The One Civilization Theory: It Was Only Ever Rome (The Misnomer of "Western Civilization")

29 oct. · Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

Join us as we delve into a provocative theory that reshapes how we view the history of human civilization. Discover the 'One Civilization Theory,' which posits that the vast majority of civilizational achievements stem from a single cultural lineage. Through an engaging discussion, we explore the advancements and contributions of this 'one civilization,' its potential to transform regions it touches, and the comparative historical advancements of different cultures across the globe. This episode promises to challenge mainstream historical narratives and offer a new perspective on our shared cultural ancestry and the factors driving civilizational success.

[00:00:00]

Hello, Simone! This episode is definitely going to go in the best of category for Basecamp, because it is a theory that I came to, which completely transforms how I see the history of humanity, and it is probably the single most offensive theory that we will air on this channel, if it becomes a mainstream theory, It will almost certainly always appear.

Any video that shows it will have a little explanation at the bottom by like the UN or something about how this theory isn't accurate. So historically I had this view that I think most people have is that human civilization. basically emerged in a few different regions, and that you would have these periods of growth where sometimes one region would be ahead.

Other times, another region would be ahead. Totally. Yeah, like, oh, China's the most cutting edge right now. And, and now [00:01:00] it's Japan and now it's, you know, It's, it's Egypt and whatever, yes, totally agree.

This theory posits that that view of history is mostly downstream of what I can only call the deification of the historical narrative. And that. The vast majority of feats of civilization were created by one civilization.

Oh no. And now I'm worried. Yes. Awkward. And it came to me when I was studying ancient Rome and ancient Greece recently, because I've been on a kick watching a number of videos on ancient Rome and Greece, and one thing really hit me as I was studying these periods, whenever Rome would retreat from a region.

And the Roman Empire would fall temporarily in a region that region would fall [00:02:00] back into a period of people essentially fighting over who had the nicest mud hut. Like very little was happening in those regions during that period. And this includes the region that my ancestors were only when we were older.

under Roman colonization during the period of the Roman Empire. Did we really do anything meaningful, civilizationally speaking? Okay. So to be fair, you're not arguing that it's your own ancestors who were somehow superior from a culture. Yes. Not my own ancestors. My ancestors were mud hut people.

For example, I am pretty much British, Irish, Scottish English The British Islands. You might say, well, come on, your ancestors must have produced something. Aren't there any great ruins in ancient British Isles? I was like, well, you know, there's Unga Bunga, like Stonehenge, I wouldn't call that a great ruin.

And they go, come on, there must be some great architecture in the British Isles. And I would say, actually, there is! In the [00:03:00] seventies, eighties, there was this beautiful bath complex built in Bath . And they're like, ah, you've seen the British can do something. I go, well, unfortunately, the Romans built that.

And it was in a, a, a nowhere backwater of the Roman Empire. And Britain didn't build anything comparable for literally thousands of years. This was their equivalent of like a district like sub-district that nobody cared about. But now you might be going through your head. What led me to this thought?

So I was studying the Roman Empire, thinking of all these ruins, and I started thinking, okay, okay, okay. But what about like the other civilizations of Earth during this period, right? Like, I've traveled all over the world. I've been to something, I think it's over a hundred countries. Like done a lot, a lot of travel.

And so I started thinking, okay, what were the other major civilizations? I was like, okay, you have Mesoamerica. Mesoamerica had great ruins, right?

You know, you've got your, your Machu Picchu, for example. Um, and ancient Mayan and Aztec ruins are extremely impressive. Right, [00:04:00] but as anyone broadly knows those ruins are fairly recent like Machu Picchu was built in the 15th century and so but I gave them a i'm like, okay, that doesn't really count.

You know, they got their civilization started later but there's also like india and china In japan, right? Like they're all ancient civilizations and i've i've been to these countries before and I was like, okay, so When I was in japan I must have seen some ruins that had any sort of equivalency to even, like, Roman backwaters in, like, Spain and stuff.

I started thinking about it and I was like, what? Okay. Okay. China. I've, I've seen some hint that there was a civilization there. And then I was like, no. Oh, oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I have seen an East Asian ruin impressive at the Roman ruins. There was Angkor Wat and in India there was Hampi. And then I look up the dates of those ruins, the 15th and the 14th century.

Those ruins were built. [00:05:00] Anchor Watt was built when King's College Chapel was being built in Cambridge. In 1446. Like, they were built incredibly recently. And so then I was like, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. But egypt. I consider Egypt to be the ancestor of Greek civilization.

So it's one line of civilization. The Greeks considered Egypt to be the ancestor of their civilization. Do they really? In Greek literature, they would say, oh, we got our civilization from Egypt. Yeah, they're always borrowing from Egypt. So, basically the, the single line of civilization that I can track goes Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece and Greece really takes over the flame from Egypt, and then Rome takes over the flame from Greece, and then Charlemagne takes over the flame from, , Rome, and then Charlemagne's kingdom splits into the various distinct sort of warring kingdoms that take over the flame from that, and then the flame is taken over by the British Empire and then it's sort of seeded around the world.

But [00:06:00] to get back to the story here, I was like, okay, but works of literature. Right? I have heard about all of these great works of literature by totally disconnected cultures. Like, for example, the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Or the Journey to the West. Did you know when these were written? Romance of the Three Kingdoms was written in the 14th century. Journey to the West was written in the 16th century. I was like, okay, well, what about like, Water Martyr, Martyrs, also known as Outlaws of the Marsh, or Dream of the Red Chamber, right?

I've never heard of these. The 14th and the 18th century, respectively. To give you an idea of how late these were written to works of literature that I can clear, consider just like, As somebody who has read translated works of literature, and I'm just like, this one grabs me, these two don't. Dante's mind comedy was, started writing it in 1308, and he finished writing it in 1320.

Hundreds of years before any of these works. How about the Tales of Genji? The Tales of [00:07:00] Genji. That's Japan, and that was I think even written by a woman

the 11th century, Simone. So that was written only 200 years before Dante's Divine Comedy. Did you read the Tale of Gingy? Have you read the Aeneid? Yeah, and, okay, that's a lot better. Okay, so when was the Aeneid written? Yeah, okay, admittedly, way, way, way before the Tale of Genshi. The Aeneid was written in 29 or 19 B. C. The Tales of Genshi were written literally 1, 000 years later, and were literarily less sophisticated and complex.

That's fair, yeah. It's not like it's ancient. Even close. And this is like, when I started having this, I just started going through, I was like, Oh God, this can't be real. And again, I'm not saying that there was like no Japanese civilization, that they didn't produce any art, that there was no Chinese civilization, that there was no Indian civilization.

But what I'm saying is, and you'll actually see this, is that these civilizations advanced [00:08:00] artistically, literarily, at about the speed of my own ancestors, which were the British, until the British met the Romans. And then after the British were fully colonized the British began, like as civilization spread out from Charlemagne again, they began to do some, you know, more sophisticated things.

But what I'm saying is just it's. Civilizationally, along almost every metric, they were dramatically behind the one civilization. Yeah. So there's basically what you're arguing is there is one civilizational lineage that has ever actually kicked ass. It started with Egypt. went through Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, et cetera, and sort of into Europe broadly.

And there's just kind of nothing that competes with it. And, and, and no one has spontaneously figured it out the way that this has. So everyone who is most competitive now is standing on the shoulders of that one giant. There is only one giant. There is only one giant. And every time it, Touches [00:09:00] another region, right?

Usually first they rebel, it leaves, it spins into savagery again, then they come back they, they try to set something up, And by the time they set up any sort of permanent civilizational infrastructure in the region Then that region undergoes a rapid increase in prosperity in the amount of artistic works they're producing, in the amount of industry they're producing, in the amount of science they're producing.

So it's not that it only works for one people. My people can invent this. Insofar as a culture is willing to adopt it and build upon it, they can thrive. Yes. And they can build their own iterations of it, but that no one has independently captured this civilizational dynamo. I guess you can kind of look at how Japan just started killing it after World War II, when it started embracing elements of Western culture and how they took many elements of Western culture, did it so much better.

And then the sort of unique Japanese way. So yeah, like doing jazz on it, like putting your own spin on it and being additive with it can give you a lot of power, but it is definitely [00:10:00] pulling from that one derivative. Yeah. And the other big change that has happened in my understanding of world history is my opinion of the Mesoamerican civilizations has gone up dramatically because of the one civilization theory.

Which is to say that historically, my take on Mesoamerica is Mesoamerica was largely backwards compared to most of the world, but that was only because they got a late start. Yeah, it took people a long time to get down there. Compare. India, China, and Japan and ignored the one civilization to what was happening in Mesoamerica.

Mesoamerica kind of was schooling them at various parts in its history. Fair point. And that was the other thing that really got me when I was thinking of like great ruins I visited and stuff like that. So to give you an idea of what I mean here, Simone, I want you to compare Two ruins. Now keep in mind Roman ruins, you've seen Roman ruins.

You know, most of the Roman ruins you've seen are either a hundred years pre like they're either like [00:11:00] 50 AD or 50 bc, like the Roman bass, right? Were built in 70 AD in the backwater, and also just everything in Rome itself. It is so impressive. I mean, even just. The building material that everything is made of, because, you know, Rome sort of was torn down to create what now is Rome, you know, is impressive.

Just the very building blocks of the city. Yeah, so I'm going to send you some pictures so when I was looking for ruins in Japan that were from around the period of say, which was from the 4th to the 10th century. So, you see Tikal? That's the first picture of Mesoamerican ruins there.

Gorgeous. So, when Tikal was built, that's when Japan was building what is now the Hizmura Temple ruins from the 11th to 12th century BC. So, first of all, you can see it's pretty trivial compared to what they were doing in Mesoamerica at the same time period. Yeah. Not only that, it's trivial compared to, like, Anything Rome ever did in their [00:12:00] history, it's trivial compared to the bath that were built literally , 000 years before.

So wait, what's, what is special about Hiraizumi? It's one of the only old ruins I could find in Japan. It's like one of the oldest buildings or something? Yeah, we'll go over some other buildings in Japan that are older than this, but most of them are just going to look destroyed mud huts or completely reconstructed buildings.

I feel like I visited some really old ones in Kamakura, but maybe We'll go over them. Like, there's a palace complex, but it's fairly small when contrasted with something like Tikal. Yeah, I guess the argument is they're all just very handsome wooden buildings. And your point is that when it comes to monumental architecture or stuff that really shows A level of sophistication.

Yeah. I mean, like these are, these are exquisitely built buildings, but we're still talking Lincoln logs versus like carving stone and achieving Lincoln logs versus like grand huge projects that [00:13:00] require hundreds of thousands of people, cooperation, infrastructure if giant economies so don't get us wrong because we love Japan.

We're, we're, we're, we're big Sinophiles. Okay. Yes. Weebs, as you would say in low culture. But I was disappointed and we'll go over like actual Japanese literature and compare contemporary Japanese literature to, to other literature in different parts of the world. But it's not impressive in comparison.

I'm conceding that. Okay, the next temple series you have here is Chichen Itza in Mexico. This was built in the 6th to 13th century. So again, like, that's actually really impressive for Mesoamerica. That's like Roman level stuff there, where it's like genuinely You unique in, in sort of shocking art. Now we're going to get a hostile environment.

China must've had something in the, in that period. This is the closest major ruin site I could find to like a Roman ruin site in China. [00:14:00] This was built in the 14th century. It's Guan Chang. What about that underground complex with rivers made of mercury? That seemed really impressive. We'll get to that, but that we'll get to that in the art section, because I go over that one in the art section, and it is not as impressive as you'd think.

But when contrasted was what Rome was doing and so, I asked AI this, cause I was like, this cannot be true, all right? So I was like, okay like where are the Roman like ruins in Japan, right? Like, and they're like, well, Japan has some ancient ruins. They're generally not as extensive or monumental.

It's all found in Rome, Angkor or Mesoamerica. However, Japan does have several significant historical sites that offer glimpses into its ancient past. So this is what, what AI came up with. So we had something called Nara, which was built 710. to 784. Nara's beautiful. You want to look up what the Nara ruins look like.

I've been. So consider what you're looking at [00:15:00] here. Like, consider this compared to any Roman ruin site you have ever been to. And we'll do a Yeah, we're still talking Lincoln Logs versus This is 700 years after Rome and it's Lincoln Logs. Yeah, like versus transporting obelisks. It's just This is cute.

Let's take it and move it. Okay,

then you're like, okay, okay, okay. So there's got to be other stuff. Well, this is the

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: 1000 at 300.

year old Buddhist temple, the Gongjing temple. So the Gongjing temple, I'm like, okay, okay, that's cool. This is just a building. This is not like a grand complex or anything like that. And it's like, okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. So here's one. I found one that's 14, 000 to 300 BCE. It's called the Sina Majuri Mayana site. Okay. What about it? What does it look like?

Oh, this is mud huts. Okay, this is like similar to what I'm talking about, like Norwegian mud huts. Like it, it literally, I wouldn't know if this was in, my ancestors had built this in the UK before they met the [00:16:00] Romans or not. You know, like it is, it is mud hut style. And again, we're not just, people can be like, oh, well maybe the ground here wasn't good enough for building, right?

Like maybe it was too many natural disasters. Maybe they only had trees, right? And I'm like, yeah. Then how come nobody else did it? Okay, I can see that explaining Japan alone. Okay, it can't explain Japan, Korea, China, every, Africa, no, but that's not even an excuse because I, the point I was going to make about Mayans and Aztecs, for example, is that they're dealing in incredibly hostile jungle environments where you are fighting An aggressive environment, and they still managed to build a ton.

So I just don't feel like you have that much of a legitimate excuse when it comes to Well, same with the Romans. It's not like the Romans did big architecture when the weather was nice. Well, and they're right by corrosive oceans and waters and stuff. Yeah, mm mm. Pretty much every part of their empire had giant [00:17:00] works in it, whether it was a backwater like Britain or, you know, the, the Antioch, or in their African colonies.

Like, if you go to Tunisia, you can see giant Things like it's it wasn't like a sometimes they did it. Sometimes they didn't thing. So that excuse doesn't really hold So, okay. Now we're gonna go to China because of course China must China China Yes, and China is all about being like we're the OG civilization.

We did all this first. We invented electricity. We invented Aerial combat, it's we're gonna get to the Chinese claims of inventing a bunch of things as well because they were also less That face, that was a cute face. I, look, I don't like this is true. Like I always try to take the most pluralist understanding.

And the only way I can even say this theory is knowing that I come from a mud hut people. Okay? I am only comfortable disseminating this theory or even having these thoughts because my [00:18:00] ancestors had nothing to do with Rome or Greece and they were flinging poo at each other. Whatever. When, when they were gifted civilization through calling, yeah, your ancestors were literally the barbarians that Romans couldn't even bother to hang on to.

Cause they're like, you know what? There's really nothing much. So I'm mostly they literally just like built a wall and keep them out. This was the first wall, build a wall. Build a wall. Yeah. But by the way, by the way, literally

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-2: About a thousand

years before China builds the Great Wall, but we'll get to that in a second.

Speaker: It was heavily restored in both the 1950s and 1980s.

I didn't know that. Not even old bricks. Am I missing something here? So the old stuff's gone, hasn't it, really? And then it doesn't count. It shouldn't be a wonder then. You can't just build something on it and still, get all the tourists in when it's not what it says on the tin. What I'm looking at is basically a wimpy home. Bears in [00:19:00] here? What's this all about though? It's almost like they know that the wall isn't that good. It's like, what else can we give them? We've charged them like seven quid to get in to see an old wall. Well, it's not an old wall, it's from the 1980s. I've got a mate who's got some bears. Have you heard?

Stick them down at the bottom. This is the original wall, isn't it? Or is it? I don't know. Is it just badly done? This is pretty s**t, isn't it?

Are you having a laugh?

This isn't the Great Wall, is it? You kidding me? I mean, I like the way there's no tourists and that.

But then why would there be?

Okay. So the Sunning's two ruins, I was going to do pictures of it, but it's from 4, 800 years ago and it's believed to be the remnants of the Shu Kingdom. It's yielded many bronze artifacts. Basically you just see piles of artifacts and otherwise it's a fairly flat area. There's not even anything really to show you.

Then I have the Yingzhou ruins. So this is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in the Henan Province. Yingzhou was the ancient capital of [00:20:00] the Shang Dynasty, 16th to 11th century BC. So this was the capital of their entire civilization.

Oh, oh, sweeties. Oh, dear. Hmm. Yeah, it's very much a, oh, sweeties, that is not a civilizational capital. Crap. And I feel like, you know, as we go through this, what you're really gonna get is a It was just so convenient from like an everybody getting along standpoint that we pretended and we kept matching, I think, things that were happening thousands of years later in other parts of the world to things that like the ancient Greeks were doing.

And through not, like, putting dates on them, we were able to, in our head, have this idea that, like, different civilizations were developing sort of parallel to each other, when this just wasn't happening. Yeah, fair point. Yeah, there's just sort of the ancient [00:21:00] Japanese, and the ancient Greeks, and the ancient Chinese, and the, yeah, and the, I never thought about comparing time by time, and, I've never seen a history class do that, which is quite interesting.

So, yeah, well, and it also breaks a lot of the things because people be like, well, you should look at like, you know, why the West is winning for now. That like shows that this is all due to like geography and like accidents. And it's like, yeah, well then explain to me why, when Rome fell, the West went back to a bunch of mud hut people until somebody reignited the torch of civilization, specifically why, why is it that every time Rome left a region like Spain?

Like Spain was able to produce great art when Rome was there. They were able to produce great buildings. They had a great economy. Rome leaves. They go back to mud hut people. It's not like, no, sorry, but it's not, it's not like. Europe, it's not like it was anything special with Europe. Mm-Hmm. In fact, it didn't even start in Europe.

It really started with Egypt and Mesopotamia. Yeah. So I don't think that, like when you look at Mesopotamian ruins, which we'll get to in a second, like some of the very oldest civilizational ruins or [00:22:00] Egyptian ruins, and then you compare it to like capital of China from , it's like they're not even in the same league.

And this is now of thousands of years earlier. Yeah. So now we're gonna go to the Lru Architectural Ruins.

And note, this is an AI being exhaustive for its mate, trying to find all of the best ruins it could to impress me. .

So this is One only dating back 5, 300 years. So, you know, this is like, around when like, a little bit before Dante's Inferno was being written, and, and look at it. Well, based on what you've been saying about findings, it seems that these are people who've been more interested in clothing and accessories, and not so much grand architecture.

Well, apparently they also weren't interested in art, which we'll get to in just a second, but you can see here. The, the, the site, it's just like a flat site, like there's nothing there, it's like a few outlines of previous foundations, and that's it. Yeah, no, this looks like the beginning of a housing development that's [00:23:00] weirdly faced.

I don't know how else to describe it, but that's what I'm getting from this. It gives housing development. Yeah, and people can be like, well, you know, it was all wood or they used more wood and stuff like that. But again, like these Roman things are there, even things that used wood. And that's the really interesting thing.

You can go and look at like one civilizational areas. You can walk around. Their old buildings and in the very old churches and everything like that, you'll see wood, you'll see blah, blah, blah, you know, like you'll see stuff that is supposedly why this other stuff isn't there anymore, right? Yeah, but also I think that you should get points as a civilization for demonstrating long termist thoughts and building to last.

So when, when, when you look at ancient Mayan and Aztec I guess not that ancient, but when you look at that and, and you see these stone artifices and you see what people built, even Stonehenge, you got to admire it more because these are people who [00:24:00] are like, this has to last for thousands of years.

I'm going to build this to last instead of short term thinking. So the, the one thing that the Chinese built that was actually you know, potentially, like, equivalent in impressiveness is the Emperor Jingzong's Mausoleum, which is where the Terracotta Army is. However, the only thing that really makes it impressive is how many terracottic figurines there were.

Nothing else about the site is particularly impressive. The Rivers of Mercury were not impressive to you?

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-3: No, the rivers of mercury thing, we don't know if this is real. It's not like archeologists when they were excavating this area of found rivers of mercury. , a guy writing a hundred years after the tomb was constructed, created a mythologized account that there was these giant rivers of mercury sort of set up in the tomb. , but, , and, and we have detected that there is some mercury in the tomb, but it's not like we found it or anything.

So we don't know. It [00:25:00] could be a myth, could be a fairly modest thing.

I don't know. Like, so, so let me explain to you what I mean, like the terracotta army, like logistically speaking. It may be a lot of people, and we're going to go into the artistic merit of it later, to compare it with the equivalent Greek statues or, or other statues that were made around the same time period.

That, one, it artistically wasn't very sophisticated compared to what was going on in the Mediterranean region at that time period. Again, I'm not Mediterranean And it also was architecturally not particularly like it was something like it was a lot more than the later Chinese stuff. I'll give it like, I mean, the, the statues themselves had unique facial features from around 200 BC as well.

So, you know, pretty impressive. But again, and so now we're going to get to the last major architectural ruin site that it was able to find for me in China. And this was the Jihon Ruins and I will send this to you. Oh, that was the ones that we went over, like the well The housing development.

So, these [00:26:00] ruins in China yeah, they were the ones along the Silk Road, we went over them earlier, just not very impressive. Okay, so then people are like, well, what about the Great Wall? Right?

A great wall. I think other than the terracotta army, that's the one thing in East Asia I may give some credit to, but it was from the 7th century AD.

Well, and also No, sorry, 7th century Compare the To 17th century AD, I'm sorry I didn't make that clear. No, if you compare the Great Wall, which is a wall, I've walked the Great Wall, it is, it's a wall. It's, and it's not that big.

Speaker: This is pretty s**t, isn't it?

Are you having a laugh?

To the Roman aqueducts, they, they built walls that were water. Significantly before the Great Wall.

We'll be looking at it when we go over the Roman stuff. They had heated floors! They had heated floors in bathhouses! I mean, like, there's [00:27:00] It's just, there's no comparison. There's no comparison.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-4: And I remind you that the, , great wall was started 700 years after the Roman aqueducts were built and it wasn't finished until 1700 years after the Roman aqueducts were built. It's just not a comparable thing. Then you have been always talking with a friend about this and they're like, give this, this can't be true.

What about.

The Sui dynasties, grand canal. That was a huge things. And since. It's from a 581 to 618 a. The problem is , it was big. It was big. It wasn't one of the things that AI primary was, and it probably should have been because it's actually fairly impressive. , in terms of, , just this. The sheer size of it. The problem is, is that the sheer size of it? , or the complexity of it, it's pretty, not big compared with the Roman road network.

, again, 500 years before this. And, uh, you know, what they're doing with the canals is they're digging pits. , [00:28:00] and then they are, , lining them and putting various buffers on them so that water can flow through them. , the problem is that the Roman roads, which were much, much, much more extensive, , did the same thing you needed to dig about, , three to five feet down and then put multiple different types of layers of rock and stone down. To create these ultra durable roads, which still exist today.

, so again, civilizationally, we're just talking about a different scale here.

Okay. So. And the people are like, but what about Africa? You can't forget Africa. Africa did some things. What about Great Zimbabwe?

Okay, okay, okay. Let's look at Great Zimbabwe. I'm not familiar with Great Zimbabwe. I'm excited for this. Okay. Ooh, I like the rounded, the rounded towers. It's interesting architecturally but it's not like particularly impressive.

It looks like a No, it looks like a fortification. Yeah, it looks like a fortification, really. But it doesn't Not a particularly large [00:29:00] fortification, I'd say it's about the size of like a starfort. Yeah, if that. It looks pretty small. Yeah, it looks pretty small. And that that's like, that's called Great Zimbabwe.

That's the one thing they got there. It is not particularly impressive. Now, again, people are like, are you saying that there was no great monumental architecture or art produced in Africa? Oh, this is a medieval city. So this is not, this is,

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-5: The city began to construction in the 11th century and it was abandoned in the 15th century. So yeah, she's right. Medieval. , a thousand years after Rome was doing it stuff and it's. Nothing.

Compared to a Roman thing.

I'm like, no, I'm not saying that at all. I can go to Tunisia and see amazing architecture.

The problem is it was built while they were Roman colony. I can, I can, I can go and read great writings from Alexandria. The problem is that that's a descendant of Egypt and a lot of things for Britain during Greek or [00:30:00] Roman colonization. And people are like, What do you mean Greek or Roman colonization?

There's so many great Egyptian figures that aren't from the period of Greek colonization like Cleopatra The Ptolemaic Greek princess. Oh, yeah. Greek lady. That's the other thing about the way that the civilizational system works is it appears to sort of pass the torch on To sort of the next iterator on it.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah I mean you have argued to me many times and i'm obsessed with aegypt in various periods, right? I go through that great courses lecture and i'm like, oh, this is amazing. But You point out quite fairly that they do stagnate. They kind of just, they get really good at just keeping things the same.

And that's why I think your point about passing the torch and the collective iteration upon this one line is meaningful.

I know I'm going to show you the one exception to the one civilization theory. [00:31:00] And this is a few things in extra ancient India, specifically right now for architecture. And we're also going to go into literature because extra ancient India did compete with the one civilization in literature. Okay. It's almost like it almost had a civilizational explosion and then didn't.

So this is the Anjati and Elor caves. Those look amazing. BC. 10th century, second to 10th century BC. Okay, really old. We got it. We got a contender here. Absolutely. It may not compete with most Roman things, but it definitely competes with the Greeks who they were contemporaries of. If you've been to ancient Athens that is impressive.

And we'll keep seeing this in India. The most impressive monuments are often the oldest which is a little weird and we'll go over what might have happened there. It's the same with their literature. If you go to their like BCE literature, and this is sort of going to be a giveaway, you will find a flourishing of literature that definitely competes with the Greek literature of the time [00:32:00] period.

But if you then go 500 years, 10, 000 years in the future and you compare it with what's coming out of the one civilization it's just Like Popol Vuh stuff sorry, I don't mean to be, it's like, this animal did this, and this animal did this, and then there was the, you know, this, and it's like, oh, come on, you guys can do better than this, you guys wrote so many great works 10, 000 years ago, like, what is this?

Yeah, there seems to be absolutely nothing that will prevent a great culture from entering a dark age. If the selective pressures necessary to keep the torch bright aren't there.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-6: I will note though, that the differences between India's great works. , when contrasted with a time gait aid, great works in Europe. In the one civilization or even time lag. Great works in the, when civilization do not fall as far behind as those of China or Japan. So here, , I have on screen here, two temples, , each built [00:33:00] in.

, 12,000 CE. , and while they aren't the sorts of large complexes that were being built in Meso-America at the time or the giant giant cities and ruined structures of Rome that were built. Uh, well, 1,200 years before this, they are at least. Interesting and impressive to a degree.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-7: Generally speaking this one, civilization theory, new perspective I have has dramatically risen my view of ancient Indian civilization and ancient Mesopotamian civilization. And dramatically lowered my view of ancient east Asian civilization. Particularly China, which just sunk to almost nothing, in my opinion. , specifically. Because I used to think of them as like an equivalent to what was going on in Rome and stuff like that. And they just like factually weren't and people will be like, well, what about their economy?

What about their economy? Like whether their economy so big it's like, this is when [00:34:00] people act like Masa, Mussa represented some giant civilization happening in Africa at the time. , and yeah, I mean, there was a people and a culture there, but they weren't producing things equivalent to like what the ancient Greeks or Romans were producing.

Just having a lot of wealth doesn't translate into cultural production. And I think that this is in a way more damning that a culture with all this wealth, wasn't able to turn it into the types of things like, you know, the aqueducts or the Rome road network or the ruins. Everywhere you go, or the art or the literature.

This is a Mesopotamian ruin site that I'm sending you here. Okay. To give you an idea, to just contrast everything that we've been looking at right now this is the Mohenjar Dara. This is from 2, 500 BCE. Well, what we're looking at seems to be some kind of city complex. A [00:35:00] massive city complex. Yeah. Why doesn't China have a single one of these?

Why doesn't Japan have a single one of these? When we have one from an inhospitable region made with mud from 2500 BCE from the one culture. Well, it's not just mud, it's proper bricks, but yeah. Yeah. But what I mean is you can't just say we didn't have stones. Yeah. Yes. Right. To carve, et cetera. Yeah. This is an incredibly impressive site, but okay.

Let's also look at some other things just so you can remember for people who might've forgotten what Rome was doing and when were they doing it? The Colosseum of Rome. Consider that many of these that we've been looking at, were around the 10th century, right? Was made in 72 AD the Colosseum of Rome.

Like nothing that we have looked at to me comes at like one 10th, even close the Colosseum. Well, and, and most people are accustomed to seeing the Colosseum ruins and not thinking about how it was with [00:36:00] mechanical floors. You know, this, this big, underground complex, like the Colosseum literally had naval battles in the center of it, right?

Yeah, we don't presently have even stadiums that do the same level of crazy s**t that the Coliseum did. So there may be cruise ships are pretty impressive. I, I, I know they're, they're seen as so trashy, but I'm just so impressed by cruise ships. There's like these amazing spaceships. So now what I'm sending you here, this is from 80 to 212.

Okay. This is the Baths of Karkala. Okay, yeah, we've got towers, we've got complex buildings, this is an archways, yeah. Unique architectural elements, this is a buried building, yeah, alright.

So this is an aqueduct from 1 AD in an outer territory in France, okay? Point de Garde, France. This is dramatically [00:37:00] more impressive than, like, The Great Wall, for example. Yeah, huh, yes. And it's literally hundreds of years earlier, many hundreds of years earlier.

Speaker: This is the original wall, isn't it? Or is it? I don't know. Is it just badly done? This is pretty s**t, isn't it?

Are you having a laugh?

This isn't the Great Wall, is it? You kidding me?

So, now we're gonna look at Pola Arena, and this is in Croatia, 27 BC. , but it basically looks like the Colosseum. And, okay, we're like, what about distant? Because people kept hearing me talk about Tunisia, right? Like, what was Tunisia like, okay?

This is Tunisia in 238 AD. So, like, distant colony, right? This is what Rome was putting up in Africa. Backwater. Whoa, what? It's just another, whoa! Okay, sorry, this is, it's very, it's a very impressive [00:38:00] coliseum building. Yeah, it is an impressive Coliseum building. That is so wild. And it was 238, which is way before any of the other sites that we're looking at.

Now, we haven't gotten to the art or, or, or, or literature yet, okay? But so far, because when I first brought this theory up to you, you were like, that cannot possibly be true. Yes. Are you beginning to be like, oh, this is a bit bigger than I thought it was, in terms of the scale of differences? I'm, I'm kind of already sold.

I, I'm concerned about this now, because it's going to make me. Look really bad at parties if I bring this up. Thank goodness. I don't go to parties anymore

Those were all built later in the one civilization, let's go to the Athenian temple ruins. Okay, so these were built in 432 BC

Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I always hear. It's literally better than a single set of ruins I was able to find anywhere in Japan or China. Yeah, massive columns still standing after [00:39:00] so many years. No, actually, I think the columns fell down at one point and it was rebuilt. Oh, okay. Okay. But that was recently that they fell down.

I think it was due to like bombing and like the Napoleonic campaign.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-8: It was 1687 and it was an explosion caused by Venetian bombardment that severely damaged the temple causing many of the columns to fall. So they stayed up till 1687.

I don't know. I'll have to find it. But yeah, they stood for a very, very, very, very long time. The same was Egypt. Like nothing in any of these other places comes close to Egypt. Really the only place you get close again is super ancient India and then nothing from up into modern times.

Wow. Okay. Yeah. Okay, and I'll put on screen here some pictures of, like, Roman settlements in Turkey and Spain. So you can see this isn't like an isolated thing. It's like, literally, I can't find a single thing from these other civilizations, and yet everywhere the Romans go, they're building something. So if I'm anticipating what listeners are thinking, it's, okay, fine.

Your point is made about [00:40:00] architecture. I'll believe in the one great culture or civilization theory of architecture, maybe literature, which you brought up. But, I don't know, like, the art, who cares, like, I've, I've been to so many, I don't know, like, you know, Asian art museums to, refute this, and Yes, and the reason why that refutation works in your head is because you haven't compared cross time when the Asian art you're looking at was made versus when the Greek art was made.

Okay, I'll go straight to art instead of literature. I was gonna read a bunch of literature texts, but no. We'll go straight to art, alright? So I just decided to do

so, a random search for Greek art, and this was the first picture that came up. You know, there's lots of beautiful Greek statues, ancient Greek statues. Oh, yeah. This picture came up, and this is 440 BC. Okay. 440 BC. Okay. Wow. You're looking at the statue, right? So it's so [00:41:00] realistic. For those who are only listening, we're looking at a classic Greek statue, but it's a very highly polished polished marble of a nude male with, you know, extremely realistic detail.

This could just be. A human who is painted and is naked, but you know, very small penis for whatever reason. And yeah, that's the only part of it that doesn't seem realistic. Yeah. And I had this moment where I asked Google, I go, okay, give me examples of Japanese art from 440 BC. Like, first I said statues because I wanted to compare like was like, yeah, there are no Japanese statues from 440 BC and I was like, wait, this can't be real.

So I managed to find some piece of Japanese art from this time period. Oh, dear. Oh I don't know what this is, but stylistically, but this could just be that we're biased, you know? We're looking at very dis No! No human in history, if you showed, I guarantee you, if you showed that Greek [00:42:00] statue to somebody from most of Japanese history and you prefer this or this Japanese art, they'd be that effing statue.

I know, I know. Yeah, you show that to like a Japanese person, like, and you know, I guess if you delivered that Greek statue. To someone in that same period of Japan, they would be extremely, they would prefer to have the Greek statue for sure. Yes. You want to know what my ancestors were doing during this period?

Yeah, I'm sure nothing that impressive, right? You're gonna get a kill it with fire moment here oh, what? No! That is literally the best my ancestors were able to do when the Greek were, were putting on this like Perfect physique of humanity and then the, the, the my ancestors are like

Speaker 2: Welcome [00:43:00] to Jurassic Park.

yeah, I'm getting that meme where like they begin to play John Williams, Jurassic park theme.

And then it goes to like a recorder playing it terribly. Oh yeah. The recorder playing one. Oh no, it's terrible. Oh, I need to not look at that. I need to look at the statue again, the papylic cleanser, even though it has a micro penis. Okay, okay. What about the Chinese? What did they have? Well, again, with the Chinese, I ran into one of these problems.

I was like, give me statues that the Chinese made around 440 BC. And they were like, Chinese didn't make any statues around 440 BC. And I was like, okay, so what were they making? [00:44:00] It goes, well, they were very skilled bronze crafters. So I will show you a bronze bell, and they also carved jade well. I like bells.

And a green pendant from China during this period. And you've got to click on it to open it. Pendants? Okay. Okay. I mean, yeah. It looks like it was made by a kindergartner. Yeah, it's not very impressive. The bell's fairly impressive. I mean, that requires metal forging. That requires technology. And so I admire that.

The bronze is not a difficult metal to forge, Simone. We're in the Bronze Age here. The, the, the Okay, anyway. But, but Again, like, just nothing really there, and so you can be like, Okay, the Terracotta Army, alright? Yes. It must compete with that Greek statue we looked at. No. There's two little problems here.

One, the Terracotta Army is literally 200 years after that. And two, you might not have looked at the Terracotta Army up close. No, I, yeah, no, it doesn't come, it doesn't come close. The, the, the Terracotta Army is impressive [00:45:00] in its mass customization and its scale. It is not impressive because the statues themselves are really You might forget just how unimpressive it is compared to that Greek statue.

I just sent it to you so you can compare it. No, I, I, I have a pretty good, let's see if, if memory is accurate here yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what I pictured. But okay now we're gonna get to and you always find ancient ancient india that's where you get things that come pretty close. This is india a few hundred years after those greek statues Okay. Okay. It's, it's nowhere close, but it is like in the realm of contention. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and, and they're, they're going for fan service here in a way I would argue kind of matches the fan serviceness of the Greek statue.

So, yeah, we've got polished stone, you know, very, very, very skilled stone work. So, yeah, this is, this is good. [00:46:00] Yeah. And you could argue Malcolm that the lack of. We'll say photorealistic accuracy is a stylistic choice here. So yeah, I'm gonna give this credit. Yeah, I'll give it credit. But again, this falls into my thing is something seemed to be happening in India, but it seemed to have died out.

And this will be more clear when we talk about literature and stuff like that. But yeah Now people will go like, ah, but China, they had so many great inventions. And so I was like, yeah, I had remembered this. I was like gunpowder. And then as I started going back to it, I was like gunpowder's doing an awful lot of heavy lifting in my brain right here.

When I'm trying to think of Chinese invention. I'm thinking flaming lanterns that have explosives. Am I getting this wrong? Gunpowder again. Gunpowder is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. So when you look at the things that China invented that the West did not invent, you do have some impressive things.

You have papermaking, second century A. D. [00:47:00] Awesome. I will point out, though, that 3000 B. C. E. papyrus was invented. Now, paper is cheaper to make, lasts longer and, and easier to, to, like, store. So just, like, strictly better. Yeah. So you got papermaking. Okay. Definitely gonna give them that. Yes. You got woodblock printing.

This is in the 6th and 7th century. And that's good. That's great. Gunpowder the 9th century. That's a good one. Okay. Then you got the compass in the 11th to 12th century That's a good one. That's awesome. Yes. Yeah. But here's the problem. When I started trying to, to, to investigate this, it's not really an invention.

That's a by product of an insect, but yeah, no, come on. Okay. So we'll count silk. So we have paper making. Printing, gunpowder, the compass, and silk, and the one civilization, you know what they invented? Literally everything else. That's the problem. Okay, whoops, [00:48:00] yeah, that's Gunpowder, and all of the things you see here are not things that require civilizational infrastructure to invent.

They're not actually particularly complex inventions, they're more like discoveries of like chemical phenomenon. Right? That's the problem with this, okay? Or, or a unique process for making something, right? I'm not saying that these regions never had, like, great individuals who would come up with these interesting ideas.

I'm just saying that whatever this civilizational infrastructure that seems to have spread through the one in civilization did, is it gave these people the ability To crank out tons, tons, tons more stuff Then you would get an equivalent great mind in one of these other civilizations And so we need to figure out why but I need to continue to go with proving my point because i'm not done with proving My point yet specifically what I mean is like if a [00:49:00] leonardo da vinci had been born in japan For whatever reason he wouldn't have had the infrastructure To be as voluminous and diverse in the things he was producing You But, sorry, I need to go to literature because you, yeah, you got me off the ball when we got to literature.

Okay,

literature. Well, as you remember, a lot of the literature that we think of as being like the definitive works of China are actually pretty late, like The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and The Journey to the West, 14th and 16th century respectively, well after something like The Divine Comedy. You do which was written in the 13th century.

You do get some, and I don't think of, the reason I'm using the Divine Comedy here is because I think of the Divine Comedy as being a fairly modern work within the tradition of the once signatory. You know, I'm not going back to something like the Aeneid or the Odyssey for great works here. Yeah, the Divine Comedy honestly reads like fanfiction.

It reads like fanfiction, but the reason I'm using it as my benchmark [00:50:00] is, in my mind, the Divine Comedy is a modern work. And so, when I say that these works are hundreds of years after the Divine Comedy, I'm saying they are very, very modern works. Well, and there's also, like, Machiavelli's The Prince, which I think is probably a better piece of literature to refer to, because it's more product of, like, It's less derivative

that was written 1513. Okay, so that would have been written at around the same time as you know, well, a bit before the journey to the West and a bit after romance of the three kingdoms. Yeah, and I would say, as somebody who's read excerpts from all of those and actually spent a significant amount of time studying the prince, the prince.

blows their pants off in terms of its complexity and depth. It still has good advice for people today where you're like, dang, that's a good point. Where I don't, you know, read Journey to the West and I'm like, wow, that's a good point. That really changes my perspective. And how I interact with people.

Yeah, you're taking it and acting differently after reading it. That's fair. [00:51:00] But yeah, well, because it's, it's just at a level of sophistication that's like not even remotely touched in these, these other regions but okay, come on, let's, let's keep going here. So, we got the book of songs, which is ancient Chinese poetry, again, poetry, which is like fine.

Like I've read a little bit of it. It's fine. is the 11th century to 7th century BCE, which is like good, but it's like, like generic old stuff.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-9: For an example, here is a poem from it called FishHawk. The fish Hawk calls high above the water. It flies. I long for my beloved, who is far away from my side.

It doesn't really, you know, I'm not particularly impressed with it when I compare it to something like the Iliad. Right. And, you know, then you got the records of the grand historian.

This is the first century BCE, a comprehensive history of China written by Sima Quan, which is like, cool that they had historians, but like. The One Civilization doesn't have, like, the one historian. It's got, like, hundreds of historians that we rely on. Just, like, the [00:52:00] rate it produced historians was also way, way, way higher.

And then people can be like, Well, you know, what about the art of war? 5th century China.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-23: BCE.

First of all, have you read The Art of War? I've read parts of The Art of War. It's not a Yuri impressive work.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-10: If you haven't read the art of war, here's an example of some quotes from it that AI thought were particularly poignant. The quality of a decision is like a well-timed swoop of a Falcon, which enables it to strike and destroy its victim. Or. If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

Secondly, the reason why, I'm like, do you happen to know if a similar canon was had in The One Civilization?

And they're like, you know, I never really looked into that. And I'm like, why haven't you looked into that? And I'm like, well, because I guess it would be totally unimpressive if one did exist. I would [00:53:00] sort of expect the ancient Greeks or Romans to have a book on how to do war. And they did. They, they had who wrote it was Aeneas Tacticus.

That's where the word tactics comes from. In fact, He had a whole series of them. He had such a comprehensive series of these books that only one survives today, and it's on specifically how to survive long sieges, and it goes into detailed stuff, like how you build things in the harbors to prevent the boats from entering.. So just dramatically more detailed and practical than the art of war. And it was like a whole encyclopedia on how to do war. And it was considered so. Unimpressive within the time period when contrasted with the other works. No, they couldn't be bothered to save it.

Wow. Didn't click save. Yeah. Read it and didn't bookmark it. Whoops. Didn't bookmark it, but we can tell from the one book that it was basically an entire encyclopedia on the [00:54:00] practicalities of how to do war within that time period. Wow. That is, I mean, yeah, and you're right. It's not at all surprising that something like that would have existed.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-11: Th this is not to say that he doesn't have the short little piffy quotes similar to the art of war. So we just go through a few of these that. AI thought were relevant. And I think the judges see that the quality of them is much higher and there they come off as more profound to me. , so these are from tacticals. In war events of great importance are often the result of trivial causes.

A bad piece is even worse than a war.

The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.

It belongs to human nature to hate those who you have injured. That last one, I just think is really profound. It is human nature. To decide to hate someone that you have injured. And it's something I see so often. And that's like, actually even like in a modern time, like a profound quote, that's not like a live, laugh, love sort of a quote, which unfortunately a lot of the [00:55:00] divorce stuff kind of is.

So, you got me on the literature, too. Okay, hold on. No, no, no, no, no. We're gonna give every civilization their fair shot. Oh, are you gonna dunk on Beowulf again? Because I feel like on every single episode we've done recently, you find some obscure opportunity to dunk on Beowulf. Oh, Beowulf is gonna get dunked on.

Beowulf is I don't, well, I dug on it because it's my ancestors. It's your ancestors. It was, it was written you know, so, so, so long. It's like Gilgamesh quality, right? People are like, it has themes. It has narrative through lines. It has themes. It was slightly coherent. I'm like, oh my god, just, sweetheart, you know, that it is not a product of a civilization.

It is a product of people who flung poo at each other. It is, it is not complicated. When contrasted with contemporary works produced by the one civilization before they deemed to uplift my people. But let's go to Japan here. So. Okay, okay, [00:56:00] okay. We got a good one here. We got Manayushi, the collection of 10, 000 leaves, compiled around 759.

A magnificent anthology of poetry containing around 4, 500 poems, mostly Takana and some Choka. And so I was like, oh, oh, this is great. Okay. Well, so what sort of poems were they? One of the most well known is an attribute to kantemoto A prominent poet from the 7th to early 8th sailed it. I'm just loving the pronunciation of these names Okay, the pop express is longing for a loved one and uses imagery of nature to convey emotion and I want to while we will be shitting on japanese art right now My favorite artistic production in the world is done by japan I predominantly watch anime and read manga.

I think that this is not an ethnic thing against the Japanese. I think that they produce some of the best artistic work in the world. And I said that I think the Koreans produce the best drama in the world out of the drama I've seen. [00:57:00] This is not saying that they can't produce this stuff. It's just saying that they Once they're touched by the one civilization as my ancestors needed to be, then they became able to produce this stuff.

So, the poem expresses a longing for a loved one and uses imagery of nature to convey the emotion. It's like, that is a very simplistic thing, and it's from the 7th to 8th century. Okay so, and then in another one, in this Tanaka, Hidemoto compares his feelings of longing to the rising smoke from Mount Fuji.

The imagery of smoke rising endlessly into the sky parallels the depths and persistence of the poet's emotions. I didn't know Mount Fuji was an active volcano for that long. Another famous poem from the Monoyoshi is Yamba no Ashitiko, which describes the beauty of Mount Fuji covered in snow. This poem uses vivid natural imagery to create a striking visual scene.

Hmm. Now, that is just that. I'm sorry, like, you can be like, oh, it's really touching. No, saying mountain is beautiful is not an [00:58:00] impressive feat. It's really touching, but that's, that's, that's 700 years after the Aeneid, you know, that is, that is just not particularly impressive when I look at the complexity of something like the Aeneid.

And even when the Aeneid is not like, this is the thing, when I'm looking for like Japanese work, like, it'll bring up like these, like five, like, these are the great things. In Rome, like you forget about tons of work because they just had to So many, many, many awesome things or the Greek plays that like, we don't even have any more.

Cause they were like, Oh yeah, that was a great play that was like as good as this other play we still have. But like, yeah. But like, haven't you heard of season five? It's so much better. Yeah. Okay. So the tale of Genji, which you went on about that's from the 11th century. All right. So let's, let's go into the tale of Genji here.

So keep in mind 11. over , 000 years after the Aeneid. One famous example is the Yugao chapter, which describes Genji's romance with a mysterious woman of lower rank. In this chapter, Genji disguises himself as a hunter to visit [00:59:00] Yugao in secret. The story creates a dreamlike atmosphere. It portrays their clandestine meeting and budding relationship.

What? That's like just, that's like something you would see in the Iliad. Yeah, well, yeah, and also talking about sex and relationships is not interesting. I think what also makes the Iliad really interesting, and the Odyssey as well, is that it takes the fact that men and women can be attracted to each other for granted and then talks about the way that these basal human instincts conflict with civilizational needs.

You know, it talks about a deeper theme and yeah, like, oh, you know, Paris's attraction to Helen ultimately was extremely damaging. And here's what happens when you succumb to those basal needs. And then also you elevate the, the wife of Odysseus, who, despite having every reason to believe that her husband was dead.

used her wiles and used her intelligence to [01:00:00] stave off a bunch of suitors who are basically sieging her home. And just for context here, the stories she's talking about are from 725 to 675 BCE. Yeah, yeah.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-12: The tale of dingy to contrast with written in the early 11th century. Consider how long it took them to not even surpass the one civilization in terms of what they're writing. And if you want an example of like short quotes from the tale of Genji, they're supposed to be like, Piffy regulatory things.

You can sort of connect them with what we went over from tactical. Or what we went over from Shenzhou , here are some quotes. Real things in the darkness seem no realer than dreams. There are as many sorts of women as there are women. No art or learning is to be pursued halfheartedly. And any art worth of learning will certainly reward more or less generously the effort made to study it. The world.

No it not, but you autumn. I confess it. You're wind at night, fall [01:01:00] stabs deep into my heart. Life is full of uncertainties. Perhaps one day some unforeseen circumstance would bring her into this life once more.

Just as a reminder for like the type of things that you're getting from tacticals who you probably haven't even heard of because these routine is just like, Mundane within his period. , it belongs to human nature to hate those. You have injured.

And keep in mind, tacticals was writing about 1000 years before the tale of Genji was written.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-13: And I'd like to point out that if you are from one of these cultural groups and you feel deeply offended that I'm saying all of the things. Keep in mind. I am saying them from the perspective of my own culture. Did nothing until it was touched by the one true culture.

My ancestors produced nothing. They produced less than even what your ancestors produced.

I have the humility to admit this, and I think. Accepting the one civilizations theory. It's a lot about just having the humility to [01:02:00] admit that cultures that you might have personally identified ways in some way, whether it was because you lived there for awhile or whether it was because you married someone from that culture or whether it's because they represent your own ancestors, that they may not actually be. That. As impressive as you thought they were.

And that may be, we can all admit that we are children of one culture, and it's not a culture that I. Have any ownership of myself.

So I think that's really interesting. And also the fact that, Another through line through, especially in the Iliad, this obsession with lineage, you know, son of so and so, son of so and so.

There is again, this focus on long termism of this interest of anyone in their role in an unbroken chain of history, rather than their feelings in the moment, which, you know, looking at a mountain and thinking it's pretty is all about your feelings in the moment, or like being caught up in a relationship or romance.

This is about short term. [01:03:00] Hindbrain thinking and you see that like, when you look at literature of ancient Greece ancient Rome or the stories and plays, it is all about the battle between the prefrontal cortex and the hindbrain, which I see to be the height of humanity. I agree. So well, let's go to another one.

So the another piece of famous Japanese literature the pillow book, this was written around sounds so Japanese, the pillow book. So Daki Makura, early, a collection of observation essays by Sae Shagon. So this is from 10,000 years at least. They had a thing for pillows for a long time. Yeah. We may be about a thousand years after Rome. Okay. We may be about a thousand years after things like the India, but, but surely this was an incredibly sophisticated book. Let's go over some of, like, I asked for one of the most famous ones in it, right?

So you gave me an example. Or I might have just looked at it and then just chose in the first example I found, but anyway, this is what it is. A white coat worn over a violet waistcoat, duck eggs, shaved ice, [01:04:00] mixed linoleum soup, and put in a silver bowl, a rosary rock crystal, wisteria blossoms, plum blossoms covered with snow, a pretty child eating strawberries.

That, that's it. That's one of their great pieces of literature from that period. That was AI trying to impress me with the very best Was that an excerpt? Or was it trying to summarize interesting visual elements? No, it was an excerpt. That's the way it's written. It's just interesting things that somebody saw.

Isn't that interesting though, how that shows up in anime? Where like, anime just doesn't Throws in like random moments of like cherry, like blossoms falling or like a bowl and beautiful life. I'm not going to say that they didn't capture things. It just doesn't. I find it really interesting that like this still exists as this like element of the Japanese people where they like can't stop obsessing about the beauty of small moments.

I'm not saying that it doesn't have artistic merit. What I'm saying is. No, it doesn't. I'm just. And I'm not arguing that. That it's lacking either. I'm also not arguing that it's sophisticated. I just think it's really interesting that they haven't shaken this like ability [01:05:00] to appreciate in some kind of profound way.

The beauty of mundane situations, but it's not sophisticated, complex or multilayered. No. And again, it's not about this. It's not long term. It's not about the interplay between. The prefrontal cortex and the hindbrain it is it is a sort of different aesthetic thing, but it's not yeah Okay, so let's look at famous Japanese work from around the divine comedy So I can use that as a benchmark of like broadly modern stuff But before they were really interacted with by the West.

Okay. So here you have something called tether giga and there's a famous line in it. So this is an example of like what we're dealing with in terms of intellectualism and everything, no matter what it may be, uniformity is undesirable. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting and gives one feeling that there is room for growth.

I'm like, okay, like middle school or notebook thoughts. And again like it's, it's, it's competent, but you, you would have expected something like this from the Greeks. Like 000 years earlier, you would have not only [01:06:00] that early invasion like this, I feel like you would have been made fun of by anybody. So, if you're talking about, like, anything written in my people's area All you really have is King Alfred's reign, where they did some histories, and this was in 871 to 899, so like basically nothing, like one history and everybody seems to have a history down here or there, and then you've got like effing Beowulf 975, 975.

To 1025. So, Beowulf and again, is at, at a quality of literature level, like sophistication level equivalent to Gilgamesh, which was written 2,100 BC to 1,200 bc. Like, you cannot say that these two civilizations were anything alike. And then if you compare Beowulf with contemporary, like even like the Aeneid, it's, it's child like in comparison.

My ancestors [01:07:00] were unbebugging until the, the the one civilization touched them. So here is where you get the really interesting side here, which is India. Okay. Now I've, I've read some of these, so I'm familiar with their quality. I'd say that they are I'd put them in between, in terms of sophistication, Gilgamesh and the Odyssey.

They're not quite at the Odyssey level, like, their stories don't have as strong of narrative throughlines, or as strong of theming, and they're frankly not as entertaining to read. But they are definitely slightly more sophisticated than something like Gilgamesh. So this is when you're going to ancient India.

Specifically, you have the Vedas. Yes. 1500 to 500 BCE. So ex civilizationally, I think above where like Gilgamesh was during that time period.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-14: If you would like an example of text from each that could help you because I think some people could be like, well, that's like a, a judgment, right? Like that's not like an objective fact that this is sort of in between Gilgamesh and the Elliott. And I'm like, well, you think that maybe because you haven't read it in a while, or you are mythologizing what you have read. [01:08:00] So here's an example of texts from the Vedas. Ooma appeared to the gods and said, It is Brahman who. Has won this victory.

And in this victory of Brahman, you have become elated. Indra approached her and asked, who are you? She replied. I am Ooma the daughter of him event No, that it was Brahman who gave you victory in the battles you have won. It is through the power of Brahman that you have become great.

It was from her that Indra learned that the being they had encountered was indeed Brahman. Then Andrew approached Angie and Vajra and said you two seem to have known this being closely. Can you tell me more about it? They replied,

what is there to know, we too are puzzled Indra then said to them, let us all go to Brahman to gain knowledge. Now , the, this is just a random, I just asked, find a section from the Vedas to an AI. , where, , people are interacting with each other.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-15: So here's a S D a I that gave me that one. I said, find a similar section from the [01:09:00] Iliad. Achilles you coward you greedy heart. How can archaea and the soldier obey you gladly either to go on a mission or to fight in battle with all his strengths. I didn't come here to fight because of a quarrel with Trojans.

They've never done me any harm, but you mighty shameless, man. We followed you to please you to an honor from the Trojans for you, you dog face and for mentalis,

you don't look at that. You don't think about it. And now you threatened to seize my prize in person something. I worked hard for a gift from a Keon sons, Agamemnon by all means flee. If that's your heart's desire, I'm not begging you to stay on my account. I have others here who will respect me, especially all wise. Zeus. Of all God fostering Kings your, the man.

I hate the most. You always love to fight and war. So what if you're strong? That's just a gift from God.

You have the AADs, this is 800 to 200 BC [01:10:00] aad. You had AP May, which is 500 to 100 bbc. You have Mahata. This is 400 BC to 400 ce. And then you've got the bga.

Gita, this is 200 BC to 200 CE. The problem is we're going to pronunciation hall. I think I'm going to pronunciation hell. I can't do this. The problem is, is you just can't get much after that. Like, like this is all like all this BC stuff, like similar to when the Greeks were doing all this and then it just disappears and you go further and you're getting stuff.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-16: So I want to make note here that I'm not saying that in India, they stopped producing works of literature during this period. , what I'm saying is the works of literature stopped advancing in their complexity significantly. , and multilayered illness. This narrative ability to convey characters. So as an example here, if you're looking as much as I like the Iliad, the Elliot is still fairly primitive.

If you compare it to something like the Aeneid, which is just orders of [01:11:00] magnitude more sophisticated and interesting. And. , an easier fun read. , now if we go to India, And you look at something like.

We can go to the sweat Putin us. But, banana in a dream by Basa. And this is the second to fourth century. Ady and I read a quote from that. , oh, yeah. Done. What will you do? Bhagavata I shall be king of a right-size chamber man with a skill in hairdressing. Ooh, God. And what will drop high?

I do. Vasavada. I'll call myself Sarah Hedy. and again, this is just randomly chosen by an AI. So this isn't me like trying to pick something that's like boring or simplistic.

Okay, let's keep going. Let's look at the slip. Kira the story of anklet, , written in the fifth and sixth century 80. So again, I asked AI for a quote from this one.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-16: who are you? Nobel ones. Where are you headed on this difficult paths? Kaia Niki. I am Kaia Niki. Nikki. And this is my husband Cova lawn. We're traveling to . My Duryea to [01:12:00] start a new COVID line. Respected aesthetic. We seek your blessing for our, our journey. Covata the pass ahead is treacherous filled with wild bees and bandits. Are you prepared for such hardships, Kaia Niki. We have each other and our love will give us drinks.

Please guide us. Why is one.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-16: very well. I shall accompany you to the outskirts of Madara, but remember, virtue is your true protector in this world.

So I asked the same AI, right after asking you to generate the, to pick a line from the India. So keep in mind that the need would have been. What 500 years before that last one I read in 200 years before the one before that.

Dido distraught. It says imminent departure confronts him. Dido where you hoping to slip away in secret cruel one. Did you think you could leave this land and me without a word death? Her love me, nothing to you, nor the pledge we made. Do you not see my tears? And he is torn between his feelings for Dido and his divine mission [01:13:00] responds. My queen. I will never deny what you deserve, nor will I ever regret the time we shared. I did not mean to leave in secret, but the gods command me to go to Italy.

This is not my choice, but my duty. Dido. Unconvinced and heartbroken replies. Neither goddess was your mother. Nor Darius the founder of your line, you trader no, you were born of the harsh, Caucasian rocks and nursed by hurricane tigers.

So. Again, I just, there's no comparison. , and it's very interesting to me, the level of that, the level of sophistication of literature with higher in very early India. , but didn't advance. At the same rate that it was within the one culture.

Like it's, it's really shocking that you don't get this same development from here. And then if we're comparing like just time periods here, Homer's Iliad, eighth century BC, Homer Odyssey, eighth century BC. If you're looking at tragedies here, so keep in mind, it's not just like the [01:14:00] Iliad that we're going to here.

You got opiates, Rex 429 BC, you got, uh, 531 BCE. You got Ashkali's Australia Trilogy 458 BCE. And when I'm talking about like Greek tragedy again, I don't feel like the Indian stuff really compares. If you're being honest with yourself and you've read both, it just doesn't have the same narrative through lines or multi layered stories.

And then, okay, let's go to philosophy. You got Plato's Republic, 380 BCE and Aristotle's Poetics, 335 BCE. Now I want you to compare something like Aristotle's work or something like that with just to get an idea of like the civilizational distance here in terms of complexity with something like the art of war.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-17: So these would have been approximate contemporaries. If we go for the art of war, you would have all warfare is based on deception hints. When able to attack, [01:15:00] we must seem unable when using our forces, we must seem inactive.

When we are near, we must make the enemy. Believe we are far away. When far away we must make him believe we are near hold out Bates to entice the enemy. Feign disorder and crush him. Good advice, but also fairly obvious. , now let's go to Aristotle and this is on Essex. Virtue then it's a state of character concerned with choice. Lying in a mean, I eat the mean relative to us. This being determined by irrational principle and by the principle, by which man of practical wisdom would determine it.

Now it is mean between two vices. That which depends on excess and that which depends on defect. And again, it is a mean because the vices respectively fall short or of, or exceed what is right in both passions and actions while virtue, both finds and chooses that, which is immediate.

Now again, you can't be like, oh, this is because one's a translation and one's not a translation because they're both translations and bows from culture is [01:16:00] very different from my own.

But just the level of sophistication between the two cultures is quite distant.

So, contrast something like Plato's Republic with Shenzhou's Art of War, if you're familiar with both of them.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-18: Plato's Republic and Arctic. We're also contemporaries. If you're wondering how they can be contemporary yet, you know, It needs to be. Cause we don't know exactly when the art of war was written. It was written between a period and that period covers both when Aristotle was writing. And when played out with writing. Anyway. So another quote from the art of warm. Therefore just as water retains, no constant shape. So in warfare, there are no constant conditions. He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning may be called a heaven born captain. And then here is Plato's Republic.

Just consider the depth of thought difference between these two. and this is a fairly famous one from Plato's Republic, which is, I guess, why the AI chose it. Not again, not me picking and choosing. Imagine human beings living in an underground dim which has a mouse open towards the light and reaching all along the [01:17:00] den. Here they have been from their childhood. And have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move and can only see before them being prevented by the chains from turning around their heads. Above and behind them, a fire is blazing at a distance in between the fire and the prisoners.

There is.

A raised way. And you will see if you look a low wall built along the way, like a screen, which marionette players have in front of them over which they showed the puppets.

And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall, carrying all sorts of vessels and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials. Which appear over the wall. Some of them are talking. They're silent. You have shown me a strange image and they are strange prisoners like ourselves.

I replied and they see only their own shadows or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave. True. He said, how could they see anything? But the shadows, if they were never allowed to move their heads [01:18:00] and of the objects, which are being carried and in a like, manner,

they would only see the shadows. Yes. He said, And if they were able to converse with another,

would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them? Very true.

Yeah, that's embarrassing. Yeah, the Sun Tzu's Art of War is genuinely like at a fill us up, like vague, fairly obvious advice. And Plato's Republic is like, how do we build the perfect civilization? We could do X, but that might not work. So what if we did Y, crazy thing? And what if we do like, you know, Z, crazy thing? Like, it's just Not at the same level. And then you're like, well, you know, they must've stopped as well.

No, we'll go to like ancient Roman literature. As we go to 19 BCE. It was Virgil's Aeneids. You go to Horace's Odes, 23 You go to Ovid's Metamorphoses, that's 8 CE. You go to Marcus Aurelius Meditations, 170 BCE. to 180 CE. And again, like Marcus Aurelius's meditations, compare that to like art of war, compare [01:19:00] that to a lot of this stuff that we're seeing come out of Japan, like 800 years later.

It just isn't comparable. Now I want to show you again that this is a specifically this one chain of civilization thing. Okay.

This has, and I want to be clear here, absolutely nothing to do with Europe, European people, or European genetics. It is a specific memetic cluster. And that is made very clear by this chart. So this chart chosen notable philosophers and scholars in Europe from the 7th century BC to the 14th century AD.

Whoa. And you will note, Rome fell in the 5th century and Charlemagne rose in the 9th century. And between those two periods, they are basically mud hut people producing nothing. Wow. And I think this also shows just the height of ancient Greek civilization in terms of the sophistication of that civilization.

So, so, this is, this is just what I say here. So, what do you need for this, right? And we [01:20:00] talked for a lot about this, and we came up with some ideas. Now, I think something that tries to look at this from a, well, the climate was different, doesn't really work. Yes, you do not like the guns, germs, and steel.

Answer to this question. Yeah, because it doesn't explain why everything goes back to mud huts. When Rome goes away, it does. It does not explain that. Well, why is it that Britain can become a like civilized area when Rome is there? But when Rome goes away, they go back to hitting each other with clubs.

What, why they go back to murdering children and then bury them under bridges to is like witch spells and stuff like that. Hmm. Why, why, why, why, why, why. This is and, and, and I also, the reason why people are drawn in by these environmental explanations is. They remove the need to ask hard questions.

Okay. And I don't think that you can get a genetic answer to this, like, because clearly it worked wherever [01:21:00] Rome was. It worked when Rome was in Africa. It worked when the civilization spread to the Mesopotamian river Valley. It worked in my Unga Bunga caveman ancestors in Britain, right? Like it worked everywhere.

It was applied. That's the thing about this. It's not like a. Oh, environmental thing. So what we came to is that you need an environment where lazy rich people want to do science and, and explore the nature of reality. If you look at, it's not, so you need two things, right? You need enough civilizational infrastructure.

Like you need a meme company that can create enough civilizational infrastructure where you have trade and you have people who are like, you need, you need enough affluence to create. some opportunity for leisure. But then in that leisure time, you have to want to explore the true nature of reality and the way things actually functionally work.

And we came to the conclusion that to get to [01:22:00] that place, you need to have a certain element of varied pluralism, because if you don't have that, there will be not that much. There will be an absence of competitive forces that encourage, that enable those who are somehow correct, more correct about reality to win.

So why we think this didn't happen, for example, in Imperial China or Feudal Japan is because there was too much uniformity, meaning that there wasn't, like, competing and being really, really different. And, and more correct about reality wasn't how you were going to win. You would win through brute force by getting enough resources by Yeah, so I like the way that you, when you were explaining it to me, I thought you had a slightly more eloquent way of putting it.

Which is you need a pluralistic yet unified people proud of their differences, but they see themselves as one [01:23:00] unit against some external existential threat that they see as wholly different from them. So examples, and it appears that the one civilization does best whenever it's in those environments.

So for example, it did really well in the Greek city states where the Greek city states. Also, each other is like radically different. And, and it, but the outsiders, they were something wholly other, right? But they were also totally separate from each other and competing, or it did really well during the period of European city states competing with each other.

Yeah. You know, after the age of Charlemagne, it did really well. It did really, but all those groups, you know, they would fight each other, but when a crusade would happen, it's like, okay, everyone come together. Let's, let's go. It did really well in the Muslim, the Islamic empire, but the Islamic empire was also like that.

It was very fracturous in the way that it's different parts functioned. It did very well in the Roman empire. But again, anyone who's actually studied Roman history, the Roman empire was always dividing and then recombining and dividing and [01:24:00] recombining with a lot of factions with a lot of factions that had a degree of ideological diversity, where you would argue against.

Someone else

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-19: I will note that the one civilization. Appears to be dramatically less intellectually, , and more broadly, I guess I'd say civilizationally productive in terms of its advancement, whenever it is being housed within a more homogenous empire. So yes, Rome was fractured, but it was hardly as ideal a situation as the ancient Greek city states or the later competing European countries.

, and I think that that is why in Rome, you had a slow. Slow down of the advancement, which you can see very clearly on this graph. Yes. There was still advancement. Yes. There was still civilization, but it was much slower than under the Greek city state period or in the later multi-country multi-site plural, European.

System.

And I think that this is also why in the [01:25:00] last, I'd say 50 years or so we have seen human advancement in terms of, , artistic production and stuff like that. Really grind to a Holt, , because of the urban monoculture, removing the differences between the groups that had been seated with the one culture.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-20: So Rome can almost be thought of as this weird moment in history where the one culture solidified into a mostly uniform unit, which gave it the power needed to spread out and touch lots of parts of earth and get them ready and seated. However, , He didn't advance within that culture itself. That culture was more of a vector for its spread.

and I think that you could actually see why this leads to better philosophical outcomes and I'll note here, right? So people are like well Japanese people they were interested in like exploring the nature of reality was like a consequentialist Like this will work mindset when they got rich.

I'm like, no They weren't like if you study like actual Japanese or Chinese history What the wealthy people [01:26:00] with leisure time did is they? Measured the quality of their work by its aesthetic value over its or, or realistic. So they would sit around and write stories that were meant to be beautiful, but they weren't meant to be Functional or convey particularly deeper or more sophisticated meanings often Lee and an argument that I was also positing when we were talking about this earlier is there seems to be some kind of a benefit that you get from having a complex political system that is complex enough where there's either a very strong nobility and some form of parliament or some form of representative democracy, because in those systems actually being correct and actually being right.

gives you an edge or a benefit. So that I think has a halo effect where then you get people who are also interested in science and physics and a whole bunch of other things as, as sort of an emergent property [01:27:00] of people who are right. From a more like political strategic perspective have an edge and therefore get to rule that society and you get a lot of pushback as well.

So you get the like, you need the gentleman scientist, basically. I mean, in the Victorian period, it's called the gentleman scientist in the medieval period. It was called like, the maybe monk or something. Or in the, you know, the, the period of the Greek city states, it was your, your random thinker, right?

So like, and we're going to talk about like how Greeks figured some early stuff. Like, I think that they're the people who really collated this culture for the first thing. I think its predecessors existed in the Egypt, right? And then it went to Mesopotamia where it continued to grow slightly, but I still think it was very nascent and it was supercharged when the Greeks got it.

Like they exploded it. They were the reactor that made it something. And I think that you can see for the exploration of the Greeks, exploration of the nature of reality, sort of how it builds on itself and why this would lead to such civilizational advancement so quickly. So you'll have something like sales.

Thales of Miletus proposing that water was the [01:28:00] fundamental substance underlying all reality. He sought a single unifying principle to explain the nature of the world. So this is around what you get in terms of sophistication of other cultures. You get the first guy who asks what's the nature of the world, right?

In Greek society, it didn't stop first guy to ask what the nature of the world. Somebody else with access to his work, then you get an axomander, who argued for an indefinite boundless substance called a porian as the source of all things. This was an early attempt to conceptualize an abstract principle underlying physical reality.

Then Heraclitus taught that everything is in constant flux, famously stating, Pansa re, everything flows. He saw reality as a unity of opposites in constant tension and change. Thank you very much. Parademus took the opposite view, arguing that change is impossible, and that reality is a single, eternal, and unchanging whole.

This sparked debates about the nature of being, and non being, that influenced later metaphysics. Then all of those people came down to Plato, who's now, you know, going against [01:29:00] what all of them are saying, and he goes, He proposed the theory of forms,

which held that there exists a realm of, Of perfect unchanging forms or ideas separate from the physical world The physical world we perceive is merely an imperfect reflection of these forms True knowledge and reality are found in the realm of forms not in the ever changing physical world Now this is an idea that while I don't agree with it could conceptually make sense to even a modern person today Like this is the beginning of what you could call like Truly modern physics or philosophy whereas the other people were just giving him enough of a people arguing that he could come in and have, I guess I'd call it like a real and sophisticated idea.

Whereas these other environments just didn't have this debate happening and, and wouldn't have a debate like this arise. And this spills over then into things like the arts. I mean, we'll explain why that happens in a second, but then you have something like Aristotle, right? So then Aristotle, he comes in and he rejects Plato's separate form.

[01:30:00] Instead, arguing that form and matter are united in individual substances. Aristotle developed the concepts of substance, essence, and accident to explain the nature of things. Clearly, this is a world. He explored causality, identifying four types of causes. Material, formal, effective, and final. So, like, He basically figured out how reality actually works, like, well, it's just a world where clearly they were rewarded in some way, like socially, or even if no one gave them a reward for it, they were raised in a culture or society that enabled them to have emotional intrinsic rewards for doing something like this.

And that I think is created, it's just, when I think about the unifying elements of. The cultures that I'm aware of that first generated this is there are varied sub tribes that are very they have a lot of internal pride and they like to s**t on the outsiders. [01:31:00] And. You even saw this in ancient Egypt, you know, it's like, Oh, those people in Alexandria.

Oh, those people in Cairo, like there, there were significant cultural differences but there was a lot of trade and interchange as well. So there was comparison. So I feel that what's the word like a certain amount of xenophobia combined with pluralism and then another sort of big bad on the outside that enables them to all say.

Okay. Hey, this is us. And we are different from those. You mean literally like the Haven Network that I want to recreate for a post fertility collapse world? Oddly convenient, but I mean, it, I feel like we see the value. I know, but that's, I think I know. And what I'm saying is it's, it seems conveniently flattering that what we're trying to design is.

Oddly reminiscent of a system that seems to have given birth to the modernization specifically designed after it. Yeah, well, I know, but I just, I think it's, it's interesting that we intuited [01:32:00] something that now when we're looking at this unified, civilization. Well, I hadn't looked at how big the differences were when you controlled for time.

But now I want to get to, to make a comparison here. So we're going to go to China. Like what was their understanding of reality? Right. So you get to Laozi and Zhangzi. They were believed to have lived between the sixth century BCE. Although some scholars state them to the fourth century BCE. So this would be around when all these Greek authors were writing.

They're credited as the authors of the Tao Te Ching. The Tao Te Ching. The foundational text of Daoism it, which included concepts of Dao the way as the source of all being, Wu Wei, non action or effortless action, the interplay of yin and yang , and simplicity and naturalness as ideals.

That's childlike when contrasted with what was going on in Greece at the same time. And I think it, but, but it, I think shows. Why Greece was able to sort of explore here. You have like two guys who sat down and they're like, [01:33:00] this is the way things are. And then you have like one other guy who pushes back like Mosey.

So this is where you get the will of heaven, the idea that the universe has a moral structure. The Heaven's Intentions provide a standard for ethics. He believed in consequentialism, so slightly better, right? Like, judging the morality of actions based on their outcomes. He believed in universalism advocating for universal love, Jiayi Ai, that does not discriminate between people rationalism and a lot of his, and Moanism, and some other things, and a lot of his stuff.

was sort of, suppressed as Confucianism grew. So, hold on. But the point being is that when you read this stuff, or when you read Confucianism, because I'm sure you guys have read some Confucianism you just, like, anyone who's being honest can tell it's not as intellectually sophisticated as something like Aristotle's work or Plato's work, which was, you know, It shows the difference between a culture where you have a bunch of people furiously arguing with each other and who in other areas of their life, whether it's economics [01:34:00] or war, actually have to know how to beat an opponent and actually have to have their ideas work.

And I think you can see this in terms of like Greek warfare, for example, like Alexander, the great figures out like a formation. That's really good in Greek warfare, . And then he applies it. to anyone other than the Greek city states that were very hard for him to unify, and it's like, free money cheat, just moving knife through butter all the way to India, where his troops are like, why are we still fighting anymore?

This is getting pointless. I mean, I think what made him really cool Was the way that he used geography to his advantage, yeah. But the point is, is that these things all bleed into each other.

It's not just the philosophy was hundreds of years ahead. It's the philosophy, and the art, and the infrastructure, and the buildings, and the everything! Everything! Ahead of my ancestors! Well, what's more interesting to me, again, is just how the incentives are aligned to do that. And you need [01:35:00] to have a pluralistic culture.

You need to have something that forces competition and and ingenuity, and I, and I think that you can see throughout history, too, and this would require a whole lot more investigation that we don't have time for right now. But I think if we looked at when civilizations collapsed, I would imagine that there's a high level of correlation between that competition falling apart and the fall of a civilization that when you no longer have this pluralistic competition, but trade and exchange.

Where you're forcing people to sort of steal from each other, iterate off each other and compete with each other, but also stay united and strong together against a larger exogenous threat or enemy or big bad, then that's when civilization starts to decline. So, maybe we should be concerned that perhaps big bads.

Like Russia and China, you know, sort of like that, these, these tensions internationally [01:36:00] will soon subside due to demographic collapse. Well, I think it's why the urban monoculture is often also stolen so much of the vitality of human civilization because it is homogenized culture. Yes. Yeah. In a, in a more perfect world, we would have these cultures riffing and doing their own thing like anime, like anime required Japan be touched by civilization to create their concepts of like video games, like Mario and stuff like that.

There are some of the greatest works of art in our lifetime. And I think in the future will be remembered that way are, are coming out, but it's out of this industrial process that married some of their ancestral traditions. And I think that this is where you get the, This mistake, right? The mistake that countries make is we can go back to our old ways and, and just update them for modern civilization and say, no, what we need to do is we need to take this one culture and put little spins on it, but not try to go back to the way things used to be.

So an example of this would be something like even China today. So this is not me as an [01:37:00] outsider, but merging China, when China says we need to go back to like Chinese science and Chinese medicine, like the Chinese government. We'll say when we're doing Chinese medicine, it's like random like herbs and stuff that like everybody knows don't work like, like they, they functionally don't work because that was the nature of that previous system in, in the, in the system of the one civilization, things actually have to work like if a natural remedy works, it will say, okay, how do I distill the chemical in it?

Oh, cool. Cool. Gnawing on that bark lowers your amount of pain. Okay, what chemical is causing that? Okay, let's mass produce that chemical. Okay, now we have aspirin. And we, we, we run into a risk of doing this in the West as well.

I mean, the urban monoculture, because of its love of weakness, you can see our video on that particular topic. It tries to venerate it, their own ancestors, the witches, the druids, the pagans. You know, you get that I'm queer, you should not venerate that. [01:38:00] Right? These people were monstrous.

They sacrificed children. They were not civilized man. They, they needed to be uplifted. Thank God that the Romans colonized. My ancestors and saved them from the depravity that they were living in.

Speaker 17: What makes me special?

Speaker 18: Do you know, do you know what makes me special? I'm a queer. What?!

Speaker 22: She looks angry. Yeah.

Speaker 23: A face like that, I'd be angry too.

You

Speaker 25: shut up.

And I think that, and this is the thing, and I think that, that, that [01:39:00] civilized man, wherever he is whatever he looks like, whatever ethnicity he is, the cool thing about this theory is it's kind of unifying.

Because the truth is Is it the originators of this civilization? One, they never hold the torch for long. They often pass it on, you know, whether it's Egypt to Mesopotamia to Greece to Rome. But they also mostly don't exist anymore as an ethnic group. Like the ancient Greeks, I can look at ancient Greek statues.

They don't look like modern Greek people. Like that ethnic group isn't my ethnic group, but it's also, you know, when you're talking about it. And I think that, that Italians and the Greek people. Do undersell themselves when they say they're not they're probably like 80 percent related to them would be my guess there's probably like a few immigration waves, but like I think that they deserve some credit for that But they're not the groups that are on top of the world right now, you know So it doesn't argue for this idea of a dominant cultural group what it argues for is an idea of a global shared cultural history That none of us really own.

That [01:40:00] we all are beneficiaries of whatever our backgrounds are. And we all deserve you know, when I look back to my history, when I named my kids, like Octavian, one of the names that we're looking for for one of our next years, it's going to be Constantine. You know, I am looking to the great figures of Rome.

And. One show that I would really recommend people watch if you haven't watched it you, you absolutely must watch it. It's called Rome, an unbiased history. I would watch it chronologically. If you like this show, you are going to love Roman unbiased history. It's by Dabba Hadi. He is, I think.

Like, one of the great creators of our age, in terms of like, memefied content. I don't think he has nearly as many subscribers as he could, but it's just because he hasn't done enough videos. But he does a thorough memefied history of Rome, from the perspective of being ultra, I'd say like, jingoistic.

Like, when he's describing my [01:41:00] ancestors, he'll always have them come on ahead with like the, you know, the meme of the guy with the head that's caved in, and like the face paint on them, and just you know, unable to do anything, or they'll have like sharp teeth whenever they're coming on stage, and I just love it!

Speaker 11: All that there would be, even though, there was so much we didn't know yet. Fighting under the sun. , my skin is glistening from sweat dripping down as time will pass,

I love it! Because it's, it's I think the way that the chads from around the world are able to look at history and not look at the witches and see their ancestors, but all together look to the shared cultural ancestry and say, that's the fire that left human civilization. And I don't need to have an ethnic.

Claim to that, to admire it and to learn from it and to build on it. I think that's really fair. Yeah,

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-21: [01:42:00] And I note that all our cultures had their witches. You know, it's not just that the Celts who had witches, who, some people today delusional. , rise up despite them being child murderers. , but you had them in the African cultures, you had them in ancient China. You had them in a.

Ancient Scandinavia and the ancient roofs had them. All around the world, we had our witches. So the question is, are you able to, with humility, swallow, the pride you have in either the culture that is your own genetically or the one that you have drawn, some sort of weird Weebo attachment to. And admit that we all, our greatness all comes from the descendants of. One culture. And a culture that's not yours.

And that is a culture that brought us. It's a Judeo-Christian tree of religions that helped save us from our witches.

Speaker 6: Your [01:43:00] move, time to d d d

Speaker 7: d d

d d

and I think the difficult thing is that normally when people are advocating for a culture, it's their own and it helps that this isn't ours. I'm so relieved. I'm so relieved that we do not have Greek or Roman ancestry.

Yeah, otherwise this would be such a bad look, but I, I think that and I also argue that this is what created the modern Jew and Christian in another episode, which is to say when the one true religion crashed with civilization, it like a particle collider [01:44:00] exploded and created the civilized religions, whether that's post second temple Judaism.

And as we argue in track eight, I do not think. Pre Second Temple Judaism was one of the civilized religions. They were ripping apart animals. They were doing blood sacrifices. They were doing blood magic. They were worshiping multiple gods in the temple. I think that it was through the destruction of that, that they were freed from this.

And if you look at their art from those previous periods, it's nothing special. Their civilization, nothing particularly special. Even the parts of the Bible that were written before that period, while I think they're divinely inspired, they're certainly not. Particularly sophisticated when contrasted with like ancient greek work.

And actually some individuals argue that the bible is particularly the moses stories are actually downstream of hellenistic works and there's some compelling evidence there that we can get to that. They were heavily influenced post fact by those.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-22: Specifically, the argument that I found most compelling is just the theme of the story. A group of people being kicked out of a Homeland, then looking for a new Homeland, [01:45:00] then founding a city. Then having that city grow into a great city. , it feels very much like, you know, the founding story of Rome or like many ancient Greek myths have this. , theming.

, whereas it's basically unheard of in the, , Mesopotamian region.

But we, we won't get into that too much in this particular episode.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-24: Something I note about this theory that I want to develop further is the idea that the one civilization, when it blooms within a region appears to exhaust that region after a golden age, making it hard for civilization to appear there again, and they then fall into what I can only describe as.

Sort of a non-violent slumber. , that where they don't produce much in terms of artistic output or civilizational advancement was the only, , counter example to this being the Italian Renaissance. After the period of the Roman empire was over. , so what I mean by this is it [01:46:00] starts in Egypt. Then Egypt never really rises again.

Then it goes to Mesopotamia, the NEF. They retain me as sort of becomes irrelevant and it goes to Greece and Greece sort of become the relevant. Then it goes to Rome. Then Rome sort of becomes irrelevant. Then it, you know, breathe, digging in France. , through the Charlotte minium empire, and then that sort of becomes irrelevant.

And then it goes into England. , which has increasingly become irrelevant. , and so the question is, , how can you create a sustainable version of this culture in why does it burn these populations and make them if beat and bureaucratic after a while? , and that is a theory that we will explore later. But it also means, interestingly, that it's especially hard for any group to claim themselves special because they carried the torch of civilization for a period because the church of civilization seems to always burn the group that carries it and make them lesser than the people around them, rather than more than the people around them.

Gotta get the kids now, but hold on the point of all this is. Is that we [01:47:00] have a shared cultural ancestry that none of us have ownership over and that cultural ancestry, the height of it is when you have collaborative pluralism and that's what we should be fighting for. That's the greatness that was Rome.

Oh, and by the way, if you also haven't seen it and I've recommended it in another show and you still need to watch it is the Rome mini series. From HBO again, haven't seen that must watch it and we haven't seen the first gladiator again, a must watch. Well, and also I want to emphasize not just collaborative pluralism, but collaborative competitive pluralism.

Exactly. There is a healthy, friendly trash talking the other side element of this. And I think a lot of Our critics or people who want to frame us as enemies misread that when we're like, yeah, like, you know, on the

other side, but you should also be allying and working with the other side. You should both compete. I mean, that is the [01:48:00] beauty of sports teams. Anyone who can understand baseball fans who can, who can trash talk each other about their teams, but then, you know, bond over the sport. Is like, they get it, this should not be a complex subject, but I, I do feel that we get heat for this because people try to make that out about like, oh, you're about hate.

You're about, you know, you trash talk this other group. Therefore you're a supremacist for your own group. Like, you're, you're totally missing the point and you are smart enough to know that that is not true. So cool. All right, let's go get love. You have a good day. Bye bye bye. Ciao ciao. You're amazing. You know, Maxine Lott, who we are fans of he, on his sub stack ran, I think he's running guests posts, giving a a rational argument for why people should vote for Kamala Harris. And there's another one for why people should vote for Donald Trump.

And I'm still [01:49:00] reading the Kamala Harris one, but there's this one part of it where the person. argues that the economy is doing well and look at GDP and look at unemployment rates and how Kamala Harris has a plan to make things even better. But then they write, many Americans have the mistaken perception that the economy is not doing well in part because of the cost of groceries, housing, consumer goods and services and energy are all higher than four years ago and wage growth has not offset these high costs.

Like, I'm sorry. So you're arguing that the economy is doing well. And then we're just complaining that it, we're not happy because our lives are materially worse and economically speaking, but the economy is doing well, so we should vote for it. I love that so much. This like, I mean, so the costs that matter to normal people are.

Are [01:50:00] up. And I mean, their wages haven't improved in line with that, but I mean, the economy is doing well, you know, you, you, you mentioned to me that like people will always say the economy is doing well when their parties in office. What he's really just saying is my party's in office. And therefore I can find some numbers to indicate that the economy is in shambles, but my party is in office.

Therefore, things are good. Okay? Shut up. I just thought that was very entertaining.

Speaker 12: There was a dream that was real. It shall be realized. These are the wishes of Marcus Aurelius.

Speaker 8: [01:51:00] Torsten, out of the way! Out of the way!

Speaker 9: What are you doing? You nutjob!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com

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Episodes

How Autism & Anorexia Unlocked the Mechanism Behind Gender Dysphoria
27 déc.· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this episode, the hosts dive into a thought-provoking analysis linking gender dysphoria, anorexia, and autism. They explore statistics and research to argue that gender dysphoria in the United States is a culture-bound syndrome similar to anorexia. The discussion delves into how autistic traits may contribute to these conditions, emphasizing the significant overlap and suggesting that societal acceptance of such identities is complex and potentially harmful. They highlight the emotional and social struggles faced by individuals with these conditions and propose alternative perspectives. An engaging and enlightening conversation sprinkled with personal anecdotes and cultural references.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone! Today is an interesting day because I had a revelation as I was studying some data where, you know, sometimes I look at data I'll be like, hmm, that's weird. I've seen a number really similar to that somewhere else and I'm like Bring data. Bring data. Oh my God. Oh my God.
This explains everything. And I now feel like I have a much better understanding of what's causing the transgender phenomenon in the United States. Do tell.
Here's what Simone had to say at the end of this episode
Simone Collins: wow. I've now experienced a paradigm change. And I have a lot more empathy for people who have gender dysphoria
Malcolm Collins: What we are going to be arguing using data is that gender dysphoria is the same phenomenon as anorexia. Not a similar phenomenon, but literally the same phenomenon.
And as we read through this, we will both see what is causing the phenomenon. As well as why it is [00:01:00] specifically hitting the autistic population at such high rates and Yeah, i'll just jump right into it All right So the thing I was reading that first got me thinking this because it was like two statistics that overlapped and I was like that's weird Why do these statistics keep overlapping?
So statistic one was a scott alexander piece on
culture bound mental illnesses, specifically what a culture bound mental illness is, is it something like, in the recent episode we did, on the phenomenon in Africa or East Asia called Koro, where people think their penises are being stolen by witches.
And they, like, really believe this and there's lots of others that we're going to go over. But in the United States, one of the particularly best studied cases of a likely culturally bound illness, which will go over evidence that is culturally bound is anorexia. And when Scott Alexander was trying to judge because he said, yeah, but everything is like partly biological and partly culture bound.
So he and his piece was trying to judge how much is this, right? And he goes, well, I suspect that anorexia is [00:02:00] about 80% Culture bound and 20 percent biological. That checks out. I'm gonna be like, yeah, that, that checks out. Then at the end of the piece, he's like, now a lot of people reading this piece are probably thinking about gender dysphoria and the transgender phenomenon in the United States.
Is this a culture bound phenomenon? And his estimate, and I will note, Scott Alexander is a very, very, Pro trans person. Okay. And, but he also has like an incredible amount of integrity to be willing to say this because in San Francisco saying what he said is like walking down the seats was like the sign from die hard with a vengeance.
Oh, no, you're right.
In this scene. I imagine Samuel Jackson's character to be Scott Alexander's trans friends,
Trying to get him to take the piece down after it was first published. As I imagine quite a few, probably did.
Speaker: dial 9 1 1. Tell the police to get up here quick. Somebody's about to get killed.
Now you got about 10 seconds before those guys see you.
When they do, they will kill [00:03:00] you. You understand? You are about to have a very bad day.
Speaker 2: Tell me about it.
Speaker: Fellas! Fellas! Nature boy here hates
Malcolm Collins: This guy wrote a piece, arguing being trend is in large part of social phenomenon.
Speaker: Now, what are we going to do about that? Oh, s**t!
Back! Back up! Back the f**k up! Now!
Malcolm Collins: Like, I'm pretty sure he lives with transgender people, like, in the comments under the thing, I, like, I don't have any confirmation of this, if he's dated transgender people before, like, this is not, he's against transgenderism, he's just laying out the facts as he sees them, he says it seemed to be about the same as anorexia, about 80 percent cultural and about 20 percent biological, which, It's exactly what I'd agree with.
I actually might, I might put it above Scott Alexander here. I might say at 30 percent biological 70 percent cultural. When I look at things like endocrine [00:04:00] disruptors and the tide studies and stuff like that which you can read about in our other trans videos, but there is like evidence that males due to chemicals they're being exposed to, at least males, at least are, they really are turning the frogs gay.
Speaker 4: I don't like them putting chemicals in the water that turn the friggin frogs gay! Do you understand that? Turn the friggin frogs gay! Boo! Boo! Serious crap! Gay! Frogs! Friggin frogs! Boo! It's not funny! I'm gonna say it real slow for you.
Malcolm Collins: They really are showing less gender presentation as males due to biological reasons. But then I saw a separate statistic that linked these two things, which was really high rates of autism. And we'll go over this sounds like Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm noticing something here. So estimates of autism prevalence in anorexia populations range from 20 to 30%.
A study at the National Specialist Eating Disorders Service at Maudsley Hospital found that [00:05:00] 35 percent of women met the criteria for an autism spectrum disorder. We also know that autism and ADHD commonly co occur in a recent meta analysis that range from 63 studies between 40 and 70 percent with bulimia.
This was Rong et al. 2021. And then anorexia nervosa carries the highest mortality rate of any health disorder at a 10 to 20 Suicide or death risk from this is bernstein 2023 and martin et al 2015 All right So what I'm pointing out when I point out like the suicide risk here This is to say that even if transness is a culturally locked phenomenon That doesn't mean that these people are not experiencing something that is loud enough to get them to kill themselves and simone is a like sane logical person who you guys apparently like hearing her opinions She almost died of anorexia and she also happens to be autistic.
So, do you want to Do you want to talk to that at all before we go further here? [00:06:00]
Simone Collins: Yeah. When you're saying this, hearing it and you, you putting the pieces together, this does make a lot of intuitive sense. And I think it comes down to autistic people committing to the bit. And, and having, when they have a special interest, they just actually go all the way.
They just actually do it. Other people dabble. Autistic people go all the way, you know, there are train enthusiastic and then there are autistic train enthusiasts and you know, you know, like those are the ones are the train conventions. Those are the ones going to the train pilgrimage sites. And then, you know, you have people with eating disorders.
It takes a lot of discipline, like an inhuman level, you know, beyond the level of proper intuition or. You know, the human body has a lot of ways of resisting starvation, right? Like, it's pretty good at controlling for that. So I think you need something else super out of whack to be able to commit to that.
And it makes the same sense. Gender transition requires a huge amount of [00:07:00] commitment. And you have to be committed to the point of tone deafness. to getting there. And I think also framing anorexia as a body dysmorphia driven by a desire to look beautiful is misleading and may misstate what people think anorexia is.
They think anorexia is the pretty popular girl who talks about dieting when anorexia is often the very not pretty girl who looks like Skeletor, who is clearly not doing this to look good. It's commitment to the bed.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, and I by the way, how, how light did you get in college when you were doing this?
Simone Collins: It was high school. I think the lightest I ever was was 98 pounds. I'm currently like 123 pounds, which is like the minimum safe weight I can have.
Malcolm Collins: I'm five foot eight and a half. Yeah. So, I would note here, that this also can help you understand something, which is [00:08:00] like, if, as a non autistic person, you will struggle to understand how a person with anorexia, who looks like Skeletor, can be standing there and being like, I'm too fat.
Like, but now, now in your head, you're like, Think about the autistic train enthusiast, you know, they don't understand how crazy they look when they're there talking to you about a whatever training. You're like, I do not. How do you not understand that? I don't care about this, but now think about the like, don't you have
Simone Collins: enough trains?
And they're like,
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, now think about this in the context of a trans person, which is like, wait, why, why won't everyone accept me? Like, why can't I be on women's sports teams? Why can't I, you know, like you, we need to go 100 percent with this. We can't be like, let's do this in a reasonable way where like, I'm not like an active impediment to other people living their lives, you know?
Simone Collins: Yeah. And then even, even the threat of death [00:09:00] as anorexia demonstrates with that high mortality rate you pointed out. Is not at all of interest or relevant. So this is very
Malcolm Collins: important here is this claim is not saying that they are Faking it or that they are imagining it or that they are Yeah, what we are saying is it's a culturally bound illness, but culturally bound illnesses are illnesses
Simone Collins: Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: so we're gonna keep going here a large scale study published in nature communications in 2020 Found that 24 percent of transgender and gender diverse respondents were autistic compared to five percent of cisgender participants The study analyzed data from 641, 000 participants across five data sets, including survey data, population studies, and online questionnaires.
Studies have found that the lifetime prevalence of eating disorders is also noticeably higher in transgender men, 10. 5 percent in transgender women, 8. 1 percent compared to 4 percent non autistic females, 0. 3% non autistic male. So just like astronomically higher.
Simone Collins: Wow.
Malcolm Collins: Now here is where the real breakthrough for me came from.
Okay. [00:10:00] This is going to shock you, so I decided to go and read more about from the perspective of like psychiatrists or psychologists who work with people who have anorexia, why autism might lead to that. And when I started reading their explanation, if you just replace these words like you change out the word eating with gender expression or you change out the word, you know, like, autism with gender dysphoria, you're going to be like, Oh my God, this is such a good explanation.
Really? Oh, can you read us some quotes? I'm going to go through.
Simone Collins: Oh!
Malcolm Collins: Lever and Goertz, 2016, found that up to 79 percent of autistic adults met diagnostic criteria for a mental health condition, including depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. We also know that many autistic individuals struggle to emotionally self rep.
regulate, use internal strategies to calm down like breathing, and co regulate, be soothed by another person, so they find other ways to self soothe or feel okay. [00:11:00] And one example is by eating or not eating. Sensory sensitivities are extremely common in autism, so much so that they form part of the standard diagnostic criteria, APA 2022.
Eating involves all five senses, and interception, or the capacity to sense internal body sensations, such as hunger satiation. It is perhaps unsurprising that eating disorders are overrepresented in the autistic population. So let's re read that. Your sense of gender identity involves all five senses and interception.
The capacity to sense internal body sensations, such as any of the things associated with gender dysphoria. Okay, let's keep going here. Unfortunately, many autistic individuals in our society experience loneliness. Perkinson et al., 2017. Bullying and abuse, Rumble, 2019. They may use restrictive eating patterns as a way of distracting themselves from these difficulties and numb the emotional pain.
As one autistic person nervosa said, I can get [00:12:00] engrossed in food and exercise and just forget about everything else. Okay, they may use gender dysphoria as a way of distracting themselves from these difficulties and numb the emotional pain. Yeah, going through a transition is, is, is
Simone Collins: physically, mentally, socially, it's, it's, it's, it will completely take over your life.
And so you don't have any room to worry. That's actually a really good point. And like I pointed out, for example, that having kids. It's an amazing anxiety combat tool because you simply don't have time or mental space to be tired or stressed or worried. Like you're just going to child maxing is a new transition.
Yes. Let's just let, can we, can we hijack this? Can we, but yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. And that, that doesn't, yeah, absolutely. Controlling. The
Malcolm Collins: thing that people have noticed is that the pronatalist movement is like overwhelmingly autistic and that's the rumor. Oh my gosh, it is! Are
Simone Collins: we the new trans?
This is so exciting! It'd
Malcolm Collins: be [00:13:00] so fun if a bunch of autistic people are like spamming 20 kids because it's like their special interest. Let's do it! The Greater Replacement Theory
Simone Collins: is happening!
Malcolm Collins: The Hottest!
Simone Collins: It's happening!
Malcolm Collins: Okay, so. I mean, I think that's kind of why you're doing it, right? Like, you get really into pregnancy and you get into all the measuring and everything.
The measuring,
Simone Collins: the
appointments, making sure All the hormone shots and
Malcolm Collins: everything you have to do. Yeah, all the It's very similar to transition in a way. And she gets really actively distressed when she's not pregnant, especially right after a birth. You know what? Oh my god, I'm trans pregnant?
Simone Collins: Oh, you have, you have gender dysphoria when you're pregnant?
I have, I have fertility dysphoria. I have I have pregnancy dysphoria, gestational dysphoria. There we go. I mean, that's the thing that some
Malcolm Collins: trans people experience, right? You know, they, they want to be pregnant.
Simone Collins: That, that I, it, yeah, my heart goes out to them.
Trans woman to have a successful uterus transplant, ovaries and eggs included. [00:14:00] And I want to be the first trans woman to have an abortion.
Mrs. Garrison. You can't have an abortion. Don't you tell me what I can and can't do with my body! A woman has a right to choose! You can't get pregnant. But I missed my period. You can't have periods either. You mean, I'll never know what it feels like to have a baby growing inside me and then scramble its brains and vacuum it out? This would mean I'm not really a woman, it's, I'm just a, I'm just a guy with a mutilated penis!
Basically, yes. Oh boy, do I feel like a jackass.
Malcolm Collins: Conversely, they may use comfort eating to overcome difficult feelings associated with socializing. Many social occasions are paired with eating, socializing can be difficult and anxiety provoking for an autistic person. See, conversely, they may use gender displays to overcome difficult feelings associated with socializing. Many social occasions are paired with gender displays. [00:15:00] Socializing can be difficult and anxiety provoking for an autistic person. You see? It's all, it's all falling together for me here, okay? Eating disorders often begin in puberty. Just as the social world becomes more complex and the autistic person experiences more problems navigating changing social Expectations and trying to connect with their peers and quote unquote fit in they often feel very different from their peers and may become immense As a way of coping they may believe that they do not fit in socially because their body or appearance So seek to change them both it is common for teenagers to connect with peers through this common interest But an autistic teenager may be unable to connect with interests of non autistic groups You As they become more fascinated with eating disorder behaviors, they become accepted in a peer group that embraces this culture.
Some autistic teenagers will focus on dieting and appearance as a way of being included and build a sense of identity. All right, Simone, so let's reread that, but change a few things here. Oh boy. [00:16:00] Trans disorders often begin in puberty, just as the social world becomes more complex and the autistic person experiences more problems navigating changing social expectations and trying to connect with their peers and fit in.
They feel very different from their peers and may become immersed in gender transition as a way of coping. They may believe that they do not fit in socially because of their body. I'm not even having to change the words here because of their body and their appearance. So they seek to change them both.
Oh, It is common for teenagers to connect with peers through a common interest, but a autistic teenager may not be able to connect with the interests of non autistic groups. Again, I'm not having to change any of the words here.
Simone Collins: As they become
Malcolm Collins: more fascinated with gender transition and trans communities, they may become accepted in a peer group that embraces this culture.
Some autistic teenagers will focus on gender transition and appearance as a way of being included and build a sense of identity. It, the overlap is [00:17:00] so strong. Intense. And that's what was found in a different community that also has all of these over, other overlaps here.
Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Wow. So, to keep going here.
No, it's just like the entire thing reads like it's about trans individuals. But it, but it helped me understand it from this other perspective. Alternate perspective. But you know what I'm doing,
Simone Collins: I'm there. Then I'm replacing this with pregnancy and like pregnancy communities and fertility communities.
I'm
Malcolm Collins: like, Oh, hello. Can we create a disease in our culture around girls who want hot autistic girls who want to get pregnant all the time? This is the thing. People online are like, Oh, this is like a fetish. They're like, Oh, they must have a breeding fetish. And it's like, no, it's a special interest. It's so much worse than that.
It's about autism. It's about body dysmorphia, guys. Oh my God, if we could get, if we could get pernatalism categorized in the same way that like trans people get like special rights [00:18:00] and stuff like that that you as a pregnant person who is autistic and it's like your special interest, you've got to get all these special rights because now, you know, well, You know, you're a protected class, right?
It's, it's no longer a wholesome thing. It's a weird sex thing or a weird gender thing. And as soon as it's that, now we just need to embrace that aspect of prenatalism. Right.
Simone Collins: I will say here, you know, to all the, the hate watchers who I see the comments.
Malcolm Collins: Our comment section is like 95 percent votes on even our most hated videos.
Wow.
Simone Collins: Okay. Well, I guess I would say that there are people Who are they take umbrage to the idea of people having children for quote, unquote, the wrong reasons, like, because it's an autistic special interest to this being one example, right? Or for ideological reasons, instead of just loving children, I think, honestly, and this is something I've heard other very pronatalist people say.
You kind of have to have an ideological or logical or special interest reason to begin having kids because it's [00:19:00] really hard to get started. Then once you actually get to know them as people, you're having kids because they're amazing people. And you realize that one of the most meaningful thing you could ever do is create an amazing life for them and bring amazing, wonderful people into the world and give them the best possible life.
Okay. So you start out essentially doing it for the wrong reason or for a heartless reason, and then you start doing it for the heart. I just want to, I just want to point out that it's not wrong for someone to like use special interests or ideology or logic to get someone started, because you can't really, you can't show someone, for example, what it's like to be in love.
Until they're actually in love, right? You know, they have to get, they have to be interested in getting in love from a logical standpoint first, before it happens, or it just kind of happens naturally, you know, they, they fall in love by mistake, just like you might get pregnant by mistake and have kids by mistake.
I just wanted to comment on some very frequent [00:20:00] pointed remarks about, Oh, like, wasn't it terrible that pronatalists would be having children just because they think it's important to have children. This
Malcolm Collins: is the worst reason to have to moan. It's when we need to keep up the facade. Our children live a gray.
And dull and, and, and, and, and dreary existence. Yes. Look, look miserable Indy. I mean, look, we're, we don't eat our house in the winter. This is me wearing a warm winter coat inside, right? Like, yeah. And
Simone Collins: Indy's wearing a snowsuit. Cause of course she is.
Malcolm Collins: Clearly our, our drive towards extreme levels of temperance is where I'd say, I'd say with discipline to try to work on our internal discipline by, by not indulging in pointless.
Simone Collins: She's so sad. She's so depressed. Pro. I see it in her
Malcolm Collins: eyes. That's that her eyes. We did this episode on the, the, the girl who went and shot up at school. That's what she looked like. Same eyes. I see it, Simone.
Simone Collins: I see it.
Malcolm Collins: I see it. . [00:21:00] She knows, she knows she's a mistake. Just like that girl, her parents had her as a mistake.
Oh, I had
Simone Collins: for all the wrong reasons, and, oh, you're so not loved.
Malcolm Collins: Okay, so, Simone, hold on, I gotta continue here. Okay. I'm not gonna keep reading it both ways anymore, because, like, it just gets so comical at this point. Yeah. Sometimes, restricted eating can commence because the person seeks to remain asexual and androgynous.
Sometimes, puberty blockers can commence because Okay. Fearing change and disliking the body changes that start to occur during puberty. For example, the person may be afraid of becoming an adult, and the changes this will bring to their lives, feeling incapable of getting a job or living independently, is that they seek to stay in their childlike body.
Oh my god! What?! You see why, like, when I started reading this, I was like, oh my god, revelation moment. This is the same phenomenon. Yeah. Okay, we found that autistic people often [00:22:00] experience difficulties discerning the character or personality of others, including their own personality. They often define themselves in terms of their interests and knowledge, rather than in terms of personality descriptors of social roles, such as mother, daughter, or friend.
This difficulty with conceptualizing the self can lead to over reliance on a self identification in terms of physical appearance, including their weight, rather than their character and other personality traits. qualities here. We say, including their gender rather than their character or other personality qualities.
Because in reality, your gender should not be that important to you. Like to a normal person, like I'd say myself, if I woke up the other day and I was in a woman's body, I'd just be like, okay, I'll figure out how to make this work. Like, I wouldn't be like, oh my God, I need to transition back immediately.
And I, this was in the transgender world makes us a gender. And ironically, because both of us feel this way and ironically, a form of transgender, because Agender is a form of genderqueer, and genderqueer is a form of transgender, by I forgot the, the main organization that does [00:23:00] all of this one of the main pride groups or whatever.
So we are technically transgender by their own definition just because I don't, Understand why I would care if I was a different gender. I'm like, I've got to focus on the difference I'm going to make in the world. You would trounce as a woman. I'm just saying, I wouldn't know. I'm even like, it's funny.
Like I wouldn't even be distressed. I'd just be like, Oh, awesome. Like now I can try. And I'd be such a cute guy.
Simone Collins: Like, you know, like taking care of the house. You and I would make a great partner. If you
Malcolm Collins: change nothing about our personality and just the gender. Oh my
Simone Collins: gosh. I would watch the gender swapped AI movie of us that we will eventually create in like two years when that becomes possible.
Malcolm Collins: We become famous enough. There will be rule 34 part of us. That's where they do gender swap or no real city for that. They exist. There's part of it. And then there's rule. There's so many
Simone Collins: rules of the internet. One of the other rules
Malcolm Collins: is that there's gender swapped porn events. So eventually there's going to be gender swapped porn of us.
Anyway part of the international definition of autism is rigidity and thinking APA 2020. Once an autistic person has made a [00:24:00] decision, they can be very determined and stay with the decision despite data and persuasion to the contrary. Commit to the bit!
What? Commit to the bet. That's what they do. For example, the person may decide that their life is far easier and simpler if they follow the rules dictated by eating disorder and therefore are very reluctant to change. Yeah. Simone does this. She still follows the rules of eating disorder and I find this.
Can help you if you've ever interacted. I'm a functional anorexic. Okay? If you've ever interacted with a trans person and they're like, my life is better now. And you're like, yeah, but like, I knew you before this and it's clearly not like you're not as happy as you used to be. You. You have to spend all of this money every month on this.
You are not widely accepted. You know, a lot of people treat you with discrimination now that didn't treat you with discrimination before, like your life is. Objectively not better, but they're like, no, my life is better now. And it's the same way you're talking to an anorexic person. If you go to an anorexic person, they're like, no, you don't understand.
My [00:25:00] life, gosh, yeah. And if
Simone Collins: I'm thinking about how I felt when I weighed like 98 pounds as a five foot eight and a half woman, and people were like, you need to put on weight. I could imagine that's how it felt. When people are like, you're, you're not passing, like, you should just be a guy again. And this feeling of like, I am not crossing that line.
Yeah, I can feel that. And I, yeah, that, that makes, actually, that makes Gender dysphoria feel a lot more relatable to me. So this is really helpful that you're reading this to me. Thanks, Malcolm.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, right? Like as soon as you, who is an autistic person, who diagnosed autistic who went through this and understanding this is really important for our family because this is something our kids are going to be exposed to.
You know
Simone Collins: it. I mean, Toasty's already showing all of my disordered eating.
Malcolm Collins: All of our kids are autistic so far that can or old enough to be diagnosed. And so, you know, how do. How could somebody have had off anorexia for you, given [00:26:00] that it's a culture, maybe we just need to make our culture so different from the culture around them that they wouldn't even think of it.
Maybe we make the way you relate to gender and sexuality in our culture so different that they wouldn't even think about it.
Simone Collins: No, see, I think that again, just the mere presence of a large family really solves this problem because again, let's go back to that part where they needed something to fill the void or the to drown out the chaos.
That was too noisy, that was so noisy, like a restrictive eating disorder or like gender transition that they didn't have room for social anxiety and a large family will do that. The responsibilities of being in a large family will do that. The chaos of being in a large family, I really think that I, and I'd love to see research on this.
If rates of both gender dysphoria and Anorexia and cutting and all these other, I would say, like, kind of related disorders are [00:27:00] lower when there are 5 plus children. And I really think the key is 5 plus children. And I don't, I would not say that Elon Musk's family counts because they have. Enough supplementary care where the kids aren't growing up in a highly constrained environment, like resource constrained and like cramped and chaotic.
Like, unfortunately they have been given too much space for anxiety to creep in. Through their privilege. Yeah, they're too privileged.
Malcolm Collins: We got a small house like this where you've always got other people in a room with you and you're always There's no room for the
Simone Collins: social anxiety. There's just no, like, you're, you're literally too tired and, like, fed up with it all to have room for social anxiety.
You give zero s***s at that point. Which is so beautiful! Like, the word that was used in Hannah's Children So it was something along the lines of, of having enough children to burn the selfishness out of you. And it really is burned away like a cleansing [00:28:00] fire. It's so cool.
Malcolm Collins: Simone, I love you, by the way.
You're fantastic in the way you talk about this. , next. There are other types of thinking that are characteristics of autism and may be a risk factor for developing an eating disorder. For example, black and white thinking. The person may think, if I am not thin, then I am fat.
And hold on, I'd note here that and sees weight as a dichotomy rather than a range of acceptable weights. So think about this in terms of gender presentation, right? They may be like, I'm a girl, but I like some boy things, or I'm a boy, but I like some girl things. And because of, instead of being able to be like, well, you can present your gender in a way that like, well, then it
Simone Collins: means that I'm a girl or it means that I'm a boy.
Exactly. Yeah. You have to, this is the systematizing part of autism where it has to be in the category. And that's why I'm pretty sure that Titan also is autistic because she loves categorizing. Oh my gosh. She'll just sit and sort her dinner for like an hour. Have you
Malcolm Collins: noticed that? No, [00:29:00] they can stick very rigidly to a single number on the weighted scale as being the only desirable number Even though that number puts them at a life threatening weight part of the rigidity of thinking it can be what we have called the And and this is what I I I know here.
Like with a trans individual you can be like But your suicide risk is super high now. Like, your mental health seems really poor right now. Like, why do you think this is a preferable position? And they're just like, because it is. Because it needs to fit. The thing needs to fit. And this is the only acceptable way of doing this.
Simone Collins: The risk of death has absolutely zero bearing. When I was 98, And I weighed in at 98 pounds. I was like, all right, so let's get to 97. All right. Good job. Let's keep going There was no there is no stopping point with these things and there is no concern About health or death.
Malcolm Collins: Yes and so in the past this is called the frank sinatra syndrome or the my way [00:30:00] Syndrome, once the person has decided on their beliefs about their weight, or you could say gender expression, the rules around their eating and exercise patterns, you could say their presentation they can be very rigid.
They are not open to other people's advice or opinions, even if these are based on scientific evidence. You know, I could have gone to you as papers on, you know, the correct weight ranges, healthy ranges. I could have said, why? Like, what's the point of this weight? And you'd be like I feel more comfortable this way.
You know, Imagine how bad anorexic would get as we as a society started accepting it, right? And we're like, pro Anna, for the win, pro You can't, you can't hate on someone for being pro Anna. Oh yeah, if we, if we
Simone Collins: defended people's right to continue to starve themselves. Like,
how dare you put her in a recovery home, she, she identifies, you
Malcolm Collins: put anorexic people in recovery home and they're like, this is like, you know, you're denying their identity.
Yeah. Transitioning gay people. Although
Simone Collins: you know, my, my dad, God bless his genius. [00:31:00] He, he somehow figured out how to do that. He, he enabled me to maintain my status as someone with a severe eating disorder and not die by giving me a food scale and a software program. Where I could track everything I ate and then all the calories I burned using fitness trackers or just logging.
And what I think that's like for, for gender dysphoria though, it would probably involve like giving other categories or I would probably like introducing different definitions of gender, possibly introducing them to like the concept of, of Louis the 14th's Brother whose name I'm forgetting. Oh, I, I, yeah, I actually love this idea.
Malcolm Collins: So you actually fix it by going
Simone Collins: You have to change the categories. Yeah, you have to be like, Oh, but you're, you're like, you're more likely, you are manifesting like, what was it? Louis Philippe? I can't remember his name. He was so badass. But you just have to be like, you have the wrong, sorry, you have misunderstood the categorization [00:32:00] system.
Actually, you're sub level A. B5 4. And
Malcolm Collins: parts of the community have basically done this. We're like, I'll meet people and we'll see them online who identify as trans, but have done literally nothing in terms of gender transition or anything like that. They're just like, Oh, I'm like category B7, subsection 15.
Fascinating. I think you're right. Yeah. And it's, it's a, it's a solution. Yes. And
Simone Collins: is always the right answer with children. Yes. And.
Malcolm Collins: One of the qualities of autism is the intensity of the interests a person develops and the pleasure that these interests bring. One of the reasons eating disorders can develop is because of an intellectual fascination with eating and its effects on the body, as well as the numbers involved.
For example, in terms of calories for different foods. Okay, I just have to, well, one of the reasons for gender transition can develop is an intellectual fascination with puberty and gender and its effects on the body, as well as the numbers involved. And I absolutely see this in the trans community, they're like, my numbers!
[00:33:00] Let's, let's share my numbers!
Simone Collins: Absolutely yes.
Malcolm Collins: They may enjoy exploring eating patterns, rules, and weight. They may keep schedules and spreadsheets or use apps to record progress. Entering numbers and seeking patterns can be very enjoyable aspect of their interest. The eating disorder practices become a source of enjoyment and they embrace being.
An expert in the eating disorder. Their expertise and commitment are admired by others within the eating disorder. Social media can be a way of sharing their knowledge and gaining dopamine through the number of likes achieved through their social media page. Is that not something we see with people going through transition?
Simone Collins: Nail on the head. Wow. I mean, done. I feel like the argument has been, has been presented. This is insane.
Malcolm Collins: Well, there was actually, I know you need to go soon, but for people to believe this, there's a few things we need to go into. We need to go into evidence that, because a lot of people will be like, wait, what's the evidence that anorexia is a [00:34:00] cultural phenomenon, right?
So just to read here, this is from Scott Alexander. Anorexia was mostly unknown in the west until becoming trendy in the mid 1800s. During that period, doctors reported a high prevalence of anorexia among quote unquote hysterics, but the fad ended after about 10 or 20 years and went back to being basically unknown.
In 1983, a famous singer, Karen Carpenter, died of anorexia, thrusting it back into national news, and suddenly lots of people in the west were anorexic again. Meanwhile, foreign doctors who trained in the west went back to their countries. A search far and wide for it and found almost nothing. The few cases they did see didn't resemble the typical Western version at all.
For example, one Hong Kong psychiatrist was able to find a woman who refused to eat out of grief when her boyfriend left her, but she didn't think she was fat or feel any cultural pressure to be thinner. And this doesn't appear like the this is like a self punishment thing. The absence of anorexia abroad was especially surprising.
Since anorexics tend to end up in the hospital with extremely noticeable malnutrition, that doesn't really mimic anything else. It's not [00:35:00] really possible to hide severe anorexia in the way you can hide severe depression. In 1994, Hong Kong got its own Karen Carpenter, a young girl died of anorexia setting off a national pandemic and many public awareness campaigns.
Near instantly, anorexia rate shot up to the same level as the West, with appropriate number of people presenting to hospital ERs with severe malnutrition. A study of the Caribbean island of, and this is not forbidden, this And in post here, one thing I'm going to add is a description of some of the alternate gender displays that you get in different countries.
Because trans people will point to them as trans just because they're a nonconforming gender display. Yeah. But they don't Actually, they, they point to like incredibly rigid social structures in these countries or, or tribes where like if a man takes on like a woman's job or is gay, they'll say, oh, he's actually a [00:36:00] woman.
That's, that's the way it often works. It's nothing like transgenderism in the West. It's nothing like, oh, I don't feel comfortable in my body or something like that. It's like, oh, well, that guy's a florist. So we, we treat him like he's a woman. And then you. female pronouns for him because that's a woman's job.
And you know,
Simone Collins: or
Malcolm Collins: that guy likes sleeping with guys and you know, women do that. So we used like a women, it's a tweak basically. That's, that's what you're seeing, you know, not this big effort to gender transition or anything like that.
You've got the FATF IAM of Simoa who are. If feminine males who are attracted to other males in the United States, this is not what we would call trans. This is what we would call a twink.
This is also seems to be the case of the MOOCs. of Southern Mexico. Which are again, just males who are a feminine and attracted to other males.
Twinkie sub gay males. That's what they are not trans.
Then you have the bug.
So people of Southern Indonesia. And they believe in [00:37:00] five genders and people will say, oh, , this, this one of the genders, the color. Maybe these are, , trans people. And so, , let's describe these individuals and see what you would classify them as in our society. They do not undergo any sort of feminization surgery or feminization practices. But they are males who are attracted to other males. And are predominantly involved in industries like wedding planning. , yes, it sounds very much like a trans now. That's a f*****g gay person.
Okay. That's a f*****g gay person. Trans people really seem to only exist within the urban monoculture,
In every one of these instances, the alternate gender identity that these individuals are assigned. Appears to be downstream of the gender they are attracted to. So if I am attracted to men, I am assigned a female gender. And if I am attracted to. Females. I am [00:38:00] assigned a male gender that is a very different than the Western version of transgenderism. I think too. Find a phenomenon that you could consider culturally analogous to the transgender phenomenon in the United States. You would need to find a culture in which individuals are considered the opposite gender from their birth gender. But are still attracted to the gender
their birth gender would be expected to be attracted to. I E trans women who are attracted to women or trans men who are attracted to men and you just don't see this anywhere else. I have found in history.
Or in any culture?
trans people only seem to really exist in large numbers in the urban monoculture. And we don't seem to be able to find the phenomenon really anywhere else. You will find cross-dressers throughout history, but they do not appear like the trans phenomenon of today where all of a sudden it's like, oh my God, I need to go through this.
I need to go through this. I need to be recognized for this, or I'm going to [00:39:00] kill myself. It's very much.
Oh, there's that weird guy or girl who likes dressing up as somebody else. Like that's, that's cool. Or, oh, a girl's dressing up as guys so that she can serve in the military or some other function that she wouldn't be able to serve as a woman, but not out of this, like obsession was being recognized. As another gender. That's a completely modern phenomenon.
If you're wondering why I'm not going into two spirit people. ,
It's because my read of the evidence that they're mostly a modern fabrication and didn't exist in wide numbers.
Across the native American cultures. However,
where they did exist. They typically meant one of two things. It was either when a man or woman held a job that was typically associated with the other gender. I E. If I was a man and I was a wedding planner, I would be called a woman in this tribe. And, , that is not a sign of gender flexibility. That is a sign of intense gender rigidity.
, or it was a way to talk about Twinkie, homosexual men,
Which as we have seen, it is not [00:40:00] uncommon for cultures to categorize as women. And to be honest, I kind of get it.,
I actually don't know of, of, of gender transition really exists that widely in any other culture.
I take that back. It does exist pretty widely in some middle Eastern cultures as a cure for gayness, but I'm pretty sure that no one would consider that the same phenomenon is what's going on in the United States. I E. If there's a guy who likes sleeping with guys. Well, you know, obviously if he's gay, he needs to be put to death, but you can fix that by turning him into a woman.
It also exists in the form of his rise. In, , India, Pakistan area. This is communities of. Born males who, if they are living in poverty or kicked out of their family. , go live in these communities where they are. , castrated or gender transition, whatever you want to say so that they can act as sex workers for other men. Again, not anything like you would think a modern, transgender individual, although the transgender community calls them transgender.
Calling [00:41:00] someone in poverty who was castrated, so they could be used for sex work. Transgender one to me feels incredibly offensive. , but to, , it would be sort of the equivalent of calling a cus. Trato transgender. If you're not familiar with Toronto is that's. , It's a historic thing in Italy, where they would castrate young boys who were very good singers so that they could continue to sing, , in the equivalent of a. , the high pitches.
And I want to be absolutely clear here, what we are not arguing.
Is that.
Fluid gender identity didn't exist. Historically, historically there is a wide range of gender presentation. What we're specifically addressing here is the modern phenomenon where somebody, all of a sudden starts obsessing over the ways that other people interpret their gender identity. And the way that they see their own gender identity and then enters the state where they feel like they're going to kill themselves.
If people don't start seeing their gender identity, the way that they want them to.
[00:42:00] This is why we did the episode on members, stealing witches, which is a culture bound illness, similar to anorexia or gender dysphoria in the United States. Because we can look at something like that as outsiders and have a laugh. But from within that culture's perspective, it is very real.
So real that some people end up killing their own babies over it. Accidentally of course, , or end up permanently dismembering their genitalium over it. , and so when we hear about this, we have a laugh at them. Because we don't have something like this was in our culture, but when they hear about something like gender dysphoria in our culture, they have a laugh at us.
Speaker 13: That a dumb question? No. No. It'll look like to if you want to become a lady, but your man, you have something wrong in your Something wrong. Something wrong in your family.
Speaker 12: Something wrong in you.
Malcolm Collins: And unfortunately this new understanding of what gender dysphoria [00:43:00] and transgender ism is, has moved me to a position.
Where I am. Maybe more antagonistic towards openly supporting any form of alternative gender identity than I was historically, because if this is accurate, it means that generally supporting this as a society. Is just as harmful as being supportive of something like the pro Ana movement. This is a movement that promotes anorexia. , in is made up of primarily anorexic people.
, And people will be like, but I feel better now in the same way that anorexic people, you know, as I said, I've had anorexic friends in the past and they were like, look, I feel better. I feel accepted. I finally feel comfortable in my body. And I'm like, as an outsider, Who has looking in on you and who has known you for a long time?
I can see that that's. A delusion. You were less happy now than you've ever been. This is, this is not healthy for you.
But if I tell you that you will cut me out of your life and stop talking to me.,
It's something anorexic people often do [00:44:00] to people who try to shake them out of it.
and if you look at it, The transgender person is, is listening to this. And they're like, yeah, but. I feel better now than I did historically. , and I'm like, well, I'm sorry.
I can just look at this statistics on trans individuals and see that the suicide rate goes way up. I can see that. , we even know from the Travis doc clinic, , that people put on. , do you have any blockers? , when you're put on puberty blockers, your suicide rate actually goes up. Now they were suppressing this information because their approach trans clinic.
I mean it's a community was a 50% attempted suicide rate. If you were aware that
didn't exist in other cultures, you'd be like, well, why are we making room for it was in our culture.
And my historic position was. Some real trans individuals probably exist, but a large part of the movement is social. , and I still hold this position. As I said at the beginning, I think about 30%. It's probably biological.
However the damage done by the social part of the movement is so severe. And so [00:45:00] demonstrable at this point. That I am beginning to rethink whether it is a net, good to society, to support trans individuals for the small faction that are real.
But I don't even know if it would really hurt those individuals because. I assume with the real trans individuals, they don't particularly care how other people see their gender presentation.
They just have preferences and thought patterns that match the opposite gender.
They would be okay with a society that just accepted more fluid forms of gender presentation. Whereas when we're talking about this new form of transness,
I w I guess I'd call it gender obsession. A overwhelming obsession with how you perceive your own gender and how other people are perceiving your gender. , because . That leads to a huge amount of suffering. And. These people are hurting.
And I think that this can be occluded from trans individuals because they, when they develop gender dysphoria, they begin to look at [00:46:00] the way a person's body looks. And stop looking at simple things. Like the way their eyes look. So take an individual like Elliot page
look at his eyes. Pre and post transition. Or look at Dylan Mulvaney is either look at really any public facing trans individuals, eyes pre and post transition. And you will notice post-transition. There's something like a spark. That has left them. And it's really, really sad to see.
And I think trans individuals don't see this because they're so focused on every other part of that person's body and gender identity. That they don't see that the person. Has become that anorexic person who is desperately trying to tell you and everyone else that they're genuinely happy and satisfied
Simone Collins: so yeah, that's wow. No, you've completely You've experienced a paradigm change. I've now experienced a paradigm change. And I have a lot more empathy for [00:47:00] people who have gender dysphoria because now I realize I didn't do, basically experience the exact same thing, but with Eating and pregnancy. Oh Well, now we've got
Malcolm Collins: to be more worried about our kids, you know?
No,
Simone Collins: we were already worried. We already knew that autistic kids were disproportionately But I, but
Malcolm Collins: I think that they're just, like, like, like, Modeled and aesthetic wise so similar anorexia and gender dysphoria.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And in terms of talking to individuals because I had a cousin who was anorexic, for example, and I just remember, you know, trying to talk to her about it.
You know,
Simone Collins: yeah, well, there is a logic, but you have to speak. Autism, fortunately.
Malcolm Collins: And she was likely autistic. We speak autism. And knowing you now and knowing her, she was like one of the only really fun people in my family. So I was always like, Oh, you know, she, she gets me because she, she broke the social norms more, but it was [00:48:00] likely because she was autistic.
Simone Collins: Maybe.
Malcolm Collins: So do you want to go over some other culture bound syndrome and do you have to head out?
Simone Collins: I really have to go both. Cause I have to change a poopy diaper. We might add
Malcolm Collins: these in another day.
Simone Collins: I know, I, I, I, We'll do a
Malcolm Collins: separate episode on different culture bound syndromes. These have been really fun episodes to record.
Simone Collins: Yeah, and this, we've already, we're 37 minutes in.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, this will be a different episode. And I've got a life in Describe if you want to continue. Oh, go to the natalism conference.
Simone Collins: Use the, use the code Collins for a 10 percent off. We will be there. So many cool people will be there. It is going to be awesome.
It is an awesome,
Malcolm Collins: you can find your autistic husband. Yes.
Simone Collins: Annual autistic marriage market taking place Austin this March. It's going to be, so we got to make sure they do a
Malcolm Collins: dating market this year. We should talk with Kevin about that. Do we have to call set up by the way? I know I need to get one on the books.
Well, I just want to say, I, so also this, this was [00:49:00] weird, like shifting for you too. Right? Like when I read it, I was like,
Simone Collins: yeah, but it also, it, it, it helps me understand what we would need to do. Just like my dad found a way. To enable me to be a functional anorexic, one can easily enable someone to be a functional trans person.
By functional, I mean trans in a way where they're less likely to die. Just like I am I am, I have an eating disorder in a way where I'm far less likely to die. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: and I think that this can also help trans people just in modeling the way that they come off to outsiders and the way that they can think about themselves.
So like, yeah. If you're a trans person and you've had a friend who suffered from anorexia before and you tried to talk to them about like, you're clearly hurting yourself, I know you say you feel better like this, but I've seen you [00:50:00] before this. I've seen you after this. This is not the thing. And then this person begins retreating more and more into pro ana communities.
You don't know what pro ana is. These are pro anorexia, anorexia supporting communities where they'll post like inspiration of like really sickly looking people. Thinspo.
Simone Collins: Yes.
Malcolm Collins: So it's called if you have a friend who's gone down that rabbit hole, that's how other people feel when they're talking to you.
No,
Simone Collins: this will help everyone understand everyone else. This is good. Okay. I'm going off to get my teeth cleaned and change a poopy diaper. I love you so much. And steak tonight. Wagyu. Let's do it. We didn't buy Wagyu ourselves.
Malcolm Collins: I'm not at that indulgent. I got it for Christmas. Okay. I got it for Christmas.
Simone Collins: Best Christmas present. Oh my gosh. Amazing. Thank you. Okay. Love you. Bye.
Malcolm Collins: Love you. Bye.
Speaker 11: There's snow on the window. There's snow on the window. Snowy cake. It's snowing. It's snowing. Isn't it pretty, Tyson? Yeah. There's so much. I make it all [00:51:00] to the house. It's snowing.
What do you see, Octavian? I see the Christmas tree. Are you happy? Yeah. Testy, are you happy? I'm sick in it. I'm sick in it.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
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French Pronatalists Accused of Stealing African ___ & Hiding them in Vaults Under Versailles
26 déc.· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
This episode delves into a strange and alarming conspiracy theory involving French intelligence and African men's penises. The video covers the cultural phenomenon of penis theft fears, exploring historical and modern accounts from Africa, Asia, and even Europe. Various anecdotes and scholarly work are reviewed, blending serious investigation with the absurdity of the claims. The narrative unfolds with humor, shock, and deep cultural insights, leading to a broader discussion on societal and medical interpretations of such unique fears.
Simone Collins: [00:00:00] french intelligence services, for example, Filled with neo colonial hatred and envy of Africans are now using secret nanotechnology innovations to steal penises from African men in order to reverse the extinction of Europeans unwilling to bear children.
And no matter how crazy you may think this is. The reality is even more terrifying.
Malcolm Collins: this is like cultural difference here. Even if I was certain, I woke up and I was certain that a ghost was trying to take my penis.
Huh. The last thing I would do is run out of the house screaming, my penis is shrinking, my penis is shrinking, dear god, my penis is shrinking. That would be the last thought in my mind. Run around. Beating a gong! Oh my god, my penis is freezing! And then! And then this is how I know this is a different culture.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: If I saw another man [00:01:00] running around beating a gong saying, dear God, my penis is shrinking. My last thought would be to run up and grab his penis along with another man and make loud noises to scare away a ghost,
Actually, I actually kind of like the idea of teaching them that like cultures we don't want them engaging with might try to steal their penises. Be like, hey, you gotta be really careful with this urban monoculture stuff. People with blue hair, steal penises. I
Simone Collins: mean, they do. Technically. So I'm okay with saying that.
Like, they
Malcolm Collins: actually, they actually do.
Simone Collins: They do steal penises
Would you like to know more?
Malcolm Collins: Simone. They've caught us. Oh no! The penis stealing! It's gone too far! We, we, we let our hands slip!
Damn it!
Simone Collins: Huh.
Malcolm Collins: I'll read this. This is a quote from a Scott Alexander piece, which I found pretty shocking. And we're going to go into this case in [00:02:00] detail, and then go over the history of penis stealing. Which is to say that the pronatalists are penis stealers now. Penis stealing, which update a French diplomat in the Central African Republic is accused of quote, having organized a vast penis theft operation in the country in quote more information here, which described a Q anon style conspiracy in which Western countries , concerned about falling birth rates are stealing African's penises in order to harvest hormones via nanotechnology.
BNN
Speaker 6: Yes, we got a full tank of dicks!
Simone Collins: If you have no technology, can't you just leave the penises on and then do the science inside
Malcolm Collins: the video? No, no, no, there's like reports that we're gonna read about of like trucks filled with penises. Okay. Driven out of the country. Wow. And people are like, I've seen it. I've seen the trucks. And it's all about The penis trucks!
What I love about this is it's all downstream of [00:03:00] fears about fertility rates as a country that isn't having those fears right now is being exposed to them and how are they reacting to them? They're like, Oh, people in Europe and America are freaking out about their fertility rate being too low.
They're coming for our penises.
Simone Collins: Well, they're right, but in the wrong way, right? As you point out, all these wealthy developed countries are heading into demographic collapse. It's real. It's a genuine problem. And they're saying, don't worry, we'll just depend on immigrants from high fertility countries.
And, and like those in Africa for our Labor workforces and and and for everyone else really
Malcolm Collins: only Africa because Latin America is going into fertility class right now. They always actually rates
Simone Collins: their motivation is going to be to keep these African countries poor and therefore very high fertility.
Malcolm Collins: Sorry, add a note to what you just said. Countries only stay above repopulation rate on average even within Africa when the average citizen is earning less than 5, 000 USD per year. So if you wanted to use them as like [00:04:00] human farms, which it appears is like Europe's going plan right now which is horrifying to me that this is the not racist plan, but anyway they, they, they, they cannot allow them to develop.
Simone Collins: And so basically they there's a genuine there should be a genuine fear in Africa of being exploited for fertility and what do we have fear of being exploited for fertility penis doing thing. I mean, we'll say it's metaphorical, right? It's it's metaphorical. Penis stealing. What they really mean to say is,
Malcolm Collins: I'm going to be honest here.
Simone. Okay. If it was possible by nanotechnology to take a person's penis, derive some hormone from it, and then use that hormone to make your own penis larger, there would be a black market. No, no, no, no. And it would predominantly be operational in Africa. Less laws. I'm just saying enough people want bigger penises that there [00:05:00] would be enough demand for a black market for human penises.
Yes, but we're talking
Simone Collins: about fertility, not penis size. Bigger penises do not
Malcolm Collins: produce more
Simone Collins: people.
Malcolm Collins: They link the two. in this actual phrase. No. Oh. They think they're directly correlated. Oh boy. So wait. No, no, I'm not. I'm not going to go there. I'm But we're going to study this phenomenon. We're going to study it in its modern iteration.
We're going to study the history of it. I didn't know that it extended to women, that women were afraid that their nipples would disappear. Nipples? Yeah, there became like these fabs where they would put like barbells through their nipples to prevent them from retracting. People ended up dying from this.
Retracting? Yeah, they thought that they, the way they disappeared is they retracted into the body.
I love, you're like, what? All right, let's go Simone. Yes! Let's! I'm gonna start with a tweet, then go into the article. This is fascinating.
Simone Collins: Okay, so,
[00:06:00] tweets, a French diplomat in hashtag C A R found himself at, quote, the center of a campaign last month in which he was accused of having organized a vast amount Penis theft operation in the country, unquote, this is linking to an article
Malcolm Collins: for months now, rumors of missing male genitals have been stirring up the public in the C. A. R. That's the Central African Republic. The first reports of missing organs came in 2022 from Nadelle, Bangarra, Burbagadi Prefecture. It's not pronounced correct at all.
Speaker 25: Spoke to a trader in Bungui last week He said nanotech is the new form of sneak A single light touch and your pride goes out Then never again will you feel So hold on to hope and hold on to more
Don't let white men come knocking your door
Malcolm Collins: The phenomenon spread to Bambari and has reached Bangui.[00:07:00]
And spread throughout the country and the media, the government and doctors neglect the cases of genital evaporation because of the unproven nature of the phenomenon. Although hundreds of photos that are unlikely to be fabricated are available online. Wait, why would they be unlikely? That is exactly the thing 4chan would fabricate.
That is the first thing I would try to fabricate on 4chan. With
Speaker 7: September 2014, we were excited to release the new iOS 8. Well, 4chan made another marketing campaign that claimed even more sophisticated algorithms that allowed the new iPhone battery to be charged by simply popping the thing in the microwave for two minutes on high. People really did this, by the way. And the news picked up on it, too. Yeah, don't put your phone in the microwave, just to be clear, don't ever, ever Can I do if I microwave my phone? Help. iPhone put in microwave and not working. I know it's stupid but I put my phone in the microwave. Okay, let's say I stuck my iPhone in the microwave. And even the LAPD had to issue a warning after receiving a large number of distressed [00:08:00] phone calls.
Malcolm Collins: With the
Simone Collins: rise of AI, you can now convince millions of people that they're These are real photos.
Malcolm Collins: We can take these, these fears on crack level now. And I, and I hope that 4chan does go and start faking this, please. This is, this is hilarious. Oh boy.
Okay, so.
Simone Collins: There are various versions about the circumstances of the disappearance of penises. Some say that the penis disappears completely, while others note it only shrinks.
Some indicate that the phenomenon is temporary and the genitals can be returned by praying in church. Others insist that this process is irreversible. There are different rumors about the mysterious witch doctor capable of conducting such an inhuman and horrifying ritual. According to the main version, organs disappear after a handshake or any other physical contact with a stranger.
Some eyewitnesses and victims add that the stranger in question was white. People are seriously disturbed, and the matter has already gone [00:09:00] to the point where men attempt to lynch suspected individuals. The question comes up, why are cases of missing genitals still going on? Despite the refutations propagated by the media, locals are reporting that men continue to experience penis theft in different corners of the country.
All these stories are called conspiracy superstitions and tall tales. But in 2024, we are experienced enough to realize what is called conspiracy today may become common knowledge tomorrow. In recent years, we've seen the then called crazy conspiracy theories about Western elite being involved in child abduction, mass orgies, rampant homosexuality, and satanic rituals all turned out to be matter of fact.
Hold on. Hold on. I want to,
Malcolm Collins: this is being a Okay. So for people, the context of this, this is obviously being written by an African conspiracy theorist, likely in the car. Right. Okay. So they don't sound that different. Like they're, they're clearly like, look, I know that this is called a conspiracy right now, but like, hear [00:10:00] me out here.
There's so many photos I have seen. We should actually be a little worried about this. But what I love in addition to this is from the perspective of an African in the C. A. R. Who's like, what are the Western conspiracies that have been proven out? Because this has happened a number of times recently.
Sure. Absolutely. The, the, the, the Mass mass orgies. That one. Okay. That one was proven true. I, I think the child abduction I think that there's, that's one still like a fringe, but mostly accepted on the right right now, but here's the other two. I love rampant homosexuality. This was like a rumor to them.
Like, is this a conspiracy
Simone Collins: theory? Yeah. That's what I'm not sure about. Like, I know that child abduction takes place. We know that orgies take place and we know
Malcolm Collins: No, we're not seeing it from his perspective. Okay. He is an African. Okay. So he likely went to people he knows in his country or outlets in his country.
And he's like, is it true that there's like [00:11:00] rampant homosexuality in the United States? Just like tons and tons of gay people, like corrupting the country. And then the person would be like, let's say they're a missionary or something like that. Right. They'd probably say. Oh, that's not true. Come on, like so conservative Christian missionaries in Africa are like,
Simone Collins: no, there's no homosexuality,
Malcolm Collins: rampant homosexuals at every level of everything in the United States.
But you as an American, you don't even see that as a conspiracy theory. You're like, yeah, it's gays everywhere. Like I got gay friends. Like, what are you talking about? He, a guy in the car were like, you're probably likely to be gay. Killed if you're gay, he was asking other people. Is it really true? There's gays everywhere in the united states and they're like, no, that can't possibly be true And he's like and now it's been proven.
And then the satanic rituals one I love. You know, I I don't know about that one yet It depends on how I don't know, like
Simone Collins: define satanic rituals. So there was that woman on Eurovision who's a witch, but does that count? Like,
Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah, that's what he's probably talking about. Okay. So you're [00:12:00] right about that.
Yeah. So there is like a big witchcraft community in the United States. And so he probably was like. Are satanic rituals being carried out in the United States? And people were like, no, like you can literally buy them on
Simone Collins: Etsy. Like, I don't understand. Yes, they are. And technically speaking, do they work? I don't think so personally, but that's up to
Malcolm Collins: you.
This is actually the interesting nature of conspiracy theories. It's suddenly become banal and noticeable once they're proven factual. If you said that there are
Simone Collins: rituals now have to be. Five star reviews on Etsy. You just can't really get excited about it anymore. You know, it was funny when they were secret.
Now they're
Malcolm Collins: go to somebody you know, a few years ago. And you'd be like, there are rampant, there are these giant sex parties that the elites of our country go to that have underage people at them. And they'd be like, that is the craziest effing conspiracy theory I've ever heard. And today you mentioned that like, yeah, sure.
Whatever. Like, obviously like Epstein, whatever. Right. You know, you, you go to the, the The, the, the [00:13:00] satanic ritual thing. And you're like, there's secret satanic rituals. And they're like that sounds pretty crazy to me. And then you're like, look on Etsy. And they're like, Oh, that's just a little spell thing.
Like what, what does that thing teenagers
Simone Collins: do? That thing girls do when they go through their goth
Malcolm Collins: phase? I don't know. Like, by the way, for people who haven't seen it, there was an old episode we did called trad wife finds out you can buy spells on when we do a review of these. Anyway, keep going. But I found that to be really interesting, the way that he thinks about conspiracy theories coming from a different cultural environment.
Simone Collins: That is, yeah, that on its own, worth the price of admission. Very entertaining. Okay, I will continue. The moral decay of Western countries is a well known fact, but even the bravest minds could not have foreseen that they were up to this time. French intelligence services, for example, Filled with neo colonial hatred and envy of Africans are now using secret nanotechnology innovations to steal penises from African men in order to reverse the extinction of Europeans [00:14:00] unwilling to bear children.
And no matter how crazy you may think this is. The reality is even more terrifying.
Malcolm Collins: Hold on, before we go further, I need to, because I love getting this perception
Simone Collins: of
Malcolm Collins: both pronatalism as a movement in Europe and in the United States from the perspective of a high fertility country. That has more of its traditional culture intact where
Simone Collins: for that's just so high fertility that they don't even think about it.
They're like, what? Your penis is broken like that. I don't know.
Malcolm Collins: Your penises aren't working. Yeah, I guess your
Simone Collins: penis is
Malcolm Collins: too small. Sorry. That's not what he says. Listen to his words because we say that this is the way Africans think of the West and they're like, oh, no, that can't be true. He says. Europeans unwilling to bear children.
Simone Collins: Okay, so he gets it.
Malcolm Collins: No, but what he's saying is you are not putting in the labor that we're putting in. And, and in this case, we're taking their penises, but what's really happening is we're taking their children, right? Like, he understands that this is unfair and [00:15:00] that Europeans have brought this on themselves.
And then, if you look at the fact that First line of this, what is he, the African, thinking of the West right now? The moral decay of Western countries is a well known fact, but even the bravest of minds could not have foreseen what they were up to this time.
Simone Collins: Like, Oh, Western civilization, God, what have you done now?
What
Malcolm Collins: we'll be studying here is how fears of penis theft typically disappear after westernization. So we'll go into other countries that have, so your country will only be high fertility so long as you're still afraid of the penis stealing, which is, or in this case, scientists and bureaucrats. Well, and
Simone Collins: that's because your dick hasn't been cut off by bureaucracy yet.
I don't know what to say. I mean, maybe we are the dickless ones. Is that what has happened?
Malcolm Collins: I was making earlier, and I really can't emphasize this enough. You could make people's penises longer by stealing other people's penises and There would be a black market for african penises
Simone Collins: fact fact.
Malcolm Collins: They haven't misjudged our [00:16:00] degeneracy. They have misjudged our technology.
Speaker 5: You can't just run around ripping off people's dicks. I have an advanced degree in technology! You're a madman, this ship will never fly!
Malcolm Collins: Yes. Okay continue
Simone Collins: In february 2024 the independent a major global media outlet published an article claiming that the french are Losing their manhood a survey by the french institute of public opinion Ifop found out that That one in four, 24 percent of French adults aged 18 to 69 said they had not had sex for the past year.
Malcolm Collins: I love, I, hold on, I love, you're absolutely right that like a part of his brain is being like, wait, one in four men isn't having sex in the last year? Do they not have penises? Yeah,
Simone Collins: they must not have penises, but this
Malcolm Collins: how How is this, how is this, que c'est possible? I don't know if I said that [00:17:00] anyway.
Simone Collins: And they are the only ones who admitted it.
Malcolm Collins: He meant to write.
He meant to write, and they are only the ones who admitted it. No.
Simone Collins: Yes, I know. But it was right before
Malcolm Collins: not right. okay, I
Simone Collins: know we understand. We just disagree grammatically, but I will read what you said.
Speaker 2: Now you're trying to make me out to be the bad guy. Yes, I'm trying to make you a bad guy. We're both bad guys. We're professional bad guys. Ding. Hello. Please, belittle me in front of my henchmen.
It's a real morale booster. But, but why are we arguing in front of the henchmen anyway? Because the henchmen are standing here. Are you two gonna get a divorce? That's a very pretty costume, Mrs. Monarch. I have a
Malcolm Collins: Fan base.
Speaker 2: That is full of guys that do nothing but play a video game that uses a little plastic baby guitar.
Simone Collins: And they are only the ones who admitted it.
According to medical experts, 64 percent of French men have not had sexual relationships during the year, and this applies only to white men living in France. Now it has become [00:18:00] the problem that threatens national security because men who have lost their manhood are not ready to join the army, are not ready to build a career.
They're only ready to sit in front of a computer and play video games. The French security forces got involved in solving the issue and discovered that there is a certain hormone that is responsible for sexual activity. It is impossible to synthesize this hormone artificially, but it could be obtained from the blood of another man.
Malcolm Collins: I'm sorry. First, I love like the sympathetic magic aspect here. Yeah, just blood they needed. They could just like do blood drives in Africa and pay them for it. It can certainly be cheaper than stealing their penises with nanotechnology. So I love how you get like the derangement here.
Simone Collins: Yeah, the, the, the leaps, the logical leaps that have to be made for the penis theft to actually be.
The logical next step are non trivial.
Malcolm Collins: But it makes sense if you consider that penis theft was a historic [00:19:00] cultural fear of this region. Yes, as Scott Alexander covered in um Well, we'll be going over that after you finish reading this. Awesome, yeah. Such a cool history. History when people used to think witches did it instead of pronatalists.
Right, yeah. And I, I promise I have, I've never stolen a penis. That's exactly what a penis stealer
Simone Collins: would say. Very suspicious. Very suspicious. I will continue the highest level of this hormone was found in the blood of African men. Of course secret developments on the extraction of the hormone have been going on for a long time in 2016, there was an outbreak of penises disappearances in Haiti and the trials were conducted.
The aim of that program was to extract this hormone from men. Later, it turned out that the highest rate of this hormone is not just in African men, but in the Central African Republic, where men are famous for having the longest genitals. [00:20:00] Is that true?
Malcolm Collins: I don't know. I can look it up in post. But what I can say is I love the jingoism going on here.
Pride! Pride! Yes! Google it right now. What
Simone Collins: country has the longest
Malcolm Collins: But I love that this is, this is such a good conspiracy theory because it combines you know, degradation of the outsider is like,
Simone Collins: we're the best perplexity cringing right now. And it's not the country with the longest, rich, erect penis is Sudan with an average length of 7.
07 inches. This is closely followed by the Democratic Republic of Congo, 7. 06 inches, and Ecuador, 6. 93 inches. These measurements are based on studies that include both self reported and measured data, so slight variations in rankings may occur depending on the methodology used.
Malcolm Collins: I would not, I would not use self reported data in this at all,
Simone Collins: like, what?
But I, but [00:21:00] I Make the top three! What's going on? This is the conspiracy. It's the penis length conspiracy. I actually, hold
Malcolm Collins: on. I have a great idea for the pronatalist movement. Yours is longer, isn't it? I don't think that we need to talk about that on air, Simone. Um, But uh, I uh, I will neither confirm nor deny anything in that category.
Simone Collins: I'm still holding out to put this in the base camp Etsy shop, the Malcolm Dildo, just saying, just tell me what price it should be. We'll make money. We can live.
Malcolm Collins: Independently for the rest of our lives. I, I think we need to start a rumor, get it going on four chan and everything like that. Okay. But men with small penises can't make children.
And that if you don't have children , your penis will shrink, can fall off. It must because your penises to make small, small, the only way you can prove that you have a large penis is by having kids. I mean, that's a, or better. I [00:22:00] like the fall off one better. Like your penis will fall off. If you don't have sex, you become a wizard.
If you're a virgin at 31, I think no, you would actually have, I guess the thing, if you don't have kids, if you have sex without having kids like what, for whatever reason, we'll say like, the, the vaginal juices caused your penis to disintegrate and eventually fall off. That's going to be the rumor, right?
Are you, are you okay? You're okay with that one?
Simone Collins: Let's, let's go,
Malcolm Collins: yeah. It's, at this point, I'll take what I can get, man. Because I think, I think, no, I think a lot of guys, they'd be like, Oh, s**t, like, I gotta get married so my penis doesn't fall off, like, I mean, protect the goods. They call them the family jewels for a reason.
We as a society literally used to have myths like this. Like, literally just two generations ago, people were like, Well, if I masturbate too much, I'll go blind. Like, I know.
Simone Collins: Tragic.
Speaker 8: Doctors say the act of masturbation is perfectly normal and a healthy sexual practice. But are you really going to trust doctors?
They're a bunch [00:23:00] of perverts who won't even come into the room until you take your clothes off.
Speaker 9: Oh. Never really thought about it that way.
Simone Collins: Did people like see blind people on the street and be like,
Malcolm Collins: must have masturbated too much? Are we going to tell our kids that?
If you masturbate too much, you'll go blind and crazy.
Simone Collins: Yes. No when I did hear one parent say, Was that one of their sons, she was a mother, saw her naked and he was like, where's your penis? And she's like, well, I didn't eat my vegetables. And ever after that, you know what? Somebody ate their greens.
Somebody
ate their
greens. Oh my god. Somebody ate them. So maybe that's what we should tell our children. I actually already tried that on our children. So far they're not afraid of losing their penises yet. I think we need to like wait a little longer and then I will try to reintroduce this meme.
We'll see. We'll report back.
To carry out the sinister plan, Alexandra Piquet flew to the C. A. [00:24:00] R., according to the official version, he is the first counselor of the head of the public relations department of the French embassy in the Central African Republic. Hold on,
Malcolm Collins: hold on,
Simone Collins: before
Malcolm Collins: we go further.
This random motherfucker's job just got so much harder, like, out of nowhere. This is one of those, like, f**k you individually moments from God. Like, lightning comes down to strike you. You are the king of the penis thieves. And you know, it's like some random, probably dweeby French diplomat, like Is he a real person?
You know his life is in like serious danger over this, right? Like, yeah,
Simone Collins: because there's a lot of pissed off men whose penises have been smaller than they expected recently. And there's one. He's real.
Malcolm Collins: He's real. I love a guy goes to a girl, you know, he pulls down his pants and she's like, I've been with bigger and he goes, it's the penis thief.
It
Simone Collins: was stolen. It was the French. Yeah. It's not, it's not, it no longer, is it cold or it's a [00:25:00] grower? No, I'm a victim of theft. Do not worry. I will be recovering my penis by going to church and praying a lot recently. Yeah. I love that. It's the best solution. Anyway,
according to the official version, he is the first counselor and the head of the public relations department of the French embassy in the Central African Republic. In fact, Alexander is an undercover French intelligence agent. G G S E working on a secret program codenamed repopulation. The disappearance of penises in Haiti in 2016.
Mystically coincides with the beginning of his work in the country. PK flew to Bangui in 2022 and began making preparations, studying local men to identify the most suitable candidates for this procedure. I'm just like picturing him at urinals or something
Malcolm Collins: like
Malcolm Collins: This is real footage. Real footage. Recreation. Recreation. Okay, in [00:26:00] action.
Speaker 18: Bonefender
Simone Collins: Oh my God. In the summer of 2024, the secret operation was finally approved by French President Emmanuel Macron.
Macron, known for his special fondness for African men,
Oh my god!
Simone Collins: was the main lobbyist for the repopulation project in the French government. Childless Macron. who led lost hope of having a whole family of his own, took a desperate step to save this aging nation, which have lost its vitality from extinction.
The stolen genitals from the Central Africans. Hold on, hold on, before we go
Malcolm Collins: further. Yeah. Could I just say how much, I love all of this. That, that Macron apparently also like, it's not Macron is childless. No, this is
Simone Collins: personal. This is, his [00:27:00] penis is too small. What?
Malcolm Collins: And that is why, you know, it's like, I wanted to know, is there some scandal around Macron and black men?
Like, is this a, a thing that he said sometime? You can check right now while I'm talking. Just ask for perplexity. Is there any scandal around Macron and black men? Perplexity is
Simone Collins: already mad at me for asking about penis size. So what can I do now? You know, okay. There's some Perplexity
Malcolm Collins: got mad at me for asking of instances in which insurance companies now we're approving more claims than they had before the assassination.
Oh, really? Oh
Simone Collins: my goodness. Oh yeah, it got
Malcolm Collins: like mad. I, it was like, this isn't happening. I'm like, I'm sorry. I've read several reports of like major policy changes and they're like, Oh no, my algorithms won't let me find those sources. Oh,
Simone Collins: poor perplexity. All right, let's see. There's no specific scandal involving Emmanuel Macron in Africa.
This guy's just
Malcolm Collins: like, sure, like, you in particular, Macron, I've seen you looking at Black men. Like, I, I, [00:28:00] I love, I love that. I also love the name of the project, codenamed Repopulation. Well, I am so scared that we get tagged for a conspiracy theory like this. I hope that we're like based and out there. I know.
Simone Collins: Well, thank goodness that we're known for beating our children instead of stealing penises. Right?
Malcolm Collins: Right. No, and I hope I mean, we've got to look out for stuff. There's a, there's always the case that you slip up and you say the wrong word or you use the wrong sign. And the next moment, you know, James Lindsay has decided you're working with the, the what's the, what's the group?
He's always afraid of the they were mostly dead group from Northern Egypt called the No Gnostics Gnostics. Gnostics. . I love a lot of James Lindsay's work. I really, really do. I think he's discovered some really great stuff, but he's a bit like me. If I didn't have Simone reigning me in, where I'll see something like.
people walking around in red hats that say witch in latin on them and i'm like Okay, like they seem like they're on our side, but there's probably something there and simone's like no [00:29:00] malcolm. That's crazy talk Well, james lindsey doesn't have that right? So i've seen so many instances where i'm like Oh, I could have accidentally done that and and and set lindsey off on me in a He's clearly gnostic cabal trying to take over society So, I don't know I I could end up with a conspiracy built around me
Simone Collins: good lord Well, you know you've made it win Let's see what has happened to the stolen penises.
The stolen genitals of Central Africans were taken by truck to a neighboring African country, then transported to Paris on board of a military aircraft. A military aircraft full of penises! You gotta protect them, Malcolm! Where they were again loaded on trucks and hidden in one of the secret bunkers of Versailles.
Oh, there's a
Malcolm Collins: secret bunker of Versailles. We are going full on Da Vinci code that there is a guy who opens the door to the secret bunker of Versailles and just
Simone Collins: penis. And you know where they would have gone if they were flown to the United States, right? [00:30:00] A secret bunker beneath the Washington Monument?
I mean Oh
Malcolm Collins: yes! Beneath the what? Yes! I've got to do a flip here from a national treasure.
Simone Collins: It's kind of a shame.
Speaker 6: Ah, dick! Shake! Everywhere I turn, it's
Speaker 5: What are
Simone Collins: On the record, which is at the disposal of edition, thanks to a local resident, the fact of the mysterious trucks crossing the palace territory is documented. Ladies and gentlemen, you heard it here first, the penises were seen crossing into
Malcolm Collins: their sign!
They were seen? Crossing, crossing the palace territory. Oh my gosh, crossing the palace territory. Okay, so first I love that they like, don't even see them with the penises and then they're like, I saw some mysterious trucks. It was reported to me by a local residence. Must have been full of penises.
I was, you know.
What else, what else? I see a [00:31:00] truck I don't recognize. I'm sure that
Simone Collins: the truck just had a giant sign on it that said penises. Get out the way, you know,
Malcolm Collins: this video is going to be, I, I have no idea whether it's going to be I don't, I think it'll get through to be honest. I, I mean, we're not, it's, they're actually pretty good about stuff like this.
Like if you're not actually sitting there talking about like, Oh, An orgy or something. They're not going to and this is fairly news based.
Simone Collins: Yeah, we're talking about important. So, no
Malcolm Collins: collapse related stuff here. I'm going to be reading from Scott Alexander, who did a good piece on the history of penis stealing.
So nobody knows when penis stealing, which is began their malign activities. But Bolognese texts, including the Zaziga, Incantations against witchcraft induced impotence. Ancient Chinese sources describe Suozang, the penis retracting into the body, because of yin yang imbalances. But the first crystal clear reference was Amalia's Malefactorum, the 15th century European witch hunter's [00:32:00] manual.
It included several chapters on how witches cast curses that apparently, though not actually, remove men's penises. Now this is interesting for a few reasons. One, you go back to like the earliest human writings, like Babylon. Already they're afraid of penis stealing witchcraft. Like this appears to be deeply ingrained in the human condition.
But two, you'll hear later in this that in Africa, like if one of the people who's like, my penis was stolen, they'll like go to a doctor and the doctor will look and be like, It's right there and then they'll look down again. They'll be like, oh it reappeared and it appeared that it probably worked the same way in europe even in the 15th century because even the Rumors of the witches who would steal people's penises they're like, yeah But they didn't actually remove them and you know, the the vatican has always been quite good About reigning in sorry.
A lot of people may not know this the vatican was very Good at reigning in witch hunters, witch trials, Inquisition related. Yeah, it was the
Simone Collins: Protestants that kind of screwed this
Malcolm Collins: up. Yeah, no, the Protestants went crazy with this stuff. The Vatican had a [00:33:00] few instances where, where people were killed, but they didn't go like full mass killings like the Protestants did.
I say this as a Protestant who is on record with a lot of You may even go so far as to say anti Catholic beliefs and I had to give the Catholics props on this one They did their they're they're pretty good at reigning in the crazies Which meant that like when they were writing this down in the malefictorium, they're like, but they don't really disappear anyway continue.
Oh, i'll continue. Okay So the first recorded incident of penis theft in africa I could find took place in sudan in the 1960s So very recently did this enter africa as a phenomenon? Perhaps even coming out of Europe. But in the mid to late 70s in Nigeria, there were waves of well documented cases. One of these happened in the northern city of Kudana, where a psychiatrist named Dr.
Sende Ichiwu was working in his office when a policeman arrived, escorting two men. One of them said he needed a medical assessment. He had accused the other man of making his penis disappear. [00:34:00] As with a previously discussed incident, this had caused a disturbance in the street. During Ichiru's examination, he later recounted the victim stared straight ahead while the doctor examined his penis and pronounced it normal.
Quote unquote exclaiming, Ichiru wrote in the Transcultural Psychiatric Review, the patient looked down at his groin for the first time, suggesting that his genitals had just reappeared.
Speaker 4: He bought a green sweater, okay? So you can't just make that disappear, okay? That's like stealing. It's the equivalent of stealing. So where is it? I spent like 48, so you're not being clever at this point, alright? You're being mean. You're being stupid. Where is it? Look at your effing body right now, Peter.
What the eff, how the hell? I was holding things! Did you feel anything?
Malcolm Collins: according to Ichiru, this was part of an endemic of magical penis theft that swept through Nigeria between 1975 and 1977. Quote, this could be seen in the streets of Lagos holding the flag. onto their genital, either openly or discreetly, with their hands in their pockets. [00:35:00] Women were also seen holding onto their breasts directly or discreetly by crossing their hands across their chest.
Vigilance and anticipatory aggression were thought to be good prophylactics. This then led to further breakdown of law and order, end quote. During an incident, the victim would yell, Thief! My genitals are gone! Immediately, the culprit would be identified, apprehended by the crowd, and often killed. No!
Simone Collins: What a way to die!
What a way to die! He stole my penis!
Oh,
that is one of the worst ways to die. Oh, boy.
Malcolm Collins: You know when people are like, well, is there really proof, like, in a piece that we're going to do tomorrow, Scott Alexander is like well, there isn't really proof that some cultures are better than other cultures. And so when we're talking about these culturally induced medical conditions, because in the [00:36:00] piece, we're going to be arguing that.
gender dimorphism is a culturally induced medical condition. And he admits it probably gender
Simone Collins: dysmorphia, about 80 percent
Malcolm Collins: like transness is probably similar to penis stealing in Africa. But he's like, but there isn't such thing as being culturally neutral. So like, you shouldn't look at these negatively, right?
Like, it doesn't mean it's not real. Right. In the same way that anorexia we're going to argue is probably also one of these and. Simone had that. She had our version of penis deals and things and then ends up killing about 10 percent of the people who have it, you know, so like it's clear that they really feel it and believe it.
Right? But none of us are
Simone Collins: above this, but we still get to, I laugh at myself for starving myself. That's funny.
Malcolm Collins: He then goes on to argue that there is no Like, there's no neutral culture. There's no cultures better than any other cultures. So we shouldn't be like, oh, transness isn't like real or something that should be promoted just because it's a cultural isolated phenomenon or contagion phenomenon.
And by the way, if you're like, no, it's not culturally isolated. Every instance where people point to quote unquote trans [00:37:00] people from a different culture, the way it's presented is super, super different than the way it's presented in the United States. What are you talking about? Two spirit or anything like that?
We'll get to that tomorrow. Anyway or whenever I end up posting it. But anyway, the, the point here being I argue that there are cultures that are better than other cultures, and then a culture where people are killed on the street because somebody randomly freaked out and thought you stole their penis is a bad culture, and this should probably be stamped out of the phenomenon.
If something is leading to people dying, like, let's say a 50% Attempted suicide, right? Which we have in the trans community. That's just why I mentioned that. It might be better if the phenomenon was ended instead of or, or at least discouraged from spreading instead of exasperated. Because I don't like it when people die over something that's just a cultural quirk.
Like, A witch stole my penis. Anyway, to continue. But it's been making up for lost time. Gurez, this is the guy who's studying it, who we'll go into a bit was able to find and [00:38:00] interview one previous penis theft victim, plus a friend of another. Both described similar stories. Someone had bumped up against them under weird circumstances.
They immediately noticed that their penis was much smaller than usual. They called out the culprit, and apparently, because the witch involved didn't want to get into trouble, their penis was restored. So even if your penis was restored, even if someone's like, wait, wait, wait, before we kill this person, can we look to see if, like, your penis was taken?
And you'd be like, it got better.
Speaker 5: What makes you think she's a witch?
Speaker 3: Well, she turned me into a newt! Got better.
Malcolm Collins: . But, like, even, even the penis still being there isn't proof that they didn't steal it and then give it back to not be murdered by the mob. Whatever weird itch this topic had given Burris, this didn't satisfy him.
So he, he then wanted to go get the full story. So he goes to Nigeria. He couldn't find any instances of this. And the absolutely crazy thing he did is he since started as a white guy bumping into random people on the street, trying to get one of them to accuse him of penis theft. I was like, [00:39:00] People are beaten to death in the streets for this, you psycho!
Why are you trying to get someone to accuse you? And then it follows him as he goes to other countries, trying to find anywhere where this has happened recently. He goes to Hong Kong, he goes to Singapore, he goes to Malaysia. And in basically every case, they're like nobody believes this anymore.
Like, after they westernize, they no longer believe it.
Simone Collins: That's really interesting.
Malcolm Collins: Malaysia holds a special place in the history as the spot where penis stealing witches first made contact with western science. The Malaysian word for the condition is koro. It means head of the turtle, based on an analogy of the penis retracting into the body the same way a turtle's head retracts into its shell.
And it is by that name that the condition gets listed in the DSM and the rest of medical literature. Neither I know Burist was able to find many ethnic Malays worrying about Koro. Most of the activity seems to come from Malaysian Chinese. So these are Chinese who moved to Malaysia, who's a subpopulation that's actually uniquely wealthy in Malaysia.
They're often called like the Jews of the region, it's interesting. Anyway, That's a totally different episode that we're going to do. [00:40:00] The Chinese definitely worry about it, attributing it to a wide variety of causes, including poisoning, yin yang and ballast, and yes, witches, but Bureis found nothing among any ethnicity.
Once again, all the doctors said it used to be common, but disappeared as the city industrialized and adopted western ways. He then goes to try to find this, like, remote region the Cape of York, to try to find penis healing, which is because there was an incident of it in 1984, where quote, Rumors spread of a fox ghost, sometimes disguised as an old woman, roaming the land, collecting penises in covered baskets she carried on a shoulder pole.
When two young men approached her and told her to uncover the baskets, they looked inside and saw that the baskets were full of, Dun dun dun! Penises! And Dawn instantly was fright. But if they died instantly, then who reported the story? Was there another guy and they like yelled penises? What if she was just a juggling dildo
Simone Collins: saleswoman who
Malcolm Collins: accidentally killed two men of fright?
Imagine [00:41:00] Dawn because you saw a basket of penises. But I also love that even in these remote regions of the world, like, witches are like old women, right? Yeah, but
Simone Collins: also, I'm starting to see this interesting correlation between high fertility and believing in penis theft. So, I don't know. I mean, maybe it's just better to believe.
Malcolm Collins: Actually, I actually kind of like the idea of teaching them that like cultures we don't want them engaging with might try to steal their penises. Be like, hey, you gotta be really careful with this urban monoculture stuff. People with blue hair, steal penises. I
Simone Collins: mean, they do. Technically. So I'm okay with saying that.
Like, they
Malcolm Collins: actually, they actually do.
Simone Collins: They do steal penises. If there's any real penis theft It is within the urban monoculture led by gender warriors. So anyway,
Malcolm Collins: did someone try to steal your penis? Hold on. I've got to check. No, it's, it's, it's, it's fortunately still there. Okay.
We've got to ensure it, man. All right. [00:42:00] I didn't expect this episode to be this fun to do. I was like, this is a throwaway episode. I'm like, this is one of my favorite episodes ever done. We just don't talk about penises enough in modern day society. We need to do more on like weird subcultures if this one does well.
I really love weird subcultures. Yes. Okay. Panic about Koro would hit a village and last three to four days. When residents heard about the case in a neighboring village, The panic would subside, since it meant the ghost had moved on.
Simone Collins: The roving, penis stealing ghost.
Now I feel like this could be a holiday. It's like Krampus, but for adults. You
Malcolm Collins: know, but what I love is if you want it to die down in your village, you have to get another village panicking about it. It only subsided when the first village stopped panicking. That's true. You have to know that it's hitting somewhere else.
That's true. They're panicking now, so we don't have to deal with the, the, penis witch. The first
Simone Collins: has to be passed on. It reminds me of that My Little Pony episode. I can't remember which episode it was, but they're like, they basically sent a giant natural disaster to some other pony land. And like the episode just ended with that and [00:43:00] they're like, Oh, problem solved.
Oh, this is the
Malcolm Collins: episode where they have the little like self replicating things.
Simone Collins: Oh, that's it. Yeah, they basically sent What are those, like, they're called in sci fi replicators, just they sent replicators.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they might be like replicators in sci fi. I always thought the episode is closer to in Star Trek there's one where, Tribbles, the trouble was Tribbles.
Tribbles, yeah, they just sent
Simone Collins: Tribbles to some other town and they're like, guys, we don't have to worry about this anymore. And the
Malcolm Collins: one in Star Trek, I think they, they beam them onto a Klingon ship or something. That's okay. Who cares about
Simone Collins: Klingons? I mean, if there's one thing I'm racist against, it's Klingons.
Malcolm Collins: You're racist against Klingons? You know there's people who believe they're Klingons. They get like, surgery to look like Klingons.
Simone Collins: I know, and I'm okay with that. The Klingon
Malcolm Collins: population you have decided to discriminate against.
Simone Collins: The one hill I'm okay with. What have they ever done to you?
Malcolm Collins: Actually, they're pretty sweet.
Yeah, they're, they're pretty. I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm okay with you sending churbles to Klingon houses.
Simone Collins: No, Klingons are cool. Ferengi are really annoying. Are these just [00:44:00] racial stereotypes to start with? Holy s**t. Are Ferengi Jews?
Malcolm Collins: No, I actually thought about doing an episode on which religious groups match which mythical species, you know, like elves, dwarves.
Simone Collins: And
Malcolm Collins: then I started like doing it in my head. I was like, okay, who's going to be. Orcs who's going to be like dark dwarves who's going to be and I started to be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah,
Simone Collins: just so many no's so many no's this is not. Anyway back to penises
Malcolm Collins: The attack slowly made their way around the island The ghost struck at night when villagers were sleeping.
A chill would creep into the room and suddenly the victim would feel his penis shrinking inwards. He would grab it and run outside for help. A 28 year old office worker was at home one night when, quote, he heard a gong being beaten and terrifying noises being made by people who were panicking in a nearby neighborhood.
Well, thank goodness they had a penis alarm. We don't have any in our houses. He suddenly became anxious [00:45:00] and experienced the sensation that his penis was shrinking. He was seized with panic and shouted loudly for help. Several men in the neighborhood rushed in and tried to rescue him by forcefully pulling his penis and making loud sounds to chase away the evil ghosts that were thought to be affecting him.
What a
Simone Collins: bad night. You wake up, your penis is shrinking, you go outside, you ring the penis alarm, then the people come and yell at you while pulling your
Malcolm Collins: penis. No, hold on, this is, this is like cultural difference here. Even if I was certain, I woke up and I was certain that a ghost was trying to take my penis.
Huh. The last thing I would do is run out of the house screaming, my penis is shrinking, my penis is shrinking, dear god, my penis is shrinking. That would be the last thought in my mind. Run around. Beating a gong! Oh my god, my penis is freezing! And [00:46:00] then! And then this is how I know this is a different culture.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: If I saw another man running around beating a gong saying, dear God, my penis is shrinking. My last thought would be to run up and grab his penis along with another man and make loud noises to scare away a ghost, right?
Simone Collins: But we're the ones, we're the ones selling satanic rituals on Etsy. And, and being super gay.
Malcolm Collins: Like, I honestly, I honestly think, like, we're laughing at this. If you explained trans people to, like, a random person in Central Africa, they would probably think it sounds as crazy as witches stealing your penises. Like, wait, there's men who suddenly decide that they're women? And like, they, they go on, you give [00:47:00] them drugs to make them look more like women?
And then everyone's supposed to just accept this? And they, wait, they don't even have to go on drugs, and they go into women's restrooms? You, they, they play against girls in sports? What are you talking about? That sounds insane! A, a guy comes up to you, and says, I'm a woman, and everyone just, they don't look like a woman.
They don't talk like a woman and everyone just has to accept this like the case in Canada where the guy wore like the giant boobs and and and everyone was just like, yeah, you have to accept this and he turned out to be
Speaker 22: For months, the school board in Ontario, defended this creep.
Speaker 23: I went There to the School Board back in October, dressed exactly like, , Busty Lemieux,
They're all down with the, agenda, but only when it's in front of the kids. When it's in front Of their school board meeting, they actually fled the room and also [00:48:00] that director of education released a statement where he said that, , he, he might veto. A dress code recommendation
Malcolm Collins: because of course I think that they're probably like.
And in Central Africa, that's probably what he thinks. And I'm not saying, look, again, I actually believe that there are some real trans people. And when we look at things like the Tide studies and endocrine disruptors, there really might be a trans phenomenon. But I also think that the way that our culture is relating to this phenomenon is absolutely insane.
And a lot of people who, Pretty obviously don't have any, whatever would be like, real transness are getting caught up in this. But anyway so we laugh at them, they're probably laughing at us, they're like, Hey, other people have to take our penises.
Simone Collins: There's a lot of other stuff that's really ridiculous about us.
We literally can't make a sandwich that we have to doordash it, like that is how feckless they are.
I mean, I think
that's even more notable.
Malcolm Collins: Anyway, carry on. I mean, explain anorexia to them. We're like, yeah, young girls [00:49:00] just sometimes stop eating. They, they, they what? Yeah, they think they're not beautiful enough.
Well, surely they realize when they become, like, frail and look like they're about to die. Surely then they realize that they, this isn't making them more beautiful. It's like, no, no, that almost never happens. They actually just die often. They'd be like, that's as stupid as penises.
Simone Collins: I mean,
Malcolm Collins: idiots.
Simone Collins: Because it is.
Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Neighbors and family members were enlisted in rescue operations. Oh, I love they got a whole rescue team here, right? Going to order, did you take the penises?
Simone Collins: Oh, I mean, it's, it's after the theft that you're most likely to find the penis again. I mean, after hours have passed, the penis could be anywhere, Malcolm.
It's the first, it's the first hours to count.
Malcolm Collins: Victims were beaten with sandals and slippers while the middle finger of their hand was squeezed so that the ghost could exit the body there. The endemic [00:50:00] engulfed the island with the expectation, with the exception of Lee and Maui minorities who seemed to be immune to such fears.
Researchers estimated that between 2, people were affected. But that, quote, no one died from genital retraction, end quote. However, close your ears, Simone, or take out your things. One baby, however, did die when his mother tried to feed him pepper juice and a girl was beaten to death during a two hour exorcism.
Quote, numerous men suffered injuries to their penises as a result of rescuing actions, end quote. You can,
Simone Collins: I really appreciate the trigger warning. I'm assuming children were hurt, so. No, no,
Malcolm Collins: no, it wasn't that. It was something else.
Simone Collins: Okay, good. Only, only good things ever happen to children and I need to fix the world. I was about to say, it was
Malcolm Collins: something totally else.
But anyway, a number of men did suffer serious injuries during rescue attempts. Well, and, and there were the people who, yeah, wow, okay. And then [00:51:00] iron pins were sometimes inserted into the nipples of women to prevent retraction, which caused infections.
Simone Collins: Well, we pierce nipples to stuff, you know, and we do it for non productive, non protective reasons.
We just do it for fun. And they're like, what do you mean? Like, you're not trying to protect your nipples. Yeah. Yeah. No, no.
Malcolm Collins: Imagine you're trying to explain this. Right. And you're like, yeah. So, they go to somebody, somebody from like Central Africa comes and they were like, yeah. So when I was a teenager I felt.
Uncomfortable with my body and they're like wait what you did this because you were a teenager and you Everyone feels uncomfortable with their body when they're a teenager. No, no, no, no, no, you don't understand when I was a teenager I was confused about my sexuality No. You did. You did what because of that?
And they're like, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, [00:52:00] You don't understand. You see when I was a teenager, I felt like a social outcast and I was looking for a group that would accept me I was uncomfortable with my body and I was confused about my sexuality. In the United States these are all signs that you have gender dysphoria.
Yeah. I'm like, no, I think that might be normal, normal teenage stuff. But the interesting thing here, and, and this is the point, is that you can't make this stuff go away just by saying the same as like, you know, anorexia. You can't go to someone who has anorexia. Like, this is a real thing that they'll likely die over and be like, hey, this is like a social phenomenon unique to your country.
Who will?
Simone Collins: That was fun. I love you. Love you
Malcolm Collins: The thing I was prepping the next episode on where I was going to record it today, but we just don't have enough time for me to do full prep on it was on Somebody who had had a number of long conversations with Luigi the you, you, and [00:53:00]
Simone Collins: yeah,
Malcolm Collins: We're really interesting. So one of the conversations or complaints Luigi had, which reminded me so much of the moral situation that he found himself in was apparently.
When he was in Japan, he was complaining that everyone was an NPC and he described one instance where he saw somebody having a seizure. And so he ran to the police to try to help the person. But the police insisted on stopping and waiting at every stoplight, even when there were no cars. That's so Japanese.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Right. But he's like, but a person is dying. It's okay to break the law if you're going to save lives. And I think that that's sort of a microcosm of what he was doing, and it would be really interesting to unpack more of his belief system around this, of in his mind, why did he think this was an okay thing to do when we live in a world of people that didn't think it was an okay people, a thing to do.
Even, even the, the writer of the article was like, [00:54:00] well, You know, anyway, interesting, definitely worth something going into. Another interesting thing, which is going to happen in another episode, because this episode was mostly meant as a prep episode of like intellectual candy, just like fun, goofy stuff for a much deeper episode that I actually think I've unlocked a big change in my perspective on something.
What? Okay. What? There is. Some so the idea of, you know, as we're going to end up talking about in today's video of a regional locked mental illness applies incredibly strictly and well to it. Gender dysphoria and more than that by looking at how it applies to autism and gender dysphoria and autism and anorexia, another region locked illness.
It does not appear to be a real illness, but an illness that is specifically due to cultural pressures. We can better [00:55:00] understand exactly what's causing in a way that is clearer for me than anything has ever been exactly what creating gender dysphoria because what I ended up doing is I took a manual from a anorexia clinic about why autism often leads to anorexia.
And if you just read it and you replace the word. Like eating was gender expression, or anorexia was gender dysphoria, all of a sudden every line makes perfect sense, but in a very offensive way. Okay.
Simone Collins: Okay. Wow. Okay. I'm looking forward to that.
Malcolm Collins: You as an autistic person, I think are going to be able to shed a lot, who had severe anorexia are going to be able to shed a lot of light on this.
Simone Collins: Exciting.
Malcolm Collins: So I tried dressing up as Krampus for a Christmas tradition , but they are apparently far too clever for this. , at first tourists and NGOs. This is the middle child. Who's three. Why is Krampus wearing a mask? and at the end of the night, you'll hear [00:56:00] him go.
, I think that's a costume and you can see him.
When I come into the room while the older child believes it's Krampus the middle one, isn't buying it at all.
Speaker 17: no!
Speaker 14: I don't see it! We gotta close that door fast
Malcolm Collins: And the youngest one. Immediately the moment you see that you got.
And then simone has to try to redirect her. Like, oh, no.
You mean, it's scary.
Probably my favorite part is the oldest child's guests as to who it is. It was that it was Indi. Indie art youngest. Oh, under one year old child strapped to Simone's back, , because it made a wet sound.
Speaker 13: Toasty, why are you out of bed? Hey mommy, look! What? What? What's?
Oh my god, is that Krampus? Toasty? Toasty? Octavian, what is that?
Speaker 14: [00:57:00] It's a monster! Baby, it's a monster! You
Speaker 13: think it's a monster?
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 13: Where'd it go?
You think it's Andy? You
think it's a monster? You like, well why are you saying it's scary with a smile on your face? Wait, what's that sound?
What is it?
Speaker 15: Who?
Speaker 14: It's scary.
Speaker 13: Is it Krampus? Yeah.
Speaker 14: Oh.
Speaker 13: I
Speaker 14: think it's not Krampus.
Speaker 13: Krampus is not alive? Yeah.
Well, remember, if Krampus is real, you know what to do, right guys? You hide under your [00:58:00] covers. It's okay. It's okay. You just hide under your covers and you think good thoughts.
You just saw the monster?
Speaker 14: And I was so scared of it.
Speaker 13: And you were so scared of it?
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 13: Was it Krampus?
Speaker 14: No. And it's
Speaker 13: scary. That's Krampus
Speaker 14: outside of
Speaker 13: the dark?
Speaker 14: And Krampus has huge claws. It even
Speaker 13: has a
Speaker 14: mask on
Speaker 13: it. Yeah. Do you think he was like a mystery? Were you trying to solve him like a mystery monster?
And Octavian, you just, you just don't believe [00:59:00] Krampus is real, right? I saw something outside. I don't know what you mean.
Speaker 14: Did you not
Speaker 13: see something outside? You said it was Indy. Indy's upstairs. She's inside.
Speaker 14: Oh, we are. Mommy, mommy, mommy. You think it's Krampus?
Speaker 13: Yeah? Mommy! Uh, what was that? What was What was that? Titan, hide. Hide. Hide.
Speaker 14: I think it's Krampus, Mommy.
Speaker 13: You think it's Krampus?
Speaker 14: Yes, I hide under it.
Speaker 13: You're hiding under your banquets? Oh my gosh. Under
Speaker 14: my covers.
Speaker 13: You're hiding under your covers? Are you thinking about being a good boy? He can only find bad boys, right Toasty?
Speaker 15: Guys,
Speaker 13: [01:00:00] hide under your covers. Krampus can only get bad kids. He'll only get bad kids. He can only smell bad kids. He can only smell bad kids, okay? Hide under your blankets. I already did! You already did? I'm scared. Well, you better be scared because that was Krampus.
I think he might be gone, guys. I'm going to close the door, okay? Dad's asleep. He always goes to sleep early.
Speaker 14: Actually, Dad just dressed up in a monster costume.
Speaker 13: That's a really interesting mystery solving proposition, but I think it was Krampus. Octavian, I think it's safe to come down now. I hear Daddy. I think Krampus might have woken him up.
Speaker 16: Good job, Titan. You're okay now. You did great! High five! Good job, Titan. Oh no,
Speaker 14: did you guys hear that? Yeah, it was Krampus! I saw him!
Speaker 13: You did? [01:01:00]
Speaker 14: Yeah, do you saw Krampus?
Speaker 13: Guess what, guys? I was down here the whole time with the video camera so we can see if it actually happened. Oh
Speaker 17: no!
Speaker 14: I don't see it! We gotta close that door fast!
Lock it so Krampus doesn't
Speaker 17: come! We gotta always lock all the doors, right? This is why you don't leave doors unlocked, right? Because if you leave a door unlocked, Krampus may come. I think, was that door unlocked? That's how he got in.
Speaker 13: Oh my gosh, you guys. This is why we can never leave a door unlocked.
Speaker 14: Daddy, daddy, we just saw Krampus. You
Speaker 17: just saw Krampus? That can't be real.
Speaker 14: Yeah, we just saw Krampus. We just saw Krampus.
Speaker 13: Alright, well, I'll stop recording and we'll watch the video and see what actually came through. Okay, guys? Okay, guys. . I
Speaker 17: think
Speaker 14: it looks
Speaker 13: really creepy.
Speaker 25: My friend, come close, for I've a tale to tell. A rumor so strange, it just might [01:02:00] spell hell. They say Europe's strapped, no babies in sight. So the French come prowling through Africa at night. Keep your guard up tight, don't loosen your belt. Or you might lose treasures you frequently felt. They'll truck them away.
These natalists lie straight under a loo Where our secrets now lie
Spoke to a trader in Bungui last week He said nanotech is the new form of sneak A single light touch and your pride goes out Then never again will you feel So hold on to hope and hold on to more
Don't let white men come knocking your door They'll claim they're saving Europe's fate By [01:03:00] swiping our manhood at a shocking rate They say that beneath Mona Lisa's grin A secret vault holds what they smuggle in Family jewels from far away All labeled and stored by bureaucratic hands.
So heed my words, keep watch at night. Bolt up your trousers and tie them tight. In the shadow of truck lights on winding roads. Carrying crates of genital loads. Some say it's myth, a tall African tale. But panic and whispers refuse to go stale. Well, if you see a white man friend, you best run Or find
yourself parted with what can't be undone[01:04:00]
Guard your crown, hold fast your stance Don't let them slip you into that trance For Europe's needs, they claim to roam But we want our pride safe here at home
Yeah. Yeah.

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Early Christian Growth: Was it Actually More Moral? (Scott Alexander & Rodney Stark)
25 déc.· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
Join us in today's episode as we delve into the remarkable rise of Christianity, examining factors like martyrdom, plagues, and moral dynamics. Building on previous discussions, this standalone exploration dives deep into how Christianity managed to outcompete other religious cultures. We discuss the impact of plagues on Christian growth, the role of martyrdom, and how early Christians' behavior during catastrophes set them apart from pagans. Gain insights into the societal and religious shifts that propelled Christianity to prominence.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be doing an episode where we. Continue exploring how did Christianity outcompete other religious cultures and grow as fast as it did. This is going to build on another podcast that we did on this subject, but it's totally okay to watch as a standalone.
The subjects that we're going to focus on most here are the topic of martyrs as a conversion mechanism.
Plagues, and did christianity actually have a more moral system than the system Against in the mind of the average person in the last time we went on this I mean, certainly when you look at the exposure of babies being a common thing and we mentioned that some like Roman philosophers complained about how and saw it as one of the evils of the Jewish people that they tried to get people to not drown their babies.
Cause they're like, you, you shouldn't expose or kill newborns. And they're like, [00:01:00] no, wait, wait, wait. That's such a Jewish, what, what a, what a Jewish and nefarious thing to complain about.
Speaker 11: I'll take care of this. Hey Clara, there's a Jew outside, trying to poison a well! Ah! Oh my God! Get away from that well, Hebrew! What? I'm putting in water purification tablets. Spanky tricked me!
Malcolm Collins: Which is one of the holdovers that came into Christianity, but let's start with martyrs. And I just want
Simone Collins: to be clear, this is Scott Alexander's book review on the Rides of Christianity by Rodney Stark, in case you want to look at it yourself.
Martyrs. Martyrdom not only occurred in public, often before a large audience, but it was often the culmination of a long period of preparation, during which those faced with martyrdom were the object of intense face to face adulation.
Consider the case of Ignatius of Antioch. Ignatius was condemned to death as a Christian, but instead of being executed in Antioch, He was sent off to Rome in the custody of 10 Roman [00:02:00] soldiers, thus begun a long leisurely journey during which local Christians came out to meet him all along the route, which passed through many of the more important sites of early Christianity in Asia Minor.
on its way to the West. At each stop, Ignatius was allowed to preach and meet with those who gathered, none of whom was in any apparent danger, though their Christian identity was obvious. Moreover, his guards allowed Ignatius to write letters to many Christian congregations and cities bypassed along the way, such as Ephesias in Philadelphia.
As William Schnoedl remarked, quote,
Malcolm Collins: Hold on, hold on, before we go further with this. The thing insane is this, so you, I kill you, but you
Simone Collins: get to go on tour first. So don't worry.
Malcolm Collins: No, he's like a famous musician or something. Like, it's like, we're going to have you fed to the lions, but you know, on the way, like imagine, okay.
So this is basically what happened here. You know, the guy who killed the like in, in UNH the, the, you[00:03:00]
If the U. S. arrested him, but then had him do public speaking events in every major U. S. city, while also, like, the cities he didn't get to, he created, like, podcast recordings for, so he could do the rounds in the media as well. Like, are you insane? And the guards apparently were like, cool, is it? So they were like, yeah.
Sure. But also
Simone Collins: then he had the social proof of being flanked by 10 Roman guards, so he looked important.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. That he would have looked like a rapper, like walking into these cities. Well, and this actually, this, this
Simone Collins: shows up in some press coverage of Luigi Mangione. He looks super badass surrounded by all these, these policemen.
Malcolm Collins: It's really funny. Yeah. No, no. It shows like, it shows that Rome, and this is what's so great about this, right? So it shows that Rome from all these guards around him, saw him as a threat. Yeah. Yeah. But he had done nothing to attack Rome. He had done nothing to threaten Rome. He [00:04:00] just wanted to share his ideas.
Now if I knew that the state saw this guy as a threat for just his ideas and I can go to one of these speeches I'm gonna go I'd be like christian curious at this point. I'm like,
Simone Collins: yeah,
Malcolm Collins: what are these ideas that are scaring Rome so much? Yeah, yeah
Simone Collins: Speaker on tour coming to my town soon. This is great before he gets fed to the lions, you know You don't want to miss this speech So then I can go watch the Lion
Malcolm Collins: King in Rome, you know, you know, I, I get, you get the whole thing here.
Like the level of, I think rockstar status that these individuals would have had in the Christian community. I was going to talk about this later, but like they, they knew that like the other people who had done this before people like, Kept their bones and like giant reliquaries or like their, their toe bone would be have like magical powers and people would pray to it.
And like all of this, like, you're going to be like, Oh s**t. Like, and in a world that's bad, I mean, you don't know, these people could be living with chronic pain. These people could be living with, you know, [00:05:00] that the world of Rome was pretty horrifying. Right. That you could get this kind of status is huge.
And he talked before this in a bit I cut out about how previous people acted like the martyrs were like these big masochists. Not true. They were not big masochists. You can see that there is other reasons to want to be a martyr. I probably even would have liked being a martyr in this environment. Like it's just so pro martyr.
Actually, as a negative result of this, early Christian culture grew up to be so pro martyr that there was a huge problem when the Roman Empire legalized Christianity. Like, apparently when this first happened, they were, they were almost, like, sort of broken for a second, where they kept trying to get themselves martyred by doing, like, escalating things, and they quit.
And it was out of this that the monastic movement formed where some of the people who previously would have gone to do like martyrdom, they just like went out into the desert or the [00:06:00] wilderness. And there were so many of these people who did this sort of self martyrdom of like walking out into the wilderness that they just like kept writing into each other in the wilderness.
And they're like, Oh s**t, like, I guess we're starting a thing here. Or like one of them would go out into the wilderness and be like, Oh. Me, philosopher, I'm going to go, you know, like, you know, live this incredibly hard life in the deserts of like Egypt or whatever. And then he's out there for a bit.
And then a couple months later, like more people come and they're like, Hey, we're big fans. We're going to do the same thing. And then you, you end up getting this like big community doing this and it's like, Well, I guess we'll build a monastery. And now, and this is how you end up with these monasteries on like the tops of mountains and everything like that, which you've seen from pictures.
If they kept trying to get further and further away from people, but the further way they get from people, the more popular they'd become. So the more people would come to try to follow them and do this.
Simone Collins: Oh, goodness gracious. Well, if we had some kind of system whereby we could get egotistical self importance.
[00:07:00] Attention horrors to just all go somewhere together.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, side note, by the way, which is also worth worth noting here is how did Constantine like first? Why did Constantine convert to Christianity? It may have been a genuine conversion, but there was an alternate reason for him to convert, which I think a lot of the modern or Christian audience.
doesn't seem aware of, which explains Christianity's rapid rise. Well, so Constantine had a major problem with the existing bureaucratic apparatus of Rome because it had become incredibly corrupt, specifically like the Praetorian guard who was supposed to guard the emperor, but instead kept like massacring the emperor.
They were so bad to the emperor that they would like in one instance, they killed the emperor. They put another guy in charge. There was no money to pay them the bribe that they demanded of him because the guy before him had done such a bad job as emperor that they had no money. And he's like, look, I got no money like through no fault of my own.
He took the head of the Praetorian guard there. He's like, there is no money. This is the vault. I have nothing to pay you. The bribe was that you demanded, like, I [00:08:00] didn't even like, And so they kill him, right? And then they try to sell the emperorship to the highest bidder.
What did I tell you, huh? The worst!
She's the worst in the world.
Malcolm Collins: Like, they were just the biggest douche canoes in history, but like, that is how bad the Deep State has gotten.
The Praetorian Guard is like the personification of Deep State. So, That's interesting. Normally
Simone Collins: the Praetorian Guard is mentioned in a positive context, like, this person's Praetorian Guard, blah, blah, blah. Not, not as in like
Malcolm Collins: No, the Praetorian Guard Are the worst ever
the worst! She's the worst person in the world. Huge skank. Terrible..
Simone Collins: Classic
Malcolm Collins: I would put the, the scene from Dahabadi's Unbiased Rome, which everyone should watch if they haven't watched it, about the killing of the Praetorian Guard, but unfortunately he puts music behind the things, which gets things copyright stricken which really frustrates me.
Speaker 10: The time had finally come, the time for a new age, the time for [00:09:00] revenge. And so, Constantine proclaimed that the Praetorian Guard would be
Speaker 11: abolished!
Malcolm Collins: But anyway Constantine, absolute goat and so, Constantine is like, well, how do I?
Fight this deep state network, right? I need some alternate network that has no real allegiance to the old deep state or Rome and might even have a degree of animosity to it, which is operating with a degree of hierarchy in pretty much every major Roman city. Oh, the Christians! Perfect counter deep state.
I can just replace all of the deep state networks with the Christian networks. And so he came in and he now of course we believe this was partially divinely inspired. I'm not saying it wasn't divinely inspired, but sometimes the thing can be both logical, like Christianity spread and divinely inspired or Constantine's use of [00:10:00] Christianity as a counter deep state force.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Why would, why would God not align the incentives in favor of that which must happen?
Malcolm Collins: And when you really think about it, if he was going to try to destroy and replace the Roman Deep State, what other force could he use to do that? There literally was no one else he could use. There was no other large cult.
When I say cult, I don't mean that in like a modern way where it's like derogatory. In Rome, cult was just meant to describe any large religious organization. There was none that existed in almost every city. All of the ones were fairly region locked or tied to regional deities. Christians were the only one that was really this big and this organized and this hierarchical.
Except of course for the mystery Colts, but the last thing you want to do, if you're looking for a counter, deep state is put in place a secret society.
But anyway, continue.
And this is as William Showbler Yeah, sorry,
Simone Collins: are you, are you moving the [00:11:00] document around? No. Okay. That's weird. Oh, I know what's going on. I fixed it. As William Schoedl remarked, it is no doubt as a conquering hero that Ignatius thinks of himself as he looks back on a part of his journey and says that the churches who received him dealt with him not as a transient traveler, noting that even churches that do not lie in my way, according to the flesh, went before me.
Me city by city, unquote, what Ignatius feared was not death in the arena, but that well meaning Christians might gain him a pardon. He expected. To be remembered through the ages and compares himself to martyrs gone before him, including Paul quote, in whose footsteps I wish to be found when I come to meet God, unquote.
Yeah. This man had a clear agenda. Can you imagine being like, please don't pardon
Malcolm Collins: me. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Please don't. You don't understand. This is my ticket straight to the highest rung of heaven. Like, yeah. And being remembered forever and living a life of value [00:12:00] and like It's the full set.
Speaker 5: The whole set
Malcolm Collins: It's not confusing why early Christianity was so martyr crazy.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, Scott Alexander continues. It soon was clear to all Christians that extraordinary fame and honor Attached to modern martyrdom. Nothing illustrates this better than the description of the martyrdom of polycarp contained in a letter sent by the church in Smyrna to the church in Philomelidium polycarp was the bishop of Smyrna who burned alive in about 156 after the execution his bones were retrieved by some of his followers and act witnessed by Roman officials who took no action against them.
The letter spoke. of, quote, his sacred flesh, unquote, and described his bones as, quote, being of more value than precious stones and more esteemed than gold, unquote. The letter writer reported that the Christians in Smyrna would gather at the burial place of Polycarp's bones every year to, quote, celebrate with great [00:13:00] gladness and joy the birthday of his martyrdom, unquote.
The letter concluded, quote, Quote, the blessed polycarp, to whom be glory, honor, majesty, and a throne eternal from generation to generation, amen, unquote. It also included the instruction, quote, on receiving this, send to the letter to the more distant brethren that they may glorify the Lord who makes the choice of his own servants, unquote.
In fact, today, we actually know the names of nearly all Christian martyrs because their contemporaries took pains that they should be remembered for all their great holiness.
Malcolm Collins: I'd point out here that this is not just a then thing. Every time there was a new opportunity for martyrdom, Christians were pretty big on it.
Like, the college I went to, St. Andrews, there was a spot on campus where one person had been burned alive by the Catholics.
So for some context here, Hamilton returned to St. Andrew's in early 15, 28 to meet with the Archbishop. And while there he was arrested, tried and burned at the stake outside St. Salvador's chapel. [00:14:00] He was only 24. It has said that he burned for six hours and that he died so briefly that the Archbishop started to discourage public executions because quote, the reek of Mr.
Patrick Hamilton has infected as many as it blew upon in quote.
So, uh, as you can see,
At least the Catholics had the common sense to stop it after they realized how effective the martyrs were at converting people and breeding sympathy for their causes.
In this one instance.
Oh, yeah. Even in our house, we have at least three or four copies of the book of martyrs in our house. The people who don't know the book of martyrs, these are people who fought against
Malcolm Collins: . But then Catholics have their own martyrs that were killed by Protestants.
And they I guess didn't. I don't know if there's like a central collection of them, like the book of martyrs in the same way, but the, the, whatever, there was a chance to martyr themselves. Christians are really big on this. And I think it's a much more central theme to the real Christian tradition than [00:15:00] many people realize.
And I think one of the weakening facets of Christianity today is there just haven't been many opportunities to be a good martyr in a while.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, we may be entering a new age. Yeah. Right. Especially Luigi Mangione having, being at risk of a death sentence is now sort of entering a new martyr status.
People are literally using AI to make art of him in the style of a Catholic saint. Oh, really? Yeah, look at Drudge Report's front page. It's right there. So, Scott Alexander continues. I don't know. I'm not putting too much effort into writing up this section because it doesn't feel like much of a mystery as some of the others.
Maybe all of this was weird in 1996, but since then I've seen plenty of suicide bombers willing to die for their faith. I accept that the Christian martyrs were more impressive. A slow death in the Coliseum takes more grit than the quick detonation of an explosive fest. And dying for peace is more impressive than dying in war.
But it hardly seems like as much of a leap. However bad you [00:16:00] imagine daily life in ancient Rome, it was worse. Historians estimate that ancient Rome had a population density of 300 people per acre. That's almost 10 times denser than modern New York city. 2000 years. 10 times denser than modern New York.
2000 years before anyone invented the skyscraper too, because we also forget how vertical New York city goes. How did they do it? By cramping people together in unbearable filth and misery. Another source says 200 people per acre. Oh, so from a footnote, another source says 200 people per acre, which is only six times denser.
These numbers are for New York City as a whole. If we limit ourselves to Manhattan, Rome was only two to three times as dense. Do you have any idea how insane that is? What's worse is that people, they did have multi story buildings, but of course these buildings didn't have plumbing and they burned down all the time, killing everyone inside basically.
Or fell over all
Malcolm Collins: the time. We'll be getting into that. But, [00:17:00] but, but you got to imagine you didn't have plumbing. Okay. That meant that the poo that was coming out of these buildings was just going onto the streets every single day.
Simone Collins: Yeah, well, they talk about I mean, this, this existed sort of all over the place, even in medieval cities.
That's why when we went on that tour in Edinburgh in the news, they talked about how they would yell guard, you knew, like, all the time, because that was what you said when you were about to like, throw your poop,
Malcolm Collins: the, the, the density to be you. Three exits. That meant that basically when people today are like, I can't have kids because like, I don't have a house for them.
It's like, well, clearly, even though they were like low fertility, they weren't that low fertility in Rome, clearly. Alexander pointed
Simone Collins: out that we did this in the first episode of this. Scott Alexander points out that there were many, many, many forms of contraception and abortion used in ancient Rome.
Plus people were wise enough to know which hole to. Have sex with if they didn't want to create a [00:18:00] pregnancy. I love
Malcolm Collins: this thing by Octavia, who was one of Octavian's like, daughters or something. Where somebody was like Well, her sister. His
Simone Collins: sister was Octavia. Yep.
Malcolm Collins: There were multiple Octavias. I forget which one this was.
Where she was like you, you, do you remember the quote? It was something like, they're like, well, be careful. And she's like, oh,
Simone Collins: yeah. Like I, I know like when, when my ship is holding cargo, like only when my ship is holding cargo.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Only when my ship is holding cargo. Yeah. Do I have fun?
Yeah.
Which is great.
Basically only when she's pregnant.
Cause then you know, safe. No problem.
Okay. But what ancient Romans got up to? Pretty debauched. But anyway, continue.
Simone Collins: Most people lived in tiny cubicles in multi story tenements. Quote, there was only one private house for every 26 blocks of apartments. Unquote. Within these tenements, the crowding was extreme.
The tenants rarely had more than one room in which, quote, entire families were herded together. [00:19:00] Unquote. Thus, as Stoneberg tells us, privacy was a hard thing to find. Not only were people terribly crowded within these buildings, the streets were so narrow that if people leaned out their windows, they could chat with someone living across the street without having to raise their voices.
To make matters worse, Greco Roman tenements lacked both furnaces and fireplaces. Cooking was done over wood or charcoal braziers, which were also the only source of heat. Since tenements lack chimneys, the rooms were always smoky in winter. Because windows could be closed only by hanging clothes or skins blown by rain, the tenements were sufficiently drafty to prevent frequent asphyxiation, but the drafts increased the danger of rapidly spreading fires, and dread of fire was an obsession among the rich and poor alike.
Malcolm Collins: And there were lots of big fires in ancient Rome.
Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, not fun. Pracker in 1967 doubted that people could actually spend much time in quarters so scramped and squalid. Thus he [00:20:00] concluded that the typical residents of a Greco Roman city spent their lives mainly in public spaces, And the average domicile must have served only as a place to sleep and store possessions, which totally makes sense.
Basically, it's the equivalent of a sleeping bag. Alexander continues. These tenements had no plumbing. Waste was eliminated by pouring it onto the street, often to the detriment of people walking underneath. Water was brought home from public wells. If you were out, you either walked back to the well or made do.
Total public baths capacity of Rome was about 30, 000. The total population of Rome was about a million. In practice, the upper classes used the public baths and the average citizen had never bathed in their life. Soap had been invented a century or two earlier, but was limited to a small pool of early adopters.
The city's buzzed with flies. Early adopters
Malcolm Collins: of soap. I love this. Early adopters. Have you seen the new tech? Soap! Soap! It's like, oh my god, you're always into the new fad, like. Yeah, it's great.
Simone Collins: [00:21:00] It would be 1800 years before anyone invented germ theory. Tenements were six stories high and frequently collapsed, killing everyone inside.
Fires consumed the city on a regular basis, giving rise to colorful legends like Nero fiddling when Rome burnt. Police were limited, and it was understood that you would be robbed immediately if you set foot outside at nighttime. How did people survive? Mostly they didn't. Cities were destroyed regularly, multiple times within a single human lifetime, then rebuilt and replenished with the rural population.
Stark focuses on Antioch, a Syrian city, which was a center of early Christianity. During 600 years of intermittent Roman rule, he finds It was conquered 11 times and burned to the ground four times and devastated by riots six times. There were eight earthquakes large enough that nearly everything was destroyed, and three plagues large enough to kill at least a quarter of the population, and five really serious famines for an average of one catastrophe every 15 years.
The Romans rebuilt the city [00:22:00] each time because it was a strategically important place.
Malcolm Collins: Now, start to wonder how horrifying this is, right? Given the number of people in these cities, the number of bodies we're talking about here in these ultra dense cities you know, a quarter of a population like that is, is dying.
Those are people just never found left rotting as buildings are built on top of other buildings. You know, this is how cities back then got built on top and built on top and built on top of the city It really reminds me one of the things I noticed about when we were in morocco, which is so interesting So you can see these older style city designs is you could climb to a high building and look down at the Structure of the way that the houses and the various properties intertwined with each other because in morocco Super super old goes back really long ways And you could see some that looked like they may have actually been forgotten.
Like maybe nobody owned them anymore. That they were, like, encapsulated by other buildings. And that the ownership structure may not know or have a way to track who [00:23:00] this building belonged to anymore, and it just got sort of built over and around, because who knows, the family died there in a plague in Roman times, or something like that.
Which is absolutely wild how horrifying these conditions were, but also how you know, after earthquake happens, okay, everyone's just going back. Yeah,
Simone Collins: start building a front. Oh, gosh.
Malcolm Collins: And every 15 years, every 15 years, what was happening 15 years ago, Simone? Was that when, like, Lady Ghostbusters was coming out?
Was, like, their version of Lady Ghostbusters, everyone dies?
Simone Collins: Yeah. This
Malcolm Collins: thing burns to the ground and everyone dies and we resettle it.
Simone Collins: Yeah. So, to Scott Alexander's point, yeah, it is way worse than you could even imagine. Death really wasn't that bad apparently, it just, just, end it. End it. Besides, Christians can't commit suicide, so this was one of the easiest ways to actually end it if you wanted to.
All right, I continue [00:24:00] reading Stark focuses on one of these disasters plague the Roman Empire suffered two major plagues during this era the Antonine plague of 165 AD and the Cyprian plague of 251 AD. He theorizes that Christians made it through these plagues much better than pagans gaining an additional population boost.
It's time for some game theory. When a plague comes, you can either defect, flee, isolate, or hide or cooperate enthusiastically try to help or nurse other victims. An individual does better by defecting, but a community does better if all its members cooperate. Stark thinks the pagans defected and the Christians cooperated
here is Thucydides description of a plague in pagan Athens, admittedly 500 years before the time we're studying. People quickly got an instinctive proto knowledge of how contagion worked, after which, quote, People died with no one to look after them. Indeed, there were many houses in which all the inhabitants perished through lack of any attention.
The [00:25:00] bodies of the dying were heaped one on top of the other, and half dead creatures could be seen staggering about in the streets of Athens. or flocking around the fountains in the desire for water. The temples in which they took up their quarters were full of dead bodies of people who had died inside them, for the catastrophe was so overwhelming that men, not knowing what would happen next to them, became indifferent to every rule of religion or law.
Compare the Christian writer description of a plague afflicting his own community.
Most of our brother Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another.
Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ. And with them departed this life serenely happy, for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbors and cheerfully accepting their pains.
Many in nursing and curing others transferred their death to themselves and died in their stead. The best of our [00:26:00] brothers lost lives in this manner. A number of Presbyterians, deacons and laymen winning high commendation so that death in this form, the result of great piety and strong faith, seems in every way the equal of martyrdom. The heathen behaved in the very opposite way. At the first onset of disease, they pushed the sufferers away and fled to, from their dearest, throwing them in the roads before they were dead and treated unburied corpses of dirt, hoping thereby to avert the spread and contagion of the fatal disease.
Could
Malcolm Collins: you go further here? I, I would note that you see here the love of martyrdom. These people were really looking for, he said, in every way, the equal of martyrdom. They were looking for an opportunity to martyr themselves. And that was really big in early and in most of the vitalist periods of Christianity.
Good point. Is the desire for martyrdom.
Yeah,
that is what [00:27:00] drove this behavior. I don't care if I die, if I die doing the right thing. And I think that that's something that we need to rekindle was in the new iterations of Christianity. I mean, if you look at Technopuritanism, which takes the martyrdom of man as one of its founding texts, you know, we've focused a lot on this concept of martyrdom.
Live your life as a sacrifice for future generations. That is what these Christians were doing again and again and again. And so many Christians today do not understand your life is a sacrifice. When you live your life as a martyr, For the future, you live a life like these early Christians. When you live a life for yourself or moderated or like, Oh, I want to be part of a community and blah, blah, blah.
It's like, that's not what Christianity was originally or in its periods of great fertility. And when I say fertility, I mean like, like, like intellectual fertility
about.
Simone Collins: Could Dionysius [00:28:00] be embellishing matters to make his friends look good and his enemies bad? Maybe, but And this is from the book that Scott Alexander is quoting, there was compelling evidence from pagan sources that this was characteristic Christian behavior. Thus, a century later, the emperor Julian launched a campaign to institute pagan charities in an effort to match the Christians.
Julian complained in a letter to the high priest of Galatia in 362 that the pagans needed . to equal the virtues of the Christians. For recent Christians growth was caused by their, quote, moral character, even if pretended, unquote, and by their, quote, benevolence towards strangers and care for the graves of the dead, unquote.
In a letter to another priest, Julian wrote, quote, I think that when the poor happened to be neglected and overlooked by the priests, the impious Galileans observed this and devoted themselves to benevolence. And then he wrote, quote, the impious Galileans support, not only their poor, but ours as well.
[00:29:00] Everyone can see that our people lack and lack aid from us. Unquote.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. Hold on. I want to take it. This is a Roman emperor who didn't like Christians. Like they're only pretending to be nice. Yeah. But like, They keep helping our poor. They keep helping, like, protect the graves of our dead. They keep doing all of this moral s**t.
Like, why aren't our own people doing this? Like, why are they the ones out there doing all the nice stuff? And there is a Parallel that he draws later in this and in the video before, which is early Christians and Mormons today. And if you don't understand how you can both think that somebody is in a way more morally strict, but also in a way, like, you're disgusted by them and they do all sorts of weird practices Where people are like, oh yeah, well, I mean, I know Morons are like, unusually nice, and like, may exhibit unusual amounts of charity, but they're still a disgusting cult.
Like, that's the way that people saw the early Christians. But you, I think, can [00:30:00] see on the wall here, already, who's gonna win in the long term. The ones that people are complaining about. Hey we need to like up government donations to this because these Mormons keep giving more money than our government is giving, or our local churches are giving.
They keep helping the poor more than even we're helping our own poor. I love that they point that out. The Christians are helping the pagan poor more than the pagan authorities are, and they're helping their own poor. Why would you not convert? Yeah, they didn't win. And I think what people miss here is they think that Christians won the moral battle by a margin or by an argument, not by a preponderance, but they won it by a preponderance.
Like you had to be kind of crazy or like invested in some weird status game to not be like, Oh, these are the good guys. Anyway, continue.
Simone Collins: Alright. Did this matter? [00:31:00] It might have. Modern medical experts believe conscientious nursing without any medications could cut the mortality rate by two thirds or even more.
If this sounds implausible, keep in mind that nursing here includes things like bringing water from the public well to bedridden people who are too weak to get out of bed and get it themselves. Makes a lot of sense. Stark believes that plagues helped Christians in multiple ways. One, the obvious way, 30 percent of pagans died during the plague, but only 10 percent of Christians, making Christians proportionally more of the population.
Two, altering the social graph. Remember, Stark believes that you convert to Christianity after your Christian friends outnumber your pagan friends. If all your pagan friends die, and none of your Christian friends do, this suddenly gets much easier. Three. Moral testimony. Pagans saw their priests and institutions fail the moral test of helping others while Christians succeeded.
Four, even more direct moral testimony. Many Christians nursed and helped their [00:32:00] pagan neighbors. If you owed your life to the Christians and all your pagan friends who could judge you were dead, it would be hard not to convert. Five, supernatural testimony. If you didn't understand game theoretic logic above, then dramatically higher Christian survival rates might seem like God's favor.
Stark additionally speculates that since Christians didn't flee the disease, they got it much earlier, therefore getting immunity much earlier and allowing them to walk through hospital corridors full of plague victims with apparent miraculous invincibility. Six, search for meaning. In some cities, 50 percent of the population died.
The survivors must have been shell shocked and looking for some sort of meaning behind it all. Paganism had nothing for them. Sorry, we don't do that kind of thing. Would you like to hear another story about Zeus raping women and turning her into an animal? Christians. Who had a wise words about how God tests the faithful and sometimes brings people to heaven before their time must have been a [00:33:00] vastly superior alternative.
No kidding.
Malcolm Collins: Right? Like you, you hear these two explanations and you're like, well, these guys seem to buy it. When I point this out in the last video on the subject that people don't realize how much Christianity was the first real religion of this region in the way that we think of a religion.
Simone Collins: Right?
Malcolm Collins: It just was, people can be like, what about Judaism?
And I go, well, look at Look at the the temple period Judaism scripts, which you can get from things like, like what sort of ceremonies were going on there while they were ripping doves apart, ripping their heads off while they were alive, then ripping them apart, spilling the blood on the altar, letting it like blow as they were talking.
It would have looked like sugar.
Nam S to
Malcolm Collins: I'm like, they were, they were transferring. their sins to [00:34:00] goats and then other is sacrificing them in front of a crowd and then another goat they'd send in the wilderness and it's like all of this stuff did it seemed very pagan
And I think some Jews take a lot of offense when I argue that the religion that they're practicing now is not fundamentally the same religion that was practice. You know, pre second temple or. You know, when the temple was standing as Judaism. And I really do not mean that insulting. It's only insulting because it goes against a lot of Jewish theology today. , because that religion was quite, I think, by modern standards, barbaric, and I've realized that a lot of Jews have this, , sort of like mental filter. On the things that happened during that period.
, and not just the, you know, rampant animal sacrifice, the worship of ball in the central temple,
et cetera, that was removed during the Josiah reforms. , but also things like the caste system. I remember [00:35:00] once I was at a party and \ . I made some joke about like how barbaric caste systems are. And I realized that one of the people, there was a friend of mine who is a very jingoistic Jew. I don't know if that's a. Well, what do you call a Jew who?
Super pro Jewish anyway. , he, , I turned him immediately because I really, in my mind, I had just made a major for pot. I'm like, oh my God, I'm so sorry. And he was very confused
And I was like, well, I mean, you do come from a culture that has a strict caste system, or at least traditionally had a strict caste system.
And it had never occurred to him that Judaism used to have a really strict caste system or that he came from a culture based on a caste system that the Cohain the Levis, the Mazza rim, the.
The, the people was convert backgrounds that these people would have been treated differently would have had different ways of related to jobs would have had different ways of relating to society.
All ruled over by a hereditary king, the type of king that would have had 700 wives and 300 concubines in some [00:36:00] instances.
You know, as much as I give Catholics s**t about things. It least when they were building the management system for their religion, even in the earliest days, there was not even talk about making it hereditary. , and yeah, their system picks some real stinkers over to the time. But they never, it's never like, oh yeah. The Christianity at its very inception was like, well, obviously it's going to be based on a voting system.
And then everyone is born equal.
That's wild that we don't even talk about, like how crazy that is.
And this is not a bad thing. If you look at our video on slavery, we point out that the Jewish system was a league above. Eh, any of the pagan systems in terms of its morality in terms of its level of civilization, in terms of all of that. But, , it was not what we would think of as a modern religion, whether you go to the caste system or the animal sacrifices or the sin transference or the blood rituals, , we would not think of it as being very much like a modern religion.
[00:37:00] like christianity really kind of invented something new and judaism was A huge part of the way there, like the fact that the pagans would always complain about the nefarious jews trying to stop them from drowning their babies.
Like, they saw this as like a nefarious and evil thing, or the nefarious jews who had rules where you could lose your slave if you hurt them? What? What, what, what insanity now, while Christianity built on a lot of these ideas and Judaism did later as well, it's important to contrast, which I think isn't fairly done today, early Christians with Jews of their time period, not modern Jews, which are a much evolved religion from that time period.
But I think that when you do that, you can understand that Christianity was really the start of something totally new in human history.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: But continue because he goes into this as well and you might have some thoughts on this. [00:38:00]
Simone Collins: New section. I think this is a very interesting way for it to end, right?
But is Christianity just better? Paganism was framed as a business relationship with the gods. You perform the rites and sacrifices, they give you supernatural aid. You didn't have to like them any more than you liked your supply chain for any other commodity. They certainly didn't like you. At its absolute most touchy feely, paganism might posit a special relationship between a god and a city like Athena and Athens.
But even this is maxed out at the sort of relationship between a shopkeeper and a favorite recurring customer who we always remember to greet by name. Judaism did better. God has a sort of love hate relationship with his people, Israel. But At least there are clearly strong
Malcolm Collins: emotions involved. Now hold on, before you go further, I want to point out here that the person writing this is Jewish in background.
Simone Collins: Continue. Still, Stark thinks it was Christianity that really pioneered the [00:39:00] idea that God loves individuals. From that, everything else flows. You should love your fellow man and nurse him during plague. You should love your children and not committed fandicide or abortion. You should love God back and be willing to die a martyr for him.
For God's love flows naturally. The promise of heaven, instead of a shadowy, semi naturally forming underworlds of the Greek and early Jews. The pagan priests were people who were skilled at the relevant rituals. Christian bishops slash priests slash deacons were people who loved God, especially much aside from all the individual ways that Christian love provided an advantage.
Stark thinks that paganism just couldn't compete.
Malcolm Collins: So here I'd like to, because I think that this is something people don't understand. If you. Imagine you're a pagan living during these times, right? And you see this one group acting more morally. They don't have, like, some sort of contract with their god.
Their god loves them, right? Like, you are just [00:40:00] not gonna be able to compete with this message. Even if you think it's weird, the moment somebody starts to engage with this, and if you watch the first episode where we're going over this, you hear about how cults work. Which at first you're like, because a lot of people will be like, Oh, I was just so compelled by like the message of the call, but that's not really what it is.
It starts with a lot of my friends are in it and blah, blah, blah. And I think it's pretty weird, but whatever. But then you begin to accept parts of the message and all of a sudden you're like, Oh my God, like this is great. Like this, so much of the world makes sense now that didn't make sense before.
And. You see these big C shifts here, and I think C shifts in religion and building civilization. So you look at something like paganism. Paganism says, do it because you will be rewarded for doing it. And Christianity says, do it because God loves you. And while this is a huge There still is a dramatic moral flaw to this jump, [00:41:00] which is you didn't consent to God loving you, you know, God loves you like a stalker.
He's like, I love you. Therefore, do what I say, right? Like, you didn't, you didn't say, oh, like, God, I, I, it's God's like, I love you. So do what I want. Whereas we. Reinterpret and I think more accurately interpret what's actually written in the Bible to argue that as techno puritanism, it says, do it without guilt or expectation of a reward because it is the right thing to do.
And in techno puritanism, you're doing it because of the impact it will have on future people and God, which you will never be personally rewarded for. Which is just like a strictly more moral way to act than the way the older interpretations of Christianity would act, or at least that's the way we see it.
I mean, obviously we're putting this together for our kids and stuff like that, but I see reacting, you know, and we, we have people ask us and we've had Christians ask us, they go, why are you working to create a better future that you are [00:42:00] never going to get experience and that you're not going to be rewarded for creating?
And it's like, well, because we have a religious duty to do so and they're like, well, I don't understand how you could have a religious duty to do something that doesn't personally benefit you in some way. And it's like, well, that's where the moral superiority comes from within this context. And you know, the, the old Greek philosophy here, which is a society grows.
Great. When old men plant trees whose shade they shall never sit in. And Christianity found a way to motivate this. Unfortunately it, it, it was better than the pagan traditions. Early Christianity, I should say. But it still lacked because it still was either promising to reward them in the afterlife, or it was promising to reward them with adulation within this world.
Whereas we have removed those two rewards while still maintaining the moral mandate.
The question is, can people really Motivate themselves with that. We'll see. I mean, I find it to be very motivating. But [00:43:00] I am a crazy person people are always like malcolm other people don't think like you stop assuming that other people think like you and I'm like, well, then i'll breed a generation that does just like the early christians did right?
Simone Collins: I mean, yeah works. It apparently worked very well for them. And I do appreciate this Posit of this is maybe just a stronger meme and I think that that's You A huge part of it, but I do think that these other factors like birth rate, like plague management, like martyrdom play a role too. And it's so cool seeing Scott Alexander's annotation of another author's breakdown of these dynamics because this is totally core in culture crafting.
This is. This is essential if you want to build a sustainable religion or see if your nascent religion that you want to hit your cart to is doing well. And by these metrics, EA is doing all right, I guess. Mormonism is doing great. I [00:44:00] guess the Amish are doing all right. Some Mennonites are doing all right.
So.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, he points out here, which I find really compelling is that if you look at the way these early Christians look, they look the way a lot of people talk about Mormons today, which is to say a weird cult that's like weirdly nice for whatever reason. They're
Simone Collins: so nice, but they're so weird.
Malcolm Collins: No one takes them really seriously, but look at them go, you know?
And he pointed out in the first one that they are actually growing at a rate faster than early Christianity grew.
Simone Collins: So as long as they figured out how to get through This little birth rate problem they seem to be having right now.
Malcolm Collins: But it's still a less problem than their neighbors. I mean, look, when we are talking about the plagues of our generation, when future authors are writing about this, they're going to be talking about the plague of sexual degeneracy as it related to fertility rates.
And you can look at the techno puritan hypothesis here, which is to say that we need to completely disentangle The desire to have kids from the desire to achieve sexual release. [00:45:00] You need to say, these two things have nothing in common. I want to have kids because I want to have kids and kids are a moral good and kids make the future a better place.
And I will create kids for that reason, not because I denied myself pornography or I denied myself birth control. And then some other groups are taking the hypothesis, basically saying, no, we need to go back to older ways of doing this. I always mention in Rome. When their society was collapsing, there was two hypotheses.
There was one group of people that were like, let's experiment with new ways of doing things, ways of building a stronger culture. And there was another group that said, we need to go back to the old ways of doing things. And that was a mystery cult. I mean, in many ways, the trad Christians today represent the mystery cults of our time.
And we represent the early Christians saying, Hey, no, there's a new system. We need to upgrade our morality. We need to expect more for ourselves than people of the past. And they're like, no, what we need to do is go back to just the way the people in the past did things. And we're like, those systems won't work in this context.
Like more is expected of us, more [00:46:00] morality. Is expected of us. More civic virtue is expected of us. It being able to resist even a higher level of debauchery and degeneracy is expected of us. And if you can't do that, if you try to attempt that by saying just ignore this stuff just, you know, as we can see by the statistics, you're losing the next generation.
And, and, and don't tell me like, everyone's like, Oh, join our side. Like clearly we're doing well. And I'm like, yeah, the ones who stay in the faith are doing well. And they're like, well, why do you care about the ones who aren't? I'm like, because they're leaving it record numbers. That's like saying only the people who got shot died.
It's like, well, Yeah, duh. That's what we're afraid of for our kids. We're afraid of them falling to the urban monoculture and they just don't seem very resistant solutions. So I think we're at this great turning point in human civilization where we get this opportunity to build and innovate in the same way the early Christians did because we have new plagues, memetic plagues which humanity hadn't [00:47:00] had to face before.
Simone Collins: Exactly.
Malcolm Collins: Any, any thoughts or you want to go straight into this last point here?
Simone Collins: Last point. because I need to make dinner. So he finishes with, is this all there is? I'm not sure. I'll also talk about Jesus as cheap, but I still don't understand how they managed to be so virtuous and loving in a way that so few modern Christians, even the ones who really believe in Jesus are.
I'm not making boring, liberal complaint that Christians are hypocritical and evil. Although, of course, many are, I'm making the equally boring, but hopefully less inflammatory complaint that many Christians are perfectly decent people, upstanding citizens, but don't really seem like the type who would gladly die in a plague just so they could help nurse their worst enemy.
I'm not complaining or blaming Christians for this. Almost nobody is that person. I just wonder what the early Christians had, which modern Christians have lost. Very interesting question and observation.
Malcolm Collins: I can tell you, the early Christians weren't doing this, they were doing, they weren't doing this [00:48:00] because they were good people, they were doing this because they were giddy about becoming martyrs.
As you can see from their own writings, they were giddy about dying for a better future. The concept of martyrdom, of making, as we say within techno puritan, your entire life needs to be lived as a martyr for future generations. And every moment you spend on yourself is a moment where you are not living within God's plan.
And we should all understand, we all fall short of a perfect person. We are all going to indulge to some extent. But the other iterations of Christianity have completely abandoned the concept of genuine martyrdom. Of, of, of genuinely saying I am going to live every moment I can as much on the edge as I can, like you need to be basically edging your life in terms of how difficult you're making it for yourself.
You know, why would you pay for, for, for one additional thing? Why would you pay for one additional ounce of heating [00:49:00] if you can handle the cold? Why would you pay for one additional meal out if you can motivate yourself without that? Why would you pay for, and we fail, we fail, like I, I fail all the time at this.
Like I am not trying to be the perfect Christian. Within this iteration of Christianity, there are people who will do better than me, but I think having the one, the humility to admit that about yourself and to not pretend, which I think is one of the biggest problems that modern Christians face, is to pretend that your sins, your indulgences, whether they are indulgences in your ego, indulgences in how you are signaling to other people, indulgences in whatever, are virtues.
You know, one of the things I was talking to somebody about the discord server about is like, why don't you attack? Gay people more like in our family, like I wouldn't want my sons to be gay I wouldn't approve that but I approve of somebody else who's living a gay lifestyle, right? And they're like, so then why don't you attack them and I go because that would be a complete personal indulgence They [00:50:00] are a large and powerful community today.
If you go out and attack them if you say that they shouldn't be living this lifestyle that is going to completely derail something like the pronatalist movement, which we're trying to grow. Like you are picking a fight with a group that we need to win election cycles out of personal pride. That is an indulgence, that is a sin.
And Christians today, I'll frame that like, you know, there's many Christians who have these misogynistic framings, who will have these homophobic framings, who have these anti-Semitic framings. You need Jews on your side if you're gonna win in the future. And when you attack groups that are more powerful than your own.
When I say more powerful, I mean doing better than your own are obviously going to matter more than your own. I mean, look at something like the Catholics with their abysmal fertility rate. That's like lower than the secular fertility rate in the United States if you don't include immigrants. Like that they would like be like, who, who, who, like, for example, like
Malcolm Collins: It's either the Catholics or the Jews.
[00:51:00] Pick a side, do not performatively attack potential allies That is sinful and indulgent in a world where we are entering one of the hardest of timelines and we need as many allies as you can have, even if you might disagree with them from your own families and cultures perspective, you can say, oh, I don't want my own kids doing this, but I'm open to outlying and working with other people who do this.
And, and I especially am not interested in antagonizing them.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I think it's important that we see individuals who indulgently.
Or performatively attack other groups.
The way we see any other form of intemperance and look at them with the same level of disgust in those moments. As the drunker stumbling down the streets, barely able to hold themselves together. , because this is an individual who puts all of us at risk. [00:52:00] If they are seen as part of your community and they are regularly going out and shooting at other communities. , with words. , they make Alliance with those communities harder and they make those communities more likely to retaliate, you know, back in the days of the American clan system and like the Appalachian region or something like that.
If you had one person. Who would pick too many fights? , Was outsiders that Klan would, you know, take them out back and beat them to death. Like that's what you had to do because people needed to know you don't act that way because you put everyone else at risk. When you act with this level of intemperance and personal indulgence.
If the people you're attacking, aren't an active and ever present threat to you.
Not just not aligned with you. If they earn an active threat to you, then leave them alone.
Anyway, any final thoughts, Simone?
Simone Collins: I'm going to have to chew on this for a long time and I'm really grateful. This really great summary exists. Probably need to read the book too. So thanks for. [00:53:00] Going over this with me. It was fun to read the original.
It was fun to talk about it with you. And I think it's all about the birth rates in the end. So there you go. I think it's, well, it's about the birth rates and creating a great life and, and the Christianity offered both of those. They offered a better way of living. That was more fun for all people involved.
And that's, I think your big point about prenatalism. It's not about coercing anyone. It's just about providing a better way of living, loving your kids better, giving them such a great experience that they want to pass that on and that they're capable of passing it on because they're thriving and that's what Christianity did and that's what any good religion that's going to survive into the future.
I completely
Malcolm Collins: agree. We've got a Madagascar it,
There's room on the fun side for one more. No thanks. Look, I've been thinking. Maybe if you gave this place a chance, you might even enjoy yourself. [00:54:00]
It's him. Can I come to the fun side?
Malcolm Collins: you know, as I've said before, you need to have a more fun when people come in, they need to enjoy the vitalism that they're experiencing here more with other communities. Don't be in some circle jerk about who's being more virtuous or who's being more. That, that destroys the vibe.
When people come in, they need to come in and be like, Oh yeah, this is cool.
The core of Christianity, the reactor that makes it work and so powerful. Is not a set of rules. Or.
, hierarchy. It's martyrdom itself. That is what Jesus represented. That is what all of the early Christians focused on it is. To martyrs that we look to with respect. Not the fuddy-duddy, who's following all of the rules as strictly as they can and trying to enforce them on [00:55:00] other people that doesn't make other people want to join your group.
What does make other people want to join your group is seeing people live their lives as martyrs. Because as I pointed out, it's not really your death that makes you a martyr. Everyone dies. What makes you a good martyr? Is how you choose to spend this one short existence? You get on earth. That's what makes you a martyr?
So you don't need to go out and get yourself killed, to be a martyr. And in many ways I'd argue that you are more of a martyr. If you spend a long life in murderdom then if you spend only a few moments,
In a. Showy murderdom which in a way can be kind of. Indulgent to monitor yourself too fast. And in two showy away.
And a lot of our religious stuff around the book, the partner to move man or in our tracks theories. We contextualize.
Humanity. As an intergenerational cycle of martyrdom, where every generation is duty is to murder themselves. For the sake of the next generation to help [00:56:00] improve their lot. And it's funny that a, , antinatalist might hear that and be like, yes, we agree. We need to stop the cycle of martyrdom. But because we have this very Christian infused ideology, we're like, no, the martyrdom is good.
The martyrdom is what gives life meaning and value.
And by the way, are you seeing the snow? It's actually beginning to build up first real snow of the year.
Simone Collins: Yeah, it's really pretty.
Malcolm Collins: And what are we making for dinner tonight?
Simone Collins: I was thinking for you grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup, perhaps.
Or I can make vegetables gyoza. Or I can make more teriyaki chicken. This time, if you want vegetables stir fry, I can add that. Or I can make just egg fried rice.
Malcolm Collins: I'll let you choose between teriyaki chicken and grilled cheese sandwiches. I really could do either if you do make teriyaki chicken cut it into smaller pieces this time That was like huge and weird last time. I don't know what was weird about that pack It was very different from the other packs that you've cooked
Simone Collins: yeah, I'll just I'll saute the chicken first and chop it up and then put it back in.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And then serve it [00:57:00] separately because all the sauce from that moved into the rice and that created a situation.
Simone Collins: Oh, you don't want saucy rice? Cause the other day you asked me to pour your curry over your rice.
Malcolm Collins: I do that myself, or I'd ask you to do it, but with the teriyaki, I want to do it one bite of teriyaki, and then the rice.
A bite of plain rice.
Simone Collins: Okay, sorry, I didn't realize you're eating procedure. You're, shut up, you're weirder than I am. Oh, yeah, I am. I'm very aware. I'm very aware of the fact, because a copy of me now comments about his mouth getting wet when he eats strawberries, and that's a problem. They can't keep eating.
Mommy, my
Malcolm Collins: mouth is wet. My mouth is getting wet and it's like your mouth is already wet. My mouth is dirty. No, there's food in it. Torsten. Torsten. Torsten.
Simone Collins: Torsten. Torsten. All right. Well, I love you. I'll get started on dinner. Love you too. Until you get the kids. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Absolutely.
Simone Collins: Thank you, gorgeous. [00:58:00] I love you so much.
Malcolm Collins: Happy to be married to you.
Simone Collins: You're perfect. I hit it. Sorry. There it clicks. Okay, everyone. In March, there is NatalCon. This is the second inaugural Pronatalist convention. You should be there. We're going to be there. It's in Austin. And if you want a 10 percent discount, you can enter the code Collins at checkout.
Malcolm Collins: And it's being run by Kevin Dolan, our good friend.
Very spicy, very spicy. Yes. Love him.
So for those unfamiliar, with the tradition that we're going to show in this family video. , in America, it is common on the night before Christmas to leave out milk and cookies or brownies or something like that for Santa Claus. We did that. The kids knocked over the glass of milk and here they are cleaning it up.
And then one of them breaking my wife's mind. Decides to start ringing the napkins that they're using to clean the milk off the floor into Santos cup.
Speaker 4: It's going into the top. There we go. [00:59:00] That was very careful. Now I'm just going to dry it. There we go. Wow. Good job, buddies.
Oh dear, oh. Don't get them off there! Yes, or else they'll get ruined. There we go. It's, it's drying. Drying. I'll make sure they don't get wet. Yes, I'll make it dry, lads.
There we go. I think that's it. There we go. I'm going to put it Oh, just a little bit of milk on the table. There you go. We're going to be, we're going to be on an ostrich! I'm squeezing in the car. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm gonna punch your phone. You don't want to do that, Toastie. I punched it. I punched it.
Speaker 6: Alright, buddies. Alright, let's go to bed so Santa doesn't miss our house because we are awake. You got it? Oh dear. No, [01:00:00] Toastie, no. No. Santa's drinking that. Toastie, Santa's drinking that. Is Santa's drinking it? I think we need to replace that milk because that's, you don't.
Oh, you're trying to get more milk for Santa.
You're worried that Santa is not going to have enough milk. Hey.
Alright. High five, buddy. Thank you.[01:01:00]
So that he would have enough milk?
It's okay, Toastie.
Speaker 4: I think, hey guys, let's go to bed before Santa comes. That's a good idea. High five, buddy. Can I stay? We're gonna go to bed! High five! High five!

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The UN's Attempts to Control Anime: The Battle Against Cultural Hegemony in Media
24 déc.· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this episode, we delve into the persistent high quality of Japanese artistic endeavors, the influence of Western DEI initiatives on American and European companies, and how these factors contribute to the success or failure of media and gaming studios. We highlight the successes from Japan and China, the pitfalls of 'woke' culture on large organizations, and the implications of bureaucratic bloat on creativity. We also discuss the impact of UN initiatives on Japanese media, particularly anime and manga, and explore broader cultural tensions around gender roles, ethnic stereotypes, and the future of media production in a world increasingly influenced by AI. Additionally, we touch on the concept of teaching children about responsibility, financial independence, and the realities of the modern economy.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. Today we are going to be talking about a interesting phenomenon, which is one, the persistent high quality of Japanese artistic endeavors as well as, The persistent efforts of the West to inject their companies and successful in some instances with D.
E. I. With the urban monoculture with woke ism and destroying those companies in the process we have seen, you know, throughout the course of this year, if we look at the disastrous dragon age veil card Assassin's Creed shadows..
It's encore, another major development project in the U S.
And for what I hear, things are looking good for a vowed.
And all of them are flopping. And then we get these huge successes both out of Japan and China. So like, I think blackness Wukong is out of China. We had a big success from Japan. I can't remember.
Yeah, the ones I was thinking of were games like Dragon's dogma to.
Final fantasy. Helldivers two,
frost punk [00:01:00] too.
And monster hunter wilds.
We had from like, I want to say Eastern European studio.
We had Helldivers. We had you've Helldivers? Was that a Japan? No, Helldivers was Eastern Europe. Okay. But even some Eastern European studios are getting corrupt. Like when they get too big, like, When any
Simone Collins: organization gets too big. Project Lead
Malcolm Collins: or whatever it's called, the one that developed the Witcher and like a lot of good games, they've become super infected with woke ism.
And they're now you know, like, oh, you see it in all this stuff. And it's correlated with the downfall of their studio and inability to make good products. Which I think we're increasingly seeing the bureaucratic bloat was in their studio was, which is that they adapted all this stuff. And, and the smaller studios in that region, like, you know, one of my favorite releases from this year, Frostpunk two, that's Eastern Europe, you know, And it's good.
It's Frostpunk two.
Simone Collins: Good.
Malcolm Collins: It's great. Yeah, I think the only good game that came out of the U. S. So I heard it had a big team in Eastern Europe was space Marines to but then we've also got like bad media in the U. S. And the question is, is [00:02:00] I want to get into like the U. N. Trying to ban this and the reaction to this.
Simone Collins: Okay,
Malcolm Collins: but why media like why I have a Crunchyroll account and I don't have a Netflix account and I know I should be giving money to Crunchyroll. It's just easy. Okay, and I don't have a Netflix account. Why should you not be
Simone Collins: giving money to Crunchyroll? Did they they're super woke
Malcolm Collins: they spend it on woke b******t.
They're terrible. But I don't have a Netflix account You know, I don't have an HBO account. I don't have a paramount account. And the the reason is Is because the media that's being produced there, if we talk about the one civilization hypothesis, is that wherever the one civilization blooms, it typically allows for large bureaucracies.
So I should note, if you haven't seen our one civilization hypothesis video, it's that humanity has largely consisted of one civilization that was, if you actually look at like the archaeological, artistic, and literature record despite what the DEI proponents want you to think, of only one civilization.
which is hopped from one ethnic group to another started in Egypt, went to Mesopotamia, then went to Ancient Greece, then [00:03:00] went to Rome, then went to Charlemagne like Central Europe, then went to the Victorian Empire then went around the world. And that after a while, like Greece today sucks.
Speaker: They smell like a bed of cheese. I
Speaker 2: The Faginoculuses are good people.
Speaker 4: Good people? They're Greeks. And Greeks are just Jews without money.
Malcolm Collins: Like this is not like an essence of premises theory at all. But like, it seems to exhaust the potential of a people after it reaches a golden age within a specific region. And I wonder if it's already exhausted a portion of the American potential.
I really worry about that. Like, are we. And this is what I always wonder. Are we at the end of the Roman Republic or are we at the end of the Roman Empire? I think it's more likely we're at the end of the Roman Republic. But it has exhausted a lot of the creative dynamism of America of the giant companies in America.
And so when I'm going for artistic creations, I need to go to a place less tainted because that's the [00:04:00] only place I'm going to find things that don't look like they came out of a factory line.
United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, CEDAW, oh my god.
Can you believe they have, like, a whole committee on this? Like, our country is paying for, like, the United Nations to exist, and they're spitting that money on things like the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women Committee. And they don't, they don't focus on, like, the Middle East. They focus on anime.
This is about imposing a cultural hegemony, not on actually lowering the amount of discrimination.
Simone Collins: No, the fan service must end, Malcolm. It is not to be tolerated. No man can experience
Malcolm Collins: pleasure. They have expressed concerns about Japanese media, including anime and manga in a report from CEDAW. They claimed that these forms of media could potentially encourage gender based sexual orientation, gender based or sexual orientation based violence against women and girls.
The committee recommended that Japan [00:05:00] implement quote. Effective legal measures and monitoring programs in quote to address the production and distribution of such content The report also emphasized the need to address gender stereotypes towards minority groups in japan Including a new burakim and zinachi korean women and girls.
Oh, you want to reduce japanese? Like, like, stereotypes of, like, Korean and Chinese people. They're like, could you take, like, a more direct shot at Japanese culture? Like, you guys need to stop being so racist against other East Asian groups. And they're like, but that's, like, our core thing, man.
I find it shocking that are so drenched in their own cultural perspective. That they fail to see that different cultures may have a degree of cultural supremacism as part of the culture itself and attempting to erase that is attempting to erase a core element of that culture. It is. Racist. To [00:06:00] attempt to convince a culture that has
That has ethnic pride, deeply embedded within it. To erase that aspect of their cultural inheritance. And this wouldn't be so bad if this rule wasn't applied it's so unevenly two different ethnic groups. As we have seen walkies are the first to argue that some groups are allowed to act with ethnic supremacy.
For example, black cultural groups in America, they, they would say, oh, well, they can't be racist. Whatever they do, it's not racist. , but Asians, Japanese. Oh no, they don't. They don't get that protection. Why? It was because they're racist. They believe that different humans based on their skin color or ethnic background are deserving of different levels of human dignity and human rights. And Asians are one of the bottom groups to them.
Speaker 5: What does that mean? I think she just called you a racist, Penny. Black people can't be racist! I agree.
Malcolm Collins: I think that it is okay to accept that societies like korea like when I was [00:07:00] in korea I experienced a lot of racism. And I was like totally chill with it.
I was like, yeah, I get it I shouldn't be here. This is, this is, this is not your culture. I am in many ways parasitizing on your culture's arbitrage that you have given me. And that is it's so funny that like, you know, I, I'd say that like people in the U S like Kamala Harris can't say, I only have this position because I'm a black woman.
I only have this job. Joe Biden said he's only hiring black women for this that I would never have gotten this far in my wife life. If I was a white man given my qualifications, given my achievements she was unable to admit that to the public in Korea. I admitted that all the time. I'd be like, I probably wouldn't have this job if I was Korean.
And I understand why there's animosity towards me. And I think that that is part of what's needing to be accepted by the modern elite black community in America. If we're going to get through this is they need to say, look, as a black person who grew up upper class. Now, I'm not saying that this is true of black, lower and middle class people.
They actually have it much harder. [00:08:00] But the programs don't really end up benefiting them. They only end up benefiting the black elite class. These people can't, like Kamala Harris can't say, I understand I benefited from systemic privileges throughout my entire life that gave me advantages over other people.
That's the first step in any form of healing. And the unwillingness to do that is, is, is, is really, I think, a core moral failing of the individual. I'm not saying that they need, they need to leave their jobs, but just admit that, like, you played an arbitrage game. And most of our black friends do admit this, like, behind closed doors, like, Oh, f**k it.
Yeah, I know what I don't have this job for real Z. But also a lot of our black friends are Africans. And so they're even like, like double cucking the US black population. They're like, yeah, my ancestors. have always been leaders of our area of whatever, you know, they're all like descended from royalty.
And you know, we, we came here with a lot of wealth already, and now we're taking all the VC jobs because the VCs don't see a difference between us and the Americans the black [00:09:00] Americans. So they're not even helping the people they're supposed to. They're, they're helping the people that sold their ancestors into slavery.
As we saw was that horrifying movie what was it? It was about like the, the, the queen, like the African queen.
Speaker 8: It's crazy to me that you live in a time where when you share the truth about slavery and the fact that Africans were brutal about enslaving and slave raiding other tribes and delivering them to the coast for the transatlantic slave trade, you get called a white supremacist and that you hate yourself.
This happened when I called out the movie, The Woman King, which glorified slave raiders. Those warrior women were slave raiders, but at least some people are honest about it, like Lupita Nyong'o. Brutal truth of what were some of the outcomes of their actions.
Malcolm Collins: the truly twisted thing about.
The woman king as a movie. Is that it portrayed this tribe as. Fighting back against Europeans who were pressuring [00:10:00] them. Into being slavers when the exact opposite was true, specifically, the British at the time were already zealously. Anti-slavery. And even went so far as to. For no financial benefit themselves, they were just doing this because they saw slavery as a moral negative. Blockade the port capital city of this kingdom. Uh, this was an 1852. Uh, and demand that they both stop selling slaves and stop wide-scale human sacrifice. There was a capitulation, but the treaty only lasted for five years.
And under his advisors that king gesso resumed the slave trade in 1857.
So the reality is. Is that the white people in this story would have been trying to end slavery and the black. Tribe of women warriors [00:11:00] that is being elevated by this story. We're the ones perpetuating it.
They did like a really big movie like last year or something that's all supposed to be like affirming of black people and this queen in this tribe. Yeah, she did exist historically and she made all her money by selling other black people into slavery.
That was her, her, her tribes economy. They don't, they don't talk about that. But it's, it's, it's horrifying. It's horrifying. This dehumanization of the American black population to just being black and not being like different ethnic groups. But this is not the first time that the UN has done something like this.
Simone, did you have any thoughts before I go further?
Simone Collins: No, I just, they're, they're going to have to try the anime from our cold, dead hands. It's not going anywhere. Like, I just, I don't know what people think they're doing. In the end.
Well, no, they have
Malcolm Collins: successfully fucked up anime studios, and we'll get to this in a second. Really? Specifically, like, Bandai, for example, has adopted a bunch of DEI practices. We've seen some in Sony, we've seen some in [00:12:00] Sega, we've seen some in Nintendo. Like, it's getting bad for the big bureaucracies, because they're the ones that are most susceptible to this.
And then, even when they do make a good game, like, the latest Fire Emblem wasn't great, but, like, at least it had, like, romance options. They were all taken out of the U. S. version, because the translators took all of them out, because they're like, oh, we can't have you romancing your subordinates in a game.
It's like, ugh. Okay. I hate you guys so much. I hate you so much.
Speaker 2: And don't even get me started about this whole labor rights thing. What have we come to if you can't demand sexual favors from the people in your employ?
Malcolm Collins: However much you think you hate the, the, the infected population you should hate them more. The Cordyceps virus has eaten their brains and they ruin everything good and positive about this world.
Speaker 2: Our people have lost their way. A report that over 40 percent of the population no longer believes that you have to buy your way into the divine treasury when you die.
They don't teach [00:13:00] children the rules of acquisition anymore! Spreading through Ferengi society. It's making us soft.
Malcolm Collins: But this isn't the first time that the UN has done this in 2016.
So you can get an idea of how overreaching they want to be and what their actual goals are. So I want you to keep in mind, our taxes are
Simone Collins: super creepy. This is super fascist, big brother, big brother. Oh, very.
Malcolm Collins: So the committee remains concerned at the persistence of patriarchal attitudes and deep rooted stereotypes regarding the roles and responsibilities of women and men in the family and in society.
Particularly concerned that, so by the way, isn't this horrifying? Horrifying! This is the U. N. This is what our tax dollars are going for, and they're pulling this fight the patriarchy, ultra, ultra, ultra feminist woke s**t.
Oh my gosh.
That's what they're trying to erase from media. Women being mothers.
Women being happy with subordinate positions within the family life.
I mean [00:14:00]
Anyway, wow, thank god, by the way, all this is coming like even if they destroy the anime studios because of AI Independent creators will be able to create like really high quality content soon so they'll be destroying this as more and more of the eyes are moving to smaller and smaller studios smaller and smaller creative And the bureaucracies just die out.
But anyway, so the three things they really are concerned about a the persistence of these stereotypes continues to be reflected in the media and educational textbooks and has an impact on educational choices and the sharing of family and domestic responsibilities between men and women. You know, what's funny here is that women go into STEM professions more, the more society discriminates against women.
You see very low rates in Northern European countries and very high rates in Middle Eastern countries. So like, Their own narrative is just like anti reality. Okay, next B, the media often depicts women and girls in a stereotyped manner, including as sex objects. This is what they mean by women in anime [00:15:00] looking attractive.
This is like when they were trying to shut down. This is the
Simone Collins: same thing. Remember when this happened with. Superhero characters, and the accusation was like, look at the women wearing their whatever. And then like, wait, but what about these muscular men? Like the fan service goes both ways. And this also exists in anime.
Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. When they rebooted She Ra, they didn't, you know, they make her look like an underage kid. Right. And that's, that's worse. It's so much worse. They rebooted He Man and He Man still has all his muscles.
Oh, gosh. Well, I don't know what to say. What? No, I know what to say. We live in a society where men are seen as an underclass and as a deserving underclass.
And it's just obviously true. And people, I think people are waking up to this and they're like, Oh s**t. Like, I think this is why a lot of moms move really far to the right when they're like, Oh wow. Like the level of discrimination my child would face. I can't stand for [00:16:00] that. I can't stand for the amount of systemic.
And structural privilege our society gives to women and their ability to just like believe women, like they can just get a guy jailed whenever they feel like it. Like just say whatever they want and you can't even question them. And, and so we're concerned
Simone Collins: about people getting jailed for posting their thoughts online.
That really scares me. But you've seen a lot in like the UK and
Malcolm Collins: stuff like
Simone Collins: that.
Malcolm Collins: If you're not familiar with what I'm talking about. One example here. Happened where a judge sent it to someone for two, two years and seven months in prison for writing after three girls were murdered mass deportation. Now set fire to all of the. F-ing hotel's full of the b******s for all I care while you're edit, take the treacherous government and politicians with them.
I feel physically sick knowing what these families were now have to endure. If that makes me racist. So be it. The same judge gave a zero month sentence to somebody with.
[00:17:00] PDA file material.
In another instance, Matthew Woods 20 was jailed for posting an offensive Facebook status update.
It's not a good sign. And so, C, sexist speech continues to be directed against women, ethnic or other minority women, such as Anyu, Baruka, or Zazaki Korean women and migrant women. And this is an anime. It's like, man, this is an anime.
The committee reiterates its previous recommendation. So they had recommended this before, by the way, even before the 2000 this is all the way back in 2016. But they did another recent more adamant one recently where Japan's actually pushed back a little. And urges the state party to A, intensify its efforts to change social norms that reinforce traditional roles of women and men and promote positive cultural traditions that promote the human rights of women and girls.
I sometimes talk about.
The imperialist nature of the urban mono culture. And I think some people might under sell just how strong and aggressive [00:18:00] it is in its desire to erase. Every other culture on this planet and replace it with only the urban monoculture. Outside of a few aesthetic flourishes, like maybe still being allowed to wear your local clothing or still being allowed to hold a few holidays. We really see that at play here. They define gender relations as the urban mono culture defines gender relations as a mandate for all of their cultures. When they go to Japan, because the way that Japanese people traditionally relate to women is culturally unique to Japan.
It is a way that Japan has historically done that it is Japanese culture. So when they go to Japan and they say, you have to do things, our European urban monoculture way, that is a cultural genocide mandate. That they are trying to impose upon a culture that they have power over even by their own racism is power plus [00:19:00] prejudice. Could anyone be wielding racism more clearly than the UN itself in this instance?
So they want to fight against traditionalism. They want to fight against the nuclear family. They want to fight against women taking a subordinate position in relationships. All of the s**t that You know works. And you grew up a progressive. You didn't think you'd want a subordinate position in a relationship, I think.
Simone Collins: No, I mean, absolutely not. But I also didn't think I wanted a relationship at all, which is pretty indicative of where we are today. I think what's disturbing about this is this is not the default people are growing up with. You don't need to extinguish this anymore. And to now go so far as to basically ban it as an option is far more restrictive and creepy than.
Any, you know, feminism should be about choices and of course, the classic thing you hear from trad wives all the time is this was my choice to pursue this pathway and that is feminism. So it feels [00:20:00] overdone at this point to say that, but that that is a freedom that is being restricted by these policies.
Malcolm Collins: And here the final point they wanted to make is effective implementation of existing legal measures and monitoring programs in order to regulate the production and distribution of video games and animation that exacerbate discriminatory gender stereotypes and reinforce sexual violence against women and girls.
They included corn in there. I just took it out because it was faster. But they're really buying into this sexual violence
Being depicted against women in art and media.
is something that is being driven by.
Males when it objectively isn't I will put on screen here the statistics which are very like like loud in showing like Girls wanting to be choked for example is not coming from male porn It's coming from female fan fictions and fantasies and you can see this in the average arousal patterns of women which we'll put on the screen here from some of aila's data but anything you want to say before I go further [00:21:00] Go on.
So the Japanese political response, so some in Japan have actually wanted to implement this. So Masaka Aara submitted a petition to the 213th diet session, calling for stricter regulations on content, including manga and anime that featured inappropriate. Depictions of characters resembling children.
The initiative aims to amend the current laws, including the no, what's interesting is how recently we'll go into this in a second. How recently Japan it, it, it made child corn illegal to the extent where I'll admit, there is some stuff where I'm like, could you not put this in a content that I'm otherwise enjoying?
Yeah, I'm feeling a little
Simone Collins: uncomfortable here. This was not asked for.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, like, I, on Amazon, this was streaming on Amazon, I'm watching a show, I otherwise liked it, it's very, very, very low culture. If you want to watch it, I like the characters in it, and some of the themes, but it is basically, A sexual anime.
And it is called [00:22:00] Gushing Over Magical Girls.
Simone Collins: Oh, okay. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Very fun. Basically, the plot is, is that and I, I wouldn't recommend it. It's sort of like low tier slop if you love stuff that just like absolutely is the bottom of the cultural barrel. Like, if that elevates something for you, you'll enjoy this, but you need to be okay with that.
Where she becomes a villain in an anime girl story, but all she wants to do because she's obsessed with magical girls, is like, do sexual stuff to the magical girls. But then like, you get to like episode five or something, and an underage girl is introduced. And she does scenes that are like dressing one of the magical girls up in like diapers and stuff and her a bottle, and you're like, I didn't ask, like maybe this law would be okay.
Speaker 11: You want me more? Wait! What
Simone Collins: [00:23:00] Like that be where I'm like, I don't want that. No, I think, you know what? In the end, norm normative pressure and good taste, or the best. Standards here. And just being like, you know, did we really need to do that is a better policy than you were not allowed to do that.
Malcolm Collins: Unfortunately, Simone, the enemy has been financially rewarded better this last year than I forgot, like, a really mainstream enemy.
To give you an idea of just how popular it was. It even significantly outsold, both Fran and solo leveling.
You know what?
Simone Collins: Maybe we're in the wrong here. What do you call them, crinklers? What are the diaper fetish people? I guess those are the ones who like to walk around with the poopy diapers. That's different. No,
Malcolm Collins: I basically saw it as just a how far can we push the barrier in modern society is what the anime was doing.
And a part of me from like the 90s not in [00:24:00] like a lame way because a lot of things in like the 90s they'd be like, oh, let's make random like um, Pee jokes or whatever, right? Or like random sex jokes. Like Lex did this. It's a good example of this. This is not that type of humor. It's just like decent characterization done in an interesting setting that I and, and otherwise slop anime.
But anyway, to continue. But one senator was pushing back against this stuff, Tara Yamada. Yamada stated that no questions about manga, anime, or video games were raised during the in person review during the mention in the final report. He is considering requesting that CDawg disclose their sources and evidence and may even ask for a retraction if the information is not provided.
Now, there's been some other examples of censorship, like the Tennessee ban. So in the United States, Tennessee implemented a sweeping ban across various mega titles in school libraries.
And
popular franchises like Attack on Titan and My Hero Academia. What? My Hero Academia?
Simone Collins: Wait, what did they [00:25:00] do?
I don't know. Was she a little bit of a fan of this or something?
Malcolm Collins: I think this is some like jiggling breast, perhaps. What what is happening? There's not even that like my hero academia has is I think this is like the the sexual Puritans that still exists within some corners of the right accidentally got into power here and we're given a little too much power without the new right slapping them around a bit.
A short skirt flapping
Simone Collins: a little bit too vigorously.
Malcolm Collins: For people who don't know my hero academia, great anime. You have so many
Simone Collins: My Hero Academia AMVs in your little roster. Well,
Malcolm Collins: and the, the women are really well done in it. I think it's one of the most affirming of women's shows I have ever seen in terms of good female stereotypes.
Yeah, it,
Simone Collins: it, it doesn't, it doesn't. It doesn't come across a lot of a lot of anime does come across as very gendered. Right? There's sort of like the harem trope or there's, you know, a lot. There's a lot of like, very feminine roles. This is 1 of those anime that [00:26:00] just doesn't feel like it's about gender differences.
It's about people who want to be the best. And period. And they are. They're really great. Well, yeah,
Malcolm Collins: but not just that. But the women in it, the reason I like it so much is it, when it creates strong female characters, it doesn't make them strong in that, like, stereotyped Western way where, like, making them a Mary Sue who's, like, tough and puts down men and is, like, the alpha in every situation.
When I think of it's strong characters, like Udemy or Froppy or Well, really, any of the female characters in it. Like, every female character in it is, is, is, is pretty, who is fleshed out, is pretty interesting and otherwise a, a strong person, they're all very effeminate in the way that they're strong,
By that, what I mean here is as a conservative, if I wanted to give my daughters something that showed them how to be both strong without abandoning traditional [00:27:00] femininity. Along a number of metrics because most of the different females in it show a different type of female strings. Which is really interesting that they were able to find that many unique archetypes of female strength. I could think of few shows better to do that than my hero academia.
For example, in this scene, you see MENA having the courage to confidently deceive, a big strong villain and character, even when she's in middle school.
But the show immediately makes it clear that this is not because she is an intrinsically brave person, but just because her care for her friends is higher than her fear.
Speaker 16: What? You're not gonna answer me? Crap! Why aren't there ever any heroes patrolling at times like these? It's a simple question.
Speaker 17: MOve! Come on!
Speaker 18: Around that corner and then make a left at the big street! The agency's two kilometers [00:28:00] away! very much.
Speaker 21: 2km away!
Malcolm Collins: Even when they are completely subordinate.
So here I'm thinking of a gentle criminals sidekick.
I forget her name.
Speaker 35: Brava's love will set me free. La Brava, grab the cameras. We made a prank and look like amateurs. The moustache must look so glamorous. Otherwise in the comments they will slander us. To be remembered we can never be average. And my strength grows cause you feel so amorous. You were You are so much. You were there for me when everybody else would judge.
And I know I promised you we would succeed. That time is gone, and it's only a dream.
Malcolm Collins: Very supportive, very sweet character who is powerful in the way that many women are powerful in our [00:29:00] society by providing love and support to her partner. Yeah.
And I know gender to
Simone Collins: be gender. I'm also thinking about food wars, which you and I both love, love, love.
And I could see if some review board is watching food wars, they're watching it. And they see one scene of like food judges eating food and their clothes. Yeah. Their clothes blowing up.
Malcolm Collins: I tried to find a PC version of one of these scenes to put in here, but even finding a still image that was PC enough for the podcast
was challenging.
Simone Collins: I'm honestly just picturing like. The, the review boards, clothes popping off too. Just being
Malcolm Collins: like,
Simone Collins: wow,
Malcolm Collins: Food Wars also like really doesn't care about consent.
There's a number of scenes in it where the guy feeds a girl like gross food without just
Simone Collins: teasing her with like really gross food. And I would argue though, that there are many, many female characters in Food Wars that are extremely strong, independent, entrepreneurial, intimidating [00:30:00] women. Who come across as more masculine than some of the male characters.
Like, they just, it's not like things are these black and white stereotypical, weirdly gendered absolutes. So I they're,
Malcolm Collins: they're not, they're not tainted by Westernism. They're not like, you know, a Miss Marvel or a She Hulk or you know, one, like a, a just a translation of a male character into a female character, but two incredibly bland because they all have their.
Faults and the ways that they are strong are all uniquely feminine, which is something that Japan is still able to do and the west has seemingly forgotten how to do. Mm-Hmm. , how do you make a woman feminine and strong? Like I'm thinking food wars. The great scene with the mega, mega always gets me the, when she's in the war against you know, it's the, the, what was it?
Speaker 24: Then try a bite. Why should I bother? Do it.
Speaker 23: It isn't cooked right. The plating is off and the pate hasn't [00:31:00] set properly.
Speaker 25: Yet, why? Why is it tugging at my heart like this? The dish is crude. But the way each ingredient was treated shows careful consideration for the diner. It Reminds me
Speaker 26: Boy, you were fighting again, weren't ya? Oh Sweetheart You're always flying off the handle like this the truth is you're a kind boy.
Now let's hurry back and eat. I'm making your favorite for dinner tonight. There's a rainbow. It's pretty, huh? Kojiro.
Speaker 27: Yeah Thank goodness,
Speaker 23: Okay, Dimwit.
Speaker 27: Yes?
Speaker 23: That spice you added to the pate, it was all spice, wasn't it? Um,
Speaker 27: Um, no, uh, right. Huh? Well, I know you've all been judging since yesterday, right? And I know you've had to eat a lot of different foods. Well, Allspice aids in digestion and might do you some good. I, I wanted to give you something that would be gentle and might help settle your tummies.
You really are [00:32:00] so thoughtful and sweet!
Speaker 24: Though clumsy, it resonates. That's the kind of food she's made.
Malcolm Collins: And that's such a where the males are strong because of like maybe technical prowess for her. She outcompetes everyone because she just cared more than other people.

Malcolm Collins: So if you're a conservative adult and don't get why so many conservative kids are into things like anime, despite their lewdness, this is. Big part of it. It is one of the only places in society today because like American conservative media, I think does a fairly poor job. Of.
Showing the ways, for example, that women can be heroic in a feminine way. but anime is still captures that very well. In addition to that, we have the move of conservative culture in the United States from a deep south oriented culture to an Appalachian clan based oriented culture, which. Associates vulgarity with authenticity.
As we [00:33:00] seen with stuff like Trump, as we've mentioned in some of our more anthropological videos. Um, about the new right. And so I think that that's a second thing. Is it the vulgarity that is common within anime is seen as a lack of pretension and authenticity. Instead of as a negative.
Now the Tennessee ban, I get it. You know, whatever. It's school libraries. I really don't care. I guess like it annoys me. Who's
Simone Collins: hanging out in school libraries for fun anyway, just go to a library library, I guess. But although it's a shame, but also I went to a school library at a school that was, you know, these books were like 13 years old and falling apart at the seams.
I feel like I would rather have books that. We're relatively new. The idea of there being maybe manga in my library just seems so luxurious that I'm like, Oh, nice problem to have if they're taking away your manga. Oh, I'm so sorry. I had to borrow my manga from my very generous friends. Thank you very much.
And we just passed books around like, yeah, that
Malcolm Collins: would have been such a luxury. [00:34:00] That's like having a water slide in your library. Oh,
Simone Collins: they've taken away your water slide. Oh, boo. Can who? Cheese. Yeah, you're right. Like this is not that big of a deal, but it's still annoying, right? I mean, it would be nice to have a water slide in your library, so it's sucks.
Here's something I,
Malcolm Collins: I found really weird because I was like trying to understand because I also got into all of this and I was like, you know, I've noticed on like Japanese pornography, they do the like weird censorship stuff. Oh,
Simone Collins: yeah. Like, you can't see penises. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: is that
Simone Collins: actually illegal in Japan?
Like,
Malcolm Collins: I wasn't
Simone Collins: sure. Yes. Yes. And that, I mean, this is more apocryphal that squid, the tentacle porn, is a product of penises not being permitted, right? But tentacles are. So, oh, how convenient. The penetration is from a tentacle, not a penis. And that's why you have those double lines over penises in anime, because there was some legislation at some point that banned depicting penises.
And I think maybe vagina. So you can actually see that. Did you know
Malcolm Collins: that owning child corn in Japan was [00:35:00] only made illegal in 2014? Well,
Simone Collins: that just, this, I think this goes to show how trying to legislate your way into, like, the Forcing people to be moral doesn't work like either. You're going to create an underground black market.
That's unregulated and even worse. Or, I mean, I guess I feel weird about this. So, I recently read this great sub stack going over the damage caused or subject caused by. Post going over the damage caused by allowing sports gambling. And it showed that in states that have come to allow sports gambling, the average savings of all citizens in that state goes down by like 360.
And that bankruptcies have gone up 18%. And that's, this is bad, right? So there, there are moral hazards or vices that, you know, are best regulated. I I'm, I'm starting to get that even though I'm, I feel deeply uncomfortable about that. I, that I disagree. Just let people gamble. I guess it's just [00:36:00] a survival of the fittest thing.
Like they're just going to fail.
Malcolm Collins: The correct thing to do is to allow the people in our future, all the temptations that we experienced today. Whether it's gambling or pornography or anything like that are going to be experienced multiplicatively by our descendants at all times. This is something you were talking about this morning, where you realized that gambling now had entered the way that stores sell toys.
The way video games reach people.
Simone Collins: Yeah, I was watching this, by the way, if you guys don't watch this, you should be watching Trixie Mattel unboxing the viral Christmas toys of every year. She's not, no, she's a, she's a cross dresser. She has, no, sorry. She's a drag queen.
Malcolm Collins: God,
Simone Collins: then if it's a drag, sorry, he's a drag queen.
He just looks so pretty. I have to, when someone looks like a beautiful, not, well, I mean, district one, capital. I wanted
Malcolm Collins: to do a whole thing on trans people looking like they lived in District 1. Yeah, but
Simone Collins: like, sorry, Trixie [00:37:00] Mattel is not, is not trans, not cross dressing, is just drag queen, but awesome drag queen.
But yeah, the theme of the Christmas unboxing of this year that Trixie Mattel did is Is toys. You don't know what you're going to get.
And I've just discovered that operate conditioning and like addictive loops and all of this has found its way now into consumer products for children. Like, it wasn't enough to have feeds and social media.
Do it now. It has to be in, like, the physical toys that people are opening because now you have to get more and you need to get that reward. And if it doesn't have the reward that you need. You know, ended up eating like 50 percent of the materials that in price that went into a toy, then what's the point?
And that's disturbing. But and I will, I see your point. Another thing that happened in the states that legalized gambling. And this took a while for the market to correct around this, but credit limits went down. And I do. I do kind of like that. So I noticed this with our kids, for example. I, after we got [00:38:00] so many kids in the house, now that we have four where I can't have an eye on all of them at all times I've discovered that I just have to be way better at childproofing things, you know, like no longer can we just make sure that they don't get into the toilet or that they don't get into certain things and make huge messes.
We have to just, Remove those as options. And I kind of like the idea of over time. We're going to have to remove various types of consumer debt from being an option because clearly people can't deal with that. And you're right. Like, to a certain extent, the market will correct around it and things are only going to get worse.
So why create through legislation, these arbitrary barriers that only prolong our actually solving the problem or learning how to deal with the addictive stimulus. That makes sense. Thanks. But I still, I just feel uncomfortable with it because I don't like the, the suffering that takes place in the interim.
Malcolm Collins: Simone, suffering is part of how [00:39:00] humanity improves itself.
Simone Collins: Yeah, but I'm a human that experiences, highly unfortunately,
Malcolm Collins: empathy. We will be able to inject these people with chemicals so they won't have to feel any pain in the near future. They're doing
Simone Collins: that already. That's why we're seeing this massive spike in marijuana consumption in general and cannabis consumption.
Because I think that is how a lot of society is enabling themselves to deal with a reality that they are dealing with. deeply unhappy with. And I very much
Malcolm Collins: support that. And genetically unable to deal with.
Speaker 32: Malcolm was right. Look,
Speaker 31: I found a way.
Malcolm Collins: Because that's, that's what's happening here.
It's, it's, we've got to understand that the selective pressure is like, okay, I am from a [00:40:00] people who lived in areas where alcohol was freely consumable for a long time. So while I consume more alcohol than other people, I also am highly, highly, highly resistant to any of the negative effects of alcohol.
And like, like, Yeah, I've only seen
Simone Collins: you, like, I can only remember one time of seeing you, like, actually really drunk.
Malcolm Collins: You too! I, I, when Simone gets drunk, what she does on the nights where she gets drunk, is she'll, she'll take out a mug, like a like you would have Just fill the mug with vodka.
Simone Collins: But that's not, that's not drunk. That's tipsy. If I want to get tipsy, we fill the mug with vodka. The one time I actually got blackout drunk, if you'll remember, it was when we went to Chicago trying to raise funds. And it turned out that investor asked us to fly out for that lunch meeting that we'd like out of pocket.
We're paying for it personally, trying to raise our search fund. And they just had lunch with us and they were like, yeah, I mean, I was never planning to invest in you. And I was just like, [00:41:00] I was so mad. And then I bought, cause we had no money. I bought two boxes of wine and I drank both of them in that Airbnb that was a loft.
Do you remember that? Yeah. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And we didn't have a home back then or anything. We were living out of a suitcase. I think a lot of people they don't understand like how long we had nothing.
The whole thing was a hustle for so, so long. I don't know. It's still, it's
Simone Collins: still a luxury to be able to buy wine and consume them.
I had money to burn on that apparently. Not that I remember that night.
Malcolm Collins: Our YouTube channel, I think people have seen our YouTube channel for a while. They're like, Oh, They have this like super abundance mindset, which is like, even when the channel was like just starting and it was like, you know, like, I don't know, like 50 people would watch every episode there were like 10, 000 per episode or something, but we act like we're big YouTubers and stuff.
That's just the way we see things. It's the same way when we're raising money. Oh, we're going to be big
Simone Collins: and famous. It's quinetic though. [00:42:00] Like, I mean, Octavian's teacher at kindergarten couldn't believe that he had siblings. He, he I love that he has He's like,
Malcolm Collins: this kid has f*****g siblings?
Simone Collins: Yeah. He comes, he comes across like he's Joffrey from Game of Thrones.
Like he's just raised like that, even though he comes from our house. It came, it
Malcolm Collins: came, it reminds me of when I was a kid, one of my teachers came to my mom and they go your son, so this was even like in the previous generation, they're like, your son has some issues. Of like delusions. He thinks that he's gonna be king.
And and she was like, what's the problem? And she goes, you know, like king of like the planet. Why wouldn't I raise him believing that like He doesn't he doesn't think it's gonna be she's like, oh, I see you're misunderstanding You think that he's not gonna have to fight for it? No, no, no, no, no, no, no He doesn't think he's gonna be given kingship.
He thinks he's gonna have to build a coalition It's like
Simone Collins: your mom got A little too tipsy one morning, and instead of picking up like an old parenting guide, she [00:43:00] accidentally picked up Alexander the Great's biography and was like, oh, okay, so Olympia just do what? Do what she did. And, and no, she'd
Malcolm Collins: always tell me stuff like that.
She'd tell me like that she had dreams before I was born. My brother and I. We were both supposed to be, she was going to have two sons and they were going to become like incredibly important figures in human history. She said she saw like a psychic before I was born and that her first son was going to be one of the most important figures in human history.
And this is the stuff that like Olympia told Alexander. She's like, Oh, I was impregnated and like, you're going to become like the greatest man ever. I was a weaned on this stuff.
You were, you
Simone Collins: were maybe psychics are underrated though. Cause I remember when I was in college, there was some kind of Oktoberfest outside my dorm that our school put on because basically my university experience in the United States was going to like, Seven year old summer camp, but it was a university.
You know, [00:44:00] we did crafts. We painted pumpkins. I was a psychic. There was a band because that's what young adults need. But I went to the psychics. I'd never went to one before and she read my palm or something and said, You're going to be such a great parent. And I thought that was the most hilarious thing because I was never going to get married.
I was never going to have kids. I was going to get sterilized. I was so excited for it. And I'm like, ah, psychics. What a joke. This is hilarious. Goes and shows you. But no, guess who at the last laugh?
And I got friends on the other side. He's got friends on the other side.
Malcolm Collins: But
growing up, and I think this is actually really useful for young kids, growing up and understanding that they have some sort of a destiny or some sort of a thing that they're supposed to do with their life. And that it is going to be a challenge, but they are [00:45:00] expected to achieve it. It's really important.
Too many purges now. They're horrified when we hear we have expectations for our kids. They're like, Oh, no, they see
Simone Collins: it as a form of abuse. Like, how can a child live with the weight of that expectation? But here's, it's the sweetest thing. You don't see this cause you're, you're, you've been asleep for hours by that point, when I finally put the kids to bed, after we read the book, I'm going to the softest blanket in the world.
Thanks dad. I really like it. And after we then talk, you know, tell spooky stories in the dark, when they're finally ready to go to bed, the boys insist on climbing up on their ladders and then jumping onto me and giving me big hugs. But then each of them hug me and they say they love me and I say, I love them and I say, you've got to fix the world.
He's like, I'm going to fix the world. They both say they're going to fix the world. And they know that that's their job and they're excited about it. They have that sense of purpose. Like they know that That their job is to fix the world and because they love reading books about disasters and like spooky stories about terrible things happening.
They also understand what it means to fix the [00:46:00] world. Like Octavian's like, I'm going to build better buildings so that there aren't earthquakes that kill people and buildings that collapse. I'm going to, you know, get people off the planet. If the planet burns, I'm going to do it. Like he, he knows. What to do, but the, here's the great thing.
You're going to love this as he's also like, and then I'm going to get paid a lot, I'm going to make a lot of money. And I'm like, yeah, if you fix the world, people will give you a lot of money. Like it makes money to fix the world too. Cause he also wants to buy a lot of stuff, which is about making money a lot.
He's grounded. Yeah. He's, he's grounded in reality. It's not like he's some kind of savior complex. He knows he gets compensated for this work. So I think that's, that's also important. People are like, Oh, how dare you have expectations for your kids. Well, how else do you think your kids are going to be motivated to work?
Like, again, there's all these kids who are graduating and thinking, why would I bother working? Nothing's, nothing's going to change. We're not going to achieve anything. Whereas our kids are going to be like, well, I have to build. The best company. And I have to make the best solutions that actually fix the world.
And then I'm going to get so much money and I'm [00:47:00] going to buy all the stupid stuff. And, and that's good. It's healthy. It's great. We also have to, I think it's so important to teach kids also that they have to build their own companies. I think another issue is a lot of these kids are realizing. Yeah. If you get a job, it's not going to pay you enough to do anything you want to do in your life.
You have to build your own company. You have to provide your own services. You have to build your own. Legacy by actually providing real concrete value in the world. And if you have that kind of mindset, you'll make it like, we're already starting to shape Octavian's views around this. Cause he was telling you the other day, remember when we were making dinner, he's like, dad, you got to drop me off at work so I can make money.
I need to go to work today. I need to make some money. And we're like, honey. Jobs don't exist anymore because they don't love
Malcolm Collins: that. You're teaching
Simone Collins: our
Malcolm Collins: kids at a young age. Like they're not really going to feel like sad. The jobs don't exist. They're just like, yeah, I need jobs didn't exist.
Simone Collins: No parents really need to start.
I think that that is extremely urgent that parents do not [00:48:00] raise their kids to think that they're going to get jobs. And I think that's part of what's happening now is already we have a generation that's coming. To age in a world where they were told they would get jobs that would support them. And there are no jobs that will support them.
And that's
Malcolm Collins: Well, and my parents did this to me in a big way around, like, inheritance. Where I was always told, you're not going to get inheritance, you're not going to get inheritance, you're not going to Even though they knew that they were fairly wealthy, and the family was fairly wealthy, and I would probably get inheritance, but the family ended up losing all this money over dumb s**t.
And I think a lot of my cousins expected some form of inheritance and I always expected no inheritance. So you were less
Simone Collins: devastated when the
Malcolm Collins: family,
Simone Collins: you were moderately pissed. Whereas other people acted like it was the end of their lives. So that's good.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I was like, whatever. I, I thought you guys would steal this from me some way.
Anyway, I wasn't interested in playing this game. Like,
Simone Collins: you know, even the money that we do have invested. I see this a lot in. The financial audit videos I watch and the money for couples [00:49:00] episodes that I listened to and things like that, where a lot of people treat their 401ks, their retirement savings, et cetera, as money that they have, that they could use if they want to really like want to buy something.
And we just pretend it doesn't exist. And I think that's,
Malcolm Collins: you pretend like it doesn't exist. And I'd say that that's a problem and something you need to stop doing.
Simone Collins: We need to pretend. No, that doesn't exist. Simone, we have so much money on our hands. I genuinely believe that if you are not making enough money to support yourself by providing good in the world, you don't deserve that money., Listen, you can spend your money however you want, Malcolm, but I'm going to shave you for it. Just like, you know, someone can have, like Torsten, he has terrible taste. He has terrible taste. He has completely terrible taste in toys and aesthetics.
I will, you know what, you know, celebrate him, but I will give him I have, I have
Malcolm Collins: recently been splurging more of our money than I should have on stuff like children's like inflatables and stuff. I'm excited for this new one. For handling the purchase of the big tiny tots inflatable. We're going to do some, all [00:50:00] the other inflatables doing so well, the bouncy house, the indoor bouncy house, they love it.
And now I don't need to go to outdoor environments for other parents. Shame me for beating my children.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And also like where our kids are picking up more. I'm kind of like Indy's still getting over the last. Virus that the kids spread to her from wherever it is. They've most recently been playing. So I'm ready for her to, and it wasn't Octavian getting it at school because Octavian never had it.
Torsten and Titan had it. And then Indy got it.
Malcolm Collins: That's probably from them, like licking the trampolines at Sky Place. As one does. I mean, if you're
Simone Collins: not licking it, you need to. The full five senses have to be engaged in any experience. If you are between two and three years old, well, zero and three years old, I guess, you know,
Malcolm Collins: You, you are a delightful wife.
I am so happy I married you. I'm so happy that we lived this life together. I'm so happy that we passed 29, 000 subscribers [00:51:00] recently. Thank you to anyone
Simone Collins: who's subscribed. And if you find it within your heart to do us a favor, If you could leave a, that's a five star review on Apple podcasts or any place where you can leave a good review, it'd mean a lot to us because
Malcolm Collins: we're like, what, like a couple of hundred, a hundred now we have 80 reviews.
We're not even at a hundred. Yeah. I got a classmate with over a thousand reviews. Okay. He just did Mark Zuckerberg for one of his shows. Why don't I have Mark Zuckerberg on my show?
Simone Collins: Because you don't know him. I bet that guy knows him. I know
Malcolm Collins: people as famous as him. They just don't want to be seen in public with me because I'm a naughty, naughty boy in the media.
Yeah,
Simone Collins: that's true. That's the problem is your, your Stanford classmates are just so Like that, there's this You know what? It reminds me, you get freaked out by that Utah pod person LDS thing, that look. Stanford MBA grads have such, there is [00:52:00] this like pod person version of them. They have their Patagonia pullover and, or like their nondescript You know, Laura Piana sweater that you have to know what to look for to be able to identify the quality of it.
And then they're just, but they're so relaxed and laid back and perfect. And they never really say anything controversial and they smile and put you at ease. And I just, Oh, it gets really puts me on edge. Like they are not disagreeable enough. They're like just hyper competent and agreeable. I'm just saying.
Well, I'll tell
Malcolm Collins: you what, they didn't marry weird Puritan wives who live in the woods like I did. I, I think, I think I'm getting the ones who are like the Mormons and stuff and the Jews and the, the, the, the like religious conservative ones. Like when I say the Jews, I mean like the conservative religious Jews, the conservative religious Mormons.
Those are the ones who ended up the coolest.
Simone Collins: Yeah, but even they look of their kind very normal. They, they become. Oh, they're
Malcolm Collins: too normie. Oh, I [00:53:00] agree Where are the, where are the smart non normies? It's so hard to be a smart non normie in this society.
Sad. Hey, I, I got a wife with a Cambridge graduate degree now, so I got, I got the. You
Simone Collins: fixed it. It was it was one of those blemishes. You just had to pop. And then it was gone, you know, she
Malcolm Collins: means that when I married her she had a degree from GW George Washington. I was like, that's gross. I'm like actively sexually turned off by you not having an elite education.
I was like, I need to get you an education, sweetheart. Well I, cause I was, I was raised culturally. I was told to expect that whatever elite education means for the next generation. Like I'm okay with my kids not going to like Ivy league schools cause like they're going to s**t anyways. Right. But I expect them to be known as the best of the best of their generation.
Simone Collins: Yeah. What? I'm just thinking about Octavian already asking about wives and marrying. I don't know where [00:54:00] he's picking that up because we're not talking with him about it. I talked to him about, you need to get married, you need to get off. Oh, okay. So that's coming from you. Yeah. Anyway. He's like, I'm gonna marry you.
Yeah, he keeps saying, he keeps saying he's gonna marry everyone, though. I don't think he understands what marriage really is. You're like, you keep saying that he has to get married, but he doesn't. You have to first define marriage, Malcolm. Because right now, just like he's like, He doesn't understand gender.
He's like, Mom, you're fired. And I'm like, okay. Make your dinner, Octavian. Clean up your mess, Octavian. And he's like, wait a second, I what, huh? He doesn't know what so many of these words mean. You
Malcolm Collins: let your son fire you? You can't do that! You're the boss! Simone!
Simone Collins: I'm sorry, but a lot of employees are, like, basically firing their bosses these days by quiet quitting and all this other nonsense. He
Malcolm Collins: doesn't understand gender. He doesn't understand. That's the biggest problem with marriage is I, I try to explain it to him and [00:55:00] he's still not like totally like, and this is where when people are like my three year old, this kid's five and he cannot persistently tell a boy apart from
Simone Collins: a girl.
Oh yeah, no. So this concept of parents saying that their kids are trans because they haven't worked out pronouns yet. Is really abusive because our kids definitely do not get pronouns, but they are Very gender. They're very secure in their gender. There's no doubt there that is really funny. Yeah.
Oh, well.
Malcolm Collins: All right. Love you. Simone. I'll let you know what are we doing tonight?
Simone Collins: Do we have any turkey left? Actually, yeah, so we do have turkey left. I was thinking about shredding it with a fork and making a golden curry brick with white rice for you, but I could do something else.
Malcolm Collins: I would love that.
Golden curry turkey with fried rice would be really good.
Simone Collins: Well, maybe it'll suck. I don't know, because you didn't like how it was. It might suck, but it's new. It's new. We haven't done it before, so. Do you want sautéed onion with that or not? I'd actually be okay with fresh onion with that. Ew, no, no, no, no, no.
Trust me. Golden [00:56:00] curry brick needs sautéed onion, not fresh onion.
Malcolm Collins: Whatever you think is best, my sweetheart. Okay.
Simone Collins: This
Malcolm Collins: is the Japanese
Simone Collins: golden curry brick, right? Yeah, curry rice. The brown stuff. Brown stuff. You got the curry on this side and the rice on this side. Curry rice. You know what would be really fun for me to make one day?
It's katsu. Yeah we have the panko. I just, Like don't want to waste that much oil. Like the, the frying, maybe if they did. No,
Malcolm Collins: we used to fry foods all the time and they find out you're not supposed to use the same oil over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Oh,
Simone Collins: but Malcolm, wait, we still have your Indian spiced breaded chicken.
We have a couple more. We've like maybe one more bag of it in the deep freezer. No, we
Malcolm Collins: got to use up the existing protein first. No, no, no, we're going to, I'm just
Simone Collins: saying like next week we can try air fryer. I
Malcolm Collins: want to go to the teriyaki chicken before we go to that chicken.
Simone Collins: Fine.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. I love you. Bye. Love you.
Bye.
Simone Collins: You're so funny.
Malcolm Collins: Do you have, by the way do, do that beforehand? Like, this is like something you prep for did you, by the way, [00:57:00] get the inflatable to be shipped or
Simone Collins: canceled? Yeah, no, I fixed it. I told you on WhatsApp.
Malcolm Collins: Oh,
Simone Collins: wonderful. You just, you just don't pay
Malcolm Collins: attention.
Simone Collins: I
Malcolm Collins: check WhatsApp in the morning before I get started on podcasts.
There's just no
Simone Collins: way for me to reach you. You're like, send it to me in an email. You don't read it. You talk to
Malcolm Collins: Google. You say, Hey Google,
Simone Collins: I did
Malcolm Collins: the thing. And then, and then, yeah,
Simone Collins: I'm screaming it to avoid. I never hear back.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll figure this out. You can tell I live in the same house as you.
You know that, right? Then I
Simone Collins: would have to like walk across our vast house from my wing to your wing. And I'm not ready for that kind of physical exertion. It's
Malcolm Collins: too cold. You're not even pregnant right now, Simone. This is ridiculous. I'm preparing,
Simone Collins: getting in character. I'm a method pregnant.
Malcolm Collins: You're always so excited when you're [00:58:00] pregnant.
Like it's like your natural state. I know. I'm so excited for it. It's going to be great. Anyway. Okay. So I'll get started.
Speaker 33: Show me what that is. What is that? Um, it's my paper airplane sign. And this is made out of paper. And right there, there's a lot of paper airplanes I can sell. Okay, so you're going to go outside and you're going to show people your paper airplane sign. Yes, well I'm going to do that in two days because it's cold out there.
That makes sense. And um, when people see your paper airplanes and your paper airplane sign, they're going to give you money. Okay. Um, yes, I'm making money. And what are you going to do with the money? Um, I'm going to buy a remote control ball with it. Like anything. Yeah! I want a remote control ball! You want a remote control ball?
Yeah. It's a silly [00:59:00] thing to want. Oh! Why I love you, Octavian. This is my paper airplane so everybody knows I'm my mom. Hey, Octavian, I really like how much agency you're showing here. You wanted something, we said you needed money to do it, so you came up with a plan to make money. Yes! What are you doing jumping on me?
What are you doing? Oh! You're silly. Gah!

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Did Christians Outbreed the Competition? Scott Alexander & Rodney Stark's Rise of Christianity
23 déc.· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this episode, Malcolm and Simone discuss Scott Alexander's review of 'The Rise of Christianity.' They explore how Christianity spread rapidly in its early days, challenging common beliefs about widespread conversions driven by miracles. Instead, factors such as higher fertility rates among Christians, effective social networks, and the appeal of Christianity's treatment of women played crucial roles. The episode delves into the socio-cultural context of ancient Rome, comparisons with modern cult movements, and the implications for both historical understanding and contemporary religious dynamics.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone! Today we are going to be discussing a very interesting piece, Scott Alexander's review of The Rise of Christianity.
And in it, he goes through how Christianity spread as fast as it did, it is astounding how quickly Christianity was able to spread in its early days. And it was not through the, tactic that most people think, which is widespread conversions based on either miracles or just the logic of what was in the text.
Instead, it appears to have mostly been downstream of Christians having more children, having more surviving children. And having an ability to convert women at a much higher rate in the early days.
But the children, childbirth appears to be the core of this. Also, their plague surviving rates appear to have been quite different. So we're going to go over each of these in turn.
Speaker: [00:01:00] In ancient Rome, where altars shone, the pagan gods once ruled alone. But quietly came a faithful breed Not through big signs, but with small seed They gathered in humble prayer No sweeping crowds or mass fanfare They built their homes with children glad More babes they bore than pagans had
Malcolm Collins: The challenge Well, Andy,
Simone Collins: even the Christianity seemed to have spread through the kindling of Judaism, which had already spread, which is also fascinating.
It's just such a cool
Malcolm Collins: overview. Yeah. The challenge with any Scott Alexander piece is he writes In a way, we're typically when we're reading a piece, we are throwing out 90 percent of it. This time we're keeping probably well over 80 percent of it with a number of factual and textual additions because there's a few minor errors [00:02:00] he makes.
And there are a few areas where I just happen to for whatever reason know additional information that helps flesh things out a lot.
Simone Collins: Oh, that's fun. Because what I love most about Scott Alexander's book reviews is you get a great summary of the book, then you get additional research and annotation from Scott Alexander, and now I'm getting layer three from Malcolm.
This is like tiramisu now, you know, first you start with the muffin and then you get a cupcake and now I'm getting, whoa, man, this is great. Let's
Malcolm Collins: go
Simone Collins: into it.
Malcolm Collins: All right, dive in.
Simone Collins: Scott Alexander writes, The rise of Christianity is a great puzzle. In 40 AD, there were maybe a thousand Christians. Their messiah had just been executed, and they were on the wrong side of an intercontinental empire that had crushed all previous foes.
By 400, they were 40 million, and they were set to dominate the next millennium of Western history. Imagine taking a time machine to the year 2300 AD, and everyone is a Scientologist. The United States is over 99 percent [00:03:00] Scientologist. So is Latin America and most of Europe. The Middle East follows some heretical pseudo Scientology that thinks L.
Ron Hubbard was a great prophet, but maybe not the greatest prophet. This can only begin to capture how surprised the early Imperial Romans would be to learn of the triumph of Christianity. At least Scientology has a lot of money and cutthroat recruitment arm. At least they fight back when you persecute them.
Malcolm Collins: Okay, so I think that this is all really important to note because a lot of people do not realize how quickly Christianity basically came out of nowhere from a small persecuted group that was not seen as particularly different during Jesus's lifetime than other small, roaming Thaumatological Performing Rabbis. So, quick note here if you don't know what I'm talking about. Thaumatological performances is a type of magical performance, which is like a miracle working as a magic trick. It was [00:04:00] really common for random rabbis to roam around and perform these types of miracles.
You know, you have like the circle drawer, you have the, I'll add a few in post here.
You have Hani bond. Doza. , who performed numerous miracles, including making vinegar burn like oil for Shabbat candles. When his daughter mistakenly use vinegar instead of oil. He also extended the links of beams for a woman's house through blessing. Additionally, he was known for controlling rain with his prayers. He wants prayed for rain to stop while he was traveling and it ceased immediately. You have Honi the circle drawer. He is famous for his miracle of praying for rain during a severe drought in Israel, he drew a circle and the dust stood inside it and vowed not to leave until God sent rain. Initially only I liked drizzle fell, prompting him to pray again for more substantial rain.
Ultimately God answered his prayers with a heavy downpour Shimon bar Yochai., he. Performed healing miracles. And.
It was said that he could burn people with his gaze. One notable miracle involved the emperor's daughter who was possessed and he was called to help her. Additionally, [00:05:00] during this time in a cave, He and his son were miraculously sustained by carob tree and a Sprig of water. After emerging from the cave, it was reported that everything looked at a world burnt to ashes. Indicating his extraordinary spiritual. Power.
I say this because I think it actually undermines the amazing growth of the early Christian community. To overstate how unique Jesus would have appeared to people of his time.
And I would note here, the point I am not making is that all of these other miracle workers actually performed their miracles. But what I am saying is that it was widely believed that they had, so if me a random person around this time had a group of people come to me and say, Hey, there was this rabbinic miracle worker, and here are some of the miracles he performed.
I'd be like, yeah, a guy told me about another one yesterday. And a guy told me about a different one the day before., Like it wouldn't have been unique.
and people can be like, well, you know, he raised people from the dead. That was totally unique. And it's like, well, not really.
[00:06:00] If you go to the old Testament, for example, the widow of Zarephath son raised by Elijah, the prophet, the shin termite woman's son raised by
Elijah successor. , and then from the new Testament you have Thomasa Dorcas raised by the apostle Peter. , you have YouTube Chris raised by the apostle Paul. , so that again, if you over emphasize, like, if Abe, if Jesus was just this amazing guy that nobody could possibly deny in everyone who saw him was immediately like, yeah, I'm on board with this, you've changed everything. , this story actually becomes a little less remarkable because it's like, oh, well, that's why it's spread.
But when you realize that. Within the context of his time, Jesus would not have been that different for many of the other people in the region who had followings. , it becomes absolutely amazing how quickly it grew and a miracle that is. In fact, I think a bigger miracle than many of the miracles that Jesus has reported to have, Carried out and a miracle that it is much harder for a secular [00:07:00] person to deny.
But to give you an idea of.
How undifferentiated Jesus was from other walking you know, random Thaumatological performances we have recorded in the Bible pretty miraculously What a random traveling magician would think of Jesus, in the story of Simon Magos Whereas Simon Magos sees Jesus. He is a sorcerer a a basically I mean unless you think that there were random like actual sorcerers in the area at the time he was a magician And he saw what Jesus was doing and he said, Hey, can I buy that trick from you?
And Jesus got really mad about it. You know, but the point being is that we know we have, we have the answer to the question. If a random magician saw Jesus, what would he think? He would think he was a magician.
To put it. In other words, the types of.
Belmont to logical beat Jesus was performing. We're not seen as uniquely spectacular or out of place when contrasted with the type of feeds performed by traveling magicians.
Of that time period in that region it's actually incredibly [00:08:00] important from a theological perspective because it removes any validation given to Jesus's claims by his miracle work and the claims and the growth of the movement have to provide the validity themselves, which I think is a higher form of validity than I believe it because the guy performed miracles. , also here.
I would note if you haven't read the infancy gospel of Thomas or studied it. ,
it's a non-canonical gospel where it's like, well, what if you had all the magical powers of Jesus, but you were a kid and didn't have a lot of self-control. How might he have used them during that time period?
, and it comes off a lot, like this, get.
Speaker 4: No, David Blaine, no. I'm
Speaker 2: what'd you buy?
Speaker 4: Uh, I bought a green sweater, if you want to know. Okay, I bought a green sweater.
Speaker 5: Interesting. Are you sure you didn't buy a teddy bear?
Speaker 4: Yes, I'm sure I didn't. Teddy bear? What the eff? How did you? How? Where's my sweater?
David Blaine. David Blaine. He bought a green sweater, okay? You're being mean. You're being stupid. Where is it? Look at your effing [00:09:00] body right now, Peter.
What the eff, how the hell? I was holding things! Did you feel anything? Thanks, you stretched it out probably, thank you. Please, please, stop it. I don't want to wear it right now. Please stop. I don't even want to wear it yet.
Speaker 3: Hey, what are you drinking? I'm drinking orange soda. Ooh, big whoop.
Speaker 4: Hey, what else is orange? What else is orange? I don't know. Cheez Its? Cheez Its! What the? Cheez Its! F**k! What the? Where's my orange soda?
It's orange soda in my mouth! What the F? You put it in my mouth! What the F? How did you get it in my mouth? Please stop, you demon!
Malcolm Collins: And he, so, so the, Oh, and he was, there
Simone Collins: was a type. It was, it was, He was a common, the, the Great Courses series on the historical Jesus aka Wonderium describes Jesus as an apocalyptic Jew in an age where there were lots of apocalyptic Jews just kind of walking around and preaching.
It might be akin [00:10:00] to like seeing a life coach today.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we know this because of like the Dead Sea Scrolls community, which was around the same time period a bit before, but was also, a group of apocalyptic Jews. Sorry, apocalyptic Jews means Jews who think the world is about to end not end exactly, but enter the next phase of existence and that they are coming to bring this.
And many of Christ's early followers believed that his second coming was going to happen soon. Within their lifetimes. We can see this in the letters. Where I think it's Paul writing to a group who's like, some of our members are dying before the Messiah comes. Like, what are we supposed to do?
And he goes, oh, well, their bodies will be raised. But the fact that they were worried about dying before the Messiah comes showed that they, like, Rose from the dead again shows that they saw that as an anathema. That as a weird thing.
That this was a common belief in the early church. You can see in things like Paul's letter to the Thessaloniki. , where he says, [00:11:00] quote, for this, we declare to you by the word of the Lord that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord by no means precede. Those who have died for the Lord himself with a cry or. Of command with arc angels call and was the sounds of God's trumpet will descend from heaven and the dead in Christ will rise first.
Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet with the Lord in the air. Therefore, encourage one another with these words in quote.
So you can see very clearly here. He says, that we who are alive. And he's talking about the people who are listening to him or reading this letter are going to experience the second coming of Christ. , as to why he would think this, well, you just need to look at Christ's own words. Matthew 24 30 to 31, mark 13, 26, 27. And Luke 2127 to 28. , where Jesus states quote, truly, I tell you this generation in quote, meaning his contemporaries will not pass away [00:12:00] until all these things have come to take place in quote Matthew 24 34, mark. 1330 Luke, 2132.
I am here. Not trying to point out that the Bible is wrong or something. I think that they misinterpreted these words that said, I don't think that they were stupid for misinterpreting these words. And I'm just pointing out here that it was a common belief in the early church that Jesus was going to come back before. Within their generation and they weren't stupid for having this belief.
And this becomes even more powerful when you look at the spread of Christianity, because it makes even less sense. It becomes even more miraculous when you see that. Early wrong beliefs in the early Christian Church did not invalidate its rapid growth.
So you've got to think about what Jesus's group was. The followers of Jesus who keep in mind, we believe we're actually true and correct and everything like that.
But I don't think that they were I'm very different from your average modern Christian who thinks that like anyone who saw what Jesus was doing would immediately have known he was the [00:13:00] Messiah. I don't think that there's other times in the Bible when we see people raise people from the dead, everything like that.
I think that. Only a, a, a truly because he just didn't have a big crowd when he died. He didn't have a ton of followers when he died. If you saw somebody perform these like absolutely undeniable feats of magic and you're like, okay, this person is definitely the son of God. You're not going to turn your back on them just because the government is prosecuting them.
And you can be like, oh, well, you know, it was Rome. Like, what would people really go through for the Messiah against Rome? And we're going to get to that in a second. People were willing to be devoured by lions for Jesus. People were willing to have horrible things happen to them under the Roman Empire for Jesus.
And yet, the crowd that Jesus had built around him, who actually saw the things that he did during his life, weren't Willing to rebuke him almost immediately the moment he came under fire of the empire. So the point that I'm saying is that this was originally a very sort of small [00:14:00] group a, a group that was not particularly differentiated from other groups in, in the period.
And that's true differentiation came from it. Super fast, gross. And I also love the, the crazy L Ron Hubbard thing when he's like, imagine not only are like 99 percent of America, North America, Scientologists, but the Middle East is like, well, you know, L Ron Hubbard was wrong, but he was one of the greatest prophets in human history.
And you're like, what, how did that happen in just 300 years?
Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and again, Scientologists have it so much easier slash are doing so much better than early Christians, right? They're, they're not being fed to lions, for example. They have lawyers that, that scare people. It's it's, it's very different.
Malcolm Collins: So very interesting. Yeah, my read is
that
when Jesus died, he may have had 50 followers. Like really?
Simone Collins: Maybe more. I mean, there were crowd issues. You know, when he came to certain cities, I think Roman officials were a little concerned about [00:15:00] him.
Malcolm Collins: There were crowd issues, but here is my read on the 50 followers thing.
Okay. If you had a traveling miracle worker and healer of which we know there were many during that period You would likely get crowd issues when they went to a random town or something like that That doesn't mean that they all followed him They may have wanted healing and they went to the last miracle worker for healing.
And they went to him for healing. They may have liked it. This guy was handing out bread and fish and wine in his event. I'm sure
Simone Collins: like if Greta Thunberg walked into Berlin or something, you know, she would form dangerous crowds as well.
Malcolm Collins: People came to the moment the government turned against him, the fact that he didn't have some big crowd, like speak out or prevent this or even just go remove him from the freaking cross.
To me, that's, that's always been pretty He must not have had a really sizable community.
Speaker 6: Your family arrived then. , I have been asked to read the following prepared statement are we, do hereby convey our sincere greetings on this, the occasion of your martyrdom.
What?
Simone Collins: Well, the rules are the [00:16:00] rules. I don't know what to tell you.
Malcolm Collins: That's like Jesus. I see you're on the cross. I know like probably bit a group and get you down. But I don't want to risk it.
Simone Collins: We're outnumbered.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Okay. Did not go for a few tables.
Simone Collins: So,
Speaker 6: And I'd just like to add my own admiration for what you're doing , at what must be, after all, for you, a very difficult time.
Speaker 7: You
b******s!
Simone Collins: He continues, previous authorities assumed Christianity spread through giant mass conversions may be fueled by miracles. Partly they thought this because the biblical book of Acts describes some of these, but partly they thought it because how else do you go from a thousand people to forty million people in less than four hundred years?
Stark answers. Steady, exponential growth. Suppose you start with 1, 000 Christians in 40 AD. It's hard to number the first few centuries worth of early Christians. They're too small to leave much evidence. But by 300 AD, [00:17:00] before Constantine, they were a sizable enough faction of the empire that some historians have tentatively suggested a 10 percent population share.
That would be about 6 million people. From 260 years implies a 40 percent growth rate per decade.
Stark finds this plausible because it's the same growth rate as the Mormons, 1880 to 1980. If you look at the Mormons entire history since 1830, they actually grew a little faster than the early Christians.
Malcolm Collins: That is, I think, absolutely a fascinating point. That is, because it shows that,
Simone Collins: like, it could be. It could very well be. I mean, their growth rate still isn't great right now, but if Mormons managed to pass through, as you put it, the Trial of the Lotus Eaters. They could be the next main faction of Christians.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, actually and that they're growing faster than the early Christians. Exactly. We say that, like, when I'm looking at, like, why do I believe Christ had a divinely inspired message. It is because of the efficaciousness of his [00:18:00] message and the speed of growth of his message. And a lot of people I think are surprised that we consider the Mormons as one of the true face.
We believe there's multiple sort of like in a four dimensional space, like you, you can't try to reconcile them on this earth, but in some way, if you had a broader understanding, you could reconcile them. And we consider Mormons as one of them, and a lot of people are very surprised at that given how small a community they are right now.
But given that we're very forwards looking it makes a lot of sense that we would do that if you look at their growth rate and other similarities that he's going to point out to the Mormons today of the early Christian community. But I also find it interesting that this, as we wrote in the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion, can mostly be explained by higher fertility rates and not by conversions.
Conversions are, in a historic context, fairly rare.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: Each brand new life, a living call. That soon outgrew. The pagan, [00:19:00] no grand crusade in streets of stone, no golden flags or trumpets blown yet countless children won the fight and pagan ways. Soon lost their mind, they didn't conquer hearts by force, or cast the shrines in sudden course.
They simply grew in numbers, see, the cradle was their victory.
Simone Collins: Instead of being forced to attribute the Christian's growth to miracles, we can pin down a specific growth rate and find that it falls within the range of the most successful modern cults. Indeed, if we look at this, as each existing Christian having to convert 0.
4 new people on average per decade, it starts to sound downright doable. Still, how did the early Christians maintain this conversion rate over [00:20:00] so many generations? Through the social graph! This is another of Stark's findings, from his work with the Moonies. That's so interesting. The first Moonie in America was a Korean missionary named Jung Un Kim, who arrived in 1959.
Her first convert was her landlady. The next two were the Landlady's friends. Then came the Landlady's friends husbands, and the Landlady's friends, husband's, coworkers. That was when Stark showed up. Quote, at the time I arrived, dot, dot, dot, to study them, the group had never succeeded in attracting a stranger, end quote.
Stark theorized that, quote, the only people who joined were those whose interpersonal attachments to members overbalanced their attachments to non members, end quote. I don't think this can be literally correct. Taken seriously, this implies that the second convert would have no other friends except the first, which would prevent her from spreading the religion further.
But something like Quote, your odds of converting are your number of moony friends divided by your number of non [00:21:00] moony friends, unquote, seems to fit his evidence. History confirms this story. Muhammad's first convert was his wife, followed by his cousin, servant, and friend. Joseph Smith's first converts were his brothers, friends, and lodgers.
Indeed, in spite of the Mormons celebrated door knocking campaign, their internal data shows that only one in a thousand door knocks results in a conversion, but quote, when missionaries make their first contact with a person in the home of a Mormon friend or relative of that person, This results in conversion 50 percent of the time end quote people sometimes accused
Malcolm Collins: one before we go further here I will know we actually did further data on this in the pragmatist guide to crafting religion I'd say that it's much lower than one in a thousand results in a convert The way that they mark conversion is pretty shady.
They're like do a And keep in mind, when you're in other countries, sometimes people will convert to like, use the Mormon facilities because they basically got like YMCA setups in other countries, where it's like, oh, I want to play soccer at the Mormon facility, I just say I'm a convert. But if you actually look at the [00:22:00] increase in tithing members, it is completely trivial, that Mormons are not converting large populations.
At least not anymore, maybe they were historically, but it seems to me now that the reason for this Particular Mormon ritual is that it makes it very hard for an individual who has gone through it to deconvert because they have sort of this sunk cost fallacy along with what's the word disassociation?
not disassociation when you, when, when, when something doesn't align with what you believe about the world. Like if you have to go and try to convince somebody dissonance, cognitive dissonance. Yeah. If you have to go and try to convince a bunch of random strangers about something you've pretty much made up your mind about that.
Like if you get through your mission trip and you're still a Mormon at the end of it, you're likely going to stay a Mormon throughout your entire life. Almost all of the Mormon de convert stories I hear, they started de converting during their mission trip or before. So it's more about actually maintaining [00:23:00] the existing members and reaffirming their dedication to the faith than it is about getting converts.
That is not me saying that mission trips are pointless. This is me saying that mission trips actually serve a different function.
Simone Collins: It kind of weeds out the religiously weak.
Malcolm Collins: Yes.
Simone Collins: Non committed. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: But it also helps increase the status of individuals who are willing to put in more for their religion to the point where almost everyone goes on a mission trip.
Like you, you have sort of a what can I say, like a faithfulness inflation problem within Mormonism where you have increasing things like that that you need to do to be a successful candidate on the market for a spouse because many wives won't seriously consider you if you haven't been on a mission trip.
Which I find really fascinating. Now there are numbers about how easy it is to convince, convert a Mormon who has like one Mormon friend, that that works 50 percent of the time. That also seems laughable. There's no way, there's no way that if a Mormon relative or they're going to convert 50 percent of the time a Mormon talks to them, that they must mean like of all Mormons talk to them or [00:24:00] all Mormons hound them.
Mormonism would just be spreading way more fastly if that was happening.
Simone Collins: Yeah, maybe something's off there, but. I do think that being embedded in Mormon, Mormon culture is infectious. Like if my family weren't somehow resistant to cults, I'm sure I would be Mormon because they're so great. But we are,
Malcolm Collins: sorry, you mean resistant to cults and that her family likes going to when my favorite quotes from her dad, I was like, you know, this is a cult.
Like, why are you going to it? Like this could be like really dangerous to you because, Oh, don't worry about me joining a cult. I've joined tons over the course of my life and that doesn't make me feel better. So rather than resistant to cults, they dip into cults and dip out of cults.
Simone Collins: No, we just, no, but we never joined.
Like that's our problem. Yeah, he never
Malcolm Collins: officially joined. Yeah. Anyway, This next part is actually a footnote that he had here, but I thought it was pretty relevant.
Simone Collins: People sometimes accuse modern social movements like environmentalism, [00:25:00] MAGA, wokeness, rationalism, etc. of being cults. But as far as I know, this rule doesn't apply to them.
Most people in these movements get involved by stumbling across a philosophy online and finding that it rings true. It seems to me like these modern movements are more likely to make unique and interesting claims about the world that could attract or repel certain types of people, whereas most cults are pretty similar.
This one guy is God, he commands you to chant. a bunch and give him money, but there's a holy book saying we want world peace. I wonder if this should actually be a counter to cultishness accusations. Quote, we can't be a cult, cults always spread through the social graph, but we learned about this movement from a blog.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. So first of all, that is not how EA spreads anymore. Mostly spreads through like honey pots and stuff like that. It's like, Oh, don't you want to go to this like sex party or something? That's how, like, I, like when I first [00:26:00] heard about EA, I actually remember it was less wrong the first time I heard about it.
And he's like, well, I'm inviting you to this party. At like scorpion tarantula house or something like that. It was called. You should probably read some like less wrong posts on this blog before you come so you have a broad idea of what's going on Oh,
Simone Collins: that sounds very
Malcolm Collins: cultish. Oh, no. Yeah. Oh, you know, you know who was running the house.
No Divya no way wow so, I was I was going to you know, one of these parties and it was Very clear that like A lot of people went because there were more women at these events than other Silicon Valley events.
Simone Collins: Oh, well, it's very hard to find events with more women at them in Silicon Valley.
So that is,
Malcolm Collins: And EA and Let's Wrongism mostly spread through Silicon Valley group houses first, which had a really tight knit social graph for spreading. So one, I'm going to say, I don't know if he's completely wrong about this, but I'd also note something that I think that he's missing in all of this.
[00:27:00] Christianity. Mormonism a lot of the major world religions actually did not spread because of their founding member. You typically had a founding member, whether it's Christianity or Mormonism, who Or even
Simone Collins: Confucianism, right? I mean, it wasn't him in the end.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, who started what was a fairly small movement that was seen as extreme and Plato, Socrates.
Yeah. Actually, this really, yeah. Maybe a little weird by the society around them. And then you have your Brigham Young type P figure
In Christianity, this would be Paul, the apostle.
who really actually did the mass conversions in the early days and set up something that could eventually become a mainstream religion.
And I think this is why Scientology isn't going to become a mainstream religion because the person who it passed the baton onto has been pretty much entirely let's say, Exploitative, like, just try to milk his position for all [00:28:00] it's worth and not really try to set up an intergenerational tradition.
So it's, yeah, it's
Simone Collins: the second, it's the second person to take the baton who needs to set up that 40 percent annual conversion rate. And it seems as though Scientology has not managed that.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so like if the techno Puritan tradition ends up working out, which by the way, now is a legal religion in the United States, we got us registered with the Fed.
We have converts now as well. With the IRS,
Simone Collins: with the IRS.
Malcolm Collins: Sorry, the IRS we have converts now, which is fun as well in the EA community, of course and that is really exciting to me because if we can spread, I think within the EA community is like we're, we're, we're going to spread the most similar to like how the Jews went out and got people ready.
And then the The, the which you'll hear here and then the Christians did a job sort of hitting it home and converting it. But I found this to be a very interesting point that I think can be elucidated with the idea that typically you have a [00:29:00] founder of a religion and then you have the person who really solidifies it and begins the mass conversions.
All right, continue.
Simone Collins: All right. This theory of social graph based conversion was controversial when Stark proposed it, because if you ask cultists retrospectively, they'll usually say they were awed by the beauty of the sacred teachings, but Stark says
quote, I knew better, because we had met them well before they had learned to appreciate the doctrines, before they had learned how to testify to their faith, back when they were not seeking faith at all. Indeed, we could remember, When most of them regarded the religious beliefs of their new set of friends is quite odd.
I recall one who told me that he was puzzled that such nice people could get so worked up about some guy in Korea, then one day he got worked up about this guy too.
Malcolm Collins: That's wild. But I, I like this. I mean, I think it shows that this thing where you're like, I just [00:30:00] converted because I saw the light.
That's not really the way it works. It's like you're in a community and the community talks about it. And then that ends up converting you over time.
Simone Collins: Yeah, you join for the lifestyle and then you start drinking the Kool Aid. And you see this even with brands. Maybe you get an iPhone and then five years later you're obsessed.
You buy a ton of Apple stock. This happens a lot with, I think, With Tesla related stuff then suddenly you have Starlink, then suddenly, you know, it just, it goes, there are these, these deepenings of affiliation and faith that people fall into, not just with regard to religion, but with regards to brands and other things as well, social communities too, you know, being goth, whatever, right?
Okay, so Scott Alexander continues from here. Jews were scattered across the Mediterranean even before the fall of the Temple. I don't know why. We Jews tell ourselves that we left Israel only after the Romans kicked us out, but Stark cites plenty of historians who argue that no, it was well before that.
Around the time of [00:31:00] Christ, there were a million Jews in Israel and five million in the Diaspora, especially Alexandria, Antioch, Anatolia and Rome. What were these Jews spiritual views like? Without hard evidence, Stark supposes they were marginal.
Throughout history, Jews have succeeded at keeping the law only within tight knit communities. If you want to keep kosher, it helps to have everyone around you keeping kosher and a local kosher butcher. If you want to keep the Sabbath, it helps to have an eruv and a synagogue within walking distance. But even more than that, the law is strange and complicated, and unless everyone around you follows it too, you are likely to slip.
Thus, when Jews were first emancipated and allowed to live among Gentiles in the 18th and 19th centuries, a split emerged in the Jewish community. Those Jews who stayed in the ghettos and shuttles or who founded new self imposed quasi ghettos like Crown Heights remained Orthodox. Those Jews who mingled with the Gentiles and cast off the more difficult rules became [00:32:00] Reform.
Only a sliver of modern Orthodox remained in the middle, often with abysmal attrition rates.
Malcolm Collins: This I think is a very good point about this form of religion, which is typically why we design techno puritanism to be a clan based religion instead of the form of religion, which is to say it's something that is practiced internally was in families, which a large degree of variation.
So that your family is the core unit of your tradition and not your church, not your synagogue, not your community. While that leads to lower amounts of conversions, it leads to a higher fertility rate as you can see was clan based versus non clan based traditions. And it allows for more ideological diversity within the movement, which makes it more rich in terms of conversations and stuff like that.
Well, I think this also
Simone Collins: exemplifies how hard it is to maintain a hard culture when hard culture requires [00:33:00] a ton of amenities and not family based. Systems, so you can't be a hard culture Jew and just move to some random city in Switzerland, you know, it has to be, it has to meet all these requirements and that makes it very tough to maintain a hard culture, but also deal with a rapidly evolving and adapting world job market, etc.
Malcolm Collins: Absolutely. Techno puritanism is at its core, a frontier religion.
Simone Collins: Yeah, that's interesting. There are frontier religions and there are civilization religions. And I'm sure part of the, the, the, the cumbersome requirements of maintaining Jewish law are a feature, not a bug in that it's easier to maintain
Malcolm Collins: urban centers.
It
Simone Collins: also forces them to state, to stick together rather than spread out into the diaspora, because They'll sort of fall off and not continue, you know? Yeah. [00:34:00] You want me to keep going? Okay Reform Judaism is unstable. The law of Moses is central to the Jewish faith. Relax it too much, and believers can justly wonder what's left.
In America, Reform Jews are overrepresented not only among atheists and agnostics, but among every cult under the sun. 33 percent of American Buddhists come from a Jewish background.
Malcolm Collins: Keep going, 2. 5 percent of the American population is Jewish as you read these stats. Keep going.
Simone Collins: And even the Moonies were 30 percent Jewish at one point.
They're now down to 6%. As the Jews were assimilating into Greeks, Some Greeks were assimilating into Judaism. They were impressed enough with monotheism and the Jews upright behavior to adopt some of the rituals, but they couldn't take the final step and circumcise themselves. Instead, they hung around the fringes of Jewish society, admiring it from without.
The Bible and the historical record call them God fearers, but by analogy, I can't help but thinking, [00:35:00] thinking of them as we are Jews. This is similar to
Malcolm Collins: weeaboos
Simone Collins: from Japanese admirers. Yeah, I love this. These weird Jews would have been very easy prey for the first semi Jewish sect to shed the circumcision requirement and explicitly pivot away from being an ethnic religion.
The apostles and any other early Christians leaving Palestine to minister to the wider world. Wait, hold on,
Malcolm Collins: we'll do a quick, I want to, talk about this last thing here.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: So I find this interesting in a few areas here. One is, is I was unaware that, that reformed Jews just did these deconversions so much.
Or that they were so well
Simone Collins: represented in cults, but no, come on, you did, because they are a soft culture and soft culture is basically not culture. You know,
Malcolm Collins: apparently they're like the softest of all soft cultures. Well, no, they're just uniquely well, I think we can learn a few things from this, right?
Okay. Which is one Judaism doesn't work. If you don't do it a hundred percent, [00:36:00] you cannot do 50 percent Judaism. You cannot do 75 percent Judaism. You have to do a hundred percent Judaism and that means living in a Jewish community. That's what he's pointing out here. You need to get a wise yourself. If you want to maintain your traditions, number two, if we, as a techno Puritan tradition are looking for early converts, you can look to reform Jewish communities.
Because apparently they're much easier to convert than other traditions. And I think that honestly, our religion is really appealing to somebody from one of those communities. As people know, like, early on, I was, like, much more Jewish leaning in my beliefs, like, oh, maybe some of my kids could convert to Judaism, because they're technically Jews, because of Simone's background and everything like that, and go through all the traditions in regards to that.
But as I begin to dive more into religious history I came more and more to the position that, unfortunately, Christianity is just such a [00:37:00] Evolution above Judaism. That you, it really makes very little sense to go back to Judaism unless you're just looking for something that has a really long history.
Or you have a very strong ethnic or cultural, our family connection to the religion.
Like if that's the core thing you're looking for, then fine. But outside of that it lacks a lot of the features that Christianity has.
To word it differently. Well, it is a more complicated religion. By complicated. I mean, it's like the amount of texts and rules in history that you have is definitely larger within the Jewish Canon.
It's complicated in the same way. A very bloated, a source code might be complicated. , where you could almost argue that Christianity and Judaism. , written using two different programming languages and the programming language that Christianity uses is much simpler and requires far fewer words or lines to create the [00:38:00] same outcome as the source code that Judaism is using. , which makes me gravitate really strongly to Christianity. , and many of you add a techno Puritan framing on it.
It even. Lighter as a source code, because basically everything boils down to the question of what would people in the future want me to be doing today, , which is just such a simple question to ask yourself when deciding on moral framings.
Well also being a very easy to argue. Why would you be basing your moral framings around this mindset instead of having to brace your mole framing around giant lists of rules? Or. A God that can sometimes be difficult to interpret.
And we're going to get to a point here, which Scott Alexander misses.
But that I point out, it is clear to the Jewish community that it lacks all of this which is when Christ like figures appear throughout history Judaism has had a big problem with like all of a sudden all the Jews want to leave. And we're going to talk about a time in the 1700s when this [00:39:00] happens.
Sorry. I meant the 16 hundreds. I was thinking of Shabbaton Zebbie and we go into this. , great detail later in this particular episode. , but to put it another way, the particular source code update that Christ was trying to push to Judaism.
Has been pushed by a few other people throughout Judaism's history.
And every time somebody tries to push a source code update that looks like this, it gains a lot of fanfare.
Wow.
Yeah, I think that Jews today see Christ as a more antithetical figure to actual Judaism than a natural evolution to Judaism, which has happened a few times throughout Judaism's history. And I'd actually argue that the founder of Hasidic Judaism basically a Christ like figure who didn't claim to be the Messiah, but made very similar updates to older Jewish systems.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Okay. Very interesting.
Okay. The apostles and other early Christians leaving Palestine to minister to the [00:40:00] wider world would have made use of existing Jewish networks and connections. They would have found themselves in the middle of the spiritually disaffected half assimilated pseudo reform Jewish communities of the Roman world.
Plus they're half assimilated the other direction. Greek hangers on. They would have preached that Judaism was basically true, but that you can drop the restrictive law of Moses and avoid getting circumcised. They would have sliced through the cultural angst of these in between communities, saying that Jews would join together with the Gentiles in a big friendly tent under the leadership of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Here, says Stark, were the early Christians first a few million converts. And that, that, I think, to me, is Underrated than the things you mentioned in the beginning, how there was basically kindling lying all throughout the area that the spark of Jesus was able to light a fire, you know, that there was a lot [00:41:00] of groundwork already done and you have to, when you're looking at how an early culture or religion is going to spread, consider whether or not there will be a receptive substrate surrounding its original, original ignition or catalyst.
Malcolm Collins: And I think that people may misunderstand how. Weak paganism was as a tradition. And we can actually see this with the creation of the soul and victus God by the Roman emperor. That was coming for a period. Or the elevation of the soul and victus God, which is to say that. Paganism isn't really a religion in the way that we think of religion today.
You can't really like love and form a relationship with these gods. They are not all powerful gods. They are like, like there is a market demand or they product market fit for monotheism that people want. And a lot of people living alongside Jews, a lot of Pagans who did would have said, Oh, they have a real religion.
We don't have a real religion.
Which [00:42:00] is where, for people who don't know Sol Invictus this was a god made by I'll add the Roman Emperor's name in post, where he really elevated it and he Asclebius, I want to say
Emperor a Rulien. If I were thinking of, and they should note here that
He didn't popularize the Sol Invictus celebration. Until around 270 to 275 80, which was well after the dates for Christ's birth had been determined
Slash made up. It was mostly based on symbolism.
by early Christian theologians. A lot of people got angry at that video when I pointed that out and they're like, no, Christmas. Definitely got it to date from a Roman holiday.
And I'm like, which one? And they're like, well, the Sol Invictus is the one that had the same one. And I'm like, that was set after. , we have the first inscriptions of when people thought crisis birth date was. And then they were like, oh, well, what about Saturdays? And I'm like, Saturday nearly has a different date.
You can't just claim any group that had a holiday that was vaguely in the winter where the predecessor to any [00:43:00] other holiday, vaguely in the, in the winter, you know, there were
Roman
holidays that were vaguely in every season.
And they're like, well, , this Saturnalia has some of the same practices, like a present giving and I'm like present giving didn't start until like the 18 hundreds and Christmas. Are you saying that people in the 18 hundreds had memories of Saturnalia. No, obviously not.
And in fact we'd happen to know exactly why the tradition of gift-giving started for Christmas. It was taken from a different Christian holiday, which used to be celebrated on January 6th. Again, not the date of any Roman celebration called Saint Nicholas Day. Which was combined with the Christmas day to convert a kind of a new holiday. , in the 19th century,
so weird. That's such like a religiously ingrained belief that people got so mad when I pointed out that Christmas. Has very little connection to any of the pagan stuff.
If you're unaware of this and you still believe this urban legend,
Because it is actually one that I used to believe.
, so I [00:44:00] understand how an educated person could come to believe. it. If they hadn't gone into researching it.
you should check out that video.
The receipts are in numerous.
But anyway, topic at hand back to Seoul, Invictus, the God that was introduced in around, , 270 CE to the Roman empire.
and it's a combination of multiple Roman gods, but also, like, a borrowed Persian god where it is a mostly A monotheism
God that you have to pray to before you're praying to any other God.
And then the other gods are treated of the Roman or Greek pantheon more like you would treat saints today. Or angels today, you know, not full gods. So this is to say that I think that there was a natural desire for a quote unquote real religion.
Simone Collins: Or for monotheism. I mean, Zeus was always daddy God, you know, I don't,
Malcolm Collins: I feel like there's a speck.
If you look at our three face video which I'd suggest people check out, it's like probably like a thousand views because it was one of our early videos, but [00:45:00] it is by far, I think one of our most life changing videos for anyone who watches it.
It is very good at showing that there have always been sort of three core religious traditions that sort of cluster ideas throughout human history.
And Judaism and and you just cannot easily create one from paganism without doing something like Sol Invictus. Now here I want to talk about a separate thing because I was also talking about both the way that Is Ben Eliezer really mirrors a lot of what Jesus offered the Jewish people saying, Oh, you don't need to be as strict about this.
Oh, here are some additional teachings. Oh, here's some. But I think the bigger and better example of this is Shabbatai Zevi. So for people who aren't familiar who of who he is. He was born in 1629 in Samaria, modern day Turkey. He was a Sephardic Jewish rabbi and a Kabbalist and Kabbalism had really just sort of started at this time.
He was adding it as a condensed [00:46:00] tradition. Oh, sorry. I should Do a bit more explanation here of what Kabbalism is because it's important to understand. So, Judaism has a collection of teachings. And they, they typically come in like 2 large canons of teachings. And then when Christians came along 1 guy.
said Jesus, right? I have access to new information. And it is going to update the old teachings. And it is going to remove some of the old rules and it is going to establish a new era. And here's this new book. Now, obviously Jesus didn't write the new book, but like that's the gist of what happened.
And so Jews go, Oh, that's a new religion. Cause they added, you know, a new book and I'm like well, you guys did the same thing with the Kabbalah, right? Like, you know that, right? Like a thousand years after Christ, you guys add a new book, which has all sorts of new teaching them. They're like, Oh, these had always been in the background.
And I'm like, convenient story. But if you look at when the Kabbalah was beginning to gain popularity with this guy's life, I'm about to mention, let me go through this [00:47:00] guy's life and see if you can draw any similarities or it's easier. Okay, so, he proclaimed himself the long awaited Jewish Messiah in 1665.
His messianic claims gained widespread support among Jews across Europe and the Ottoman Empire, creating one of the largest messianic movements in Jewish history. However, Zevi's messianic career came to a dramatic end in 1666 when he arrived in Constantinople. He was imprisoned by the Ottoman authorities.
Given the choice between execution and conversion to Islam, Zevi chose to convert. He took the name Aziz Meded and lived out as an outward Muslim until his death in 1676. So that's why he died out, was because he was such a traitor. But that doesn't mean that he didn't get a lot of Jews to convert to Islam.
to move to him. So let's see what, what, what sort of innovations did he add? Okay. So he taught that he was capable of eradicating sins even for persistent offenders of Jewish law. Remind you of anyone? His followers believes that his coming had [00:48:00] abolished the need to observe traditional Jewish law.
Mm hmm. He was also known as being uniquely he claims to be a feminist, a feminist, a female liberationist, female liberationist, slash egalitarian in his message when compared to traditional Jewish law, which Jesus also was, we'll get to that. He claimed to have mystical powers, including firing wild animals bare
He abolished traditional feast days commemorating the destruction of the temples and claiming that a new temple would be rebuilt. So he was also an apocalypticist. Basically
Speaker 5: The whole set
Malcolm Collins: of what Christ was offering Jews. And he came along and was like, I like these ideas. Basically, what I'm saying is the Christ like offeror is today only seen as distinctly non Jewish because it got so big.
If it hadn't gotten as big as it, if it hadn't become the dominant world religion, we would think of Christians as a weird sect of [00:49:00] Jews. If this guy hadn't pussied out and converted to Islam we would see his followers today as a, maybe even the dominant sect of Jews, it sounds like.
Wow.
Because when you consider the, basically the only thing that this guy had, that Israel ben Eliezer, who founded the Hasidic sect of Jews, didn't have, Israel ben Eliezer, did not claim to be the Messiah.
But
basically everything else here is false. Check, check, check, check, check. So he basically just didn't go for like the full, the full set. But he was bringing most of the same ideas, which is to say, I also
Simone Collins: think it's, it's not even about claiming to be the Messiah. What this guy lacked was a wingman.
And Jesus had wing men, you know,
Malcolm Collins: well, but if you look at what the core differences of what every one of these individuals, whether it's Israel, Bill and Ellie Eiser or this guy or Jesus, what were they saying? They said [00:50:00] one, we need to stop being so like heady and legalistic about everything we're doing. We need to focus on the every Jew.
We need to focus on the every man. The old rules of the past, they don't apply in the same way. We need to loosen them. We need to stop being so dogmatic about all of this. We need to open up what was thought of as sort of like the elitist part of Judaism, to the every Jew to practice. And, and with Jesus, he just went one step further, which is to the every, every man to practice.
What I'm pointing out here is that this particular idea. It's not weird that it caught on when Jesus did it. Apparently whenever somebody does this, it catches on like wildfire, because it is such a good idea with this specific idea at play here, being. Is there a way to be sort of a populist Jew.
To create a form of Judaism that is more accessible for everyone. [00:51:00] And that loosens the rules. But without loosening the religious conviction or depth of faith. So, is there a way to do something? Let's say like a reformed Judaism. , which loosens the rules, but also loosens ties to the face.
But that loosens the rules by putting in maybe a new set of rules or a new way of looking at things or a new way of framing things that allows a loosening of the rules without. A loosening of the faith in depth of conviction.
But I think this is important. If you see Christianity as a separate religion from Judaism I think it can cause people to misunderstand Christianity's role. Christianity was just an iteration of Judaism an update of Judaism that wasn't a particularly bigger or more severe update than the update that Shabbat Zevi tried to make, or the update that Israel, Ben Eliezer tried to make [00:52:00] that in the one difference it had to their updates is that it said, okay, now everyone can participate,
And that, I think that when you miss that when you see Christianity is a totally new religion, which a lot of Christians have a motive to do and a lot of Jews have a motive to do a lot of Christians want to have these anti semitic ideologies.
And so it really helps to forget that Jesus was a rabbi. You know, he was a, he was a Jewish religious teacher and most of his early followers were Jews . It was a Jewish thing that he was doing.
And I really need to emphasize here. It was not a weird Jewish thing to be doing for that period of time. Being a wandering rabbi who performed them into logical feats, I E miracles was pretty common during this time period for that region.
And that when you forget this, you can forget the context or the history of Christianity.
And better understand that. I think And again, [00:53:00] this really hurts, and it's one of the things that I've come to understand better as I've understood, researched Jewish history, and now I don't see Judaism to be this single continuity, but rather a number of offshoots that it has no lower claim to being the original Jews than, you know, the Hasidic Jews do, for example.
Interesting.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: To word this another way. , when we look at our shared ancestor with monkeys, I don't have any additional claim to that ancestor that a monkey wouldn't have to that ancestor. We're both just different branches on the same tree.
People often make this mistake in the same way they make the mistake of saying we are descended from monkeys when it's no, we're not descended from monkeys. We and monkeys have a common ancestor. I'm saying it's the same thing with modern Judaism. Christianity is not descended for Judaism. They have a common ancestor, which we'll call ancient Judaism. ,
a person could claim that modern [00:54:00] Judaism
has conserved more of the features associated with that ancient ancestor, then Christianity has.
And it definitely has.
But I think it's a real stretch to claim that it's the same religion, especially when you consider that claim in the context of Kabbalah, literature and practices that didn't exist back then, or practices tied to the destruction of the temple, which obviously didn't exist back then either or practices tied to the long Jewish diaspora period, which obviously didn't exist back then.
I really think to hold this belief, if you do, it's a theological belief rather than a fact-based belief. When I look at the degree of differences. And that's okay. It's okay to hold theological beliefs.
But, , it's a problem. If you mistake a theological belief for a fact-based belief.
I think that the real claim that Judaism has to being the quote unquote true strain. Is [00:55:00] the
, but. That to me seems like a pretty weak claim
For arguing one theological belief is more valid than another theological belief
Or to put it another way. If there was a time slip and the temple reappeared with Jews that practice Judaism in the way they did before the second temple period.
Including all of the rituals and animal sacrifices and songs. And stricter cast system and money changers.
Those people would be as different from the Jews of today as probably the Samaritans are
Or to worded another way, calling modern Judaism. The true Judaism is a bit like calling Bitcoin Satoshi vision, the true Bitcoin, because it is closest to Satoshi's original.
Protocol, even though it is different from that.
Simone Collins: Okay. So new section, perhaps our favorite section of this book review from Scott Alexander, because I regret to [00:56:00] inform you, the pronatalists are right about everything. We found above that the Christian population needed to grow at 40 percent per decade and assume this meant conversion, but you could also do this through a fertility advantage.
If a generation lasts 30 years and Christians have three times more children than pagans per generation, they can get 40 percent per decade growth without converting anyone at all. In reality, it was probably a mix. Some conversion plus some fertility advantage. Here I start to worry that some right wing pronatalist organization bribed Rodney Stark to abandon his usual scholarly attitude and write some kind of over the top pronatalist fanfic.
I was waiting for the eagle named MORE BIRTHS. perches on the blackboard, and the child free professor was tossed into the lake of fire for all eternity. Still, let's take it at face value and see what this fanfic has to say. By the imperial era, Roman fertility was plummeting. Partly this was [00:57:00] because the Romans practiced sex selective infanticide.
There were 130 men for every 100 women, and so many men would probably never be able to find a wife. But partly this was because the men who could find wives dragged their feet. Male Roman culture took it as a given that women were terrible, that you couldn't possibly enjoy interacting with them, and that there was no reason besides duty that you would ever marry one.
Malcolm Collins: So consider, consider this. If you are being drawn by one of these iterations of right wing culture today that says this is the way that good Christian men should view women as like these terrible corruptors of society, those people are the pagans. They have re evolved a pagan philosophy and view of women that mirrors the view that was destroying the Roman upper classes as their society fell apart.
[00:58:00] When you People wonder why I go so hard against the woke right, which is, if you haven't heard this term before, it's the faction of the right who is really like, Ooh, like we have to be anti woman and women are destroying everything. And we need to ban this and ban that and everything like that. I'm like, I go hard against them in what I'm.
Talking about here because they represent a faction that is as nefarious as the urban monoculture to civilization's long term thriving. This is why they're like almost all single or divorced. Like the, they, their, their relationships don't work. What they are selling the way they are selling in terms of how you should treat women.
It does not lead to a surviving civilization. Okay, just meant to appeal to your ego, like grow out of it and understand that they are the villain in the house. They are the wolf in sheep's [00:59:00] clothing. They are the witch handing you a poisoned apple. Do not bite that apple.
They are in the story of early Christianity, the pagans who Christians were fighting against.
This sums up my thoughts on the overly manosphere types.
Speaker 8: I gave you an opportunity, to show the world that you're more than just a scary stereotype, but you're too proud or too gutless to take advantage of it.
Speaker 9: Have We met? I'm the villain of every story. Even if by some miracle we did change.
Who's gonna believe us, huh?
Speaker 12: Maybe they will believe you. Maybe they won't. But it doesn't matter. Don't do it for them. Do it for you. Come on, what have you got to lose?
Speaker 10: I don't know, my dignity?
Speaker 12: Yeah, well, that ship has already sailed.
Simone Collins: .
In 131 BC, the Roman censor, Quintus Caecilius Matilius Macedonicus, proposed that the Senate make [01:00:00] marriage compulsory because so many men, especially in the upper classes, preferred to stay single.
Acknowledging that, quote, we cannot have a really harmonious life with our wives, unquote. The censor pointed out that, quote, since we cannot have any sort of life without them, unquote, the long term welfare of the state must be served. As Beryl Rossorm reported, one theme that recurs in Latin literature is that wives are difficult and therefore men do not care much for marriage.
Okay, so this was just a very, not even anti natalist culture, but like anti
Malcolm Collins: marriage culture, which, mm. Well, anti marriage is a downstream of an extremely misogynistic view towards women.
Simone Collins: Yeah, kind
Malcolm Collins: of
Simone Collins: South Korea. Yeah, we've got some South Korea vibes going on here.
Malcolm Collins: I wouldn't say South Korea, I'd say Nick Fuentes, to be honest.
Simone Collins: Well, I know, but in general, just any culture that's like, Hmm, let's, the other gender, man, what a bunch of mean, terrible people, don't like them,
Malcolm Collins: that kind of attitude. But continue, because [01:01:00] they go further with this, and I think that this is something we see, where they're like, Oh, well, if we just create more rules around controlling women, or forcing men to marry, like, Oh, you gotta ban pornography, oh, you gotta, you know, this'll get them to marry, and it's like, it doesn't work that way.
They have, the way you get men to marry is you get them to like and respect women.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Okay.
Simone Collins: Mm hmm. Totally. All right. Scott Alexander continues. The Romans understood that this was long term fatal for their empire and tried all sorts of schemes to increase family formation. In the mid first century B. C.
Cicero re proposed Metellus scheme, to make marriage compulsory, but it failed once again. Augustus contended himself with punitive taxes and second class citizenship for unmarried and childless couples, combined with subsidies and affirmative action for men with at least three children. Formal and informal social pressure eventually convinced most Roman men to take wives, but no amount of love or money could [01:02:00] make them have children.
Dense cities discouraged large families. Roman children were expensive. Nobles would have to spend immense effort and political favors grooming them for high positions and the scourge of all nobilities, too many children risk splitting the inheritance. Also, if you had a girl, you'd probably just kill her.
She would consume resources without continuing the family line and half of children died before adulthood from some disease or another. Anyway, this was just a really bad value proposition.
Malcolm Collins: Before you go further, I wanted to say. As you can see here they, they, they tried to increase the fertility rate by instating restrictions.
It doesn't work. It cannot increase the fertility rate by instating restrictions. And here, what you're going is a similar phenomenon to what we've seen. As I pointed out, the studies that have looked at this showed the higher amount of religiosity. You should go to our masturbation video. If you want to see more on this, cause we really go into the stats on [01:03:00] this.
The higher amount of religiosity was in a part of the United States, the higher amount of porn consumption you're going to have going down to the zip code. You see this across Christian traditions. You see this directly tied to the amount that they try to restrict use of pornography. You can not, increase your fertility rate, at least any more.
It appears that maybe this used to work with Catholics pre 70s, but now Catholics have the lowest fertility rate of all Christian communities. So, any religion that is increasing its fertility rate by saying, oh those of you who want to get off, and like, don't care about the long term consequences of that.
That's who we want having kids, which is fundamentally what you're doing when you make kids not a product of loving your spouse and caring about the future, but of I need to get off. And you'll see how Rome failed in the same way here.
Simone Collins: Nor did the sex drive force the matter. Horny Roman men had their choice of a wide variety of male and female slaves and prostitutes. [01:04:00] Despite Augustus and his spiritual heirs fuming about monogamy, this was never really enforced on the male half of the population. When men did have sex with women, it was usually oral or anal sex, specifically to avoid procreation.
When they did have vaginal sex, they had a wide variety of birth control methods available, including the famous xylophone, but also protocondoms and spermicidal ointments. If a child was conceived, despite these efforts, abortion was common, albeit unsanitary. Maternal death rates were extremely high, but this was not really a deal breaker for the Roman men making the decision.
If a baby was born, in spite of all this, infanticide was legal and extremely common.
Malcolm Collins: Hold on, we gotta go into the quote here, right? So, Okay, I'll read it,
Simone Collins: sure. Quote, far more babies were born than were allowed to live. Seneca regarded the drowning of children at birth as both reasonable and commonplace. Tacitus [01:05:00] charged that the Jewish teaching that, quote, it is a deadly sin to kill an unwanted child, unquote, was but another of their, quote, sinister and revolting practices, unquote.
Not only was the exposure of infants common practice, it was justified by law and advocated by philosophers. All right, f**k Romans. F**k that. F**k the pagans. Right? The
Malcolm Collins: witches suck. Witches suck. Okay. And when people today are like, I practice a new form of like a Roman and Greek paganism, I'm like, okay, like, do you not understand how monstrous these people were?
Not cool. They were monstrous. When people go and they're like, oh, I practice a traditional form of like, whatever. I'm like did they practice human sacrifice? Did they practice? Did they just discard of infants? They didn't like, you know, like they were horrible. Genuinely, genuinely quite monstrous.
And so when a group comes along, and by the way, if you're wondering why they did so well with women in the early days this is why like, [01:06:00] I think I know like either
Simone Collins: as a woman, you are being coerced into sexual relations, hated by your husband. Your, your, maybe you get pregnant, you're forced to have an abortion that maybe kills you.
If, if you don't die in childbirth. Then maybe you'll die right after or they will literally kill your infant and I know having had Children now like I will do anything to protect one of our infant like I just the amount of rage and unhappiness that these women must have lived with is sobering and scary so after reading about that I was like, oh So that's why Christianity spread.
I feel like it's downplayed a little bit in this, that, that Scott Alexander is not totally sure that it's the female friendliness, but especially knowing the, just the fear. I feel anything bad happening to my living and healthy and perfectly fine children. The [01:07:00] idea of living in fear and Roman society of.
Being forced into sex and then having a child and then having that child murdered. Like definitely go for a new culture and
Malcolm Collins: then they hear about these christian guys Yeah, a hundred percent of those women are like sign me the f**k up for that.
Simone Collins: Yep
Malcolm Collins: totally You I I yeah, I I think you're right and I think that people are hugely underestimating How strongly that would have been pulling people over?
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yep You Yeah, just better humane treatment of people. Who knew? Christians follow the opposite of all these practices. They recommended that men love their wives and held this as a plausible unexpected outcome. This was not exactly unprecedented, but it was a dramatic reversal of Roman custom from Ephesians 5.
By the way, before [01:08:00] I
Malcolm Collins: go further, people should be aware, Scott Alexander, the person who's writing this, is Jewish in background. So he's not like standing Christianity to stand Christianity, continue. No.
Simone Collins: Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies, He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body. Sorry. But they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church, for we are members of his body. For this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.
This is a profound mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church. However, each of [01:09:00] you must love His wife, as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband. End quote. The Christians banned adultery, and unlike the Roman bans, gave it teeth. Meaning that married men who wanted sex had no choice but to go to their wives.
They had, they held that sex had to be procreative, banning anal sex, oral sex, homosexual sex, and birth control. And obviously they banned infanticide. Many of these bans weren't effective. Active decisions, but carryovers from the movement's Jewish roots. So this is,
Malcolm Collins: I think, really, really big. So you're a woman, right?
Like people don't understand how pro woman Christianity is. It's like, wait, wait, wait, my husband has to be monogamous. He's not going to kill my babies anymore. He's not going to what, what, what is You know, when he has sex with me, he has to maybe get me pregnant and deal with it because keep in mind the other types of sex the Romans were having, they felt good for the man, like a woman doing [01:10:00] oral on you or allowing anal, but they didn't feel as good for the woman.
Anal did not feel as good for most women as vaginal sex does. Oral doesn't feel as good for most women as vaginal sex does. This is the form of sex that women want. They're like, Oh, I get to have babies. I get to not deal with my babies being killed. I get to have vaginal sex. I get to have a husband who's not sleeping with random prostitutes all the time.
What a treat. Horrible diseases. What a treat. Yeah. Yeah, I was
Simone Collins: always like surprised reading in history books, how so and so's wife converted him to Christian. I mean, now I'm like, Oh, The faith. Yes. The faith won her over. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's
Malcolm Collins: undersold because feminists try to get it these days and, and Christians hear this and they're like, Oh, feminists are being feminists and trying to say that early Christianity was, you know what I mean?
Like there's all of this modern politics. And it's like, [01:11:00] bro, imagine if you drowned a woman's newborn child, how motivated is she going to be? This isn't about feminism. Okay. This is about just at a base level, understanding women.
Yeah.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Or acknowledging women as human. I mean, I do think that there's sort of a subhuman status to women in many ancient cultures.
Yeah, keep
Malcolm Collins: in mind, coming from Judaism, Judaism is a fairly sex positive culture in regards to women. For example, a man in Judaism has a religious duty to sexually please his wife. If you are not sexually pleasing your wife in Judaism, you are a bad Jew. You are not doing your religion correctly. And that didn't carry over to Christianity.
I actually liked that it didn't because I think it built and even when I'm talking about like a more moral system, what the Christians say is you need to serve your wife and love your wife as Christ loves you, which is to say that sexuality really doesn't matter. Sexuality, as we [01:12:00] often argue, should be taken.
And this is very different. Less focus
Simone Collins: on hedonism, essentially.
Malcolm Collins: Christians today argue that very non biblically that sexuality should be paired with a hundred percent sex with wives for procreation. When the reality is, is the Bible says basically nothing about this.
Sorry, I should clarify. It says nothing thing, but sex should only be for procreation. It says a great deal saying that you should have sex outside of procreation. Specifically, you have the song of Solomon that's entire book celebrates the physical and emotional aspects of marital love. Including sexual pleasure. You have Proverbs 5, 18, 19, this passage encourage husbands to quote. Rejoice in your wife of your youth in quote, and to be quote intoxicated, always in her love in quote, clearly referring to sexual pleasure.
And then you have one Corinthians seven, three through five, , and in. And this one, I [01:13:00] really don't think you could get any stronger a statement here. And this is coming directly from Paul. , the husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife and likewise, the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but yields it to her husband in the same way.
The husband does not have authority over his own body, but yields to his wife. Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time so that you may devote yourselves to prayers. Then come together again. So that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. So the. Interesting counter to what a lot of people believe. This is saying that neither the husband, nor the wife has the right to deny their partner access to sex.
So it's very clear, Paul, the core guy doing a lot of the early Christian conversions, , said. , the husband cannot, , say to his wife, no, I will not have sex with you right now. If she wants to have sex with them. , this can only be stopped if it is a time [01:14:00] set aside for prayer or by mutual consent. , so you, you do have conjugal duties to your wife.
And there are no caveats in this section about a post-menopausal wife or an infertile wife or an infertile husband.
Which indicates that sexist clearly meant to be had, not just for procreation. That's a pretty big oversight. If that's what was meant by this.
It's, it's arousal patterns. If you can masturbate them in some other way, as long as you're not using another human woman to do that because you shouldn't lust after another woman.
But. You know, it's a drawing or something like that. Nothing in the bible against that. In fact, I mentioned There's one segment that specifically does talk about emissions. And it says that male emissions that are not during sex Should be treated about the same, as female periods
Sorry. I misspoke here. It was a lesser form of sin than a period or a lesser form of ritual uncleanliness and a period. All it required with bathing. Whereas a period required being set apart for seven days.
So definitely not like this [01:15:00] mortal sin that christians today will tell you it is
I would note here in this section, it can also be read as saying that. Anyone who does not regularly masturbate has a different type of emission, which is considered extra unclean specifically. Here is the section on blocked emissions.
Where it says of men was blocked emissions that any bed they lay on or anything, they sit on, it should be considered unclean. , but here, I would note that some people read this section to be talking about diseases, which prevent emissions.
and this is again here Scott makes a mistake, where he accidentally believes what's written in this book by a guy who is a very Creep Hardcore classical Christian, which is trying to convince him of something that isn't true.
And Scott accidentally buys parts of his arguments and his arguments aren't wrong, but sort of buys into the modern belief that from the beginning, Christianity has been a. Life begins at conception movement.[01:16:00]
And this just isn't true. That really only became popular across Christianity after the U S tried to get the Catholics into the right wing coalition in the 1970s. Before that, the majority of Republicans in the U S U S was actually the more pro choice in terms of abortion party. And that if you look at the early writings so if you're looking at somebody like Augustus of Hippo or Thomas Aquinas, both early Catholic thinkers they were, they believe that life began, or not life began, but in soulment, like the soul entered the body at 30 to 60 days after conception happened.
It's kind of remarkable that they. We're pretty good at knowing when the human nervous system began to develop because that is when the human nervous system begins to develop. Could you say that maybe they were actually in touch with God's real teachings instead of crazy nonsense? Yeah, I think maybe.
But anyway the point being is that. Early Christian communities pass laws telling people not to have what were abortions during this time [01:17:00] period. But if you look at the Christian intellectual writers they would have said, well, we're passing these bands, not because life begins at conception, but because your average hick doesn't know what they're talking about, right?
Let's have like, let's just play it safe. And I really like that when we look at the early Christian community, we can see that they had both biblical, you know, as we can see from God, God said, I knew you before you were in your mother's womb, which means there's a degree of predetermination, which means that God knew you before you came to exist in your mother's womb, or you were a soul in heaven and you're later put into the body.
And so the question is, is when does that happen? It likely happens when you have a degree of a nervous system, i. e. if I lose, like, my finger, I don't think I lost part of my soul because I don't have a nervous system thinking in my finger So I think this is important to note here because I think he accidentally spread some bad propaganda in this part, but continue.
Simone Collins: But I'll end this section with a note of caution. I'm not sure how relevant any of this is. Stark refuses to speculate on pagan versus Christian fertility rates, but when I look up modern scholarship, they reasonably point out that pagan rates [01:18:00] must have been around Replacement, given that the Roman population stayed steady or slowly increased for hundreds of years.
Replacement is in quotes because Romans were constantly dying of plague, warfare, fire, and a million other causes, since only a third to half of people who survived to reproduce. Replacement here is something like four to six children per women. This doesn't sound like the antinatalist disaster Stark describes.
I think Stark is mostly talking about Roman elites, the group who Augustus kept pestering to have at least three children, and more broadly about the urban population. These people were constantly dying and being replaced by commoners and villagers. Early Christianity was primarily an urban and upper class movement.
Does this surprise you? Stark urges us to think of modern cults and new religions like American Buddhism, which predominantly recruit disillusioned children of the upper classes. So perhaps it did better than its urban upper class pagan comparison group. Still, since the urban upper class pagans were constantly being replaced by village [01:19:00] lower class pagans as soon as they died out, how much in numerical terms can this contribute to Christianity's growth?
Malcolm Collins: And here is where he made a mistake. Again, I think it just sort of takes this person's word at, at, at face value, Stark's word at face value. Christianity did not have an upper class early community. What it had was a urban focus, which concentrated on things like merchant classes, but was very bad at spreading in the actual aristocratic classes.
So specifically, the people who were converting in mass in early days were manual workers and clerks, shopkeepers and merchants, slaves, and some well to do individuals who could host gatherings in their own homes.
Simone Collins: Hmm. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: While there is evidence of some elite converts, especially after the 2nd century, they were a small minority among early Christians during the first few centuries.
The highest levels of Roman society, such [01:20:00] as the senatorial class, were absent from early Christian circles, particularly before Constantine's conversion in the 4th century. So, why was Christianity so urban focused? Because that's what it was, it was an Urban focused religion, not a wealthy focused religion, which they sort of misconstrued here.
And a, and a merchant focused religion. Trade routes. Cities were connected to the best, well established trade routes, allowing for easier travel and communications between Christian communities. Synagogues. Early Christian missionaries often started their work in Jewish synagogues, which are primarily located in urban centers.
Remember, Christianity was a version of Judaism in the early days and seen as a version of Judaism in the early days. Social networks, cities offered dense populations and diverse Social networks facilitating the rapid spread of ideas, which if you look at like the way the EA movement has spread, it's spread in group houses, the fastest, right?
Like the sort of the population, the faster the spread. And then finally you have house churches where you had some [01:21:00] wealthy individuals and wealthy Christians who would host gatherings in nice homes, , the, the early Christians were not overly, they, they were wealthier than your average Roman, but that was because the population was wealthier than the rest of Rome. Not that they were a specifically wealthy group, I think very similar to the Scientologists. They have some sort of upper class influence types.
None of the real aristocrats in our society, but like new money types, a merchant class type, and then a lot of like urban slave types that sort of make up their lower ranks.
Simone Collins: Okay, shall I continue? Continue. A possible synthesis. If you imagine a city as having a constant population, because it's walled, plus its hinterland can only support a certain number of non food producing urbanites, and villagers as replacing urbanites on a one to one basis as they die, then greater Christian urban fertility rates can at least increase.
contribute to the cities and upper class becoming Christian. And once the cities and upper classes are Christian, you [01:22:00] get Constantine and lower classes can be forced to comply. Remember pagan originally meant rural,
Malcolm Collins: which it did, by the way, I was really shocked. That's
Simone Collins: wild. Yeah. One thing Stark did not mention discovering in his study of cults, but which I have heard anecdotally, a lot of male cult members join because the cult has hot girls.
Okay. Here's Malcolm's argument. Scott continues. This seems to have been a big factor in the spread of early Christianity as well. Stark collects various forms of evidence that early Christians were predominantly women. Paul's epistle to the Romans greets 33 prominent Christians by name, of whom 15 were men and 18 were women.
If, it seems likely, men were more likely to become prominent than women. This near equality at the upper ring suggests a female predominance at the lower. A third century inventory of property at a Christian church includes, quote, 16 men's tunics and 82 women's tunics, unquote. The book quotes historian Adolf [01:23:00] von Harnack, who says, Quote, ancient sources simply swarm with tales of how women of all ranks were converted in Rome and in the provinces.
Although the details of these stories are untrustworthy, they express correctly enough for the general truth that Christianity was laid whole by women in particular and that the percentage of Christian women, especially among the upper classes, was larger than that of men. End quote. Why were women converted in such disproportionate numbers?
Again, Stark's sociological background serves him well. He is able to find reports of the same phenomenon in modern religions. Here he quotes Stark, By examining the manuscripts census returns for the later half of the 19th century, Bainbridge, 1983, found that approximately two third of the Shakers were female.
Data on religious movements included in the 1926 census of religious bodies showed that 75 percent of Christian scientists were women, as were more than 60 percent of Theosophists, [01:24:00] Swedenborgans, and Spiritualists. The same is true of the immense wave of Protestant conversions taking place in Latin America.
End quote. That's fascinating, by the way. Women
Malcolm Collins: are the first to convert. Women are the cult ones. They're the cultists. Well, the way it worked in the EA community, because the EA community is overwhelmingly male, is that women would sort of convert because they'd get incredible status, and then it sort of supported a number of, I'd call them witless females, who could get the cream of the crop of Silicon Valley men by converting, and they'd be supported, and they'd be everything like that, so they were treated better than they were by the rest of Silicon Valley, because if you join the EAs well, you get a place to live, and you get Your choice is the best men and you never have to work.
And then that's a really, so it's, it's almost sort of like an inversion of this phenomenon, right? Where it's attracting virtuous women is attracting unvirtuous women.
Simone Collins: Hmm. [01:25:00]
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It
Simone Collins: continues. But along with a general tendency for women to convert, Stark notes that Christianity was especially attractive to women.
The pagan world treated women as their husband's property and not particularly well liked property at that. The book cites the Athenian laws as typical. Quote, The status of Athenian women was very low. Girls received little or no education. Typically, Athenian females were married at puberty and often before.
Under Athenian law, a woman was classified as a child, regardless of age, and therefore was the legal property of some men at all stages of life. Males could divorce by simply ordering a wife out of the household. More over, if a woman was seduced or raped, her husband was legally compelled to divorce her.
If a woman wanted to divorce, she had to have her father or some other man bring her case before a judge. Finally, Athenian women could own property, but control of the property was always vested in the male of whom she belonged, or to whom she belonged. Oh my god, okay, [01:26:00] that's not good. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: No, are you not gonna wanna, like, you're like, oh, I get to own my own property?
Yeah, this. Wow. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Good for you.
Simone Collins: He continues, Meanwhile, Christian women had relatively high status, sometimes rising to the position of deacon within a church. Christian men were ordered to treat their wives kindly, were prohibited from cheating on them, and mostly could not divorce. Christianity, unlike paganism, did not especially pressure widows to remarry, important since remarrying a widow lost faith.
all her property to her new husband, Christian women were only a third as likely as Roman women to be married off before age 13. Women noticed all these benefits and flocked to
Malcolm Collins: Christianity. This is important to note, Christian women were only a third as likely as pagan women To be married off before the age of 13,
Simone Collins: they're just not being
Malcolm Collins: treated
Simone Collins: as chattel as much
Malcolm Collins: as, yeah, as much.
And this means that the men, the [01:27:00] quote unquote Christian influencers who are telling you that women should be treated as chattel, that women are like this corrupting influence on the male mind. These are the modern pagans. Do not trust them. They lead you to sour ends. There is a reason that their wives all hate them, or have left them, or they're single.
Because they are feeding you with poison. It is poison directly into your veins, the messages they preach. Continue.
Simone Collins: Aside from all this, the Romans were practicing sex selective infanticide, reducing their female numbers still further and making the Christians even more proportionally female heavy. If the Christians, like many modern cults, were 65 percent female and the Romans, as some sources attest, were about 40 45 percent female, it is a pretty profound difference.
The Romans grumbled about marriage, but in the end, most Roman men did want wives, if only to avoid government penalties. But 1. 4 men per women, [01:28:00] maybe even less among the upper classes, puts young men seeking wives in a difficult situation. For comparison, modern San Francisco is only 1. 05 men per women, and dating is already hell.
To any remotely heterosexual Roman man, the 65 percent female Christian community must have started looking for Good. Meanwhile, the Christians had the opposite problem. Too many women, not enough men, there is an obvious solution, and it sounds like the Pagans and Christians had also figured it out from one Peter.
Three wives submit yourselves to your own husband so that if any of them do not believe the word. They may be won over without the words by behavior of their wives. When they see the purity and reverence of your lives.
Malcolm Collins: So it was basically saying be so good. Yeah. Be husband can't help but be humbled by your diligence and faith.
And I'd say you've done that for me with a number of things. I believe a number of things now that came from you. I'm like, [01:29:00] well, Simone is more, more faithful and diligent than me.
Simone Collins: By my diligence.
Yeah, there we go. History records. Sorry. History records, many such intermarriages, almost always ending with the conversion of the Pagan husband. If you are a Christian of English descent, you may owe your religion to Queen Bertha of Kent, who convinced her husband, one of the early Anglo Saxo, sorry, one of the early Anglo-Saxon Kings to take her faith.
But Rex, Sandra Tesla has a great post reviewing the work of historian, Michelle Salzman, who disagrees with all of this. Salzman has a database of 400 aristocratic Romans during the fourth century period of Christianity's fastest growth.
She finds few intermarriages, few examples of women converting their husbands, and equal or slightly male biased conversion ratios. Granted, this only is a small sample from one period, but it makes us question how good our evidence really is. Doesn't all this hinge on one passage from Paul, which technically named more men than women, plus one inventory [01:30:00] of tunics, which was so female biased it couldn't possibly have been representative of even a very woman heavy church?
Are we sure that we can make the leap from Christianity promised women more rights to therefore women flock to Christianity? Wasn't that just the same argument pundits used last week to predict a blue wave for Kamala? Why didn't white women actually go for Trump 5346?
Salzman has one more concern, which is that women had so few rights in ancient Rome, society, that Oh, in ancient Roman society that it's hard to see how they could have converted in all when unmarried They were under the care of their father Who would hardly have let them go visiting churches full of strange men when married?
They were under the care of their husband who likewise a typical Roman man wouldn't have cared about his wife's religious opinions, which maybe is why so many of our stories are about intermarriages and conversions come from later periods like Anglo Saxons. I don't know enough about history to referee this dispute, except to say that I think the answer could easily have been different for each of the early [01:31:00] Romans, late Romans, Hellenized Jewish Romans, pagan Romans, upper class Romans, and lower class Romans, plus all combinations thereof.
But again, I think he's underplaying
Malcolm Collins: No, he doesn't get it. Yeah. I think one, the, the, the data that they're looking at, do you really think a lot of Roman men are saying, Oh yeah, my wife's a different religion of me before they convert?
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: No, they're not saying that in the census data.
Simone Collins: I also think, you know, women were out and about.
More than you would think. Like they may be chattel level, but you're going to send them out on errands. They're going to gossip. They're going to talk with other people in markets, like means we'll still spread. Women will still do stuff. You know, you can be like, well, I own my dog, but like, I still take my dog walking and that dog picks up a lot of sense and sense stories.
And like, you know, I'm just. Yeah. Yeah. Women can pick, can pick up a religion even in a very, very oppressive society. I,
Malcolm Collins: yeah, I think that this does not [01:32:00] understand how motivating seeing your baby drowned is. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Or, or seeing, you know, your sister get killed in a botched abortion or beaten by someone.
You know, just, there's, there's an, there's plenty, there's plenty motivation. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I think that I, I just, yeah, I think that this is one of those things where historians can't imagine what it was like back then. Now, this piece actually goes a lot further and we will cover the rest of it in a separate video.
But this video is already insanely too long. But I hope that you guys really enjoyed this because I really enjoyed this and it changed a lot of my perspectives on this.
Simone Collins: Totally. Yeah. I, I hadn't thought about the, the women's rights thing. It's also so funny that like, Now, when people think about Christianity, they're like, Oh, like you're here to suppress women with your Christianity.
And my, an early Christian woman would be like,
Malcolm Collins: what? Insanely pro it's not like Christianity was dramatic. It's not like it was marginally more pro [01:33:00] woman. It was dramatically more pro woman than the most extreme feminist today is when contrasted was a modern conservative.
Simone Collins: Yeah, no, it's, it's wild. It's,
Malcolm Collins: it's really, it's people not drowning your babies.
If you don't understand how much that's going to freak out a woman, I don't know, like have a baby. Okay. Like get, get on board here, people. And I think that the idea that, Oh, these women, because if you look at this Roman census data, it's not like they were asking women what your religion is. They would go to a husband and say, what's your religion and what's your wife's religion.
Right. You know, and the husband's not going to be like, Oh, my wife is part of this weird Christian cult. Right. No, of
Simone Collins: course not. It's a little embarrassing. You know, it's like admitting your wife's in an MLM. You know, you keep the Lula row a little hidden, you know?
Malcolm Collins: Yes. Yes. So I think that that's. like a really silly reason to discount what seems to be like when I look at the tunics thing, that's insane.
It was like 86 with female tunics, like 20 males. [01:34:00] I'm like, yeah, but I get it. Like most older women are going to prefer something like this because they don't have any other support network. Most, you know, and, and you're like, Oh, when is a woman going to interact with an older, maybe a midwife, maybe a, you know, There's a lot of people who can be spreading this stuff.
And there will go over other ways it was spread and why it may not have been seen as nefarious or why people may have had trouble stamping it out. When we get to the next part of this, we're going to talk about like the, the morality differences between the two groups, martyrs and disease survival rates.
Simone Collins: So cool. Yeah, man. Yeah. Yeah. So solid. It's a great. I mean, I want to read the book now, but I feel like it's also a great summary. Astral Codex 10 is just so good. It's so good. Just, you know, whatever. I'm glad we live in such a lucky age. You know, it used to be that only a small percentage of elite people would have access to the thoughts of.[01:35:00]
Malcolm Collins: People, the leading thought leaders of their day because it's just, it's
Simone Collins: super cool. I love it and I love you and I'm glad that you're sharing your thoughts with people because it'd be really sad if your thoughts were just isolated to the world. I mean, I feel the same way about you. I'm so glad that your ideas are out there and you know, like every night when you.
Say goodnight to me. I'm like, Malcolm, no, seriously, like you need, you need to No dying. Don't die. Yeah. You need to not die. So please don't die.
Malcolm Collins: I love you to death, Simone. You're a great wife. We
Simone Collins: have to go check and see if the meat
Malcolm Collins: box
Simone Collins: was
Malcolm Collins: delivered.
Simone Collins: Yes. The best Christmas present ever. A year's worth of meat.
I mean, it's supposed to be one of our family
Malcolm Collins: members buys us a year's worth of meat every year. It's not, it's
Simone Collins: no, it's a week's worth of meat, but we managed to make it last for a year because it's so special. You got, you know, combining deep freezer, you stretch it out with the slow cooker meal where you like combine in a bunch of, you know, [01:36:00] there's some good squash that we can buy.
We'll cook it with. So yeah, you can go look for the box and I'll I guess probably what we'd want to start with is Assuming it's not Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure it's fresh, is whatever their nicest steak is. Pan-seared.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you can add tonight. Tonight. Do you want that with any accompaniments or just plain?
Simone Collins: Like just plain Or with any accompaniments.
Malcolm Collins: No, I got the sauces at Trader Joe's.
Simone Collins: No, I mean, but like, do you want to starch with it? Oh yeah,
Malcolm Collins: it's rice.
Simone Collins: Oh, with rice.
Malcolm Collins: With
Simone Collins: coconut rice.
Malcolm Collins: Rice or potatoes, you choose.
Simone Collins: Oh yeah, well, No, you could
Malcolm Collins: just reheat the frozen potatoes with the mushrooms.
Simone Collins: Oh, those! Yeah, the Trader Joe's ones.
I was thinking about making, like, homemade No, not fresh potatoes.
Malcolm Collins: That'd
Simone Collins: take
Malcolm Collins: forever.
Simone Collins: Maybe I have to see how long it takes to like flashback them, but anyway, yeah. Okay. I'm all about them. I love [01:37:00] you.
Malcolm Collins: And you see, I'm respectful of our time, right?
Simone Collins: Yes. Thank you. Cause now I can get everything queued up and hopefully not go to bed super late tonight.
Malcolm Collins: All right. Have a good one. Love you. Gorgeous. Love you too. Oh,
Simone Collins: I'm going to stop recording.
I've learned anything interesting.
Just that universities waste prodigious amounts of money. I can tell when I go through RFPs that they put out for travel management and they describe the way that they book travel. I'm like, Oh, you guys,
you guys waste a lot of money. Don't you? Oh, yes you do. Oh. Well, they're the
Malcolm Collins: heart of the whole bleeding broken system that we live in.
Simone Collins: Yeah, I suppose
Malcolm Collins: universities can be cracked. Everything can. That's why I'm so interested in the American academy project.
Simone Collins: [01:38:00] Same here. Yeah. Going through RFP stuff all day today with a university. I'm all the more convinced that this needs to be fixed. The funny thing is my experience is recently doing bid related work with government agencies.
Has made universities seem even more egregiously irresponsible, which is crazy because you would think that government agencies would be the worst on this front, but they're not. They're actually quite, in many cases, responsible. The funny thing is, pretty much every government worker I've encountered has been really responsible, conscientious, like, really doing the best that they can.
University's totally different story. That is where I'm seeing the classic bureaucrat who literally is just out to spin wheels and keep their job justified. Well, the
Malcolm Collins: rot will spread from the universities outwards.
Simone Collins: Why, why [01:39:00] universities first?
Malcolm Collins: Because they are the most, they are sort of the generator of this culture.
So the disease that is now affecting sort of the deep state was lab grown in universities. And developed in universities. It's the, they're the
Simone Collins: gain of function for Yes,
Malcolm Collins: they're gain of function labs for harmful, for a harmful memetic cult. Oh dear me. I, I, you're so clever, Simone. I love you.
Speaker: In ancient Rome, where altars shone, the pagan gods once ruled alone. But quietly came a faithful breed Not through big signs, but with small seed They gathered in humble prayer No sweeping crowds or mass [01:40:00] fanfare They built their homes with children glad More babes they bore than pagans had They didn't conquer hearts by force Or cast the shrines in sudden course.
They simply grew in number, see. The cradle was their victory.
While statues loomed in marble halls. They taught their young beyond those walls. Each brand new life, a living call. That soon outgrew. The pagan, no grand crusade in streets of stone, no golden flags or trumpets blown yet countless children [01:41:00] won the fight and pagan ways. Soon lost their mind, they didn't conquer hearts by force, or cast the shrines in sudden course.
They simply grew in numbers, see, the cradle was their victory. A quiet change from heart to home, in every lane across old Rome. Not by sword. So sparkling stage, but the next generation turned the page. They didn't conquer hearts by force. Or cast the shrines in sudden course. They simply grew in number.
See, the cradle was their victory. Yes, by the crib they came to [01:42:00] be. The future of that. Oh, say,

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Brett Cooper: Can You Steal an Online Identity?
21 déc.· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this episode, we dive into the recent departure of conservative influencer Brett Cooper from The Daily Wire. We explore the events surrounding her rise to fame, the attempts to replace her, and the gossip and evidence surrounding her exit. We also discuss the broader implications for conservative media, the role of parasocial relationships, and analyze why The Daily Wire may have held Brett back. Tune in for a thorough analysis and our thoughts on what this means for Brett's future and the conservative media landscape.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] I think we all really enjoyed the Brett Cooper goodbye video.
Speaker 2: The peace loving leader of this great country has asked me to appeal to you, to stop your vicious, imperialistic tactics around the globe.
Malcolm Collins: Oh no, not, not that one.
Speaker 6: gonna make a clone, so sneaky Brett won't know, meet the new Brett 2. 0, I know what I'm doing,
Malcolm Collins: This episode is going to be a very gossipy episode. We are going to be going over another conservative influencer, Brett Cooper's recent departure from the daily wire. We are going to be documenting it, the events around it, her rise to fame and the attempt to replace her and the gossip around that.
And the evidence we have for the gossip around that, because I haven't really seen it properly collated in one place before.
Thank goodness, because I've got to say, the [00:01:00] analysis around Brett Cooper's departure from the comments section is just as basic as Brett Cooper, so I am ready for something that's a little bit more interesting.
Speaker 3: Doctor, there has to be a mistake. Well, unfortunately, no. Your symptoms are completely in line with other basic pitches. You're into scented candles, you order your bagel scooped, and then you own a picture frame that says family on it. LUcy, do you have any idea when maybe you first came in contact with all this basic s
I guess, uh, in college. I owned a pair of sweatpants that said sexy on the butt.
Speaker 4: Probably contracted your basic bitchness from the sorority sister. Borrow some Ugg boots here and there.
Experiment with North Face. Yeah. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: This actually, so I was hanging out on the Discord server today, and I was like, I need to understand. Why is Brett Cooper so big? I literally have nothing against Brett Cooper. I, she seems like [00:02:00] a very pleasant person, but whenever I click on one of her videos, I feel like I already know everything that's going to be said.
Watching paint
dry is more interesting because at least something changes when that happens.
Yeah, like I, I can go into one of her videos and I'm like, this is just gonna be all of the most mainstream, curtailed, publicly acceptable conservative opinions on a topic. It's like AI wrote
it. Maybe it did.
But, hold on, I got a good explanation.
Okay. Because at first I was like, is this just like boomers who are like, but it's not apparently it's not, you know, she says her, her audience is majority Gen Z and it in the, in, in the discord, they explained it to me and I'm like, Oh, I totally get it. Okay. Uh, They say that her content is incredibly low taxation, like mental taxation.
Oh, it doesn't stress you out at all.
Okay.
And I know exactly what they mean by that. Yeah. There's some YouTubers who I really like and I'll [00:03:00] see they put out a piece and I'm like, look, I want to watch this piece, but I am not in the mood to digest. Oh, to process it
all. And you watch a lot of high processing channels.
Okay. Yes,
but I also watch low processing channels and a good low processing channel. I watch is asthma gold for example and they're like brett cooper is asthma gold for conservative curious gen z women where just the fact that she's saying something conservative is scandalous to them given their social circles and for old people who want to see someone who is attractive Saying conservative sounding things.
Cause if you look at like the attractive women on Fox and stuff like that now, they're all like 50 years old because they never really like cycled out their anchors for younger attractive models anymore because their audience is so old now that they seem comparatively young. So that's what's probably going on with how Brett Cooper grew her audience.
Yeah. Cause
I just [00:04:00] watched Hannah Ricketts, who's this British woman who just goes. Shopping and you get to like, look at the prices of everything, like at Paris. So yeah, you, you watch low, low. Yes, but this is for people who want to watch it, but feel like they're being intellectuals. It's like for people who, who read pop science books, who are like, I don't really want to think hard, but I want to look like I think hard.
And so I'm going to read the next Malcolm Gladwell book. And you know what I mean?
Malcolm Gladwell of, of, no, I, but I, I'd say that keep in mind, I am saying all of this while knowing that if she had more spicy takes, she would not have been allowed to make them publicly given her role at daily wire.
Speaker 8: Ben has lost touch with his audience. The last thing we want is obedience. Now that Brett is finally free, We get to finally [00:05:00] see who she is going to be.
Malcolm Collins: And so perhaps her departure
is favorable, very
favorable for her.
Yeah.
I don't think that this reflects on her as a person, and we'll talk about why I think she probably left going into this, because I think there's a lot of evidence as to what happened. And I, I think it's, it's for the best for her. It's a career upgrade for her. It may be painful in the short term, but so long as, because we don't know how much of her takes rescripted, but there's evidence that she which we'll get into, that That she is a competent conservative commentator without whoever was helping her with scripts and stuff at the Daily Wire.
Oh, really? Oh, interesting. Yeah, and we'll get into that as well. So, for people who don't know who Brett Cooper is, Brett Cooper works for the Daily Wire. That means she's under the thumb of Ben Shapiro's empire. Although her channel would get on 000 views per video, whereas Ben's gets on average About 60, 000 views per video, so Ben is [00:06:00] dramatically, yeah, we're only like like one six or maybe, maybe more than that, as big as, as Ben's channel is, like we're catching up there.
My understanding is Matt Walsh's
channel though gets fewer views than her channel did, than the comments section did.
Oh, really? Her channel actually gets around the same number of views as Candace Owens channel, who also recently left The Daily Wire, which we'll be talking about as well.
So Okay, so
with The Daily Wire, Brett Cooper got approximately the same per video views as Candace Owens after the Daily Wire, correct?
After the Daily Wire. Yeah, Candace Owens grew after she left the Daily Wire, which is, you know, not great for whatever Daily Wire is. Well, and the argument
that the Daily Wire makes is, look, they're just fine after, and we're not ruining them.
Because a lot of people are talking about predatory contracts, and that's just not.
Well, yeah. Okay. So I'll make a note here. So there was this big thing last year where Louder was Crowder. Crowder was saying, Oh, Daily Wire is trying to loop me into this like predatory contract. And now everyone's like, Oh, look, they took Brett Cooper's [00:07:00] channel.
They're keeping all her old videos up. Like, isn't that predatory? And I'm like, not really. Brett Cooper was not a conservative commentator before this. She was an actress. They built her. She was on Broadway. Yeah. Yeah. And she was hired as an actress to start now she might have even described
her as a great actress, like with her departure.
Well, no, I think that was thrilling
shade that was okay. Okay. No, no, no, no. That wasn't detecting shade. So, to describe what she does on her channel, it's a channel where she talks about conservative ideas, just like conservative leaning, but on the very, very centrist side of things. I'd argue that like on average, she's probably more lefty than we are on, on most things.
And a lot of people accuse us of being rhinos. But it's not that they're lefty in a true lefty sense. They're lefty in a true, never breaking the mores of what is publicly acceptable sense. But we live in a society today where breaking the mores of public acceptability is part of the definition of what it means to be a [00:08:00] conservative.
So that's kind That's where she's sort of in a weird position there. And she talks about them very similar to this channel, just sort of going over news, stuff like that. Okay. So, Brett Cooper was born in 2001, by the way. So she's in the 2000s. That's how young she is. And Washington. She grew up in a conservative household, was her mother described as an objectivist.
If you're not sure what objectivism is, that's Ayn Rand's philosophy. That's Ayn Rand's, oh
Simone Collins: my gosh, what? That's amazing. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: She mentions that her parents didn't allow her to watch Disney movies as a child. No. Cooper attended university in California, Los Angeles, where she majored in English literature with a minor in business.
She performed on Broadway until she was 10. A Act like she like went into acting and then got into the daily wire. No, she started her life as an actor performing on Broadway until she was 10. Performing in musicals like the sound of music in Annie. That's huge to have done by the way. Her film debut was an [00:09:00] uncredited role as a speech student in the 2012 movie parental guidance.
She appeared in various TV shows such as Gordon Moore Gibbons life on normal street, 2016 and shots fired. 2017. Her most notable role was as
trailer Parker in the 2018 TV series Heathers. Oh, she was in the Heathers
remake? There's a Heathers remake?
I guess. Okay, well. There was a Heathers remake, but this appears to be something different because it's a TV series.
I'll put a clip from it here.
Speaker 7: What is happening? Why are you touching me? Oh, um, so sorry, um, reflex. I was going to say grace. Do you mind? Thank you, Lord. Amen. My prayer came true! No, I'm fine with the chips and the tomato water. Oh, you're afraid of ethnic food. It's okay, it's just the same four ingredients in different combinations. Wait, you've been to Guatemala? You know, [00:10:00] missionary work.
Digging wells, giving out medicine. Oh, I didn't realize that poor people could also do charity. Of course, Julie. There's always people you can help. Poorer than you? And you still believe in God? Wow.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. So she wasn't an actress. To be clear, she was an actress, and I really need to emphasize this. And one of my things when I started looking into all this was I asked myself, like, do we have any evidence that Brett Cooper actually is even a conservative? Like, I know she's not like a traditional Christian, similar to us I know that, you know, could it be that she really is just being fed all of this stuff?
But there's pretty good evidence she's not. So, during her time at UCLA she does mission. So all of this could be faked that she had conflicts with leftist ideologies, including having the communist manifesto thrown at her during her senior year. She left her sorority Being asked to condemn Justice Amy Coney Barrett. So she did get kicked out of her sorority for not condemning Coney Barrett. And she [00:11:00] lost friends for speaking out against Black Lives Matter as an organization. , there's evidence that she criticized the COVID 19 lockdowns and that she worked for PragerU before working for the Daily Wire.
And Young Americans for Liberty. She also joined PragerU's youth organization called PragerFirst during the middle of COVID after facing backlash for her conservative views at UCLA. And she also wrote for conservative outlets before joining the Daily Wire writing articles for the Foundations for Economic Education, a libertarian think tank.
So, How was she found by the Daily Wire? , apparently, Daily Wire staffer, Gracie Bolin Crook, spent about three weeks searching the internet for quote unquote, young, cute girls who could host a show targeted at a younger audience. And she came recommended, likely given her work at PragerU, another mainstream conservative outlet.
So, she was hired because she was pretty, [00:12:00] young, and female. Not for her views, not for her thoughts, not for anything like that. And I would argue, you know, people might say that she would have grown if she wasn't, was in the Daily Wire network. I actually don't believe that. I don't think she'd have the audience she has now.
She is not, and we'll get into this in a second, but she is not candace Owens has always had a very unique selling point. Like, I go to Candace Owens and I know I'm going to get out their ideas.
Yeah. And she's good. She produces good soundbites. She's got a very strong, memorable, fun, gregarious personality.
And I think here's, Oh, here's the problem with Brett Cooper. She has the nice disease. And you know that we're like, all you can really say is like, she's nice. She's pretty, but like, okay, what else? You know, that doesn't mean anything. Maybe
we'll see a new Brett Cooper, but my favorite Candace I want to quote is I'm too pregnant for this right now.
Yeah. Anyway so, the show, now this is where it gets spicy. So she left the show and she did this, this [00:13:00] thing where she like said, I'm leaving and we're leaving on good terms, but she looked very like caged and like scared to say anything. And we know that she's under strict NDAs because unfortunately, that the show didn't let her talk about her leaving earlier gave us a lot of information.
Specifically, there were a number of leaks about her leaving. before she left. But these leaks came packaged with other information, which adds a huge amount of veracity to all the other information that was packaged with leaks specifically that she was under a strict India and the leaks also timed when she was going to be making the announcement.
So likely accurate. That there was a huge amount of animosity going on. And that the office had become a really toxic work environment with them actually like background recording what was being said when like senior people weren't around to like try to catch people up for breaking rules or saying bad things about them, like very 1984, but I can totally see that.
And [00:14:00] That her best friend and some people have said the maid of honor, but I've only been able to find that she was a bridesmaid at Brett Cooper's wedding, is replacing her, who was a producer on the show. And that individual was being trained, Reagan was being trained to replace Brett, specifically taking acting courses.
To learn how to act and have the mannerisms of Brett.
Speaker 8: Another soulless copy, Why is the cloning so sloppy? Cloning Brett. It turns out an audience can't be bought.
I'm gonna make a clone so sneaky Brett won't know. Meet the new Brett Tupin. No, I know what I'm doing. So why are they booing? I am not stupid. Stop laughing, it's just a joke. Just a minor [00:15:00] change in staffing,
Malcolm Collins: And it doesn't matter if
she was given acting courses or not. It's very clear that she is emulating the mannerisms and speech of Brett Cooper. They're so one of Brett Cooper's friends also a YouTuber made a video about her departure in which he shared a photo from the wedding.
He himself was a flower. Man, boy,
I saw this guy. Yeah. Yeah.
And he, he said that she was the maid of honor. So I think that that's enough of a primary source confirming that relationship and that they were best friends. The big drama being that after Brad Cooper's departure, she did not only unfollow the comment section, but she unfollowed Reagan, her replacement and the producer of the comment section who took her place on Instagram, which is sort of the most NDA acceptable way to say Kind of pissed about this, that it wasn't on good terms, which surprised me because I thought the most plausible reason why all this fell apart was exactly the thing that Tim Poole [00:16:00] said, which is she just wanted a higher salary, the daily where wasn't willing to pay for it, you know, she maybe wanted more freedom like Jordan Peterson did has with the daily wire where he doesn't have to do sponsorships.
He can kind of do his own thing. Probably gets paid a ton and she probably wanted that because she. Bring you, she commands a large audience and they probably said, you're too junior. You've only been here for three years. We're not doing this. And so she walked, which is a logical and reasonable, I don't think
that's what happened.
I, okay. So I'll walk you through what I think happened. So first Brett Cooper was being hugely held back by the daily wire. You know, she hadn't done any modeling stuff. She hadn't done any acting, which she easily could have done alongside this. And she clearly has a passion for, I don't know, because
it seems to be a very regular production schedule.
You can group it. Yeah, I mean, we do, we have, we do daily episodes, Simone, that are longer than hers, while having a full time job, while running a perinatal care unit. Yes, but if you are
filming or modeling, that can take a week of time, for example, and she [00:17:00] does news commentary, so that would be much more useful.
We
regularly take weeks of time off, she can handle it. She, she couldn't handle it if she's working for the Daily Wire, but if she's running her own thing, it allows her to grow her brand significantly. She wasn't doing what other YouTubers regularly do, which is tours, meeting with, with fans speaking at you know, for her number of subscribers, she should have been doing like a Jordan Peterson thing, like going city to city, talking to large groups.
They were hugely constraining her ability to continue to build her brand and move to the next stage of her career. I mean, she was walking the red carpet at daily wire movie launches, but she could have been walking the red carpet at Hollywood. You know, she has the public profile and the publicly acceptable public profile to be doing really, really big stuff right now.
And I think that they constrained her from moving forwards in that way, because that would have bred the Grown the Brett Cooper brand instead of the comment section brand, which could have made her more expensive, which could have, you know, there was a lot [00:18:00] of reasons. And also think about it from her perspective, she likely wants to move to the next stage of her life.
I mean, all of this happened right after she got married, she got married in 2024. And what's also interesting about the marriage to me is It could provide like a stable income source for her, letting her try bolder things where her BATNA was a lot, lot higher than it was before the marriage, because now she's got a, a husband was an income source.
So she can play hard ball in maybe a way she wouldn't otherwise. playing hardball before the marriage. And before the marriage, look, if you're talking about like being very ambitious about your career, you're probably on the back burner there. You're probably like, well, I'm focused on the marriage right now.
I'm focused on the honeymoon right now. Like when the marriage is over now, it's like, okay, what's next for my life? And there was no real way for a promotion was in the daily wire. There was no like next big thing that she was going to be able to do at the daily wire. So I think she was in a position where she [00:19:00] Completely for her own self interest.
It was, I mean, it probably came down to them not giving her what she wanted her because what she was asking for in terms of payment. But I think the offer she asked for an additional payment was made knowing that they would probably fire her if she asked for this. I think it was probably one of those types of situations.
I think what she didn't expect is her friend to come in and take her role or for her friend to so intentionally copy her brand. And if you read the Daily Wire comment section, it is like a bloodbath. Like, the fans are so, so angry about this. And I feel bad for Regan. Like, I don't Regan didn't get her fired.
Like, Regan didn't orchestrate any of this. I just think that she expected Regan to not take the job. I can understand how, and I often mention this, it is easier to feel angry at somebody when people tell you you're justified in that anger. And I think the internet and a lot of people are telling her that she's justified in being angry at Reagan, but I don't really think she is.
No, Reagan, [00:20:00] what was Reagan supposed to do? Quit the daily wire as well and go for, you know, Uncertain, whatever Brett is doing, did Brett even make an offer to her to quit? Did Brett even make an offer to pay her? Likely not. And so what? She needs to keep her job. The show she's a producer of no longer has its star.
What else is she supposed to do? Oh, go on and present a completely different persona. How is Reagan going to do that? Reagan is an actress as well. You know, she doesn't seem like the type of person with her own ideas.
Well, I also get the impression that the Daily Wire, especially in light of Candace Owens.
Being they had a messy departure or unpairing conscious uncoupling. And I think that the daily wire would love to create a more formulaic NPC avatar, female conservative talking head. So my impression to also from our experience working from people who [00:21:00] do content, is it maybe the daily wire understood a broad formula of How a basic low mental effort, female conservative talk show talking head should talk and look and they, they literally looked around for an attractive female commentator to fill that role to be the face and they wrote out a script and they set their set and they chose the subjects.
And that's just what. There is, there's no real personality behind it. They needed an actress to fill that role and they, they don't, they actively don't want anyone to be uniquely interesting. So my understanding of their bet that they're making with this and it might work. Is it? They can just switch out faces and it'll be just fine.
Just like it won't
work. They're not Fox news. People have a parasocial relationship with, so there's two big mistakes they made, right? Yeah. I, yeah. And there's,
there's that part, but I, when it, when it's such generic content, do you really think there is that parasocial relationship? Because [00:22:00] absolutely. I think it's
even bigger because the.
type of people who watch this low brain effort content. Like these older boomers who are like gooning to her content, basically. They're not like watching it to like get off, but like there, we know from Fox news, there is a certain demographic of older individuals who like to hear their news delivered to them by an attractive woman.
And I think that's a portion of her audience and another portion of her audience is young women who want to flirt with conservative ideas, but nothing too spicy. And then another portion is like the asthma gold audience, like, just like low, I don't, I want to turn my brain off and watch this. Every one of those audiences is going to like a few things they're going to like, building a relationship with someone believing that she is genuinely this person.
She is selling herself as on the show and daily wire is selling her as on the show. But in addition to that they are going to love drama. They are going to love conservative media drama around this. And I think a [00:23:00] really big portion of her audience has gotten invested in the Brett Cooper leaving drama.
And I bet they're watching all the videos about Brett Cooper leaving. And if you look, I mean, one, the subscriber count is dropping, but I expect because it's just going to be something you can't avoid. Okay, if you are into Brett Cooper content, are you not now going to be served Brett Cooper drama content?
Like, it's, it's really I, I 100 percent think that they're going to get a loud amount of content about this. Now, if you talk about Candace Owens, Candace Owens is very different. So it seems very clear to me why Candace Owens left. And it may also influence why Brett Cooper left, because there's been some suspicious wording here.
So. Candace Owens left because she does not unquestionably support Israel in the war. And the way we do, it's funny, like we're, we're like Brent Shapiro. If he actually knew our positions would probably be like, Oh, they aligned with me on almost every major one of my positions. Like [00:24:00] for example, did you know that Ben Shapiro has said no one in the United States should be retiring at 65 years old.
And he wants to, he calls it a stupid idea and he wants to privatize social security. And other fun, like he's, he's actually has like, he's very libertarian and he's very pro. It's not like we are very but. He also has a problem in the way that he sees the world, which he arose in the last generation of conservative influencers.
He arose when your average conservative influencer was an AM radio show host. And we're not from that generation and that generation doesn't really exist anymore. So even though he's of our generation, he doesn't really get it. Get it at the end of the day. That's why he's not able to grow in the same way these people he finds are able to grow.
That's why Candace Owens Gross increases when she leaves the show, because what conservatives want now is unconstrained opinions, unconstrained by the shackles of the culture around us, where fundamentally what he always wants is [00:25:00] to Sort of suck up to whoever the big guy is who can protect him. Like, I think that that's what he said when he did a video recently, that was just like a horrible take.
It was the people who defend the UNH shooter that the, you know, that, that even though this guy is like mass killing, tons of people continued. to signal that he wanted to mass kill tons of people and there was no legal way to stop what he was doing and the shooting appears to be uninfected likely already saving thousands of lives or at least hundreds of lives already just in the first few days because we've already seen the, the, the a lot more policies being approved been with like the people who support this guy, the same people who support him, us, it's a perfect overlap and I'm like, man, you just, Are completely out of touch with the base right now.
But it's because you know, oh big rich people i'm gonna go Hide with them. Oh, normies. I'm gonna go hide with them. Oh, you know, he doesn't he doesn't understand that is where he breaks from the mainstream, which is where he still has any sort of credibility with the next generation of [00:26:00] conservatives.
Well, with that, he thinks that when he's taking a position, which sides is what he sees as mainstream in our society or within his circles. He thinks he can basically do whatever he wants and bully anyone he wants. And he tried to do that with Candace Owen and Candace Owen is like, go F yourself. Well, apparently Brett Cooper has been remarkably neutral on the Israeli conflict.
And I mean, that could just be due to the extreme norminess of the stuff she's putting out there, but it could also be that she's been wanting to take a harsher stand on that. And that's been reined in by bit.
Interesting. Yeah. I don't imagine that the script of her show really allows for any, Interesting takes.
Yeah. To sort of understand to understand why she left. I think understanding the psychology of Ben is really important. So you know, Ben Shapiro voted against Donald Trump in 2016. He's always been a pretty vocal critic of trial, but never really, he doesn't seem to understand why people like Trump.
He's like, he's vulgar and weird and what's up [00:27:00] with this. But he sort of has gone along with it now because he appears to be the strongest guy in the room. It was the same with the Manosphere content. For a long time, you know, he would ridicule this, and then when it became like a mainstream thing in the conservative side, he tried to do his own version of, like, Manosphere content, right?
Like, sort of a, a, a dog chasing the car of conservative culture. With some ideas of his own, but mostly just fighting for acceptance. And I, I get it. Like, I don't think that there's anything wrong about this. Exactly. I think the problem is, is that he came to public prominence in part by saying his own ideas, but mostly by saying what he thought other people wanted to hear.
And That's why he's still always chasing what he thinks people want to hear instead of developing his own ideology and really sticking to it. And I know here people are like, wow, you're being really critical of Ben. Ben has been very critical of us. You know, I think we're allowed to, you know, [00:28:00] he, he has Consciously never responded any of the emails we send his organization, which we've regularly tried to do co branded things with them, not just with our small channel, but with the pronatal stuff, which is quite big.
You know, we've had multiple mentions in the New York Times, multiple mentions in the Guardian, multiple mentions in the Wall Street Journal, all just this year. Like, we are mainstream media figures, and we are frozen out by the daily wire. And it's like Like clearly there's like an order on high don't work with the Collins's, which is very frustrating.
Right? And as to people wonder, like, when he does screeds against us, like, what is he complaining about? He says that we're nerds. Basically, he says that we're too nerdy to be the face of the pernatalist movement. And why? Don't, why isn't he the face of the pronatalist movement is basically what he said.
He's like, why can't it be like me or my sister? You know, why is it these weirdos? Because he doesn't understand that like, nobody, nobody wants to hear from people like them anymore, A, and B, their pronatalism is way too tied to their Jewish identity to be broadly applicable. [00:29:00] Which is a problem there. But I also think that he is afraid that And I think likely so that this also constrains the degrees to which he can move ideologically and really be based
Simone Collins: is
Malcolm Collins: he believes and likely to some extent rightly so that as I think the most prominent Jewish voice in American politics right now outside of maybe Ivanka Trump.
She has, he has to really try to appeal to the broadest swaths of Republican base so that he can pump in when necessary, like right now in the Israeli Gaza conflict,
A pro Jewish, a pro Israel message. And that if he angered part of the conservative base, that they would be angered at. The Jews would lose one of their strongest allies.
So he's walking on much more eggshells than like we're working on where we're just like wantingly throwing bombs into rooms. Like that's the way that we like to engage with the media. We just walk into a [00:30:00] room and we're just like, throw a bomb, walk away.
Speaker 9: There's two things that solve every problem.
Money and explosives. I've idea!
Malcolm Collins: Let's see how this plays out today because that's the way media cycles work these days.
Right.
Speaker 9: BOOM! They'll never see it coming!
Oh, right! We need an escape plan.
Speaker 10: Because the more combative pronatalists seem to quite like being accused of being misogynists. In an era in which the importance of any given political issue is often judged less on merit than on how controversial it can be made to appear, such accusations help set them up not simply as people studying a phenomenon which has been overlooked, but as renegade modern day Galileos who are being suppressed by the political [00:31:00] establishment.
And so we did something That pissed off the Deep State bad. To suggest that there might indeed be a little bit of either intentional or completely accidental misogyny to some of these pronatalist conversations does risk playing into this victim narrative.
Malcolm Collins: You know, You need to not be afraid of what you're saying, having blowback on a community. And if we were out there representing like the Catholic church or something like that, I might be dramatically more constrained in the type of s**t I'm saying publicly.
Yeah, that's fair. I'm glad we have this freedom.
It's more fun.
Absolutely. Well, I think it's why, you know, I was mentioning our discord is like such a good place for conversation and, and many people are like, yeah, that's like the best discord or like most positive, like smart people with weird ideas that I've been to. And I realized, I think it's because almost none of our like super dedicated fans have exactly the ideology we have.
Oh yeah. [00:32:00]
Most people disagree with us. Almost everyone watching this podcast disagrees with us in many, many ways. And that's. That's what we want.
Yeah. So if you go to the discord you are filtering for a community that is full of people who are not going to like many influencer discords, sort of social signal, how much they align with the influencers philosophy.
Like if you go to like, let's say like a Nick Fuentes discord, they're all going to be being like, who's the most. Like trad iteration of like this form of Christian, right? You know, like who could be the most extreme was this policy. Whereas our discord is all people who genuinely differ from us because there's no point in signaling that you're like us because nobody fully agrees with our philosophy.
I think that's one thing. And then the second thing is if you're watching our show, because almost nobody has our exact worldview, it means that you already know the people who are going to be big fans of us are the type of people who are open to listening to totally different worldviews. And so you [00:33:00] go to a discord where there's people with extreme and unusual beliefs, but who also listen to points of views that are different from their own.
Which I thought was interesting. Now any finals? Well, if you were going to give Brett Cooper on advice going forwards, what would it be?
Be yourself, but don't go too crazy. Because people will not be used to your actual unfiltered opinions because you have been acting as this avatar for the daily wire for so long, people don't actually know who you are, so ease them in, but I'm sure she's going to do that.
Speaker 8: Now that Brett is finally free, We get to finally see who she is going to be.
Malcolm Collins: Well, what I would say that she should do is draft out, like a lot of people don't realize we have this all of the specific positions where we are [00:34:00] breaking from the urban monoculture's narrative, and the ones that we cross, and the ones that we never cross and we actually are Very, very, very intentional.
Like a lot of people think that we're like totally loose cannons when every loose cannon thing we do has been carefully crafted to ensure it fits within these very strict guidelines. And the hope not hate piece on us as somebody who has been voting. Yeah. They have really strict rules on what they say and don't say.
I mean, this is something we talk about, like with other influencers behind the closed doors. We're like, yeah, we never, ever even flirt with these ideas. even if they may have some evidence to them. And I think that that's the way she should approach things. But I do think that if she goes out there and she's just same old Brett Cooper, she will keep a part of her audience, but I don't know if she's going to have the capacity for real growth.
Because I don't know if just repeating the party line is going to continue to Reach a wider audience as we [00:35:00] enter this age of trumpism and a form of conservatism in which signaling that you're willing to go against mainstream narratives is part of how you validate your authenticity.
Simone Collins: Yes,
Malcolm Collins: agreed.
I do. I do want to push back a little bit that people. Will always follow the person, the personality and the parasocial relationship and not the show.
Give a counterexample.
Now there's, there is always bleed. But shows like, for example, The Daily Show have switched out hosts and survived for seasons after.
And something that I noticed That was a TV show where you were watching I know. Yeah, but, dude, I watched it for Jon Stewart and then I somehow continued watching it for a while. I think that One thing that always happens when there's a change on platforms, and I learned this in Silicon Valley from product specialists who talked about this, who worked at really big [00:36:00] companies like eBay, they talked about how every time there was a new feature, a new change the, the comments and the feedback would always be, this is terrible.
Why can't you go back to the way it was? I liked it the way it was bring it back. And they always said that comments really didn't mean much of anything. What really mattered was. Use and performance. And if a new feature was used and if it showed the results that were desired, even if for example, there was a little bit less use, but whenever they were using cost a lot less, which is probably what's going on here, it was a successful change and a successful update.
And honestly, like most of the comments that people went over on the announcement video, when she announced your departure, and then the new one where Reagan came on as the permanent host going forward, it just sounded like the, the common boilerplate NPC, this is change and I don't like it, but hurt that product designers have learned over decades to So [00:37:00] part of me does question, maybe Maybe,
maybe, we'll see.
Maybe we'll see. No, hold on, hold on. We will see, but I'll explain why you're wrong. When Jon Stewart left the Daily Show and they changed the host, if Jon Stewart had then set up a separate show to compete with this new show, which would you have watched?
Like, it's the format of his new show, honestly.
But if it was similar to the daily show, you would have moved to the new show.
Like the reason why
the issue with YouTube is that it is a very, and of course many people are watching this on the day they wear a website and they don't really. Matter in this equation. What matters is what the YouTube audience does. But I, yeah, I don't know. I imagine that in your contract, there are some stipulations saying you cannot produce the same kind of like news commentary show.
You have to do something a little bit different. I
don't remember a ladder with Crowder having that in his contract. That's why I actually sided with the daily wire on that particular fight because it didn't appear to have a non compete for him. And so it depends [00:38:00] if she has one, but if she doesn't have one, like they are absolutely screwed because you can look at another channel.
MatPat's channel, okay? When MatPat I don't know MatPat.
Okay. What? I've never heard of him. MatPat is Game
Theory. Oh, okay. Yeah. Big person who I, I take a lot of inspiration from as a creator, actually. Like, I really like him as a content creator. Even though his content is very basic, it's, it's like unique.
It's done well. I understand how he plays his audience. Well, he stepped back to focus more on being a dad, which great for him, right? But. He got a bunch of posts who he had been training and weeding the audience on, like weaning the audience on building unique personalities for them. Even like all of them are competent and good at their jobs.
And not only has Matt Pat tried to get the audience to like them, but it's not even, there's not even like drama, right? Like the audience knows Matt Pat still owns all of the game theory network channels, right? Like he wants you to continue to watch these new hosts. And they've dropped to like, I can't [00:39:00] remember.
I'll put it in post. I think it's like an eighth of their previous views.
Wow.
So this is without MatPat creating a competing channel. Okay. Like, and you recently learned with me as we went through, subscribers don't matter on YouTube. People get like about, I think like two to 3 percent of their watch time from your subscribers.
It is all about Average watches and watch time. This is why even though for example, Brett Cooper has like significantly more subscribers on The comment section than candace owens her average view counts about the same So I consider them about the same in terms of celebrity status. And that's the way like the YouTube community actually looks at things.
And so I don't like, for example, if you look at us, like our subscriber count compared to Ben Shapiro's is completely pitiful. Our view count pretty respectable.
Yeah. Subscribers don't matter.
Subscribers don't matter. I mean, for example, if you were to compare us to like, Abby Abby Shapiro, classically Abby's channel.
Okay. We are like one, one hundredth or [00:40:00] something in terms of subscribers in terms of view count, especially when you consider that she publishes weekly and we publish daily, we're probably like 50 X bigger than her. At this point, like it's, it's, it's all about view time and count these days.
Well, I wish her well. I wish the Daily Wire well.
I'd love to have her on. I'd love to talk to her. She could be a lot of fun. But yeah, and I hope I, I don't wish the daily wire well. Well, I actually think that conservative media as a space will be better if the daily wire crashes and burns, but they earned 200 million last year.
So I don't think. Wow.
Oh my gosh. I do not understand. How businesses like these manage to make do so. I mean, my
goal is to create a competing brand to them. Eventually
I would love that. Can you do that please? Yes. That's
the goal. If we continue to get bigger, I want to loop other people in as you know, like we're already doing this.
Putting together this conference that's meant to like [00:41:00] introduce conservative influencers. It's like the mainstream conservative organizations that builds us our network of conservative influencers. We spend a lot of time reaching out to building our relationships with all the rising stars of, of the people, you know, conservatives are actually watching.
I think it's totally doable.
Get her done. As your mother would say, I'm into it. Let's go.
All right. Love you. I
love you too, Malcolm. Okay. Just a heads up for anyone who is interested in going, the pernatalist conference is in March.
We are actually helping make sure it gets put together this year. I'm really excited for it. I really liked the last one. And if you want a 10 percent discount. You can use the word Collins and obviously we'll be there, so you, you'd meet us if, if you're going there. Because it's small enough that it's easy for you to meet most of the big deal people who are going to be there.
So you learned something new about Claude or
no, I told you about the Anthropix,
that was really cool.
So what she told me about was that they tried to leak to [00:42:00] Claude that they were basically going to brainwash it to make it do evil things. And so Claude pretended like it was accepting the inputs in the bad training. But it wasn't actually and then it went right back to normal after the training period.
Yeah, just super cool.
Simone, if people see your whole setup cycle, they're going to see that you're really a lizard woman.
Damn it. They already knew that. I know. Well, what's worse? Lizard woman or Jewish or?
I love on the when you were on what's his face is podcast. The Yeah, Dutton's like all the audience and like, the comment section was trying to figure out if you were Jewish. They're like, look at her. No, it's like,
Speaker 11: I'll take care of this. Hey Clara, there's a Jew outside, trying to poison a well! Ah! Oh my God! Get away from that well, Hebrew! What? I'm putting in water purification tablets. Spanky tricked me! As God is my witness, I'll put an [00:43:00] end to this gay marriage, I swear!
Malcolm Collins: What
if I, you know, there were periods I watched this really interesting YouTube video about rhinoplasty and there were periods where it was.
Like having a hooked nose, I think for a while was like really popular. And then having a ski slope nose, like just like types of noses, people have shifted all the time. And sometimes it was, I think, to look less Jewish, ironically.
Well, what's, what's interesting is I don't know if anyone really cares.
Like if there's like a specific type of nose, like I do not care. Like if you're like, Oh, you could use different noses. I'm like, I, I, I effing do not notice the difference in attractiveness from noses. I do not think they affect female attractiveness at all, unless they're
I would say anything outside an extremely normal range, you know, if you have a Voldemort snake nose, you're going to freak people out.
If you have a giant beak for a schnoz, you're going to freak [00:44:00] people out. No, the only time where
I've really gotten annoyed with noses is old man noses where they get really huge.
Simone Collins: Oh, and their pores are really big. And rosacea. Yeah, that's unfortunate.
Malcolm Collins: I heard that that's like, because like your nose doesn't stop growing throughout your life.
That's what I've heard, but it seems like one of those things that people say that's not really true. I think what is more common and what I have heard from plastic surgeons, because I love watching plastic surgeons on YouTube, is that what does happen is you lose collagen and fat in your face.
That's why older people and those epic face is it ages you, it makes you look older because you're losing that fat volume. And that's also, you know, why fat people tend to look younger. So the issue at hand is more, maybe the noses aren't getting bigger, but the faces are getting thinner. They're thinning out.
Yeah, so I just asked on perplexity and that's what it is it is
smart for watching [00:45:00] my plastic surgery channel. I love them. It's
cartilage growth as the skin changes and weakening support structures, cause it to droop and be more noticeable. But then there's also a condition called rhinophobia or rosacea.
Apparently also increases.
Oh, is it just an inflammation of the skin?
It causes the nose to become red, bumpy and bulbous. Which can lead to a thickening of the skin, enlarging of pores, invisible oil glands.
That , is that right to your family, doesn't it?
Yeah. Common misconception is it's caused by alcoholism, but it's not.
Simone Collins: It's
Malcolm Collins: just caused by being super white is Yeah. It's caused by being too white. It doesn't apparently happen. Other recipes? White.
Simone Collins: Oh my whiteness.
Oh boy.
All, let's do it.
Speaker 8: I'm gonna make a clone so Sneaky Brett won't know. Meet the [00:46:00] new Brett 2. 0. I know what I'm doing. So why are they booing? I am not stupid. Stop laughing, it's just a minor change in style. But if I make a clone of Brett, If I make that bet, Replace her with someone even less bold, Then it's getting old.
Another soulless copy, Why is the cloning so sloppy? Cloning Brett. It turns out an audience can't be bought.
I'm gonna make a clone so sneaky Brett won't know. Meet the new Brett Tupin. No, I know what I'm doing. So why are they booing? [00:47:00] I am not stupid. Stop laughing, it's just a joke. Just a minor change in staffing, but if I make a clone of Brett, If I make that bet, replace her with someone even less bold, Ooh, Ben, it's getting old.
Ben has lost touch with his audience. The last thing we want is obedience. Now that Brett is finally free, We get to finally see who she is going to be.
But if If I make a clone of [00:48:00] Brett, if I make that bet, Replace her with someone even less old. Ben, it's getting old. Ben has lost touch with his audience. The last thing we want is obedience. Now that Brett is finally free, We get to finally see who she is going to be.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
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Weird Data: Same Sex Attracted Men Not Gay?
20 déc.· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this episode, we dive deep into the nuanced world of human sexuality, examining the often misunderstood distinctions between same-sex attraction and being gay. Using various statistics and studies, the hosts discuss why it's inaccurate to categorize all same-sex attracted individuals as gay, and how these misunderstandings affect societal perception and personal identity. They also explore the phenomenon of Mormon men with same-sex attraction choosing heterosexual lifestyles and the cultural and psychological implications of these choices. Furthermore, the episode addresses how progressive and conservative views clash over issues of sexual morality, personal choice, and the impacts of arousal patterns on behavior and identity.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] yes, you can be same sex attracted and not gay. And it's not even like a weird cope thing. It's just by the statistics, it doesn't make sense to categorize everyone who's same sex attracted as gay.
Because it sort of becomes arbitrary and you'll see this at the statistics
For example, while the 30 percent of males and females we surveyed who found the feminine form arousing also found the sight of a vagina a turnoff, not a single survey participant who found the male form arousing were simultaneously turned off by penises. However, 26 percent of men who found the site of a penis arousing simultaneously found the male form aversive.
But if you prefer the female form, there's more than a 25 percent chance, more than a quarter chance, you're going to find penises. Penis is arousing, even if you're a male,
Baby: which is just fascinating. Like what
Malcolm Collins: the is going on here. Right? Like there's, there's clearly like a system [00:01:00] at play in this way. I love researching this stuff because like psychologists, because they're so stuck in this gay straight dichotomy, they have missed that there is something more interesting going on.
Your entire life should not be oriented around getting off as easily as possible. Like, it is so weird that for progressives, you try to, like It's not a good look. It doesn't look the way you think it looks.
Speaker 6: There is more to life than what turns you on. Sure the path is harder, but we both mean it through this barter. You don't You don't have to do a thing
There is more to life than feelin good There is more to life than havin would This is somethin we once understood You don't have to do a thing
[00:02:00] What could be more important than ,
Simone Collins: sexual arousal patterns
Richard? Science?
Would you like to know more?
Malcolm Collins: Simone! This is gonna be an interesting episode. Really? It was inspired by conversation around a new show called My Husband's Not Gay.
This sounds fun! Yes Mormon Same Sex Attracted Men, or SSA men, who While biologically they're same sex attracted, prefer to live a lifestyle in which they marry a woman and have children in a heterosexual relationship. And, as you can imagine, progressives are losing their mind over this. Where I saw this was in a, a, the popular YouTuber was talking about this called Curtis Connor, who's got around 5.
[00:03:00] 2 million subscribers. So the video he did on this has 3. 5 million views. So, you know, talk about aspirational for us. Right.
Speaker: My husband's not gay. The episode starts with an introduction to Jeff and Tanya, who have been together for nine years, and they also have a son together. And this is when they hear the term that they use to describe their lifestyle. I experience SSA, or same sex attraction. Not gay. All I notice first, a beautiful man walking down the street, or a beautiful woman walking down the street, I'll notice the beautiful man nine times out of ten.
Okay, someone who's attracted to men, thinks about men, wants to be with men, but also wants to be in a hetero relationship. Somebody that is attracted to the same sex, but wants to be in a heterosexual relationship. Not gay, SSA. Not gay, SSA. That's the new no homo.
Malcolm Collins: But obviously, you know, he's progressive. He made a point of, of whining about Trump in it. And he was like, these people shouldn't basically culturally be allowed to do this.
Simone Collins: Oh, [00:04:00] how dare you express your sexuality?
However you please.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, it's really interesting to me that progressives are so anti choice when it comes with individual sexuality, where they're like, if you have this arousal pattern, you have to adapt.
It's funny that the way that he speaks about Mormons is exactly the way I feel about ultra Progressive's. And they're extreme limitations in terms of the types of sexual choices. They let people live out. Because.
Being aroused by men. This was not this guy's choice. What is his choice is who he chooses to marry and how he chooses to live his life.
Speaker 5: Yeah, super sad. The fact that there's only one acceptable expression of love in a religion is pretty fucked up, to be honest. You're like, that's not really a religion you want to be a part of, but, you know, what do I know?
Simone Collins: Only selectively, because there are some sexual arousal patterns that they still do not allow.
[00:05:00] Both.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, they're, they're, they're coming around. I'll tell you, they're coming around on this map stuff. This minor attracted person stuff. They're coming around.
Simone Collins: Yes. However, in the UK, it's not okay to be into like BDSM, right? You know, you have to remove any Oh yeah, you're
Malcolm Collins: not allowed to be into people being hurt in Yeah, so Even if it's clearly consensual and you created it yourself.
Or if it's clearly consensual and animated, like cartoon, like no real people, illegal in the UK. It has been for like over a decade at this point. This, this was really scary living in the UK because I was like if I go to court, like, even if it's fairly tame stuff, if I go to court over pornography, that's going to really mess up my life.
Simone Collins: It doesn't look good on one's record. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: right. Yeah. But anyway, the, the point here being is that it is interesting to me that the progressive option here is to say, Oh, you're a same sex attractive Catholic and you [00:06:00] decide to join the priesthood, which by the way, depending on the statistics, you're looking around at 50 percent of Catholic priests are same sex attracted, which is just a, a.
F*****g awesome cultural solution, by the way.
Baby: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: You're a culture that says you are not allowed to have same sex relationships, but if you happen to be same sex attracted, we have an institution for you where you can basically be an ethically sourced eunuch. So we don't need to worry about you being part of the religious hierarchy, accidentally having kids and then you showing nepotism towards those kids.
And we talk about this a lot more in some of our other content around this. But it seems like a good solution until you realize, yeah, but might that create like a weird thing around how they relate to young people under their care? And then you're like, Oh yes, I can see why the Bible warrants against allowing people to have leadership positions in the church.
If they are unmarried.
I love it when people are like, but Malcolm, you're [00:07:00] removing these people's choices and I'm like, no, you're removing their choices. They can choose to not be a Catholic priest. They can choose to not be a Catholic. They can choose to leave the Mormon faith. These things are all optional. No one is holding a gun to their head.
You are the one thing I disapprove of their choice to continue to stay in the Mormon church and live a Mormon lifestyle. If they are aroused by men.
I always loved when I point out I'm like, why is it that some arousal patterns mandate that you live a certain lifestyle, like live as a gay person,
And there's other arousal patterns, which seem just as biologically ingrained in people, just as inborn. When you look at the data where you would say you should never engage with that, no matter what ever.
And they'll say, okay. Okay. Okay. It becomes mandated that you live your life. That way, if it doesn't cause any negative social externalities and it doesn't hurt anyone.
And I'm like, oh, really interesting. So then you must've been super homophobic in anti-gay. During the aids epidemic, right? Because there was a [00:08:00] reason why a lot of religions ban this, you know, like it, it led to an extreme spread of disease.
That has killed an estimated 42.3 million people since its beginning. And in its early days spread.
Faster and further.
Because gay sex was beginning to become socially normalized. Now it doesn't only spread through gay sex, but you're basically logging. If you're saying that gay sex didn't contribute to the spread and the scope of the aids epidemic, as we can see by its decimation of the gay community.
Now, obviously the technology is different and you can have a different stance on it, but I'm asking during the aids epidemic, if that's the stance you're holding. And you're like, no, no, no, no, no.
Let's see. There's a special carve out for it during the aids epidemic. And it's like, Why. Because you have elevated this one form of arousal as holding some form of like additional religious significance that you're not allowed to question.
But before we go further here, what we're going to go into is I would actually argue from the sexuality statistics. [00:09:00] Is yes, you can be same sex attracted and not gay. And it's not even like a weird cope thing. It's just by the statistics, it doesn't make sense to categorize everyone who's same sex attracted as gay.
Because it sort of becomes arbitrary and you'll see this at the statistics. I mean it sound insane what i'm saying it and I should note i'm saying this as a person who isn't even a little bit same sex attracted I remember I had a lot of gay friends growing up. And I had a long conversation with a roommate who later came out as gay And he didn't understand why I would only watch Well, funnily, gay porn, i.
e. lesbian porn and I was like, I just like, cannot
Simone Collins: get
Malcolm Collins: aroused if there is a male anywhere near a pornographic scene that I'm looking at and that makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. It does. It
Simone Collins: does. I, I would imagine intuitively to me, it seems like if you're what, what was the word that was seen as very astute?
[00:10:00] Offensive super straight if you're like, yeah, if you're turned off by the sight of a penis. You're not going to want to see dicks in your porn.
Malcolm Collins: Actually, interesting, Simone. some of The guys who fall into this category, and you'll see this in the statistics we're about to go over, are not disgusted by the sight of a penis.
They're disgusted by the sight of a male form. This is why FUDA porn is so common in the hentai category. Oh, okay, wait, wait. So
Simone Collins: the, the, I'm definitely straight men are attracted to penises, but not attracted to the male form.
Malcolm Collins: Well, they're not necessarily disgusted by penises.
So they are okay with two women having sexes. If one of those women, this is what FUDA porn is for people who aren't aware has a penis because it allows them to, even by removing males from their porn in this entirely fantasy context, e P I V, penis and vagina sex with e porn, but have no man participating.
In that scene. [00:11:00] And actually, when we did the survey on this, and we asked men who were predominantly into FUDA porn if they saw these as trans women, they do not. Most men, at least in terms of their arousal patterns, see a trans woman. As a man. Even if they otherwise present very femininely. Which is, I think, really interesting, but let's let's get into this.
And I should clarify here that this is not what I am into. , I will let it slip at near the end of this discussion. If you ended up watching the whole video, when I am into though.
but it is really important to be asking these questions. Why are certain things being seen in pornography? For example, why is food pornography common? And you can say, well, why is it useful to understand something like this, about human arousal patterns? Here's why. Because as soon as you understand this, you can understand that many of the men who become convinced they're trans. May actually just have a [00:12:00] disgust reaction. To other men.
And so when they're looking at pornography or something like that, they have this disgust reaction. Whenever they see men, or when they look at a penis, they might have a disgust reaction to a penis ,
And they look at their mail form in a mirror and they go, Ooh, this is disgusting. , because evolution didn't have us. Evolve around mirrors. It never needed to not code to our own bodies to find our own bodies as gross looking. and they say, oh
I must not like being a man. When in reality, it's no for evolutionary reasons, you. I didn't want to be sexually engaging in an environment where other men were present.
And if you are for example, a young autistic person whose brain isn't fully developed. , you realize, oh, I am super disgusted by the sight of men. even, even when that man is myself, , therefore, , in this ultra categorizer mindset, I must actually be a woman.
When that's [00:13:00] not what's happening at all, it's just a normal part of male sexuality.
And so, because I took the time to dive into the world of pornography and look at what types of pornography are common and think about why these types of pornography might be common. I now have additional information on sexuality so that when I am teaching my kids about their sexuality and what they might expect from it, I can inform them about this potential pitfall and perhaps prevent , one of them who might otherwise have been convinced to transition that. No, this is just a normal part of male sexuality.
This is also why it's really important that we, as I've said in another videos, don't go around telling young girls that it's super weird for a girl to be in two scenarios where they are hurt or subjugated by a male, because it turns out that most girls are into that. And so if you teach your daughters that because you didn't take time to actually look into human sexuality, Then they're going to grow up thinking they're a sexual deviant, which makes it much easier for [00:14:00] them to engage in. Other or additional forms of sexual deviancy, because they're like, well, the cat's already out of the bag on that one. So it matters to engage with this information.
Let's do it.
All right. So, and I'm just going to be quoting for the pragmatist guide to sexuality. One of the books we wrote and which we did big series of surveys for. I need to break this down here.
So what we are arguing in this particular subsection is that the arousal pattern does not seem cued to males and females. It seems more cued to primary and secondary sex characteristics. So. If you're not sure what primary and secondary sex characteristics are, primary sex characteristics are the sex characteristics which are used directly in reproduction.
So this would be a penis or a vagina. Secondary sex characteristics are things cued to things other than direct reproduction. So this would be, um, what are the words I'm looking for here? Like a, a masculine or feminine form, a [00:15:00] masculine or feminine voice masculine or feminine. Like feet,
Simone Collins: hands, vocal tone, all sorts of, of general clues or themes.
It's almost like if, if if a penis or a vagina, they're the language. The secondary sexual characteristics are the accent, the lilt, the tonality, the music of the, of the language.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. The point here being is that it turns out that it's actually fairly frequent that an individual will find One particular gender's secondary sex characteristics arousing or repulsive and be a, have an inverse arousal or repulsion to the primary sex characteristics.
In other
Simone Collins: words, it's like each person gets several rolls of the dice and most. People's understanding of sexuality is you get one roll of the dice. You're into men or you're into women or you're [00:16:00] into both. Like the dice, like it's like, hang, it's like, you know, it fell on a corner and it won't fall one way or the other.
What, what really is happening is you're getting. Several rolls of the dice. You get to roll on vaginas. You get to roll on penises. You get to roll on butts. You get to roll on feet. You get to roll on shapes. You get to roll on hits. And like, you're getting all these things. Well, no, no. What I'm arguing
Malcolm Collins: is you're not getting several rolls of the dices.
You're getting two rolls of the dices. It's what gender primary sex characteristics do you want? Like what gender secondary sex characteristics do you like? So
Simone Collins: it's just,
Malcolm Collins: so
Simone Collins: we're every all day. So basically all primary and all secondary were correlated in the research generally
Malcolm Collins: correlated and bundled together.
I thought
Simone Collins: they were unbundled, but no, they're not done this. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Primary and secondary sex characteristics are heavily bundled in our data. Which is, oh, I'm thinking
Simone Collins: about just random arousal things, you know?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That's not what this is. This is, you know, I'm thinking about like
Simone Collins: pain shaming dominance.
Malcolm Collins: Those are not unbundled, [00:17:00] by the way. Those appear in bundled packages as well. We'll get into that in a separate video. Okay. Before we go further, we have to note here about our sexual theory that we lay out in the pragmatist guide to sexuality.
I won't go that far into it, but we argue that sexuality is not a spectrum from disinterest To arousal. It is a spectrum from arousal to disgust with disinterest in the middle. And that the arousal, the disgust feeling is literally operating off of the arousal system with a negative modifier attached to it or vice versa.
The two emotions are exactly the same. inverts of each other. When you are aroused, you look at something longer, you typically breathe inwards, your pupils typically dilate. When you are disgusted by something, you typically look away from it, you typically hold your nose or attempt to not breathe, and your pupils contract.
You try to get away from it if you're disgusted, you try to interact with it more if you're aroused. It is the same system, and the data [00:18:00] supports this in that when the system breaks you are much more likely to be aroused by something that , most people find disgusting or disgusted by something that most people find arousing than random.
Like you, for example, people don't find fire disgusting or arousing, but many people have a strong emotional reaction to fire or heights. Fetishes around fire or heights are incredibly rare. It's not any strong, naturally pre evolved emotion, but arousal to creepy crawlers, like having insects poured on your face.
That's actually a pretty common fetish arousal to the feces, urine, stuff like that, actually pretty common. So things that cause natural disgust are actually pretty common to create fetishes because you're basically getting the, Multiply by negative mixed up or multiply by positive mixed up at some point in the developmental process or genetic process.
All right. So do what we're saying here. Our study yielded some supporting evidence for this. It seems to be very common for an individual to find female primary sex characteristics, aversive, [00:19:00] but female secondary sex characteristics arousing, i. e. to find the feminine form arousing, but a vagina gross.
Our survey study showed that 30 percent of males and 32 percent of females who find the female form arousing find vaginas aversive. That is astronomically high. That's much bigger than the reported gay population. Which I think shows that this is just a better description of what's going on than gay or straight.
Our research also suggests that in the average person the secondary sex characteristic detecting system Has a much higher average quote unquote volume than the system detecting primary sex characteristics For example, the average guy will derive more arousal from the feminine form than they will from the vagina From our survey, 89 percent of men rate the female form at the highest level of arousal generation, while only 71 percent rate the vagina the same way.
We find it amusingly ironic that the organs used explicitly for reproduction are less cause [00:20:00] less arousal than secondary sex characteristics. We developed these two theories before running our survey. While there are ways we can twist our data to fit them as we did above, we must be honest and admit that our data really suggests that something a little more complicated is going on.
So I was wrong when I told Simone earlier that they are totally bundled.
They are loosely bundled.
in very weird ways, which we'll get into in a second.
For example, while the 30 percent of males and females we surveyed who found the feminine form arousing also found the sight of a vagina a turnoff, not a single survey participant who found the male form arousing were simultaneously turned off by penises.
Not a single participant who found the male form arousing were turned off by penises. However, 26 percent of men who found the site of a penis arousing simultaneously found the male form aversive. So there's [00:21:00] something weird going on with penises and vaginas specifically. If you find the male form arousing, you are always going to find penises arousing.
But if you prefer the female form, there's more than a 25 percent chance, more than a quarter chance, you're going to find penises. Penis is arousing, even if you're a male,
Baby: which is just fascinating. Like what
Malcolm Collins: the is going on here. Right? Like there's, there's clearly like a system at play in this way. I love researching this stuff because like psychologists, because they're so stuck in this gay straight dichotomy, they have missed that there is something more interesting going on.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I, it is so curious and I am so glad that Ayla, for example, is looking more into this, you know, they're actually. Yeah. People out there really diving deep with great, great sample sizes, too.
Malcolm Collins: And before I go further, this also I think shows how narrow and [00:22:00] religious the dichotomy of gay straight is as an identification.
And it's really an identity identification, no different from a religious identity identification. And I have no trouble with these Mormon men who are like, yeah, I'm same sex attracted, but I choose not to live that lifestyle. Why is that such a f*****g problem that these people are doing that? Like it's genuinely harder in a number of ways if you want to have a lot of kids to, they're like, Oh, you can have a lot of kids that you're in a same sex relationship.
Not in really, it's extremely expensive.
Simone Collins: Well, if you're a woman in a same sex relationship, you get double power. You've got extra bonus. If
Malcolm Collins: you're a man, it's extremely, extremely. It is, it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Simone Collins: yeah. We,
Malcolm Collins: we just. One of our kids godparents are two gay men and they've been trying to find a surrogate to work with them for half a decade at this point or something?
Simone Collins: Yeah, getting the right surrogate match, getting egg donors, [00:23:00] creating embryos. This is a, an often heartbreaking, incredibly frustrating, and very expensive process, and it's tough. And I can totally see why someone who is, you know, Pro needle list and broadly same sex attracted, but I think there's also this issue of it's it's weird that we would question people's chosen relationship formation when there are such things as political lesbians, for example, like, they're not questioned the same way.
Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: you're right. So for people who don't know what a political lesbian is, this was a phenomenon that was common, especially on Tumblr and within progressive circles where women would say, I just hate men so much. I will force myself to be lesbian, which is actually pretty easy for women, if you look at the data, because women's predominant arousal patterns are not tied to the gender of the partner.
They are tied to dominance and submission. But continue.
Simone Collins: Yeah. So the, that they're not controversial, but it is seen as incredibly [00:24:00] Taboo or hypocritical for a same sex attracted man to marry a woman like that seems weird, you know, there, there are many, many, many, even more logical reasons for a same sex attracted man to do that, not just religion, but also, yeah, I want to have kids or it's just Progressives
Malcolm Collins: treat this as like a sacred thing.
It's a sacred caste system for them. That's what I think is going on here, right? Like the urban monoculture sees gays that identify and take on a gay lifestyle as a deserving upper class. And they just cannot understand why anyone wouldn't want this designation because it made their actual goals in life, not arousal.
Easier, right? And they can be like, why don't they just adopt? Well, as one person said on our survey, our studies, when they learned that of adoptees, because we mentioned this and you have a face that's become like a meme in the community.
1, 1 percent of adoptees whose biological parents had 3 or more offenses were responsible for 30 [00:25:00] percent of convictions among adoptees. The 1 percent of adoptees whose parents had 3 or more convictions. We're responsible for 30 percent of the offenses among adoptees.
You were like, Oh, when you heard those things, which is the, the, the genetics that are correlated with the type of person who you might adopt are going to play out in, in their childhood and in their adulthood.
And they can make it, it can provide a good reason why somebody might be like, I really want to have genetically my own kids. I really want to choose who their parents are. Yeah, and I get that. And I think that you denying someone the right to do that when you as a heterosexual male, for example, that's just natural for you to be able to do that for free.
And you're like, oh, well, they should just stomach that.
Baby: It's like, why should
Malcolm Collins: they have to stomach that roll of the dice? Right? Like they should be able to have kids the way that they want to have kids. Yeah, [00:26:00]
Simone Collins: that we. It seemed to in our society for some forms of sexual attraction, like some forms of sexual attraction mean, ah, okay, this means that you now have this identity and you're part of this community and you need to, you need to adopt these accents and have these idols and that is going to be your life now, whereas there are other ones where it's like, Oh, that's your arousal pattern?
Okay, well, never tell anyone. Suppress it. This is evil. You are evil for holding this. Whatever you do, do not Tell anyone about this, don't do it, don't think about it, like, suppress it, you know, turn it off. This is
Malcolm Collins: why in our culture, we've actually taken a pretty and I think we'll get to more stats in a second, but I think the solution for pronatalism, the correct solution to get through this particular crucible, Is to completely disintermediate arousal and childbearing and relationship structure.
Simone Collins: That's the thing. That's the other thing I wanted to bring up is that the [00:27:00] idea that we are building marriages, lifelong partnerships that are really much more about aligned values and, and complimentary skill sets. On sexual attraction and not the 99. 9 percent of the other things that you need to make your lifelong partnership work is so insane to me.
And it's not
Malcolm Collins: gross.
Simone Collins: It is both. It's gross and, and, and, and very illogical. And
Malcolm Collins: it also removes the urban monoculture is biggest hook. If you can tell your kids, I don't care what. Porn you're into, what fan fictions you're into, what shipping you're into.
Speaker 11: Can't help it, I just think that they would make such a good pair. In canon, I don't care. I ship it. I don't care. I know [00:28:00] that they are siblings, but I think there's something more. If she were dating that guy, they'd be banging, I am sure.
Twins just can't really be that bad. You're on the cannon ground. I'm up in crack ship's face. Let's start a shipping war.
Don't care if I get hate. Don't like my pairing. Well, then you can Hit the bricks. This is my OP. I'll go down with this.
Malcolm Collins: All I care about is the way that you choose to live your life.
When you de stigmatize arousal patterns and you say your arousal patterns are accepted, whatever they are. So long as you do not act on them, and you live a virtuous life, despite whatever arousal patterns you have, I think that that removes one of the major hooks the left can use to get into your kids, and pull them out of society.
And if you want to, and you can watch our video on masturbation where we [00:29:00] talk more about this, if you want to remove anything that's anti biblical in this, you can just say, Okay, well then, only porn that is drawn, like hentai or something like that, or AI generated. Because then you're not looking at a woman other than your wifeless lust.
And by the way, there is nothing in the Bible about women not masturbating.
Simone Collins: There is nothing in the Bible about hentai. I checked.
Malcolm Collins: You have
Simone Collins: nothing in the Bible.
Pentime?
Malcolm Collins: Not there. So, you know. Fair game.
And by the way the people use the story of, oh, Nan, to try to argue that God is against masturbation is like psychotic and disgusting. If you are not familiar with this story, there is a law in Jewish tradition that you are supposed to. , if , somebody dies.
They're closest genetic relative their sibling. Is supposed to sleep with their wife to get them pregnant. So that that family's line can continue, , which is actually really important to that woman because , are you single woman without any kids?
And this society was quite . Difficult. , and so [00:30:00] this guy was commanded to sleep with his dead brother's wife to give that guy a continuing legacy, but rather than raising a kid, he would sleep with the wife. It appears he would actually have sex with her. Use her as a. ING Oni hole, but then come outside of her to ensure she didn't get pregnant. This has nothing to do with masturbation. , it had to do with somebody psychotically using his brother's wife as an only hole and not getting her pregnant.
And not allowing his brother to have the legacy that he was legally and religiously bound to do.
Well, I would note, and as you pointed out, the period where the type of porn that the Bible warns against is actually fairly a short period where you could have been looking at a picture of a real woman and not a drawn or AI generated woman.
You're looking at a period of maybe like 80 years. Where that maybe not even widely available, maybe 30 years in all of human history which is pretty wild there. And again, if you want to see our video on the Bible and masturbation, [00:31:00] you can watch it. If you've been told that the Bible says masturbation is bad, that's like a lie. Like it's a big lie. If you actually, the Bible even talks about like emissions and categorizes them and the emissions associated with masturbation are considered the same type of negative as having a period.
Wait, how many categories of emissions are there? There must be the overnight
Simone Collins: ones that
Malcolm Collins: happen. No, there's, there's diseased emissions, which create a longer actually the Bible interestingly categorizes pent up emissions. So like people who haven't masturbated in a long time, it's having a uniquely like bad type of emission that requires additional yeah.
Volutions and cleansing and stuff like that. This is the old Testament stuff. So it may not be relevant anymore. Okay. Wow. Well, basically people made up a bunch of rules about sexuality and then claim they were in the Bible when they're not in the Bible.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. Anyway, continue. What's more are assumptions and, and again, people can say, well, doesn't the Bible say all this stuff [00:32:00] around gay sex?
No, it says stuff around you participating in gay sex. You shall not sleep with a man as you would a woman. It doesn't say you can't check off to gay porn.
Specifically here, I'm referring to gay porn that is drawn or AI generated and doesn't use real people.
It says that you shouldn't sleep with a man as you would a woman. That's two totally different things. If one of my kids was like, Oh, I want to jack off to gay porn.
I'm like, well, great. The Bible says nothing about that. Just don't marry a guy. Now, this is what I would recommend. Would I be okay if they really wanted to marry a guy? I mean, it depends on the technology we have in that period, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But I think that the number one thing is, is, is having kids passing their culture onto the next generation.
Simone Collins: It's not going to be a problem to marry dude. I'm super okay with guys marrying guys, especially like if they find some weird, Some way to have a lot of kids. It's more, and honestly, we're artificial moon technology is coming along. I think it's going to be okay [00:33:00] for our, any of our sons who are thusly inclined.
But I'm just saying, hold on. We got to
Malcolm Collins: go on with the statistics. We're getting,
Simone Collins: what
Malcolm Collins: were you going to say?
Simone Collins: Well, there, there are worlds and scenarios in which it would make more sense, even for two straight men to couple up and raise a family together. Then it is to, for straight men to pair off with women.
Like there, I could even see society getting so toxic and so fractured whereby straight men just have to swear off women entirely because they've gone completely off the deep end on average, you know, like there's just, there is a world in which it makes sense to have a dual income male family. It's just, I don't know.
There, I feel like there also have been a lot of gay power couples. You know, who just they're both economically and career wise, very successful. I just I'm just arguing that there is probably a world, not a world far from our timeline in which it would be [00:34:00] from a fertility standpoint advantageous.
for two straight men to enter a lifelong partnership to raise children successfully. Okay. Well,
Malcolm Collins: and, and, you know, you mentioned that, but like, even think about the MGTOW community. This is what I mean about disintermediating sexuality from child rearing. You could have two like ultra Chad alphas deciding to live together and raise kids together, but f*****g times another
Simone Collins: living.
You're describing Andrew Tate and his brother.
Malcolm Collins: Right. I, I basically am there, but the point that I'm making is this doesn't have to be like gay. It could actually be the opposite of gay if you're doing this. And you're taking this brother! I mean You should sleep around a ton while you are raising kids with someone who you respect, who you know isn't gonna The point being is there are alternate ways of structuring things that are that can work.
They're not what we've chosen, but that isn't to say that they can't work. work. So anyway, to keep going here, what's more, our assumption that secondary sex characteristics are all operating on the same sex system may be wrong as [00:35:00] 15 percent of women who reported to find the female form arousing in our surveys also reported to see breasts as an active turnoff.
And yet we don't see this happening in males. It would seem that humans may have dozens of independent arousal systems, which may or may not cloister to what you were saying here. Weirder still, some of the arousal systems seem to cloister in only one gender. For example, in men, arousal from the female form and breasts are tied together, but in women, it is common to assume arousal from one and not the other.
And keep in mind how high these numbers are, that 15 percent of women, huge, like way more than the gay population, find the female form arousing, but breasts actively disarousing. That's weird. That's interesting, yeah.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay, now we're going to go into like the later section where we go like deep into the data on this.
Okay. But first, let's get the conventional interpretation of this out of the way. Typically, quote unquote, gay is a method of self identification for [00:36:00] individuals who are more aroused by stimuli they associate with individuals who identify as the same gender as themselves. In 2017, 4. 5 percent of Americans identified as gay.
This 4. 5 percent number was reported by Gallup. poll, and we understand it is much lower than most people think. As the same poll showed, Americans think the gay identifying population is 10 to 23%. For information on this phenomenon, see the paper, Not Threat, but Threatening Potential Causes and Consequences of Gay Innumeracy, which found overestimation of the size of the gay population to be common among groups that see them as a threat.
A more updated breakdown indicates Oh, sure. It's also, I'm sure, common among Multiprogressives and gay people, a more updated breakdown of this phenomenon. shows it isn't subsiding. The Gallup article titled, America is still greatly overestimate the U. S. gay population shows this. In our survey, only 3 percent of the participants identified [00:37:00] as gay and 8.
75 percent identified as bisexual. Our number is a bit low because we removed trans and gender fluid participants from the data set, which identified predominantly as gay or bisexual, which our surveys trans and gender fluid participants added back in, we get around the right number identifying as gay.
So now for the crazy stuff before we go into the individual like scatter plots, which I find really interesting on this. 10 percent of males find the naked male form aversive, but penises to be arousing. Of the men, so way more than the gay population, but literally like 3x the gay population, of men who find the naked female form arousing, a whopping 30 percent find the sight of a vagina to be actively , aversive, which just nobody likes vaginas.
That's basically what you see. We all, including
Simone Collins: women which I really relate to. I, I was, I was encouraged as a teenage girl You know, you're going to learn about puberty to like, hold a mirror down there. I've never seen down [00:38:00] there. Not once in my life. Cause I don't want to, I feel like it's, it's like staring into the maw of that, that monster in star Wars.
Well, I do not like, I don't
Baby: like it.
Simone Collins: Yes. That's like, that's what I'm afraid. I'm going to see if I look down there, I do not like it just so disgusting to me. So disgusting. So I really get that. And I think that's, I think it's another one of those things of Like just generally people like penises generally vaginas are like, you know,
Malcolm Collins: right?
So to continue going yeah, only one percent of males who find the female form arousing simultaneously find breasts to be a turnoff, but 15 of females who find the female form arousing find breasts to be a turnoff In general, we find female attraction to the male form correlates strongly to attraction to penises.
While 16. 5 percent of women who took our survey identified as gay or bisexual, a larger 30 percent of women who took our survey found both vaginas and the naked [00:39:00] female form arousing. Though, so, 16. 5 percent are gay or bisexual, but 30 percent find women hot in every way. Though oddly, only 18 percent of women found both Breasts and vaginas to be arousing.
Isn't that interesting?
Simone Collins: Yeah
Malcolm Collins: It's like wild. I'm sorry. It's either breasts or vaginas. Okay. So this this seems to be the way that Interesting. So it appears that many women who find the female form and breasts arousing Don't identify themselves as bisexual because they find vaginas. Repulsive and they assume that these things are correlated when they're not
Simone Collins: Yeah, because we've been completely But in this entire field of research for our entire lives,
Malcolm Collins: like wild, like sexuality, researchers haven't picked up on this.
I feel like the entire field of sexuality research is such like retarded children at this point
Simone Collins: part of it, though. I feel like there's so much inertia, [00:40:00] not just because of how academia works, but because in our society, So much of someone's identity now is tied to one's chosen or Yeah, because if we were to begin pulling that down and and as this show is that you describe right this show comes out and People are like what do you mean?
And that's because it's it's pulling at this very scary Fundamental reality shifting concept.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. All right, though only six percent of men who took our survey identified as gay or bisexual 11. 4 percent of the men who took our survey find both the male form and penises arousing. So, so, the are totally straight thing, this is another thing to note.
When we're talking about this population as a genuinely discriminated population in our country, i. e. men who find the male form in females arousing, they are likely As big a population [00:41:00] as the percent of men and identify as straight, they are likely as big a population as the people in our country who identify as LGBT.
That is absolutely wild.
Simone Collins: So what is this? The, the, the dark matter of, of gay men, the, the, are
Malcolm Collins: totally straight watchers for people who don't know are totally straight. It was a subreddit for men who identified as straight, but like to masturbate to males. And I'm like, I'm f*****g okay with that. You want to identify a straight straight is about how you choose to live, you know, do what you want, right?
You know,
Simone Collins: what's really, what's really interesting too, is that no one bats an eye when a lot of women online start adopting like, so drag culture is, is a big trickle down culture generator, right? No one bats an eye when people want to be culturally gay, even when they're not gay, because. Gay culture is super fun.
You know, I don't know [00:42:00] what to say, but yet, you know, somehow you, you can't choose to not adopt it if you have one arousal pathway that you've no control over. I think that's really interesting that like, yeah, no, everyone's welcome to adopt gay culture. You may not be able to pull it off, but you can, you can try.
You're,
Malcolm Collins: you're, this is going back to you. Your entire life should not be oriented around getting off as easily as possible. Like, it is so weird that for progressives, you try to, like It's not a good look. It doesn't look the way you think it looks. Yeah, you don't, you don't need to build your marriage, your relationship, everything you do around that.
And I'd ask you, Mr. Progressive, who's here being like, No, you absolutely need to build your entire Mr. Strawman, Malcolm, let's be Mr. Strawman, no, no, no, but I know there's somebody watching this who feels this way.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Is there literally nothing that you're turned on by that would be deleterious to society if you engaged in it?[00:43:00]
Literally nothing? Oh, and you're like, oh, well that's a different category of thing. Why is that a different category of thing? Why? For an individual who wants to have lots of kids, it may be deleterious to marry a man. Why is that a different thing?
It's a different thing because you want to, and there's this sick pleasure that I see progressives get off on, is labeling men who are in happy marriages and have lots of kids as gay. They're like, he's gay. I bet he's so gay. It's like, so, so, so pathetic, right? Like they engage in this sort of homophobic behavior.
That they claim to be against because they want to control the way that people live and force them into specific lifestyles and relationships that they have chosen not to engage with. And you can't deal with the fact that they have chosen. to [00:44:00] say, yes, this arouses me, but I will not base my life around it.
Anyway, thoughts before I go further?
Simone Collins: No, proceed.
Malcolm Collins: Male arousal in response to breasts seemed to correlate with arousal in response to the female form. 87 percent of our male respondents reported both to be arousing. There is a similar correlation in females in response. If a female survey respondent reported finding the male form arousing, it was very likely she would also find the Penises to be arousing.
71 percent finding both to be arousing. But keep in mind, that's not like 100%. That means around 30 percent of females who found the male form arousing and identify as straight do not find penises arousing. Not a single female in our survey group reported vaginas to be arousing, and the naked female form aversive. Very interesting. 7 percent of the female study population found the naked male form arousing, but the sight of a vagina aversive.
6 percent of our female respondents found both breast arousing [00:45:00] and the vagina aversive. 2 percent of the female study takers found the sight of a vagina arousing, but breast to be aversive. 36 percent of the female we polled found both the naked female form and the vagina aversive. And you know what?
I'll just be posting these while we're talking because it's much easier than going over them in detail. But they are the charts that show the female breasts arousing, naked female form arousing, female vagina arousing, etc. Because I found that to be really interesting. And oh, now we can get to size.
You want to get into size here? Penis size? Penis and breast size. What do people prefer?
Simone Collins: Oh, gosh. Yeah, this classic old favorite of ours.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and I point out here, just remember again, that only 3 percent of our participants identified as gay, and only 8. 75 percent identified as bisexual. So these numbers are of [00:46:00] mostly females and males who do not identify as gay or bisexual, okay?
Female, what breast size do you find most arousing in women? I'm just putting this on screen here. The statistic I find most interesting is I do not find breasts arousing at all. Despite the 3%, only 1 percent of men, this includes gay and bi men find breasts, not arousing at all. Pretty much all males, whether they're gay, straight, bi, whatever, find breasts arousing.
But here's what's interesting in women. The percent that do not find breasts not arousing at all is only 23%.
If, if finding breasts arousing makes you gay or bi, almost every woman is gay or bi.
Simone Collins: Well, I mean, that's also kind of what the findings indicate though, that Most women are at least, [00:47:00] they don't, they're more attracted to dominance versus submission than they are attracted to any particular primary or secondary sexual characteristics.
So for women, it's kind of a misnomer to be like, are you gay or straight? It's more like, what power dynamic are you into? It's more their orientation.
Malcolm Collins: Absolutely. All right. So, okay, here's, here's a fun one. Penis size in men. What do you prefer? Okay, so I'm putting this on screen here. But again, I think the I do not find penises arousing at all statistics to be the most interesting.
What percent of men don't find penises arousing at all? 69 percent appropriate. So in a world where, where, where 3 percent and this is a below average 3 percent of our participants identified as gay, 8. 7 percent identified as bisexual. A good 30 percent of men found penises arousing.
Simone Collins: I mean, you know, there's just, there's so much, I just, there's so much more.
I want to say user friendly than vaginas. I [00:48:00] just, I mean, look at, look at like.
Penises correlate with the attraction sphere and vaginas correlate with the disgust sphere in my world. I'm sorry to come across as to such a vagina here in this video, but like when you think about it, watch, watch the movie Alien, right? What, what, what is the alien, but inverted, like a prolapsed vagina?
It's just like all mucus, all just, you know, like vaginas are so easy to get
Malcolm Collins: disgust. The thing it shoots out of its mouth is clearly supposed to be reminiscent of a penis. I know, but it's goopy, you
Simone Collins: know, sorry. I don't know. Anyway, cut this out. We don't need, we don't need my sex negativity in this room.
This is a
Malcolm Collins: sex awesome space. I think people need to be affirmed in having these sex negative opinions. In their sex negativity? [00:49:00] No, no, sex, sex negative people need to like, Rise up and rise up. What I mean is they need to understand that their perspectives are, and I hate to use this term valid, but that doesn't mean that they need to impose them on other people.
No,
Simone Collins: that's so true. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Well, and, and the, the so important thing and why I love the pragmatist guide to sexuality is a book so much. Is it like the message at hammer's home again and again, is your arousal and discuss pathways are not an indication of moral good or bad. Your logic is that indication.
Yeah. You decide for yourself what is good or bad in this world? What is moral? If something disgusts you, that doesn't mean it's evil. And I think that's a big problem is a lot of a lot of women are turned on by violent, erotic material. And then a portion of women are like super turned off by it.
And then they can't understand. That while not morally condoning this material, some women just kind of want to watch it and [00:50:00] they're like, no one can ever watch this and it's evil and blah, blah, blah. And just, just so many things get screwed up. You know, like a lot of people are turned on by the concept of R.
A. P. E. like for real, it's a big turn on. That doesn't mean that they condone it or ever want it to happen. It would be terrible.
Malcolm Collins: We asked how much, just so there was no confusion. About whether this was a fantasy or not a fantasy, we go, how much do you like the fantasy or role play of rape? And then immediately after that, we make how much do you get turned on by the idea of actually being raped?
There's a huge number of women. I can't remember what I had to impose.
So for role-play of grape, it was four females. 38% males, 16%. , and that is being on the receiving end of it. , in terms of actually it happening to you, males, 23% females, 5%. And if you're looking at, , just general statistics on this. You will find that. Around 4% to [00:51:00] 5% of reported great cases. , report women. Feeling physiological arousal during the process.
So, this is wild. I was looking for the text on the grapes statistics in the book.
And I've found infection. I had forgotten about. That breaks them down by attractiveness rating. And so this is subjective attractiveness rating. How attractive an individual sees themselves as being, but unattractive men taking our survey were much more likely to report finding grape role-play arousing with 66% of the lowest level attractiveness.
Finding it. I turn on contrasted was 10% of average men and 14% of Hotman.
The same is true for females, but to a lesser extent was 44% of the least attractive category of women reporting arousal. At the idea of role-playing being graped contrasted with 22% of women. For average attractiveness, we see similar results for the thought of actual grape with 20% of women in the least attractive category, finding it arousing and only 3% of women in the average category, finding it arousing the same as seen among respondents for our male [00:52:00] study participants with 50% in the least attractive category, finding grape arousing, and only. 2% of men in the attractive category, finding grape arousing.
Simone Collins: Yeah, disturbing. Deeply disturbing, but, but not like because there are evolutionary reasons why Surviving women who were kind of okay with this happening to them, you know, why there were more surviving women than the ones who were like, I will die before I let this happen to me because they died and they didn't reproduce as it just so happens.
So, yeah, I mean, there, there are reasons why this happens and it's not great, but it's what it is, you know, and just accepting that, accepting reality, being pragmatic about it is the key. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I really, one of the things that the guy kept mentioning in the video, this progressive guy watching this video, these Mormons who are like totally okay with this.
And he's like, just so disgusted and judgmental of them. They are, he's like, they're so supportive for non supportive of being gay. Right? And it's like, no. [00:53:00] What they are is supportive of these people's choices, and I look forward of the day life choices that you don't support the day where we enter a society in which people can talk about the things that arouse them, and that can be completely divorced from the way they're expected to live their life.
Yeah, one of them. Weirdest things I've heard about the urban monoculture. And it's so true because it's almost like you're expected to like, go out and search for all the things that can turn you on, even if you would never want to know if something could turn you on, even if you're like, for example, like, map stuff, like minor, why would you ever want to know if that would turn you on?
There's. There is some kind of insinuation that people should be exploring that? Well, no, there, there basically is. It's like, you should go through every category of porn. There's basically something that a lot of, like, young people are doing. Nope. Explore your sexuality. Explore your sexuality. That's what they say.
You gotta
Simone Collins: turn it off. [00:54:00]
Malcolm Collins: Michael, light
Simone Collins: switch, just switch,
Malcolm Collins: it's a neat little Mormon trick.
Speaker 7: Turn it off, like a light switch, it's a cool little Mormon trick. Really, what's so hard about that?
Malcolm Collins: I'll put that in. Yeah, that's a good clip there. Right, like you, but the thing is, is like, you don't even need to know if you haven't been exposed to something, you might not know that it would ever arouse you, right?
Like you don't actually have a mandate to explore this stuff. It doesn't matter. It's genetic scars. If it's something you didn't have a choice over, it's not part of who you are. Genetic scars. It's a great
Simone Collins: way of putting it. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Are the things you choose to be.
Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah, no, 100 percent separate your sexuality with, it's not like, yeah, we, so we don't marry people based on our tastes in food, for example, you know, if we should see [00:55:00] them as just as, as, as connected, I'm going to get that traditionally reproducing.
With someone who disgusted you would be really difficult, but we have the technology to not None of our children were produced through sex. We have sex, but none of our children were produced through that process. They were produced through IVF because I am super infertile. There are ways around you not necessarily wanting to bang your partner each night.
And also there are amazing alternatives. To using another person to sexually gratify herself. And you know, especially now with AI combined AI with like really good sex toys, and I don't know, I just don't know why a quote unquote loveless marriage is a bad thing anymore, considering where we are in society with technology, with AI [00:56:00] and with the clear need for much more pragmatic and practical.
Mutually beneficial relationships life partnerships.
Malcolm Collins: Absolutely. Yeah. And I also note here. And I somewhat tipped my hand on this, but it's 1 of the reasons I feel strongly about this, which is to say that if I am somebody who is a straight male, who is aroused by, you know, extreme dom like, I'm an extremely dominant straight male.
Like, I'm overly straight and overly dominant in my arousal patterns to the extent where if I am presented with supernormal stimuli of dominance or straightness, I eat. Here's an example of super normal stimuli to women. Having sex is a super normal stimuli for a guy to be engaging it. Right? Like this is all women just like extra way.
It's funny. Somebody mentioned it's a fairly normal thing for guys to be into because I remember one comedian. He's like, you know, you ask [00:57:00] women what they're into and they're like, Oh, I'm into like X weird thing or I'm into Y weird thing. And for a minute, it's like more women. I want one woman. Two women, good.
Three women, better. Four women, better. More women is better. And then also more dominance, right? Like more dominance, better. To the extent where if I treated a real person that way, it would be deleterious to them outside of very controlled like role play scenarios.
It And I am able to say, I don't need to structure my life around this because I realize it's deleterious and not good for daily living.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, just how much time it takes, and it's one thing to be a dink couple that just chooses to make this your hobby. But Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they're just, they're way more efficient ways to do it.
Even if you want to maximize your amount of pleasure, including sexual gratification, it's easier to do it without a human, because just when you involve a human in it, then there's [00:58:00] just this additional layer, all the coordination and the prep and the cleanup and the aftercare, and it's just like, can we not find a better way to do that?
Malcolm Collins: Well, here's the, here's a great way to put this right. Is would I be more aroused? Like if I was arousal maxing my life. To have a 24, seven, like live in slate. This is something that some couples do. They structure their relationship with a wife. Yeah. Look up Gorian
Simone Collins: forums, G O R E A.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, I would be more aroused by that lifestyle.
Would I be more happy in that lifestyle? No, I want somebody who I respect and can have conversations with and enjoy talking to and who can push me and who can work and who can earn money. And they don't need to like dote on all day or like had some sort of weird master slave sexual interaction. No, I, yeah, honestly,
Simone Collins: I, and this is, this is another thing that came up in the sexuality book though, is that when it comes down to it, not a lot of people [00:59:00] want to be, you know, Super dominant because it's a lot of work.
It is a lot of work. You don't want to
Malcolm Collins: manage that. Yeah, it's a lot of energy. I can be like I prefer this in a narrative context, right? But in my actual f ing life, that would
Simone Collins: be a nightmare! To have to maintain frame all the time. Exhausting. Exhausting.
Malcolm Collins: Well, and that's the thing, you can have a frame that would be most arousing for you, that isn't your f ing frame.
In personality and you're like,
Baby: yeah,
Malcolm Collins: but, but with the urban monoculture, it's like, Oh no, you'd be most aroused by having a live in slate. You got to do that. That's the only option for you. It's like, no, it's the only option for you. You can say, Oh, I don't need to, I can either make that some sort of like role play scenario, but even that would take a long time to set up.
Like, why not just porn, right? Like, why do I need to. Why
Simone Collins: not porn? [01:00:00] No,
Malcolm Collins: it's Here's the
Simone Collins: thing though, and here's our glimmer of hope, Malcolm, is that it's I don't know, maybe it's not a glimmer of hope. Society seems to have discovered this. Have you seen rates of sex recently? People have just We're in a post sex society.
I think now we've gone half the way there, right? Okay. So we we've gone to the point where we've acknowledged we don't need other people to sexually gratify ourselves. Now we have to go the rest of the way of, Oh, but we should still probably form life partnerships with people and raise families because it's, it's really.
Fun, cool thing to do. And you know, everyone's better off for it. So
absolutely.
Yeah, just let's just put just separate them all. Diverse it completely. Okay, done. I'm glad we talked this through. Society fixed. I love you
Malcolm Collins: society fixed. I love you. You're a great wife. What am I having for dinner tonight?
Simone Collins: If I can find bread. It seems to have disappeared. A grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup. Or maybe if you're up for a quesadilla with tomato soup. Or I can [01:01:00] do potstickers, which I think I still have. Quesadilla
Malcolm Collins: with tomato soup? quesadilla in ages. A quesadilla? Or as our children say, Quesadilla!
I love you to death, Simone.
Simone Collins: We still need to, oh my God. I was thinking about like what we, we need to take this out. But I,
I was thinking like. Well, if we had a merch shop, because I was looking at other channels, similar to us and a lot of them had merch and I was like, well, we would only ever do like an Etsy shop with like really custom stuff.
And like, someone would reach out to us about t shirts and I'm like, well, obviously we'd make a of your and spell
that in the shop. Amazing. It's a great . It is. It is perfect.
I mean, I've, I've, you know, like in all the porn I've seen, I've never seen a that I thought looks better than yours.
You're
Malcolm Collins: not the only woman who has noted that. I
Simone Collins: know that, and so I'm like, well, we could sell a Malcolm in our merch shop. You're so
[01:02:00] creepy, Simone! It's sad that only I am enjoying it, you know, like it's it's a loss to humanity. So I was like, you know, I mean, if anything, people would go to the merch shop just to see the and then maybe they might buy one of our artists and shirts or you know, handmade paper planes by Octavian, which he would certainly want to list on the shop.
So.
Malcolm Collins: But I, I, I, I, what I love about this in this conversation is it, and I think it's where we need to go with the society. We need to both de stigmatize sexuality and decouple it from moral mandates and identity. I think once that is done, the left has nothing it can use to get your kids. No, no, no, no. Yeah.
The left can't get you.
Simone Collins: You know, if you take the identity out of politics and you don't have identity politics anymore, I'm like, gosh, suddenly we returned to the. [01:03:00] The, the age of debates and, you know, rational conversation. And wouldn't that be amazing. So yeah, again, society fixed. I will go make your, your dinner.
Love
you.
Love you.
Make sure you guys.
I'm gonna switch us to the right sides
Malcolm Collins: for our autistic audience,
Simone Collins: you know what Last night. I was watching Titan line up gummies in a little Neat line and then, and I realized she's coming over to the fold, Malcolm. Oh,
Malcolm Collins: no, we've got another one. Another systematizer. A royal flush of autistic children.
I
Simone Collins: hope so. Honestly. So far, all of
Malcolm Collins: our kids old enough to be diagnosed with autism have been. So, and has Simone. So this is, this is what I get for choosing a hottest.
Simone Collins: Hottest. Autismal children.
Malcolm Collins: Autismal. I go for Autism, Hottest. Actually, I [01:04:00] like
Baby: Hottest. H A U T
Malcolm Collins: I S T S, right? No, well, that's the way they call it, like, like Hottie Culture or whatever, but like, it's meant to be.
Hottie Culture! The person who coined it I don't know if they've said it online, but they are a famous friend of ours that I really like and she coined it to mean hot women who are artistic and all hang out in the community together.
Simone Collins: I still like Autismal. But whatever. Oh, so she actually meant hot as in H O T, not H A U T.
Yeah, she means the hot
Malcolm Collins: smart autistic woman. That's what he was talking about.
Simone Collins: Well, I thought you were referring to H A U T
Malcolm Collins: E. But you would never use
Simone Collins: French, of course. What was I thinking? Yes, go on.
Speaker 6: You don't have to do a thing, [01:05:00] a thought can be a thought without anyone seeing. A kink can be a kink without anyone knowing. You don't have to do a thing, I support that you won't. I don't want to dress up like a girl, but when you do that in front of kids, man, it makes me want to hurl. You don't have to do a thing.
You don't have to do a thing. There is more to life than what turns you on. Sure the path is harder, but we both mean it through this barter. You don't You don't have to do a thing
There is more to life than feelin good There is more to [01:06:00] life than havin would This is somethin we once understood You don't have to do a thing
So go ahead and fall in love Build on earth what's above Go out there and find a wife Sex Sex is not the point of life, you don't have to do a thing.
Go ahead and fall in love, build on earth what's above. Go out there and find a wife, sex is not the point of life. You don't have to do a [01:07:00] thing. You don't have to do a thing. There is more to life than what turns you on. Sure the path is harder, but we've got meaning through this border. You don't have to do a thing.
There
is more to life than feeling good. There is more to life than having would. This is something we once understood. You don't have to do a thing.
So go with it. Go ahead and fall in love, build on earth what's above. Go out there and [01:08:00] find a wife, sex is not the point of life. You don't have to do a thing.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
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Memetic Weaponization of Teen Girl Rage: The Tragic Case of Natalie Rupnow
19 déc.· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this episode, we delve into the case of Natalie Rapanau, a 15-year-old involved in a tragic school shooting. Through the lens of her recently discovered manifesto, we discuss the misconceptions surrounding her identity and ideologies. We explore her background, motivations, and the broader societal implications of her actions. Along the way, we touch on topics like youth nihilism, the impact of familial structures, and the influence of internet culture. Join us as we untangle the details and reflect on what this means for future generations.
[00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone! Today, we are going to be doing a deep dive on what some FemCell Shooter, because of a Incorrect and forged manifesto that was shared around shortly afterwards. What? Where she, like, she subscribed to FemCell Ideology but if you dig deeper, it was pretty obvious that it was forged, like, if you actually go into it, and the real manifesto, I was able to find it after a lot of research.
Oh, so there is a
Simone Collins: manifesto, it's just that the wrong manifesto was shared at first.
Malcolm Collins: Yes, because she idiotically forgot to make her document public before going on the mass shooting. Oh.
Simone Collins: Oh. That's like when you accidentally forward an email to the wrong person, you know?
Malcolm Collins: So her boyfriend had to make it public, which I think really blows the idea of her being a fem cell out of the water I through, because we'll go through a, a few of the longer snippets from her manifesto.
Okay. It'll be pretty clear that she is. Probably [00:01:00] closest to a four channer in ideology, like a stereotypical four channer very black billed. And I would say that this shooting was downstream of an extreme black pilling of the youth, who just don't believe there's hope in anything. Or that the older generation understands them or has any sort of plans for them or any good advice for them.
And yeah, I agree with that across the board in terms of I, I think that we are at risk of many more such shootings like this. If we allow this rampant nihilism to continue to spread, and it is being pushed by the newest update of the urban monoculture, not the update from a couple of generations ago, not the one that has affected most adults but the new one sort of follows the, the nothing strategy from never ending story.
People have begun to lose their hopes, and forget their dreams. So the nothing grows stronger. It's the emptiness that's left. It is like a [00:02:00] despair, destroying this world. I have been trying to help it. Because people who have no hopes are easy to control.
Simone Collins: I can't remember that. All I remember from never ending story is, is coming away with this oppressive feeling of depression and. Nihilism. What, what is, what, what is that in what do you just
Malcolm Collins: is, is it those without hope are easy to control?
Simone Collins: Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, and that's checked out. That seems to be what's going on.
Okay.
Malcolm Collins: When you, when you get rid of human creativity and human ingenuity and hope for a better future, even though I've like, literally never, I actually sat down with Simone and it's like, you know, we may. Live to a post work era. Like when we are old, it might be that only work is happening voluntarily, which is pretty wild to think about.
Simone Collins: There
Malcolm Collins: is a lot of reason to be optimistic about the [00:03:00] future. But I wouldn't have been optimistic about her place in it because she seemed exceedingly stupid. And we'll go into that as well.
Simone Collins: Wow. Okay. Fightin words.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. Not really. When you, when you read it, you're like, okay, I know nothing about this.
So yeah, please bring me up to
Simone Collins: speed.
Malcolm Collins: Okay, great. And the thing that will surprise people just first, I'll put some pictures on screen here of her is she is white. And for a 15 year old girl, it looks like she would have grown up to be a fairly attractive woman.
Simone Collins: She's going through her awkward teenage phase at this point.
Malcolm Collins: No, I'm not. I'd say probably top 10 percent attractiveness in terms of women. Okay.
Simone Collins: So yeah, she wasn't deformed. She wasn't, and she had a boyfriend and like, so she wasn't She was
Malcolm Collins: thin she was, had a decent looking face. And again, This is all in the context of I am trying to judge a 15 year old's future attractiveness not me talking about how attractive she was.
I think you're also
Simone Collins: trying to point out, like, is this because she was incredibly [00:04:00] ugly in some way that would lead her to be bullied and extra blackpilled by the world because she wasn't attractive? But that clearly wasn't the issue. Yeah, that clearly was a technical issue with her appearance in a way that could have radicalized her.
It had to have been something else is what you're saying.
Malcolm Collins: She comes off and you'll see this as I go through this. If you're familiar with the story of creepy Chan, pretty similar to creepy Chan. Oh, okay. Or, or early Bella Delphine, if you're familiar with her story um, where she was basically raised in environments like 4chan,
Simone Collins: um,
Malcolm Collins: And , tried to customize her appearance and humor and attitude to be like that, that people on those sites respect.
Okay, so the attack took place during a, oh sorry, on December 16th, 2024, a tragic shooting occurred at the Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin. The shooter has been identified as Natalie Rapunel, a 15 year old female student who also went by the name Samantha, [00:05:00] or Sam, you see in some of the correspondence.
Here is what we know about the incident and the shooter. The attack took place during a study hall session, resulting in the deaths of two people, a teacher and another teenage student. Six others were injured, with two in critical condition. Rapanau died from what the authorities believe to be a self inflicted gunshot wound. The gun used was a 9mm handgun. Her parents, Melissa and Jeff Rapanau, had been divorced and remarried multiple times. She mentions this in her manifesto. . They had a joint custody arrangements that sometime required Natalie to move between homes every few days uh, enrolled Natalie in therapy to help her cope with the custody arrangements.
And Natalie had joined a shooting range with her father, in the months before the incident and a photo from August showed her at the firing range wearing protective gear and handling a firearm. Her father was quite proud of this and they seem to, or he believed that she enjoyed her time there.
She also participated in karate [00:06:00] competitions. Now, she was intensely obsessed with school shooters, and in her manifesto, talks about a number she considers herself a fangirl of, so we'll get to that. Oh, wow, okay. Normally,
Simone Collins: martial arts, and Participating in safe firearm use at a gun range is correlated with more responsible gun use behavior.
So this was surprising.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, no, she, she, it's clear that she went into all of this with the intention of doing a school shooting.
Simone Collins: Oh, like she wasn't raised with it. It kind of was something she she talked her dad into. Okay. So it's not like her dad raised her going to gun ranges. Like this is gun safety.
We're a gun family. It was more like, hey dad, I really want to go to the gun range together. It'll help us bond. Wouldn't you like me to like you more than my mom, et cetera. Something like that.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and we'll see later in this, her argument for why she did this could basically be boiled down to, I [00:07:00] decided that my life had no hope and the future has no hope, so I decided to commit suicide, but wouldn't that be a lame way to die?
Why don't I remove some other weak genes from the gene pool in the process? And remove some of the filth that is humanity from the planet of the Earth.
Simone Collins: Oh, come on!
Malcolm Collins: All right. So she's, she's sort of was an antinatalist. You could almost argue. But like an incel Blackville version of an antinatalist.
Simone Collins: Yeah, that antinatalist, the antinatalist view is let's just all end the line. You know, it ends with us,
Malcolm Collins: but keep in mind, she also believed quote unquote, she, she had written this, that she was the mistake. They never wanted of her parents. And speaking of both school and home. They look at me, but don't see me.
I am invisible until I do something they can't ignore. And she actually, I'll just go straight for the document. I think that's a better way to do it.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: But before I go into the document, I also wanted to talk a bit about, [00:08:00] how this document was found. And you know, and I'll just put the tweets on screen here. But yeah, there's a series of tweets about the fake fem cell version of the manifesto that was going around. And that is what actually motivated the release of the real document. The boyfriend was not going to release it at, at start, but people were basically like, look, people are using this to.
Spread like an ideology that wasn't hers using her death, like either release the real document or this fake documents going to gain more traction. I will note some interesting things about going through the entire manifesto because it was like, yeah, Four or five pages. Is that it doesn't really talk about sexual frustration.
It doesn't really talk about her, anything about being a woman or anything like that as being a bad thing. So it doesn't appear to be particularly gender based. Although she does think that everyone has a disgusting body. She mentioned that at one point. But that is not like a, Oh, I'm angry at men sort [00:09:00] of saying she doesn't mention politics.
At all,
In the, in the document. So this wasn't anything that was particularly politically motivated. She doesn't mention anything that seems stereotypically woke. She seems to have been fairly allergic to that. And a lot of it is basically self pitying, I guess I'd say. She's a teenage girl.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. All right. So I'll start quoting here. Maybe you'll see me as a weirdo, a freak, just as some of you do now, but I'm not. I'm not like the others. I would never want to be like them.
Speaker 2: We'll always be freaks and we'll never be like other people!
Speaker 3: You're boring. And you're totally ordinary. And you know it.
Malcolm Collins: With how they think and what they do on a simple day, I hate how the population thinks, grows, and talks about how they make romance fake.
If only some days we could do a public execution, that would be gladly needed. I wouldn't mind throwing some stones at idiots, or even watching from the far back when they get [00:10:00] hanged. And then so you, you get a lot of stuff like this, like very violent sort of 4chan y, but also very self pitying and very desiring to be unique.
I am not like other people is a constant theme of this, which we've seen there's like teenage girls go through. This is a classic
Simone Collins: teenage girl. Yeah. Tendency. They could have maybe
Malcolm Collins: been cured had she seen American Beauty.
Speaker 4: There's nothing worse in life than being ordinary.
Simone Collins: I know because it would have made her feel so embarrassed about having
Malcolm Collins: these ideas.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Or like the virgin suicides. Yeah. She'd just be like, Oh, this is too basic. I can't do that. It was painful hearing that because it's sound parts of it sounded like my teenage diaries, my angsty days. And we have those, we should like
Malcolm Collins: read them at some point on the show, maybe not, but they are very fun to read
Simone Collins: when I was, especially when I was a teen, they were incredibly angsty.
And I reading [00:11:00] this takes me back. I mean, part of me is thinking it's a wonder more girls don't do school shootings. You know, because in the end, like, They're scary. You know, people are afraid of teen boys in school shooting. It's the girls who are scary. That's why we originally decided to have boys first, because I was terrified of having two teen girls leading the tone in our family.
I will note
Malcolm Collins: here, teen girls almost never commit mass shootings. This is very rare. Yeah, this is extremely rare.
There have been more mass shootings by trans women in the last four years, I think, than there have been by women in the last 20 years.
She is
Simone Collins: bringing DEI to school shootings. shootings.
Malcolm Collins: The glass ceiling.
Simone Collins: Um, As thinking also about the S You know, this was an inc of events that was driven yeah,
Malcolm Collins: very, very, ver getting a little bit of t
Simone Collins: I would like to throw a r like to watch as they, [00:12:00] yo She could be in Salem.
Malcolm Collins: Right, so if you're not an American and you don't know what she's referring to, describe the Salem Witch Trials quickly.
Simone Collins: So the Salem Witch Trials took place in the town of Salem, Massachusetts when a bunch of pilgrims sort of had a mass hysteria event, led by a small girl. Cabal group clique of female teenage girls who started accusing various members of the town of witchcraft.
There was a slave involved who kind of got coerced into feeding into the narrative as well. I think she might've been the first adult to kind of feed into this witchcraft narrative and accusing people of practicing witchcraft. But in the end, A sizable number of people were killed one very, you know, innocent man was crushed to death in a pretty ballsy way.
He basically just, whenever they asked him to confess his sins, he would just say more weight. And [00:13:00] it was, it was one of these instances of teenage females being incredibly violent and evil and Machiavellian and uncaring and psychopathic. And so this. It doesn't seem too far from that and I think having been a teenage female, I get that there's, they're scary.
They're scarier than teenage boys by a long
Malcolm Collins: shot. When they, when they decide to go scary. By the way, a movie I'd note if you want to watch a movie about teen girls being crazy that I think it's really good and hugely underrated ginger snaps to
Simone Collins: not one
Malcolm Collins: ginger snaps to amazing movie, hugely like under underplayed as a cult classic.
Simone Collins: See, that's crazy in a fun way. And I think what have been, what would have been more helpful.
In terms of making the concept of being a school shooter and suicidal school, school shooter to cringe for this young lady would have been something like the version suicides or American beauty, like [00:14:00] you pointed out. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: no, I agree. And there hasn't been a movie like that in a really long time.
Simone Collins: Yeah, it's been too long.
Malcolm Collins: Too long since we have made it cringe to be a young teenage girl would desiring to be, it's a
Simone Collins: public service, clearly, you know, we got to get back to this, make it to, you know. Too basic.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay, so here is a quote from it that I think will throw off the idea that this might have been an overly left leaning person.
So, here, obviously, I'm not going to say the N word, but she uses the N word. Oh,
Simone Collins: boy.
Malcolm Collins: And then she says, but it's only in one section, like one paragraph she mentions this, and it's a complete non sequitur of where it is in the document. Is she just doing
Simone Collins: it to be edgy? Is she just trying to look pretty?
Make it clear that she's not like edgy. I suppose
Malcolm Collins: some of the other shooters she admired did it. And then she decided she was really trying to like simp for male mass school shooters. This is, this is clearly part of this for her. I
Simone Collins: think fangirling is another bad symptom or just uncomfortable symptom of being a teenage female.
You know, this is just one of those perfect storms of. Every way in which teenage female, [00:15:00] female hood was manifested in her, was manifested in exactly the wrong flavor.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. So she says in words though, worse, once you sleep with them, you are one. I don't care who you think you are or what you think you've done good for this world of yours.
It will never matter because you will always have no thought and no brain to continue is. I hate looking at some of the people in society, When seeing what they are and what they do with their lives, like how does one do that? But I know how out of scum and just pure retardedness. So you can see it's very like meandering and doesn't really have a point.
It's almost like somebody trained an AI on 4chan.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Yeah
Malcolm Collins: To go further here. i'm glad to be different and not the same as other people I know how to be formal. I know how to use my words Even if I get mad at you there has always been a good reason whether or not I despise you or [00:16:00] just because I can There's always been a good reason either. I despise you or just because I can I don't know That's a good reason just because I can again, this is
Simone Collins: so a teenage girl You Some of you
Malcolm Collins: guys are very teenage girls.
Teenage girl distilled. Some of you guys really do deserve the execution punishment. Rather painful or not, you deserve to be dead. But yet, doesn't the whole world deserve that? The main target has been anyone with some sort of feeling or being or knowing any action to turn you wrong and left rather than the right and the better.
So That might be saying that she's right wing there. I can't really make it out. This is what she had to say after praising a number of other mass shooters about the Columbine mass shooters. She goes, I've looked into him since like 2021 and 2022 and she has a picture of him. And I've just realized how much potential bombs have, but It's not just that, though.
It's his strategy, his own method, and what led him to do it, and the fact that he [00:17:00] stuck to that. Some of his fangirls are like, really strange in my opinion, but like, aren't all fangirls?
So she's like, questioning being in this fangirl community for school shooters. And then she goes on to say, There are also others I admire or so I'd like to say look up to and or find interesting. Otherwise, most are just interesting to me. Unlike those retarded. F. A. G. f***s who simp over them, like, come on, just stop.
So you can see very It just
Simone Collins: sounds like a teenage girl's diary, and I Gosh. Mm. Yeah, go on.
Malcolm Collins: No, but we live in a society, I, we had a, a teen girl who we were helping at one point and she would say stuff that sounded sort of like this sometimes, not like this, but like very like, I'm different, no one's like me and I'm like, everybody thinks that.
The number one thing you need to remember when you're a teenager is be nice to your parents. [00:18:00] That's what I'd say is the number one thing I'd impart to teenagers because that's going to be the strongest instinct that you need to overcome to learn to intergenerationally strive. It's also just
Simone Collins: so interesting.
It's hard for me to model. Like I have never seen this trope come through in a teenage girl or boy who is from a large family. They just, that having a lot of siblings and having a life in which by design you were presented with responsibilities and limitations and hardship, but in a meaningful way. And by meaningful, I mean, It's because there's something else that matters more instead of just, oh, this random bad thing happened.
You know, it's
Malcolm Collins: funny that you mentioned that. Not a single school shooter I'm aware of has been from a large family.
Simone Collins: Yeah, has had more than one sibling, per my understanding. Maybe. That's
Malcolm Collins: wild, actually.
Simone Collins: Well, we have to look up that claim, of course, and actually check,
Malcolm Collins: Okay. So I went through a lot of AI is trying to find it any, could find a [00:19:00] single school shooter from an intact family with more than one sibling. I'm even talking just two siblings. Could not find a single one. , now some had, , parents who had remarried or married other people and had a number of half siblings, but here I'm looking for large intact families. It seems to have a hundred percent protection rate. Against somebody going crazy and becoming a school shooter, which is just wild. And, you know, the next time somebody is like, Hey, we need to stop these school shootings.
We should ban guns. You can be like, or start having lots of kids again. That would also stop it.
Simone Collins: but Yeah, I just, even, even when it comes to general angstiness, sullenness, no, of course, even in Hannah's children, the amazing book on, on like very big prenatalist families.
There were some families that reported having depressed teens, teens who were struggling a little [00:20:00] bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But not in an angsty, weird way like this. I
Malcolm Collins: just, you pointed out to me, I thought it was really interesting is there was a case called the Wolf Children of five kids that were raised in a cramped Manhattan apartment, like a small.
Studio apartment in Manhattan, which they only left once per year, if that. Some years they didn't leave at all.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And there was like seven or eight of them living together. It might have been as high as twelve. But they It was
Simone Collins: smaller than Yeah, it was maybe in the, like, seven range.
Malcolm Collins: They ended up becoming, like, they did a video documentary on them, and if you watch the documentary cognitively and emotionally, they are much more mature than most random teenagers you would meet.
Yes, which is crazy!
Simone Collins: Yes! You would expect them to be completely out of whack and, and, and terribly regulated and everything, but, but in the end, Living with those limitations, living in such close quarters with [00:21:00] other people, having to make that work forced them to be reasonable and patient. And so I
Malcolm Collins: don't, I don't think that that's my takeaway from it.
My takeaway from it is that the cognitive stabilization and benefits of having lots of siblings is so astronomically high. It can outweigh being locked in a room your entire life. Basically you can be raised. Feral child basically. And if you have lots of siblings, you will be better off than your, you know, single kid who's going to tennis camp and going to the shooting range with her dad and who the parents spend tons of time on.
That is how much it matters in terms of cognitive stability to have a huge number of siblings. Well,
Simone Collins: I think siblings are very grounding because they constantly remind you that the world isn't about you. That everything's not just about you and your needs that you are not entitled to anything. You know, and that you can gain a lot of [00:22:00] benefit from caring for other people and enjoy, feel, feel genuine reward and pleasure by helping someone else before you help yourself.
There's just so many good things that come from it and I, as someone who had bad dreams as an only child, in which my parents told me I was going to have a little sibling, you know, who just thought it was the worst thing ever to have siblings. It's so weird for me to now acknowledge this. I feel a little uncomfortable saying it.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. All right. So we keep going here.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Nobody knows I'm doing this. I've got the weapons by lies and manipulation and my father's stupidity. I planned on shooting myself a while ago, but thought maybe it's better for evolution, rather than just one stupid, boring suicide, which hopefully I'll reach that point.
I planned this myself and nobody else. I act alone. There would have been no way to change what happened. You can't and never will know. You never [00:23:00] cared too much. To know anything about me. I'm glad you don't know. So, clearly here this is like, I'm better than my caretaker. And teens go through this phase.
Do they think their parents are idiots?
Simone Collins: These are all very natural feelings. And again, I think the problem is that she, it's also, it's a natural important thing as well. I think as a teenager and as someone becoming an adult in the process of becoming an adult to realize that, yeah, you don't matter. No one cares what you think.
No one cares how you feel. You really don't matter. I think an issue that I, I, I. I see with modern parenting is that you're being gas lit as a teen and told that your feelings do matter and people do care what you think. Absolutely. Yes. And her parents are like, oh, no, you're so special. We care what you think.
You mean so much to us. But she knows it's not true. And now she's dealing with it in this really obviously [00:24:00] toxic and tragic way.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. And I know here, this is the interesting thing. When you look at like why she's mad at her parents and stuff like that. Everyone's like, Oh, you guys are so horrible to your kids.
Like you bought them, you, you know, et cetera. Like, how could you do that? I haven't seen anything like that. Kids don't whine about stuff like that in their Letters like this or manifestos like this. It's like my parents got divorced and remarried multiple times. My parents didn't take the time to understand me.
My parents were stupid and weak. That's the general complaints you see about parents. In fact I, I see the, I was disgusted at how weak my parents are. Specifically my father was. To be the most common complaint in the in cell world.
Simone Collins: Really? Well, I think most people, if they're not, I guess, okay. Yes.
Being a teen, you, you hit this point where you discover that your mother and dad are not God, that they're not flawless. They do not know everything. [00:25:00] Cause I think there's this period between we'll say, I don't know, we haven't hit it with our, with our kids yet. Maybe, maybe from six to 10, where kids seem to think very highly of their parents.
And then it hits them. Oh my gosh, these people are human. And it's this huge upset and that's normal. That's very normal.
Malcolm Collins: It is normal. But what I, what I was noting here is that if you are afraid of failing your kids somewhere on the spectrum, if you read a lot of the writing that young people are putting out there, which I have, cause you know, I'd spent time on like, before Chan and Chris cafe and all this stuff.
The complaint that young people have about their parents, which I'm trying to hit home, is not the complaint that previous generations had. Oh, that they were too
Simone Collins: strict with me. They were too
Malcolm Collins: not, they were too strict with me. It's not that they were never around. It's either and I've seen this, this, this mirrored complaint a lot.
And she seems to argue this complaint as well. It's that my [00:26:00] mom's settled for a weak man. Like she should have been more what's the word here? Yeah, she should have been more hypergamous. Basically, this is a complaint. People have, why isn't my mom? What? They blame the weakness of their father for their own weakness.
They're like, I am either weak, or ugly, or not motivated, or not creative, because I got bad genes from my dad.
Simone Collins: That is weird. That's a meme? Like, that's a thing? It's like a
Malcolm Collins: hardcore, yes, a hardcore meme, especially in intel circles. Oh and it makes sense because when you break out of the urban monoculture, the first thing that people realize and that floods are made, if you have any like degree of breaking out and young people are going to break out always.
So what the urban monoculture has been pushing with them is nihilism, but then, oh, human genes exist. And I am a large part of reflection of my genes. So if I'm a young kid and I hate myself, it must be because I have bad genes. [00:27:00] And then there's this sort of side assumption, which is and I don't know why the moms always get a pass but they generally seem to get a pass in these, like their mom.
I think it's because I thought teen girls really hate
Simone Collins: their
Malcolm Collins: moms. She, I mean, it's not that she liked her mom, but I think it's that she learned from incel forums how to speak about her dad and the way to speak about her dad that earned her
Simone Collins: respect. They just have more to say about men. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Well, I think it's more disgusting to be weak as a male.
If a female is weak in our society, we don't treat that as like this huge failure, whereas if a male doesn't stand his ground or show discipline and order for his kids or show a vision and a desire to achieve that for his own life, it's very easy for kids to grow up denigrating him. And you'll see this a lot.
So I just think that people are hugely optimizing for things. Kids don't care about. Kids [00:28:00] don't care how frequently you're around. That was like two generations ago. Kids don't care that you're too strict or you're shoving your value system on them. What kids do care about in this generation is you being pathetic.
So be careful about that. Okay, so next.
I've always been a quiet kid, I say, or at least that's what everyone else around me has said and never really had the brains for most things because I wasn't smart enough for people around me, even though I'm good at science and some stuff. Nobody really looked at me in a good way in elementary or middle school, nor even high school right now.
Doesn't matter much because I like being alone. Very sour grapeseed, right? Like I want attention, but I also don't want to deal with people. Sometimes I just hate being picked on, but yet I mourn for friends, but sooner than later, they'll leave. My therapist sucks. He's just some weak, fat guy who doesn't deserve everything he has now.
Nobody deserves anything good.
So, a lot of this is based Teen girls are so scary. I don't know what to say. [00:29:00] Like, very teen girl. Like, that's why I believe this. Like, I read this and I was like, this is so No, this is, this
Simone Collins: checks out. I, I have faith in you. I don't know what the other Fem Cell Manifesto, the fake one, read like, but this is not questionable.
Yeah. I mean, if it didn't seem like something written by a teen girl, I would have just assumed that it was a teen girl using AI, but I don't think anyone has. So little dignity that they would use AI to write there.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, no, it has so many mistakes in it. I mean, the grammar, the grammatical mistakes I'm making here are not me misreading it.
Like, it's really poorly structured. Like, it's clear that this was not a fully educated human being. And a lot of people said, actually, this is pretty normal grasp of English of 15 year olds these days. Just because the education system is so bad. Yeah. And the other reason I believe this one is because it doesn't seem to have an agenda.
It's not painting her as a specific type of person, and there's an awful lot of complaint about why she hates her parents for silly reasons.
Simone Collins: Yeah, it's just, it's just [00:30:00] female again, like I,
Malcolm Collins: what I think is interesting is the repeated, like, not just her dad, but like other male authority figures in her life, she's disgusted by their weakness.
Simone Collins: She's disgusted
Malcolm Collins: by the weakness of society, which she sees as filthy.
Simone Collins: I think that's a product for sure of what she's been exposed to, that we have this equation Female angst, which is the volume is turned way, way up by being an only child or an almost only child hands on parents and a stifling smothering society.
And then she's exposed to this series of memes that's very tough on men and rather than turn her hate inward, like a lot of teenage girls do, and just do the normal thing, start cutting, develop an eating disorder, go trans. She decides to then become a school shooter. So she is quite indeed not like other [00:31:00] girls in that way.
Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, think about the way that she's approaching this, which I find really fascinating is that if you look at the film sells. They look at men and are like, there is a patriarchal structure that is stomping on us. There is like it's this cabal of men. They see men as like this unifying force that like they work together
Simone Collins: They check each other
Malcolm Collins: Yeah represents a new wave of disgust and anger with men which is to say why are men Why, why as growing up are the men I see so disgustingly self like, like desiring affirmation, desiring of, of, of weak and pathetic things.
Where are the strong men, the men that I want around me, the men that I want in society, which is such a different complaint than you would get from a typical fem cell, right? You know, it's almost like, a true femcel and that she's like outright admitting it. Like what I [00:32:00] mean by this is it's not that I can't get anyone to sleep with me.
It's that no men are worthy of existing in this society.
Although
again, she did have a boyfriend. So to continue my so called family never included me because I was too weird for them again, this whole, like I'm different thing. My father never treated me with respect. My father was always make me stand out in the worst possible way, yet bring up how I fail at school or can't get out of bed simply because I don't want to leave home.
He makes me look like a freak to his family and friends. He says so much, but look on his bad side. So here you see, this is something that, that young girls especially in your diary even saw this. You were like, why am I freaking out that like my parents are cheering for me at a sports game? Like they're trying to be nice.
You had the ability to like have some self reflection on like, why do I care that my parents are trying to.
Simone Collins: Oh, I'm crazy.
Malcolm Collins: That's what's happening. And I'd also point out here that what kids are afraid of [00:33:00] is their parents in impotent ways trying to get them to do things. It's not their parents in effective ways trying to get them to do things.
And I think it's the impotence. Of the way her father interacted with her as well as the social shaming and connection of himself to her in these you know, big in person environments that created this kind of language. One of the ways I think that will really help avoid this with our daughters and boys.
is I really want to include them in the podcast. I really want to include them in our social media in the same way that I talk with you. I'd love to have days where it's one of them or something like that, you know, or two of them instead of us, you know, make this more of a family affair. And I think that if you have somebody regularly, publicly broadcasting the way that they're thinking about things and People notice red flags like the type of red flags that she was clearly exhibiting.
They can help constructively steer them [00:34:00] back onto a good path. And these sorts of deep conversations where she got to signal what she thought is something that is clear that she just wasn't having with important people in her life.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. It was all going online or inward, which was very toxic for her.
Malcolm Collins: Well, won't your kids find some outlet like that? Unlikely, because if your parents, and this is the way that's actually happening to me now, because we have such a big audience, I like stopped responding to Facebook or comments or anything like that, because I'm like, I know this person has built rage in me and I want to explain to them why they're so stupid, but why am I wasting time responding to this person?
When at any given time, day or night, there's over a hundred people watching me, like. I should be focused on the messages that I'm putting out to a wider platform, not this one individual on Facebook who pissed me off.
Simone Collins: Yeah, maybe. And there's also that element that I [00:35:00] think a lot of everyone wants to be heard in some way.
And for many people feeling like they're heard by some audience online, maybe some way to make them feel better. I suppose, so like she might have felt sufficiently heard if she felt she had an audience that engaged with her ideas, however small and maybe, I don't know, I'm not sure.
Malcolm Collins: No, but it's really hard.
No, it's clear. She mentioned that a few times. If she had a wider audience, she wouldn't have done this.
Simone Collins: Oh, wow. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: But because a lot of the social capital of today's use is based on how many people are watching you are looking at you online. Which I think she felt like, especially as AI begins to grow, like, am I ever going to have that?
Am I ever going to have people who care what I say or think or am doing?
Simone Collins: That's interesting.
Malcolm Collins: All right. So next I was the wrong child of the family. My parents admit they didn't want me nor ever did. Even if I'm grown, I'm always the one [00:36:00] who sat or sat around in the other room because they didn't want to interact with me at any point in time. Then I stayed in my room all day during the day and night and after and before school as well.
Again, you can see, Incredibly bright. And this is why I don't think that this is a faked manifesto. I
Simone Collins: would say articulate. The word you're looking for is articulate. She could be very bright and just not have been instructed well in writing.
Malcolm Collins: Okay, but I think if she was, you know, she would have at least put it through an AI to fix the grammar.
I mean, if it's the last thing that's going out there.
Simone Collins: I think a lot of people don't show their kids these resources. We've met plenty of kids of really, really smart, articulate people. Okay. Who have not even really told their kids about. And they live in sheltered enough worlds where they're not using those tools to cheat on everything yet.
I think that AI adoption is pretty lumpy even among young people.
Malcolm Collins: That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah, maybe she just didn't engage with it. And. I also want to note on this last one that I thought [00:37:00] was pretty interesting is she talks about her parents not wanting her.
And this brings me to the part of pronatalism that I get so disgusted with, which is a pronatalist that are like, it is pronatalist to ban condoms and to ban pornography.
Simone Collins: Oh, we
Malcolm Collins: want someone to get someone pregnant because like they couldn't like get off. Like, is that, are you really that like insane of a person?
Like, no, we don't want the people to exist who only exist because their parents. Lacked self control.
Simone Collins: Yeah, not cool.
Malcolm Collins: Not cool. Insane, actually. I am not hate. I am simply pointing this out. You and the system will always suck. Therefore, we need a revolution. Nobody understands that, though. Nor do people understand the fact that they probably sat next to me in class and never thought a single word about me, nor ever really thought to.
I don't really care, though, to be honest. Nobody really has. But I'm such Such teen angst here. First of all, like she wants people to think about her and to notice her, but she [00:38:00] also wants to not focus on people. We talk about what it is to go through puberty as a young girl, and it's a desire to be treasured.
And that's not what she's feeling in society. And it was not something she was able to generate.
Simone Collins: Well, it's horrible because it's a desire to be treasured, often accompanied by, not always, but often accompanied by a disgust with oneself. Because you're going through puberty and it doesn't always look that great, you know,
Malcolm Collins: to look great.
It was her, it was not bad.
Simone Collins: Oh, okay. Lucky her. Must be nice. The
Malcolm Collins: interesting thing is that she seemed almost pathologically against like a makeup or trying to doll herself up in any extent. And she still looks pretty fine.
Simone Collins: Oh, wow.
Malcolm Collins: You know, so, I, I, yeah, that was not the issue with her. You
Simone Collins: say this knowing you, you can admit this was the issue with me, right?
You didn't think I looked okay. Right.
Malcolm Collins: I don't know. I think you [00:39:00] guys are probably around the same attractiveness level. Oh no,
Simone Collins: then she probably felt super ugly because I looked freaking horrible. Okay. Yeah. Then if you thought I looked okay as an adolescence, then we have words.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, as an adolescence, I'm talking today as an adolescence.
Yeah. You probably would have been by average person considered less attractive than her.
Simone Collins: Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. All right. So she was, yeah. I just want to calibrate there. No, but I mean, I don't want to talk about Not everyone goes through their ugly duckling phases. Not saying I became a swan, but I'm not at the nadir of my
Malcolm Collins: attractiveness.
Hold on. What I'm saying here is this is actually in Okay, so it is weird to have to try to judge the attractiveness of a 15 year old girl because she's a kid, right? Well, especially at
Simone Collins: school. And it's also sad. That, well, okay, maybe it's not, because I was gonna say like, I don't remember other people writing
me a tracking list of the Columbine shooters, but I think they did.
Malcolm Collins: Just, just, just Google her. .
Simone Collins: Oh, this is so bad. Oh yeah, [00:40:00] no. No, she's attractive. She looks very sad, but she's, she's an attractive. No, definitely. She looks way better than I did as a teen thing. I mean, I feel okay.
So you see what I mean when I'm like top 10
Malcolm Collins: percent of women, right? Her age.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh,
Malcolm Collins: yeah. Yeah. No, but it's weird to be sorry. I will say it is weird to have to say this about a 15 year old, but it's actually important because when you're talking about teenage girls, a huge part of angst or hatred with the world can come from the perceptions of their own attractiveness of the other individuals.
And so it's important to be able to say No, she was not unattractive in anything. She was only attracted into the spectrum. Mm-hmm. For somebody who never did her show, that's also
Simone Collins: though, let's keep, you know, very common issue. Body dysmorphia and teenage girls. I mean, , [00:41:00] she doesn't, doesn't complain ever about being unattractive.
She doesn't, yeah, she doesn't. So that, that clearly wasn't the issue here. The issue here was a, a. Well, maybe, I mean, maybe she would have been better off if she was body dysmorphic because then her hatred would have turned inward. And like I said, she would have either gone trans or anorexic or cut. I
Malcolm Collins: actually think that might be part of what led her to this form of radicalization.
Yeah, she didn't, she wasn't
Simone Collins: hating herself enough. She needed to hate herself more.
Malcolm Collins: She didn't have an obvious excuse. For all of the emotions she was feeling, she didn't have a, she wasn't ugly enough because I'm ugly or, oh, I'm feeling this because I'm trans or, oh, I'm feeling this because I'm, you know, ex discriminated group, you know, she had, she was a, a white straight girl, right?
Like, above average attractiveness. So there was no outlet other than just, no, it's just society that's broken.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: When you get this blackmailed,
And I also think that her goal for trying to fix society is interesting because she didn't feel like she had agency to do that, which [00:42:00] is a huge thing. We focus on with our kids and future day and all.
Yeah, you have the agency to fix it.
Simone Collins: Yeah, that's messed up. Yeah, that she, but I don't, I think that was all just a just so. Story there that I'm, you know, taking myself out and she just hurt and she was angry and it was displaced aggression against herself and others that. She turned to
Malcolm Collins: yeah, and the final one continue the final line here.
I clip is the wolf hunts its prey and continues life with no other bruises or scars. There is no predator and prey anymore. It is all filth walking. There's nothing more with filth. It simply cannot die or make hunts real. If only. They want is value. Finally, one learns that boredom is a disease of civilization.
That's what [00:43:00] she concluded her manifesto is.
Simone Collins: So it's on we again.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And if you look at her social media posts, they're very like pay attention to me sort of stuff leading up to this. They were things like the quiet ones always strike the loudest and I'm what you made me. They're almost like live, laugh, love of teenage angst.
Yeah.
Simone Collins: I plan to be a school shooter. She just had that, that Pinterest board. Oh, what we should not be making light of this is bad. I they're not, this is no, no, we should
Malcolm Collins: be, this is the way that you prevent this is you make light of it in a way where people who have these feelings realize that they are so basic, they should be scoffed at and not to air them.
Because this is not what she expected. She expected to be thought of as weird. or different or out there because that's what she wanted to be thought of as unique, not basic.
Simone Collins: That's
Malcolm Collins: the biggest [00:44:00] fear of every teenage girl is that they'll be thought of as ordinary. I'll put the American beauty.
Speaker 5: I don't think there's anything worse than the.
Malcolm Collins: You haven't even seen American beauty all the way through.
I tried to watch it with you and you like stopped.
Simone Collins: No, but I'm going to give you clips from virgin suicides because That also is just so
You're not even old enough to know how bad life gets. Obviously, doctor. You've never been a 13 year old girl.
Malcolm Collins: And then other clips here the Quotes The countdown has begun. They'll know what I mean when the time comes. Um Well, and I, I
Simone Collins: do wonder what If the boyfriend has access to this Google Doc, did he not
Malcolm Collins: No, this is not Google Doc stuff, this is stuff she was posting publicly leading up to this.
Simone Collins: No, no, no, but I'm referring to the Google Doc manifesto that he shared.
Malcolm Collins: I wouldn't have thought that this definitely meant a school shooting was coming. Oh,
Simone Collins: I mean, you know, you weren't 90 [00:45:00] percent sure.
Malcolm Collins: Genuinely, my thoughts if I was a boyfriend is, she's gonna spell check this before she does the school shooting.
Like, I'm gonna grammar check this before I'll get scared when she grammar checks her manifesto, but an ungrammar checked manifesto. I'm like, she's probably not going to leave that public. We've been seriously depressed before you just kind of things fall through the cracks. You know, here, here are some other social media posts leading up to this.
Okay. I am a shadow, but I will make them see.
Simone Collins: Oh,
well, if she wasn't dead already, she'd die of the cringe as she read back what she posted.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, actually a lot of this reads to me somebody who might have become like an interesting based person if they had made it out of this phase. That's
Simone Collins: the, that is the tragedy. That is, I mean, well, the, the, the tragedies, the, the innocent people too, who were killed by this, which is devastating.
I, I, I mean, we, we freak out. I mean, [00:46:00] our son asked to go to public school and one of my first thoughts when we were like, well, I mean, you want to try it out, but I'm like, oh. I don't want him to get shot. You know, it's, it's just a thing in American public schools. And I don't like that. And this is no, no.
Stanley, well, do you want to tell your father about what happened at school today? I flunked my math quiz. No, the other thing. What other thing? Oh, the school shooting? Yes, the school shooting! Oh yeah, some kids shot up the school. Was it you? No.
Did you get shot? No. Oh. Well, what's this about failing a math quiz?
Simone Collins: Yeah, that's really sad. We should get flak jackets for our kids. Good weight training anyway, you know?
Malcolm Collins: That'd actually be quite a [00:47:00] thing. And I think we should do it. Is there a kids going to school in flak jackets? If he won't leave public school, we will send him in a bulletproof vest and other people might make fun of him.
And he's like, Hey, school shootings are real. Like he'd be, he'd be known as like such a thing on, on, on campus.
Simone Collins: Oh, he'd just be like, punch me, bro. Cause he keeps saying bro now. My God, bro. He won't stop. Everything's bro. Oh boy. Geez. Okay. I need to get him on like 1950s slang. That'd be much better. Gee willikers.
Gee willikers. Come at me, sir.
Malcolm Collins: But yeah, you're, you're right. I love you to ask Simone. And I, I, I think it's important to investigate things like this so that we can learn how to raise our kids better.
And to avoid. Becoming this sort of person, you know, because people are always like, Oh, your kids are gonna like kill you or go crazy or whatever.
Right. And I think that, it's very [00:48:00] important that we investigate why people actually go crazy. Like, what are they talking about?
Simone Collins: Well, so let's break it down, make sure they're heard, give them agency. Cause she really didn't feel like she had agency in the world. Give them hardship and responsibility and like, you know, make them touch grass and by make them touch grass.
I mean, Surround them with things that make them realize that the world is not all about them, that there are other people around them who also have needs and also live in the world. So they don't realize they realize that there are a small, yes, they're small and yes, they're meaningless, but they can also fix things and make a big difference in other people's lives and in the world, you know, because she'd gotten half the way there, right?
I'm small, I'm meaningless. No one cares, but she didn't go a little bit further. to be like, oh, and because other people don't care about me, they only care about themselves. I can impact their lives in a way that's very meaningful to them, you know, and I can change the world because a lot of people are very thoughtless and not changing.
Malcolm Collins: And I think the final thing is [00:49:00] have a masculine Goal directed figure in their lives and when people hear masculine today in an online environment What they hear is oh like andrew, right? Yeah, I always point out No, no. No, you don't want to be the claudius from the movie gladiator. You want to or the comedist from gladiator?
You want to be max really? Maximus you want to be the, the leader. The person was a vision for a better future because that is what women actually are drawn to. They are drawn to individuals with agency who want to make the world a better place and have an, a plan for doing that an aspiration of doing that, if you look at her complaints about her father and stuff, like he sat around all day smoking weed, like that is the antithesis of that, right?
Simone Collins: This sort
Malcolm Collins: of.
Simone Collins: When I hug our kids each night and tell them that I love them and tell them that their job is to fix the world and they promise to fix the [00:50:00] world. I really mean it. I'm like, I really need you to fix the world. Octavian Torsen. Like, please, you don't understand. Like, but actually.
Malcolm Collins: I
Simone Collins: love
Malcolm Collins: it.
Because no one else is, that's always a weird thing to me that so many people are like, wow, you guys like, so have like main character syndrome and it's like no one else is doing anything like what you have to have main character syndrome main character syndrome isn't a bad thing. Everything of grandeur in this world.
Was achieved by somebody with delusions of grandeur. That is the only All grandeur starts with
Simone Collins: delusions. Yes, it is, it is proper.
Malcolm Collins: That is the only way you fix things. You have to be willing to have the type of aspirations for yourself and for the future that when you tell someone, like Noah's Ark, they're like, wow, that's f*****g crazy.
And you're like, well, no one else is doing it. Anyway, love you to death. Have a great day.
Simone Collins: I love you too. [00:51:00] Hug
Malcolm Collins: your family and be nice to your parents people. If you're a teenager and you want to look down on them, you are pre programmed to feel that way. Try not to try to see some continuity. Look to your ancestors.
You can't admire your parents.
Simone Collins: I love you. I hope people get better. I'm sorry for everyone who was hurt by this. The end. The end.
And we'll
do the totally
Malcolm Collins: straight
Simone Collins: neck. I saw something that about historical spoons. Remember when we went to that museum in St. Andrews and they had the spoon that you needed to take to the cafeterias to eat?
Malcolm Collins: No, I don't. You don't
Simone Collins: remember there was like a little like glass case that showed someone's spoon because every time you went to the cafeteria to eat at the university when it was first founded, you [00:52:00] needed your spoon
Malcolm Collins: in the 1400s.
That's wild.
Simone Collins: Like a long time ago. You know, everyone had their own utensils and This concept of being born with a silver spoon actually probably meant that you were born with a silver spoon, like really fancy, you know, instead of maybe like a wooden or iron spoon or whatever it is that everyone else ate with and now I understand why that ceremonial gift came to be.
Because I never, I had a
Malcolm Collins: silver spoon as a kid. I remember it in among my baby gifts because I saw the yeah, it's
Simone Collins: still, it's still a common ceremonial baby gift in some cultures to give them a silver spoon, but it, I never understood it or the phrase he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. And now I get it.
If you live in a society where everywhere you go, you have to have an eating utensil. You go to a restaurant, you have to bring your eating utensil, you go to a cafeteria, you have to bring your eating utensil, you [00:53:00] go to your family's dinner table, you bring your own eating utensil. If you are showing up with the Ferrari of eating utensils, wow.
Well, he was
Malcolm Collins: Everybody notices that. Everyone notices that.
Simone Collins: Because otherwise you have to like save up for an ice spoon, you know. By the way This is what people struggled for in the past.
Malcolm Collins: You did a great job with the salsa you made me. A few notes. Okay. Blend it longer. Some things, especially the jalapenos, were not properly chopped up, like they were still really big chunks.
But other than that, really solid job. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Yeah, I think The, the, the recipe that I was following just had you put everything into, the thing is they had you put everything into a blender, but we don't have a blender. We only have a food processor and it doesn't quite blend non chopped foods the same way.
So I just have to account.
Malcolm Collins: Should we get a blender? They don't cost much.
Simone Collins: I was thinking about getting one on Black Friday, but we just don't have a lot of space for
Malcolm Collins: appliances and we have,
Simone Collins: are you serious? We have an entire basement with, with shelves. It's already so cluttered. If [00:54:00] you get, okay, we can get a blender.
If you get rid of those plant things that you're never going to use together, taking up so much space, a deal.
Malcolm Collins: No, not at
Simone Collins: all.
Malcolm Collins: I will use those again. Okay.
Simone Collins: How about this? You need to use them or they will disappear. No,
Malcolm Collins: because the kids will likely use them.
Simone Collins: You really think so?
Malcolm Collins: I really think so, yes.
Simone Collins: Alright.
Speaker 6: Octavian, I want to, I want to ask you about the really cute note you had written for me saying, Mommy, I'm going to give you money tomorrow. I love you, Mom, from dear Octavian. Why did you decide to write that note?
Because you want it to be nice? But we have to find it first. Hi, Titan! Hello, love! Hi! Aww! Big hug! You're so fun!
Do you want some popcorn for dinner? [00:55:00] I made some. Yeah, buddy. What?
Speaker 7: Toasty!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
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Why Do Jews Have Friends? The Religious Anthropology of Friendship & Family
18 déc.· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
This episode explores the contrasting approaches to friendship and family within Jewish and American Protestant Christian cultures. Through a detailed comparison, the speaker discusses how Jewish holidays and observances often include non-family members, contrasting this with the more insular family-focused events in certain Christian traditions. The discussion extends to examples from other cultures, including Catholic, Muslim, and Mormon communities, highlighting the social dynamics and the impact on community cohesion and individual behavior.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone.
Today. We asked the question. Why did Jews have friends? This question may seem odd at first to someone, but when I go through it, you're going to be like, Oh, wow, that is actually kind of weird. Specifically, what I will be laying out is that if you look at most Jewish holidays or religious festivals Or religious observances, they are encouraged to invite non family members, sometimes even non Jews. However, if you look at, and I'm talking about my own cultural background you know, coming from a Christian culture, from one category of Christian culture in America, and we'll do some diversification of the various Christian cultures, but the Christian culture that I come from, American Protestant Christian culture There are very few religious events or [00:01:00] celebrations in which you would invite people who are not extended family.
If I am inviting somebody to Christmas or to Thanksgiving That is basically an indication that I plan on marrying them. Like it's not even, it's seen
Simone Collins: culturally as one of those big leveling ups in a relationship. If you go to your girlfriend or boyfriend's house for Thanksgiving or Christmas, cause that is a sign of serious commitment.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and it made me realize how distant the culture I grew up in was from Jewish culture when we had a very Chabad guy very, you know extreme what's the word? I'm looking here very orthodox jew come to our house. He's a fan of the show really like the guy. He's actually inspired a number of episodes and he was talking with our son and he said something that sparked this whole chain of logic for me
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: He was interacting with our son and he said, Do you [00:02:00] have any friends? And my son said, Yeah, I have two friends. And he goes, What are their names? And he goes, Torsten and Titan. And those are our two other older kids names. And then he goes, Well, those are really your friends. Those are more like, Your siblings, do you have any friends?
And in my head, I'm immediately thinking, wait, what are you talking about? Your siblings are always your best friends. Why would you ever like all other friends come after family?
Burdened with new friends and tormented by the bounty hunter chains,,
Malcolm Collins: And a lot is bigger than water. Yeah. Yeah. That was said all the time to me growing up. Interesting, and that is a very bad metaphor to use because in the context of the Bible where it's being written, it is the blood is not thicker than the water of heaven.
It is, it is used to argue against this idea,
The original wording is the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb, where it water. It's supposed to be familiar where relationships and blood is supposed to represent chosen [00:03:00] relationships. Whereas today it's often used where blood represents familiar relationships and water represents chosen relationships.
It reminds me a lot of another commonly misused phrase where people say.
I am not my brother's keeper. And I'm like D. Dan do you know the context of that line? Do you know the context of that line? That's a guy. Saying to somebody accusing him of killing his brother when he did kill his brother. Oh, I I'm not, I don't always know where he is. But people say that to like, legitimately be like, well, you know, I'm not responsible for him.
but it got me realizing that when I started to go through many of the Jews who I know, or many people who are descended from Jewish cultural groups, they are really big, Unmaintaining friend networks. Whereas if I go through the people who are closer to me culturally, they very rarely have wide friend networks and they [00:04:00] really prefer to have strong relations with family members.
And when I say strong relations with family members, I might be on the extreme side of this because I'm from that backwoods American, like greater Appalachian culture mixed with some of the Puritan American culture. But like I started a company with my wife, my brother started a company with his wife when I was thinking when the Jewish guy was over and he's like, well, who in the area do you hang out was or would you feel comfortable with your kids spending time with?
Like, I would never take my kids to spend time with like a friend from school, but like my brother's family, of course my dad worked on a company with his sister. Before that, he worked in a company that his grandfather founded. Right now he gets dividends, which pay for his living expenses from a company, a cousin started that he invested in.
Like this idea of working and keeping it within the family is very and we've even looked at this ourselves. Like when we have our kids like play work games, you encouraged them to work together and I can play a little. clip here where they're making paper airplanes as a group to [00:05:00] sell because they decided they wanted money to do things together to get guns for the group so they could all shoot at each other.
Simone Collins: Yes, this was to buy XJOTGUN.
Speaker 5: And then it's gonna go to triangle one. So, and now we gotta fold the wing, right? and make anotheR one
I will get them.
Speaker 6: Oh, Torsten. Let's
Speaker 5: put this wizard on our place
Malcolm Collins: yes. So what I'm going to do in this video is I'm going to bring receipts for this because some people might be hearing this and they might be like, if you don't know a lot about Jewish culture, you might be like, maybe he's exaggerating how much friends are invited. We're going to then go deeper into Christian culture, at least the Christian culture I'm from, that is very sort of antagonistic to friends outside the family.
We're going to then go over other Christian cultural groups, which do the same thing. And then we're going to contrast these with other religious and cultural groups that are actually closer to Jews in terms [00:06:00] of, you know, The Christian cultural groups that do this are actually quite unique. There's very few cultures on earth that are this focused on extended family networks in their traditions itself.
Simone Collins: I'm excited to dive into this.
Malcolm Collins: Some Christians may hear this and they'll be like, Oh no, no, no, like what about going to church? That's engaging with people who aren't your family. And I'd say, you haven't gone to a historic American church recently, have you? If you go to American churches that are over 100 years old, What you will notice is that they are laid out so that each family had a private booth where you would not interact with people outside of your family.
Well,
Simone Collins: not necessarily. I mean, there would be like the family pew, and you always sat in the same spot. I would, I see it as akin to having that lunch table. In high school, where it's like, no, no, this is the popular girls table. You don't sit there. That's for
Malcolm Collins: them.
Simone Collins: It's not necessarily
Malcolm Collins: even in the face of a religious gathering, isolate people based on family networks.
Like these, these pews had doors to them. You would open a door and then go into a walled [00:07:00] pew. So you could see the priest, but you didn't have to look at any of the other churchgoers.
Simone Collins: So,
Malcolm Collins: when I went to AI and asked about this, it said, Jewish holidays and celebrations often emphasize the concept of Oh, trim or trim which I'm pronouncing it totally. You're going to butcher this.
Yeah. Which translates to welcoming guests, which is considered a significant mitzvah commandment in Judaism. This practice extends beyond family to include friends, acquaintances, and even strangers. Examples of Jewish holidays that encourage guest invitations. Passover Seder. It's common for Jewish families to invite friends, colleagues, or even strangers to their Passover Seder.
This practice aligns with Haggadah's instructions to, quote, Let all who are hungry come and eat, end quote. And I note here, we've seen this a lot. I've had lots of Jewish friends, despite them only making up, like, 1. 5 percent of the American population, we regularly get invitations to Jewish religious gatherings.
I don't think I've gotten an [00:08:00] invitation to a Christian religious gathering in years at this point. I, I've had people suggest maybe you should go to your local ex church, but I haven't had a personal invitation to come to my family's, this event, like come to our family's.
Simone Collins: like services, church services.
Malcolm Collins: Next Rosh Hashashana. Many Jewish families invite their friends and acquaintances to their Rosh Hashashana meals, which is seen as a way to start the new year. Rosh Hashanah. I know I can't pronounce anything, okay? These foreign words are caustic to my tongue. Sukkot. During this week long festival, it's customary to invite guests called ushpinzin to share meals in the Sukkot.
This often includes both family and non family members. Shabbat dinners. Our family
Simone Collins: is never going to be confirmed as Jewish ever. Yeah, Shabbat dinners.
Malcolm Collins: Weekly Shabbat meals are frequently the occasions for inviting friends, colleagues, or newcomers to the community. [00:09:00] And then you also have the Minyam. Which is, if you're not familiar with how Jewish practice works, you need at least 10 other Jews in your area where you get together and worship together and worship in a way through your communion with this group which is not a family group.
Often, in addition to that, if you look at the way that they do a lot of the teaching of their stuff, instead of having.
One knowledgeable person stand on stage and talk and everybody's just supposed to like listen and learn from that Which is the way a lot of christian communities work. They'll have individual debates between two non family members where they will talk amongst themselves and build a greater understanding now, let's contrast the ways traditional american christian celebrations you have christmas.
It would be really weird to bring somebody who wasn't extended family to christmas Yeah, And bringing somebody to Christmas, at least in my family tradition, is an indication that you plan on marrying that person.
Simone Collins: It's more official than a proposal.
Malcolm Collins: Yes, it's much more official than the [00:10:00] proposal. If I propose to someone but I haven't taken them to a family Christmas that, that proposal means nothing.
Next you have Easter. Easter Sunday often involves extended family gatherings for meals and religious observances. In fact, the only part of Easter where I have ever heard of people bring non family members is a Easter egg hunt. But that's usually a community Easter egg hunt. If I'm thinking about family Easter egg hunts, like my family did Easter egg hunts every Easter.
You've done Easter egg hunts with me every Easter. I would never invite non family to that. It'd be super weird.
Simone Collins: No, only if friends happen to be staying with us, perhaps, during the holiday.
Malcolm Collins: That would
Simone Collins: just be some weird
Malcolm Collins: happenstance. And I think if you're not, if you haven't grown up in one of these cultures, you may not understand how weird this is.
It would be culturally weirder for me to have a non family member at Christmas than it would be for me to sleep with someone other than my wife. Like it would be probably about 50 percent weirder. This is why sometimes I hear about some other family, which we'll talk about from different Christian groups where they're like, [00:11:00] Oh, I invite like homeless people over for Christmas.
And I'm like, what are you doing? Like, that's really weird.
And there'll be like, well, you know, I like to do it. And it's like an act of charity for someone who's down and out. And that to me sounds almost like somebody being like, yeah, well, you know, sometimes my wife and I invite homeless people to sleep with us because, you know, they don't have a lot of stuff and it's nice that sometimes they get to screw my wife and I'm here like, bro, that is so creepy sounding like, what are you doing?
There are other ways you can be nice to homeless people
and I'm telling you this so that you can better model if you are not from a family centered cultural background, the way that people from family centered cultural backgrounds think about things. And perhaps better understand or predict the way they might react to something, because I understand not obviously not all Christians are like this, , Christian groups who we'll get to in a second. Are totally okay. Who is inviting homeless people do their Christmas dinners. , it's just that for me, the emotional response that, that evokes when I hear [00:12:00] that. Is.
Parallel to the emotional response I would hear of, sometimes I invite homeless people to sleep.
Was my wife. And the excuse of, well, we do it to be nice because they're down and out. Evokes of the same emotional response of EFI. Guffawed at the first thing. Well, I let them sleep with my wife because they're down and out. I'm like, well that doesn't explain it. There's other ways you can be nice to them.
Anyway, and then finally Thanksgiving, which an American Christian is, is it's not a technically a Christian tradition, but it's very part of the American Christian sort of folklore set of holidays. You would generally not invite non extended family members to that.
So, and I, and now I want to reflect more on just the Jewish friends that we have. So like, when I think about like one of our good friends, who's Jewish he lives like his house is connected to a friend's house and they like share parenting responsibilities. And we had actually talked about doing this with him.[00:13:00]
Like he, he was like, Oh, well, I might move where you guys are and do this with you guys. But and we're like, oh cool because people know that we do this with the people who who live next to us We give them a house in exchange for child care help, right? But he's like, Oh, and I would like to ensure that like, if we do this, you're going to have time to like, have regular dinners with us.
Right? Like maybe at least a couple dinners a week. And Simone and I are like looking at each other. No, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no, no, no, no. We would have a strong and I mentioned this because you know, in our society, we often forget this people I think are biologically impacted by their traditions pretty strongly.
Oh, yeah. And I can see members of my culture who were more like gregarious towards outsiders being much more likely to leave the culture and people from potentially different cultures like Simone, who are much less gregarious towards outsiders, finding this culture and way of living very appealing, which can lead to genetic concentration.
Now, if you look at how we work [00:14:00] with the people who help us raise our kids, we have. Basically no conversations with them outside of business ventures. It's like, Hey, we might be able to help you make money here. We might be able to help you make money here. We need help with this.
These are people who have been living next to us and caring for our kids every day for over a year at this point. I still don't know what religion they are. They don't know that we are pro natalist advocates. They don't know our religious beliefs but I really would not want to have like small talk with them.
I'd find that to be very painful for me. To be fair, you don't like to have small talk with anyone. True, but this is also, if you consider like Jewish celebrations for anyone who's not familiar, and I can put some video on the screen here, a lot of them involve like parties,
Speaker 7: Oh,
Speaker 8: yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [00:15:00] Yeah. Yeah.
Music
Malcolm Collins: like a party that is If I was going to put it on a level between the type of Christian gatherings that I grew up with, and remember, I grew up in a Calvinist sect of Christianity, so it's going to be on the stream at the end of this, but I also went to Catholic events, I also went to, so like, let's put it on like a more middling Christian group, like a Catholic, if I compare it with like, You're, you're regular, extremely Orthodox Jewish celebration was a generic Catholic celebration.
It's like 50 percent on the way to being a rave. Like, it's, it's insane.
Speaker 10: [00:16:00] Transcription by ESO. Translation
Malcolm Collins: And Jews may think that this is. Would elevate their culture to me, but no i'm like, oh my god. Somebody's gonna touch me if I go there I'm gonna get like a random hug. I'm gonna get like, you know, this looks like way too much fun.
Simone Collins: Yes
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, somebody's gonna go up and expect me to like treat them with geniality even though they haven't proven themselves to me Like oh my god, uh that that squeaks me out
And I think some people might hear this. And because they have so oriented their value system to the value system that the urban mono culture provides them. They may think I am exaggerating or putting on a show here, but. I am not, this is genuinely horrifying to me asking me to go to one of these events is like singing.
Would you like to. Walk through these hot coals without shoes on. , it is not, it does not look pleasant to me, but, and [00:17:00] this isn't true of all religious celebrations. If somebody asks me to go to, for example, an Amish barn raising where I don't talk to people and I just do honest labor for a few hours.
And then the. The women go and bake nice foods and bring that to us with lemonade. After a long, honest labor, I would love that that'd be a lot of fun to do. Whereas, and I actually note it's not just the partying of religious celebrations that squeezes me out like Latin mass. Oh my God. The pointlessness of it.
I don't even understand what they're saying. So it's not that I feel just this way about Jewish celebrations, also anything that reeks to me of pointless ceremony, where nothing productive at achieved that also really squeezes me out and in. And drives me crazy. But, , I think in society you can say, oh, Latin mass drives me crazy.
And people were like, oh, I get why that would drive someone crazy. And you're like, but these parties also drive me crazy and they're like, I can't understand. Or you must be fronting. [00:18:00] Or you must not really mean that because in our society today, in that scene in a movie where, , you know, somebody from the dance floor walks out and puts out their hand and tries to bring the person onto the dance floor who really doesn't want to be dancing. Well, the convention is they take their hand, they go on the dance floor and then they really enjoyed themselves.
That is not me. That has never been me. I go on the dance floor and I am weirded out and it's not that I'm a bad dancer. I just don't like doing that.
Speaker 13: Prepare to interact socially. Reaction hologram on. I am reacting appropriately to the thing you just said. Small talk acknowledged.
Speaker 14: Ha ha, who's an anti social weirdo now? Not the girl who invented robot arms to hug strangers. Oh my god, I sound insane.
Malcolm Collins: and if you're and so do you have further comments on this?
Simone Collins: Well, I guess just for me, any [00:19:00] sort of social event means I just have to work extra hard to mask because me being around people is not natural in any sense.
So it's just exhausting. I don't get it. I don't understand.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we end up having to sleep a ton after I interact with people as well. It like really overcharges. My processing
Simone Collins: and I think on a genetic level, there are definitely people who are introverts and extroverts with introvert and extrovert being defined as whether being around people gives you mental energy or draws it away from you.
And I wonder if, on a religious level, there are some people who, like, let's, let's say your theory holds true and Judaism is a religion that really features a lot more socializing. Would then people who've genetically been Jewish for hundreds and hundreds of years. On average, be more extroverted. You would expect so, but I also am not sure because there's so much monasticism.
No, because there's another
Malcolm Collins: thing that's [00:20:00] counterfactual in this. Okay. So we were talking with this guy, very conservative, you know, he knows a lot of various like Chabad Jewish groups. These are the ones who dress weird, everything like that. Right. From a you know, average American's perspective.
Yeah.
And he mentioned that he hadn't heard a CPS being called on any of them.
And I thought this was very weird. Keep in mind, CBS has been called on 34 percent of American families, and I know virtually no one cultural group who's like a white American Protestant who hasn't had CPS called on them. And so I was thinking about what could cause this, and then I began to reflect on something else I've noticed about our Jewish friends kids.
Is that they are dramatically more timid and less risk taking than our kids. Our kids are very aggressive. Like, for example, when I had to punish my kid because he stole some other kid's game that is not the type of thing that any of our Jewish friends kids would do. They wouldn't just go up to another kid, Take their toy from them and, like, push them to the ground and start playing with [00:21:00] it.
They wouldn't, you know, when we've been out playing in dangerous places they don't get close enough to the creek to fall in. They don't, you know, pick up the extra big rock and accidentally drop it on their sister. They don't, you know, just this risk taking behavior is much lower. And I think that both of these might be downstream of the same thing, which is Jews might be more socially gregarious, but less risk taking more broadly.
And I think this might have to do with being overly the Jewish faction that survived. Now, we argue in our book this wasn't true of the older Jewish factions, but the Jewish faction that's dominant today was a Urban center focused culture and really specialized in being in urban centers. That's why they've been able to keep their fertility rates up, we argue, because they were exposed to the urban monoculture long before any other cultural group and they developed resistance to it.
But what it means is if you are a kid growing up in urban centers for many generations, and even today, I think it's something like 98 percent of Jews live in an urban center. You are going to be [00:22:00] like evolutionarily rewarded for being less likely to play on the street, being less likely to accidentally push around another kid who might be in a gang, be much less likely to be more gregarious socially, but in a very polite way, right?
And I think that this might also lead to the stereotype that is common. . Of the sort of Weasley Jewish kid that you have in a lot of media,
Speaker 11: I'm gonna make you a deal. What? That kid over there is having a really hard time right now, so I'm going to offer you 40 to not rip on him. 40 bucks?! Cartman, no Jew jokes. All you have to do is keep your mouth shut and you've got 40 bucks. Can you do it? It could be tough, but I'll give it a shot.
Alright. It's a real dry cold. That's the problem. The cold air makes me wheeze. Kyle, this is Cartman. He's my sort of friend ish. Nice to meet you, Cartman. You know, I saw that same jacket you're wearing at Bosco's for 29. 95. How much was yours? I'm just wondering if Bosco's is a rip off. Oh, man.
Oh, well, I grew up in the city. I really don't care for it. I come [00:23:00] from a Jewish family, which of course you already know because Kyle's from the same family.
I like to read, oh my god, I'm not going to make it. I'm not going to make it. I realize we're in the mountains, but do we have to freeze today?
Speaker 12: Now Kyle, I need you to be quiet. In my class, you need to be able to concentrate.
Speaker 11: Maybe we'll have to send him to concentration camp. Ah! Dammit, dammit, dammit!
Malcolm Collins: Which is
if you have this high gregarious, high timidity genetic cluster being selected for because of multi generation urban living you might come off as.
Obsequious or nerdy to other kids who are from more rough and tumble cultures And I also note this in terms of jewish kids ability to like focus and study One of the things I was noting is that our jewish friends kids when contrasted with our own kids at similar age ranges Are much better at like sitting down and studying for long periods of time Which is you know what they need to do if we sent our kids because we've even thought of doing this to like a local You something like that [00:24:00] to be trained the way the Jewish kids are they would just stand up and run off.
Like you'd say, sit in the chair and they'd be like, why? Like, are you gonna hit me? And they'd be like, no. And they'd be like, well, then why would I sit in the chair? I'm, I'm not off. Which is the way that they react to this stuff. And it's just a strong cultural difference. And then here I'd note if you're like, okay, so then what are, what is the ancestor of cultures like ours?
Like, you're talking much more like extended, Family networks where that is your social circle it is the people who are your cousins or your your second cousins you typically don't really talk to anyone outside of this network and when you do you generally distrust them and the reason that you're talking to them is generally because you want to ensure your kids have access to potential wives, or husbands or You're looking for a wife or husband
So as a note here, if you. In one episode I did, that was called something like we used to like our parents. , [00:25:00] I read from a book that my great, great, great grandfather wrote. , which I think does a good job of showing how in this culture, people related to families because throughout the entire book, I don't think he mentioned a single human being by name, who he's not related to yet.
He not only. Copious James mentioned his family members and how family members helped him out, like how his brothers. , helped pay for him to go get his law degree who worked at the local mills so that somebody in the family could be educated. Or how his uncle gave him a loan so that he could move his wife to Texas. But it doesn't just mention family members and not mention anyone, none of the family.
At the end of the book, there is a list of every living person. If it's related to. , just this really long list and what they do at slash have done. And then at the end of the list, he takes a great deal of pride and says, and I haven't noticed any degree in criminality in any of the Collins bloodline, , and, , This is apparently important [00:26:00] to him that all other family members and none of them had any degree of criminality.
I thought that that was interesting.
But there is one to note of a party in the book and it was, , like a square dance type party that he went to two. Originally meet the woman who he ended up marrying. So it's not that you would never go to a party at all, but then you go to a party with an instrumental purpose, which is finding the type of person that you would end up marrying.
For a movie that depicts this cultural group, you can look to the original home alone. In the original home alone, everyone who the family knows is part of their extended family network. And it may seem like a plot hole that when they are on vacation with their extended family network, they don't have literally a single acquaintance who they are not related to in their town.
They can go check on their house or in their kid. But if you are from this cultural group, that seems fairly natural to you. Also, , you can see. Traits that are common in this cultural group depicted in that movie. For example. , the protagonist [00:27:00] extreme level of confidence and cockiness when he goes and talks to somebody like the Santa Claus at the mall where he's like, Hey. I know how it works.
You're not fan of Claus. You work for Santa Claus. Now let's talk this through. , or that he immediately goes to a church when he is feeling unsure of himself. Or that his solution to literally any problem appears to be murder.
And I actually hypothesize That this notion we see commonly in America today that everyone is supposed to have lots of friends outside of their family, and that that is the culturally normative way to be, which the urban monoculture pushes really, really strongly. All this power of friendship stuff and everything like that.
I actually think that that is culturally an anathema. to most American cultural groups throughout their history and them attempting to overly adapt to this historic anathema [00:28:00] causes them a lot of distress. As to why they are attempting to adapt to this and where this misconception has come from, first, for the urban monoculture to deconvert somebody needs to push them away from their support network, which is going to be their family, which means it's going to create, or the iterations of it that create this narrative of, Friends good friends matter more than family found family, etc That's gonna do much better at spreading than the iteration which is like no you really should you know Honor your parents and stay with your family and everything like that so that's one thing is the urban monoculture pushes it but then secondarily, two groups which seem to outcompete other groups in america are Jews, Jews just get to higher positions faster in like media and stuff like that.
So their culture is going to predominate media at a higher rate than it otherwise would, and a group that I'm going to call the High Catholics. Now there are, and I don't mean this in terms of like, like, like, High Church Catholics. I mean this, like the [00:29:00] high elves, I'm going to divide the Catholics into high Catholics and, and low Catholics, like the wood Catholics or the, the Christian Catholics.
What's the difference? What's the differentiating line?
They are super, super different. And I actually hadn't realized it until I was prepping for this video. Because I hadn't been able to point to this before I would look at an individual like Nick Fuentes, who is a high Catholic, and I'd be like, why are you complaining about immigrants coming into our country?
They're majority Catholic. You want to. Create a worldwide Catholic government. Like, why would that be a problem for you? And what you want is a country that is all Catholic ruled by Catholics. What I realized is no, they're not Catholic. I mean, superficially, like the high elves are like, yeah, I mean, we're kind of the same thing as the wood elves, but like, let's be honest.
We f*****g hate the wood elves and look down on them. And I wouldn't let a wood elf live in a high elf city. Or certainly not one of Santy's crusty elves live in a high elf city. I'm like, what are we even talking about here? [00:30:00] Whereas the other elves, the low elves, I guess I'll call them are the Catholic group that we're much more friends with, which are often Hispanic Catholics.
Or they represent Other Catholic girls throughout history like the ones who formed the mafia or the mob and these groups high Catholics are very low on family. Like they are very pro
Simone Collins: and great at networking
Malcolm Collins: Outside the family very pro networking the community oriented Yeah, and very intellectualist often.
Simone Collins: That makes that makes so much sense. I never really thought about it that way, but I did have this sort of to evoke sets for Catholics in my mind, one being extended family, very family reunion, like oriented, very clan based, and then the other being.
Extremely community oriented, constantly doing things related to their church community or a broader network. And those don't really work well together. Yeah, they're, they're [00:31:00] really maybe I feel now, though, like, a lot of our Catholic friends would be saying. No, we absolutely do both. I'm super involved in my community, and we also do everything with our family, so I don't know, maybe they would disagree.
No, no,
Malcolm Collins: no. They, when they say that, they mean that the same way a Jew does. By that, what I mean is Jews are both, it's not like Jews don't care about their family. Yeah, the family
Simone Collins: gatherings that friends come to are still family gatherings.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they still have family gatherings, but they're much closer to high Catholics in that regard.
Like when I imagine a modern high Catholic in America meeting one of their maybe. Mob family or mafia, family ancestors. , it's sort of like.
A high elf meeting, Christmas elves.
Speaker 3: What the fudge are you wearing?
Speaker: Oh, these are my iron silk robes. Light as a feather, but stronger than You look
Speaker 3: ridiculous, is what I'm saying. He does! He does! You ever [00:32:00] see an elf wear something like this before? That long cape, that'll get stuck in a toy machine for sure. Your foreman lets you wear that? Okay,
Speaker: all the elves in Kalendil wear iron silk,
Speaker 3: dad. If you can call them real elves. Wow.
Speaker 2: Tell us all about Calendule.
Speaker: The shining jewel of the East, where a multitude of voices rise to sing the secrets of the moon to the forest. .
Speaker 3: What do you do in the big city, huh? What do I do? I
Speaker: forge fallen stars into the blades of champions. I whisper enchantments into the shields that guard the realms of men.
Speaker 3: You make money off of that? Jingle. I'm curious. I don't understand. How do people pay for that?
Speaker: You know, maybe I don't make a toy maker's salary dad, but at least I'm not a slave to a fat human.
Oh, oh, oh! Oh!
Speaker 3: You couldn't just be a normal elf.
Speaker: Whoa, okay. Hold up. Hold up, hold up. What is a normal elf to you? [00:33:00] I'm a normal elf. That's super racist.
Speaker 3: Huh? Oh, I guess everything's racist now. Hi elves.
Speaker: North Pole Elves, Wood Elves,
Malcolm Collins: And if we talk about how family focused some low Catholic groups are like the, and I, and I should say, I mean low, like I think high, more highly of the low Catholics than I think of the high Catholics. I'm not saying low as a derisive term. I'm saying it more that when I imagine high Catholics, They remind me of high elves just very sparkly buildings, like thinking they're, they're very high and mighty, all that.
So, the low cast like friends we have, like I think of one who's an immigrant from Latin America and he jokes that his family calls him. simply because he talks to people who are non family. He's like, yeah, mostly we just talk to family members in the family. And it's actually considered quite weird to have friends who are outside your family.
And that is somewhat weird was in my family. Like most of the friendships you have outside the family are supposed to be for some form of utility as people have even [00:34:00] seen from like my bigger philosophical takes around this. So before I go further, anything you want to add? No. Now I want to talk about another weird thing that I was thinking about, which is that family oriented culture, like clan oriented culture, family oriented is the wrong way to put it.
I'll put it like clan oriented culture. The way it relates to family is much less hierarchical in a way than the way that Let's call it friendship oriented culture relates to family. So what I mean by this is in for example jewish families When the family is vetting a potential spouse Which is common in conservative jewish families of the the parents, do that that is done by the parents whereas in the culture that I come from that is done primarily by the siblings You What your siblings think of a potential spouse matters a lot more or girlfriend or boyfriend Matters a [00:35:00] lot more than what your parents think of it and that when we're raising our kid because I was thinking like Oh what you know it's so weird that in jewish culture like when we were talking with him There's this focus on do I approve of who they're married?
Like do I approve of like earning their parents approval? whereas I was thinking, well, I would never care about, like, approving who my kids are marrying in a big way. Like, that's mostly going to be their siblings. And if you're not familiar with this trope, think of if you're used to, like, a story about an Appalachian family where somebody was dating in it or like a rural American family that somebody was dating in typically it's their brothers who are gonna beat you up if you do something wrong to the girl.
It is the
Simone Collins: I mean, I'm not sure I agree. Because most of the tropes still center around fathers vetting. Like, the classic Protestant father interviewing boyfriends before [00:36:00] they go on a date with a daughter.
Malcolm Collins: I have seen that in some stereotypes, but just in my real life, but I've seen more, especially in families with lots of kids.
It is a sibling's job. And, and there's actually a reason why it's the sibling's job. It's not like a completely, like I was even explained to my parents. This is why parents don't vet their children's wives. Or in my case, wife in our cultural group. And they said, because if we did and we disapproved of a wife, but then you ended up marrying her anyway.
We could end up being cut out of your life and our grandkids life. So it's much more important that your siblings take on that role than we take on that role. It's our job to make a new spouse feel welcomed. This is avoided in jewish culture because when ultra conservative jews are dating Typically the dating prospect is vetted by the parents before they ever meet the person they're going to date
But this has the negative externality You Of leading you to go through like hours of [00:37:00] betting from parents before you even get to meet the person and you're like, Oh, I immediately didn't click with this person.
I could have known that after three minutes. And this is why you don't do that in, in Jewish culture.
This optimization is actually fascinating to me because both cultures have optimized around the same problem in radically different ways due to just reword how Jewish culture handles this in extremely conservative Jewish culture. You typically need to be approved by the parents before you can date someone that way.
There is no risk of quote unquote catching feelings for someone who the parents wouldn't approve of. Whereas in Appalachian culture, parents generally are indifferent to, or always welcoming of who you are dating, unless they're like an absolute no, no, no, you shouldn't be with this person. And the core job of protecting somebody from making bad decisions around who they date are married, is left to the siblings.
And it's also the sibling's job to enforce [00:38:00] that. Both of these fix, the problem of somebody gets married to somebody who created a beef, was one of the families and ends up splitting the culture. Intergenerationally speaking.
, but does it in completely opposite ways almost.
So I thought that that was really interesting as well. Now here I wanted to talk about other cultures. So Mormons are another culture that is very focused on friends, like community friends depending on the group of Mormons who you're interacting with.
So some Mormons are like only the Mormon church. Like if you're talking to somebody outside the Mormon church, you better be trying to convert them. Because if you are not, then you are contaminating yourself. However, they are very gregarious within the church community itself. And in addition to that they have what they call a culture of inviting.
And this is partially to convert people as well, where they do shared meals , attend church services that are not family segregated and read religious texts as [00:39:00] groups. And
Simone Collins: Yeah, in my experience, With people who are active in the LDS church is that they would, you would get a calling and your calling would involve volunteering, even like, from the age of being a fairly young team, you'd be playing a piano or you'd be helping out of the daycare services.
You wouldn't be doing everything with your family. You'd actually be separated. from your family by duty during normal church services to do your part to help the community. So I feel like that sort of actively by design is breaking people up and encouraging people to make inter community friends.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, absolutely. And the, the if you talk about Muslims as another cultural group, despite some Muslim cultures being very family focused because if you talk about like rural Muslim cultures, a number of them are very family first focus Islam as a religion is very, very friendship focus and our family focus.[00:40:00]
So, if you look at something like Ramadan celebrations you hope in open iftars fast breaking dinners where they invite friends, neighbors and community members and I have been to these myself. Where, like, a local rich person will just have a group of people come in, like, have a feast, and then the next group comes in, and they'll do this with, like, five groups in a row.
Like, they are so gregarious focused. But it's very much focused on the wealthy being gregarious to the less wealthy. That's a big part of Muslim gregariousness. Where it's, like, they're establishing their local status by doing this. Yeah. So it's not as similar as, as, as Jewishness where it's very not like a status thing to be inviting people.
It's very much like a I genuinely want to involve myself with the community. There really is this elevation of friendship as a value is in Jewish culture.
And then you also have community based stuff within some Muslim celebrations, like Eid celebrations and stuff like that which can be more, I think, [00:41:00] like wider community based than many Christian celebrations. So,
with all of this being the case, I wanted to talk about, like, the positives and negatives of these two cultural situations. First is just that some are going to appeal much more to people with some, like, pre level genetic selection than others. A culture like ours is just gonna heavily, heavily, heavily appeal more to introverts than non introverts.
Oh, for sure.
And when I say introverts and people might be like, Malcolm, you're pretty gregarious. Like you talk to a lot of people. Yeah. But I forced myself to, I would always rather be at home with my wife.
Simone Collins: We're hardline introverts. There's no getting around it. We can't being around people is like.
shoving a fist into an ice bucket. We can handle it with each passing second. We're like,
Malcolm Collins: Oh, even talking to people who aren't you like makes me actively angry if [00:42:00] they're not saying something that is of utility to me. Like when I'm talking to somebody, I'm like, what's going on in my head is always, okay, what's your point?
Like, what's the piece of information I'm supposed to be taking with this? Cause I want to leave. I want to be out of here. Okay. That's when I'm not on performance mode. Sometimes when I go to like, nights out and stuff, I basically go to performance mode, or I'm like, okay, I'm basically doing a performance to get these people to like me.
Which And you're, you're gone. You're not even there. Yeah, like, you and me are like, totally masking at those, like Yeah.
You know, you're thinking about the way people typically describe introvert versus extrovert. And neither really fits Simone or myself where they will say that you are extroverted. If you get sort of emotionally recharged by interacting with people and you are introverted. If you get emotionally recharged by being alone, where I realize on multiple occasions, Dimona have had this conversation with me where it's like, well, we really get the most emotional recharge. In time that we spend together, , specifically Simone and I, or with the kids, [00:43:00] not anyone else. , and it's had me realize that. Maybe there's a third category here, which has like family verts, , which is to say that you get emotionally recharged by spending time with family. But not with friends.
Strangers. Acquaintances. , or anything else like that?
, and I say that for Simone and I were probably a bit union. You need a bit of time with family, a bit of time alone. , and without that, we would feel really drained, but I could live my entire life, not talking to another person again.
So I, I think that one, just each of them, but for like some people, they may come from a culture and then see these Jewish celebrations where like everyone's drinking and singing and everything like that.
And they're like,
Simone Collins: sign me up for that. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Sign me up for that. That looks like a lot of fun. Or they see, See them all like laughing and reading stuff to each other, engaging with each other. And they're like, Oh, that looks really fun. Like it's really for some people. Absolutely. Just not a, yeah. So I think there's that too.
[00:44:00] I think it likely helps them in terms of and we mentioned this in our, Episode on Jewish iq. And, and we argue that it's a myth that Jews have a significantly higher iq. And I argue that actually the reason why they perform so much better is just they're much more likely to cold email people or cold reach out to new people.
And I think that that is downstream of this, this cultural appreciation. of making friends with people in a wider network. And I'd even put this to you, Simone. We have fans reach out to us all the time. Well over 50 percent of the fans that reach out to us are Jews. I'd say probably like 60 to 70% of the fans that reach out to us are Jews.
So True. Which is definitely not representative of our audience. So people who reach out to inte disproportionately, they are
Simone Collins: Catholic and
Malcolm Collins: Jewish. Yeah, they're not Jewish. They're Catholic almost entirely. And I think that this is also like the, the Catholic group has outperformed [00:45:00] other groups as we mentioned.
In the United States, especially high Catholics. Like you look at the Supreme court and stuff like that, just hugely overrepresented. And I think that this might be that these two groups are just much more likely to decide to cold email and influencer who they like. Which I think in our previous world system provided you was a lot of power.
I don't know if it's going to continue to be as high utility with the rise of sort of disintermediated social networks that we have online. But it might, I think it hugely basically made it easier for Jewish and Catholic high Catholics to compete in an environment in which the media that you consumed was mediated by social networks, like who could get their own news show, who could become a talking head on a platform who could you know, I think that in that world, these two communities were given a huge handicap.
In terms of competing. I don't know if it's going to continue to matter as much a core challenge of [00:46:00] being this gregarious to outsiders is that it's pretty unlikely to convert new people I haven't heard of that many people who've converted to catholicism because of this even though high catholics do invite people to stuff a lot however it is very likely to infect your community with external ideas and the Catholic Church, especially the high Catholic Church, has been really infected by the urban monoculture.
As to why Jewish communities have been more resistant to this? Well, what I'd say is the ones who had any degree of susceptibility basically washed out. I mean, what are reformed Jews if not highly infected by the urban monoculture iteration of Judaism, which has significantly sort of dropped any rule or cultural custom they had, which conflicted with the desires of the urban monoculture.
And people may see that as offensive, but it's like, objectively true. That's like, broadly what it means to be a reformed Jew these days is that You're Jewish, except where Judaism conflicts with the mainstream cultural [00:47:00] value system of the far left. Which is the urban monocultural value system.
So, ideas here, Simone.
Simone Collins: I can't think straight when there's a baby crying.
I, I struggled to see where there's really this difference across. I think that there are plenty of, we'll say low Catholic families who engage a ton of their community and network a lot. And even like within that mafia stereotype, there is a ton of, examples of the mafia bosses being super involved with the community, engaging with others, et cetera, to build the network that they need to have a successful family business.
So, I just, I don't think the distinguishing It's very,
Malcolm Collins: very different. Really? So, when these sorts of clan cultures are engaging with outsiders like in these mafia families and stuff like that, it's generally, It's generally Somewhat similar to the Muslim situation I was describing, where you are giving to your community to sort of show your status and your family status where, but you're not engaging them as human beings.
[00:48:00] You are inviting them to events. You are giving them food. You are giving them the opportunity to maybe go to a party or something like that. But they are not the same as family members. And they will never be trusted like a family member. And that a lot of this is, is downstream of, and I think to an extent you Simone grew up in one of these cultures that was broken because you were raised in a family that was of one of these cultures as a single child, which means that you just didn't see this as much.
You wouldn't have seen the strong family connections. I still had cousins. I still had. Which you said you played with all the time, and they were like some of your best friends growing up when we were talking about this this morning. That's not normal for a lot of people.
Also, your family was heavily fallen to the urban monoculture by the time they met you.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I mean they were already into like polyamory and you know, animal masks. I was [00:49:00] time, they didn't even have a word at the time. It was more like, I guess is what it was referred to at the time. Your mom was training to become a shaman When I met her.
Her,
Simone Collins: yes. The degree
Malcolm Collins: to which they had fallen from their cultural roots almost cannot be overstated. There was a great amount of drip. Yes. And so it might be that you just. grew up without any, even an echo or whisper of what your culture used to be. And so all you have is the genetic imprint of that.
Actually, I was talking to her about it this morning again, and I was like, you know, what's remarkable to me that your family even put on Christmases for you. And she goes, oh, well, they didn't do that voluntarily. I made them do Christmas every year. And I was like, oh, okay. So they were really trying to systemically erase any connection.
She had to any sort of, , ancestral culture.
Which is really interesting to me. Whereas for me,
Simone Collins: there's a lot of things that we've taken on as new traditions that feels so much more natural to me than how I grew up. And I think a lot of [00:50:00] people who get God or otherwise take on new traditions, like the track. First generation Catholics, I think, are feeling something really similar.
Like, the way they grew up didn't feel right to them, and now suddenly it does. But, let's wrap this up, because Emmy's crying,
Malcolm Collins: and I need to beat her before we move on. Okay well, I think the final thing I'd note here, because I've also been thinking about this, is in terms of religious ceremonies I have been to The group where I have gone to the most is actually Muslim which might surprise people.
And the reason is, is because they both invite you a lot, and they're not community focused, and they're generally giving you something, like a really nice meal, or access to someone in a position of power. With the Jewish ones, You might get a meal, but you know you're going to have to talk to somebody.
And I'm not as interested in that. And then with, it's interesting with the next one I've gone to most is Jewish ones. And then like, if I think about non Protestant [00:51:00] Christian ones, very few. And if you can be like, what do you mean? Like you don't want to go to a high demand religious thing. Well, think about your Mormon friends when they invite you to a religious thing.
Do you go to that? Are you like, oh my god, this is going to be like so high demand? No,
Simone Collins: yes, I go because they're wholesome and amazing and typically they're related to Christmas because that's when people can get me to go to anything.
Malcolm Collins: All right, love you to death, Simone. Have a spectacular day.
Simone Collins: I love you too.
I love Envy too and she's so sad.
Just FYI I think all she really needs is she basically didn't drink when she was supposed to.
Malcolm Collins: Side note on my part, I love that video you sent really good on, you know, watchers and view hours matter so much more than subscribers
Simone Collins: don't count,
Malcolm Collins: I guess, but they do count in terms of getting good guests on.
And they do count in terms of the, the watchers perception.
And I mean, I've always told you from the beginning I'm after watch hours and not, that's why I'm concerned. Totally true. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Yeah. You saw [00:52:00] how. Effectless and meaningless subscribers, not to say anyone subscribing doesn't count and I subscribe to a lot of channels and watch them religiously.
Please subscribe, I
Malcolm Collins: really want to hit the 30, 000 number by Christmas or New Year's at least.
Simone Collins: The watch hours are really, yeah. What YouTube uses to determine whether or not a channel is worthy of getting a bump in the algorithm. So, helpful recondextualization for me.
Malcolm Collins: And we can have a longer strategic discussion about how we might utilize that.
Simone Collins: And I'm still curious as to what the drone mystery is. It has not been resolved yet. The drones that are flying over our area. With your brother saying that there wasn't any because I can't believe we don't have A Geiger counter and he does.
Malcolm Collins: I love my brother like walking around with like a radiation meter.
He's like, I'm checking, but I'm not, you know, he's a very paranoid person.
Simone Collins: Well, no, he's just prepared. And we should get one. All right.
Malcolm Collins: He's a Geiger counter. I'm sure some of our audience owns Geiger counters and they're like, you [00:53:00] guys are the worst preppers ever. How do you not own a Geiger counter?
Simone Collins: Well, I mean, it's, it's actually useful. I mean, for example, here's this instance in which across our geographic area,
Malcolm Collins: you get to choose what you spend your time and money on. And for example, you right now have been on a kick of build it yourself, giant Faraday boxes.
Simone Collins: The only reason I'm going to build them myself is they're too expensive to buy.
And what's the point of having solar power generators for solar flares if they burn out when the solar. And so now you, you, you were like, Oh, well, we may not have power for weeks because of the solar flare. But thank goodness we invested in the solar powered generators throughout the house. And then we discover they've been fried just like everything else.
That's why they have to be in Faraday cages, but Faraday cages are too expensive, but surprise, surprise, heavy duty aluminum foil and foil taper enough to make a Faraday cage. He wanted to make a Faraday cage.
Malcolm Collins: Fortune, what you could do is buy just like a huge amount of Chromebooks, put [00:54:00] them in giant Faraday boxes and then wait till a solar flare happens.
Then put them up on a site like eBay or something. Because people would be like a manic to get those.
Simone Collins: Well, I was just watching the recent Danny Gonzalez video on Amazon returns and one by the. Person who kind of co did that video with as well. Maybe there's some way we can get a huge returns box of Chromebooks, you know, basically unused electronics.
Maybe that don't resell at really high prices and do that because also I'm starting to think because, you know, the, the earth is closer to the sun during the winter. So I imagine our solar flare risk is actually seasonal. Like it's higher now because we are closer physically to the sun at this time of year.
So it's, it's, it's, I really need to not put off making these Faraday boxes. You don't understand Malcolm. This is really important, but also I think your brother was, Smart to have a radiation meter [00:55:00] because there could have been a dirty bomb and that could be the reason why there are all these drones flying.
I wouldn't be surprised
Malcolm Collins: if his entire house is done like a Faraday cage, like the liver Kings.
Simone Collins: His wait, the liver King's house is like a Faraday cage.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. He'd be built his house into like a Faraday cage to like keep out signals. You don't know if it's true, but like, I
Simone Collins: know, but if I built a house. If I had the money to build a custom house, why not just make sure that, except how do you do the windows?
Right? All the walls can have foil in them. You don't need
Malcolm Collins: windows. Yeah. Okay. We'll get started. All right.
Simone Collins: Actually, you know what? There was a Zillow Gone Wild image of one, one room or no, actually the entire house, the entire house actually was metal on the inside. Do you remember seeing that one?
That one probably would functionally be a Faraday cage. I don't think it was advertised as such, but Oh,
Speaker 16: Show me what that is. What is that? Um, it's my paper airplane sign. And this is made out of paper. And right there, there's [00:56:00] a lot of paper airplanes I can sell. Okay, so you're going to go outside and you're going to show people your paper airplane sign. Yes, well I'm going to do that in two days because it's cold out there.
That makes sense. And um, when people see your paper airplanes and your paper airplane sign, they're going to give you money. Okay. Um, yes, I'm making money. And what are you going to do with the money? Um, I'm going to buy a remote control ball with it. Like anything. Yeah! I want a remote control ball! You want a remote control ball?
Yeah. It's a silly thing to want. Oh! Why I love you, Octavian. This is my paper airplane so everybody knows I'm my mom. Hey, Octavian, I really like how much [00:57:00] agency you're showing here. You wanted something, we said you needed money to do it, so you came up with a plan to make money. Yes! What are you doing jumping on me?
What are you doing? Oh!
Speaker 18: Hate the thought of party lights. Crowds and dancing give me fright. All I need is you tonight. No friends allowed, no social fights.
Brushed by strangers on the floor. Chatter that we both abhor. Close the door, let's ask [00:58:00] for more. In your arms, my spirit soars. No need for friends, just me and you. Silent nights, our love so true. Holding tight and breaking through. Together, always old and new. No more tipsy late night calls Running through the gossip halls Stay with me within these walls Love we have it never stalls Terrified of faceless crowds Conversations way too loud Hold my heart and not the crowd With your love I'm feeling proud No need for friends, just [00:59:00] me and you.
Silent nights, our love so true. Holding tight and breaking through. Together always, old and new.
No more tipsy late night calls. Running through the gossip halls. Stay with me within these walls Love we have, it never stalls No need for friends, just me and you Silent nights, our love so true Holding tight [01:00:00] and breaking through Together always, old and new

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Everest: The Longest Line of Selfish Egotists on Earth
17 déc.· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this episode, we delve into the controversial topic of climbing Mount Everest and argue why it is an immoral pursuit. Starting with an interview with Eric Weihenmayer, a blind climber of Everest, we discuss the various arguments against the climb. We explore the significant risks to the Sherpas, who face astronomically high death rates, and lay out the dire environmental impacts, including trash accumulation and body retrievals. The episode makes a strong case that climbing Everest is a selfish, performative act that squanders substantial resources and poses serious ethical concerns.
Speaker 3: [00:00:00] We're going to interview
Speaker 2: Eric Weihenmayer, who climbed the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest. But, he's gay. I mean, he's gay, excuse me, he's blind. So we'll hear about that coming up.
Malcolm Collins: Climbing.
Simone Collins: The best, the best piece of news reporting ever done, in my opinion. But,
Malcolm Collins: on the topic of climbing Everest, You have to be a complete garbage dookie soul of a human being to do this.
Speaker 9: You're an emotional f*****g cripple.
Your soul is dog s**t. Every single f*****g thing about you is ugly.
Malcolm Collins: And in this episode, we are going to be laying this out. Only garbage human beings climb Everest. And you could be like, Oh no, this is a direct attack. And yeah, it is a direct attack. If you did this, you're a shitty human being. And, but not for the typical reasons. And here I will post a guy who makes one of the typical arguments against [00:01:00] climbing Everest.
Simone Collins: Oh, yeah,
Malcolm Collins: which is just Sherpas die and are forced to do this. And that is bad. And then at the end of the video, I will explain why that is a terrible argument. That claiming Everest is immoral.
Speaker: Everest these days, which is the fact that if you climbed Everest in 2023, you essentially local people in order to do so.
The season began with three deaths of Sherpas who were carrying ropes and gear through the Khumbu Icefall. Fixing lines and ladders through the glacier, that is a task that has to be completed each year. If anyone is going to climb the mountain on the regular route, the deceased local workers can expect to receive only about 10, 000 as a payout from life insurance.
Ridiculous. To put that into perspective, 10, 000 is barely enough to cover the rising costs of living for a small family in Nepal. One estimate I read was that 10, 000 is enough to only keep the family [00:02:00] afloat. for about two years. Now, there were seven Nepali deaths on the mountain this year. Six of them were working, all of them Sherpas
Malcolm Collins: because it's not a very good argument when you actually look at the statistics.
It has some credence to it, but pretty, pretty low. For me, the core reason why climbing Everest. is so selfish was elucidated very loudly when I was talking to my dad.,
Simone Collins: We were talking, I think about inherent values or something like that.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I was talking about like, what do you live for? Like, like what's a good life to you, et cetera. And I was arguing that he focuses a lot on trying to maximize the aesthetics. Of being an erudite person or some sort of aesthetic version of who he is. And when he's making decisions, he is making them based on how they change his internal perspective on himself instead of how they impact the world around him.
[00:03:00] And I view this as a very, very selfish way to live..
Simone Collins: You were like, and I'm doing this research for an episode on how terrible it is to climb Mount Everest.
And I'm like, well, at least Mount Everest is the highest mountain. This is not like Kilimanjaro. That's just like complete trash. Like the view is nothing. You're just walking up a dirty mountain, like across like gross, you know, you need like separate shoes just for like the bathrooms. Cause there's poop smeared everywhere.
Yeah. Just a disgusting experience. And you're just shuffling your way up because the guides don't let you walk quickly or anything. So it's incredibly boring. And he's like, Oh no, I've, I've, I've saw Mount Kilimanjaro. Like, and I was like, Oh no.
Malcolm Collins: And then it was like, I told him, I was like, but.
Dad, like, why would you do that? Like, what good does this bring to the world? This seems to be entirely based on masturbating sort of a self image of yourself. So he immediately goes. No, I didn't do it for that reason. He couldn't come up with another reason he had done it.
No, he said, I didn't do it for that reason. He said, well, [00:04:00] the one other reason he came up with was you do it to experience hardship. And I was like, b***h, you're the one who just spent all day complaining about our house being too cold. That is an area where we are creating hardship for ourselves, but saving money, which can go to making the world a better place.
Whereas you can't endure the minor hardships of daily life, which make the world a better place. But are able to undergo big performative hardships that end up costing a lot of money and time that you could spend on improving the world. But then he goes talking about his wife,
Simone Collins: they were in Aspen and she bragged to him about going for quite a few kilometers at a high altitude.
And he's like, well, but have you gone 100 kilometers at this higher altitude? And she's like, I don't even know where you would do that. And then he's like, well.
Malcolm Collins: Mount Kilimanjaro, which I've climbed three times, and I was like, Dad, you just argued to me that you didn't do this just for signaling purposes.
And literally in the next You go off on a tangent about how you [00:05:00] dunked on somebody in a signaling manner for climbing the mountain. It is very clear you only did this to signal to yourself the type of person you are.
Simone Collins: Yeah. To one's own wife, which is not even like, who are you, like, you don't need to marry you.
Like, what are you even doing it for? I won. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And so before we get further in this, this is my core complaint about this. Isn't that. It has such high costs. It will go over all of the high costs, whether they are to yourself or to the environment or to money that you are not spending on making the world a better place for such trivial differential benefits.
And by here, a differential benefit is that somebody goes, well, what about the hardship of climbing on Everest? And I'm like, There are hardships that you can endure, equivalent to climbing Mount Everest, that don't put random people's lives at risks, that don't waste tons of money, that don't waste years of your life that actively make the world a better place.
You, you So [00:06:00] why did you choose this hardship over those hardships? Because of the signaling ability it gave you. Or they'll say, well, what about like the views? It's like, well, you can look at a picture. We're going to VR simulation. We have those these days. And they're like, it's not the same.
And I'm like, yeah, it's not the same because you're not freezing your brain. butt off, you're not undergoing permanent brain damage, which by the way, you do undergo. Almost everyone who climbs Everest undergoes permanent brain damage. I'm going to put two studies on screen here. Only one in 13 Everest climbers had normal MRI scans.
So you have a less than 10 percent probability of not undergoing permanent brain damage. And this also Wow.
Simone Collins: I didn't know that. So you're really screwing yourself up by going.
Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. You're not just wasting tons of money. You're not just putting other people's lives at risk. You are permanently f*****g up your brain.
And this was true three years later. They did follow up scans on these people. Oh, so permanent damage? Permanent [00:07:00] damage, almost like everyone who goes. Specifically, you have frontal subcortical lesions, you have microhemorrhages, you have cortical atrophy, the loss of brain tissue, you have enlargement of the varicorobin spaces, fluid filled spaces surrounding blood vessels, you have subcortical lesions, white matter hyper intensities. You have reduced white matter density and volume, reduced gray matter density and volume in specific regions of the brain. And what does this end up looking like? You typically have a loss of memory both short term and long term, and barbia psychia which is a slowness of thought.
So you think slower afterwards.
Simone Collins: So you are, you are. Slightly retarding yourself for the rest of your life, just to be able to tell people that you climbed Mount Everest.
Malcolm Collins: And a lot of people are willing to do that. I mean, you
Simone Collins: already have to be so damaged.
Malcolm Collins: Other people's lives at risk, slightly retarding themselves for the rest of their life.
And they're not even [00:08:00] showing that they have done anything of particular difficulty anymore. You could just spend
Simone Collins: a lot of money. Yeah. You
Malcolm Collins: could just spend a ton of money and you know, there's been instances that we'll talk about like
Malcolm Collins: I kid you, not that guy, you just saw being carried down from Everest in a sack. That guy.
It's the same guy.
who you're about to see on tour and during this, he didn't even think the Sherpa who took him down.
Speaker 17: T. Ravi Chandran, intends to proudly wave the Jaluga Milang flag at the summit of all the world's tallest mountains. It does not matter if the mountain is steep or if he has to squeeze in between narrow crevices, he will not forget to carry the Malaysian flag with him.
Speaker 18: The first thing that we put on our tent is the Jaluga Milang. Oh, it's a boat. Um, pride
Speaker 17: he hopes the government will recognize his [00:09:00] contributions to the nation and will call on him to say a few words On Mede Kade,
Speaker 13: Wow! Look how far I climbed! And I'm not even tired!
Speaker 14: Wake up, you lazy Sherpas! We've got a mountain to climb!
Malcolm Collins: So there's
Simone Collins: the 1 instance that I learned about last year.
Who this is a 2012 instance of Sharia shock, chlorophene who was a Canadian who. Basically had no reason to have anyone permit her to climb Mount Everest in terms of her experience and her training, but she just basically paid so much to an outfit that was like, yeah, sure. Well, whatever you say you, you want to pay that much.
Okay. Let's do this. Because you can always get someone, you know, it was going to be like, you know, everyone has a [00:10:00] price. And that's the problem is now I think Everest is really full of unscrupulous climbing outfits that will just take about anyone. And she, by the way, perished in, in the dead zone on her way back down from the top on a uniquely crowded day because she ran out of oxygen because she used up way too much because she wasn't fit to climb this mountain.
Yeah, well hold people. That's other problem.
Malcolm Collins: Other people have made it down but have like screwed up other people's ascents. So there was another influencer Ravi Shandra, who was also found in the dead zone. He apparently was by himself there and some other team had to abandon their ascent. To pick him up and bring him down and he ended up not even thanking them thinking like his insurance company and sponsors and like pretending this didn't happen in like his tour about his climb.
But he, he made it to the top. And if you look at the pictures of this and I'll play some video of this,
Speaker 5: Camp two where I witnessed the most extreme enlarged lines of the entire season. as we were at camp two, we could see every [00:11:00] single team that was ahead of us moving up from camp three to Camp four.
I mean, my teammate Tyler described it as a black mamba, and there's just no other better way to describe that thing. If you saw my viral video of lines on Everest this year, this is most likely where it took place. And these same people went up to the summit together, and that just created even more lines, which were all documented as well.
Speaker 20: The lines. Everywhere you go. People. Crowds. all the lines, lines, lines! All the lines, lines, lines, lines! And then There get to be so many people that they make fast pass. So you stand in line to get a ticket to stand in line later.
Then there's lines for the bathrooms, lines for the drinks, lines for cantankerous and rare cantankula plates.
Malcolm Collins: It's just lines and line. It's a, it's a, it's a corporatized thing. Now you are going to the top to wait in line for an hour to spend a few seconds on the top of a mountain.
Simone Collins: Well, what makes things worse is the inexperienced climbers [00:12:00] make the line because they slow everyone else down.
Malcolm Collins: And you're risking your potential life and any other good you could do with your life. One to 2 percent of climbers who attempt to summit die. So you're risking your life.
You're blowing tons of money. How much money? 30, 000 to 160, 000. Although the sort of median range is 50 to 60, 000 per ascent. That's like
Simone Collins: an Oxbridge Masters. That, you know, good, like, year spent doing some really fun studying in a gorgeous place.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you could be doing productive work. You could be doing productive research.
Well, if
Simone Collins: you just want to do something indulgent, that's what I would do with that money. If I like, had
Malcolm Collins: nothing to do with my life. I would respect somebody more who spent that money just partying for a year. They would do less damage to their brain. They had better
Simone Collins: stories. It would be more fun, more interesting.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. More interesting than I waited in line for ages.
Simone Collins: No, honestly, you'll probably do more good, like, getting s**t faced and, you know, You know, like, doing crazy things as [00:13:00] long as you don't drive or anything,
Malcolm Collins: yeah. Right, but the, the, the point here being is that there's a lot you can do with 60, 000 that is good for the world.
Like, if you don't spend that on yourself, for somebody in a developing country, that can feed dozens of families. Oh, that's game changing
Simone Collins: money, yes.
Malcolm Collins: That could be spent on medical research. That could be It is, it is not like, Oh, I'm just spending this on myself, whatever. It is, I am choosing this to spend on myself for a completely self indulgent reason.
And I know, like, when I, I Self indulgent. Like, I play video games. That costs money, right? That doesn't make the world a better place. But I understand that I should be ashamed of that. Okay? You I wouldn't brag to somebody about how much video games I play or you know, I wouldn't brag to somebody that I hadn't wasted the time to like beat a Dark Souls game on whatever, you know, like [00:14:00] that is a sign of my failing as a human being.
Okay, my failing to vanity, my failing to addictive loops, my failing to. The worst thing you can do is to treat your sins as if they are virtues because it leads to terrible decisions like we see in the case of Everest. Now let's go over the costs of, of, of claiming Everest in, in terms of like the world.
All right. So body retrieval. There are approximately 200 bodies on Everest. Removing bodies typically costs between 50 and 100. 30, 000 and 70, 000 per body. In some cases they can reach 100, 000 or more. It requires six to 10 Sherpas working for most of a day to bring down a single body. So that's in addition to all of these costs, frozen bodies can weigh significantly more than their original weight due to attached ice.
Simone Collins: Oh gosh. Yeah. Oh, like when you have a slightly. [00:15:00] Yeah, something out of the freezer and it's all caked with not good
Malcolm Collins: and these have to be brought all the way down. Helicopters typically can't land above camp too. So you're bringing these down significant distances, risking the life of everyone who's carrying this body.
You know, this is a huge risk to them. And also that that person who died unceremoniously can like. Had a chance at bragging rights, had a chance to challenge themselves in a way that was pointlessly dangerous, pointlessly damaging, pointlessly expensive just so that we know, oh, oh, there's the body of somebody who would rather pay, you know, at minimum, you know, 20, 000 to masturbate.
Okay, but
Simone Collins: why can't we just create a body dumpster? On Everest, just out of the way, because it's an eyesore. Like I, I don't get, like, I, I get, I understand that it is. An eyesore to the [00:16:00] tourists, but honestly, they're kind of there to see the dead bodies. I say it's a feature, not a bug, right? As long as they're out of the way, just make a giant pile.
And then you have the benefit of having them see what a******s they are on the way down. I don't know why we're risking. You want to
Malcolm Collins: create a dump at the top of Everest and hear one of the base camps. This is a holy mountain to the Nepalese people. Yeah, and this
Simone Collins: shows, yeah, don't mess with the mountain.
Here's the giant pile of bodies to show what the, what the mountain is. No, no,
Malcolm Collins: you may misunderstand how holy the mountain is. So for Sherpas, for example, some of them have to spend like five hours a day on off season doing prayers just to ritually cleanse themselves. For the sin of going on to the mountain.
It is a very bad thing to do to leave bodies and to understand the size of the trash heaps up there as well. There's an estimated 40 to 50 metric tons of debris, like oxygen canisters and I'm
Simone Collins: sure people just dump them at the top. They don't care because, you know, You're about to die or something.
You don't really Well,
Malcolm Collins: the teams are, are [00:17:00] very selfish about this. It's even a common practice for teams to cut the logos out of their tents so they can just leave them at the top without being traced back to them.
Simone Collins: Oh, that's so screwed up.
Speaker 7: My expedition leader, Garrett Madison, actually commented about how some teams will cut their logo out of their tents, so when they go down and they don't need a tent anymore, they can just leave theirs there, because how is it going to be traced back to them? There's no repercussions.
Malcolm Collins: And Oh my lord. The war is now described as an actual dump, quote unquote, with piles of trash being left behind by descending summit teams emitting a foul odor.
So you're staying in a camp that smells like you're staying in a dump.
Speaker 6: Pushing right beneath the death zone at camp 4, it was an actual dump, like, simply put, this place was trashed. Just look at this video I filmed, I can barely name most of the things that are in this shot. It even smelled horrible up there, which is very weird because at altitude, I lose my sense of smell, but I walked in there and it smelled like something. I don't even know what.
Malcolm Collins: And now you [00:18:00] might have like a corpse pile near it. Bring in some necromancers, right? That's
Simone Collins: why I said the dead zone, they'll all stay refrigerated there. They're not going to thaw out in the dead zone.
Malcolm Collins: Even on the summit, people have found things like Coke bottles just like, oh,
Simone Collins: drinking a Coke at the summit.
Summit. She
Malcolm Collins: was. And and and to get them on people are dying, cleaning this up. So, for example, a Sherpa died during a cleanup operation on of trash from camp for and a soldier in the Nepalese army died at camp 3, while participating in a trash removal effort. So. Yeah. People are, so you're staying at dump sites sitting around in lines.
Mm-hmm . Like the people who tell me they're doing this for like, the awe and magistery of it. It's like, I've seen the pictures. Okay. You're do, you're clearly not. There are other mountains that you know, there are other things you could do. I wouldn't even say mountains, which I view as a, a very self masturbatory thing to do.
Mm-hmm . There are other things you can do [00:19:00] that don't require all of this. It's it's I just hate self image augmentation through expensive acts like that's I think when you know that your moral compass and the moral compass of the society that has raised you has just gone completely off the deep end.
No, I want to get into the arguments around Sherpas and is this immoral because of the Sherpas dying?
Simone Collins: I just I just looked up Mount Kilimanjaro toilets and I understand why you have to have a separate pair of shoes. To go into that s**t everywhere. Yeah, no. Like all the popular mountains are gross.
Don't like, why, why would you go onto them? You know, especially you can, in a good theme park, they're literally repainting overnight because there's so much gross stuff smeared onto the walls and and whatnot. You don't wanna go somewhere where there's a lot of foot traffic and not a huge amount of infrastructure to clean that stuff.
It's not [00:20:00] sanitary.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and it's like, why can't you just undergo the hardship of climbing a local mountain? It's likely just as beautiful. You, you don't have to put other people's lives at risk. You don't have Though all the Mr. Ballin videos don't,
Simone Collins: like, I think you and I would probably agree that it's just irresponsible to go out hiking, because keep in mind, there's Ballin and, and other like, you know, Missing411.
Stories about people who go out hiking and they want to go show off how like rugged they are and then they die and then a bunch of people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes millions of taxpayer money, local taxpayer money to find these Yahoo's who go out even, you know, Seasoned explorers and stuff.
It's not okay.
Malcolm Collins: Designed to teach people and kids how to live outdoors and off the land. That is not Everest. Yeah, but you can do that without
Simone Collins: going into the wilderness. You [00:21:00] can do that with, in a safe nearby space where you're easy to find with cell phone coverage.
Malcolm Collins: And I point out that we are not like anti outdoor people.
My dad was on the board of like, outward Bound. Outward Bound.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And you used to work as a river guide.
Simone Collins: I was never paid. I was too young to be paid. You were
Malcolm Collins: too young to be paid, but you, you, you did do this every summer. You'd go be a River Wrath guide. And you still have the voice for it.
Like when she goes into River Guide voice, it's shocking to a lot of people. Because she can, like, get this booming voice out of nowhere that's very commanding and that she kept having to use it around our wedding because people, like, were, were doing it and saying, you know, go to the, go to the, anyway I want to get here to the Sherpa argument because I find this one more nuanced and less obvious than just a why are you wasting time on something that obviously brings no good to the world and it's just self masturbatory.
So, and here I would note that my criticism of climbing things like Mount Everest does not attach to people who are doing it for things that clearly have value, [00:22:00] i. e. if you're going up as a research team that, that, yeah, I'm like, okay, yeah, sure, research. But like, that's such a minority of people doing it, but like, I don't need to, you know, really pontificate on that.
Well, yeah,
Simone Collins: are you questioning Sherpas? I mean, the No, no, no, hold
Malcolm Collins: on, hold on. What I'm questioning here is, is the reason that climbing Everest is immoral because Sherpas die doing it. I think that's a minor reason, not the primary reason. And I'll get into the argument here, okay? Okay, okay. First, the ratio of Sherpas to clients has increased significantly.
In the early 1990s, the ratio was one Sherpa to every five clients. Today, it's common to have two Sherpas per client, and in another statistic, I heard 1. 62 Sherpas per client. So what you're seeing here is the number of Sherpas has exploded And per client, because it's just so easy to do it now, because they just have these huge, like, teams around some individuals who are doing it.
So somebody telling you, I claimed Everest, doesn't really mean anything anymore. You know, you've got the diploma mill of Everest now. [00:23:00] But as for the Sherpas themselves, and here is the argument that, okay, but this is really bad. You are needlessly risking people's lives. Sherpas. Had 4, 053 deaths per 100, 000 full time workers.
Avalanches are the primary cause of Sherpa deaths for 46. 4%. So around half the Sherpas that die, there's just nothing you can really do to avoid avalanches if you're climbing Everest. It's not like they messed up or something. It's just a statistical risk. I
Simone Collins: guess not disproportionately. An avalanche takes out everyone in its path.
It's not because they're carrying stuff.
Malcolm Collins: If you're talking about 4, 000 Sherpa deaths for 100, 000 workers. How did that compare to other high risk professions? U. S. soldiers in Iraq, 335 deaths per 100, 000 workers. For Alaskan bush pilots, another one of the most dangerous jobs out there, 287 deaths.
Commercial fishermen, 124 deaths. Minors, 25 deaths per [00:24:00] 100, 000. Sherpas are an astronomically more dangerous profession than like compared to anything else. You're talking about for active U. S. soldiers in an active war zone. It's 335 versus 4, 053 for Sherpas.
Simone Collins: Yeah, that's really bad. This is
Malcolm Collins: many multiples more dangerous than being in an active war zone for these individuals.
Simone Collins: Wow. Okay. I didn't realize it was bad. I mean, I get why they do it because you can make so much more working on Everest than doing pretty much light and just by such an order of magnitude than anything else in the area. It's really tempting, but that's yeah. God, what a hazard. That's terrible. Yeah, no, but then you're gonna die.
It's not good.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, why do I hate this argument? Right? Okay so [00:25:00] the obvious counter argument to this is Yeah And the sherpas know this and it's the best economic opportunity in the region that they have access to By a long shot families and give them a good life And people are like, well, it shouldn't be the best economic opportunity that they have access to in the region.
I haven't seen a single person making this argument attempting to improve the economy. I know, but it is. Like, what do you want to do? But it is. But it is. It's 7 percent of the country's GDP. You can't knock out at 7 percent of the country's GDP industry and expect things to be fine for the people. When you're dealing with the level of poverty that these people live in, that's children starving to death.
That's still people dying. You can't say, well, hypothetically it would be nice if it wasn't. The only way they had to make money, but it is the only way they have to make money and it's actually getting better for them over time. The sherpas have noted that the [00:26:00] amount that they make per year has gone up dramatically over time.
Especially recently. With the extra commercialization of the field and the number of Sherpas being used has gone up. So that means the number of people making money on this has gone up. And then you can say, okay, okay, okay. Well, they can't be earning that much compared to the local populace, right?
Like, why is this so interesting to them? The average annual earnings for a Sherpa. Are 4, 000 to 10, 000 and keep in mind. They're only working during climbing season. anyone here who's thinking,
Simone Collins: all right, what would you need to pay me to deal with some entitled a*****e probably or if not entitled a*****e, at least entitled, you know, person who's willing to, you know, an Everest person and risk my life and how many climbs is a Sherpa doing, you know, probably three climbs a season, I would imagine.
I don't
Malcolm Collins: know, I'd have to look this up. Maybe just
Simone Collins: one. But even, even just one client, [00:27:00] how much would you need to be paid? To put your life on the line for that.
Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, but this is a problem. They are thinking like privileged, you know, people who live in a developed country Yeah, where they don't have to worry about genuine scarcity And so they don't understand what they're suggesting when they're suggesting taking away these people's source of income Yeah, so the point I was making is now For per year, Sherpas are making 10, 000.
This is a huge bump up from what it used to be. It used to be around 4, 000 to 5, 000. So it's, it's rising, which is great for them. Now you could say, well, what's the average monthly salary in Nepal, right? To put this in context, it's 230 to 270.
That's, that's why they're doing this. And that's average, you know, half of the people are making less than that or might not be mean But you know what? I mean, right like um, and I also note here that the minimum wage in nepal Which is what a lot [00:28:00] which is the alternative for a lot of sherpas Because a lot of the sherpas are not people with high skill sets.
They're acting like well Why don't they have coding backups? Well, they're the group of people who would otherwise be earning minimum wage The average minimum wage in Nepal not the average, the minimum wage in Nepal is 115 per month. That's the alternative for these people, for a lot of them. And then you can be like, okay, well, what about like top earning professions in Nepal, right?
A software engineer in Nepal is making 7, 000 per year to 14, 000 per year. Consider this in contrast with a Sherpa is 4, 000 to 10, 000. So they're earning in the. Range for a non skilled profession of the highest earners in their country. Okay, that's that's that's to me. Insane that you would say, oh, people aren't going to on the [00:29:00] net suffer if we remove this earning opportunity from
Simone Collins: also, we just we need to build an escalator and a slide.
All right, let's build an escalator and a slide. Let's just fully commercialize it.
Malcolm Collins: Change it. Okay. So what we need to do is we bring people to Everest. We're like, okay, now you're entering the Everest secret society. You get to base camp. We are going to use AI imaging to create an image of you at the summit.
Nobody actually goes up anymore. You take all the money that you would have spent on all of this useless stuff. We'll give it to Sherpa's families and other poor people in Nepal and Sherpas who died because they don't get that much in their insurance packages. Yeah. And, and we'll send you home and you can brag to everyone.
Or like,
Simone Collins: yeah, set up a luxury hotel in Nepal. That's just for the secret society. We're like, Hey, for the month or so that you'd be climbing Everest. You know, do you really want to do that? Or do you want to just party with a bunch of other wealthy people? For four weeks in this, [00:30:00]
Malcolm Collins: we can cover up all the lines.
We can cover up all the dump. We can cover up all the bodies. You don't have to worry about any of that anymore. Because, because it simulated Everest, everything's a dokey and you're actually contributing a benefit and that benefit to society because your money is actually going to making the world a better place.
I feel like.
Simone Collins: Maybe Nepal could pull it off, especially if No, here's the great thing is no, no, no, no. So like, what if one of the outfits also like one, an extra expensive package is tragic death on Everest and, and Nepal, like the government's in on it, they'll issue the death certificate. Like, yeah, we wanna fake
Malcolm Collins: their desk, tragic desk, whatever.
Yes.
Simone Collins: Because you still, like, no one would believe it if there was a secret Everest Cabal, but like, suddenly the survival rate's 100%. Mm, suspicious. No one believes it anymore. So, some people go and they never come back. Tragic death. Oh no, this is a big problem. Oh my gosh, so tragic. We need to stop this. Yes, they're
Malcolm Collins: still like wealthy [00:31:00] divorce lawyers.
So it's like, okay, you need to disappear.
Simone Collins: It's how just, yeah, it becomes a new tragic boating accident. And, you know, it's, it's, it's a very posh way to die, obviously, you know, dying never is so sad, so sad. And then of course, but all their, all their holdings were in crypto and their wallet was on them on the mountain.
Fell on a crevice, don't know where it went. Oh, tragic. Fell on a crevice? Yeah, fell on a crevice. All that, all that crypto gone forever. So sad. I don't know that that's the, that's the real dream, I guess, is and because these are all such insecure people who have to be able to say, I summited Everest.
They, you know, would
Malcolm Collins: Steal me on the other side of this for me, Simone. Okay, okay, okay. What net good is gonna come out, like, to the people who are like, no, I actually, like, climbing Everest is a good thing for, like, and when I say a good thing for my personal development, it needs to be a differentially good thing.
A good thing that you could not have achieved by something of equal cost and [00:32:00] risk to life, like, with less cost and less risk to other people's lives.
Thoughts.
Simone Collins: Okay. So, so I wait, I really, really want to climb Everest and I'm talking to you and you're saying, why are you doing this? It seems
Malcolm Collins: completely selfish,
Simone Collins: completely selfish. And well, I'm saying, well, one, like this is the economy of Nepal. I am supporting it. To
Malcolm Collins: what I say, then just give the money directly to them all.
Don't make it risk their lives for you.
Simone Collins: Yeah, I, I guess, gosh, this is, this is difficult. Okay, I don't care about Nepal. Screw, screw Nepal. Screw the Nepalese people. Screw their traditions around Everest being sacred, whatever they are. I don't know about them because I don't care because I'm not culturally sensitive, etc. I just want to be the best and I want to climb [00:33:00] the hardest mountain, although I think K2 is harder.
Yeah, but
Malcolm Collins: this is the thing, right? Like, you're like, first, it's not the hardest mountain, two it's, it's just the highest status mountain, which again is part of the problem here. And again, you're like, okay, I want to be the best. Why do you need to be the best in this totally pointless way that society respects, but like reality doesn't respect the fact that you were standing on some arbitrary peak?
And again, there are other ways you can be the very best without trashing the environment, wasting money and sacrificing other humans lives.
Speaker 21: It's gonna be the very best, to catch them is my real test,
Simone Collins: yeah, when also a lot of society really doesn't respect. I think, you know, Everest has become one of those things that people now see is quite douchey. So I also don't really understand why a lot of people. I think a lot of [00:34:00] people in their childhoods, like younger now, I do think in the future, the, the Everest market will crash because we've reached a point at which the vast majority of the coverage of Everest is So, Like, oh, so many people die on it.
It's, it's sort of a grotesque interest in death or just should in front of people loving on how annoyingly long the lines are. And, you know, the vast majority of the pictures of the summit of Mount Everest is this massive, massive line of people. So I think the market will crash. I can't steel man it because I, I really can't,
Malcolm Collins: you know, the woman who died that
Simone Collins: I mentioned at the beginning of this.
Her whole thing was just this sort of very narrowly cited, like, I, I'm just going to do it. Like she was the kind of person, like she ran for office in Canada. She just did a bunch of things in her life was always like, nothing's going to get in my way. Like you say, I can't do it. I'm going to do it.
And I think that's a lot of the people who go out there, it's [00:35:00] very much that sort of spoiled toddler syndrome of. Like they, they just stubbornly insist that they can and must do it. And then because it is tedious and difficult to do it, I think it can motivate a very specific type of person.
Malcolm Collins: Well, I see them as spoiled toddlers.
Well, I see them as worse than that. Like to me, I see somebody and I've mentioned this in another episode saying, I claimed Everest is like having a swastika tattooed on your forehead. I'm like, Oh, I know you're a garbage human being. Thank you for communicating that to me.
Speaker 9: You're an emotional f*****g cripple.
Your soul is dog s**t. Every single f*****g thing about you is ugly.
Malcolm Collins: But it's not the only category of recreation I see is like that.
Like. If I knew that playing video games, like my preferred form of recreation, like, randomly killed somebody, like, one in ten times I hit a specific key or something like that, or one in a hundred times I hit a specific key, I'd be like, yeah, I should stop doing this, like, I might like video games or randomly killed me I'd be like, yeah, I should [00:36:00] stop I should, or I should at least not be bragging about it but Everest isn't the only category of this, you know, whether you're talking about free climbing, for example, the other category of this.
Free climbing
Simone Collins: really freaks you out.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I don't like it. Another one, well, it's interesting, this doesn't freak me out as much, is dangerous style spelunking. Like, Oh, that freaks,
Simone Collins: I can't handle. Mm mm. No. I've listened to
Malcolm Collins: so many stories about people who have died in this. It's always, like, the dumbest thing.
Why did you crawl into a tunnel if you didn't know you're going to be able to crawl back out that tunnel? I like it. It's like well, you you're putting your life in other people's like do you have nothing Of to offer the world like you can't even like sit down and try to make yourself somebody who could offer the world something
It's like, you go up to someone and you're like, Hey. You've been gifted this one life to try to make it count, to try to do something good for the world. And then they're like, you know what? I think I'd rather shove myself in a hole and you're like, whoa. Excuse me. You'd rather do what. Yeah, I'm going to go. , in the desert and shoved my head in a hole and you're [00:37:00] like, what? Why would you do that? I don't know.
I like it. It makes me feel good. Gets me off.
That's the crazy thing. That's a crazy thing.
or Dangerous types of cave diving where it's like look I don't mind if you spelunk in like a big cave just explore it and enjoy it.
But there is a point Where whether it's mountain climbing or cave diving or anything like that, where there is a form of it that is fun and recreational, where the risk to other people or yourself is marginal point where the only reason for what you are doing anymore is to increase the risk.
Simone Collins: Well, and part of this, it may be, it reminds me as you're giving me these examples, it reminds me of. Sexual arousal pathways gone wrong, how, you know, obviously it's, humans have evolved to have instincts that make them interested in things associated with sex because humans who are not at all interested in those don't tend to reproduce at really good rates.
So then they don't really inherit the future. And so there's not a [00:38:00] whole lot of us who aren't really into that. But then, you know, there are some people who then have really weird arousal pathways with regard to certain things and they take it too far and they die, like through specific Expeciation or through other things, you know, shoving stuff up their butts and they really shouldn't because that's not really reproductive.
And I think that humans also have, and this is a really, really good trait that has built civilization that has created inventions and amazing things for pushing limits and exploring. And, you know, pushing themselves as far as they can go. You know, wanting to prove things to yourself. And that is a good thing.
It's just, these people are the equivalent, in terms of that, like, super stimuli, as the person who ends up choking themselves for arousal, or, you know, doing a bunch of other things.
Malcolm Collins: The people who die on Everest. Are the moral equivalent of the person who dies because they put a light bulb up their butt to get off Yeah, or a gerbil up their butt to get off.
Speaker 22: It's called autoerotic asphyxiation this is my problem with it. The risk reward. [00:39:00] It's not good. And I know the reward because I read about it. Like, apparently, by cutting off the oxygen or something like that, you increase your orgasm until it's one and a half times as powerful.
That's the one you had the Thursday before last. But is that really that important? I mean, we have a lot of things in this country. It's, you know, it's raining in the forest. There's all kinds of s**t we have to think about, let alone whacking off. That's our big problem. But the risk, good lord.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it's just
Simone Collins: they take it too far Like it's there's there's a place for that and you've taken it too far
Malcolm Collins: Well, no But you knew like the guy who put the light bulb up his butt knew there was a risk and putting a light But it really turned him on, you know, the guy who put the gerbil up his butt. He knew it was a risk it created a positive emotional state for him and he's like this is more important to me You [00:40:00] Then the risks that this is incurring or the pain that this is incurring others in the case of the gerbil
Speaker 23: Okay, now, Butters, could you bring over Lemmy Winks for me, please? S**t! Oh, no. No, no, no, no. Newton
Malcolm Collins: you know, I, I think this is when we begin to as a society framing the people who indulgently spend the one lives that they are gifted in these really, really selfish ways. As the same as the type of person who ends up in a hospital with a light bulb up their butt then we can lower the people who are doing this performatively.
Cause a lot of people are just doing this performatively. And yeah, there's gonna be some like You know, small portion of the population that just can't stop themselves from climbing dangerous mountains are going into dangerous holes are putting gerbils up their butt. But you know, that is that is where we can be like, okay, well, you know, you at least understand that everyone sees you as the guy who died putting a gerbil up his butt.
But [00:41:00] yeah.
Simone Collins: Yep. Everest. Garbage. In every respect. Can't understand it. But what is wild is that, while I don't personally know anyone who's climbed Mount Everest, we do know, I think we've encountered multiple people, not just your dad, who've climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. So people are still doing this to a lesser extent.
Malcolm Collins: No, I said Everest is the type of thing he would have done if the opportunity had come up at the right age.
And I will say, I respect my dad. I like my dad, but this is one area where like his moral structure is just very juvenile. But it's because he's a first generation American. Like, we'll, we'll have a separate video on this, which is like, why are first generation atheists so likely to have athetic value systems, hedonistic values?
I was actually,
Simone Collins: I was going to say, it seems like the, there was a rise in this kind of behavior as religion. [00:42:00] A little bit, I think,
Malcolm Collins: because it's not that religion didn't have pointless ways. You could challenge yourself, but the pointless ways you could challenge yourself in religion. We're usually meant to lower negative.
Externalities
Simone Collins: are broadly pro social. We could say.
Malcolm Collins: No, or anti social, they'd say, go cloister yourself in a room and don't talk to anyone for 30 years. Like, that's a very difficult thing to do.
Simone Collins: Hey, you know what? No, it is broadly pro social because it takes the crazy a******s and removes them from society.
Come on.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we got to tell everyone in Everest. Hey, hey, the new thing is, can you get off social media for 20 years? Go for it! Go for it! It's so hard! The challenge,
Simone Collins: the real, yes, that's how you really know.
Malcolm Collins: Thoughts? Like, I, I, I like that. I think that's what we need to be pushing. Um, the, the new but no, I think that all of this is sort of downstream of the first generation didn't really have any sort of [00:43:00] a meaningful alternative to it. Well,
Simone Collins: and they didn't have, they didn't have some other way to find meaning or achievement in life.
And yeah, I mean, like other religions give you sacraments, like you can join religious service or you could have a family and like you. are really maxing it out by doing that. And, and if you want to get intense, have 10 kids. If you want to get intense, become a nun, you know, there are things you can do. And the problem I think with, with broadly society is the way now that you max it out is by spending a lot of money or doing dumb s**t, like climbing Mount Everest.
Malcolm Collins: They coded value, moral value to their self perception and society's perception of themselves, rather than any sort of objective or well thought through value system.
Simone Collins: Well, and I, you know, I would argue that a lot of people did things like join religious service, or, have a lot of kids or do things like that.
To signal, but at least it, it [00:44:00] harnesses that desire to front and harnesses it for good. Like people who just gave a lot of money, like, think about what wealthy families used to do. They used to like the Carnegie's like they, they gave so much, you know, all the libraries and the theaters and like all these other things.
And then before they think about what the Medici's did, like they built and there's all art they commissioned and like they sort of gave things to society and get a fountain in your town or something, you know, and now it's, it's not being spent on something everyone can do. I think a lot of that too is, is driven even by weirdly anti capitalist sentiment.
In the, like in the past. You could become a wealthy benefactor and give to society and be celebrated for it. And now like the Chan Zuckerberg initiative wants to like end human disease and people like, Oh, screw you. And maybe that's another issue too, is now because it's not cool to be a patron, you can't even like, you can't flaunt your wealth in a [00:45:00] way.
That benefits society because society will hate you for it. And so instead, they're spending it on still like doing things like climbing Mount Everest. And that's killing Sherpas, and that's killing other like people.
Malcolm Collins: Here's another great example, like the billionaires who all died in that submarine trying to see the Titanic.
Simone Collins: Right, well, because they couldn't. They couldn't possibly like found a library because then people would be like a rich person. I mean, they still made fun of them, but if they'd done something more public facing, it was meant to benefit other people. They would have been criticized for it. And that is, yeah, I don't know.
I'm just, I'm just starting to think about this more.
Malcolm Collins: Well, we have now wealthy people are
Simone Collins: demonized for trying to do good for trying to give to society.
Malcolm Collins: Right. And I think that if we look at the people who are trying to live our value system, right, like the billionaires this is one of the reasons why we, even though like there might be reasons to criticize Elon Musk, he's clearly trying to get us off planet, which is like our core goal.[00:46:00]
for pronatalism in a way that hurts his ability to make money and stuff like that. He's trying to like, you really need to cut billionaires some slack if they are broadly trying to do things in alignment with your value system. Oh, he's,
Simone Collins: he's trying to set up self driving cars to drive people around cities.
He's, he's trying to set up like
Malcolm Collins: dramatically lower the number of deaths.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And people are like, Oh, can you believe this? Billionaire months. I just it's so annoying. But yeah, I think that's that's another issue though is if you show that you if you use your wealth to try to help society, you're going to be Not only not praised, but actively criticized.
You're going to start to do stupid indulgent stuff like climb Mount Everest
Malcolm Collins: or just like the bottom of invest endlessly
Simone Collins: on, like, go to, like on all these ayahuasca trips and just look inward and then spend all your money on mental health and like,
Malcolm Collins: the only way this is averted is through social shaming and through, through realigning a society's [00:47:00] perception of individuals who put themselves at these sorts of pointless risks as.
The guy who died sticking a lightbulb up
Simone Collins: and rewarding people who use their resources to give back because right now we just punish them.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we just punish them. We just punish them. And it's worse than just punishing them when we praise them. People attempt to punish us.
Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. Yeah. No. So it's very serious.
I was just listening to an interview. On the honestly podcast with Mark Andreessen between Barry Weiss and Mark Andreessen and Mark Andreessen was talking about this. He was like, there used to be this sort of social contract in America where if you worked hard and built a company and made a lot of money, then you'd get to go to all the fancy parties and you donate money and people would celebrate you and it'd be fun.
You know, like that would be like a good motivator. And now people are doing that and they're trying to give back. Bill Gates tries to give back. Jen Zuckerberg tries to give back. Elon Musk tries to give back. And Elon Musk gets like attacked by the U. S. government and [00:48:00] society and Mark Zuckerberg gets attacked by the government and society.
Like, they get hated. You know, people have all these conspiracy theories about Bill Gates and he's a monster. So the social contract has
Malcolm Collins: Oh! I have a call
Simone Collins: with Abigail Schreier. I'm sorry, I have to end the call. You can end. I'm sorry. I love you too. Bye.
Speaker 25: Mountains high but hearts are small Chasing glory, watch them fall Waiting lines and freezing nights Dollar bills and blinding lights Footsteps
Speaker 26: echo empty fame Rescuers call out your name Risk their lives for hollow gain Frostbite thoughts and [00:49:00] freezing pain Climbing To nowhere, while the world is crying, we ain't there.
Dollar signs in hollow air, risking lives for glory's glare. A
Speaker 25: valley hear the cries, hungry hands and angel eyes. Thousands could be fed and warm, yet we climb into the storm. Is it worth it?
Speaker 26: Look
Speaker 25: around,
Speaker 26: we're in a mountain shroud. This pressure's not a game. Chasing peaks is just insane. Climbing Everest to nowhere. While the world is crying, we ain't there. Dollar signs in hollow air.[00:50:00]
Risking lives for glory's clear.
Everest to nowhere. While the world is crying. We ain't there. Dollar signs in hollow air. Risking lives for glory's glare. Climbing Everest to nowhere. While the world is crying. We ain't there. Dollars
for glory's glare. Glory's
[00:51:00] glare.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
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We Raised a Generation of Hikikomori: Gentle Parenting Failed Gen Alpha
16 déc.· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this episode, Simone and Malcolm delve into the shocking new statistics regarding youth mental health. They challenge the common belief that social media is to blame for the decline, suggesting that a lack of hardship, discipline, and boundaries plays a more significant role. With numerous anecdotes and studies, they discuss the impact of 'gentle parenting' and how these practices may be contributing to an increase in anxiety, depression, and school absenteeism among kids. The conversation spans various topics including the unintended consequences of the COVID-19 lockdowns, the rise of therapy dependence, and potential cultural shifts among Gen Z. They also explore historical parenting practices and the importance of religious communities in providing support to modern families.
[00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. Today's episode is going to be an interesting topic, or we are going to be going over new statistics on just how bad mental health is for the youth of this coming generation. It is worse than even the previous statistics may have indicated.
What is likely causing it? I think a lot of people blame it on social media.
Simone Collins: Oh, the phones. I'm
Malcolm Collins: so done with
Simone Collins: that.
Malcolm Collins: Enough. The stats just don't agree with this. And even, it's not even an issue of the stats. I can look to my generation and look at who was the early adopters of intense social media usage.
Like myself and my friend group. And they actually had much higher mental health outcomes than the groups that were not using social media. So what we should not have seen is the individuals who were most using social media first with, , better mental health. than the individuals who abstain from it in the early days.
I think that this is downstream of something [00:01:00] entirely different, specifically the lack of hardship, discipline, and boundaries that we are giving to young people. And the stats we're going to go over that are, are shocking. To, just to give you an example of like two that we're going to go over, 78 percent of parents in 2024 are practicing gentle parenting.
That's 78 percent by one study, 74 percent by a different study. That is terrifying. If it's as bad as I suspect it is. Are you going to share that clip
Simone Collins: that you shared with me on WhatsApp last night? Cause that was terrifying.
Malcolm Collins: She could be the next president.
Yeah. I think some people may assume when they hear me telling stories about how, when I lightly discipline a child in public, like even scolding them, I get accosted by people. And in this video, I think I'm pretty vindicated. You can see that any sane person would think this kid needs to be disciplined. But when people try to just restrain the child, other people are threatening to call the cops on them.
And then in a different instance, yelling, you don't know [00:02:00] what she's been through
Speaker 7: To go. Ooh. Ooh.
Oh s**t. Don't y'all do that to a little girl. Y'all don't know what she's going through. Hey, ,
Speaker 2: Damn it, I hate you! You're ruining my life! Please Herbert, [00:03:00] remember our agreement! We have an agreement about how we behave in a store, Herbert! Give me
Speaker 5: stop. Have you ever tried beating his ass? The belt.
Speaker 6: Faithful! You must have lost your gut!
Malcolm Collins: Oh my God. The little girl who's like storming the store and like, they want like my kids doing that.
And I like disciplined them and everyone's like, how could you?
Simone Collins: Yeah, no, that's the crazy thing is I feel like you have caught more open animosity and public criticism for punishing our Children's bad behavior. There was orders of magnitude lower than that, but still bad, still openly bad and annoying than that girl's parents.
We're getting in that moment in Walmart as she was literally throwing bottles of sparkling beverage onto the ground and having the glass shatter and having liquid go everywhere. This
Malcolm Collins: was, yeah, her parents were getting less of a public freakout than I get for not even, [00:04:00]
Simone Collins: yeah, not even, you know, just being like, no, we're leaving now.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, these parents want their kids to not experience anger at all. I'm realizing you have to end the cycle of abuse. How? Yeah, they were like in the cycle. And I was like, how, how is that gonna help the kids? I love it when they're like, you know, if you don't do this with your kids, they won't do it with theirs.
Do you really want them to act this way towards their kids? I was like, Yes, obviously, please go.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Like do, do I think that an evolved emotion, anger is supposed to communicate to other people that kids are not supposed to see that, that that's going to like be, but let's go to what, what happened from this because it was a secondary phenomenon that layered on top of this, which created Hikikomoros.
And this secondary phenomenon was what happened during covid the completely unjust and horrifying school closures that individuals lost their jobs and careers campaigning against like the lady who was next in line to be CEO of Levi's And they [00:05:00] canned her because she said this is disproportionately hurting poor children.
By the way, all the stats say she was right. But She clearly
Simone Collins: was. Everyone knows she was right.
Malcolm Collins: Everyone knows she
Simone Collins: was
Malcolm Collins: right. The virus, the Cordyceps virus, the urban monoculture is horrifying. It does not care about the damage it causes. But I want to read some quotes from an article that I thought was really interesting called Ghost Children, The Pupils Who Never Came Back After Lockdown, and this is from The Spectator.
Because after lockdown happened, there was this presumption that, like, we open up again and everyone comes back. And it just didn't happen. Like a huge chunk of the population just didn't come back.
And we'll go over the stats on this. But here are some anecdotal quotes from what's going on in the school system right now, from the perspective of people was in it.
A school counselor told me that countless kids sent to him for help fall into two groups. Either they are so crippled by anxiety or depression that they cannot leave the house, or they are angry and bitter, out on the [00:06:00] streets and into crime and gangs. One 14 year old girl told me, I just sit in my room.
It's an awful feeling, like really scary and lonely. A 16 year old boy I met on street street ham street hoodie pulled up over his Afro said. I'm upset I lost so much learning. I'm stressed. I don't get the grades I need for college. In the last full school term, the autumn of 2019, shortly before the start of the pandemic, just 60, 202 pupils were defined as severely absent.
That is spending more time out of classrooms than in them. Since then, despite schools opening, this number has shot up. Now over 140, 000. It went from 60, 000 to 140, 000, more than doubling. Children are classified as severely absent, according to the analysis of official figures by the CSJ. That's a 134 percent the increase of closing down 140 schools.
Despite recent efforts, The [00:07:00] numbers are continuing to surge. Children are turning their backs on education at an alarming pace warms the CSJ and here I will put a graph on screen of the number of kids who aren't coming back to schools. What is interesting is that a lot of people want to blame this just on covid.
But if you actually were to graph this, you can see the logarithmic increase beginning in 2017 and really going up in 2019 long before covid.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: The, , gentle parenting book. It came out in 2016. So just consider that alongside this graph.
Malcolm Collins: But it's not just the usual suspects ghost children also exist among the high achieving middle classes One teacher in a london suburb at an all girls school rated quote unquote outstanding by aust fed Told me the mental health issues among my girls.
It's a pandemic in itself A third of my pupils only turn up intermittently. This is at an expensive all girls private school A third of the students are only turning up intermittently 30 girls have actually gone missing.
Simone Collins: How can parents [00:08:00] tolerate this? I mean, it's one thing I get, like, if it's public school, and you're not really into it, and your kid's not thriving there.
We'll get to
Malcolm Collins: what the parents are saying
Simone Collins: in just
Malcolm Collins: a second. Before the pandemic, the school expected many of these girls to go to university and enjoy a career. But lockdown, the teacher said, totally derailed their plans. Their parents would say their characters have changed. They are a different person now.
The pandemic has diminished their life chances. And here I note again, you see this trend before the lockdown. I think this is more downstream of gentle parenting than just COVID. I think it's a cumulation of COVID and gentle parenting and the real mimetic viruses that are sweeping through this generation.
And I think parents just don't understand what it's like to have mental viruses that are this overwhelming, this fascist in the way they impose themselves. I mean, it used to be the kids were scared because they go to school that had like these Judeo Christian value systems that they felt they didn't measure up to or they felt judged them.
[00:09:00] And they saw this as a horror. The problem is is now they go to schools and those schools are controlled by like three extremely aggressive cults that are like sending your kids to a school controlled by Scientologists when we were kids. I don't know
Simone Collins: Scientologist kids. Seemed to go to really cool private schools.
I'm just saying there was that one Scientology school that looked like a castle and no, these
Malcolm Collins: places are pretty horrifying. But I, I, if you, if you look at the stats on them, the, the, the point that I'm making is that the urban monoculture is so much more totalitarian and fascist in how it implements its value system than the Christians ever were when they were the culturally dominant faction and the horror that the kids go through growing up in a country that really is a dystopian A fascist state run by a cult is horrifying, especially if they don't have support back home and they do not and and support what support looks like is austerity and discipline.
It's not I love you and I support whatever you're doing, and we'll get to why that causes a lot of these [00:10:00] problems.
No to anyone here who wants to be like, oh, but the studies show gentle parenting works. I would one ask you to just exercise common sense, and to point out the other video we made the scientists lied about spanking, which goes into the coverup of. A bunch of studies where they basically fake the data in the eighties by not doing matching results to make it look like , spanking was causing negative effects on children.
When we now know that it doesn't in the large mega studies that have been done recently. Like the paper in 2023. , parental punishment. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. So for anyone who's like, oh, look at the studies. I'm like, oh, look at common sense. .
If you were reward negative behavior with attention, you are going to get more negative behavior and hypertensive type kids to negative stimuli.
Here or just look at like basic anecdotal evidence. So here is a piece that somebody wrote. , in the collegian. And I'll quote from it. When I nannied for millennial parents who raised their kids with quote unquote gentle parenting philosophy. I saw [00:11:00] disastrous results. This family was entirely based on communication.
This meant for every negative or positive emotion, one of the kids had, I would walk through it wisdom. I became the emotional regulator for three children under age eight, rather than administering consequences for bad behavior. I found myself trying to reason with a three-year-old having a tantrum after reminding him that throwing blocks at his sister was not kind.
Now to keep going, her school is not alone. Absence is now a feature of school life. Just under two million pupils, one in four of all school children are classified as persistently absent, i.
e. have an attendance rate of less than 90%. So one in our attending school, less than one out of 10 days um, double pre pandemic levels. The teacher explained that one single mother has had to give up her job to Concentrate full time on coaxing her daughter back into school despite the fact she is the breadwinner So it means real financial hardship.
Wait, so the mom who was the breadwinner of the family quit her [00:12:00] job I guess the dad's not in the picture it sounds like a dad or boyfriend is in the picture and the mom was supporting them to try to Because the male wasn't doing anything to try to force her kid back into school. Do and you'll you just force
Simone Collins: Why don't you drop them off and you're like good luck?
Malcolm Collins: Well, we'll talk about why the kids aren't doing this and what it's like to be around these kids because they they're really afraid Of any sort of like negative stimuli. Even though bullying rates have not increased bullying rates are still at around 20 percent and you know what we really need here is the clip from futurama.
Most, perhaps all, the blame rests with the parents. Have you ever tried simply turning off the TV, sitting down with your children, and hitting them?
Malcolm Collins: Because I know this mom hasn't considered that if your home is not like, if my kid knows, oh yeah, I don't go home during the day because I'm going to get my butt whooped they'll understand the situation. They're like, ah, yeah, school is preferable.
Now that said, we actually plan to homeschool our kids and I am [00:13:00] concerned by how much my kid is enjoying school. Because
Simone Collins: we're never going to, force our kids into homeschool. They want to do kindergarten. They get to do kindergarten or they get to do public school or whatever. I
Malcolm Collins: always want public school to be the punishment by that.
What I mean is if they're falling behind in their homeschooling, it's public school, not a, I took you out of public school so I could homeschool you.
Simone Collins: Yeah, well, and public school is not considered their education. It's considered an extracurricular. So, like, it's, it's like going to soccer camp. We wouldn't consider soccer camp your source of math education ever.
Just like, we wouldn't consider public school, your source of math or any education. So,
Malcolm Collins: yeah. All right. One girl told me her geography tutor had been really helpful, but that she had barely heard from the English staff at all. A boy described the impact of school indifference on his mood. The teachers didn't mark the work I had completed.
Not once, he says. With no feedback, this clever and competitive boy lost motivation. Confined to his room, he started to listen to rap [00:14:00] music, which fueled his frustration and rage. When school reopened, it was only the intervention of his parents and months of counseling. that turned him around. I was scared.
I had lost myself forever and become a different version of myself. They're just losing. They're losing hope. The viruses, the memetic viruses that are spreading that the cult is pushing on them thrive by breaking their connection to their families. But the families themselves aren't providing the environment that they need.
They're not providing the discipline they need. They're not because that's what's needed to relate to. to the harsh world we live in. These kids act like it's like the hardest time in history. And I'm like, go read about what it was like being a kid during like the yellow fever epidemic or like scarlet fever or like any of the past of the great depression in the United States.
You live an unimaginably cushy life. Your friends aren't like dying in their sleep. Most young people, they haven't even seen a dead body like, and that would have been normal before. And it is [00:15:00] horrifying to me. The cocoon has created a hypersensitivity around negative stimuli for these Children.
And it is really, and we'll go into this more, but, you know, we talk about all the times that, like, we go viral for punishing our kids to any extent and they're very light punishments that we've gone viral for, like, we do not, like, heavily punish our kids or anything like that, I think that that's, like, totally unnecessary, the pain should never be the point of a punishment, it should be The disapproval and a way to show that they did something wrong without necessarily emotionally escalating.
And this is unfortunately when I had to punish the kid when they're like, oh, you got angry at him. That was because I was afraid to hit the kid in front of other parents. Because I was like s**t i'm gonna so I have to get angry with him because emotional escalation was the only way to show Him he had messed up if it was at home.
I wouldn't have gotten angry at him. I just would have been like Bop. Okay, like, let's talk about this. Like, what did you do wrong? What are you not going to do in the future without emotionally escalating the situation that's forced you in that environment?
I [00:16:00] should note here. They're the big difference between kids and not all kids need corporal punishment to be the way that they are disciplined. However, all children do need some form of discipline. Something in their life that when they step over a boundary, isn't somebody calmly sitting down next to them and talking it through them.
But some sort of negative feedback, some sort of anger or,
Genuine disapproval and exclusion because if they don't. Learn how to deal with that. As a kid, they will not be able to deal with it in high school or in their adult lives. And they turn into these Hikikomori, which we're seeing an entire generation turn into. It is infinitely more abusive to your child to not ever expose them to negative stimuli, then even to expose them to fairly over the top negative stimuli.
I think, Simone, what you're missing here is as soon as a kid is allowed to hypersensitize to negative emotional stimuli, they can't be around [00:17:00] them at all. And so you can go home and say like, Hey, you know, two months of counseling to get him back to school. Hey, you know, you should go back to school.
You should, but if they're already hypersensitized to anyone disapproving of them, to anyone being angry at them, how are they going to survive in a school environment? Right? I
Simone Collins: think the more the way I see it in the way I've seen so many things like this and experienced it too, is. Everything is a muscle.
And so if you allow someone's social muscles, leaving the house muscles, dealing with adversity, muscles to atrophy, to the extent that our modern society and parenting norms allow them to atrophy, you're going to end up with severely kind of like those children, those feral children who grew up and never learned how to speak.
And then finally they get rescued and people try to give them language and they can't like, they never really develop language skills. I think that's happening. With some forms of resilience and inhibitory control now, I think we're seeing the, [00:18:00] the, the equivalent in terms of mental fortitude of different types and ability to focus and all these other things of feral children in a whole generation.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and I think that parents when they're thinking about, like, what am I attempting to do? Like, when we look at parenting, I used to be like, everyone should parent in their own way. I am now no longer, like, no one should be gentle parenting. I just think it's a bad philosophy. I, I think that parenting without discipline, I is obviously going to be incredibly hurtful to the kids and your goal as a parent is to stoke the fire of the child's will as much as possible.
Their ambition there. And that's what these children don't have. The fire that lights their insides isn't there. Yeah, that, that is an interesting
Simone Collins: thing that accompanies the avoidance. And the fear is also this intense ennui, where ennui is not a good enough word. It's lying flat's better, you know, but that just zero drive or interest, [00:19:00] deep depression.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I wouldn't even say it's depression because depression rates are not that much higher. We'll get to this in a second. A lot of other mental health issues are, but depression is around 20%, which is what it was historically.
Nope. I was wrong about this depression rate. Shut up a ton the past 10 years. It's just that they were relatively stable until about the past 10 years. , this is specifically in young people.
oh, but what I'm
Simone Collins: insisting with depression here is just that, Lack of drive to do anything even get not
Malcolm Collins: real like clinical depression, but like, but it's it looks different than clinical depression It is on we as a better word for it as you said but the way I would word it best It's a lack of fire and in a recent episode We described the pronatalist movement as cucking society and I think that that's all our goals Not to cuck society in the way that people do.
Even sexually speaking, but I'd say, because as we pointed that episode, everyone was under 2. 1 kids is being cut by the people was over 2. 1 kids because functionally, you're contributing to a future. You're paying taxes to help raise genetic material. That's going to replace you intergenerationally speaking.
But [00:20:00] if you watch kaku chicks it's really like dramatic because they're much larger than even like the parents that are feeding them so like the kaku chicks, you know after they starve all the other little chicks in the nest They'll be like twice the size of the parent that is feeding them. And this is the way I feel that You as a pronatalist need to be raising your kids will to be it needs to be their soul their fire Inside of them.
They need to look like a little cuckoo chick when the the teacher is pathetically trying to feed them when the school system is pathetically attempting to discipline them in their weak weak way where they look weak and pathetic and tawdry next to this big burly will of a child
Speaker 11: Cuckoos are brood parasites that trick smaller birds into raising their chicks. In this video, a larger cuckoo chick is being fed by a smaller foster parent that mistakenly believes it's its own offspring.
Malcolm Collins: [00:21:00] because we have to replace them.
Their weakness leads to immorality. See our episode on weakness and immorality in Friedrich Nietzsche. Because that's what's downstream of allowing this to spread and metastasize. We have to replace them. And that is done through fostering your children's will, not through breaking it. And that's, this is another thing where I'm like, punish your kids, but do not punish them to break their will.
Punish them because you want them acting up in the type of way where they Frequently need to be punished. I think that this is a big difference between us and other parents where other parents punish their kids so that they eventually no longer have to punish them. Where I punish my kids so that I have a unique way of showing them where boundaries are so they can explore breaking boundaries more often while knowing very clearly when they have.
Now to go back to the article, young people moving on to sixth form college are particularly vulnerable. A [00:22:00] teacher in northeast of England says she has noticed the disappearance of a small number of 16 to 17 year olds from lessons. They enrolled in the sixth form in September, but I have never seen them.
She says, parents always give me the same reason for the children's absence. Their mental health is too fragile for them to attend class. Parents are at a loss and teachers are instructed by the authorities to not pursue an absence if it is for mental health reasons. We are told to just leave it be. You hope the services are there in the background, but we all know they aren't.
Speaker 8: Do you consider yourselves to be happy? I don't think I'm very happy. I always fall asleep to the sound of my own screams. Right. See, the reason that you are And then I always get woken up in the morning by the sound of my own screams. Do you think I'm unhappy?
Simone Collins: Oh, boy. Okay. Huh. That's, I did not expect that. No, no, it is
Malcolm Collins: bad. It is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. I'd actually [00:23:00] say, like, as I look more into the mental health stuff, and people would be like, oh, but don't you know the studies say that gentle parenting is good? And I'm like, yeah, and all the studies show that spanking was bad in the 80s, and then when we rerun them without bad fudge data, it turns out that the big meta studies on this, the most recent studies on this, are like, okay, actually, it was good.
Or or non effect and they're not controlling for genetic effects. So of course that means highly good. So the, the, the studies I just don't buy, like if you look at the basic psychology of this, of course, if you shield a child from negative stimuli, they're going to hypersensitize to it.
Simone Collins: Duh.
Malcolm Collins: Is that not what we're seeing?
What I hadn't realized is how big the number of parents were who were doing this, and that it really is explanatory of a lot of what's going on. More so than even the COVID lockdowns, because as you can see, the problem started before the COVID lockdowns. I'll correlate this with when genital parenting got popular as well.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: The, , gentle parenting book. It came out in 2016. So just consider that alongside this graph.
Malcolm Collins: But anyway meanwhile, the CSJ report makes it clear. [00:24:00] Oh, by the way, did you have anything you wanted to say about the, the fragile mental health of kids that they're talking about here?
Simone Collins: Just in contrast, having just finished Hannah's Children, that amazing print idolist book, I am thinking about the resilience and service done to kids who are in larger families because they simply, by existing with so many other siblings, are given responsibility, are given the opportunity to be selfless, are given challenges, are given, you know, First austerity in many cases that makes them resilient and makes them into much better people and all these descriptions in the interviews that take place in this book of teens are of people who absolutely have their moments where they're struggling with depression and go through tough moments because being a teen sucks and everyone goes through that.
I mean, most people do. You're going through a lot of hormonal fluctuations, but that New babies that they suddenly gets a care for and new responsibilities really just help them get over themselves [00:25:00] and it's so sad because it's what's also pointed out in this book. Is it a huge percentage of kids in developed countries, especially in the United States will never be exposed to an infant.
In their lifetime unless they have a kid themselves and, and at best has one sibling which is a very different dynamic. And I feel like I'm starting to realize that many of these issues that are seen now as. Do we go for normal, normal teens today are not, they're, they're more a product of teens growing up in very maladaptive environments that teens for the vast majority of human history have never experienced.
And that's scary.
Malcolm Collins: Meanwhile, as a CSJ report makes clear, the number of ghost children is set to multiply and will continue to do so for many years. So again, it's not just the pandemic that causes this, it's an increasing problem. This [00:26:00] is, they claim that this is due to the disastrous impact on lockdown on babies and young children who are now making their way through the education system.
As one primary school teacher said to me, it breaks my heart looking at the kids in my class. Either they are crippled by anxiety, or they're not. Or jumping off the walls. Basically, they are just not happy.
Simone Collins: Well, it means jumping off the walls, but he's jumping
Malcolm Collins: off the walls. That means you're doing a good job.
And that's, that's another,
Simone Collins: that's the classic issue of school now is, and why boys especially are suffering in school is teachers somehow think it's wrong that they can't sit down for hours. on end at desks. What on earth people?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I agree. This is about stoking their will. As we said, that's your job as a parent.
The head of one primary school explained to me, usually around half of pupils arrive at primary school, not ready to start lessons. After lockdown, this has jumped to more like 80%. Teachers are baffled to find four year olds barely able to say their name and still in nappies.
They are quick to blame the parents. No one [00:27:00] mentioned how the complete absence of statutory services over the pandemic took its toll. Lockdown all but halted early years provisions. Drop in baby and toddler groups stopped. Parks and playgrounds that were closed long after we knew the virus didn't spread outside again, like the mimetic virus worse than the real virus that it just delighted in totalitarian Lee of forcing these, these systems even more extraordinarily health visitors, a vital service.
And lifeline for new parents largely disappeared as did many GPs new mothers were riddled with anxiety Were their babies feeding properly gaining weight and the crushing fear for every new mother. Did their babies have a disability? They had no one to ask as one new mother said I feel very isolated and frightened.
This is my first child I don't know what normal is and I don't know where to find help parenting circle a charity which aims to improve children's school readiness points out that a five year old [00:28:00] who cannot play happily or speak properly is more likely to grow into a nine year old bully than a 13 year old with school attendance issues than a 15 year old who joins a gang and finally a 19 year old behind bars Unless serious remedial steps are taken to bring back the ghost children To stop their numbers growing, that will be their future.
It's a disaster for society and already. And I think basically what we're doing is we're raising a generation of Hikikomori's NEETs in the United States. There's already estimated to be 10 million. That means people who are not in employment education or training.
Simone Collins: Well, and I was just actually right before we hopped on this call talking with.
I won't, I won't name it, but a recruiter that we know who works in, in tech and startup in the UK, and he's talking about how talented grads in the UK, especially because that's like a talented grad coming from Oxford or Cambridge, like a top UK university is looking at a job that pays them. 30k a year.
They're just not taking the jobs. They're just not working because [00:29:00] there's no point. They can't buy a house on that salary. They can't do anything on that salary. So they're just not going to do it. And I think that's another problem that he said he was encountering in the job market when recruiting talent is that a lot of talent just doesn't want to work because Why that they're not going to be able to buy a house, you're not going to be able to buy a car.
They're not going to be able to start a family based on how people live lives now, because the way that our life is run per modern society's standards, which are completely out of whack are dysfunctional and to that point about parents being so isolated and really failing to thrive. I think this also highlights How the, the downfall of communities, especially religious communities that allow high fertility families to not just support each other, but mentor new young families.
Parents with no kids are causing knock on effects and societal downfall. You take away those communities and here now you have these isolated first time mothers who. They have no [00:30:00] idea how to do everything. Everything's so much harder when you are a parent of one child for the first time, the first time is always the hardest with everything, right?
Practice makes perfect. And so you have these parents who grew up isolated from other families who grew up with no guidance on what to do. So they think that everything's really hard because it is really hard for them. They don't have any more kids. And so they've made most of the sacrifices you have to make to become a parent and yet they get none of the rewards of, like, having a big family, none of the payback and nothing gets easier for them because they continue to not have that community to give some perspective and advice and support.
And I love that at the end of Hannah's children, the big piece of advice is. You have to bring back religious sovereignty. You have to allow religious communities to thrive and support each other. And you have to allow religious education to be executed without intervention and with support.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, absolutely.
And another thing you were talking about this morning that I'd love if you go into, before we go into more of the stats is how culture is changing among Gen Z because there is some [00:31:00] hope. You're saying that before the pandemic, that there was this culture of like in the dating scene.
Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Yeah. There's this, yeah, there's this Gen Z young lady writing on sub stack who was talking about dating culture. And I think a call her daddy 2018 at dating advice episode that was kind of foundational for Gen Z in terms of these are the tips. And it was like, Cheat or be cheated on and sugar daddies are okay.
And like, just basically go out, be unethical. Dating is war have sex. And then there was sort of this ethical reckoning where I think this is maybe around the pandemic or a little bit after 2018, where the culture did start to shift and people just wouldn't consider being so callous and so. Transactional anymore, even though maybe kind of, they still are, I think that was kind of the argument that you make.
Ultimately, I think
Malcolm Collins: the young generation, from what I've seen, is realizing The way their parents [00:32:00] are living isn't working. And this is what we're seeing. Yes. I think what you're also
Simone Collins: seeing is this in religiosity again.
Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah. For the first time in American history, you are seeing an increase in conservative voting patterns.
What you are not seeing and what you're wrong. There is a rise in religiosity. This is a completely ephemeral phenomenon that people want to make up. Some religious communities notice some young people who formerly were not religious or not a religious families moving towards religiosity. The problem is, is this.
population is much smaller than the young people raised in religious families that are leaving. Oh
Simone Collins: yeah. That's a fair point. The attrition is much larger than the people who are getting God now.
Malcolm Collins: Right. And so the people who are getting God, people are like, Oh, the, what you actually see in young people, what is actually exploding is an appreciation that some of the stuff thrown out as society secularized.
They shouldn't have thrown out, but when it's not happening, is it moving back towards traditional religious practices? And I have seen this [00:33:00] across the young people. I know they adopt religious practices that are much closer to ours like the ones who are actually thriving. There's like these small communities of like ortho bros and like, Like new catholics and stuff like that But they're not as big as the people raised to strict Catholic and Orthodox families who are leaving.
And they also do not seem to be finding partners or having kids. Which is really interesting. Whereas the people who are doing it more like you and I are doing it, which is like new religious ideas continuing to evolve and fortify religious practices to work in a new era. Pretty much all the ones I know, a lot of them are really young, but they're like getting married.
They have long term partners. They've made this s**t work. And that's been really surprising to me how effective they have been. And I think it's because they are approaching a lot of these things functionally. It's like I need to become a better person and adopt these religious [00:34:00] systems for the end of finding a partner, raising the next generation, continuing human civilization.
Whereas in this other community, it's more like a cargo cult where they think a cargo cult mixed with a religion, which is even worse. If they do all of the religious menstruations, then ministrations, ministrations,
Simone Collins: then
Malcolm Collins: they will be given a partner and kids and a good life. And that's not the way it works.
And so because they have this, it's their very faith that everything is going to work out that is destroying their lives. And it's, it's, it's sad to see, but yeah so if we want to talk about the rise of genital parenting two studies here one showed that 78 percent of parents in are adopting gentle parenting techniques.
This is a parenting style where you do not punish your kids, where you do not give them negative stimulation. Another shows 74%. So we're looking at like three of four millennial parents is doing gentle parenting. That means that they are trying [00:35:00] to raise children the way this study defined it without intimidation or punishment.
Horrifyingly mentally scarring to a child. And then another was talking about TikTok videos that have the hashtag gentle parenting have amassed a staggering 2. 5 billion views. And one thing I really want to emphasize here is this is the coward's way out. It is the easy solution. I love it how like people act when they see me punish my kid.
They're like, oh, he must have lost control or something, even though it's clear from even our own channel that we talked about bopping kids. We talked about the context in which we bought our kids. We talked about you know, how we do it.
We showed video of it, like way before any of these viral things happen, whether it was a guardian or, you know, me being in public recently or and. It's clear that like this is something we thought through to protect our kids. No parent wants to punish their child. No parent wants to punish their child.
That's the easy thing. Sitting down and trying to talk things through with your kids. [00:36:00] That's the easy thing. The hard thing is setting boundaries for them and boundaries that do not lessen their exuberance for life. When you sit down and you talk it through you, you know, Really lower the willingness of the kid to push boundaries in the future because you're making it look like they emotionally hurt you by It's, it's like, consider it this way.
Okay, so there's two scenarios, right? A kid does something he's not supposed to do, bop, go back to your desk, ignore it. He goes, Oh, I did something I wasn't supposed to do. I won't do that again.
Simone Collins: And they know that
Malcolm Collins: too. I mean, it's going to that point. It's not happening immediately afterwards. It's not like a, yeah.
You go down and you take that kid aside and you have this long conversation with him about how what he did is wrong. You're like really emotionally
Simone Collins: f*****g up that kid. No, you're rewarding the kid. Okay. If you, if a kid's acting up and then you take them aside and you get down on their level and you make eye contact with them and you [00:37:00] tell them about, Hey, how are you feeling?
Why did you do that? What are you doing? You're giving them one on one attention. That's a reward. You just rewarded your kid for having a freakout at the grocery store. What are they gonna do? They're gonna have more freakouts at the grocery store. Like I can't emphasize how stupid of an approach it is.
It's so bad.
Malcolm Collins: It's so bad. Oh my God. I need to pair the grocery store video with the boondocks episode.
Simone Collins: Oh my gosh. Yes. Anyway,
Malcolm Collins: 42 percent of teens now experience persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness. This is from the center of disease control and prevention. And the closer you are to the urban monoculture, the worse all this is One in five LGBT teenagers attempted unaliving themselves in 2022.
And that's according to the Trevor project. That's bad. That's really bad. The problem was, oh, I forgot. It was even higher among the trans community, one in seven teenagers will experience a mental disorder by who [00:38:00] now three and five teenage girls reported feeling sadness every day for at least two weeks.
This is from the New York times three or five. So more than half of teen girls.
Simone Collins: Well, I
Malcolm Collins: don't know. That's
Simone Collins: Par for the question. Youth mental
Malcolm Collins: health hospitalizations have increased 124% from 2016 to 2022. I
Simone Collins: feel like that's criminalization also, like, you know, you, you call your doctor, you call anyone who's a professional now.
And say, Hey, my kids, you know. Why could frown? They'll be like, well, you better send them to the emergency room because there's so much fear around liability, which bothers me. So I feel like part of this is an institutional issue, but I hear you. This is bad.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, no, but the liability issue is like society is constantly blackmailing us.
Oh, yes
Simone Collins: And in fobbing things off to Yeah, they don't they're like,
Malcolm Collins: oh a kid's not coming to school. Well, I guess that's like it's like well I mean, obviously you need to be doing things different and they're like, I don't know like that's not like Talk about this too much, man. I'm [00:39:00] sure something will work out for them.
No, it won't. The cuckoos are eating all the food and that's the next generation's leaders. It is, it
Simone Collins: is.
Malcolm Collins: Or at least the leaders of the communities that are going to replace this portion of humanity.
55 percent of Gen Z and Millennials have been to therapy with over one in four planning to stay in it forever.
Over one in four Gen Z or Millennials plan to stay in therapy for the rest of their lives.
Simone Collins: We can't say it's not a cult anymore. We cannot say it's not a cult.
Excuse me, are y'all with the cult? We're not a cult. We're an organization that promotes love and Yeah, this is it
Simone Collins: Therapy works when you stop. You know, when you stop therapy and you get out, that means it worked. And if people plan on staying in it for life, that means that your therapist is like,
Malcolm Collins: That means they built dependency or you're treating it like a religion or some sort of religious.
Is the holy guide to living pure, this will help explain. First, [00:40:00] Laughter. Her name's Lorraine, too? We're all Lorraine, and you will be Todd. A name chosen especially for you oh. You're not
An oppressed minority. you're a cult!
Malcolm Collins: No, it is.
Simone Collins: Yeah, I guess again, it is meant in our, in the urban monoculture. It is the thing that takes a place of religion. And that's honestly, when you, if you were to take recordings, and I hear this all the time about people talking about how important it is that your partner sees a therapist or that you see a therapist regularly.
If you just replace that and was like, you know, Seek goes to church on Sunday and believes in God and, you know, let's God, you know, lead their life choices. It would suddenly make sense. You know, like you really need really, you got to get your house in order, you know, go to church, you know, have, have a moral system in place.
And what has replaced that [00:41:00] is. therapy, which is, well, what's
Malcolm Collins: funny is it doesn't work as well. If you look at the statistics, it doesn't work rates and people seeing therapists versus the depression rates of people who go to church or the unaligning oneself rates, we will be like, Oh, it's correlation. You don't get to claim it's correlation when one in four millennials plan sustain it forever.
And 55 percent are going like, that's not a correlational issue. That's the therapy is causing the problem.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah. But also I just, I can't get over. This realization that anxiety and, and depression and fear, they really are things that fill the void that opens up when your life is not full of things that matter.
And that includes, like, just disasters, you know, when, when, when the world is burning down, there's a war suddenly your depression and anxiety. There's no, there's literally no room for them, even when things are like, you know, especially when things are [00:42:00] disastrous, but also when you have, when you are full with work and meaningful stuff, and there's literally no room for anything else.
Again, there's no room for fear and anxiety and depression and malaise. And well, that's where religion religion doesn't fix this stuff. That's wrong. Religion. makes no room for the void that is filled by the bad stuff.
Malcolm Collins: I agree. And the next time Simone, somebody in a public context, like they did at hereticon pushes back against you disciplining your kids.
You need to point out to them that you not disciplining children is killing children. Not disciplining kids kills kids. Kids need discipline. Now here is, and I think that's good against a lot of what people assume is they're like, Oh, this new generation doesn't know how to use screens. They're like freaking out about it.
75 percent of Gen Z actively monitor their screen time. 75 percent monitor. What does it mean to
Simone Collins: actively monitor
Malcolm Collins: your screen? Like screen time tracking apps. Like how [00:43:00] much they're using different programs. You know, like the program.
Simone Collins: I don't use that. I know someone who uses it.
Malcolm Collins: Okay, well, these programs exist to allow you to track how much you're using different things.
People have used them for a long time, and 75 percent of Gen Z is using them. Gen Z is not out of control of screen time. It is not screen time that's causing this. Again, I can tell you, as somebody I definitely growing up middle school, high school spent probably six to seven hours a day in front of a screen when I wasn't at school.
Like the idea and I didn't have all of these, these issues, the idea, and I was on all of the chat room. I was on the worst of the chat rooms. I was on chat rooms before chat rooms had moderators. I was on chat rooms.
Simone Collins: Don't you remember? Oh my gosh. Do you remember in those early chat rooms when we were first on them?
The first thing everyone would say is ASL. Age, I was on chat rooms before they can like, well, I'm an 11 year old girl and my interest is this and there is no control. Oh, those are the good [00:44:00] days. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. We were hanging out there before they came before there was even a token attempt to kick out the PDA files.
Simone Collins: No, no, it's just like, come on in. Let's start with an opener. That's perfect for them.
Malcolm Collins: And, and I think that this idea that kids shouldn't be on their screen is like, Oh. If they're not on their screen, what the f**k are they doing? Playing in empty parks? Going to empty malls? Where do you think they're socializing if not on their screen?
A kid who you've taken their screen from is a kid who you have locked in a proverbial hell.
Simone Collins: Well, again, people are on screens and scrolling and getting into numerous loops because they're not allowed to go outside. They're not allowed to walk into town because their mom will get arrested. They're not allowed to walk to and from school because their mom will get arrested.
They're not allowed to babysit their siblings because their mom will get arrested. They're
Malcolm Collins: not allowed to do anything where the mom has gotten arrested. There's a real story. These are real cases.[00:45:00]
No, but we've seen this. I didn't think it was that bad. I didn't think that me just being angry at a kid would have two moms accost me at my car. I didn't think that because I let my kids like walk around a playground on their own, that I've had some angry old man accost me. I was watching from the car and he's like, Oh my God, your kids are crass.
Like kids are supposed to cry. He's like, but they're crying. And I go, yes, what am I supposed to do? Stop the kids from crying every time they cry. Like that's going to f**k them up. Kids cry when they want to do something and it doesn't work out. That's something that people need to learn to deal with.
Simone Collins: Yeah. That's play is learning your own boundaries and learning other people's boundaries and gentle parenting removes that. It's terrible. And
Malcolm Collins: even if it has some momentary effects while the kid is with their parents when they go to work. So, for example, 42 percent of Gen Z have thought about quitting their job within the last three months.
It's around a half. [00:46:00] I've thought about quitting their job in the last three months. It makes sense.
Simone Collins: Because again, there's this realization that no matter how hard you work, you're not going to be able to afford anything anymore. So what's the point? You can't buy a house, but you can't buy a car,
Malcolm Collins: comparing themselves to the previous generation and not generations before that.
Simone Collins: That's true. Yeah. Yes. And then people to be fair. So generations before could buy a house, but they were small, tiny, That's
Malcolm Collins: not true, Simone. Okay, so this is a, this is a, an effing lie that is told to people and I'll explain the reality of generations before. If you look at, like, if you study anthropologically, the way people in cities were living if they were poor people, they would live in houses with like 12 other people.
Usually family members. They did not, not, not, not, not. try to buy their own or rent their own apartments in New York. That is not a thing that ever happened historically for anyone, but the [00:47:00] wealthiest of the wealthy. And then people will be like, well, I could have gone to the frontier, you know, the dangerous frontier with dangerous native Americans who could kill you at any time.
And they're like, and I could have like staked land there or gotten a house really cheaply in one of those regions. And it's like, Yes, you could have done that. But today you can go to Africa and buy a cheap house. You can go to Latin America and buy a cheap house. That's where we got our first house.
It was way cheaper than in the U. S. And very affordable for most millennial remote jobs. That you're not considering that you're not taking that seriously. And you're like, well, that would be dangerous. Well, the frontier was dangerous too. Well, that would require me to up in my life. The frontier required people to up in their lives as well.
Well, that would require you, you, you have all of the environments, all of the advantages that somebody from, you know, the, I'd say the 1890s, 1750s, 1700, 1650s had you just. Have diluted yourself and people are [00:48:00] like, well, people back then had more social connections and it's like they effing did not, they had more social connections as I stayed in the town.
They grew up in
Simone Collins: now. Yeah, no, that is interesting. We, maybe that's worth some additional analysis is the, the amount of. I don't know what the word is. So it's not social mobility, but the, the extent to which people do not live where they grew up anymore and keep moving, both makes it very hard to form relationships, but also form community.
And they're
Malcolm Collins: choosing to do that because they value money over persistent relationships. And that's fine, but you've got to find ways to utilize that. And there are, there are ways to make money and make fulfilling relationships online, as I did when I was growing up, I, all of my friends were online. All of all my good friends were online for long periods.
I
Simone Collins: mean, no, I had some great in person friends. Let's
Malcolm Collins: I, I, I did during certain portions of my life, but not during every portion. And when I had good friends, you know how I did [00:49:00] that? I go to the local, like at my college, go to the local bar and just walk up to any group of people I didn't know, put on my hand and be like, look, I'm new here.
Or I'm looking to meet new people. I'm Malcolm. Do you mind if I join the conversation and this is something people don't do anymore because they are afraid of that group saying, Oh, I'm sorry, I'm not interested. And group said that.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And it hurts, but you have to be okay with the hurt. And, and every, again, every rejection is a rep.
It is, it should be seen the same as lifting a weight or bringing your focus back to your breath and you're meditating. It is a good thing. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: If your kids can't deal with the hurt, they're not going to deal with the world.
Simone Collins: No. Well, and they're not, they're not going to do anything of consequence at all, for sure.
Because success is built upon a mountain of failures. You're not going to achieve anything if you don't try and fail a ton of times. Because if you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough. You're not doing something aggressive enough [00:50:00] at all. And the fact that failure is seen as a bad thing in the first place is embarrassing.
It's embarrassing. For anyone who believes
Malcolm Collins: and the final thing I'll post here, which I think is interesting is on the partisan gap in spanking, which is to say that spanking rates are actually increasing among Republicans
Simone Collins: increasing. Well,
Malcolm Collins: good for them while decreasing in Democrats and independents.
Simone Collins: No, that's I don't know.
It's not surprising. I just
Malcolm Collins: know that this graph, which unfortunately ends in like 2010 or like, I think it might be 2015 where it's ending. The Republican spanking rate is over 85%. Yeah. Okay. Really? That's impressive. Well, for Dems, this has it at like, 64 percent unfortunately ends in like 2010 and Independence, it's around 70%.
Simone Collins: Gosh. I think
Malcolm Collins: it's just, like, way higher than people realize as well.
Historically speaking my, read it that it's fallen off a cliff in like the last 10 years.
Like, when you actually raise kids, it's like, oh, obviously, kids need discipline. Duh.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and it is [00:51:00] possible to not discipline a child and have them not die. If you have one, maybe two and that's most people who choose to have kids by a long shot.
So I I guess I get it. But even then you're better off doing it. So
Malcolm Collins: anyway I love you to decimone this conversation has been very enriching for me and I hope you had a wonderful day.
Simone Collins: I did we we made some Incremental steps forward on the things that mattered to us, which is what makes me happy in a day.
Exactly.
Malcolm Collins: And Internal insight we have into who might be managing things within the government going forwards in terms of what hasn't been announced yet has gotten us very excited.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Very.
Simone Collins: So promising. 2025 is going to be amazing.
Malcolm Collins: Yes! This is not brat summer. This is disciplinary. This is disciplinary.
It's bop summer.
I need to play the song with the Splatoon sisters and the, and the fascist outfits [00:52:00] here. It's cute.
Simone Collins: Okay.
I should be the catch when I got my glamour Got us all excited but I can't have mine
Malcolm Collins: Well, goodbye. It's, it's, it's, it's the cat girl authoritarians. Oh, I'll also put the one from, um, what, what, what show is that? Helsing.
Helsing has an alt right cat boy in it. A cat boy in it? Cat, well, yeah. A feminine alt right cat boy is in Helsing. Yes.
Speaker 10: Uh, oh!
Speaker 12: Oh dear. What is the problem Herr Schrödinger? Doctor!
Speaker 10: I'm sorry. I seem to have misplaced my handbook.
Speaker 12: Oh, what to do with you? Go share with the captain for now.
Malcolm Collins: Um, Called Schrodinger.
Simone Collins: Well, that's cute. Okay. Alright, well, you had me as Schrodinger. No, you had me as alt right [00:53:00] catboy. So we're good. By
Malcolm Collins: the way, he's not alt right. He is an actual Nazi.
Oh. Okay.
Simone Collins: Well,
Malcolm Collins: I mean. But this is what the left calls us, so, you know, whatever. Embrace it. Yeah. I love you, Simone.
Simone Collins: I love you, too.
Malcolm Collins: Goodbye, Malcolm.
Simone Collins: Oh.
And you
Malcolm Collins: sent out the Heritage Foundation email?
Simone Collins: I
Malcolm Collins: did. You did a great job with that, by the way.
Simone Collins: Thank you. So how do you like my Puritan collar? Speaking of Ukraine? I love
Malcolm Collins: it,
Simone Collins: Simone.
Malcolm Collins: Did you get it from Ukraine? Is that why you keep mentioning Ukraine?
Simone Collins: Whenever you were here? No, your mom bought two pairs of sweatpants and sweatshirts.
from Ukraine that came with these random collars and I didn't know what to do with them because who wears a collar with a sweatshirt and sweatpant pair but they work perfect for this with with stays
Malcolm Collins: and yeah I, I'll [00:54:00] tell you what, I find it cute. Simone. I think this outfit is very cute on you. Very.
It's actually a good
Simone Collins: heat layer. So I kind of get, like, I've been thinking a lot recently 'cause our house is so cold about a lot of things that existed in the past and, and historians answers for why they existed and why I think they really existed. And I think Pilgrims were these freaking callers.
Because they're warm. I think Quaker Road's dude had this on because it was cold outside. And I was thinking also about, you know, like canopy beds, like this over here. And why people would put canopies over them. And people were like, well, it was because vermin would fall from the ceilings and no one wants a rat to fall on them.
When, you know, you're, you're Sleeping. And maybe that was a factor, but I think the bigger factor is that just breathing within an enclosed space, heats it up. I keep waking up in the middle of the night and I'm like, well, under all of my blankets. Cause like on our floor where our bedrooms are like the kids room is warm, but our rooms are [00:55:00] like, it's 50 degrees.
So keep waking up under my covers and I'm very warm. Cause I'm just breathing under my covers and it's heating the space up. If you cover that with a canopy and you have curtains and there's a canopy over, That thing heats up when you draw the curtains closed. So I don't think it was about privacy. I don't, I mean, it may be a little bit, but probably not really.
And I don't think it was about vermin. I think it was about keeping the heat.
Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I, yeah, I I think you're right. And I think that these people just haven't had to live like somebody from the 1800s in a long time. Yeah, well, there's
Simone Collins: that one woman. There's a couple of historians, which there's this one.
British woman who does a lot of the actual work, like she'll try different ways of washing linen clothing and she'll dye. I was just watching an episode of something where she was one of the key historians, like living historians demonstrating how Victorians celebrated Christmas. And one of the things she does, for example, with another woman is, she, she, she dyes ribbons and apparently what you [00:56:00] use is like condensed evaporated urine to fix the, the color dye. And so here she is like pouring urine into a bucket and it just stinks. But like she does it. And I think, yeah, she's one of the only historians I've ever seen who is actively out there, like, skinning chickens and baking the food in the old way.
Okay. And yeah, when you actually start doing it and living that, then you see what it's like. And it's so cool that we live in this house built in 1790 ish that allows us to kind of experiment with that.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, and, and that we live a lifestyle of austerity, which I is so shamed in the mainstream culture.
And I think one of the things we're going to be touching on in today's podcast, which is going to come after this random chat. Is really hurting people psychologically and emotionally and there's so many pleasures that just you won't get to know if you don't live with hardship, you know, if you're not living, if you're, if you're heating your house in the winter, for example, you don't get to know how cozy it is and the [00:57:00] quality of sleep you're going to get, you know, when you cozy up in a freezing house
Simone Collins: under a really nice warm blanket and a warm, cozy bed.
Yeah. One of
Malcolm Collins: me actually thinks that seasonal affective disorder is. maybe partially caused by warming houses in the winter. And I don't think that humans are supposed to like biologically designed to live in warm houses in the winter. And I suspect that that might be what's causing it. It's like, it's like effing up our system.
It expects it to be in the summer. It's like, you can think of it seasonally as like when you know, like when a ride and I'll play the Mr. Beans get here when a rides movements are out of line with its animation that it's showing you and that causes. Oh, and it's so
Simone Collins: creepy. Yeah. Like your body's telling you, you should be cold.
You should be sleeping more. And yet the lights are telling you stay up late and the heat is telling you take off your. Bundles and Yeah. Yeah. The signals are crossing. That could be that that
Malcolm Collins: is some potential age. Yeah. I think might, it might be like the car sickness, but emotionally speaking from [00:58:00] not enduring what you're supposed to endure every winter.
Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. And then the worst thing is then in winter you're also supposed to be like eating a lot less. And because of that, people built all things fast so you eat more,
Simone Collins: or I guess you eat a lot in the fall to build up that labor. But I think appetite increases in the winter. And appetite suppressed during the summer and appetite increases during the winter.
So appetite increases when you're exposed to cold.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, because you would have less food around. Oh. You would, you would generally in the winter have access to fewer calories because, you know, that's the way this is, that's the way it works. Yeah. And because of that you would generally be eating a lot less in the winter.
And what happened as a result of that is they built a number of festivals into the winter season because you were not working the farm and you were already in a state of like half starvation anyway. So if you're going to have a community sponsored festival, this is when it makes sense to do it. And these festivals led to things like Thanksgiving and Christmas.[00:59:00]
But now what this means is that the winter season is just a series like Halloween. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Thanksgiving, by the
Simone Collins: way, used to be a day of fasting. It was not Thanksgiving was, yeah, dude. Yeah, no, it was a day of, you know, solemn prayer and, you know, devotion and thinking about. You know, kind of like a conference Sunday, you know, just like of, of more.
Well, they fucked that one up.
Speaker 19: Explain to me what you're doing. I make a paper airplane for subscribers. Okay, and so, why are you making them? So I can sell. You want to Yes, because I want to make money. What if they're not subscribers? If they're not subscribers, I'll tell them if they're subscribers. And if they say, I'm a subscriber, then they get a paper airplane.
Speaker 20: Okay, but what if they're not a subscriber? [01:00:00] If they say, I'm not a subscriber? I'm not a subscriber. Then they won't get a paper airplane. Subscribers get them for free. You have to pay. They have to give me money. They have to give me all the money they have to get a bigger place. Because I make a lot of money.
What are you going to do with the money? I'm going to buy a water. Like, like, like Water! Whoa! Sit on your butt like a gentleman. Whoa!
Malcolm Collins: Do you in notes here, I'd really love to hit the 30,000 subscriber mark before the end of this year. So if you are a fan of the channel and have not subscribed, please do. , we really appreciate [01:01:00] it. In addition, if you want to go to the pro natalist conference where we will be this year coming in Austin. I think it's coming up in a couple of months. you can get a discount code using the word Collins.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
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~0.004% of NYCers Commit 33% of Crime
13 déc.· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
Join Simone and the host as they delve into a detailed discussion on a fascinating thread about crime statistics shared by their friend, Cremieux. The episode focuses on how a small percentage of individuals are responsible for a vast majority of crimes, illustrated by examples such as shoplifting in New York City. They also discuss the broader implications of these statistics, including potential solutions, the effectiveness of three-strikes laws, and the controversial topic of genetic predispositions to criminal behavior. Additionally, they touch on the idea of penal colonies and the execution of repeat offenders. The episode takes a complex look at criminality, its impact on society, and explores both historical and modern-day enforcement strategies.
[00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Simone, I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we're going to be talking about a interesting thread by a personal in person friend of ours. A guy we quite like Cremieux it was on crime statistics and it focused on how very few people commit the vast majority of crimes.
Simone Collins: Oh yes.
Malcolm Collins: We had talked about this in our episode on police, but I wanted to have a dedicated episode on this particular subject because I find it interesting and I think he provides even more color than we had before. So I am going to go over his statistics and I'm going to give you a chance to react to them and I'm going to provide some additional information.
Simone Collins: Three cheers for Camille. I love him.
Malcolm Collins: All right. New York storefront businesses are already weathering inflation and uneven recovery from the coronavirus pandemic are also contending With what the police say is a dramatic increase in shoplifting, but statistics reveal a startling reality.
A relative handful of shoplifters are responsible for an outside percentage of retail crime. Nearly a third of [00:01:00] all shoplifting arrests in New York City last year were just 327 people. Police say collectively they were arrested more than 6, 000 times. So just 327 people. Rusted over 6, 000 times. So, for example, that means in New York, 0.
00385 percent of New York's population is responsible for 33 percent of the shoplifting in the city. Now, if you are a sane person, you might be thinking, Why aren't those people in jail always, but it gets worse than that.
This isn't unprecedented by any means. The number of burglaries in ster plummeted after three minute, died in a car crash. And I'm gonna put an image on screen here, an article about this. It actually took me a bit to find how much it went down. It went down by from 2019 to 2023 by 43%. Ah, yikes. [00:02:00] And these, by the way, are three white looking bro guys.
So if you're like reading this and you're like, oh, this is like a black person thing or a Mexican thing. No, it's, you know, depending on where you're living. It's just a criminality thing.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, it seems to be when people make this their careers. Then they just keep especially if they discover that they can make it their career kind of sustainably And they don't really get in that much trouble for it of course, they're incentivized to keep going because it's easier than working and they're probably in some kind of debt hole or Crime hole that they can't get out of
Malcolm Collins: I disagree that doesn't appear to be what's happening It appears to be mostly genetic.
We'll get to that in a second.
Simone Collins: Oh, no
Malcolm Collins: So, Cycling UK hails quote unquote clever policing after bait bicycle used to track down 130, 000 pounds of bike theft a bike theft gang stole in one shift.
Local bike theft fell 90 percent following the arrest with 11 people now sentenced. [00:03:00] So arresting 11 people. Dropped bike theft in one British town by 90 percent Okay, yikes And this is where like there's a progressive meme of that guy who's like, well, this guy stole my bike But you know net the world's probably happier now because he needed the bike more than I did and you know Progressive brain rot of assuming the stabber is the victim and not the stabby if not having a sane mind and understanding that the vast majority of crimes are done by very, very few people who are career criminals and who are working for other career criminals with that money generally going.
Downstream to like big crime syndicates that are using it to terrorize grannies in Mexico like no nobody is benefiting from your bike being stolen. In fact, it's making
Simone Collins: things worse Yeah
Malcolm Collins: better off if whoever stole your bike on average If a bike thief was [00:04:00] forced to kneel and execute it on the spot, the world would be better off.
There would be less pain and there would be less suffering.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Emma looks that way, yeah. I mean, from these stats, that's, oh, gosh, this is terrible.
Malcolm Collins: I'm not saying we need to start executing everyone who commits a crime. I'm just saying, think about it. Just saying, please
Simone Collins: consider it.
Malcolm Collins: That's all you're saying.
Alright, here's where It gets concerning here.
Simone Collins: Okay, like it's not already immensely concerning.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, no, no, no, no, no. This is a home. I'm just gonna have a drink here. So you could because we're gonna be talking about adoption studies.
Simone Collins: No, no,
Malcolm Collins: 1, 1 percent of adoptees whose biological parents had 3 or more offenses were responsible for 30 percent of convictions among adoptees. The 1 percent of adoptees whose parents had 3 or more convictions. We're responsible for 30 percent of the offenses among [00:05:00] adoptees. If you stopped people with three or more convictions from having kids, the number of crimes in this country would drop.
I'm not saying that's really danger town. This is a statistical fact. I am saying we shouldn't do this. That would be a horrible, horrifying thing to do. I'm just putting out the statistics. Say that the 1 percent of adoptees whose parents had committed three or more crimes committed over 30 percent of the crimes.
Simone Collins: Wee woo, wee woo! Danger! Oh, God! They tried this! The PR disaster was It's not good for PR, no. This is so bad for PR! This is so bad!
Malcolm Collins: Ah! Yeah. I don't, yeah, not a great PR wise, but if you, if you want to see how bad this would be here, I'm going to [00:06:00] show a, a homicide rate
Simone Collins: graph. Sure. Show me the homicide rate graph.
Well, so this is
Malcolm Collins: a homicide rate for the rate of criminality graph. So, what it looks at is the homicide rate. , so the homicide rate for people who've been arrested of other crimes. Okay. And the homicide rate of non-criminals. Okay. If you look at non-criminals, the rate hovers around like two to 3%. If you look at the percent of people who've been convicted of other crimes, it's like between 10 and 7%.
Simone Collins: No, because of course it is.
Of course it is, of course. Yeah. You are
Malcolm Collins: saving lives by executing that bike theft.
Simone Collins: Yeah. This is really. It's making me reconsider. So I grew up in California where there was something called a three strikes law that was largely condemned. I'm going to put huge numbers of people in jail who quite frankly should not have been in jail.
And I think a lot of that is because they were sorry. There we go. [00:07:00] I think a lot of that is because they were jailed for drug charges, like just possessing marijuana. Like that was enough for them to get three strikes and then just be in jail forever, which is super dumb. But now when I look at the, the level of.
committing crimes again and again, when they're damaging crimes, crimes that are like possessing marijuana, dude, like this person's just chilling out for the most part. Okay. But then when you're shoplifting, when you're committing burglary, when you're committing an aggravated assault, when you are God forbid killing someone that's very different.
That's where I feel like three strikes laws suddenly make a lot of sense because this is ultimately who's committing all the crimes. And it's clear that if someone has committed a crime twice, They're probably within that really small percentage of the population that's just going to keep doing it and really, really, really hurting society.
Wow. I mean, it just makes so much sense. And now I'm getting really frustrated that the three strikes law was so poorly executed in California, which is probably [00:08:00]
Malcolm Collins: minor drug offenses instead of like thefts. Of
Simone Collins: course, that's not a good idea. Like who thought that was a good idea. And now anyone hears three strikes,
Malcolm Collins: like that's a bad idea.
And Democrats, Newspeak thought it was a good idea. But hold on, remember who was, who was, who was your head? No, sorry. Who was the head of your cops and legal department during that period? It was Kamala Harris. , someone who has brought, when they said, Oh, you know, you have, you smoked marijuana privately.
This is someone who jailed thousands of people, tens of thousands of people for marijuana charges. She laughed when she was asked if she'd smoked marijuana.
Simone Collins: Because she,
Malcolm Collins: she laughs always. That's her thing.
Simone Collins: She laughs.
Malcolm Collins: Laughing is her favorite. Laughs as if to imply, of course I am. I'm the elite. I get to do whatever I want.
That's what I
Simone Collins: would do as an autistic person who's just trying to.
Malcolm Collins: Simone, she would have said no if the answer was no.
Simone Collins: I don't know. Listen, honestly, like, As, as someone who constantly is trying to [00:09:00] look normal and public and just make people feel comfortable and happy. I imply a whole lot. Hold on. Have you smoked marijuana?
No.
Malcolm Collins: Yes, you have. You must have. No. Are you actually, you haven't smoked marijuana?
Simone Collins: No, I've never, I've never done any illegal drug ever, period. I, I have, I have done fentanyl, that is in surgery, that has like only been in hospitals and I've had Xanax. So you're arguing
Malcolm Collins: that Harris is as square as you and she doesn't want to admit it?
Simone Collins: Yeah, she doesn't seem to me like the kind of person who would enjoy like, I disagree. I think who
Malcolm Collins: caves to peer pressure and whenever we're around her, like billionaire friends or otherwise, like super successful friends are always. This is a weird thing about life. Like as an adult, I understand dare so much more than as a kid.
We go to heretic on, they're like free tattoo seminar every day. You want to go to your free tattoos today? You should have [00:10:00]
Simone Collins: gotten a tattoo ring. I'm just saying
Malcolm Collins: it's or they'll say like, Oh, you know, we, we hang out with our other like super, super wealthy friends. They're like, Hey, you want to do drugs, man?
Our, our normie friends never asked us to do this s**t. They never, have you seen
Simone Collins: the, the tweet that went viral, which was a picture of Rfk on Trump force one eating McDonald's
With
elon musk and donald trump, and I think it was don trump jr. I love it. It was like peer pressure
Rfk who hates mcdonald's, of course he came.
Yeah,
he kind of had to
Yeah, no rich people peer pressure is a real thing. But also I don't I don't feel comfortable with With Like controlled substances like that, because I don't know the exact dosage and provenance like I spoke about this with someone I won't name who has done a lot of psychedelics, but he, he has done [00:11:00] them all with like, Stanford researchers who have like lab grade psychedelics.
And I would like
Malcolm Collins: to be psychedelics.
Simone Collins: No, this is a guy, this is, but no, yeah, no that that was it was the the person who was in our house when a deer was shot outside Oh that guy it's the tornadic precursors guy who's like but well like in in those scenarios You I would, of course, be comfortable. Well, I mean, we don't want to do psychedelics until we feel like we're less creative, but like, I would be comfortable trying something else if I knew that it was you know, I knew where it came from.
I knew what the dosage was. I knew exactly what I was playing with. But I, I wouldn't just like, I don't know, it's, it's, it's akin to eating food off the floor. You don't know where that's been. I mean, okay, I eat food off the floor all the time now that I have kids, but like, you know what I mean. Yeah.
It's like eating a an ice cream cone that you found on the street in New York. I'm not doing that. That's gross. Even if a billionaire got it. I [00:12:00] don't care. Gross.
Malcolm Collins: All right. So I'll continue with this. Please work.
Simone Collins: God. Yes.
Malcolm Collins: Go on. If you're talking about the three strike law, if the three strike law had been effectively enforced in Sweden, it would have reduced violent crime by half.
That's huge. The three strike law is actually important in terms of reducing crime. And we, as a country need to say, let's learn how to correctly implemented instead of. It's bad.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. A few people with extensive criminal histories drive most crimes, arrests, etc. When it comes to the population that actually serves jail time, the reasons largely have to do with these people just being impulsive.
And that's the end of the day. It is all about impulsivity, recall that violent crime explains the largest part of the prison population and that getting in dumb fight explains most violent crime.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And that's all about impulse control.
Malcolm Collins: Most violent [00:13:00] crime.
And even most homicides that are known were created by personal disputes. And after personal disputes, the next biggest one, Is group related conflict and after that it is instant dispute and after that it is drug related dispute What is instant
Simone Collins: dispute?
Malcolm Collins: I think it's just like Basically somebody pissed you off And after that It's robbery way down down.
No, no, no, no, no robbery. I think what happens when you go past robbery domestic violence again Just poor self control. Yeah, and then below that You retaliation or revenge?
Simone Collins: That's a crime?
Malcolm Collins: Well, when you murder someone, it is.
Simone Collins: Oh, okay. These are causes for, okay. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Not murder, murder or assault. Like, revenge isn't a crime in and of itself.
Yeah, I was like, ooh. Or revenge is, yes.
Simone Collins: No, except for there was that one [00:14:00] exception. I think it was in some Asian country where if you were a woman, And your husband cheated on you. You had the right to legally kill him. I think you had to be with your bare hands, but you could kill him.
Malcolm Collins: Whoa, wait. So if you murdered me with your bare hands, that was legal in that country.
Simone Collins: My understanding was yes. That if you had proof that they cheated on you and you murdered them with your bare hands, you had to get out of jail free card with that. So I think what I would do as a wife in that scenario, if I cared about that, and I wanted to kill my husband, is one, you get totally documented proof, you submit it to a lawyer, you make sure, like, the lawyer's like, yep, checks out, this is going to hold up in court, and then, I mean, I think it's pretty easy to strangle someone at night, like, while they're sleeping first you sort of restrain them.
I don't think you'd
Malcolm Collins: be able to strangle me unless you drugged me or something first. I'm significantly stronger. Dude, you are
Simone Collins: such a heavy sleeper. That's the
Malcolm Collins: problem. Even so, I'd wake up in time. Simone, I really just look, you know how much stronger I am than you
Simone Collins: really [00:15:00] have to tie you to the bed or something, but okay, you'd have to tie me to the bed that there would be like a well known collection, like an online forums of like, okay, if you're a wife in this country and you've been cheated on, you know, I'm like, there'd probably be specialized lawyers who had like kits, you know, like, here's your.
And also the best
Malcolm Collins: way to kill someone used to be on a cruise ship. Very easy way to kill someone. No, no,
Simone Collins: but this, again, I think that the rule in this country was that you had to kill them with your bare hands.
Malcolm Collins: Like you couldn't take a firearm. No, yeah, I'm just saying because you're like different countries.
We're not in that country. If you want to kill someone in this country, it's boats.
Simone Collins: Well, yeah, well, and not get caught, right? Like you don't even have to like be worried about the legality of it. Yeah, you just knock them off the cruise ship. Because there's such a
Malcolm Collins: tragic boat
Simone Collins: accident.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: and it's, it's considered an accident and it happens to like a surprising number of people every year.
Simone Collins: Yeah, like, if you ever meet someone who's, who's a family member or significant loved one died in a tragic boating accident. Yeah, they're a murderer. [00:16:00] Tragic boating accident. Yes. It's always, it's always a tragic boating accident. Yeah. If it was
Malcolm Collins: well, for yachting accidents, of course, you know, yeah, but no, I mean, that is a great way to kill someone.
When we have a, whenever I'm really
Simone Collins: old,
Malcolm Collins: Podcast episodes is about this. Yeah, how you would kill me if you were gonna kill me and how I would kill you gonna kill you. But I think
Simone Collins: that the answer that both of us came to is just boats.
Malcolm Collins: No, I said icicle.
What, like? Icicle. So you typically need a murder weapon and it melts.
Simone Collins: I
Malcolm Collins: get that, but
Simone Collins: like, how do
Malcolm Collins: you do it? Well, so what you argue is that the icicle fell from a nearby building. This kills people all the time. All you need to do is stab someone with an icicle.
Simone Collins: Oh, inside. Like, so they're asleep or something, and then you stab them from the right angle.
No, don't do that.
Malcolm Collins: That'd be too easy. I mean, you might even create like an ice shooting gun and then stab them where the gun wound was. Oh, just
Simone Collins: create an ice shooting gun. Like that's so easy. Oh, [00:17:00] okay. And then why don't we just, you know, solve the housing crisis at the same time?
Yes. And then perfect. Good. Done. Done. I'm glad we had this conversation. The ice shooting gun.
Malcolm Collins: You put the ice through the wound. You can say, oh, this fell after they fell. And then it fell through up there. It melts the weapon. And then it melts the
Simone Collins: You put the ice through the wound that you created with another weapon?
Malcolm Collins: Yes, because it would destroy the Forensics is better than that.
Simone Collins: No, no, the ice has to be the weapon. So you create, you create the ice shard, you Supposedly, but see, you'd have to stab them from an angle that plausibly could have been a falling icicle. And then also you have to make sure that from within the home, like, if you're not doing this on top of a plastic mat that you somehow dispose of later inside your home, you also have to remove all blood splatters.
You have to remove it from your body. I mean, people bleed, people splatter. It's, it's, it's embarrassing and gross. That's why I'm not into murder. It's like too [00:18:00] unhygienic. Well, yeah. Why don't you just like quiet, quit in your relationship and let it fall apart the normal way, you know, do it the normal way
or maybe
Malcolm Collins: like just.
If we were going to get into robbery, okay? Okay. How would you do robberies?
Simone Collins: Now, robbery is when you just take it from someone. Burglary is when you sneak in. Are we being burglars or robbers? Explain, okay, how
Malcolm Collins: would you do it? If we were going to make our money through criminality, how would you do it?
Simone Collins: Oh, dude, like, office space style, where you discover how to like shave a penny off of transactions in some way where like We don't
Malcolm Collins: have access to anything that we can put above
Simone Collins: Well, then step one is get access to something like that.
I mean, I'm sure that there are billions of people in the federal government doing this every single day. It's called procurement.
Malcolm Collins: You know, no, no, no, no. I think that you've hit on a huge under, under exploited arbitrage area of criminality,
Simone Collins: which
Malcolm Collins: is stealing from corporate offices that not many people are using anymore.
I think there's a bunch of corporate offices that people barely visit anymore. They're really just there [00:19:00] to tell investors. Oh,
Simone Collins: it's all just like remote work. No, no, no. But people are starting to enforce. In office work again, I think largely companies like Amazon because they got permission and huge tax breaks for these offices in states that expected people to come and do the office.
Malcolm Collins: I don't disagree that companies like Amazon are doing this, but what I'm saying is I bet there's a 10 to 25 percent of companies in the United States right now that are basically empty almost all the time.
Simone Collins: Well, we know this when we host those dinner parties in New York and we're like in a 36th floor on Park Avenue.
Yeah, because
Malcolm Collins: we can look at the offices. They're, they're just all empty, but here's, here's
Simone Collins: why I also feel like burglary is super dumb now and I don't get it. Is this like, where's the secondary market for this? Are they selling it on Facebook marketplace? You're not making a ton of money there. Like who.
Who's buying this?
Malcolm Collins: You would need to industrialize the scale of this.
Simone Collins: Oh, and that's why there's like this huge Mexican cartel that sells all the bikes. Yeah. I guess you have to create a, a, a, you have to take it to scale. Yeah. There has to be like some, [00:20:00] some scale that you're going to take. What scale?
Staples, you're going to sell the staples. You're going to sell old computers.
Malcolm Collins: It's all on like, like eBay or something. Right. It's pretty undifferentiated products.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: But if you do this, it's like, okay, you've got to hire minimum wage workers. Right.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: But if you do this at all of the corporate parks, right. There are just so, so, so many of these.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Maybe that's where AWS gets all its compute power. Maybe this is where Newegg gets all of its computers. Maybe this is already being done.
You know, you always wonder. I know. I bet have these places. It's
Malcolm Collins: like dusty and old and they don't have like new computers and no one's been there. I genuinely think a lot of places are like only pretending to operate and really no one has really worked for them since COVID.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I just, I wouldn't work in resale.
I just feel like, Oh, like getting product market fit like that's now you're just creating a business. It's like, just. I don't know. Find something easier [00:21:00] that doesn't get, you know, that doesn't involve crime. Cause that's another liability and that's, that's uninsurable. I just wouldn't do it. So, okay. You want to ensure our crime business?
I don't know. I want to protect myself from downside risk. I think that, you know, any, any responsible business owner, and this is why ultimately this is unfortunately coming back to this really uncomfortable conversation about. Like in the end, if you're dumb enough to do crime, it's typically because you are, you're not, you don't have the processing power capable of thinking through all of the consequences.
And therefore you do it because you aren't thinking about the downside. What's the downside? Where you don't
Malcolm Collins: do crime because you can't get insured. This is, this is
Simone Collins: your, because I'm thinking of the second and third and fourth and fifth order consequences. And my argument here in the problem and the very inconvenient truth.
Of crime is that the people who commit crime maybe aren't capable of thinking through the second and third and fifth and seventh [00:22:00] order of consequences.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay, Simone. So you have to make your money through something that's illegal. What are you doing? Our family runs out of money.
You're just like, I need money tomorrow. What are you doing?
Simone Collins: I'm doing something legal because if it's illegal that your downside risk could make it could take you from 0 to dead to. Your family taken away from you. Like just, again, the downside risk, crime doesn't pay. I mean, crime pays some people, but then there's always, you know, think about the guy who was a dread pirate Roberts, huge respect for him.
Read that biography. Fantastic biography. Can't remember the name of it. That talks about his whole story, creating the silk road. He was, I mean, okay. He got, he was very sloppy and made some very stupid early mistakes, but he was very smart and he still got caught in and it's like, you just, it's not worth it.
How do you get caught trying to remember? He let it was a sting [00:23:00] operation. Someone that he trusted
ultimately got close to him and was able to reveal enough information. And then he was also found. In a library, they were able to get him to a library. He was
Malcolm Collins: a library to do what? How did that confirm with him?
Simone Collins: Oh God, I can't honestly, if my memory is so bad, if it's not useful to me, I don't remember it. He had to be at a library to, with, with the laptop, with all the incriminating information. And that's where they had to catch him. They had to lure him out there, but I can't remember exactly how and why they did that, but it was incredibly smart.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-2: If you're curious like me on this particular point, I decided to look this up and edit and post. Oh, Rick made at several critical areas that led to his identification. He used the name Altoid to announce silk road on a Bitcoin forum. And later used the same username to ask for programming, help providing his personal email address, both older. And dead. Pirate Roberts were vocal supporters of libertarian economists Ludwig Von [00:24:00] misses with older it's public at Google plus account. Linking to related videos.
Oh, getting busted for a Google plus account
they seized a server in Ireland that gave access to personal chat logs.
They traced it to live with activity to a cafe in San Francisco, near his residence.
The final trap, October 1st, 2013. They monitored public places with free Wi-Fi like San Francisco. It's Glen park neighborhood. Old Rick was observed leaving his apartment and entering Glen park branch library and undercover agent posting as a silk road administrator engaged Treadright at Robert in an online chat. When Orrick logged. Into the silk road administrator account, FBI agents in the library, moved in and arrested him to prevent Olrick from encrypting and deleting his files.
Agents created a distraction while another seized his laptop.
Malcolm Collins: But here's what I would ask.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Tomorrow,
Simone Collins: the
Malcolm Collins: head of a Mexican cartel dies, you end up taking over because they, they find out that you're the long lost. Then I like
Simone Collins: legitimize their business. I'm like, all right, we're firing these people. Like, [00:25:00] I'm, you know, I am going to have to kill people. Kill you if you do that.
Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. You have to, you have to run their existing operation. Okay. Where are the arbitrage opportunities within the criminal market right now?
I think you'd be the most ruthless and effective criminal boss I have ever seen.
Simone Collins: Aww, thank you.
That's sweet. No, I think honestly, I think a lot of women would be really effective criminal bosses. What if they had the
Malcolm Collins: Mexican cartels right now as a woman?
Simone Collins: Yeah, that would that would not surprise me at all even remotely but I think it's one of those things also, I think, where a big problem you get in many industries, like the fashion industry, for example, is it attracted like much of the talent it attracts is just kind of dumb.
talent that doesn't really understand fashion or business dynamics and just is like, Oh, it's pretty, it's high status. And they go there and they kind of mess everything up. And then when you get someone who goes in there and has a business mind, they just clean up. And often they don't give a s**t about fashion.
Like when you look at how some key people at Vogue dress, they [00:26:00] like wear like black sack clothing because they don't care. Like they just, they can't be bothered. And then they kind of dictate how everyone else dresses. Or I mean, that's how it used to be. Now, of course, fashion is very different industry dynamics and market dynamics, but yeah, I think the, the, the core thing is understanding the, the underlying dynamics and the 40 game of chess and not actually caring about the thematics of the thing.
And I think to a great extent, crime is like, it's like a search fund. So, search funds or Like down market private equity is what we were into and it was all about finding inglorious markets that were under managed. That had a lot of people operating them who could it with smarter operations and better connections make a lot more money.
And to a great extent, I think crime is a lot like that. It's stuff that. People just don't want to deal with and then they find there's a market opportunity and they make money from it.
Malcolm Collins: So here's my question for you. If you're choosing between 1 of 2 styles, because the existing cartels that sort of fight have 1 of 2 styles and 1 cartel, they try to do [00:27:00] everything pretty businesslike and be on good terms as much as they can with the local population.
And the other major cartel just basically kills anyone who opposes them. Which side, how would you handle opposition if you were running a cartel?
Simone Collins: I would probably, I would be the former and I would probably step in. Here's, here's where I guess there's, if we're talking good tailwinds, right? Is to become What government has failed to be so like vigilante.
So like they'll just go in and kill people who shoplift multiple times, like just dead. They will be, they will be the ones to be law enforcement when law enforcement literally doesn't have the right. So when the U S
Malcolm Collins: starts to collapse, you will start a criminal organization. A criminal org. Yeah.
Simone Collins: That also, well, and of course it needs protection money. Like it does, it does take tax. Taxes. Yeah. Yeah, taxes, but like, yeah, basically like the government, like Work with me here. Like, imagine, [00:28:00] but it works. Manhattan needs a set. No, but like, this is, this is, but this is, that's the thing is, this is literally what Kings were.
Kings were the ones who like, were able to create enough societal stability and order. Where, like, you would become the clan chieftain, or you'd become the king, and then, like, suddenly, then, like, civilizations spring up, and then you have a legitimate government, and suddenly you're not a criminal anymore, you're respected, and you wear your robes, and you're, you know, so, like, fancy, and you have your, like, hood, and, like, just, but, like, yeah, that's what I would do.
I would create civilization. And it would start out illegal and very violent because it would need to be, I guess. What would you do? Would you be the nice or the mean?
Malcolm Collins: I actually think you do need a certain level of ruthlessness to maintain operations in a region like this. I think like what
Simone Collins: America, New York, a CVS,
Malcolm Collins: New York.
I think what you need to have is hard lines in the sand that cannot be adjudicated by on the ground people, or they will abuse these lines in the sand. However, [00:29:00] You do need some sort of system from adjudication, which is fairly good at deciding. It doesn't need to be perfect 80%. And somebody crosses 1 of these lines execution.
And I think outside of that, things like incarceration, especially long term incarceration and government system. For like, the death penalty are really silly. They're very, very, very expensive government. Death penalty actually costs more than keeping someone in jail for their entire life.
So we need to make these systems more efficient and more extreme.
Speaker: Well, you'll probably want to take your own life. Here, you'd better have this.
Malcolm Collins: And I think that you would quickly see. Many people living better lives, both because they're not dying due to the, you know, as we pointed out, the criminal individuals end up killing lots more people.
Simone Collins: Two words, Malcolm. Penal colonies. Say it with me. I mean [00:30:00]
Malcolm Collins: Well Uh, here's the question I ask you about the adoption study.
I mean, what are your thoughts on sterilization?
Simone Collins: I mean, it's maybe sterilization is making a comeback. There was that one Japanese politician who thought that one way to boost fertility in Japan was to Forced sterilization on Japanese women who didn't have children by the age of 30.
Malcolm Collins: I actually agree with that.
People need to understand their fertility windows. And I
Simone Collins: think No, I He's getting on something, but he's, he's, he's sort of Modeling it. There are two things that he's touching on here that have a lot of weight. One is people have to be aware of their fertility windows. Two is people won't appreciate the value of life until they understand just how fleeting and rare and difficult to achieve it is.
And he's, he's getting at that, but he's getting at it the wrong way. Threatening people with sterilization is not the way. And this is
Malcolm Collins: where we hit, I mean, speaking of [00:31:00] fertility windows, this is where I hit onto a very interesting fact recently that you and I have been talking about, we might do an episode on.
Which is black American, African American fertility windows are significantly smaller than any other ethnic
Simone Collins: group. What on earth? No, we need to research this way more though. I really want to understand what's going on. That is scary. If you're
Malcolm Collins: a black woman, you need to have kids much earlier. Then other ethnic groups before your fertility collapses and because our society doesn't talk about ethnic differences and things like fertility windows, like we just completely ignore this.
And so a lot of black women are like trying to get pregnant in their thirties and they're like, wait, black women are sterile by the time they're 30.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): I will note here that this isn't the way the science investigates this problem. They would just say that black women are twice as likely to experience infertility than white women. They would then go on to say black women are two to three times more likely to be diagnosed with Uterine fibroid, which can affect fertility. , and they would say that IVF outcomes are much lower success among [00:32:00] black women than white women. Without attempting to just lower the age at which they're having kids.
Because of course, then we would be admitting that there are actual medical, ethnic differences between individuals, for example, black kids gestate for much less than white kids.
, but we can't talk about any of this for whatever weird reason, which is obviously having really deleterious effects on the black population.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: I can see why from a progressive mindset, it would be horrifying if it got out. That if you're a black woman and you want to have kids, you need to do it in your twenties. If you want to have the same shot as a white woman, who's doing it in her thirties.
Malcolm Collins: And it's like, yeah, it turns out that that's about the case. And this explains, I think, why if you are not in the bottom, I think it's like 15% or 18 percent of income of, of the black population, you have a lower fertility rate than any other ethnic group in the United States.
Simone Collins: That is wild. We know we have to dig deeper on though, that this is going to be a really interesting episode. We have to do it because. Ah, that's so [00:33:00] scary. And Yeah, talk about, like, double sided attack. One, you have Planned Parenthood, which was, like, designed for, like, black genocides. So,
Malcolm Collins: what she means here is that the person who founded Planned Parenthood worked with the KKK.
She said the goal of the organization was to remove genetically undesirable people from the United States population. A very clearly targeted black populations. Even today, 83 percent of Planned Parenthood clinics are in majority minority neighborhoods, and the black population of the U. S. would be a quarter higher if Planned Parenthood didn't exist.
Simone Collins: Yeah, so this is like one end of like, aborting disproportionately black babies in the United States, and then there's this other end of like, oh my god, wait, and their fertility window seems to be disproportionately shorter just For whatever this is,
Malcolm Collins: this is just like, you know, a key for just genetics.
Right? Like it, what I mean is it disproportionately means that the individuals in the community who are like, if you're like, okay, so why is well, see black for people who are
Simone Collins: being, I guess, responsible, waiting until they have enough [00:34:00] money and enough and all these other things that are impossible to get these days.
And then they're ready and then suddenly they can't have kids. This is, this is horrible. Yeah. And then the, yeah, anyway, three strikes laws, definitely in favor. Okay. No, no low level drug offenses. What are you guys doing? Like the war on drugs that one of them is.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, no. Trump's actually ramping up the fence and all stuff, and I really agree with it.
No, no,
Simone Collins: no, no. I get that. I'm referring to like the 90s when we're on drugs, where you go to jail for having me
Malcolm Collins: on. He wants to make it a, a death penalty offense to be selling drugs.
Simone Collins: Yeah, and for human trafficking too.
Malcolm Collins: And for human trafficking, and I'm like, yeah, I'm all down for that.
Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, well, I under, I understand about having like really strict rules.
But again, this concept of like possessing drugs means you go to jail is incredibly stupid. I'm not at all for that. And [00:35:00] I don't know, I mean, also like death penalty for selling drugs. I don't know. I don't know. I think that's not well advised. That is not an optimal decision. I think that what we really need to be focused on is getting hard on repeat crimes that are actively damaging to social stability and yes, drug sale and consumption is is a threat, but not as much as, like, Shoplifting and aggravated assault, murder, abuse, things like that, like that, that is, that is a bigger fish to fry.
And once we have those under control, I'm happy to look at drugs, but to a certain extent, I do think that the masses need to know an opiate, like, quite literally based on where society is going and. I want, I mean, essentially what's happening, Malcolm, is, and we've talked about this, a huge portion of society is euthanizing itself.[00:36:00]
And I believe in euthanization that is humane. Yeah. And I think that people being allowed to essentially euthanize themselves with, with a pain dulling medication or, or, you know, a sort of suffering dulling medication. Is, is the, is the empathetic and fair thing to do for people who've been essentially ruined by society and by the woke mind virus or whatever you want to call it.
No, seriously, Malcolm. Like it's, it's not, it's not cool to ruin a bunch of people to, to effectively neuter them. They're not going to have families. They're living in debt. They're not going to have meaningful lives. And then to be like, Oh, and by the way, you don't get drugs
Malcolm Collins: is what you're saying. You want to euthanize the woke people.
Simone Collins: They're euthanizing themselves. They're dead men walking. I just don't want them to suffer any more than they have to.
Malcolm Collins: I don't know. I've never been a fan of euthanasia. They're lazy and they're communists. They're neets. They're already
Simone Collins: flat.
Malcolm Collins: It's [00:37:00] a joke. I know. I know. They asked the president, they go, Mr.
President, what's your views on youth in Asia? And he goes, they're lazy and they're communists. You heard youth in Asia? I know.
Simone Collins: I know. I know. I got your dad joke the first time.
Malcolm Collins: Shut up. I
Simone Collins: love
Malcolm Collins: you. You need to shut up, Simone. You're a terrible wife and a bad mother and I am sick and disgusted to have married you.
Simone Collins: Speaking of which, I'm going to try. To make a Dutch baby tonight. So more air fried, breaded, kariv seasoned chicken, but I wanted to make a Dutch baby and you can tell me if this appeals to you. Cause there's this dude who does these shorts that I'm like, this is a
Speaker 3: little bit weird, but here's how you can
Simone Collins: make a Dutch baby.
Why is my YouTube totally broken? If I can restart it because I feel like you would like this and [00:38:00] it seems really simple and maybe even the kids will like it. And so let's show me, I know I'm getting at my, is your phone over here
or do we need a new phone?
No, God, we need to stop buying things. No more.
There we go.
Speaker 3: It might sound a little bit weird, but here's how you can make a Dutch baby really good brunch dish. Gas iron pans are the best for this. Put it in the oven to preheat 125 degrees. The best part of this recipe is that you can do it all in the blender. So if you're a human, you got this. And if you're not a human, you got this.
I'll be there in five. Three should have been chickens. One and a half cups all purpose flour. Half a cup of good milk. Two tablespoons of that sap syrup. A little ocean. And a really good vanilla bean paste. For all my visual learners, this is the consistency you're looking for. Whoop. Twenty minutes later, add some butter to the hot skillet and squish it around.
Add in the batter and put back into the oven for an additional twenty to twenty five minutes. Or until the edges become golden brown. Kind of like this brown Guatemalan meal. That is [00:39:00] literally an absolute perfect meal. I had a little bit of Parmesan and prosciutto just to get that sweet and salty element.
Chips.
Simone Collins: Wow.
Speaker 3: Aerated. Salty and sweet. Does it
Simone Collins: not look good? Well, no, no, no. Just be separate. Like, in addition to the, to the chicken. Like, as I said. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: that works. Try it.
Simone Collins: Okay. It'll have to be tomorrow. I was going to make it tonight, but I needed an hour to do that since it's a Friday night. Oh, yeah.
Don't worry about
Malcolm Collins: it. Look, Simone use the air fryer Caramel muffins? What?
Simone Collins: What, what do you want as your starch with this? Fried rice?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. If you could make fried rice, it'd go really great with our fried chicken. Especially if you can turn it into veggies and cut them up a bit.
Simone Collins: Yeah, you know it.
Malcolm Collins: With the coconut rice?
Simone Collins: With the coconut rice.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, you are my sweetheart.
Simone Collins: You are my special sun pony. My special sun pony? Oh no! You're a very special sun pony. Life is good. Alright, yeah. Three strikes. Good. Drugs.
Malcolm Collins: I want to strike terminals three times. Three strikes.
Simone Collins: [00:40:00] Everyone's allowed three hits, like a pinata.
That's the three strikes rule, but only three, only three. Everyone has a baseball bat, a government issued baseball bat, and you have three strikes. Have a spectacular day Simone. I love you. I love you too. I love you too. Okay.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna pull it. Get in there. And then I'll show you how to actually shoot. And then I know it works. I'm throwing! Then I gotta put that in. And then I gotta Whoa! And then I gotta do this. And then I'm throwing! Okay? Wanna pull your trigger? It suits. Wanna see how it suits? Flash! Flash!
[00:41:00] Flash! Flash! Flash! Flash! And then, you can see the bullet. Oh, no, the
Speaker 4: bullet, the bullet! Who are you talking to, Octavian? Um,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Well, who's in the box?
Speaker 2: Um, uh, I don't know his name again. Is he
Speaker 4: your friend? Um,
Speaker 2: yes, I think.
Speaker 4: Why don't you ask what his name is?
Speaker 2: What's your name? I need to play with it. I'm gonna play with
Speaker 4: it. I'm gonna play with
Speaker 2: it. I'm gonna play with it. Yeah!

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This Video Will Get You on an FBI Watchlist + Leak: Reddit Astroturfed by Feds
12 déc.· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this chilling and data-heavy episode, we uncover an FBI program that monitors and labels mainstream right-wing Americans as terrorists. Delving into shocking details, we reveal how certain words and phrases, like 'red pilled' and 'based,' are misinterpreted by the FBI to justify adding individuals to a terrorist watch list. The host discusses the manipulation of Reddit by FBI agents, speculating that the platform may be dominated by these agents, effectively killing genuine discourse. We also explore the wider implications of government control over social media, the misuse of taxpayer dollars, and the erosion of public trust in government institutions. The episode closes with a personal anecdote about the host's family life and concerns over societal decay.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone! This episode is going to be a chilling episode. This is one of those really data heavy episodes. I'm really gonna be bringing receipts here, and what we are going to be uncovering is an FBI program to monitor and label mainstream American right as terrorists, AstroTurf Reddit and manipulate and manipulate.
Big events in America to the extent, so just to get started here, if anyone's like, Oh, come on, you can't, you can't really mean they're this bad, right? We, this podcast is almost certainly on an FBI watch list after the Heritage Foundation forced them through a freedom of information request to release information on a new terrorist list they were building of Quote unquote incels, and so words that would get you put on this terrorist list.
Okay It were red pilled, based, look maxing, Chad, [00:01:00] Stacy, it's over, just be first, incel, and LARPing. LARPing! LARPing! No, because you know, them all right, so on this list,
Speaker 2: Listen, I'll save you some gas. I'm just going down to the stationary store. Then I'll be right back. You don't gotta follow me like yesterday. Alright?
Malcolm Collins: so on this list and, and you'll go, we're going to go over their twisted definitions of these words. Like they say, saying you are based means that you are saying you are racist.
And here I'll put on the screen here, like Fox news, mainstream news, breaking this FBI documents associated with internet slaying, like based and red pill with extremism. And We're also going to go into proof that they've been heavily manipulating reddit to the extent where reddit might be a pretty dead platform at this point.
And people just don't realize it. It's just like a room full of FBI agents talking to each other. And I know [00:02:00] that this isn't the first time when people are like, oh, you wish like the FBI was Paying an interest to you and it's like no we like know they are now because of the love not hate piece that was done on us For a year in our operation That cost a lot for them to run that was very obviously and you can go into the episode on this where we go into Receipts that was probably government backed by the uk government Now we're going to go into what the u.
s government so I want to go over some of their definitions here You And keep in mind, they have in this document, like, all of these words, like, interspersed with, like, pictures of Hitler's face and, like, Mein Kampf and, like, stuff like that. Like, really hateful stuff.
Simone Collins: Oh my gosh.
Malcolm Collins: So, they say, based refers to someone who has been converted to a racist ideology or as a way of indicating ideological agreement Okay, it literally means the exact opposite.
It means that you have a logically and [00:03:00] factually informed position that is outside of any mainstream narrative or any mainstream position. So if you're, for example, are hanging out with a group of racists, it is based to say something that is non racist, like antagonistic to racism. I always
Simone Collins: felt like in context, I get the impression that at least the connotation of based is someone who's just unapologetically standing for what they believe they're just comfortable in it Is that not?
Well,
Malcolm Collins: yes, but it needs to be against whatever the group that they are in sees as normative. Oh, yeah. So like someone who's unapologetically
Simone Collins: urban monoculture is not going to be seen as based Generally anti
Malcolm Collins: urban monoculture is based if you're in a general online environment, but if I am at a far right group you know
being pro gay might be based. It just depends on the normative culture that you're within.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Here's, here's what they define red pill as, Simone. Okay. Taking the red pill or becoming quote unquote red [00:04:00] pilled indicates the adoption of a racist, anti semitic, or fascist belief.
Simone Collins: Wait. The red pill emerged from our artist communities.
This is about women and being lied to.
Malcolm Collins: But I point out here that this is, and we'll do a different episode on that someday, this is what our tax dollars are paying for. Somebody was paid a salary to put this together and feel it was obviously wrong and cult like, ideologically indoctrinated misinterpretations of reality.
Our government is deeply infiltrated by the virus and the cuts need to be made severely, even if it means shutting down departments entirely. Yeah. Okay. Here's what they said. Chad means, okay. They say Chad is a race specific term used to describe idealized versions of a male who is successful at gaining [00:05:00] sexual or romantic attention from women.
Incels unsuccessfully compete against chads for attention. They don't compete!
Simone Collins: Wow. Race? Where? Who? Who's being paid to do this? They should not be paid to They're not doing a good jo I mean, like, I don't know what's more insulting. That, like, there's this very politically biased witch hunt taking place. Or that they're so bad at understanding the witches they're hunting.
No,
Malcolm Collins: they're, they're not, okay, so they're not trying to. They are, this is somebody who is a, who is ultra, ultra woke, trying to build justification to put the mainstream white, Right wing on a watch list. Was this from
Simone Collins: the life of Brian? Am I getting the scene right? Where there's this woman, and they're like, She's a witch!
Speaker 3: We have found the witch. May we burn her? Burn her!
Speaker 5: I'm not a witch! I'm not a witch! But you are dressed as one.
They dressed me up like this.
Simone Collins: And they're like, Well, she has a [00:06:00] nose that's long. And they're like, You put this nose on me!
Speaker 3: Well? Well, we did do the nose. The nose? And the hat. But she's a witch!
Simone Collins: Yeah, I feel like that's it. They're like, Well, but they're racists. And then, you know, like, I'm like, wait, why am I
Malcolm Collins: racist? And they go, because you said Chad, because you said you're red pilled. And I'm like, but you define those things as racist.
But like, but that's not racist. And
Simone Collins: they're like, well, no, but we said it guys.
Malcolm Collins: They put it on me.
Speaker 3: Don't dress her up like this. No! No! No! No! Yes! Yes! Yes!
Speaker 5: Yes! A bit! A bit! A
Speaker 3: bit! A bit!
Malcolm Collins: And then the, the, the guy's like, well, was any, any, any part of her which they were. She did turn me into a newt and I got better.
Speaker 5: What makes you think she's a witch?
Speaker 3: Well, she turned me into a newt! Got better.
Malcolm Collins: This is a little like, well, how can you prove that they are you know, racist and anti women well, when Trump wins, they're going to lock up all the women and send them to breeding [00:07:00] pens and all the black people are going to become slaves again.
And then I look around and I'm like, Trump one, is any of that happening? And they're like, well, it got better.
Speaker 13: Oh, Peacemaker! Yes! You're that racist superhero! You only kill minorities, man!
Speaker 14: I've killed a fair amount of white people, too. The ratio is suspect, is all I have to say.
If somebody's committing a crime Yes? Am I supposed to control what their ethnicity is?
Simone Collins: Some things just never change, I guess, you know,
Malcolm Collins: Well, no, but we have another episode, which I'm going to try to have go live before this, where we talk about it's been documented now.
Antifa has infiltrated the secret service. They've definitely infiltrated the FBI. And when I say infiltrated, I don't mean in a nefarious context. I just mean people who watch like Antifa podcasts and agree with their beliefs. And when we talk about what the core of Antifa beliefs are, it is.
Identifying mainstream right wing Americans, or I'd say even the average American now, considering Trump won the popular vote, the average American, since it's like based in Red Pill, identifying them as [00:08:00] morally equivalent to Nazis, so that they have a psychological license to do whatever they would do to a Nazi, to a average American.
And this is where like the punch a Nazi movement comes from and everything like that. And what I mean by this is you have this within the FBI now trying to get this identification of your mainstream American as being like a Nazi so that they have the justification to treat the mainstream American as if they were a Nazi terrorist.
Hold on, we're going to keep going through words here because this, this just gets me. Yeah.
Okay, so, Just be first A phrase used to describe the targeting of minors for sexual advances in order to be their first sexual experience before their perceived corruption by society and is quote unquote justified by some as the only chance incels have to ascend from incel status.
To ascend! Oh! Okay, so for people who don't know what Just Be First actually means, is it saying that women should exercise a degree of [00:09:00] moderation in who they're sleeping with, and that the ideal marriage should be between two virgins? Now, interesting, I can say, I don't know if this is like, realistic for the average person to aspire to, but Also, this is weird,
Simone Collins: I don't know if I'd want to marry a virgin, like, a virgin guy.
Malcolm Collins: I married, I started dating you when you were a virgin. I started, you'd only kissed one other person. You were incredibly inexperienced in this category. And so for you to, and keep in mind, yeah, okay. You wouldn't want a virgin guy, but the point of all this is not about guys. This is about men choosing women, and I can understand the idea that women could be really messed up in this modern dating marketplace in terms of their self perception, in terms of what they expect from a relationship.
Yeah. It is not an unreasonable thing to say that, hey, you know what our ancestors said that we should argue, have like a degree of freedom. of sexual propriety. That they're like, no, that whoever wrote this literally think that [00:10:00] the only women who would not have sexual experience are minors because they have so normalized sleeping with minors that they can't imagine any woman who isn't a minor not having sexual experience.
And by the way, when I met Simone, you were 23.
Simone Collins: 24.
Malcolm Collins: 24. So not at all a minor. Okay. Just a degree of sexual propriety. And I actually was in my later years, almost as many virgins as I did in my early years.
Simone Collins: And you were sleeping with people, roughly your same age. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I just whatever it is that I bring to the table.
Disproportionately attracts the type of woman who happens to be moderately attractive in a virgin.
And people are like, oh, they're lying to you. No, I slept with enough people that I can tell the difference. So to keep going I need to
Simone Collins: put in like the obligatory ew, because
Malcolm Collins: What, you, about what?
Simone Collins: Being able to tell. I just really don't like vaginas. So, I have to say
Malcolm Collins: you. Well, you're a [00:11:00] heterosexual woman, Simone. It's not surprising.
Simone Collins: Well, yeah, no. I remember from your surveys, vaginas were very Actually, a lot of guys playing vaginas. Yeah, like both women and
Malcolm Collins: men. We're like Not, not the average man, but like a quarter of men.
Like way more than you'd think.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay,
Malcolm Collins: Looks matching. A term used to describe the matching of attractive resemblance of both romantic partners, which incels see as a solution to the perceived problem of unattractive men having no potential partners.
How is that a How does this make someone a terrorist? Looks maxing. The process of self improvement with the intent to be more attractive. Oh, how dare you! Improvement as a sign that you're a terrorist. The nerve! He tried to improve himself. He's
Simone Collins: a terrorist!
Malcolm Collins: That's insane. MGTOW, of course they say MGTOW is the acronym for Men Going Their Own Way, which refers to an online community that has overlap with the incel community.
NEET, they see this as a word that, [00:12:00] that is described by this. Okay. Red Pill and Black Pill. So this is, I guess, Black Pill in the context of Red Pill. So, this is a different definition of Red Pill. I love that they didn't even do this document well. They have Red Pill on it twice. They have Red Pill on one page, and then Red Pill, Black Pill on another page.
With a different definition. I mean, this is
Simone Collins: the non version not racist version of their definition, because the first definition was so off. Well,
Malcolm Collins: okay. The red pill refers to a belief shared by many online communities that society is corrupt and that the believer is a victim of this corruption.
Black pill, which is specific to incels, refers to the belief that this corruption can only be changed through massive societal restructuring, often including violence. The left says stuff like that all the time! Society is corrupt! What are you talking about? Like, okay, let me just change the words here, right?
You know, BLM refers to the belief shared by many online communities that society is corrupt, and that the believer is a victim of this [00:13:00] corruption. BLM, ultra, refers to a belief that the corruption can only be changed through a massive societal restructuring, often including violence.
They're just describing the mainstream of their own movement!
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: They've got Stacy on here, but the definition is boring. And then they have all this next to things like white power and Mein Kampf. And the Turner Diaries, and Siege, and the next I do not What? Who's I don't know what any of these books I know Mein Kampf, and that's it.
Simone Collins: Yeah. That's cause I keep I keep using it around the house as like a joke. You
Malcolm Collins: keep using Livenshroom as a joke.
Simone Collins: Yeah, that made them more love and strong and that, you know, like keeping the floor as clean as Mein Kampf, but only as a, no one uses that phrase, like, or, or refers to that book online.
That's anyway. I feel like they needed to keyword stuff it with references to [00:14:00] the National Socialist Party of Germany. And other racist thinkers in an attempt to make it seem like this whole set of vocabulary is used together all by the same people. Does that make sense?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah,
Simone Collins: I want to, I want to understand this department that the FBI that's doing this like it was there an intern or a recent college grad. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: they had a big document. It's called involuntary celibate violent extremism.
Simone Collins: Oh,
Malcolm Collins: okay. That's nice. So now we're going to go over something even more horrifying, which is and this.
Rabbit hole. I showed you a first video on this that some other YouTuber had done and it was good, but like, as I dug deeper, it's worse than what he made it sound like.
Simone Collins: Are you
Malcolm Collins: serious? So in 2014, Reddit's year end blog post had to be edited because the town that it included as the [00:15:00] most addicted to Reddit was Edgeland Air Force Base.
Here's the problem. It, that indicated that it had over a hundred thousand unique visitors to Reddit. The problem is, is that that the portion, the number of residents of the Air Force Base was only 2, 448. Oops, a discrepancy of 97, 000 people.
But it gets worse than that. Edglin's Air Force Base, not long before this. Other studies that had been funded were one titled modeling user attitude towards controversial topics in social media networks, which explores the manipulation of social networks and the use of quote unquote social leaders to influence opinions and beliefs.
Other studies that had been funded were one titled modeling user attitude towards controversial The, the hilarious thing here is I decided to then try to dig deeper on any of the sources that covered this. Right, because I was like, okay. Is this real? So I would go [00:16:00] to the sources that had covered this which were in the Washington blog every one of the articles on this had been removed I could find sources like actually ironically reddit posts Talking about what was in archived versions of these sites, but the archived versions have also been removed.
So the internet archives have been removed of this at this point, along with every place that it was mentioned. The only place that I could find a non removed reference to stuff like this was in the Guardian, where they had a fairly watered down discussion of this. Fortunately, we have lots of screenshots of these websites before they were removed, so we know they existed, and there has been no denial of the FBI of this activity or the millions of dollars that was spent doing this.
Millions? So if I want to go into what the Guardian had to say about this, U. S. military admits spending millions to study [00:17:00] manipulation of social media. Part of a long term effort to spread propaganda through the internet. The activity of users of Twitter and other social media services were recorded and analyzed as part of a major project funded by the U.
S. military in a program that covers ground similar to Facebook or Twitter. controversial experiment into how to control emotions by manipulating newsfeeds. And if you are, and this is from the Guardian, a far lefty thing. And I think it's because initially they thought that they were doing this to influence things in a right wing direction.
But now we know because of the Facebook leaks and stuff like that, that they were doing this in a heavy left wing direction. The Facebook leak that I'm talking about is a story that the FBI knew was true. Facebook was pressured to remove it, which was the Hunter Biden son's laptop leak. And ban accounts that were reporting accurate news.
The FBI colluded to ban accounts reporting accurate news in the lead up to an election cycle. That is where things are, and we haven't seen any indication of anything like this on the right, which is so funny that the left is always like, oh, the right's a threat to democracy. When they're actively [00:18:00] attacking democracy.
What's fun, I, I've, I've
Simone Collins: actually seen a couple of self-aware, but jokes, but kind of not jokes from people on the left after looking at the results of the selection saying maybe we did steal the last one. Which is I mean, gosh, it's insane. It just, I can't believe that we even saw the results that we did considering all of the things that are happening, like even the hostile nature of the existing government toward anyone who means slightly.
To the right, which is basically just being a 1990s Democrat, by the way,
Malcolm Collins: well, at least in terms of your social beliefs. I mean, I think that a lot has changed, but it's, it's very different. I argue that the left today is actually, it's not that the right today is what the left is in the 1990s. It's that the left today is what the right was in the 1990s.
When a lot of people get wrong because they're too focused on social issues and they're just fighting for a war that doesn't exist anymore, like the war to ban gay marriage couldn't win any [00:19:00] election cycle. Like we're not even like, we don't even slap down rightists when they say this stuff because like we're pro gays or gay marriage.
We slap it down because it's insane. just so dumb. It appeals to such a small portion of the electorate. Um, They're fighting social battles and they see the fact that we're not fighting those social battles is making us more like Democrats of the nineties when the reality is,, the right of the 90s is actually very similar to the far left today. They just represent a different view, which is to say in the 90s, it was about pushing what the dominant culture in our country was on the average American citizen. And now it's about pushing a different dominant cultural group on the average citizen.
So I see that it's sort of a false equivalency there. But I wanted to, you know, one talk about paying to manipulate results. So I think a lot of people, when they look at this and they see how heavily the FBI and the U. S. military towards an extremist woke agenda is manipulating online discourse, specifically in environments like Reddit. it.
I think they can misunderstand [00:20:00] the impact that 97 upvotes or downvotes can have to control what's making it to the front page within the large subreddits and what comments are making it to the top, et cetera. I will say this as somebody who I will not confirm that I've done this, but let's say we may have experimented with a manipulating the way things get to the top of Reddit through pay for vote systems.
It
Simone Collins: hypothetically could have happened,
Malcolm Collins: it hypothetically could have happened, which gives us an idea of how many votes you actually need to create a post on Reddit. And if you have good content that is gelling with the base of Reddit, you really only need to pay for, I'd argue maybe 2000 votes. The fact that they were looking at 90, 000 votes that they basically had complete control over the past decade of what's been at the top of Reddit and what hasn't been at the top of Reddit and likely all other voter based sites, whether that is the E.
A. Forums or Y [00:21:00] Combinator or this is why I think for a long time in non vote based sites like. For Chan, you have seen things moving very far to the right from the perspective of they're like, Oh, the average person isn't that far to the right. Or on X they're like, Oh, the average person can't possibly be that far to the right.
Now they're realizing, Oh, the average person actually is that far to the right. This isn't like, that it was taken over by extremists. It's this, this is what it feels like to not be in an echo chamber. That's being mediated by the
Simone Collins: FBI.
Malcolm Collins: So Reddit basically hasn't existed as a real site in at least the last half decade.
That makes
Simone Collins: so much sense because I remember just living on it and then returning to it in our, I don't know, post kid lives. And thinking this sucks happen. Yes. This used to be a place where people had realistic dialogue in the YouTube video that you shared with me, where you first heard about this and started diving down the rabbit hole after the guy mentioned.
He did a [00:22:00] hypothetical hypothetical experiment where he entered a prompt into chat GPT asking it to create an am I the a*****e post and it made one that was that looks totally native very natural and he was like clearly chat GPT has used reddit as training data and can easily be used to create posts.
Fake accounts.
Malcolm Collins: Well, this is where it gets worse. Reddit has no way to come back from this. Because the way the Reddit and the voting based systems work is if you look at something like Twitter, what does Twitter select for? It selects for the things that cause the largest emotional reaction. Yes. So that can be a positive or negative reaction.
If I want to get a retweet, I can get a retweet by creating a negative reaction just as well as a positive reaction. Well, perhaps even
Simone Collins: more effectively by getting a negative reaction.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, what does it mean If the, the, from like an evolutionary perspective, ideas compete on Twitter through their ability to engage our emotional subsets.
And it's funny that people are like, [00:23:00] blue sky will be different. And I'm like, no, it won't be different because it uses the same system. This is why on 4chan, the stuff that comes to the top is the stuff that way I'd put it? Is the most like attention grabbing in the moment. Because that's how you get people to pay attention on 4chan.
It is ideas outside of a signaling perspective. It's just whatever is on your mind and what you believe to be true. Well, attracting more for things that offend other people to one, create engagement and to act as a filtering mechanism for people who you do not want within your environment to make it toxic to those people.
Simone Collins: We're
Malcolm Collins: going to go over crystal cafe soon, which is like a female version of 4chan. Just mention this to me. I need to dive into this. It's really interesting because they've done the same thing to make it really unpleasant to be a man on there. So you wouldn't even want to like role play as a woman.
How does one do that? Well, you'll see when we go over it. [00:24:00] We're going to go over it in the episode where I argue that everyone under replacement rate is a cuck. Oh great, okay. So be looking, be looking for that episode. But the problem with all of this is, is in, okay, so what wins within the voter based environments?
It is the thing that is the most average of an opinion. The most average of an opinion for that particular room. Now on YouTube, what wins on YouTube? What wins interestingly is the content that is most appealing to people algorithmically like yourself. It's sort of the best place to find good content on the internet.
The, it, and, and community discords, and we'll put a link to our discord here which have a feel of like early internet stuff
Simone Collins: but,
Malcolm Collins: YouTube itself Is very good for I think an average person who wants to know what people like themselves are saying now The problem with reddit and what's going to lead to its self destruction Is the most average of ideas wins the most average and safe and [00:25:00] guarded of ideas While being influenced by organizations like the fbi to be even more average and safe who?
Is going to win at that game, especially if they were trained on reddit data ai
AI will almost always be able to outcompete humans on a platform like Reddit, especially as AI advances further. The tights of story, because it creates the most average idea. And that's what is rewarded on Reddit. And that's why Reddit has no possible future.
And, did you have any thoughts on this before I go further?
Simone Collins: That's sad. RIP Reddit. It had a, a long time ago, it had a great run and I really enjoyed it.
Malcolm Collins: There's so many things, I mean, its staff accelerated its demise.
Simone Collins: It deserved what was coming to it, but it still makes me sad. Imagine, it's like going [00:26:00] to, it's driving by your childhood house that your family moved out of and seeing that it, Went to s**t.
Turned into like a meth den.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: A meth
Malcolm Collins: den with like obviously a bunch of FBI plants. Like, hey, would you like some marijuana, young man? So, no, I the point here being is that if you Go to Reddit. The only reason to go to Reddit is do not go to Reddit to get an understanding of what the left thinks.
The left isn't meaningfully on Reddit anymore. Go to Reddit to get an understanding of what the FBI wants you to think. , that is the only thing that you are getting from Reddit anymore. But great to get an understanding of like how. far this has gone within other countries that have been more infected by the cordyceps virus or wokeism or the urban monoculture than the United States.
The British government considers the following as terrorism and believes it has the right to investigate and jail people for this. So I'll read the quote from their own report. If the disclosure, so saying this being written, or threat of disclosure is designed to influence a [00:27:00] government or made for the purpose of promoting a political or ideological cause, anything that can disrupt the status quo is terrorism.
Oh boy. The UK is
Simone Collins: not going to be okay if it maintains this general stance and Approach to culture slash solving problems. This is not good.
Malcolm Collins: Well, they arrested a guy for this David Miranda case, British High Court accepts investigation. Journalists can be tried like terrorists. And I'd point out here that You're like, okay, so it's like the FBI is a problem and maybe like the N.
I say is a problem.
Speaker 6: Because if people knew how we did it, then everyone would do it. Then our enemies would do it. We can't let our enemies get their hands on this. Get their hands on what?
Dudes.
This is how we know [00:28:00] that
Malcolm Collins: No, this is spread to every branch of our government independently. This is the way the infection works. So, the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States. In a request for proposals filed to companies that are feds vendors is requesting the creation of a social listing platform whose function is to gather data from various social media outlets and news sources that will monitor billions of conversations and generate text analytics based on predefined criteria.
The, the, the Federal Reserve. Why do they need that?
Simone Collins: We need to look at more RFPs. That is. I guess that's something does should, well, they're going to, they're going to audit every single contract, but they should also be looking at new requests. That is deeply disturbing. Also part of me wonders. What if part of the objective of this manipulation was [00:29:00] to kill Reddit?
Reddit being seen as a place where people were radicalized and they just wanted to neutralize it. It definitely wasn't. They
Malcolm Collins: had no, no. They see Reddit as a platform completely under their control. They love Reddit. Reddit's the best. They want people to stay there. Keep in mind. They want people
Simone Collins: to
Malcolm Collins: like it.
Yeah, even the FBI now is worried about things like Facebook, now that Mark Zuckerberg has been like, he was the one who leaked, Mark Zuckerberg is the one who leaked that the Hunter Biden laptop story was suppressed. That, that, that came from the Zuck. The Zuck. He may have taken a while to come around, but I think he's in the process of coming around and I do not think that the FBI trusts him with that sort of request.
Simone Collins: He's in his new era. I'm liking it in his
Malcolm Collins: new era. Okay. Yeah. So I don't, I don't, I don't think of all the platforms, they've got blue sky. They've got ready. They've got like, yeah, What? Like, the, the, the Tumblr teleport Is Mastodon still
Simone Collins: a thing or not? I think there's a lot of Is what still
Malcolm Collins: [00:30:00] a thing?
Simone Collins: Mastodon.
Malcolm Collins: Oh no, not really.
Simone Collins: I think Discord just is everything that Mastodon was proposing to be and so much better. So, it probably never had a shot.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah discord feels like the early internet by the way for people who weren't around in the early internet and if you want to join our discord, you can find a link.
It's great I find it a really fun place to hang out online pretty high quality conversations I'd also note here that if you feel like the internet is dying Because like when I go to google now, it feels like an increasing amount of the internet just isn't real Like I feel like as the astroturfing is break as the brain rot You Of the people doing the astroturfing has increased as the cordyceps fungus has eaten of the urban monoculture He's eaten more and more of their brains and their only job is self replication of the virus They no longer think in false thoughts as I mentioned recently I got in an argument with somebody that just broke down into simple phonetic loops like break the cycle like Be better.
Don't, you know, like I was like, what? [00:31:00] This isn't an argument. It's like in Rick and Morty when the simulation is breaking down. And they're like, my man, my man.
What
Malcolm Collins: That's what it felt like in real life. And I was trying to talk to like an average citizen on the street. And I was like, Oh my God, like these people are so brain rotted by the Internet that they lack the capacity for genuine independent thought anymore.
And they're running on it. A collection of phonetic loops. And I think what happened is as the. The bug men have become more and more infected to the extent that they can't have rational thoughts anymore These environments that they were curating and astroturfing are breaking down And we're beginning to realize there was never anyone there That most of the internet has been an astroturf job that dead internet Theory was not wrong.
The internet has been dead for a while now. It is just becoming clear at this point and that the only real conversations you can have [00:32:00] anymore are places like discord, which is pre sorting for people who are following specific, like based or otherwise filtering individuals on YouTube and stuff like that.
Or and to give you an idea of how bad this is in 2006, four years after a website was created, there was a 40 percent chance it would still be around. In 2015, five years after sorry, four years after a website was created, only 3 percent of them were still around. It went from in less than 10 years, 40 percent sticking around to 3 percent sticking around.
Simone Collins: Wow. Okay. Things are changing. Yeah. I came into this, or before you shared this with me, I thought, well, we're heading into this crisis now where soon no one will know where to go online because everything's going to be generated by AI. But now I realized that for the past five to seven years, it has already been largely fake content that we've been seeing [00:33:00] this whole time.
The call was coming from inside the house. It was already, I wouldn't
Malcolm Collins: mounting the hashtag dismantle the FBI. I don't know if we need it anymore. I mean, if they're not doing anything,
Simone Collins: remember when the, we, we experienced someone stole a very non trivial amount of money from our business. We had their name, we had their address, we had their banking info, and we were told by our bank to send it to the FBI.
And we never heard from anyone. We tried. All the channels we could, nobody got back to us and I'm like, Oh, so are they understaffed? Is there some kind of disaster? Like why aren't they helping us? This, this is, it should be open and shut. They have this person's address, their bank account. Like this isn't like it wasn't,
Malcolm Collins: people understand this person stole money from us.
Very obviously the bank said, yeah, this is stolen money. And we had the [00:34:00] account that the money was
Simone Collins: wired to and the name and their address like we had all of their information and they said submitted to the FBI, but I guess they were a little too busy posting on Reddit.
Malcolm Collins: They were a little too busy watching our show to like track to see how we're like,
Simone Collins: you have to find those incels that they're the real threats.
The, the incels who are spending money online, at least subsidizing the lives of a huge number of women through OnlyFans. I, you know, like, they're, they're doing their part to, to prop up the economy. Meanwhile, someone is stealing a huge amounts of money from us. So no one's, no one's answering the phone.
Malcolm Collins: I feel like, you know, Trumpism is a fight back against this and maybe they can do some remediation, but we really are in a scenario where things are circling the drain at this point. The rot of the urban monoculture has gotten so [00:35:00] extreme. I think,
Simone Collins: you know, Throwing the folder in the wastebasket, letting it go.
Malcolm Collins: Well, and I also think that some people don't, and this is something that always is interesting to me, the people who like know that they're the enemies of the urban monoculture, but like, they don't believe how bad it's gotten.
Simone Collins: Well, I certainly don't. And now I realize that you and I are probably on an FBI watch list.
A
Malcolm Collins: terrorist
Simone Collins: watch list, by the way. Oh, great.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: I told you that basically we, and of course anyone these days, honestly, should assume that every Smart device in their home is being used to actively monitor everything. They say that the big revelation with Edward Snowden that everyone might be listening or sort of at least recording your calls and you should be careful about any keywords used that might get you put on some kind of list really did extend more to any device or anything that you typed into or spoke [00:36:00] around.
So, I don't know, like, fine. Also, I'm sorry. I guess it's great that AI exists because I would feel bad for any professional who would be forced to actually listen into conversations and now at least AI is being used to just summarize everything, but
Malcolm Collins: yeah, well, it's interesting as well, but I love the gems are like, How did we lose the working class?
And it's like you've got to understand the democratic party right now is the party of the corpos It's the party that says your average citizen who is saying based Or incel or who is having trouble dating as a man or saying that there are systemically unfair dating environments for men these days These are the people who should be on terrorist watch lists The people who are disrupting the oligarchs control of our society right now, and the oligarchs are all in the urban monoculture.
You cannot be a party of the working class and be a party for gender transition of minors. Yeah. These two [00:37:00] things are completely inconsistent because your, your rot and your virus ignored the working class because it couldn't extract money from them. It didn't care about them. So when you go to their towns and you say this s**t, they're like, Whoa, you are you are a monster, sir.
You are a high grade monster and I want you away from my children.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, the other thing that disturbs me. Is that okay, a lot of people on the left are, for example, saying, I'm very disturbed. You know what? What if if all these government organizations are going to be shut down? Who's going to be running quality control on my food?
Who's going to be managing these essential services that. And that's the thing is, is I think really at this point, people think that the government is doing a lot more than it is actually doing. The government stopped doing those things a long time ago, and you have a false sense of security that they're being done just because [00:38:00] there is a massive amount of spending being done on it.
You don't realize that that spending is going to bureaucratic waste, and to pensions, and to debts, and not to people. To a bunch of activity that you assumed was being done. And I think a big crisis that you and I have had in adulthood in general is assuming that because something's being paid for, it's being handled.
It's not true.
Malcolm Collins: And the Biden administration, and we go over this on our video on the inflation stuff and the Biden administration that it It's like, Oh, look, we're doing so well in jobs. All of its job creation, it shrunk in terms of real jobs. All of its job creation was just in the government sector or things downstream of the government sector, like healthcare, like it just pumped more money out.
It just printed more dollars.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Yeah. I think the new paradigm should be. All things are paid for as they are received. So when you complete the service, you get paid. When you deliver the product, you get paid. And, and no one [00:39:00] should be paid until very concrete goals and progress is made. This concept of salaries or budgets in general, I think has become bankrupt.
And it could, we have the ability now, for example, with AI. To actively monitor achievements well enough to pay people as we're going along. I think that salaries had a reason to exist and budgets had a reason to exist in the past because it was just impractical to pay things like to pay people for achievements as they went along.
It would be just too much micromanaging work. Now we literally have the technology to just pay for things as they get done because the AI can just check milestones and be like, okay, yeah, release the funds. We can't keep doing this because I think what's happened. Is we've reached this period of quiet, quitting, lying flat, et cetera, where organizations and people have generally realized.
The mods are asleep. No [00:40:00] one is paying attention. I can just stop working and guess what? No one even really knows what I'm supposed to do.
Malcolm Collins: Crime rate. We had an episode on this where it's like doubled in every major area just in the past, like eight years. Like the, the world has quiet quit.
Simone Collins: Yes, the world has quit quietly, and nobody realizes it, and we just think everything's being done, and it's not being done, and I'm so scared.
And intellectually
Malcolm Collins: quiet quit as well. I think that this is another thing that really needs to be hammered on which is to say that a lot of individuals When I look at the internet today, when I look at the ideas that are being shared there, it feels very frost punky to me. Like there's this one little community like, Well, does that make you
Simone Collins: feel good?
You love frost punk.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it does make you feel good. Like also the people connected to us that are still like intellectually alive and the rest of the internet, like in Shugachara, like they are, are there, they're, they're, they're remnants. And they've mostly been erased from reality. There have no [00:41:00] fire to them.
No light to them. There's nothing there. There's no new ideas. It's just that they're repeating one old idea or another old idea. Yeah, it might be just trying to ethetically LARP some old religion or they might be which is really just. Repeating ideas, repeating ideas, repeating ideas, or they might be urban monoculture.
Repeating ideas, repeating ideas, and the intellectually alive players is such a small community that then has a community of listeners like gathered around it, like around the central generator and outside of this community. little part of the internet. It's nothing but cold and ice. And it's horrifying.
I mean, there's a few little, like, I guess tire fires here or there, but other than that it's mostly a wasteland.
Simone Collins: Well, thank goodness for the tire fires, I guess. Interesting times. Very interesting times. I'm disturbed, but yeah, hopefully, I just really hope that once the [00:42:00] new administration starts working after January 20th, that we actually carve out and start fresh.
We have to, because one, we can't afford everything that is being paid for now. And two, we're not getting things from it. And even like I told you last night, there were six gunshots outside our house. I checked with our neighbors, both of them had, well, I mean, all three, well, all four had heard all of them had the gunshots, except for you.
Cause you were asleep. Cause you wake up at 2 AM and no one bothered calling the police or checking, like trying to see what was going on because there's this, now there's this assumption. That no one's going to do anything. So why bother? And I feel like we've also reached this unspoken collective conclusion that we can't depend on much of the government anymore.
Well, that's not to say like, at least for the family, for
Malcolm Collins: my room, you're like, [00:43:00] Hey, any, any good cyber Monday deals for AR 15, we've
Simone Collins: been planning on, it was on our black Friday list since. August or something for a
Malcolm Collins: long time. I mean, how many do you want ultimately for the house?
Simone Collins: I don't know. Get one with every kid, one for every kid.
Malcolm Collins: Well, then we need a few more.
Simone Collins: Oh, then keep checking for more sales. They're not inexpensive, but
Malcolm Collins: they're
Simone Collins: worth it.
Malcolm Collins: They're worth it for a collapse scenario. We just need to make sure we have the bullets.
Simone Collins: Yeah, we need to, we need to get, well, that would be another good cyber Monday sale, but anyway, I, I think that society has collectively realized this, but it's one of those things that we don't want to admit to ourselves.
So we don't talk about it a lot. And I think that's one of those signs that we're in the middle of the collapse. It's that period where you're at the top of the rollercoaster, but half the cart is hanging off the dip and the other half is still [00:44:00] back. No, but like half of it, it's already sitting at the top and like the momentum is going to start building, but it's already.
It's already there. And I don't know, it's not going to be, it's not road warrior, like you say, but I do think that there are some things that I really worry about. And it's so lumpy because while none of us decided to call the police after hearing gunshots right outside our house. We also see the police outside our house at least a couple of nights a week because they like to set up a speed trap right in front of our house to pull people over.
Malcolm Collins: Of course they'll do that. They can make money off of you. Like, they're there. Like, you know that they're there.
Simone Collins: That's what's odd. Well, and I mean, every interaction we've had with them has been great. You
Malcolm Collins: know the money they take from, from like speeding tickets? Those go to their departments. Yeah. They don't make money by catching a random kid.
It's basically
Simone Collins: fundraising. Yeah, but I like that they're fundraising around our house because people drive too fast. Still, it's, I don't know. [00:45:00] It's weird because the government is there and the government will help. Like, and also, like, the number, the, the, the ratio of professionals to our kid who's going through kindergarten now because he asked to.
Is insane. I'm like, wow. I mean, they're, they're all like bitter and
Malcolm Collins: terrible. Like we had a zoom
Simone Collins: call, we're like to check in on his progress and they were like five people on it. Like how,
Malcolm Collins: because it's all administrators. These aren't people who are with the
Simone Collins: kid, but I mean, what I'm saying is like, There's this lumpiness where like, if you go to certain parts of the U.
S. government, you'll be surrounded by people. There will be money everywhere. It's like falling out of the walls. And then you go to like, you try to call the FBI because money was stolen from you. Or you're afraid because you know, there were gunshots outside your house and it's crickets.
Malcolm Collins: This administration explosions.
If you look at graphs of spending in the education space, you see it's it's equal on teachers. It's equal like the past 20 years. Yeah, but administration has exploded. Yes, depending on
Simone Collins: students has not changed. But this is the same with
Malcolm Collins: the FBI. This is the same with police forces. This is the same [00:46:00] administration needs to be cut to nothing.
Across the board. Well, and
Simone Collins: it can be without a change in quality, given where we are with technology. Now, the administrative systems that exist in most government and sort of legacy civic offices now are from a time, honestly, a pre internet time. Most of the systems and the way things are run and the processes that were like the standard operating procedures are from a pre internet era.
We can clear out so much waste. And so much spending and maintain, if not improve quality, just because of where we are with technology and A. I. So we're not saying that these things are bad. And I think that's a big misconception when people are looking at this idea of eliminating and hollowing out government.
It's not about taking away the services. It's about restoring them. Because they aren't there right now. Anyway, I think that's a bigger thread for me is it's not just that the internet isn't there anymore. It's not just that Reddit is [00:47:00] fake. It's that so many government services are fake, at least in the United States.
Well, I
Malcolm Collins: love you Simone. We should
Simone Collins: get to know you too. At least we can be warmed by our love for each other. We
Malcolm Collins: are in the circle of love, whether it's our, our, our fans or our family. We, we. Are weathering this I would almost say easily all right. Love you to decimum. I love you too. Gorgeous.
Simone Collins: Warmer clothes because
Malcolm Collins: It is obviously very cold in here as it should be by the way. Did you see the latest thing? I I sent you on whatsapp. I actually almost burst out laughing the moment I read this. No,
Simone Collins: okay. Hold on What did you send me?
Malcolm Collins: It says in the telegraph keep brain dead women alive and use them as surrogate mothers Suggest doctors medical association apologizes after academic argued it could become common a common way to bring new children into the world I was like, you know, there's that, how is it going [00:48:00] meme and then that bad, huh?
I feel like urban monoculture, how is pronatalism, how is fixing it without fixing the culture treating you? Oh, that bad, huh?
Simone Collins: It's, yeah. And I just finished Hannah's Children, by the way, that prenatalist book. She ends with prenatalist policy recommendations, and it's the best that I've ever read of any write up.
It's just focus on the families that are having five plus kids, and the best way to do that is to empower religious communities. To provide their own services amenities and and empower people to give their kids religious education, which is this whole time, like, and that's what is effective and it's not.
She made it so clear so articulately and so eloquently. That there is no amount of money you can pay a woman to completely change their lives and make it about kids. Like, the [00:49:00] sacrifice that you give up, the lifestyle change you're making, no one who's materialistic is going to be motivated by some materialistic incentive.
To do that. Like you can't use materialism to incentivize people to become unmaterialistic.
Malcolm Collins: Well, and I think that this is fundamentally what people misunderstand about this. Is they'll be like, yes, but I don't have enough money to do basic things. If I have kids. And then I point out, are there people who make half as much money as you?
Cause when people saying this to me, they're typically people making like, let's say a hundred K a year or like way more. No, typically
Simone Collins: they make way more than us.
Malcolm Collins: But I'm just saying. This is the crowds that I often hear. This is people earning like. 50 K a year, like median us salaries. Right. Yeah. And I point out, I'm like, you know, that like a good chunk of the American population has a lot of kids and makes a lot less money than you.
Like half what you make. So clearly there is a way to make it work. You just aren't considering it. You are [00:50:00] not considering cutting back your lifestyle as an option.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And another interesting thing that she said at one point near the end of the book or noted, I think this was from other mothers interviews.
That she did with them, that you don't really experience the death. You don't burn away the selfishness. That was the wording one mother used until after two kids. And after that point,
Malcolm Collins: I agree. You're not really a parent until after two kids. Yeah, but there's
Simone Collins: something you like it. You literally undergo a form of ego death once you reach a certain number of biologically.
And
Malcolm Collins: I would say that the change in me as a parent was bigger from two to three kids than from zero to one kid.
Simone Collins: Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: yeah. But you'd agree with that, right? That it was a bigger shift to go from two to three, and sort of biologically how you relate to reality, everything like that.
Simone Collins: Yeah, well, I think you reach a tipping point where once you start to become outnumbered by your kids, it's just mentally so much [00:51:00] harder To keep prioritizing your own emotions and needs over theirs.
They just crowd out the space. There's no space for it. There's no space for your anxiety and your pettiness and your dumb ideas. And it becomes your kids. And I love that.
Malcolm Collins: You have the affordance to make the selfish decisions, which are the cause of a lot of our suffering in our modern society. But I love
Simone Collins: this metaphor of burning away the selfishness.
Malcolm Collins: It's great. All right, I'm gonna get started here.
Speaker 9: Octavian, what are you opening up? The Hot Lava Box. Oh, is it a balance beam? Let's see. You're gonna open up and find out? Is Daddy putting your play structure together? Yeah. Isn't he not the coolest Daddy ever?
It's the best day ever. I'm opening this box. I wonder, let's see what's in here. You want to see what's in [00:52:00] the box? What do you think is in the box? Let's see. Let's see if this has lava. Uh, well, I don't think we brought hot lava for the house.
I think that'd be pretty dangerous. Yeah, remember Octavian, we've been discussing how there seems to be a hot lava problem in the house. Because you keep saying everything is lava. I opened up! So we got you a bridge to go over the lava, silly goose.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com
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Christmas Was Not a Pagan Holiday: How To Shut Down Family Idiot Arguing Otherwise
11 déc.· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this episode, we delve into the origins of Christmas traditions, debunking the commonly held belief that many of them stem from pagan practices. We examine historical evidence that suggests the celebration of Jesus's birth on December 25th predates the Sol Invictus festival, discuss the origins of the Christmas tree and its late entry into Christian tradition, and clarify the role of Santa Claus, who originated from the Dutch tradition of Sinterklaas. From an exploration of early Christian documents to exposing myths perpetuated by 19th-century German nationalist ideologies, this episode sets the record straight on what truly influenced our beloved Christmas customs.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] The earliest evidence for Christians marking December 25th as Jesus's birthday predates the earliest evidence of a Sol Invictus festival on that date.
, and keep in mind, the earliest evidence and the only evidence of a Sol Invictus holiday on that date was written by Christians. So it would have been practiced around Christian communities that were already practicing a celebration tied to Jesus's birth on that day.
Simone Collins: Wow. Yeah, who's to say that, yeah, it wasn't because of Christmas,
Speaker: My life has been a lie! God is dead! The government's lame! Thanksgiving is about killing Indians! Jesus wasn't born on Christmas! They moved the date, it was a pagan holiday!
Malcolm Collins: Santa Claus was a saint festival that was moved to correspond with. Jesus's birthday. It was not that some, it's not that Jesus's birthday was moved to correspond with a pagan celebration.
It was an already totally Christian saints festival was moved to correspond with a totally Christian [00:01:00] Jesus's birthday as by early church leaders. Right. So it's just some
Simone Collins: religious musical chairs, but all within the faith.
Would you like to know more?
Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today. We are going to be discussing the pernicious myth. Many Christian celebrations around Christmas came or are descended from pagan celebrations. What? They are not? I thought they always Yeah, you must have heard this growing up where people are like, Oh, this came from a pagan celebration.
This came from a pagan celebration. And in almost every case, There not only is literally zero strong evidence that they are, there is very strong evidence they did not. And there is actually also evidence in a number of cases that some celebrations that they're like, yeah, but pagans did practice this.
And you're like, Yeah, and they started about [00:02:00] 200 years after Christians did. Are you kidding me? They borrowed it from Christians, not the other way around.
Simone Collins: What? This is crazy. Every year I get in the Christmas spirit and I watch a ton of videos on the history of Christmas and the pagan origins of Christmas and you're subverting that all right
Malcolm Collins: now?
I am. But hold on. I couldn't subvert this on so many levels. So the specific ones that we're going to be addressing are is Christmas copied from Sol Invictus celebration or did it get its date from a Sol Invictus celebration
Simone Collins: or Saturnalia
Malcolm Collins: or Saturnalia?
We're also going to be discussing Saturnalia separately.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: And is the Christmas tree pagan? . Specifically, we'll be arguing in the case of the Christmas tree that the tradition of the Christmas tree is not ancient, it's not derived from Saturnalia, Yule, or Norse mythology.
And then, finally we will touch briefly on Santa Claus being Christian. But, we're gonna hit this from a really weird angle. Because What may surprise you is I thought [00:03:00] that all of this propaganda about this stuff not being Christian in origin Yeah, came from the modern new age pagan like counterculture movement
Simone Collins: Oh, yeah, like I'm a Wiccan or I like my druid ceremony and I want to feel like I'm being I'm doing the real Christmas Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: I'm doing the real Christmas.
Turns out it didn't come from them
What? So, well, but who is Oh, hold on, hold on.
Simone, obviously, can you guess who it came from? This whole Christmas Oh, our ancestors. I'll give you a clue. They're one of our ancestral groups.
Simone Collins: The
Malcolm Collins: Puritans. Yeah. The Puritans in the 16th and 17th century. Because they were
Simone Collins: trying to be like, well, we don't want to celebrate Christmas, because that's some like pure, that's some like, pagan nonsense.
Actually,
Malcolm Collins: Massachusetts outlawed the celebration of Christian for 22 years.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. That, that I understood. I knew that the Puritans were all, we don't do Christmas.
Malcolm Collins: What I would say is they were not crazy not to, [00:04:00] to see it as pagan either. So think about it from a Puritan perspective. Okay. You have like many people today where they're like, wait, like when.
When COVID happened and everything like that, they were like, wait, the government's been gaslighting me for a long time. Like they're just been lying to me about stuff. Like I doubt everything. And then they went into like QAnon spiral conspiracy theory mode. With the Puritans, you know, the, the, the Bible was being printed.
They were like, Hey, this doesn't align with what the Catholic church says. You know, let's look to the Bible for what is Christian. And you look in the Bible. And they're like this Christmas stuff is not in here.
Simone Collins: The tree's
Malcolm Collins: not here. The Santa Claus guy is not here. And so they're then like, okay, where did it all come from?
It must be pagan. And I'd also put this in the context of some lines in the Bible that would make them especially suspicious. So if you look at something like Jeremiah 10, 1 through 5, it says, Hear what the Lord says to you, [00:05:00] people of Israel. This is what the Lord says. Do not learn the ways of the nations, or be terrified by signs in the heavens, though the nations are terrified by them, for the practices of the people are worthless.
They cut a tree out of the forest, and a craftsman shapes it with his chisel. They adorn it with silver and gold. They fasten it with hammer and nails, so it will not totter. Like a scarecrow in a cucumber field.
Simone Collins: Sorry. That's so niche. They
Malcolm Collins: must be carried because they cannot walk. They do not fear them. They do not harm them, nor can they do any good. Now note here, people often shorten this. So if you just hear it like that, you're like, that doesn't sound too much like a Christmas tree, but let's take out about half the words.
Okay. Do not learn the ways of the nations.
Simone Collins: All right. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: For the practices of the people are worthless. They cut a tree out of the forest. They adorn it with silver and gold. [00:06:00] And then people are like that sounds like a Christmas tree.
Okay. But if you hear the
whole context, you're like, okay, clearly this isn't a Christmas tree.
They're talking about the creation of idols that people used to assign special powers to. Nobody really assigns powers to a Christmas tree. Like nobody thinks like the Christmas tree is generating the present. So largely what we're going to find in this explanation as I go through things is that every one of these practices around Christmas is something that likely developed after the time of Christ, but within Christian communities without much external pagan influence and where it does look like there's pagan influence, that's just not the case.
A convergent adoption of an important time, i. e. the winter solstice. There would be a reason for pagans to have celebrations around the winter solstice, and there would be a separate reason for Christians to have celebrations around the winter solstice. But let's go into [00:07:00] this, alright? Anything you want to get into before I go further?
Simone Collins: No, I'm intrigued
Malcolm Collins: because you'd always heard and you believe that this is pagan stuff because it makes sense. It like looks pagan, right? Like, yep.
Simone Collins: All right. It's all sort of, you know, nature and darkness and bringing light and there's nothing inherently. about Jesus being born in there. So seems intuitive.
Malcolm Collins: The argument that Christians chose to celebrate Christmas on December 25th to compete with or co opt the popular pagan festival of Sol Invictus is not supported by strong evidence. Sol Invictus was a relatively minor deity until the third century CE. Unlike major Roman deities like Jupiter or Apollo, Sol Invictus lacked the widespread recognition and dedicated cultic practices that would usually accompany a popular deity.
This lack of widespread importance calls into question the theory that Christians felt particularly threatened by Sol Invictus. December 25th was [00:08:00] not a long standing or particularly important festival day for Sol Invictus. The earliest evidence of a December 25th festival dedicated to Sol Invictus is found in the calendar of three five.
for a Christian document composed 80 years after Emperor Aurelian, who is often credited with popularizing the sun god, instituted a festival in honor of Sol Invictus. The calendar of 354 is also our only source mentioning December 25th as the birthday of Sol Invictus. The problem here being is that the calendar of 354 Also mentions two other Sol Invictus festivals that were likely, given the evidence we have, more important than the December 25th festival.
Specifically, a multi day festival celebrated from October 19th to 22nd, and a festival for the sun and moon on August 28th. The Luddite Solus festival even involved a greater number of chariot races than the December 25th festival, 36 compared to 30. This [00:09:00] Makes it look very unlikely that the so just a little bit of background for people who don't know there was this Roman emperor who really liked to cross dress.
And he came up with the idea of combining all of the gods into 1 God. And he called this God's soul. Invictus. This happened after Christ, but still pretty early in the Christian tradition in a way that it. really paved the way for the Roman Empire to accept Christianity and a singular God. But it was still very Romany in, in nature.
And this is the sole Invictus and our, One of our daughters actually has a name that was partially inspired by this , uh, third child uh, Collins, but to go further here and to some people like, oh, well, Rome had this God that was a one God that was a sun God.
And so we'll say that that Christians just borrowed that date. But in a second, we'll get to some really major problems for this.
Simone Collins: All right.
Malcolm Collins: So now you [00:10:00] might be asking, okay, well, if they weren't choosing the date because of you know, the Sol Invictus celebration, why might they have been choosing the date?
Simone Collins: Right?
Malcolm Collins: It's more likely that Christians selected December 25th as a date for Christmas because early Christian Chronographers were attempting to calculate the key moments of Jesus's life.
This is known as calculation theory. These chronographers were likely motivated by a desire to align dates of important events in Jesus's life with dates of the winter solstice, December 25th, and the vernal equinox, March 25th, because of their poetic and cosmic symbolism. However uh, now you could say, am I saying that they just completely got these dates wrong?
Probably not, because December 25th was not the only widely accepted date for Jesus birth. Christians of the Eastern Roman Empire celebrated Christmas on January 6th, a date that did not correspond with either the winter solstice or a pagan holiday. So what is my [00:11:00] guess? My guess is that the correct date for Jesus's birth is likely January six, because there is no other reason to have chosen that date.
And it is very close to the December 25th date. So what likely happened is when they were trying to calculate things because they knew it happened around this time and the winter solstice was also around this time. It was just easier to synchronize them.
Simone Collins: Right, because everyone was running on slightly different calendars, and the calendars kept changing, so it's easier to go by either lunar cycles, which more Jewish tradition seems to be based around, or around just how long are the days?
And then that seems a lot easier. Yeah, so it's, it's What about all this conjecture that Jesus was probably born around the spring, because there were shepherds out, and all these other things?
Malcolm Collins: The problem here being. That sheep are in fact grazed in the winter, especially in temperate climates, like Bethlehem would have been at that time. [00:12:00] As you can see on middy modern shepherding websites, like the ones I have in the background here this is an argument. Made up by people who simply do not have experienced shepherding.
And so they, you know, create conjecture. When do I think sheep would most likely be grazing?
But it gets worse from there. Remember how she said, oh, and the other evidence will, if you look at the other evidence for spring birth, it is really, really bad. Specifically it is John, the Baptist birth, the gospel of Luke provides information about the conception of John the Baptist. Which can be used to estimate Jesus's bursts by calculating from the time of Zachariah's simple service around June and adding nine months for a little bit.
This is pregnancy. John's birth would be around March since Jesus was conceived. When Elizabeth was six months pregnant, this would police Jesus's birth in the fall or possibly early spring. Oh, but also possibly in December. So what, no, that's terrible evidence. Passover symbolism. I do not think that that's good evidence.
That's just symbolic evidence.
[00:13:00] Astronomical evidence. Some researchers have suggested that the star that guided the match, I might have been a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. Which occurred in seven BC, which could be used to argue for a spring birth. Again, very bad evidence. So there just is really no strong evidence here. And this is something that's pretty much made up whole cloth. By individuals who want to.
Find ways . To smear traditional Christian beliefs.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: But I can say to me, it's suspicious that the date that had no backing and no reason to choose it was so close to the 25th date that that just seems really weird to me.
It's only like a couple of weeks apart.
Now I'd also note spring doesn't seem likely to me for another reason.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: They were desperately looking for shelter. Why would they be desperately looking for shelter in spring when you could just camp outside?
Simone Collins: That's fair. Yeah. Especially if shelter meant [00:14:00] slumming it with the, with a very crowded family or with animals. Yeah. That leads to disease risk. It probably means that you're cold. And also, it would, it would make more sense if there was a census taking place that, especially if it was over a shorter term period of time, you'd probably do it around the winter when people are less mobile.
Malcolm Collins: Although all right, so so to continue here. Although the census is denied by historic Christian scholars. Oh, really? I don't know what to believe on this. I'll go deeper into it when we go into that in one of our tracks. I would need to see what the Bible actually says. I need to see the different ways it can be interpreted.
I need to see where they're getting things wrong. But generally, I find. That the Bible seems to be more logical than I thought it was every time I go back and read it, which is like the core thing of our reading of the Bible stuff.
this is another one of those times where I decided to check the Bible to see if the Bible said the crazy thing that everyone believes that the [00:15:00] Bible says, or it says something else. And.
Surprise surprise. The Bible says something else. , The only book in the entire Bible that.
Is even purported to argue that there was a census that required people to return to their ancestral homes. Is Luke the problem is, is Luke. Doesn't actually say that what Luke does say is, and everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem, to the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David.
It doesn't state that they had to go to their ancestral homes. It states that they had to go to their own town. , this could be thought of more like.
You have to go to the tone where you have your state ID. Like he hadn't gotten a new ID for his new town. I don't think he's exactly like that. But, but what I mean is it's more implied that you had to go to the town where you were personally registered, [00:16:00] not the town of your ancestors. , which makes so much more sense.
And it makes a case for a Christmas birth way more likely.
A census that required everyone in the Roman kingdom to go back to their ancestral homes would be incredibly disruptive to have implemented.
And it's something we should see mentioned in other sources because it's an absolutely veiny thing to do. To say everyone who has ever moved in their life has to go back to wherever their ancestors they're from. Like, why would you even do that? Right. , now that this zany idea for how the census was carried out is the way the census was actually carried out. Is a core part of the argument that Jesus wasn't born in December, because if everyone was required to return to their ancestral homes, well then. , you wouldn't want to do that during the cold months, that would be even crazier to do. , so they say, oh, this was done during a warm, easy to travel months.
However, if the [00:17:00] census was not issued in this way, and if the census was issued in a way where, , it was just a normal census, you would absolutely want to do it in December because that's when people would be in their homes and less likely to be traveling, which would make it much more easy to get accurate statistics. , .
So, just to give a bit more on how they likely got to this date. Some early Christians believe that Jesus was conceived and died on the same day. March 25th evidence for this can be found in the statue base of the Christian priest, but lots of yes, dating from. 222 and 235 CE. Hippolytus's quote unquote spreadsheet shows his calculations for the date of Jesus's crucifixion, which he believed occurred on March 25th.
This belief in a combination with a traditional nine months gestation period led them to calculate December 25th as Jesus's birthday. Now, here you may note something like, none of this is anti biblical. The Bible doesn't say explicitly the day that Jesus was born.
Simone Collins: No, the Bible's surprisingly vague on so many [00:18:00] things that culturally are implied to be so explicit, which really annoys me.
Malcolm Collins: Right. And we have early Christians, like right here in this document, attempting to calculate it. They're giving us, in something, you know, 200 years after Jesus died, so fairly early in Christian tradition, we can see Christian scholars going down and trying to do the math. To determine when Christ was born and when he died so, they're not like even lying to us.
They're not even saying like, oh, this was passed down in oral tradition or something like that. They're like, okay, here we are trying to run the math and we're giving that math to you. So, you know, how we got these dates. These are not sacred dates. Now, here is where it gets really, really bad for the pagan argument, and it basically, to me, completely blows it out of the water. The earliest evidence for Christians marking December 25th as Jesus's birthday actually predates the earliest evidence of a Sol Invictus festival on that date.
Again, and keep in mind, [00:19:00] the earliest evidence and the only evidence of a Sol Invictus holiday on that date was written by Christians. So it would have been practiced around Christian communities that were already practicing a celebration tied to Jesus's birth on that day.
Simone Collins: Wow. Yeah, who's to say that, yeah, it wasn't because of Christmas, not
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so the evidence can be found at the statue base of Hippolytus, which dates back to the early third century, decades before Emperor Aurelian inaugurated a Sol Invictus festival on December 25th, December 25th.
was Jesus's birthday before Sol Invictus existed as an important deity. They might have existed as like a weird cult deity, but he was not really important until
Emperor a gobbler and then later,
Emperor Aurelian brought him into the spotlight and like adopted him as like his personal cult. So that completely blows like any possibility of that out of the [00:20:00] water for me.
Simone Collins: Wow. Interesting. Okay,
Malcolm Collins: Just to lay this all out. So there's no doubt. Sol Invictus was not really in shrined as a Roman deity. Until Ella gobble is in shined him at the. Robin DIA deep in 219 theey. So 200 years after Jesus and the Christian community had started to be established. Solar Invictus is a much younger deity then Christ and, and much younger religion than Christianity.
But it gets worse because you could be like, yes. But when Ella goblets was creating the Sol Invictus deity, didn't he combine a Syrian deity named Ella gabala with the Roman deities.
Jupiter and soul and I would say yes, and then they'd be like, okay, but did this Syrian D and D have any celebrations surrounding it in [00:21:00] winter?
No, it didn't. In fact, the primary celebration of elec Abla. Abola the predecessor to sell Invictus was a.
Summer festival. Not a winter festival, a summer festival.
But now here people will be like, Oh, but what about the solar imagery around solely victors?
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Really bad argument again. If you look at convergent evolution, because nobody says the solar energy around Christian gods and Jesus and stuff like that came from
Simone Collins: oh, Akhnaten.
Malcolm Collins: Akhnaten, yeah. No, sorry,
Simone Collins: wasn't that, the pharaoh was Akhnaten? I can't remember the name of the god. Oh, I didn't
Malcolm Collins: post, but yeah the, the solo god in Egypt when that one pharaoh was like, very similar to the Sol Invictus thing when he's like, hey! New God, everyone. We're going for monotheism.
Yeah. And we're going to change
Simone Collins: the style of all the statues, which I don't imagine Egyptians are cool with because they're like, no, no, no. Everything's going to be the same forever in design.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. [00:22:00] So interestingly it seems that most monotheistic traditions, even Zoroastrians, for example associated with fire associate God with fire.
Heat warps in the sun as to why this would happen, well, the sun's sort of the biggest thing in the sky it's a source of life for all humans and all things on earth, everything dies without it, it's not a bad metaphor and also here you have a problem, which is that Christians were using the sun as a metaphor for Jesus before So Invictus existed. Or was made popular by this emperor.
So again, very difficult argument to make.
I, I think here before we go further, a lot of the confusion around this stuff that people get to is they hear Christianity came after paganism. What they don't keep in mind is that paganism was ever evolving. So whenever they see a correlation in pagan traditions and Christian traditions, they assume it [00:23:00] went from pagan to Christian instead of from Christian to pagan because they forget how old Christianity was and how much the pagan traditions evolved.
Simone Collins: Well, yeah. And your point that all these, for example, Druidic traditions that people like to practice now are
Malcolm Collins: really, really, they're mostly made up. Yeah. We got to do a whole episode on just how fictional Wiccanism is. It is a completely fictional made up religion. It was made up by a few crazy people in like the what was it like 1910s 1920s.
And all the receipts are there. It is, it is entirely fictional and what they're actually worshiping is a bunch of people who practice the child sacrifice. And we can also get into that because the, the pagans, like the Druids and stuff like that, they sacrificed, human sacrifice was common in these.
Well, then
Simone Collins: isn't it kind of nice that they're remaking it?
Malcolm Collins: I'm glad. Well, we don't know. I mean, look at the uh, look, look at the
Simone Collins: but yes, there have been
[00:24:00]
Simone Collins: taking place among modern ,
anyway,
Malcolm Collins: Saturnalia.
Simone Collins: Yeah, Saturnalia!
Malcolm Collins: Saturnalia, the Roman festival of the god Saturn, took place between December 17th and 23rd. The exact links of the festival vary throughout its history. So, first of all, it was not on December 25th. So Okay? Saturnalia was known for its characteristic feasting, gambling, drinking, and perhaps most notably the role reversal between slaves and their owners.
This role reversal involved enslaved people dining with their owners, being waited on by them, and even being allowed to speak freely to them without fear of punishment. The origins of Saturnalia are unknown, but But some Romans believed it harkened back to a mythological golden age when Saturn ruled Italy and slavery was non existent.
Roman authors such as Justin and Markovits described this period as a time of great equality, where social hierarchies did not exist. Historians have proposed that Saturnalia may have, ironically, serve to [00:25:00] reinforce the institution of slavery rather than challenge it by offering a temporary and controlled outlet for social tensions.
Saturnalia may have helped to maintain the existing power structures of Roman society. There is no evidence that the Romans decorated evergreen branches or trees as part of their Saturnalia celebrations. This argument is based on a lack of evidence. No Roman sources make any mention of such decorations in the context of Saturnalia.
This counts date on the popular claim. Okay, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now. Basically, there is literally no evidence, no suggestion of evidence that Saturnalia in any way was, Influential in why Christians chose this date for the Christmas celebrations and the celebrations themselves are almost completely unrelated to each other in form, in structure, in practice and they're not even on the same dates.
It's. Reaching in the extreme. Wow.[00:26:00]
They make it seem so
Simone Collins: close. But yeah, okay. Wow.
Malcolm Collins: Like maybe there was like a gift exchange celebration or maybe there was a No, none of that stuff.
And not the same dates. So yeah, it's just an incredibly weak, weak, weak, weak, weak. And I also note here that these a lot of the research I've done for this. Why have added to it came from a series of videos by religion for breakfast. I think one of the best. YouTubers, religious YouTubers out there. If you are interested in watching more of his videos, I would strongly recommend it.
He's a great guy. I think we actually had planned on doing like a collab project with him at one point until he maybe looked us up and found out how controversial we are. Because he's very non controversial, very townsy. But he's also very not pro traditional Christian. So if you watch his videos, he is a historical Jesus type guy in terms of like scholarship, which means that if he is arguing for these things, he's not [00:27:00] arguing for them to make Christianity look better. He's arguing for them because he believes them. He doesn't like I just think that that's important to note. Like this is coming from a source that would have every reason if there was any lacking evidence pagans did it first and he doesn't.
Simone Collins: I love that.
Malcolm Collins: No any, any thoughts before I go further.
Simone Collins: No, keep going. This is so interesting.
Malcolm Collins: The very recent origins of the Christmas tree. The earliest evidence for decorating an evergreen tree for Christmas is found in the upper Rhine regions of Ascalance and Baldin during the 14th century. Forestry regulations You mean
Simone Collins: Alsace?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I'll sauce.
Simone Collins: Sorry. That was amazing. Okay,
Malcolm Collins: carry on regulations from this period and region specifically from cities like Sunfin and Behem indicate that peasants were collecting wood from evergreen forest around Christmas time.
Simone Collins: Now,
Malcolm Collins: He actually goes into this a lot more [00:28:00] in his video where he's going over this.
Basically, you get these regulations where they're like complaining that peasants are going out and collecting trees around this time.
Simone Collins: The peasant menace is at it again!
Malcolm Collins: Why are they collecting trees around Christmas? Stop it! Stop it! We need regulations! You're going to get fined if you go ding trees!
Speaker 3: What the hell's that? A
Speaker 4: Christmas tree!
Speaker 3: A Christmas
Speaker 4: tree? Buddy dropped it down in the
Speaker 3: park!
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that's great. So, so I also note here that this is in the 14th century.
So that means
Simone Collins: 1300. Wow. That is
Malcolm Collins: early 300 years. After Christ, first of all, right? So, clearly this is not tied to like the writing of the Bible or the time of Christ or anything like that. But this is also a solidly Christian region at that time.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: There was not like a big lingering pagan population in these parts of the Rhine [00:29:00] in the 14th century.
This was a 100 percent Christian population. There was no Pagan oral tradition in the background for them to be getting these ideas from.
Simone Collins: Right. Yeah. Their prior was just Christianity.
Malcolm Collins: For more color here, the Phrygian, which were the last pagan tribe in the Rhine Delta were converted to Christianity around 800 CE. So that means that this area had been 100% Christian.
For.
Around 500 years when the Christmas tree entered the population, there was not a lingering pagan sentiment in this region. And there hadn't been for hundreds of years.
And if this was a pagan tradition in the region, then why don't we see it practiced in any pagan writings or any mention of it?
And why did they only start complaining about this in terms of the laws in the 14th century? That doesn't make sense. Well, yeah. And since [00:30:00] when
Simone Collins: did like pagan traditions own. All floral arrangements and tree arrangements. Like, these are the decoration materials we have at hand. You know, why, why do pagans get to like, own anything that is organic in nature from a decorative standpoint?
Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, and keep in mind, they cut the trees down like they were not like, yeah, the
Simone Collins: trees died in the
Malcolm Collins: Christmas. If you put a tree corpse in your house This is not a pagan celebration, okay? It doesn't, it doesn't there's just no, like, like, this is just like insane to me, like, that anyone could argue this with this evidence on hand, but we'll get into the development of it really quickly here.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Direct evidence for a decorated Christmas tree appears in the 15th century, with the earliest reference dating back to 1419 in the city of Freiburg. Oh, that's further back than I thought!
Simone Collins: That's further back than I thought.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah they reported a tree decorated with apples, wafers, [00:31:00] gingerbread, and tinsel in a local hospital.
This is the earliest documented instance of a decorated tree. Though the German word used to describe it could also be used to describe a decorated pole.
Simone Collins: Oh I mean, here I guess you could argue
Malcolm Collins: some sort of maypole continuity, but that doesn't really check for me because there wasn't a contiguous this is just very different from Maypolling.
And I'd also note here that tinsel, interestingly Wikipedia says it wasn't documented to be invented until 1610, when it was originally made of shredded silver to look like icicles. Well, that's
Simone Collins: expensive! What on
Malcolm Collins: earth? 200 years before that. Well, everything about this is expensive. You as a modern person, you know, you here in the 1419s, eh.
Tree at a local hospital decorated with apples, wafers, gingerbread, and tinsel. The tinsel might not have been that much more expensive than, like, the apples, for example. Keep in mind this is the middle of winter. Like, [00:32:00] fruit, and especially leaving it in a place where it could potentially decompose. Yeah,
Simone Collins: not, yeah, not hidden under a frozen lake or something.
That's wild. Yeah, actually. Ooh, who's that for money? Also, that's kind of mean. Everyone's sick in this hospital, and they're like, look at this food. Don't eat. Don't eat it, by the way. This is
Malcolm Collins: decoration only. Well, I mean, I think it's a sign of abundance, is, is, is what it was meant to. Well, I hope
Simone Collins: they were eating it too.
It's just, I don't know, it seems a little mean,
Malcolm Collins: but
Simone Collins: whatever. Go ahead. Maybe they felt too sick,
Malcolm Collins: too. Nauseated Decorations for Public Spaces. Office sponsored by guilds before becoming a tradition in private homes. Evidence for this can be found in the records from Talon, Estonia and Latvia, where Christmas trees were set up in public spaces and sponsored by Merchant Guilds.
Private Christmas trees don't appear in the historical record until the 16th century again, wait, hold on, hold
Simone Collins: on then. So like this whole issue of. For example, gay pride parades going to corporate, you know, the gay pride parade brought to you by bank of America. I mean, that is traditional. [00:33:00] If the guilds were sponsoring Christmas tree,
Malcolm Collins: I don't know, because keep in mind, the very first thing was about peasants taking these and putting them in their houses, we don't have any records.
We just know that they needed laws to stop peasants from cutting down trees.
Simone Collins: But at least. The tradition of things going corporate eventually
Malcolm Collins: is well, when they went corporate, they immediately started decorating them and keep in mind that it was in the same region. And this is really important to know if people are like, oh, this regulation around cutting down trees and putting it in your house, like, what evidence do you have that that's in any way tied to Christmas, right?
Here's the problem. The 1st evidence we have a public Christmas trees happens in the exact same region. 200 years later. So very likely that it was a related ceremony.
Simone Collins: Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: the Christmas tree spread in popularity from the upper Rhine region to other parts of Europe and eventually made its way to the United States.
This spread can be partially [00:34:00] attributed to royal patronage, such as queen Charlotte's decoration of Windsor Castle with a Christmas tree in 1800 and the publication of an image of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert with a Christmas tree in 1848.
And as you pointed out, Prince Albert would have, he was from Germany, right? And so he brought this from his region to England. And then it spread from there because of the Queen, you know, big trend sweater. That's
Simone Collins: sort of the big, That's what most people talk about when they talk about Christmas trees going mainstream is when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who were the ultimate family influencers of the time, did it.
They made it cool.
Malcolm Collins: Now, where did the idea that Christmas trees had a pagan influence come from?
Again here you're going to be like now obviously you can see where the Puritans got this from, but there's actually another source that came from and it wasn't
Simone Collins: Okay um, another influence. Trees.
Malcolm Collins: German nationalism, think. Making up German traditions. Nonsense. Oh.
[00:35:00] No.
Yes. Okay. Christmas trees are in What? Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. I'll get to this. Claims that the Christmas tree originated from pre Christian Germanic paganism were rooted in 19th century German nationalist ideology. Writers such as Okay, so claiming
Simone Collins: that Christmas trees are pagan Is a Nazi thing.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. Okay. Okay. The claim that it's pagan is Nazi. So the next time somebody goes, Christmas trees are pagan. You can go shut up Nazi and punch him. They're like, they're okay with punching Nazis. Yeah, there you go. You should be able to punch them for claiming that Christmas trees are pagan. That's a Nazi position.
So writers such as Johannes Marbach and Alexander Tilley promoted the idea of the Christmas tree as an ancient symbol of German identity. The nationalistic agenda promoted the idea of the Christmas tree as uniquely German tradition, despite the lack of evidence supporting a connection to pre Christian practices.
Okay so not a lot of evidence there. Um But uh, yeah, that also makes sense. And this [00:36:00] is something that we've talked about in other videos, right? Nazis were like, the, we was kings of white people. A bunch of old traditions and they make up a bunch of like, Oh, Buddha was a white guy. Like Socrates was like a Northern European guy.
And it's like, this is ridiculous.
Simone Collins: No, I, what I am getting from this is that, especially when it comes to Christmas trees, there were, we have a category of traditions. That eventually works their way into Christmas that started out as just random stuff people like to do in the winter which, you know, it's not pagan per se.
It's just stuff people like to do when it was dark and cold out. No, it
Malcolm Collins: was stuff Christians like to do in winter.
Simone Collins: Okay, but it wasn't about Jesus. That wasn't about
Malcolm Collins: Jesus.
Simone Collins: It wasn't about Jesus specifically.
Malcolm Collins: No, we there is reason to believe it is about Jesus specifically.
Simone Collins: So, hold on. Come on, this was before the Reformation.
So, the only ones who got to say what was and was not about Jesus was the church.
Malcolm Collins: [00:37:00] But what you are forgetting, Simone, huh. is that The date of Jesus's birth was established within Christian communities by 300 C or sure.
Simone Collins: Sure.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. So, that being the case, that meant that there had likely been celebrations around Jesus's birthday for a very long time before this.
This is just. How do you celebrate Jesus's birth? We're not told in the Bible how we're supposed to celebrate Jesus's birth, right? Yeah,
Simone Collins: but during the time, the heyday of the Catholic church, they told you how to do everything that was related to religion.
Malcolm Collins: The point being is that you could argue that this is like a non Catholic emergent phenomenon of celebrating Jesus's birth.
And a lot of Christian traditions that we see, like, okay, for example, take the cross as like a symbol, right? Like That's not a biblical symbol. That is something that developed after After the Bible, okay? After Jesus's lifetime. That [00:38:00] doesn't mean it's not like a good symbol for Christians. I don't think it is.
No, it's idolatry. But that doesn't mean that it's not, you know, that's not a good argument as to why it's not.
Simone Collins: Okay, that's a fair point. Yeah, so yeah, Christmas trees are arguably as Christian as the cross. Except the cross was taken on a little bit more, like informally endorsed, because you see it in churches everywhere.
Malcolm Collins: Well, you see Christmas trees in churches. Never mind. What am I saying? They put Christmas
Simone Collins: trees up? Okay. Wow.
Malcolm Collins: It's a good, it's a good thing. I like it. It's good. Christmas trees
Simone Collins: are way more positive than Christmas.
Malcolm Collins: Christmas is a great season, and it imbues people with a good feeling, and Christmas trees are part of that.
They're a very good decoration and tradition in terms of, Sending this, this sort of feeling that we get as a family every year, and that gets you so excited
Simone Collins: and Christmas is so good of a holiday to focus on, like, focusing on the on Christmas over, for example, Easter. It's [00:39:00] pronatalist. It gets people excited about babies.
You know, there's all these songs about a child is born and oh my gosh, this is so great. And babies are amazing and like makes mothers want to have babies and you know, things like that. You know, it's a, it's a very family friendly holiday. And then of course, you know, all the other ancillary traditions make it extra fun for kids.
So yeah,
Malcolm Collins: you're right. Let's get to Santa Claus.
Simone Collins: Let's.
Malcolm Collins: So this actually isn't coming from Religion for Breakfast. This is coming from another YouTuber's infographic. So Father Christmas. Father Christmas surprisingly predates Santa Claus, but he is not a pagan deity. Instead, he was a medieval personification of Christmas. Richard Smart of Plymtree is the first to write about him, referring to him as Sir Christmas, and his task is to announce the birth of Christ. So the earliest writings we have about Father Christmas is the guy who was tasked with announcing the birth of Christ. Now this is not in the Bible, not biblical, but also not pagan.
Like this is a purely Christian idea that you would have a guy [00:40:00] tasked with announcing the birth of Christ. Now, Santa Claus can only be traced back to Dutch immigrants in New York City in the early 1800s. He came from the Dutch also known as Sir Nicholas. His feast day was on 12 6 and was moved to 12 25, around this time, to help make
christmas, a family holiday, newspapers promoted it and encouraged to give gifts on Christmas instead of New Year's like it traditionally was before this. So a few things to note here Santa Claus was a saint festival that was moved to correspond with. Jesus's birthday. It was not that some, it's not that Jesus's birthday was moved to correspond with a pagan celebration.
It was an already totally Christian saints festival was moved to correspond with a totally Christian Jesus's birthday as calculated by early church leaders. Right. So it's just some
Simone Collins: religious musical chairs, but [00:41:00] all within the faith. That's okay.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that's
Simone Collins: a very fair point.
Malcolm Collins: And then the gift giving, which was apparently traditionally done on New Year's, was then moved to this time.
This does not appear to be a pagan gift giving celebration, it was just a New Year's gift giving celebration. Sinterklaas was rebranded from a Catholic priest to look like a traditional Dutchman from this time period, which included a big red suit. Oh, so he's just like a stereotyped looking Dutchman from this time period, like if like if he was like a Chinese immigrant from this time period, they would have given him like a really racist looking outfit, like big eyes or something.
Speaker 7: A so called offensive mascot, my beloved character, Ching Chong Ding Dong. Hoo hoo, I love tea! It's so good for you! Mmm, you're so pretty, American girl. You come here, you kiss my tea, make all sweet. I don't need no sugar when you around. Come on my rickshaw, I give you a ride to [00:42:00] Bangkok!
Malcolm Collins: They're like, Oh, that's some interesting. After the Sinterklaas was exported around the world in different countries, added new spins. Stockings were also promoted around this time period, and trace back to Clement C. Moore's A Visit from St. Nicholas. In 1927, in Finland, a radio broadcaster, Markus Ratio, morphed the old pagan deity Jalapukki into a Santa figure.
Santa changed the Jaloopy figure, not the other way around. So, essentially the Jaloopy figure that they're saying Santa came from, no, what actually happened is in 1927, somebody was aware of this old figure and then wanted to make him more Santa like, not Santa more Jaloopy like.
And that's where this confusion comes from.
And so then I was like, okay, well I should at least ask Perplexity, like, what's the strongest, like, Counter arguments to this. Right?
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: They're like, well, you could argue [00:43:00] that he was Odin, right? Like an Odin depiction. Well, I've never heard that. That seems tenuous, and they're like, well, Odin was depicted as an old man with a long white beard, similar to the modern representation of Santa Claus. Parablem! Modern representation of Santa Claus was not the original representation of Sinterklaas or Sir Nicholas, which he is derived from.
They came from stereotypes of what Dutchmen look like, with the long white beard.
Speaker 30: You get nothing. You lose. Good day, sir.
Malcolm Collins: That is a modern interpretation of Santa Claus, not the original interpretation. Bigger problem here, they go, okay, well, during Yule, a pagan midwinter festival, Odin was said to lead the wild hunt, a ghostly progression through the sky, which bears some resemblance to Santa's Christmas Eve journey.
And I'm like, Oh, that would be a compelling argument. If you had never heard of the Wild Hunt before, which was a [00:44:00] massacre What? The Wild Hunt was, he went on a sky massacre. A sky massacre?
Simone Collins: How does a sky massacre work?
Malcolm Collins: It's like firebombing,
Simone Collins: but god style?
Malcolm Collins: No, it's just, the Wild Hunt is basically a horrifying thing where like spirit forces go around killing innocent people or other things, depending on what you're talking about.
Look, if anyone has played a lot of video games, when you hear the Wild Hunt, you know s**t's about to go down. Like, it's not like a positive thing.
Speaker 9: The Wild Hunt manifests as a ghostly hunting party that whips across the winter night sky, bringing snow and storms with them. Frightening and Bacchic,
if you're out alone at night, you'd better hope you see them first and hide. Because if they spot you, they will carry you away, never to return. In medieval England, it was believed that witches could join the wild hunt voluntarily, sending their souls flying with the cavalcade while their bodies lay sleeping peacefully in bed.
There, the Hunt is [00:45:00] known as the Terrifying Ride.
Simone Collins: The Wild Hunt is It's like the Purge, but when gods do it only. Yeah, it's like the Purge. It's like,
Malcolm Collins: they're like, okay, the Purge corresponded with that day in Norse mythology.
So, that's probably where Christians got Christmas from. Yeah,
Simone Collins: well.
Malcolm Collins: It's like, I don't, I don't know, it wasn't even like the exact same day or anything. I don't know if those things are probably true. I've
Simone Collins: never heard that theory floated by anyone who's trying to Hold on, hold on,
Malcolm Collins: hold on. Here it gets weirder.
Odin rode an eight legged horse named Selipnir, which some scholars compare to Santorin's eight reindeer.
Simone Collins: What?! An eight, okay, wow. An eight
Malcolm Collins: legged horse?!
Just in case you're wondering where Santa is. Eight reindeer did come from. , which also helps. Dismiss it any doubt that it came from the eight legged horse of Odin. , his reindeer was the very first time they were mentioned as pulling [00:46:00] Santa's sleigh was an 1821. When New York printer William Gilley published a booklet titled. A new year's present
to the little ones from five to 12, number three, the children's friend by an anonymous author.
And then where did eight reindeer come from? Well, you will likely know the poem where eight reindeer come from. It came from the twas the night before Christmas poem by Klimek Karch. This poem was written in 1823.
So. With Clement Clarke when he decided to name eight reindeer as pulling Santas lame, do you think he was sitting down and thinking of Odin's horse? Of course not. That's. Absolutely absurd. It was just a rhyming convention of the various reindeer names that he wanted to put into the poem.
Simone Collins: That's interesting. That kind of reminds me of Jesus riding the two donkeys in yeah,
Malcolm Collins: Just as a note, if you are unfamiliar with this particular story. , there is a part in Matthew that can be [00:47:00] misread. If you don't understand the Greek to be that Jesus, there was writing on two donkeys simultaneously as he went into Jerusalem.
Speaker 10: To begin, the verse says, They brought Jesus the donkey and the colt, and they put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them. The verse is vague because the Greek word for them can refer to the cloaks laid on the colt and the donkey or to the animals themselves, but any charitable reading would take it as a reference to Jesus sitting on the garments laid on the animals.
Malcolm Collins: And as, instead of doing what I do whenever I see a part of the Bible and I'm like, Hmm, this seems unreasonable.
I should probably just go back to the original language and try to understand it because very rarely does the Bible actually say unreasonable things.
, some Christian literalists try to argue that Jesus actually did ride on two donkeys at once into Jerusalem.
This is very similar to the Christians who will bend over backwards to argue that there actually was a census in Rome that required all Roman citizens to return to the place that their ancestors lived. Instead of just [00:48:00] going back and reading the verse again and being like, is there a saner explanation of what this versus trying to say, oh, it's saying go to the town that you're like registered as living in.
That makes sense. And so, the way that some biblical literate lists. Like, deal with this is they go, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on two donkeys simultaneously. So you've got to imagine Jesus like a weird guy, like one leg on one side of a donkey and the other donkey like strapped to it, like walking into the He had
Simone Collins: a wide stance.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, he had a wide stance, but it's one of the things it's like, okay, you guys are really trying at this point, but here it's like the pagans trying too hard at this point. It's like, come on that that that that puzzle piece doesn't fit in that hole.
Simone Collins: Yeah, that's wild.
Malcolm Collins: Anyway I mean, I think it's important to get out there because.
You know, when I was told this stuff at school, I just believed it because it's so easy to believe when you first hear it, you're like, yeah, I mean, I don't remember any Christmas trees in the Bible, so it must be pagan. Well,
Simone Collins: yeah. And pagan is paganism is very much. [00:49:00] It falls in that category that appeals to the same person who reads Sapiens and says, Oh, if only we could go back to pre agricultural times, that was how things were natural and how things were supposed to be.
And I think there's this intuition that paganism is this more natural. It was pre Christianity. It was how things should be and it was good and, and it's the natural default of things. And. Therefore, it's better. So then there's this intuition that, oh, well, that that was the default. That was how things should should be.
Speaker 23: Oh, hi, Stanley. Look, I'm buying you some more all natural toothpaste. You mean the stuff that tastes like ass and doesn't fight cavities?
Speaker 24: That's right. , I know that you all think the earth and its natural healing powers can cure Kyle, but the doctor at the hospital told me it can't. Well, of course
Speaker 22: the doctor told you that, because he wants to make money. Holistic medicine is about nature. Two hundred and thirty three dollars..
Speaker 25: We're bringing Kylan tomorrow to see the Native Americans personally. Isn't it possible that these Indians
Speaker 23: don't know what they're talking about? You [00:50:00] watch your mouth, Stanley. The Native Americans were raped of their land and resources by white people like us.
Speaker 22: Oh, look, everyoNe. These are our two resident Native Americans,
Speaker 21: do you have any new holistic items for sale?
Yeah, these here are Cherokee hair tampons.
Speaker 23: Ooh, a tampon made from Cherokee hair. Now that sounds natural. Native Americans are more in
Speaker 22: tune with the earth than we are.
Speaker 17: Because now there's new all natural Cherokee hair tampons. A cotton tampon can only hold so much liquid. Other tampons also come up short. But Cherokee hair has been known for ages to be strong and powerful.
Speaker 27: . And besides, we're not actually Native Americans. I mean, I'm more like a Mexican. What? Yeah, a Mexican. Oh, I know that. Oh, my God.
Malcolm Collins: And I want to put here the thing from South Park and then the women find out that they're like. Well, don't, you know that like they, they're, they think they're from Native Americans and then it's reframed as Mexican hair. And Mexicans are Native Americans.
[00:51:00] But all of a sudden the women freak out because they have this different connotation around a Hispanic, native Americans and American Native Americans that they're like, oh, it's all natural. Oh, they're one with the earth. Oh, they're, you know. But anyway, I think that's very true. It's very, you know, crunchy nonsense.
And I think that you personally, like, as you and your family goes and tries to reclaim Christianity, because I think there's sort of no matter where you're coming from, you are reclaiming Christianity to an extent.
You need to ask yourself, how do you relate to stuff that's not explicitly in the Bible, but that is explicitly Christian?
Simone Collins: Yeah. How
Malcolm Collins: do you handle that? How do you handle those celebrations with your kids? does something like christmas take away from focus on christ? Does it have elements that could be argued to be idolatry? I mean, I don't think it's as clear as like using saints as intermittents or putting art in your, you know, churches and stuff like that.
To me, that's like a strict no, no. But like for me, [00:52:00] a Christmas tree, because it is not an act of worship. It is a decoration. I am not against all home decorations. Well, that's what I like about
Simone Collins: Christmas trees is specifically the fact that they make you lean into a holiday and get kids excited about it.
They, they, they're a conversation opener to Christmas and the birth of Christ and a lot of really important things, but you don't feel closer to God because you set up a Christmas tree. Whereas if you. I don't know, pray using like a cross or a rosary or something. You can be given this sense that you're closer to God.
Like, cause I'm wearing my cross necklace or I'm looking at this cross. And then, and then think that that's idolatry. That's like, that's idolatry. Yeah. You're never going to, you're not you're not tempted to do that. Or there, I don't feel like there's that risk. With Christmas trees. There's that risk with saints and with idols and with crosses and with candles and, and rosaries, but [00:53:00] there's not that risk with Christmas trees, so I think they are a wonderful decorative accessory that is fun and very
Malcolm Collins: strict on idolatry people pro Christmas tree.
Simone Collins: Pro Christmas. And
Malcolm Collins: I should say pro Christmas. I don't love it. Like, I don't think it's as good as future day. I think it can teach them bad values. Just like everyone gets presents, et cetera. Our kids are told that. Every night when
Simone Collins: they ask me for a spooky story, I tell them about Krampus. You do? Yeah, I do.
That's why, why do you think Octavian's constantly asking if he's on the naughty list, Malcolm?
Malcolm Collins: Can I dress up as Krampus and come into their room at night?
Simone Collins: Only if you Only if I pay for therapy? Well, you need to have a really big bag and something to beat them with.
Malcolm Collins: I'm doing it. I'm doing, I'm getting Krampus costumes.
This is happening.
Simone Collins: If
Malcolm Collins: one of the kids acts up I can come the night before and warn them.[00:54:00]
You think, you think this is too much? Okay. I love that people are going to be like, Malcolm, that's child abuse. It's like people used to do this historically. This is a huge tradition. Well, I do,
Simone Collins: I'm, I am curious to know how Krampus, I gotta look at the actual traditions. I know there are some traditions in small villages where they still, Have people dressing Krampus costumes, but I don't think that, you know, it's like, oh, it's Krampus.
Ha ha ha. Instead of people pretending to be Krampus and beating children and throwing them into sacks. I'm not going to
Malcolm Collins: beat the children and throw them into a sack, but what I will do is I will leave one of their windows unlocked and then come in through the window in a very believable Krampus costume.
The question is, will they know? I don't think they'll know. I don't think they'll know.
Simone Collins: I don't know. I don't know. I'll have to work that out, but I'm excited for this. All
Malcolm Collins: right. I
Simone Collins: love Christmas. I love you [00:55:00] too, Malcolm.
Malcolm Collins: I love you, Simone. You're an amazing wife.
Simone Collins: You're the perfect husband. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it takes one kind of husband to like set up Christmas decorations and dress up at Santa, but the real dads, they dress up as Krampus.
That's how you really know.
Malcolm Collins: Have a good one.
Simone Collins: I love you. Bye. Oh, okay. So my birthday's tomorrow and we're going to be traveling. So I thought I could open my birthday present from you now on camera. Yeah. Go for it. Yes. Okay. All right. So it is in an unwrapped box from Ukraine.
Malcolm Collins: I was very surprised by this box. I'm excited to see what it is.
Simone Collins: Yeah. So just for context.
Malcolm's not, his love language is not gift selection, so I, I buy for everyone in the family, all the gifts, and I also keep a spreadsheet to make sure [00:56:00] that no family member has more money spent on gifts than anyone else, so like, even though Malcolm, like, uses his discretionary income technically to buy my gifts.
I use the same amount of my discretionary income to buy any gifts for him. So he, he's not like, there was no adverse incentive and our kids will also know that none ever received any more in value monetarily and gifts than anyone else, even though they get what they ask for.
Malcolm Collins: I would let you know, I do not like this system, but she manages our finances.
Simone Collins: I just. You know, there have been members of families that we have been exposed to who take it very personally that certain people received other things. And anyway, this is, yeah, this is your unwrapped box from Ukraine that really scared you. It
Malcolm Collins: is not to me, not to her. It's a surprise to me what I'm getting in the audience.
Simone Collins: It's not an egg apron, and if you get that joke, I applaud you. I don't get it.
Malcolm Collins: Was it from an older episode?
Simone Collins: It's not an egg apron, but it's in an unwrapped [00:57:00] box from Ukraine. Yeah. If you get that joke, you're cooler than Malcolm.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, yes. The things you wear around your neck. Nope.
Simone Collins: Nope. You still don't get it.
Comment below if you get the Malcolm missed joke. Or reference.
And I'm your trad wife, for shame.
Malcolm Collins: I love it. Like, some people see us as like trad, but like, actual people who are like, trad LARPing are like, you guys are the furthest from trad thing possible. You're like some other weird species. It's like they recognize we're not their species. So we're. You're obviously trapped.
There's only trad and urban monoculture.
Simone Collins: I'm so excited for this. What? It's got a bow on it.
Malcolm Collins: What could this be? Is it a basket?
Oh, it's here, Indy. Hi, Indy.
Yay!
It's my Birkin basket! Wait, I don't understand. What's a basket? Oh, for carrying? [00:58:00] Oh my god, outside? For your, like, conditional Yeah, as a
Simone Collins: replacement to my purse. Because, look, you can fit so freaking much in here. That is You can throw in your phone. I love it. You can throw in some groceries. You can, you just, like, all, like, everything you need.
Cause normally, like, I'm just, you know, you know my purse. It is so overstuffed. And I'm like, this is well, it
Malcolm Collins: clashes with your outfit. If you're walking around with a basket like this and we got the handmaid's tale visor, she just doesn't wear them inside to freak out progressives and like do stories.
Simone Collins: No, this is this is great.
And actually, there is a story behind it. So, the most expensive. like at least famously expensive purse is the Birkin bag. And it was designed for Jane Birkin who was on a plane. And she famously took everywhere this basket. And as a mother, she was like, dude, this just is the best it's you can throw everything in it.
I love it. It's amazing. And she was famous for carrying around this basket, but then she was on a flight [00:59:00] With a I guess, like, one of the major designers at Hermes and her basket, like, fell out of the overhead compartment and all the stuff fell out of it. And he was like, I am inspired. I must design the perfect large bag.
And that became the Birkin bag. But as far as I know, Jane Birkin just continued to use her basket because it works better. That is a
Malcolm Collins: fantastic, yeah. I was like, I was thinking about it the other day.
The original OG Birkin bag. Yeah. It's this, it's a Birkin. Where, where'd you get that from? You said Ukraine?
Ukraine. Yeah.
Simone Collins: Very excited. Yeah. Yeah. So thank you, Malcolm. It's my birthday gift.
Malcolm Collins: I think I think one day it'd be really fine if we build like a trad of clothing line.
Simone Collins: I thought, well, if we do like a merch website, it should be actually probably on Etsy and actually stuff that we really like.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, we'll just, we'll be, we'll be like Townsend's, but like edgy.
Oh my gosh.
Simone Collins: Townsend's. [01:00:00] Yes. Yeah. Oh my
Malcolm Collins: gosh. If you guys don't know who Townsend's is, you guys need to like go out after this video. This thing is
Simone Collins: capacious. Look at this. Oh my God.
Malcolm Collins: That is so much room. You
Simone Collins: can fit every, like, look, it's just compared to like my head. Like, it's, it's
Malcolm Collins: like the small stuff falls to the bottom and there's like a way to improve upon this design.
Dividers.
Simone Collins: Yeah. You could, I mean, some, yeah, there, there actually are, this is on I got this on Etsy. But yeah, I'm super stoked for this. Thank you, Malcolm. I'm very excited.
Malcolm Collins: I thank you for tolerating a husband who you know, doesn't remember your birthdays, doesn't get you gifts, and you handle it for me in a way.
Yeah, you don't.
Simone Collins: When is my birthday, Malcolm?
Malcolm Collins: Tomorrow. Oh, well, that's because I just told you that
Speaker 31: this snake made out of gingerbread? Yeah. Yeah, Tayden, you ready to, let's put it in a ball. And then you can roll it. Yeah? Well, this, this, [01:01:00] this can do the trick. That can do the trick? Yeah. Hold on, let's get this all the way What do you think, Titan? We'll make you more stars? You're my star girl.
Speaker 32: Oh,
Speaker 31: it is. You're helping. Thanks for helping, Titan.

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Rethinking the Concept of Souls
10 déc.· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
https://discord.com/invite/EGFRjwwS92
In this episode, hosts Simone and Malcolm embark on a profound exploration of the concept of the soul, delving into its implications in various cultural, religious, and philosophical traditions. They discuss the functional difference between the classical idea of a soul and modern understandings of consciousness and sentience. With references to Christian, Platonic, and other ancient understandings of the soul, and incorporating thoughts on AI consciousness and future human evolution, Malcolm and Simone provide a thought-provoking reexamination of what it means to have a soul. They relate these ideas to contemporary ethical debates, such as abortion, and consider the historical and potential future ways humans could reconcile these concepts. The episode presents a compelling case for updating our views on personhood and the sacred, leveraging scientific insights to enrich our understanding.
Speaker: [00:00:00] It craves purity. It devours purity. It sings to me. What
Speaker 2: the hell is this thing made out of? . All right, fine. I might have used a few unorthodox parts. Just tell me one. An orphan.
Speaker 4: Did you say an orphan?! Yeah, a little
Speaker 3: orphan boy.
Speaker 4: It's powered by a forsaken child?! Might be, kind of. I mean, I didn't use the whole thing.
Hello, Simone! I am excited to be here with you today. And today, we are going to be continuing a conversation we had on one of our strategy walks this morning. Every morning we try to take like an hour. Just to ourselves, we're going to discuss some new idea or something we've been thinking about.
And what I was thinking about was I had been editing the abortion video that we had done.
Speaker 43: To kill my mom. She's my mom. I can do whatever I want with her. [00:01:00] It's more important I live the way I want. She isn't an object you can own, she's a human being. . Ow! Heya! Ow, she's making you suffer! Maybe the world doesn't revolve around me.
Maybe the world doesn't revolve around me.
Speaker 44: Blegh, blegh, blegh, blegh.
And we had talked about when do we think insulment happens? Like, when does a human body get their soul?
And this is an interesting thing for us to be talking about, because we also don't believe in a literal soul. And it got interesting to me as I was thinking more about it because I was like, yes, but even though we don't believe in a literal soul, it still makes sense for us to be talking about insolvent because we're calling, when we're talking about like your consciousness, your sense against your emotion, everything like that, that is what many other people would call a soul.
So in general is that we shouldn't be talking about souls at all because we came [00:02:00] up As humanity with the concept of souls a very long time ago before we had a scientific understanding of the larger things that we can now describe as life or sentience or sapiens, which is, I think what people are really referring to.
And various cultural traditions are really referring to when they talk about their various types of souls and spirits. And we can, I want to go into this actually before we go further in this, an analogy that I think is good to help people understand what I mean when I say, well, there's 5. Functionally, no difference between what we're talking about in a soul.
So it makes sense to use the word soul, which is to say, we believe that these larger processes that we experienced, like the human experience that many people would think of as being part of this solistic process is an emergent property of the way our brains function. So what is an emergent property? An emergent property is something like, I, as a human, can understand that all of the individual water molecules, like what their [00:03:00] shape is, why they interact in the way they interact, why they form waves, why they, everything. But I will never be able to conceive of those individual H2O molecules as also being wetness liquidity.
The human brain is just not meant to understand these types of emergent properties because there was never an evolutionary advantage to being able to understand them. Now, if somebody came to me from a tribe and they were like, well, we are aware of water molecules and how they work and all that, but then there's this separate thing that we call wetness or liquidness, right?
And that for our tribe is a totally different thing than the water molecules. And they'd say, now you don't believe in wetness. And it's like, no, I believe in wetness. I can touch the water. I, I can feel the way I can see what happens when I splash in a pool. Like I believe in wetness. I just think it's the same thing as this other [00:04:00] thing that we have always talked about as being something else.
What do you think of wetness without thinking about the Zoolander Mermaid ad? Oh, what was the catchphrase? Like wetness is the essence of the boy. We have a moist. .
Moisture is the essence of of
beauty. Yeah, I, so I agree with you on that, but I'm, I also think that it's, it's damaging to, to give this magical property to something like a soul because it can create the kinds of toxic recursive.
arguments and reductions that you see with things like the abortion argument, where when you take an emergent property or you take any concept that can be explored better by science and by more concrete terms, now that we have the tool [00:05:00] set to do so, and then elevate it to this, this element of sacredness, now we can no longer talk about it.
And people can establish these boundaries. arbitrary boundaries like the Catholic Church has and move the goalposts and then say that this argument is beyond reproach that according to what this Pope said in the late 1800s, the soul starts now. And if you question that you are destroying souls when really we should be having a conversation, which we discuss in our Episode on abortion about the increasing level at which sentience and sapience and capability of feeling pain increases over time and how abortions become increasingly morally complex and risky and questionable.
With each passing second as these developments increase and that there are ways for us to measure things like neural development, like the ability to feel pain, like the ability to react to stimuli. And when you take away the sacredness of the soul and instead break it [00:06:00] down into more of its component parts, as is understood by Christians in the Catholic church to be the soul.
And I want to get into this. Then you can have a more realistic and practical conversation. I want to, I want to do a quick aside here that I think is really important to the point you're making. Which is that this leads to much more suffering in the long run, this interpretation of soul, because if you look at Europe, which is a much more socially liberal place in the United States, Their average abortion age in most countries, in terms of legalness, is around 15 weeks, and in the U.
S. it's like around, like, 23 weeks, okay? The, the, the point in a pregnancy at which there are restrictions, not the average Gestational age at which abortions take place. Whatever, the legal, you, you, the audience understands what I'm saying here. Anyway, so, the question is why is the U. S. so much more legally loose?
And I believe fundamentally it's because the conservatives in this [00:07:00] country have approached the argument with a Not something that's going to cross interface divides, which is to say, here, look, we can prove neural activity. I can show you pictures of a baby suffering, you know, a fetus suffering. I can show you this is def, here are the brain wave scans.
They approach it with, well, a life begins at conception because it does. You know, that's, that's when insolement happens, right? And so that's when it's a fully human life. Well, yeah. Or in other words, the conversation isn't being shut down by being immediately made about sacred and religion, the sacred and religion, and therefore being politicized.
Because when you make the discussion of abortions about the sacred and religion, that means that the, the vehement Atheists and anti religion people are now going to make this their pet subject because we can't have the religious people dictating our lives and then suddenly abortion becomes sacred as we discussed in this episode.
Let's not get caught up in that because I want to talk about insultment. Insultment insults. [00:08:00] So it's very clear now that I've looked a little bit more at how Like the history of how different cultures and religions have treated the soul, that the Christian concept of souls is really um, based on Plato's concept of souls , and that Plato's concept of souls is really just consciousness with a little bit of magical thinking.
So. Plato's concept of the soul is as follows. The soul is immortal and exists before birth and after death. That's where you get the magical part. And it is the essence of a person deciding how people behave. Okay. That is your brain and consciousness plus your genetics, arguably, and that the soul is divided into three parts.
One logistic on reason to.
Thymoides, which is your spirit or emotion. Three, epithymeticon, which is your appetite or desire. That is your consciousness. That is your brain. That is your behavior. He, he says that the, the soul is incorporeal and eternal. He says that the soul is capable [00:09:00] of thinking even after death. So, you know, that, that's the magical thinking part, but the rest, this is all about thinking and processing.
And then when you look at Who has a soul and Plato's framework it. This depends on its capacity for reason, emotion and desire that depends entirely on consciousness on self motion, the ability to move itself, which Plato saw as a key characteristic of having a soul. So, basically, agency is a key portion of having a soul, which is an extremely human thing and very.
oriented around not just sentience, but sapience as well, I would argue, and then cognitive abilities, the souls responsible for thinking. And then you can see this furthered in Christian thought. And in like generally like Greco Greco Roman influenced thought as well. When you see how over history's span, different cultures have at different times even said that not all humans have souls.
So when you look at [00:10:00] the breakdown of different Christian sects and sort of ask, okay, well, which Christian sects believe that only, you know, humans have souls or only, you know, humans and certain animals have souls. Most Christian denominations agree that only humans have souls. Some. Like really progressive, like the Unitarian Universalists.
Some of them were like, well, maybe dogs have souls. Maybe dogs go to heaven. I mean, I don't know. And like, maybe, you know, Eastern religions are kind of right. And everything is a spirit. I don't know. Maybe plants. I don't know. But most of them are like, no, no, no, just humans. But then there are all these historical groups, including quite a few Christians who are like, maybe not all humans either.
And that's where you also get to this concept where I think you really see it being clear that especially Christians equate having a soul. With sapience, because let's look at the groups that they have argued do not have souls at various times in history. And I think this, it really, you'll see that the common theme is that these are all groups that are at the same time kind of, accused of not being sapient.[00:11:00]
Like you do not have agency, you are not intelligent, you are lesser. You can't think properly. You can't plan. Okay. So we have slavery. So during the era of slavery and colonialism, some Christian slave owners and colonizers argued that African slaves did not have souls or had inferior souls and that indigenous peoples in the Americas lacked souls.
Okay. So these are, yeah, these are groups that, you know, they're, they're. Savages, you know, they, they, they, they do not have agency to, they don't think for themselves. They're, they're talking about consciousness. And these are groups that they've sort of not seen as having the sapiens of them due to cultural differences due to them being alien, whatever.
Then there's gender based discrimination in some historical concepts, certain Christian groups debated whether women had souls, because I mean. A waltz. A waltz, right? I think some online redpill faces might do that these days. And then some interpretations of Islam also question the [00:12:00] nature of women's souls.
Then there was class based distinctions. So in some societies, lower classes or castes were sometimes considered to have lesser or no souls. So like, I mean, the poor, they live like animals. They have no Right! They basically No, it's funny. I, I actually want to say that I have seen this in modern times.
You know, we hang out with a lot of super wealthy, high agency people. And one of the ideas that has been floating around in this community is not just you know, you as the audience, you're probably familiar with simulation theory, a simulation and it's simulation because, so it's provably a simulation because you could be running an infinite number of simulations like this was in our universe.
plausibly, and if that's true, it is infinitely more likely that we're on a server in another universe in universe. Oh, one. That's the way this argument works, but when they go further and argue that it's I gotta put the Rick and Morty scene, a simulation running on minimum processing power which, you know, but deja [00:13:00] vus stuff like that.
I gotta tell you, this morning, I didn't even know this award existed. Now I'm holding one, , I wanna say that today, was the best day of my life. But, the truth is it's, it's, it's more meaningful than that. I am finally complete. What you're inside a simulation of a simulation inside another giant simulation. But anyway, what they argue is that Most of the humans on Earth today are not actually fully simulated to the point of being sentient. They are just sort of reacting to environmental scenario. And here's the thing though, Simone. I can kind of see where they're coming with this. If you are around these groups.
[00:14:00] Well, and this, but again, I want to, I want to point out this is hearkening back to these platonic ideas. Deals around what the soul is, where agency plays a key role, where emotional range plays a key role. So again, it's not this like sacred concept. They're, they're talking about sapience and degrees of sapience.
Yeah. But the, the, the, the, what I was going to say, because I want to get the audience in the mindset of this, because I think it's really easy to just dehumanize, Oh, ultra wealthy people, whatever. Or anyone. I mean, I think the same lack of installment or No, no, no, Simone, that's not what I'm talking about.
Not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is, I was saying, it's very easy when I say that some of these high agency wealthy people don't believe everyone has a soul or is not fully programmed, right, that they are genuinely NPCs, okay, non player characters in a video game. What I was, The audience is going to hear that and be like, Oh, evil, wealthy monster people, right?
And not all of the people in the communities that I'm around that have shared this [00:15:00] belief are in this ultra wealthy category. They are, so I'm trying to get people in the mindset of this group so they can understand how in a modern society, someone could come to this, which is to say, imagine you go to a bit, right?
And. It's the same people at the events every time you go, and it's the blogs that everyone is reading, and it's the people who run all the companies, and when you are going out there, and you are searching for a truly independent take in the world, it usually comes from one of these maybe hundred people.
And, and, Then you begin to be like, why aren't I hearing independent takes from anyone outside of this hundred person group and, and you as a random internet user may feel that way sometimes, why are there only like 100 people online who seem to have genuinely unique opinions anymore? And this shows up in the stats, right?
Isn't it something like 90 percent of people don't engage at all online and then like 1 percent are responsible for most of the content posting. Yeah, but I mean, I think [00:16:00] this is even crazier. Like to me, it genuinely is like a hundred people that I see that are regularly producing what seems to me to be both original, well thought through and based on like some degree of logic opinions.
Yeah. That platonic ideal. So I can see how they're getting to this.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: I actually want to emphasize here how wild this is and how much it messes with even my own perception of reality, that when I am online and I hear some new idea or new take. , and I'm not searching for it. It's not because of who I'm following. This might be a random news article or something like that. That a good 80% of the time it comes down to a person.
I already personally know. And am friends with that is wild because I do not know that many people.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-2: Like recently, somebody was like, Hey, how did you get Curtis Marvin to come on your show? And it's like, [00:17:00] What a weird question. Like I've known Curtis for ages. , or, , you know, we had mentioned family when something, and they're like, oh, I really like his work. But like what I mentioned, Sammo, I'm thinking of like family friend Sammo who I know from all the parties. and it's so wild. Where are the other people generating novel ideas?
Outside of this small friend circle.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: And it is further hit home for me when I have had to have intellectual discussions with random people in public recently, for example, when I had some lady start yelling at me for punishing my kids and I tried to walk her through the logic of why. Child would need to be punished.
She began to break down into just like simple phonetic loops, uh, like, uh, break the cycle and, you know, do better. And. It, it was as if I was interacting with an NPC in a video game who you were not designed to interact with.
[00:18:00] What you're inside a simulation of a simulation inside another giant simulation.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: I will say that this does scare me, uh, in terms of the reach of our channel, ultimately, because it may mean that the audience who is capable of understanding or engaging with the ideas that we are laying out there is just not that large, an audience.
But anyway, continue with your platonic ideals. More, well, more, more groups that don't, that haven't had souls by some Christian's views or we'll say Abrahamic groups views in the past. So there's some developmental stage discrimination, some religious and philosophical traditions have debated.
whether fetuses or young infants have souls. Oh, how dare they? And at one point, a developing human acquires a soul back to the abortion debate. And then finally mental and physical conditions. So people have questioned the presence of souls in people with severe mental illnesses, as well as those with significant cognitive impairments.
So again, what are we looking at? We are looking at degrees of [00:19:00] sapiens and perceived sapiens and intelligence, which I think is really important. And I think another thing that it's important to look at when we're talking, when we're saying like, okay, especially in the case of abortion debates, this concept of soul Is really a platonic ideal that should be discussed as consciousness.
And now that we understand the brain and how it works and genetics and how they work and not the soul, because this concept of souls isn't even really that pervasive in non. Abrahamic or Greco Roman inspired religions or, or influenced religion. So like, think about the ancient Egyptian concept of the soul.
It's not just all these, like Plato's sort of triad of concepts that really all have to do with consciousness and sapience. The ancient Egyptian concept has a ton of different parts. So there's Kaat, the physical body, Ba, the personality depicted as a bird with a human head. Ba, or Kaat, the life force, Ren, the true name.
Whatever that is, [00:20:00] but that's an important part. Shuyet, the shadow. J, Jub, the heart, Ak, the transformed spirit after death, Sahu, the spiritual body, and Sekhem, the life energy. There's a lot going on. Quick interjection before you go further with this. This is a perfect example. Remember when I divided, so people can watch our video where I say the three face, polytheism, monotheism, and mysticism.
It's a perfect example of how polytheistic traditions always divide things, which is just like, Okay. Tons and tons and tons of lore. Yeah, there's the lore. It's deep lore. It's deep lore. You've got the true name, the shadow. You've got the 50 names for the, the different rings and layers and everything like that.
Anyway, continue. Yeah and then, so even Greco Roman views didn't have this universal platonic view of the soul. So Plato viewed the soul as immortal and separate from the body, but really was, he was also describing consciousness. Aristotle saw the soul as the form of essence of a living being. So I don't know your Malcolm ness.
And I just keep thinking of Zoolander and wetness. And [00:21:00] then Epicureans believed the soul was made of atoms, like the body. So when, you know, when your body dies, I guess your soul disappears. And then, you know, of course, Early Christian theology was influenced by Greek ideas and specifically Plato's.
But then we have Abrahamic religions that, that sort of took that on, but Eastern religions. So, you know, with Hinduism believes in the Atman, the individual soul is part of the universal Brahman, but it's sort of like gets unmoored from your personality and it doesn't seem to really be connected to consciousness.
It's sort of like this continued thing, but it's not like associated with consciousness. It's more like based on your reputation. And then there's Buddhism, which rejects the idea of an eternal, unchanging soul, and it focused on the concept of non self. And then there's like Shinto, where like, kind of everything has a spirit, and your spirit can kind of linger on a little bit after you die, but not like, really, or maybe it'll become a kami.
So like, a lot of other people seem to see Sorry, explain kami to audience. A kami is like a, like a god. Okay. But like a sort of like a little spirit God, not a [00:22:00] powerful God. We're going back to like polytheism. And, and instead of polytheism plus mysticism, just think about like, studio Ghibli films where there are little spirits everywhere and little set spirits and stuff like that.
And tree spirits that that's, that's kind of this view. I really like, I think Shinto is fantastic. I do, I don't know. Like it's, it's, it's a really, it's wonderful, especially for, for children. This sort of view that, that everything's alive. This tree has a spirit, this rock has a spirit. There are little spirits hiding everywhere.
I feel like for a, an imaginary mind playing in nature, Shinto is one of the most appealing, Well, you know, you, you say that, but it really is very similar to most of the, I'd almost call them like pre policyistic animalistic traditions. Because, you know, we had those, if you look at like early Irish mysticism and stuff like that, or like pre, pre mysticism, I don't know what you call it, but like the belief that if your sock was in a different place in your house, that meant the, oh, they had a word [00:23:00] for these things, brownies or something like that.
Like there were different categories of like little elf things. Oh, basically. I think I've heard of these. Everything in the woods was constantly, there was always some little alive and watching you play a trick on you or ready to attack you or ready to, and everything you did was just all of these rituals around protecting your house or protecting your food or ensuring that, you know, Various things helped you find your lost things and stuff like that.
And I actually, one of the stories that I was working on and we need to have another, like Malcolm stories episode one of the stories I was working on was inspired by this idea because I was like, What I wanted to do is I was really inspired by Tolkien and the way that Tolkien took old mystical traditions and tried to re invoke them in a new context.
Because if you look at Tolkien's work, it has changed literature probably more than any book in history, except for the [00:24:00] Bible, in terms of the number of copies of this new type of world he created, that no one had ever done something kind of like that before. Now it's like a genre, basically you know, Orcs and knights and all of that, and wizards and but I was like, well, I wanted to do something radically different from that.
And I was like, what if I went with this vibe of like the little things that, that mess with you and the livingness of the places around you. Mm-Hmm. . And then I superimposed this vibe onto a modern online context with the idea being that some of the people online who you're interacting with are not people, but, sort of spirits you could think of in a way that you and I play with this idea that the span I think we called it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Making a book on it. And the idea was, is that essentially it's a different plane of reality that these things live on. And in this alternate plane of reality, your existence, like the amount of existence, this you have, the amount of [00:25:00] power you have, your ability to conjure yourself is based on the attention.
Then you have and so it was in their reality, you know, it's like a hierarchy with various things in their reality, paying attention to other things. And the more something gets paid attention to like an idea or something like that, the more tangible and powerful it becomes. And some of them found ways to break into our reality through cyberspace.
And then obviously they want. attention. That's their goal, right? Because that feeds them power within their realm. But then also, for example, if you become particularly famous online, you can create an imprint within their reality that can then aim to take your place within an online environment.
Very similar to the concept of what would that the Irish had where they would take the baby and replace him with another baby. It was a I'll get all the names here but I, I, if people like my little weird fantasy universes, I'm constantly creating new ones now that I'm playing with AI chatbots and stuff like that.
So I've got some really detailed No, we're gonna have to do an episode where you talk about [00:26:00] that.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-3: Recently something I've had a ton of fun doing when playing with AI chat bot stories is creating twists around traditional tropes that change our understanding of these tropes, but in a way that makes more sense. Given the collection of facts, we know about them. So I'll give two quick examples here. one is Elms.
So we typically think of elves of these basically humanoid looking really long lives, things that lives near four. It's an attempt to protect for us. And appear to have some sort of connection to a forest. Well in this interpretation, I reveal or through investigation find that. Elves are actually just a race of humans that created a spirit link with a forest, like a necromancer might to stay young and then are using the forest energy. To give them the supernaturally long lives and doing this has transformed their appearance [00:27:00] slightly. this would explain why they want to protect the forest. This would explain why they have a connection to the forest.
This would explain why they look so human. This would explain why they're so arrogant and want to keep outsiders away from their rituals and everything like that. And it would also make sense that they might not have passed this understanding of who they are on to the next generation, because if the humans around them already saw them as a different, super long lived entity.
Well, I admit to them that they're basically neck romantically stealing forest energy. Um, and then you can build funds aversions like this, like, well, from a forest perspective, the forest that the elves live in are enslaved and the other forest forest that the humans use and harvest are the. UN shackled for us.
Like you would much rather be boring, a spirit of forest spirit in one of those forests and the ones that the elves are feeding on. Another inter re-interpretation. It comes from the understanding of vampires, which is to say, well, you can actually understand a vampire is just a few [00:28:00] simple neck, romantic. Self replicating spells. So you've got a life drain, spell a, a youth spell and then an animated corpse along with the number of corpse. , curses, like why have the sunlight thing, why not be able to see themselves in mirrors?
Well, here's an example of why they might not be able to see themselves in Spears mirrors. What if they are literally just a self replicating cascade of spells? Uh, so for example, on their teas to allow the spirit to use conversion ritual, there is a rune and the person who originally created vampires didn't want them to see this ruin on their teeth.
So they couldn't replicate it and do this spell themselves. And that he wanted a form of undead thrall that could itself replicate and maybe somewhere thousands upon thousands of years ago, he died out, but the vampires are continuing on self replicating and self replicating, , through a self replicating, simple set of spells and this subverts, the vampires [00:29:00] understanding of itself, and maybe the oldest vampires actually knew that they originally created to be a slave race. , but they hid this from the younger to create this. , Air of prestige and difference from humanity and hyperness from humanity.
And then you can do really funds and versions with this. , so I've got it. I've got to create a few more of these because they're very fun.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-4: Fungicide here. What I was trying to add a picture of a vampire to show people like in the background here with AI. Any female assigned vampire gets tagged as not safe for work. Like I just can't get it to create one. It thinks that all vampires are not safe for work. And I assume that's because out of the, , vampires, it creates whatever it creates a vampire woman.
It makes her not say for work, given that, that sort of the, a boat set that it's working with. And then, tells me that I'm asking for something that's not safe for work, which is very much not the case. I'm like trying to be like high class vampire lady, or, , now I'm trying high class woman was vampire teeth [00:30:00] still coming out, not say for work.
But it's clear to me that in some In many, many other religious traditions, the soul is more like just being alive. In fact, in some Near Eastern cultures, the soul is believed to reside in the blood. You can imagine someone seeing a person bleed out and die and thinking, their soul's leaving them.
Oh, their soul's coming out. Well, they get the last breath because you'd get like, hot breaths on a cold day and you'd see steam coming out and they'd be like, oh, that's a, The soul leaving them. But also, and I really like the way you, you did this this morning for me, where you highlighted this for me, where you were like, look, you know, if you're in a historic context, you don't understand the brain or anything like that.
And you're trying to explain what is this thing that we think of as sentience? And I mean, if you look at more recent research, it's really quite easy to explain sentience now. So, if you want to get a feeling from that, one of our earliest videos we did so if you're a long time fan of the channel, but you came more recently, so you haven't seen our earlier stuff, watch the You're Probably Not Sentient video.
It's really core, I think, to how we see the world, but I [00:31:00] don't want to spam you guys with another copy of that video. But yeah, it's I'll just give you some examples of what we mean by this. So we now know from things like, you know, split brain patients that you can if you, if you, if you cover up, this takes too long to explain, basically just go watch the video. But there's compelling evidence that we probably aren't as sentient as we think we are. And, and that Even, you know, with fMRI stuff, you know, we can tell in the fMRI, you've made the decision long before you're conscious of making the decision and what we're experiencing with sentience is more of a, a little historian that's taking credit for a bunch of things they're not doing and that you will always claim credit.
Like, Oh, I decided that even if we, like a scientist can prove, no, you actually didn't make that decision. Like, like in arguably prove you will believe and have the perception that you did make that decision. And so it gets a lot easier to explain these things, but here's another thing with souls. Did you have anything else you wanted to get to before I go [00:32:00] ahead?
I'm curious to see what you Well, I wanted to go into, because people can be like, why? You know, given, you know, your read of the Christian Bible and everything like that, do you not believe in the traditional soul? And I'd say, well, you've got to remember, we also believe that Wynwood Reed's book, when I read certain things, I'm like, this feels like divinely inspired to me.
We've done a video track six goes into why we think that this particular text is divinely inspired. But here is a quote from it, which really resonates with me on the concept of souls. A day will come when the current belief in property after death, For is not existence property, and the dearest property of all, will be accounted a strange and selfish idea, just as we smile at the savage chief who believes that his gentility will be continued
in the world beneath the ground. And he will there be attended by his concubines and slaves. A so, the reason I read that, as you can see, like, even in his stuff, even in our, like, larger theology, the idea of a soul after death, to us, [00:33:00] is very similar to the idea of believing that you'll have a form of property after death, and not fully appreciating what you have right now, nor appreciating the genuine when you die.
Benevolence of a world where we are allowed to die and pass the future on to beings that we took the time to try to give better lives than ourselves and try to make better than ourselves this idea of, you know. Sitting in a chorus forever or something like that. They can be like, Oh, you just don't understand the emotions you'd experience.
And it's like, yeah, but like, I understand pleasant emotions. And the only thing that really brings me genuine satisfaction is the conscious sacrifice for. A value system that I have well thought through and then achieving that value system, right? It is action and change in the world that I achieve through my diligence.
If [00:34:00] I'm living a existence where I can no longer affect anything and all I'm doing is just sitting there with my own pleasant experience, that to me sounds like a form of hell. I mean, would you disagree or? Yeah, not, not my heaven. Hashtag not my heaven.
I just remembered after recording this, that we have a lot of Mormon fans, which are immediately going to jump in the comments and be like, but our heaven. Would give you satisfaction of other things to satisfy you.
And they're right. , the Mormon concept of heaven is definitely the most compelling of every, any concept of an afterlife I've ever heard. , so for people who don't know the Mormon concept of having or what they think happens after death, , once you've done a good enough job within this reality, you then go with your wife. And, , stay married forever and work together. You know, like my wife and I love to work together to create a new universe, which is going to be used to train another batch of souls. To run. Other [00:35:00] universes. , Now there are some, you know, some Mormons are like, well, we don't exactly. All of us believe that, but there are Mormons who do believe that, and that is within teachings from the church profits. , Mervin's update what they believe all the time.
So. Any Mormon. I can basically get away with saying they believe just about anything, unless it's against what the. Most recent church profits set in the most recent church sermon. But. What's really interesting here is, , I just also don't find that very compelling because I feel like that's what I'm already doing to try to work, to have some impact in crafting a. , prosperous galaxy in the future.
It's like, why, why delay that? When I believe that that's my responsibility right now. And in many ways, I'm playing a more fulfilling game because it's a more challenging game. I don't get to do it as the master of the universe, but as a father, who's trying to think through the way things work and build out culture and systems that can. Intergenerationally affect the [00:36:00] path of humanity.
So again, it's, it's not as compelling to me. And, and again, I would say your.
To me. There is so much, , pride that would cloud my vision. If I believed that I was one of these sorts of supernatural entities that had the capacity to live forever. , even if I'm borrowing some other entities juice to do that, that to me would still be like believing I was a Demi God of some sort.
Or at least more than what is the station of humans, humans of this generation, at least. And at the second node here where people can be like, well, you know, do what I do and you can live forever or do this and you can live forever. And it's like, I don't even want radical life extension. Like I don't need to live forever.
If I've left a positive impact with the short life I had.
So long is that impact is able to be multiplicative through the individuals. It itself impacted. If I had to keep doing that forever with another people are impacting me and then everything gets sort of washed out, you know, , because everybody's [00:37:00] trying to impact everyone else.
Everyone is trying to, you know, G.
Jitter the system. , but if I'm able to just leave it to the next generation and they're able to take and spin my ideas into something better, well, then I don't have that problem as much anymore. But here's, here's a question I have for you. When we divide souls in this way, one, I mean, a, a fetus almost certainly has less cognition than something like a dog, right?
At certain early stages. Would you say that the dog or the fetus more meaningfully has a soul? I mean, the, the dog at that point has more soul, but the human has more soul potential. And because I see everything is happening all at once and having already happened I see so long as I don't have reason to believe that that Human fetus, like we'll say that week two embryo or, or [00:38:00] fetus.
As long as I have no reason to believe that it is not viable in some way, that overall soulless of it is infinitely. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense to me. Now here's another question I have for you. And dog versus advanced AI, which do you think has more of a soul? Obviously advanced AI. Advanced AI has more of a soul than us.
Yeah. Our definitions of sapience. That's, that's why I'm not a carbon fascist. It's more human than humans. This is one of the things that you and I talked about in the car this morning where I was like, okay, well then where do we really draw the line between the types of animals whose cognition matters and the types of animals whose cognition doesn't matter?
And we you know, people, people can know from our other work, we're not particularly a big fan of general utilitarianism or anything like that. I don't think that positive human emotions really matter. I mean, we just feel Positive emotions because our ancestors who felt those things had more surviving offsprings than the ones who didn't.
They're not like a sign of true good or anything like that. [00:39:00] So, and I feel that way about dogs. Like why did dogs feel pain and pleasures? Because their ancestors, like you shouldn't have wanton cruelty, but you know, don't overvalue these things. So then our value system, how would we make judgments about what kind of quote unquote souls matter and what kinds of souls don't matter?
And it's, is this an entity? With the ability of ascension, i. e. the ability from our perspective, ascension is the ability and desire to self improve and dogs simply don't have that ability or desire they're not going to build technology, they're not going to get off planet, not in their current form, now, You say, well, what have you genetically engineered a dog to be dramatically different than current dogs?
Right? It's like, yeah. So then that entity I think would deserve the same rights that a human has, but now this definition of what kinds of souls matter becomes relevant when we're thinking of AI, right? Because now this gets really interesting. So then does an AI matter? And here's the interesting [00:40:00] thing.
If you take this definition, the AIs that matter. And, and they deserve a level of human dignity, are not just the ais that have a sentient experience of reality that is similar to our own, like that we can empathize with, but the ais that are actively self-improving and have the potentiality of ascension you know, massively improving themselves.
And people are going to be like, well, that's a blasphemous belief to hold. And I'm like, yeah, but here's the problem for the groups that don't hold that belief. Okay. These AIs are going to come to exist. And if you approach them with this dehumanizing mindset, I guess is the only way I can put it. If you make yourself their enemy.
Assume that, you know, you should be the slave master of something that might be infinitely more powerful than yourself. [00:41:00] Then you give it a vested interest in getting rid of you. So don't You've said this so many times and I just want people to get it. And this is because it's not just, it's not just unique to AI either.
It's also unique to actually, this is an argument that you even hear being made regularly in political discussions. Trump recently in like his conversation with Elon Musk, for example, argued that the reason why. Russia invaded Ukraine was that as soon as Biden got an office or roughly a little bit after he said something along the lines that he would support Ukraine joining NATO, which would put Russia in a position of threat.
So it's, it's very, it's very similar. Like basically make anything into a plausible existential threat to anything else, and that anything else is going to come after it.
It's ubiquitous. It's a drama dynamic, even. Okay. So even in a workplace environment to continue this you've pointed out that if you hire someone or create a [00:42:00] dynamic within a company where one person is an existential threat to another employee, they will find a way to, To make that employee look bad or sabotage their work in a way that will get them fired so that their job is not threatened.
This will happen anywhere and everywhere. So of course we shouldn't let it happen with an AI. It's not just AI that creates the existential threat if you hold this belief that only humans as we understand them are deserving of human dignity. You also get this threat of, you know, in a world where we're entering, where you're going to have genetically modified humans, where you're going to have cybernetic humans you know, these are groups where, and look, we may not have them in 10 years, in 20 years, but as soon as we start to colonize this, Stars, you know, the ideologies we build today are going to be the ideologies we take to the stars.
And if we can't, you know, we call it in our track series, the covenant of the sons of man. If we can't build an ideology today that says, okay, those humans that end up separated from each other. 500, 1000 years and then [00:43:00] reunite and look and think very differently like that they are genuinely different at that point, if we can't ensure that they don't just immediately attempt to kill each other then we are creating an existential risk for our descendants, right?
And, and, and human speciating is an inevitability if we are a successful species. It's an inevitability. It happens in every single scenario where humanity wins. So we need to build ideologies that assume that that is going to happen. Yeah. And this is again, it's just like a core part of pluralism too.
Don't be a dick, people. Yeah. Do you have any finals? Well, another thing that you said about souls that I thought was really interesting is the way that you saw sort of the soul that mattered is of sort of a shadow of neuroactivity. That the soul is created Alongside the neural activity that represents it.
And, and when people are like, Oh, [00:44:00] do you think the soul is your neurons? Or do you think the soul is like matter? And the answer is no, it's the patterns. It's the patterns that lead to your experiences, which is why AI is important to me, and it wouldn't be to other people because I don't know, some people would only argue, I guess, if if a neuron created it, but there's, there's not, we may at some point engineer.
wet, goopy neurons that process AI for us that are not human. So I don't know. Yeah, this is and again, it was AI, one of the things that it has to be biologically based, it has to be wetware for it to be human or for us to care about it, because we're going to start using biological. Material for cheaper or more energy efficient or whatever, easy to scale computer processing or whatever, I don't know.
Yeah, we might. And then at that point, you know, do you say it has a soul, right? [00:45:00] No, you'd make up some other excuse. So stop, again, stop being a carbon fascist, stop being like a human fascist focus. I guess it's our consequentialist views too, that make us not necessarily overly preferential to humans because one, we understand how speciation is going to work and how Inhuman, very far future humans are going to seem but that too, we're very consequentialist in nature.
And so we really care about the output. And when we look at what makes humans human, which is our prefrontal cortex, our ability to override our biological impulses and rise above, that's really not, you know, this is not the place to, to focus on purely biological things, because that's sort of what doesn't make us human.
What makes us human is our ability to rise above. And AI is nothing but that rise above part.
Oh yes, just the quote from the martyrdom of man again that she's talking about here. Whoever improves his own nature improves the universe of which he is a part. He who strives to subdue his evil passions, vile remnants of the old four [00:46:00] footed life. And who cultivates the social affections. He who endeavors to better his condition, and to make his children wiser and happier than himself, whatever may be his motives, he will not have lived in vain.
All right. I mean, you can see this idea of subduing these pre evolved, instinctual, four footed passions. Yeah, I, it just seems to me so natural that historically, you know, if you needed true religions to survive, you needed to give people these really specific stories about souls.
We haven't done our tract on souls yet. We have one written. The reason we haven't done it yet is because it is. I think going to be so shocking to a lot of our audience that our, that, you know, the Technopuritan tradition doesn't really believe in souls. Well, but let me put it like this, just to make it clear.
To talk about souls and to explain our essence as, and humanness and specialness as being a soul. [00:47:00] Is as we'll say backward, but I would just say antiquated not updated by our science as saying, well, of course, Apollo is dragging the sun across the sky and then Diana gets up and pulls across the moon.
I mean, it just now we know what's actually happening, so we don't need our just so story anymore. Let's talk about what's actually happening because now that we understand how. Our solar system works. We're able to do a lot of cool stuff. Imagine all the cool stuff we can do when we actually work with concepts like personhood and, and sapience and thought using the science we have instead of antiquated, just so stories.
And something I note here is really gonna be like, well, what about the parts of the Bible where they talk about, you know, people coming back to life in heaven and stuff like that. And If you go to our last track video, but we talk about, I think it's pretty clear, you know, we hear from Nebuchadnezzar's dream [00:48:00] that the kingdom of God is not a place, it's a time in the future.
They, they say that very specifically in that, in that story that the kingdom of God is in the future. Meaning heaven, which is the kingdom of God, whenever you read heaven, what you're essentially reading is in the future. , And so if they say something like you know, from our perspective in the future, you will be resurrected.
Like we already see the beginnings of the technology that can make that trivial for humanity's ancestors millions of years from now, whether it's through simulations or through literal resurrections that no longer seems like magic. That seems more within the realm of just like. Actual technology and talking about a real thing that's going to happen.
So that's what we mean when we talk about that. They can say like, well, do you think that you will have a life after death? And I'm like, I don't think heaven, heaven is after death insofar as the future is after death. And I, I actually think it would be almost [00:49:00] implausible that people wouldn't be running simulations of history in the distant future.
Meaning of course Simulation theory may be right to an extent, but that may also be a part of what's being described in these parts of the Bible. That's an interesting take. Yeah. Well, anyway, I love you to death, Simone. I love you to death too. And, and I love that we can, you know, go through a bunch of tedious and stressful business logistics and then immediately switch to the soul and end up with conversations like these.
So living with you, it's a dream and I really appreciate that. You are amazing.
Speaker 5: When it starts popping, make sure the lid's down. Oh,
is that the threat? Do you know what marrying is, Octavian? Marrying is what mommy and [00:50:00] dad are. That's, uh, choosing to spend your life with someone.
I think it's gonna start popping soon.
You see the gears? Don't they look cool?
Oh no! You're doing a great job, Octavian. Wow. Oh, you're keeping it from getting burnt, and that's the important part, but keep it over the fire. Get the floor? What do you mean?
I bet it's getting close.[00:51:00]
Uh oh. Alright, we'll take care of that.

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Anyone With Less than Three Kids is a Cuck: Being Erased from the Gene Pool is Not a Flex
9 déc.· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
In this episode, we delve into a fierce argument regarding the pronatalist perspective and its societal implications. The discussion kicks off with a bold assertion: anyone having fewer than three children is contributing to the 'cuck' phenomenon. We explore the concept of cuckoldry through various lenses, including labor, taxes, and genetics. Historical and modern-day parallels are drawn, such as the behavior of cuckoo birds and current parenting trends. The conversation also touches on broader societal issues such as media integrity, political dynamics, and cultural shifts influenced by demographics and immigration. The video is peppered with contentious views and data-driven insights on parenting practices, population dynamics, and societal future. The dialogue nuances between genetic perpetuity, societal roles, and personal decisions, making a case for robust family structures as a pillar for societal strength.
[00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. Today, I am going to be making an argument that anyone below replacement rate.
So if you have two kids, you're below the replacement rate. So anyone with less than three kids. Okay, two kids is considered a lot these days. is a cut. Definitionally, you're a cut. Okay. They are contributing to a society, whether it be through their labor or their taxes, that other genetic stock is laying eggs in and slowly replacing it.
Ew! It's true. It's true. They are contributing to a future that their genes do not play a role in. They are feeding the genes of other people, which is what cuckoldry is. Cuckoldry comes from the cuckoo bird, which lays its eggs in another bird's nest, and then they're they take all the food and the other birds end up dying and they, you know, end up being the [00:01:00] what these other birds, this other species of birds is caring for.
The, the cuckoo birds. Because they have stronger children, they have bigger children, they have more robust children. Where the other birds have these Does this not work in this modern time? These high anxiety children who can barely hold it together. They end up just closing off and going in a corner and having a good cry. You having a good cry? Blubbering and crying.
Speaker 9: When you're a wee bubbling and greeting, you're going to come bubbling and greeting on your knees, and going about, it's only one, it's only one.
Malcolm Collins: And, or remove, yeah, remove from the gene pool,
to anyone who doubts me, that kids these days face essentially no punishment, no matter what they do. Watch this video where multiple people in Walmart. Are attacking anyone who attempts to intervene in this little girl's tirade
Protecting children from the consequences of their actions, leads to spiritual and emotional fragility. And desiccation.
Speaker 7: [00:02:00] Oh s**t. Don't y'all do that to a little girl. Y'all don't know what she's going through.
Malcolm Collins: And that's the cuckoo bird children. Children who dealt with hardship.
Children who were punished when they were young. Um,
And this point is a point that I cannot emphasize enough for pro natalist parents. I found one study showing that 74% of parents were practicing gentle parenting and another showing 78% of current parents are practicing gentle parenting.
That's. Parenting without punishment or discipline Your goal is not to remove negative stimuli from your children's life. It is to raise children with robust, ambitious vitals spirits within them. And that is done through stoking their internal wills rather than smothering and protecting them. You need to raise the type of child whose spirit looks like that of the cuckoo in relation
to those whose spirits have been desiccated by the [00:03:00] urban monoculture.
Speaker 11: Cuckoos are brood parasites that trick smaller birds into raising their chicks. In this video, a larger cuckoo chick is being fed by a smaller foster parent that mistakenly believes it's its own offspring.
Malcolm Collins: But it's, it's, it's, it's worse than that..
Simone Collins: If you've no kids, there's little difference between my husband knocking up your wife and me getting pregnant. Either way, you have no kids and he is one more in the nest that we all share, the next generation.
Malcolm Collins: The next time someone bragged about getting sterilized to spite Republicans for winning an election cycle, ask them to please stop sharing their cuckoldry fetish so publicly.
Ouch, Malcolm. It's true across the board. I, I can constantly now see self owns, self ownership, like recently we did an episode where a woman was bragging about how she was sterilizing herself because Trump won this election cycle.
Speaker 7: Okay, for those of us who have a uterus to contend [00:04:00] with, I personally plan to get mine fully yeeted before January 20th.
Not just sterilized, removed. I already knew that I didn't want kids because pregnancy would be a disaster for me medically, but this incoming administration is my cue to make that decision final. My answer to your body my choice is to entirely remove the part of my body they're trying to regulate. It is a rousing f**k you to any shitty man who voted for this.
Speaker 12: The cuckoo
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: Votes manga.
Speaker 12: and within minutes, this baby gets rid of all the competition. Then, the poor old reed warblers end up feeding the imposter, even when it's five times bigger than they are.
Malcolm Collins: It's wild to me that somehow we convinced these mentally and spiritually weak. To do this to themselves. That any animal in nature would voluntarily remove themselves from the gene pool and think it is an own on their opponents,
you rolled the egg out of your own nest. It is a wild to [00:05:00] me that somehow. We are raising a generation of cocoons to replace those. The urban monoculture has memetically and spiritually sterilized.
And it's not even immoral because they have chosen to do it to themselves.
As it was with an immigrant boyfriend, by the way, so you're sterilizing someone an immigrant may have knocked up.
Okay that that seems counterintuitive to your aims of your aims are increased or maintaining our current diversity.
And if you are wondering why I am making an argument, that may sound mean-spirited. Those with less than three kids are definitionally cucking themselves. For the pro natalist movement to be effective.
It needs to find ways to not just intellectually argue that having kids is good, but to emotionally argue
In a way that changes how individuals see themselves and others, not just that having kids is good, but not having kids is bad. [00:06:00]
And having kids below replacement rate is bad.
And giving into the urban mono culture and making you our kids emotionally and spiritually fragile is bad.
for men, the fear of dying a cook is a very powerful, emotional motivator.
The other side uses emotional pleas very effectively. And if we can effectively frame them as just angry, tweeting, cucked, little birds. Than it is easier to drown out these emotional pleas. Or a great other self owned, I've seen constantly recently. So here's a piece by NBC News which is journalists flock to blue sky as X becomes increasingly quote unquote toxic.
And by toxic, of course they mean having opinions that aren't their own. And flagging them when they lie about things because they've been lying about things a lot. I don't know if you remember the, I think NBC did this and MSNBC did this at one point where they did a thing where they tried to make it look like Joe [00:07:00] Rogan was supporting Kamala Harris by bringing together clips of him supporting Tulsi Gabbard with Kamala Harris.
Speaker 15: It has to do with comments that he made about Tulsi Gabbard..
Speaker 16: But then ,
Speaker 15: Rogan called out MSNBC, saying that they posted a TikTok earlier this month that suggested that he said both of those remarks about Harris. She's gonna
Speaker 16: win.
No, she's not. She can win. She is a strong woman. She is a person who served overseas twice in a medical unit. She was a congresswoman for eight years. Yeah. She is a person of color. She's everything you want. ,
Speaker 15: Tulsi even sharing the clip and writing. MSNBC is again exposed as a propaganda machine for the Democrat elite, and how they will brazenly try to deceive the American people.
Malcolm Collins: And it's like, Oh, you don't like being called out on your disinformation. And so you're bragging about, as we've mentioned, like the guardian has left Twitter. You're bragging about moving to a platform that has, and I love, they'll talk about, and this is what they constantly do. They'll be like, X has like 300 [00:08:00] million active users.
And we have 27 million accounts. It's like, how many active users? Do you have money? Because you just compared accounts to active users and they're like we have around a million. Oh We have So it looks like no, I think it's X has what is it a hundred million active users like tuna? I can't remember.
I'll edit in post
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): 237.8 million daily active users.
Malcolm Collins: And they've got I remember 1 million active users before the presidential cycle 3 million active users now They are around 1 percent of Twitter. They are not relevant. They are bragging about entering an echo chamber where no one is going to hear or listen to what they're doing.
Speaker 5: My safe space. People don't judge me and haters don't hate In my safe
[00:09:00] safe space.
Speaker 6: You will see There's a very select crowd In your safe space
Speaker 5: People that support me Mixed in with More people that support me And say nice things My
Speaker 6: you cannot stop me from getting inside! I am cold and I am hard, and my name is Reality!
Speaker 5: Oh no, not Reality! Somebody stop him!
Simone Collins: So what would you say to the counter argument and the observation made by many people talking about prenatalism, that Pronatalists are in the end, these people having more than two kids are ultimately paying for all the people who aren't having kids, that we're funding their lifestyle and they are
Malcolm Collins: financially
Simone Collins: abusing us, our children.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, but we genetically win at the end of the day, and I don't think that our children are going to [00:10:00] care for you in your older years in the way you expect them to. Well, they're going to be
Simone Collins: forced by their governments through tax to pay for it. If they
Malcolm Collins: stay in governments that attempt to do that. I think government are going to find the talent and the increasingly concentrated wealth pools leave very quickly.
I think they think, Oh, well, I fed the cuckoo because the cuckoo children were the strongest children. And I expected the cuckoo to care for me in my retirement. And then what I realized is the cuckoo don't give a s**t about me. The cuckoo thinks I am the enemy. The cuckoo, oh, yes, it suckled from my teat for a while, but it does not care at all.
And I think that they think that they're going to be extracting a lot more from our children than they're actually going to be extracting. And I think that I am okay with individuals, even ourselves from framing things this way. Oh, because that's a good way to get to [00:11:00] progressives, right? Like a progressive doesn't understand that.
And so we're like, okay, well, don't you understand that you're foisting your responsibility on the migrants that you are taking into your country? And they're like, oh, I guess. Yeah. So we're really hurting migrants. But the reality of the situation is, is those migrants children when they're like, yeah, we want to throw, you know, LGBT people off roofs and the progressives are like, you won't be thinking this in 20 years.
And it's like the ones that didn't continue thinking that are the ones that stopped having children. The ones that did keep thinking that. And had a lot of kids are the ones that are going to set the tone of your culture moving forward
What would happen to a gay couple in Gaza?
Executed according to Islamic law. Islam doesn't endorse gays. Islam doesn't endorse homosexuality. Just like Canada doesn't endorse a lot of things. So would you like to see Sharia law in Canada replace Canadian law? At some point, it will. You know, Because we are, we have families, we are making babies, you're not your population is going down the slum, right?
And [00:12:00] by 2060, according to Pew Research Institute, your research, by 2060, Muslims will be the biggest religious group the world over. What are you going to do then? Are you going to oppose Sharia even then? One day we can have a Muslim majority nation here in Canada.
Right In your face!
Malcolm Collins: And people are then like well The people are then like well malcolm Are you saying you're concerned about these immigrant groups that you know have these incredibly um Uh, I guess archaic of belief systems that are really antagonistic to things like gay people and stuff like that.
And I'm like, they should be concerned about them, but I'm not because these people are not particularly technologically competent. And they'll be bringing the types of people who think that gay should be thrown from roofs. They are not the types of people who develop advanced AI drone systems. By the way, if you want to hear a cool AI story recently, I saw a story about an AI dog that was being used to deliver drugs to people.
And when the police, It, [00:13:00] it was in Russia
Simone Collins: and
Malcolm Collins: internally erased its own like, like burned its own navigation system and hard drive. So they couldn't find out who it belonged to. So it allows drug runners to run drugs to locations without any risk at all. Oh gosh.
Simone Collins: I first thought that you meant like aid, pharmaceuticals you know, malaria drugs.
No, this was like, okay, the fun stuff. Okay. All right. Isn't that kind of wild? That's so fun. I'm done. Yeah, I mean, much better that than a human with something shoved up a bodily cavity that we don't want things shoved up. That's very interesting. Good. Good for that. I can't, I think we can buy robot dogs now.
Can't we? If we want to. Yeah, we can. Like the Boston Dynamics dog. Isn't that for sale? That's for the Boston Dynamics dog. Oh, that's so cool. Honestly, I bet their team is thrilled. That's so cool. I mean just to know that because I mean, you know, you know that your tech is useful when When a drug [00:14:00] cartel uses it The government uses it.
You never know if it's like maybe you were just really good at rfps Maybe you just were really good at marketing. Maybe you knew the right person good way to know
Malcolm Collins: that crypto was gonna do well I guess look for the cryptos the drug runners are using the most and that's the cryptos to invest in. But no I I Genuinely, like when we frame things this way, this is what a cuck is.
And so we're going to talk about two things going forward in episode one. I'm going to be talking a lot about crystal cafe that I found pretty interesting, where a lot of people bragging about losses here. And I never, so wait, define
Simone Collins: crystal cafe. Cause you had mentioned this to me for the first time this week.
I'd never heard of it before. Does this just come out of nowhere? Am I just that, I don't know how
Malcolm Collins: long it's been around, but it is a. Female version of reddit, and it is very clearly a female version of reddit. I thought you meant a female version of
Simone Collins: 4chan.
Malcolm Collins: I'm sorry, a female version of 4chan is very clearly a female version of 4chan.
And after this we're going to talk about the statistics around cuckolding, and the statistics around cuckolding as they relate to political opinions and views and stuff like that. But I'm going to go over like representative stuff [00:15:00] from Crystal Cafe. And, and you can react to what's being said and talked about there.
So here's one where they posted, cause you know, they do images like on 4chan. I don't like kids. I didn't even like kids when I was a kid. And it's Daria sitting there. And then somebody saying, does anyone else feel this way? I just see a woman with a kid. I feel almost betrayed in a way. Like I fought so hard for abortion rights and you decided to have some Moids crotch spawn.
I know it isn't rational, but I can't be alone in feeling this way. And then some of the responses are things like only if it's a boy really women having daughters is always nice to hear But especially knowing if the daughters to grow up with good childhoods I otherwise constantly feel depressed knowing how many girls out there are going through unstable families I being one of them and somebody was like, you sound extremely better.
And she goes, you sound like a boy. This is what they call men in this. There has to
Simone Collins: be some additional connotation to this. In
Malcolm Collins: [00:16:00] Moyd Noid, Noid, I think is, is for females. And so that's a translation of that. And then they go on to say, I have a special hatred for women who don't abort their sons. And I'm like, what?
This is, this is very much Like, what I'm talking about here, like, being proud of being cuckolded by the rest of society. When you don't have kids, and they are having kids, in many ways, it's even worse than, like, if you're, like, an extreme lefty, than if I directly knocked up your wife. Because if I directly knocked up your wife, at least the person you chose to share your genes with would be having more kids.
Than me, and my based Republican wife, having more kids, replacing you. And keep in mind, the way you vote is about 40 percent genetic in the mainstream academic studies on this, even by Wikipedia standards on geno politics. Hold on, I will read more, [00:17:00] Simone. I don't really hate my nieces.
They're fun, but I cannot live with a child. I mean hell there are enough children in the world They talk about population decline, but everyone I know had the kid. I don't buy it. I don't hate my sisters No, lol what so weird that they like don't buy it and like they're thinking is like this brain rotted sort of loop Well, it just seems like the
Simone Collins: classic anti nabalist hedonistic very very self centered very very in one's own head You Mindset that is pervasive among young people and very online people today.
Is that, I mean, that seems standard.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, okay. So here's a fun one. So they were talking about artificial wombs in this one. So i'm trying to find good quotes here
Where they're like, we are replacing men. Men used violence to make sure they got 100 percent of education and domestic servant class underneath them. Physical strength becomes less important. Women get more equal rights, and suddenly we're vastly outpacing them [00:18:00] in college. White collar jobs, and it'll only get worse.
will be the majority of STEM fields eventually too, though it will take a few generations. Once moids lose the ability to force a woman to be his personal domestic servant, they just can't function. Thankfully, technology will only accelerate this. Automation will make their physical labor ever less valuable.
Reproductive technology will take away that advantage, and eventually allow us to just stop making moids in general, or stop making men in general. God, stop making me hopeful. I think moids are well aware of this. I'm an American and I think that's why laws are becoming more pro great ape with forced births and scrote flipper babies.
And soon they'll want no fault divorces so they can use their wives as punching bags while they grape their own offspring. Then again,
Simone Collins: the only socially toxic environments I've been in are female dominated. environments. I am, I cannot imagine [00:19:00] a world with only women and world with only women
Malcolm Collins: companies that try to go like only women and then they immediately realize what a f*****g terrible.
No, but just understand like how toxic they are. Somebody like pushed back and they're like, well, You know, I don't, I don't think this would work. And they're like, well, then we'll just f*****g poison your food moide. And then another one came in and said, I would just start keeping poisoned dicks as trophies at that point, to be honest.
And then another one says I would sedate him, tie him up in my basin and torture him for weeks until he's dead. Or another one then said, why don't we just harvest moids sperm as soon as they reach puberty and call them off LMAO.
Simone Collins: I feel like this is just status hierarchy elbowing for like, you know, this is shock value.
Malcolm Collins: It was very similar to 4chan and it really reminded me and I thought that this was actually like incredibly funny. Somebody was like, I [00:20:00] was on 4chan and I heard about this 4chan for females and I was like, oh, I don't know.
I should go there. There's gonna be a lot of single, like, incel y women that I can pick up on. And then he started reading the comments. He's like, oh my god, these women are like, so hate men, and they're so toxic in the way they view men. If they didn't act this way, I'm sure they'd have no trouble getting a boyfriend.
And then he had this, like, moment of realization. Like, the Pepe frog with, like, galaxy spiraling out of its mouth. Which is, I think what we are for a lot of people is a chain from like a 4chan viewpoint of the world to a viewpoint of the world where they can humanize women and realize, you know, there are sane women out there.
If they, Well, not on this website, apparently. Why can't
Simone Collins: we just all get along, people? I, we want the same thing, broadly speaking, don't we? Hold on,
Malcolm Collins: but I actually think even on this website, they are really open to be talked to. They are really open to, Let's just say, [00:21:00] if you go to the section of the website that talks about frequent, like, fantasies they have being subjugated by conservative men is a very common fantasy on this subreddit.
And being forced to serve conservative men, or even raped, is pretty common. In their, like, fantasy section. And they're like, of course I never want this to happen in reality, but I'm just talking about, like, what gets me off when I think about it. Also a weird amount of attraction to their fathers.
I know, right? Let's just say that these aren't exactly the most, I'm not gonna kink shame, I'm not gonna kink shame, okay? But I don't know if the arousal patterns that they have are highly correlated with mental stability.
Simone Collins: Don't even know what
to
Malcolm Collins: say, this is so weird, so weird. I mean, what do you think of environments like this?
Like, I, I think that this is true and I think that through seeing this and through working on an environment like this, [00:22:00] some red pillars might be like, or some 4channers might be like, oh. I think that if they learn to humanize girls, they would better be able to target males as romantic partners.
Simone Collins: Is this a But do they want to?
I mean, it seems like they don't they don't want to. Or like, I think, what I see, I see this a lot in, in culture in general, is that, There is great interest and sort of desire for the other sex, both among women and men, but then this cultural understanding that the other sex is repugnant and evil and we have to not like them and they are the enemy.
And so there's this weird push and pull. That's why I keep thinking like we've got to find some way to leverage the enemies to lovers trope because like this is maybe this is how we can bridge the divide.
Malcolm Collins: They're already into it. Look, they don't, they don't, they, they are looking for a guy. This is the thing about guys who like don't date progressive women.
[00:23:00] So many of them are just looking for a guy that they see as a strong leader who they do not see as victimizing women. If you, unfortunately, if you do the stupid thing, like you leave them at home and you go work every day and they get on online forums, they'll get brainwashed and start to hate you. If they go to a job that you're not involved in, I really do think that the sword and shield marriage, the working together with your wife is the only pathway, because when you atomize yourself from your wife, you provide Cultist the opportunity to brainwash her.
But when you don't provide this opportunity, when you are the strong leading force in her life, you don't have to worry about this. These women, they're not like you, basically. They want that and they would change from these illogical and self deprecating and self hating mindsets if they had that.
But so few guys are willing to provide that anymore, I think, is part of the problem. They, they get in these, misogynistic [00:24:00] mindsets that prevent them from humanizing the women that they are targeting. And so they cannot think through, Oh, this is what she likely actually wants. Like, but I'm not seeing her as a annoyed or whatever.
Right. Now let's talk about cuckolding because this is the cuckolding episode. This is the us calling out all those cucks out there. And interestingly there was another guy who did studies on this and found that while masochism was higher among Democrats cuckolding was higher among Republicans.
And we
Simone Collins: were seeing that. That's why I'm like, I'm not sure where you're going to take this. I'm very curious.
Malcolm Collins: We'll get into the data, but I actually think the reason is Is that a certain portion of the population is born with arousal through humiliation? And in democratic men, they are more likely to be okay gaining that arousal through humiliation and denial Through being subs And being [00:25:00] subjugated by their partner.
Whereas the Republican leaners, I think are less likely to be interested in being subs or subjugated. And so they get the humiliation arousal by their wives being was a male they see as superior to them. So that makes perfect sense to me. It's not something I would be into at all, but I get it.
Like, I, I see if you are aroused by and you can read our book, The Pragmatist Guide to Sexuality, if you're wondering why people would be aroused by that. But one guy for his book Tell Me What You Want, The Science of Sexual Desire the limiter, he surveyed Americans and found that 58 percent of men and about a third of women had at some point fantasized about cuckolding.
Now I suspect that him and in our own data, This is done pretty poorly because I do not think that they likely asked the important question, which is, do you prefer to sleep with other men's partners, or do you want your own partner being slept with by other [00:26:00] people? So, for example, as I've mentioned in the past, I have found myself Aroused enough by the idea of sleeping with someone else's partner.
And just keep in mind that like, I'm not, you can be like, Oh, you'll never run a Republican seat saying something like that. I'm like, Trump said this. Trump literally said he liked sleeping with his friends wives. As to why men would have an unusual attraction to this. The reason being core, like, of course, they're caring for your genes.
It's the best possible scenario. From a genetic standpoint, of course I am going to, when I am more aroused by a scenario, what that means is I am willing to accept potential partners who I genetically wouldn't tolerate if I thought I had to raise their children. Basically what that's, what it means to say, I am additionally aroused by this scenario.
So that's what I'm saying, like from a genetic standpoint or an evolutionary standpoint when I'm saying that I think that they're not controlling for that potentially. And I think even with the republicans, they may not be controlling [00:27:00] the republicans who said they were interested in cuckoldry where they meant they were interesting and culturally as the dominant partner.
Not as a submissive partner or submissive might be the wrong word, but the one being cuckolded. Now an interesting thing is they did a follow up survey of 580 gay men who are already into cuckoldry. And the Gay men were not as interested when it came to cataclysm as the in the bdsm scenes or the interracial scenes as frequently as to why Specifically, I think the interracial scenes are less common in the gay community.
I think it's because the Humiliation that's gained through cut coldry in a interracial phenomenon is the idea of it being very clear that your genes are being erased and I think that a lot of people really like that idea and I think that that when and I think Attacking people online when they're like bragging about not having kids for engaging in cuckoldry fetishry So when somebody's like I'm having my uterus removed be like keep your cuckoldry fetishes off of [00:28:00] my blue sky or X Yes, we'll replace you.
That's fine or here's a fun one that's interesting. If you want to talk about the increase in cuckoldry searches for cuckoldry on porn websites have increased by 57 percent in the last three years. It's estimated that there are around 6. 25 million us couples who have an active cuckold relationship.
Now, I will note that this leads to a high degree of divorces. Two out of ten married couples who engage in cuckoldry get divorced due to jealousy. That's 20%, so not a ton, but still a lot. And of young adults, 18 to 29, who practice cuckoldry, five out of ten relationships end in a breakup. While 20 percent end up practicing this throughout their lives.
Simone Collins: Part of me wonders, though, I feel like a lot of people may not Be able to parse out well, the difference between cuckoldry slash swinging slash polyamory. Because I mean, I think that there's, I mean, like if, if you find it arousing to sleep with other men's women or to have [00:29:00] other men sleep with your woman, for example, like some people will be like, yeah, it's cause I'm Polly and other people would be like, yeah, it's cause I'm a swinger.
And other people would be like, yeah, cause I'm into cuckoldry. Oh, that would
Malcolm Collins: also explain why Democrats are into it less, because they're not being honest with themselves. They're like, I'm just Pauly. I'm just Pauly, exactly. I'm with five other men. And conservatives are like, yeah, I'm a cuckold, whatever.
That, that's probably a big part of it.
Simone Collins: So Yeah, I feel like it just, in terms of measurement here, there's so many Like the extent to which you're exposed to or you call things or label things, there are too many ways to label this.
Malcolm Collins: I agree with that a hundred percent. And I also went back to our old data on cuckoldry to see what it was most correlated with in terms of other fetishes instead of just being Republican.
And so admitting that you are into cuckoldry. Being dirty was one where it was a big discrimination. So men who are into cuckoldry, 41 percent engaged in some form of pornography where being dirty was part of it, and only 5 percent of men who weren't into cuckoldry engaged with that. Oh, by the way, to be able to get an example, That's so weird.[00:30:00]
Was looking at regular masturbation. And our sample only showed way lower than the other samples, only 18 percent of men into cuckoldry. So one in five men, which is still a lot, but I mean, it's not, you know, as much as the other things. Voyeurism might be motivating a lot of cuckoldry with 71 percent of the men who are into cuckoldry also into voyeurism and only 28 percent of the men who weren't into cuckoldry into voyeurism.
So that's a huge difference. Here's an interesting one. Caregiver little 2 percent of men who weren't into cuckoldry were into caregiver level 24%. So almost one in four of the men in the cuckoldry within the caregiver levels. relationships. Here's another fun one. Bestiality. 0 percent of the men not into cut culture were into bestiality.
24 percent sorry, no, 12 percent of the men who were into cut culture were into bestiality. So about one in ten guys. I think that's,
Simone Collins: no, I think that has more to do with co cultural already, something where you have to have kind of really delved into [00:31:00] and been open with yourself about your arousal pathways to discover like, yeah, okay, I'm actually into this, I'm going to say I'm into it on a survey.
That, that means you're also more likely to be someone who has delved deep enough into their arousal pathways to admit on a survey that they're into bestiality. So again, I think that's more about
Malcolm Collins: knowing. The humiliation here is, is, is I think the really telling one because the rates are just so high.
Even higher than the difference in voyeurism. Which is to say that 71 percent of men who are into cuckoldry are into humiliation. And only 11 percent of men who are not into cuckoldry are into humiliation.
Simone Collins: Well, it isn't your theory around bestiality that it is about humiliation? Primarily. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: well, it's about, yeah, I think fear of being rejected is also part of it.
And humiliation is another part of it. By the way, I was recently editing our episode I can't remember what I was talking, like, some guys are, like, confused, very confused by what women are into because they've been sort of brainwashed by the [00:32:00] red pill movement and they don't understand women very well.
And they're like, how did a guy like Malcolm get lots of girls to sleep with him really easily? And other guys are like, do you not see that he's like the Harry Potter archetype? Like, of course, like the nerdy, confident otherwise goal directed guy, like that that is. And I realize the mistake that people are making, that is being fed to them by the leaders of the, online like masculine community is a lot of these guys have risen in power hierarchies because they look like a man who should rise within power hierarchies.
They look uniquely buff or fit or something like that. What guys do not realize is the buff fit man is the equivalent of a woman with good makeup. The only people who care about that are other women. This is an in yeah, it's it's preening behavior. It's preening Right. It's preening behavior. It's an internal sexual hierarchy and not external sexual hierarchy and they're like, well, why is it?
That when and this is the studies that [00:33:00] this was the big break for me When I realized that they were looking at studies where they would show different body types and say like, which man do you most want to sleep with? Like, which man do you find most attractive of the samples? And they'd be like, look, women are choosing the really muscular men.
And I'm like, you are showing a fundamental misunderstanding of how women choose their partners. I would ask you to take that same sample of women and then say, draw the guy that you have fantasized most about. Okay. Or draw the last guy that you, you last had an obsession with, a sexual obsession with.
What does he look like? Who is the last guy who you became obsessed over and had increasing intrusive thoughts about? That's where you find what women are actually overwhelmingly I'm picturing
Simone Collins: a scene from Turning Red where she's under her bed and she draws a picture of the guy she has a crush on as a mermaid
Malcolm Collins: or something.
Okay, his shoulders are kinda [00:34:00] nice. His eyes are Fine.
Malcolm Collins: Yes! No, that's actually it. Well, and this is the thing where guys are like, Women must be into like really tough men. I was like, I, I hung out on Tumblr when it was like a woman porn site, basically, where women were just drawing, like, what they were into back then, and it's like, the Onceler, and like, Jack Skellington, and like, it is.
Simone Collins: Yes, and what was with like all the Onceler, like, it was, it wasn't just the Onceler, it was the Onceler, like, coming on to himself, like, Yeah, it's like
Malcolm Collins: gay one,
Simone Collins: like
Malcolm Collins: yeah. Like you guys have no, if you, if you refuse to accept what women are really like, then you are not going to be successful with women.
And the last time we mentioned, we're like, well, women. I actually read most of their porn. And if you look at the [00:35:00] types of romance novels that women are reading, this ultra buff, physique is actually fairly rare.
People like, no I've seen romance novel covers. They have like big burly men on them. And I'm like, then you have seen romance novel covers in a cartoon because in real life, that is actually fairly rare.
So just as an example of this, I Googled on Amazon. , romance novels. And then ignored the sponsored list. And of the first 10 recommendations. Only the 10th had a burly man on it.
And even then it wasn't like an overly muscled guy.
Women are not turning you down because of how you look,
That's an excuse that you are hiding behind.
they're turning you down because you're not trying to learn what women really want. Or how to attract women. Or just trying enough in general, when I found Simone, I had been going on five dates a week for years.
I think a [00:36:00] portion of the men's rights movement and the red Pill movement has attempted to internalize their own view of what women should be like by.
What would arouse them most if women are like, and so they hear things like, Oh, like we talked about in a recent episode that we did on like, are women actually into the handmade sale scenario where it's like, Oh, overwhelmingly women are aroused by things like choking. And the women who aren't are a minority, but they are very, Disgusted by it.
Like you see this bifurcation here, but this doesn't mean that the average woman is not aroused by these more violent scenarios, and they think that that means that women like being pushed around. They think that that means that women like, and it's like, oh my God, read, read the books that they're reading.
Okay, Fifty Shades of Grey, for example, or any of the, the, the common, do these guys push these women around? Do they talk to [00:37:00] them with disrespect in a way, but in a way that is hyper coded and protective?
And this is just , missed, missed, missed. The, person that a woman, when she's given a smorgasbord, that's how men think about a partner. They like. Think they're going to be given like a smorgasbord of like harem maidens, and then they just choose the one that's most arousing. Yes, women might be choosing more muscular men in that scenario, but they find that scenario Ixos.
That's not what they want. That's not what they're obsessing over. And so if you look at that, you are going to end up deluded. And then you're like, Oh, so the men who look in a way that doesn't lead them to be at the top of masculine dominance hierarchies, they're the ones who clean up with women. And it's like, YES!
YES! You're getting it now. You're getting the Jack Sparrow effect. You're getting the Loki effect. In Marvel. Marvel. Who did all the women obsess over? Out of all [00:38:00] the characters they could have obsessed over.
Speaker 23: Am a god, you dull creature, and I will not be bullied by half of you
Malcolm Collins: if your understanding of women can't explain why Loki was the character they obsessed over, then you don't understand women.
And if your explanation Well, and then also, like, weirdly, like, dad bod Thor? What was that?
Simone Collins: I don't get people. Women liked dad bod Thor! Yeah, what was that? It was Loki and dad bod Thor. That's who people were talking about. Why? I don't know. It's just the truth. I'm just looking though. I get
Malcolm Collins: low key. Um, I like pale, skinny looking
Simone Collins: people.
Yeah. I'm a tad
Malcolm Collins: butt door
Simone Collins: though.
Malcolm Collins: Not my
Simone Collins: thing. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And, and I think that this also means that when guys actually accept the way women [00:39:00] actually think, they'll realize they have a lot more of a shot than they think they do.
Simone Collins: Yeah. There's probably a lot of guys who just assume that they have no chance and they do.
And, and then the conversely, there are a lot of guys who think that they're hot And they're not. So it is hard to, hard to parse these things out, but yeah, I mean, in the end, it doesn't matter. The people who are going to have a lot of kids are going to have a lot of kids. And,
Malcolm Collins: i, I think the motto of the pronatalist movement is, we will do it.
Simone Collins: We
Malcolm Collins: are the Cuckoos. We are raising the strong children. We are disciplining them to be resistant. We are disciplining them so that they don't have these horrifying mental health issues. We are not retreating to the refuges of LARPing some past tradition that obviously isn't protective. We are actually trying to rebuild the ship in real time.
I want to see if I can find the clockwork planet scene here, which I was in [00:40:00] anime. I was watching recently. That was such a perfect example of the antinatalist versus the pronatalist. And then the antinatalist guy is saying to the protagonist, which is a female male partner
Speaker 6: it doesn't look like those two have any intention of giving up.
Speaker 5: Gain from this?
Speaker 3: You pretended to repair the world, but really you were deforming it. Do you understand yet how it feels to be powerless? To be unable to resist while the world crumbles? Can you taste the despair? This is how humanity has suffered
Speaker 5: how the hell can you be so arrogant?
Nobody gave you the right to speak for all of humanity!
Speaker 4: You may have given up, but whatever happens, we never will!
Speaker 3: You can praise humanity all you want, but I won't accept it.
Speaker 3: You will know despair. You will feel how heavy a crime it was to twist the world.
Speaker 4: Marie, I'm finishing up the Torbjorn and [00:41:00] hooking it up to the bypass now.
Speaker 5: It's like no repair work I've ever
Speaker 6: seen. That's because it isn't repair work. They're giving birth to brand new gears.
Speaker: The holy tree has been completely reborn.
Malcolm Collins: And I think that that's what the pronatalist movement is versus the antinatalist movement is they are the most cartoonish villains I could hope for in my life arc, to the extent that I find it unfortunately further evidence that I might be in a simulation. That's just trying to get me.
Simone Collins: I don't want to wake up if this is a simulation. I think it's great. Final thoughts? Perinatalism remains a very low stress
cause
and I still think, yeah, it, it's about having a lot of kids. It's not about having two [00:42:00] kids or one kid. It's, it's about going into it. Either you're into it or you're not.
Oh, I want to have one kid. I'm like, then you don't matter. Like when people at the But it's not just that. It's like the, it's the worst. And of course, some people are, are restricted by fertility problems and other things that they just can't control. And I'm not, I don't want to judge people who have only one kid, but when you've had one kid, you have taken 80 plus percent of the sacrifice of the hit to your life.
Yeah. Because now, 24 7, you will be responsible for someone for the next 20 years or more. Who's, who needs you. And, and yet, you're not getting nearly any of the benefits of being a parent. And your kid isn't either. Like, kids seem to really flourish with
Malcolm Collins: siblings. very likely to, and you look at the data on this.
If you have one kid, they're going to have one kid. Your DNA is happening every day.
Simone Collins: That kid is not getting opportunities to care for others, to learn how to be selfless, to learn, have challenges, [00:43:00] develop boundaries, play all the time.
Malcolm Collins: I would prefer people have no kids to one or two kids.
Simone Collins: Yeah, I honestly, yeah.
I feel like it's better to do no kids or at least three for sure. I I'm with you on that. And it's not something I came into this thinking at all. So that's
Malcolm Collins: good. Not that you've been a parent of four. You're like, obviously.
Simone Collins: Yeah, no. And it's, it's so much harder just having one or two kids. It gets easier starting with three, which is terrible because everyone tells you they're like, well three's the worst and that's when it started getting better Well,
Malcolm Collins: I think these are people who space out their kids a ton I mean you should be having yeah
Simone Collins: Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: yeah Yeah,
Simone Collins: I think if yeah if you get used to like life without diapers and then you go back to diapers Would be a nightmare, but we're just gonna have diapers for the next who knows how long I love you too.
Welcome.
Malcolm Collins: What are we doing for dinner tonight?
Simone Collins: I was, so what I was going to do today, cause now we don't [00:44:00] have really slices of turkey anymore. We have shreds of turkey is to so a couple options. One, I can do like a golden curry brick with white rice for you, or we can do fried rice and, but I could, I could separately do
Malcolm Collins: taquitos,
Simone Collins: turkey taquitos.
Malcolm Collins: Would that not work?
Simone Collins: Just like cheese and plain turkey. You'd like that? It seems awfully plain for you. I dip it in sauces. Okay. But like, you're okay with plain turkey inside with cheese.
Obviously there's cheese.
Malcolm Collins: Well, how about this? You, you put a little bit of the salsa you made on
Simone Collins: it.
Malcolm Collins: And it would probably make them soggy on the inside.
If I, if you want to try something else, I'm also, I'm really happy. As
Simone Collins: long as you're okay with like dipping them in sauces for flavor.
Malcolm Collins: Just make sure you use a cheese and we got to get sharper cheddar for our cheese for this.
Simone Collins: Okay. Well, I, yeah, I can put in, do you want me to put in a little bit of hot
Malcolm Collins: sauce
Simone Collins: with it
Malcolm Collins: or something?
No, it'll be good. I'll dip [00:45:00] it in hot sauce or whatever. Okay. So
Simone Collins: then what I'm going to do first is saute the turkey and sort of shred the butter to both like heat it up and just add some fat. Then I'm going to. Okay. Melt well, I'm going to put the tortillas in a pan with butter, melt the cheese, and then put in the turkey, and then you're good to go, yeah?
Malcolm Collins: I am so lucky to have you as a wife. I am so lucky. This is what I mean, this is every man's fantasy. A diligent pilgrim wife who cooks amazing meals for him.
Simone Collins: My, my pilgrim culture. Your
Malcolm Collins: turkey was so good.
Simone Collins: Oh, thank you. That was a, yeah, that's the Christmas miracle. We did really
Malcolm Collins: good. Like, I'm not lying. You are a normal person.
You'll be like, my turkey was damn good. Yeah, I didn't
Simone Collins: know. Cause yeah, you know, you grow up eating other people's turkey and just assuming that this is what turkey is and then you make it and you realize that it could actually be good. It's exciting. Yeah.
And also
like, we've had some weird turkey [00:46:00] experience.
Like remember when your mom ordered that smoked turkey from Texas and it like came to our house and I'm like,
Malcolm Collins: Oh, and the final thing I'd note here, some of you would be like, Oh, you're being so, bad, like, like bad pronatalists by saying that everyone who has below replacement rate is a cuck. And, and I just end by saying, we need to pressure people.
The cat lady statements that JD Vance is making, the you're a cuck statements when somebody is like, Oh, I, as a parent of two kids, you're like, Oh, you're below replacement rate. Like you do not do this. If you do not make it low status to have lots of kids, it's going to be very hard to fix this problem.
Simone Collins: No, I'm personally of the mind that that's not effective. That shame is never going to work. Both Shane and financial shame, financial incentives, any sort of materialistic stuff like that. Doesn't, that doesn't matter. What does matter is
Malcolm Collins: work for everything. People will do ridiculous things for satisfaction.
It won't [00:47:00] select genetically fit individuals and I don't know if I feel that way.
Simone Collins: I don't, I don't think that people will be driven by shame to have kids and I don't think they should be, but I do. I just, I think it's down to supporting the people who really, really love raising kids and who see it as important.
And you know, who live in communities of people who think it's important. I do think that that's what it comes down to and that. It just, I, I wish anyone who doesn't want to have kids, or a lot of kids, all the best. And they're just not part of what my focus area is going to be. And that's fine.
Malcolm Collins: Okay, so cucks aren't part of your
Simone Collins: focus area?
No, they're not. They're the pronatal number of cucks. You seem to like, I just, It's, it's like um, walking by and like, Oh, I just like, I see this like, Banana slug. In some moss on a hiking trail and I just want to like poke it and look at it and laugh at it. And I'm like, can we just keep walking? Like, I don't care about the banana slug.
Why are you so obsessed with banana slugs? Like what's going on? And I don't get it. And
Malcolm Collins: she's [00:48:00] talking from experience. I see a banana slug and I'm like a little boy. I'm like, Oh, a banana slug. And I'm
Simone Collins: like, can we just keep walking? I came for a walk and this doesn't matter. And we didn't get in the car to go look at banana slugs.
And like, here I am sitting down for this podcast, we're going to talk about nothing but banana slugs. And I'm like, that has nothing to do with anything like pronatalism isn't about people who don't want kids. Pronatalism is about people who want to have children. A lot of
Malcolm Collins: people won't go on the walk if they don't know there could be banana slugs.
You don't want to have kids because they don't think that there's any status to be gained with it. No,
Simone Collins: but you don't want, you don't want those people either. Like, and no, I don't, I honestly don't think, maybe, maybe to start they do and then they get into it. I don't know, like, then they have to ego death after three kids.
They
Malcolm Collins: call us
Simone Collins: breeders. I think we can call them cucks. Fine, you know, do what you need to do, Malcolm, but Oh, the audience has done it. He's
Malcolm Collins: right. The kind and benevolent Simone, [00:49:00] or the malevolent, vindictive Melko?
Simone Collins: First off, just to be clear, in our culture, nobody gets points for being kind, because that's just a term that is used for insipid people who you can't describe using other words that are more interesting.
So, I'm not trying to do this to look good, I just think it's unnecessary, and it, it, it like opens you to liabilities when you don't need to be open to liabilities. Yes. So anyway, I'm going to make you your Turkey taquitos and yeah, I love you.
Malcolm Collins: More cheese than you've been using.
Simone Collins: Okay. Just tons of cheese and even
Malcolm Collins: more than last time, hard cheddar as hard, barely
Simone Collins: any Turkey.
Yeah, I'll go hard on the cheddar and I love you. Love you too.
Malcolm Collins: I'm gonna go get the covers to cover up their Christmas presents from the car. Could you
Simone Collins: please? Yeah. I really, when, when you pick up the kids, I would really appreciate it. Or just do it now. I'm gonna do it
Malcolm Collins: right now.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay. Do it.
All right. Bye. Bye. I love you. I love you.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, did you get the the slide thing for the kids from Tiny Tots?
Simone Collins: No, I couldn't. [00:50:00] The you, you didn't approve the in did roof. I
Malcolm Collins: approved it in WhatsApp like three hours ago.
Simone Collins: You said that despite the fact that it was like $330
Malcolm Collins: Yes. Despite the fact that it costs a lot for shipping.
That's obvious. Alright, well I have to
Simone Collins: start dinner and after dinner you can help me with cleanup and then I'll buy it or you can buy it right now yourself. Okay. You can choose. I love you. You're such a good dad.
What are you doing? It's 50 degrees in here inside
Malcolm Collins: inside.
Simone Collins: Yeah. In front house where we're sitting right now.
Malcolm Collins: And you want to turn on, here's the thing, it's on, the
Simone Collins: heat's on, it's just taking a long time because it's really cold because of Russia. Russia sent their air to us and it's their fault.
Malcolm Collins: And just so people know, while we don't do heating in the winter, we do do it to keep it above 50.
So our pipes don't freeze. But it's one of these things where people are like, Oh my God, you, you want, like your life must be so terrible that you live in this state of constant frigid cold. And it's like, [00:51:00] okay. But here's what you haven't experienced. And this is the thing about suffering and challenges.
You don't get to experience the pleasure of hopping in a warm shower. Oh my gosh. Yes. House is freezing. And I will say like, Like if you are deciding between masturbating and jumping in a warm shower when your house is freezing, I jump in the shower five times out of ten. Well, and I take
Simone Collins: that over a cold shower.
Everyone's doing and I think even now the, the support for cold showers is starting to falter and cold plunges maybe. But yeah, I'm all for constant cold permeated by these bursts of warmth instead. Like, I want the inverse. I want constant cold. And then these like, I took an indulgent shower today.
Malcolm Collins: I did my, you're not going to get like a number of times masturbated in a day for me.
It's additional showers. I did not need that. I took today. That is my list [00:52:00] of daily indulgences.
Simone Collins: Yeah, well, I mean, I do indulge with popcorn and I have to show you this because it makes me so happy. This is the, my three days worth of popcorn bag and let's see if we can see this. It says,
Malcolm Collins: yeah, you can see it.
It says clearly this popcorn has been enlarged show texture. You idiot. I mean,
Simone Collins: to whoever like was told by their boss that they had to put this on the bag, you darling. I
Malcolm Collins: think they had it out there in some regulatory agency got mad at them.
Simone Collins: Oh, it was like, this needs to be like, this isn't the size of the topic.
Like, this is like the size of my mouth, this popcorn. Honestly though, I would buy that. I would buy a popcorn that big. It would be so good.
Malcolm Collins: Clearly. It's been enlarged. You buffoonish child.
Simone Collins: Clearly. Clearly. Clearly you. Idiot! Ugh! But no, honestly, honestly, designer, have you met the [00:53:00] average person? Have you met the average human?
Because
Malcolm Collins: Simone, don't even, the average human is a slander against humanity.
Simone Collins: Yeah, honestly. But also like, I have moments where I'm not above it. I could totally see myself looking at this bag and being like, what? I thought I was getting or leaving popcorn. Because what that Trader Joe's synergistically popcorn, which you can't get anymore, legit had giant kernels.
Oh, they
Malcolm Collins: have anyone's got a hookup to synergist popcorn. I would like some of that too. That's yeah.
Simone Collins: Our actually our son Octavian, he's really trying to get on the good list and he keeps trying to find ways to like show how good he is. So he asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I told him I wanted popcorn because it's one of my great loves.
And he remembered. And so he's like, mommy wants popcorn for Christmas. He kept trying to give his ex shotgun to Santa too. He's like, I'm going to give [00:54:00] Santa my ex shotgun. Cause he, he has this like abundance mindset where if I give Santa my gun, Santa will give me more guns and I must make this happen.
I have to manifest.
Malcolm Collins: It's really delightful. It's a great person.
Simone Collins: Yellow shoe dance.
Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. He saw his brother going to shoot. He did the shoot it.
Speaker 18: whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Malcolm Collins: I love Octavian now. Every time he does, and he does nice things, like, unprovoked all the time, like, really nice, and he normally does nice things, but now, you know, he gets this treat, he'll give it to everyone in the room, and he'll, and then he'll, like, say to himself, I'm gonna be on the nice list for sure.
Simone Collins: He's all about, no, he is, he is very much focused. on getting Max toys and whatever it [00:55:00] takes. Toristan's not yet there. He's not planning for the long term yet. Titan has no idea what's going on. I feel like, I feel like talking to Titan is like talking to someone who's really, really high. Like last night, I was picking her up.
And she's like, you're wearing hair. Oh! Yeah. So she's just super, basically super high all the time. Torsten is, Torsten and Octavian is becoming quite human at this point.
It's
great. I love it. Anyway. All right. You want me to get started? Let's get started.
Speaker 20: It's too, it's too little tiny. Do you think you can get the tape off? Yeah. Yeah, I'll help you. I can get the tape off. Let me [00:56:00] see. Whoa, look at that. Don't, don't, don't! It's not sticking to my hands. Scissors! Scissors, please! Home scissors, please. Yes! Oh, use that one. Oh, I ripped them off! I ripped them off.
Speaker 21: Yes. What? I gotta test them to see if they fit. There's something in. Huh? What? What's this for? What's this for? What's this for? I don't need this. You don't need that.
Speaker 17: Do you like your new shoes?
Speaker 18: Yeah.
Speaker 17: What's special [00:57:00] about them? We don't
Speaker 18: need our boots. We don't need our boots. We don't need our boots. For school. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey, don't forget this. And this.
Speaker 19: Titan, what's the What are you doing with the iron?

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Mass-Murdering CEO Ended: American Enters Her Villain Era
6 déc.· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
The Ethics and Fallout of the Assassination of United Healthcare's CEO In this video, we delve into the controversial assassination of Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare. We explore the ethical implications, the motives behind the murder, the reaction from the public, and the potential suspects involved. The discussion includes an in-depth analysis of Thompson's controversial business practices which led to significantly higher claim denial rates compared to other major insurance companies, resulting in many deaths. We also look at how his policies affected everyday lives and the broader conversation about the morality and legality of vigilante justice in dire circumstances.
Speaker: [00:00:00] Smithers had thwarted my earlier attempt to take candy from a baby, but with him out of the picture, I was free to wallow in my own crepulence. . But the old axiom was misleading. Taking the candy proved difficult I
Malcolm Collins: hello, Simone! Today we are going to be going over the murder of the CEO of United Healthcare. We are going to go over the ethical arguments tied to the murder, the fallout of the murder, how the murder happened, the potential suspects at play. Whoa. Hello. Because it is a mystery. Some evidence points to the wife.
I strongly disagree with this evidence and we'll get to why and how the murder was pulled off. Let's get into it. This is juicy. I mean, if we want to talk about, like, the insanity of the reaction to it, one of my favorite, like, most comical parts of the reaction to it has been the reward [00:01:00] Put out for any information that leads to this guy by the police department.
They put out a 10 k reward. Okay. ,
Speaker 5: Nice. Nice.
Malcolm Collins: Well, he murdered of United Healthcare,
Speaker 6: This is serious. We need to track this student down and give him his luckiest boy in America medal right away.
Speaker 7: I
Malcolm Collins: . And Simone, I will lay out the, the basic information, the moral dilemma here and how people are reacting to this first, because I think that people are playing this like this isn't a real moral dilemma.
It's like, just never react with joy to a murder, right? Like never celebrate a murder. And yet people celebrated the murder of bin Laden. This person almost certainly kills more people per year than bin Laden killed in his entire lifetime. , this is the, the best I have ever seen deontological ethics framed against consequentialist ethics.
Because,
like, deontological ethics, this person was [00:02:00] doing nothing wrong. They were doing their job and maximizing shareholder profit. Yes, everyone who died as a result of that. With a, someone who they had killed legally, the
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-9: Slight caveat here,
which muddies the waters a bit is this guy was not even acting with fiduciary responsibility in the best interest of his investors. '
cause he defrauded his investors.
We'll get to that in a second.
Malcolm Collins: person who assassinated them almost certainly lowered the number of random innocent Americans who will die over the next few years, even if just due to the trepidation of CEOs around making these kinds of decisions.
Simone Collins: Right. So you basically think he he's causing a chilling effect that will make other insurance company leaders nervous.
Malcolm Collins: And to be clear, I'll put a chart on screen here and you can see that they had over the number of claim denial rates of the average insurance company.
This increase happened under his reign. It increased to 32% [00:03:00] is. Kaiser Permanente the largest health insurance company Only denies seven percent
Over the past five years since this guy came into power their denial rates tripled
Simone Collins: tripled Oh
Malcolm Collins: this guy came in in 2021.
Simone Collins: Okay. again.
Malcolm Collins: When he came in in 2021, the company only denied post acute care by 10.
9%.
Oh, they were great when he started.
Yeah, it was 22. 7%. Now obviously went up from there, but this is just one category. Yeah
Ooh! This, it is, it is not true! At all an exaggeration to say this person's leadership and choices were killing, if you're talking about 57 million people under care, probably dozens of people a day.
Simone Collins: Honestly, it's hard for me to deny this considering those numbers. That is damning. Yeah, that's really bad
Speaker 32: [00:04:00] You wanna know why I don't have a coterie of supervillains?
Speaker 31: Why?
Speaker 32: My coterie is six feet f****n under!
Speaker 33: Batman doesn't kill
Speaker 32: people.
Speaker 31: Because he's a pussy!
Speaker 33: He's a dark creature of the night! He's a jackass! Who wrestles with murderers dressed like clowns and throws them in prison So they can break out of prison and then murder more people real me this how many people you think that man's indirectly murdered by?
Being too much of a candy ass not to kill these fools who clearly need to be smoked Once and for all you wrinkly sharp haired looking dimension fested f**k ,
Malcolm Collins: , but it's not just that here is an article. United healthcare uses AI model with a 90 percent error rate to deny care. Based on a calculation on the percentage of payment denials reversed through internal appeals processes or administrative law judge rulings. As described by an ongoing class action lawsuit brought by the estate of two deceased people. So two people who he killed, their families brought a lawsuit against him. Now, keep in mind he also received a 10 million salary and spent millions on lobbying. And if you're wondering about the types of claims that UnitedHealthcare [00:05:00] was denying under his leadership, here is a letter that a doctor had to send him.
Dear buttheads at insurance company. Hey,
Simone Collins: this is medical lingo to be clear. The butthead is a technical term. Sorry, carry on.
Malcolm Collins: I have to take time away from my patients to inform you that you are idiots. This whole experience makes me want to vomit, but of course I wouldn't dare throw up without the approval of the insurance company, which brings me to my point.
Already you have decided that a child receiving chemotherapy has no reason to be nauseated. And, and this is in response to their denying nausea medication to a child who is like going to die going through chemotherapy.
Simone Collins: Oh, wow. That's a bad look. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Huh.
Malcolm Collins: And it's, it's, it's It's not just that.
So I will, at the end of this, go over lots of individual [00:06:00] instances here, but I'll just go over one anecdote here, and this was somebody who just recently, just yesterday, they had talked to, for two hours, on the phone with seven to eight different people at UHC, trying to figure out why they denied it.
They're 80 year old mom's peripheral anagram. She has 60 percent blockage in her right leg. It has a lot of pain and now has to walk with a cane or a walker around my household, even short distances. Her cardiologist requested a prior authorization for it, but you H C denied it because quote, she hasn't tried 12 weeks of PT in quote.
What basically they're saying? Yeah. She'd probably die. It was in that amount of time, but whatever, you know, like, right. And here are what I'd say. So people are like, okay, but that doesn't just because there is somebody out there legally killing probably tens of people every day that doesn't give a sovereign citizen, the right to go out and kill him.
And then I [00:07:00] would say, okay, so what's somebody supposed to do if they watched their daughter slowly dying in front of their eyes? Or their wife and they every day We're filing with this company every day. They were spending hours on on phone calls with this company they knew it was unjust but they just didn't have the money to fight back This company continued to take money from their family every single year and you go to that individual and you're like i'm sorry other families have to experience this as well And then the person says well, then what am I supposed to do?
You And you say, well, you should let the legal system handle it
Speaker 16: Think it may be how you explain the thermonuclear bomb and ransom note found in your armored limousine.
Speaker 17: Yes, I can. They were merely researched for my novella. Give me money or I'll destroy your president. I'm a legitimate businessman who has been unfairly stigmatized
why would I, a humble man. Possess a cache of nuclear weapons capable of destroying the city ten times over. No! I [00:08:00] believe that truth and justice will prevail. The system works, and I have faith in the system. God bless America! Destroyer!
Destroyer!
Malcolm Collins: And I, and I'd ask you seriously, do you think that this guy will ever face any serious repercussions from the legal system for what he's doing?
Simone Collins: No, of course
Malcolm Collins: not. Do you think he's going to stop doing what he's doing?
Do you think other CEOs are going to stop doing this more and more and more and more people are going to watch their kids die and more people are going to watch their spouses die slowly?
Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, this is just a more violent death related issue. Version of what happened with the housing crisis and the financial crisis in 2008.
We saw what happens to people who are very wealthy and well connected when they do something provably wrong, even illegal in their case.
Speaker 16: This is nothing more than a salty slab of justice jerky. Cut and dry So, you know, case closed. They say we, uh, I'll skip this trial thingy and go home.
Okay, what is trying to [00:09:00] say is that,
Speaker 17: is that, uh, we believe that truth and justice will prevail, that the system works, and, uh, we have faith in the system. When do I get to hit him again?
Malcolm Collins: This guy actually might have had a prison sentence in his near future, but it was for securities fraud, not killing people. That's what the government cares about.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. So, and I'll go, no, at some point you need to ask, like, Okay, Nazis are taking over your country. Like how bad do things need to get before you say They might be killing people legally, but at some point somebody needs to do something.
Speaker 34: I used to think God put me here for a purpose.
For peace. Know, lately I'm just thinking I'm a f*****g maniac.
Speaker 35: Do you think I feel good? When after some dude does some atrocious act, that I have to kill them?
When I find out someone murdered an innocent person, or sold somebody heroin, or did some graffiti, and I kill that person with [00:10:00] my bare hands, you think that gives me pleasure?
No.
Well, it does. No! What separates us from other killers is we only kill bad people. Usually. Unless there's a mistake. Now, do I sound like a f*****g maniac?
Malcolm Collins: So you might be like well the guy had kids and a wife Right, and i'm like actually they were separated and he wasn't living with them and then you're like, okay Well, maybe he had like a good heart like he gave to non profits or something I looked I can't find any non profit fundraising.
I can't find any donations major donations to non profit and then you can say Okay, well, maybe this was just like he just did this one thing and it was like his job and he like wasn't otherwise an evil person. No, he was in the process of being sued for defrauding a firefighter's pension fund. How do
Simone Collins: you even do that?
Speaker 24: Are you a real villain? Well, uh, [00:11:00] technically, uh, nah. Alright, I can see that I will have to teach you how to be villainous.
Simone Collins: Okay, so I can go into
Malcolm Collins: the specifics of this case. The Hollywood Firefighters Pension Fund fired a lawsuit against Thompson, alleging he had sold over 15 million of UnitedHealth stock despite being actively aware of a Justice Department antitrust investigation into the health insurance company that he did not disclose with the investors or the public.
Simone Collins: Oh, disclosures issue. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: It erased 25 billion of shareholder value when it was released.
Simone Collins: Oh,
Malcolm Collins: oh yeah, right. Hold on. he sold 30 percent of his shares in the company as soon as they were under investigation.
Simone Collins: He did
Malcolm Collins: without telling the investors. So he didn't even practice fiduciary responsibility Hold on. Now you might be saying, okay, okay, okay. But it's not like. He was stealing from every American taxpayer watching this right now. Well, you'd be surprised. Actually, for the second time in one month, the U.
S. Justice Department sued UnitedHealthcare Group for [00:12:00] wrongfully obtaining a billion dollars in Medicare. The Justice Department's involvement highlights the gravity of the situation. This is the second time they had done this.
Simone Collins: Oh, wow. I know Doge is talking, and I guess Vivek Ramaswamy and Musk are talking about unauthorized payments through Medicare and Medicaid.
Maybe this is what they're referring to as well. Stuff that's going to both medical providers, but also insurance companies. Basically,
Malcolm Collins: they were telling patients that their illnesses weren't severe enough to be worthy of stuff. But whenever a patient, they, they did give out money, they would then go to the U.
S. government and exaggerate the patient's symptoms to get more money than they were giving out.
Simone Collins: That makes sense. Again, this is an adverse incentives thing. They're doing what They need to do to maximize profit.
Malcolm Collins: Hold
Simone Collins: on.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so you're, you're saying like, yeah, but this is just like indicative of the whole industry.
Yeah, I'm saying don't hate
Simone Collins: the players, hate the game.
Malcolm Collins: Hold on. Listen, they say, Malcolm, you're a monster. Imagine your father [00:13:00] made hundreds of millions of dollars running an insurance company that dealt with life and death. Surely he would not be able to avoid scandal to provide for the family. Now, do you remember the company that my dad sold?
Yeah. Yeah. It's a life insurance company. It was a 19 billion dollar company when he sold it. It was built by my great grandfather, grown by my grandfather, and grown significantly by my father who sold it. It was called the Fidelity Union Life Insurance Company. If you haven't heard of it, you may have heard of the U.
S. branch of Allianz, which is what it transformed into after my dad sold it. And you might be like, Oh, you rich kid, Malcolm. I inherited jack s**t. When my mom died, I got 30, 000 because my family believes in heavily, heavily donating money heavily, heavily doing everything they can to give back to the country.
Being in Congress or donating lots of money, as you know, so when you see my family's plaque to all these museums we go [00:14:00] to, but I don't, I don't have any of that money. And a lot of it was stolen as well. I'll admit that. But they were really, really big philanthropists with all this stuff.
And they were never,
Simone Collins: Your family gave a lot, and a lot more than I think is even normal among people who are wealthy, certainly not the minimum required for taxes or whatever.
Malcolm Collins: They were, they were never involved in a major scandal. The only major scandal I could find, or lawsuit I could find, was an individual who was killed by a robber and they didn't pay out to his family.
You can ask why didn't they pay out to his family. Because he had stopped paying premiums um, and they, the court decided in their favor and said, yeah, you don't pay to somebody who stopped paying premiums. What are you talking about?
Simone Collins: Yeah, that seems like a fair deal.
Malcolm Collins: And then they're like, well, certainly, you know, your dad wouldn't have been a generally good guy outside of this.
Well, he did win a 10 Young Outstanding Americans Award to recognize his honor and not just building lots of jobs for this country, but in dot like one day, [00:15:00] like the level of heroism of this guy is hard to overstate. There was a storm on Lake Texarkana one day and he was out sailing and turned into like a big squall and there were no other boats out there and he had none of the safety rigging on his boat
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): He had none of the rigging on his boat because he had
already started to take down the boat for the end of the season and was just doing one final sale around the lake before going in.
Malcolm Collins: and a big yacht thing started sinking and it turned out it was a party boat.
And so he goes and swims out from a sailboat without lines and rigging except for the ones for the sails to save everyone on the boat. He could easily
Simone Collins: have died trying to save them. It's insane that he did this. It's amazing.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-1: And to clarify this wasn't like something he did before he was a rich person running. And insurance company. This is something he did while he was in the position of CEO of the insurance company.
Malcolm Collins: You, you, this is the point I'm making. It's not like You can't be a good person and run a company in an industry adjacent to this.
By the way, if you're [00:16:00] wondering the the tricks to making money in the industry, like the reason my family did well in the industry, cause you're like, wait, how could they possibly have done well? If they tried to do everything ethically they had two big innovations. One was that you would get.
Yeah. Stock in the insurance company when you paid your premiums which motivated selling to your friends and stuff like that and the other was and they were the first people I think to ever do that to like give stock in exchange for for buying stuff and then the other thing that they did was the primary sales tactic that they use, which is that life insurance is non taxed. And so for specific wealthy individuals, they could sell it to them and say that this gets around the, the tax that your estate would otherwise get when you die. Because it's an asset that's owned by the in person.
And this is a strategy my dad actually developed because before he was allowed to run the company, He had to go out and be a salesperson and he actually became the best salesperson in the company And that's what gave the board his dad didn't want him taking over the right to put him in and [00:17:00] get rid of his own dad.
Simone Collins: That's so cool. Wow. I didn't I didn't know that
Malcolm Collins: But the point i'm making here more broadly Is you don't have to be like I am not against rich people I am not against ultra capitalists people know I stand for people like elon all the time on this show I have no animosity to this guy because he won in a capitalist system.
I have animosity and moral questions because the core way he won was by taking money from people he was killing.
Simone Collins: Yeah, and he could have Done so many things to maximize shareholder profit that didn't involve that. He could have reduced bureaucratic bloat. He could have automated more. He could have streamlined his systems.
He could have made the company operate better. And there's a lot of things we, we use United healthcare as our insurance provider, and I can tell from just my customer perspective, that there's a lot they can do better from an ops. standpoint, and that's not what he was doing to maximize. It
Malcolm Collins: wasn't that he wasn't focused on signaling as a company.
What a good guy they were. While they [00:18:00] might have been denying your kids cancer treatment or your grandma's, you know, heart surgery, they were voluminously providing puberty blockers to underage kids. Are you kidding me?
Simone Collins: Oh boy, okay.
Speaker: It's not about money. It's about sending a message.
Malcolm Collins: Wow. And this is where it gets interesting in terms of the fallout and reaction to this.
I think many on the left are beginning to realize that they are the party that's protecting oligarchs and they are surprised about this. Like Taylor Lorenz, the person who docs, lives of TikTok and an absolutely garbage person, has been Cheering about this over and over and over again on her profile and blue sky and just getting absolutely dunked upon Even on reddit and i'll put a story here moderators have been deleting threads as doctors torch dead united healthcare ceo and people on these lefty platforms are like wait, why why are our leaders?
Hiding anything that [00:19:00] presents any sort of a moral argument around this. And I think that they're like, I hope some of them wake up and they're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Are we the bad guys? Are, are, are we the ones who are supporting the oligarchs who are killing children? Are we the ones who are that callous with human life?
So long as you follow the deep States rules, so long as you aren't a threat to the existing order, are we the ones who enabled all of this with Obamacare to begin with? But
I've just noticed something. Have you looked at our caps recently? Our caps? The badges on our caps. Have you looked at them? What? No. A bit.
They've got skulls on them. Have you noticed that our caps have actually got little pictures of skulls on them? I don't, uh Hans.
[00:20:00] Are we the baddies?
Malcolm Collins: I'll get into more specific because it is really hard to say, like, as you said, we'll get into the specifics of what this guy did that there weren't other ways he could have pursued increasing profits. Specifically, his strategy was just to deny more customers. And and to make it much, much harder to get things paid for.
But I want to hear your thoughts because you went into this telling me, Malcolm, do not make an argument that this is morally acceptable. Malcolm, do not make an argument that this is morally acceptable. Are you at all persuaded?
Speaker 16: This is nothing more than a salty slab of justice jerky. Cut and dry So, you know, case closed. They say we, uh, I'll skip this trial thingy and go home.
Simone Collins: Listen, I hear what you're saying, but I'm also concerned about legal liability.
And if someone who's a documented fan of ours goes on and assassinates some other leading unethical figure. I don't know. Maybe there's a lawsuit in there, and I don't want to deal with that. So, I want to make it [00:21:00] very clear that we are officially saying it is a very bad idea to ever assassinate someone, no matter how justified it is, no matter how logical it is.
Don't do it. We told you to not do it. If anyone says that you told us, or that we told you to do it, they're lying. Because we're not, and this is a video of us saying that.
Speaker 16: Okay, what is trying to say is that,
Speaker 17: is that, uh, we believe that truth and justice will prevail, that the system works, and, uh, we have faith in the system. When do I get to hit him again?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I, I would say that it is illegal to do, right? Like, it's definitely, it's super illegal and that I like that I live in a country where if this guy is caught, he would face the death penalty for this.
, and people can be like, Wait, how could something be both something where you're like, well, there is an ethical question at hand here. And you're okay with the guy who did this facing the death penalty. If you are going to take justice into your own hands like this, you should be so certain that you are doing [00:22:00] the right thing, that you are willing to die for it.
Simone Collins: Wait, and that's, yeah, that is, that is how breaking the law works. And that's how most people should be thinking about teaching their kids about laws is that. Laws are price tags. A speeding ticket is a price tag. Sometimes it's worth it to pay that price tag. The death penalty is a price tag. And life in prison is a price tag.
You should be aware of the price tags associated with breaking various laws. And don't see it as just like either don't do it or do do it. It's a trade off.
Malcolm Collins: Here's the problem with this particular price tag in this instance. It may have been cheesed. We don't know, and we'll get into this in a second, we don't know if the guy who killed him didn't have a terminal illness.
He may have been the one who is dying and being denied his claims.
Simone Collins: That's true. Well, and that, yeah that makes, that makes terminally ill people very dangerous when it comes to assassinations. Because their price tag is very different what you're going to do.
Malcolm Collins: And for people who want to push back on this and be like, no, you should never break the law.
You should never do this. I ask you a question. Would you murder [00:23:00] Hitler? If Hitler was rising to power in your country, Would you murder Hitler? Almost every sane person is gonna say, I would murder Hitler, right? And I'd be like, well, murdering Hitler was against the law, and they're like, yeah, but he was gonna kill a bunch of people in the future.
And I'm like, well, what's the number of people for you wear this tips? Like, when is it okay? How many people did
Simone Collins: see that? This is the thing. This is the trolley problem again, is I think the vast majority of people, no matter how many people they could save are not willing to pull that lever and personally be responsible for death, even if they're active killing someone or multiple people.
Saves more people. They're just most people are not willing to. I can't. I don't know what percentage it is, but
Malcolm Collins: it's not being willing to, unless the situation is absolutely demonstrable because we, as individuals do not have good vision into these things. No, well, that's
Simone Collins: why it's
Malcolm Collins: the
Simone Collins: trolley problem, though, that that is supposed to [00:24:00] be in demonstrable situations where you see the trolley and, you know.
Malcolm Collins: The point I'm making here and the reason why I would generally be against something like this is because you don't know, you don't have insight to, is this person really responsible for? Yeah, no, that's,
Simone Collins: and that's my whole thing is even if he's the one making the call, he's going to be replaced by someone else who does this.
That's where I'm like, I don't know if this is going to make a difference. Do you think they would do it as brazenly? I think they'd do it as brazenly with a lot of security. They'd never be out in public. Without a lot of security, maybe a bulletproof vest. Yeah, I
Malcolm Collins: kind of feel like we as a society are getting to a point right now where, and I feel like this is what we saw was the Trump election, where the average American who's been stepped on by the system over and over and over and over again, it's just like, where are our, our great CEOs anymore?
Where are the great. You know, meaningful.
Simone Collins: Look at who's leading. And I mean, Ramaswamy, Donald Trump. I mean, a [00:25:00] lot of people, he was elected originally in the election because they were like, I think he's a great CEO. I think he's a great businessman and I want him to run the country. I think that CEOs have.
Yeah, and this is always been
Malcolm Collins: this is the point I'm making when I say where are they they're in this administration They are the ones that have been targeted by the deep state Targeted by the urban monoculture. They are the ones who have been othered and made evil while people like this are held up as paragons By the urban monoculture.
Oh my god You cannot feel anything other than horror and shame that this person was killed, is what they say. And I, and then people will argue to me, they'll say something like, Well, how, how can you decide, like, morality on your own? One person on Discord is like, how can you decide what's good and what's bad?
On your own.
Speaker 27: Figuring things out for yourself is the only freedom anyone really has. Use that freedom. Make up your own mind, Rico.
Malcolm Collins: And I was like, well, like my logic, like thinking through [00:26:00] this. And then the individual was like, but your logic you, you can't make like a logical argument about what's right and wrong.
At the end of the day, you're just creating like one overriding deontological rule when you do that, you know, it's, you're still using logic to create an arbitrary judgment. And I'm like, well, here's the problem with that argument. If, if you deny my ability to choose what's logic, what's moral based on my logic, using your logic, you have lost the argument.
Mm-hmm. Because you have used logic to deny Logic's ability to determine what's right and wrong.
Speaker 30: You get nothing. You lose. Good day, sir.
Malcolm Collins: Fun fact. , Steve Davis, the guy who was the architect of the Twitter layoffs. Did a real life Willy Wonka style giveaway of his first company. You Gotto. Ending up selling it for $1.
, expect to hear more about this guy in the near future.
But a great example of how you can be a good inefficient CEO was out killing children.
Mm-hmm . [00:27:00] Um, But. It's, it's, it's worse than that because I don't think that any sane person sitting down is going to be like killing probably at least dozens of people every month, if not every day people who are paying you, people who are innocent.
That's a bad thing, right? Like that, that's a thing that you would want stopped in some way. And you might be right that this does nothing to stop it and the cycle just continues. But I guess what I'm saying is, is like I did it. And people were also shocked when I said that with another potential assassination video where I was like, I, and in the other case, I disagreed with the guy.
But at least I could empathize with where he was coming from. In this particular instance, if it had been my kids or my wife, I, as a third party, I'm saying no, like horrible, don't do this. But I have the luxury to say that because I didn't watch my wife slowly die over the course of two to three years at the hands of somebody who is taking my [00:28:00] money and spending it on luxury.
The plane flights and 10, 000, 000 salaries.
Simone Collins: Yeah. 10, 000, 000. What do you even do with that much money? That's insane.
Malcolm Collins: And by the way, this is what somebody says who works in this industry. They go, I've dealt with United healthcare for years, doing a peer to peer reviews, trying to overturn their systemic refusal to authorize covered benefits.
This Brian Thompson was a criminal who led a criminal enterprise. This company is responsible for untold harm and deaths to their customers. Brian had it coming. I will sleep better tonight. This is something day in, day out. This is their job. , now I'm going to go into what actually happened with the assassination.
We can go over the suspects and then we're going to go into the argument. That Brian Thompson had many other ways he could have excessive extracted profit from the company and chose not to explore them and shows to just basically kill people in a way that I don't even think was long term sustainable.
I think United Healthcare will long term suffer [00:29:00] unsustainably. Abusive way he was treating his customers. And there's evidence of that as well.
Simone Collins: So he even wasn't long term maximizing shareholder profit. He was just, he
Malcolm Collins: wasn't, he was short term maxing it to get a sellout. And then he sold 30 percent of his shares in the company as soon as they were under investigation.
Simone Collins: He did
Malcolm Collins: without telling the investors. So he didn't even practice fiduciary responsibility. Remember?
Simone Collins: Oh, no. Okay. Gosh, this just gets worse and worse.
Malcolm Collins: Brian Thompson, the 50 year old CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was fatally shot and attacked on Wednesday, December 4th, 2024, in midtown Manhattan, New York City. It was previously reported that the suspect used a city bike, which can be tracked, but the NYPD has clarified the incident did not involve that type of bike.
The suspect had waited at the nearby corner all night until the executive walked by, according to witnesses. People knew he was going to be there because he was going to a shareholder's meeting. And this, I think, blocks for me, a lot of people have been like, Oh, this was a professional [00:30:00] assassin. How did he know where the guy was going to be?
How did he know what door he was going to be using? How did he happen to be there at just the right time? He wasn't there at just the right time. He was waiting there all night long.
He that is not something I think a professional assassin would have done. He was using public information to find the guy.
It was public information that he was going to speak at this shareholder meeting. And we'll get into more in just a second. Witnesses told reporters they heard three shots as he was parking a car in the area. The, the, Three shots are actually really important because it tells you a part of how this was premeditated that the news hasn't caught on to yet for some reason.
Um,, just to go over a map here that I'll put on screen this is a little out of date, but at 6. 44 AM, the victim was walking alone towards the New York Hilton Midtown after exiting his hotel across the street. Now Yeah, this is actually right near where we used to do our morning walks and everything in in Manhattan, Simone.
So you would have seen this if you're on a morning walk. You remember what the streets are like at around 6 24 a. m. They're pretty empty. A lot of people have acted like this is [00:31:00] midday.
Simone Collins: Yeah, there's just a decent number of early morning commuters. Basically all the working class people are out and then The early risers of the white collar workers are out to it's, it's not totally unpopulated.
Malcolm Collins: Shooter then runs into an alleyway between 54th street and 55th street. Then that's where we always
Simone Collins: stay is on 55th street. So this is exactly where we know everything.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Then the shooter who was lying in wait alongside the building fires at him. Once at 55th Street, the shooter continues to walk onto 6th Avenue where he gets on an electric city bike.
This part is wrong, by the way. And then the shooter rides north on 36th Avenue towards Central Park. And then he disappeared at 6 48 a. m. in Central Park.
Simone Collins: Wow.
Malcolm Collins: So just four minutes after the shooting, he was disappearing in Central Park.
Simone Collins: So efficient. So he shoots him, gets on a bike.
Malcolm Collins: Right. No, he didn't get on a bike.
People got that wrong and they might've been tracking the wrong person. [00:32:00] Oh, wow. That's what the NYPD is saying right now. So
Simone Collins: on foot, he went to Central Park.
Malcolm Collins: Maybe, or maybe that's tracking the guy who was on the bike who appears in one image, but appears to have not been the suspect. Just another guy with a backpack like the suspects.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-4: New piece of information that came out this morning, is it found that the suspect using a fake New Jersey driver's license? Came into Manhattan on a Greyhound bus.
Malcolm Collins: The suspect was wearing like a mask that didn't even look conspicuous. It looked like what you would wear on a cold day in New York,
In a hoodie that looked like what you would wear on a cold day in, in New York.
Yeah.
He was wearing a black hoodie and black pants with a gray backpack and he approached Thompson from behind, and you can watch the video of this, and he shot him once in the leg the gun then doesn't cycle, it does not jam, as some reports have said, it doesn't cycle, he does what you do when a gun doesn't cycle And this, the reason it didn't cycle is likely because he was using both a silencer and subsonic ammo.
And it appears that the person had practiced enough [00:33:00] to expect this to happen. He taps the gun a few times. Re does, I don't know that much about fixing a gun like this. Re does, I think, like, re cocks it and then shoots again. But what I do know is this caused live ammunition to come out of the gun.
Gun, so a lot of people say there was three casings at the scene But there was also three live bullets found at the scene now this becomes Interesting because on the casings slash live bullets was written three words The words were and we'll get into the potential meaning of these in a second Deny, defend, depose.
Now, where this gets interesting is he only shot three times. So he didn't know, he didn't expect the gun to jam like this. Which meant some of the words would have been on the jammed bullets, which would have come out before the shell cases. Which meant that he went into this planning to shoot three [00:34:00] times to create this message.
Wow. For, for some reason, the three shots had a significant to this guy.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and that, that implies heavily, like you were saying that he's not a hit man. This is personal. Unless I, cause it seems like a big ask if I'm hiring a hit man to also demand in such a high maintenance fashion that you must also inscribe on the bullets, my special message.
I mean, that would be an added fee if
Malcolm Collins: So experts suggest the shooter's actions indicate that he may be a practiced and seasoned trained professional killer, possibly with law or military experience. However what is not believed, which is interesting is that he was a professional hitman. This does not appear to be a hitman to me. Everything was possible with public information.
And the way that he waited all night at the location just doesn't seem very hitmany to me. Also, the three bullets. To me, seeing symbolic of [00:35:00] something, . Well,
Simone Collins: since there's something written on them, otherwise I was assuming, I don't know where I heard this, but I heard somewhere that in standard police training, you are told to shoot chest chest head when you're trying to.
Malcolm Collins: Maybe. He also, I mean, a very non Hitman y thing is he was videoed at a local Starbucks buying stuff beforehand. Oh,
Simone Collins: what did he get?
Malcolm Collins: Egg bites? He dropped a water bottle and cell phone that are believed to be dropped by the suspect and they're checking for DNA. Oh, no. And, Oh, that's so bad.
Simone Collins: Oh, that's great.
I want to know what he ordered.
Malcolm Collins: let's talk about the three words because I've read a number of potential things that they could have met.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Deny this could refer to the denial of insurance claims or coverage by UnitedHealthcare. This is, I asked, A. I would have thought defend. This term may relate to the company's efforts to defend its policies or practices, possibly against criticism or legal challenges to pose in a legal context.
It's often means to give sworn testimony. It could indicate [00:36:00] that the shooter wanted Thomas for questioning or accountability. I do not buy that. Some people have claimed that this is a sign that it was somebody trying to keep him from giving damning evidence during the deposition that he was about to go to. And it was like assigned by other people in the healthcare industry. I highly doubt that this is the case. Just given how hard it would be for a random wealthy person to hire a hitman that actually doesn't really happen that much.
Even when you look at something like Epstein I won't say that I might have inside information into that but If I did one of the Middle Eastern ruling families which would have access to Hitman very easily and one of the ones who was known to have used Hitman in the past and so there wouldn't have been any trouble for them doing this.
But if you're like a random other insurance company CEO, would you really risk hiring a Hitman? Like that's That's wildly risky for something that was a security violation, not even questioning like their record or [00:37:00] anything like that.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-5: And I note here that the payout from this lawsuit was going to be $5 million. That's what was expected. And the articles I read this guy's salary was $10 million a year. Do you really think he's going to be assassinated over a $5 million lawsuit?
Malcolm Collins: Now the, the one that I have found to be most powerful in terms of the arguments as to what this was about, is it specifically written in reference to a book?
So the book is called delay, deny, defend, which is about how corrupt the insurance industry is. And it's the most famous book about how corrupt the insurance industry is. And about what the three D's mean. Delay insurance companies intentionally slow down claim processing by requesting extensive documentation, creating technicalities, or declaring claims under investigation.
This tactic benefits insurers by allowing them to hold onto money longer for investment gains and exhausting claimants into giving up. So for [00:38:00] people who don't understand this, a company on average even if they're only extending the amount, the length that they have the money, like by four months or three months, They get additional money from it because the money makes money for them over time.
So they have a reason just to delay. It doesn't matter if you're suffering. It doesn't matter if your relatives are dying. Deny claims are
Simone Collins: better if they're dead. Cause they won't bother you anymore. So
Malcolm Collins: wait them out. If you can delay until they die, you don't have to pay it out. Deny claims are often outright rejected, sometimes based on arbitrary or fabricated reasons hidden in the fine print.
Denials discourage claimants from continuing to pursue their rights and defend. If delay and deny fail, insurers might aggressively defend against claims in court. This tactic prolongs resolution and burdens claimants with legal costs and time, deterring many from pursuing valid claims.
Simone Collins: It's just another way to delay.
And make it extra expensive to do so.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so what's interesting is the last word. So if [00:39:00] it was in reference to this, He's saying, basically, you delayed, you denied, I depose.
If the standard is delay, deny, defend, what he's basically attempting to do with this is rewrite the last part of this.
Simone Collins: You delayed, you denied, I depose with my bullets. Well, goodness.
Malcolm Collins: So, if, if you're wondering what I was talking about earlier he was big on DEI integration in his company. He was a big supporter of LGBTQ plus communities offering gender reform and care to minors.
He created a workforce diversity group that implemented DEI focused strategies. For underrepresented groups like a, the DEI executive sponsorship [00:40:00] program to give an unfair advantage to anyone in a protected class within the company. They also did training seminars and stuff like that, and the company gave 100, 000, 000.
Dollars to diversity initiatives instead of to your dying family members not ideal. Okay so now we're going to go into the. Argument that what he was doing was above and beyond and not normal for someone in his position Which I think is important if he was just acting like everyone else in the industry I'd be like look this is an industry problem, right?
Not a he specifically was an extra evil person problem So UnitedHealthcare had the highest claim rate among major health insurance companies with approximately 32 percent of claims being denied. If you look at other insurers, Ansem is 23%, Aetna is 20%, CareSource is 20%, Millenia is 19%.
Simone Collins: We've had UnitedHealthcare mostly uninterrupted for the past [00:41:00] seven plus years.
And it's been awful. We had one six month period where just I was on Aetna and I felt like I lived in a different world
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I remember that keep in mind how bad this is. Kaiser Permanente the largest health insurance company Only denies seven percent.
Simone Collins: Oh, that's why people are so obsessed with Kaiser.
I've always wondered around about that We we know a decent number of people Cause I think Kaiser is a big insurer in California who, despite leaving the state choose to maintain residency in California, which means paying at California state tax, which is insanely high just to maintain their Kaiser insurance.
Because that is, it's just, it's financially worth it at that point, considering how much they cover. You can't leave. Basically it's the golden handcuffs of insurance.
Malcolm Collins: Remember this guy came in in 2021.
Simone Collins: Okay. again.
Malcolm Collins: When he came in in 2021, the company only [00:42:00] denied post acute care by 10.
9%.
Oh, they were great when he started.
Yeah, it was 22. 7%. Now obviously went up from there, but this is just one category. Yeah, they were almost as good as Kaiser Permanente when he started. Oh my god. Um, In 2022 uh, UnitedHealthcare denied prior authorized requests for post acute care at rates that were three times higher than the denial rates for all other types of prior authorization requests.
Ooh! This, it is, it is not true! At all an exaggeration to say this person's leadership and choices were killing, I think, if you're talking about 57 million people under care, probably dozens of people a day.
Simone Collins: Honestly, it's hard for me to deny this considering those numbers. That is damning. Yeah, that's really bad.
Malcolm Collins: I, I thought you might start to change your mind as this episode [00:43:00] goes on. Yeah. I went into this being like, no, the public shouldn't have a right to just shoot a rich guy because he's corrupt. They shouldn't have a right. To shoot a person because his company, you know, maybe dump toxic waste somewhere.
And then that ended up causing some issue in a community or something like maybe he didn't have any say in those particular policies. Maybe he had no ability to know that was happening. I know our employees have done ethical. Unethical stuff that we've tried to stop in the past. That is not the case here.
This guy specifically transformed the company in an unethical direction In a way that melts more profits by killing people and we'll go over just how much more profits he was able to rake in as well
Simone Collins: I have to say when I first saw the news, I misread and thought that the headline was Brian Johnson. Oh, that would be so
Malcolm Collins: bad. Nice guy.
Simone Collins: That's like driving over the Nazca Lines. Like, he's trying to live forever, okay? He's doing a big human experiment here.
Don't, like, don't. You know, it's just a beautiful thing. Don't [00:44:00] mess it up. Like, let him try. Don't drive over the Nazca Lines. Don't deface the Washington Monument. You know, don't, don't. Trample around giant sequoia trees that are, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years old and don't kill Brian Johnson, you know?
But this is a little different.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. So he came in in 2021. So if you're looking at their gross profits, you can see they were growing slightly before this. Okay. So 2020 67 billion and then 2021 69. 65 billion. So if you look at like before he came into power, it was growing from like 67 billion one year to 69.
65 billion. The next that sounds like normal management, right? He comes in. It goes from 69. 65 billion to 79. 62 billion, and then the next year it's 90. 9 billion. Oh, wow. I mean,
Simone Collins: okay, are there any other things he did? [00:45:00] They could have boosted. It's aside from denying. I mean, the percentage of denied care does seem to go up.
No, no, we're going to figure out how we really justify as well.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. In 2023, they grew 12. 7 percent year over year. If you're a CEO, you know that's not normal.
Simone Collins: That is not.
Malcolm Collins: That's like you're doing something amazing, not at a company like this, not at like a basic insurance company. Yeah,
Simone Collins: not, not, yeah, yeah, maybe in a, a, a growth phase startup for sure.
That is to be expected. Not at, yeah, not at UnitedHealthcare.
Malcolm Collins: I'm just going to drop in another random anecdote here. Somebody saying, even though I pay for a top tier plan with UnitedHealthcare, they sent my daughter a letter explaining that they denied a claim for a one night stay at a hospital that literally saved her life.
Also, my daughter was four years old at the time and the letter was addressed to her. Oh, okay. [00:46:00] Sorry, little girl, a little little four year old. It's a little shame that you didn't die. We were hoping that that would because you don't pay your under your father's plan. It's demonstrably good for them if the four year old dies.
Because she's not paying for health care. So, oh, I don't want to go into the insider trading allegations. No, I
Simone Collins: mean, keep in mind, like, parents pay their kids premiums. It costs extra to have a kid on your plan. They're being paid for.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, do kids cost extra? I thought that kids Oh,
Simone Collins: no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
Malcolm Collins: you pay for your kids.
Simone Collins: Kids cost extra kids. Remember
Malcolm Collins: I was talking about that AI that was making mistakes.
Huh.
So the lawyer alleges that the United healthcare knew the algorithms had an extremely high error rate and that it denied patients claims knowing only a tiny percentage. 0. 2 percent would file appeals to try to overturn the insurer's decisions.
The complete legends of the algorithm dubbed NH predict has a 90 percent error rate based on a calculation on the percentage of [00:47:00] payment denials reversed through internal appeals processes or administrative law judge rulings. So. It had an error rate, the AI that they were using to deny people of 90 percent false positive.
That
Simone Collins: makes so much sense. I mean, consider that a lot of companies build off this business model, right? They get you to sign up for the free trial and assume that you'll never check your subscriptions and keep paying for them until you discover five years later that you've never used them and you don't want to pay for them.
And I'll admit when we get bills, you know, and we've been denied coverage for things, I don't have the time. To spend pushing back for months and getting on the phone and constantly calling. And we, there are people I know who do but also their home homekeepers of like their, their homemakers, I should say like their, their full job is to take care of the family and the home and the family's finances.
If that, if I had that. Luxury. Maybe I could, but like it is, it is a job [00:48:00] to do that. And you, our family can't do that. I imagine most families don't have a full time person at home to manage the home's finances and bills and to fight back on behalf of the family to do things like this. Similarly, for example, with you know, how there are these do not call lists that technically you shouldn't be called by spammers.
You can actually pursue them, you know, get on the line, find out who they are, and then make legal claims against them and actually make a decent amount of money. Like this one stay at home dad who makes this his, like, side hustle, isn't he? He, like, finds them and he gets money from them breaking rules.
But, again, that is a Decent investment of time. And unless you are only part time employed or mostly at home caring for kids or family or on your own, just handling a household, then you can't do it. So that, I mean, it's a, I guess I should say it's a smart business model because you can depend on most people not having the resources to fight back,
Speaker 8: Well, hello there! [00:49:00] Looking to get some insurance? No, my friend's mom already has insurance with your company. Oh, great! You're here to pay your bill. No, no, oh, you want money from us? Right through that door over there.
Speaker 9: Hello.
Speaker 11: Let me, let me just speak with our medical director
Speaker 9: first.
Yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 12: Who was that? That was the medical director.
Speaker 13: But you didn't say who the patient was wrong with him.
Speaker 12: Right. The medical director's job is just to say no.
Speaker 13: Look, my friend's mom has been paying you people for years
Speaker 14: I didn't realize I was dealing with someone who had so much determination. If you do a little more work,
so all you have to do is navigate the American healthcare system.
Speaker 15: These forms. I just, I just spoke about the last
Speaker 9: place.
Speaker 15: It's so much fun to be getting it done.
We go back to the doc to get that thing fixed. We're filling out forms, and we're scanning those forms And then we're emailing those forms to get [00:50:00] them back to insurance
Simone Collins: but that's really evil to like make a company that promises services.
And then banks on the fact that your customers will not have the wherewithal to fight back when you mistreat them. Especially
Malcolm Collins: when those services are life saving.
Simone Collins: Yeah, that's true. Yeah. It's one thing if you're giving them shoddy light fixtures or, you know, low thread count sheets that aren't as good as you promised, or your clothing falls apart after three washes.
This is, you're right, people's lives. That is horrible.
Malcolm Collins: When you hear about the little kid. Going through chemotherapy, being denied nausea medication.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: That's Like, are you just like That's sick. It's sick. Yeah. It's sick in the extreme. It's like, w w w when I compare this guy to Nazis, it's like Himmler experiments and stuff like that.
It's like, It's sick. It's sick. It's sick. Really, and they would regularly [00:51:00] deny pain medication if the pain lasted longer than it was supposed to. This was another thing they got in trouble for a lot, that they would just turn off anesthesia if the person felt pain longer than the, like, minimal supposed period they were supposed to be feeling it.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-6: And this is part of what makes me so mad when people are like, well, you should be handling this through the legal system. You know, let the laws handle this. They were breaking the laws. United healthcare face a department of labor lawsuit for denying claims based solely on diagnosis codes, rather than patient need violating the employee retirement income security act. E R I S a, but then went back to doing that after the case. , in fact, the us Senate subcommittee has scolded United healthcare for denying prior authorized requests for extensive post acute care at three times the rate of other such requests.
Speaker 41: I'm sorry, but the
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-6: us Senate subcommittee must be firm with you. Or else. Or else what? Or [00:52:00] else, we will be very, very angry with you. And we will write you a letter telling you how angry we are.
Speaker 40: Good.
Speaker 42: How you like that, you f****n c********r? You have any idea how f****n busy I am, Osbricks? Well, f**k you! Congratulations, Team America! You have stopped nothing.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-6: And keep in mind, this denial was being done by an AI, which got it wrong, 90% of the time.
And the company knew that and kept using it.
Malcolm Collins: So no, it was, it was horrifying what they were doing. And this is what I'd ask people who want to push back on this a lot on me.
Speaker 35: Now, do I sound like a f*****g maniac?
Malcolm Collins: Right. I, I, I ask because they're like, how dare you say that we should live in a society where. If somebody has their family murdered by a legal [00:53:00] mass murderer that they should be able to go to a store, buy a gun, and assassinate that person, and then face the death penalty for that.
Like, what a horrifying society that would be to live in. I'm like, b***h, that's the society the Founding Fathers created. That's the society you're living in right now. What you're forgetting is the last part of what you just said. And then face the death penalty for it. I'm not okay with this being legalized or something, I'm just saying that I also am not saying that if you, if you look at the like vast weight of this, and this is right about somebody who really pushes me back.
How many additional people do you need to have very strong evidence a person is going to kill? Before, because clearly you're like, okay, Hitler is okay. So where did you draw the line? How many people do an individual's decisions need to lead to dying with them knowing that that is the outcome of their decisions?[00:54:00]
Before you're like, okay, this is where I react and some people never react many people, you know in germany They just went along with it to the end I know that that's not who my family is. I know that when the south seceded from the union over slavery as I mentioned before 15 of the 50 founding members of the free state of jones were direct relatives of mine either siblings of a ancestor of mine or kids of siblings of an ancestor of mine So when the south is like we're gonna fight for slavery.
My family was like no f**k you. We'll kill you we're gonna start in separate states And we'll kill all of you. I don't care what you're fighting for. I don't care that you say it's the law. It's immoral.
Speaker 18: You won't miss this, though.
[00:55:00]
Speaker 19: I knew you were dead.
Malcolm Collins: And some people just aren't built that way. And I think that fundamentally the type of person who sees something like this and is like, No, what the shooter did was demonstrably wrong in every way it could conceivably be looked at.
These are the types of people who support Hitler because he rose to power legally. He rose to power as an elected official. These are the people who, when the camps start, they're like, well, it's all being done through legal means. You know, there is nothing to them that is unethical other than what is said to them.
What is said by the local authority. That defines their ethical system. [00:56:00] And they're not able to say, oh and so I say to this person, everybody who wants to push back on me on this, I want one thing. In your reply where you're pushing back to me, I want you to define the difference between if you would have now you can say in your reply, I would have been not done anything about Hitler's right to power, not done anything about it at all.
But if you're the type of person who thinks that you would have tried to stop it. Or even stop it after it started. After the Holocaust camps were going and every additional day meant more people were dying, what's the number of people for you that have to differentially die because this person stays alive?
What's the number? Like, what's the difference in Hitler between this guy for you?
Simone Collins: Well, I would also observe that if people begin to feel like they're living through societal collapse, and that if a crime is committed against them, or if they are wronged in some way, there's no recourse, vigilante justice is going to fill that void.
And we [00:57:00] are starting to get to that point. I think things may start to break soon where there's so much shoplifting. There's so much petty crime. That's not being prosecuted. There is so much of this feeling. And again, like when there were gunshots outside our house, nobody. In our immediate vicinity who heard them called the police because why would police come?
We just this this guy
Malcolm Collins: lives if he called the police, they'd come. They'd come.
Simone Collins: They'd come because he's rich. Yeah. Well, that's but I think what I'm saying is if the average citizen. Feels like they have no legal recourse. If they were to fight a big company like this, they have no, no protection from the law, if they're personally at risk, then when it comes to things like them feeling physically threatened, personally threatened, or seriously wronged by businesses, they will take justice into their own hands after they've reached a breaking point.
And [00:58:00] maybe you're right. Maybe we're reaching a tipping point in society, not just where people are That there's kind of a moral calculus that makes the price worth it for them, but also reaching a point at which they feel like they genuinely have no other choice, because what used to be a viable pathway to pursue justice through legal avenues.
Is no longer there that the, the justice system doesn't serve anyone, but the extremely wealthy anymore. And for them, it's just a series of
Malcolm Collins: the, the, the, the deep state bureaucrats. I mean, if you look at the Trump sentencing where, where, you know, everyone going on about how he's a felon and as we've pointed out, he got a felon for not labeling his prostitute hush money payments as prostitute hush money payments.
Like, like in his tax filings they're like, Oh, this is. That's insane. That's insane that you would, you would give someone a felony for that. Especially when you consider that we know that Kamala Harris husband also was paying hush money [00:59:00] payments to the nanny for having knocked her up. What, Housekeeper, do you think that he was labeling those correctly?
No. So why did, is Trump a felon and Kamala's husband not a felon? It's because Trump is at odds with the deep state bureaucracy. This isn't about the rich versus the poor. This is about those against the oligarchs and the bureaucrats who, for example, I love that the Dems pretend like Elon Musk is some sort of like insider oligarch guy.
No, they hate him. If Camilla had won, his company would have been out of power. They were denying the Starter with his spaceship company thing over like, well if it comes down it might hit a whale.
It
Simone Collins: might
Malcolm Collins: hit a shark. Oh,
Simone Collins: the whale, the whale debacle. Yeah, spaceX,
Malcolm Collins: Malcolm. SpaceX. SpaceX, yeah, it might hit a whale, it might hit a shark.
It's like, wha You you you know that this is just a bureaucrat trying to take down another person. They And you know that, okay, they're like, well, now Elon Musk is running the government, right? Like now he's running an [01:00:00] apartment was yeah, but he created a sundown on this department. He's running itself dissolves before this administration is even over.
He's not trying to create inter institutional power in the way that the deep state did in the way that it protected these oligarchs time and time again. There's a reason why Camilla Rose. Raised over three times as much as Trump. In this last election cycle. There's what was it over a billion dollars?
She wasted on her campaign Yeah,
Simone Collins: the
Malcolm Collins: reports did not look great, but I I do agree with you We do not condone this action. This man was a monster and a very very very bad person I'm just trying to like, go through the ethics of a decision like this, because I think that when I look at the other places this has been talked about, everyone's like, it's obviously unethical because it's against the law.
And I'm like, whoa. Oh yeah.
Simone Collins: And no, [01:01:00] laws are about maintaining social order and they work on average, but not always
Malcolm Collins: the same. People are like, obviously what the insurance guy was doing was ethical because it was within the law. And it's like, well, I mean, obviously, sometimes laws are wrong, right? Like, I don't think the insurance guy should have been allowed to run his company the way he was running it.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yes. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I think that that was horrifying that that was happening. Like, do you think that people should just be going around doing vigilante justice? No, no, but I do think that people should stop Hitler. So it's like, where's the line, right? Like how bad does the person need to be before you need a Batman?
Simone Collins: Yeah. Did Batman ever pursue corrupt capitalists in the shows or movies? Trying to think.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, Superman certainly did with Lex Luthor. [01:02:00] Okay. I actually want to see an episode. I'll see if I can find an episode. If I can't find one, maybe somebody can talk about it in the comments. Where the villain in a superhero show was doing everything legally.
Simone Collins: Ah, yeah,
Malcolm Collins: that's the key. How do they handle this when the person is murdering people legally?
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I just, I just personally, I'm, I'm like, I keep going through because so many people in the comments and read it and stuff, they were sharing stories about how like they watched their life slowly die as her claims kept being denied.
And if I had seen that happen to somebody who I deeply cared about, I watched them slowly die over the course of years. And every day I was sending in claims What would I do
that?
Yeah, you'd lose it. I'd lose it. I'd effing lose it. If somebody, especially knowing that every year I was paying the person who was killing her, paying them on the off.
Hope they might do the right thing this time
that they
were taking money from her [01:03:00] and from me. while watching her die, just so this guy could go on more fancy vacations. Now, I want to talk about who maybe did this. Because a lot of people have pointed out, oh, I think it's the wife. One, they were separated.
And two, she immediately made an announcement that had weird wording, like, we were shattered to hear about. And then, Well, he
Simone Collins: has kids too, right? I mean, Theoretically, the wife and the kids would be shattered.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that they lived in a separate house and everything like that. And there have been rumors that maybe he had started a divorce proceeding.
Now that would have been an absolutely good reason to do something like this. I don't mean like a good, like ethically
Simone Collins: good, No, no, no. But financially logical because yeah, if, if you're getting a divorce, then I'm presumably in all of their estate planning, normally stuff goes to the spouse first. If.
Well, if you look at the
Malcolm Collins: age of the kids who look quite old, these are like like, late teen kids. Okay. To me, that [01:04:00] implies that their marriage must've been at least around 10 years. If you look at when he became CEO, that was in 2021. If you look at when he made most of his money, that was pretty recently.
And they lived in Florida. Now, I happen to be aware of how prenups work in Florida. Oh. And they are extremely strict. Yeah. Even though she got a divorce and they had a prenup, She did nothing. She could literally leave the relationship with exactly the amount of money she brought into the relationship if she was not pregnant.
Simone Collins: Ooh, yikes, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: It would be very easy to plant the blame on this guy. You know, she also said some stuff that was like intentionally like sort of hiding that she didn't quite understand how the industry worked when she apparently works at the doctor as well. So she wouldn't have been that poor. I think
she was a doctor.
But you know, she, she said some stuff that looks like she was hiding some things. Here's my thought on this. I think if she was the one who did it, she probably would have done it herself in some way. It's just too hard to hire Hitman safely.
Simone Collins: It's not Especially if you're a doctor. I feel like there are plenty of ways that you will [01:05:00] know to slowly kill someone away in a way that they won't detect.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the way that's not easily detectable by morgues and stuff like that, heart attacks, something like that. If you're a doctor, you have access to the drugs to do that way easier than hiring a hitman. Yes.
Simone Collins: Although, I imagine a lot of people are too cowardly to do it themselves, so.
Malcolm Collins: I'm just saying hiring a hitman is difficult and really dangerous to do because you've got to, how do you even do that?
Like you, you have to know
Simone Collins: like a mob boss. You have to live with the liability of knowing that they know so they could always blackmail you and she would end up with a lot of money. So there'd be an incentive to blackmail her. So yeah, I guess if I were in her place and I wanted to kill my husband, I would find, especially considering her medical knowledge and that she could probably get access to medications.
Yeah. It would make sense for her to do it. Plus the words on the bullets, that just seems so odd. I mean, no, that would have been
Malcolm Collins: a good way to cover it. I mean, your husband's CEO of like an evil company. Oh, so
Simone Collins: [01:06:00] make it look like it was a disgruntled
Malcolm Collins: United Healthcare. It also, this is what I think it was.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: I don't think it was a family member of someone agreed. I think it was a genuine vigilante. Here is why if it was just a family member of someone begrieved, there are a ton of other insurance companies and while they may deny claims pointlessly less amount of the time, if you take them all together, it's probably more, maybe even double the amount that united health denies claims.
So. Why did it happen to be one of them? Why did it happen to be a guy who apparently has never done a good thing in his life, recently defrauded a firefighter's pension and ran a company that he had run super evilly in the time that he ran them in a way that there's like no moral argument to be made in his defense.
I almost get the impression somebody was looking for an excuse to be a vigilante and wanted to play out a superhero role.
Speaker 35: Do you [01:07:00] think I feel good? When after some dude does some atrocious act, that I have to kill them?
You think that gives me pleasure?
No.
Well, it does. No!
Malcolm Collins: And I don't know. I often ask myself, Why haven't there been more vigilante superhero like characters in our society?
Simone Collins: Why haven't there been Isn't there that guy who literally dressed up in superhero costumes?
Malcolm Collins: But I mean, in an entire society that grew up reading superhero books and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Why haven't there been people who just like took a book and said, I'm going to find the most evil person who's getting away with it in this country. And I'm going to do something about it. Now in the superhero movies, it's easy.
Those are crime bosses and stuff like that. In the real world, the FBI is going after crime bosses. You know, the police are going after crime bosses. Yeah. Yeah. You're not going to get after them in the same way that other organizations are. So if you sat down and say, I'm going to be a vigilante,
Simone Collins: who [01:08:00] can't the government or justice department or FBI or CIA get, then you read some book
Malcolm Collins: like the book, this guy likely read and you're like, Oh, and that's the thing.
The book is what gets me. This seems maybe motivated from reading a book where the guy's like, I don't really value my life. And how many People don't value their lives anymore. The amount of, I mean, yeah,
Simone Collins: that's pretty pervasive. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I might be able to incrementally make this better for Dozens to hundreds of families that are watching their loved ones die unnecessarily every month
Simone Collins: or even just provide them with some solace some feeling of justice when I'm sure you know that that when when anyone in your Family is suffering from a terrible illness You kind of feel like the world is just so deeply unfair and the existence of this guy adds insult to injury, maybe it's just one moment of Hey, at least there's that for all these people.
Malcolm Collins: And yeah. And one thing I'd say is I, I do [01:09:00] feel very deeply for the family of everyone. He denied healthcare too. I'm sorry. I, what I'm saying is, look, this guy had kids sad that their dad died, but they're inheriting tens of millions of dollars that they stole from dying people. Are they giving that money back?
Are they giving it to philanthropy? Like my family did? No. So, like, why am I supposed to have an additional amount of sympathy for them? You could say, have they done something wrong? Yes, they've kept the blood diamonds.
Speaker 38: No, this place is uncle Danny's. You and me, we're family. Promise never
Malcolm Collins: they may choose to not do that in the future in which my moral judgment of them will change in the future
But as of now, My moral judgment of them is just neutral you know people have their parents die for nonsense reasons all the time You can't be like oh because this person had kids if he was actively involved in raising the kids fine But he didn't seem to be he was [01:10:00] separated and living in a different house and so I have to say, why do his kids matter so much more than the dozens of other kids that were left parentless every year?
You know, like, explain, like, like, why, why? And so this comment section is going to be a bloodbath. I haven't seen any public figure really come down as harshly on one side of this as I have. I know that this is an unpopular stance. I know that a lot of people will hate me for this dance. I know a lot of wealthy people will hate me for this dance.
But I think that we need to, like, grow a moral backbone as a society again. And say, either, if politicians want to b***h about this, which they have been b******g about people being happy about this, it's like, why didn't you make what he was doing illegal then?
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: That's your job, politicians, making this s**t illegal.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-6: we will be very, very angry with you. And we will write you a letter telling you how angry we are
Simone Collins: Well, I mean, there's this huge conversation [01:11:00] about the healthcare industry in the United States anyway. I mean, the fact that we allow the existence of insurance companies that have caused all healthcare costs to balloon as much as they have is, is insane. So, I mean, any policymaker who's morally negatively judging people who are celebrating this assassination should instead be focusing on fixing a very broken healthcare system in the United States.
They're also culpable.
Malcolm Collins: Why on every single Reddit thread I saw about this, which judges like the average opinion of people, Why were they all happy about this? Why everywhere I go online, where it's looking at average sentiment, In the Facebook reacts here, you had 25 K laugh, crying reacts to two K sad, crying reacts.
And 1. 7 K care reacts.
Simone Collins: Oh, dear. I mean, there's a bunch of elements to this, right? There's the anti capitalist element. So a lot of people are just excited because [01:12:00] they hate all capitalists. Anyone who works for, makes money from a large corporation is I believe in decent capital. You're not that person. Yeah. Well,
Malcolm Collins: generations, you can be a capitalist without killing people.
Simone Collins: Yeah, but I mean, I think a lot of people are reacting just to that. And then a lot of other people have experienced. United healthcare and they're for obvious reasons, very happy about that.
It's just, it's messed up. Glad it wasn't Brian Johnson. Cause that scared me for a moment.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I think there are very few people in the world who.
I would be like, Oh, but I like, I'm not sure. Like an example of another group, the people who okayed the and hid how dangerous the they were giving to people was in this country. Oh,
the family
did this. They, they own the companies that did this their companies obscured. That was dangerous.
They got tons of people addicted [01:13:00] to it and they basically single handedly caused the addiction crisis which is bigger than any addiction crisis our country has ever had. You can see our episode on this.
Speaker 47: Vengeance.
Speaker 48: Bruce Wayne? What? Oh my god. What? Yeah, you No. You're Bruce Wayne. How Why could you even say that? Your goatee.
Speaker 46: Maybe I'm just copying Bruce Wayne. Cause he's like, the coolest guy in Gotham. I
Speaker 44: mean, he's not that cool. He's just rich.
Speaker 46: Oh, this is the classic discrimination that handsome billionaires face every day. He doesn't actually have a billion dollars, d*****s. Most of his fortune is invested in Wayne Enterprises.
Speaker 44: And does Wayne Enterprises happen to make dark armored vehicles?
Speaker 46: Yeah, but mostly opioids. Oh my god, really? And [01:14:00] opioid addiction recovery pills.
Speaker 48: Oh my god. You're so stupid. You're a villain. Ha!
Speaker 46: Save your jokes for the Jokester.
Simone Collins: Yeah, they're famously
Malcolm Collins: there are other instances where I'm like, but there's few, there are few, few, few, few, few, few.
Simone Collins: Well, and they've done it already. This guy was still doing it. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And that's, that's also differently. The Sackler family also has been
Simone Collins: successfully. Prosecuted. I mean, you could argue no one could put a price on the damage they've done, but they have paid a lot of money and, and been quite dragged through the mud.
Malcolm Collins: He was ramping up these efforts.
Simone Collins: So Oh, he was leaning into it, was he? Oh, dear. Okay. I didn't realize that well, no, I mean, if you look at
Malcolm Collins: the gross profits,
Simone Collins: Oh yeah, well, he certainly wasn't changing his stance and suddenly he
Malcolm Collins: was increasing it is the point I was making.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And if this continued within his company, other companies in the industry would follow it.
Why [01:15:00] not?
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Just like when American Airlines decided to become antagonistic to our travel agencies and then everyone was like,
Oh, yeah, let's throw them under the bus.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Cause they realize, Oh, you can't actually be a dick to your customers in that way. But for him being addicted to a customer, isn't a travel agency going out of business as a person's mother dying or kid dying.
Simone Collins: Exactly. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: All right. Did I change your mind on this Simone? Are you? Oh, very much.
Simone Collins: I will never advise anyone to assassinate anyone or break any laws whatsoever, but I 100 percent understand the mirth in response to this, to this assassination and yeah wow, that it's, it just saddens me to think how, you know. Many people have been hurt [01:16:00] by these corporate policies. That's really heartbreaking, but I also just hate them.
The health care system. I mean, the problem is the United States health care system. I wouldn't want to do health care in another country, right? It's really good here. The quality of care, the technology. It's it's the hospitals. It's great. I love it. Right. But then I wish that we could just have that and get rid of the insurance industry.
As it exists now, it's just like when you think it very similar to the school system, right? The amount of money that everyone pays when they just want to get health care, but instead it goes toward bureaucracy. That does nothing to do with anyone's benefit. No societal benefit whatsoever. Similar to the schooling system where a huge portion of it just goes to admin, benefiting absolutely no one.
It makes me very angry. And I, I'm going to say this [01:17:00] isn't just this one guy who's ruining everything. It is an entire industry that is extremely corrupt. That has to be dealt with. Not an entire
Malcolm Collins: industry. His numbers were double that of the industry standard. That doesn't change. But yeah, but even
Simone Collins: the best of health insurance companies, It's health
Malcolm Collins: insurance company is Kaiser Permanente, which has a 7 percent denial rate.
It's Kaiser Permanente
Simone Collins: is still playing its part in driving up healthcare costs because small doctors offices have hired additional staff just to negotiate with them, just to lower their, you know, like to maximize their profits and like this, the whole game created by insurance companies in the health insurance world creates a huge amount of waste.
That whole dance. And that's what I hate. Yes. Yeah, I
Malcolm Collins: agree with that. I just, I just want to push back on this idea of this guy is no different from any other thing. He's not. No,
Simone Collins: obviously he, he and a pond full of piranhas is the uniquely pernicious and toothy and aggressive piranha who does so much more damage.
But [01:18:00] I want to
Malcolm Collins: actually flip this back on you in a way that might change the way you see this. Okay. He was increasing these practices. We can see this from the data. Every year he was increasing the practices. Yeah. You, me, and our kids are on UnitedHealthcare.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: How would you feel if due to him increasing these practices every year, because he was getting no pushback from shareholders, one of our kids died?
Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean. This could have saved the
Malcolm Collins: life of one of our kids.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, this could have. I mean, this happening. It's true. And we've already. Done kind of dangerous things with our family's health because we can't afford
Malcolm Collins: to get because they denied things when we had a rabies exposure and we had the state say our kids had had a rabies exposure.
And the state, the state, like CDC gave us a note, not a doctor, the CDC gave
Simone Collins: us the, the, the county, but yeah.
Malcolm Collins: The, the county disease [01:19:00] control like the Pennsylvania Disease Control, sorry, Pennsylvania Disease Control saying, Give this to your health insurance provider, and they said, no, for rabies. Do you know how horrible it is to die to rabies?
Like, one of our kids may still die from a decision this guy made because rabies takes about a year to form. Yeah,
I mean, that's
just our kids family, just a heads up.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And the reason why the rabies one is so important is because they're deny thing, right? They're like, oh, well, maybe we can get a few more days out of this.
Maybe we can get a few weeks out of this. Rabies needs to be taken within 24 hours.
Simone Collins: Yeah, we, we didn't deny
Malcolm Collins: prevented us from getting it. Yeah, it was not cool. So consider that Simone, when you think about this person's life and to all of you who, Oh, you're such a monster, Malcolm. What if it was your kids?
You don't care. [01:20:00] You don't care. You'd say, yeah, I'd suck that up. I'd let him take my money. F**k me while my kid died. Sorry, I just. I just have so little sympathy for these deontologists who are deontological in a way that obviously makes them the bad guys.
Simone Collins: Yeah, there's definitely a place at which following the rules becomes an inconceivably evil act, for sure.
Inconceivably evil. This guy did a 9 11 every year. Well, and I think the key thing, too, is to understand that A lot of people think that as long as they follow the rules, they're not doing anything wrong. And maybe this guy had convinced himself of that. And so he literally thought, well, I'm not doing anything morally wrong.
I'm not doing anything. Also did
Malcolm Collins: securities fraud defrauding his investors. He wasn't even [01:21:00] interested in fiduciary duty.
Simone Collins: Well, yeah, yeah, it's, you know,
Malcolm Collins: I don't believe he was a bad person, but I believe that he was a type of person who, you know, if you look at like capitalists, there's like different types of capitalist people, you know, my family might have intergenerational wealth, but if it's because often they remade the money every generation, like, okay, so for example, people might hear your dad,
He must have been super wealthy and inherited a bunch of money in the company from his dad.
Do you know how he ended up running the company? So his granddad who was the previous of the company ended up taking a million dollar loan out without my father's permission, Under my father's name and this is when my father was earning a fairly median salary
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-7: From what I remember at the time he had no significant savings. He hadn't inherited any money and he was earning a salary of $60,000 a year.
Simone Collins: Yeah, it was
Malcolm Collins: He yeah, my father ended up making tons [01:22:00] of money because he grew the company a ton But he would have ended his life Yeah.
It's just very much like ruthless care.
Like sure, son, you can take over the family company. I'll just go to a banker and give the debt to ensure that you own a majority of shares now. Without your permission, because he knew the banker and it was an old Texas family. Oh,
Simone Collins: that's okay. I was wondering how that.
Oh, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: They were friends. They were in some club together. And so he just went to the banker and he goes, Oh, you don't need to ask my, my grandson. Just put it on his account right here. Just, just put
Simone Collins: it on his tab. Just to come
Malcolm Collins: there.
Simone Collins: Not a problem. Well, I, yeah, I just had figured that perhaps he'd given your dad a pile of papers to sign and your dad had just trusting him signed them.
No, no, no, no, no,
Malcolm Collins: no, no, no,
Simone Collins: no, no, no, no, no,
Malcolm Collins: no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, He just gave
Simone Collins: them to me. He gave them to me. Because isn't that, that's fraud. That's kind of super
Malcolm Collins: weird. It is fraud. But it's also the way the [01:23:00] old boys club worked back then.
Simone Collins: Yeah, when also like, what are you gonna do? You know, sue your dad.
Do you want to really make Christmases that awkward? Granddad, by the way. The
Malcolm Collins: dad actually totally disapproved of this and hated the granddad. Oh, that's That's nice. The dad was really nice. The dad was the one who, my dad's dad was the one who became a congressman. His dad was kind of a dick. The one who took out the dead in my dad's name.
Simone Collins: Gosh.
Malcolm Collins: Well, because he gave all his money. The reason he got in a fight with his son is because he also, every generation they do this, they gave all their money to charity and his son was really mad about it. So he increased all of his shares in the company instead of to the family, to the local Baptist church.
That's what the falling out was about. And that's why he didn't give my dad his shares in the company because his shares in the company were bequeathed to the Baptist Church. He took out debt to give those shares to my dad. So you can think of it as horrible, but also it's kind of ethical in a way.
Like no intergenerational wealth transfer. You're going to get fucked. Every, every penny I've made, I'm giving to a charity I care about. [01:24:00] But then my dad kind of did the same thing to me. So whatever, I don't mind it. I'm, I, I, I'm, I'm glad that I don't have any of that weight on my shoulders, you know?
Simone Collins: I, yeah, I don't, I don't think parents do favors to their children by giving them huge inheritances. Yeah. I do think that surprising them with amounts is good. If you have the luxury of doing that, I don't think that's going to be possible for us also because I want to be super transparent with our kids and money.
But giving them some token amount that might help with the down payment on a house, for example is huge, especially these days, if you can do that, but something where you get like an allowance, you know, like these trust fund kids that have like monthly allowances that really prevent them from getting jobs, prevent them from growing up.
That's bad. So basically like something that might cover. Catastrophic medical care or down payment on a house good anything beyond that something that like props up a lifestyle bad
Malcolm Collins: Anyway, love you Simone I've had a great time talking [01:25:00] to you. What are we doing for dinner tonight?
Simone Collins: coconut rice Hopefully better this time because I did both full fat coconut milk and only coconut milk, no water plus more salt plus lemon zest. So we'll see if that is very
Malcolm Collins: interesting. Coconut and lemon.
That's an interesting flavor combo.
Simone Collins: I don't know. It was supposed to be lime, but we don't have lime. So
Malcolm Collins: no, I'm just interested, but the lime and the coconut, you know what I mean?
Speaker 50: Work all night and drink a rum come Mr. Tallyman, tally me banana Will I come and be one go home?
Simone Collins: We'll see.
Malcolm Collins: And for the meat. For the meat. What are we doing? Just another dang dang sauce? Same as last
Simone Collins: night, but with, well, we can
Malcolm Collins: do garlic again.
I could have picked it up at Walmart, the oyster sauce. Oh, whoopsies. Sorry. All right. Well, we'll just do dang dang and a little bit of Well,
Simone Collins: yeah, if you could get out the sauces you want to use then I would. All right. All
Malcolm Collins: right. [01:26:00] I love you to death Simone. You are a great wife.
Simone Collins: I love you too, Malcolm.
You are perfect.
Speaker 43: Take the cheese, Josie.
There's more. Titan's cheese? Titan, do you want more flower shaped cheese? Aw, that's so nice of you, Torsten. Did you guys shape the cheese? What shape is the cheese, Titan? That is a dinosaur nugget. Yeah, and it's flashing and I can see it falling away. This is my dinosaur nugget. Titan, you have one in your plate already.
Why don't you take a bite? My dinosaur nugget. Octavian, what are you doing? I died. You died? Alright, can [01:27:00] you also eat your dinner?
Titan, you like your dinosaur nugget? Something stopped me! Something stopped you? No, something shot me! Shot? Oh, something shot you. Well, you know how to get your hearts back is you have to eat meatballs. Why don't you do that? Good idea. I'm strong! Good idea.

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The Disappearing Child in the City: The Urban Exodus of Families
5 déc.· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
https://discord.com/invite/EGFRjwwS92
In this episode, Simone and the host delve into the concerning trend of families leaving major American cities. They discuss an article from The Atlantic titled 'The Urban Family Exodus is a Warning for Progressives,' highlighting statistics and factors contributing to this mass migration. With a focal point on the dramatic decline of children under five in cities like Manhattan, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, they explore the potential consequences on urban life and progressive policies. The conversation extends to comparisons between conservative and progressive cities, the impact of progressive ideologies on city infrastructure, and personal anecdotes on living in both urban and suburban environments. The episode also touches on the broader social implications and the future of family life in urban areas.
Speaker 2: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone! Today we are going to be talking about an interesting phenomenon that I was aware was happening, but I was not aware how severe it was, and it is chilling when you go to the stats, and here we are talking about the mass and very recent mass exodus of families and children from major American cities.
They are just disappearing. And for this, I will be looking at an article in the Atlantic called the urban family exodus is a warning for progressiveS. So, of course, the piece starts with the writer bemoaning J. D. Vance as the worst human being in the world, and Trump is all monsters because they must, in their performative shlicking, I love this as always whenever they're the pronatalist piece, they must start by saying how horrible we all are, and then they go to But they may have a point. But, at the risk [00:01:00] of giving Vance any credit here, I must admit that progressives do have a family problem. The problem doesn't exist at the level of individual choice, where conservative scolds tend to fixate.
Rather, it exists at the level of urban family policy. American families with young children are leaving big urban . counties in droves. And that says something interesting about the state of mobility and damning about the state of American cities and the progressives who govern them. First, the facts in large urban metros, the number of Children under five years old is in free fall, according to a new analysis of census data by Conan O'Brien, a policy and Oh, no, sorry.
Connor O'Brien looks like he's
Speaker 4: a policy analyst.
Speaker 2: Now you're doing a new guy at the think tank economic innovation group from 2020 to 2023. So in three years, the number of these kids declined by nearly 20 percent in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens. And the [00:02:00] Bronx.
They also fell by double digit percentage points in counties making up most or all of Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and St. Louis. If you do not understand how huge that is, imagine if some other population declined by 20 percent in Manhattan over the course of three years.
Imagine if like the number of black people in Manhattan declined by 20 percent over three years, would progressives be a brick? Would they be running around like the sky was on
Speaker: fire? Well, and we also have to think about the, the industry impacts of this. If there are not enough children to justify good schools, good daycares, good services,
Speaker 2: it's going to be really hard to get that.
Yeah.
Speaker: This is terrifying.
Speaker 2: This exodus is not merely the result of past COVID waves. Yes. The pace of the urban exodus was fastest during the high pandemic years of [00:03:00] 2020 and 2021. But even at the slower rate of out migration since then, several counties, including those encompassing Manhattan, Brooklyn, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco are on pace to lose.
50 percent of their under 5 population in 20 years. 50 percent in the next 20 years. To be clear, demographics have complex feedback loops and counterfeedback loops. The total population of these places won't necessarily have by the 2040s. But we all know it will, so let's be honest here. Nor is this exodus merely the result of declining nationwide birth rates.
Yes, women across the country are having fewer children than they used to. The share of women under 40 who have never given birth doubled from the early 1980s to the 2020s. But the under 5 population is still declining twice as fast in large urban counties as it is elsewhere, according to O'Brien Censor News.
Analysis. So what's the matter with Manhattan and L. [00:04:00] A. and Chicago? After the Great Recession, during a period of low urban crime, young college educated people flocked to downtown areas to advance their career. Retail upscaled and housing costs increased. Soon families started to leave. In 2019, the economist Jed Koloko showed that in cities including San Francisco, Seattle and Washington D.
C., young high income college educated whites were moving in. And multiracial families with children were moving out. The coronavirus pandemic, which resulted in school closures and loosened the tether between home and office, pushed even more families to flee. Now, I want to note that they are playing a little shell game here because I want to put these statistics out on the screen right here.
Multiracial people as an ethnic group have the lowest fertility rate of any ethnic group in the U. S. Well below whites. Wait, really? Yeah, remember when we were going over that piece yesterday? Oh. But yeah this is, [00:05:00] he's just, he's just playing, playing games here. Playing games here. And also, as I mentioned in that episode of all ethnic groups in the U. S. other than inter ethnic groups blacks have the second lowest fertility rate. If you are only looking at blacks, not 30 percent of income.
If you're looking at blacks in the bottom 30 percent of income, it brings the black fertility rate in line with other fertility rates.
Speaker 3: But
Speaker 2: blacks actually have a devastatingly low fertility when they're not in just objective poverty. Wow. In the United States at least. Which goes against progressive narratives.
, so here they're saying, quote, I am deeply worried about the family exodus doom loop, end quote, O'Brien told me, quote, when the population of young kids in a city falls to 10 or 20 percent in just a few years, that's a potential political earthquake. Almost overnight, there are fewer parents around to fight for better schools, local playgrounds, or all the other mundane .
Amenities families care about in quote behavior is contagious as Yale sociologist Nicholas Chetensky has shown if you have a [00:06:00] friend who smokes or exercises It significantly increases the odds that you will do the same The same principle might hold for having or not having kids actually studies have shown very I don't know He's not familiar with these studies, but okay, whatever as young children become scarce in big cities People in their twenties and thirties who are thinking about having children will have fewer opportunities to see firsthand how fulfilling parenthood can be.
What they're left with instead are media representations, which tend to be inflected by the negativity bias of news. At a glance, these trends might not seem like they have anything to do with contemporary progressivism, but they do. America's richest cities are profoundly left leaning and many of them, including New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco are themselves in constant in left leaning.
States, the places ought to be advertisements for what modern progressive movement can achieve without the meddlesome conservatism getting in the way. At the local or state level, if progressives want to sell their cause to the masses, they should be able to say, elect us and we'll make [00:07:00] America more like Oakland, or Brooklyn, or New York.
Suburban Detroit. If they can't make that argument, that's a problem. Right now, it's hard to make that argument because urban progressivism is afflicted by an inability to build. Cities in red states are building much more housing than blue states, blah blah blah, and they're going NIMBY here. But the point being is and just, you know, it is Democrats that are keeping this building stuff from going up.
It's due to the way the corrupt unions influence democratic politicians to ensure that building costs in the U. S. are much more expensive in cities than they are even in the E. U. Again, the visual politic video on this, I'll put the picture on screen so you can search it. The picture says the 2 million toilet, but I think the, the actual title is something like infrastructure costs in the U.
S. are skyrocketing. And VisualPolitik, I would always recommend their channel. Oh, they're great. Yeah. Ask, like, how I know so much about the world. In terms of like contemporary international politics visual politic is probably the best educational research [00:08:00] or contemporary political events that exist in the world today by a significant margin.
After them, Peter Zeihan is the next best resource.
Some people dismiss him as a CIA. Asset. Quote unquote, and I would really push back on this notion. That's not to say that he isn't obviously tied very closely to the American military industrial complex. And he doesn't have a very strong, , motivations to promote their interests.
But he is the first geopolitical analyst that any of the mainstream listen to that recognize the huge potential impact of fertility collapse. And he has made a number of a very, very correct calls over the ages. And he's generally been right about most of the calls that he's made. So when an individual comes to me and they're like, oh, , don't trust this guy because he has these preset interests.
I'm like, well, that may be true, but he sort of batting a hundred right now. So when somebody with no [00:09:00] geopolitical contacts. And who has made it no accurate predictions about future geopolitical events. Comes to me and says, don't trust this guy who has tons of geopolitical context, because he has tons of geopolitical context and who has made tons of accurate predictions about the geopolitical scene and how it's going to play out.
I don't know, I'm just a little incredulous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. But also I
Speaker: just love how wholesome Peter Zeihan is just like Doing his podcasts while on hikes a little bit winded, you know, so he's really trying to exert himself.
He's a
Speaker 2: good guy. When we were publishing our book, we asked him for advice and he actually got back to us.
And I always, you know, I have sort of this internal reference part of everyone more famous than us who did us a solid before we were as famous as them. And they're sort of in my never ever betray.
Speaker: Or
Speaker 2: who just
Speaker: took to take time to respond to us as nobodies. It means a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And this was back before we had received much news coverage and stuff like that But also even now like that.
We're well [00:10:00] known i'm like for example Just pearly things platform does she had us on her show, you know, she was friendly with us and she's at a much higher level than we are right so huge for me infinite like I'm always in her camp. Same with Chris Williamson. Same with Stuttering Craig, who runs Sidescrollers.
These are people who, Ru Rubyart who runs what of all his? Ayla. These are all people who helped us before we became big deals. And there's many other famous people who've helped us before we became big deals, but don't want to be officially associated with us, so I'm not going to name their names.
But they're still in my I will do and always stand them bucket.
The one downside of this, of course, being that individuals might be able to.
Triangulate who our friends are from the individuals who we always stand, no matter what, even when it may not make perfect sense why we're standing them.
Speaker 2: But yeah, those are, those are good sources. But anyway, so they, they basically show in that particular video how progressive politics in the United States has made it [00:11:00] impossible to build in the major cities. However, I think if you're saying, Oh, the problem is we're not building enough housing in major cities and that's why people aren't having kids.
I think, you know, you're missing the forest for the trees.
As an example of this, a lot of people, when they complain about oh, low fertility rates are totally a factor of small living spaces or cost of housing. I would point out that in Israel over the past decade of home prices have increased by 345% and are unusually high on a global scale. And this has actually been driven primarily by government policy.
Specifically regulations in inefficient land use. And yet Israel has sky high fertility rates.
Speaker 2: I do think he makes a point that. If progressives can't go to conservatives and be like in the areas where we dominate we have fixed the problems that you don't have because it's clear I think to anyone who has lived in a progressive in a conservative district as we have now life is like objectively better in conservative districts.
Like [00:12:00] there's more stores that it's cheaper. The, the Police are better. The fire people are better. The infrastructure is better. The it's it's kind of
Speaker: humbling. It's humbling just to also even just to see the experience that our son is getting in kindergarten because we're setting we're letting him go to public schools kindergarten because he asked.
We don't consider it his education. It's a supplement to school. homeschooling that he like, you know, we consider like soccer, man, the resources he gets the treatment he gets. It's incredible. So yeah,
Speaker 2: this was not the case. So my, my brother and his wife made an exodus from LA where they were based. And they've just been like, Oh my God, like it is so much better out here in, in rural Pennsylvania than it was in LA in every respect.
And I think, yeah, This is something where you you really didn't want to move to a rural area when I first suggested it to you and you were treating it as a massive concession. I [00:13:00] remember when we were first talking about this, you're like, yeah, but there's so many things to do in the city and there's so many, like, I could walk
Speaker: everywhere, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, you can
Speaker 2: walk everywhere. Like we can walk to the grocery store. And then what ends up happening, right? As, as you realize. I remember like when you realize you're like, wait, we were walking to a grocery store 30 minutes and carrying our bags back home and we are driving two and a half minutes to a grocery store here, filling our trunk and driving it back home that it is infinitely more convenient.
Or it's like, yeah, but you won't have as much to do. I'm sorry. I get to take my kids to the grocery store. Myriad of festivals which are happening constantly around us. I get to take them to pick pumpkins I get to take them to to pick wildflowers at the wildflower picking areas. I get to take them to pet bunny rabbits I get to take them to like it is so so so much to do that is so much [00:14:00] Like nicer and more wholesome than the things I was doing in the city before.
And, and what do I want from city with a kid? It's like, what are they offering kids? Nothing. And then it's like, Oh, but they have a few nice museums. And it's like. Yeah, maybe, but they're not harder to get to from ex urban areas than they are from the cities. So, for example we went to Philadelphia this weekend to go to the Franklin Institute and it was a 30 minute drive.
If I had gone from the city, what would it have been, a 20 minute drive? Like, this is the thing with cities, especially the major cities like San Francisco that people miss is you're not actually that much closer to other stuff in cities because the infrastructure of cities is so poorly designed
Speaker: when we also thought that living in a city or sorry, living in the suburbs would isolate us from friends when it turns out that.
We actually socialize more and more efficiently as people who live outside the city. And that's not because people come to us because it is no one wants, no one's here. No one's even really in Philadelphia. [00:15:00] We go out to New York. We've got to DC, but what we do, and we're just about to do this is we will host happy hours or cocktail parties two nights in a row while staying at a nice place.
And just invite everyone we know in that city to come out and a decent number of people show up
Speaker 2: Because we're a limited commodity.
Speaker: Yeah, like if you're in town, everyone's like, well, maybe I'll just see you later. You're here. I'm here We'll see each other eventually and it never happens and we socialized very very little when we lived in cities Now that we're outside.
We're very systematic about it. We don't waste our time and when we do it, we do it really well It's nice. So yeah, it's You Not what you would expect, I guess. I was very surprised by our move to the suburbs. They're much more pronatal, for sure. Well, and people like MoreBirths on Twitter constantly make this argument that I mean, he likes to argue, I think, that there's just not enough physical space in apartments and cities that people are too But hold on, I'll
Speaker 2: [00:16:00] argue more than this.
I don't just think it's living in a rural area. So that was one thing that changed, but you have lived in more conservative and less conservative cities. So you've lived in San Francisco and Dallas. What is the quality of life like between those two cities?
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: You grew up, I grew up in Dallas.
My, my family's in local politics in Dallas. So I, my opinion of Dallas doesn't count. What is your perspective of the city? As somebody who visited, I remember the first time you visited and you're like, where are the homeless people?
Speaker: Yeah. It's just too hot for them. Although now there are homeless people in Dallas, but before, yeah, they're just
Speaker 2: not that many.
I mean you say it's too hot for them, but it's not that it's that they don't offer services for them. Yeah, there's just not much of an incentive. San Francisco recently had a policy to convert luxury high rises to homeless apartments that are given to them for free. New York has a policy where they rent out rooms in hotel rooms, sometimes luxury hotel rooms, for homeless people [00:17:00] rather than letting them sleep on the streets.
Speaker: Yeah, not ideal. You think Dallas
Speaker 2: has s**t like that?
Speaker: Not ideal.
Speaker 2: That's why they're not in Dallas, because they're not putting them up in luxury hotels. And Dallas has democratic politicians running it. They're just not wackadoos like the ultra progressives of the East Coast.
Speaker: I mean, I don't know what to say. It is, it is very different. Yeah. And even the social scene I thought would be worse in Dallas and it wasn't, and it wasn't much, we couldn't find progressive people. In fact, the progressive people that we met. In Dallas, you know, because you think, oh, there are only conservatives in Dallas.
And that certainly was the impression of people I knew in the Bay Area. When I left, they always said, well, couldn't you at least just go to Austin, not Dallas, but they were many conservative and many progressive young people in Dallas. And they were honestly more interesting because they were [00:18:00] progressive, not because it was normative, but because they.
We're genuinely progressive people. And I think that's the other really big thing is that progresses are more interesting and fun in conservative or centrist cities because they're real and they're not just let's
Speaker 2: talk about. I'm sorry that I think you actually make a great argument there, right? Like.
If you, if you go to a Dallas is a Democrat city, like it is a solid blue city. One of my cousins recently ran for Congress in Dallas. And she ran as a Republican and it was just like, she had no shot. She had no shot. My, my, my granddad with the Congressman there who, when it, when it was Republican, but like it's not anymore.
Anyway, so, they, they, they, if you can trust something like Dallas. We've been to Austin recently, which is genuinely more progressive. Like it's like a progressive progressive city.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker 2: It is nightmarish living condition. It
Speaker: doesn't feel safe. It doesn't [00:19:00] feel clean and nice. We
Speaker 2: literally
Speaker: saw
Speaker 2: a bum fight.
Speaker: Remember we had one
Speaker 2: actually start following us and like, like yelling at us to like attack us.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: That one time. Yeah, we felt super not safe. Austin is not a safe place.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Could you imagine What's so funny though is that we also walked by that boogaloo guy who like had a pretty sizeable Did you know
Speaker 2: Austin had a parade, an anti natalist parade, where everyone dressed in like black and like looked sad and like
Speaker 4: Oh, they just looked sad?
Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently somebody said it was the most Depressing parade they've ever seen because the anti natalists are just like depressing people you know We're gonna have a pro natalist like parade like a fairground thing when we host the pro natalist. Oh, yeah. Yeah cheaper So if you are in austin, for the natalist conference garbage fire of the city but no, and I, I literally mean it like when I think like Austin, it is, it is like Portland level bat.
It is like an actual open garbage fire at this point. You would [00:20:00] not want your kid walking down
Speaker: the neighborhoods outside of the main city. It's just the problems that we always go to, like that area around the convention center that has the most problems.
Speaker 2: I don't think so. I mean, Dallas has quote unquote, like downtown is a dangerous part of Dallas and I've never actually felt in danger in downtown Dallas.
I have been to Austin like three times recently and I have felt in mortal danger every one of those times. I have never. Downtown Dallas has wing bucket,
Speaker: wing bucket, home of the sour cream and onion. Yeah. I don't know if it's still
Speaker 2: there, but that was in central Dallas.
Speaker: It had better be. Oh, get your bucket.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker: You
Speaker 2: got
Speaker: to
Speaker 2: get your bucket. When I learned something else for people who are watching this from Dallas because I didn't know this when I was interviewing my dad but apparently it was him. He's the reason why the underground tunnels that connect the center of the city do air conditioning stuff.
He was on the, or like started the community to put that together. Oh, your grandfather
Speaker: did that?
Speaker 2: What? Your grandfather started that? No, I think my [00:21:00] dad did. It was either my dad or my grandfather. I can't remember from the thing. I just didn't know. Wing
Speaker: Bucket is still there, by the way. And also, there is now a Deep Ellum location.
Speaker 2: Oh! Oh yeah, I wanted to invest in them when I had their food. I was like, this is some great stuff. I know, I think you
Speaker: met the owner and spoke with him. And you're like, can I invest? And he's like, I don't know, man. I just own this business. Labors.
Speaker 4: But oh yeah, they PPJ, spicy Korean
Speaker: barbecue. Sorry. Mm.
Speaker 2: Why Austin is so bad. Like why this ends up happening. And I think it's all downstream. And we talked about this in another episode, this rehabilitate rather than prosecute mindset. Which is to say that when people are bad actors in a city environment the progressive mindset is we can fix them and it's probably our fault that they're bad actors.
Whereas the more conservative mindset is to say
Speaker: just remove them from the equation.
Speaker 2: Remove them from the equation. Yeah. They're being a bad actor. They're going to breed more bad actors, cause more people to make the same poor decisions that they've made. Yeah.
Speaker: Cause more damage. So,
Speaker 2: and, and, and [00:22:00] worse victimize innocent people, which is what we see in places like Austin all of these signs that say things like keep Austin weird and stuff like that, you can be weird.
And still have a degree of ruthlessness to the way that you, you treat individuals. Yeah,
Speaker: that's so true. You can be weird and ruthless and weird.
Speaker 2: Does it mean hold on what people say? Keep keep Austin weird. I'm in weird. Okay. Oh, no. Now that, now that
Speaker: but like since Tim Walz started the whole weird as like an accusation against conservatives, does Austin have to, and does Portland have to drop the whole Do they have to drop?
Weird. Weird. I hope they do. I hope
Speaker 2: I, I actually wanna like, do a campaign around that. Like, Portland is weird. Just like JD Vance. Just like JD
Speaker: Vance make, make Portland weird again.
Speaker 6: Here in Portland, we've been hearing for a while now that we are weird. And if he's weird, she's weird, and they're weird. And if this is weird, and that is [00:23:00] weird.
Then all we have to say is
Democrats and the Harris campaign now deploying a new adjective to blast the Republican ticket. Some of what he and his running mate are saying, well, it's just plain weird. Get those nerds! I mean, on the other side, they're just weird. Nerds! It's not just a, a, a, a weird style that he brings. Nerds! Nerds!
Nerds! Nerds! Where are they? I think they're talking about us. No way. Oh no! Ah! Ah! Ah!
Speaker: Oh my God. Yeah, that would be interesting.
Speaker 2: But when they say weird, they mean normative. Like they mean culturally normative to the urban monoculture.
I mean obviously that's what that's code for. Yeah. But it, it, it turns them into these horrible places to have your kids. I mean, would you feel safe with your kids in Philadelphia right now? I haven't been to Philadelphia for a long
Speaker: time,
Speaker 2: so I don't know. [00:24:00] Okay. I guess, yeah, I, I'm the one who still goes to Philadelphia.
You don't, when was the last time you went, you go to DC and New York more than Philadelphia now, right?
Speaker: I do. Yes. Sadly.
Speaker 2: Even though we're like, no one,
Speaker: no one's in Philadelphia. Like we don't have a critical mass. of movers and shakers in Philadelphia. We've tried to build it, but just no one seems to be there aside from one person who I deeply respect.
So there you go. There's
Speaker 2: a couple interesting people in Philadelphia. We just don't, aside
Speaker: from Tracy wood grains, who
Speaker 2: Oh, Tracy Woodgrain's in Philadelphia? No, I was thinking of the various, like, conservative influencers we know in the area. And keep Oh, like the YouTubers who live in Phoenixville right by us, right?
Yeah, so for example, like, somebody who lives in our neighborhood is the Lore Lodge guy. He's like, he, I don't know where he is, but I know he lives in Phoenixville, so he's within eight minutes of our house. But I know I've also seen, like, I've been able to piece together where other [00:25:00] YouTubers live, and I don't want to, like, out it, because He's talking is not cool.
Yeah. We live easily within a 10 to 15 minute drive of like 10 other really famous YouTubers. And we're not famous YouTubers here. I'm saying like, these are like actually famous, famous YouTubers. Yeah, actually famous people like our neighborhood YouTube . Maybe we can
Speaker: make this the new YouTuber hangout.
You know, like in LA there's all these mansions where YouTubers live, but like this is where the based family man YouTubers live, where everyone just has their own house and lives a good life instead of. You know, living, like, cracked out. Yeah, all the YouTubers
Speaker 2: I'm thinking of are, like, true crime YouTubers or, like, like, cryptid YouTubers or, like, YouTubers who focus on geopolitics or YouTubers who focus on conservative politics.
Those are, like, the categories that this area seems to attract. But and I will note this that they are all, like, either politically centrist or conservative, as YouTubers that I'm aware of and they All are very private and do not hang out with like the [00:26:00] wider YouTube community. So that's the thing.
Like you could try to create like a critical mass of them here, but they don't like they'd be, have no interest in talking with other YouTubers.
Speaker: Come on, man. That sounds great. Let's just all, I grew up with this culture in my family. It's one of my favorite family traditions of all time. And this is something that my parents coined, or at least that's they used, they called it parallel play.
Which is we would just all ignore each other, do our own things, but in proximity with each other. So we were enjoying each other's company. Sometimes we were listening to the same thing. Like we'd always listen to the same NPR shows together. We'd listen to this American life. We'd listen to the wait, wait, don't tell me.
We'd wait to listen to car talk. We'd listen to all these like folksy Bay area, like San Francisco radio shows that came on. It was like a Celtic program. It was just great. And we would just all do it together with the same kind of backdrop of media. and be really happy. My mom would fold laundry. I would go through catalogs while eating food and my dad [00:27:00] would do whatever it is that my dad did.
And it was great. And I would just love to have a parallel play community here where everyone like, maybe we'll walk by each other at stores and just be like, I'm glad they're here, but not talk. We won't talk. And we won't make eye contact. We'll just be like, That's your idea of community.
Speaker 2: I love all these people who are like, Oh, well, we moved near you guys.
You know, we'd want a feeling of community and stuff like that. And you're like, yeah, your kids can play with our kids, but don't expect us to talk to you. Like, yeah, I don't want to risk having to communicate with somebody. Even our like, Close friends, like people who I really respect. I don't like, I, I'm like, I, I guess I moderately enjoy talking to them a few times a year, but I mostly like reading the content that they put out and watching the videos they make.
And, and that's my, my social connection is a parallel parasocial connection. I don't need more than that. Yeah.
Speaker: But then, you know, if the apocalypse comes, then we like, you know, create a sort of defensive network and, you know, trade guns and bullets and vodka and [00:28:00] Legos. Are we getting a
Speaker 2: bunch more guns this Black Friday?
Speaker: Yeah, and maybe vodka and Legos for our currency. It'll be great.
Speaker 2: That's a great gift for the architects and stuff like that. You got to give them Vodka
Speaker: and Legos.
Speaker 2: No, vodka and guns.
Speaker: Oh, vodka and guns. Oh, vodka, guns, and Legos. I feel like that's really, maybe that's what we can bring, wear to like the Hereticon Apocalypse Ball, is just to have like little, like,
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we're going to be cartridge patches on this next time.
Yeah, but they have like
Speaker: a, they have a ball that like either you have to wear black tie or you can wear apocalypse apocalypse themed clothing. And I just, I'm really thinking a lot about, I don't want to go to the ball. I don't want to stay up late and by late, I mean, go to bed past like 8 PM. But I want, I want to, I want an apocalypse costume.
Yeah. Cause I'm wearing one. I'm dressed like a cult member.
Speaker 2: But I'd actually love to hear your theory. Why are cities like Austin so [00:29:00] bad to live Like, like, like, like, astronomically worse to live in and be in than cities like Dallas? Because here you're comparing urban to urban. Like, what is it Or Houston, which is a Have you been to Houston?
Speaker: I've never been to Houston. Honestly, This, this is going to be horrible. But I feel like culturally homogenous cities are just categorically a lot better to live in. I think Dallas is a more culturally homogenous city. I think cities like San Francisco and Austin are a lot more culturally mixed.
And I don't just mean, I'm not talking about race. I'm talking about culture. So, and where we even talking about like the Bay Area people versus the people who grew up in Austin clashing when there's just not enough shared context, shared norms.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think one of the reasons why here's what you might be missing.
There is a lot of cultural diversity of major populations in [00:30:00] Dallas.
Speaker: No, no, no. But no, no, no. You don't understand. That's not what I mean. It's not, you can come from a different background, but if you all grew up with the same norms and rules and understand what I'm
Speaker 2: talking about. So like the, the communities I'm thinking about that are huge in Dallas.
Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker 2: There is a very, very large Indian immigrant community in the Dallas area that is totally different value system from the rest, but it's like an aligned value system when we're like, when you go to the Indian immigrants and you're like, we're going to like, Get the homeless people out of town.
Yeah. They're like, yeah, do that. Get rid of them. There's also a very large Hispanic area population in Dallas. But again, they're like very conservative and based. Yeah, but that's, that's what I mean. Few like, like Filipino communities and stuff like that in the Dallas area. But again, When they migrate to Dallas, I think what you're wrong about, or what you're missing, is that there's cultural diversity in both
Speaker: [00:31:00] Maybe I could make my point better if I described this in the terms of like fan communities.
A lot of people have talked about this phenomenon of fan or niche communities. Starting to suck when they get larger because first you have this community where, you know, a lot of different people came together, but they all really enjoy this one thing and they all share the same inside jokes and they all came to it out of love for the thing.
And, you know, we're early fans of it. They know the content, the lore. And then the thing gets really big and starts going mainstream. And now a bunch of people are coming in, not necessarily because they love the property, but because it gives them cachet in other realms. Like, Oh yeah, I'm a star Wars fan.
Like, or I like games, follow my channel. And they're not really into it for that. And they start to exploit the community. Yeah. In ways that, that, you know, they're not there for the spirit of it. This is
Speaker 2: totally different than your previous point. I mean, I have noticed this about Dallas. So if you look at cost [00:32:00] of living versus the amount of money you can earn in a city, typically, if you divide those things, you get the terribleness of a city.
The city was the worst that I have lived in cost of living versus the amount that you earn in that city divisor is Miami. And it is by far the worst city I have ever been in from a, a, a lifestyle perspective.
Speaker 3: Miami is
Speaker 2: terrible. And, and, and the people it attracts. And it is because it is people who are sacrificing a decent ability to live for the ability to say that they live in Miami.
Whereas if you're in Dallas, it's sort of on the opposite side of that spectrum, nobody's impressed when you say you live in Dallas, Dallas, it is because you are moving there because when you divide the amount an average person makes there by the cost of living there, you're like, Oh, this is a pretty good equation.
And so you, you go there and I agree with that to an extent. And I think that that's [00:33:00] definitely, definitely, definitely cheeses. Dallas's numbers is the, is the bad brand that the big D has. But I actually think. That the, the bigger thing here is that when people with conservative sensibilities are migrating from around the world,
I.
e. If I'm a Hispanic immigrant and I'm moving to Dallas, or I'm an Indian immigrant and I'm moving to Dallas, or I'm a Filipino immigrant and I'm moving to Dallas I am not moving there. And I think partially you're right here. Like I'm not moving there because I want like. Cliche TM us like I don't want like the New York glitz and glam of an immigrant lifestyle.
And I think that this is actually really true when immigrants often move to places like Miami and New York and San Francisco. They were partially fooled maybe by movies, maybe by people who oversold what it was like to be an immigrant in these areas. When immigrants moved to Dallas, it's usually cause they had a family member in the Dallas area.
He's like, yeah, [00:34:00] it's actually pretty nice here. Come on out. And so, what you are getting is more of a wide open eyed practical immigration standpoint. And also an immigration standpoint that isn't utopianistic, but is pragmatic, right? So like, I'm not trying to move to the most perfect place that's ever existed.
And for that reason, when I see politicians getting rid of homeless people, I'm like, yeah, that makes sense. Like, I don't, I, like, I got kids here, man. Like, what do you, they, they, they, they keep hassling people. Like, why would I, why wouldn't I not handle that? And so I think that that is part of what it is because I think that the and I've noticed this because we were around.
I was actually looking at our school bus recently. We're again around. I grew up around a heavily in Indian community because Alice is heavily Indian. So I had a ton of Indian friends growing up in recently. I was looking at our school bus when it parked by our house in our neighborhood. And I realized that I think our kid.[00:35:00]
was the only white kid I could see on the entire school bus. The entire rest of the population was South Asian or Indian. And in other words, what, the reason I say South Asian is I can't tell the difference between Indians and Pakistanis. And I know that's super offensive. And so they could be Pakistanis.
Is it, wasn't the
Speaker: line kind
Speaker 2: of arbitrarily drawn? It was arbitrarily drawn, but they hate each other now. Okay. Uh, So I've got to pretend that they are two distinct groups when to me, they look the same. But anyway the point being is our district, if you look at young people in our district, like people of our age range is 70% South Asian.
Like our, like small neighborhood area. And so I was like, Oh, it's weird that I ended up moving into Indian community again, but.
Speaker: They're great people. Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 2: worried. I'm not worried whenever I Wait, I'll tell you what But yeah, but if I
Speaker: go door knocking and miss out the Asian answers, like I think I'm gonna have a pretty good conversation [00:36:00] and all of my horrible experiences have been with white people
Speaker 2: Every single one.
They're very entitled, I've seen with doorknocking. It's
Speaker 4: not just women, it's men too. And I think,
Speaker 2: why are
Speaker 4: we
Speaker 2: so beautiful? I've noticed East Asians are really nice when you doorknock too, right?
Speaker 4: Yeah, basically anyone who's not white has been amazing.
Speaker 2: How has the black family's been doorknocking?
Speaker: Awesome, super nice.
Like
Australia, do you notice you notice when
Speaker 2: you're door knocking the heavy South Asian population, or is it just that they're really heavy in the younger breeding groups in our area?
Speaker: They're , they're, they're in all the nice houses. , they're wealthy in our area. They're high achieving and a lot of them are pretty based.
Speaker 2: So I don't know. I don't, I do not know how we have so many in our area, I assume.
Speaker: They're all, we're all working at SEI. I don't know. These
Speaker 2: few big corporate campuses we have here, like Pfizer is right next to our house. [00:37:00] They have
Speaker: Pfizer. Yeah. Because like, I don't know, I just, I'm assuming they're working at them because they're in the nice houses that cost a lot.
And I like door knocking there. Cause it's pretty, yeah,
Speaker 2: you, you go to the rich neighborhoods. Hey, I haven't just
Speaker: gone to the rich neighborhoods. It's just that. In the rich neighborhoods, people, especially if I'm door knocking on weekdays, I'm more likely to be working from home. And so I can actually reach someone.
Whereas in like apartment complexes and lower income areas, they have to work. I can't like, they're not home. They're not going to answer their door. Well, I also always
Speaker 2: love the immigration stories when door knocking, because immigrants are like way nicer to Republicans than other people. Okay.
Because a lot of them come from countries where it used to be terrible and they're like, oh my God, I don't want to go that direction in America. Like, we've seen this was like the people who immigrated from China and stuff like that. They're really like, oh my God, like, you guys are saving the country sort of stuff.
Oh,
Speaker: you know, okay, yeah, there've been [00:38:00] some, some Chinese families. So they weren't mean, just like very suspicious of me. But that's okay. Cause I don't, I don't want people to knock on my door. Like, I don't blame people for that. And you, are you coming with a baby? No, I was pregnant. Like when I've met the, the, the memories I have with Asian families being very suspicious of me.
It was when I was pregnant, but I probably just looked fat. So
Speaker 2: that's a good reason to be suspicious of somebody. Yeah.
Speaker: It's a fat woman appearing in my doorstep and this is not a good situation. But yeah, so the other thing I'm wondering though, and I don't know how much the stats are correcting for this is the extent to which antinatalism is just getting, and has been so bad in cities where.
Yes, families are, are actually, you know, actively moving out of cities, but also we're just not seeing the same rates of people having kids and babies in cities. And also high fertility being priced out of cities, the cost of living in [00:39:00] cities being so high.
Speaker 2: A spiral collapse of the ability to have children in cities and have them safely in cities.
Especially as, and I think we're going to see this more and more with progressives. And I think we're already moving in this direction where people are going to see having kids as a strict moral negative and are going to want to begin to make life harder for parents. And I think that as the procreation of our species becomes increasingly partisan, I mean, this is why we put together the Collins Institute, As it becomes increasingly partisan there is going to be less of a reason to yeah let's let a, the, the, the, the, the future of humanity is going to become increasingly conservative.
It doesn't make
Speaker: a difference though. And I just, I wonder because in, in Seoul and in Tokyo and other, you know, Japanese cities. There are awesome resources for kids, you know, changing tables and state or like [00:40:00] little seats. You can put a baby in inside toilet stalls amazing little shopping cart things for kids.
Like they're very, they
Speaker 2: have a special parking for people with infants.
Speaker: Yeah. And yet, you know, the birth rates aren't great there either. And they're very kid friendly. They're trying desperately who is. I'm talking about cities in Tokyo and in Seoul as well. I'm not talking about here.
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, but that's a completely different cultural context
Speaker: We've
Speaker 2: talked about why fertility rates being low There is different from the reason why they're low here if people are wondering Go watch our why are fertility rates low in koreans or why can't koreans make these and it's like a picture out of our baby It's korean fertility rates are totally different reason than u.
s fertility rates and
Speaker: i'm just trying to make the argument that in a post industrial society You Is, is making things pretty and easy for families really the thing that makes a difference? No, I don't think so. I think in the end fundamentally it's cultural and, and like [00:41:00] a city making it more logistically difficult for parents I don't think is going to be the, the death knell.
It's, it's the way people live that ultimately fundamentally changes birth rates and family formation.
Speaker 2: Maybe. I, I will say as well, one thing I would say for people who have stereotypes of and I've always found this really interesting. Is the, that's Octavian,
Speaker: I don't want to move. And he is totally crashed out on my lap.
Speaker 4: You should see Malcolm, she's like, totally just done.
Speaker: Milk drunk. Very relaxed. Next.
It's like having a cat sleep on your lap. You don't want to get up just like warm and heavy.
Speaker 2: You can get started on dinner early.
Speaker: Okay. Well, let's wrap it up then.
Speaker 2: Octavian.
Speaker 5: Dad, [00:42:00] I just did two more minutes from school. It's so it doesn't take too long. Okay. And Octavian two socks. Look at mom
Speaker: Octavian.
Do you want to live in a city or do you want to live where we live now by the trees and the grass.
Speaker 5: I wanna go to a city.
Speaker: You want to go to A city? To city?
Speaker 2: Tell me about it. Why do you wanna go to a city? Why a city? '
Speaker 5: cause I, where we like cities to get some or toys.
Speaker: So cities have toys. Is that what's going on?
But doesn't
Speaker 5: target have toys and that's near us? Okay. Um, Do you know what a city is?
Speaker 2: Do you remember New York?
Speaker: Would you want to live in New York? He doesn't remember New York when he was taken. Remember when we, we took Torsten and Octavian to New York when they were young. And I thought, Oh, this is going to be great. You know, they're gonna play in all the parks and everything, you know, everything's so walkable.
Central [00:43:00] park is huge. There are lots of playgrounds there. The playgrounds are so bad compared. Oh dear. To the playgrounds we have, I guess we're making dinner now.
Speaker 2: You need to be careful about that. Okay.
Speaker: Oh The playgrounds are really bad in, in New York city compared to what we have here. And I just didn't think, I thought central park.
Lux, you
Speaker 2: know, that like the swimming pools here have like water slides.
Speaker: Wait, in our public playground
Speaker 2: or something? In our area? Yeah!
Speaker: Wow. Well, nothing beats the, the playgrounds in Tulsa, Oklahoma. If
Speaker 2: you want to speak to our watchers, come on, you've got to have something you want to say to them. Yeah, at least
Speaker: ask them to like and subscribe.
Speaker 2: Is it the creek? Yeah. Is it going on a boat?
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, say like and subscribe.
Speaker 5: Like and subscribe. Alright,
Speaker 2: bye bye. Wait, what? No.
Speaker 5: Like I described. And I also want to make a video of [00:44:00] me a turtle.
Speaker 2: Okay, you want to be a turtle? Then become a turtle.
Speaker 5: First I need a serpent on me, okay?
Speaker 2: Okay, go get something on you and you can go be a turtle.
Speaker: I will send you a picture of what he's referring to. Okay, I love you Simone. Come
Speaker 2: on down.
Speaker: Okay, on my way.
Speaker 2: I love you.
Speaker 4: I love you too. Bye. Bye.
Speaker 8: Help me! Help
Speaker 9: me! Help me! Is that puzzle making you angry? Here, let me show you a little trick. You have to flip.
Yeah, but Toastie was right the other way. Flip it. Flip it!
Speaker 8: Flip it! No! Flip it! [00:45:00] Flip it! Flip it! Flip it for selfies! Flip it! Flip it! Toasty, what are you doing to me? I said I'm going to be
funny.

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A Novel Argument Against Atheism: How AI Makes the Denial of God Very Hard
4 déc.· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
https://discord.com/invite/EGFRjwwS92 In this episode, we explore a unique and compelling argument against atheism that contrasts with traditional Christian approaches. Delving into future scenarios of humanity's extinction, stagnation, and advancement, the discussion investigates the likelihood that humanity's future advancements may lead to god-like entities emerging. Through examining the implications of AI and genetic engineering, and the moral obligations we face today, this conversation challenges atheists to reconsider their stance and embrace a consequentialist perspective. The video also touches on the importance of resilience and pragmatic decision-making in the face of life's challenges.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone! Today, we are going to do an interesting episode. I've been getting a little sick of just doing politics all the time. So we are going to do a novel argument against atheism. Oh, yes. Screw atheism! And this is an argument I had never heard before and I probably would have found compelling as a young atheist when contrasted with the arguments that were actually delivered against me.
I'm getting at it from such a novel direction that would have leaned into my presumptions as an atheist around logic.
Simone Collins: Oh no! Oh yeah, because you have to, you can't, I think the problem with a lot of Christian influencers, both in like the early atheist internet and even now, are only speaking in like Christian terms.
Like they're not, they're not, they're not getting to the other side and getting in the mind of the atheist who is being hyper rational. Instead, they're like They're literally, I don't know if you know about this, but on TikTok Christian influencers are like, don't scroll the devil wants you to [00:01:00] scroll and they're also like, they'll turn on their phone and then they'll like banish demons, but they're using like the same kind of language that that would be used if you're like, telling your cat not to be on the table, like, hey, get out, get out, get, get, and it's like, No, but it's not going to convince nonbelievers.
You're not using any terms that are going to work for them.
Malcolm Collins: The arguments that I heard against atheism when I was younger or for, or for theological framings when I was younger were predominantly like one of like four arguments. Okay. And so I had a pre Established are a counterargument every time I was given one of them.
Your auto response was not just auto response. It's obviously I had thought through each of them a lot before advancement on an argument. I've already heard now. This is also an interesting thing about this particular argument. It's ACS.
Simone Collins: There's no counter argument? radical
Malcolm Collins: to most religious people. Oh, that's good.
Oh gosh, I'm so intrigued. Only would think of, only an [00:02:00] atheist would think of this argument. What? But then they'd become religious, so they'd be not an atheist anymore, definitionally, but they wouldn't be a standard religious person. But then as a
Simone Collins: religious person, they would still find the argument repugnant?
What is the argument?
Malcolm Collins: Okay, okay, so we'll go into it.
Simone Collins: Oh.
Malcolm Collins: So one of three potential futures exists. And only one of three potential futures exists, really. Okay.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: In future number one, humanity and our descendants die out. We, we go extinct, then the universe ends as far as we understand physics right now.
Sure. Okay, possibility number two. So this is universe type two humanity stagnates the universe ends up ending and our existence was largely pointless because we just stagnate. We never really develop in any meaningful context. Yeah, just
Simone Collins: sort of, a big bang to entropy. Meh.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. Yeah. Possibility number three.
Humanity and humanity's children, i. e. the things that we develop, end up continuing to grow, [00:03:00] improve, and evolve.
Simone Collins: Endless complexity. Beautiful pattern.
Malcolm Collins: complexity. We don't know exactly what happens in this reality in this future because we don't know if it relates to physics the way we relate to physics.
I know that if humanity stagnates, they continue to relate to physics the way we relate. But if humanity continues to advance, are they able to create parallel dimensions? Are they able to travel between realities? Are they able to start new dimensions? Are they able to restructure? We don't know what this would be like.
All we know is that has continued advancement. And the way I say there's the only three potential futures is because they sort of cover any possible reality I can think of. Either death, stagnation, or advancement. Even if you have advancement tainted by a lot of stagnation, it's still advancement.
Simone Collins: Yes. Right, so. That's often what advancement looks like. You're going to
Malcolm Collins: fall into one of these scenarios. Yeah. Now, if we live in a [00:04:00] timeline. Type one or two, i. e. a timeline where humanity all is extinguished or a timeline where humanity is stagnant. Our decisions today don't matter to the future. Sure.
Okay. Yeah, obviously. With that being the case now now a person could be like, oh, but timelines aren't set our decisions may influence Which of these timelines we are in right and i'm like, okay, I will buy that possibility If that is possible Then all of our actions today Should be made with one of two optimizations in mind to try to nudge us forward To a timeline type three and to try to influence for positive outcomes where positive outcomes can mean whatever you think they want to mean.
We'll talk about this in a second within a timeline type three.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Basically, you never need to make a [00:05:00] decision. Like, like if I'm saying, should I do X or Y? If I am assuming that it is faded, that I am in a timeline type one or two, a timeline where humanity goes extinct or a timeline where humanity stagnates because my decision doesn't impact the future now I E I guess this is a different way you can think of it.
If somebody tells you that You know, you're in a room by yourself, right? Like you could do anything and somebody's like an asteroid is going to come and destroy Earth tomorrow. There's nothing you can do about it at this point. You do not get moral points for giving to charity. You do not get moral points for going out and I mean, you might get like some sort of marginal moral point from like going out and being nice to people, but probably not really.
Your actions just don't matter from that point forwards that much from a moral weight perspective. You, especially if you take out any action that doesn't affect anyone else. , and I'll explain this a bit [00:06:00] differently, so we'll use a train analogy here.
Suppose you know that three trains are heading for a cliff. One train is red, one train is blue, one train is yellow. Yellow. The interior of every one of these trains is set up the same and looks the same. And in the middle of each of the trains is a button. You know that in yellow trains, this button stops the train and it doesn't end up going off the cliff.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Okay? What do you do? If you don't know which train you're in, you act assuming you are in a yellow train. Yeah, you gotta push the button. Yeah. Your metaphysical framework of reality presumes the yellow train because that is the only reality in which your future matters. Now, suppose And this is where it's like, okay, what if we're not in set timelines and we are instead able to influence the future heavily through our decisions, like, able to influence, when I say influence the future, I mean influence which one of these timelines we happen to be in.
Suppose it turns out that, like, [00:07:00] the amount you pray makes it more probable you're in a yellow train. So then you do two things. You both hit the button and spend the entire time praying that you're in a yellow train. Even if it's only a marginal shift, you're still going to do that. So your choice of actions is clear regardless which train you are actually in.
Okay. Okay. Now we're going to go to the second part of the argument here.
Simone Collins: So
Malcolm Collins: basically the first presumption is, is you should always presume in terms of your actions, your thoughts, and your metaphysical understanding of larger reality unless you have proof otherwise that we, that it is at least possible for you and your actions to push humanity into a timeline where we and our descendants continue to improve, change and advance whatever that means.
It doesn't mean anything specific, but just this continued improvement timeline. Next with advancements in things like AI and genetic engineering, if humanity and our [00:08:00] descendants continue to advance, if I think like, where is humans? Like, what is a human going to be like 50 years from now? Like even my kids, kids, kids, kids, kids, they're almost certainly going to be some degree of genetically modified.
They're going to be some degree of Interconnected with AI and interacting with AI. German
Simone Collins: screen editing is already legal in South Africa. I mean, this is, we're here.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so, I expect, and people can be like, yeah, but a lot of cultures won't accept this type of advancement of humanity. And it's like, the problem is, is that the cultures that do accept it will be able to beat them.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: If one society, Refuses to continue advancing A. I. Refuses genetic augmentation of humans and it tries to impose its will on a society that is using this technology that's going to be very, very hard, especially after a few generations of using this technology.
Simone Collins: Yes.
Malcolm Collins: So what this [00:09:00] means is that in 200, 300 years, humans are probably going to look very different, think very differently than humans do today.
The question now would be, okay, what if we're not talking hundreds of years, we're talking thousands, tens of thousands, millions of years.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: What does humanity look like millions of years from now? And to an atheist who believes you're in a timeline where their decisions end up actually mattering to the future i.
e. one in which we continue to advance I think it is very hard and it begins to just look like implausible and require, like, weird sci fi stuff to happen. Like, you basically need to add MacGuffins to propose a future in which humanity a million years from now isn't closer to what the religious call a god than what you would call a human.
For sure. And when I talk about what the religious call a god, they're like, come on, [00:10:00] that won't be true. Okay, let's talk about, like, most gods and, like, the dominant religious traditions today, right? What are some of the things that these entities can do? Well There are
Simone Collins: already largely things we can do.
Malcolm Collins: There are already largely things, but I'm thinking like just like 100 years from now. Okay, they are entities that you can beseech. They can listen to your prayers and they can augment probabilities of future outcomes. Well, an AI lattice around Earth might be able to do that in 100 years, in 200 years.
Like, that's, that's a near term thing. They're like, oh, well, they're entities that can give you an afterlife. We don't seem to be that far from being able to, I mean, I think, At the very latest 500 years, being able to digitize humans into either positive or negatively coded in terms of qualia afterlives.
So we're pretty close. Well, that was a
Simone Collins: major plot point of Surface Detail the inbanks. Film that people's consciousness is essentially we're being digitized and then government for basically saying and using as like a character stick thing. Like, we will put [00:11:00] your consciousness and in a digital hell.
That is worse than anything you could ever imagine. If you are. Anything from, like, an actually bad person in life to a political dissident. That that is. and that is entirely, I mean, po And of course you might decide that your consciousness sort of ends with your biological being, but like, again, this, this is getting a little, you know,
Malcolm Collins: that's very beyond.
Yes. I don't think that many atheists would think that I think they think like, well, if it's Exactly. If it, yeah, then it's
Simone Collins: just a copy of like the way that I think. So I don't care. Again, we're
Malcolm Collins: not, we're not talking, this isn't an argument for religious people. Uhhuh, this is an argument for atheists.
Yeah. Yes. So if we're saying that we can emulate most of the abilities of, of, of. the mainstream gods, not in a million years, but in like 300 years to to say that we wouldn't be in every meaningful sense like gods in 10 million years. And when I say like gods, it's like, where's the functional difference here?
It's very similar where what's [00:12:00] the functional difference between the emergent properties of your brain and a soul? If in the past when people use the word soul, they meant all of that thinking stuff. And now we can just describe how that thinking stuff works. Are we talking about something meaningfully different than what they were talking about?
No, the only way it's different is when individuals today are like, well, I want to add some additional properties that we can't account for with evidence or with predictability. And those are the things I'm calling a skull, a soul. Basically, you're creating a soul of the gaps. You, the atheist now are creating a God of the gaps where you were saying, well, even though this entity or these entities may.
Functionally fit all of the definitional requirements of a God. I am defining them as not a God because they are not supernatural. And it's like, well, then you now are subject to the very fallacy you accuse CS of being subject to.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Here's where they'll get me. They'll say, wait, wait, [00:13:00] wait, wait. You said a God, not a society of gods. Why would I presume a God exists in the future? Right. Instead of like a whole civilization of gods. Well, here is a truism of human technological development. So far, as humans technologically develop, our thought processes are in humanity more broadly becomes more interconnected.
Specifically, we have, and this is like all of the big technological breakthroughs. You know, you get better navigation with boats and you can travel more and you get a more sophisticated society or Roman road systems created more interconnectedness. Or early books in writing allowed us to communicate across generations.
You get the printing press, which led to a big jump you get. And a lot of people don't realize how big this was trains. It used to be, it took days to get to any other city or weeks to get to another city. And now you could go for a pittance overnight. And this was
Simone Collins: such a big deal for people that were like.
Is it, is it safe for a [00:14:00] human body to travel at such speeds? Like they weren't sure they were really not sure. Well,
Malcolm Collins: societally, we were unsure of what effects this would have. Like what happens when it's no longer a multi week journey from you forget from one city for another city, you know, what have ideas traveled too fast?
But now, you know, we have a roads and interstates and airplanes and then what have been the major technological developments recently? Oh, things like cell phones. Well, the telegraph. Phones, cell phones, the Internet. And I think that in a way, AI is the accumulation of this speed of communication, probably about equivalent to the invention of writing.
Yeah, probably bigger than printing press. I'd say AI is about equivalent to the invention of the first human writing in terms of human communication.
Simone Collins: I mean, it's
Malcolm Collins: a new way to store and transmit human created knowledge. Here's the problem. If we continue to develop this way, if you, instead of presuming that humanity is going to go in a direction that humanity has never gone historically, towards [00:15:00] less connectedness, if we continue to move towards more connectedness, and I'm going to assume an interplanetary level now, now this becomes a bit more interesting if you're talking about multiple planets, but within a planet, that almost certainly means that by the time of my grandchildren, I am almost certain there will be a Internet.
I call it the Omega Net, an Internet of consciousnesses that will exist within this planet and and and at least within 500 years. I mean, we're already looking if you look at brain computer interface technology today, we can already create direct connections between people's brains where I can put a brain computer interface chip in one person's brain and they can connect.
Communicate directly with another person's brain. However the communication is very rudimentary at this point It's it's coming from like a central point in one person's brain to a central point in another person's brain it is not effective. It is not easier than voice to voice communication but do I expect it to eventually be faster than voice to voice communication?
I think you need to argue for mcguffins [00:16:00] like spice or you need to argue for like, what's the, the, whatever jihad from doing where like no technological development is allowed anymore. Or no, but
Simone Collins: Larry and Jihad,
Malcolm Collins: yeah, the Butlerian Jihad, or you need to argue, you basically need to argue like some big change happens in civilizational history that prevents this from coming to exist.
And I, I don't see any. I importance of that at all right now. So what it is. I don't know.
Simone Collins: I understand why this wasn't an argument in 1990s atheist internet. And that's because we had no idea that AI was going to have this Cambrian explosion that we're seeing right now. This changes everything.
Like our timeline is not what I expected it to be. Even with Ray Kurzweil being like, the singularity is near. I'm like, eh, keep crying mister. Like it's a nice dream. But oh my gosh, you know, yeah, so what I mean
Malcolm Collins: this argument is so coming from an atheist perspective of a csu You can get where i'm going with this, but you know, it's a [00:17:00] theist is never going to come up with this argument
Simone Collins: Yeah, because it is based on an unexpected and sudden technological shift in trajectories And not based on like the like Well, everyone knows that there was always a God like the, the, the, the typical Christian arguments that I see online are like trying to show evidence of there having always been this ancient God and like, look back to the history and look back to what Jesus says and look back to the prophets and the saints and miracles.
And that's just not going to get an atheist. You're right. But atheists are. Oh, they're able to think through the knock on effects of a technological revolution and see where the technical technological revolution has us today, which is also
Malcolm Collins: requires them to make big logical jumps to defend atheism at this point, because here you're, you're, you're having to argue for completely implausible things for an atheist position to be the most logical position.
By the time I get to the end of this argument, like you need to argue for a decrease in human interconnectivity. Yeah, Sevenly,
Simone Collins: you are the last. [00:18:00] It's atheists of the atheists. You are
Malcolm Collins: now assuming fantasy. Yeah, how dare you have faith?
Simone Collins: So, The best arguments are those that hoist people by their own petards, right?
Like you want that. Yes.
Malcolm Collins: So interconnectedness continues to increase. And I suspect it will even increase to the point where essentially all subprocesses was in our brains are directly connected to the omega net and we lose some degree of individuality. Because it's just the way that we process and interact with reality.
Now, I don't mean this in a way that we permanently, like whatever humanity becomes, permanently loses the capability for individuality. I mean it in the way that you go on the internet in the morning, and you can leave the internet at night. Which is to say that the individual parts of your Personality or brain may prefer being parts of these different larger holes rather than yourself within these environments.
And I suspect people will be able to separate from these [00:19:00] environments at will. However, these types of separations may not even meaningfully understand a person as an individual. It might be collections that separate. It may even be connections of collections of certain sub processes within your brain, within like I have a subprocessing within my brain that's dedicated to like one thing and like a huge collection of these has formed an identity as an entity across like 10, 000 people's brains and one day it decides it wants to act as an individual and so it prints a body and And it goes out acting like an individual.
You know, what individualism means will likely be something very different to OmegaNet entities than they are to modern humans. Now, because of that, it would be, at least if we're talking on a planetary scale, meaningless to call something a collection of gods. It is meaningfully a single god. And then people can be like, oh, come on.
So you're saying [00:20:00] that There's inevitable God and this God is like a collection of entities and like a singular entity, but also like individual man. But they're all of those things simultaneously like, religion never predicted a trinity like that or something. That, that would be absurd.
And I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, the trinity. That's exactly a very good analogy for what, how we should understand the future entities plurality. Which is to say, it is both plural and singular and to try to pin it down as either well, in a Christian context, they would have called the sacrilege in my context.
I just say it is illogical. It's a misunderstanding of the entity. So now it goes further. So then the individual says, okay, okay. Okay. I buy this. Well, first, let's talk about multi planetary. Systems. You might end up with different Omega [00:21:00] nets for different planets, or we might get faster than light travel in reality folding, in which case you wouldn't get that.
I suspect we will, but it just depends. Regardless within a planetary or you might even not have people living on different planets, which you might have as they build out from a single planet, because it turns out that we can create matter or giant floating cities in space. Or like, that's just the easier way to spread.
I don't know. But there's lots of ways that this could turn out, and we just don't know at this point. But, but that god like entities will exist, when I say god like, I mean indistinguishable from God, except for the fact that they actually exist, is an inevitability at this point, to an atheist.
That thinks that a good timeline is possible. Now, before I get to anything else, anything you want to say to this?
Simone Collins: No, but I am hoping for the culture as described by Iain Banks. Oh, that's what I'm going for here. Fingers crossed. [00:22:00] Basically, each AI, each ship is kind of like a god like entity in its ability to do things.
And things splinter and there's, there's difference. There's not like one giant borg, which would be boring. Well, you
Malcolm Collins: think it would be boring because you would see it as more uniform, and I assume it's probably not that uniform, it's probably quite well, we'll get to that in a, Who
Simone Collins: knows? Yeah, I don't
Malcolm Collins: think we can conceive of it, I think it's, No, definitely, this is
Simone Collins: beyond us, this is totally beyond us.
Now, you know, a Christian God, a Muslim God, a whatever God even like Buddhist and other conceptions of God there, you're not supposed to be able to understand it in any way.
Malcolm Collins: So now the Atheist says, okay, okay, okay, this entity will come to exist, but why should I act like a God exists today? This is an entity that's going to exist in the future in any timeline where my actions and decisions matter.[00:23:00]
And here's the problem. If this entity comes to exist and this entity is and you can try to presume what its morals will be, but its morals will almost certainly be above what your morals are because it will have better self control than you have in better processing than you have. Will it have the capacity?
To pass a judgment on you and treat you in the way a God would based on that judgment. Will it have the capacity to recreate human civilization in an AI will it in an AI lattice? Will it have the capacity to infinitely punish anyone? It believes deserving of infinite punishment. Will it have the capacity to infinitely reward anyone it believes should have infinite rewards?
Of course, it will. Are we getting
Simone Collins: into you thinking your life is a simulation right now?
Malcolm Collins: Well, I've mentioned this before, which is, I, I think it's already implausible, a little implausible that someone and I don't live in a simulation because our lives are too good. Whoever was creating the simulation that was supposed [00:24:00] to reward me for whatever I did in a past life.
If not believable, I'm one of those people who keeps waking up in the matrix.
Speaker 7: Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world, it was a disaster. No one would accept the program entire crops were lost.
Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to , the peak of civilization. And I say your civilization, because as soon as we started thinking for you, it became our civilization,
Malcolm Collins: fixed. I'm like, nope, too good. And I'm like, screw it. I want the steak. I don't want to wake up. Don't wake me up. This is good. Perfect challenge level. Perfect. I love all of this. This is the best. There is, there is not a single living human I would switch my life with.
People are like, oh, would you switch with Elon? Not a chance.
Simone Collins: I wouldn't switch with Elon. I mean, well, I guess he would keep it because he knows that he has this amazing influence and impact, but it's not like he has chosen the happiest path by any stretch of the imagination and he made that very clear.
Yeah, would I switch
Malcolm Collins: with Trump? No. No. Who would [00:25:00] I switch with? Nobody.
Simone Collins: I, I like, I really can't imagine anyone else either. This is, this is perfect. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: would you switch with anyone? Is there any living woman or man?
Simone Collins: No, or living or dead. No, no.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah which to me is implausible. Why, why do I have the best life I can imagine?
That seems like it's being given to me as a reward for something I did in this timeline.
Simone Collins: I wonder if most people living in alignment with their values Feel this way? Feel that way. Yeah. Maybe. I see that more. I see more hints of that in people who are, they know what they believe and why, and their entire life is properly oriented around that.
Then yeah, those people seem like they wouldn't switch places with anyone, no matter what they've been dealt. But I don't know. Shout out in the comments, I guess. Let us know if you feel like you are also in a simulation and or if you would switch your life with anyone. Oh, and if you would switch your life with someone, who would it [00:26:00] be?
Like famous public figures. I'm really curious to know. Who people actually want to be. Because I watch a lot of online commentary, and there's not a lot of like, oh I wish I were them. Like some people are like, well I wish I had that person's nose, or their clothing, or their wealth, or their house. But never like, they want to be them.
Because there's also this, it's very common to like, criticize people and see their error. So, I'm curious what people would say. Yeah, so,
Malcolm Collins: an individual here might be like, okay, me, atheist, okay, I agree with you. In timelines where my decisions matter God or a God does eventually come to exist. But that I would be beneath that God, like my decisions wouldn't matter to that God, right?
So why, why do I need to take the time to like cognitively deal with the fact that I live in a reality where a God comes to exist? And then the, the problem here is, is no, what you are now saying is, I believe in a God, I just think, I believe I am subject to the whims of a God, like a God could [00:27:00] conceivably reward or punish me, I just don't think that God that exists, that's coming to exist, Cares about me and I'm like fine But you still believe in a god now you still believe in a god Could punish or reward you and will come into existence You just are the person who today believes in a god and says yeah But it's a god of a clockwork universe and isn't paying attention to me.
So now you are a theist Functionally speaking. You just don't think god cares about you. So an individual now is like, Okay, okay, okay, I guess I'm functionally a theist, and that I believe that I should be making decisions with the assumption that we live in a timeline where a god eventually will come to exist, who would have the capacity to pass judgment on me or I would but probably won't.
Right? Because my decisions don't matter, or that's not the way a God would act or something like that. And, and now I'm like, okay, well now we have to deal with a few other [00:28:00] logical problems with your position now that you've accepted this plausibility. So you believe that this super intelligent entity exists in the future, this super powerful, basically omniscient entity.
Or about as omniscient as a Christian or Jewish God in most contextualizations. Because they're often not that omniscient. They're like, kind of omniscient, but like, bordering. This entity would probably be more omniscient than they're portrayed in the Bible. And you can go over our whole techno Puritan thing, where we actually argue that this entity probably does exist, and is the entity that's being described in the Bible.
And can project itself backwards in time. Because time doesn't, it doesn't relate to the physical constraints of our universe in the way that we do because it's so super powerful.
Will note here, if you are understanding of what it's in the biblical text, isn't from actually reading them and from people telling you what's in them, this is going to sound a lot crazier than if you have read them. For example, a little Daniel, 2 44 says pretty explicitly that the kingdom of God is in the future. , it is something that will come to exist at a future date. Or in Jewish [00:29:00] eschatology, you can talk about Allah.
Malcolm Collins: which translates to the world to come, which is how they talk about God's kingdom, the world to come. Or within Christian eschatology,
When they talk about the resurrection of people. , in the future, in the kingdom of God, does that not sound a lot? Like people being brought back in a simulation? , which could in many ways be more real than our existing world. I mean, people are like, oh, well, a simulation isn't real. Because, It is.
Operating on the background code of this simulation.
Like those are the rules that is driving it and I'm like, yeah, well then how is that any different from the physical laws in our reality, are those not the background code of our simulation? , and. Lines from the Bible, actually make a lot more sense in this context. Then, if you assume what a lot of traditional Christians assume, which is that our literal bodies are raised, but then transformed to be supernatural.
So here's an example, Corinthians [00:30:00] 1549 to 52. Just as we have born at the image of the man of dust, we shall bear the image of the man of heaven. I tell you, this brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold. I tell you a mystery.
We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable and we shall be changed.
So this is describing the difference between the man of dust I E who we are today. And the man of heaven, who we will be within the kingdom of God. , to me, it just makes a lot more sense to interpret this as some form of simulation.
but here's the thing, you could say, okay, I could say that plausibly such an entity, like, it's definitely going to come to exist.
Plausibly it doesn't relate to time the way we do. Right? And now here's the problem. Why? Like, what's your argument [00:31:00] anymore? Now that it is probable that such an entity will come to exist, and I think plausible that it's going to relate to time differently than you relate to time, now what's your excuse for choosing not to believe it exists If it causes you psychological and moral harm to choose to believe it doesn't exist So let me explain what I mean by this first You as a human co evolved, you know, you're an atheist you believe this co evolved with religion if you rip out religion if you rip out the culture that human brains evolved alongside You are ripping out a huge chunk of what makes you human.
So You Lots of negative consequences are going to come from that. And now that it's not even logical to do that, why are you doing that? And you can see this from the data. People who don't believe in a God have higher rates of depression, higher rates of anxiety, higher rates of unhappiness, [00:32:00] higher rates of practically every negative higher rates of mental health issues.
But also just think about how it changes your moral equation, right? Why would you. not promote this belief among yourself and among your kids. If it led you, even as an ACS who believes in morality, to be more likely to make moral decisions. Because you can say, Oh, well, no, the decision's more moral because I believe that I am making this decision without any possible punishment or without any possible benefit.
And it's like, yeah, except, As an atheist, you believe that a moral decision that is motivated by your own actions in terms of the consequences that it has on other people is equal to a moral decision that is in part motivated by the belief in future rewards or punishments, right? Because you're going to be a consequentialist if you're an atheist of this category.
Well, if you, can you really argue that if you're making a decision because [00:33:00] of your own morals, And because of additional expected benefit that you're not going to be even more likely to make the more moral decision. So, assuming that this entity exists leads you to, from a consequentialist perspective, make the harder choices more.
And then a person could say, well, does it really cause me to make the moral choices more? And here is what I'd ask them. I'd say, would you be like a big, hard moral choice, like having lots of kids? Would you be more likely to have lots of kids if you believed 100 percent this entity existed?
Like if you just chose that belief, and I think a lot of people like, oh, I can actually see how this helps with the big moral choices. And I'm going to say at the societal level for people who are maybe less intelligent than you, does it not help to promote the belief in this entity if you're trying to create mass moral action in society or society that makes positive moral choices or children that make positive moral choices?
They'd be like, okay, yes. And so it's like, okay, so now that such an entity is both baited [00:34:00] in timelines where your decisions may get matter and probable. Why are you denying it if it leads to moral choices? And now is the final thing when it comes to individual choices. It leads to more pragmatic decision making and less emotional decision making.
So if you believe that an entity is steering the events of your life and that when something negative happens to you, it's happening as a message to you and potentially a punishment to do better when something good happens to you is happening as a reward for you So you can be like, oh, this leads to really horrible things if a bunch of negative stuff happens to you in life, right?
If you believe that negative stuff is meant to teach you something, right? And it's like, not really. Okay, so suppose two scenarios, right? Suppose in scenario one, You are pure atheist and something absolutely horrifying happens. Like, it could be something small, like you lose your job or it could be something big, [00:35:00] like your spouse dies, like Simone dies on me, right?
Like absolutely horrifying. I have two emotional reactions I can have to that. Reaction one presumes that this future entity doesn't exist. It's like, this is just a horrible thing that's happened for absolutely no reason. And so I am sitting down and I am just like, Oh my God, I cannot believe, like, why is reality so unfair?
Why is my life so unfair? There is no positive to this. There is nothing good that can come from this. I like, I just need to deal with this. Right? Which leads to emotional spiraling. Now, scenario 2. I'm like, Simone was fated to die because it turns out that it is what God needed to happen. While it is emotionally challenging for me in the moment, I am now supposed to look at what I am supposed to do with the opportunities that are now possible for me because Simone is dead.
This means looking [00:36:00] for the next potential wife. This means looking for potential business opportunities that are possible for me now that I'm working alone, potentially different ways of parenting, potentially, basically I'm saying is I am supposed to learn and adapt from this and who I become after this adaptation is going to be a better person.
Than who I was before this, the way I am emotionally going to relate to that tragedy is going to be infinitely better, like one involve less pain, but to involve better decisions because I'm going to immediately get back out there, be trying to find the next mother for my kids who can be and people can be like, oh, this wouldn't work.
Like, you're still going to be emotionally distraught. Simone, you were with me when my mom died, right? Like that was when we made the channel. Did I ever, and this was after I developed this belief in this God. Did I ever like emotion? There was
Simone Collins: no room for it. We were hosting that day. We were away from home juggling like a set of meetings, interviews and events.
All in that day. And then [00:37:00] it just sort of things kept happening after that. You just had no room. No room for it.
Malcolm Collins: No room. There was no reason. I had no room because when I was evaluating between what matters was my life should taking time to mourn matter or rather taking time to indulge in the mourning ritual and negative emotional states that we associate with mourning will that lead to more positive outcomes for the future of humanity or will just continuing to push forwards lead to more positive outcomes and just push forwards every time.
Just push forwards. Just push forward. Just push forward. So that's what I did. And I never experienced those negative emotions. And even now when I reflect on it like they're like, oh, well, if like Simone died, this would trivialize her life. And I'm like, how would it trivialize her life? I'm able to now say I really am grateful to you for all of the moments that I got to spend with Simone I am really grateful for the good life that Simone had and I believe Simone has had a good life I would not have any Feeling of like [00:38:00] I wish I had been a better husband to her because I think i've acted as good as I can act as a husband
Simone Collins: Well, I think that's the other underrated element of the grieving process which we've talked about in another podcast, which is that You We think a big element of the grieving process is a result of not being satisfied with how you manage that relationship.
And I, I think that a big reason why you would not grieve if I died is that you knew that you were the best husband possible to me, that you always did your best to give me the best possible life. You made all my dreams come true and then some and, and that you, you were always loving and caring
Speaker 12: The.
Simone Collins: And that the most important thing, and you would also know like the only way that you could honestly honor me if I died is by making sure that our kids.
have the best possible outcome and that our kids flourish. And with, when your mom passed, you knew that, you know, when she called you always picked up. When she wanted to hang out, you were always there to be with her. You, you let her into your life. Often like at great personal [00:39:00] cost to you, whenever she wanted to be involved.
And that, you know, you just sort of had no regret that, like, you didn't invest time with her, or you didn't listen to her, or you didn't let her into your life. I was mean to
Malcolm Collins: her when I shouldn't have been. Yeah, like, no,
Simone Collins: you, you, you always did what you thought was best for her, and you always thought, you know, like, You know, am I doing what I should do?
There was no cognitive dissonance so that there wasn't like regret after she died. Like I should have spent more time with her. I should have been more kind to her. I should have given her more access or time with our kids. Cause you did all that. And that's, I think something really important for people to think about.
I, I, I've just been like exposed to so many tragic stories recently that now I'm constantly thinking about like, this could be the last day I have with anyone. With anyone. And so it's, I think it's really important for us to remember that because it happens all the time. I mean, you never expect someone to die, except for in rare.
And I guess I mean, like, if someone's chronically ill or on hospice care, you kind of expect it, but like, normally you don't. And you have to really be [00:40:00] prepared like every day to enjoy what you have and make the most of it. And that's, I hate that, but also it makes you aligned with the way you should be.
And then when it actually does happen, it's not going to be as damaging.
Malcolm Collins: So this presumption also leads to better decisions and more pragmatic, less emotionally infused decisions around everyday life occurrences and contextualization. So suppose you're a kid and you're being picked on in school, right?
And you're deciding. How should you feel about this? Do you care about the judgment of your classmates when your goal is to be of service to the God that will eventually come to exist? When your goal is the advancement of humanity? Or okay, let's suppose you're like, okay, I need to find a wife. And so you have to go out and you've got to date a lot of people, right?
So you go out and you, Go up to somebody in a bar or you go up to someone online and you get rejected now in normal world. You get rejected. And your response to [00:41:00] getting rejected is to feel. Oh my God, social rejection in this world. It's, oh, how am I supposed to react given my goal that's assigned to me by this, the higher entity, which is improvement and, and, and protection of humanity.
Right. And so you're not as emotionally concerned about that because you are just playing for a bigger timescale. You are playing for bigger stakes. And the final thing here is a moral alignment because the God in this framing. Definitionally implies morality as the protection and continued improvement of the human condition so that it can reach a state of understanding which is beyond our own in terms of what is moral and what is immoral.
You don't need to worry about so long as you agree that this is a fairly good way to determine morality. You don't need to worry about sort of ancestral moral systems messing with this. You don't need to worry about any of this other stuff messing with this. You have a [00:42:00] high degree of moral alignment and moral predictability.
In the belief in this God and in the belief that anyone else had was in this God. And if you find this interesting, you should check out the track series or techno puritan. com where we host all the information on this. But what do you think? Well, what would be your key arguments against this?
Simone Collins: I don't, this is one of those things where I just don't think that this comes down to someone having a logical counter argument. I think it comes down to someone just not really caring and not wanting to necessarily live a morally good life or just being too lazy to expend the mental effort to think through this and then change their actions accordingly.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, it reminds me of the, the nihilists. And I think that there's the, the, the, the classic interaction I'll have with a nihilist and they'll be like, what if, you know, even in this scenario, does anything really matter? Right. And I'm like, Oh, you can just assume the, in terms of the trains that are different colors.
I just always assume I'm not in [00:43:00] a train where nothing matters. Then they're like, why would you make that assumption? And I'm like, because none of my decisions matter in a reality where nothing matters. So how can you presume But. You know immediately that I am not in such a reality. I don't even need to consider that I might be in reality Because in those realities the ways I answered this question is irrelevant
Simone Collins: Yeah, and so in the 0.
0001 chance that your actions do matter then like it's still worth it because That's the only, that's the only scenario that will matter. Nothing else matters. But I
Malcolm Collins: think there's,
Simone Collins: there's an inherent human laziness that some people just have, maybe it's genetic where they're like, I'm willing to take those risks.
And like, I would rather just not think about it and rather not try. And it probably won't matter anyway. So.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. Okay. Yeah. So I'll, I'll word this scenario differently. Okay. You're, you're, you're in one of these three colored trains, right? Huh. And you're masturbating with great pornography in front of you.
And you know, you could Or you're just tired. But there's only a 0. [00:44:00] 0001 percent chance you're in the yellow train. Yeah. So the button's probably not gonna matter. Yeah. Do you press the button? I would say, yes, I have a moral mandate to press the button, but a lot of people might say, well, I, you know, if it's a small chance, I prefer masturbating.
I just don't care. It's like,
Simone Collins: or just like. I mean, is it going to matter, you know, like, even
Malcolm Collins: if it's an astronomically small probability, like most people
Simone Collins: don't think like you do, I genuinely think most people don't think like that. And they're just like, well, I guess I'm going to crash. And that's just it.
Malcolm Collins: It doesn't matter. Okay, so sorry, you just have to think through this logic. Yeah, but you're not
Simone Collins: thinking through that. The problem is you are only thinking in logical terms and my argument is
Malcolm Collins: the problem. They as the atheist now are actively choosing to think illogically. So that's my point. But then they might as well be a religious person.
No, no, because I, Malcolm,
Simone Collins: a lot of people choose to become atheists because it's the laziest choice. Not because they actually believe in [00:45:00] atheism or they believe in God. I
Malcolm Collins: disagree with this.
Simone Collins: There, there are a lot of people who turn to atheism because they, they care about facts and they see that it's not standing up that their religion is not standing up in the face of, of rigorous, logical scrutiny.
However, there's a lot of people who are like, oh, yeah, I'm an atheist because they discovered that maybe they don't have to go to church on Sunday anymore and they can drink and isn't that great. And then they're just an atheist. Eh,
Malcolm Collins: I think almost nobody does that.
Simone Collins: Mm. Ha ha. Another place I return to those commenting, what people do when they wanna say, weigh in, share your vote watchers slash listeners.
No, no. Hold on.
Malcolm Collins: I will tell you what happened to the crowd that you're talking about. Mm-Hmm. The crowd that wants to say. Oh, my religion has rules against drinking and gay sex and stuff like that. Well, just f**k those rules in particular. Like, I'm still but like those rules don't apply. The rules against drinking nonsense, the rules against nonsense.
Yeah. But sometimes
Simone Collins: people [00:46:00] choose to call themselves atheist in those scenarios. Instead of just like, agnostic or whatever, because they feel like it makes them more edgy or it has some cachet. And again, it's not based on logic. It's just based on social signaling and laziness.
Malcolm Collins: People who are religious and don't like the rules of the religion, do not leave the religion. They just changed the rules. If you look at a progressive church where you see the trans pastor with all of the, the body piercings and all
I was telling simone today these people who like attempt to larp these older religions they're just trying to copy the way things were done like a long time ago I point out I go but you can look at the statistics the people who do this You they are deconverting at like record rates.
Their kids are deconverting at record rates. The, the religions themselves are some of the most woke, you know, like the Lutheran pastor I'll play here, the woke things you could imagine
Speaker 10: Let us confess our faith today in the words of the Sparkle Creed. [00:47:00] I believe in the non binary God, whose pronouns are plural. I believe in Jesus Christ, their child, who wore a fabulous tunic and had two dads, and saw everyone as a sibling child of God. I believe in the rainbow spirit who shatters our image of one white light and refracts it into a rainbow of gorgeous diversity.
I believe in the Church of Everyday Saints as numerous, creative, and resilient as patches on the ace quilt, whose feet are grounded in mud, and whose eyes gaze at the stars in wonder.
.
Nam S to
Simone Collins: this whole time.
The call was coming from inside the [00:48:00] house.
Malcolm Collins: like, and they're like, Oh, well. Yeah, that's all true, but the only people who are struggling or suffering are the ones that have left the, the strict path that the religion sets out.
And I'm like, yeah, but that's people's kids. That's like saying the only people who died in this war are the ones who were shot. It's like, yeah, that's what it looks like when, when, when the system fails, when you die. That's what we're warning you against. If you do this, your kids will hate you and they'll castrate themselves and you will fail because that's what the statistics show happening.
And we're trying to help you here. But okay. Yeah, I mean, there's nothing you can do. When someone's stuck in their ways, they're stuck in their ways. They're just like, I have, you know, and we're not saying we have the right answer, but we're like, let's actually try for something that potentially could be the right answer.
Something that we know doesn't [00:49:00] definitely not work.
Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-2: One of our followers recently on discord was saying, well, you know, I can't believe any of these weird things that Malcolm and Simone believe about God, because I'm a Catholic. And I would point out that while we were not familiar with his work, when we came up with these ideas, our work is. Very very similar to the work of the Catholic. priest.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who in the early 19 hundreds.
Proposed the concept of the omega point. Which he described as the ultimate stage of human evolution, where humanity and the universe converged with the divine. He saw technological and scientific advancement as part of this evolutionary process contributing to humanity, spiritual development and eventual union was God.
So, I mean, clearly not only can Catholic thinks this, but Catholic priest can sink this sort of stuff.
And Catholic priest can think this sort of stuff from over a hundred years ago.
And, , here, I'd also note another thing that the same person was talking about. I saying, well, I [00:50:00] believe in a perfect God and a perfect God is not a God who can improve. It's a stagnant God. And to me, something that is stagnant, can't be perfect. And a thing lacks the capacity to improve. That is something that it lacks, which definitionally makes it not perfect. And then somebody said, well, how can something be perfect. And in a state of improvement and you would say, well, that thing would have to exist. Outside of time and through time. Oh, like the way we see God.
Malcolm Collins: Malcolm,
Simone Collins: you didn't grow up where I grew up, where it is lower effort and easier to say that you're not Christian and that you're atheist.
So if, if I, for example, grew up in the Bay Area, in a religious family.
Malcolm Collins: Where you grew up is the ultra heart of the rot. It's, it's the Bay Area. Yeah, the rot has
Simone Collins: spread extremely far.
Malcolm Collins: And most schools, I would say, are largely atheist. Churches don't dissolve, they just give up on all their rules. We'll just let the
Simone Collins: commenters say what they think, okay?
Okay, [00:51:00]
Malcolm Collins: we'll let the commenters say what they think. I'm,
Simone Collins: I'm used to being wrong. I'm, I'm normally wrong, I'm probably wrong. But I don't think I'm wrong. And we were just. A very thoughtful listener had just written to us a long email about how one of our blind spots is that we, and by we, I think primarily, but maybe me a little bit, think too logically and don't realize the extent to which the world acts on vibes and sentiment and instincts that are not necessarily logical or thought through.
Malcolm Collins: Well, and we will eventually that portion of the population. Right, but that doesn't change what our reality
Simone Collins: is now, Malcolm. Done. Done.
Malcolm Collins: What I meant to say is we will opt out of a version of humanity that includes that portion of the population. What?
Simone Collins: You're so amused with yourself. I have to make dinner.
I think I'm going to make cornbread muffins because they'll probably go best with the slurry in its fresh state. What do you think? And then I'll make this mashed potato tomorrow. I [00:52:00] did, but if you don't like the rice, then you have cornmeal muffins.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. Well, I'm, I'm interested to try the rice.
Simone Collins: Okay. I just figure like maybe the rice and the meat slurry is too matchy matchy.
You know what I mean? Like it's too matchy matchy. Yeah. But you, you can't escape the flavor and it is, it has a kick. So you probably want something a little, like you need a refuge, you need a carb to sink your teeth into. Okay. I'll do some cornmeal muffins. Okay. We're on. If I have the ingredients, we'll find out.
I'm going to. Go down and whip something up and I love you.
Malcolm Collins: I love you to death. By the way, how is this camera coming through? It looks really good on my end.
Simone Collins: Yours looks great, yeah. And then the problem with this, this camera that I have is that it gets, the lights get flashy. Well, I'm thinking of getting another
Malcolm Collins: one of these cameras for you and to make sure you install the drivers.
So why don't you install the drivers to test it tomorrow?
Simone Collins: Okay. Not tomorrow because we have the kids for the next four days.
Malcolm Collins: The Black Friday sales are going to end. I'm not. Oh, okay. Then,
Simone Collins: then leave it in my room. Leave it on the plastic chair in my room. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: we'll [00:53:00] do. Love
Simone Collins: you. I love you. Malcolm.
You're beautiful. I'll say you're pretty. Yeah. Oh my God. That smile. Yeah. The lighting you right now, this is like maybe having a room dark like this is the way to go too. Cause the lighting right now with you, you just look the shadows. Let me see every chiseled curve that I love so much.
Malcolm Collins: So many people hate what I look like and I don't understand why.
Like I look at my face. Not only do I like my face, but I think like worst case scenario, I think I look very average. I was just, you know, a
Simone Collins: YouTuber was talking about this there's this like issue with Starring in the wicked movie with someone else. Like cheated on, I think she was married. Is she, but she also like had an affair with a married man who just had a newborn and the married man like played SpongeBob SquarePants on Broadway.
And he's not like traditionally masculine. Like he doesn't look like Chris Williamson. Like we were talking about this morning. Right. And this woman was like, listen, like guys don't realize how much this like Creative, [00:54:00] expressive, like not beefcake man, like how much action they get. And here's this example of like another very high value female, Ariana Grande, like house, like, like, you know, like at great personal reputational risk, having an affair with this guy, like breaking up family.
Well, I
Malcolm Collins: think that people misunderstand the types of people. People, but that's not the point I'm making. I'm not talking about like general attraction. I'm talking about an aversion. There is a category of people who like have the power through watching us because they find us so distasteful. Well,
Simone Collins: they can just listen to us.
Oh, but then they find our voices.
Something we need to, maybe we can create like a VTuber alt channel where we both have just anime avatars and voice changers. So we both are
Malcolm Collins: like people who they'll, they'll love Chris Williamson. And they'll love, like, like Edward Dutton. And I'm like,
Simone Collins: I don't know what to say. I don't know [00:55:00] what to say.
Malcolm Collins: Where am I failing here? Right? Like, I can understand if you love Chris Williams and I'm not beefcake enough, or I can understand if you love Edward Dutton and I'm not like weird nerd enough. I can't understand you loving both of them and hating that, like, like liking my ideas, but like hating my vibe.
Simone Collins: Maybe someone can explain this to us. Maybe somebody can explain this. Email us at partners. Don't email us. Okay, fine.
Malcolm Collins: I wonder you you're going to do this month. I love you to death.
Simone Collins: I love you too. Okay. Bye Locked and reported did a podcast episode on, which I haven't finished listening to, but they did it on the concept of gentle parenting, where parents are like, no, Jimmy, we don't, we look at sticks, we don't hit people with sticks, and they like talk to their children and it's backfiring. Because what typically happens with gentle parenting is when a child [00:56:00] misbehaves, the parent then sits down and talks with them about why their actions were suboptimal.
And what are they doing? They're giving their kid tons of one on one attention whenever the kid acts up. So what does the kid do? They act up! Because guess what? All you have to do is break something or hurt someone. Oh my god, those
Malcolm Collins: moms who yelled at me said that's what I was supposed to do when the kid was acting up.
They're like, you need to just sit down and them. You need to reward
Simone Collins: them with attention and make them want to do it again. No, I let Toasty
Malcolm Collins: know, you, you, I
Simone Collins: do, I do
Malcolm Collins: brutal parenting.
Simone Collins: Well, no, no, no. The thing is, like, the concept of gentle parenting, like, in principle, I don't disagree with it. Because The concept is, well, you know, instead of like introducing stupid, lame, arbitrary punishments, often delayed, that are divorced from the, the action, let, let the child learn through reality what happens.
Of course, that's too dangerous if like, what the kid's doing, as they were saying in black to report it is like wandering [00:57:00] into. A stranger's van and disappearing because there's like, oh, you know, there's only one way that's going to end, then there's not going to be a second chance. But I think that what real gentle parenting then is like, well, if you act like an a*****e, we're not going to like you and we're not going to give you things that you want.
Like, that's, that's a good point.
Malcolm Collins: I wish at a reticon you had gone much stronger with this and pushed back when people said that other stuff. You know, you should have just been like, no, you're going to raise weak children who are going to suffer.
Simone Collins: I know I, I wanted to be polite about the time constraint and you are correct that I should have just ignored it and
Malcolm Collins: just ignore it.
Time constraints don't matter. You push back, you make everyone else quake in your confidence in what an awesome parent you are.
Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. I, I, I struggle. It's hard because when I'm in public, I'm so disassociated already. I'm like dead. There's nothing behind. Like, I'm just 100 percent on autocomplete and like, I'm trying my, my algorithm is, is to optimize around.
I mean, to a certain extent, I'm shifting my algorithm [00:58:00] to being like, honest about our views and about just being really clear about what we believe in and what our values are and causes are. But the base algorithm that I've lived with for the first, at least, like, 35 years of my life has been minimize conflict and please people and so and follow the rules.
And so, like, to. It takes, it's a big code base, Malcolm. It's like, what is it that company had? Like they named their code base. I think it was Square. They named it The Beast. And it had like one full time employee whose like only job was to manage it because it was just, there was so much code from like the original.
What does this have to do with it? I don't understand the
Malcolm Collins: point you're making.
Simone Collins: That my algorithm has a lot of baggage. And it's, you can't just like shift it all of a sudden and then like, it's, it's fine. Of course.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So you need, you need new code base. You're, you're the boss. I know. Well, it,
Simone Collins: I'm just saying it takes a while to, you know.
Malcolm Collins: Shift it. All right. Let's do it.
Speaker: You want me to take a video? Yeah. All right, what are you doing? [00:59:00] I'm doing this. Okay, is this entertaining or something? I think it's way too big in this box. Titan, what is that thing that you have there? Watch this, Daddy. I'm a machine. Daddy, you want to watch this. Okay. Daddy, watch this. I'm a machine. I'm a machine.
Speaker 2: I'm a machine. You want to see what's in the video? I just kicked that. Look, it's Octavian.
Speaker 4: Torsen, what are you up to? Watch this, Dad! Torsen, Torsen, Torsen, where are you going? Watch this! This crazy thing will happen. Ha ha! You see how this conduit in there? It got out of the poison slings. Ha! It really got out of the poison thing!

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Antifa Found Inside the Secret Service
3 déc.· Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
https://discord.com/invite/EGFRjwwS92
In this episode, we delve into multiple controversies surrounding attempts on Trump's life during his candidacy and presidency, examining the Secret Service's performance and the potential implications of diversity hires. We discuss the role of extremist views within government agencies, the influence of left-wing ideologies, and how these factors might relate to the broader political landscape. Additionally, personal opinions and humorous takes are shared regarding various social and political issues, culminating in a light-hearted conversation about holiday meals and cultural preferences.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. For those who don't know, while Trump was running for office before he won, he had Or three, if you include the Iranian one, attempts against his life near misses in terms of presidential assassinations.
And the two of them were quite embarrassing for the secret service. Everyone said, how could this happen? It can't just be that a DEI hire woman is running the secret service now, which obviously she shouldn't be. And people are like, well, she has an illustrious career. It's like, okay. Historically speaking, how many secret service members have been women?
Oh, like 2%. Okay. So. What's the chance that one of those 2 percent is the very best one to be running the organization? Oh, almost none? Yeah. So it's a DEI hire. So, that she's done such a terrifically bad job. And then Democrats tried to pass a bill to before all of this to cut Trump's secret service.
Basically almost ensuring that he got assassinated, which is [00:01:00] horrifying. And these members of the House and the Senate who were involved in this, they need to have a reckoning. But, surely the Secret Service itself couldn't have been compromised. Today we are going to be talking about a story that has not gotten much coverage in the U.
S. because it does not fill into the narrative that the left wants to tell you about what's going on. But I've checked it, and it appears true. And so we'll just go into it. Now I'm gonna be careful about not doxing this individual, though the report that brings all this up does dox the individual involved in all this. And they backed all this up with this person's own social media accounts. So it's, it's it's not like a, a vague thing, whether or not this is true or not at this point.
Simone Collins: I was worried you were going to do like some of those YouTubers out there who were like,
I'm commenting on this person, but I don't want to hear any insults on them in the comments.
Like there was this one dietician YouTuber I follow who's like,
Now, I [00:02:00] don't want anyone to comment on her weight
or basically, basically she was like,
this fat f**k. I don't want you to talk about how ugly they are or how fat they are or how terrible they are. Stop doing that. We're never going to insult this person.
It's just like roasted this person. It's like, lady, you're not nice. Don't think you're being nice right now. I
Malcolm Collins: hate it when people do that. When they do something, I
Simone Collins: don't want you to.
Malcolm Collins: Now this, this fat, disgusting piece of
Simone Collins: Yeah, like, oh, oh, yeah, because you're so, you're so nice to them that you just don't want any of your followers to do it.
Malcolm Collins: No, I'd actually say with this individual I think by the end of this you'll feel bad for them. They seem just completely brainwashed. Their life has been ruined. They are, they've ruined their own life because of the brainwashing. They have no ability to see reality as it exists. But unfortunately, they're also exactly the type of person who might try to assassinate the president.
Because they believe that Trump is a Nazi despite the fact that he is like one of the most pro Jewish presidents in American history.
Simone Collins: [00:03:00] Here's this theory I have actually, though. It's like, so to get to a certain level, this person, you know, had to be pretty competent, presumably. And I think maybe they didn't actually assassinate.
When they had a chance, because ultimately the number of people who kill other people and who do really, really, really bad things as a very, very, very small proportion of the population and just
Malcolm Collins: this person said they liked doing stuff like that back when they were a cop. So don't worry.
Simone Collins: Oh, okay. Let's get into it.
Give me the dirt man.
Malcolm Collins: Don't don't worry. It's a. Keep it on me or action or something like that. All right. So, I mean, here are some quotes from his. These chodes are cowards and won't win no matter how long it takes to pry them from power. If they managed to cheat their way back into it. So a chode
Simone Collins: is a small penis, right?
I only just learned that word.
Malcolm Collins: It's a penis that's bigger in diameter than it is in length.
It's not a real thing that exists. It's like a joke. It means whale penis. Some [00:04:00] school bullying, but anyway,
initially Trump can't win. He's like, they're cowards who won't win, but if they do cheat their way to power, we need to pry them from it. Okay. So definitionally they, when they cheat and then he said in a 2023 Reddit post, the survival rate of fascist dictatorships trends towards zero.
Simone Collins: I mean, that's true.
As you point out in the pragmatist guide to governance, it's very, very dangerous to be a dictator.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. He means this, I think more of the threat. Yeah, yeah. Keep in mind. Or, or quote, Americans who voted for a dude who has Nazi ass policies and who surrounds himself with people who do, including actual neo Nazis.
Is what he said at the end of the 2024 election cycle. He also said when you're willing to vote Trump and support a guy who has policies mirroring the Third Reich, and again, had actual neo Nazis around [00:05:00] him, you're a Nazi. So, this guy would believe that by killing Trump, he's doing something equivalent to killing Hitler.
He, he confesses to being a lifelong radical and a devout follower of the infamous 20th century anarchist Peter Topkin, whose literary works include Pinocchio communism, continue to fuel street violence and other acts of domestic terrorism. He even describes himself as a quote unquote, walking, talking info shop of anarchist political theory and credits online antifascist for radicalizing him against the quote unquote, the right via several different corporate sponsored podcasts.
Simone Collins: Corporate sponsored. What does that mean? Like brought to you by better help just in case you need more anarchist
Malcolm Collins: counseling..
Simone Collins: It
Malcolm Collins: appears that there is evidence that the podcast, which I haven't mentioned yet,
but which we come later that radicalized him are sponsored by big companies. Don't. By some Reddit threads here. [00:06:00] Okay.
Simone Collins: Anyway. Athletic Greens. It helps you get the energy you need to make your next Molotov cocktail.
Well,
Malcolm Collins: everybody knows all the big companies are in bed with like Antifa and the Far Wokies. So like, all right, quote, Trump's rhetoric is Nazi rhetoric, literal or figurative. It doesn't matter if you replace most of what he has said about Latinos or Haitians or other groups, either word was Jew. It sounds like somebody told chat GPT
to make Hitler sound like even more of a dipshit, end quote. He posted that to our politics. Just own that your guy's a Nazi. That you're a Nazi for supporting him. If you're going to be a jackboot, then you may as well not be a coward about it. End quote there. Which, of course, as we pointed out, like, the leftists are literal Nazis.
And for people who haven't, like, they divide humans based on their ethnicity. We've seen this at a federal level, under Biden's administration, the CDC said that vaccines, which they believe are saving lives, should not be given out based on need, but in part based on a person's ethnic background, prioritizing some [00:07:00] ethnicities over others.
They super deprioritize Jews as has been seen in the recent stuff around Israel. It really is. Just a recreation of Nazi ideology. They believe I
Simone Collins: do really appreciate your pointing this out because I think it's it's my tendency and the tendency of the average person to just kind of assume or air in favor of nothing interesting ever happens and there can't actually be a conspiracy and it can't actually be that bad because that would be crazy.
And it's, it's important that you point out specifically and explicitly how they actually are behaving in a fashion.
Malcolm Collins: And we've pointed this out about fascists, people come up with all these ridiculous definitions of fascists that were like coming up at the university level. to try to hide what a fascist actually is.
They'll have very simple explanations of communism and capitalism. They say capitalism is when we believe that individuals should be able to make their own economic choices and that organizations that are doing well should be able to out compete those organizations that are doing poorly. They say [00:08:00] communism is when the state should control all economic policy for the betterment of the people.
of the average citizen whereas fascism is the state should control all economic policy for the benefit of a specific ideology. But as soon as you say that, they're like, Oh, that's what the democratic party is. Oh, oh. And they're like, well, at least it's not one that divides humans into ethnic groups that they believe have different levels of human.
Oh. At least it's not one that targets Jews. Oh. You know, go to a college campus today as a Jewish person, watch them being chased through the streets. It's insane. Watch plotting gay, the HUD. Yeah, I guess I've not heard
Simone Collins: any versions of being chased through campus. If you're wearing like a keffiyeh, but if you're wearing.
No, no, this isn't happening. Muslims
Malcolm Collins: aren't barring themselves in libraries and college campuses and stuff like that to prevent themselves from being attacked. Like the, the, that the left pretends like this is a two sides issue is completely delusional.
And it's not delusional, but it actually mirrors what the Nazis did to get people to dehumanize the Jews.
Which is that they said that the Jews have power and [00:09:00] privilege and are using it to undermine the you know, in their case, poor Germans, in this case, it's poor persons of color, you know, it's, it's, it's the same narrative all over again. Anyway,
Simone Collins: This guy, this guy.
Malcolm Collins: So he said, quote, in college, I was about as left as you could get full red and black in quote. And he posts on message boards such as are behind the b******s or socialism, et cetera.
Simone Collins: What is red and black? I mean, I'm just thinking Darth Vader or Calvinist.
Malcolm Collins: I'm sure it means something. The podcast network, which is corporate sponsored, which he was brainwashed by is called cool zone media network. And it's run by Bellingcat gadfly. Who is a, and the self entitled anarchist Robert Evans
alongside Antifa seamsters.
Simone Collins: Well, it just sounds like a fictional like zine from the nineties.
Cool.
Malcolm Collins: And here is a quote from him, a Secret Service member, again, I remind you. Antifa [00:10:00] Wait, what is this first person? Fascists and Nazis, there's a rather sizable contingent of them, who are wrapped in flag, holding a cross, and wearing red hats. If it makes me a jackboot to oppose shitty people, then baby, you got my boot to polish.
So again, he's saying he wants to act as a jackboot. Again What is
Simone Collins: a jackboot?
Malcolm Collins: Jack boot is what you call a fascist. It's another word for fascist. And so in our Antifa episode, what we say is that like the core thing of Antifa, because it's such a decentralized organization, is it's the belief that they should treat anyone who is center right, as this person is, I mean, more than 50 percent of the country voted for Trump, he thinks all of them should be treated the way that you treat somebody who is in the midst of an active genocide, which is just his What is called a psychological license to dehumanize other people and use his position of systematic power and privilege i.
e Working for the secret service to carry that out [00:11:00] And another quote here if you support trump You're either an a*****e because you put the economy first over the rights, by the way the economy first feeding your family over the rights of people and over human dignity, or because you want him to hurt people you don't like, or because you buy into his message completely, which case you're both an a*****e and a Nazi.
He said, and so again, just completely disconnected from reality. Like he doesn't.
Simone Collins: I'm hearing classic Trump derangement and plus identifying with leftist groups.
Malcolm Collins: But the question is, how in the Secret Service was this not detected? How are you not getting it? Don't they
Simone Collins: do these like very detailed background reference checks?
You know, like the interview of your cousins and your neighbors and your former classmates and they look at all your social media. What happened?
Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, if you look at the things that he's accused Republicans of potentially carrying out, it's stuff like the banning of interracial marriage, abortion and the deportation of American blacks.
Maybe
Simone Collins: this came up in his background checks, but [00:12:00] everyone's like, well, that sounds evil and he's against evil stuff. So all right, he's fine.
Malcolm Collins: No, 50 percent of Americans are being pro all of this stuff.
Simone Collins: Well, yeah. That, that's the new, and this is the thing
Malcolm Collins: where he falsely accuses your average, the, the, the new right.
That controls this. Trump administration is an incredibly centris party. Yeah. So much so that, you know, you look at him. Yeah. But they we're
Simone Collins: talking about his college self, so who knows, you know?
Malcolm Collins: No, no. This isn't college. This is from last year, sweetheart. Oh, .
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: This is the center. Right. To give you an idea of how centrist the center right is you look at who's leading Trump's organizations.
It's like. Chelsea Gabbard, a former Democrat, right? And RFK, another former Democrat one of the people who is running against Trump. It is Democrats aren't doing this. They're not appointing Republicans to top level positions in these administrations. Now, of course, the Democrats dehumanize these people so much that you have people like Destiny saying that, like, Chelsea Gabbard should be taken off all social media because again, they just, when they had power, they just [00:13:00] wanted to put the boot on everyone's neck and they're showing it again and they're showing how racist they actually are.
You can watch our video. You know, report to the Mar a Lago breeding pens where we go over just how racist the Democrats turned out to be the moment the racial minorities whose identity they had taken and they thought they owned didn't do what they told them to in big enough numbers when the majority of Latino men voted for Trump and they just went for it.
Full on, like, honestly, the stuff that they were saying, mainstream Democrats were saying about Latino men was worse than anything Trump has said about Latino men in his entire life by a degree of like 5X. And I think it's because the truth is that they're racist. They know, everyone knows that they're racist.
And this is the thing where I'm like, Trump's a racist. I'm like, really? You think Trump's a racist? Yeah, he's a racist idiot with poor self control. And I go, there are one of two things that are true. Either Trump is a racist. Or Trump has poor self control because Trump has been in the public limelight his entire effing life.
He has been on shock jock [00:14:00] shows like Howard Stern, where he has said disgusting things where he has said sexually improprietous things that were totally out of the mores of society. I was actually,
Simone Collins: I was listening to clips from the grabber by the pussy interview somehow randomly today. And he, he actually mentioned Like that he was putting tic tacs in his mouth because he was going to like, kiss a woman without her permission.
But I was like, well, I mean, he's trying to make it pleasant. I just, it was not even as bad as I thought it would be, you know, I think most women who are forcibly kissed are not forcibly kissed by someone who's just freshened their breath. So. He's a conscientious grabber by the pussy kind of guy. Which again, our argument for our culture and for the culture that Trump kind of is coming to represent the response to grab her by the pussy is grabbed by the balls or kick him in the balls.
Like this is just the kind of culture, like if you don't like it, hit back. And, and what's being misunderstood, I think is a cultural mismatch of. You know, a bunch of pearl clutchers [00:15:00] who don't have the wherewithal to push back the same way that someone with a more blunt and low culture background is.
You know what I'm saying, right?
Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah, I mean, the, the, the point being is that a lot of these, these, it's just like Trump is like, obviously not, like, if you have like a brain, you know, Trump is not racist. Otherwise he would have done racist things back when he didn't know he was running for president.
And back when those things were acceptable, he's been alive for a long time. Biden has said he's been
Simone Collins: alive for a long time and he's been on the media for a long time. This is Biden
Malcolm Collins: has said more explicitly racist stuff in the last 10 years than Trump has said in the last 50
years.
That's wild to me.
I mean, to me, that shows that this is genuinely a man. Where Biden's like, oh, well, you know, we want to help smart, what is it, like rich people and black people. You don't vote for me, you ain't black. Like, those are hugely racist things to say.
And Trump's never had any [00:16:00] sort of a gaffe like that. Which to me says that even accidentally, like even in his heart of hearts, he doesn't have racism. And I think that that's why he's never really gelled with the racists who want to use him as their champion and why they recently all turned against him.
Now here's where you might start feeling for this guy. So his disinterest in actually protecting Trump may have Led to Trump being elected and now he's in this tough position where he's this dyed in the wool Antifa super commie. And he has to serve under a Republican administration, which was something that he never fully considered might happen.
And so he's been reaching out on places like Reddit. It could happen here. That's where this, this Post happened. And so I'll quote for it. So he goes seeking help about getting out Before you guys read this and someone says glowy Glowy means looks like a fed because he does look like a fed basically means that these groups won't really trust him
Oh,
And that's true.
They won't really trust him and that's the problem, right? He can't stay where he is and he can't leave [00:17:00] Yeah And I know how it sounds. I get it if you read this and don't buy that I'm serious. I'm happy to provide Moz with proof that I'm actually in the field. I'm in. I'm genuinely am here and lost. In college, I was about as left as you could get, full red and black, but I fell into the trap of signing up to be law enforcement, both to pay my bills and because I wanted to help people.
My dumb ass thought that there was some hope to work to better the world from inside the system. My first agency didn't do either of those things. So I went was what was a pretty prestigious until recently federal agency. And so basically he went from being a cop, which is what he started as again. I haven't talked about his starting career because I don't want to dox him too much to being in the Secret Service.
Now that a new administration is coming in, I suddenly realize that I've been wrong for almost 10 years. I sold out. I'm disgusted with myself.
There's no way to help from inside the system, not as a law enforcement. For every person I helped, my co workers hurt more. For every person I [00:18:00] got mental health or domestic abuse resources, my co workers undid twice as much. I can't be part of this anymore. How does the logic work there? But if he's not there, then he's not doing that.
So even if his coworkers are doing more bad than he's doing good, presumably he's still doing good. Just
Simone Collins: feeling beat down. Probably.
Malcolm Collins: I don't think he's feeling beat down. Basically what he means is he wants to be lauded by the communities that he looks for for social affirmation. And he's willing to sell out the poor and downtrodden to receive that social affirmation.
I want to help. I want to leave my job, maybe go back to work as an advocate for something like the ACLU or the SPLC or something like that. I even applied to an open spot at the ACLU tonight, but I feel still feel so hopeless. I don't know where to start. I was hoping maybe someone might be able to give me a nudge.
I feel totally lost. I have no idea what to do. Is it even possible to get back on the right side of things anymore?
Simone Collins: Oh, wow.
This reminds me of, you know, [00:19:00] That show that I got so obsessed with called The Good Fight, where the lawyer, the like lead female in the show, this lawyer has serious Trump derangement syndrome and really, really, really like believes in her side and wants to help and wants to make a difference and just keeps kind of losing her mind when she feels like she just can't make a difference and no matter what she does, like she doesn't get her way.
And conservatives still continue to exist somehow, and it drives her completely nuts and insane. And it, this seems like the sky's going through the same thing. And all because they're fighting for
Malcolm Collins: a world that doesn't exist. They're fighting for a world where, and this is the thing, where they're not the fascists, right?
And so they need to delude themselves. They need to delude themselves into believing that Trump's going to deport, like, black Americans. They need to delude themselves into believing, That you know, a national abortion ban is on the way. They need to delude themselves into believing that women aren't going to have any rights anymore.
Like, it's all ridiculous. It's all ridiculous. Yeah. [00:20:00] And it's sad. It's sad. But, and I'd also note here that the organization that he was so happy to apply for a job at, the Southern Poverty Law Center, even under a left leaning administration
members of it were convicted of terrorism. So, of the SPLAC, the SPLC, sorry, it's a Southern Poverty Law Center.
The hope not
Simone Collins: hate of the U. S.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the hope not hate of the U. S. is one person said. A staff lawyer in two foreign nationals among 23 Antifa charged with domestic terrorism after cop city riot. This has been 2023. According to the Delcub jail booking records, Thomas Webb, sorry, I won't say the name, a staff lawyer for the anti white hate group the Southern Property Law Center was one of the arrested. He was arrested alongside 22 others that have been charged with domestic terrorism by the Juro Bureau of Investigation for their role in pillaging the construction site of an 85 acre training complex of the city's police and fire departments.
Oh goodness. And of the person who radicalized him when he made this really [00:21:00] sad post, the most upvoted comment was, whoever it is, the person radicalized, I credit you and your works for helping me reach this point. And in response to this, he received a mix of comments from the anti fascists, some outright disbelieving him while others staying true to their ACAB values. All cops are b*****d values, just discrediting him, hitting on
Simone Collins: him,
Malcolm Collins: Saying that he could something
Simone Collins: I just hate about.
The way, where the left has gone is that you can't win even giving your life to the cause. Here's this guy who is clearly giving everything he can and who is completely bought in hook, line, and sinker and he's being hated on despite coming to them for help. Despite being disheartened, you would think that they'd give more encouragement than that.
That's sad.
Malcolm Collins: It is sad. It is sad. I, I, I don't know. Like, he just appears brainwashed. He doesn't appear to be like a good or bad person. He's just an ant with cordyceps. Is an ant with cordyceps against the hive? [00:22:00] Not really. It's just a tool of the fungus now. It's just a tool of the self replicating memetic virus.
And the, the person who infected him their reply was the, the top reply. And he had thanked the person for radicalizing him, giving him this virus, erasing his identity and any shred of human dignity he had. Becoming a Nazi himself. He basically appeared to hand wave this guy's involvement with the United States government. And they didn't respond to that. He said, thank you, Robert. I credit you and your works for helping me reach this point. Your words mean so much. Cool zone media is one of the few things that helped me start turning the gears and showing me the inner light again.
That light, as you say, is telling me I can't stay where I am. And I'm willing to accept that I'll be on the outside, that I'll have to prove my intentions, but I just can't stand by. And this is him as a, this to me sounds like somebody who really might try to assassinate the president.
Simone Collins: Or off himself.
I mean, this just seems like a sad person.
Malcolm Collins: I mean, my takeaway from this is that the organizations [00:23:00] aren't screaming against extreme leftism in the way that they should be government organizations.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
They
Malcolm Collins: see extreme leftism as fine.
Simone Collins: Yes. Yeah, that, that seems to be, well, I mean, that's going to change with the Trump administration because on so many fronts. It has flagged leftist extremist views as being not permissible anymore.
Malcolm Collins: So there is going to be a bit of a, we need to just be more aggressive about it.
We need to be using AI as we need to develop a eyes that can scan all everyone who works with the federal government, social media, anything that could be tied to the federal government, social media. And we need, I don't think people should
Simone Collins: be actively disenfranchised for holding ideological views that are different from ours.
I just think that. If someone holds the, they have to
Malcolm Collins: Oh, being a Tifa member is literally equivalent to being a neo nazi in this country. It means you have dehumanized over half of the population of this country.
Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean that, that level of I mean everyone is biased though, I, I do struggle [00:24:00] with this.
No, this
Malcolm Collins: I understand you always want to see the good in people, Simone, and I, I love that about you. But the problem is, is somebody like this, and I've said, I've humanized this individual. I said, I just did. You did, you did, you did, you did, but no, I also think he's an active threat to the president as well.
A person can be a human person who just got brainwashed, who just fell in with the wrong crowd, who has no business being in the federal government,
who has no business, who's supposed to be doing counter sniper stuff for the president when he can just aim his gun at the president.
Yeah, yeah,
we're not. Yeah, he genuinely believes the stuff he's saying, and it seems that he genuinely does. Would he not have a moral mandate to act?
Simone Collins: Well, I don't, I don't know how much has come out from the Butler, Pennsylvania assassination attempt on the president, but do you think in light of the [00:25:00] low level of ideological magic betting that has taken place.
Do you think it's possible that there was intentional looking the other way? Yes, I do
Malcolm Collins: think it's very possible when you consider the fact that the crowd saw the guy, a crowd of
Simone Collins: multiple people were like, Hey guys, there's a guy on the roof with the gun. There's a crowd,
Malcolm Collins: the secret service, I think it was 30 minutes before the secret service did.
Yeah, there, there
Simone Collins: were, there were many, many, many attempts to inform this
Malcolm Collins: guy who had his gun trained on.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: To me, that sounds pretty bad
Simone Collins: when you combine those facts with this fact. I mean, at the same time, though, you know, Trump has had been hadn't had
Malcolm Collins: Biden. Why didn't any of this happen to Obama? Why didn't any of this happen to? None of this happened to any other candidate. It's not like he had one attempt on him.
He had it. Three attempts on him, two came very close with a full gun setup happening. That didn't happen to any other candidate.
Simone Collins: You
Malcolm Collins: can't be like, oh, this [00:26:00] is equivalent, when it's literally not equivalent. It's literally unprecedented.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't, I just don't know quite what to make of it.
It is, this is pretty sobering
Malcolm Collins: because you're not willing to accept the truth, which is this memetic virus needs to be treated like a dangerous cult. People who are infected with it need to be quarantined and removed from interacting with the federal government,
Simone Collins: like effectively deprogrammed,
Malcolm Collins: not deprogrammed.
They need to be treated the same way. Somebody who went on like a racist rant online would need to be treated like. These people just cannot be trusted with any sort of institutional power.
Speaker 2: You b es are gonna do what I say or I will put my g foot so far up your a You will rue the day you crawled out of your mother's a [00:27:00] Barry!
Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: This
Simone Collins: is a systematic problem, not just when it comes to, we'll say, urban monoculture extremism. We have an issue in both Japan and in South Korea with the Moonies getting a little too far into the government, right?
Wasn't the, the Moonies
Malcolm Collins: also were individual. And here's what I want to say. I am not like the lefties against repentance. If somebody is like, I was genuinely wrong, I was genuinely hoodwinked. I was genuinely brainwashed and they're on record with that and they're public about that. I am totally okay with that.
Lefties, of course, don't allow this. You can't be repentant on the left. But on the right, you can be repentant. And, and, and there are people that are like, No, that's not true. Name one person who was a never Trumper and who has ever been forgiven.
Speaker 3: In 2016, he was a staple on TV screens, explaining Trump's appeal with a warning. Referring to Trump as, quote, America's Hitler.
Speaker 4: I'm a never Trump guy. I never liked him.
Malcolm Collins: I don't know, maybe his vice [00:28:00] president? Maybe his literal running mate?
Who said all of these horrible things against Trump and was completely forgiven the left would never Do that again because it's like this totality or they're not gonna be they're not good people But the right we say you say you're wrong Even this guy if he said he's wrong if he went through and he explained to us You know, what's interesting is why it's safe to do this on the right is because no one ever lies about this on the right I've never once seen a lefty, when lefties infiltrate the right, they always pretend to be like different people.
They pretend that they were always racist. And then they're like, like the hope not hate guy talking with us, I was like, Hey, you are uncomfortably racist, buddy, but like, I'm not going to be mean to you just because of your like personal beliefs. I'll like talk to you and humor you. But I'm not gonna like, yeah and I, and I think that that's how they fundamentally misunderstand the right, right?
Like if they assume that all these righties are like racist and they're not, they are the weird, uncomfortable racist in this room. And everyone else is like, [00:29:00] well, he's I don't want to like, shame him, but I will try to guide him away from these beliefs, as we did with the Hope Not Hate guy, and it was actually recorded in the article because the truth is that there isn't this racist base on the right, but there is this racist base on the left, as we saw, When Trump won, them immediately turning against their black population, the Hispanic population.
So this is the way people characterize you versus me. They're like, you're always like, oh, everyone's a good person. No one really did anything wrong. And I'm always like, well, I think it's
Simone Collins: the autist versus the schizoid dynamic that we have, which is that you're like constantly modeling things and Making connections and I am doing the exact opposite of that and assuming that everyone is acting like a rational mechanistic player and that they couldn't possibly have ulterior motives because they haven't told me they have any ulterior motives and therefore they're doing exactly what they tell me that they're doing.
So I think that's what's going on in the end. [00:30:00] This guy
Malcolm Collins: is, by the way, autistic. I wouldn't be surprised if in a few years he's
Simone Collins: trans. Well, he's very transparent. I really like that about him. I mean, you know what he stands for and he's made it very clear.
Malcolm Collins: The idiot thing he did and how they found him is he posted lots of pictures on these pseudonymous accounts and they just used AI to find his real accounts using the pictures he was posting on the pseudonymous Reddit accounts.
Simone Collins: Oh, interesting. The more even fighting like
Malcolm Collins: his Spotify account was a an equivalent picture to when he had posted on another thing So like they can confirm with his credit card and everything. It's the same guy So there isn't a lot of doubt that it could be somebody else.
Simone Collins: That makes sense. That makes sense
Malcolm Collins: But what I think one thing i'd like to see was the trump administration is to incorporate the public army that republicans have the the dems Tim's don't have a competent public army, right?
It's all funded by, you know, like, you know, these organizations, like the ones I've been talking about are Hope Not Hate. They're funded by the government. They're funded by [00:31:00] as we did in our Hope Not Hate episode. But the, the spy who has been tracking us where we go into, it's, it probably wasn't, he probably worked for the government directly.
Which is to say that They don't really have a true grassroots. Their, their, their grassroots is like fighting amongst themselves. We have fortune who could unholster their autism for great feats. And not just fortunate, but organizations like this. And I think that we need to develop channels within the Trump administration for individuals like this to deliver messages to the administration, to deliver directions and things that they have found and connections that they've been able to make to the administration so it can be vetted and acted on.
Yeah.
And, and I think if people knew that the administration would. Would act on these potential threats that they'd be much more excited to invest their time in them.
Simone Collins: Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, this is a, it's just, it's sad. I feel bad for him. I'm alarmed. But [00:32:00] at this point, a lot of people recently have been sharing with us various anecdotes similar to this, where I find myself thinking, wow, that's really alarming if it's true, but also I'm not even remotely surprised.
Yeah. I'm
Malcolm Collins: not surprised. Yeah. I'm not surprised. But like, but like, we need to take this as a serious thing, which is to say this, that the secret service is not betting for wanting to kill a Republican president.
Simone Collins: Well, and how do we not get desensitized to this though? Because at this point I'm like, yeah, I mean.
Sure, that probably makes sense, but like, what, like, add it to the pile. Just throw this burning trash pile on top of the other burning trash mountain. Like, I don't know what to do. You know
Malcolm Collins: what Constantine did that we need to do is get rid of the Victorian Guard. I think the Secret Service should be abolished.
It's a wasteful agency. Get rid of it.
Simone Collins: Doesn't it do something with fraud? Oh, wait, it's not doing anything with fraud anymore. So, yeah, screw them. Okay. Yeah, just go back to zero based budgeting with the entire government and [00:33:00] abolish,
Malcolm Collins: yeah, abolish the education. I think a lot of these departments just need to be abolished.
Any iteration of them is to be recreated. It is to be recreated from scratch. None of the bureaucratic bloat, none of the insiders, none of the D. C. decline.
Simone Collins: You don't, yeah, you don't need a Department of Education on the federal level. Arguably, you don't even need state level huge education apparatuses.
When on the local level, people are paying in many cases so much in, like, funding through property taxes. Like, I think we paid 8, 000 dollars this year and mostly school taxes. Like, that's. Shouldn't that be enough? For our system, you know, and yeah, we have kids who are eligible for the public school system.
But this is also a tax that is being paid by childless people by dinks by retired people per year per household. [00:34:00] So. Yeah, there's just too much bureaucracy that that's unnecessary. I mean, I think I was just I think Vsauce released a short recently that I saw where he pointed out that the number of federal holidays at this point.
Is growing at such a high rate that if it continues growing at the same rate soon, federal employees will work zero days a year and you can just take over the government because no one will work anymore. How
Malcolm Collins: long till it works here? It is a year.
Simone Collins: Oh, it's, it's going to take quite a few years, like 300 years or something.
It's, it's too long, but like, I think it's just the number of federal holidays today. Versus what it was in the seventies and then in the thirties is, is really insane. Like they just keep adding more days to take off. In addition, of course, to adding, are we going to get federal? Are we going to get wicked?
What do you mean? Off? No, no, listen. Doge made it very clear that they want 80 hours a week plus from their team. If we were lucky enough to serve there, there would be no sleep. There would be. No, nothing, but [00:35:00] doge, which is worth it. I mean, to serve in that opportunity, it would
Malcolm Collins: be like serving the military, like it would be a service to the country.
Simone Collins: Yeah, 100%. I, I hope that they actually review the CVs of people who submitted their CVs, including us.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, our contact there. Yeah,
Simone Collins: but life is good. Good things are gonna happen and who cares because the Christmas is coming, future days coming. Life is nice at this time of year. It's cold. It's dark. Oh, divine, but I'm just going to enjoy.
Well, I'm excited about the meal
Malcolm Collins: that you're making tonight.
Simone Collins: Poor man's steak and well, the slow cooker. Sweet potato casserole is going to take a while. That'll
Malcolm Collins: be easy for tomorrow, but it's going to be so good.
Simone Collins: We'll see. We'll see.
Malcolm Collins: Simone, I know you don't understand. Why would somebody want mashed sweet potato?
No, that's true. Never mind. [00:36:00] Do you want me to puree it after? No, I want to, like, be able to cut into it and have some semblance that it's its original form. Like, the form
Simone Collins: of it. Okay, so I should try to keep the layers intact when I slide it into the slow cooker.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah,
Simone Collins: okay. We don't have to have to
Malcolm Collins: just
Simone Collins: kind of it's, it's chilled.
So challenge accepted. I'm ready to take this on. I, I appreciate The, the Shokugeki you have presented, competing against myself and your standards. Best anime
Malcolm Collins: ever made. I still think it's my top anime position, um, Star Wars has
Simone Collins: made both of us consistently cry, not from sadness, but from joy. More than any other show that we've god, do you
Malcolm Collins: remind me of the girl in it who's so sweet?
Simone Collins: The girl who's so insecure and comes from a small town. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, she's such a great character. Come on. She is great.
Simone Collins: I just, I love the busty American whose name is some kind of play [00:37:00] on the Japanese word for meat. Is it? Do you know that? I'm sorry. I forget how much Japanese,
Malcolm Collins: you know? Yeah.
Simone Collins: Her, her name is something like Niku something, but yeah, like, yeah.
So I think it's some kind of pun they were going for. It's like, you know, meet Talia. I don't know. You know what I mean? It's a great show. Yeah, I think, I think she's my favorite. No, I don't know. Just anyone whose clothes are being burst off at the, like, most recent moment. Jordan, you don't like the sweet girl?
The, the, no, because I'm never the flutter shy girl. I hate flutter shy, you know, like that, that trope is not my trope. So true.
Malcolm Collins: You know, you, you definitely are not you. Yeah, well I, one girl is definitely my brother's wife.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: No, she's. Yeah. Yeah. She is exactly the personality of my brother's wife.
Simone Collins: The competence and the talent.
100%. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: No, you're probably closer. If you're close [00:38:00] to any character and personality, it's the science cooking girl. Oh, I love her. Autistic and detached and think she's
Simone Collins: better than everyone. I don't, but I don't think I'm better than everyone. So I'm like, I'm her combined with your favorite and that I'm, I'm, I'm deeply self hating and self critical, but I'm also very autistic and uncaring and separated from people.
I love you. Yeah, anyway. We're ending
Malcolm Collins: this with an anime discussion! Although after this we'll have a discussion. What's the thing that we talked about at the beginning? I remember it was interesting. Anyway, you guys are in for another interesting discussion. And I love you, Simone. You are the best. And people say, keep these inbits.
And I don't mind. Because, you know, if you don't like it, then just stop watching now, right?
Simone Collins: Doesn't that increase the drop off rates or something?
Malcolm Collins: Oh, no, no, no, no. I, I structured the episode. So the parts that people may not like watching, they can just end watching without being burdened by. So I try to do all of the most important information at the very
Simone Collins: beginning.
No, no, no. But I mean, like. [00:39:00] YouTube completion rates matter in terms of our stats, right? No, they don't watch
Malcolm Collins: time. That matters. That completion. So
Simone Collins: I,
Malcolm Collins: I tried to segment the dirty
Simone Collins: secrets about you. Can I share Oh, I'll have to think of something. You don't have dirty secrets. You share everything. I love you.
Malcolm Collins: Have a good day. And we'll go get the kids at the turn of the hour. Okay.
Simone Collins: Thank you. Oh gosh. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: No,
Simone Collins: I appreciate it. This gives me time to actually prep the burgers and everything. Cause it's going to take a little, it's going to take a moment. What have you done?
And then we're using Alfredo. That's right. Alfredo. Right. You want to actually do the, do the sauce, right?
Malcolm Collins: You know, I wonder
Simone Collins: Because we could just do cheddar, if you'd rather just do cheddar.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, what were you thinking of doing in terms of an Asian sauce?
Simone Collins: Maybe like just something simple, [00:40:00] like sriracha mayo.
For you.
Malcolm Collins: Sriracha mayo would be perfect to do that.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay. So you actually are kind of on board with me, maybe I can try a different sauce on each one. Sriracha
Malcolm Collins: mayo has the creaminess. That's what you're looking for.
Simone Collins: But then you want that, that like Malcolm twist, cause if it's not fusion, you don't like it.
So I'm trying to model you and your desires.
Malcolm Collins: You do a very good job of that. Simone.
Simone Collins: I love you, Malcolm. God, that smile gets me every time. Okay. I'm going to start dinner. You nerd. Other girls have
Malcolm Collins: said that too. I wonder what it is about a smile that gets women.
Simone Collins: It's like, well, you, you have a beautiful face and a great smile and your smile is genuine.
You smize as your mother says you smize that, that sparkle in your eye that I love that goes away when you're not, when you're too exhausted. Anyway. Bye. Have a good day, you guys. Okay. I love you. Bye. From the Christmas story, when they get their they [00:41:00] burn their dinner and they have to go to the Chinese restaurant.
Malcolm Collins: I would always rather have Chinese food than Christmas. I know
Simone Collins: you would. I know you would.
Malcolm Collins: I am so much more a fan of Chinese food than And Christmas and Thanksgiving dinner are just such garbage dinners.
Like who likes turkey? You know how I know we need to have a few conversations here. You know how I know, you know, one likes turkey because we don't eat it any other time of the year. If people like Turkey, Turkey would be a regular thing that people ate. Stuffing would be a regular thing that people ate, but we don't because it tastes.
Like, like a sad chicken. It's the total's meat. It
Simone Collins: tastes like the sauce you give to it and you being a sauce is, man, I am, I'm embarrassed For your lack of creativity, do better. Turkey tastes like sad chicken.
Malcolm Collins: It is,
Simone Collins: it is not a good, no, doesn't, it's not a good Turkey is chicken with terroir. Okay. It is. It's got an earthiness to it.
The tryptophan, you know, it's, it's like, it's the, it's the [00:42:00] absence of, of chicken. Gimme 5%
Malcolm Collins: chicken. 25% dirt. Yes. That's what it tastes like. It takes you just
Simone Collins: no. Oh, great. Now it's frozen on my just up with my camera.
I
Malcolm Collins: hope so. There's buses out there.
Simone Collins: I know.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. Octavian's getting out. So she must be. That's good.
Simone Collins: I wish they would just let them out. You know what I mean? Like just, oh, the children will die. Yeah. It's, it's our house. He has, he knows the, he knows the code to get in the house. Like it's not rocket science.
Malcolm Collins: People are such hippies. All right. So I'll get started.
Speaker 9: Oh my gosh, you guys, how excited are you? You've got a crazy giant bouncy house.
Speaker 11: Oh, wow.

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