The Evolving Landscape of Parental Advice

In this episode, we explore the surprising decline of parents giving life advice to their children, sparked by a conversation with Megan, Scott Alexander's wife. We examine which cultures stopped giving life advice first and why, and discuss the consequences of children growing up without receiving such guidance. We dive into personal anecdotes, cultural practices, and the societal trends that have led to this shift. We also share practical advice for parents on how to effectively pass on valuable life lessons and create a lasting positive impact on their children's lives.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be talking about something that was inspired to me by a conversation I was having with a friend.

Actually Megan, who is Scott Alexander's wife and I were talking about raising kids 'cause they have young kids and stuff like that. And passing on. Ideas in sort of life systems intergenerationally. And one of the things that they noted, and I started to note this as I recalled, you know, asking other people, is that people do not give their kids.

As much life advice as they used to, and in some cases gives their kids virtually no life advice. And they, they never set their kids down and are like, this is what you should structure. This is the way you should structure your life. This is what you should expect from these stages of your life. Yeah.

This is what you should want to do with your life and. I think the, the areas I want to dig into this are what [00:01:00] cultures stopped giving life advice first. Hmm. Like what cultural trends made it, because most cultures historically did give children life advice. This was a very normal thing to do historically speaking.

Two, why did this stop? When did it stop? And for people who grew up without being given life advice. What is good life advice that I would give generally to them and to my kids as well. So, opening thoughts. Simone, before we go deeper into this,

Simone Collins: I'm super excited to talk about this because I feel like it's part of that larger trend that we talk about that really.

Precipitates the, the beginning of the end for society and human mental health, which is the atomization of everything. And I think a big tailwind here is a trend whereby we stopped getting everything from within the family in the household and started getting it piecemeal from outside. And that a lot of people.

Are now getting their advice from external sources who [00:02:00] may or may not be aligned with their best interests. Instead, who are basically, you are getting this information not because it, it's going to help you because it's, it's the information that was best marketed that was more likely to go viral. That was for whatever reason.

I

Malcolm Collins: actually go so far as to see that many people structure their lives. Around aesthetics of what they saw as a good life within television shows while they were growing up. And I, there's

Simone Collins: that, but there's also the fact that. Just to give you like a, a picture of, of how things have changed, even when you look at how parents are parenting, a peer research center study found that only 27% of parents say they often ask a family member for parenting advice, which indicates a clear decline in, in the reliance on families.

They're, they're now looking to parenting books, and every time I talk with someone who's pregnant and expecting to become a parent. They talk to me about the books they're reading and the podcasts they're watching, and the videos they're watching. They do not talk about talking with their mothers [00:03:00] or their parents in general about parenting.

Yes. So they're, it's not just about like going for an aesthetic norm. It's about. Shifting to the experts. Like we, we give our kids to childcare. We don't give them to our family. We give our our kids to school. We don't homeschool them. Things

Malcolm Collins: are being outsourced, like the two groups that are going to try to take advantage of this.

If you allow other people to implant a life vision in your kids' head, they're mm-hmm. Either going to. Marketers who want to use this to make money. Yeah. Or they are going to be self-replicating mimetic sets that e exist like the urban monoculture because they're good at turning people into basically self replication zombies.

And I wanted to start with actually, I, I'm just gonna read the, the. Interaction I had with, and I asked Megan for permission to share this as you, as you saw Simone. Interesting to be like, do I need to anonymize it, et cetera. So I'll read it because I thought it was very insightful in sort of how it framed this.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: So she said came up when I asked Scott if he wanted to [00:04:00] discuss, quote, which pieces of advice to pass on to the kids. And he went, what are you talking about? Scott's parents were supportive, always eager to help with administration. Administrative navigation, but he thought, dad sits you down and gives you life advice, was an unrealistic thing from the movies.

Pretty confident. Malcolm and I were from Advice Giving Cultures one, and, and she's from a culture that's fairly similar to ours. Mm-hmm. Whereas, I don't know. I, I, my understanding is Scott's from a, a Jewish cultural background, which was surprising to me because that's a culture that I always thought was very high on advice giving at least in terms of the movies and stereotypes, which, which means probably in reality our Jewish fans can say one way or the other if, if advice giving stopped.

And I know before I continue reading this. Within my own family. I saw this with one parent and not with the other parent. Like my dad basically never gave me life advice. Oh yeah. Never, never. But my mom constantly gave me life advice. Yeah. And I got life [00:05:00] advice from my grandparents on my dad's side.

Actually the grand mom as well. My granddad didn't gimme life advice either. Which is interesting because the advice I got from my grandmom. Was framed through, this is something your granddad used to do or say. So well, and it was

Simone Collins: actually, it was a very consistent family doctrine that was passed and shared among many people.

So there was like, there was almost a family guidebook or rule book, and these were norms that were shared across family members. Right. And that I think was very good. It was solid advice too.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. To, we'll, we'll get to this advice later in this, but to continue with what I'm reading here one of your books illustrates his mom's unmistakable advice giving compulsion.

She's talking about me here and has a side-by-side comparison with his mom doing a good versus bad job of targeting it. Ha ha ha. Not sure about Simone, but I'm predicting low advice, but not zero. What about your parents? Did your parents get life advice? Simone. [00:06:00] Sparingly, but yes. Oh yes. I remember like the advice, and this is actually kind of surprising to me, that your mom gave about sleeping around a lot.

Yeah,

Simone Collins: that's what I was just thinking. Like the, the one piece of advice that I really remember my mom saying so indirectly about sex was that you, that sex is like a precious gem and you should be really thoughtful about who you give your gems to. And it really went over

Malcolm Collins: my head. So I was like, I, I actually think that's not bad advice to give a young girl and what's fascinating,

Simone Collins: solid, it just you saying that to an asexual person or someone who's only, who's gay for Malcolm and Malcolm only apparently like, is just not,

Malcolm Collins: but what's interesting about it is, and this this could be part of like trying to figure this out for me, is.

Her mom met her dad when they were in what today would be called a polyamorous [00:07:00] relationship. You know, she is not somebody I think of as like she was very in with like San Francisco pro sexuality culture. And yet what seems like an older family tradition about how to relate to sex and sexuality got passed down through her.

Potentially she was repeating something that an ancestor had told her. And that's why it came out as sort of this prepackaged narrative that goes against even her own sort of life practices which I, I found very fascinating. But anyway, to continue reading here my mom's side had a very pushy for advice culture, and fortunately for me, my grandfather on that side mostly gave good life strategy advice.

And I'll note here, when she was talking about my mom giving good versus bad advice or, or giving it in good versus bad ways is my mom both gave me larger structured advice, but also gave me advice almost every like day, every day. Oh, constant feedback. Can

Simone Collins: I give my example? I have

Malcolm Collins: yes. Great. [00:08:00] Okay. I stopped doing

Simone Collins: it because she just gave so many of these, but I, I used to keep a Google doc of her funny emails.

So I'm just gonna read one 'cause it's relevant because it's about. It's about us on YouTube. Oh, okay. Subject YouTube channel and it, it just starts out YouTube just don't seem to understand that you are adults and that you have virtually nothing to fall back on. And just a few brief years to strike your Fortune YouTube channel.

Are you shitting me? This sounds even more pathetic than blogging for HuffPost. And you look so sad and pathetic. Hi guys and girls. Surfs up. The others who have your education are working their asses off to get somewhere. And you two have more ridiculous excuses for not living adult lives than I've ever heard.

Shut down your failing company and get jobs as it is. If I were an employer and I saw digital imprint of all your striving, I would not hire you. I haven't seen anything so sad since Heidi Montague on Spencer Pratt and it did not go well [00:09:00] for them either. Buckle down and get jobs immediately when el

Malcolm Collins: This is very common for the type of advice I got from my mom.

It was, I, I love when people are like, how come all of the public criticism doesn't get to you? And it's like. I was trained on criticism for a very young age. It's, it's like the, the Bain quote,

Speaker: Oh, you think darkness is your ally? You really adopted the dark. I was born in it molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man

Malcolm Collins: and her advice, and I may speak of her in like, kind because sometimes the advice was good advice. Other times the advice was not good advice.

And you could say, oh, well, why aren't you mad about this? Or have any animosity about this? , And it's like, well, but [00:10:00] she's not wrong. I mean, starting a YouTube is a huge time sink. Yes, it's gone well for us since then, but in the early days, , huge variability and potential outcomes. I, I do have a Stanford MBA Simone does have a graduate degree from Cambridge.

Like we could get jobs at McKinsey or something and just make safe money. , I understand why she might have frustration that we don't get that

I will say I love how good she was at explicitly trying to pick at my known insecurities, which makes her such a better troll than the random Internets online. And the emails like the one we read here weren't unique. Here's another one. I asked Simone to sim me some more. I'm going to stop following you and Simone on Facebook.

That video was tragic to see. It reminded me of those. Sad, lonely videos Simone did when she had nothing much going on in her personal life. Even the feathers were back and there were of course no views. Just a couple people desperate to be noticed, [00:11:00] wasting their time. It's as though you two bring out the worst in each other, the most vulnerable and weak parts.

You should be bringing out the best in each other. So sad to watch you losing your momentum in life and making such disastrous decisions. You will be left behind by your classmates and your brother.

but what you can tell within that is what she would often frame the advice around is you will never be rich if you don't do X. And I was like, mom, I don't really care about becoming rich. And she just couldn't understand this.

She's like, but of course. And I was like, no, I, I care about influence and saving the world. Having lots of kids and trying to make the world a better place. And she'd be like, what? You know, if you keep having kids, you won't have as much money and you won't be able to give them as nice of things. And I'm like, well, I don't know if that stuff really matters.

But then other times she would give me really great advice. You know, yeah, she's the one who gave me the advice. When I was bemoaning which college I was going to [00:12:00] choose and I was like, Ugh, you know, this is the, the most important decision of my life. It's gonna affect everything that sort of comes after this.

And she was like pretty sternly. Like, no, it is not the most important decision of your life. The most important decision of your life is who you marry. And at the time, growing up within the urban monoculture. I thought that that was a ridiculous and potentially even a little misogynistic thing to say.

I was like, no, of course it's your career. That's the most important thing. Great.

Simone Collins: We were raised, like all I ever thought in high school was all, the only thing that mattered in my life was what college I got into.

Malcolm Collins: That's what I thought in high school. Yeah. In middle school it was like you're preparing for high school so you can prepare to get into the best college.

Yeah. And then you get into a good college and then your life is set. Yeah.

Simone Collins: And so your mom, your mom gave some really solid advice, but

Malcolm Collins: we'll, we'll get to more of that in a second. Like the advice I got from both sides, but I'm continue being here, but I

Simone Collins: wanted to give that one example. No,

Malcolm Collins: it's, it's a great example for our YouTube fans.

Yeah. She would be quite happy with how things have gone for us. She died during our YouTube [00:13:00] career, and we have an episode when that happened and everything. Yeah, she actually,

Simone Collins: so yeah. As much as she hated the idea of us being on YouTube to begin with, yeah. Before her death, she, she was a huge fan of our podcast, watched every episode, and at that point.

Her feedback, actually, I was just following it today was much more tactical. She's like, Malcolm, you need to get your lighting better. And she'd send us all these tutorials. I'm like, here's the camera angle you're supposed to have. What are you doing with your background? You're too close to the camera.

I, I, I literally just put gloss on because she was like, I, this, the matte lipstick isn't good. You have to wear gloss. And so I still listen to her. I still listen to her.

Malcolm Collins: But anyway, to continue here, yeah. A handful of young people I asked either didn't get advice from their parents at all, or they got seemingly blatant, stale and self-centered.

Quote, go into my exact profession type stuff. Oh, interesting. And I saw this too with a lot of my friend's kids. You know? You did. Yeah. You know, I go the, the, the, the one that I saw the most was my friend's kids, was not going to my exact profession. It was, do what [00:14:00] makes you happy.

Simone Collins: That's,

Malcolm Collins: and I think trend

Simone Collins: I saw was that advice shifted from very tactical, like, here's how to live your life, et cetera, et cetera.

And it went from that into. Here's emotional coaching. Here's how I want you to be happy. Here's it. It it sh the values shifted. The advice was no longer about tactical, practical stuff. It was about feelings.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Which is you know, where I'm thinking of the, the career advice I got from my parents very different my dad's career advice, he gave me one piece of career advice consistently and over and over again, which is.

If you are for, are fortunate enough to make a large amount of money when you're young

Simone Collins: mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: Don't expect it to be easy to make that amount of money for the rest of your life.

Mm-hmm.

IE if you, you know, come into a lot of money when you're young or you make a big business play, which he did when he was still very young.

And he made the mistake of thinking, well, I'll just be able to do this again and again and [00:15:00] again. In terms of how he was spending money, he kind of did though he not realizing he should have. He would like make a lot of money and then lose it all. And

Simone Collins: then

Malcolm Collins: as an early lucky roll of the dice instead of something that he would be able to persistently repeat which is actually really solid advice.

I didn't end up needing it. But because I didn't make a ton of money when I was young. But still really, really solid advice. The other advice that he gave on career stuff is do not overly focus on the degree you get. And that the degree you get should be for status and recreation.

And don't let it sort of narrow the career choices you make or the, the starting career trajectory you make. I don't know if this was good advice. Don't

Simone Collins: create No, no, no. I think that's, that's solid advice. Creating path dependency with careers is. I mean,

Malcolm Collins: I got my degree, my undergraduate in neuroscience.

And I got my graduate degree as, as an MBA. Mm-hmm. And I, I went into business, so I, I definitely did that. Mm-hmm. I, I went into neuroscience because I wanted something that showed my intelligence but was also fun. And so, so I did [00:16:00] neuroscience doing a I was gonna do a minor in philosophy, but I found it was so stupid as soon as I started studying it at the academic level, couldn't, I was like, you couldn't take all the meds.

It really, it really is all semantics at the academic level. Like, I was like this,

Simone Collins: so it, that's, I can't take it.

Malcolm Collins: And I was like, what? What, what do you mean? Like, what does X mean? Like, just define it how you want to define it. I wanna understand why I exist, you know? Mm-hmm. But anyway, to continue here and that it was often ignored.

Soft cultures seemed to lose advice, giving entirely advice, assorted differently from support, which I find slightly surprising though it could make sense. If you think of advice as pushing a cultural package for children to unpack after they migrated elsewhere as adults and are no longer in touch.

Probably too much of a story. I don't know. I think less wrong, and this is like the wider rationalist community is a young adv advice young advice pushing culture. But it might have a pretty weak quote. Only take advice from people that you respect slash want to emulate in [00:17:00] quote, discounting meaning they don't do this, which is something I was always told by my mom.

And this is the piece of advice that you really adopted from her, which is never take advice from somebody who isn't in a position that you want to be. Mm-hmm. So if. If somebody hasn't made a fortune and they give you advice on making a fortune, it's probably not gonna be very good. If somebody isn't in a happy marriage and they tell you how to get a wife probably not.

Great advice. And this is actually really important. Within like the YouTube community, as there are so many advice givers on how to be like an awesome man, for example, who are you know, single and childless or in, you know, like divorce number three or like. You know, no, no, no, no, no, no. You shouldn't be.

But people don't look at that. And, and, and so this isn't just a problem with less wrong culture doing this, although I have seen this was less wrong, where they look at you know, advice from people with out proven track records. Oh. Where yes.

Simone Collins: That does happen a lot. What on earth like

Malcolm Collins: [00:18:00] Likeer Kowski, for example, A lot of people take his AI stuff really seriously, even though he's like literally hasn't been successful at a single thing other than writing a fan fiction in his entire life.

The Fanfic kind of fizzled out technical or AI related. And, and yet

Simone Collins: he's, no, he's been successful at raising money. I would take his advice on raising money.

Malcolm Collins: I would take his advice on raising money too. Mm-hmm. And I would take his advice on making a fan fiction popular. I would not take his advice on the threat level of ai.

And, and, yeah. So anyway, to, to continue here. Or at least I feel surprised by how often I have to explain or justify some of this tendency in myself. Like that she's saying she feels even weird. And we've had this as reporters. They go, how dare you give your child expectations? Like, you want something from them.

They're like, well, do you want this? Or we, we got this

Simone Collins: a lot online like that. It, it was tantamount to abuse that we had high expectations for our children.

Malcolm Collins: Any expectations for our children.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And, and I was like, what a psychotic thing. I, I, I think that there are a few signs from my cultural [00:19:00] perspective that are a sign of more disinterest and a lack of genuine love or care for someone then to not have expectations of them.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: If you. Care for your kids. Certainly you want a particular outcome for them, right? You like, you just don't want, you know, whatever. You're trying to, because, because if you want, whatever it means you can't even model who they are or what they might want even for themselves. Right. You know? Well, but I

Simone Collins: almost, I, I almost wish that people chose whatever over what I think they actually are, which is choosing, which is happiness.

I just want my kid to be happy. I think that's the worst thing you can hope for for your kid. And tell them. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I, I, well, I mean, 'cause it shows and my father has, has, has pushed for that with me in terms of like what he wants from me. And I see that as not a sign of caring. Like I like my dad and everything like that, but I don't see it like if you're an, an adult and you do this with your kids, like I just want them to be happy.

Know that to a [00:20:00] kid that comes across as disinterest often. Wait, I'm, I'm sure your parents gave you some, I just want you to be happy. Speech or something? Or did they not, like, did they have some bigger thing that they wanted from you?

Simone Collins: I mean, they gave me what I would now contextualize as, as please be more culturally like US advice, you know, like, tell me about that.

Well, because I only wanted to stay at home and study and be by myself and they're like, go out experiment, stay out late, you know, be, be with friends and people. And I didn't want that. You didn't want that. I didn't want that. At least there are some people who are giving their kids cultural advice where they wish their kids would conform more.

And I do think that there are different forms of advice. So I think that

Malcolm Collins: I, yeah. I wanna categorize, let's, let's delineate this. Yeah. I'll give you my categories or you, you used start with your categories in the middle. I think there's

Simone Collins: one, there's the direct advice, like my mom telling me the story of the, you know, having sex is like giving away [00:21:00] JUULs.

And then there is the. I think the bigger form of advice my parents gave me, and I think this is the most important, important advice that every parent gives to their kids, which is the what you do, your actions, and then kids watch your actions carefully, which helps 'em normalize to what is they expect of themselves but also.

What they think ultimately is good or bad. 'cause if they hate something you do or they, they see how you live your life and that it doesn't work out well, they're going to do something very different. So I think that's the most useful advice. And when I think about the advice we give to our kids, I care so much more about what they see us modeling than what we ever say to them, because that can be really discounted by kids.

Then there's the. Cultural institutions with which you raise your kids. So by choosing to put your kid in a certain school or to send them to church, you are implicitly choosing the advice that they're surrounded with by other people. But I think

Malcolm Collins: that this is a huge mistake people make today, is that they try to outsource to cultural institutions that have been, and there's a lot of people who, like, they send

Simone Collins: their kids to like the LDS church or Catholic school, and they're like, [00:22:00] okay, they're covered.

Like, my kid's gonna grow up a Catholic, and then they're like shocked when they turn 18. You're like, wait, the

Malcolm Collins: Catholic school is where a lot of this. Is coming from, and it's like, yes, a lot of this is coming from Catholic school. And, and no, like

Simone Collins: many parents have told us that, like they, they thought they had it all right?

And they did all the things and they sort of outsourced the advice to that institution, be it the church or the church and related institutions. And then our kid, their kids leave as soon as they leave the house. So like, yeah, by the way, I'm an atheist and

Malcolm Collins: I'm, no, because a lot of these institutions mimetic viruses have gutted them and used them for recruitment processes.

Mm-hmm. And they still wear the face. Of Catholic school or something like that, or LDS school or something. When in reality they're a pipeline. Out of these, these institutions, and so I think not just vetting the school, but I generally, unless I was from a large cultural institution that I really trusted, like for example, I think Brigham Young is actually pretty good as a university system implementing LDS cultural values.

Yeah. Yeah, I I would not trust [00:23:00] 99% of Catholic schools. Hundred percent. And implementing Catholic values. I, I think so. I

Simone Collins: think when Catholic schools were still run out of convents, I would trust them a lot more. And like taught like literal nuns leading them. But now there are just so many more, like maybe not even really parochial schools, just like schools that call themselves Catholic.

And there's also a ton of classical Christian schools and also just classical schools, which I think now a lot of parents when they decide that this is their version of like homeschooling light, like, well, I don't really have the bandwidth to homeschool my kid, but I wanna do the whole, like, Western civilization is great.

Raising my kid is a non-progressive thing. They choose. Classical schools, and I just don't, you, you

Malcolm Collins: just don't know. Classic. I I think classical schools are retarded. I'm ret I'm sure

Simone Collins: some are good. You just don't know. No,

Malcolm Collins: no. I mean, as an educational model, and this is just my thought, I understand some cultures are different.

I actually do not think you do a good job of passing down [00:24:00] cultural values by forcing people to read the same books you read as a kid. Because those will be drowned out by wider cultural influences.

Hmm.

And, and this is what people believe. They go, well, if you read. Western classics you will come to respect the Western tradition.

Not at all. It's like the problem is, is you're trying to create a westernized, maybe even Christianized version of a yeshiva. But this is a, a Jewish college thing that you go to for two years where you learn about Jewish cultural history and religion. Mm-hmm. But the problem is, is you don't pair that with pride.

That's, no, that's really huge. I can give a good example of this,

Simone Collins: With Shakespeare. Because I, I was taught Shakespeare in school, obviously, like a, a lot of us were, I don't know if they do it so much anymore. But when I was taught Shakespeare in middle school and high school, I would do things like write essays about how there's documented proof in Romeo and Juliet, that Juliet was brain damaged.

And this is the most stupid story about a bunch of like retarded people who literally [00:25:00] are killing themselves because they're just literally like brain damaged. And then. And I hated it and I hated everything about Shakespeare. But then my mom, she loved Shakespeare. And when she, she would work with me to memorize sonnets, she would go through various elements of it take me to place and then annotate it with me.

And, and then I came to love it. So

Malcolm Collins: think the point I'm making here is Simone, is it is more important if you're trying to influence the directionality of your, your children. Mm. That you teach them what to have pride in more than the specific things that you teach them. Well, more than

Simone Collins: that though, and this has to do with our shelter.

Don't shelter annotate rule. Which is that it's, it's not about exposing your children to information or not exposing them to information or sheltering them from it. It's about how you help them interpret it. And your interpretation is really important. Like the way you translate anything to a kid is super

Malcolm Collins: important.

But I, I'll say I, I do not like your, your [00:26:00] taxonomy of advice categories. I would categorize it quite differently. Okay.

Simone Collins: Go for it.

Malcolm Collins: So, category one is advice that is taught about who you and your family are and what makes you different from other families. I got a lot of this from both sides of my family.

But it was always framed as, well, you're a Collins and that means X or Y. And it's often taught through an anecdotes. About your ancestors. So like, I was taught about the ancestor who had nine daughters. And so he you know, but he didn't let them get out of work. And so he built a special, harnesses so that instead of having to buy animals like, like oxid and, and beast of burden his family would, would pull the plow. And, and this was miles actually. And then Malcolm an ancestor named Malcolm. Was known for having an arm that didn't work because you know, when they, he was the kid, his brother fell off the roof but he was [00:27:00] told to not be playing.

They were sent to the roof by their dad, who was about to have a very important business meeting. And he said, don't play and don't interrupt the meeting. And so we held him so long until the meeting was over that his arm ended up going necrotic and dying to keep his

Simone Collins: brother from. Getting injured, falling off the roof.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And, and this is a, a story. I mean, obviously these stories are meant to tell you things about our family. Our family is ruthless in, in, in work ethic. You know, work ethic matters above all else. And that they care about family and they care about family above all else. And I was even told this all the time as a kid it's a, it's not about the iq, it's the I will is what my mom always said.

And this was taught through the way they relayed to me. So if something I remember very vividly about being a kid is the only thing I was never allowed to see was any. IQ tests or any major testing results when I was younger. Oh, interesting.

My mom would not let me see any of them, I [00:28:00] presume, because I did very well on them.

Was, was, was sort of my understanding from my later scores on these tests. I mean, I did, you know. Get a Stanford MBA in a, the St. Andrew's undergrad and did very well in both of those institutions. It would be odd if they

Simone Collins: started out as abysmal. Well, I mean,

Malcolm Collins: I was actually, I was in the school, the, the, they don't even have these anymore, but I was in what was called the district program.

Yeah. Where they would take you outta classes and then take you with all the other smartest kids in the school in, in public school. Yeah. They've shut most of these down, which is sad. 'cause they were really good for these kids, I think. Well, and a lot of

Simone Collins: research has found that. That kids with uniquely high IQs are basically just another version of special needs kids.

And when not accommodated, it's like they have higher rates of behavioral problems, higher rates of dropouts. Like they, they, they also need accommodation, but screw them because apparently IQ gives you an advantage.

Malcolm Collins: Is this form of like family. You know, what's expected of you and everything like that, right?

And things that family do. And the other past, through family stories, but also through [00:29:00] expectations, like, as I said the not showing me the, I, my, my test scores ever I think was very clearly my parents trying to say to me remember. You know, a, any, anything you're born with isn't something you should be proud of.

Hmm. You know, if, if you're, if you're born naturally talented, that only means you need to work twice as hard because the world deserves more. You, you know, the, the world needs more from you. And this was something I was, I was actually regularly told as a young kid, and not just by my parents, but by other family members.

Was that like, well. You know, you, you were born in a position of privilege because more is expected of you than is expected of other people. And the, the. I, I thought that that was really interesting. Then the next category of advice I would, I would call like one off like naggy advice which you see across many cultural traditions.

Mm-hmm. And I definitely got this within my family. This is the type of advice that my mom gave there, right? Like,

Simone Collins: yeah, you're

Malcolm Collins: gonna fail. You're, you're, you, you look [00:30:00] ugly. Simone is a vortex of failure as she called you the best. You know, I never got

Simone Collins: this, by the way, so this was only something I think you ever got from your mom.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I've seen it in other cultures. I've seen it as depicted in Greek and Jewish culture as well. Which is very much just like, you know, constantly calling you up and being like, Hey, are you doing this right? Are you doing this right? Like, you, you look ugly. I saw you on the news and you didn't have your hair done right.

Fix it. You, you, you know, I'm pro in your hair.

Simone Collins: If we got a dollar every, I

Malcolm Collins: remember. Growing up I had a lisp, for example, and so she'd say something like, if you don't fix that lisp, you're gonna sound faggy and no girl will ever wanna have sex with you. And I love that that's the way she framed it as well.

Mm-hmm. Right. Like, the, I mean, this has

Simone Collins: transferred

Malcolm Collins: a little bit to the way we

Simone Collins: talked to our kids,

Malcolm Collins: right. Which is that she didn't try to like fancy up the communicative language. No, she moved with me. No. She was very. Because again, we're from the backwards cultural tradition, particularly her which is basically American redneck [00:31:00] culture.

And what that means is, is you, you, you don't, you know, overly formalize how you're communicating with your kid, right? Like, and, and you talk in terms of things that you think that they will care about. Like, bet. You know, he's a young man, he wants sex, right? So I will say if you do X, you won't get Y, which is a thing that presumably you want.

Yeah. But you also show cultural values. A a another category is in the things that people say that chafe against the, the system that you find yourself in. So one of the, you know, I was. At a boarding school at one point. And my mom was coming over and she heard I was on, you know, probation and she's like, what are you on probation for?

And I was like, well, I was caught with a girl in my room. And I was, how were you

Simone Collins: that sloppy.

Malcolm Collins: I had girls in my room a lot. Okay. It, it, I, they, you've gotta sneak them in, right? And then sometimes people will walk [00:32:00] in or they catch you sneaking somebody in or they see you walking towards a dorm with a girl.

I mean, if you're climbing through a window, they can see that. Right? You gotta be quite you know, one of my tactics was to dress them up, like pizza delivery. You know, oh my gosh. Yeah, but then what if they don't see the pizza delivery leave? Do they start checking the rooms? You know? But anyway, I was caught with a girl in my room and my mom said to me what?

They don't let you sleep with people or drink. What do they think you guys are doing? You're teenagers. And, and that's very much like. You know, we within this culture, don't, don't care about these types of uptight rules. So, so that's one way that advice is given. But then there's also and I find the naggy advice doesn't really work well.

I've seen it in Asian cultures as well. I've seen it in Jewish culture. I've seen it in Greek culture. I, I don't see it in most waspy cultures to be honest. And or at least when it's in waspy cultures, it appears more. And this might be a backwood saying where I've seen it, it, it appears more [00:33:00] aggressive and mean-spirited.

Simone Collins: Oh, or maybe passive aggressive is a better way of putting No,

Malcolm Collins: no, no, no, no, no, no. And when I've heard it in Jewish culture and Greek culture, it's comes off as very passive aggressive. Like, oh, why? Oh, I thought you were referring to was, I think in waspy

Simone Collins: culture, it comes across as more.

Malcolm Collins: So, so at least within the backwards culture where my mom comes from, right?

Mm-hmm. She'd never say something like, oh, Malcolm, I, I see you haven't brought a girl home. You know, that. When are you gonna bring a, a pretty girl home or something like that, like your brother or something, you know, like, and I, I see that a lot was in Jewish culture. It's like, when are you gonna do x like X person In Asian culture, it's, they, they do this a lot as well.

My mom would never say something like that. It would be something like. I bet you're not getting any because you, you come off like a puss like, you know, if, if you stop and, and would, I really appreciated her advice around like finding a, a partner or something like that is, it was [00:34:00] very outcome driven.

She never gave me advice, like one, like the passive aggressive, like, why haven't you done X? It's like, oh, you need to be doing more y so that you can get more C. Right? Yeah. You, you need to be yeah. Sometimes her plans were ridiculous. Like, I, I need to get invited to more debutante balls, but I wasn't friends was the type of people who had debutante balls.

She was, that was in her generation. I can't go I, I can imagine like more crazy advice to somebody who's going to school in Scotland at St. Andrews and then went to high school in New England where they just don't do that. You know, she was from Texas, right? Of course they do that in Texas.

But I, I, I, I also think that there's another category of advice, which I call like broad life advice. And so, you know, the, the best advice I was given here that was traditional family advice. That was something that my dad did, and I was told by my grandmother and this is advice I would genuinely [00:35:00] recommend to anyone watching this.

If you're, if you're a young person watching this and you're like, what's, what's really good advice? 'cause this is what you were hinting at at the beginning. It's that you should think of your life as divided into life stages. And what you do and want within each of those life stages is going to change and society today, so doesn't prepare kids for this.

In fact, it's so bad as I was reading the Zian article on zz, who has this EA person who went on puberty blockers as a young kid and, and went trans. And the reason they really did this was because they were afraid of going through puberty, would turn them into a different person. And, and that they were so, you know, insistent on maintaining who they were.

And I think that this also causes you know, the ea and rationalist fear that they're not taught about these transitions that you got us through in life of, of, of death, right? Where I don't remember ever really being particularly afraid of that. At all in my life. And the reason is, is because I was taught that [00:36:00] well, you know, when you're young, you have these goals.

Like your goal is to build the best you, you, you are the tool that you all have access to throughout your entire life. Make that tool the best. Tool it can be. And I remember every day when I went to school, that's what I was thinking. Well, after school, when I would study extracurricular things I was like, I am doing this.

As Simone knows, I would listen to lectures constantly, like university lectures. And I got tapes and, and, and courses of them. And I'd go through like 48 hour lecture, you know, every, every week. On deep, like PhD level topics because I, I was told to do this, I was like, you are making yourself the best weapon possible as an adult.

Don't waste your time on anything that won't add to that. So. I really, really, really focused on that. And then it was, okay, well when you're a bit older, you know, then you wanna be looking for a spouse then you want to be having kids and building a career, then you want to be dedicating yourself to public service and growing your reputation within the [00:37:00] community.

And the reason why, even if you don't follow these individual like life stages, that's why I'm not going into the stages in detail. If you wanna read them, you can read the Pragmatist Hydro Crafting Religion. It's for like $1 on Amazon. But. The, the, the wider framework here is that, and this was so important to me, being able to be as happy and successful as I am now as an adult.

Understanding that. It's not just what I dedicate my time to at different life stages, but to let go of the last life stage. Mm-hmm. Like when you're a a, a young person, you know, you might, you know, get status or get self-affirmation by chasing. Sexual partners. And then you become an older person and you say and I see a lot of people, they are still doing this when their biology often, and I, I I can sort of tell this no longer is rewarding them in the way it did when they were younger because our bodies.

Built to shift. It's not just at [00:38:00] puberty that you shift, it's, it's when you get to like three kids. We've talked about this in other videos. It's when you define a long-term partner your biology undergoes many shifts and the things that you get satisfaction from, and if you are. Searching from satisfaction in ways that you found it in the past rather than the way that you are programmed to find it in the moment.

You will often not find it. And if you overinvest in a form of satisfaction for a particular moment like. You know, teenagers get a lot of satisfaction from personal validation. And so many of them get tricked into restructuring their lives around quests for personal validation, which I think a lot of the gender stuff and a lot of the trans movement comes downstream of.

And so they, they, they search for this personal validation or, or pleasure and then they realize, you know, me as an adult with kids, I see the way that they laugh at and interact with the world. And I know that there are whole [00:39:00] ranges of emotion that I will never be able to feel again. And there's no reason to be sad about that.

'cause I'm not that person anymore. That person is functionally dead and it's good that that person is dead because that's what it means to grow up. Yeah, it is a failure state. You know, when I was a kid, I was like a hardcore goth. Not like Goss, but like Goss punky, very J Go jeans. I had my own thing going on, you know?

And I remember when I did all that, I would look at the older punks slash goss and, and the thought that ran through my head was, what a disgusting loser. You know, and. I knew at that time while I was indulging in that form of rebellion that it was. Not even a phase. It was just a form of of culture that I was opting into because I was young, because I was youth maxing, and that what I wanted from myself in my next stage of life had nothing to [00:40:00] do, was what I was doing in this stage of my life.

Mm-hmm. At this stage, I wanted to be rebellious and sleep around. I'm not saying that you should sleep around at this stage, but I was told actually by my mom that I should be doing this. She's like, you're a guy. If you are high status, if you are successful you know, you prove that by sleeping around which was bad advice.

But it was, it was advice that I got from my parents that I took to heart. And I, I will not be giving to my kids. But I, I wonder is, is that like. Intergenerational, like cultural memory there. But I think that that's one of the most important pieces of life advice that anyone can internalize is that who you are.

Doesn't just change in life. It's a failure if it doesn't. Yeah. You have seriously effed up if you are still searching for the things that gave you pleasure and validation in your mid twenties, in your early thirties, or in your, you know, mid forties, right? Like you are supposed to go through a cycle of [00:41:00] self transformation, you know, at least every decade.

You're not supposed to stagnate, you're not supposed to optimize around one particular outcome which I thought was always really good life advice I got from my parents. The other piece of advice, I didn't get this from my parents, but other, the other category of life advice I'd say is advice from an individual's own life.

So, like my dad telling me, Hey, if you make a lot of money, make sure to that's, that's where this

Simone Collins: thing that happened to me and here's how it played out.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, here's how you can avoid this thing.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And I would, I would certainly I don't, I don't have that much of that type of advice for my kids.

I, I guess, the big category of advice that I would have there for my kids. Comes from annoying things that my parents did that I'm glad that I don't do, and I would be afraid that I can't have that reference point for my kids where I was like, oh my God, I so appreciative of my parents for being so annoying in this way.

So that I never do that. Because clearly I have it in my genes. A tendency to maybe do [00:42:00] that. But this is stuff that may not be, you know, relevant to other people. Like, you know, don't you know, overly bring up in conversations you know, your particular in the moment challenges. Like other people don't care to hear about that.

Right. Do you, do you have thoughts, Simone? Advice?

Simone Collins: Well, I'm, I'm curious to know what you think people should. Intentionally do with regard to advice or lack thereof with their own kids, because I think a lot of people either didn't receive advice from their parents or felt like, feel like the advice they received from their parents is no longer relevant or they didn't really like it.

So what, what do you think, what would you see other parents doing that you thought was meaningful? Because, I mean, I have strong opinions on these things. Like I don't actually care that much about the. I mean, I give, I guess I give our kids advice a lot because I, I will tell them. Like, Hey, if you're unpleasant to be around, no one's [00:43:00] gonna wanna be around you and you won't get things out of them.

So maybe you should try to be a little more pleasant. Or, but I think what's more important is, is us modeling things. Like I said before, I think, and we've seen, I think one, one thing that I really hate is when people try to outsource advice or, or training. Like we've seen some people say, oh, you know, we've hired this cook and we've hired this maid and we've hired this fix it person.

And you know, we, we make a point of having our kids watch them work. So that they learn from them. And what their kids are learning, in my opinion, is that hired help does this stuff. And we, it's so

Malcolm Collins: funny that somebody would, because somebody, you know, told us this is parenting advice and, and someone told

Simone Collins: us as parenting advice, and we've seen parents actively do this and say that that's proudly that they, they have their kids observe them and, and learn.

It

Malcolm Collins: reminds me of there's a South Park episode that's making fun of this

Speaker 3: you got your phones and your ai and you kids haven't learned to be able to actually do anything. So we're gonna take this morning to learn how to fix [00:44:00] something.

So what do we do, it's very simple. You do is you take out your phone and you call the handyman. . Now we rest until the handyman comes.

Are you following

Speaker 4: this at all, guys? Is this seeping in?

Malcolm Collins: But what I actually do, and Simone knows this, is I have a policy that whenever we call somebody to fix something in my house that they I get to watch them and they have to explain to me how they did what they did so that I can always do it the next time.

Now what's really fascinating to me is that. An individual, like a, A man could come to me and say. This is advice I'm gonna give to my kids. And I would say, but wait, why didn't you do this? Why didn't you know how to fix all of these things yourself? Because you had the people come when you were, you know, now and you learned it from these people so that you could teach your kids.

When I teach my [00:45:00] kid how to fix a sink, it is going to be because I personally. Call to fix it guy and watched him fix the sink.

Simone Collins: Right. Yeah. You don't have your kids learn from the fix it guy. You have your kids learn from you after you learned from the fix it guy.

Malcolm Collins: Right. But the, the point here being is you are intentionally signaling to your kids that this isn't actually a cultural value of yours.

Mm-hmm. Or you would've done it yourself.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Actions speak louder than words.

Something I forgot to talk about here is why people stopped passing down their cultural values. And I think one of the core reasons , is society developed a narrative downstream of psychologist culture, , that a lot of, or pretty much all of a person is problems, could be blamed on somebody else, primarily their parents.

, And so. When you can, , you know, sort of externalize any of your personality faults to being your parents' fault, then you begin to think that parenting is this huge, dangerous, walking on eggshells, saying where you might mess up your kids. And then you think, [00:46:00] okay, well if anything I can do might mess up my kids, what I should just do is tell them nothing, , do nothing.

And then this becomes normalized.

Simone Collins: So that's like, that's my big thing. But how, what, what other advice would you give to people as they contemplate intentionally? Guiding their children through explicit or implicit advice.

Malcolm Collins: What would I do? I mean, I, I think that the most important things are one tight, easy to remember analogies or stories.

Hmm. Like the ancestors, your ancestor did X, your ancestor did y very vivid and easy to remember.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: The, the other thing that's very vivid and easy to remember are simple. It's not. Iq. It's, I will oh

Simone Collins: yeah, quippy easy. But,

Malcolm Collins: but these come with other things, like if your son comes to you and they are proud, 'cause I remember, you know, like I get proud if I did well on a test or [00:47:00] something like that. And what was always said is, well, I mean, that's the minimum that's expected of you. Like, what, what have you done outside of school? Like, and, and, and also this, this, this belief that you're supposed to show in your work ethic.

Not just in the results. Like, it's not like they, they weren't results focused. It's that they wanted the results but they wanted work on top of the results. And the results weren't the purpose in and of themselves. So like, you know, you, you wouldn't be praised like in some Asian families, I see people be like, praised for good grades.

I don't remember ever in my entire childhood being praised for good grades. And, and I did get, you know, good grades occasionally, and I got bad grades occasionally. I remember being scolded for bad grades. I remember being told, which my mom actually picked up from the movie Clueless. That grades were just a jumping off point for negotiations.

And that was something that I, I really took to heart in the way I related to [00:48:00] grades and teachers. And I cannot tell you the number of times. I got my grade up, I'd say like 80% of the time when my grade was bad. And the teacher gave it to me and I go, okay, you know, meet me after class. We're gonna work on a way to fix this and improve this.

Very you know, depending on your environment. Many teachers, if they have a student who's like, I want to improve this, I want to improve myself, you know, meet with me when they understand. That you will work as long as it takes to, to get that grade up. Eventually they just move the grades up and they learn not to give you bad grades.

That's, that's really what I think I, I learned with the teachers. But it was a form of of, of sort of, you know, training. You trained them. Yes. But I, I think with a lot of people there, the, and then the other thing I'd say is. The other most important thing you teach with your kids is values.

What should they have pride in? What shouldn't they have pride in? Hmm. And then the next is a life path. It was very clear that my parents didn't have like a, [00:49:00] oh, you should, you know, follow this religion or that religion. They really didn't care about that. They definitely didn't say, oh, you should want this or this from a life path.

It was more like, well, you know, we will be disappointed in you if you don't seriously consider. Why you're alive. You know, think about what life path you might want and then build a plan to achieve that. Mm-hmm.

And I think

that, that of all the lessons I got from my parents is the most important.

Think through. It, it, this is like, I, I think adjacent to the, you know, life comes in stages is the think about what you want. Know why you want those things why those things are ethical to want, and then build a structured pathway from how you get from where you are today to where you have those things.

And we've even built like holidays around that. I mean, that's what future day is really about for our kids Absolutely. Is, is, is thinking about the future that they want and then understanding that they have agency over that and they're expected to act on that agency.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Good. I like that. That's [00:50:00] good.

Malcolm Collins: So I really appreciate Megan kicking off this topic and hopefully it helps some young people.

Simone Collins: It's fun topic. Yeah, not

Malcolm Collins: exactly. Great for the algorithm probably because it's, it's not spicy or controversial but I suspect it is likely helpful to a lot of people. And it would be nice if in the comments or the discord when people are talking about this, if they could be like, oh, I was from X culture and I got advice.

In this category and not in this category. Yeah, we'd like to know.

Simone Collins: Like I, I genuinely want other people's opinions.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Love you Es.

Simone Collins: Love you too. Gorgeous.

Yes. You'll be vindicated to know that our. Harsh words about nurses were were largely vindicated. That one person pointed out in the comments, they were like, you're being really mean to nurses, which I don't want to be.

I mean, I have two family members who are nurses and they're great, but. I've also seen nurses say, really bizarrely, you mean other

Malcolm Collins: people in the comments were like, yes, I agree with you on nurses.

Simone Collins: As, [00:51:00] as a retired nurse, yes. As a former male nurse. Yes. Like, yes, I'm finally, someone's talking about nurses and how bizarrely uninformed they are.

Yeah, I don't know what's going on there, but yeah. At least, I think at least three people. Who were current or former nurses chimed in to say, thank you for saying that, which I would expect a nurse instead if this weren't true, to come in and be like, well, maybe there's some field where this is a problem.

But in my field, nurses are very well informed and very thoughtful. About their overall approach to medicine. But I,

Malcolm Collins: I thought the, the, the take on discord from a, a nurse that all that everyone they've met who goes into nursing is either a saint or a complete slut is weird, was very interesting as well.

But I can see nursing be appealing to both groups. Sure. Individuals who want a stable, a decent income job where they can just [00:52:00] heat it hedonism max on their spare time. Nursing works really well for that. Plus it had a bunch of shows that made it look really glamorous. Yeah. Like that came out at the age where people our age would've been watching, you know, scrubs in house and everything like that, and making these decisions with those shows in mind where everyone sleep around.

There's so many hospital shows. Yeah. Yeah. But then for the San person, you know, if you're somebody who wants to dedicate your life to like treating the injured and stuff like that, and is very dedicated to that, I can see a lot of people going into that. But I was surprised to hear about all of the mysticism in the nursing field and somebody was writing about.

The other thing is, is that, that it's, it's like a, a whole thing in the, the, that the autoimmune disorders, they were saying that were weirdly and almost always caused by breast surgery implants. I don't know. Anyway, it, it was weird. It was weird. We're going over the, the episode that we did that you reviewed today, which was, which one was it?

It was the one on the, the progressives who think we're living in a different [00:53:00] timeline. Crazy to look into. Any other interesting trends in the comments?

Simone Collins: No, just people being entertained by the delusional nature of many people on the left. I mean, you know, 'cause it's satisfying. And I, I get it.

Also, people appreciating the Chris Chan references, so.

Malcolm Collins: I've, I've, you know, I sometimes check to see if we yet, you know, with all the press we get and all the, the, the hate we get from the left, okay. Because, you know, we're eccentric, right? If, if we are yet seen as old cows like Christian, if we are on God, what is that site where they, they document them all the time.

New, I wanna say new grounds, but no, it's not new grounds. It's something else. Do you know what I'm talking about where they, I'm so bad with names. Yeah. I'm so bad with names too, that like ALA has a profile on there, but we, we still don't.

Simone Collins: Oh. Yeah, the little cows place. Kiwi Farms. Yeah. Kiwi

Malcolm Collins: Farms.

Yes. I, I, I'm shocked. But I guess we're probably not interesting to people [00:54:00] like that because we're so self-aware and intentional about the way we do all this. That they would find that boring and, and un unappetizing as a source of drama.

Simone Collins: It's good stuff.

Speaker 5: Wow. Are you a gentleman? Are you a good looking dude? Okay. Get the front, get those bangs neat and tidy. Yeah. All right. I am better. Yeah, I have the butter, the, it's, it's giving Kevin from home alone. What do you think? Yeah. Okay. Looking good. All right. Now close it up and you can take it down to your room.

Speaker 8: All right. I cannot take it.

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