Cultural Identity and Education: Bridging the Past and Present

In this thought-provoking discussion, Simone and the speaker explore the challenges and issues facing the current education system, emphasizing how it sometimes instills doubt and pessimism in students. They share a personal story from a concerned parent who removed their child from the public school system due to objectionable teaching materials. The conversation delves into topics such as racial identity, educational content, and historical biases in the curriculum. They consider the contrasting educational experiences provided by Jewish Yeshiva systems and modern universities, highlighting the decline in confidence in higher education. The video discusses fostering pride in cultural ancestry without shame, emphasizing debate and critical thinking as key components of effective education. Ultimately, it advocates for creating a system where students learn for the love of knowledge and meaningful discussion, rather than merely for grades or employment prospects.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone.

Speaker: Sorry, I'm late. Horrible, nightmare visions! It's called life, Dib.

Malcolm Collins: Education, as it exists today, seems to believe one of its primary drives is to induce pessimism and self hatred into the student from a cultural perspective.

Speaker: Children, your performance was miserable. Your parents will all receive phone calls instructing them to love you less now.

Malcolm Collins: You

Simone Collins: know, I feel like normally when I hear statements like this, Either from you or in media. My default reaction is always to say it's not really that bad.

But yet one more parent wrote to us today I don't know if you saw their email. We're having it i'm not going to name them for their confidentiality, but they were writing from a personal perspective about the experience that drove them To take their kids out [00:01:00] of Yeah, I'll, I'll read this just cause it's one of those things where like I can hear about it abstractly and think, well, that's not really happening.

And yet here's this parent. Saying

what pushed my wife and I over the line was a worksheet. Our daughter brought home, which asked kids to match values to white people, black people, et cetera, drawing lines between the group and what was valued. White people were supposed to be matched with money and a picture of a clock. I assume it indicated being on time between that worksheet and another take home worksheet involving pronouns and gender stuff we contacted.

The public school they went to and asked who is giving our daughter, the material, it turned out to be a consultant, which they subsequently refused to fully name or state what exactly they were contracted for. After that event, we pulled our oldest daughter

Speaker: What does identifying blotches have to do with determining our future careers?

Oh, you poor doomed child.

Simone Collins: I just to, to hear that, that, and we know, I can know [00:02:00] factually that that's happening because we talked about that one insane unhinged DEI consultant. This is

Malcolm Collins: from the Smithsonian where like. Being white is associated with hard work and personal responsibility and being on time. And it's like, well, that sounds super racist to me.

Like, how are you guys, how do you think you're the good guy?

Speaker 5: When me and Brad first met, I didn't think we'd get along, but turns out we kind of agree on everything. Your racial identity is the most important thing! Everything should be looked at through the lens of race! Jinx, you owe me a coke. We both think minorities are a united group who think the same and act the same. And vote the same. You don't want to lose your black card. Sorry, I don't know, I just think we should Roll back discrimination law so we can hire Basie and race against Jinx!

Now you owe me a Coke. Hey, tell him what you told me yesterday. White actors should only do voices for white cartoon characters. I've been saying that for years

Malcolm Collins: But continue.

Simone Collins: Well, no, I was, I was actually thinking about the DEI consultant who works specifically with kindergarten programs and has that curriculum. But, it, it just that it, that we Oh yeah, welcome to the garden, check out that episode. We are [00:03:00] contacted by people who are themselves experiencing this.

Makes me realize that you saying this, As much as I want to chalk it off to exaggeration and storytelling, it's not, it's reality.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, absolutely. , and this is, I think where this is seen most right now is in the university system.

Speaker: The machine will now decide your fate.

Malcolm Collins: Recently, just 36 percent of Americans now tell posters they have significant confidence in education, specifically in higher education, down from 57 percent less than a decade ago. Oh gosh. So consider, 36%, that's all of the population that has confidence that higher education is doing a good job. And There was something written by someone who really helped frame this and put it in perspective to me, and I want to read it with you and talk through it.

Because it had me rethink some things. And it reminded me, we were on a [00:04:00] recent call with a pronatalist group in France, right? And they're trying to promote traditional French ways of doing things. And I consider us so blessed that we grew up in the United States and that we intrinsically look at a pluralist way of doing things, because it means that we look to other groups.

I, you know, they were trying to fortify their religion, Catholicism, right? And I was like, okay. Well, so surely you've looked at the religions that are more resistant to fertility collapse, like Protestantism and , Jewish groups. And they're like, I never thought to do that. And I was like, well, you should, they're doing this working that you could adapt.

And I was reading something by a Jew recently

Speaker 2: When have I ever ripped on you for being a Jew? Oh yeah, well you're a stupid Jew. You're a Jew. Shut your goddamn Jew mouth. Good job, Jew. Jews. Shut up, Jew.

You're a Jew ist. Dude, he's Jewish. Jew. Jew. Jew. Jew. Jew. I told you Jewish people don't have rhythm. F**k off, Cartman! Okay, except maybe for that one [00:05:00] time.

Malcolm Collins: and I was like, this is a really interesting point that I don't just think matters for our educational system, but like at the end of this, discussion. I want to talk through with you how we can update the Collins Institute, our free, you know, educational system, CollinsInstitute.

CollinsInstitute. org you can go check it out. But like I kind of want to re re rethink some parts of it, especially as we're dealing with older kids and the way that we do our sort of homeschooling

Hmm.

Okay. So this was written by a Jewish First semester, Columbia student.

In some classes, professors started having us read key passages of the text together, either aloud or during quiet in class reading time. I joined them at first imagining that a second read was a deeper read. Asked to analyze together, I might notice that my group partner had no understanding of Descartes .

Ontological argument. I tried to ignore it. So it's [00:06:00] not to seem unkind as our final exam neared my classmates. Study habits came into sharp relief.

They seem

to be learning the material from scratch, scrambling to flip through entire swaths of the Western literary canon in a single week.

Speaker: Take a good look, children. It will prepare you for your adult lives in our nightmarish corporate system.

Malcolm Collins: It was then that I understood that for the past few months, I had been participating in a show class. I was one of the only students who actually bothered to read any of the books. Apparently, the opportunity to explore the supposedly foundational texts of Western civilization didn't matter as deeply to my peers as I expected.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh, could you imagine going through that? I mean, some of the most meaningful elements of my college experience was I took this one class on the divine comedy and going through that with a small group of students and everyone was so engaged in it.

Malcolm Collins: Well, that's [00:07:00] because you were with all the Catholics in that and they really care about that.

And this is when she was No, no, no. There was a, there was a Jew. Now it's a It was a Catholic, a Jew, an

Simone Collins: atheist. It was really great.

Speaker 8: Here's a start to a bad joke.

Speaker 9: Would you Happen to be a man of faith?

Speaker 10: Yeah, I'd say so. And would that faith happen to be of a certain chosen people? I actually kind of see myself more spiritual than religious. Oh, you're one of those?

Speaker 9: Oy vey.

Speaker 11: Well, my door is open, and on Fridays we get to Something my friend wouldn't know much about.

Coming

Speaker 9: from the guy who can't mix dairy and meat on the same plate. I

Speaker 11: was just talking to my wife about that.

Speaker 9: You know, I'm glad you brought her up, because I just saw Esther yesterday. She was at Culver's getting a double cheeseburger with bacon.

Simone Collins: That the Catholic I had a crush on was the only Catholic in it. And then the rest

Malcolm Collins: What, no, he works at the Vatican now, right? He

Simone Collins: I, I had seen him in Vatican City. I don't know.

I think he's in like Maryland now.

Malcolm Collins: Oh.

Simone Collins: But you know, it was a very religiously diverse class, but everyone had read the text and in detail and there was spicy conversation in that class. Can you imagine going to a class where no one had actually read the text except for [00:08:00] you?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I did that all the time.

What? Maybe the virus was worse in the UK. I did my undergrad in the UK, but a lot of people just didn't really care.

I've heard

it's getting worse now. Like this is an increasing, this is at Columbia where he's describing this experience. But you'll understand why they didn't care as we go deeper. Damn.

I was slow on the uptake for a specific reason. Like many modern Orthodox American Jews, I attended a gap year in Israel between high school and college. The particular program I attended, Yeshvat Har Estazoyin, Of course I mispronounced that. I ain't no J O O,

You know, maybe we're not seeing heaven because one of us is a J O O.

Malcolm Collins: you know, I don't know how to speak this language.

It's known for intellectually rigorous traditional Talmud study. It was, my first experience was higher learning, in which I and a cohort of like minded peers spent our days immersed in the demanding study of text, In this case, [00:09:00] the Talmud and its commentaries.

Experiencing these two vastly disparate educational cultures, one after the other, left me wondering what it was that brought about the baffling divergence between one culture that treated learning as the ultimate sacred endeavor and the other that treated it as a boring formality. And I think here he's a little misstating what he ended up discovering, but I think what he did end up discovering is really clear here.

On a typical day at the Yesh Kiva, we would show up to class having already spent a number of hours pursuing and analyzing the material among ourselves. We knew that if we had not studiously read the relevant Talmudic passages and commentaries in advance, we would be completely unable to follow the lecture.

So, as we sat in the classroom and waited for our Rebbe or teacher to arrive in addition to the usual small talk, my friends and I would often discuss the relevant questions that were on our minds. We had read that Maimonides, a 12th century Egyptian Talmudist, maintained [00:10:00] that the Torah requires all testimony to be received orally.

As the verse states, at the mouth of two witnesses shall the matter be discussed. Hmm. But how would he resolve the objection raised by Nachmanides, the 13th century Spanish sage, who highlighted that the Torah clearly allows for written testimony when it legislates divorce to be achieved through the use of a written document alone.

After the lecture, my peers and I continued the conversation, comparing notes, debating our Rebbe's approach, and developing our own ideas. Be sure to find time in the evenings and late nights to explore topics outside our general curriculum Studying among other things great works of jewish philosophy poetry and mysticism What motivated us to labor so tirelessly to understand these arcane and complex subjects?

There were no grades given at the yeshiva And our future careers would hardly be determined by our understanding of the laws of jewish [00:11:00] divorce So why did We sit at the edges of our seats to be sure we understood every word the rabbis spoke and Well, I'm sure you could you already begin to guess probably what the differences are between the two systems, but this is just so Aspirational to me of an educational paradigm.

How do you get children to? To value what they are learning for its own sake, right?

Simone Collins: Make a school for autists. Because this was me, before every single class, I'd show up and I'd be like, Well, what did you think about this passage in the text? And I didn't I, I

Malcolm Collins: think it's more than I think part of it he's actually giving away here.

Simone Collins: Okay, what is it? Is

Malcolm Collins: that he wasn't learning this stuff for grades, or for a job, or for, you know, secular world things. He was learning it for internal class status within the Jewish cultural hierarchy. And because he [00:12:00] believed, believed, and this is the thing about belief. Belief is a thing you choose.

And this is the thing I didn't really realize until I started becoming more religious is you choose to believe in God. It's not like a there's some religions who are like, well, God called to me. And I'm like, well, then you're just a schizophrenic. I believe there's some

Simone Collins: insanely high proportion. You had told me of people actually hear his voices, right?

25%, 75%, 25, 25 is insane. That's that's yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But I was like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm going to choose to believe this stuff. He was from a culture that chose to believe that there was some intrinsic value to their progenitor texts, to their history and their ancestry and ancestors. But to go further, to better understand how they convinced or brainwashed, if you want to go with an urban monocultural interpretation, brainwashed their children.

To not be [00:13:00] ashamed of their ancestors and to believe that their culture has value in their lives has value. What a horrible brainwashing, right? Simone the yeshiva succeeded in cultivating a culture of area addition and studiousness in its students in large part, because they taught their students to be proud of their inherited tradition, which they were studying.

We were told we were studying. The uniquely special wisdom of the Torah, which was divinely gifted to us and our ancestors. We learned how the Talmudic sages of the past endured unbearable persecutions, even death, in order to preserve and study the Holy Torah. And it's exogenical tradition. We were taught that the sages, whose words we would painstakingly pour over, were among the greatest geniuses and most pious men who ever walked the earth, and that their works contain crucial lessons which remain relevant today.

The pedagogical culture I encountered at Columbia was entirely different. [00:14:00] Officially, Columbia prides itself on century old curriculum, a series of classes every student is required to take, which present an overview of the best works of the Western canon. But when I actually entered Columbia's classrooms, I found that this outward pride was hollow.

In fact, it camouflaged a much deeper pervasive shame, which most Columbians felt about their inherited intellectual and artistic traditions. Sorry, I'll note here I'm actually cutting out a lot of this just to make it quicker to get to the key points, so this is not, like, a direct quoting.

On more than one occasion, in fact, quite regularly, a professor of a core curriculum course, be it focused on literature, philosophy, music, or art, would be sure to note in his or her introductory lecture that, in truce, there was nothing special about the Western Canyon's approach to a topic. Their spiel would include some version of the following disclaimer.

If I had it my way, we would study African art, Eastern philosophy, or Hispanic literature. [00:15:00] Unfortunately, due to the oppressive constraints imposed upon us by the prejudiced alumni and agenda based donors, we will have to study the works of these mostly irrelevant dead white men instead.

Simone Collins: Irrelevant dead white men.

Malcolm Collins: Right?

Simone Collins: Honestly, though, I mean, I'm, I'm a very mercenary person. Whoever's relevant and whoever is, is whoever's bankrolling the school. So if that's what the donors want.

Malcolm Collins: Well, there's been a major crisis now. The donors don't want to donate anymore because they're like, yeah, obviously. But, but you white man.

We need to have like a spooky,

Spooky, scary skeletons Send shivers down your spine

Malcolm Collins: last time I did a, a a Peter s pumpkin, but this time I'll, I'll do something else for my spooky. I, I should, I should have our kids dress up [00:16:00] as white man. Yes. For Halloween. I don't know how they're gonna,

Simone Collins: they're gonna, they're gonna wear, they're gonna be ghosts.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah, she's literally cutting holes out of sheets and creating Halloween costumes for them and I'm excited for it That you don't accidentally make the sheets a little too pointy Or we're gonna get a lot of trouble Simone

Simone Collins: No, they're gonna look like little ghosts from Charlie Brown

and except this is the thing Here's the twist is if they don't receive rocks, they're going to be sad.

So it's early

Malcolm Collins: where did they receive rocks?

Speaker 3: I got five pieces of candy. I got a chocolate bar.

I got a quarter. I got a rock.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

No,

there's this whole scene. Come on. Do you know? Have you not watched? It's the great pumpkin, Charlie Brown. The whole thing is when they go trick or treating, everyone else gets all this great candy. And then at this was one kid, it's like, well, I got a candy bar.

I got a lollipop. I got a rock. And if our [00:17:00] kids did not receive rocks, they would be devastated because they don't like candy.

So it's, I dunno, I find

it poetic and perfect. Like they have to be a little Charlie Brown ghost.

Malcolm Collins: Who would reasonably be excited to study the greatest works of a civilization defined by the greatest evils it has committed?

For the next several months, As we made our way through the greatest works Western civilization has ever produced, we would be periodically reminded that Western canon was built upon fundamentally bigoted principles. When we were taught about democracy in Athens, our professors emphasized that like America's democracy today, the Athenian democracy ideals were far from realized.

Women were not given an opportunity to vote, and the Parthenon was built using slave labor. I recall my surprise when we studied Rembrandt Our assigned readings focused on exploring how the Dutch master benefited from his homeland's colonialist ambitions. At every [00:18:00] possible juncture, the great thinkers and artists of our syllabi were put on trial and they were always convicted.

Simone Collins: This seems like a comedy bit. Like every single, like, well, this white man. I think

Malcolm Collins: university today is a comedy bit from the, the young people we know on campuses. It's literally like, Oh, we got to study this guy. But did you, have you thought about how maybe he might've been a racist? Yeah, no. Yeah. I thought about how maybe.

He benefited from their, and let's not talk about colonialism. It's like, they act like, like, like white people invented colonialism. I'm going to do like a series of maps on screen tiers of like historic empires, whether it's the Mongol empire, the Chinese empire, the Japanese empire, the Mazamuza's empire, like everybody did this, the strong conquer the weak, that's history for you, buddy, that's for the sign of That's a sign of reality.

[00:19:00] It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression. Symbolic of his struggle against reality.

Malcolm Collins: It's like, it's like you found out it's almost like, it's like one of those people who's like, did you know that when you go to a grocery store and you buy groceries, the store profits,

they don't

sell you the food for the price they bought it for. Did you know? And it's like, are you retarded?

Speaker 12: Plaque is a figment of the liberal media and the dental industry to scare you into buying useless appliances and pastes. Now I've read the arguments on both sides. And I haven't found any evidence yet to support the need to brush your teeth. I don't know how you know you ain't got rid of my teeth at a young age.

Because I'm straight. Teeth are for gay people. That's why f ers come and get them. If teeth make me gay, then sign me up. Cause I wish I had them. You doubt me? Yeah. Come on! To the [00:20:00] crime lab! Computer, search for Teeth, and Plak Conspiracy, and Metallica, and Justin Timberlake. Do Justin Timberlake. Please, Hushup.

The search needs complete silence to work. Oh, shoot, I forgot.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway.

Gotta continue here. These comments were not limited to judgments of individual artists and philosophers. Over and over again we were told how terrible it was that Western canon as a whole, and seemingly as a condition of its being, silenced the voices of women and and included only those of European, Christian, heterosexual men.

Which is, by the way, an effing kidding. There's a lot of famous gay people in the European canon, but like, okay, whatever. A lot,

Simone Collins: actually. Europe was very gay.

Speaker 14: That tan, well tended [00:21:00] skin, Look at the killer shape he's in, Look at his slightly stubbly chin, Oh please, he's gay, totally gay!

Speaker 15: I'm not about to celebrate, Every trait could indicate A totally straight expatriate. This guy's not gay, I say not gay. That it's the elephant in the room, No, it's irrelevant, you assume, That a man who wears perfume Is automatically radically gay. Look at his coiffed and crispy locks. Look at his silk translucent socks.

There's the eternal paradox. Look what we're seeing. What are we seeing? NCJ! Oh, you're a peon!

Ah.

Speaker 18: This man is gay and European.

Malcolm Collins: A lot of people know that like one of the most famous Muslim poets, like talked openly about gay stuff. There's streets named after him in Baghdad.

And still there's like, yeah, he's, what do you mean by what's gay stuff? Like sex was men. Oh,

Simone Collins: okay. [00:22:00] I don't know. Like, I'm just thinking like Broadway and drag

Malcolm Collins: brunches before that.

Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah, no, obviously. But like, I don't know, like, I just figured you weren't being as explicit about non heterosexual sex

Malcolm Collins: is very I mean, maybe not explicit, explicit, but as explicit as what's that Western guy from ancient Britain, not ancient Britain, but like, Victorian Britain.

Oliver What is

Simone Collins: there? I don't know of any famously gay

I'll add it in post.

Microphone (2- ATR2100x-USB Microphone): Oscar Wilde is the way I was thinking of.

Simone Collins: Anyway,

That is to say that there were plenty of historical figures that were gay, but like, yeah, I guess this, this isn't still, and it doesn't seem like it's been that long since we were in school and yet I don't remember any of this.

It's

Malcolm Collins: been a complete siege and this is a thing that many parents don't realize. It is not the same.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, I remember some things being broadly PC as, as they called it back in the day. Yeah.

It's a whole new ballgame on campus these days, and they call it PC. And it's not just politics, it's [00:23:00] everything. And if you don't watch yourself, you can get in a buttload of trouble. Save the whales! Those women? Those aren't women, Tom. Those are womenists. Hey, Sam, isn't that the guy that you used to, uh you went out with a white male? I was a freshman. Fresh person. What's that supposed to mean? Yeah, cock man, oppressor. You know, this place is kind of insane. He's Tom, I'm your Causehead.

They find a world threatening issue and stick with it. For about a week. What happened to the ozone layer? It was last week. Now it's me.

Simone Collins: I think, yeah, that's the problem is parents are assuming that it's like what they experienced when they grew up.

And they did grow up broadly progressive to a great extent. And the school system was broadly progressive, but progressive now means something much more bigoted and hateful than it used to, I think. And that's the problem.

Speaker 5: Ask him about interracial dating. All I said is that black men who date white women have internalized racism, and white men that date ethnic women are fetishizing them.

Guy's against interracial dating now. Like, [00:24:00] am I being pranked? Did Boomer put you up to this? Ugh, you know that taco place is white owned? White people should be making white foods, like crap macaroni and cheese, no seasoning, not even salt. It's like he's a mind reader. I mean, I've been pushing for segregation forever and my man does what?

Malcolm Collins: And bigoted and hateful are the words for it. There really is nothing else. If you treated any other cultural group this way, people would be you, sir, are a bigot. Where such verbal grievances proved insufficient, the few pre modern female or minority artists who could be excavated from the historical record were messily grafted onto our syllabi. We studied so, Fanna Sibba, instead of Da Vinci, fragments of Sappho rather than Sophocles.

What? Sappho

Simone Collins: versus Sophocles?

Malcolm Collins: People. I don't even know if Sappho was a real person or a lesbian. It's just like What? Even? Might be from one line, but there is actually a lot of evidence that she probably wasn't. And that the way that she structured these few lines that are seen that way are, was a normal [00:25:00] way to structure plays at the period.

So, Sappho isn't even gay! People, I'm sorry Christine de Pizan in the place of Spinoza. Oh, what a shame. Such substitutions were celebrated as a reparative maneuver and therefore as a necessary improvement over the thinkers and artists who had been replaced.

Speaker: Now, open up your textbook and begin memorizing the copyright information. You will be quizzed on this.

Malcolm Collins: The practice was always increasing and the 2024 Literature Humanities, Cervantes and Milton, were replaced by Marie de France and Ibn Arabi.

Now I want you to contrast this with the conversations, oh this is me actually because I want to. I've been watching recently some contra some conversations that Sammo Sammo Berger, who runs Bismarck Analytics, really smart guy, has been having it's Rubiard, who runs whatevalt hist. And so people thought that I was throwing shade at whatevalt hist in a previous video, [00:26:00] that he was the YouTuber with more subscribers that I was comparing us against.

He is not. I really Respect the guy's work. He I don't agree with him on anything But I think what a lot of people miss is he's a

Simone Collins: you don't agree with him on everything But you actually agree on quite a few things.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, he's he's 22 years old. Okay, cut him some slack I actually when a when a young person Is too buttoned up.

I actually respect them less than when they make mistakes. A great example of this is like Brett Cooper versus Pearl Davis. I think of Pearl Davis was a lot more respect than I think of Brett Cooper. Even though Brett Cooper has a lot more followers and everything like that, she seems to be operating off of some script.

No one. And Brett Cooper was like 18 when she became famous. No 18 year old girl becomes famous without it. Cool. You know, questioning a few things. They're not supposed to question having a few ideas. They're not supposed to have, she's been so like a bowling lane where you put the [00:27:00] two like things in the aisles so that like no ball can ever go in the gutter with every idea she's pitching.

I'm like, Oh, she's got a team betting everything she does and says and yeah, Ruby art says some silly things, but it's just because he doesn't have any guardrails on what he says. It works. Things he's like willing to do it. It was the same with Pearl Davis. I'm often like, yeah, that was probably a foolish thing to say, but it shows to me that you're a young person willing to think outside the box.

And that to me is a higher order thing than always not looking foolish. And I, I'm sure that we look the same way to people, you know, maybe, maybe it's old people who might push the boundary too much. But anyway, so he was talking with Sam Obergia. It's this really famous analytic company. And they're just like talking about history.

They're talking about different cultures and there's no benefit to them of doing this. Like these, these interviews only get a couple Southern views, like less than a regular episode of ours. But it's clear [00:28:00] and I'll post a little bit of one of these episodes here. that they like these jewish students who pair off like this.

And we'll talk more about how their education system works, that they're just interested in the information. They're like, what does this tell us about the future? What does this tell us about what we should tell us about society? They are studying and discussing information that gives them an existential understanding of reality from their perspective.

Speaker 6: Much has been lost to the mists of history. We don't actually know how you can handle such a volume of mail, right? And those are the sort of main arguments that people use related to the literacy of the Empire. That's a very good point, and I'm of two minds. The first is that France in 1800 had a 20 percent literacy rate.

Speaker 7: And if you're looking at France in 1800, you're looking at one of the very most developed societies in history. England was like, close to 100%, I think. 70 to 100 percent in 1800. And you bring up, you brought up a couple of [00:29:00] interesting points I want to tease out. So I'm just gonna hit this like bullet points.

The first is, I agree with your thesis that the Catholic Church created modern science. Look at the scientific method. It was made by monks in the 1300s. And I'm one of the people who will agree with that thesis the most. Um, the second thing is that as to your classical literacy, uh, Jesus Christ was literate and he was a carpenter.

And so what that signifies is that the middle classes in the Roman empire at least were literate. And for the third point, I think one of the biggest things people should know about history is whatever thesis you have about a particular era of history is true, but the opposite is also true. And an example of this that I like to use because it just shatters people's conceptions of history.

Is that people would have sex in public in the middle ages And we see medieval europe as this very puritanical religious society and it was Significantly more religious than us What religion meant in that society is a very different thing where the things that we [00:30:00] associate with protestantism today like sexual purity or cleanliness or Reading the bible medieval christianity was totally different

Malcolm Collins: And that is a critical part of an education system. And I want to talk about how we can work that in. Do you have anything to say before I keep going?

Simone Collins: No, I want to see where you take this.

Malcolm Collins: My friends showed up at classes each day to preserve their GPA, not to uncover truths about the world, and it showed.

After being shown the faults of each of the great thinkers of the West, my friends showed little respect for their ideas. If a particular claim in the text did not resonate, it was dismissed rather than grappled with. Isn't it silly? A student might remark that Augustine made such a big deal out of a few stolen pairs.

This was the fruit of pedagogical shame at its finest. A cohort of students uninterested in and repulsed by the values and [00:31:00] creations of the culture they were supposedly being educated to join.

Simone Collins: Wow, okay.

So, not that we had college funds for our kids, but if we did, we would be dissolving them.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. What?

Simone Collins: Not that we have college funds for our kids, but if we did, we would be dissolving them at this point.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Colleges teach kids to hate their ancestors and nothing hurts fertility more or the intergenerational survivability of a culture more than having pride in your identity.

And these individuals were taught. One, they're not even really taught their identity. And this is one of the things I find about American culture. It's one of the reasons why we talk about the backwoods peoples. One of the reasons we talk about the American nations and the different immigrant groups to America is people don't realize even within our country that [00:32:00] we're America's a continent, bro.

We are as different as the Europeans in terms of our perspective and our cultural history. And every one of us has something to have pride in when you study, when you learn about it. And I think that one, and the most important thing, is how do you impose an understanding of sacredness in your ancestors?

I think first, there's two things here, is to focus on your ancestors sacrifices. This is something that Judaism has done very well. Almost all of their holidays are focused on some sort of sacrifice that one of their ancestors made to preserve their traditions. You know, Passover, for example. Or

hanukkah. No, but they're all about some trial that they went through, right? Yes, yeah. This is a very powerful mechanism, and when you actually study your real ancestors, and better if you have [00:33:00] books about your ancestors and what they did. You can learn from them that the trials that you experienced today are childish and trivial in comparison, there's that joke about, Oh, I walked five miles uphill through the snow and and our parents generation, that was a joke, but people did used to walk five miles to school through the snow.

You know that, right? Like. It's not a comedy. The comedy is that they told you it. It's not that they didn't suffer through that. They did. Our ancestors suffered in ways that we cannot begin to conceive. Women lost one tooth for every pregnancy, on average. We live in a, and, and before penicillin, the level of pain that people went through every day you know, as we've talked about, like the king of France had like eight.

[00:34:00] Additional anus that was just rotted through this was yeah,

Simone Collins: serious anal fissures. We'll just leave it at that. Okay

Malcolm Collins: But the level of pain he must have felt every day King

Simone Collins: henry the eighth two of his leg wounds that just

Malcolm Collins: Every day they lived in astronomical pain and yet they pushed through For us for the future for their kingdoms.

Simone Collins: Yeah

Malcolm Collins: And so we all have these stories. Every culture has these stories that the Jews, I don't even feel like the Jews do a particularly good job of showing because their stories are told in a way that was meant to seem challenging to people 500 years ago. They're like, Oh, they were huddling afraid of like an invader who could kill them.

But today just talk about like basic medical stuff to understand the challenges of our ancestors.

Simone Collins: Seriously. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And then the second thing. And this is where the progressives, their entire ideological trick. And you can say, why did they do this? They do it [00:35:00] because if you can lower somebody's connection to their ancestral culture, it's easy to convert them into something new.

And because they're peddling this mimetic virus, this totally new cultural tradition, the urban monoculture. The best way to do that to get people to ignore all of their ancestral tradition is to paint their ancestral tradition as evil or to lie to them about what their ancestral tradition was. As we pointed out in our black culture video that you know, if you go back to the sixties black people had a higher marriage rate and a lower out of marriage birth rate than white people by a significant margin.

And yet today you have movements like the BLM. Movement saying this is a traditional part of black culture and it's like, no, the way that you fight the progressives on this, okay, is you admit what they are unable to admit my ancestors [00:36:00] didn't create the culture I venerate. I name my children things like Octavian.

When my ancestors in England were taken as slaves, they were colonized by the imperialist Roman Empire, but the Roman Empire brought civilization that civilization. You know, when I look. Just so, so people understand, like, how backwards my people were, because it wasn't just the British, it was, you know, especially it was you, a lot of Norwegian, Viking ancestry Beowulf, and some people were like, oh, Beowulf, I remember, I was talking down to Beowulf in a previous video, and they're like, it has themes, it has like, metaphors to their state and society, and I was like, Yeah, some of the earliest literature has themes.

Beowulf, at the level of education that it was written at, or the [00:37:00] level of civilization it was written at, I would say is similar to the theming of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Except the Epic of Gilgamesh was written 26 to 28, 000 years before Beowulf.

Simone Collins: Nah, Gilgamesh is better because it has a good bromance.

All good literature has a good romance, my good sir.

Malcolm Collins: When I read something like Beowulf, I am reminded that while some people can't own this, that my uncivilized ancestors, before civilization reached them, were half beast and half

Simone Collins: human. Wow, you're really just digging in with the

Malcolm Collins: I don't have the hubris to pretend, and I, and I will say, we did, we took their civilizational architecture and we did better than them.

The Italians, the Greeks [00:38:00] today, they're a backwater, nothing of a people. They're a decaying culture.

Simone Collins: So you're not, what you're saying here is that you are not for ancestor worship. You are for celebrating tactics that win. And in the end, that's what should be celebrated in universities. And I would say that this probably gets at the heart of what Columbia was trying to do with their classic series, which, which was to say, Here are texts that over time have proven themselves to be foundational to Western civilization, which is what we happen to occupy.

I mean, don't blame us for not doing a ton of Eastern stuff. We

Malcolm Collins: occupy a civilization that has been conquered by a festering wound of bacteria, a magnetic virus. That has eaten and it happens many times throughout history when a civilization becomes too indolent. One of the things. Oh, okay. Okay. You're

Simone Collins: referring to the urban monoculture.

I'm referring to pre urban monoculture that the era at which this classics program was established. [00:39:00]

Malcolm Collins: For example, one of the things, you know, I was talking about Ruby Yard recently, talking about something really interesting with Samoan. One thing I didn't know about is they were saying, when the Persians reached the decaying remnants of the Babylonian Empire, they just opened the gates.

They didn't even fight. And they were going over multiple times in history where this happened, where an empire had become so decadent that it had lost the vitality to survive. And is that not what the West is doing right now, with the giant waves of immigration? Just opening the gates. We are just saying, I give up, replace us.

That is the state that we are in at this point, that we lack the ability to intergenerationally motivate our survival because we have no pride. That's

Simone Collins: the point is this is again a very happy cause. Pronatalism is the collective group of people who've chosen to inherit the future, who have chosen to be [00:40:00] there.

And to show up and to have kids. And so I think the bigger question is, I think most people who are prenatalist are probably going to opt out of the university system, or at least approach it with great skepticism.

Malcolm Collins: The question

Simone Collins: is, what kind of internal culture does one want to create? And how will one make that internal culture, one that, Doesn't just celebrate the ancestral values of the culture, but winning values that impart fitness, however you want to define it, to your kids, right?

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, I think that you need to find an intellectual architecture that may, one, resist the urban monoculture's attacks, which is really important that you're able to do. And I think the biggest point to resisting the urban monoculture's attacks is, for example, If I am an American black family, right?

And they're like, Oh, well, this civilizational technology of [00:41:00] Christianity, you know, as the Smithsonian spreadsheet said, that's not black. Monogamy, they'd say, that's not black being on time. They say, that's not black. And it's like, well, it is. They took this civilizational architecture. And if I am a black family in the 1960s, I can say, well, look at white culture, right?

Look at how indolent they've become. have higher marriage rates than them. We have lower rates of, of out marriage kids, of kids being born to single families. And we took their civilizational architecture and we did better than them. And the same way that I'm able to say that about like my Victorian ancestors, right?

Like they took the civilizational architecture from the Romans and they did better. And this actually brings me to one of the books that always sort of chilled me as a kid, because I, even as a kid, I realized how far society had already fallen. When they were trying to teach us to have more empathy for pre colonial black culture, they had us read a book [00:42:00] called Things Fall Apart by Chinche Achebe, which talks about the Igbo culture.

Simone Collins: I think I read that. Yes. That title sounds so familiar, but I have no memory of the reading. I

Malcolm Collins: remember, I remember one scene that just like, Wait, so then the colonists were right, right? Like, they helped you. In which, in the protagonist Okunokowa's village, twins were considered an abomination. So they were customarily abandoned in the evil forest to die.

They took infants and they left them to starve to death or be eaten by animals alive in the forest. And the apologists stopped this practice. The imperialists stopped this practice. I'm not like, oh, so like, why am I supposed to think that imperialism was a bad thing when I'm when I look to my own ancestors?

The cows, what did they do? They would make child sacrifices and we have found the bodies of children under [00:43:00] bridges. They would construct something as simple as a bridge to ensure its stability. Bad, wrong. Evidence of human sacrifices at Stonehenge.

Simone Collins: Wrong and bad.

Speaker 26: To be buried in that ditch at Stonehenge with the injuries he has, Suggests we have a sacrificial victim.

Speaker 28: Prepare to defend the eagle!

Speaker 29: Hyah!

Malcolm Collins: Civilization uplifted us and we don't need to shame our ancestors for embracing that.

When I look to the ancestor within my own culture that I admire, they are the ancestors after we adapted.

Simone Collins: Yeah, they're the ones who rose above, who learned better, who did better, and who learned and [00:44:00] iterated and, and yeah, overcame their Previous generation shortcomings. And that's what good culture is all about.

I'm totally with you on that. That's so funny. I don't remember things fall apart at all, though. I did read it. The, the only, like, I think the only good racism based education I got actually was they, they had us watch Roots, which was great with, did you watch it?

Malcolm Collins: I've watched some of Roots. Yeah. The only, the

Simone Collins: only part of it, I remember of it though, was them warning.

People like about white, white people and they're like, they smell like a wet chicken and there's something about this like sticks with me forever. Like every time I see our chickens in the rain, I just think of this line, they smell like a wet chicken and they smell like s**t. So I'll tell you that.

Malcolm Collins: So I'm going to go over one snippet from another article, and then I want to think through with you how we can educate our kids better with this information. [00:45:00] Okay. My optimism about higher education's recovery, of course, is based on my pessimism about the future of sheep raising in the governance of academia.

At the moment, the higher Oh, sorry. He

Simone Collins: means, like . I was thinking like animal husbandry. Sorry. That would've been more appropriate

Malcolm Collins: probably. Establishment Shepherds extraordinaire. Act as though things will go much as they have for the last 50 year. By things I mean the mass production of haphazardly educated, but heavily indoctrinated graduates.

Who have absorbed the core ideas that America is very bad, and that multiculturalism is very good. In 2016, when Donald Trump was campaigning for president, he caricatured higher education's business model as We'll take 200, 000 of your money, and in exchange we'll train your children to hate our country.

We'll make them unemployable by teaching them courses in zombie studies, and underwater basket weaving, and my favorite, tree climbing. Though the higher education [00:46:00] establishment detest Trump with every holy fiber of its being the professional bureaucrats and administrative careerists increasingly recognize that Trump's deflated view of colleges and universities resonate with many Americans.

So how can we build something like this Jewish system and to describe how this Jewish system works is you have an education system with no grades. That isn't necessary for a person's job outside of what they learn, which can help them within Jewish intellectual circles. So like what they learn is the point, not how it grades what they learned.

And they're expected to have these one on one conversations or debates about the information with other scholars in their class, which in part Influencer class status. I think that maybe we can create some sort of daily part of our education system where our kids can talk with other kids in our [00:47:00] network, right?

Like, okay, take somebody like Scott Alexander's kids, right? Like, I would love it. If every day we had one lesson plan where our kids would debate their kids or to make

Simone Collins: it about, call it. Yeah, fun interchange and status hierarchy. And then when you're reading something, you're reading it with it, with the motivation of getting to discuss it and hash it out with other people in an enthusiastic format.

I think a lot of people, for example, who watch anime or, or consume other fan universes don't necessarily enjoy every single series they watch, but they watch the series because they love discussing it with their friends. And I've seen this with other genres as well. Like a lot of people, when I went to college, loved watching the office together.

Not all of them loved the office, but they loved. The ability to talk about it in a really animated way with others.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and I think that this is sort of like our track series. So, like a lot of our track series, biggest fans are actually her righty [00:48:00] Jews which I think would surprise some people.

This is like ultra Orthodox Jews. But not really see Jews and ultra Orthodox Jews specifically. When they are discussing their religious traditions, they are allowed to have crazy takes. They are allowed. I mean, if they can back it up with logic, that is actually something that has some level of credibility to it, right?

Too many Christians today. And I think this is part of why Christianity is failing. And I think it's part of why Catholicism is failing more than Protestantism, and Orthodoxism is failing more than, you know, I think even Catholicism at this point. So Orthodox Christian churches, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox churches.

And it's because if you sort of rate churches by how much are you supposed to like, Read the text and interpret it yourself. The ones that lean more to that are doing better. [00:49:00] And I want my kids to do that. I want my kids to read the text and tell me, dad, your interpretation is wrong. No, the

Simone Collins: point is taking ownership.

And I think that's the whole point of literary analysis. When done, right. When done wrong, it is. Okay, tell me the text and tell me what it means. And that's what a lot of school has become. And I did get some of that in some of my classes when I went through school. But when done right, it's Let's read it and you tell me what you think and you make your argument and that's where it gets super fun.

Malcolm Collins: What it should mean, I mean, if this text is imbued with some sort of supernatural and we would argue that all of the ancestral texts that have been elevated by God through their impact on our civilization have a divine inspiration in a way. Well, if it has a divine inspiration, then you're supposed to be able to take something from it relevant to your time.

And I think that that's a problem with a lot of these classics courses. As they're like, learn the [00:50:00] classics. But learn them was in their context. Yeah,

Simone Collins: only within their context. Yeah, and that's that's too

Malcolm Collins: much that they are relevant to you Yeah, specifically don't assume that Caesar was writing for you.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, and that's wrong. That's wrong I, by the way, I just want to say to those who do not, you know, who think that Trump was making up the fact that they were tree climbing courses to Trump's credit, yes, there are absolutely tree climbing courses, but

Malcolm Collins: paying 200 K a year for that,

Simone Collins: not 200 K a year.

However I would argue personally that if our children took tree climbing courses, I would be very proud of them because that is a trade that is tree maintenance. And as you know, all too well, we get charged. Insanely high prices for tree maintenance. These people make money,

Malcolm Collins: do how to climb our trees and cut them.

Simone Collins: I mean, we would make bank. All right. So that is. I'm not saying it's 200, 000 worth it. [00:51:00] It is not a bad investment. And I'm seeing like three day extension courses with the university of Pennsylvania or whatever. Like this is not, you know, this is not a 2, 000 course. So he's technically right. He was just exaggerating it in a way that putting it in a context where it didn't make sense.

I just want to say that. So Trump was right. But I'm all for tree climbing courses because that's a trade and I want people to actually create value. And my big argument about universities is we also need to parse out what the different things you're buying are and what you're discussing here with this classics course for a while.

And like for why Columbia was offering it in the first place is to impart high social class, understanding the classics, being able to discuss them intelligently,

Malcolm Collins: A purely social class thing based on memorization, not on argumentational ability. Well, an

Simone Collins: argumentational ability is the core of the social class.

So what they have is a program that was originally meant to help students signal social class, which [00:52:00] is why many people send their kids to university. Then they stripped it of that. Because they, they got the kids disinterested in the actual texts, not capable of actually discussing them because they weren't freaking reading them and then put them in all this additional context that makes them utterly useless from a class signaling standpoint.

So you are totally wasting people's time. And then we also need to parse out. So are you going to university to signal class? Okay. Maybe we can find some other way to do that. You know, to show that you are well and be relevant,

Malcolm Collins: how class is Signaling is done within a culture in a modern context right now class signaling is primarily done through woke virtue signaling

Simone Collins: Yes, yes.

Depending on the social network,

Malcolm Collins: intergenerational wealth has completely fallen to the urban monoculture as have the higher echelons of big business. You are being naive here. If you think anything else, that is why, because these are class signaling classes, they're teaching you that, Oh, you signaled class.

No, personally,

Simone Collins: I'm just going to say this. I'm sorry, but [00:53:00] personally, I think that. Woke status signaling is extremely middle class. It's extremely middle class. I would say that crazy wealthy people. Oh, okay.

Malcolm Collins: No, we've seen some that are very, there is a wealthy class that is anti woke, but they are not intergenerational wealth.

They are not blue blood. The blue blood class has been completely toxified. That's fair.

Simone Collins: Actually it has. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: It's been, only new money is anti woke. Except for like us,

Simone Collins: no, there, no, we, we also know new money. That's super woke. So no, no, no, no,

Malcolm Collins: no, because they're trying to signal to old money that they're one of them.

Simone Collins: Maybe, I don't know.

Malcolm Collins: This was the whole problem with classically Abby, watch our classically Abby video. She's trying to be upper class when upper class is being woke. You can't be upper class and anti woke.

Yeah, you

could be a dissonant class like Elon Musk that the media will like make fun of, but you are [00:54:00] a rebel in the minds of everyone else.

You are though. Can you believe,

Simone Collins: but let's, let's go back to the, the, what do you do based on this? I think the big takeaway for me is. The kind of cultural indoctrination and pride I want to give to our children is not, it's not our inherited pride. It's not our ancestors. It's not in our case, like broadly European pride of civilization.

Yeah. And that's, so I'm thinking like, as I, as I think about What kind of pride I want 'em to have. It's what you see in the, literally the S Civ game preview

Malcolm Collins: songs. Yes. The th game preview. It is. That's what I want you to think about it is look at what

Simone Collins: the pinnacle of humanity has done at any given point in history and take that and your obligation in your rung.

of, of the chain of humanity is to take that and make it even better. And that's a big burden to shoulder, but it, what, what pride you can [00:55:00] hold knowing that that's something you are capable of taking on by standing on the shoulders of giants.

You're plotting a new course again, aren't you? The currents before us are ever changing. We must adapt and press forward if we are to see our journey's end.

It is the nature of humankind to push itself toward the horizon. We

test our limits.

We face our fears. We rise to the challenge. And become something greater than ourselves

Malcolm Collins: I agree, but the big thing I want to send them into for middle school is I really like this Jewish practice of finding a single debate partner.

And maybe mixing it up a bit, but we can do this within an online context, right? You can even [00:56:00] do it with AI

Simone Collins: in, in the absence of No, no

Malcolm Collins: Simone. Why not? They need to have pride. in winning and they need to build social connections and cohesion through it that will be of utility to them. We need to look for other influential thinker families who I think will have created some of the best of the generation, like sharpest knives to cut our kids against.

Yeah. Put them into rotating daily debates, like a half hour, an hour a day on subjects where they will be humiliated if they haven't actually studied it.

Simone Collins: Okay. I'm kind of, I'm kind of there for it. Actually, that sounds great because so much research does indicate that peer pressure is extremely effective and shame is extremely effective.

Oh,

Malcolm Collins: they need to know, they need to know that these people will be talking about them with the other friends on discord or whatever and be like, oh yeah, well, you know, they're not really a good debater on, they don't even [00:57:00] understand

Simone Collins: deontological

Malcolm Collins: ethics.

Simone Collins: Those Collins midwits. Yeah. Our kids won't go for that.

Malcolm Collins: They would hate that. That's how would not get it. You gotta get them a little bit of social pressure here. Oh, and what if they're debating a cute boy or girl? Oh, they need to know their stuff. And what a way for courtship that. That's I think, one of the true failings of the courtship. Oh yes. Is that it Is gender unique, right?

Mm-Hmm. . So that you're not gonna end up having to impress a cute boy or girl with your knowledge of the Torah. But or the Talmud but in our system, I actually think that's a really good system for mates. Well,

Simone Collins: I would say pitting any different gender diets against each other is, is great fodder because one of the most common tropes in romance, especially for women is enemies to lovers.

It's a, a very, like, that's a turn on her.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, he's actually pretty good at this. Women, women

Simone Collins: love this. You know, they love the, I hate you. I'm going to beat you.

Malcolm Collins: I also love debate without an external moderator. The idea is your [00:58:00] goal is to convince the other side. If you want to convince people your perspective of the text is right, their goal is to convince you that their perspective of the text is right.

Simone Collins: Well, this also takes us back to some of the oldest forms of education, which were debate which were rhetoric and you go back to the Cambridge Union, the Oxford Union. These are some of the most notable, memorable and powerful aspects of the oldest university systems. Yeah, I'm all for it. I love it. That's really great.

This is a fun takeaway, and I'm glad that you read that essay.

Malcolm Collins: By the way, a fun thing, 25k subscriber fact, that I found really fun before we move to the next episode is, I was going through this meme that was like a political meme of the different factions of like the way people might relate. To following fertility rates.

And this wasn't even on like a fertility rate sub. This was on a sub for like, political map memes, right? Okay. When we're like, well, do you watch Malcolm and Simone? And other people are like, oh, I love Malcolm and Simone. [00:59:00] Yeah. I was like, this is just like a random thing that I'm checking now. And people are like, oh, Malcolm and Simone.

And you know what they said? Eh,

Simone Collins: do I wanna know? Wish,

Malcolm Collins: talk more. Malcolm's such a blowhard. .

Simone Collins: No sweeties.

No.

Malcolm Collins: You are the star in everyone. You, she keeps her mouth shut

Simone Collins: for a reason.

Malcolm Collins: You know what's up? You are the, the reason people come back.

Simone Collins: Well, maybe if I drink more another

Malcolm Collins: drink. We drink more at the beginning of the next video.

Simone Collins: Okay. All right. Love

you. Sounds good. Love you too. Congratulations, it's official.

Malcolm Collins: 25, 000 followers, subscribers on YouTube, so you're gonna have a drink

which actually undersells how popular our channel is, because I've seen we've been popular, more popular than a few other like, but we were like, what episode do we want to do for the 25k subscriber special?

Simone Collins: Oh Actually, [01:00:00] do you want this to actually be the opening? Then you should just start with your normal. Hello.

Malcolm Collins: No, it won't be the opening. I'll put it somewhere near the beginning, but not at the actual opening.

Simone Collins: Okay. So hold on. Can I first just say cheers?

Oh

Malcolm Collins: yes. I've got to do my

Simone Collins: Cheers.

Malcolm Collins: Cheers. Hey, subscribers, subscribers. Cheers. It's so good to have you here. 25 K. And to have Simone

actually drinking in one of the episodes,

Simone Collins: you guys aren't

Malcolm Collins: going to get drunk Simone for two episodes.

If we're able to fund and film today,

Simone Collins: maybe I'll pour a little more and we'll see, but yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Oh,

Simone Collins: so tasty.

Malcolm Collins: Do you like the what type is it?

Simone Collins: It's just a Speyside whiskey. 12 year, single malt. But, remind, it tastes like honeymoon. You know what I mean?

Malcolm Collins: When we went there on our honeymoon.

Simone Collins: You learned something new. I learned something interesting. Let me find the name of the paper that I [01:01:00] thought was really interesting. So, it is called if the face fits predicting future promotions from police cadets, facial traits which I'll get to the punchline of the research

when selecting for leadership potential based on police cadet photographs, respondents, predict Correct promotional choices at levels well above chance as measured by an AUC score of 0. 7. Further, respondents evaluations successfully discriminate both between no promotion and lieutenant promotion and sergeant versus lieutenant promotions.

So basically just by looking at someone's face, Get a

Malcolm Collins: fairly

Simone Collins: accurate. You

Malcolm Collins: can actually tell a lot about a person genetically by looking at their face. You can tell IQ by looking at face. You can tell voting patterns by looking at face. You can tell personality by looking at face.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Can we get, maybe we can find those composite images of a leftist versus a conservative, which are, they're just really,

Malcolm Collins: it's very clear.

I Well, in a lot of these, I look very much like the conservative type, I think. [01:02:00]

Simone Collins: And I look more leftist because I'm misshapen. We're the perfect.

Malcolm Collins: It was not misshapen. It has to do with softness of features.

Simone Collins: Versus hardness of features. Sort

Malcolm Collins: of a witless look. Do you look like a witless woman? We'll find the images and the audience can

Simone Collins: decide.

Malcolm Collins: Probably in the middle to trad wife. You don't have that. I'll put it on the screen here so the audience can make a decision.

Simone Collins: I still, it's what's interesting to me though, is it makes me wonder. If one then can manipulate one's face to look more promotable, is that enough? It wouldn't change

Malcolm Collins: anything.

It wouldn't change anything. What they're measuring are genetic correlates. Individuals attribute far too much to bias and far too little to genetic correlates.

Simone Collins: That's fair, though some people were in comments on this. This was posted on Marginal Revolution, the Tyler Cowen blog. Some people were commenting that this can be cumulative.

If you're [01:03:00] the tallest kid in the yard, people are probably going to look to you for leadership. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: come on! This is nothing like height! It's facial structure. People want to believe that humans have more free will than we do. We are mostly genes and then a little bit our environment and that's what makes us who we are.

Yeah. That's why when you have people raised in different families the adult IQ difference is only eight percent. For is siblings. So it's just, it's just, there's so much, so much is, is just genetics and stuff like that. And people don't want to admit it. It

Simone Collins: is inconvenient,

Malcolm Collins: but that's something we're going to be talking about on this episode.

So I will get into a start.

Are you sure this isn't too much light? I feel like it washes me out.

Simone Collins: No, I think it's, it's, it's the correct amount of, I mean, it's, it's a lot. I want better lighting for you in general. You don't have

this much light on [01:04:00] you.

Probably I do. Cause I'm sitting right with the window shining on me.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. No, you, you definitely don't.

This is ridiculous. I'm just looking at the contours of my face. You couldn't see any on this side.

Simone Collins: Okay. Well that's, yeah, that's a

Malcolm Collins: little

Simone Collins: better. At first it was so dark. So I'm just trying to correct.

Malcolm Collins: I don't believe you. The commenters can let us know what they preferred, the more light or the less light.

Okay. And I'll put this at the end of the video. So let us know. All right. Is

Simone Collins: it my fault for wanting to see your beautiful face? Is this your wife's?