Navigating Consent: Age, Maturity, and Society

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] wherever you have socialists or communists, you have a push to erode and decrease the age of consent. Wow. Okay. So I'll just go over some examples here. The Communist Party of Great Britain, this party supported abolishing the age of consent altogether.

The Italian communists in 1985, the Italian communists attempted to lower the age of consent to 12. Okay. The pacifist socialist party, which is a communist socialist group in 1979. They supported a petition to lower the age of consent to 12. And I have read that in parts of the USSR, it was 12.

5 years. Now,

Simone Collins: Oh, 12 and a half. Those prudes Lord almighty. Can you believe that's, I mean, that's young.

Malcolm Collins: You are intrinsically creating a class distinction by denying sexual access.

Would you like to know more?

Simone Collins: Excited for this. I, you have me so intrigued.

I have no idea. [00:01:00] What? And, and how do you learn of these things?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone! I'm excited to be here with you today! This episode was inspired by a question that you had asked me before. And we had done an episode on this, which is the concept Of a classless society, and it's intrinsic impossibility because there are certain assets that humans desire, which are not in infinite supply and intrinsically cannot be made in infinite supply with the.

Key one we focused on there is being the attention of other human beings. Some humans will always have more attention than other humans. And that allows them access to certain privileges and abilities. And, and we see this in our, in our world right now. Like, what do the young people want? It's attention.

That's what they want the money for. That's what, that's why being a YouTuber is like one of the most desired career path trajectories these days. It is because [00:02:00] Of the value of other humans attention, which, of course, cannot be communalized not without serious human rights violations happening and removing most of humanity's free will, well, in that conversation, I began thinking about other things that humans desire.

And, of course, you know, when people talk about communism, they're usually thinking about things like food and housing. But in terms of our evolutionary pressures, food and housing were always an end to a mean, which was breeding. Right.

Simone Collins: Food and housing is what you do to reproduce successfully.

Malcolm Collins: So one of humanity's strongest built in desires is to breed, to have sex with individuals.

Um, This desire, I argue in a previous day, the barbarians versus wife sexuality framework likely bifurcated. So you have one form of sexuality [00:03:00] for somebody you see as a close long term partner. And then you have one form of sexual profile for the people you see as disposable conquest likely mirroring the way that you, Ancestors would have treated people and spread their genes when conquering territories which of course was a major way to, you know, get a lot of babies in a short period of time.

Well,

Simone Collins: and the, the, the, when you look at human genes, it appears that that indeed was the case. Like it shows up in our genetics.

Malcolm Collins: But then so does, how does communism deal with the fact that people can decline consent, right?

At the end of the day is not a woman's body. The highest all means of production. You know, if you want to seize the means of production that is controlled by one cast of people, so that other casts that people cannot freely access it. Well at that puts women in a very precarious position. Because they are born as a group of people. We have access to a resource, one of the most critical resources in [00:04:00] society that another group of people is not born with.

Therefore, they are born with intrinsic privilege.

Malcolm Collins: Like, somebody, one, somebody sexually might be more desirable than other individuals.

Simone Collins: Yeah, which inherently I guess is anti communist because it creates class, to your point.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I think in a way this is what this, Movement that you see among women where they will say all women are equally attractive.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It's a very communist kind of take. Yeah. Well, they, they believe that, and you see this, this, this is actually how they deal with this particular problem.

And it's, it's been very fascinating to watch the Hayes, the healthy at every size movement and other like fat acceptance movements try to convince us men that the reason we prefer skinny women to obese women Is because we've been socialized to prefer skinny women to obese women. And actually, I've sort of seen this across the board within online [00:05:00] socialist circles, is this idea that the things that some humans find attractive, they only find attractive when they're socialized.

Because of socialization and not because of an inherent desire for X or Y to be attractive or X or Y being a sign of fitness. I think the extreme form of this we're seeing now is the idea of lady dick as you've heard. Girl dick, yeah. You know, trans women who have not undergone surgery and still have male genitalia say it's not male genitalia, it's female genitalia.

And if you lesbian won't have sex with me, it is because you are transphobic. You learned from society what women are supposed to look like, but actually, if you remove the socialization, you are equally attracted to everyone. Is sort of the, the idea behind this, which is really interesting way to relate to sexuality and obviously very problematic because it is not at all correlated with actual human biology and fundamentally overrides the [00:06:00] concept of consent.

Simone Collins: Right.

Malcolm Collins: But it goes further than that. So I began to dig deeper to try to get a mind communist founding fathers. What did they think about sexuality? What did they think about sexual consent? I think that that consent could happen. And one of the things they talk about sex. Oh yeah. Yeah. Foucault talked a lot about sex.

Okay. Getting through in just a second. Is sort of wherever you have socialists or communists, you have a push to erode and decrease the age of consent. Wow. Okay. So I'll just go over some examples here. The Communist Party of Great Britain, this party supported abolishing the age of consent altogether.

The Italian communists in 1985, the Italian communists attempted to lower the age of consent to 12. Okay. The pacifist socialist party, which is a communist socialist group in 1979. They supported a petition to lower the age of consent to 12. And I have read that in parts of [00:07:00] the USSR, it was 12.

5 years. Now,

Simone Collins: Oh, 12 and a half. Those prudes Lord almighty. Can you believe that's, I mean, that's young. I can understand.

Malcolm Collins: That's pretty pubescent.

Simone Collins: Yeah, you know, yeah,

Malcolm Collins: but hold on. We're going further. We are now going to talk about the French intellectual petitions because this is where Foucault and some other really famous early communist thinkers were involved in one of these petitions.

So I mentioned three, but I haven't mentioned the French one yet. So this one has a lot more theory to talk about here. So I'll be reading a perplexity answer on this.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: In the late 1970s, several petitions were signed by prominent French intellectuals calling for reforms to, or abolition of the age of consent laws.

These petitions were driven by a mix of legal, philosophical, and sociopolitical arguments. The 1977 petitions a petition published in Le Monde, [00:08:00] criticized the detention of Le Monde. Her non violent sexual offenses involving children aged 12 through 13. In May 1977, another petition addressed the French Parliament calls for the equalization of the age of consent for homosexual and heterosexual relationships, arguing against the discriminatory nature of the existing laws, which I actually agree for.

So during this time period, the age of consent for gay sex was higher than the age of consent for straight sex.

Simone Collins: Oh, that's interesting. I do not

Malcolm Collins: agree with the 12 year age of consent law here.

Simone Collins: Oh, I thought it was like a man boy lover thing. Okay. The

Malcolm Collins: 1979 petition, a controversial petition published in Liberation in 1935, defended a man arrested for sexual relations with girls aged 6 to 12, arguing that the children were quote unquote happy with the situation.

Simone Collins: Oh, no, no, no, no, no,

Malcolm Collins: no, no, no. This petition was signed by notable figures such as Simon Iff, And Jean Louis Bory and others. But let's, let's talk about the specific intellectuals [00:09:00] involved. The intellectuals involved include Michael Foucault, Jean Paul Sartre, and Jacques Derrida. Often argued from the perspective that questioned conventional understanding of maturity.

Foucault, for instance, viewed consent as a contractual notion and argued that it was not sufficient to measure whether harm was being conducted. So he was against consent more broadly. This perspective is part of a broader critique of societal norms and rules and factors which these intellectuals saw as oppressive and overly rigid.

From a Marxist viewpoint, some arguments against fixed age of consent laws stem from the belief that the laws are idealistic and do not account for the material conditions that allow individuals to truly understand the world. This perspective suggests that maturity and the ability to consent are not strictly tied to age, but to one's lived experiences and material conditions.

So, that's sort of the context we're looking at here. So let's talk about why you would want lowered [00:10:00] age of consent if you are a communist, right? Yeah. Well, first, it is the, the core of everything in communism is, I want what I want. Like, there are things other people have, I want those things. The rich have things I don't have, I should have those things.

Okay. And so it makes a lot of sense to say, well, I want this person for sexual access. Therefore, how dare the government, especially if they are not complaining about my, you know, grooming them or whatever. But I also think it brings a lot of the modern grooming Conversation into new light because it was normalized in their mindset.

They're basically like, if this person can make decisions like sentient decisions, there's no like gradient of intellectual development within this system. The reason the age 12 was chosen, cause I was looking at this is they argued that was the [00:11:00] earliest a person might go through puberty.

And therefore, as soon as a person has gone through puberty they should be able to get over it. Like, well, I guess nobody's going to want to have sex with a prepubescent person. That, that seems to be the theory here. But they may want to have sex with somebody after puberty. And so there's no understanding of continued intellectual development.

But I think that we think that, See this again with stuff like the puberty blocker argument we're seeing in our society now. Oh, a

Simone Collins: new age of consent argument,

Malcolm Collins: 12 year olds,

Simone Collins: Yeah, that would, and they're arguing they're allowed to make this choice. What makes them less capable and society snaps back and says, they're not fully myelinated.

They're not sexually mature. They're not whatever. And. And I guess they're very similar arguments. That's Oh, goodness gracious. That's right. A lot of

Malcolm Collins: this comes from the concept of does a family, like when does a child leave their families? Intellectual protection.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Right. Or control. I mean, it can be viewed as positive or negative.

[00:12:00] Protective or harmful.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And far progressives you know, want to take the perspective that because they have kids at much lower rates. That, you know, how do you get access to Children if you're not having them yourself, you need to take them from other people. And so it causes them a lot of problems that when people aren't properly fully thinking, like, they're not properly myelinated.

They're not sorry. People should. I should explain what I mean when I say somebody's not fully myelinated. So myelination is what allows neuron, like, action potentials to travel down our neurons very quickly. It's, it's the key thing that allows human ends to think at all. If you look at non myelinated species, the only way they can increase the speed of the action potential.

Is by making the actual neuron larger. So if you get two things like, you know, people will talk about cephalopods, like octopus and squid being really smart. But they actually have axons that get up to like half a centimeter [00:13:00] wide. A lot of people don't know this. That is. That is massive. You can never get, you can never evolve intellect if that's the tactic you're using for increasing the speed of the, the action potential.

So it's not like myelination is like a small booth. It's actually critical for human understanding.

Simone Collins: So you're saying it's like equivalent to upgrading from gravel roads in your mind to paved freeways.

Malcolm Collins: Full myelination doesn't happen until you're late teens. So I thought it was mid twenties.

Yeah, it might be mid twenties. Yeah. Mid twenties is you're, you're right. I'm wrong. Mid twenties. I'm going from memory here. But the point being is when you are talking to a 12 year old, you actually have the ability to convince them of some really crazy stuff quite easily because they're not a fully thinking human being yet.

And so if you are a, you know, a communist PDA file and you want access to children, you know, why not? And even if you don't specifically want access to [00:14:00] children, they are easier to access, especially in times of poverty which is, you know, what a lot of these times were, you know, you go to the poor kid, you offer them, Oh, you get to hang out with this famous French intellectual.

That's what I see there. What were you looking up?

Simone Collins: I was looking up when myelination is complete. It can go up to until you're 30. And yeah, I think it's, it's one of those things where

Malcolm Collins: it starts. Another thing. What are your thoughts on age of consent laws, Simone? When do you think consent should be?

Simone Collins: Yeah, that's, that's tough. I think it really depends on the context of your society as well. And the, the presence of witnesses, I think affects things too, you know, when, when a guy's like, Oh yeah they consented, you know, I think that there's a certain point at which, and this can apply to adults too.

Consent or confessions only really makes sense in the presence of like. [00:15:00] Impartial witnesses who are like, yeah, there's the coercion here. There's no,

Malcolm Collins: well, I mean, that's the way a lot of society used to be. So Puritan society, women would always have their minders with them.

We're just gonna leave you two alone. I am never alone in the company of men. I even refuse to feed my roosters without a chaperone. Come in, silence!

A sage choice which will make our gathering a blessed evening? I will be gone by evening. Those who court when the sun descends court the devil's design for certain?

Simone Collins: Yeah. They would court with yeah, with, with, well, they didn't call them.

We don't

Malcolm Collins: have that in our society. Yeah. So here would be my take on existing age of consent laws. Cause I do think that there is definitely room for modification and I think some states have good age of consent laws and some states have bad age of consent laws.

Simone Collins: Oh, there's differing law in United States states?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. When I grew up in New England, I had to be pretty aware of them because some [00:16:00] states have age of consent laws that are like way too easy to trip. So, there were some laws in New England when I was growing up and I don't know if they've been reformed since then, where like when, if you were dating somebody.

And you had a sexual relationship and you were like both 17 or something. Right. One day when one of you would go above the age of consent and the other one was below it, like, suppose your birthdays were like, three, four months apart. Yeah. That'd be three, four months where you could be charged with statutory rape.

And they, because the way it worked is people over X age can't sleep with people below X age. Yeah.

Simone Collins: You have to stick in your zone.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. To stick in your zone. That is really stupid. That is a stupid law. Because it, yeah, I feel like a

Simone Collins: more consistent law would be to accuse both underage parties.

No, no, that is

Malcolm Collins: actually true. In some states both of you, if you're both under age, both violated, both the other person so I, I think that that is, [00:17:00] am I okay with that? Yeah, I am okay with that. I think the banded range is the best way to do it, which is to say if one party is below X age, the other party has to be within X many years of age.

The half plus

Simone Collins: seven rule? Should we just, should we just legalize the half plus seven rule? Actually, that's Just keep it, even for fully like super old adults, you know?

Malcolm Collins: I don't know if I mind doing that. That's actually probably So if you're, if you're 40

Simone Collins: years old, you can't date someone who's younger than 27.

Malcolm Collins: So, explain the half plus seven rule.

Simone Collins: The half plus seven rule is a rule of thumb rule that at least exists in the United States as like a social convention that you start hearing about in high school, where it's okay to date someone, As long as they're older like basically if they are half your age, plus seven years, that's, that's sort of the difference permitted.

So if, let's see, I'm 36, so the youngest I could date [00:18:00] would be I'm so bad at math on the spot. Half of 36 is 13 plus 20. I can date a 20 year old boy and not be super creepy. Yeah. Am I getting that right? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Well also I think another thing to talk about. Is it was in communism and classless societies is the dissolution of the family as it relates to sex and sexual access.

Simone Collins: Well, yeah, it reminds me a lot when you first started talking about this in terms of the way that a lot of communist states or communist aspiring states, I should say, because real communism hasn't been tried is. The loss of religion, the removal of religion. And I feel like this feels similar to that when I read brave new world, the one thing that seemed kind of weird to me was, I mean, it's a communist future, like brave new world by Aldous Huxley actually does describe a communist world because it is like post scarcity.

Everyone [00:19:00] has enough food. Everyone, you know, does their job or whatever, but they also get everything they need and live in luxury. And they have one of their many sayings is everyone belongs to everyone else, something along those lines, you are not allowed to be exclusive sexually with anyone, like, it's super not okay.

If you're like, well, I don't really feel like having sex with you.

Malcolm Collins: Actually, this is true. And we see this within modern socialism. Circles. I think this is where polyamory and this idea of it becomes politicized was in Circles because I've definitely seen the politicization of polyamory, but how dare you think you own another human being?

Simone Collins: This is, this is one of those situations where like, I feel it, it kind of works in Brave New World. But to your point, Brave New World is a futuristic communist post scarcity high tech utopia. And what makes this sexual element of this, we'll say like sexual communism, make sense and work is that one, you're only mixing within people of your social class, [00:20:00] like alphas and betas and you know, whatever, like these groups that are have like, they have looked different levels of IQ, different levels of, of interest and aptitude.

They're only mixing with each other. So I think one of the big issues that people encounter now, when they refuse sex to other people, it's like they're refusing sex because they feel like someone is of a lower social class than them. And then there's this big, like, Oh, you don't think I'm good enough for you.

And like, I think there is a distaste, especially for women. For sleeping with people who are. In some ways, like, or in multiple ways lower, you know, like both in looks and in social class. Well,

Malcolm Collins: actually, this is a really good point. You are intrinsically creating a class distinction by denying sexual access.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And, but, but within Brave New World's world, you're only mixing, you know, Like if I'm a beta, I'm only mixing with other betas. So like, I'm, I'm only having sex with all betas. I'm not

Malcolm Collins: like in far progressive communes and stuff like that, which is, which is what I've heard because I read a lot of Tumblr back in the day, a lot of Tumblr and action [00:21:00] got an idea of the culture that was created among the online leftists.

And they definitely did have an attitude that it was quite a thing to decline the internet. consent. Especially if the person you're declining consent to is of a higher caste than you within the the leftist caste system. So like a white person declining consent to a black person or a disabled person was considered particularly egregious or a Oh, because in

Simone Collins: leftist circles, those are of higher class.

Malcolm Collins: They, they, they don't see it that way, but they're like, how dare you decline consent to someone of my group? I'm the priest cast, right? Like I should be able to get what I want when I want which is interesting that they do already. They built this new cast system that they hold to very rigidly while trying to remove class, but you see within their circles.

And I've heard this from people who have like D transition. One of the things that they say that people try to do beforehand is to really make women sort of [00:22:00] hate their bodies because they get used sexually by the community so frequently that they begin to look upon their own bodies was discussed and they felt that that is what motivated transition for them.

If they just felt like their body had become so disgusting for such frequent public use and that everyone else had access to it. To their body when they wanted to and that to decline consent is in like to invoke a contract. Like I have this, you don't have this and it's quite sad, but like, I can definitely see how that is part of the memetic package, which helps the idea of the surgical genital mutilation spread like, well, if I do this, then I'll won't be.

You know, used this way anymore. And another thing that I wanted to highlight here is the dissolution of the family unit. In many ways, a family identity is a class identity, right? It's I am X group. I have X hereditary connections. And that differentiates me from other [00:23:00] people. The goal of you know, a classless society is to break down that connection you have to your ancestors, that connection you have to your parents and this is why you see even in like mainstream leftist movements like BLM, the dissolution of the nuclear family as being an important goal for them.

Because they see it as an intrinsic hurdle in what they want to achieve. And if they can use, you know, a 12 year old sexuality as a bait to achieve that, then they will. And this is where I think banded systems are really important for consent. Banded systems. What's it? It's systems below. Oh, I see.

The half plus seven rule. It's important to pronatalism more generally. So, you know, if you look historically, you know, I was just talking with a guy recently and he was, he said that he met his wife when they were 13 in chat rooms, right? You, it is true that like your sexual system begins to come online in like this 12, 13 age range.[00:24:00]

Yeah. And

Simone Collins: there's loads of, I mean, it's considered actually quite sweet to marry your high school sweetheart, right?

Malcolm Collins: Right. And, and I think that You know, we need to provide an environment where you know, a 13 year old can flirt online with another 13 year old. Without like this idea that you shouldn't start dating until you're in college, which is basically the, the norm within the dominant social group in our society makes it very hard to have a lot of kids because you're past most of your peak fertility by then.

You know, the age historically, you know, when most people would have been getting married was 20 in the United States. Well, if you're getting married at 20 and you don't start like seriously dating until 18, you, you just don't have a lot of time to figure out what you're doing or how to secure somebody or to see a large pool of partners.

But I think realistically, like when did I really start dating, dating around 16 16. I

Simone Collins: think that's reasonable.

In general. I think the rules should be made less restrictive. [00:25:00] Around regular childhood dating stuff. For example, , in many states right now, if, , people are going out and they're in high school and they text each other nudes of each other, now both of them is in possession and can be charged with the creation of child corn.

And that is like, That's not the same thing. Like you shouldn't have to your entire life deal with the same stigma. Because you did something stupid when you were, you know, young and horny, , that somebody does that is like victimizing. A minor. , and that is like, you know,

,

this is also true in, in, in kid dating, , where I think the, the, any, any punishments. Around, like, if you do have a form of statutory grape for this age range. , it should be far lower punishments if it's high schoolers and high schoolers, for example, , I think that the [00:26:00] real. , evil here comes when somebody who is at a much later state of myelination is manipulating somebody of a much lower state of myelination. And I would also notice here. Nature sort of makes us a bit fairer because the males often going to be the pursuer in this situation.

And even in an environment like high school, be dating people slightly younger than him, but females myelinate and develop a much faster than males do. So they're always going to be at a slightly higher mental age. , in this dangerous period.

And all of this for me is really downstream of not making kids terrified. Of the opposite gender and dating. Because you do that, then there, they're not going to start, you know, seriously dating or engaging with the other gender until., college. And it's it's that gives them an incredibly short time window to figure out the most important choice they're going to make in their life, which is who they [00:27:00] marry. ,

I wouldn't encourage my kids to be necessarily having sex in high school. , however, , I wouldn't want them to go to jail if they do.

Simone Collins: And I, another reason why I like half plus seven is a rule is that you cannot date someone older than you until you're 14. So like that, that seems reasonable to me. And that's what 12 just seems so wildly inappropriate.

Yeah. Like even though you may be sexually coming online when you're like 12, 13 years old, I get it. Right. I mean, especially cause people are having earlier and earlier puberties now. You are still just getting on your feet. You don't want to start messing around that like, you know, chat rooms great You know, but yeah more than that.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean it this reminds me of a one of my good friends who is from an Indian family and we worked together when we were at a hospital Right. So I, part of my career, I was working in schizophrenia research and I knew him [00:28:00] then. And so he was you know, in college at the time. And I, you know, asked him about dating and stuff like that.

And he goes, Oh, and my family, we just have this rule from his culture. You don't date until you've got your first job. Until after college, you don't date in high school. You don't get college. You just focus on grades. And I can understand how that would be useful in terms of accumulating like social status and wealth, but in the current environment, like given when you exit college these days, especially if you're on a medical trajectory, that makes finding a wife incredibly difficult.

And that's one of the things I've always worried for my kids is how do I ensure that they are dating within a safe environment, i. e. intellectual peers. And I think that this is the thing about people when they're myelinating, right? I don't mind, you know, a 16 year old daughter of mine or a 15 year old daughter of mine dating a, you know, 16 or 15 year old boy, right?

Like that's not something that worries me because this person doesn't have some giant cognitive [00:29:00] advantage that they can use to manipulate the other person. And I think if I'm overly strict in banning them, then groups like these communist groups and stuff like that, like if you, you know, Disallow your kids from, from flirting or safe childhood dating you provide an outlet for people who are promoting dangerous childhood dating where they go further than they should for their particular age range or where they're dating outside of like cognitively safe pools to come in and target those kids because the kids is like, well, with my parents, it's all or nothing.

So, you know, if I'm dating anyone, it's the same as dating anyone, you know, everyone. And so the only way you can prevent that is by putting reasonable restrictions around what they're doing there. This basically the way that we have have planned on doing this is we've built this network that we've talked about for our kids, where we have other families with kids around their age range.

And we want to create an online community. Where they can chat with those kids and, and, and get to know these kids with the understanding [00:30:00] that unlike other online communities, if they make a friend or they make a girlfriend here, they can go do a sending out where they go stay with that person's family for a couple of months, or that person comes and stays with us for a couple of months.

As a way to get to know the person, but all of this is obviously with the presumption of heavy parental supervision. But this, this allows them you know, if they have access to this, then they're less likely to be forming attachments to random strangers online, which is, you know, I think where the real danger comes into play, especially with online influencers, because I can only imagine.

If I was like an online influencer when I was like 18 or something like that,

Simone Collins: oh gosh.

Malcolm Collins: At like peak, like sexual desire, that is definitely a position I would've been like, oh I have all these girls throwing themselves at me. I'm just going to use this position to, you know, get whatever I want in the moment.

Like, it's, it's, it's, I understand how so many people at those ages end up getting into pro trouble. [00:31:00] Yeah. But do you have any final thoughts on communism and age of consent laws?

Simone Collins: Yeah, I think I'm just going to say I think Brave New World got it right because it's the only scenario in which I could really see the free sex that would be required of communism to work.

And this is a world in which humans are engineered. So also like everyone's at the equal level of attractiveness. Everyone's kind of a clone. You know, they all look the same. So you're not even dealing with like, Oh, like you're kind of gross. You know, everyone's. Totally in the same league, socially, cognitively, and attractively, and they all share exactly the same culture, so there's not even an issue there.

So I'm saying that like there are, there is a scenario in which it could work. Well, I know, but I mean,

Malcolm Collins: I'll give you my scenario for it could work, but here's what I would put as age of consent.

Simone Collins: Okay. Oh, age of consent.

Malcolm Collins: I think age of Well, yeah. Okay. Half plus seven. We know, but I, I think you need the [00:32:00] banding other otherwise you, you don't.

Okay, you could do half plus seven.

Then it is the older person, because it isn't actually encoded into law in a lot of places. The younger person and the older person are both considered violating, graping the other. Yeah. It's the older person who's committing the grape. That is the way I would handle it. Now, in a future society, how would I handle this?

Mm hmm. I would say that we should just remove sexual impulses. I think they are most useless of all of humans desires. They are, I mean, it was to ensure that our ancestors who couldn't figure out to put the thing in the thing, and that makes babies and babies are good to make babies through like pure biological impulses.

I want to, Enter a world where when people have kids, it's because they have chosen to have kids. And there is no accidents. There is no anything like that. It is.

In addition, this would do wonders to the quality of partnerships that people were forming because. There isn't this externality that's not really tied to the quality of a [00:33:00] relationship. I E how hot you found someone. In general, this is going to be how I'm going to teach my kids to think about looking for partners.

And if any of our audience isn't married yet, it's how I would encourage you to think about looking for partners. What you are looking for is the.

Mother or father of your children, every criteria you're using to judge whether or not you should date someone and then whether or not you should escalate that relationship should not be how turned on by them.

You are, it should be, is this person going to be a good mother or father to my children? And then secondarily, a good partner to me.

And I guess I didn't really, when I was younger realized that that was the choice I was making, you know, every time I see Simone interacting with their kids and I see what an amazing mother she is, and I said grateful for the choice I made. I realized I didn't. I understand the weight of the choice when I was making it.

I even me. I was, you know, it was 50%. , you know, how much do I like dating this person? , how much do I like being [00:34:00] around this person? How much do I like sex with this person? How hot is this person? How much is she going to augment my status within the communities I'm in. , and that was just a huge mistake because that, wasn't what I should have been.

I mean, I lucked into a good choice, but, , I would encourage our listeners to. Really, really, really discount how the, the whole, how much a person turns you on part of dating. Also living within a community that had had its arousal pathways removed or did not use them when it was choosing partners. We'd have two really, really huge positive externalities. , one is that men would no longer have the incentive to signal to women that they were interested in a longer term relationships than they really were. , to gain sexual access because men have higher value within the marriage marketplace and women have higher value within the sexual marketplace. So men will often try to convince a woman that they're interested in something more serious than they are to get her to put out a, which is really bad for women.

But then men have this, , [00:35:00] the inverse problem, which is a lot of women come to believe that their ma value on a marriage marketplace is their value on a sexual marketplace. When it just isn't a woman can get a much more attractive, wealthy, competent guy to sleep with her, then she can get to settle down with her for. I think what should be obvious reasons, but if you removed a recreational sex from the community, , or at least the desire for recreational sex. , the, at anything other than like a training to get good so that it can be, I guess, Used to manipulate communities that still have their arousal pathways.

It would, it would really help. Fix a lot of the problems of modern dating.

Malcolm Collins: Well, so if you would

Simone Collins: remove sex, would you also remove food? Because it's, I feel like they're very much the same thing. You know, it's a survival instinct and, you know, assuming we live in a future where you could probably have like some kind of internal IV drip.

Malcolm Collins: Absolutely. I, I, yeah, that'd probably be the next one. It would, it would be, yep. Arousal pathways I'd remove and I would remove the desire to eat, [00:36:00] but not taste pathways. I think taste pathways are enough to, you know, appreciate interesting dishes and stuff like that. But the, the desire for food for the sake of like calorie type food, like differential calorie load.

Yeah, I would remove that. I mean, I think from my perspective, all non reproductive sex is a sin. So, It is something that I would definitely want to get rid of. Like, I, I, I don't, I just don't see the advantage. Like, what's the utility of arousal?

Simone Collins: Yeah, what's the utility of eating either? And both, when you think about them, can be pretty gross.

People smacking their lips. Except for when you eat, the sound that you make when you eat.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I actually think when you speak about getting rid of eating, you're probably right. I imagine in the future you know, if you think of something like an infant in utero the way that the mother's body is adapting nutritionally to be giving them [00:37:00] directly in their blood supply, like the most optimal nutrition.

I think the way that we would probably want society to be structured in the future is humans to essentially have like small backpacks that. Placenta backpacks? Yeah, placenta backpacks. It's like, they'll optimize nutrients for their state, level of health, everything like that, directly into their bloodstream.

And that eating itself would be merely an artistic experience. You know, to Like smoking.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like what?

Simone Collins: Like smoking.

Malcolm Collins: Smoking? Yeah. But not like social, it's a break. But it's not something that you have to do, you know, if you don't want to do it, because eating takes a lot of time. I mean, three meals a day that some people do.

I do one meal a day. I don't know how anyone has time for three meals a day. But it just seems like such an indulgence. Would you agree? Or

Simone Collins: when I am sleep deprived breastfeeding or pregnant, I, [00:38:00] I need it. But not normally. Yeah. And it's a hassle.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, and with, with sexuality as well, it's one of these things where when people are like anti porn or anything like that, I'm like anything that can be used to ensure that my sexuality takes up less of my mental capacity or less of my day, I think is a good thing.

You know, I, I do not think movements that end up redirecting attentional

Simone Collins: attentional.

Malcolm Collins: Not attentional. More. How do I say more? Additional, additional mental processing to sexual thoughts, which I think things like nofap ultimately end up doing is a negative thing because it ends up dedicating more of, you know, the thing that I am, my mental processing.

Simone Collins: To me, nofap is a lot like Alcoholics Anonymous, right? Nofap is, is stopping. It's, it's not like an addiction, it's [00:39:00] worse because, you know, like, I think men's need for, we'll say release is similar to a hunger, you know, like you can't go without food. So you can't go to like, you know, you can't go cold Turkey on food or, I mean, I would argue on any sort of sexual related activity, especially as a man.

And. So then you just end up getting obsessed with it. And then you think about it too much. It's like when you're starving, I know what it's like when you're starving, like all you can think about is food. It's, it's literally like the only thing that's on your mind. When am I, where can I get, what can I eat?

You know, when is, when is my next meal? And I imagine that's what it's like for people on no fat, maybe it's not. And hopefully it's not, but it just seems just like AA where like, now you're stuck thinking about it for the rest of your life and you just have to live that way. It seems so unproductive.

Like all the things you could do. Yeah. If you weren't focusing on not fapping. And to be clear, I don't want a brave new world, free sex society. I'm just saying, if you have [00:40:00] to make free sex work, that's.

Malcolm Collins: The way to make it work. Will it first remove arousal or to make it work? No, I mean,

Simone Collins: that's, you don't need free sex if you don't have arousal.

In the Brave New World scenario, if you have a world in which people have arousal and need sex, then a world in which people are isolated within their own social class, bred to all look similar, think similar, and act similar, then, you know, it's okay. It's fine. It'll work. It won't be too problematic, although even Huxley in the book suggests it's somewhat problematic, so whatever.

But yeah, that's age of consent at 12, too, too low. And I, I only have to add that I hope that we get to do more. Episodes where you reference French works and philosophers, because again, there's nothing to

Malcolm Collins: be diligent about. Not overly banning our kids from dating and stuff. Oh,

Simone Collins: obviously not. [00:41:00] Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But again,

Simone Collins: I feel like the, the, the.

Tacit social norms of a high school social set, the half plus seven rule are more practical than our actual laws, which is insane. A lot of what life is about and where we've kind of become derailed as a society is we've built all these really weird complications instead of just doing kind of what makes sense.

You know how we had like all these, there was the food pyramid and then there's, what do we have now? It's a food pile. I can't remember. Food pile, box pyramid. Now it's a pile. I can't, I don't know what it is now, but it's complicated.

Can you

Malcolm Collins: believe that the food pyramid, like when you think back, so people who are younger who don't know the food pyramid, this is something that like in school I was taught, this is what you need to eat to be healthy.

And the thing it said you needed the most of was like carbs, like pasta. Like bread, pasta. Now we know that you need like none of that. Yeah, [00:42:00] well. And it was like bread.

 The answer is in the pyramid. The pyramid? That's ancient stuff you're talking about.

What is it? What is it for? We built the pyramid a long time ago to illustrate how much people should eat of the four basic food groups. It's upside down. What? Sir, the pyramid is upside down.

Turn the pyramid upside down. You can't be serious. That would put butter and fat at the top of the Flip the damn food pyramid! Sir, we've got a match.

Malcolm Collins: Didn't

Simone Collins: want you to know that

Malcolm Collins: pasta. Oh my God. I'm

Simone Collins: being so good. I'm eating my

Malcolm Collins: pie. I always felt like I was being healthy when I would eat like pasta or like French fries or like, you know, cause I needed to get all my carbs and I just wasn't getting enough carbs.

It's so

Simone Collins: hard to fit in all the carbs. Yeah. And then I think it was, it was at the bottom bread. Then vegetables and dairy, then there, then there were [00:43:00] fats and meats, and then just the very top of sugar. So sugar was bad. But now we live in this world in a society in which sugar and carbs are considered exactly the same thing.

Oh, yeah, fruit was in there somewhere. I think it was like

Malcolm Collins: middling.

Simone Collins: Middling is a fruit. Who cares? Who cares about fruit? It's the nineties. Eat your fruit loops, kid. It counts as a, as a bread. It's good. Better.

Malcolm Collins: I love you, Simone. You are a spectacular wife. And I am fortunate to be married to you. And I hope that our listeners like and subscribe.

If you enjoy our content it would mean a lot to us. It's actually interesting. Our viewer counts have been like shooting up and like, in terms of watch hours and views for a video, our subscriber count barely budges. I think it's because we don't ask, you know, maybe that's what we're supposed to do with like.

Like and subscribe.

Simone Collins: Yeah, and we ask our son Octavian to ask our audience, and he just says that they need to life and describe, which is not very helpful. So I guess everyone's just Please life

Malcolm Collins: and describe people!

Simone Collins: Living [00:44:00] and describing, and that's why we're not getting any more subscribers. Very problematic.

Please help us.

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