Inside The First Natalism Conference: Gossip & Impressions With Diana Fleischman

We recap the first major international natalism conference hosted in Dallas with special guest Diana Fleischman. Topics covered include apprehensions going in about trad attendees & racism accusations, demographics breakdown of attendees including 50% with 0 kids, speakers dynamics & highlights (Brittany Benjamin, Peachy Keenan), bonding between sexes, unconference sessions for solutions brainstorming, targeting overlooked populations like furries, comparisons to effective altruist movement origins & attraction of autists, likelihood of future growth trajectory & longevity of the movement.

Simone Collins: [00:00:00] hello everyone. You may see a familiar face with us today because we are rejoined by the one and only Diana Fleischman, who we saw in Dallas recently we saw in Austin recently.

For the natalism conference, the, the first really major like non national based pro natalist conference out there, which we did not organize, but thoroughly enjoyed. Now if you can't remember Diana Fleishman can be found on Twitter as a sentientist. She posts a lot and really interesting, thoughtful stuff, a good mix.

So definitely check her out on Twitter. Also. She, you know, could go to dianafleischman. com or check out the podcast interviews that she does with Aporia. But we are here to talk about the natalism conference, all the gossip, all the fun, because it was interesting. It was not, we didn't know what to expect, right?

Malcolm Collins: I can say I went to it with a lot of apprehension because I know the brand of pronatalism that we push on our show. But, you know, when I look at the Articles that are attacking us. [00:01:00] They're always saying, Oh, you know, the pronatalist movements, just like a bunch of like crazy racists and like great replacement theorists and stuff like that.

And I assumed going to the conference, like there was a part of me that was like, Oh, it's just going to be like a bunch of like. crazy people who are primarily motivated by race politics who you know, are just extremely, extremely, extremely off the reservation or like classic. So sometimes when you go to a conservative event, they'll just be like a bunch of hucksters, like trying to sell you on stupid, whatever scams or whatever.

I saw neither of that at this conference at any sort of large level. It was predominantly like if people were like, what's the. Category of people. It felt very much like the early effective altruist movement, but much more religious. And I literally couldn't have asked for a better thing in terms of what I saw there, but I'd love to hear your

Diana Fleischmann: thoughts.

I was also a little apprehensive when I joined because well, I think it's fine to say this. [00:02:00] It was not beautifully and competently organized from the beginning. Like they originally reached out to me and Jeffrey and then Jeffrey and I were not thrilled with the lineup at that point, the lineup got totally shuffled around.

There's a lot of people that changed at that point. And unsurprisingly, they invited many women who ended up not being able to come because they had all children that they had to take care of. So, I also asked them if they would be able to provide childcare and they said, You know, we have no plans to provide childcare.

As a side note, they did end up providing childcare and I can understand their apprehension given that the conference is running at a pretty big loss for the first year.

Diana Fleischmann: I thought that that was kind of short sighted, although Kevin Dolan later said that he didn't see a lot of interest from other people and he left his six kids with a flex at home. I also was a little apprehensive from going because I'm kind of a poser in this space. I only have two kids. I may only ever have two kids.

I donated eggs a lot, which is kind of like being a cuckoo more than anything else. Does that

Simone Collins: technically mean you've had more than two kids? Yes,

Diana Fleischmann: it does technically mean that. But it also [00:03:00] means that I have refused to care for them in the way that trads would appreciate me doing. I still

Simone Collins: very pronatalist.

Diana Fleischmann: It is, it is pronatalist. That's also narcissistic. So, so that's the other reason. And then when I saw the hip pieces that came out about it, I was thinking, you know, are we going to have. Antifa show up and there was a little bit of information security. They didn't tell anybody, even us until the very final minute, what, what floor things were going to be on.

It was, there was a lot of security. But you know, what I found out going to tons of conferences over 20 years is that if you invite smart people. It doesn't actually matter that much. What else you do if smart, it doesn't matter. I mean, the amenities were really good. And the scheduling, just cause the schedule didn't really finalize until the very last minute.

And I met a lot of cool people. Again, you know, when we were there, you guys are more tech focused, you guys are more kind of effective altruist and tech focused. And I was also thinking, you know, like for example, our mutual friend [00:04:00] Ayala was saying, well, I would come to a party there, but I wouldn't be welcome.

And it's true that she probably wouldn't have been welcome. There were people there who disliked her. Right.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, it was interesting. There were some, one of the really interesting things was seeing how unwelcome, so there were some people who went there that were like old school style racist, like there was this white nationalist famous whatever guy, but they seem to be pretty what's the word I'm looking for?

Like, sad guy in the corner that no one's really interacting with? They, they had some people, like, I, I know that they, they, they just were not, I think they went, and it was a really interesting thing I noticed, where if I looked at people who were there by age the, the old people were typically operating on older ideologies that they thought would get them a lot of followership among the young people, but the young people were much more interested in messages, like the messages that you had.

Diana Fleischmann: Yeah. So like, let's, let's [00:05:00] try and divide it up. Let's think about, so, so Brit. Britt Benjamin, who is there with her four year old. By the way, there were only a handful of kids there. There was my daughter. I know there were surprisingly few, right? Yeah. There was an, there was a one year old who was getting into everything.

It was very cute. There was a four year old and then Emma Waters brought her eight month old, which made me really grateful that my daughter is not yet that age. Cause it's very hard to keep them entertained. Yeah, as far as the the divide, you know, you guys were saying you thought it was gonna be more 70 percent trad, 30 percent techie, and it ended up being more like 70 percent techie, 30 percent trad, right?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And like deep techie too. Like, I, you know, I have a tech VC background. And the companies that they were working on were actually like really impressive often.

Diana Fleischmann: There were a lot of Mormons and a lot of Jews there. What other, I mean, I

Simone Collins: didn't know. Like a decent number of like Baptists, but not, not, I expected to see a bunch of trad cats and there weren't

Malcolm Collins: really that many.

There were some trad cats. I was surprised that I didn't see any ultra [00:06:00] Orthodox Jews.

Diana Fleischmann: Mm.

Simone Collins: But see, the thing is, I, I don't think. So my definition of pronatalism is that like it exists independent of like a religious background. Like if your religious imperative is to like have a lot of kids and you're just doing it because it's part of your religion and part of that culture, like sort of by default, then you don't get credit for that.

But if you're doing it because you have also thoughtfully thought through it and you may be really religious and you may have a religious imperative, but like, for example, We know some Orthodox Jews who I consider to be very pronatalist because they talk about like, well, there's, you know, the most impactful thing we could ever do with our lives is have kids.

We really care about our kids. And they're not just like, Oh yeah. You know, like, you know, God decided we should have kids and, you know, God has given us this many kids. So I think that we didn't see that many ultra Orthodox Jews there because many of them are only pronatalist. By chance, like, or they, they have a lot of kids because they're also very religious, but they're first and foremost religious.

Does that make sense? Yeah. I disagree.

Malcolm Collins: [00:07:00] And I'm That's definitely not what I've seen. I mean, I, I've noticed a lot of ultra Orthodox Jews really get the perinatalist message. They get what we're aiming for. And I would have like, like when I go to other pronatal events, like if we're putting together, and this may be biasing me because most of the events we've done in the past have been in New York it's very common to have ultra Orthodox Jews be at least 30 percent of the people coming.

And yet I didn't meet a single one at the entire event. I met lots of Jews, but not ultra Orthodox Jews.

Simone Collins: Yeah. What's your take on this, Diana?

Diana Fleischmann: I mean, there's a, there's an Israeli and Jewish saying that says children are joy and you know, they are really into children. And if you go to Israel, Israel is really pronatalist.

There's playgrounds everywhere. Even when I went to a conference, I went to a sex differences concert with my baby and there was a, there was quite a few Jews there. Because the, the organizers were part of the community here in New Mexico, the Jewish community here in New Mexico, they were making such a fuss over my baby, which is not, not even that Jewish a baby.

So, yeah, I, I, I don't [00:08:00] know, but I did meet, you know, like there's the guy, I was giving a talk and, A very sweet moment happened where I couldn't get my baby to settle down. So they moved my talk back a little bit and my baby was sick. She's generally pretty chill. And this father of six who was also somewhat Jewish came swooped in and got my baby to sleep, not only just during my whole talk, but she slept for like an hour after that on my shoulder, he had some magical effect on her.

And so I did, I did meet a lot of fathers of a lot of kids. I do think also, I wrote about this on on Twitter that I was really. Struck at the warmth between men and women at in this conference, because I've never been to a traditional I mean, I've been to church and I've been to synagogue, but this actually seemed like people were really paying attention to women in a way more than I heard about before.

Maybe it's because women are underrepresented and they recognize that women there were taking time away valuable time from their Children. You know, peachy Keenan was a huge hit. So I do. I love what you guys think about about [00:09:00] this dynamic between men and women as opposed to at academic conferences.

Well, I think part of the stuff at academic conferences is there's so many rules against having sex and there are a lot of people there who want to have sex. And I don't get the feeling that this conference was at all people who were in any way interested in hooking up.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that's interesting. A lot of people went there explicitly and they told me this and we're looking at seeing how we can handle this in a follow up at looking to find a partner or someone to marry.

And this is true of both men and women. I want to be clear about this. Fewer women went. But I noticed among the women who went, more of them were single. And if you want to get an idea of how many of the people at the conference were single I think like our initial read is around 50 percent of the people at the conference had zero kids.

And this is something Wow. We often see was reporters where they'll be talking about the pronatalist movement. And they're like, I want to talk to young people in the pronatalist movement. We have a ton of kids. Like, that's what I want for our article. And I'm like, the movement started like a year and a half ago.

Where, where do you think we're going to, these people don't [00:10:00] have fricking time machines. You know, this takes time, especially in today's

Simone Collins: environment. Yeah. There's just that one couple that has 22 kids and like what, 10 of them were in one year or something like that.

Malcolm Collins: I do think you're right. I think that there, it was unusual when I contrasted it with other events that had a similar feel, like it really felt similar to manifest.

Did you go to manifest this year? So this was like the best EA party I've been to recently.

Simone Collins: Just for, for context manifest was, this was the inaugural conference essentially of the manifold prediction market. Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Like Yad was there. Scott Alexander was there. Robin Hanson was there. You know, typical a lab was there and it manifests they had on day one, like a betting market for when the orgy would happen or if an orgy would happen and it ended up happening like the first night.

Simone Collins: Yeah, I think it was when it was not even it because why it

Malcolm Collins: was so odd. Like, I think when people are like, Oh yeah, I mean, academics go to conferences one idiot late, but is [00:11:00] that really like top of mind? Yes, it's really top of mind at a lot of academic conferences. Even back when I was an academic and I was single.

Like these are people who are culturally similar to me, everything like that. There do happen to be within the traditional EA community, lots of orgies and stuff happening. This is not rare. And it was notable and I think it made it easier for men and women to interact. As you said that this was not on anyone's mind.

Simone Collins: It was too wholesome for that. But here's the other thing is, is I feel even differently from that. I think. At many different types of conferences, including conservative conferences. And I would also put this on like the ARC conference, like ARC conference in London, which is like a conservative Davos.

That's what they're trying to do. Can you spell out the acronym there? The Alliance of Responsible Citizens.

Malcolm Collins: Jordan Peterson, Louise Perry thing.

Simone Collins: I often feel like when there are women speakers, it is because they're the token female speakers. They're not like, you're kind of like listening to them and you're like, Oh yes, the female has spoken now.

That's [00:12:00] good. Let's get that out of the way. Cause I want to listen to the guys speak. Cause those are the ones we all came for. Like, there's not really this much like respect for them. And they also don't really have them that much. That's interesting to say. So like, in other words, I feel like In many of these cases, the women who are selected to speak at many conferences are selected as a diversity checkbox and not as actually good speakers.

And what was really interesting is that some of my favorite speakers, including you, Diana, including PG Keenan, were totally my favorite people, like hands down, you know, they had really, really well.

Malcolm Collins: Yes.

Simone Collins: No. God. Yeah. But Benjamin's talk was amazing. Yeah. So like this, I was like, wait, whoa. And like, so this was, and I did not expect this because one, it was a trad conference and two, like, I'm so used to like any female speaker being a diversity checkbox and pretty boring and not that substantive and not that unique.

And this was totally not the case. And then there was also just this like very. Big level of respect.

Malcolm Collins: I think part of this was just the ARC speeches weren't as good in general. And the reason [00:13:00] why they weren't as good as general is because they were broadcasting them and there was a fairly large audience and it was more speaking to the audience.

So it was a chance for people to pick up more followers. It was a general audience. So they defaulted to their stump speeches. Whereas with this one, because nobody knew, I mean, this was a oversight and planning, nobody knew what speeches everyone else was giving. So it meant that everyone had to veer as.

far away from their default pronatalist stump speech as possible if that's what they usually gave or move towards a pronatalist stump speech if they weren't used to giving pronatalist stump speeches. So like Raziv gave a very generic, like, not generic at all, it was weird and interesting and I liked it, but it was like a pronatalist stump speech, but that's because he typically doesn't give one of those.

Whereas like Brit Benjamin, you know, at, at Hereticon, she gave the pronatalist stump speech. So she ended up giving a speech on No fault divorce and how it makes it harder to form good relationships. And I didn't know this about her. So Brent Benjamin is Patry's ex wife. We've had Patry on the show [00:14:00] before.

He's the guy who does Charter City stuff. And she is has been a long time sort of pronatalist advocate. And she did a speech. We should have her on the program. And artificial womb advocate too. And she is, is a divorce lawyer. That's what she does for a living. So she was able to talk about that in sort of like really interesting details.

So I think that that was another reason why the speeches were uniquely good. But then I also reflect on the women's speeches at events like ARC, right? And they were speeches on like why we should ban pornography or like, you know, still sort of almost a form of female mate guarding behavior. Like they were like, I'm going to be honest, like a lot of veiled female mate guarding in the guise of conservative value systems.

Whereas here it was more like functionally, how do we solve this? Yeah.

Diana Fleischmann: I think it's a big tent in the natalism movement. So there's people who are advocating for things like artificial wombs. There's somebody like. Emma waters, who has been beefing online with Richard Hanania about things like surrogacy there's you guys who are very [00:15:00] tech focused and interested in embryo selection.

There was Pat Fagan who's a very well known sort of evangelist there who was back to back with me, which I never thought I'd be sharing a stage so closely with an evangelist. And what I was reading about is this guy called Charles Haywood, who was there as well, he came up with the slogan, no enemies to the right.

And so I do think that conservatism has become less prone to criticizing other conservatives or other people who are value aligned. So in, in, in my tweet, I said, you know, maybe people were being nice to me because I'm value aligned. And Dolan, Kevin Dolan said, well, you know, people are not that value aligned with you.

You are definitely less trad than everyone else. But in some sense, I was value aligned. Cause I showed up with a baby, which, you know. Is more value aligned than, than many people who were there. Yeah. So I think that's the idea that like, if somebody's value aligned with you, with the message that you're espousing at that moment, that, you know, you shouldn't be critical of them.

And, you know, given, given, you know, my, my interaction with Emma, for [00:16:00] example, who's at the Heritage Foundation, I would have never expected that she and I would differ so much actually on what we think are some, some good ways ways forward. This is kind of. At the putting the beginning at the end, but let's talk about where this conference was and what it was like.

So the whole first day was back to back speakers and unfortunately, maybe for you, Malcolm, the best rundown of this is actually at American Renaissance, which is a white nationalist. Yeah. So the best rundown of the whole conference, maybe somebody will post something else. That's more comprehensive.

But that was a summary of each of the talks and you know, to our credits and the natalism conferences credit, the American Renaissance writer said, well, natalism doesn't want to be associated with white nationalism. Yeah, that's right. We don't really want to be associated with white nationalism.

Thank you. Yeah, please. And thank

Malcolm Collins: you. And then the second day, I, I did, yeah. My, my experience with him at the conference, the guy who was affiliated with him was interesting because I did feel kind of bad for him because I felt like a lot of people didn't want to talk to him or engage with him. And so it's [00:17:00] always sad to see somebody being ignored at a conference like this, but it was really excited to see that.

The genuinely, you had some leaders of that movement show up thinking that their fanboys would be there or that this would be a way to recruit more people. And it didn't serve as that for them. And that was very heartening to me.

Simone Collins: Yeah, the second day was a conference essentially. And like, they, they had on, on the funding team for the natalism conference, someone who was really familiar with Stanford D school sessions with working sessions.

So it was broken into this sort of like, People propose working sessions or people going to all day thematic sessions. There were all suggested by participants and then just dig deep on ideas. The three of us floated around short, like 30 minute rapid fire on conference sessions. The subjects ranged from like, how do you create a renegade group of people to help solve academic problems to how do you keep your family and your religion?

How do you innovate in education? How do [00:18:00] you arrange marriages? Summer camps.

Diana Fleischmann: Yeah, there was a guy who wanted to make a pronatalist romance novel. And this lovely woman there who was watching the children who got a free ticket to watch children. She told me that she has actually read. Pro natalist romance novels.

I think there's Amish

Simone Collins: romance novels. Oh, there are a lot of Amish romance novels.

Diana Fleischmann: Tell me one that she'd read recently where this woman falls in love, she gets married, and then she has a child with down syndrome and she runs away from her maternal responsibilities because she's so overwhelmed by having this child with down syndrome.

And then when she goes out into the real, you know, on non Amish world and everybody tells her, why didn't you kill your baby? She realizes how far. The outside world has fallen. And so she goes back to her home and her husband to take care of her baby. And that's the romantic I think that

Malcolm Collins: sounds fascinating.

Yeah. So, so it was pretty well run, but one of the things, one of the reasons I think it was like the second part was well, like it actually was fun. The second day, like engaging one of the guys who's organizing the conference was one of the [00:19:00] people who used to run the Singularity Institute. So people who don't know the Singularity Institute and I keep mentioning it.

felt very much like the effect of altruist movement from like 2010. And I'm, and I keep asking myself like why? Like we were talking at one event like, like, and this is really promising because the EA movement went on to be a very powerful movement in terms of our, our society. And somebody was like, well, I think the way the EA movement did so well is they disproportionately attracted Autists.

And then like five people, when somebody said that, was like, raised their hands and somebody peeped in the room perfectly at that moment, being like, did somebody say autists? And, and that's when I realized that, oh yeah, this movement is really disproportionately autistic. And I think the way it's attracting a very similar audience, it, it is a movement tied to an obvious truth or problem in society that is for whatever reason, Socially, you're not allowed to talk about it.

So it's the type of thing that's going to draw the Iconoclasts and the autists disproportionately. You know, with the EA [00:20:00] movement, it was most charity is actually pretty ineffective and meant for self vanity. And that was just an obvious thing. Now everyone says that. But back then, that was a controversial thing to say.

And now, it's population rates are falling really fast, and this is actually a problem. And we probably should find a, like, steer society in a direction where it can handle this. And so it's acting as sort of both me and the early EAA movement without all the orgies.

Simone Collins: Without all the orgies.

Diana Fleischmann: Only with proletarianism. Effective altruism is starting to sort of dip its toe into, not pro natalism at all, but I know many effective altruists who I thought would never have children, who've decided to have children, and as much as effective altruists talk about, you know, facts and evidence, It actually is because of peer pressure and because effective altruists are getting to know other people who have children that they've decided.

So Toby Ord who wrote the precipice wrote a essay with, with his wife, I think her name is Bernadette about, you know, how they decided to have a child and how it was going to reduce [00:21:00] their effectiveness somewhat, but that it was it was worth doing. And that was a long time ago. That was like. I don't know 10 years ago or something like that.

And so, now I know a few other effective altruists who are now either having children. So what I'm saying is that people are not immune to peer pressure. Even the most rationalist people are not immune to peer

Simone Collins: pressure. It's so interesting though, that even doing it, they thought that it would reduce their effectiveness when like, I honestly, it like from a hiring standpoint, when we look at like potential employees a combination of, of at least some proven competence and then being a parent is such a good combination because they, they're less flighty, they're less flaky, they're more consistent and you know, they're motivated, you know, and there's a lot of people who in EA, I would never hire even if they're really intelligent because they're like profoundly flaky.

And in parenting really. Creates more reliability in people. So they're probably more effective in odd, odd ways. But yeah, I what, another thing in terms of like autistic, weird [00:22:00] populations that were discussed is at one point in one of the on conference sessions there was a discussion of like, well, but like what segments of society should we target with these messages who are not already part of this movement and who are not like, you know, obviously like.

Conservative religious and someone, I'm not going to name that, but they're like pretty well known was like, well, I mean, You know, furries are like a great example of a population that could, you know, that is untapped and overlooked. And I, it like, it kind of blew my mind at first to think about it, but he's like, no, listen, like he had recently gone to some like really conservative, more like higher profile conference, but right before it was a fur con in the same like venue, and so he met and spoke with some furries.

And ask them, like, for example, about their, their costumes and what they did for work and the costumes are, you know, like 15 to 20, 000, like you can't to be a real good furry. Like you gotta, you gotta have money. You have to have some level of competence and you have to be, I guess, heterodox and clever enough to be like, I don't care what society thinks because

Diana Fleischmann: you're [00:23:00] saying being a furry is like being a parent.

Malcolm Collins: It's about, I really do not think genuinely they're not a good community to target because for needle is honey and freedom is hedonism. And so yes, it has a similar filter in that it's frowned upon by society to talk about, but the honey is different. And so even if you're going competent people you're going to draw the people who are not, flightier or less effective

Diana Fleischmann: and freedom, I think is infantilizing.

I think that parenthood. It's, it's, it's just a super grown up, I think before you become a parent, you don't know if spending time with your kids is going to cut into your, you know, video game playing movie watching time, or if it's going to cut into your work time. And for some people it does cut into their work time and they never, you never gain their their effectiveness again.

I certainly am not as productive as I was. With two kids now than I, you know, as with, with one and I'm, I've been listening to you guys talk about how you manage your lives as a way of trying to figure that out. So yeah, the, the, the natalism conference, yeah, it was, it was really, [00:24:00] it was better, much better than I expected.

People were extremely warm and, and generous with their time. I don't think it was just because I was carrying a baby, although I think that helped a lot. And and I don't know. So cute. I can cameo with her in a minute if you want. Well, and it was

Malcolm Collins: really easy to talk to new people there. I was also surprised by that.

Sometimes at conferences, there's these conferences where people are like, why are you talking to me? We don't know each other yet. Or you feel some apprehension about approaching groups. And I noticed none of that was in this. There were no cliques.

Diana Fleischmann: I couldn't, I didn't see people who were just hanging out together in a way that was glommed together the whole time.

I didn't notice that at all. Even, you know, the, the group of extremely tall men in conservative politics were, were, you know, sometimes I feel like, If we're sitting down, it's fine, but I can't, but they were very, very they got, they got down to my level. Hold on. I'll bring the baby out for a minute.

Simone Collins: But I want to see Stella. I want to see Stella. I want to see Stella.

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Stella. So [00:25:00] we're going to wrap up this one to start on the next one.

Diana Fleischmann: Hi!

Simone Collins: Oh my goodness, look at

Malcolm Collins: you. Oh. Yes.

Simone Collins: Oh, hello. You are so awake. Oh, did we just get a little wink? We kind of got a little wink. Oh

Diana Fleischmann: my gosh. Hello. Oh, she

Simone Collins: kills me. She kills me. She definitely, like, charmed everyone at the conference.

Oh,

Diana Fleischmann: let's see if we can get a little smile from you. Katelyn!

Simone Collins: Oh, there we go.

Malcolm Collins: Anyway, the conference was fantastic. We'd love to see people in future years. And I really do hope that it can grow in the way the EA movement did historically grow. And people were like, but then it's going to burn out and sell out. I'm like, yes, that's what happens with something successful.

And then we'll start something else new, but I'm really excited. And thanks for coming.

Diana Fleischmann: Yeah, it was, it was a wonderful time and it was wonderful to spend some time with you guys

Simone Collins: as well. Yeah. Yeah. That was one of my favorite parts. Not going to lie, but I think that's a lot of what like these conferences need to be.

[00:26:00] And I think that's the one last point that I will end with is that you know, when, when you're building a movement. Yeah. It's about sharing the ideas and the unconference sessions and the brainstorming and stuff, but it's also just about showing people that they're not alone and showing them other facets of the community and hanging out.

And it was great for that too. So I'm glad we got to see you. Okay.

Diana Fleischmann: Bye.

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