Exploring Universal Basic Income and Financial Decision-Making

In this episode, hosts engage in a detailed discussion about a Universal Basic Income (UBI) study, exploring its outcomes and societal implications. The study, funded by Sam Altman of OpenAI, provided $1,000 monthly to participants over three years. Contrary to expectations, the recipients had $3,000 less wealth than those not receiving the funds, indicating potential negative impacts of UBI on financial security. They delve into how this aligns with human nature, the role of financial literacy, and broader implications for economic policies and future societal structures amidst AI advancements. The video also critiques media representation of the study and questions the reliability of objective reporting. The hosts connect UBI's potential impacts to larger themes of work, leisure, and purpose in an AI-dominated future.

Speaker 18: [00:00:00] Well, here we are again. Yeah. You remember our learning machine over there?

Speaker 19: What's it going to teach us today, Mr. Money?

Speaker 18: I'll turn it on and you'll see.

Malcolm Collins: when they gave people a 1000 dollars a month over the course of 3 years, 36, 000 dollars in all.

On average, recipients of this money had 3, 000 less total wealth than recipients who didn't get this money.

And I need to point out here. They didn't even increase the time they spent with their kids. Like to me, like, that's the, like the cruel twist of the blade of how fundamentally selfish the average human is,

Speaker 22: Yeah.

Speaker 23: I don't like

Speaker 22: people.

Speaker 23: Oh, well, now that's not fair, Roy. Have you met all of them?

Speaker 22: I've met enough of them. People. What a bunch of b******s.

Malcolm Collins: people are like,

I can't [00:01:00] afford to spend time with my kids. And we have proof now that even if you had more money, you wouldn't spend more time with your kids when people are like, if I had more money or if I had inherited money or blah, blah, blah, like I would be living a different life, like that's functionally untrue.

You would actually maybe be living a materially worse life and now means if reparations were to be paid as a form of UBI to the black community, it would permanently monetarily sabotage the community.

Speaker 26: If you're just joining us, black people got their reparations checks today, and in short, all hell is broken loose. So how did you become the world's wealthiest man, Tron? Hot hand in a dice game, baby girl. welL,

Speaker 27: I think what everyone wants to know now is what are you going to do with all this money?

Speaker 28: I'm going to reinvest my money into the community.

Speaker 27: Oh, that's a very nice gesture. What were you saying? Hi! Okay.

Is that your son?

Speaker 28: No, no, I just bought this baby Cash.

Malcolm Collins: Now, here's where it gets dystopian. At the top of the [00:02:00] page it's just one line for the results of the study.

Cache increases possibilities

Speaker: for I knew that even though some of you supported us, some others were looking at me and thinking, You're a liar!

You're a liar! You know something that you're not telling us, you slimy scumbag liar! You know, that's what people would say to me.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone! I am excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be discussing something that changes my view on economics. The media. And what might be the most optimal economic system?

This is a large experiment that was run by Sam Altman of OpenAI to see if UBI would work. UBI means Universal Basic Income.

It is the idea that

It might make sense to just do cash handouts across the population, like say everybody gets 1, [00:03:00] 000 every month, and that this might be a lighter weight way to do welfare, and it might have some moral or even economic justification. Well, I am going to briefly describe the findings from this study that I thought were most relevant.

Then I'm going to go over the way the news. Reported the studies findings and the way his organization open a I reported the studies findings. So, the information that I thought was an important takeaway is that when they gave people a 1000 dollars a month over the course of 3 years, 36, 000 dollars in all.

On average, recipients of this money had 3, 000 less total wealth than recipients who didn't get this money.

Simone Collins: Wait, wait, no, no, no, hold on. I just want to make sure I have this right. [00:04:00] They were poorer. The people who got extra money but were not told to change anything else about their lives. Had less money than before this experiment if they received the, what is it?

1, 000 a month payments.

Malcolm Collins: Yes So 36, 000 in total. No, no, no keep in mind this means somehow when contrasted with the other people they lost 39, 000 because it's not just the 3, 000 less to their wealth You also have to consider all the money that was given to them that at the start of the experiment, you know Should have made them well They managed to lose.

So they managed to lose a considerable sum of money.

Simone Collins: Ooh. I didn't think about it that way. I was like, okay, well, if you started out with 50, 000 and then you ended with a little less than that, you know, it's fine.

Malcolm Collins: It's worse. So for every dollar received by the program's participants earnings, excluding the cash transfer decreased by at least 12 cents.

Oh, so they were working less. We'll get to all that. We'll get to all that. I'm just giving you the, the. [00:05:00] Things I thought were most relevant. Okay. All right. Total household income fell by at least 13 cents per dollar received.

So, to your 1st question, recipients of reduced their by 4 to 5%. These reductions translated to 2. 2 fewer hours per week. 114 fewer hours annually recipients mostly spent this time on more leisure activities and not pursuing education or work.

Higher quality jobs or spending time or caring for family members. The authors noted, quote, Interestingly, we do not , observe those with children spending more or less time with children as a result of the transfers. Moreover, households without children reduce their work by more than households with children.

So, when people are like, oh, if I had more money, I'd spend more time with my kid, it's like, err, like, statistically, that's wrong. And I should note here that they actually kind of tried to go to participants, like, they would ask them every time they meet, like, how much time are you spending on additional education?

How [00:06:00] much time are you spending on additional training? How much time are you spending on

Simone Collins: See, you could even argue that they kind of

Malcolm Collins: And they did not. They still

Simone Collins: didn't even.

Malcolm Collins: No evidence of this. Now, here's where it gets dystopian. Okay. On OpenAI's website . At the top of the page where they, on OpenAI research, it's just one line for the results of the study.

Cache increases possibilities.

Speaker: For I knew that even though some of you supported us, some others were looking at me and thinking, You're a liar!

You're a liar! You know something that you're not telling us, you slimy scumbag liar! You know, that's what people would say to me.

Malcolm Collins: Let's keep going. So, here we have a write up on this by

The register

and I will read it because it [00:07:00] is, it is actually kind of chilling. So they wrote as the title of this, Sam Altman's basic income experiment finds that money can indeed buy happiness.

Simone Collins: Oh, I mean, it's not wrong because people spend more time Netflixing and chilling.

Malcolm Collins: I guess. Yeah. The results of the largest universal basic income trial program in the United States, the one backed by billionaire Sam Altman, no less, are in and entirely uninspiring. After three years of giving 1, 000 to low income individuals, 1, 000 a month of no strings attached cash, a group of researchers at Altman's Open research determined that recipients mostly spent the cash on life necessities, got a bit choosier in their employment, and made more use of medical care.

Perhaps most critically, it gave participants an increased sense of agency, making them more likely to start their own business, take the opportunity to work a lower paying job for more independents, budget their finances to plan for the future, and improve their [00:08:00] prospects for the future.

Through further education. Thanks for reminding us of what we already know, Sam. UBI makes overworked poor people less miserable, underlined.

Speaker: And then people would see my wife in the supermarket and they would say hello, but they'd be thinking, Ah, there goes that murderer! You got away with murder, you murdering, lying waste of life!

Simone Collins: I want to get this straight. So they, they said that the, the research gave people those opportunities, but didn't ultimately make those things happen.

Malcolm Collins: It gave them the opportunity to take a lower paying jobs,

Simone Collins: but it also gave them the opportunity to invest in education.

It didn't say that they did invest in education. It didn't say caused them. They factually didn't, by the way, it gave them the opportunity to

Malcolm Collins: that's just they

Simone Collins: chose. I know. Well, but what I'm saying is, is this this article was not misleading per se, but it was. factual, but more,

Malcolm Collins: more an opinion piece then.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Hold on. [00:09:00] They get to the the meat and potatoes, so that you know that they're giving you both sides of the argument. Later in the article, it says, It's not all sunshine and roses and UVI land. . Though the Y Combinator Studies results published on July 21st, 2024 are generally positive and show the benefits of no strings attached cash payment.

Not everything was a net positive. Take, for example, the fact that that recipients were more likely to visit the hospital, see a specialist, go to the dentist, and cut down on excess alcohol and drug use. Those are all great results, except they didn't lead to a net improvement in participant health. Quote, on average, we do not find direct evidence of greater access to health care, or greater access to medical care.

or improvements in physical or mental health, end quote. The researchers say in the report, for many participants, quote, the additional thousand dollars per month alone may not be sufficient to overcome the larger systemic barriers to health care access and reduce health disparities, end quote. In other [00:10:00] words, UBI is just one piece of the puzzle that is lifting the conditions of the poorest Americans.

Speaker: And to me, people might say things like, Liar! Tell us what you know, you goddamn liar!

Malcolm Collins: Not enough socialism! Not enough socialism! I don't want, I To think that you could write an entire article and not mention that they were poorer at the end, that they were late making less money, that they were earning less, that their incomes were now less. Malcolm, stop.

Simone Collins: You're thinking too much. Quiet, quiet.

Malcolm Collins: They were in a worse position overall because now they're lower income. They were not spending more time with their kids. They were not spending more time on self improvement. They had

Simone Collins: the opportunity, Malcolm. Damn

Malcolm Collins: it,

Simone Collins: can't you just be A good kind person.

Speaker 22: People. What a bunch of b******s.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): Actually wanting to talk more about this. Not spending a lot of time with their kids [00:11:00] thing, because I would thinking about this in my own life. And I realized that the amount of time I spend with my kids is not at all a function of financial security, but a function of just. Commitment. Like what I expect for myself as a parent.

In fact, recently I started deciding that every single weekend day I would make a day to do something special with the kids. Either take them to a park. Like for example, yesterday I took them on a long walk through,

The woods. , a hike up and down a mountain in valley forge.

Speaker 25: Oh, we're tired. I said that. Yeah.

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx): And. There was just a commitment, like every weekend day. I'm going to spend. As much as I can with my kids. And I think that. My, my financial situation didn't change. It was just a change in commitment. And I think for a lot of this stuff, it's just a, what's your commitment [00:12:00] to an individual thing.

And then when somebody challenges you and they're like, why aren't you doing this? Because you don't want the cognitive dissonance of, oh gosh, I could be a better parent. You say, well it's because I don't have enough money. But it's not because you don't have enough money. It's because you haven't decided to do it.

Simone Collins: This is

Malcolm Collins: In the register, a mainstream newspaper. So let's go to another mainstream newspaper. This time we're gonna go to USA Today, okay? So how did USA Today report on this? The title, How much is 1, 000 a month's worth?

Question mark. New study explores impact of basic income. Quote, How We're all finding the same results in quote said Stacy West, co founder and director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Guaranteed Income Research quote. You give people cash and they make great decisions for themselves and their family in a way that you know can promote upwards economic mobility, end quote.

Speaker: You know goddamn well what happened so stop acting like victims [00:13:00] and confess, confess! Liar! Confess!

Malcolm Collins: So this person works for the University of Pennsylvania. That's a IEB league university. That's Penn. It's still a

Simone Collins: progressive university.

Malcolm Collins: But she's just lying. I, I, I, I just said

Simone Collins: it was a progressive university. What more do you need to hear?

Malcolm Collins: Since when did

Simone Collins: progressive universities pursue truth?

Malcolm Collins: Understand now how corrupt even the Ivy Leagues are now.

They will just Even,

Simone Collins: even the Ivy What are you talking about? They've been the Forefront of correction from the woke, my virus.

Malcolm Collins: I think some people still believe that there is some degree of credibility within the hollowed institutions. You may have had the wool lifted from your eyes, but I am sure some of our listeners are at least slightly aghast that she would lie to a reporter about something this easy to fact check and that the reporter would then publish all of this uncritically.

But let's read more of this article. That they wrote [00:14:00] overall, researchers said their findings suggest cash quote provides flexibility in quote, quote, the data we collected highlights the complexity of people's lives and needs in quote, reads a statement from open research shared with USA. Today. Quote, cash provides the flexibility to meet those diverse needs, and it is responsive when needs shift based on a person's circumstances in quote, according to the study here.

So now they're going over all of the important takeaways. That we should take from the study, okay? No, they are not gonna Note what they are not mentioning. Recipients increase their spending by 310 a month on average, primarily using their money for essentials, like food, housing, and transportation. Not really true though.

The money was also used as a financial support for others, with recipients spending an average of [00:15:00] 22 more a month on things like gifts for friends and family, loans, donations, charity, and alimony payments. Recipients worked 1. 3 hours less a week on average compared with the control group and reported more leisure time, but remained engaged in the workforce.

Recipients were 26 percent more likely to visit a hospital in the last year of the study and 10 percent more likely to get dental care and visit an emergency room. They also reported a decrease in problematic alcohol and some types of illicit drug use. Now here I would note, by the way, in case you don't remember, the other Paper accidentally admitted the fact that it's one of the ones this paper is coming up that their health didn't increase.

So, yeah, they might have had a marginal increase in dentist visits, but it didn't change anything recipients were 4. 4 percentage points more likely to move neighborhoods. Open research plans to look in to how the cash transfers affect housing stability and neighborhood [00:16:00] quality and future analyses.

Recipients, especially black and female recipients, were more likely to report having an idea for a business. Recipients also reported a greater likelihood of starting a business within the next five years.

 She's

Speaker 6: maKing jewelry now She's got her own website

Speaker 5: your sister like, going to massage school

Speaker 4: But

And it's just like, we're so happy, because she's not floundering around anymore.

Speaker 5: Yeah? What's she doing again?

Speaker 6: Making jewelry. She got her life

Malcolm Collins: and then And then it says, but the concept has received pushback.

More than half of us adults oppose a universal basic income of about 1, 000 a month for adults when surveyed by Pew research center in 2020. And the greatest opposition was among white adults. Whoa, spooky.

Speaker 8: [00:17:00] How's it hanging? I'm gonna scare

Speaker 9: the hell of you! Any

questions?

Malcolm Collins: A number of states, including Iowa and South Dakota, have passed bills that prohibit counties or cities from providing guaranteed income as skeptics argued that the money would discourage people from working.

And it's like, well, I mean, it did. We know that now. Why didn't you? Oh, you did report that they worked less, but you didn't report that they're also making less now and have less now.

Speaker 10: I don't know what your plan is, but I'm gonna stop it! I am infecting this city with genetically enhanced vermin, but you'll never know! You just told me.

Speaker 11: You're lying!

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, Simone, why do you think, [00:18:00] you can understand why all of the newspapers are lying about UBI not working and covering it up.

Why do you think OpenAI would be motivated to lie about UBI working?

Simone Collins: That one seems pretty straightforward that a lot of people are afraid that AI is going to take their jerbs. And if AI does take the derps, then they're going to get real angry at OpenAI. They're going to get their senators and their representatives to make legislation that kills OpenAI.

And if that happens there will be no more OpenAI. And OpenAI wouldn't like that. So that's what

Malcolm Collins: I'm thinking. So I'm glad that you immediately see through this. Sam Altman always hears, what if AI takes all our jobs? And so he's like, well, if I can show that UBI works at a broad level, then I can say, well, it's not my fault.

It's the government's. It needs to be issuing UBI. Look, I showed it worked. And for for people who don't know, this is by far, like the largest, most rigorous study on this done in the developed world. There were some studies that showed it was beneficial in developing countries, [00:19:00] but, like, in those instances, people were losing it to, like, change that roofs to metal roofs and it's like, yeah, obviously, but it turns out people in the developed world who don't have a lot of money.

The average income of individuals in this study was 29, 000 dollars. I'm going to say something so sinful. It turns out they're in that position because they have chosen not to improve their lives. And when given the flexibility to make choices to improve their lives, they don't make those choices.

Simone Collins: Actually, can I weigh in here? So I I've been thinking as you're talking about the results of this, this research of Caleb hammers, YouTube channel financial audit, where he, he has people come on and he goes through all of their spending and everything.

Speaker 12: Well dude, you're blowing all your money when you don't have money. You can't take care of your own life. You start your checking accounts with nothing. You refuse to get a job that will accept you, like the Whataburger job that did accept you, and then you decided not to do it. Well, I had a [00:20:00] reason. I mean, in my head, I had a reason.

Speaker 13: But you could have gone back and got it! They're always hiring! I don't know. Maybe.

Simone Collins: And there are so many patterns that I feel would probably show up in participants of this study as well.

There are many people who've come on, who've received inheritance. They've received 60, 000. They've gotten a divorce and they sold the house and made 200, 000. And when people. receive cash windfalls and they're not financially literate which is the lion's share of the people who come on Caleb Hammer's show.

They blow through it all. And often then some, they go into further debt. And I think what happened And this has been shown in statistics. Yeah. I think what happened here is a, a, a small, a relatively small percentage of uniquely predisposed to laziness. Financially illiterate people saw that they were going to receive a thousand dollars per month and were kind of like, Oh great.

Like my expenses are taken care of. I'm going to quit my job. Like my [00:21:00] expenses are relatively low anyway. I'm going to go out to eat every night. Like, you know, they're like, Oh, well things go to food and, and transportation. So they're going to get like a lease on a new car. You know, they're going to do a lot of things that they're going to increase their spending in a more unsustainable way.

Like I'm going to get sushi every day. And. This small number of people who just totally quit their jobs, which are probably part time to begin with, and just decided they were basically going to live off the thousand dollars threw off.

Malcolm Collins: People didn't decrease their, their the percent employed didn't decrease, but their hours work did their hours were did.

So I said,

Simone Collins: these people who are probably working part time anyway are probably decreasing. I'm going to push back

Malcolm Collins: really strongly. You think so? In your mind, you hear 20, 000 and you hear low income individual when 29, 000 is around the mean income in the United States. I mean, median income. Hold on, I'm going to look up right now, but I'm

Simone Collins: pretty sure.

Yeah, I think, I thought it was more around 60, 000 for household, which is much higher than what you're saying.

Malcolm Collins: No, it's uh, [00:22:00] 37. 5. Is the median? It's the median. So this is around the median income in the United States. This is not like, unique, idiot, like, whatever. But I'm gonna go further because I want to explain how the study works.

I want this to be a good summary of like everything on the study, all of the important findings and how it's structured. So over the course of the study, as I've mentioned they What treatment group one was given 1, 000 per month. The control group was given 50 per month, and this was to keep them coming back.

There was 1000 participants in the treatment group, and there was 2000 participants in the control group, which is enough to be very statistically significant in a study like this. Payments were unconditional with no strings attached. Participants retained all existing benefits. Data collection. The study collected both quantitative and qualitative data.

Specifically, they did lots and lots of surveys because again, it's an expensive study to run. So they want to capture everything and bank transactions and they also did interviews with participants and there's going to be multiple extra studies to come out about this [00:23:00] going forwards but i'm sure they're going to be more massaged going forwards now that the Cat sort of out of the bag was this one and i'm sure sam the person funding.

This was not happy about this Especially given that he just had everyone lie about this when he could have, like, owned and been like, okay, well, now we need to come up with something other than UBI, which he didn't do. He's like, we're still going to pass. I expect massage results going forwards.

So, there was a benefit to food scarcity, but this was short lived and it disappeared over time. By the end of the program, participants reported no better ability to meet their food needs. The control group, the people in this was really fascinating to me. The people in the treatment group who were getting the UBI, they significantly increased disability reporting.

So by four percentage points. So once you started to get some handouts, it seems like you normalized to this way of life and begin to look for additional ways to get handouts. Which is not great. No significant health improvements quote. And this is from the study. No improvement in measures that participants self reported access to health care or their [00:24:00] concerns about their ability to pay for needed medical care in quote.

And their debt increased. So, if you are on UBI, while the amount of money you reported spending on saving money increased, your actual functional debt at the end of this was higher. And so, employment effects There was a 2 percent decrease in labor market participation. This recorded in eight fewer weekdays annually.

Next other negative effects. There were minimal changes in credit availability, bankruptcy rates, and foreclosures. Now let's talk about the positive outcomes. Increased spending on essential needs like food, house, sports, and transportation.

I mean, but those aren't really essential needs is the thing. If they're not increasing your productivity, then they're not essential needs that they're a form of luxury. If I go to live in a mansion, is that an essential need?

Speaker 14: How much debt did you go into in those three months? Mmm, those three months, I would say, 15, 000. F you, lean, that's not lean. [00:25:00] It was my, my, my rent. That's not lean, though. My rent for a month is 3, 500. It's not overly expensive, but it's not lean. My rent was 3, 500. Yeah, that's not lean. Because that's the place I was going to live in.

I don't care, live in a cheaper place. Mm hmm, but then I would have to move again. Oh, cry. Cry. What? So, the problem was, I was supposed to start working August I'm trying to justify all this bull Okay, yes. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Well, this shows up again all the time in financial audit when Caleb asks like, well, you know, what's this and what's this.

So many things that are food are really not food and people are spending ridiculous amounts eating out and they're going to classify, I'm sure all restaurant visits in this. And if someone gets a new car, a new lease, like chooses to do something irresponsible as transportation again, and Caleb gives his guests so much s**t for eating out, even just going into a gas station and getting a snack, he gives them s**t for that.

He gives them like anything like he considers irresponsible, [00:26:00] but people do it so much, especially if they feel like they have money to spare and the same with transportation. Like there's people who will just take Ubers everywhere or. Like, and like, you know, us, like, even when there's an emergency, we're like, I don't know, maybe I can, I can walk it, you know?

No,

Malcolm Collins: I was just thinking about us and eating out. So Simone basically never eats out. You may eat out three times a year. Maybe I am a little bit more like I am. I admit that I have less Austerity than Simone. And yeah, like even when

Simone Collins: we go traveling, I'm going to a grocery store and buying food.

Malcolm Collins: But when I eat out.

I always and it's probably less than once a week. I always ensure that I can make at least two full days worth of food out of it. By that, what I mean is I typically only eat one meal a day. And when I eat out, I'll make that my one meal for the day. And then I save half of it. And then I cook it the next day for my second one meal of the day.

And Simone, you're not like, you know, I'm a hundred percent about this. And when a restaurant lowers its portions, I like get really angry because we've

Simone Collins: stopped our, we have this. [00:27:00] favorite restaurant in our area that it decreased its portion size. And we're just like, that sucks. We never get to go there again.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I can't make two meals and stretch

Simone Collins: it into two meals. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So, I, yeah, I do want to highlight that that's probably what they're catching here is really just leisure spending. They did, as mentioned by other things, give away more money, 22 per month. Okay. They got 1, 000 and they gave away 22.

So generous. They had improved food security in the first year, but only in the first year. They had marginal increased use of dental care, as somebody else mentioned. More autonomy in decision making and job searching, whatever that means. By the way, for people wondering where this happened, it was Texas and Illinois across urban, suburban and rural areas.

The age range was 21 to 40 years old income qualification, household income below 300 percent of the federal poverty threshold, approximately 77 0. 25 K. So you could get into the purchase. The study of you had up to [00:28:00] 77, 000 in family income for family of four or 37. 5 for an individual average household, individual so what are your broader, like, to me, I used to believe in UBI. I was always like, we do need at least one big study on it. I am glad that he did the big study. I am sad that they are occluding the real results of the study. I wonder, for you, why do you feel that it did decrease people's earnings, incomes, financial security, and, yeah.

Simone Collins: Again, I, I, what I see on financial audit when this happens again and again, is it gives people a false sense of security and it makes them, it gives them the sense that, oh, my expenses are covered now. Like, oh, I have money now. Therefore, I can relax a little.

And these are people who already feel kind of constrained and stressed out. They're dealing with student debt. They're dealing with auto debt. They're dealing with personal loans. They are living paycheck to paycheck. And they're thinking, All [00:29:00] right. Well, like this is great. Like this means that I can let loose a little more, like eat out a little more.

And there's a lot of emphasis on like you pointed out. It's like eating out and indulging in pretty expensive things is actually, I would say more common among people of more limited means than it is among more wealthy people, like more wealthy people. We know like when we've hung out with wealthy people, they're like, No one eats out.

Yeah, everything's in and like bought from Costco or like some, like, and that's a luxury, you know, having a house where you can have a deep freezer, where you have space to store, like a giant bag of rolls of toilet paper is a luxury. Yeah. And I, I think that's, that's an issue, but like, yeah, like that, that's, that, that is what happens also with this whole thing of like, people said they were saving more, but they were in more debt.

I see that show up on financial audit a lot too, where people are like, well, don't worry, I'm saving like this much saved up. And then Caleb will be like, yeah, but you have 16, 000 in credit card debt at 21 percent interest. What are you doing? Like people don't realize or they don't see debt the same.

[00:30:00] So I bet people were racking up credit card spending and they were technically saving, like putting cash into a savings account. But then being more spendy with their credit card, because again, they had this false sense of security. So I think a lot of this comes down to financial literacy. I was watching and I don't, I

Malcolm Collins: don't, Simone, you can save financial literacy all you want, but functionally giving these people more money made them more financially insecure.

They had in the end. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: In total. So, I mean, I think that you can say it's a problem of financial literacy, but I think that the, the function of this is that it turns out, you know, when people are complaining about capitalism, they're like, well, capitalism is forced labor because you're sort of like scared into working.

They're like, yeah, you may not have a gun to your head, but, you know, You know, you have to deal with the fear of what happens to you. If the money stops coming in, it turns out that that's a key here. Part of making capitalism work. Then I think even the pro capitalist people realized, I think a lot of capitalists thought like, well, wouldn't it be nice if we [00:31:00] had something that was like capitalism, but without the gun to the head.

And it turns out when you remove the gun from the head, people end up just. Living more hedonistically and I need to point out here. They didn't even increase the time they spent with their kids. Like to me, like, that's the, like the cruel twist of the blade of how fundamentally selfish the average human is, but it also, I think, shows something that we talk about was having kids and everything like that, which is people are like, I can't afford to have kids.

I can't afford to spend time with my kids. And it turns out that no, you are choosing. How much time you're allocating to your kids and we have proof now that even if you had more money, you wouldn't spend more time with your kids and that the average person who's saying that is just diluting themselves.

They're going to go out to restaurants more. They're going to do little indulgent things and that's it. But I mean, I, I like, and I think that when you talk about this from a financial literacy perspective, [00:32:00] undersell. What this is saying one, one thing about human nature, which is that the way that you live life today, when people are like, if I had more money or if I had inherited money or blah, blah, blah, like I would be living a different life, like that's functionally untrue.

Like we know that from the data. Now, if you had more money, you wouldn't be living a better life. You would actually maybe be living a materially worse life. So. That's true. Second is UBI, if done at the societal level, is gonna, think of the effect this would have on, like, we're not even talking about the UBI, like, even if the UBI was free, it would have a negative effect on On GDP.

That's insane that if we could like force some other country to pay for UBI, it would have a negative effect on GDP, but it gets worse than that. What if you're talking about something like reparations and now means if reparations were to be paid as a form of UBI to the black community, it would permanently [00:33:00] monetarily sabotage the community.

Make them permanently more poor. It also means I mean, just the little things, the little things really got to me that these people went into more debt and everything like that. And I think it just removes like this for me, remove so many, I think I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt.

And when I say people, I don't mean individuals. I mean, I rarely give individuals the benefit of the doubt, but I mean, humans overall, like maybe humans aren't that selfish and dumb and narcissistic and the bed. If you just gave them, I was on a call recently because occasionally, we get called in to do meetings with like. Well known investors and the investor I happen to be meeting was on this one. I was on a call with a female investor who you all probably know, but I don't know if I'm allowed to say, but anyway, one of the guys on the call, because I was talking about the impacts of fertility collapse.

And we were talking about where [00:34:00] AI might end up impacting this. And I was like, well, I mean, functionally AI is going to make a certain portion of the global population obsolete. And his argument was, no, it won't make a certain portion of the global population obsolete. It'll make you know, you'll be able to give it to people in like these poor countries in Africa and make them as efficient as somebody in the developed world.

And I was like it's just not, I, I, and what I said, and I didn't mean to come off as derogatory about this. As I said, I think that you are surrounded by too many intelligent people. And I was like, I run a company that focuses on outsourcing travel management in Latin America. So I work with a lot of this type of person.

Well, no, we,

Simone Collins: we have, we have. Worked with talent in everywhere from Africa to Europe, to Asia, to Latin America that's central and South America and, and the United States. And I think the bigger problem, this isn't like people in other areas. The bigger [00:35:00] problem is that people who tend to be extremely educated and Working in very privileged, isolated communities, especially in investment that includes search funds, private equity, also tech funded like our sorry VC funded venture backed startups tend to get this myopic view that everybody is like them, which is to say that everyone is equally resourced, equally educated with as many countless years and hours.

Of education behind them, and therefore they have the same amount of potential if suddenly given the exact same resources, which is just not the case. Some of these people have just grown up so malnourished that even when given an additional 10 years of education, it's still going to take them a while to catch up.

Malcolm Collins: But it's not just that as a problem. Like, I'm even thinking about where I'm using AI. Everywhere that I use AI in my life is either something I would have hired someone else to do, or something I was hiring somebody else to do. It is never a case in which it significantly empowers somebody [00:36:00] else. We have a, on the margin here with our company where it improves people's English skills if they don't speak English, cause they can run it through and say, does this make grammatical sense in English, but those are employees just doing a slightly better job than they were doing before.

It's not like additional employees or additional work. Where. In fact, I would say that I probably in, in this last year probably saved 10, 000 I would have spent on outsourced talent just in my personal life.

Simone Collins: And that's, that's also universal. And the people being outsourced are not, I would say actually at this point, Maybe some low skilled workers are being displaced by AI, but more it's people who would be earning over 100, 000 who wouldn't, it would be exempt from this UBI experiment because the people who first and foremost, I'm seeing struggling to get jobs now are.

Like we'll say higher touch customer service representatives. [00:37:00] They're engineers, coders specifically, and they are analysts. And these are all very highly educated people. I can't remember which guy it was on the online podcast. But he was talking about how he made everyone at his firm set their new default tab to me, I think it was one of the latest versions of chat GPT.

Just to get them so accustomed to using it in place of a traditional search engine, but also utilizing it to do what an analyst would otherwise do. And that's what they're doing. They're basically realizing they no longer need analysts. Because all you have to do now is basically say, you know, tell me what this industry outlook is.

Look at these things and compile these reports. You know, give me the odds of this or that happening. And it's really, really good at doing that. So I would say this is, it's even, it's, it's a more dire picture right now for privileged people than it is for unprivileged people.

Malcolm Collins: I disagree with that. I think certain types of privilege, these people, and this is the thing that's the [00:38:00] difference, right?

And I think that this is what I told him that like, he fundamentally didn't. understand if I give somebody from one of these backgrounds, a simple task, like do this, then this, then this the odds that they will be able to complete that task is actually fairly low. They will complete it sometimes, not other times.

Sometimes they'll try to steal from you midway. Sometimes they'll decide that there's some other way it can be done that actually makes no sense. Given the context. Just like the level and routineness of extreme screw ups that you're not going to get from an AI is Insane. There is no reason for me to work with that.

I want to say, let's just talk about this podcast, right? In terms of like people losing their jobs and why we're not going to other people. I was looking to hire somebody to do our title cards. This was a job that I like interviewed people for now. I just do it with AI. Like that's the core thing.

Me plus AI, because me plus AI. When [00:39:00] you enhance the working abilities of like the smartest or most talented or most ambitious or most self starter people in society, they can do the jobs of tons and tons of other people. It turns out that like, if you lack this self starterness or like, it expands the potentiality of the most productive members of society.

Way more than it expands the potentiality of the average member of society or consider this podcast. Like as this podcast has grown, we're probably at the point now where most podcasts would be hiring like analysts or have fans do that. But if you look at this episode, how did I get the information for this episode perplexity?

You know, I go through, I'm like, Oh, what are all the arguments here? What are all the ways his study went wrong? What are all the, you know, and that's something I would have hired someone to do on Upwork before it wouldn't have been a high paying job, but somebody would have had that job. And I think that.

This misunderstanding of just how low functioning the average human is leads to really smart people who surround themselves with really smart people to make [00:40:00] really bad bets about what's going to happen in the future. But those bets are often very self serving.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I also, I think that some of this illustrates illustrates the importance of I will versus IQ.

That it really isn't about being smart or having the capability of something. And that's what people are also underestimating when looking. There's, there are people who are tracking, like, how does AI perform on intelligence scores now? Like, how intelligent is AI? And I will, like, AI does not have to be very intelligent at all to be more useful than even an intelligent person, because even intelligent people often don't want to follow instructions, don't care about following instructions, forget about instructions, you know, they, you can have the processing power, but the ability to follow through.

With humans is rare and wanting. And that's, that's why I think the people who ultimately win in the post AI world are not necessarily the most smart people. They're the most [00:41:00] ambitious, tenacious, voracious.

Malcolm Collins: People, that's why we built the Collins Institute the way we did, which is our school system for anyone who's watching this and doesn't know this, it's free for your kids.

But yeah, I mean, we need to foster those skills cause that's what matters in the AI era.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Speaker 16: My wife and I built the Collins Institute, a comprehensive interactive map, or skill tree, comprising all of human knowledge. The platform is designed to be usable as soon as a student gets comfortable with reading, and goes about midway through a PhD in most subjects.

However, we built it to cover all human knowledge, meaning it covers a much larger domain than is taught in the traditional school system. Ranging from tort law, to hanging drywall, to the industrial transportation of grain, or aquaculture pharmacology.

 Click on a node to open it. The node will include a description of what knowledge is needed to pass its test, as well as a list of the best places to learn that information.

Vote on the sources that were most useful to you by clicking this button. To add an additional source, click this [00:42:00] button.

Malcolm Collins: Did you have any other takeaways? I guess one of my takeaways from this is I was really disappointed. Even, even I, who is regularly disappointed in the media, this was like a new level. This was like, Oh,

Simone Collins: well, this isn't just disappointing.

It feels. Creepily manipulative, especially in favor of Marxism. Because it's, it's not just like, oh, you guys didn't try. And, and I think we're very accustomed to lazy journalism. What we're not accustomed to is, and honestly, I think that there's a reality in which nobody actually tried to post misleading information about this.

And I say, this is someone, one of my flaws is that. I'm very trusting of other people and I can be trusting to the point of gullibility where if someone's kind and they're like, this is me, this is my background. I'm like, okay, great. And I take everything at face value. [00:43:00] And I also see then after that point, anything that they present to me is like confirmation of them being a great person.

And I think maybe what's happening here is, is a lot of these people are just so. Steeped in socialistic ideals that they just can't see anything that runs contrary to that reality. That they're so accustomed to realities in which universal basic income is the obvious correct answer and everyone knows it works well.

And this study is just going to show people in more granular detail how and why it works well that they literally can't see like muggles not seeing magic. They don't see the fact that people had lower net worth after being in the treatment group for this period. I really think that's more likely than them actively trying to mislead.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, look, like I want to consider this line. This is the line that gets me this sarcastic. Thanks for [00:44:00] reminding us of what we already know. Sam UBI makes overworked poor people less miserable. Like I hear you. But then are these people just like autonomous drones that need to be taken out? Like, are they, are they like contributory members of society or are they lesser than an AI?

And I think that that's something that I'm realizing. Well,

Simone Collins: Malcolm, these people are very unlikely to be those who are having kids. So I, I, I wouldn't worry about them too much in the long term and the short term we're getting to an age in which people who have strong biases like these are mostly preaching to the choir.

So they're not doing any damage because no one's listening to them. Like, in another conversation we had recently, you pulled up the top performing podcasts and none of them were really. espousing progressive ideals so much. If anything, if [00:45:00] they were led by progressives, it was heterodox progressives and not towing the line progressives.

So it's clear that there's some people who just consume mainstream media and that's our source of truth. And there's the people who, Consume the, you know, this collection of podcasts and, or, you know, this collection of sub stackers with these people on Twitter or this little corner of the internet. And that's their reality.

So I don't, I'm not too worried about them. I don't think they need to be, you know, questioned or fired or

Malcolm Collins: institutions in one of the two political parties in this country and they can pass legislation that ends up hurting millions of people.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I do worry about, I mean, given this information and the point you make both about UBI and reparations and how much damage they can do to people who really shouldn't be subject to more damage, like who don't deserve this.

I, I do. I

Malcolm Collins: do worry about that. I want to talk about a bigger problem here. Okay. And this comes from, so we have a lot of friends in the Latin American [00:46:00] community, cause that's the majority of the people we hire. And it's also, you know, like our kids, God's parents, like we're just really tight with Latin America, especially Latin American first generation immigrants in the United States.

And so we were able to see some of the changes that happened in this community throughout things like COVID. One of the things I've mentioned is that they've moved significantly to the right of where they were historically. But the other thing that I noticed that happened Is the cultural norms changed within the community where before COVID and the basically free money program that happened during COVID where everyone was getting their COVID stimulus checks.

Before that, a sign of status, like what you aspired for, if you were like a young person within the community was to be able to show off by spending sort of excess superfluous wealth, you know, bling, that sort of stuff. Fancy cars. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And during COVID, cultural norms began to shift in the community where actually the highest form of status or [00:47:00] show off was to not be beholden to other people for income.

Specifically that you could You think so? Either, yeah this is something that I saw

Simone Collins: more Interfamily dependency among at least some of our closer friends

Malcolm Collins: might have had more interfamily dependency, but the point being is not having a job, for example, became higher status, not having a, oh,

Simone Collins: oh, yes, yes, yes.

Yeah. And some of our friends have talked about this too, who are more deep in the community than we are.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. They were like, yeah, not having a job became higher status, not having to like work as a slave for the system. Like also I understand the framing. I hear that. And I'm like, yeah, I can understand how that could sound cool.

Like I don't have to, I don't like owe my existence to anyone else. I have found a way to make living off the government stimulus checks work for me. Is basically what they're saying. And I have found a way. And I think that this is why you also see an increase in disabilities on the people getting UBI.

Like once you realize this might be an option, you're like, Oh, where else can I get free money? And so a lot of them found other ways to get government program stimulus and stuff like [00:48:00] that that increased the amount of money they're like, like the, what they needed to do to get by on this. And they also began to focus on other ways to get by on this, whether it was, you know, getting additional child support, whether it was, you know, whatever the, the avenue may be, it became high status to not have a job.

I E basically I'm not being tricked by the system or I'm tricking the system slash other people. And. If this happens writ large society, like if we culturally permanently make a shift to this mindset civilization collapses, like we need productive people. Okay. And we may reach a point of AI bifurcation where a portion of society just becomes irrelevant to the global economy.

And at which point it's like, okay, this is good actually, because the people who are like, well, I might be able to live on a. So I'm going to stop aspiring for anything more like, okay, that's positive. But like, we need about 15 years to get to that [00:49:00] point. So I guess in a way it's positive, right? Like you don't want the people who definitely can't compete with the AI enabled smart people to be trying because that's just going to be demotivating and depressing.

Right. But what are your thoughts?

Simone Collins: I want to see, I want to see more experimentation there. I like you really wish and want UBI to work. And

Malcolm Collins: well, here's the way it might work.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: What they could do is lump some UBI.

Simone Collins: No, because look at how lottery winners fare. I know, here's

Malcolm Collins: the thing. Look at how lottery winners fare. And

Simone Collins: again, back to financial audit with Caleb Hammer.

I haven't heard of a single instance in which that at least I can remember. I'm sure someone can find one, but typically when people receive lump sums. It's they just blow through it. It doesn't lead to any anything good. Now, of course, the people who go on the show are hot messes and the people who receive lump sums and do well with them or we have statistics

Malcolm Collins: on this from lottery winners and we know it doesn't help.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, [00:50:00] part of me thinks a problem with this research is they were looking at lower income families, relatively speaking who may just not average income families. Right. But I just, I feel like you think if you

Malcolm Collins: get rich people, UBI, what you want is UBI for rich people. Well, no, I just

Simone Collins: feel like the correlation between financial literacy and lower income levels is pretty high and that what happens now, because we don't learn this in public school anymore.

And keep in mind in all of my, like, 1940s to 1960s propaganda videos that I love watching. Talking about budgeting and I'll share with you one of my videos and maybe you can put it in a clip.

Speaker 18: Another thing you both should know in order to use credit wisely. And that is how to figure the maximum amount of credit or other obligations you can safely afford. Sounds like another good job for the learning machine.

Speaker 19: When Mr. and Mrs. Homemaker figure the maximum amount of credit. or other obligations they can safely afford each month, they first deduct from gross [00:51:00] income their income taxes, Social Security, and any other deductions they make to arrive at their take home pay, or disposable income. Under disposable income expenditures, they deduct essential living costs.

Their discretionary income is left. Out of discretionary income they provide for savings, insurance, recreation, and contributions to their church. After deducting any payments they are making on any installment purchases or cash loans, let's assume they have 30 of their monthly discretionary income left.

Simone Collins: It's so common to talk about budget. I was just watching one today and the wife in this hypothetical family of this union factory worker who's proud of his job was going through the newspaper with all the other women in her neighborhood to find what the prices were so they could all decide where to go shopping on Saturday morning.

That they were comparison shopping across local grocery [00:52:00] stores just for their, for their daily shopping. Cause they had four kids and they take care of their six person family.

Speaker 17: There are five big neighborhood markets within a couple of blocks of our house, and Julia spreads her shopping around, going where the prices are lowest and the quality best. With six mouths to feed, food is a big item in our budget, and we have to make sure we get the most for our money. Also on Saturday mornings, I usually take an hour or so to go over the accounts and bills, figuring out ways to double stretch that check of mine to pay him.

Simone Collins: And there was a whole video on budgeting. We don't teach that in schools. We don't teach that in school. Well, it'd

Malcolm Collins: be sinful to tell somebody that they, they shouldn't have something, you know, I feel like a lot of them.

Right.

Simone Collins: Because that's, that's, that's what, that feels to me like one of those white culture senses. Sensitivity training slides, which like white culture budgeting, like that's white when

Malcolm Collins: they're like, Oh, this is a white thing. Yeah, this is, yeah, no, no, we're not saying this is a white thing. We're saying that like racist, like DEI people call it a way to [00:53:00] define.

And I'll just like the famous Smithsonian piece where they were like hard work as a white person. Yeah, work ethic and like being on time being on time financial literacy. It's like, well, well, but that's my

Simone Collins: point though. My larger point is that we don't teach this and we don't universally. Try to impart financial literacy to people.

And therefore the time when most people begin to become financially literate is when they start making a lot more money and no longer living paycheck to paycheck.

Malcolm Collins: I maybe, I mean, I'm going to say that to me, this feels very much like. If I go to a progressive and I'm like, why are you giving out fentanyl to people on the streets?

And they go, well, fentanyl makes people feel good. And I'm like, yeah, but you know, it causes long term damage, right? Like all of the studies say, giving someone fentanyl causes long term damage.

Speaker 12: Side effects include, it's heroin. So, all that stuff.

Malcolm Collins: It's the same thing with any sort of cash handout, whether it's a lump sum, whether [00:54:00] it's UBI, giving people unearned money.

is the same thing as giving them fentanyl. It causes them to regress, it causes damage to their lives, it causes damage to their prospects, it causes damage to their pride. You are hurting their soul by doing that. And they can say, but it makes them feel better. their life easier. And it's like, no, it doesn't.

It makes their life easier right now. The moment you hand them that cash, their life is easier, but long term you may as well have given them a fentanyl.

Simone Collins: Well, so another thing I was thinking is I, it may be that UBI is kind of an all or nothing thing. That either you can, you're totally taken care of and you have no financial worries.

And then maybe you'll do some good in society, or maybe you won't. And I'm wondering if maybe there could be experimental UBI villages. I was also thinking about this for like immigrants where it's a walled off [00:55:00] community. Housing is provided, jobs are provided. And if you go, you have to take one of the jobs and you have to do it.

So you can like enter the socialist communist world.

Malcolm Collins: Well, that's what you can only exist

Simone Collins: within that. And it does things that the government needs, like that you'll build solar panels or you'll build whatever it is, you know, like roads, you know, it'll be like the new public. So

Malcolm Collins: the Bruderhof or Christian communist community I've, I've brought them up on other shows that haven't aired yet.

We'll see, it's going to be a long edit show. That one, the

Simone Collins: one I'm really looking forward to where we're

Malcolm Collins: doing all of the different religious way or to see which is the the best in a tier system. But anyway, yeah, the Bruderhof do this. And you what you see was any community that does this, is they're typically not able to produce particularly high technology related stuff.

And you might be like, well, that's fine. But the problem is, is that low tech stuff is going to be increasingly produced in automated factories with AI. And so at this point, you're just sort of from like a self masturbation standpoint, forcing them to work on something an AI could do at a tenth their cost.

It

Simone Collins: could sort of become [00:56:00] wildlife preserves for. After humans become moderately obsolete,

Malcolm Collins: are you saying AI is going to force us to work? And like, no, this kind of work

Simone Collins: with me here. They exist in brave new worlds. Okay. They exist in brave new world. Like the, the people who did not want to opt in to this human engineered dystopia and who wanted to be ugly and who wanted to be gross and old fashioned lived in their little communities.

And. You know, this, this could be one of those things where, at this point, the services they provide are services to each other, medical care, child care, elder care, care cutting fixing supplies, and then, you know, there's a certain amount of provisions that are provided to the community, and the rest is just kind of expected that you will build your own internal economy.

And, you know, it will be policed and certain laws will be enforced to make sure that everyone, you know, is comfortable and okay. But, but, you know, I mean, if humans are considered redundant in this crazy AI society, maybe that's,

Malcolm Collins: But the problem is [00:57:00] it's not all humans. And I think this is, I do not believe that we will reach a state within the next, I'd say 30 years or so.

Where AI independent actors are replacing, well, they might be most independent of humans.

Simone Collins: Well, I'm saying it's an opt in thing. If you create government built communities where, you know, if you go there. You will have a comfortable place to live. You can get a job. You'll never have to worry about your food.

It's clean. It's safe. It's secure. There's I mean, this sounds so dystopian, but also I think a lot of people would, you know, Find it appealing. You know, you can get entertainment. Everything

Malcolm Collins: brings me to a question, like a Facebook campus or a

Simone Collins: Google campus, you know, just like that.

Malcolm Collins: What do you do of the human being?

Suppose this happens within our lifetime of AI really does keep advancing to a rate where it's replaced as economic actors, even the most competent human beings, and it's non malicious. It's [00:58:00] just a better artist than any human, a more creative artist than any human, a better poet, a better writer, a better company founder, better scientist.

Even if you think that there's some intrinsic good in humanity, do you reach a point where you're like, yeah, but is there really? Like if it's just better at everything, like it's literally only keeping us around as a kindness.

Simone Collins: I view it more like I see the culture in Ian Banks novels, where once AI reaches that point it keeps humans along kind of for entertainment and because we're nice to humans and whatever, and they deserve to live too.

But it allows humans to then experiment with becoming more than human. And already, AI is an outcrop of humanity. AI is our descendant. And AI is arguably more human than humans are, given what I consider to be defined as human, which is the only thing differentiating us from other Mammals and other animals is [00:59:00] that we have this prefrontal cortex where we're like processing and thinking and questioning.

Just our basal instincts. And is that on steroids depending on how you look at it? It's it's just pure intelligence. It's just pure questioning. If you set it up that way and, that doesn't change the fact that we aren't capable of also becoming more human or doing interesting things by augmenting ourselves by integrating with AI by getting a neural lace and being part AI part human.

And, and That's cool. So yeah, I think it's worth it to keep AI around and

Malcolm Collins: to befriend AI and Well, I actually think that this brings up an important point that we've mentioned before. Like, if AI keeps developing at this rate, a lot of people think that our, like, transhumanist philosophy is, like, threatening to humanity or something.

And I'm like, It's the only path forward for our species, if AI keeps developing at the rate it's developing. And you can say, well then stop AI for developing at this rate, and it's like you can't, because you would need every country in the world to agree with you, and that's just not going to happen.

Simone Collins: There's going

Malcolm Collins: to be some country that thinks they can get a [01:00:00] marginal edge on you.

Simone Collins: Yeah. And

Malcolm Collins: for that reason and they're like, well, we could threaten war. Okay. You really think we're going to get the U S government to go to war over it with someone like China over AI development? Like, no, it's not going to happen.

No, this is

Simone Collins: a non proliferation issue. You, you, this is an arms race and your country had better win because the winner will be able to take all. And that is. Why it's such an important policy

Malcolm Collins: issue and no one's just no one's talking about it, which is just we have we have friends working on That in washington, but anyway, yeah Yeah, thanks

Simone Collins: friends, please fix this i'm very scared

Malcolm Collins: All right, have a good one

Simone Collins: What am I making you for dinner tonight? Do you want pumpkin ravioli with pesto? Do you want pizza? Do you want dumplings? And fried rice with vegetables. I'll take dumplings and fried rice tonight. Okay, so I'm going to make fried rice with the stir fry [01:01:00] vegetables. You can choose whatever sauce add on you want.

And

Malcolm Collins: Just while you're frying it, put in a little oyster sauce. It's the tall sauce. The tall sauce with the

Simone Collins: yellow band?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: That's it? Oyster sauce and soy sauce?

Malcolm Collins: Oyster sauce and soy sauce, yeah.

Simone Collins: Because you used to give me a little

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I'd put in a little bit of Asian vinegar, I'd put in a little bit of MSG.

Okay, okay, okay, so just the, the

Simone Collins: standard things I've been putting in.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but the, the the, this stuff actually works really well. If you wanted to put in anything else, I'd put in a little bit of that red fermented chili paste from Korea. That's the only other thing I like in mine.

Simone Collins: Oh, in the red bin.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but what I would say is the oyster sauce is the most important thing, it needs to be put in before the fried rice is cooked.

Simone Collins: And then, of course, rich person onions. Shallots.

Malcolm Collins: I have shallots.

Simone Collins: Oh, no, you don't. But we do have the ones we got at the Indian store. We've got the frozen veggies. No, no, not the frozen veggies.

I'm talking about the [01:02:00] green onions.

Malcolm Collins: Yes, green onions. And we've got a jalapeno in the fridge that needs to be chopped up and used. You want

Simone Collins: me to put that in too?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Simone Collins: Okay, I'm thinking about when I put that in. I'll put it in with the other vegetables.

Malcolm Collins: Put it in whenever. I don't care. I love you.

Simone Collins: I love you too. You're special and pretty. Oh since we have a little more access time, and I'm still trying to feed Indy, who, that's what she needed, was just food. Put your sword up at an angle and let's see if we can get that to work.

Malcolm Collins: Let's give this a shot. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Oh, that's how we do it? Hello. I, I need to like reach out and grab that fine ass. Well, let's see how does that

Malcolm Collins: look? Prosterior

Simone Collins: situation. We've got a prosterior. Yeah, that looks good. Come on. I mean, we could, we could position it better. But

Malcolm Collins: I want to have more bobble. I want a full like [01:03:00] set up here. No, we will.

And I, I

Simone Collins: haven't, you know, we had a lot of stuff come up this week, but

Malcolm Collins: you know what? I really think I'm going to research on your set as saber to go on that like long flat part above the fireplace.

Simone Collins: Oh, I like my candles and my whiskey. No, no, no. But you said whiskey is for what? For 25, 000 followers. Yeah.

Is that when I open it?

Malcolm Collins: We'll be there in like two days.

Simone Collins: Well,

Malcolm Collins: we'll see. Maybe not two days, but certainly by the end of next week. Good. Then I get to have a drink. You do need to have a drink, Simone. You've been really working hard recently. And I appreciate everything you do for the family because it's more As much as I deserve, you give me more than I

Simone Collins: deserve.

I love you, Malcolm Collins.

Malcolm Collins: I love you, Simone. Mostly because you earn it, not because of like anything intrinsic about you.

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, that would be gross. That honestly would be gross. I [01:04:00] don't, but I think actually, have you read recently? I think it's Reagan who we met at Manifest.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah,

Simone Collins: yeah, yeah.

It's some, some Substack posts recently about transactional relationships. I haven't read them yet, but I think it's very encouraging to hear more people talk about like, there is no such thing as like, a relationship based on love. Or there shouldn't be. I come on. There should be.

Malcolm Collins: Yes. And I am only in this relationship because Simone's delusional.

I'm not delusional, give so much more than I do.

Simone Collins: I'm very, I'm very delusional. I'm full of illusions, I'm

Malcolm Collins: full of

Simone Collins: illusions. I have all the delusions.

Malcolm Collins: If I'm able to build this podcast into our job, I've done something.

Simone Collins: Yeah, man,

Malcolm Collins: I've done something

Simone Collins: I'm there for that. I would love that. That'd be really, that'd be really cool.

Next thing to do in life.

Malcolm Collins: It seems realistic at our current growth rate.

Simone Collins: Well, I mean,

Malcolm Collins: for a few years,

Simone Collins: we'd have to get sponsorships or [01:05:00] something. I don't even know how that works. Who would sponsor this? Coors Light, that, that'll be the big one. Coors

Malcolm Collins: Light. You know what? They wouldn't even need to pay us.

If they gave us free Coors Light, I would,

Simone Collins: it would reduce so much of our monthly spend. No. No. Honestly though, haven't some people won like free Coors Light for life? They would probably. No, they

Malcolm Collins: would, they would undersell that for me. They'd be like, that is not. I'm like, Oh, I used to drink a lot, but now I barely drink at all.

And my liver is healthy. I get regularly checked. And they'd be like, Oh, that's great. Okay. Here's a healthy amount of Coors Light. And I'd like throw it at them and be like, is that a beer for ants? I mean, at least. 15 per day. That is my low number. What's the,

Simone Collins: who was that? Was it a Persian king or something who like had to have one drink a day?

You're

Malcolm Collins: thinking of Genghis Khan. So no, or Kublai Khan.

Simone Collins: Kublai Khan.

Malcolm Collins: Kublai Khan. He his generals didn't like, he was drinking too much. And so they said you could only have [01:06:00] one glass of wine per day. And so he had crafted a giant goblet that was like the size of a person. And he would fill it every day just to mess with them.

Simone Collins: Churchill move. I love that one goblet per person that that's, that's vitality right there. That is it is these people who will survive the AI gauntlet, who will survive the AI gauntlet. We'll step through.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, you need, I, I, I thank God for naltrexone in terms of, of at least tightening some of my opioid pathways.

But like getting through the AI gauntlet is going to be increasingly hard. And our children, they're the ones who are really going to have to pass the gauntlet. And I just have so much pity for these parents who think that going back to these traditional lifestyles are going to work for this next generation.

Anyone who tried that is going to be just,

Simone Collins: if they can fully air gap for life, [01:07:00]

Malcolm Collins: then

Simone Collins: that's a big,

Malcolm Collins: be fully air gap for life. No one is fully air gap for life anymore. They're just not giving their kids any immunity before seeing them in a smallpox land. They are going to be so smashed. Oh my gosh, it'll be like Hulk smashing Loki.

Like that's what we're talking about here for the people who are like, Oh, I'll just, I'll just go tradition. I'll just go tradition. And that will compete against the temptations the AI will create for my kids. The perfect girlfriends better in every way than a human girlfriend, the perfect jobs, the perfect life, the perfect music, the perfect movies based on their experiences that day.

We'll be created for them that night. You have people like, well, AI, is it there now? I'm like, yeah. Cause we invented it like five years ago, bro. We're like on iPhone two of AI right now. Do you understand what we're going to have to deal with? [01:08:00] Yeah. Yeah. This is the thing. Like, I am terrified of AI, but so different in the way the AI apocalypses are.

I'm terrified in the, the AI that's doing its job. Yeah. Yeah, being tempting, trying to attract our attention. There was an AI program recently that I actually need to check out. We might do an episode on that apparently can create really, really good podcasts that people listening to can't tell that they're not real podcasts.

Simone Collins: Like a both a like text prompt generator, but then they also do the voice and then you just listen to it and you could say make a podcast about why cat girls deserve to run the United States and then it would be like, and you could set the time people

Malcolm Collins: and they like interjected everything.

Simone Collins: Oh, and you can listen to a 30 minute podcast of relatable people prattling on about why cat girls should run the United States.

Yes,

Malcolm Collins: you could.

Speaker 21: You know, it's kind of funny when you think about it, this idea that AI is going to take all our jobs and we'll have all this free time. But if this UBI [01:09:00] study is any indication Having more free time doesn't necessarily lead to all those positive changes people talk about.

Speaker 20: You're really hitting on something important there, and it's something we need to think about seriously as AI gets more and more advanced.

This whole thing about work and leisure, it brings up these big questions about, If we're really prepared for a world where maybe traditional work isn't the main thing anymore.

Speaker 21: I see what you mean. It's like we could be on the verge of this huge societal shift and knowing how people really react to having all this free time is like essential if we're going to make it work.

Speaker 20: But so many articles and news stories about this study just ran with that narrative. It's like they're choosing the data that fits their story instead of looking at the whole picture. It's like they have an agenda, you know, and unfortunately, it feels like objective reporting is becoming more and more rare.

It's a scary trend, and it makes it hard to know what to believe. That's why it's so important to be critical thinkers, to question what we read, to look for different perspectives. You said it. Okay, so we've talked about how [01:10:00] this UBI study was portrayed in the media, but I'm curious to get back to something you mentioned earlier, AI and what it means for the future of work.

Speaker 21: You know, this study showed that even with more money and free time, a lot of people weren't suddenly becoming entrepreneurs or anything. So what happens when AI starts automating even more jobs? Are we headed for a future where tons of people have even more free time but don't know what to do with it?

Speaker 20: Man, that is the million dollar question, isn't it? Honestly, I don't think anyone has a crystal ball to predict how this is all going to play out. But what we can do is look at what's happening right now, analyze the data, and talk about these big questions. That's how we figure out where we're headed.

Speaker 21: Totally. Like, ignoring the problem and hoping for the best isn't a real solution. We gotta be proactive if we want a future that works for everyone, not just the tech people or whoever else is at the top.

Speaker 20: I'm with you on that. It's

Speaker 21: exciting to think about how tech could free us from boring tasks and give us more time to do what we love.

But then on the other hand, this UBI study makes me wonder, [01:11:00] are we ready for that? Like what happens to our sense of purpose? You know?

Speaker 20: That is such a deep question. And it really gets at what it means to be human in this world where technology is becoming so advanced. If AI can do all the jobs, then what?

What are we here for? What gives our lives meaning?

Speaker 21: Man, those are some big questions, and I definitely don't have all the answers. But the point is, we need to start asking them now. We can't just wait until it's too late and then wonder what happened.

Speaker 20: Exactly.

Malcolm Collins: And that scares me because even our little niche that you would think isn't automatable might be soon.

Simone Collins: Yeah, unless people, you know, maybe we can rely on people being carbon fascists to a certain extent and wanting to know that the, no, no, people don't like people that much. That's why friendship is plummeted.

People don't actually want real friends.

Malcolm Collins: They don't

Simone Collins: really need real friends. And we need to

Malcolm Collins: have cultural priorities around it.

Simone Collins: We, yeah, we can, we'll have to try. We'll have to try. I don't know if it will work, but we'll try. How about [01:12:00] that?

Malcolm Collins: We have to try. We have to try. Anyway. Love you. Did I Simone?

Yeah. Would you go

Simone Collins: down and get Octavian? I mean, she's nearly finished drinking and then I'm coming down to start dinner and then you can take a break. Sound good.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: Will you pick up the kids? Thank you. It's, it is, it is time. It is time.

Are you guys ready to go?

You guys ready to go?