The Dynamics of Communal Narcissism

In this video, we dive into the concept of Communal Narcissism, a newly identified phenomenon where individuals within leftist communities exhibit narcissistic traits. Through an article by Brett Parley and Keith Thompson, we explore how communal narcissists seek validation through their contributions to social groups rather than personal achievements. The discussion highlights the surprising presence of grandiosity and entitlement among those previously considered healthy. We also touch on the dynamics of in-group signaling, the historical context, and the broader implications of such behavior for societal discourse and power structures. Join us in unpacking this intriguing topic!

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be going over an article called Communal Narcissism, which dives into a new phenomenon that scientists are discovering where it turned out.

That the way, say that they scientists change their methodology a bit and go, oh my God, I, I, I found something shocking. It turns out that there is narcissism within leftist communities. How did I. How did, how did all of our old studies not pick this up? But it is a, a new phenomenon and so we're gonna be going over an article that was written by Brett Parley and Keith Thompson that explores this phenomenon and how it is being sort of tracked and elucidated by scientists.

And obviously I'm gonna do what I normally do, which is not read the entire article, just read the parts that I think are interesting to, to learn about. 'Cause obviously it starts just talking about what we all know is that the left is shockingly narcissistic in many ways and like going into when they all put up black squares or like pride flags over there.[00:01:00]

There are pictures. Do you remember when that used to be like a thing? And in college, I remember like when it would happen, I'd be like, afraid not to do it. I'd be like, oh my God, I have to do it. Or everyone's gonna say because if all your friends have it up, everyone's gonna be like, ah, this is proof that you are homophobic.

I already had suspicions that you might be a conservative or have conservative sympathies. And so, you know, trying to start my career I had to, I had to go as the go, as the flow. I love some people, like I would never do that. And it's like, well, you know, I, I do support like general gay rights, right?

So I, I should, I guess change my profile. But let's continue here. Examining the literature on clinical narcissism in the time of Trump, we discovered something surprising. Researchers had been certain that they would be able to distinguish healthy individuals from those suffering from the new condition.

What gradually dawned on them was that many of the individuals they had been scoring as normal were in fact, exhibiting vanity, grandiosity and [00:02:00] entitlement the hallmark traits of self-centered narcissistic displays. Very overtly and actually even more overtly than the ones who they were categorizing as narcissists.

Of course, the pathological aspects of the new condition announced themselves in markedly different words and gestures. It had previously been assumed that these characteristics were healthy, unlike the well-known characteristics of over art narcissism so readily apparent in people like Trump remark, and I would say that people are like, oh my gosh, how dare you call Trumper?

Nurse. I mean, come on. Like we can be conservatives and still be like the guy's a little narcissistic. But anyway, to continue here remarkably the experts nearly missed telltale signs of what they would go on to characterize as communal narcissism, communal indicating that individuals seek validation and admiration through their perceived contributions to social groups or communities rather than through personal achievements.

So. What this new form of narcissism is, is [00:03:00] narcissism about like. I'm always a good person. I always do good things. I always contribute to my community in the night, in, in the correct way. Mm-hmm. And it is through constant signaling of, of sort of in group when you are. Convinced that that in group is the only group that really matters.

Mm-hmm.

Which you see among you know, progressives was like Hillary Clinton calling the others the deplorables. You, you really, as somebody who used to be a progressive, I remember the way that they think. And it is really that the other, anyone who isn't within their social. Alignment, this urban monocultural alignment is really sort of not human.

Exactly. Not really. Absolutely. Worth considering or thinking about.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Subhuman like too, too ignorant to be really considered a peer. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But is that not like classical narcissism? To, to consider only this one group as mattering and dedicate your life to this one group and everything that they [00:04:00] do is axiomatic good because they are the ones doing it.

To our surprise and that of the researchers themselves, communal narcissism turns out to be the equal and opposite variant of the self-centered, overt type in which individuals boast about being quote unquote the best. Joshin Gerber's 2012 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychiatry introduced the agency communal model distinguishing agentic narcissists who boast of their intelligence and achievements from communal narcissists who claim to be the most helpful or virtuous.

Isn't that a fascinating way to, to, to delineate the two groups? Basically, if you have this narcissistic trait and you are age agentic. You become this sort of overt narcissist. Yeah, I'm the best, I'm the greatest. Right. Because you are, you both think that you are the greatest and you think for yourself which is in a way morally superior to the communal narcissist who is non-ag agentic, but thinks that they are great and everything they do is good.

[00:05:00] So they just align themselves with a preexisting, often what they see as the dominant cultural group. And well, it seems to

Simone Collins: me like a, this is a new. Iteration of the Karen, what you're describing, because the Karen is also that like, I am the HOA president, like I represent our community. You are ruining this.

You can't park here, you can't do this. And the, the classic Karen archetype is someone who believes that they are in the right and speaking on behalf of their community. And not based on some individual evaluation, but based on what they believe to be normatively correct.

Malcolm Collins: I really found the way she put this interesting. This is a form of narcissism where instead of thinking you are the main character and the most important person and nobody else's thoughts, feelings, perspectives really matters. You think that your community is the only one that really matters and no other community, thoughts, perspectives, et cetera, matters, and that you are an avatar of that community.

[00:06:00] Well, yeah. I think that the Karen is a version of this, but I think that the higher version is the Twitter person or something like that, because the Karen had to go out and run for office and everything like that.

Mm-hmm. She wasn't just reflexively reacting to whatever group she thought was the biggest in her environment. I think that the the, the better proto iteration of this. Was like the Satanic panic bomb, the the Christian Pearl clutching mom when Christians were the dominant social group in America.

And, and instead of the urban monoculture, and this individual would just, and, and these likely exist, was in some communities where, where Christianity or Mormonism is still the dominant group where they just reflexively. Pearl Clutch and, and, and pull themselves back to Well, my community is the morally righteous community.

My community is the, is the correct community because they are the dominant community that, like, they, they align themselves with this community because it's dominant. And I think of many people. [00:07:00] Personality structure switched which community they were supporting as the urban monoculture became dominant.

And I think, right. So like,

Simone Collins: yeah. Okay. I see what you're saying about agentic versus not agentic, in a sense, they flock to whatever the dominant community is because they, they need something. To stand behind as authority since they aren't incapable of or not confident enough to develop their own.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, these are the people who make fascism work.

You know, like the moment, like the Nazi party seems to be gaining power. They all flock to it because it is now creating. The new moral standards and they act as moral police for the community to prevent people from, from deviating or defecting from the community. Which is actually sort of really good for the human gene pool right now because these individuals are being completely weeded out of humanity in a big way.

When this behavior used to actually be quite because the urban monoculture has so low fertility rates used to be quite successful as the fertility strategy. Yeah. Just align yourself [00:08:00] with whoever looks powerful.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Actually.

Malcolm Collins: And then be narcissistic. Yeah. Yet both groups share the same essential needs for affirmation and validation.

Kins. Okay. Work and, and. Oh, sorry. No, sorry. I need to be clear here. His last name is Okay. They're not, they're not putting shade on his work. They're not saying kins. Okay. Work. I was wondering why they wrote like that. I was like, what? And enhanced our understanding further, the communal narcissist, warm glow conceals a sense of entitlement and special status for such individual's.

Feedback or criticism is commonly experienced as an attack. Yes, I have noticed this, this is true of narcissist feedback or criticism is an attack, and it's true for many progressives when you're like, Hey, like, do you not see how imperialistic your community is acting towards external groups? And they're like, how dare you?

I can't, you can't. Like, when I pointed out that, well, when they said it was monstrous. And the, the, [00:09:00] the groups that use corporal punishment are monstrous. Like when we were skewered for this, I'm like, well, you know, depending on the study you're looking at, it's like 85 to like 90% of like, black Americans spank their kids, right?

Like, this is way more dominant in African American communities. Are you saying they're monstrous and they're like, oh, but how could you the conservative say that we are racist? And I'm like, well, because you're doing something racist right now, right? Like, you're, you're, you're assigning. A, a true value to something that is just like a, a choice around parenting practices.

Mm-hmm.

And not even a choice, but a culturally bound choice around parenting practices. Exactly. And so, but like, you see their brains break down in some of the pieces where we said that, you know, it's like they don't even counter argument. They were just confused and enraged that us and the conservatives could point out something that they, the progressives were doing was racist.

While communal narcissism can be detected in many social movements both today and in the past, it most closely mirrors the ethos of the progressive left. [00:10:00] In fact, it plays a key role in the psychosocial dynamics driving that ideology. Although I note that I think it used to be a driving force on the right.

I used to think that your, your standard communal narcissist in the, in the 1950s or 1960s in the United States would've been a rightist and the right displayed these tactics when they held the dominant culture. I don't think that this is intrinsically I leftist thing to do. I just think that this is a strategy that is sometimes employed by some cultural groups to maintain power.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And probably for the past 2000 years, it was more common to see people. Doing this through a church which I guess we exactly argue is more conservative leaning. So this is not exactly a partisan thing, it's just that right now it happens to be mm-hmm. A progressive thing. Right.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Communal narcissism exists on a spectrum at its mild, and individuals earnestly advocate for social justice, finding quiet satisfaction and camaraderie in their omni cause of supporting [00:11:00] the intersecting grievances of marginalized groups when less.

But, and, and note they put marginalized and scare quotes. When less benign individuals become dogmatic and antagonistic as when the view hosts engage in their anti-Trump vitriol. Prioritizing moral posturing over dialogue. At its most severe, individuals try to justify violence such as BLM riots, assaults on Trump supporters.

And the firebombing of Tesla vehicles. Perhaps most chilling is selective compassion as seen in the silence of many progressives after the recent murders of Yin Lavinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgram. Despite the victim's dedication to peace, many self stylized champions of universal values, withheld outrage, revealing, who are these people

Simone Collins: who were killed?

This was the

Malcolm Collins: two Israeli diplomats who were killed, I'm guessing. Oh,

Simone Collins: oh, oh, okay. Okay. Yes. Thank you. One was about

Malcolm Collins: to go home to propose Really sad that this happened.

Simone Collins: I know. Yes. Devastating.

Malcolm Collins: Revealing a [00:12:00] disconnect between their benevolent self-image and their deeper ideological purity. And I did note this, you did not have much progressive hand wringing after those murders, after the Holocaust survivor was burnt alive in another American attack with a Molotov cocktail.

Simone Collins: Oh gosh. Right then that was more recent. Oh my gosh, that was

Malcolm Collins: more recent. And the left and the mainstream media just has not been covering this stuff much. Which I think shows their you know, true ideological bent, which is quite chilling to me. Yeah. But you know, I, I guess I'm glad I'm not Jewish.

Like it's, it's a scary time to be Jewish in America right now. Yeah. I can see why they, they, they feel they need their own country to stay safe. But anyway, the progressive left pivot away from violent revolution in the sixties, and its subsequent long-term march through institutions echoes this pattern from campus.

Protest to corporate boardroom Activists demand systemic change, but their need for validation often overshadow the very goals they want to [00:13:00] achieve. Thomas Sowell's, the vision of the anointed. Unpacks this delusion where, quote, unquote, good intentions habitually resist disconfirming facts leading to blind spots, unintended consequences, and lack of course corrections, which I think we saw probably most blindingly.

When Greta Thornberg, when, when she was. You know, taken in by Israeli troops. They, they tried to show her the videos that Hamas had filmed of themselves, of what they did on October 7th.

Yeah.

And she refused to encounter this information. Yeah. And when asked to justify this, she was just like, well, you know, I, I didn't wanna be.

What, what she said, like brainwashed by their propaganda or something. Yeah. I think it was just a choice. Not engage at all. Propaganda.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: They want you to know

Simone Collins: what they're about. Like, that's, that's the, that's the point. So many Israelis keep trying to make of like, th. They're really clear about what they want.

Why are you writing this? I

Malcolm Collins: honestly, the level of cognitive disconnect. I was looking at pictures from a [00:14:00] pride parade recently. Like I wasn't even just looking at, was looking at the pictures and they had a whole section of the parade that was like pro-Palestine. And, and, and it like dotted amongst all of the other pride stuff was pro-Palestine stuff and like, Hamas flags and you know, stuff like that.

And I was like, what the, what? Like, they, you, you, Hamas, it's like. But we have said we plan to kill you. Right? Like, you understand this as you're, as you're protesting for us. Like, we're not shy about what we do to gay people. Yeah. It's not, we're not shy that we want this to be illegal, you know, and I, I find this very like weird, the level of like cognitive disconnect and inability to see through the wider.

A cultural malu. I, I, I guess, yeah. Totalitarian movement thrive by manufacturing consent. Ordinary people are forced to cooperate with permission structures designed by elites with power and authority as consequence. They come to believe things that they would [00:15:00] not otherwise have entertained. Allowing men to compete against women in women's sports, approving sex changes for minors.

Opening borders to unvetted illegal immigrants, defunding the police and decriminalizing crime. Radicalize radical changes in policy are facilitated by media and institutional narratives that provide scaffolding for fast shifting beliefs. That is also interesting how quickly the progressive beliefs have shifted.

Like the ban on police thing, like came outta nowhere, like that would've been considered some weirdo fantasy, I think like five years ago. And then it just became normal. Like it wasn't like it became normal. Slowly it became normal. Like one month it was like, okay, now. But I'm

Simone Collins: still so not clear on like, who, who actually wants this?

Because it, it seems like this wasn't exactly a black community thing because so many black, no black communities. Like no,

Malcolm Collins: actually, what does less than whites do, like black voters work with less than white voters. So it's not, it's, it's the Carly it's a [00:16:00] oppo. No, it is. I think the communal narcissistic patterns are more prevalent in women than men.

Mm-hmm. Potentially because women are less agentic. I don't know.

Simone Collins: Or women. Well, women are more, they're more sensitive to social cues and they're more conformist. Yeah. Which makes sense from an evolutionary perspective because women are more dependent on their community support networks to survive because they spend, assuming they're reproducing a non-trivial patient of their lives.

True. And women get

Malcolm Collins: way more genetic benefit from striving to be average than men. Yeah. In that if women strive for the safe average option, so long as a woman survives broadly, she's likely gonna do genetically okay? Because she's likely going to be able to find a partner if she wants one and have kids.

Whereas for men, I mean, this is because historically a lot of women what were like. Multiple women to a, a partner or something. Whereas for men it was often harder. Like you, you had to sort of go for broke. Yeah. Which would've pushed you know, less conforming actions. So as a woman who was usually genetically [00:17:00] safer to conform with group norms, whereas a man, it was usually genetically safer to try to look for what is objectively true.

Simone Collins: Totally. Yeah. Men are go big or go home. Women are, let's stick to the center of the bell curve.

Malcolm Collins: In private Trus public lies, Tamara Koran introduces the concept of. Perfect preference falsification, where individuals publicly affirm politically correct quote unquote truths while privately remaining skeptical.

Unlike overt narcissists who shrug off social norms, communal narcissists require moral approval from the anointed, rendering them more susceptible to social pressures and more likely to falsify their preferences. They readily adopt questionable ideas that the narrative insists are fair-minded and true.

In 1957, Carl Young warned of. Collective possession driven by a quote unquote overwrought. Emotionality that is immune to reason. He spoke of [00:18:00] psychic epidemic fueled by utopian delusions, psychic epidemic fueled by utopian delusions and collective possession or overwrought. Emotionality. God, that actually is really a.

I, you know, I, I usually don't think much of, of Carl Young, but that, that is very predictive. Today's progressive left was chance like no human is illegal risks falling into this trap. Arguably it already has yet a path forward exists. And I. It illuminated by two men who were both assassinated at the age of 39.

Malcolm X experienced a crisis of phase after discovering abuses within the nation of Islam, but found clarity in his pilgrimage to Mecca, where he prayed alongside blue-eyed blondes and black skinned Africans. Upon his return, he offered the following statement. I'm for the truth no matter who tells it.

I'm for justice no matter who it's for or against. I'm a human [00:19:00] being first and foremost, and as such, I stand for what benefits humanity as a whole. Martin Luther King likewise sought to combine the disparate values, compromising his big tent, love for the Southern Baptist. Congregants and the Ian will to power from secular allies.

In his most famous service sermon in 1967, he forged a synthesis. Power without love is reckless and abusive. Love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love. Implementing the demands of justice. And justice at its best is power, correcting everything that stands against love.

God, I find that to be incredibly stupid. Sorry. I, I know that some people have, can be like, oh, this is this great Baptist sermon or whatever, and I'm like

not so much. I,

I, I think that niche philosophy is actually probably closer to right than this philosophy. You can look at our video on niche, niche, niche and philosophy.

Is actually just broadly correct on in, in many [00:20:00] areas. And I think that there's this drive whenever someone is popular to be like, well, you know, not like them. You know, because that makes you look cool, right? To, to be sort of edgy and to have alternate perspectives. But. Nietzche is mostly right, this person.

No, I, I think equating love as a guide to goodness leads to incredible immorality because first, you know, progressives just define all their actions as driven by love. That's how they justify them. They say, well, I protect this community because you know, don't you love your fellow human? I you know, distribute money to everyone because don't you love your fellow man?

You know, ob obviously I don't personally, I take other people's money and distribute it, but you know what I mean. I, you know, it's this, this it, it allows you to justify anything. 'cause you can just say, I'm doing it for love, but you, well, this is

Simone Collins: similar to the toxicity of contextualizing yourself as a good person, because therefore, you know, if you're a good person, then nothing you're doing is bad because a good person wouldn't do a bad [00:21:00] thing.

And I think that's a really common problem with narcissists of, of course this is the right thing to do because I'm doing it and I'm right and good.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, I, I do good things because of course, because I'm a good person

Simone Collins: and good people do good things, therefore. It's, it's, it's ironclad logic, Malcolm.

Malcolm Collins: But I also think that even if you do this correctly, like you actually just do whatever creates this love emotion in you, you didn't evolve the emotion of love to define like moral truth.

I, the, the oldest or one of the oldest stories that humanity has there's older stories in the Bible in Gilgamesh, but one of the oldest that we have is, is the story of choice. And the point. Of the story of Troy is that love can lead a man to do truly evil things.

Simone Collins: Oh, I don't know. Or, or the pursuit of hot women.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, I, I do, I I, I don't think that in the story it's framed as he's only doing it 'cause she's hot and I don't think that they really differentiated [00:22:00] hotness and love back then. But I, I, I think that even somebody can be like, no. That was just because he found her hot. And I'm like, well, could he have done it for love?

And they're like, well, yeah, he could have done it for love. And then it's like, okay, well then it still stands, the lesson still stands. Love can cause people to do evil things. It's one of the earliest stories that mankind needed to write down and teach other people. And yet people have just forgotten this.

Because it makes them sound like they're the good guy.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. It is really annoying. Even like, people like Lex Friedman do this where they're like, well, what about love? Like, they just seem to think that bringing up love or acting like we have to talk about love or that love justifies things, makes him look morally good or sophisticated.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I unfortunately now I need to bring this up whenever Lex Friedman comes up because I, I, I do feel that he is intentionally and misleading about this. Lex Friedman is not a professor at MIT. He has taught classes. Night classes off [00:23:00] season at MIT which I have done at Stanford and Harvard.

And at, well, carne Mellon, I really only did it fully at Stanford and Harvard. Simone did it at Harvard, actually. You did it at Carnegie Mellon. Carnegie Mellon. We did, we only did like a, a, a guest lecture thing, but yeah. But, but I could claim by lecture Friedman standards that I am a professor at Stanford or Harvard.

And so you're like, oh, well, if he hasn't actually done anything with Stanford, where was he educated? And the answer is, all of his degrees are from Drexel. So I, I gotta call him Drexel Freeman. Going forward well, no, it gets me if you're gonna brand yourself as this like big intellectual, I don't mind because like there's other intellectuals.

I don't effing know where they went to college, but I still find their work interesting. Like for example, I've never thought about where short fatto talk. Went to college or his affiliations was any sort of intellectual institution. And yet for a long time I really liked his work. I recently, you know, he's you can, you can watch our video on [00:24:00] the, the why it, it you should, it matters.

To take aside like why FIS isn't good. We think he's, he's gone too far into the fence sitting place that it has, has corrupted some of his logic on issues. In an effort to be a fence sitter. Because some people define fence sitting as like morally good.

Speaker 8: What makes a man turn neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?

Malcolm Collins: Right. You know? But the point I'm making is like, I don't care where a person, a lot of people, I like Cat Girl Kula I love but yeah, cat Girl Kula does really good intellectual stuff and I've never thought to ask, you know, what is this person's affiliation? But l Friedman leads with this MIT connection.

Simone Collins: Well, and also, like there are, there are people out there major, oh, typically conservative intellectuals who actually have really impressive credentials, but don't share their real name or their face or their credentials.

And actually go outta their way, like,

Malcolm Collins: Bronte with Yale.

Simone Collins: Yeah. [00:25:00] Yeah. But you, he would never say that and he, he intentionally grammatically screws up his writing, so. Yeah. Yeah. I see your point.

Malcolm Collins: No, I mean, I think that that you, you see this repeatedly is that's, that, that gets me right? Like the, the, and, and I, I am willing to say this because, you know, we've met.

Lex Freeman, and he never responded to my text about doing a show sometime. And I've been, I've been on P Morgan. Okay, you can have me on Lex. I'm not, you're not too good for me. Sorry. I have a lot of pride justify about influencers who I hang out with and then don't work with me. I'm like, come on man.

But hey, we weren't, well, I know we were already pretty famous back then, so that was. Well, back

Simone Collins: to the concept of love, though. It is dangerous. It's dangerous. Well, but I think hiding behind anything, be it love or be it, I am on the winning side. I'm on the good side. I'm with the church. I'm with this political party, I'm with this [00:26:00] university like.

Falling back on any of this, and this is one reason why we also don't really like referencing philosophers and that that's maybe the thing I like least about the SIA article. And I know you're saying like, oh, this nietzche philosophy is solid. Maybe it is, but leaning back on these people instead of articulating concepts, using plain English is another way of hiding behind something without making your point and owning it personally.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, I mean, even the writers of this article, I mean, I'm, I'm struggling to tell from the, the context if they support this love sentiment. 'cause the next thing they say is such wisdom offers an anecdote to the communal narcissism of today's left authentic compassion rooted in universal truth. Western civilization must return to these values, duty, honor, rationality, and openness to debate.

Now those are some values I can get behind. I need to do the Starship Troopers team here, courage, duty, honor. When you, what, what is it? It's a good day to die when you know the reason why. [00:27:00] Mm-hmm.

Starship Troopers: A good day to die when you know the reasons why citizens, we fight for what is right, a noble sacrifice. When duty calls, you pay the price for the federation. I'll give my life duty honor.

Malcolm Collins: This is this is the world that we wanna build.

Yeah.

But I, but I actually like this, this, this alternate one duty honor, rationality, and openness to debate.

I think sounds good. Yeah, absolutely. It was s Scott Fitzgerald who noted that the mark of first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time without losing the ability to function. For instance, accepting that there are differences between individuals and groups.

A wise culture resists the what Ian called the. Persistent Utopia lie distinguishing authentic from performative [00:28:00] compassion. We must teach our children that genuine goodwill comes from personal decency, not external validation. Only then will we be able to reconstitute the principles that have guided humanity for centuries.

And that's the article. I thought it was interesting. I, I, I thought it was interesting to go into this new concept. I, I, I do think that the way that you fight this is by, having kids who are proud to be other and different and do their own thing. Which in part means that if you are, and I think that this is one of the big trap that many of the traditional Christians do, is they teach their kids to obey because they were taught to obey.

And being taught to obey does a great job. Your cultural group is the dominant cultural group. Because when the kid is no longer with the parent, who do they obey? They obey the person was the most power, which is the culture was the most power.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Right.

Malcolm Collins: But if you, well, that's a

Simone Collins: big problem with especially American parenting, is that rather than let kids [00:29:00] suss out problems on their own and resolve their own conflicts and really just fight it out you encourage them to appeal to authority and that that produces this kind of culture.

Malcolm Collins: Exactly. And, and again, as I was saying, I see this so much. In conservative circles where they're like, oh, my kid is so obedient to look at them. And I'm like, you shouldn't bring them to be maximally disobedient.

Simone Collins: Yeah, you should be. You should not like that. That's a bad

Malcolm Collins: moral. It's a bad sign. Moral disobedient is what you should, or it at least what we optimize for.

And again. You know, culturally this may change if you're from a different cultural tradition because cultures, I believe, sort of co-evolve with, with us. And so you may find

Simone Collins: no, I, no, I just, I, I, I really don't think obedience is a good thing at all. What we encourage is teaching our kids that certain actions have consequences and so that they can make rational decisions.

Obedience means. Following a rule regardless of whether the rule is logical or beneficial or good. [00:30:00] And that's not,

Malcolm Collins: well, some cultures have operated off of that sentiment for a long time. Yes. I think, for example, many Catholic cultural groups have, have operated for a long time on a is is he talking obedience model?

Obedience model. Right? Hmm. And I think that it's uniquely challenging within a modern context, but I think that they're likely going to be better off of finding a way to just make sure that their kids know who they need to be obedient to, which is God in the church. Rather than trying to build something because like you look at our kids, right?

They're not like, like their disobedience and intentional sort of trolley predilection is very obviously in a large part genetic. Yeah. We're just providing framing for it. If you don't have that fire already lit, you're gonna be easier trying to protect what you do have in your kids. Which is, you know, when you talk about you, the video, if you.

Apparently Jordan Peterson, your kids are gonna be Sims. But I admit that like his parenting model [00:31:00] may work for people who have co-evolved with obedient, optimized cultural frameworks. You know, sitting the kid down and attempting to break their will may work for kids who like biologically have very weak wills and just really want something to follow.

Whereas our kids, oh my God, they even, even like the youngest ones. They will look at us and, and be like I'll be like, Hey Titan, you might knock that bowl off the table right now. And, and then she'll like start pushing the bowl and I'm like, Titan, if you do that, I'm going to come over there and bop you.

And then she'll like get a big smile and knock the bowl off the table. And then I have to go over and bop her. And then she'll, she'll like whine for like 30 seconds and then go back to whatever she was doing. But I think a lot of people, maybe this is why people don't understand what we have to do, is it our family structure is, is just the kids don't care, you know, otherwise usually.

[00:32:00] Usually if there's a threat of bops, the kids won't do it. But very frequently there's this with the kids and you know, it, it's just like the cat. This like, even my little infant, I can be like, Hey, don't do this. And it's clear that she understands no now. 'cause when I say no, she gets so excited. She'll, she gets immediately try to do it and start laughing.

And I'm like, oh my God, you're an infant. So obviously I'm not gonna punish you, but. I didn't, I didn't teach you to think it was funny to immediately try to do the thing that you were told not to do. And I fear that that is just the genetic destiny of my family, of to, to want to break the rules.

Malcolm Collins: My favorite incident of this was my little girl. We were eating outside and I had a bowl of macaroni in front of me on. The, , the sort of patio where there's an overhang. And so she comes over and knocks it off the overhang and it falls over, and I'm like, Ugh, that's a bummer. You know, but we've got more macaroni.

But then she runs down to where the macaroni fell in the bowl, [00:33:00] and she starts putting the macaroni back in the bowl. And I'm like. Obviously I'm not gonna eat it now, but that's so sweet and cute that she's gonna come and bring it back to me. And then she gets the macaroni back in the bowl and she walks it back to me and then she holds it up like she's gonna give it to me.

And she was three at the time, no, two younger, probably two and a half at the time that she did this. Like she's gonna give it to me and then slow motion. Moves the bowl so it's over the edge and slowly spills it out exactly where it had fallen before, before giving it to me and just starts laughing. And obviously at that age, there's no way we could have taught her this behavior at that young of an age.

But and this is why, and people can be like, well, why do you even punish them if like, you know, this is genetic or whatever. And it's like, look, breaking the rules isn't any fun if the rules aren't even enforced. Exactly. People with these inclinations like frameworks to break because what they're trying to [00:34:00] do is figure out where the boundaries of the rural system are.

Mm-hmm. That's what this behavior is. It's saying, okay, I can't get away with this, but can I get away with this? Oh, okay. Maybe if I try it and I look cuter while I do it, you know, they, they are trying to find the boundaries of what they can get away with. And you need to like a Roomba operating in a room with no walls.

It just won't learn anything if it doesn't hit the wall occasionally.

Simone Collins: Yeah, exactly.

Malcolm Collins: And I wonder, I mean, I, yeah, there must be some people, I mean, I could have played with other kids where I didn't see this behavior yeah.

Simone Collins: At

Malcolm Collins: all.

Simone Collins: This? No. Our kids are the first kids I've ever met who can't meet a rule that isn't meant for them to break.

That isn't like an opportunity for fun through breaking,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. Rules are just an opportunity for fun. Come on.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it's just an invitation for a fun tussle. So, yeah. That's interesting. I mean, how would you counter this, because this kind of [00:35:00] communal narcissism as it's described. Hurts communities, doesn't it?

Or do, or do you think there's some kind of technical benefit to this? I mean, you were saying it's what makes what did you say it like, I think you're thinking about

Malcolm Collins: it wrong. I, I, I, I think that it's probably mostly genetic. Okay. Who is susceptible to this? And I think that these individuals should just be thought of as like.

Because they're, it, it, it's created specifically by being both narcissistic and non-agent. And being non-AG agentic basically in my mind, makes you an NPC. And so you should think of these people as like random NPCs that are spammed into the environment and are just always gonna follow whatever the dominant cultural group is in this really predictable way.

And you just need to think about them as. People to navigate around, not like actual players in society. I know, but

Simone Collins: in terms of like, okay, if, if we were. There are all these conversations about how do we get the left to win back? Young men, how do we [00:36:00] get the left to win elections again? How do we root out the gerontocracy running it?

Should there also be a conversation if the left wants to win more about rooting this out, or does this army of Karen's. Help the left in some way.

Malcolm Collins: They do help the left. I think I, they, they've caused a lot of their problems, but they also help them maintain sort of their internal not cohesion, but conformity.

Now this internal conformity is what has turned a lot of people away from them. But it's also what turned people away from the right as well. Any group that ends up courting these individuals. This is actually a good point. It ultimately ends up failing because these individuals make the agentic people in society angry.

Like, like if nothing is more age agentic than just shut up and follow the rules, stop trying to think for yourself. And that's, you know, what the Christian Karens used to do in, in the eighties and the seventies. Right. And I think that that drove a lot of the age agentic people. That's why the [00:37:00] tech bros of that time period were all.

Progressives and today, you know, the, the, the competent tech bros are moving more and more to the right because they're being pushed out by this group. And so the question is maybe just if, if you're a culture build that culture in a way where it never accepts this level of syco fancy. And this is why we internally build things like Lemon Week, which we do for our kids, where every year is a holiday.

You have to find something that offends you and spend a leak learning to steal, man it because we see a fence as a sign that something threatens your wider ideology by being potentially credibly true.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Does this exist on, I think it does still exist on the right. I think it exists in more isolated, it always will exist in isolated church groups, religious groups.

Malcolm Collins: What

Simone Collins: in isolated church and religious groups, but I think it also exists in some isolated, especially old guard Republican groups.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely it does.

Mm-hmm. [00:38:00]

I mean, when, when, when an individual on the right goes out and thinks they're going to look good by signaling something that shows, you know, very little actual thought has been put into it.

Mm-hmm. Which, which we often see. You know, oh, I'm the, the most right wing. 'cause I say we should ban gay people. And I'm like, well, how does this help anyone? Right? Like,

yeah. If,

if you're, if, if, if. You think that being gay is okay enough that you're gonna get married to another guy? You obviously don't hold the beliefs that you hold, so you're not like helping them get into heaven or something.

Mm-hmm.

You know, so, and you can watch our video, you could say like, well maybe it leads to like broader societal degradation or video do gay destroy civilization, where we went over this in detail looking at historic examples and it doesn't seem to

Yeah.

It appears that in many cases it was actually.

That leading into societal collapse that you had stricter sexual norms? A good example of [00:39:00] this is the Rowans where they were looser before their golden age than at the height of their golden age or during their decline. So, you know, I think a lot of people just have this like vague memory of like, well.

The Greeks and the Romans at some point in their history allowed for gay people. Therefore, before the decline, it's like, well, no, you should look, because they also had an ascent. Right? And so, I, I think that there's just like no logical reason to really be going out and pushing for this. Yeah. And, and yet people push for it and, and, and it wouldn't even win.

It wouldn't even win if only conservatives were voting. If you look at like, modern conservative beliefs in the United States, it's, it's, it's just like an aesthetic belief that people, I think push as part of dominance, hierarchy fights. Hmm. Or to affirm because they think that like being conservative is like tough and cool in some way to affirm that about themselves.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay. And then,

Malcolm Collins: and I think, I think calling these people out, we should have like a word for this, like calling these people out as like [00:40:00] lame, like, like what is this? I, I think it's sort of like. Stop masturbating in public is, is what you should say, like, because that's what they're doing. They're just trying to masturbate sort of this, this position in a pecking order instead of creating a, a real argument that would do anything to help the wider party.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Can people recognize this in themselves? Like how would someone even realize it? Or is this, I mean, I guess do narcissists even know they're narcissists?

Malcolm Collins: I mean, I think can you see it in yourself? That's a, that's a good question. I mean, I think the question is, do you. Like if somebody said, Hey, spend a week seriously engaging with every idea that you find offensive as if it was serious and probably true.

This, this is the best way to find this out about yourself. And I think the number of things that, that you find too offensive to engage with is a sign of whether or not you are a person like this. [00:41:00] If, if the term like that is too offensive to seriously engage with.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: It actually applies to this

Simone Collins: ever is uttered by you.

What, if you ever feel that way, you know you're in trouble.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Because offense means that you should engage with it more intellectually, not less. Absolutely. It's threatening to you. Yeah. So I think that this world belief is, is defined by too much yeah. Fear of en engaging. Is things that are offensive to you.

That's, that'd be the easiest way. But I don't think that these people can be broken out of this or anything. I think even on the left, the people know the people who have this, and they find them tiresome, but they're, they're like, what? They're part of the alliance, so let's try to make this wider thing work.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Oh boy,

Malcolm Collins: star, I love you, Simone. What are we doing for dinner tonight? You know what I would like for dinner tonight?

Simone Collins: What would you like?

Malcolm Collins: It's just some pizza. Not pot stickers. Oh, you've got pot stickers? Yeah, I've got pot stickers. I haven't done pot stickers in a while, actually been

Simone Collins: [00:42:00] ages. And I, I'll do that thing where I do a mix of them.

I'll make fresh za dipping sauce. Seems like something you'd enjoy. Yeah. Let's do pot

Malcolm Collins: stickers. And we can also do a little bit of kimchi because I'm done with the,

Simone Collins: yes. Let's do kimchi. Good gut bacteria for you? Yes. Good. Okay. I'm excited for that. It'll be fun. And we're about to have our first ever monthly hangout for Patreon paid subscribers at our $10 level.

I'm super excited. We might do them on weekends. We might keep. Doing them on weekdays, we're gonna find out from the people who show up and we'll ask people over the weekend. But huge thanks to those who support us on Patreon. And if you're interested in supporting the podcast and hanging out with us occasionally and soon, we're gonna start releasing exclusive episodes on the platform.

Check it out.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I'm, I'm very excited for this. You know, get to know what people think we should be doing more of, especially the people who like this, the best.

Simone Collins: Yeah, because we don't wanna get stuck in like a vortex of the episodes that perform the best [00:43:00] on our channel seem to be, oh my god, women are the worst.

Oh my God. Progressives are the worst. Oh my god. Juice are the something. Just anything that draws out.

Malcolm Collins: Anything that looks like we might be saying something Anti-sematic or racist? Yes. Immediate popoff. Immediate. Yeah. Or or anti-woman. Or anti-gay.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And then, you know, the rest, like we try to throw in some, you know, oh, like history.

Oh, tism. And it just doesn't perform nearly as well. But we don't wanna end up in just a silo like that, because then that's gonna be boring even if you do like that stuff. So.

Malcolm Collins: And people can be like, oh, well this is a sign of your audience. I'm sorry. I actually, I'm friends with some progressive influencers and they're like, yeah, it's the exact same for me.

Simone Collins: Really? Oh, that's, that's dark

Malcolm Collins: movie. I know. I don't know who it's, who said this, but yeah, it's a a, it is a influencer who our audience almost certainly knows, and they're, they've said, yeah, my god,

classic.

Love you [00:44:00] to death alone. You are the most perfect wife, any man. Could ever have.

Simone Collins: No, really just you, because there's a lot of things that other guys could, oh, sorry.

Just me. For me, you're a better match than anyone, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'd be a nightmare to a lot of people, but thank God you love me. God, I love you. All right, love you. Bye.

And I'll join this thing. Where do I go for it? We need to adjust it a little. I don't, I don't know, like,

Malcolm Collins: well, to the audience, can see my two Father's Day gifts. Now I got the one helmet over there and then I've got my Roman helmet too, right over there. I need to

Simone Collins: get a stand for that, don't I? I do.

Malcolm Collins: I think so.

Simone Collins: Note to self

Malcolm Collins: stand.

All of my amazing exploits of the, the One Civilization video obviously inspired this.

It was only ever Rome. If you, if you haven't seen that video and you like our videos, that is probably one of my most [00:45:00] controversial takes in one of the most long research takes to do that, that required like a month of research to put together and is incredibly offensive. Anything new today that you learned, Simone?

Simone Collins: Gosh, I, I did learn, I, I guess, okay. I, I was watching, I was trying to understand the reasoning behind Zohan mom's interest in providing government run grocery stores in New York City. And it, it's bizarre to me that he hasn't really addressed the shortcomings of all the past experiments of government grown grocery stores.

'cause you have to keep in mind this is like a 1% margin kind of industry. Meaning that this is one of those industries where the corporate players in the space are deeply incentivized to be efficient and to provide the best possible. Like product and, and efficiency that there is, [00:46:00] and government bureaucrats are not incentivized to do that.

Malcolm Collins: Is that what he just hasn't thought about it? Apparently. I guess he

Simone Collins: hasn't. Yeah, I, I was trying to find like maybe there was something he thought of or would contribute to this idea that had not been tried. There is.

Malcolm Collins: Okay, so you don't know this part of the story. He said that what they would use to pay for the government grocery stores was $31 million that he thought was going to corporate grocery stores as government subsidies.

But he misread in where, where he got that information from and they're not actually getting government subsidies. So he doesn't actually have the money that he needs to do his little project. But when, you know, whatever, even

Simone Collins: if you provided government run grocery stores though, which would maybe artificially depress the prices, that would just put normal grocery stores at greater risk, like eat at their margins and then cause grocery stores to shut down at a higher rate and then create more food deserts.

It just, it's a terrible idea. Yeah. Oh, well,

Malcolm Collins: no, it's, it's hilarious. But I'm, I mean, I'm, [00:47:00] for him, I wanted to speed run New York, you know, I think. When people understand that metropolitan areas can actually economically collapse, because I think right now there's this perception Mm. That no matter what they do, things are gonna be fine.

Yeah. And the new will always come back. Yeah. And I don't think that, that, like, I, that's been one of my most persistent and I think controversial projections.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Is that Manhattan is going to economically collapse?

Simone Collins: Well, it was. I mean, it used to be. I don't know. I as a teen somehow, because I, I watched mostly movies that were made around the height of crime in New York.

Like, I can't remember the name of it, but there was this amazing like, punk gang Subway, New York movie. Oh, yeah. You're

Malcolm Collins: talking about like when New York was in the slummy state of like the 1980s. When I say that New York is going to collapse, I mean something far more drastic. The

Simone Collins: Warriors 1979, it was good.

This style was great.

Malcolm Collins: Far more drastic than [00:48:00] that. Which, which I, I could totally see happening. I was working on for our fab.ai, which is now live on the website. Yay. If you wanna play it there. It's, it's still at a very alpha stage right now, so I don't know, maybe wait another week or something.

But putting together a giant list of all of the competitors. So I've tried every single paid chat app and I'm putting together a review of. All of them for the site because, you know, good for SEO but also it's something I want to exist. And I don't think that the audience of this show wants to hear me go through and rank every single paid AI chat app because I think they're so fun that I'm trying to build a better one now because I'm like, well, all the existing ones kinda suck and in various ways where they could be improved.

So that's really exciting. One really confusing thing about this, and it almost feels like a conspiracy to me, is that the most popular ones. Like, you know, replica character ai are by far the worst. Even when you're talking about the ones that are for like narrative building, like, AI dungeon which, which seems to get a lot of attention [00:49:00] and has an active community.

It's just not very good when contrasted with other ones like Tri Spellbound. Yeah. I tried

Simone Collins: character AI at your behest and was. Shocked.

Malcolm Collins: She didn't believe me. She said, you're using it wrong or something. It can't actually be that stupid. I was sure. I'm like, no, it is. It is. Like actually confusingly bad.

Simone Collins: Worse than that. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: worse. And then you try it and you're like. Oh my God, this is confusingly bad. By the way, if you're wondering what I think are the best ones right now, and I still think that both of these are better than what we're putting together, but we'll hopefully be meeting them soon.

It would be GPT flow, the paid model the highest tier paid model or try spellbound. Which Trice fell down is interesting, but it doesn't appear to have like a giant community or anything like that. Mm-hmm. And it, it looks like it's made by one person and yet it's incredibly good. So I'm a bit confused by that.

Although they're, they're really good model broken now they're on like an average model, so we'll see. It's still better than the other ones, but anyway, I'll get started.

Torston Collins: To me. Okay. Dr. Torsten. [00:50:00] Dr. Octavian, how are you? Curing Titan? Oh, we're just putting in In a big napkin. In a big napkin. You made a big bandage. No.

Yeah. Get up the said and then I hooked it up through the medical can. Now we can see his heart. Better or not. Then we call, wait, wait, wait. What's up daddy? No, wait, no. Let's do blame. No people put down, down, let's it's words. Okay. Yeah. You should sweep by now. Okay. In the hospital.

Put one on here too, [00:51:00] because we wanna take out his brain. Okay. Are you gonna give her a brain scan? Yeah, I look, I look for that. Okay. You're, you're the ambulance driver now? Yeah, I'm, and Tristan, are you a, are you the doctor? Yes. Tostan. Are you the doctor? Like Andre? Yeah. What his brain is. Okay. Looks like.

Simone Collins: Well, thank goodness. Yeah.

Torston Collins: Not beating Well, what do, what are you gonna do? We gotta retreat.

Okay.

This is the primary for her. Oh yeah. You're gonna, we need to take out his heart and then put in this new heart that, oh, you're gonna do a heart transplant. [00:52:00] I know. Oh yeah. Spread a heart transplant. Wait, I'll take out the heart. Oh, she's cured. Is she better? Why? You forgot something. I need to take out your heart and I put it in a new heart.

Simone Collins: Aww Titan. Do you feel better? Yeah. Oh, that's so good. Yeah.

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