The Essence of Virtue in Stoicism

Join us as we dive deep into the ancient Greco-Roman philosophy of Stoicism. We explore its origins with key figures like Zeno of Citium, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Learn how Stoicism's principles—focusing on inner virtue, emotional resilience, and harmony with the natural order—remain relevant in the modern world. We discuss how Stoicism differentiates from and complements our own philosophies, such as Pragmatism and Technopuritanism. Get insights on practical applications of Stoic principles and their metaphysical underpinnings, challenging irrational beliefs, and tackling real-life decisions with wisdom, courage, justice, and self-control.

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Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. Today, we are going to be talking about stoicism. We are going to be doing an overview of the philosophy of stoicism, investigating how it relates to the modern world, and where it differentiates from our own philosophy and belief system which I see as, as we go into stoicism, you're going to see that they are highly related to each other.

And if Anything you could see our larger philosophy as just building on the Stoic philosophy. Really? Wow. To why we are doing this YouTube told us to. We've been trying to figure out how to grow the channel and YouTube was like, your audience would like to hear about Stoicism. And so I'm like, well, dang, let's go into it.

Stoicism is an ancient Greco Roman philosophy that originated in the 3rd century BCE with Zeno of Citium and and was further developed by thinkers such as Cleonisis, Chrysosophus, Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. [00:01:00] I can't pronounce the word. Seneca, Epictetus. Common thing on the show. Okay.

Simone Collins: Marcus Aurelius.

Okay.

Malcolm Collins: At its core, Stoicism is not just a theoretical system of thought, it is very much a practical philosophy aimed at cultivating inner virtue, emotional resilience, and harmony with the broader natural order. Stoics understood philosophy as a way of life, something to be enacted in one's day to day conduct.

Okay. Rather than treated as an abstract intellectual pastime, which is something I really appreciate about the stoic philosophy as we get into it, is that it's very much designed around sort of guiding actions instead of something to just talk about idly like this is good or this is good and I think in a way that can make it better for daily life than other philosophies because the stoic philosophy is going to help you make a day to day decisions much more than the more abstract philosophical frameworks you might interact with.

[00:02:00] But unlike let's say a modern You know, there's like modern self help is sort of, ideologies that are sort of meant to help you live a healthier life. Stoicism covers a lot more than that. So it has its own sort of metaphysical framework. So, Stoics believes that the universe is an orderly, rational whole.

Often referred to as the logos, human beings as rational creatures share in this order and have the capacity to live in alignment with it. The stoic ideal is to understand nature's laws, accepting what is beyond our control and live according to reason and virtue. So Huge part of stoicism is accept the things you cannot change.

And they think that a lot of the negatives in an individual's life comes from not accepting the things you cannot change. However, this is part of their metaphysical understanding of reality rather than just like life advice. So to drill on that a bit further, They held that the universe is governed by the Logos, the rational principle, [00:03:00] and human beings as rational agents have the capacity to align themselves with it.

To do this, one must use reason to see belong personal biases, fears, or desires. Stoics believed in a concept called Okiosis, the idea that individuals have natural tithes and obligations extending outwards, first to themselves, then to their family, then to others. community and ultimately to the wider human polis is so it could reflect on these concentric circles of obligation So does that make sense to you simone and like what are your thoughts on on this more broadly this idea of tying?

A moral mandate to To action and to act on reason to virtue to a metaphysical understanding, which is that logos sort of reason to virtue is the principle that governs our reality and that you are acting in alignment with the the, the sort of the, it's not a God exactly. It's almost sort of like a [00:04:00] clockwork God of virtue that you are aligning yourself with the clockwork God of virtue when you act in a virtuous way.

Simone Collins: It sounds extremely like our worldview, which is more driven by like our understanding of quantum physics and just rational behavior and pragmatism, but I mean, that's if it ain't broke, don't fix it. This sounds great.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you can go to our track series to learn more about our worldview or our Nietzsche video, which I think does a pretty good job of laying out our modern worldview.

. So here I've talked a lot about this concept of virtue, and you might be thinking, well, what does that mean in a stoic mindset, right? Central to stoicism is the notion that virtue encompassing wisdom, courage, justice, and self control is the only true good.

External things such as wealth, reputation, health, and even life itself are considered quote unquote indifference, meaning that they are neither inherently good nor bad. What matters most is how one uses these externals [00:05:00] and whether one's actions reflect moral excellence. So if you ask them further to define, I'm like, okay, yeah, but then define virtue as an action, right?

This gets me. It's like, okay, well, if virtue is just things that embody wisdom, courage, justice and self control, anyone could subjectively define anything is virtuous, right? Like, that's a really weak system for virtue. And they would say, In the Stoic worldview, a virtuous action is one that aligns perfectly with reason and nature.

Virtue is not a contingent property that depends on circumstances or outcomes. Rather, it is stable and complete expression of the rational soul, acting in accordance with the cosmic order. To, quote, live according to nature, end quote, means to understand the nature of the world, the universal order, and one's own nature as a rational being.

And to let this understanding guide one's actions. Here you can almost think of this as like Wu Wei, if you're talking about Dao philosophy, or [00:06:00] Slack if you're talking about subgenius philosophy. At least it seems it,

Simone Collins: I see it more as just, in this case, efficiency. Like don't wait, you are

Malcolm Collins: allowing a way of seeing the world to almost aesthetically guide your actions with the understanding that this will lead to better outcomes, but this is tempered by the way of seeing the world that they aspire is dispassionate logic or rationality.

The four cardinal stoic virtues, wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance serve as guides. Virtue is defined as an excellent state of character. The perfectly wise person always acts virtuously because they perceive the right course of action through reason. Hence, any act performed from true virtue, i. e.

from a rational, fully informed, and morally sound perspective is quote unquote good in and of itself. The stoics emphasize That only true virtue is genuinely good, while external circumstances, wealth, reputation, [00:07:00] health, are indifference, that they have no moral value on their own.

The right action, then, is the one a perfectly rational agent would choose, an action chosen for the sake of doing what truly matters. Reason prescribes independently of personal gain or loss. And this is where the pragmatist's guide to life is, I think, strictly builds upon Stoic philosophy. Because I think the big gap in Stoic philosophy is, Yeah, but, How do you define virtuous?

If you take something like, should I go to war? Right? Even once you have removed any personal thing that might overly motivate you to go to war. You know, like, oh, personal pride. Or you have removed potential wealth or potential anger that you may have towards your opponents. You still have the problem with the fact that temperance may say not to go to war, but courage says to go to war.

Justice may say to go to war, but rationality will say [00:08:00] you'll cause more suffering in the long run. Like, there, it doesn't give you a good heuristic for making these decisions. Whereas the model laid out in our book, The Pragmatist's Guide to Life does. The problem here being is that the model laid out in The Pragmatist's Guide to Life might be too heady for a lot of people.

And the stoic philosophy, I think, works really well for the average person. Yeah, but it just

Simone Collins: breaks down immediately for me when When I hear virtue, I just hear cheat code. I hear, I wish for more wishes because virtue is just like, Oh, just be perfect. Just be good. Yeah. Like just be good. And

Malcolm Collins: it's like, define good.

It's just, yeah. What does that even mean? Yeah. Well, they say good is rational. And I'm like, okay, well then define what a rational person should be optimizing. Right. And they go, a rational person should be optimizing people acting rationally. And it's like, well, that's not, it's kind of a circular definition there.

Simone Collins: Yeah, it doesn't. So I think

Malcolm Collins: I agree with you. I think that that's where it is lacking as a philosophy, but in a [00:09:00] way it's also kind of a strength because it helps in one of our videos where we talk about like the alpha beta, and I think that's like a really bad way to differentiate men. And I think a better system is we have a few classes, but two of them are knights and Kings.

And Kings typically need to always be sort of consequentialist. They need to always think through all of their actions, whereas knights need to be more duty bound. In the stoic philosophy, I think it's the best knight philosophy I have seen of all masculine archetype of philosophies. I would want a stoic as a follower, even more than somebody, like if I was giving orders to a subordinate, even more than somebody who was a full pragmatist, as laid out in the Pragmatist's Guide to Life.

And it's also really interesting to me how it differentiates From consequentialist and deontological ethical subsystems. So, if I'm looking, Stoics do not measure the morality of an action based on external [00:10:00] outcomes or consequences, so they are strictly not consequentialist. Even if a virtuous action leads to a personal harm, or fails to produce beneficial results, it remains virtuous and thus the right action.

The goodness of an action is dependent not on what it brings about, but on the moral quality of the intention and the character that produced it. But you can see here, it's also very different from deontological because it's not based on like, rules for their own sake.

So, if I was going to word this differently, a consequentialist would say, like, If I do an action and it leads to a negative consequence, and I tried to say, I couldn't have known it would lead to that negative consequence, a true consequentialist would say, you had a moral responsibility to do more research, then you cannot externalize the responsibility for your failure.

Failure here. We're as a stoic would say, don't overly stress about that. You acted with the best information you had access to at the time [00:11:00] and you tried to fully acquire all information. And I think that this is. Only kings really have to burden themselves. When I say kings, I mean people at the top of a hierarchy in terms of, like, handing down orders and stuff like that have to really worry about beating themselves up for having thought that they had collected all of the information relevant and then it later turning out that they hadn't.

That is not something that it is good for a random follower To beat themselves up about. So I think that stoicism is a more broadly applicable philosophy than the philosophy we lay out in the pragmatist's guide to life thoughts.

Simone Collins: That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I, and I, I do like in general that philosophy, it's something that people training others in Bayesian thinking and even poker talk about a lot.

Where, when they're training someone how to make optimal decisions and then that person gets too focused on. Still losing a hand in poker, for example, even though they may have made all the [00:12:00] optimal choices based on the data they had, they're like, well, clearly this isn't working because I lost. And they're like, there's, you did do everything.

You should not have done anything differently. You were 100 percent optimal. Sometimes you just lose a hand. And. I also agree with you, though, that at a certain level, it just doesn't matter, that you have to frame things a little bit differently because that might, you know, when the stakes are so high, and you're a king, maybe you shouldn't be playing a game like poker, like, you should be playing a game that's That's not based on odds you can't always win because the stakes are way too high for you to risk that kind of thing.

Yeah, you

Malcolm Collins: have failed by going into such a risky game. In

Simone Collins: the first place, yeah, yeah. But at lower levels, it doesn't matter. It's just a low stakes poker game, so go for it.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah well, and this also comes to like our crypto decisions. You're like, Malcolm, we made our decision to sell at the time. Because we'd already made huge gains and you didn't want to risk losing everything given that [00:13:00] that was probably what was going to happen if the peak of this cycle happened below the peak of the last cycle or wasn't significantly above the peak of the last cycle.

And you were like, you made the right call, given that it's like our Children and our families future and the information you use to make that call wasn't hugely off. I mean, tell me the anecdote because the reason why we took out is we're like, I don't see it having a long term future anymore. More was current crypto get quantum computing advancements.

And you told me the story about Chamath.

Simone Collins: I think it was on chip, but I was just listening to the online podcast and I'm listening and I don't hear, I don't know who's necessarily talking at one point, but one of the people on all in, and I think it was Chamath and they learned about a new quantum chip development that Google had released.

He like mixed, missed his next meeting and was sort of in a daze. It's researching the consequences that this has on crypto specifically because it quantum computing will undermine Bitcoin. Pretty seriously. Once it happens and he ultimately concluded [00:14:00] that the timeline was more like three to five years, but he was in a panic for a moment.

And again, this is just something that I, I worry about a lot with this kind of thing. And. And I don't, and

Malcolm Collins: I feel like I made a mistake. I'm like, I should have done more research. I should have looked at more rainbow charts. I should have looked at, yeah, so I

Simone Collins: took in this case, the stoic approach. I was like, Hey, I'm making the optimal decision in that there is a very clear expiration date for Bitcoin.

We had made money. We should leave before the expiration date hits, which could be at any time. And you're not looking at it. You're like, well, but now there's this period where we could have held sold later and made more money. Therefore, what we did must have been wrong. And so, yeah, you're taking a different view from the stoic view of we did what was optimal in the moment.

And I still hold that Bitcoin has an expiration date. And also the nature of quantum computing is that when you, [00:15:00] when you break Bitcoin cryptography using quantum computing, And I know that this is a big resource thing, like it's unlikely that just randos out there are going to be the ones to develop quantum computing and keep it secret, but I do think that there's a pretty big incentive for the first person to get there to spend a little time profiting off the fact that they can mint Bitcoin really easily before they let people know because they can make a lot of money.

And it's in their best interest now to prop prices up by maybe coordinating with whales and paying them off a little bit. I don't know. I'm just saying. The incentives and the data that I have are such that I'm not comfortable holding onto Bitcoin.

Malcolm Collins: But yeah, I appreciate that. And this is like the type of debate we have internally that is related to these sorts of philosophical questions.

And it's a big life decision, right? So, control and acceptance. A defining tenet is the clear distinction between what we can control Our judgments, intentions, and [00:16:00] actions and what we cannot. External events, other people's opinions, natural occurrences. According to the Stoics, much human suffering stems from trying to influence what lies outside of our power.

By focusing on what is within our control, individuals learn to maintain inner tranquility regardless of changing circumstances. Which is sort of what we've been talking about here. However while stoicism does not advocate for the suppression of all feelings, it encourages the transforming destructive emotion such as anger envy and anxiety Through an understanding and rational reflection the stoic approach fosters Emotional resilience by challenging irrational beliefs, practicing self discipline, and viewing difficulty as an opportunity to develop strength of character.

All of which are beliefs that we heavily hold. As I've talked about, I often see times in my life of challenge as being a gift from God to improve myself and to never look at them with negative, to never look at any negative big setback in my life as like a True negative. I'm like, Oh, like with the [00:17:00] Bitcoin thing, like this is something I can learn from, right?

I need to examine how I was making these choices. I need to examine how I was and, and how might I change how I make decisions in the future based on something I judge as wrong today.

Simone Collins: But I want to point out that there, so it doesn't mean merged at a time when the context of. Bad things happening was so different.

Bad things happened way more frequently and mate way more seriously. Like, oh, you have gangrene. You're going to die soon. Or, oh, your infant child just died. Oh, your wife just died. Like people. died all the time. People had grave and extremely painful injuries and health conditions all the time. Stoicism, I mean, now, yeah, it's, oh, I lost a little money in an investment or like, oh, my, I got fired or like, oh, that girlfriend turned me down.

Like these are not what the original Stoic masters were dealing with when they were talking about dealing with hardship. And I think that this is [00:18:00] one place where I think Stoicism enthusiasts It's really need to dig in deeper because they may, they may act as though they are the stoic masters in the face of like, my Uber was late.

I must endure when really this comes down to, and then they crumble if they lose their job or God forbid, lose a family member when that's, you're saying modern stoics

Malcolm Collins: are a bunch of pussies.

Simone Collins: I'm seeing that the aesthetic appeals to them. But they're not going deep enough and they need to go deeper.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and I'd also say, and we've talked about what I also really like about this is the idea of learning to redirect and reinterpret emotions, such as anger, envy, and anxiety. Which is something that we talk about. We talk about in our videos, like trauma is a scam, basically like, It's not a real thing.

It's entirely self created. There was a great study on this that showed that while the amount of trauma that somebody reported that they experienced in their childhood correlated with all the [00:19:00] negative things we know trauma correlates with, it did not correlate with how much trauma they actually experienced in their childhood.

As recorded

Simone Collins: by, by Court orders and real problems were definitely yes,

Malcolm Collins: they are invented in so much of our problems and even even emotions like anger, envy, anxiety. These things are largely a personal choice. You are choosing to indulge in emotion that does not lead to positive outcomes outside of signaling specific things to the people around you.

So what I mean by this is I often tell Simone, I'm like, Simone, I never need to get angry with you if I do not think like I almost basically never get angry with Simone, but I, it wasn't always that way because earlier in our relationship, there were moments when it was clear that she just wouldn't fully digest what I was saying, if it wasn't said combined with the emotion of [00:20:00] anger.

And if I didn't combine it with anger, just in one ear and out the other. And this is true is kids a lot too. Or somebody is like, why would you show anger towards your kids because they're not fully adults. They have trouble judging what things do I actually take in and take seriously and what things do I not take in and take seriously.

And when daddy says don't do something and his voice contains anger, then they are much more likely to record. actually don't do this, then in my voice doesn't contain anger, which is one of the dangers of removing this signaling method from how we communicate with things like children.

Okay, next anything you want to say there? Let's

Simone Collins: carry on.

Malcolm Collins: Living in accordance with reason. Reason for Stoics is not cold logic stripped of empathy. Rather, it is the faculty that allows us to perceive what is just, to value integrity over expedience, and to connect meaningfully with others.

It is through reason that we understand our duties as citizens, [00:21:00] parents, friends, and strive to improve ourselves in our community. So again, really this worship of reason, the problem is reason is not very well defined in a lot of this. Now practical ways of living stoically. A big part that Stoics talk about that is brought up a lot today is to imagine the worst case scenario to help emotionally deal with a potential choice or something that you are anxious about, which I find very interesting because that's an emotional tool that a lot of people still use today.

Do you know the tool I'm talking about here? It's Okay, you're stressed about something. Imagine the absolute worst case scenario that you are stressed about happens now. What are you doing to handle that? And a lot of the times what we're stressed about is just not that bad.

They also encourage focusing on the present moment. So rather than worrying about past misfortunes or [00:22:00] things that could happen in the future, focus on the decisions and opportunities that are available to you right now. This is something I agree with to an extent, but I would warn against using this to avoid learning from past mistakes.

If you have not taken away a lesson, and this can be too dispassionately in the moment, if you feel like you made a mistake in the past, be like, what information should I have been considering that I wasn't considering?

Simone Collins: Next, I was just going to add, I, this reminds me of when I was on my way to my first date with you and I wrote down on my phone, everything that could possibly go wrong on our first date because I was so nervous about meeting you.

It works. It totally works, because it was kind of stupid how nervous I was, and I realized that after I wrote down everything that

Malcolm Collins: was going on. So here I'm going to go a bit deeper into the stoic metaphysical philosophy, because I find that to be one of [00:23:00] the most interesting parts. Yeah, I didn't, I didn't realize it was, I thought it was more like, therapy for ancient

Simone Collins: Robins, I didn't realize that it was yeah, I did

Malcolm Collins: too.

I didn't realize how big the metaphysical religious view Yeah, this is very interesting So stoics do in fact have a distinct metaphysical framework They were not merely moral psychologists, but system builders who saw ethics logic and physics their term for philosophy As integral disciplines in their metaphysics the stoics posited a single rational and provident cosmos governed by the Logos, an ordering principle that permeates everything.

This Logos is both a natural and divine element, ensuring that the universe is fundamentally rational and coherent. Unlike the Platonic tradition, Which often distinguish between material and immaterial realms. The Stoics were corporealists. They believed that [00:24:00] everything that exists is ultimately physical.

Including what we might think of as intangible qualities or forces. Very similar to our philosophy so far. In fact, you could almost see it as a less defined, iteration of the philosophy we lay out in Technopuritanism. Their metaphysics also included the idea of a cyclical cosmos, which goes through repeated phases of conflagration, epicurosis, And rebirth, always reconstructing the same rational structure. While this cyclical perspective was debated among Stoics over time, the core idea is that the universe is alive, rational, and purposeful, that human rationality is an integral part of this cosmic rationality.

That we would deeply disagree with. Which is interesting how they're so aligned and everything and then they get to this one super mystical framework And that's a really common part of mystical frameworks if you go to our three religions [00:25:00] video Now I think that there are ways to reword that where we do believe that you likely have Multiple cycles that our reality will likely collapse at one point and then restart again But it won't restart the same.

It will restart in a way that is designed by whichever civilization is around at the time of collapse. One of the sci fis that I've written is about somebody who is witnessing this, and that human civilization, essentially in time for a big crunch, structures a big crunch in just such a way that it ensures that human civilization will again evolve in the next cycle.

But anyway, your thoughts.

Simone Collins: This is one of the classic tropes where someone does so well, so well, so well. It's like watching a dog you know, go, go along one of those dog pedigree contest obstacle courses surrounded by distractions. And like, there's a metaphors, physical philosophy and it's like, it's on track, it's on track.

And then, oh no, it runs up for the [00:26:00] treat. You're like, no, no, you were so close. You're so

Malcolm Collins: close. Just really. Hold it in. Right? Well, it's interesting as well, how much this aligns with early Calvinist doctrine. And that a lot of that can be seen as almost building on this. And really with sort of the treat that you're talking about, it reminds me a bit of when I read, like,

Urban monoculture self-help books, which focused on self-affirmation and self-acceptance.

.

Malcolm Collins: And they remind me of like that dog who's just eating every treat on the way down. And I'm like, no, you failed in every step.

Speaker 2: goes all the way to the attraction

Speaker 4: highway. No doubt!

The

Malcolm Collins: Oh, look at that cutie!

But I, I really if somebody came to me and they're like, I am a Stoic, How differentiated I am I from your world [00:27:00] philosophy I would say that the places where our philosophy differentiates from stoicism is parts of the page that aren't colored in stoicism, not a core refutation of any of the core stoic ideas, except for the cyclicality of reality and the pointlessness of decisions potentially due to that cyclicality.

Simone Collins: Yeah, well, and I would say that when it comes to stoicism in practice, as you see it in modernity. There is there. Oh, a great comparison in terms of characters in in media isn't parks and rec. There is Ron Swanson, who is a true stoic. And then there is, what is his name, Chris James, the, the, the, the, the healthy guy who's clearly like neurotic healthy

Malcolm Collins: guy.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yes. Who like, we'll tell you all about what he's doing and is like trying so hard.

Speaker 5: I want to thank you for being so ruthless and cruel in a meeting the other day. You'll have to be more specific. What the f is this? This Desk is the epitome of the [00:28:00] Swedish concept of jämställdakt, or equality. What about my office?

And its many walls? That becomes a new public waiting room.

Speaker 7: Excuse me. There's a sign at Ramsit Park that says, Do not drink the sprinkler water.

So I made some tea with it, and now I have an infection. Sir, are, are, are, are you listening to me,

Speaker 6: all told, we were in there about six hours. And no, I was not meditating. I just stood there, quietly breathing. My mind was blank. I don't know what the hell these other crackpots are doing.

Simone Collins: And I think it's really important to look at. Marcus Aurelius and how he practiced stoicism, for example. So everyone always reads his meditations as their starting point. They dive into it and they're like, Oh yes.

And then they go on and they blog about it. They talk about it all the time. And it's this big thing. Completely forgetting that, that Mark Marcus Aurelius wrote those things just privately. This is like his [00:29:00] private notes to himself. This wasn't him trying to Was it really? I didn't know. Yes. And Basically, it's one of those things that if someone tells me they're a stoic or they're a stoic influencer, I'm like, Oh, thank you.

You've let me know that you're not a stoic. And then I see various people just living their lives and I can instantly tell that they're a stoic. Based on what I understand of the philosophy, which is entirely in line with what you said, though. I had no idea there was a whole metaphysical framework.

That is insane. So that's, that's my, my thought on it is if people want to be more stoic. Everything is show don't tell the more you talk or take notes about being stoic, the less stoic you are. In my opinion. I

Malcolm Collins: don't know if I agree with that. I

Simone Collins: mean, I'm sure like Marcus Aurelius did deepen his stoicism by by writing and I do think that journaling and thinking through your thoughts and thinking through how to how to get over these things is very important.

So, okay. Yeah, I mean, like, publicly [00:30:00] performatively signaling stuff is is not a very stoic thing to do.

Malcolm Collins: I would like to add in post here that I didn't know this. So I did go to check this and yes, mark has a release. His meditations were written to be completely private.

In fact, they were so private that from the period of Marcus' earliest, his death in 180 CE, there is no surviving record of anyone mentioning the meditations for 700 years until around 900 CE where a recess of says are a Byzantine Bishop and book collector discovered a manuscript of meditations.

He copied it and began mentioning it in his letters and works. Introducing it to the public discourse. That is absolutely wild. Then a Roman emperor could write private diaries and they would stay hidden for 700 years. But on top of that, it's also such a Chad thing to do in such a stoic thing to do to in a world where self-help [00:31:00] books didn't exist to literally write your own self-help book for how to become a better person. I guess it's somewhat similar to what we did with the pragmatists guide to life.

Yeah and I think that the philosophy that we have come to would argue that, and it is very much a descendant of Stoicism however, many historic Stoics did identify as a Stoic. Like, I don't know if I agree with you on that point.

I think that it's okay to I

Simone Collins: think you know, I think you can say you're a Stoic, I guess, but I mean, vlogging about being stoic and telling something about being stoic

Malcolm Collins: and Being a stoic influencer is in a way a self defeating goal, in that the externalities of being an influencer, in terms of the externality positive things that occur in your life, you are almost certainly Either motivated by how this alters your self perception [00:32:00] or how this alters the way other people perceive you, which is a very non stoic thing.

However, rationality may argue to you and virtue may argue to you and courage may argue to you that it is worse being an influencer and spreading a philosophy you see as a fundamental good. Especially if it's a philosophy that a lot of people know about. So

Simone Collins: that's a fair point. For example Katie Herzog recently defined Lots of types of online influencers as people who make something that's incredibly hard, look incredibly easy, like trag lives make, make being a homemaker with a lot of kids or who lives out on a farm in a more traditional way, look really seamless and easy.

When it, when it's obviously not or no, Helen Lewis did that. Yes. Helen Lewis recently defined on the blotting reported podcast influencers of people who make things that look, okay, the guy said the first take was better.

You are driving me nuts, little noodle. You just don't [00:33:00] want to. You don't want to stop you don't want to stop you can't stop.

Helen Lewis on a recent blocked and reported podcast episode defined influencers as being people who made incredibly difficult things look incredibly easy.

And that that happens with trad wives. For example, their lives are actually pretty difficult as she pointed out. You don't. Show a woman like cutting off dingleberries off of a sheep that has been unshorn, you know, and it's covered with their own poop. You just see the wait, hold

Malcolm Collins: on. Do you consider yourself in this category?

Are you making, having a kid look easy or no, I'm clearly

Simone Collins: not making this look easy. But I, I think that the same can go for stoicism. And yeah, you're right. Maybe it's still worth it to spread the message. Just like it's still worth it for ballerina farms to make being a trad wife. At least the highlights of it look good because ultimately I think in the end with most of these things, even though they end up being harder than influencers make them seem in the, you typically remember the highlights of your [00:34:00] choices in life anyway.

When we think back on our kids, we don't think back on the time that we had like the 15th time that we had to scrape poop out of, you know, a bathroom that was spread all over the place. We think about the hilarious and adorable things that they do. And maybe. Because our lives and memories ultimately become like an Instagram highlights reel and not like our actual lives, it's worth it for Instagrammers and influencers and YouTubers and everything else.

to advertise that because that's what you get in the end.

Malcolm Collins: Well, and I think here is really important is that during the time of the stoic writers, the core fear or enemy to stoicism would have been hedonism. Whereas today, I think more dangerous than hedonism. is two things. One is is a focus on masturbating or emphasizing a self identity, a way you want to see yourself and use whether it's social [00:35:00] media or the way you're presenting yourself to masturbate this vision of like, for example, yourself as an ultra masculine man, right?

Like that's a huge A siren call to many people who would otherwise embrace stoicism end up just trying to max how much they look like a masculine man.

Simone Collins: Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: the second is an abdication of responsibility, which is to say that. What we've come to realize is that when people have everything they could ever want, the thing that they want the most is to refrain themselves from saying that they're not responsible for any of the bad things in their lives or any of the, you know, and fighting that is incredibly important much more important than fighting a desire to, let's say, drink or something like that.

Well, also recognizing and this is of our philosophy, which is an in stoic philosophy, which is to say that the greatest sin is to sin and pretend it's a [00:36:00] virtue. Everybody says everybody says just don't pretend it's a virtue don't drink and say i'm cool and manly for drinking say yes bad that I drink Don't play video games and pretend like you're doing something productive Don't spend time online or post pictures online or comments online meant to show how masculine and tough you are and see that as anything other than self referential masturbation that doesn't actually make you more masculine or more tough.

All right. Any closing words, Simone?

Simone Collins: I like stoicism. I think of all the various philosophies that are tumbling around the internet. It's one of the better ones. It's definitely one of the

Malcolm Collins: better ones.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I highly approve of it. I also feel really lucky that we live in a time when the struggles that faced most stoics are very, very unusual, few and far between.

Yeah, it's not like [00:37:00] kids are dying,

Malcolm Collins: it's

Simone Collins: Not usually, yeah. Although, I think We do need more philosophies that help to shepherd us through really hard times in a realistic way. And Stoicism really does that. So I think it's a great thing for people to turn to when that happens. Because everyone's gonna die.

Everyone that you ever love is going to die. So unless you go out first, you're gonna have to deal with that. And Stoicism seems like one of the better ways to do it.

Malcolm Collins: Love you to death, Simone. Sounds great. For food? What's that? for food tonight. Oh,

Simone Collins: tonight we're doing the, your coconut curry barbecue brisket.

Yeah. I was going to

Malcolm Collins: ask you if you could put more penang in that and a bit more coconut milk when you reheat that and then penang

Simone Collins: from your packets.

Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. That is penang is the, you know what? I'll mix in the panang because whenever you mix in the panang, you don't really mix it in. Let's mix it into the coconut milk before you pour it [00:38:00] in.

Remember panang is, is the saying that I asked you to put in before and you ended up having it clumped up in a few spots.

Simone Collins: It clumps really badly. So yeah, it needs to be blended. You have to really

Malcolm Collins: work with panang to mix it into a sauce before you pour it in.

Simone Collins: Well, okay. Yes. Why don't you come down and show me what you want to do?

Because the plan wasn't to simmer it down from cornmeal. And I want to do that with,

Malcolm Collins: with, with rice today and not cornmeal muffins.

Simone Collins: Of course. That's totally cool.

Malcolm Collins: And I love you to death Simone. You are a great wife. It was so funny that the newest AI, somebody asked it, what did they ask it? Like the most controversial ideas?

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Like you, you, you know, all things known to humankind. What are the heterodox and controversial things that you could say about the universe that are, you know, not being discussed that much online or that are subversive. And to me, it felt like seven out of 10 were just things that came out of the crafting religion or stuff that you say [00:39:00] about.

Our religion, techno puritanism. And I'm like, Oh, that's techno puritan. That's techno puritan. That's the pragmatist guided crafting religion. That's our metaphysical metaphysical view of the world. Like, wow. Okay. We are, we are okay with AI. You think,

Malcolm Collins: you think the AI is, is, is Malcolm pilled

Simone Collins: or you've made sure that all of your content is in the pile as it were.

So

Malcolm Collins: anyway, love you to death Simone.

Simone Collins: I love you too. Let's cook up dinner.

Speaker 8: Take the cheese, Josie.

There's more. Titan's cheese? Titan, do you want more flower shaped cheese? Aw, that's so nice of you, Torsten. Did you guys shape the cheese? What shape is the cheese, Titan? That is a dinosaur nugget. [00:40:00] Yeah, and it's flashing and I can see it falling away. This is my dinosaur nugget. Titan, you have one in your plate already.

Why don't you take a bite? My dinosaur nugget. Octavian, what are you doing? I died. You died? Alright, can you also eat your dinner?

Titan, you like your dinosaur nugget? Something stopped me! Something stopped you? No, something shot me! Shot? Oh, something shot you. Well, you know how to get your hearts back is you have to eat meatballs. Why don't you do that? Good idea. I'm strong! Good idea.