, I’d say like 2 to 3% worse, but some degree less than the, the, Also, the, the, the 10-year-old has an awareness of what’s happening to them that the baby doesn’t have that I think makes it more horrifying, their death. But this is just my moral intuition. Again, you can take your moral intuitions differently.

And the people who wanna say everybody’s life has the same value I mean, I don’t think God thinks that, right? Like, he killed random babies all the time and like, you know, when he was killing the, the Egyptians’ firstborn sons, or when he told us to, to kill all the Amalekites or the Midianites or whatever, the, the few times when he told us to kill everyone.

And even punished Saul for not doing it. So you can’t say, “Oh, it was just the way war was done at that time.” No, that was an active decision on God. Any thoughts you have on the, the value of a life, Simone? [00:53:00] I,

Simone Collins: I think I’m with you in looking at both viability and potential impact. Because if, you know, like, I think a lot of people And I know it’s different for everyone, but what, what our objective function is, and you have to consider your objective function when making a moral calculation.

Our objective function is maximizing long-term human flourishing. And that involves focusing on, on, on saving lives that aren’t necessarily going to terminate early anyway and, and involve a lot of suffering, right? That’s, that’s not gonna contribute as much as saving a life that is more likely to live long and make the biggest impact.

Yeah. I hear you. So

Malcolm Collins: this is where,

Simone Collins: Though I think that you, that you also just don’t like babies as much as I do, so it’s- Yeah ... it’s easier for you to say that. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: it, it, it would... I mean, indulgently you’d want to [00:54:00] save the baby, but I think, like, logically... Now this is where it gets i- in terms of human individual lives, is every individual life equally worth saving if it cost the same amount of money?

Speaker 27: I would note here in the context of the Bible, it was important to teach people things because this was not a widely understood concept before the time of Christianity. Like, don’t discriminate against a poor person versus a rich \, person. Don’t judge somebody solely off of wealth. But now society has moved too far in the opposite direction, , where we do not fully grok that some people are doing more to see God’s vision come to a reality or see what needs to happen for humanity come to reality, and other people may live lives that are purely parasitic on the system, and that we act blindly to this, and that we need to begin to, , recognize that while both of their lives may have [00:55:00] dignity, they are not equal in value in terms of if you can only save one, if you can only...

You know, you, in, in some sort of broad, vague sense, they may be equal in value, but in terms of, like, practical, I have to do something to save one, they’re very obviously not because of the long-term effects they’re going to have on other people’s lives. , And, and note here, this could be a person who’s super wealthy like the, , CEO of, , UnitedHealthcare, and their life is a negative externality, literally lower in value than, , somebody who is purely a parasite on the system.

,

Speaker 27: Or more salient modern example, Bricks and Minifigs CEO

So this isn’t like wealthy people’s lives are more valued than less wealthy people’s lives. It’s what you do with that life

Malcolm Collins: And here we’ll say a random unemployed Somalian versus Elon Musk. Now, did you know that now he’s worth the next, I think, five richest persons’ net worth combined?

Simone Collins: Yeah, in, like, certain countries he’s, he’s- ... like, [00:56:00] worth more than them. Surely there’s gonna be a more democratic way- But isn’t he, isn’t he, like, worth more than Canada or something?

Or like their GDP. I, I, I can’t remember. But yeah, it’s some- something insane. But I mean, so this, this is something that even came up with COVID, right? Because when vaccines were in short supply, the question came, like, “Well, what lives are we going to

Malcolm Collins: save?” Well, and the, and the Democratic establishment at the time, like their White House at the time suggested that it be given to those who’ve been racially disenfranch- basically give it to Black and

Simone Collins: Hispanic- Well, so it, it’s clear that people do make, at first...

Like I, I keep trying to explain to our kids there’s no such thing as fair. Because you, you have to establish, like well then what is, on what basis, you know, are you dividing a resource? And that depends on your values, and people have different values. And I think that’s the core thing. Mm. Is there is no universal like good or bad thing, or worse or better sin.

It really d- it’s all based on how you orient toward your

Malcolm Collins: objective function when it comes- But this, this is where when it comes to the value of a life, the value of Elon’s life is demonstrably- Mm ... more than the random Simoleon in this example, right? The, the reason I bring this up is his pursuit-

Simone Collins: Well, that [00:57:00] depends.

I mean, for like people who, who devalue capitalists and who value non-capitalists, he doesn’t.

Malcolm Collins: Right. But I’m talking about what we think is objectively true about reality. Mm. That our goal in life, any human’s goal in life is to move humanity forwards, right? To, to move human flourishing forward.

Simone Collins: Whoa.

That’s, that’s our goal, but I don’t get the impression that’s a universal goal.

Malcolm Collins: Right. But- A

Simone Collins: lot of people’s goals are

Malcolm Collins: very

Simone Collins: different ...

Malcolm Collins: this is a track. This is about what’s religiously

Simone Collins: true. Oh, yeah. Okay, yes, yes. For us, yes.

Malcolm Collins: So you can say for them, whatever. I don’t f-ing care what they think. Yeah, okay, okay.

They can go in the blender for all I care. I

Simone Collins: didn’t know we were talking about just our view.

Malcolm Collins: In our worldview, and I believe the worldview of the majority of our fans, the prospective impact of Elon going forwards is enormous when you look at the things that he’s accomplished for the human race so far.

Broke wokeism through the acquisition of X, on top of what he’s done for the environment with Tesla, the way he’s moved forward technology with Tesla, SpaceX, X, that he’s dedicated the company’s entire mission to a [00:58:00] Mars colony, right? The like, how cool is that? And the positive externality of a Mars colony, it means even if an asteroid does come that could kill all of humanity or we get a Gray Goo scenario or we get some sort of AI foaming scenario, we get...

We have the backup. The backups matter, people.

Simone Collins: Okay, but you’re going way off the rails. Going back to murder, and I, I, I did, I... One of our listeners, at least one of our w- listeners pointed out, like, how do you reconcile thou shalt not kill with the fact that there’s a lot of killing in-

Malcolm Collins: In the Bible, yeah

Simone Collins: yeah. So how do you

Malcolm Collins: personally- Because thou shalt not kill does not translate to thou shall not kill in the Bible. It translates to thou shall not murder, which in Jewish law at the time was a very, very specific type of premeditated murder.

Simone Collins: Okay, so tell me more. Like, h- how do I know if I’m doing a, a bad per the Old Testament, per the Ten Commandments?

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, in the Old Testament we see people killing people all the time on behalf of God. [00:59:00] Yeah. It’s basically if the person is an enemy of your people, you have free range on them. That’s, that’s the general... And your people, I think, you know, we can, we can I, I would say, like, any of the saved people, any of the people of God would fall into the our people category here.

But if they are creating negative externalities for your people, the Bible’s pretty carte blanche, do what you want. No, not even what you want. You, you have a commandment to deal with the problem. Multiple times throughout the Bible.

Simone Collins: Huh. Yeah, I, I would love to learn more about this specific definition of Judaism.

Like, per Judaism you say? Uh-huh. Like, of what murder is.

Malcolm Collins: Within Judaism, the context is what’s good for the Jewish people, right? And God was very okay with this context throughout the Old Testament, okay? The idea that he doesn’t want us to... And I, and I think that this is the, the line that is twisted the most.

To translate it to thou shall not kill is just lying, ‘cause that’s not what it [01:00:00] says. And I don’t, I... Th- this is the one thing I really get annoyed with, with nux when he goes over this all the time. When we end up in a scenario where the other side is blatantly stealing elections, like, let’s suppose.

And y- and, and, and your vote doesn’t matter anymore, and you have nowhere to run anymore, and now it’s prima nocta on your daughters right? You have a mandate to fight back Right? Especially when things get tyrannical. Like, I would want our people to be one of the first when things do go full Nazi to actually fight back against that.

Real Nazi. You know, like taking away our rights that we’re seeing now, right? To live life the way you want, to breed the way you want, to have children the way you want, to engage with genetic technology the way you want. I think, you know, when these rights are infringed upon, that I think are some of the most important rights that any human can have the, the lengths to which I think we are mandated to go is extreme insofar as it [01:01:00] doesn’t bring down negative externalities on our community, which is a pretty big and so

Simone Collins: Right, because as soon as you make yourself an existential threat to another group, that group has a mandate themselves to of course take you out.

Mm-hmm. And that’s I think a, a very important calculation.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And this is where all, because Leaflet wanted to talk about this, you know, on... An individual within the techno-puritan phase has a mandate to stay armed with the highest degree of lethality armament for your level of technology, ‘cause you know, you don’t wanna get stuck like the Sikhs do with stupid knives that is practical for your context.

So for example, if you’re on a spaceship, you probably don’t want something that’s n- accidentally gonna crack through the hull of the spaceship, right? But you do still want something that is lethal. And this came from the Sikh context, right? Like anybody who looks at techno-puritanism at this point can tell [01:02:00] this is a real religion, right?

Like this is obviously like a sincerely held religion, and this tract explains our views on you know, you should not... They really say don’t just go out and, and, and kill random negative externalities in society, ‘cause that makes our community into a negative externality for other communities that don’t have these views.

So that is where it makes sense to not go out there and make a, a, a jerk of yourself. But clearly these are our real religious views. And so within any government system, I think they have to respect this if they’re respecting it for Sikhs. And I’ve, and I’ve now explained logically why we have these views and why we believe we have a mandate for self-protection, because if you go into public without self-protection, you are putting yourself and your family at risk.

And so if you are over the age 18 you have a mandate for self-protection at all times. Because it, it’s up to you to not just protect yourself, but all of the other people who could be killed or have their lives removed in any sort of negative [01:03:00] externality event like a live su- shooter situation for example.

Now you are a positive externality because you can end that.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Speaker 3: And note here, this is not me telling you this for funsies. If you take a literal interpretation of the Christian Bible, this is what we are commanded to do. So if you look at something like Luke 22:35-38: Then Jesus asked them, “When I sent you without purse, bag, or sandals, did you lack for anything?”

“Nothing,” they answered. He then said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. It is written, ‘And he who was numbered with the transgressors,’ and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, that which is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.”

The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are your two swords.” “That’s enough,” he replied. So a few notes here. In the Greek, most modern interpretations take this to mean that there were only two swords among all of the disciples. , However, it doesn’t exclusively mean that in Greek. It [01:04:00] could mean they all had two swords or he alone had two swords.

, So what I take this to mean is that you don’t need to arm yourself with more than two, , lethal, , close-range, , weapons. , And the way that I would generally handle this speaking is that you need to be armed with at least one, because he does say you, you need a sword more than the cloak on your back, right?

, And that for the other, I would use something that is faster disabling, like a taser or something like that, , because that falls into... within the category of him. Back then, they wouldn’t have had something like that, so the idea , is first you arm yourself with something lethal, then you arm yourself with something quick.

, And this is if you are taking what we are going to call the

Oath of preservation, which is to say that you take responsibility of your own life to yourself, and if you allow yourself to die because you went out in public and you were killed by somebody who you should have been able to defend yourself against, but you weren’t because you did not take the oath of preservation, , that’s your responsibility

Morally speaking, that rests on your soul, [01:05:00] morally speaking

Speaker 3: in the same way an unaliving is, in the same way self-harm is, in the same way, , a skydiving accident is, , which we consider quite sinful.

and I wanna really focus on the words here so we can understand what Jesus is saying in this context. He’s basically saying, “When we were doing our preaching, when I was doing my preaching with you guys, , we were doing it in a pacifistic way, and in a way that was monastic.”

You know, where you don’t have a - coin purse, et cetera. , He’s like, “And now that we’re moving into the next era, you know, after my death,” which this is one of the last teachings he gave us. , “After my death, it will not be monastic. You are demanded to not go into the monastic lifestyle, to go out there, to be industrious, to have the coin purse.

And secondarily, to be armed, and to expect persecution, and thus be armed.” , So even if you’re looking at the, , the swords in this context and you do think, “Oh, it meant two swords for the entire group,” he’s still not even talking about this context. He’s talking about [01:06:00] the context for after he’s dead, where everyone is expected to always be armed at all times. And note here, some people will then say, “

Didn’t Jesus say something like, “Live by the sword, die by the sword,” as an abnomation of armed conflict?

Speaker 3: , And if you hear-- would then say something like, “Well, what about, you know, when, ...”

Jesus says in Matthew when one of his companions takes a sword and chops the ear off of somebody who’s trying to arrest Jesus,, “For all of those who draw the sword will die by the sword. , Do you not think you can call on my Father, and he will put at disposal more than 12 legions of angels? But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?”

, So note here, he’s not saying broadly. He’s, he’s very explicitly not saying in a general context all who live by the sword die by the sword. He’s saying all who live by the sword in opposition to God’s plan, and right now he’s saying it is God’s plan that I am supposed to die in just the near future.

, And, You, you also see this because the same scene is recorded in, in John [01:07:00] 18:10. , “Put your sword away. Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?” , So the reason he says to not use a sword in this context is because, , he is trying to fulfill a prophecy here, and he’s beginning to interfere with the prophecy.

, So his previous commandment, which one of his last, that you are supposed to be armed at all times, and if you don’t have a sword, you should have... And keep in mind, sword in context changes, , in modern context. We are all, not just techno-puritans, all Christians supposed to always be armed Because we have responsibility for our lives and the lives of those around us.

And note here, this, this is not a particularly weird thing for Jews in this time period. Almost all Jews were armed most of the time

This is why when they were like, here are two swords, Jesus, is that enough? I don’t think they meant for all of them together, as that would have been an absurdly low number of swords for Jews to have during that time period. It seems much more likely they mean, is two swords enough now that you’re telling me that I need swords?

That, in context, [01:08:00] appears a much more likely, even if it’s not what the mainstream Christian denominations want you to understand and will fight against, interpretation of what’s being said here in a literalist context.

So here you can see something like Nehemiah 4:16-18. , “The officers posted themselves behind all the people of Judea who were building the wall. Those who carried materials did their work with one hand and held a weapon in the other, and each of the builders wore his sword on the side as he worked.” , Nehemiah 4:14, “Don’t be afraid of them.

Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers and sons and daughters, your wives, your home.” , Basically talking about arming oneself as being a duty within the community and it being normal within the community. In Samuel 25:13, “David said to his men, ‘Each of you strap on your sword.’

So each of them strapped on his sword, and David strapped on his as well,” implying that all the men had swords ready to strap on. , In Psalms 14:4-1, “Praise be to the Lord my rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers [01:09:00] for battle.” , Again, showing that the Lord does want war. He does want battle. That is part of what is expected of us when we are faced with evil.

Speaker 28: also have Nehemiah 4:13. They stationed arms by families with swords and spears and bows.

We have

Speaker 29: Psalms.

Speaker 28: 14:41, “Praise be to the Lord my mo- rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.”

Speaker 29: . Basically, it’s all over the Bible. Wherever you look at the Old Testament, , people are expected to fight for their own people

Speaker 4: So officially, how does this work within techno puritanism? , There are two potential oaths that you can take, the oath of self-preservation, which is taking responsibility for your life and the lives of those around you, And the secondary oath of self-preservation, which is a more maximal form of this.

Once you have taken one of these oaths, going forwards, you are expected to undergo what is mandated by that oath. After the first oath of self-preservation in any context where you might encounter [01:10:00] somebody who is also armed with a lethal weapon, it is upon you or your responsibility to also be armed with a lethal weapon.

, This means that if in a context like, say, a plane flight or something like that, actually there is no chance that even a Sikh is gonna be on that plane with a lethal weapon, you don’t have to have a le-lethal weapon. But if you’re just, like, walking around town, absolutely you have to have a lethal weapon on you.’

, So it has one small caveat, which is if one of the types of places where no one can have a lethal weapon is in your way of a secondary location where some people might have a lethal weapon, but you will be in for a short period of time, you are not mandated to have a lethal weapon.

So this would mean if you have taken the oaths , of preservation, , and you are going on a vacation somewhere, you don’t need to then buy a sword when you get to that location if you were not able to carry yours in your luggage, right? , So this is the first oath of preservation. The secondary oath of preservation is to take this more [01:11:00] maximally because, , frankly, just a lethal weapon, , which implies generally a short-range weapon, is not going to be everything you need to protect yourself from most of the dangers of this world.

And so the secondary oath of self-preservation is more maximalist and says... While the first one says you can have up to two, ,, the second one says you are mandated to have a short-range lethal or disabling weapon and a long-range lethal weapon, , with the long-range one being lethal.

So this would mandate both, , something short-range and something long-ranged. And generally, you would take the first oath about six months to a year before you take the second oath. , While it is generally advised that most techno-puritans take the first oath at around the age of eighteen going forwards.

It is not a mandate to be a follower of our religion

And it is not advised if you are in an environment where it may prevent you from

Speaker 4: doing business or [01:12:00] advocating the interests of our people more broadly, , because it could within certain cultural contexts. , And , the secondary oath is only for people who want to maximally dedicate themselves to this and requires regular training in whatever that long-range weapon is

Speaker 15: Final note on this oath is, and you are responsible for recognizing this in yourself or having this imposed on you by your community, but if you ever reach a state of mind where you are now a danger to those around you or you are too aggressive in the way you might use something like this, ,

It, it is a moral necessity for you to either for that period not be armed, , or period, period not be armed for the rest of your life. So if you have something like dementia, you would not be armed during that period. If you are drinking, , heavily, you would have a mandate to not be armed during that period or on any sort of mind-altering chemical

Malcolm Collins: And never, as [01:13:00] a techno-puritan, broadly speaking never do like a, a mass shooting or something like that. There is just no point to it. It doesn’t achieve our ends. There, there are ways that lethality can be handled that do not hurt innocent individuals.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Speaker 12: Basically, we just expect you to be dramatically more cunning as a techno-puritan than the type of people who would do something so witless. You know, if you want to mass effect action, use a gene drive or something like that.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and this means to be demonstrably sure of the guilt of an individual even in scenarios like say somebody is out there saying, you know, “My group needs to go out and murder people.” Like they’re, even if they’re not doing it themselves, they’re out preaching this every day. Like murder innocent people, grape children, something like that.

If this is being preached do you have a moral license to do something about this? Absolutely within this faith system. But, but this is only if, if what they are [01:14:00] preaching is manifold worse and being acted upon by people. If they’re like a crazy person on the street, that’s doesn’t matter. If you’re in an environment where people are being killed regularly I think that we have a moral mandate to intervene in this so yeah, that’s a, a, a broader understanding of, of morality, sinfulness, where to engage with stuff.

The final thing I wanted to note here, which comes downstream of one of the questions somebody had on the, the stream about, like, the actual ruling in this on techno-paganism, if you’re a follower Is what is the ruling on techno-puritanism around if you feel that you are able to develop more emotional control long stream by emotionally venting in the short term?

Now first I would note here, I think the research demonstrably shows that it- you lose self-control the more you indulge in it. If y- if you feel that you have a better ability to deal with your grief by crying and letting it out, and this is something that you’ve experienced [01:15:00] and you know yourself, sure.

But know you’re in dangerous territory if you’re doing that. Because for most of us, what happens is the things that make us sad in life are the things where, Like I didn’t really feel that sad when my mom died because I knew I had done everything I could to be a good son to her and to give her a good life within reason throughout her entire life.

I’d always been there for her, and so I was like, “I don’t really have any regrets on any interaction I’ve had with her. I have regrets that she won’t be able to see my kids, but like, that’s not something that I have control over, so there’s no reason to feel sad about this.” But there have been times when I have done things that I feel deep regret about, and there is this emotion that you feel.

Like if you feel grief in that moment, if you cry, if you blame yourself, if you hit something, the responsibility, your self-responsibility, your anger at yourself can deservedly be lesser. And I think we all sort of feel this voice in our heads. And what I’m [01:16:00] talking about is not giving into that voice, because that voice is lying to you.

It doesn’t lower your culpability. Instead what you should do is instead of giving into that voice saying, “No, I need to learn from this. Okay, I wasn’t there for my mom as much as I needed to be. Is my dad still alive? Is anyone else in my life still alive? Are, are my family members that are estranged still alive that I should reconnect with?”

It should flip a switch for you in regards to all of that. The final thing is I’ll note that this entire ethical subset that we’ve discussed here also applies to interpersonal relationships. If an interpersonal relationship is purely masturbatory, you get nothing from it, it doesn’t enrich you, it doesn’t help you understand the world better.

Like when I talk with Leaflet, I often come away with entirely new framings of society. So true. A great one she gave that I’m gonna put it in the track here because it’s gotta go on a track somewhere, is I was talking about as humans genetically engineer themselves, we’re likely gonna [01:17:00] see different groups with different preferences begin to look very differently, where you might see techno-puritans end up looking like space marines one day, right?

Like giant super intelligent, super, you know, two hearts, everything like that. Adonis type figures. You might see another group, like let’s say Jews spec- ... spec into like a high agility build. And no, this isn’t a commandment for techno-pyrogenethums. You guys need to find out what works, what’s, what’s the correct build to spec into.

Spec into an agility build. You know, they become the cat people of the far future or something like this. And I was talking about how this makes diversity even more valuable when you have a real groups with differential strengths. And what Leaflet said is she goes, “Look, if this is confusing to you, think about this.”

You’re putting together your space boarding party. This is like, you know, y- your crew for a spaceship. This is like you putting together- ... your adventuring guild, right? You, you want, you know, yeah, your Orkan warrior and your, you know, dwarven workshop guy, and your [01:18:00] elven mage, and your, you know, y- you, you want all of the different builds in there, right?

That is how you build the best party. You would be stupid to make your entire party, you know, human or dwarf. Or y- you, you can do it for some sort of novelty reason, but we genuinely benefit from working alongside other groups. Even if the dwarves and the elves sometimes screw each other over, a party’s still better off having a dwarf and an elf in it.

And I think that that’s an important thing to think about. But the reason I was saying that this matters with friendships is I think we all know that there are friendships that we engage in in our lives, or relationships we engage in, that do nothing but drain from us. Those are directly sinful to have, and if you’re afraid that you’re a bad person for abandoning this person because oh, well, if you weren’t there for them, who would be?

If you don’t have a moral mandate to that individual, like they’re a parent of yours or something and even then this is tentative, if they are draining resources that could otherwise be going to the next [01:19:00] generation cut ‘em off. This also goes for parents. A parent who is draining resources that should be going to the next generation and isn’t contributing, cut ‘em off.

Because the next generation, the younger generation matters more than the older generation. And, and, and cut ‘em off can mean pull the plug. And this is also true of ourselves if we ever become drains to our families.

Simone Collins: Yeah, we hold to that.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway. If you’re gonna be like, “Oh, God says all life has value,” then why did he tell people to randomly kill people sometimes?

Why did he tell you to, to, to... Why did he punish Saul? It’s because that’s clearly not what God wants. God wants what’s best for society. That’s why he has guided, and the groups that have followed him have always lived- ... the, in the most flourishing of societies, the most prosperous of societies. Because that’s the downstream effect.

That’s why all the sins that we get as Christians generally make your life better. But they need to also generally make society better, and so we’re extrapolating from that. Anyway, thoughts, Simone?

Simone Collins: I probably agree. Yes. [01:20:00] Yeah. And I think it’s important al- to, also to note that a lot of the more, le- less sinful things you’ve pointed out would be seen as very sinful things to do per today’s standards, and just going with what feels socially comfortable is not necessarily

Malcolm Collins: the right thing. Yeah. And note here when it comes to weapons, you also have a duty to secure them, a, a religious duty to secure them, because an unsecured weapon can end a child’s life at any moment.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and that’s most gun deaths in America, right? It’s tragic, so yeah. Any, anyway, it

Malcolm Collins: also- But even if you, even if you hate our religion, if you want the right to carry a weapon, techno-puritanism is the way to go.

Speaker 9: And note, in terms of what the weapons look like, you can go in generally a few directions for the traditional weapons. One is to go with something that represents your ancestral group or that has ancestral ties to the Technopuritan tradition. Since we personally take [01:21:00] a lot from our own Scottish ancestry and we lean a lot into Roman ancestry, that could be a dirk or a gladius.

Or something that is inconspicuous if you think that that is the most efficient, like a belt buckle knife or something like that. It really depends on, one, your own heritage and identity and how you wish to honor that, and two, what works within your existing social context. With the understanding also always being that if everyone else is banned from having a weapon, then there’s no risk of you being killed in that situation or needing to protect someone, so you also don’t need a weapon.

But if any other religious group is allowed a weapon, because Jesus told us that we have to do this, and I know a lot of other Christian groups and denominations have pussied out of this in one way or another, but we are not them. And more is expected of us in terms of protecting ourselves and our communities than most of them expect from themselves.

Most of them live incredibly indolent, self-centered, [01:22:00] and efficaciousless lives. Why should we part our moral standards to theirs?

Simone Collins: There you go. Love it. All right, well, I will go start your dinner, and I love you very much.

Malcolm Collins: Aw, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Good tract, I think.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Interesting stuff, and I, yeah, sins are under-discussed, so I’m glad we’re going back into them.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Love you. Bye.

Simone Collins: Recording. We are here. We are back. It is happening.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, people, people like the medieval shirt on the leaflet call, so I decided I... It was okay to wear it on our-

Simone Collins: It’s good. It’s good. It’s, Mm ... the stuff that really signals BDSM is leather straps.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that’s what I

Simone Collins: was worried it appeared it looked- They ruin leather straps.

Yes, I mean- That’s why we didn’t buy anything with leather straps, yeah ...

Malcolm Collins: instead of [01:23:00] medieval. ‘Cause what I’m going for is Ren Fair man, because everybody says I make my wife dress like she’s from the past, so why don’t I dress like I’m from the past? And I go, “I don’t make my wife dress that way,” but, you

Simone Collins: know.

I chose this outfit. This is not, like, something you made me... I was like, I showed up one day wearing this stuff, and Malcolm’s like, “Well, okay.”

Malcolm Collins: Okay. I guess this is what we’re doing. All right. What are we doing for dinner tonight, by the way?

Simone Collins: I’m gonna make some kind of pasta dish for the kids. It might be macaroni and cheese.

It might not. I don’t know. Is it gonna have, like,

Malcolm Collins: a meat sauce or a... What, what type of sauce?

Simone Collins: I... Probably a macaroni and cheese sauce or possibly just Parmesan cheese. Okay. I, I don’t know yet. It sort of depends on what the kids want, what mood they’re in. I’m okay with mac

Malcolm Collins: and cheese tonight

Simone Collins: if- Mac and cheese?

Malcolm Collins: if you’re doing that, yeah.

Simone Collins: It suits their, their cheesy fancy. It might suit your cheesy fancy, too.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, no. I can do a reheated potato tonight.

Simone Collins: Yeah, you can with cheddar? Do a reheated

Malcolm Collins: potato with cheese.

Simone Collins: Okay. Cheesu. [01:24:00] Like cheddar, right? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and then some of those meat patty things, the pork ones. Yeah,

Simone Collins: bon cha, or whatever they’re called.

I don’t know.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Pork bon cha. They’re really good. They go really well with cheesy baked potato, I’ll tell you what.

Simone Collins: That makes a lot of sense. With some pepper on it, yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: And this time I’m gonna try to make, what, slices and just air fry them and see what happens.

Malcolm Collins: Let’s try it.

Simone Collins: What could possibly go wrong?

It better be better, because it’s gonna get crispier when you air fry it. In theory. We don’t know. If it’s an already baked potato, it might be pretty much like... Potatoes are very strange in, like, w- the starch doing things that I don’t understand, ‘cause I don’t know potato science. I’m not a potato scientist.

Speaker 30: Let’s unpack everything right here, okay? All right. Yeah. W- now let’s get this mask out right here. I get this out right here. You can’t wait to start using them, huh? Yeah, I just can’t wait.

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