Based Camp: The Cybernetic Birds and the Bees

In this episode, Malcolm and Simone discuss how they plan to teach their children about sexuality, relationships, and gender identity. They explain their perspective that biological sex differences exist but shouldn't overly define someone's life and goals. They emphasize teaching kids these are tools to use towards efficacy and warn against overinvestment in temporary cultural narratives. The couple advocates early spouse-seeking in college, avoiding compromising photos, and considering dating strategies and metagames. Overall they aim to equip their kids with knowledge to make informed choices given cultural realities.

Transcript:

Malcolm: [00:00:00] if you look at the cultural groups that are strict, but are otherwise forced , to engage the progressive monoculture, this is where you get the meme of the Catholic school girl, right? And this is definitely something when I was more promiscuous, I ran into girls like this a lot where the most promiscuous girls typically come from conservative religious backgrounds.

Malcolm: They do not come from the backgrounds closer to you, where their parents laid out both options.

Simone: Yeah, that's actually come to think of it. Yeah. ,

Malcolm: they, they're like this system used to work in the past, but it used to work in an environment where this urban monoculture didn't exist and wasn't constantly sniping at it,

Would you like to know more?

Simone: Malcolm Collins, hello.

Malcolm: Hello, Simone. It is wonderful to be chatting again today. I thought today, given that we have done some episodes that discuss things like people's sexuality, gender, stuff like that that we talk about, because another big theme of ours is, well, what are we going to do for our culture, for our kids?

Malcolm: How are we going to build something that's [00:01:00] intergenerationally durable, that focuses on these concepts specifically in relation to... How we are going to conceive them as a cultural group and, and the, the way we will teach our kids about them or teach them to contextualize them within their own life.

Malcolm: Yeah, exactly. Before we go any deeper down this, particular rabbit hole, I think it's important to survey the landscape of how cultures relate to sexuality and why they relate to sexuality, the way they relate to sexuality. So, cultures can be thought of as broadly an evolving software that's sitting on top of evolving human hardware.

Malcolm: Which is a person's pre coded genetic predilections, and then on top of that you have this sort of software package. And if the package does a good job at getting people to reproduce, and pass that software package on to the next generation, then, then those iterations of the packages exist in higher proportions than other iterations of the packages.

Malcolm: And this is why [00:02:00] most successful cultural groups throughout history have prohibitions on masturbation and sex outside of marriage and stuff like that. So first let's talk about why, why would you have a prohibition on sex outside of marriage, right? Well, sex outside of marriage and it's not that there aren't cultural groups that allow a lot of sex outside of marriage, there are.

Malcolm: They just have not been very successful, and by that what I mean is they didn't conquer their neighbors, they didn't grow a lot, often, they, they are typically smaller cultural groups that are really pushed to the wayside. By history and this is because one, monogamous cultural groups typically out compete polygynous cultural groups.

Malcolm: Now, first, we need to make clear that almost all cultural groups are polygynous to some extent. By that, what we mean is the ultra wealthy and ultra powerful in almost any society in history yes, even the Catholic monarchies and stuff like that often had uh, timepieces. It was expected.

Malcolm: So let's be clear. When I call a culture [00:03:00] monogamous all cultures are polygynous to some extent where the elite are typically allowed multiple partners. The question is where's the slider there. And if that slider is under 1% of the population.

Malcolm: It's expected to have multiple partners. I call it a monogamous culture. If it's 5% to 10% those are where most polygynous cultures stay. Very few polygynous cultures get as high as like 20% of men having more than one wife. So, so it's important to understand what we mean when we call a culture polygynous versus...

Malcolm: Monogamous. And it should be intuitive. A lot of people are like, oh, in a polygynous culture, every man has a lot of wives. And it's no obviously that won't work because you have about an equal number of males and females in almost any society, unless there's a lot of war. So the monogamous cultures typically out compete the polygynous cultures.

Malcolm: And there's been some great studies on this. You know, we have them cited in our a book on, on both sexuality and relationships because they're really interesting and you can see them side by side in, in some places like Africa where you can see these cultures operating side by side. And what you see is that these [00:04:00] more monogamous cultures typically have lower rates of ape, and we're not going to use the, the full word there because we don't want to get demonetized.

Malcolm: They usually have lower rates of crime, lower rates of violent crime. Lower rates of unpaid debts and and most importantly, lower rates of terrorism. And this is usually directly correlatory to the number of unwed men in these societies. And so the groups that adopted these monogamous practices outcompeted the groups that did not, so that's one reason. And then once they adopt monogamous practices, if a person is having relations outside of their marriage, well, they might, as a single woman, end up having kids outside of marriage. And that's typically really bad for any cultural group because those kids often end up becoming wards of the state in cultures that don't allow women to work as much.

Malcolm: And typically when a culture Encourages women to work more their fertility rate decreases and nearby cultural groups end up out competing them, which is why it's [00:05:00] so common in these cultural groups to say, so this is why historically, the cultural groups that have won have one often been more monogamous they, they often really discourage premarital relations and, and, and relations outside of a marriage because that could break up a marriage, which then causes you know, obviously problems.

Malcolm: For a society where it's expected that people are going to be together forever, right? Because maybe they don't care for one kid, and then the kid becomes like a vagrant. And you know, Oliver Twist, right? Roaming groups of kids without parents were a major problem in these societies. Almost like packs of stray dogs that were intelligent and were constantly trying to screw you over.

Malcolm: It's something we don't really see in the world today as much, but it was a major problem historically speaking. So that's, that's why you have that. And then the masturbation push. The reason why so many groups are against that is because it lowers fertility rates, right? And you can look at some cultural groups.

Malcolm: I'm pretty sure some Jewish sects do this, where it's like you can't [00:06:00] even have sex with somebody when the person would not get pregnant due to their stage of the menstrual cycle. That would be considered sinful. And so, like, why are you doing this? You're trying to maximize reproduction. That's why you see this in so many cultural groups.

Malcolm: Now, why I'm laying out this groundwork Right? Is this is no longer theoretically the most successful strategy if you're trying to encourage high fertility rates in a culture because the way that fertility works has dramatically changed. What did you do this morning, Simone?

Simone: Yes, this morning I had a frozen embryo transfer, meaning that I went to our fertility clinic and they transferred into me.

Simone: Using a catheter and ultrasound, an embryo that we had previously created. So this was not procreative sex for our next kid. In fact, none of our children have been created using procreative sex. And I like to think that that is the ultimate gift that we give them. They don't have to think that [00:07:00] their parents having sex created them, which.

Simone: It's a heavy burden that I personally bear and wish that I didn't want to talk about trauma. That's, that's my trauma. Yeah,

Malcolm: that's your, they are, they are a product of science and money. So, but, but yeah, it's, it's, so this is really important, you know, obviously it was an embryo that we selected based on its, its, its genetics which is also a cultural practice of ours.

Malcolm: So from our cultural position. Sex is purely masturbatory or a way to have kids less expensively.

Simone: Yeah, because not everyone has the luxury or the affordance to either pay for IVF or be lucky enough to live in a nation that supports it. Right, right.

Malcolm: So eventually, I mean, I'd like our family office, which we want to run things for all of our kids to be able to pay for this for, for any of them that want it.

Malcolm: But in the meantime, the only case where I think it would really be ethical for somebody was in our cultural group to have kids not using[00:08:00] IVF and polygenic risk screening because those kids could end up getting, you know, cancers or have other maladies that could easily be screened for right would be if it was in some way cost prohibitive.

Malcolm: And because of that, they were going to have less kids. But if it's not cost prohibitive for that family, then then sex for that family is it. Always masturbatory. And by that what I mean is there's no different. You are just using another person's body to, to, to feel good in the same way you could by yourself.

Malcolm: Now, it could be a bonding ritual, I suppose, but this culturally really changes how we teach our kids to relate. To, one, sexuality, but also things like gender, because, you know, we're entering a world where artificial wombs are coming down the pipeline. They will definitely be here by the time our kids are old enough to have kids themselves.

Malcolm: And so is IVG, which means that they would be able to have kids with people of the same gender. If they wanted to, and this is really [00:09:00] interesting because another thing is if you look across the world, you know, whether it's China or Islam or the US or wherever cultural groups that have been successful, i.

Malcolm: e. spread a lot and survived over a long period of time almost always have homophobic undertones. And typically when they begin to lose those undertones, they, that is right before a collapse ends up happening. And, and one of the questions can be like, what's going on here? Why is that the case? You know, when this is clearly not in a portion of the population's best interest and it is because it increases fertility rates for those cultural.

Malcolm: And so, even if you have a cultural group that becomes historically speaking, that became more tolerant. Of LGBT individuals if it had like a branch of it, like a split of it that was less tolerant of them, that split would have more kids, it would end up out competing them and, and so, you see this just across the world in, in these longer lived

Simone: cultural groups.

Simone: But what you're saying is now with modern technology, it suddenly doesn't [00:10:00] matter as much if you have, you know, two consenting adults flapping their genitals against each other. It's completely

Malcolm: irrelevant. Yeah, it's completely irrelevant. Yeah. So is gender. So is gender is still important to us insofar as males and females are dimorphic, you know, both physically and psychologically which may make them assortatively better at specific tasks or specific roles within a marriage.

Malcolm: But not beyond that. Yeah.

Simone: Yeah. Well, so. Let's talk then about what the talk is going to look like with our kids. And of course, who knows, you know, by the time that they reach pre adolescence, at which point we're going to talk with them about this more concertedly. We'll, we'll probably have new information that changes what we're going to do, but what's our running plan now?

Malcolm: I would say that there's two large concerns for us in regards to this. One is cultural groups, which are really, really sex negative often have a higher bleed rates.[00:11:00] I. e. more of their members leave the cultural group, especially when they're competing against this sort of progressive urban monoculture.

Malcolm: In fact, I would say that. Sexuality is the progressive urban monoculture's biggest lure to get people out of these conservative traditions. They say, hey, come to us and you can be sexually hedonistic. You can act on any desire you have , and we will praise you for it. You know,

Malcolm: now what's interesting is it's becoming more and more sexually conservative in many ways. It's becoming more sex negative, and, and we're seeing this where it's becoming more restrictive in the way it views sexuality. And we can have another video on why that's the case. But what it means is that if you have a group like us as a cultural group, if we tell our kids we do not care how you engage with your sexuality, so long as it is efficacious.

Malcolm: That big pull that this urban monoculture can use to draw them out of our cultural group loses most of [00:12:00] its bite.

Simone: I think that's a really important point because what I see a lot, for example, in comments on our videos is, Hey, this sex negative shaming is a really... Key portion. We can't retain our culture if we do not shame what they would call sexual deviance.

Simone: And what you're seeing here is actually, it's that very shaming that pushes many people away. So, so that's, it's not a complete view to believe that this, that this shaming and this sex negativity is going to help you over the long run. Especially in modern society. Yeah.

Malcolm: Well, I, I, it's, it's, I do believe that kids should learn to control their sexuality and, and, and teach them to control that, but they should control it.

Malcolm: As a utility, like I would say that this is part of how humans engage with other humans and that when you are acting morally by our cultural framework, you are engaging in in these practices in a way that is efficacious and in the best interest of things that you think have long term [00:13:00] moral value. And so by that, what I mean.

Malcolm: You know, you can use sexuality to get things out of other people, right? I think that's something that, that a lot of people know. And it can be very important in terms of shortcuts in, in life and other people can use it against you. So if you don't have full self mastery, other people can use this against you.

Malcolm: And really importantly, it's important in mate finding. Within most modern mate finding rituals, you know, if you are targeting really educated people and you are not sexually experienced, it's very rare to find ones that also aren't sexually experienced, especially if you're a guy, you know, I think that this is more an important thing for guys with girls.

Malcolm: I think there's more of a gambit. You know, they can wait to try to find the correct partner with the understanding that they're going to pair bond more if they do that. But I would, I would more just inform them of the trade off here. Okay.

Simone: Yeah. Yeah. So, so specifically with her daughter's sexual strategy, basically rather than, because I remember, so my mother had given me some sort of talk about [00:14:00] like, when I was much younger, she was like, sex is like jewels, like you're born with, she was very, I think, uncomfortable with the subject and you're born with a certain number of jewels and you have to be careful about how, who you give them away to.

Simone: And she was, yeah. And this was someone who had grown up in a very sexually open culture and you know, was involved in poly, in her youth and everything. And so, I think it was really, when I look back on it, I think it's really interesting what she was trying to say to me, because I think she was trying to say You're free to make choices here, but there is a bit of a trade off and a cost and I think you and I just want to be a lot more explicit with that conversation that like, yes, sex, you can basically as a woman take two different sexual strategies, one in which like, probably you're a lot more open with sex, you probably use it to your advantage a lot, obviously you're careful.

Simone: safety wise, health wise, et cetera. But you know, you, you, you understand that you're going for like high count and strategic advantage and enjoyment, enjoyment. Like some women really, really enjoy sex. So like maybe, you know, that would be a good strategy for our daughters who are like. [00:15:00] I'm super into this.

Simone: But that when it comes to securing a partner, when it comes to a life partner, like someone who will marry them and invest in them and have kids with them, it is going to be harder to do that. And so their odds of maybe needing to raise children in alternative fashions, either like independently or in concert with other people or other siblings or something like that, like that is going to have to be a realistic viable pathway if something like that is important to them.

Simone: And also that. We need, we need, I think we should warn them that what they want now may be very different from what they want in the future. Because I do think that when you're younger especially both as a male and a female, but especially as a female, like you kind of get the impression younger, Oh, well, like more sex, more exploration is a good idea.

Simone: Keep your options open. But then later you're like, man, I really want kids, but you didn't want kids when you were a teen. And so it's really hard to plan for that.

Malcolm: So I think, you know, something to, to note is that when you met me and still other than me, you know, you are a virgin. Right. Yeah. And I will say that that definitely [00:16:00] increased my perception as you as a potential wife.

Malcolm: You were a higher quality potential wife to me, and a lot of people would be like, oh, that's terrible, or whatever. But I think the reality is, and, and there's like biological reasons for this, that men are going to be more committed to partners and some men are going to have a strong preference for partners with a low body count.

Simone: Well, I think there's the partner that you wanna have sex with and there's the partner that you want to have and raise your kids.

Malcolm: Yeah. And well, yeah, so, so I, I also argue that there's a difference here. The type of person that I would want for a random sexual encounter is very different than the type of person I would want for a long term relationship.

Malcolm: And so even I, as someone with a high body count I appreciated that coming into the relationship. But I also think that us telling our kids this, in the same way that your mom told you this, it worked for you. She gave you one choice. between multiple strategies, but also taught you the value of self control and you decided to use those two pieces of information [00:17:00] to choose a low partner count strategy.

Malcolm: Well,

Simone: let's be clear. I think that the primary thing my parents gave me was complete freedom to make the choices myself because I found all humans, men and women, disgusting until I met you.

Malcolm: Yeah, but the point I'm making here more broadly is I actually think, so a lot of people hear this strategy in terms of what they, we tell our kids, and they, I think, intuitively suspect that it will lead to our daughters sleeping with a lot more people.

Malcolm: When in reality, if you look at the cultural groups that are strict, but are otherwise forced strict around these topics, but are otherwise forced to engage with, with near the progressive monoculture, this is where you get the meme of the Catholic school girl, right? And this is definitely something when I was more promiscuous, I ran into girls like this a lot where the, the most promiscuous girls typically come from conservative religious backgrounds.

Malcolm: They do not come from the, the more the backgrounds closer to you, where their parents laid out both options.

Simone: Yeah, that's actually [00:18:00] come to think of it. Yeah. Like all the, the. Friends that I had who were raised by super, super socially liberal parents

Malcolm: were fairly prude. Yeah.

Simone: Had sex super late.

Simone: Basically, until we graduated high school, none of my friends were not virgins. Except for one exception. And then the... The the vast majority of them all, when they did become sexually active were like in very committed relationships, like that lasted for years, maybe terminated in marriage.

Simone: That's that is, I hadn't thought about that before. That's really interesting. So,

Malcolm: yeah. Yeah. So, so it's, it's something to keep in mind that it is actually a fairly successful way because it's something that people, when they talk about going back to the way things used to be. They, they, they're like this system used to work in the past, but it used to work in an environment where this urban monoculture didn't exist and wasn't constantly sniping at it, you know?

Malcolm: And, and so I think, yes, the system did used to work in the past, but, but when I [00:19:00] look at what cultural groups work today at conveying this message to their daughters, it's actually the ones that engage with it in, in this other full information. But, but, but understand the potential costs here and in this, sir, what were you going to say Simone?

Simone: Well, you're, there's another thing I really want to discuss here, which is a factor that wasn't really that much of a thing when you and I were teens, but it's definitely going to be a factor for our teen daughters. So I still, there's a lot of stuff that we need to get through with girls, especially, but also then boys, we had to do boys next.

Simone: But,

Malcolm: We were talking about sexting, you know, and I, and I Well, it didn't, but

Simone: not just Well, okay, so yeah, let's start with sexting, for sure. Well, you and I were having a discussion the other day where we're like, Well, what, what happens if, you know, one of our daughters is encouraged by someone she's dating?

Simone: To send sexually explicit photos of herself because we had an issue with Someone, a colleague having photos exposed of herself and I'm like, Oh my gosh. Like there, there are people who I think are totally normal who I would never expect to be sending explicit [00:20:00] photos of themselves. Sending explicit photos of themselves to people.

Simone: I'm like, this is an issue. What are we going to do with our daughters?

Malcolm: In the moment to them, it may feel like this can help them secure a better partner. They may feel like, Oh, this isn't actually. engaging in sex was a person, therefore, like my rules, like when you create rigid rules, instead of just giving people a reason behind those rules they can act in ways where it's well, but stuff doesn't count.

Malcolm: Right. Doesn't count. Right. You know, But if you explain the reason why this is about maximizing the number of children you have and, and ensuring you don't have children outside of a committed relationship and ensuring that you are high quality perceived by potential partners, like those are what you're optimizing around.

Malcolm: And so what we came up with here, actually,

Simone: Simone came up with the idea. No, no, no. You came up with this and I think it's beautiful. Brilliant is so your idea was okay. Well, we should just tell our daughters that any of their boyfriends ever pressure them to send explicit photos of themselves. [00:21:00] Send deep fakes.

Simone: And I think this is so brilliant on a couple levels. One is like first they can always point to this, this YouTube video and be like, Hey, my mom and dad, like proof from an early age told me to only send deep fakes. That was a deep fake. This is a family policy. Second, I think that there's a lot of vulnerability that you expose yourself to like mentally when you, when you send something.

Simone: That kind of compromising of yourself to someone else when as far as you should be concerned, anything, any photo that ever just even goes onto your phone, I don't care if you send it to anyone, that belongs to the internet. That might as well be out. It is gone. It is out of your control.

Simone: So even just taking , exposed photos of yourself, is putting yourself in a really vulnerable position. And I just feel like you'd feel... You know, even if there are fake naked photos of you online, one, you can make them super flattering, but two you know, that isn't you. So you don't feel the same level of exposure.

Malcolm: The person could have done it themselves. And there's likely going to be technology for detecting deep fakes, which then allows you to do, you know, if they ever try to release it or use it to pressure you, you can [00:22:00] just be like, Hey, you could have created those on your own. And, and I can prove that those aren't real which allows you to engage in sort of the point of this, because at that point, you know, if a partner pressures you, , what you would say back to them is you're like, okay, do you want this for your personal sexual satisfaction?

Malcolm: In which case, a deepfake Will be useful or do you want this to gain power over me? Is this about a power dynamic? And if it's about a power dynamic, no, I do not think this is a smart thing. Well, I think

Simone: usually it's a post hoc power dynamic, you know, like first it's for enjoyment. Then there's a breakup or there's some other weird politicking going on or there's some social clout that could be gained or you want to prove, you know, oh, hey, look at my girlfriend and she's so hot.

Simone: I'm going to show you this photo. And then someone, someone else shares it.

Malcolm: Yeah, they didn't know because of course we would encourage them not to tell them that they're deepfakes. Of course not. It comes out later that this person was sharing deepfakes of a girl and saying that they were real photos.

Malcolm: They would look like such a fool. Yes.

Simone: Yeah. No. So, [00:23:00] okay. We've got a couple of policies in our family. Just get stitches and deepfakes

Malcolm: are good. Policies with our daughters.

Simone: So the other thing that I actually want to talk through with you, you and I haven't talked about this yet but I'm genuinely concerned about.

Simone: The, the ease with which you can make money as a young woman on sites like OnlyFans. So, I don't, I don't know I don't have enough data to know if this kind of compromises your, your reputation, or if it, you know, hurts your social clout, or if it hurts you mentally, like it kind of gives you just a screwed up perception of, of men like as a girl, but I do

Malcolm: dramatically lowers your value on dating markets.

Simone: I worry about that because it's also really tempting. And I think we're going to have very industrious children.

Malcolm: But and one of the things that we'll mention in the, in the video about my mom who died recently is one of the most important lessons she taught me. And it's one that we will definitely teach our kids is the single [00:24:00] most important decision you make in your life.

Malcolm: The single most important accomplishment in your life is who you marry more important than your career. Much more important than, than you know, your academics or anything like that. Your marriage is the most important thing to one, your ability to succeed in the world into your daily quality of life and, and, and three.

Malcolm: How you exist in the future, which is through your kids, you know, So what would

Simone: you do then if, if our daughter,

Malcolm: You are constantly emphasizing to them the importance of securing a high quality partner as their single most important task in life. Anything that permanently and dramatically lowers their probability of that for some sort of short term benefit is going to.

Malcolm: Be a lot less desirable.

Malcolm: And so what they will have to do is internally judge for themselves. Is that a hit I'm willing to take? Am I willing to take a [00:25:00] permanent hit to my desirability on the marriage market for short term, the financial gain or access to some sort of financial gain system that I otherwise wouldn't have access to.

Malcolm: And I think for most people, if you just lay out like the reason for all of this, and I think the really important thing. With the way that my parents conveyed this to me and the way I will convey it to our kids. is why this is important. Like, why is it who you marry is so important? It is the fastest way to make a lot of money.

Malcolm: If you're just like, I want to make a lot of money, easiest way is to marry rich. If you're like, okay I want to be successful in my career, easiest thing is to have somebody who has your back. My career has been completely enabled because of you working with me, writing those books with me.

Malcolm: Helping me think these ideas you want to stay sharp and not, you know, I'll tell them, look at a lot of old people and you'll see how quickly you can begin to mentally fall apart. If you don't have somebody constantly sharpening you how easy it is to stray from your value system. .

Malcolm: Yeah. Like you matter more to me [00:26:00] being like, I guess, intellectually engaged and sharp today than where I went to college. Wow. And it's true. It's true. Like you can see this is obviously true. You know, you went to Cambridge for graduate school. I went to Stanford for graduate school. Like we went to good look, but how much does that still matter in our daily lives today?

Malcolm: Like in terms of what I know or my knowledge of the world, very little.

Simone: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. No, spouses are everything. Well then. So what if it's just your voice or just your what if one of our daughters is using some kind of like anime filter? So no one sees it's her, but she's still doing it to make money.

Simone: Like, how would you feel about

Malcolm: that? Well, this is the great thing about our culture, right? Is we are telling our kids, they have to make these judgments for themselves. They have to make the cost risk trade off for themselves while knowing what the end cultural goal is. So it's not a bunch of superficial cultural goals that are supposed to achieve this in outcome of high levels of reproduction, high [00:27:00] quality partners, high, high desirability on marriage markets.

Malcolm: You know, we just tell them those are the end goals. Now you have to decide. How you're going to achieve that and a lot of groups, they're designed to work for both smart people and dumb people like this cultural strategy would not work for a dumb, impulsive person, but a because, you know, we are our cultural group will engage in things like polygenic selection.

Malcolm: Presumably, we will have a lot fewer people like that within our cultural group, so it won't be that much of a problem. So

Simone: you're taking up the bumpers, but you're like, it's okay, we're really good bowlers. Is that, is that

Malcolm: it? I mean, and this also comes to how we relate to things like, you know, one of our kids is gay, right?

Malcolm: What I would say to them is, wow, it's going to be dramatically more costly to have kids. That's the downside to that. But because, you know, depending on the cost of, if they're

Simone: male if they're a lesbian, it's pretty fine,

Malcolm: right? So yeah, just double up you can, you can produce twice the number of kids[00:28:00] just, well, I mean, I, it depends on IVG technology and stuff like that and where that is and how cheap that is because they could want the kids to be a hundred percent biologically there.

Malcolm: Yeah, that's

Simone: true. Then it would be much more expensive for

Malcolm: sure. Sure. But if they're doing that, you know, well, not that much more. I mean, there's cost benefits to all of this. Right. And the goal is just maximize and it's not maximize reproduction. And I should be clear, maximize reproduction insofar as you can set these people up for life well, and gives them a good childhood.

Malcolm: Because if you're just spamming kids and you don't take the 1st 18 years of that kid's life and sell them on a good future, right? And sell them like our cultural group is a good way to do things. And you want more people like us to exist. So when you have kids still enjoy their lives as well, they'll just leave, right?

Malcolm: You have to both set the kids up well. So it's, it's a, an equation that you're doing in terms of how many kids you're having versus your means of the family and your local situation.

Simone: So now I can model what's going to happen when you walk in on one of our daughters and she's camming for money is you're going to [00:29:00] be like, listen, listen.

Simone: I respect this, but what I would respect even more is if you do like an Andrew Tate thing, but with AI surrogates, you know, and just you know, build their whole ring. You know, you can you need to maximize this, you know, doing this yourself, putting a, you know, filter on, there's a better way to do this, but be thoughtful.

Simone: I think this is going to be a very entertaining adolescence for our, for our kids. What about for boys? What are your top like warnings you're going to give to our teen boys when it comes to their sexuality?

Malcolm: Well, I think one of the most important that, that girls. Do not have as much is people will try to get pregnant to lock them down.

Malcolm: People do this way more than I thought way more than people thought it is. It is a high quality partner. It was something I constantly had people trying to do with me. I constantly had to worry about. If you're a high quality male partner, people will try to get pregnant very frequently and it's because it's an effective strategy and the legal system as it exists now is really on their side.

Malcolm: So like in the US, if even if a woman, like you are not [00:30:00] sleeping with her, you throw away a condom, you had slept with another girl and she uses that condom to impregnate herself, you're still responsible for child support, even if you never had sex with her.

Simone: Right, because the state views that as, you know, what, what is best for the child.

Simone: And if the child has additional financial support that's not the state, then, okay, perfect, you know.

Malcolm: Yeah, so be aware of that. I think as a male, another really important thing is there's going to be a lot of social pressure on you. To define your self worth. And, and this is true for girls as well by your desirability within sexual marketplaces.

Malcolm: So for women, it's not like the actual number of people they sleep

Simone: with. The number of people who want to sleep with you, for men, it's the number of people you sleep with.

Malcolm: Yeah, but either to. Understand that this is a tool they can use to their advantage if it's a system that they can play well But to be very very careful about actually investing in this sort of system.

Malcolm: It's, it's a mini game in your life. It's not a game [00:31:00] that lasts for long. It basically disappears after you get married. Any, any of your score was in this system. Just utilize it in so far as it helps you secure a long term partner. But other than that, really don't define your self worth by it.

Malcolm: And this also comes to, you know, what I tell our kids about gender, which is really interesting. So. I would be much more concerned about one of our kids. Being trans than being gay. Like I really wouldn't care at all about them being gay, I would tell them the cost of that. But, but trans insofar as not just identifying.

Malcolm: Like I wouldn't care if they just identified as another gender. I mean, technically, we would be considered trans because we're both pretty agender. Like we just don't care that much about what our gender is. But What I would be really concerned about is if they decided to, , undergo all the gender affirming surgery and, and all of the social costs of this.

Malcolm: And I'd be like, that just seems really indulgent, both time wise, money wise, everything wise, for something that I [00:32:00] hope we have raised you to, to believe doesn't really matter that much. Yes, men and women are different. And if you want to play different cards than you were dealt, or you want to, in some way, game the system with hormones or something like that, go ahead with it.

Malcolm: But when you get to the level where this is like a major daily expense to you, when you are making life choices, that is in debt you to a particular medical regime that's going to be a major part of your income for the rest of your life and it to some extent is going to force you to always simp for one cultural group over another cultural group

Malcolm: and I mean, we've seen this, like you look at what happened to somebody like Buck Angel, you know, you don't toe the line and you just get completely piled on by the community, even though he was a, person who, who moved the trans agenda forwards a lot in the early days.

Malcolm: When I think a lot of people thought it was about just acceptance, right? Which is, it's something that we would support. And so that that's where I would [00:33:00] have a little bit more concern if I ever felt like they were investing either in their gender or in their sexuality. If they began to act like their sexuality was a major part of their identity.

Malcolm: I would view that as a failure as us as parents, because I, I would say your sexuality and your gender are tools. They are things that you should like consciously understand, but they can be used to manipulate you by your environment. And, and the level of self control you have over them, yes, exercise self control over them.

Malcolm: Insofar as you make sure they're efficacious towards your long term goals.

Simone: Right. But I think the important thing here that I'm actually hearing from you is you would have exactly the same reaction. If you had a a Cishet boy who got super obsessed with weightlifting and looking masculine, spending money on on, you know, same with a girl with a Cishet girl who like decided that she was going to get plastic surgery.

Simone: And you know, you know, buy all these other medications and stuff to look super feminine. And so it's more, your concern is more like [00:34:00] medicalizing gender, no matter where you started and no matter where you're going. It doesn't matter if this is switching or if this is just maxing, you just aren't for it because this is not

Malcolm: something that's or, or overly incorporating gender into self identity.

Malcolm: Mm

Simone: hmm. Because honestly, like it can go either way. And I think that the bigger. The bigger concern you have is just like overinvestment in this thing that ultimately we don't think

Malcolm: well, I mean, I think your gender is serendipitous You know, whether you are born a man or a woman is largely within most most I think belief systems these days something you're you don't have control over And I am always really against over investing in terms of an individual self identity Something they didn't have a lot of control over

Simone: You're trying to make something that isn't really happening, happen, you know, like just explain what the punches well, so, you know, if, if you, if you feel super, you know, feminine, but you're not like, you know, maybe just try to find a way to work with that, you know, or if something traumatic happens in your life, like work with it, turn it into something good, you [00:35:00] know, but don't try to force something when that causes disproportionate expenditure and your, your resources could be better spent elsewhere.

Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For me, it's mostly just an expenditure thing. And when I say expenditure, I don't just mean money. I mean, time,

Simone: focus, mental

Malcolm: bandwidth. Doors you're closing, bandwidth, mental bandwidth, I mean, anything like this, it's eating mental bandwidth is a major problem in an individual's

Simone: life. Well, this is, again, like I'm thinking more than trans people at this point, I'm thinking like a lot of women who spend so much time on makeup, on all this performative femininity, same with men who spend so much time in the gym and like doing all these things to show.

Malcolm: Oh yeah, no, to me, having a gym bug boy would be just as bad. No, it is something that is non efficacious. Now, if they are doing it for health reasons, that's one thing, right? You know, if they are doing it just to affirm their self identity no and, and as we said, you control the [00:36:00] narratives that you are optimizing for it in a big way, every individual.

Malcolm: Gets to choose their own rules for life, the game that they're playing, right? You determine your own win conditions. And if your win conditions are self indulgent and about satisfying a personal narrative that wasn't created to have some sort of true impact on the world, I would be very disappointed in them.

Malcolm: Whatever that narrative is.

Simone: Well, so if

Malcolm: they were like a sports star or something, I'd be very disappointed.

Simone: I don't know. I think if they, you know, if they're making a crap ton of money or they were, you know, doing really well.

Malcolm: A sports star to make money and then use that money to have efficacious change in the world.

Malcolm: Or to get a, a larger podium to speak from. Yeah, like those two things would be, things I would value. But if they were a sports star, because they saw themselves as a sports star, and like being a sports star was in and of itself.

Simone: Right, but I mean, that's, I think that's the same with anything.

Simone: You, you really don't objective functions that are. They're optimized around fulfilling [00:37:00] an identity and that's the problem. You know, that's, that's the core issue, but I'm actually, I'm really glad that we recorded this conversation because I imagined that like when our daughters start dating, you're going to have, I'm really keen to see if this actually happens, if this is a thing.

Simone: But you could have that weird dad response where, you know, you're like, sit every like boy down and you're like, I'm going to kill you if you hurt my daughter. You know what I mean? No, what

Malcolm: I'd probably do is I'd ask my daughters, what role do they need me as a dad to play to increase the one safety of the dating experience?

Malcolm: And to quality of partners are getting, and I suspect that different roles might be necessary with different guys, depending on so they'll be

Simone: like, Dad, play bad cop. Yeah,

Malcolm: I need you. I need you to be the tough dad tonight. That's what we're going for was this guy. I think it'll play out really well. No, no, no.

Malcolm: And I think another thing that we could do that's going to be very different than sort of the, the urban monoculture is I would encourage my kids to start looking for spouses [00:38:00] and having kids fairly early. The way that I divide dating, as I say, high school is a hundred percent for fun.

Malcolm: Fun and practice. This is where you get good at dating, this is where you get good at engaging with, you know, whatever gender you're attracted to. And the reason I say that is, this is true, especially if you're going to public school. Now, if you're high schooling online, as our kids were, this is less important.

Malcolm: The reason why, if you're going to like public or private schools, this is really important, is the people you are surrounded with were largely chosen by serendipity, and it is very unlikely That 1 of these, you know, couple 100 randomly selected people is going to be an optimal marriage partner for you.

Malcolm: Whereas I think they're probably going to be like, I was in people that you meet. And so 1st, you're going to need to, you're not going to meet 10, 000 people. What you're going to do is you're going to pre filter the people you meet by certain metrics and then try to meet everyone in as I tried to everyone in the San Francisco area that met certain prescreened requirements that I felt I got to that point where I had met every woman in the entire area during that period of time who was single around my age and met the requirements.

Malcolm: I was looking [00:39:00] for maybe not every single one, but I'd say at least 60 to 70%. And that's pretty good. So, so that's really a big difference is, is we'd say, okay, yes, high school is for practice. Yeah. But immediately after high school, you need to be looking for a spouse. If, if you want to realistically find one in time.

Malcolm: College is not for fun. College is for finding a spouse. And if you get to the end of college and you haven't found a spouse, you need to be, like, freaking out. As I was, as Miles was. I mean, my brother found his spouse on his first day of college. And, and by the time I graduated college, I was like, okay, I've got graduate school, but that's really it.

Malcolm: If I fail at graduate school, my odds of finding a partner, because as I've always said, you know, there's a large pool of pre vetted candidates there. So, what else would you tell our sons? Anything else?

Simone: to keep in mind the metagame being played. By the women that they are dating. So we'd previously talked, about, , women have a hot, crazy graph, but men have a hot, evil graph.

Simone: [00:40:00] If you've got a man, who's got a super high partner count, like above a certain partner count,

Simone: the odds of you hurt people are much higher. So I would just want. Our, our sons to be aware of the trade offs that are happening on the other end with women that they're dating and to be aware of the role that they're playing in their lives. And I think one thing that you did really well when you were dating other people really actively and looking for a wife, but also just dating to explore and sort of like, you know, build experience or have fun or whatever it was.

Simone: Your goal was always to, to leave someone better off than they were when you started with them to introduce them to new like boyfriends, to you know, find out what they want and try to, you know, help them get closer to that. Whether that was like exploring their sexuality or finding a better partner or moving their career forward or learning about things.

Simone: And, and I, I really think that, you know, we should have the general, you know, campsite rule, leave it better, better than it was when you came, you know, and so I, I really

Malcolm: liked that. Yeah. And that was always my breakup [00:41:00] strategy back when I wanted to break up with someone, I would find them another partner.

Malcolm: I'd say I remember with one girl, I was like, okay, like we're breaking up out of everyone, you know, today, who would you most want to date? And it turned out it was one of her professors. And so I was like, okay, here's your strategy. I'm going to set you up for this. And she actually ended up dating him.

Malcolm: Yeah. Um, uh, That she was the professor that all the girls wanted. So I was, I was really proud that I got that set up because I was like, okay, this is. This is a strategy. We'll work together on this. But I think that through that, and this is something that is hugely underestimated in the manosphere, many of my really high quality partners that I got when I was dating were references from other people.

Malcolm: You know, when you treat women well, and it's also true when you treat men well when it is clear that things don't work out, you know, so long as your goals were always up front for the beginning, I'm looking for a spouse , their network and they're having dated you and saying, this is a good person, trust me, you know, et cetera, to, to, to someone who they know.[00:42:00]

Malcolm: Can be really, really high quality and securing a partner and very, very valuable at securing access to people who don't date on open markets. And that's something that I think a lot of people miss. You know, if you're out there getting the type of person who dates, Like strangers, you're much more likely to run into like himbos and thots and stuff like that.

Malcolm: Cause these are the people that are out there having sex with lots of people, but there's certain types of people who essentially don't date anyone. Who's not a pre qualified lead. And I'd say that this is where the majority of the really high quality partners are. And this is why you can find them best through certain types of networking and achieving success within your own life.

Malcolm: That is often the thing that reflects. Best in, in, in the dating scene, not improving your superficial sexuality. And that's always something we should remember to tell our kids is improving how hot you are and you should always be a baseline level of hot. I know it's you know, you should ever let yourself go or anything like that.

Malcolm: I would do that as a sign of[00:43:00] well, for me dating, that would be just like an immediate screen. Oh, this person lacks self control. So I'm not intrigued. Like they can't live the lifestyle that I want to live.

Simone: Or you view attractiveness as a, just a sign of conscientiousness. In other words.

Malcolm: Yeah, like a baseline level, but outside of that when you go above a certain level of attractiveness to attract partners, you know, you are disproportionately getting the partners that are choosing you because you are attractive and these are thoughts they want you for your attractiveness as opposed to partners who are choosing you because of your intellectualism or choosing you because they admire your morality are choosing you because they like where you're going in life and they want to go on that path as well.

Malcolm: And that leads to very different types of partners and relationship dynamics, which is something I really want to hammer home for our kids. Because both men and women in the early days, they can begin to optimize their dating around what [00:44:00] ends in sex with the people they want to have sex with instead of, and a lot of guys, I love it in the manosphere.

Malcolm: They recognize. That women screw up when they do this, that women will do this and they'll think, Oh, that's a quality partner. I could get in the real world, you know, blah, blah, blah. And it ends up in terms of like longterm partners and it ends up screwing up what they're optimizing for. But the same thing happens to men.

Malcolm: Yeah, the types of women that those strategies are successful with are often not the types of women who you would want to marry for, for obvious reasons, right? Because they are dating you because you are attractive, right? So that's not. Women who you want to marry don't go around dating guys because they're attractive.

Malcolm: They go around dating guys because they make good long term partners.

Simone: Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm really glad we had this talk. I'm looking forward to having the talk with our kids because I want to see what weird curveballs they throw at us.

Malcolm: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, who knows what gender and sexuality look like in the future?

Malcolm: I expect they're going to be quite different. I expect It's so funny. If [00:45:00] I try to explain, I think, to a lot of young people today what trans or gay meant in my generation, They'd be like, but that's trans, that's like transmedicalist, that's like transphobic. And I was like, no, no, no, like the transmedicalists, those were like the only, that was like the only game in town back then.

Malcolm: For people who don't know what this means when I was younger you were born trans. Right? You, you were either born in the wrong body, or you weren't born in the wrong body, and to say anything else was transphobic, and now that would be considered transmedicalist, because that would be saying, oh, well, you have to have this level of gender dysphoria, you have to genuinely believe this, and, and that is now considered transphobic.

Malcolm: And I think that this also helps for me really highlight how one, how fluid these concepts are within a society, but also how much the way that like in, in, in the Vogue today, the way that these concepts are contextualized is not the truth. Right. And [00:46:00] by that, what I mean is it's not like the moral nexus is the only way to view these ways.

Malcolm: It's just how the dominant cultural group. happens to view them today and that will change over time and something that may be seen as moral today will be seen as immoral in the future. And therefore I encourage my kids to just not play that game and not overly invest in that game. Because the chips that they spend may end up blowing up in their face in the future, you know, today, what we call TERFs at one point were mainstream feminist ideology, like in the era of Skinner ism and stuff like that Today's heroes are tomorrow's villains.

Malcolm: Don't play that game. Just decide for yourself what you want with knowledge of human biology, as realistic as you can understand, and knowledge of your end goal, which is to maximize your number of offspring who stay within your culture and are happy they exist.

Simone: And there you go. I love you so much, Malcolm.

Malcolm: I love you too, Simone.[00:47:00]

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