The Ethics and Impact of Antinatalism

In this thought-provoking episode, the hosts dive into the unsettling world of antinatalism and its most extreme branch, efilism. The conversation begins with a tragic recent event—a suicide attack by an antinatalist—and draws parallels to previous attacks like Sandy Hook and the Christchurch Mosque shootings. The hosts explore the ideologies behind antinatalism, highlighting its logical inconsistencies and the dangerous zealotry it fosters. They discuss the rising prominence of these beliefs and their association with dark personality traits. The discussion also touches upon the implications for future societal trends and the ethical considerations of right-to-die policies. Strap in for an in-depth analysis of one of the most controversial and disturbing movements of our time.

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. We unfortunately just had the, third suicide attack by an antinatalists.

And we, just for context, this is the third, because the first was Sandy Hook in 2012.

And then the second was the Christ Church Mosque shootings in 2019. Both were perpetrated by people who were antinatalists, either literally part of the movement, like familiar with the philosophical concept of eism, which is the extremist branch of Antinatalism, which is like, oh, let's also remove life without other people's consent.

And, yeah, that was Adam Lanza. We'll get more into Adam Lanza. I want to at least. But the

Malcolm Collins: point being is Antinatalists, and this is something where it's, it's a very large community. They're probably as large as the perinatal list community. If you look on Google Trends, if not larger, actually I

wanna argue that actually it's, it's quite larger.

It's larger than you think.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Which we'll get into later. But what they believe is that humanity would be better off not existing. And [00:01:00] what the phylis believe, which this latest suicide attack , was motivated by, is that we also have a duty to sterilize all other life, or quote unquote glass the planet.

So that nothing can evolve sentt again. So we're gonna be getting into these beliefs. It's been a while since I. Explained why they're really stupid and actually the I ideas behind them. While they make sense, if you do not allow them to be challenged by any sort of outside logic, the moment you apply like outside practical logic to them, they begin to fall apart really quickly.

And so it's a weird sort of logical framework and that it has internal consistency. I'll admit that. But it lacks basic logic. So we're gonna get into like, way more details than anyone has covered on this. Do, do you want to get started, Simone?

Yeah. So just to give the, the basics, a 25-year-old man named Guy Edward Barcus.

Bombed the exterior of a fertility clinic [00:02:00] in California. This, I think, injured for employees. No one else was killed but him. And he

Malcolm Collins: also did not destroy the embryo tanks. He only damaged the waiting room. Yeah. So fortunately he only killed himself and injured other people. However, in his video confession, 30 minutes, not video,

it was like audio.

Audio. Confession maybe. Audio

Malcolm Collins: confession. Yeah. He admitted that he. Thought he might end up killing people, and he didn't care because he didn't think the lives of anyone working at an IVF clinic had value.

Well, and he also, so being someone who he calls himself a pro mortals, he's, he's also clearly eist, clearly Antinatalists links to in his written manifesto, which he also provided a bunch of links to eism websites and content.

He. It says in his spoken manifesto that. Per his life philosophy. Couples who use IVF are amongst the most, the worst form of what he calls pro-lifers, which I think is really funny 'cause most [00:03:00] people who are pro-life are, who call themselves pro-life, are technically anti-abortion. And people who are anti-abortion are more conservative Christians who also tend to be more sanctimonious against IVF.

So anyway, whatever. Fine.

Malcolm Collins: No, but, but you should be clear when he says pro-lifers, if you hovered over his website, what it used to say before it was taken down is FU pro-lifers. Yeah. What he means by pro-lifers are not people who are against abortion, but people who believe life is a good thing.

Yeah. And so he's extra, he thinks that he, as he says in his spoken manifesto, he really extra super hates.

People, couples who undergo IVF, because not only have they chosen to bring life into the world and bring kids into the world, they've worked extra hard and been extra thoughtful about it. So like, , it's almost a difference between manslaughter and premeditated murder to him, I think. Yeah. The

Malcolm Collins: words he used in his, in his speech when he was explaining this, he goes, I am not killing anyone.

I am just changing the date that somebody dies.

Yeah. He says, anyone who? The parents are the ones who cause death because they bring in life in the first place. As soon as you're alive, you're going to die. And [00:04:00] it's the parents' fault. And so you can

Malcolm Collins: immediately see. He referenced the Sandy Hook shooter in his ideology.

Yes, he did. And if you're not familiar with the Sandy Hooks shooter's ideology, he believes that children would just grow up to suffer. Mm-hmm. And that by killing them while they were young, he was removing suffering from the world. And this is why. When you look at these antinatalists philosophies and terrorists, they so frequently go after the youngest individuals.

Yes. 'cause they see them as the most pure and because they see death brought to you by another person as the highest positive thing you can do for someone else. Mm-hmm. It is maximally good to kill a maximum number of youngest people. That's why they, right. 'cause you can save them from the most

suffering like they still have.

Maybe 90 more than 100 years of suffering ahead of them. Versus someone who's 30, you know, you've, you've already lost. Like there's so much stuff, you know, like Yeah. In terms of, let's be logical about this, but I won. But [00:05:00] he's, and I just wanna say in his manifesto, he explicitly links to alleged YouTube transcripts of the Sandy Hook Killer.

And in those YouTube videos, the Sandy Hook Killer explicitly refers to Eism and is very familiar with the concept. And this is back in 2011. So this also shows you how long. The, the concept of antinatalism and eism have been around as well, which I think is important.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and, but for people who aren't familiar with the Christchurch shooter he wrote a long manifesto where he was antinatalists for a different reason.

He was of the environmentalist Antinatalists camp that thought that there were just too many humans, and specifically he didn't like that certain. Ethnic groups were having more kids. And that's, but I think a lot of it was because he thought that those

ethnic groups still had birth rates that were too high.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. He didn't, he wasn't like a, like, black people are inferior person. He was a black, he's like, they're having too many

babies. No, it was specifically Muslim people are having too many babies from him because it was a mosque shooting. But yeah, I mean, for him it was [00:06:00] too many people. But actually Malcolm, they're super connected because mm-hmm.

Guy Edward Barcus, the, that's most recent. Terrorist is among other things, an abolitionist, vegan, um mm-hmm. An abolitionist ve it, it, it's like a, that's someone who's, you know, for animal rights and everything, but to the extent that even animal welfare is considered. Not good enough or evil by them because that just normalizes the concept of human enslavement of animals.

And abolitionist vegans are those who, you know, no pets, no use of animals in any way. Like we do not touch animals. These are the

Malcolm Collins: PETA members who like kidnap that woman's dog and euthanized it.

Yes, because dog ownership is also subjugation of animals and enslavement of animals.

Malcolm Collins: And it's better that these things are dead.

So before we get to these concepts, if you're like a sane person and you're listening to this, you're like, wow, these people are cartoonishly evil. And it is, yes, by any normal or like objective moral framework, these [00:07:00] people are cartoonishly evil. And we've mentioned this before. If you look at Antinatalists, they've been studied by a number of studies specifically.

A pivotal study WhatsApp was antinatalists an observational study on their relationships between dark triad personality streets and Antinatalists views. Schrodinger 2021 found strong associations between machiavellianism psychopathy and antinatalists views. I. Was depression acting both independently and as a mediator.

This study widened the scope of dark triad research previously linked to socially aversive moral judgments to include antinatalism, and then they did a follow-up study to this, which replicated it. There was also a study Cy Post in 2022. Dark triad Personality traits are more common among those who believe procreation is morally wrong.

Again, narcissism, Machiavelli, and psychopathy. Then you have an OSF, that's an open science framework, dark triad, and antinatalism from February, 2020 which again, found this [00:08:00] connection.

Alright, so I, I agree with you and we can go into stuff about this. This kid's. Upbringing and background that indicate that he

Malcolm Collins: is well, he didn't have a father in the picture, which I think is a really big thing here.

Yes, he was ang father and he burned down his house once before.

Yes. Playing with matches, but he also, according to his father, who he'd been estranged from for 10 years. Really enjoyed building incendiary devices, which his father claimed were harmless, but also this kid apparently playing with matches accidentally burned down their house.

Whoops. So, I mean, he also describes himself along with someone else that was close to him, named Sophie, who we can also talk about, described himself as having borderline personality disorder. Well, so one, he didn't think it was a disorder 'cause he gave it scare quotes. But. My understanding of borderline personality disorder is basically your c**t.

Like you are just a very difficult, un unpleasant person who acts out and externalizes a lot. You're, you're pathological b*****d. Yeah. And so [00:09:00] like this is clearly someone who does have behavioral problems.

borderline personality disorder it's characterized by tremendous impulsivity, , radical confusion of identity.

, And then this pattern of idealization, , of people with whom the person afflicted with the disorder is associating with radical idealization of those people and then radical devaluation of them. And then there's another theme that sort of weaves along with it, which is the proclivity of people with borderline personality disorder to presume that they will be abandoned.

And then to act in a manner that makes such abandonment virtually certain.

However, I think that there's a very strong argument that Antinatalism is growing and antinatalism is a problem because we celebrate performative.

Utilitarianism and goodness and empathy. And, and let's be clear, you know, he is, he is a vegan. He believes that the [00:10:00] most important thing is eliminating suffering and he points out in his written manifesto that he is, though he doesn't believe in God he does believe that there is objective good in the universe.

That that objective good is minimizing suffering, which is definitely consistent with, for example, the Antinatalism espoused by antinatalists influencers like Lawrence Anton, who we debated in London who also agrees like very passionately there is a thing that matters and it is eliminating suffering, which basically means eliminating sentience, which we would say is super evil.

How, but let's, just to be clear, he explicitly says in his manifesto. Our view is the opposite of nihilism. No, we don't believe in God. But yes, we do very, very, very passionately believe in this purpose. And this is, I think, what drives them to a certain extent, to engage in acts of terror instead of just offing themselves because they are very zealous.

This belief, which makes them dangerous. Like it's one thing to be nihilistic. I'm like, Ugh, I don't [00:11:00] care about anything. Everything's horrible. It's more

Malcolm Collins: than that. I think one thing you'll find with Antinatalism is , and you see this repeatedly when people get involved with Antinatalists community or ideas is that antinatalism.

Drives depression. It's not the other way around. I, I do not think it's that depressed people are more likely to become antinatalists. I think it's, and you see this in this guy's writings, he was talking about how he first heard about this idea and it didn't really, it seemed stupid to him at first, and then he began to engage with it and think about it more.

And he talks about how as he ruminated about it more, he became more and more depressed. Hmm. And it seems that he probably was infected with this idea by this girl, Sophie. So this was not his girlfriend. Shortly before he ended up doing this this girl had had, her boyfriend had asked her boyfriend to shoot her in her sleep.

Now her boyfriend's in jail for murder, which is one of these things where it's like, hold on, you were gonna kill yourself anyway. Why couldn't you have just taken the role of the boyfriend? Like if you were actually a moral person, why don't you murder Sophie in her sleep? And [00:12:00] then you murder yourself.

Yeah. And you don't need to bring other people into this. Yeah. For people who are so obsessed with consent, what's really interesting is him going out and attempting to murder innocent people. He cared so little about the consent of others, and you talk about him building in scenario devices and stuff like this.

This was not a competent person. Mind you, this is somebody who, for example, tried to live stream. The attack and the live stream didn't work. And you know, just in a number of areas, things just didn't work or it was clear. He did, he, he said that one of the main reasons he did this attack is because he was frustrated that conversations about eism we're so heavily being censored on.

On the internet, other websites. Yeah. The direct result of this attack was Eism being taken down on Reddit. Yeah. And other, and all of the subreddits he linked to being taken down.

Simone Collins: But actually, I wanna highlight, I wanna highlight that thing that he pointed out, that he had felt that for years, antinatalism and Eism were being censored online, and that he was having an increasingly difficult time [00:13:00] encountering communities that were discussing this.

And I think that's important to highlight. He, he said, for example, he believed that Elon Musk had banned the term antinatalism from X. Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: As

one example. Despite this. So despite what may be, and this is alleged, I haven't necessarily tested it out obviously there's more that's been taken down now because of this action, but allegedly there is censorship of these concepts online.

And yet if you look at Google Trends. Though, for example, the pro-life movement that we're talking about, like people who are against abortion and Antinatalism as, as a topic, if you look at Google Trends, pro-life used to be really, really big in the past, and then it has, it has actually gone down quite a bit.

And now at this moment at least, they're basically neck and neck. And Tism and Antinatalism are also incredibly closest concepts. Tism has. If you look at Google Trends, prote has people like us, people like Elon Musk, a bunch of other advocates, [00:14:00] actively engaging with the media, pushing this concept, et cetera, et cetera.

There aren't really any I. Very public analist advocates real, like not that much, and they're certainly not very good at engaging with the media at least as effective as we are, and the media isn't as interested in engaging with them. Plus apparently they're experiencing rampant online censorship.

Despite this, we're seeing similar levels of search volume. Do you understand what this means? Like, this implies to me that there's actually a much higher level of, of inherent cultural interest in analist beliefs. Then the internet would reflect

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, I, I agree with this. I think that that antinatalism is the answer for your standard woke urban monoculture person.

Yeah. When you point out that the way you've structured your life is not actually virtuous and is incredibly selfish and you're not paying into the future, the debt you of the past and a lot of social services are going to collapse soon because of your selfishness and you're victimizing people from third world countries.

To pay for your selfishness. [00:15:00] And then they're like I need a philosophy that makes me not the bad guy. And, and so this is their answer. Moreover, it's a philosophy that if you watch our video on like pessimists and Doism and how it's psychologically protective, it is an incredibly psychologically protective movement because it allows you to always just be that pessimistic person in a group when somebody else is.

Excited for a thing or happy to do a thing. If you come in and you talk down to them or you look down on them this is incredibly, you, you look both to yourself and to other people in the room. Like the more mature person, like the person who has control of the conversation.

Day's. A great day. Oh yeah, you look sophisticated, you look erudite, you look dispassionate, and yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And ooh, you know, like the, the French philosophy guy beatnik.

Some people think the beatnik is [00:16:00] merely a bum with sunglasses, but he is more than that. Though not much. . Beatniks hang out in unemployment lines, health food stores, but most of all in coffee houses, the beatnik is often fond of reading poetry to jazz thusly.

Mary had a swinging lamb. He followed her to school. She hacked his wolf for a bongo drum. And man, that lamb was cool. Thank you Mr.

Malcolm Collins: Right. You know, and it's, it's, I get it, right? Like I see why all of this is psychologically protective and why it is so desirable to people who care so much about the ways that other people see them rather than actually trying to do good.

Mm-hmm. And as I pointed out, is this guy, even by his own moral framework, he died a martyr to our cause to the prenatal list cause. His death will be useful to us in terms of further restricting Antinatalists conversation online and phylis conversation online as to why we would do that. [00:17:00] Generally in the past I was like, oh, these seem like well reasoned like nerds or whatever, like we can engage them with debate.

But what I've seen increasingly. Is the amount of depression that is downstream of this mindset, the amount of mental anguish, completely unnecessary, that is downstream of this and the amount of terrorism we're seeing from this, especially when you, given that people like our family will likely would be targets for terrorism like this you know, when he talks about like the pro-lifers, like who's, you know, and hating IVF people, you know, he's talking about people like us.

Like I, I, you know, I think a lot of these people have individuals like us in their mind. When they are thinking about this type of stuff. And that is horrifying when I see something like, because now, you know, every day since then I have been increasingly worried about the threats that individuals like this pose to our family.

You know, that Sandy, the Sandy Hook shooter, was able to convince himself that he is doing a favor to children by killing them. You know, this is a belief. That these people can build [00:18:00] about individuals like us. And so, you know, I, I feel that in the past while I was like, okay, any conversation, whatever, online, it actually, probably just due to the one negative mimetic weight of this ideology there probably are positive externalities to restricting conversation around it.

Especially when you look. At its propensity to draw people with, you know, Machiavellian and psychopathic tendencies as to why it draws people like that. Before we get into like the arguments against it, I think the core reason is, is that, to, to believe this philosophy. It, it's fundamentally people who are angry that they were brought into the world and they don't feel like they had consent in that decision.

And so they want to deny other individuals just so that other people who are like them, because they only seem to be able to emulate people who are like them. And I can emulate people like them, you know, like. It's sad and he complained a lot about the right to die and it not being easy to take his own life in California.

And I was like, but it's just so ironic that we [00:19:00] agree with that. Right. The one

thing you could have done then was help Sophie, who was his friend who died before him die.

Malcolm Collins: Right. But, but I obviously big hypocrite everything like this. But the point I'm making here right, is, okay, I'll agree with them on this Right to die stuff.

I'll agree with them that it should be easier, but there are ways to unlive yourself. Right? And he was real aware of them and he mentioned. Three of them, they're already spoken. Manifesto, if people decide to not bring you into this world. To cause yourself to be brought into this world. And they're like, well, the consent of the people who aren't brought into this world don't matter.

And I'm like, why don't they matter? Like there is a world in which I wasn't brought into existence. Yeah. And you're super

not okay with that. And I'm super not okay with the world in which I wasn't brought into existence. Yeah. There's a world. By the time my parents found out it was too late,

Malcolm Collins: somebody like walked up and forcibly sterilized you before you had our kids.

Right? Like, yeah, those kids wouldn't exist. The humans who I interact with and love and [00:20:00] hug and, and I'm excited to see how the ways they're going to change the future wouldn't exist. If you did that, you denied their right to choose whether or not they exist. Mm-hmm. And a person's inability to see that when they make a decision that removes.

Another potential person's agency that that is just as bad as them saying, oh, somebody brought me into the world without consent. It, it's, it's because of the psychopathy, it's because of this extreme level of machiavellianism that they cannot emphasize with. The fact, and this is one of the things with their movement is, is they know, like all of them know that the vast, vast majority of humanity prefers existing.

They like being alive and they want to exist. And they refuse to attempt to emulate these individuals worse for them than this. And this sort of like actual Thanos mindset that they have. Right. Worse than that for them is that when you look at what people say gave their life a meaning on their deci bed, [00:21:00] if you look at, like, to me, I think great artistic depictions around like.

A good life. You're looking at like the end of Gladiator when he dies and you know, he sees his family and the kid and his hands on the grain. Or you look at the end of grandma and grandpa turn young again. That always tears me up. And I'll, I'll, I'll put these here. Don't do it to me. Don't do it.

Jota, I'll leave the rest to you. Well, if anything happens. Do you want to try it? Yeah. Yeah. Hey, Grandma. Hm? It's a little springy. I'm not as good as my mother. I guess I'll take a break. It's a nice dark weather. As expected of my mother. She seems to be doing well.[00:22:00]

That's the topic. Grandma? I'm leaving it at the entrance. I'm tired of waiting. I'll never know what tomorrow brings I'll leave it at the entrance. I'll leave it at the entrance. I've practiced a lot with the Tsumuske brothers. I'll leave it at the entrance. I'm sure it'll be different. They're coming, Akemi.

Grandma If only one wish could come true If it's a wish, it's already come true. Grandma, what are we going to do tomorrow?

Oh, if you sleep in a place like that, you'll catch a [00:23:00] cold. Hey! Mother! What's wrong, old man? Is

Malcolm Collins: But you look at these.

None of these are about how happy these people were in their lives. Mm-hmm. None of these are about, oh my God, I'm really glad for, you know, how many times I orgasmed. I'm really glad for all of the times I watched a movie that I really enjoyed. I'm really glad. No, it's about family.

it once.

Make us believe it again.

Malcolm Collins: And these are things that these people can't even begin to understand because the urban monocultural mimetic virus has so untethered them [00:24:00] from any of the things that ever historically gave life a value, that the only thing that's left to them within this shallow framing is.

Pure hedonism, pure pleasure and pain. And as we've pointed out in the past these people are the human equivalent of a paperclip maximizer.

I don't know, I think it's somewhat worse than that because it doesn't seem that guy or his friend Sophie were really, I. They weren't focused on, on trying to pursue pleasure.

So calling them hedonists, I think isn't even that. Like they, they really, if any, if they indulged in anything, it was, they indulged in their suffering and in the suffering of the world, even to an artificial extent.

Malcolm Collins: I, I, I agree with that, but I think what you're missing is what humans seek more than pure pleasure, which is another interesting thing if you're even just talking about purely baked in human drives, is self validation and they engaged in this flagellation.

To create an image of themselves that they saw as valuable within the communities [00:25:00] they engaged in and that they could assign as virtuous. Instead of looking for actual virtue, they were trying to paint a picture of a virtuous person. Through this, this self-flagellation. And, , and if you listen to , his long thing, he keeps talking about, oh, I experience pain in life.

Oh, I experience pain in life. And imagine the level of privilege you have to grow up in to expect from life, a life without suffering. Like that is, I I wouldn't even, like, we've, you know, we have No, but he doesn't. He doesn't.

Simone Collins: And, and one of the, one of the things that I just don't understand, he kept saying.

Life is a zero sum game. And no one wins. And I'm like, one, like if it's zero sum, someone's winning. And I don't think he actually understands what zero sum means. He even says, yeah, he

Malcolm Collins: didn't seem to understand what zero means. Yeah. He was like, did

I say that right? I hope I said that right. I, I don't, so one,

Malcolm Collins: hold on.

Definition time. Yeah. Zero sum means a game in which you can only win by hurting somebody else. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Like there's that, there's a limited resource, like there's three [00:26:00] points, and if I take two points, then you don't have those two points. But I, I literally don't think that's what he thought because he thought everyone loses.

So like, I mean, if life were a zero sum game, then like. Good for the winners. You know, literally

Malcolm Collins: by, by the way, just, just for clarification life is literally quite the opposite of a zero sum game. So true. And that's the thing,

I really don't think he,

Malcolm Collins: he knew

what he was saying. Gives

Malcolm Collins: pleasure of satisfaction.

Ends up giving somebody else pleasure and satisfaction. Yes. Whether we are talking about sex. Or being a good parent for your kids or creating a good book or movie, or creating a good video game, or you know, everything, well, even happiness is

infectious. When you're surrounded by depressed people, you tend to get more depressed.

When you're surrounded by happy people, I think you get more happy on average.

Even consider the creation of this show that you're listening to now, when I create an episode that a lot of people like and find enriching and makes their lives better, I feel happy. I get positive emotional response from that. When I create an episode that does the [00:27:00] opposite, I get a negative emotional response that is literally the antithesis of a zero sum game.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And I, I 100% hear you there, but the point I was making earlier is the things that cause a human being suffering , , are just the things that our ancestors if, if they experience this sort of negative emotional stimuli in response to certain environmental factors, cause them to have more surviving offspring.

Mm-hmm. This is their sort of hard coating. If you say. Is that the thing of core value in the universe? The thing that led to our ancestors having more surviving offspring. I'm like very obviously not like Hmm. And, and it's, this is why I call him a paperclip maximizer to an extent in, at least in regards to the suffering emotion in regards to his logic.

Hmm. Is that. You know, he would say to us, well, you wouldn't like it if I forced you to suffer. This is the same way of like a group of paperclip maximizing robots saying to another one, well, you wouldn't like it if I stopped you from making paperclips. And it would be [00:28:00] like, well, yeah. I mean obviously, but

no, it's all about him actually.

Is that he, he wasn't even arguing that per se. He, he would, he literally resented anyone trying. To make his life nice. For example, he talked about how annoying it was when friends would try to get him to go to a concert with him and get, force him to have fun. Well,

Malcolm Collins: because it subverts his, his, his self-perception of this suffering individual.

That was what was core to him above all else. Hmm. And this is why I think that Phylis and Antinatalists communities are so toxic at the end of the day is because if you are a happy or chipper person within these communities, you end up being attacked or low status within these communities. Hmm.

You need to cultivate to work your way up within these status hierarchies. A a, an incredibly pessimistic view of reality. Hmm. Which he represents in, in a big way. And we're gonna do another episode where I'm gonna contrast two [00:29:00] animes. But I think do a good job of sort of representing different ways of seeing things.

Mm-hmm. One is chin about this girl who pretends that she has magical powers as sort of a coping mechanism around her father dying and she's living a really terrible life. Mm-hmm.

高名人。2倍と、どうして?で、歌でプラス。

悲しい。

Malcolm Collins: and then another gu mote around a girl who is desperate from validation for other people and. Indulges in her own self-hatred cycles.

[00:30:00] Later

I had a totally normal conversation with someone. She changed too much. Is this even the same person? Why did she come to me eat a miniskirt? Is she trying to seduce me?

She smells so good. What is this? Do all girls smell like this? Can I get a Mogo? Frappuccino? Same hormone. Did she say CIO Chino? Is that some sort of dirty, what's going on? Uh, um, a coffee. I. Coffee, please

Malcolm Collins: and while the girl in what emote objectively had the better life than the girl from Chino the girl from Chino ends up living a much better life. Mm-hmm. Because even when life is hard, what she understands fundamentally is she can recontextualize. All of the things in her life, which recontextualizes the emotions that she is getting [00:31:00] from those things.

Our emotional systems are so simple to hack. But the other thing about she, well, and this is why we

like the Adams family so much too Yeah. Is that they really epitomize this.

Malcolm Collins: She recognizes that she. Can choose whose validation she seeks. She doesn't need to seek it from just everyone or from toxic communities.

And if you seek the validation of toxic communities, it over time corrupts your soul whatever you want to say, soul or anything like that, until you're this shadow of a human, like this individual had become. Mm-hmm. I do not think that he was a. Objectively stupid person. I think that he was somebody whose mind had been so ravaged by this sort of mindset that he was unable to logically think anymore, that he thought that he could increase the visibility of ell.

By doing something that would cause all the effortless communities to be shut down, like very obviously if then logic. And I, I know if, if effortless are like, oh, how could you say to my earlier argument, how could you say [00:32:00] somebody who hasn't been brought into the world yet, has any, any rights or any concept of consent?

And it's like, well, when does the consent rights start? Like you, you clearly, you're drawing some sort of arbitrary line in the same way that people who believe that life begins a conception do, which obviously we're very against. You can see any of our episodes on that where you're saying, we, we think that life begins basically before conception.

If you talk someone out to having a kid or you, you prevent them from having a kid, you have. Ended the lives and the choice to be alive of their potential kids in the future. I think that that's the only morally consistent way that you can view this. Because otherwise you're dealing with an arbitrary barrier where life exists and life doesn't exist.

If you look at, for example, David Beta's writings, he believes people have a moral mandate to abortion until consciousness. So it's not that they believe that life begins a conception. They believe that there's some stage at human embryonic development where they have consciousness and now they have an absolute right to continue existing.

So somewhere. A little after at or after week 12, then.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, which to me, I think is just stupid. And this is why I actually think that Eism is more [00:33:00] logically consistent than generic antinatalism. Generic Antinatalism is just the version of eff eism where they do make this arbitrary distinction and they say, okay, now all lives after this point matter.

All lives before this point don't matter. And I'm like, why are you making this arbitrary distinction? Why can't you just say all potential lives matter? Mm-hmm. And so I, I think it's one of the things where. And I think any rational person can immediately see this if they're thinking clearly, you're just using like a trick of philosophy.

If you say, well, my kids' life didn't matter before they were conceived, my kids' life didn't matter before they developed consciousness. It's like, why? If they were going to matter within a certain timeline with certain decisions, like we can get into like all of the specific arguments about the environment or stuff like that.

I don't care about those. I think that that's like the one thing that just like immediately breaks their argument and comes down to like. Pedantic philosophizing rather than actually thinking through the consequences of their actions.

Well, there's one area where I ly agree with him [00:34:00] and I, I agree that.

These kinds of communities online are, you know, should, should be regarded and treated and censored as much as I would prefer a world with lots of free speech, the same way that any, any group advocating for some form of genocide should be censored. I think a much more meaningful, but also much more difficult to pursue.

Policy change is right to die. And that is a huge thing that this guy rants again about in his in his spoken manifesto and that clearly he and his friend dealt with as, as an issue. He points out that people who've researched mass shootings have found that typically precipitating events for these mass shootings were desired suicides or botched.

Attempts to end their own lives. Yeah. He

Malcolm Collins: even goes through this.

Yeah, he goes through this and he says, we need to have a right to die with dignity. And [00:35:00] I 100% agree. I, I do think that as much as, as a, an unborn person cannot give consent to live or not live, you shouldn't remove the consent. Or ability of an, an existing person of sufficient age and cognitive capacity to choose to end their lives.

And I do think that it should be not as difficult as it is now. And he, you know, he pointed out that, for example, like pulling a gun to your head and pulling the trigger is scary. And like, it's, it's just hard for a lot of people to get past that, even if they really want it. And I, I hear that. I mean, when my mom was.

Terminally ill, she wanted to end her own life. This wouldn't, and she couldn't do it. This happened

Malcolm Collins: had he had had the right

to

Malcolm Collins: die.

100%. And that's the thing is like, I think Antinatalists. Believe, and I think truly, I mean based on culture, in some cases, just based on having, you know, very severe untreated or maybe even unsuccessfully treated clinical depression really just don't want to live anymore.

They absolutely should have the right to die. And if they had that easy right, you have the

Malcolm Collins: right to [00:36:00] die. Is a bigger issue here if you're looking at demographic collapse as well. Because we're going to have an increasing number of old people who, you know, if you look at the last few years of somebody's life, that's when they spend like the majority of the money that, that, that would be spent on them in medical costs.

Yeah. You're, you're

very end of life care is just

Malcolm Collins: huge. Astronomically expensive. Yeah. Which is why Canada's

made program is. Very

Malcolm Collins: smart. Yeah. You can look at our thing of, is it okay for for Canada to be killing sad, homeless people? And we did have an episode on this where we, we argue about this pretty extensively.

And I think it's just something that anyone who's being practical is eventually gonna be like, yeah, we need to stop restricting this. And at the end of the day, if you're like, well, but then they go straight to hell or they're defiant. God, look, the people who are doing this don't believe in, in God anyway, like

exactly.

You know, so they're not, people believe this is wrong, are not going to do it. And the people who you shouldn't, you shouldn't impose your culture on other people. It's just wrong.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, so I will agree with him on that point. All this violence

could, [00:37:00] this violence could have been avoided.

Malcolm Collins: It's not fair.

His violence, his violence could have been avoided. But I, but I think his violence also could have been avoided if. These communities, a, a access to them was more restricted. Like, I don't see anything. Yeah. There, there's like literally zero positive externality. And I think that websites that host communities like this, like Reddit and stuff like that, need to be further pressured.

It, it is. O obviously beyond the pale for them to have a, a, a group that says We need to sterilize all black people, or we need to sterilize all Jews. Why is it not equally bad to have a group that says We need to sterilize all people? Yeah. It it should be like multiplicatively worse Yeah. For them to be hosting these groups.

Yeah. Especially when these groups seem to be motivating. As much terrorism as these other groups. Yeah. And it's just, oh, well, and worse is these people's terrorism always targets like children and young people. That's the other thing about it, I I, if they have like a uniquely evil form of terrorism that is [00:38:00] completely downstream, and you see this in this one, guy's, I.

Speech is that he didn't want to, in the same way, the girl who got her boyfriend to kill her, he didn't want to be responsible for his own death. All of the anger that you see was in the Phylis community can fundamentally be boiled down to. I hate that I am burden I, I, I go around telling everyone I would rather be dead and I hate that I am burdened with having to follow through what I am going around telling everyone for status.

I hate that that responsibility is on me. Why couldn't somebody else have burdened that responsibility? My parents are something like that, and I'm willing to deny. Thousands of other people who would want to live the right to exist, just so other people who might be in my position don't end up in that position.

Mm-hmm. And to me that's just like, what, like the, the level of narcissism required to have that perspective. But it is within Ebony Eli writing, you will always see it as the core thing that is leading to this because [00:39:00] the, the easy answer to all this is. Well, you should just take your own life then, right?

Like you have a choice to not exist. But if I don't bring my kid into the world, they don't get the choice to exist. You always have a choice. And this is fundamentally why the eist ideology, why you see terrorism from them and not from ISTs. Because tism, despite what our detractors will tell you, is always, every major prenatal list I know is like a voluntary prenatal list.

They believe and they're, they're

strongly against coercion. It's very ironic how much he and other. Antenatal list. Terrorists talk about coercion being evil, and yet they, their entire philosophy is based around coercion. Yeah. 'cause

Malcolm Collins: eism can only work if they can enforce their views on other people, if they can enforce people who would otherwise choose to have kids, to stop having kids

and just to preem something really quick.

Again, ISTs are not pro-lifers. There are some pro-lifers who call themselves ISTs. But when we talk about, when I'm talking about pro-life here, I'm talking about [00:40:00] anti-abortion people. No,

Malcolm Collins: no. But anti-abortion, people are

Simone Collins: often fighting for policies that do remove consent from people that are I,

Malcolm Collins: I agree.

But every major prenatal list I know like every single leader in the movement. Is pro-abortion was in, you know, limited time spans, like very early pregnancy when it's clear that there's no nervous system. Every major prenatal list advocate I know is, is pro. Never coercing anyone to have kids. We are very happy that dinks are leaving the gene pool.

We are very happy that people like this guy are leaving the, the culture in gene pool. And you know, I think that cultures that. And people who like being alive and want more people like them to be alive in the future, should be the ones who populate the future. And, and that's why we as a movement you know, do so much to make it easier for people who already want to have lots of kids, to have more kids.

Because the Protist movement can function without coercion because all we care about is making it easier for the people who wanna exist in the future, to exist in the future. The Antinatalism and Phylis movement are [00:41:00] fundamentally, they require coercion to work. They require removing the consent of others to work.

They remi require removing the consent of animals to work. And I think that that is, is, is fundamentally why at the end of the day, they lead to terrorism and Tism never does. Hmm. Which is just fascinating to me that, that we happen to live in a time where the people we are fighting against are so fundamentally evil.

They are, and everybody keeps saying this when they read his, they're like, he's like a caricature from like A-J-R-P-G novel. Like Asma Gold was saying this, or JRPG game, and then leaflet was like, yes, he absolutely is. In, in terms of his belief system and. It, it's, it's, it's true like these individuals seem to lack the ability to take a few steps back and be like, I want to remove the vast majority of human's right to consent, and I want to eradicate all living things, which at the very least is gonna involve removing the consent of, because a lot of things you destroy aren't humans [00:42:00] and things that aren't humans.

Always want to survive. There, there is not really there, there are yeah, but they just say that as

consciousness being subjugated to the coercive evil will of DNA and I can't remember if it was the Sandy Hook terrorist who said something like this in the transcript, the alleged transcript that.

This guy shared, or if it was this guy, but definitely their belief is we are the slaves of DNA. That , is hypnotizing us into wanting to survive and reproduce, and we have to break the cycle. This guy who, who committed the most recent act of terror again, abolitionist, vegan, thinks that, you know, ev everyone's suffering.

And, but also like. He, he acknowledges that nature is even more brutal than like industrial farming and agriculture animals. Yeah. Mean

Malcolm Collins: you wanna sterilize all animals.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So like, yeah. It's not just humans, it's, it's everything. It's, it's the end of all life.

Malcolm Collins: And I mean, these people are [00:43:00] dangerous. We can see this now, like this exists in public.

Like these people are dangerous.

Simone Collins: Well, and again, they're dangerous because they are zealots because this isn't, this isn't about en we, this isn't about depression and leaning back it is saying, I. Very strongly believe that any negative experience is all that matters. No, no. Positive experience matters all, and by way the reason

Malcolm Collins: why you need to take this perspective.

The reason why you can't believe that even of somebody who experiences more positive emotions than negative emotions is living a life of value. Is because if you took a moment to think about this, if you were somebody like him and you looked at the speed of AI advancement, you look at its ability to edit genes, you would be like, Hey, humanity is maybe a hundred years away from removing suffering altogether from the species.

They were so close. Having AI simulated environments for anyone who wants them. From having, you know, the ability to remove pain from our genes, the ability to remove, you know, re-edit ourselves. And I think what we're gonna find is that most people who survive and the cultures that survive don't remove that stuff because they see it as something of fundamental [00:44:00] value.

But he, you know, lacks the intellectual maturity to see that. So even from his perspective, she thought, well, the vast majority of people would remove all of this from themselves if they could. We are close to that. We are. So much suffering has been gone through in the great cycle of history that we are almost to a point where now we can begin to start.

Piling on the scale in the opposite direction. Well, and they're trying to prevent us from reaching that turning point. And it's not even that

Simone Collins: they're not aware of this reality. His friend Sophie on TikTok, literally has a post responding to this, responding to this statement. This is the best time to be alive.

And she's a whole rant against it. So I don't think this is even a matter of ignorance. Did you

Malcolm Collins: find it or like, do you have

Simone Collins: a I I didn't even listen to the whole thing 'cause it was, she's just very annoying and the audio is bad. But yeah, she, they're aware of this argument. They don't buy it.

And I, I don't know if it's, it's willful refusal to engage with the situation. Well, no, it's

Malcolm Collins: because this, this one drop of pain matters more than infinity drops of, of, of pleasure. Well, and be

Simone Collins: clarified this with the much more un [00:45:00] much less unhinged, Lawrence Anton, who's a prominent anti antenatal list advocate in the uk who is, is very kind, also vegan, like very empathetic.

More, more, socially acceptable and, and, and all that. Very nice. But he, we asked him, okay, so there's one planet that has nothing but like thriving life, like absolutely everyone is, is having an amazing, perfect existence. And then maybe one person suffered for like a year, and then there's another, another planet that is just completely devoid of life.

It is a rock. Yeah. Which planet would you rather have be the only planet in existence? And he chooses. The rock because there was one person who like suffered for a year on the planet full of otherwise, 100% flourishing, incredibly happy people and billions of them. So, and, and I

Malcolm Collins: hope that anyone, like, if you're beginning to engage with this ideology, you can immediately see how comical that is.

That that does not make sense.

Simone Collins: But what, but again, [00:46:00] this is, this is religious zealotry without a belief in God. This is. I care about one thing and it is the complete elimination of suffering. I think, you know, once someone chooses that, that's of their objective function they're, they're going to, there's really no argument that you can make to convince them that they're wrong and that suffering isn't that important in, in a larger scheme of things.

Yeah, they've chosen, I mean like in the end as we,

Malcolm Collins: even if you assume that their arguments are right, right. You know, at least the net suffering versus net pleasure argument, their actions are still wrong because eventually humanity will get to a point, like very soon we can already see the other end of this timeline.

Right. And, and, and, and that's if you assume their whole suffering argument. And, and they should be most pro people like us because we are, you know, in the eyes of other conservatives seen as transhumanists. Now, I don't identify the transhumanists, but [00:47:00] I believe we have a moral mandate to intergenerational improvement, and that includes a genetic and technological augmentation.

So like we are the branch of humanity, most likely to see that future happen. But again, we don't even see the world that way. Like, if I could remove suffering for myself, I wouldn't, like, I might put caps on suffering. I might be like, okay, it might make sense to mitigate it in extreme circumstances with like my kids and stuff like that.

Hundred percent. But I, I wouldn't remove it entirely because I don't see it as the core boogeyman of all reality. The core boogeyman of all reality is stagnation, not suffering. Suffering is what motivates us to not stagnate. And in that way. You know, it, it's, it's like saying fire bad, you know, it's like, well, fire can burn you if you get too much of it, but it is,

Simone Collins: it's like saying traffic lights are bad.

All right. It's, it's a signal. Suffering is a signal. Pleasure is a signal. Signals are bad. Traffic signals are bad. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Signals are bad because I don't like when a signal says Stop. Yeah. That's really what it is. Yeah. All It's [00:48:00] like a child who's like, all rules are bad. Like, because I don't like it when people tell me to say, stop.

And we, we need to have a, well, they also,

Simone Collins: Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook killer, like specifically. What had that view. He, he was extremely phobic of the very concept of culture, saw it as this form of subjugation or enslavement and especially contextualized it along the lines of people. I. You know, getting him in trouble and trying to force him to live a certain way.

So this is, this is a thing that many of them appear to have problems with. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So they, they actually, you see this with other guy as well. I don't want to go do these things that make other people happy. Like, I don't want to engage in something that could bring meaning to my life. And so, I, I think what you're seeing here, and you might have pulled on something that I hadn't realized before.

A lot of these anti-natal listed phylis hate culture as well. Mm-hmm. They hate anything, whether it's cultural, biological. Or even intellectual that puts constraints on their actions. They're like, I should be able to do whatever I feel like whenever I want and feel pleasure [00:49:00] in doing that thing.

Yeah.

And, and Adam Lanza again, the Sandy Hook Killer in his alleged transcript of YouTube videos that were taken down, but back from 2011 he, he basically argues that children existed primarily to propagate the values of the adults and culture that raised them, and he hates culture. So like you could see why he targeted children in his act of terror because he's like, these people are the victims and vehicles for this thing that I hate.

Yeah. Or, or you could be viewed it as a source of, of sorrow and horror both to himself and for all being subjected to it. So yeah, there's definitely something going on there.

Malcolm Collins: , , and the same thing is what a, what a emotionally healthy person would say is, is children exist to improve the culture of adults.

That's why we. Get the benefit of old age and dying instead of living forever. And that's why most of the ISTs I know are also anti extreme life extension. Because, you know, children are my child as opposed to extreme life extension, which is technologically in the car of the near future [00:50:00] is my chance to say, Hey you know, Octavian.

Here's everything I believe, and now he was out, my prejudices was out. My perspective can say, okay, well here's are the parts of that I agree with. Here are the parts of that I disagree with. Mm-hmm. And, and through that build a world perspective that is superior to my own. And this is why I'm okay.

With, with that. And I think that's a, the way emotionally healthy people view kids is, is, is is kids get to pass judgment. On their parents' perspectives. And that's what makes it superior to a system where, where we just live forever. And this is something where when this guy passed judgment on his parents' perspectives, he's like, well, I don't think they're good.

And that's fine. You know, if, if I, I, I think it's good that we live in a world where I. If you try to raise your kids like in an urban monoculture, for example, and they're like, Hey, the culture you raised me with gave me no reason to want to continue existing. That's great. Just don't then attempt to remove the consent of others.

Like this is a decision that you are making for yourself. And it's a decision that I advocate and I'm okay [00:51:00] with. And so I almost wish there was a form of this antinatalism philosophy that was just focused on self deletion instead of other deletion.

Simone Collins: Yeah. , In normalizing euthanasia. Optin euthanasia.

So great. Yeah, these people just see the

Malcolm Collins: AKI themselves. Like imagine this guy finds out that the Buddhists were right. You know, he is like no reincarnation. You know, and this is why I've often joked the first time I said this to Simone, she got really mad at me 'cause she was raised a partially Buddhist and she, I've noticed people who.

Westerners who have at one point considered themselves Buddhists often have a uniquely low understanding of what Buddhists actually believe. Hmm. Like, like more so than almost anyone else I've met. And I was like, well, Buddhists are basically just like Antinatalists philosophy on steroids.

Like they want to delete all existence. They want to. Remove all thought and experience. And they view the horror of existence is reincarnation, right? Like reincarnation. It, it's something you're trying to end. The first time I mentioned this to you, you were like, you got all mad at me, and then you did this weird thing where like a [00:52:00] few days later you're like you were arguing from my perspective.

And I was like, when did you change your mind? At the end of that argument, you were mad at me A few days later, you 100% believed me. Well, what changed there? I thought about it.

Simone Collins: Okay. Sometimes truths aren't fun to hear.

Malcolm Collins: Christ people do that. And if, and if you watch our stuff on like spiral versus antis, spiral ideologies should check out our tract on this.

Mark my words, this drill will open a hole in the universe. And that hole will be a path for those behind us. The dreams of those who have fallen, the hopes of those who have risen. of those who will follow. Those two sets of dreams, weaved together into a double helix, drilling a path towards tomorrow!

Malcolm Collins: Like how do techno puritan define good things like this antinatalists ideology and like the Buddhism more broadly. Not all schools of Buddhism, but a lot of them fall into this antinatalists mindset, right? A fall into this antiviral mindset, which I think is a better judgment of. Bad [00:53:00] then suffering.

And then you have the, the, obviously the spiral instead of the antis spiral all comes from login which I think is a very good and tight description of what good is. Hmm. Any final thoughts, Simone, or any other things you ran into about this guy?

Simone Collins: No. I mean, aside from that, maybe he was radicalized by his friend Sophie, who he deeply admired.

He linked to her social media pages. He said that the, his assumption. If he under, if he remembered correctly, was it, if one of them died, the other one would shortly follow. So I feel like she absolutely played a role in radicalizing him. , Her online handle typically was vegan to natal list, like vegan antinatalists.

And, and I

Malcolm Collins: love how they're fundamentally boast in their death, proves themselves to be fundamentally selfish and self-centered people. Yeah. 'cause she

Simone Collins: ruined a man's life. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: In her selfish choice, her, her boyfriend's life, by having her sh him shoot her in her sleep, yeah. She could have taken that responsibility on herself.

Mm-hmm. And, and this is what we regularly see within this community, is a refusal to take the [00:54:00] responsibility themselves.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So just, I

think it's important to, to point out the role that community does play in this, that. I, I don't think, I mean, one, if he had been able to end his own life much more easily, this would not have happened.

And

Malcolm Collins: he, he could have more easily. I mean, it wouldn't have happened like even more easily than we have today in our society. But there were other options for him. Well,

Simone Collins: and I think one of the reasons why he did what he did though, was he wanted to. Raise awareness about,

Malcolm Collins: no, he wanted to like an ant that's been infected by a, you know, toxoplasmosis or, or what is it?

Cords, virus, cords, virus or fungus. Where, you know, it eats their brains and it just wants to spread it. Self and after it's consumed, everything that's inside of them, it drives them to go up a stock of like grass so that a, a fungal growth can grow from it to spread the spores as far as possible.

Nothing of the host survives. Your friend had a feeble [00:55:00] mind. It suffered greatly and gave it easily.

Malcolm Collins: This mimetic virus had destroyed this guy's mind and it decided to use his death to try to spread the virus to as many other people as possible, and fortunately. Again, he died a martyr to our cause, not his own, because his death has been able to shut down the spread of the virus because it had already so spfi his own mind that he didn't somehow think beyond self validation that this would cause the topic to become more restricted in terms of a talking point and make us look like more of the good guy in the public eye

maybe.

I, I do worry that he has. Raised awareness about, I know, I think we need

Malcolm Collins: to raise awareness of it as a terrorist movement.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But I I think that people in the movement are kind of like, before the eism subreddit was shut down, the top post after this happened was like, oh, this sucks. [00:56:00]

Malcolm Collins: I, I know I loved it.

And a bunch of the comments were people being like, well, we don't hold these beliefs. And then the top voted comment Underwr was like, yes, we do. Yeah. Like whatcha talking about? Yeah. We absolutely do. Yeah. So yeah,

Simone Collins: so that, I mean, it worries me, but I. Everyone be safe out there, please. And be careful.

Malcolm Collins: Be safe out there.

Be careful. And we hope that you know, as, as we grow this movement, we can keep it, you know, we don't ever have our own terrorist to deal with, which fortunately we haven't yet. And I don't, I don't know how colonialism could motivate terrorism because it just like motivates a life of dedication to the future in, in your children.

Well,

Simone Collins: we both work and sleep next to multiple firearms and other weapons. We have all these. Different security systems in our house. Like I, I would say that we've, we've become more and more paranoid every single day.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

So that's not great, but,

Malcolm Collins: and we get a lot of death threats,

but we've got to do [00:57:00] this, you know, no one else is.

Well, and now you can see why, right, why people don't wanna come out as ISTs because there are very.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I think that this, these movements, the antinatalists and the ISTs need to be stigmatized in the same way that we would stigmatize a, a racist who wanted to sterilize like black people or an antisemite who wanted to sterilize Jews like,

Simone Collins: or an anti-abortion activist who wanted to bomb clinics.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah,

which is what most people thought he was when this first came out. They're just like, oh,

Malcolm Collins: right. No, I, I actually disagree with your thought there because they could say, well, you know, you don't frame all the anti-abortion activists this way just because of the most crazy people. What I am framing them negatively by is the beliefs that the mainstream of the movement holds, which is mass sterilization.

That is a mainstream view. That is not an extremist view within the movement.

Because they know, even if they convinced everyone, if there was a few people who didn't agree with them, and, and obviously most people aren't gonna agree with them 'cause most people like being alive they can only win in the end by [00:58:00] force it serialization.

Simone Collins: I don't know. Lauren Anton was very clear. I mean, and I think the, the purest and actually most logically coherent PE members of the, I dunno, I disagree, I think are extremely against removing consent and even these people.

Who were, we're in favor of and who are ISTs and therefore are clearly for removing consent. Still talk about the evils of removing consent all the time. I think that the logically coherent element of Antinatalism, not eism is we need to do this in a way where we convince everyone to not do this.

Although that kind of gets more complicated because they also wanna sterilize animals. But still. I'm just trying to, they know better

Malcolm Collins: than, the animals are just so stupid. They just, IM trying to be terrible, like people in Africa, like if you, if you read about like David DeTar things about like poor starving people in Africa.

Mm-hmm. You know, he's like, well, you know, they're basically just too stupid to know they should hate their lives. Um, Basically they're [00:59:00] arguing. I'm like, okay. Oh my God. You, you can't understand how somebody with less than you could be more satisfied with their life. And this individual, it doesn't appear that he'd ever worked with Dwayne in his life.

From what I could see, it doesn't appear like he, he genuinely had one of the least, he appeared to be from like a, a middle class, upper middle class family. It didn't appear that he had ever had any real suffering in his life other than growing up without a dad there. I,

Simone Collins: yeah, I don't know.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, love you to es Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you too. Stay alive. Protect your kids

Malcolm Collins: How's it doing?

Being back from the cruise recording episodes again?

Simone Collins: Really good. I so miss having our talks and yeah, I don't think people, I don't know. I wonder if other parents experience what we experience when we talk around our kids, when our kids start vehemently insisting that we must not talk.

Malcolm Collins: Stop talking to your, yeah.

I wonder if that's just like me and my desperate desire for attention. This is, you gotta listen to me. I have something to say. But [01:00:00] God forbid

Simone Collins: we have something to say to each other while they're present. No,

Malcolm Collins: that's not allowed. And then they have nothing to say.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, they, they sort of, they just want, they just want to be the ones to talk, so they'll be like, well, and then the the rocks, I have two rocks.

They get really shy the moment you

Malcolm Collins: show them a bit of attention,

Simone Collins: but they demand the attention. The attention is not optional. The attention is mandatory. So it's really nice to Yeah. With before our kids get home. It's really lovely to to talk with you.

Take this.

Ah, my leg,

ah, my belly. And I poke you in the [01:01:00] not my head.

Good job.

Oh, you've taken out Oh my, my, my.

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