The Attractiveness Bias in Academia

In this engaging episode, Simone and Malcolm dive deep into two fascinating studies. The first explores gender differences in the desire and value placed on romantic relationships, revealing that men have a stronger preference for romance compared to women. They discuss the potential reasons behind this disparity, including societal influences and state support systems. The second study examines how attractiveness influences the speaker fees of scientists in various fields. They find that while attractive social scientists command higher fees, natural scientists who are less attractive earn more for speaking engagements. The hosts also share personal anecdotes and reflections on trauma, societal norms, and the intersection of personal experiences with broader cultural themes. The episode wraps up with a light-hearted discussion about comments from their audience and the quirks of nerdy dating.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be discussing two very interesting studies.

Hmm. The first looks at how much men and women want and value romantic relationships showing that men. Have an overwhelming preference for romance and romantic relationships. We'll get into why that may be. And then in the second we're going to look at how attractiveness affects the speaker price of scientists within various fields.

The what? In some fields, the more attractive they are, the higher they're paid and within other fields, the less attractive they are, the higher they're paid.

Simone Collins: Oh, I have to guess this before we go into it. And guess in the comments. Don't cheat. Don't skip ahead. I wanna see if people get this right. Maybe like obscure scientific fields. I bet neuroscientists are really attractive. Just knowing what you've said about like people in the field and, and then also looking at like the people who work in the field.

And I'm gonna guess that you know what also [00:01:00] archeologists and biologists, I'm gonna say in general really good. I'm gonna say historians and artists who aren't commercial well, like fi, like super modern artists, probably better off looking.

Malcolm Collins: Well, let's see if you're right. All right. Okay, let's, but we're gonna, let's first start on relationships.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I'm, so, I think this is a really, so why I think this relationships thing is really important to explore, and I wanna just talk with you like in terms of what you think you would do as a man dating today, is that we can't solve the problem of tism so long as women. Really don't have that much drive to marry men.

And this is one of those uncomfortable issues where I do think that like both feminism and currently state support services kind of just really removed everything that used to make women be like, yeah, I'm probably better off. Well, I

Malcolm Collins: also think that the way women date causes them to form negative impressions of men and causes them to undervalue the types of relationships they might be able to get.

That's

Simone Collins: [00:02:00] fair. Yeah. Well, and, and overfocus on it. Like when I look at at least Progressive. Critiques of dating and relationships and social media. It's like, well, I don't wanna be a mother to another like guy. Like, like basically like if you take on a boyfriend or a husband, now you're, you're baby. But that's not I'm, I understand that,

Malcolm Collins: that that's what you perceive because you watch the Twitter people who are trying to make themselves look good, but the core problem women are having in terms of self-perception.

If, if you look at, let's say Tinder where there's a famous statistic that less than 1% of women are swiping right on the average looking guy, right? The vast majority are just swiping on a few guys. So this means that they are likely, even if they think they're in a monogamous relationship, sharing a partner.

And that partner is going to, when he knows that they are very easily replaceable as they are for the top attractiveness and earning men in our society treat them in such a way.

Simone Collins: That also explains a lot. 'cause I was, I was looking at some stats on my own on this front before we started and was really confused when the stats were reporting that [00:03:00] more women than men report themselves as being in relationships.

And I'm like, Hmm, how does that work? Because I'm looking at the US we're roughly, it's 50 50. Yeah. So happening

Malcolm Collins: is that women, and this is where you get this, I hate men thing. And I think that we as men can like be like, oh, well this is just, but. Some of these women, based on their experiences, may really have a reason to feel like every guy is cheating on them because they are.

No, because they kind of are. Yeah. They are not moderated. They, they are not dating women who are men who are actually in their league. Yeah. They are using their sexual league was their marriage market league. They're dating lazy.

Simone Collins: As we've

Malcolm Collins: talked. Yeah. Well also not considering that that lowers their value within the marriage Market league later further confusing them.

Right. But let's go into the statistics on this because there, there's other issues at play here as well. I mean, the other big one before I go into the statistics is that women to get most of the things that they used to get from a relationship from the state these days the core things women often got from a relationship was security.

Support somebody to help care for their kids. You know, there, there is no reason, for example [00:04:00] that 73% of black women today should be having kids out of wedlock. If you look historically when there wasn't as much state support, the black child rate out of wedlock in the 1960s was half. The white child rate out of wedlock, it was 5% to 10%.

And so this is something that is downstream of these support systems which create an alternative. As you've pointed out. Even if you're not talking about the ones who have kids you, you can get this protection by the state for women if you look at the people who actually like used shelters, for example, they are overwhelmingly women.

If you look at the people who are on welfare, I remember I was looking once and it was like a crazy number . No, it was, it was single mothers was the one who was eating it all up. Yeah. Oh,

Simone Collins: well, yeah, sure.

Malcolm Collins: But the, the point here being is that yeah. And find the real number on that 'cause that, that, that's gonna be interesting.

But the point here being is that. Women have sort of become nuns to the state and the urban monoculture, it's like if they just dedicate themselves to it fully, they can receive. And people can be like, well, what about sex? And, and again, you can just look at the statistics. While women might be into like weirder porn than men [00:05:00] on average as you can see by the monster aisle at most mainstream bookstores, the girl monster aisle.

God bless. Yeah, it's a thing. It's like that this girl F's monsters, like, that's a, that's a whole, not even one aisle. I would argue at most bookstores, it's like two to three aisles. If you're talking about a large bookstore, like if men flaunt a, a fetish like that I, I think that they'd be pretty heavily shamed.

I.

Simone Collins: So according to a Pew Research Center survey, 61% of women in the US reported having received at least one major federal entitlement benefit at some point in their lives compared to 49% of men. So more women, but not,

Malcolm Collins: no, no. Hold on. Which you're not checking is how many are currently receiving what bet men are on it?

Less. What percent of entitlements go to women versus men? Hmm.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Not what percent of women and men are on entitlements,

Simone Collins: on, on joint returns, women accounted for only 19% of combined a GI and men paid 82% of the taxes. That's a a, a [00:06:00] adjusted gross income is a GI. So, so

Malcolm Collins: wait, women only paid what percent in taxes?

Simone Collins: 24%. Really? That's wild. Yeah. But that, that was that was in 1979.

So a lot has changed. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm still gonna here. I would've

Malcolm Collins: to surprise if it hadn't moved, maybe in the opposite direction. I

Simone Collins: mean, maybe. And so when I asked what percent of entitlements go to women compared to men, it says women receive a higher share of entitlement benefits compared to men in the United States overall.

Receipt of entitlement, 61% of women. Have received at least one major ENT development. It's not the answer. That's the same one I know, but that's what perplexity ISS telling me. And

Malcolm Collins: this is why, I remember when I looked at this, I found that crazy high number and I was really surprised. And the way I got that crazy high number was looking at the percent of entitlements who were going to single mothers.

Which is what allowed me to calculate the number.

All right. I found an answer here. A 2019 Urban Institute study found that around 65% of welfare, , money goes to women, and about 35% of welfare money goes to men. So women get [00:07:00] about double the amount that men get.

Malcolm Collins: and, and a

Simone Collins: list women, I think the, the big thing is that women know they can fall back on the state. I think men. Can be far less confident of that being the case. Absolutely. Yeah. Also, men, women are more able to legally fall back on men. So a man can't, for example expect that if he ends up a father, he can just.

Garnish the wages of the female partner, right? A woman. I mean, it's very

Malcolm Collins: much the,

Speaker 2: How could you make my son miss an entire semester of school? I mean, it's not like he's a hot girl. He can't just bail on his life and set up shop in someone else's.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So to, to keep going here. Men strive more for romantic relationships. 61% of single men versus 38% of single women reported looking for romantic relationships.

In a recent US study this study was romantic relationships matter or more to men than women. Very on the nose naming there 48% of men versus 28% of women had [00:08:00] experienced love at first sight, a study of 100,000 US adults. Wow. 48% of men versus 28% of women. Wow. That is wild. Did you experience love on first sight?

Simone Collins: Yeah. I

Malcolm Collins: did. You always told me that, but I, I thought it was more my profile that was the love at first sight thing than my looks.

Simone Collins: And it was, it was your looks. And that's even documented in my diary, you know? That's true. I, you're just, oh, my type, you're so hot. And you're, you get hotter. It's so crazy.

Like when I think back at you then I'm like, no, I was not as hot back then. You were at least. At least twice, possibly three times as hot now as you were before. And I was actually just like, on the truth, like truth. On, on the subject of, of you being soy,

Malcolm Collins: This is a, an obsession my wife has built up from replying to comments on this subject. So I ended up moving it to the end, , because I don't think it's relevant to this particular topic.

Yeah. So, but anyway, yeah,

Simone Collins: love, love at first sight. I certainly experienced it, but yeah, I mean, I mean I think it's important to also note though, anecdotally, you know, all this, [00:09:00] all this really resonates with me because where did we come into this, right?

Our first date, you're sitting across from me saying, I'm looking for a wife. I'm not looking to date, and I'm sitting across from you saying I'm looking. Only to date, and I'm gonna live alone forever. Like we had very clear needs and desires and plans, and mine had nothing to do with long-term commitment to a man.

And I think that's the thing is, is the BATNA the best alternative to a negotiated agreement for women. Is to be alone in many cases, especially when contextualized with mainstream society because the benefits of being with a husband are not communicated anywhere.

Malcolm Collins: Anywhere. It's funny that you mention all this because you know, the people I was dating before, you also like where I was finding people.

'cause you're like, what would I be doing in the modern context? Yeah. You look at the one who was our, like groomsman at, at the wedding, the woman but she was on my side because she was a woman, right? Mm-hmm. So what would you call that? A female groomsman anyway grooms. Very cool, very successful, very accomplished.

Yeah. But I met her at the school's [00:10:00] anime screenings Damn street. You know that that is where I was looking for wives, right. Like back then. Mm-hmm. And I, and I understand that things have changed, but, you know, finding people was in these, I, I was trolling for nerds. Like I was only going into places where I was gonna find nerds because I knew I had a disproportionate advantage when I would email people.

I, but I think

Simone Collins: you also wanted smart. Women who would intellectually, well, no, I mean,

Malcolm Collins: by signaling nerdy interests and attitudes and the way you dress and everything like that, you, you signal a, a perspective of your values and your environment. And it wasn't a perfect coalition was mine, but it was something that could be evolved into that over the course of, you know, the, what, 15 years we've been together you know, so.

I think that that works maybe more when you're younger. And that these are Yeah, no, it's not like don't exist anymore.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Unless you're a Anna Vains and moving in your trans community of people who refuse to grow up. 'Cause she seemed to have some anime group that she hung out with a lot.

Malcolm Collins: But I bet you could go to that group and find [00:11:00] interesting girls who are tired of the bs. Like, you know, they're

Simone Collins: actually, yes. I mean, well there are adult anime groups then, but. And you know, actually no. I, I think if, when, when I'm thinking of anime conventions, modern anime conventions, there are plenty of single, men and women in their twenties and thirties?

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, the key was an environment like that is one, they're gonna be much more woke. So you've got to be careful about how you approach things. And, and two you're, you're in an environment where some people, like if you go to the anime like chain or the chain of like, things were like.

Ren fairs are happening, and I've read a lot of things by, like, Ren Fair Workers is there's like these basically like orgy parties that they do at both. And you want to avoid that crowd.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You, you want to find the, the chaste individual within the nerdy environment which is a very good vetting mechanism.

Simone Collins: Mm. Yeah. And they're there, they're always there. At least in my experience,

Malcolm Collins: men report falling [00:12:00] in love three times on average versus women's two times on average. So what men are,

Simone Collins: that's really interesting. What's

Malcolm Collins: going

Simone Collins: on there?

Malcolm Collins: Well, look, they're, they're, they're not only, only having love at for sight and almost double the rate, but they fall in love.

Yeah. But they're also falling

Simone Collins: in love more. And this is so not the stereotype, you know, the stereotype is the women so romantic, you know, always all, you know, mooning over someone. When it's apparently the opposite. What it, but really though what's going on?

Malcolm Collins: 70% of couples agreed that the male partner said, I love you first.

Ah, that's also so not the stereotype. Well, it's sort of like a proposal, right? Like I think men are exp I always thought that men were expected to say it first.

Simone Collins: You said it first to me, but you said it. I think I might love you manipulating you. I think I might love you. No, no, no. You, you, you, the, the, the actual statement that you shared was, you know, a little, a little couch.

But it was very cute. It was very, I was like, Hmm. You know, yeah. It's so sweet. I didn't need to say anything. 'cause you already knew. I was like [00:13:00] madly annoying. I was enthralled. Yeah. It didn't matter.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, it, when people can watch our videos about, like, my wife is less in love with me now and I like, you may think I'm hotter now, but you're less like.

Pathologically obsessed with me. You were like full on yore in our early relationship. And, but

Simone Collins: I know. Yeah, but I didn't, do I do way more things for you now? No. You, I love way more now. We're committed to you now. I, I am more content with you now.

Malcolm Collins: But you've also pointed out that because I've raised your status so much our relative status differences, like do genuinely require me stepping up more than I did in our early relationship.

Simone Collins: That's true. Yeah. The auntie has been. Has been upped,

Malcolm Collins: And you're like this is the way things are. Like, life isn't fair, right? Mm-hmm. And, and you're definitely holding up your end of the bargain. More like you being pregnant with kid number five while being sick, while handling all this, like, it's just so intense what you're doing.

You know, we had in, what was NHK, the Japanese Filmers here yesterday. I'm surprised nobody noticed in the comments that there were no, two

Simone Collins: people did. Two people noticed.

Malcolm Collins: In the, in the Antinatalism episode. Yeah. One of my [00:14:00] favorite episodes. People never watch our favorite episodes. I'm like, I'm like, I spend so much time.

I really, it

Simone Collins: had a lot of comments when I went in and checked in on that. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Men said, I love you an average of 42 days earlier than women, because they don't just say, I love you first. Damn. That's leaving somebody hanging right there 42 days earlier. That is not okay. That's like just manipulative in my perspective.

If you don't, if you're not interested in a long-term relationship, just be like, I don't feel that way about you don't like, they just end

Simone Collins: it because you're wasting their time. It's really cruel to waste someone's time like that. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Don't, don't, this is even worse. It appears that they know, they plan to say it eventually, but they just wanna establish their power in the relationship.

Simone Collins: Yeah, that's, that's really uncool this female tendency to. Act cool. And by, by that I mean have like literally a, a sort of chili ice cream reaction to not be impressed by anything they do. And they're like, oh, I love this restaurant. Oh, you didn't actually get that good at reviews, whatever, right? Just what is that?

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Right.

Simone Collins: It doesn't make you look good

Malcolm Collins: at all. No, I agree. [00:15:00] I agree. This whole like poo-pooing whatever, like, oh, not that great. Mm-hmm. What I've also just talked about, like, the reason why a lot of men get in bad situations within this current dating market is they have no idea what the average woman looks like.

They, they basically, like I have heard that you are mid from like our channel or like lower mm-hmm. And I'm like, you need to stop comparing my wife. To other well-known YouTubers, you watch and go to an airport,

Simone Collins: internet mid like an IRL, like higher because I'm not obese, but like we in, in an age of filters and cosmetic procedures.

And also I. In an age agent, which obviously like the most attractive people are between 21 and 23. I'm, I'm, I have to be. No,

Malcolm Collins: no, no. Yeah. But what I'm saying is it helps men to reset their actual expectations. Oh. You, I've seen some of our

Simone Collins: colleagues, like, how are you going to end up in a, well, I

Malcolm Collins: can't find a hot woman in the US who wants me, so I'm gonna go to like Latin America and look for a woman.

And I'm like, this isn't gonna work for you. Like, you, you, you, well, I mean, it's are way too high on attractiveness. We've

Simone Collins: been talking about that. Right? Like there, there are some people who are now [00:16:00] like. Some people's approach to modern dating is, okay, I'm just gonna be a passport, bro. I'm just gonna find my, my tie, or Eastern European.

Tra wife who's gonna be younger, who's gonna be very attractive, who yes, also is gonna be smart, but like she can

Malcolm Collins: be done. But like, keep in mind the effects that that's gonna have on like, you know, this

Simone Collins: I, you're not taking into account the hedonic treadmill as well, which we've seen play out in plenty of these types of relationships.

They're just normalizes

Malcolm Collins: your life in the US and just so like.

Simone Collins: I, I get that. Like this is, this is one approach. Okay, you can do this, and then you just drop her when she gets old. You could just Leo, Leo DiCaprio it. Right. Just keep going and just like strong prenup or like marry in a homestead state, like whatever it is that you need.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But these are also the types of people who are more likely to like poison you if they think you're gonna pull that off. Like, I mean, yeah. You've taken them from their support network. You've put them in an incredibly vulnerable position. Yeah. You've had their backs against the wall,

Simone Collins: Yeah, we're fortunate that the people we know who have done this on basis has not

Malcolm Collins: died.

Awkward being here. .

Speaker 5: What's wrong, [00:17:00] Carl?

Speaker 8: Well, for starters, she is barricading herself inside my house and every time I knock, she screams at me in this like language, it's like some demon yelling at me or something.

Malcolm Collins: But no, the point I was making about like, go to an airport and actually look around and discount anybody who is significantly younger than you in age, because they're just gonna look hotter no matter what. And then sort of try to build a normal, I might have an do that also,

Simone Collins: like I think, I don't, like do you want a child like you're, you're, you're, you're basically.

Marrying a child, meaning you also have to take care of it and deal with, you mean if you're marrying a younger

Malcolm Collins: person? Yeah,

Simone Collins: that's true. Yeah. Like when I, and I know like there are other, there are downsides too to marrying someone who's set in their ways, like waiting too long is also difficult because then they're gonna have, like, they're gonna be a lot less flexible and willing to grow with you.

And that also is a problem. But like this solution of just, oh, I'll marry a child, like. Okay, well then this is one reason why we didn't like, we, we thought for a while. 'cause a lot of our, our friends were like, oh, you should get [00:18:00] no pair. Like it's, it's a great, it's a great thing, you know, cultural exchange.

They watch your kids, young women are

Malcolm Collins: terrible these days.

Simone Collins: But then, yeah, but then like we have to like. Now we have, you know, not four children at home, but five. And we have to, you know, feed them and pay attention to them and, and help them through their homesickness and, you know, take them out on outings and like, no, you know, it's busy.

We want a partner, we want someone to help us, you know, and we wanna help them, but not. So

Malcolm Collins: when you're actually seeing this in the statistics here, because I think one of the things that people aren't thinking about when they're doing the password growth thing is you are very likely not gonna be able to have as in-depth into intellectual conversations with this individual as somebody who has a cultural similarities to you.

Simone Collins: Fair? Yeah. Even, even if it's just the cultural differences. So let's say that they're equally educated, they're equally likely, no

Malcolm Collins: language difference. Mm-hmm. Know anything. Yeah. Just due to cultural framing differences, you're gonna have a harder time. Yeah. And we see this in the data. 49% of men versus 20% of women claim their Repa romantic partner with their primary Confidant US study.

Mm-hmm. Wild. Right? 40% of men to 20% of women. Wow. So [00:19:00] 49%, sorry. Almost 50% of men considered their, their wives, their yikes. Or their partners, sorry, not even their wives. You are my primary confident. I, I think it's a big problem that women consider people other than the men their primary confident. I, I'd say that's a huge warning flag for a relationship.

If the woman considers anyone other than their husband to be their primary, I just don't

Simone Collins: really see it as a marriage if, if you're not actually integrating your life with someone intellectually. Yeah. I mean also professionally, I, I, I just, and, and, and professionally can mean. That maybe one person maintains the household and the family's finances and like, just like backend admin for the family business or for, you know, the partner who works.

Like, I could still, I still see that as a professional arrangement, but like separate jobs, separate careers, separate friends. Like this is. Yeah. What that is, just fill

Malcolm Collins: her out. If she is experiencing problems with the relationship and the first person she goes to isn't her partner, but somebody else,

Simone Collins: yeah.

Malcolm Collins: That somebody else can often have a vested interest, especially if they're a PE female partner with, you know, the degree of intersexual competition to drive the relationship apart. And we repeatedly see this in [00:20:00] the, the women who do something ridiculous and then go to their like. Friend signal threat or whatever, and, and they're affirmed for doing the thing that anyone would know is ridiculous because the other women are just, you know, either they're just insane or they're trying to tear them down.

Simone Collins: Right? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And then men show stronger associations between relationship status and mental slash physical health outcomes. So it helps you more in mental and physical health.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, so what the leftists that I follow on YouTube would say is that that is because women take on. And uncompensated and un un unreturned, unrequited burden of providing mental, I think you support and physical care. I mean,

Malcolm Collins: even if we pretend like you do as much as like I do as much as you do, it's obviously not true.

Simone Collins: Well, when it comes to, when it comes to physical care, I 100% do more, but that's, that's because it's. Kind of what women specialize in.

So yeah, like, I'm making you your meals, I'm doing the laundry. I am, you know, doling out medicine when people are sick. And, but, and, and I think that's, it's, so it's, it's [00:21:00] to me obvious that men would be physically better off with women caring for them. But that's, that is another reason why women are like, okay, so now I'm not caring just for myself.

I'm caring for my, my partner and any kids that we have like. I mean, they'll happily take that on if it comes to it and they'll find it satisfying, you know, I mean, assuming it's a relationship.

Malcolm Collins: No, and I mean, I think it is a raw deal that women get even, even in Yeah. You know, fairly I mean, people might consider a relationship conservative progress.

We we're called like anti egalitarian all the time by leftist media, whatever. Even though we run our companies together, we do our podcast together, we, you know, do work together, whatever. Men are less likely to initiate breakups. Women initiate 70% of divorces. Women also initiate breakups more often in non-marital relationships.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. This

Malcolm Collins: is just mm-hmm. And,

Simone Collins: and men are more likely to get into a subsequent relationship more quickly.

Malcolm Collins: Uhhuh. Well, and here you see men suffer more from relationship dissolution. 40% of men versus 20% of women report frequent loneliness [00:22:00] during divorce year. Men's mortality risk increased by 27% after a spouse's death versus women's by 15% increase.

Well, and again,

Simone Collins: but also it is not just that women basically then the women, I think. Often re receive a little bit of a hedonic bump after ending a relationship because there are fewer. Logistical burden on their lives, but beyond that, they have better support networks just period.

Malcolm Collins: Right. If they're, if they're primary confidant, whether they're husband, then you immediately have somebody you can go to, right?

Yeah. A hundred percent.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And

Malcolm Collins: with 50% of men having their wife with their primary confident o obviously, or partners, their primary confident, that's, that's gonna be an issue.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I, I'd also note here that there's this perception that like men are this sort of the abusive gender in relationships and they don't value women as much, but here you're seeing this giant increased mortality risk in men you don't see in women after a divorce.

This giant increase in lonelier. Literally twice what women experience. And so I think what we're seeing there is that that's just a, a false narrative. And, and people keep pointing to this study that was withdrawn about men leaving their partners when they had a, a major injury or illness.

[00:23:00] Mm-hmm. And then the guy who released it withdrew it and said, I did the mass wrong. It's not, not accurate. So what we actually see here is we, there are so

Simone Collins: many high, it's weird. There are many high profile examples of famous men. Who like left their wife as she was going through cancer. Like one of them is Brian Johnson.

He was accused of that. And then there's some other guys who. Policy stuff. Criticized There was the, the

Malcolm Collins: Democratic Dean Howard Dean.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Howard Dean, that's right. Yeah. So what's up with that? There was a

Malcolm Collins: famous actor, the the director guy who divorced his wife via facts and then like married a, a name or something.

Oh no, a stepchild. I have to find out who that is.

So the Phil Collins one was the divorcing his wife via facts, although he denies that that's what's happened. And the marrying the stepchild. One was Woody Allen. , And they make it clear that she was only technically a stepchild and that, uh, Woody Allen had began a relationship with her mother, and this was the adopted daughter of that mother, although he never fully married the mother, [00:24:00] even though he dated her for over 10 years.

And then he started dating her adopted daughter when she hit. 20.

Malcolm Collins: But you know, no, I think that what this is, is all of those men are far leftists oh. And I think if you adapt to the urban monoculture as a man, you're gonna treat your wife significantly worse than you don from what I've seen.

Simone Collins: Why?

Malcolm Collins: I, I think because you don't really have a set of rules for how women are supposed to be treated and you don't have a true moral center.

Mm-hmm. So it's like, I wanna feel good, therefore we're gonna be polyamorous. I want feel good. Therefore, you know, this, there isn't really a, oh well, she'll be better off anyway there, there's always a way to justify your decisions within, in the urban monoculture. Oh yeah, yeah. Or like,

Simone Collins: yeah, we, we've never really been integrated anyway.

She doesn't depend on me, I guess. Yeah, there's more, maybe there's more separation as well. Like we were never commingled, we always had a prenup. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: 19% of men versus 11% of women report never having emotional support. So way more men than women, almost double. The rate of men have never gotten emotional support from their spouse.

Despite what the feminist will tell you, that's men were [00:25:00] six times more likely than widow women to begin new relationships after becoming widowed or divorce. So women were, sorry. Women were six, six times more likely. So it's not like a little bit more likely. It's six times more likely. In the paper they argued for this.

I don't really buy a lot of these arguments. Men are socialized to avoid showing vulnerability. Of course, they've gotta be like, they're socialized, and it's like, then why are the worse men, the democratic men, why are the worse men, the urban monoculture men, right? Like, why is it that the better husbands seem to come from these more traditionalist cultures?

You know, and the the answer is, is because this is just wrong. Right. Like showing vulnerability can often be used to manipulate other people. I mean, that's the beginning of emotional blackmail.

Simone Collins: Well, and I also think that 'cause I was looking at different argumentative styles between men and women.

And women are way more likely to use emotional appeals, but I think that's because it's, it's manipulative.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. This limits men's ability to seek, receive emotional support from friends and family. Consequently, men become more dependent on romantic partners for intimacy and emotional needs.

Women maintain broader [00:26:00] support networks beyond romantic relationships. I. I just disagree with this. This to me sounds more like the women having broader friendship networks seems to be a more modern thing. It doesn't appear intrinsic to women or anything like that. It doesn't appear downstream of vulnerability.

It appears to be a tactic that the Erwin Monoculture uses to pull people outta their families. Right. Because incredibly effective to create these all female social networks where people go for validation and that can enforce alternate cultural norms in the one the family is adopting.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Would you say you have more female friends or male friends?

Simone Collins: God, I don't know. I mean, how do we even define friends anymore? Male, probably in terms of people that we,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. I don't know.

Simone Collins: I love, I don't, I don't see gender, Malcolm

Malcolm Collins: people live different genders, like can't be friends. I love that there's this perception and I'm like, that is so not true for married people.

Like, after marriage, it becomes a lot easier to be close friends with somebody if, if I. Of you, [00:27:00] even if like one person is single. And, and I think that this can cause sometimes unnecessary friction where people have too much phobia around this,

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Where they're like, you're not allowed to, or I'm really, and I think they need to be mutual

Malcolm Collins: friends.

Like, like for me, I actually feel safer with you having a majority of male friends than a majority of female friends. And people can be like, why would you Oh, because you

Simone Collins: think they'd like poison you against me? I might, I don't know. I mean, I'm thinking about the people that I chat with regularly, the most, like text with.

It's true. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Your long-term calls was like really childhood friends as more female, but like, but no, no,

Simone Collins: no. Even, even new friends, like who do I text regularly? I, I text Diana Fleischman about her book I text with the brilliant mother who I constantly talk about. And I, I text with. Like honestly, other people who are female know that I think about it, but like, they're the ones who chat more.

Malcolm Collins: Do they, do they ever try to drive wedges in your relationship or

Simone Collins: No? Never. No.

Malcolm Collins: That's why you need the female. Okay. The discussions, maybe it, 'cause they're

Simone Collins: all a little bit on the. Spectrum or like [00:28:00] different neural neur, but like, well,

Malcolm Collins: maybe your, your wife

Simone Collins: to be, our conversations are so tactical, it's like, here's this study, or here's this method, or here's this piece of information.

Malcolm Collins: So, so the answer is, is you need your wife to interact with women who have lots of kids and are in healthy relationships.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yes. All of these women are, if not married, no, they're all married. Okay. Huh.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Interesting.

Malcolm Collins: All right. Well now we're gonna get to the big mystery that I asked you at the beginning.

This one is called Yes. Oh my goodness. Key points from beauty premium for social scientists, but unat attractiveness, premium for natural scientists. This in the opposite of what you think and so I was wrong here. How attractiveness affects social scientists value in public speaking while having the opposite effect.

On social versus natural scientists. Oh my god. Social scientists benefit from being attractive while natural scientists actually benefit from being less attractive. Sample methodology, 739 [00:29:00] public speakers from eight North American speaker agencies 217, full-time academics, 551 part-time academics, 366.

Non-academics facial features on a scale of one to 10, using geometric facial analysis, speaking fees used as a proxy for quote unquote market value.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I love that they're using market value as a term in this. This, I love it.

Simone Collins: Yes. This is a wonderful study of applause to it. Whoever did this. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Four, four key findings with supporting statistics.

Facial attractiveness has no correlation with academic achievement. So this is the first one here, which is really interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Generally, historically, what, what, what they found is that people who are more attractive are typically more competent. Yeah. It might just be that there's an alternate pressure to like, leave academia if you're more attractive and go into another field.

Simone Collins: Fair.

Malcolm Collins: Because attractiveness is correlated with intelligence. Overall. Yeah, but also

Simone Collins: attractiveness is indeed correlated with things like higher salaries and stuff, so, yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like I, I might be an academic if I was less attractive, for example. Mm-hmm. I was definitely going down that path.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Attractiveness affects external visibility only where physical appearance matters. Significantly [00:30:00] positive effects on TED Talk invitations Google webpage mentions NY time bestseller list. And, and so the Google webpage mentions 20% per attractiveness point and on the NY time bestseller list, plus one week per attractiveness point.

That is wild. No significant effects on book publications or book awards where appearance is less visible. Opposite beauty premiums by field in speaking fees. Natural scientists, unat attractiveness premium significant negative effect with a p value of 0.011 a 19% increase in speaker fees. So oh no, for each one point decrease in attractiveness.

Simone Collins: Whoa, what?

Malcolm Collins: So

Simone Collins: it's huge. So the more misshapen you are, the more cachet you have as a potential speaker. They're like, oh yeah, they look really messed up. Let's have them talk to us about. Bio biology natural like geology. What, what are we talking Natural, I mean, well

Malcolm Collins: think about like Stephen Hawking [00:31:00] or like a, you know, Einstein or something.

Like, the archetype we have is somebody who is not traditionally attractive, even though Stephen Hawking was originally quite attractive.

Simone Collins: Yeah. The, and, well, this, this, what's so weird to me is like, I remember in the halls of academia, like when we were talking with or just hanging out with people at different departments like.

I remember the geology people very attractive, but like party animals, like very rugged party animals, like get dehydrated digging all day and then just get, and same with archeologists and then. I don't know. You said like neuroscientists were often just like, yeah, every neuroscientists

Malcolm Collins: being fairly attractive, but maybe that's wrong from this.

Now if we go further here social scientist, beauty premium in business fields, you have a really big one that makes sense. Yeah. In effect 0.034. Well, in the other social scientists, you have a, a highly but not enormous of 0.364.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: [00:32:00] So. I think about

Simone Collins: Diana Fleischman, you know, she is very attractive and she's in the social sciences, right?

And like she is a more public facing kind of person.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, sorry, I, I gave the wrong number there. It was B 0.204, P 0.0 3, 4 4 business fields. And then for others, plaintiffs it was B 0.364, and p less than 0.001. So this would mean it's. I guess bigger in the other social sciences I spoke wrong. Non-academic speakers with science backgrounds show the same pattern.

Natural science background unat attractiveness, premium social science, business beauty, premium social science, others beauty, premium key insight, stereotypes, drive market value. These findings suggest that public stereotypes about nerdy or geeky natural scientists create a market where less attractive natural scientists are perceived as more credible, competent.

Well, social scientists benefit from conventional beauty premiums. Yeah. Appearance versus substance. Despite no correlation between attractiveness and actual academic performance there is, by the way, there just isn't within academia. The, the speaking market rewards different appearances for [00:33:00] different fields indicating that public perception, not academic quality, drives these premiums.

The ugly Einstein effect. The paper references the cultural Cartesian dualism where people believe you can either be physically attractive or intellectually brilliant, but not both. Particularly for natural scientists. And this is a phenomenon that you and I have taken advantage of before. Remember the study on glasses and hair links gonna go into that?

Simone Collins: Yeah. That in general, people with shorter hair. And people who are wearing glasses are seen as less attractive, less approachable, but more intelligent and more competent, and both men and women one without glasses, but two with like long hair that's down are seen as more attractive and more approachable.

So I guess like the Jesus hair or the Fabio look for are, are but they're also seen as less, less intelligent and competent. It's funny,

Malcolm Collins: I do de, I definitely don't see men with long hair as approachable. I always think that they, they're gonna be a creep.

Simone Collins: Yeah. But then again, I, you know, you have the Fabio [00:34:00] thing.

Like, how did that happen? Because I, I never thought that, well, I

Malcolm Collins: think that this might be urban monoculture brain people because it's being collected from students and stuff. Maybe I

Simone Collins: see. I just perceived it as this subconscious association with feminine traits and beauty, regardless of the person's actual gender.

It's like, oh, if it looks more like a woman. It's gonna be prettier and dumber. And if it looks more like a man, I don't this, it's gonna be smarter,

Malcolm Collins: I think. I think it's about urban monocultural, social norms, the long hair maybe. Maybe. And the glasses I don't think are about urban monocultural norms. I think everybody generally assumes people with glasses are competent, but less approachable.

I mean, you don't really need your glasses that much, but you still wear them based on this. No, I don't. When you first read these studies, I do think that people, men and and, and women view women with shorter hair as more competent which is why you cut your hair after that study. You used to have super long hair, like hippie hair.

And then after Brian Johnson,

Simone Collins: Brian Kaplan,

Malcolm Collins: Brian Kaplan came on our podcast and was like, Hey, for your audience, you should probably grow out your hair. And now you, you've grown out [00:35:00] your hair.

Simone Collins: No regrets.

Malcolm Collins: You tell me how much you hated your longer hair. When you had short hair, because it was so easy to maintain.

Oh. How did that change? Hair

Simone Collins: is so easy to maintain. It is, it is.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, do you wanna go to wigs?

Simone Collins: Ew, no. Yeah, that's, I mean, not, not ew to wigs, whatever you do, but like, I don't, I don't wanna do wigs. And I, I'm, I'm fine with my hair the way it is.

Malcolm Collins: I love eating Dec Simone. I am very excited for dinner tonight.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I'm gonna make you your

Malcolm Collins: desk door. So we're doing mac and cheese.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Delivered to your room, right?

Malcolm Collins: I mean,

Simone Collins: don't come down rest. Okay. I've got the kids. It's fine. I'll get the

Malcolm Collins: kids at eight. Okay.

Simone Collins: That'd be great. That'd be wonderful.

Malcolm Collins: And I'll just lay down and, and go to sleep. And yeah, extra cheese.

Simone Collins: Well, I mean, if you're gonna sleep the whole time, should I not interrupt you then?

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. Wake me up to eat. I mean, I should.

Simone Collins: Okay. Okay, then I'll, I'll, yeah, I'll just, [00:36:00] I'll, I'll just drop food by, and if you're asleep, I won't wake you up. And then you'll just wake up and there will be mac and cheese. Yeah, because I,

Malcolm Collins: I wake up very frequently when I have this flu.

It's like 20 minutes, and then I wake up in a puddle, and then 20 minutes, and I wake up in a puddle of sweat, and then the sweat puddle of sweat, and I move. And then by the end of the night, the whole bed is just soaked.

Simone Collins: You're gonna yell, you're gonna have like two more nights of this. And then when you're with the kids on one of the weekend sessions this weekend, I will just wash your sheets real quick.

Does that sound good? Yeah. Because I know it's so stinky. It's so gross. I know. I hated that. I'm sorry.

Malcolm Collins: I just feel like a rite of passage, you know? No need to contextualize things as negative. It's a different experience of what it feels like to be alive. Yeah. Well that's why I just, I, I

Simone Collins: constantly think of this, this one part.

It was like this random, like one off. Mention in one of Ian Banks' culture series books where like the, one of the main characters is Hitch Hitching a ride on a spaceship and meets someone who is, is exhibiting strange behavior because this isn't a post singularity sci-fi world where no one gets sick anymore.

But [00:37:00] on this particular ship, the human passengers had decided to. Take turns getting a virus. Because they heard that that used to happen to people back in the day and they would feel comparatively so awesome after that. It was like worth trying. And now whenever I'm sick, I, I try to pretend that I'm one of those people.

Malcolm Collins: I don't even, I don't even think you need to focus on the after. So I have a flu right now, right? Mm-hmm. Like, and I can contextualize this, and we always talk about you contextualize what you feel, right? Like, I can contextualize this flu as like really negative because it causes discomfort and pain in some areas of my body,

Simone Collins: but

Malcolm Collins: it also causes, interesting sensations I don't normally feel. Yeah. Like a chill in my teeth, which is a very interesting thing to focus on. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Also get to feel that.

Malcolm Collins: I, I find this particularly interesting because it's one of the only times in your life you really get to feel the nerves in your teeth, except when you're in immeasurable pain due to like a dentist or a disease or something like that. So it's interesting to meditate on a couple other things that I recognized after this was I.

[00:38:00] One, , I feel almost no arousal when I'm at this level of illness, , which is very interesting and often no desire to do some other things that I often do, like play video games. The entire time I've been ill, I have had no interest in playing video games, and I'm sure this is like evolutionary, so I don't spread this to other members of the tribe, and I don't go out and try to fight a war when I'm super sick or at least don't like, get excited about it.

But like is there not great utility in having a period of my life where I can sort of explore the world through the perspective of somebody who doesn't like video games or feels arousal?

, And, . Another one is that because I'm like waking up all the time and I'm having these fever dreams, it caused me to ask a question that I'd never asked before, which is why are dreams so disrupted by something as pretty much insignificant as a fever? And it really got me meditating on the concept , of dreams and sleep.

And Simone also asked, why does the sweat from a fever smell so bad? And I was pointing out to her, well, that's probably evolutionary as well, to tell other members of your tribe that you have an illness and to not come near you, or at least to be able to detect that in other individuals. Maybe it's not an [00:39:00] active signal.

and it also you know, gets a different experience of what sleep is like. I get to experience fever dreams which are unique, if not, you know, entirely pleasant in a traditional sense.

And I can sample this new, this new way of being human. But I think more than all of that whenever I have a flu, my mental state is quite differentiated from my mental state. When I don't have a fluid, it's, it's probably as different. As being drunk versus not being drunk. Not, not in the same direction, but it is definitely an alternate mental state where I approach things much more slowly deliberately and methodically.

And that can be an interesting time to think about things. You know, I've written some really interesting things when I had a flu so I'm not, you know,

Simone Collins: even go out of your way to orchestrate uncomfortable. And slightly compromised mental states because it does help you like avoid distraction.

Like you'll wake up at 2:00 AM in the morning because you know. Yeah. So like you're, you're only half awake. Your brain is desperately trying to get you. Yeah. This is

Malcolm Collins: something I seek out because the different differential mental states allow me to produce [00:40:00] differential work within different domains.

Yeah. And, and sort of hunting for these and a flu is one of them, you know, and I think that this, this is the thing, like I. You get to choose whether you experience life negatively. You get to Adam's family, it your contextualization of your emotional and physical state is always a choice at the end of the day.

Mm-hmm. And we've talked about this. We, we actually saw a new study on this recently about trauma. And again it's more perception of trauma in youth than actual trauma in youth that correlates with mental problems as an adult. Yeah. Well, specifically

Simone Collins: like this was, this was a, a Spencer Greenberg team follow on.

To CD, C reports that something like, I think 63% of people who reported experiencing adverse childhood trauma or events basically childhood trauma also reported depression and anxiety. However, when they did more digging on this subject. They found that experiencing these things only explains like 10% of it, something, something along those lines.

You can read it yourself. Mm-hmm. Go to [00:41:00] the clearer thinking this with like it, I think their blog and what they didn't dig into, which we've seen in other stories, studies like this one Nordic study is that when you look at people who report. Adverse effects or, or events in their childhood, they're yes, absolutely much more likely to report anxiety and depression.

But when you look at what's actually documented in court cases, we're like, okay, this person clearly experienced real trauma that is documented. And we know, 'cause you know, like the legal system got involved. If they didn't actually report it, they, they also were not very likely to report having problems in the moment.

So that's why we've sort of come to this conclusion that a lot of it

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, it was, it was that the people who. Did experience verifiable trauma as a child, but didn't remember it as an adult. Did not have negative or did not contextualize it. It wasn't, it wasn't,

Simone Collins: didn't remember it, it was just didn't report.

Having it

Malcolm Collins: di didn't, didn't contextualize it. Traumatically.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and, and it's the same, the opposite direction. People who didn't experience gender gen, genuine trauma as a kid but [00:42:00] contextualized normal parent stuff as trauma ended up having all these negative outcomes. Yeah. And this is something that is.

You know, so one super important from a mental health perspective to understand that trauma is something that's incepted and contextualized. Mm-hmm. And I would definitely, I mean, if you look at my childhood. I would have a lot of trauma from a generic standpoint. You know, I went to like Prison Alternatives at 13 and I never lived with my family again after that.

I was in fights constantly, was in, you know, the pseudo prison system. These are, these are for kids. They have these private prison alternatives. Think Holes is a very good depiction of one of these. They're, they're in the desert and they're often run by Mormon extremists. And they, they, they send some kids there like, instead of it, and it might have been a cash for kids thing, we don't know because I don't really think I did anything that warranted going there.

For context of what it's like at these places. I would've been around 13 at the time and by the time I got out I was either at, I can't remember, it's either 65 or 75 pounds. , You know, obviously extremely malnourished. , You could just see all of my bone structure was crazy. I.

When I got there, they would do [00:43:00] strip searches and cavity searches, and you know, most of the time you're there, they have armed guards. For people who don't know what this is, it was something called the. , Okay. So the troubled teen industry is something that's been used more broadly, but in the nineties, a portion of the industry began to be used by judges in the United States, is an alternative to sending kids to juvie.

, When juvie became overcrowded, the reason I ended up getting sent, largely speaking from what I can tell, is my parents were in a divorce and neither of them wanted the other to get custody.

So they both convinced the judge that the other was such a bad parent that I would be better off, , living on with the government than living with them. And so the government just assigned me to a prison alternative instead of living with either family. And most of these facilities have since due to, , the high number of suicides in them and the, , abuse allegations because they were pretty much, , like the adult private prison industry, except there was virtually no oversight at all.

, They've mostly been shut down. There's a 75% reduction in them since the nineties, so it's not really a thing anymore. , But a good depiction of [00:44:00] them is the movie holes, as I mentioned.

How bad they were, were, its hidden for a long time because the industry was really divided into two sections. One was the court appointed alternative to prison, like a private prison industry for youth. , And then the other was for like rich kids, like Paris Hilton went to one. , And so there was a lot of like movies and Netflix shows about the ones for rich kids, which were very, , you know, not, not nice, but at least, , you know, nobody was actually, you know, killing themselves on, on.

Property or anything like that , at high levels, , which was not the case at the ones that the government was sending kids to.

And after that, I never lived with either of my family again, , ever. , I would say until after college. But I didn't live with either family until after college. I lived on my own after college.

As for some fun anecdotes I can throw in. 'cause I really, really don't wanna do a full episode on this. , At the one that sort of like holes the wilderness type because there's various types of these and I went through a cycle of them, , you know, just 'cause I wasn't going home. , And the, the ones that are more like that, I have this [00:45:00] vivid memory of, , some of the kids were running away into the desert.

And, , well, I mean, we knew, they, they told us that nobody really ever makes it away because, , you know, there's, there's miles of desert in every direction. , And you could hear on the radio, , and they were chasing the kid down with like, hunting dogs and like, , Jeeps. , And

all the other kids were cheering 'cause we could hear the progress on the radio, you know, hoping the kid, obviously he didn't get away, but it was, it was a, a funny vivid memory for me. , Another one was when I went to one of the school varieties that they, that they had, because you know, obviously you can't just stick a kid for, you know, however many years in the wilderness.

. There was an instance where a teacher, , threw a kid through a closed window. , And I remember that one really vividly. 'cause I was like, whoa, man. Like, that's crazy. Like, even, even going through that, I was like, that's crazy. , At the, at the school one, the other thing I remember, it's like all the teachers we're selling drugs.

Like that was really common as well.

I, , actually went back to the school version of one of these, , when, you know, later in life and it turned out, , one of the students burned it down. So that's what happened to that.

[00:46:00] Oh, also fun fact, , other kids tried to kill me at each of them. , At the school version, my roommate actually got expelled for trying to poison me. , And then, , fortunately he was incredibly incompetent. , And then at the, the wilderness version, , some kid idiotically signaled to me that he was gonna attack me that night.

So I just like made my bed look like I was sleeping in it and I was elsewhere and he attacked it with a shovel. , But, you know, I was fine the next day, obviously, because I wasn't in it.

So after years of doing daily episodes, that's all you're gonna get out of me about that point in my life. Hiding short snippet at the end of an unrelated episode because I really hate trauma narratives. I think that they are incredibly toxic.

so, you know, I was at a very young age, you know, sort of forced to make things work on my own and I look at people who just go to like boarding school in report trauma, right? Like, and I'm just, it's like, what a pussy you are, right? Like, like, well, they're only

Simone Collins: hurting themselves too.

Like that's, that's a real sad thing.

Malcolm Collins: And, but I know, like, like personally, even though I went through all this, it probably [00:47:00] would've been worse living with my parents given you know, what they were going through during this time period of my life. And so like, and people can be like, well, then why don't you have like a negative?

And I'm like, look at who I am as an adult. Like, why would I contextualize any of that dramatically? Like I, I feel like I was, I was forged to be super strong and, and, and flexible and, and , those are all positive things. Why would I, why would I go back and internalize those negatively? And people have been like in the comments, they go, Malcolm, you just don't understand like, parental abuse.

And I'm like, I, I'm pretty sure, like within my family, we do not, not only do you have my situation, but I was also talking about how my dad forgave his grandfather after taking out a million dollars in debt under my dad's name without telling him in the eighties. This in the eighties too. So a lot more money today.

And at the time my dad was making 70 KA year. So, he was quite boned if he couldn't figure out how to make things work. And he, he patched that up as well. So a lot of these people who are like, oh, you know, it's not that, I don't think that there aren't ever actual cases of like very, very serious abuse.

I, I look at somebody like alea. But even if you're looking at somebody like alea, this might be where it's a whole separate episode. She was seriously beaten like [00:48:00] very, very serious. Not like our kids where it's just like light, like re orientation thing? No, when she

Simone Collins: was also like ritually beaten, like, where I'm gonna take you to the thing or like hit you with a switcher paddle.

Like, I think they had some, a leather thing that they would use or something.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And. She even says, despite all of that, despite how bad all that is, I still think me going, the period I went to public school was more abusive than the physical punishment. And that's just recontextualization. This is a, i i Is it worse to be severely beaten occasionally, or is it worse to be, as she described a public school, it turned her life into a filler episode?

You know, is it worse? No. It was like being

Simone Collins: in a show where it's all filler episodes, which is Yeah. Is, it was such a great way of putting it,

Malcolm Collins: having all your agency taken away and having to sit in a chair and listen to a teacher all day, like, and for people like us, we'd be like, oh, the second is worse.

So even with people like her, when people are like, oh, you don't understand trauma well. But clearly Alea does understand what any traditional form of trauma, right. Like, yeah. And, and with that, she's still like, and public school is worse. ,

The reason I make these [00:49:00] comparisons is I'm trying to show that people who have experienced different types of childhood trauma are able to recontextualize it. , Even if it is quite severe by modern standards, whether it's Alea where I don't think you could experience more physical abuse other than like having a limb ripped off, or.

, I don't really think there is any higher level of financial abuse than having a million dollars taken out under your name without your permission or in my background,

but the point I'm making here is, even people who have undergone quite severe things are able to recontextualize them and. In some cases it may be impossible. For example, in each one of these three cases, there was no sexual abuse happening. , And so it may be impossible in that instance, but the reason I use these three cases is they represent a wide diversity of types of abuse in which every individual was able to recontextualize.

Malcolm Collins: and I just don't see it negatively at all. Like even a little bit, because I really like who I am today and I feel like all these things contributed to that.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. I'm glad you're okay. I'm glad you don't. Yeah. Interpret things [00:50:00] in a bad way. It, it's, it's too bad. And in the end though, this is so part of our philosophy, it, it, nothing, the, what matters is what you're gonna do about something.

, It's up to you. You know, it's your internal locus of control that matters. And yes, there are exogenous factors in life, but that doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is what you can control and you can just control how you react to things and what you do about what you are dealt.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Absolutely. Well, I love you to DeSimone. Love you too. And you are, go to sleep please. Amazing woman.

Simone Collins: You're an amazing man. I love you and I hope you feel,

Malcolm Collins: and thank you for, you know, having such a. You know, you had severe anorexia, you almost died. This is how you lost your, or your uterus stopped functioning normally.

You, you had severe depression during your youth. Yeah. And, and nothing

Simone Collins: bad happened. I, I had an idyllic and perfect childhood. I just made it hard for myself.

Malcolm Collins: But I don't think you contextualize, I mean, you do contextualize like college is, is bad. Not really.

Simone Collins: No.

Malcolm Collins: I remember actually even today, I was thinking about my last day of high school and I was [00:51:00] like, I didn't realize how much better life would get after high school.

Simone Collins: Oh man. It's so much. It's

Malcolm Collins: orally better. It's

Simone Collins: so hard being a kid, like every, oh, like high school's the worst, I think. But like, it's just rough being a kid in general. You don't get to choose anything. You have no control. Everyone else determines where you go, when you go, what you get to do, what you get to eat it.

It sucks. I hated it. I, I love being an adult. It just gets so much better. We can

Malcolm Collins: construct a way that our kids can live a more adult-like lifestyle.

Simone Collins: Oh, we do. We, we, we like very, very carefully listen to what they want and we let them do it. That's why we don't do everyone sit down at the table for dinner.

Everyone does dinner exactly the way that they want. We we're, I think we're pretty good about that.

Malcolm Collins: Thank you, Simone.

Simone Collins: Thank you Malcolm. I love you.

Malcolm Collins: Love you too.

Simone Collins: All right. I'm gonna be quiet when I come into your room, so.

Malcolm Collins: Now the bit on what Simone learned about what people meant when they said I looked soy, , from the comment section, , where we had further dug into this topic.

Simone Collins: On, on the subject of, of you being soy, just to follow, because this is just a [00:52:00] constant thing with our channel.

We had asked about it and a lot of our audience had explained to us, or especially to me, 'cause this is a question, why, why is Malcolm soy and all of the things they described as soy, I'm like. Okay, so you're just describing everything I find attractive in men. And I think it's, it's important for our audience to recognize that at least when it comes to terminally, online, nerdy women who I imagine are actually pretty good matches for most of you, if you're watching this channel, this is the type of woman you'd probably want are disproportionately attracted to traits that you consider to be soy.

And by trying to eliminate those traits from your. Appearance compartment, et cetera. What

Malcolm Collins: trait are you talking about here?

Simone Collins: Skinnier paler, nerdier glasses. Expressive. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I had this realization what they were actually talking about is what the differences between the two dive teams and the Sum 41 Music video into Deep is. I.

Malcolm Collins: No, and I can, I can see why somebody would see those [00:53:00] things as soy and like, and you know, like this, this,

Simone Collins: it shows my

Malcolm Collins: misunderstanding is I saw that not being soy was about trying to be like more attractive.

And, and I realized, no, it's,

Simone Collins: I think it really has to do with appealing to men. And maybe a very specific subset of women, but not the type of women that I think we've

Malcolm Collins: gone over them before on where pe men perceive what women want. Yeah. Or because what they do is they look at what women want for random, sexual encounters. Yeah. And they confl that with what women want in a long-term partner. Well, but also like

Simone Collins: are. I, I think that's really interesting too, because I, I'm also not the type of person who's looking at men from the perspective of like, who do I wanna bang once? I've never looked at men that way.

It's only been from a long perspective. No, no. And this is why I

Malcolm Collins: think that you have this perception because I, I think that they're actually getting data when they go out to bars for like the women who will do the one night stands and stuff, like mm-hmm. The data that they're getting is from the women who are interested in just sleeping with somebody else.

But aren't

Simone Collins: they, like, when it looks to, when it comes to getting married, don't they wanna attract like slightly. Right, but the data that they're getting

Malcolm Collins: is wrong because [00:54:00] they don't go and date the, the long-term chased women. They, yeah. You know, they're, they're not out there looking for the nerd women on the nerd, the fandom board, like when I, you know, started dating you, it was just pure nerd.

It was like anime cons were. All, all of our dates, you know, we yeah. Your second

Simone Collins: proposed date was to watch My Little Pony. Yeah. And not even

Malcolm Collins: anime, like even

Simone Collins: more

Malcolm Collins: intense than

Simone Collins: that, just

Malcolm Collins: so great. It was you know, we, , and for me this was about flexing, like you show me your big knife collection, like flexing Ah, yes.

Al culture. And I flex to you that I don't care about societal norms and I don't care about judgment. Yeah. Which is like a thing in our culture. Right. You know? So nice.

Simone Collins: Aha. That is better. Thank

Malcolm Collins: you.

Today is a great day to be sick.

Simone Collins: This is true. And then you'll feel so good. You'll feel so much better. Trust me though, I, you don't seem to be

Malcolm Collins: better yet. You still seem to be lumbering a bit.

Simone Collins: Well, I'm pregnant, so I'm gonna be like this for another four months.

Malcolm Collins: okay, well, we'll get started on this one. This is a, a fun one.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You're [00:55:00] stealing Tyson's money Yeah. To come in,

daddy. Oh, it's a money ca. It's a cake net outta money. Do not peel Does off cake. Octavian, you're breaking it.

Speaker 10: Doesn't matter. You're breaking it. Stop it.