
Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins
Based Camp is a podcast focused on how humans process the world around them and the future of our species. That means we go into everything from human sexuality, to weird sub-cultures, dating markets, philosophy, and politics.
Malcolm and Simone are a husband wife team of a neuroscientist and marketer turned entrepreneurs and authors. With graduate degrees from Stanford and Cambridge under their belts as well as five bestselling books, one of which topped out the WSJs nonfiction list, they are widely known (if infamous) intellectuals / provocateurs.
If you want to dig into their ideas further or check citations on points they bring up check out their book series. Note: They all sell for a dollar or so and the money made from them goes to charity. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08FMWMFTG basedcamppodcast.substack.com
Latest episodes

May 23, 2024 • 33min
The Medical System Is No Safer Than the School System
The Site Simone Mentioned: https://www.emigal.com/2022/01/16/blood-testing-focused-on-longevity/ Our Discord: https://discord.gg/EGFRjwwS92 In this eye-opening episode, Malcolm and Simone share their harrowing experiences with the failures of the modern medical system. From being denied prophylactic rabies vaccines for their children to not being informed about elevated lead levels in their daughter's blood, the couple realizes that the focus of the current healthcare system is on bureaucratic compliance and liability rather than patient outcomes. They discuss the importance of taking personal ownership of their family's health by proactively monitoring blood work, conducting regular scans, and staying informed about cutting-edge research. Malcolm and Simone also explore the idea of creating a network of like-minded physicians and families to support each other as the infrastructure of society begins to break down. Throughout the conversation, they touch on topics such as the Sinclair method for treating alcoholism, the failings of nationalized healthcare systems, and the impressive efficiency of South Korea's medical industry.Simone Collins: [00:00:00] any normal parent would pull that up, look at it and be like 3 means.But I'm not getting any alerts.Malcolm Collins: I'm not being told by anyone, So it must be fine. So it must be fineSimone Collins: we weren't really paying attention or taking ownership of it ourselves. Instead, we were like, Oh, if no one's telling me anything's wrong, I guess nothing's wrong, which was apparently a really bad approachI don't know why we didn't assume that this was also happening with the medical system, but the focus of this system is not on patient outcomes, it is on bureaucratic compliance and ass covering and justification of bureaucratic structures,Malcolm Collins: what I want to do here is take this opportunity for not just for our family, but for the network of families that makes up our community. This is something you can join if you're like, my family would benefit from this.But what we also need to make this realistically implementable for us is like minded medical professionals who are interested in, providing a new type of telehealth, basically where they're much more like [00:01:00] a thesis advisor. By that, what I mean is the patient can't just decide on anything themselves. They need to then take all of their research to the doctors, say, here's this study, here's this study, here's this study.And I think as a result, given the symptoms are given this, I should be prescribed X which again, creates reasons for value aligned families to group together and support each other.As the bureaucratic infrastructure of our society is beginning to break down. Because it is. It's not just the school systems. It's not just the infrastructure that's falling apart. Civilization is essentially falling apart around us.would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone We are coming into this episode I will start with mitching and ask for anyone who fits this criteria and doesn't make it to the end of the episode but we are looking for values aligned individuals Uh, with MD, so value aligned doctors, and we're likely going to create a list for different states for our listeners to directly contact [00:02:00] them, but obviously we would really love one either outside Pennsylvania, but preferably was in Pennsylvania due to some prescribing laws.But the reason we need to make this ask is that we have. Completely lost faith in the, I guess I'd call it bureaucratic medical institutions in the United States and largely in the world because I, I lost faith in the NHS when I was living in the UK and I was like at least in the U S because as profit driven, et cetera.And now I have realized that I should have been putting as much stock in these institutions, having my back. Children's best interest at heart as I had put in the school system, having my Children's best interest at heart. And that these institutions in their own way have become as corrupted and as useless as the public school system and are becoming increasingly more so as time goes on, to the extent where if your kids are going [00:03:00] to just, an average age.doctor down the road. I would say that I would not trust that they are safe. So do you want to go into the events that led us here, Simone?Simone Collins: Sure. Yes. It all started with a a bat that we found crawling around in our yard. Octavian ran up to Malcolm and said that our dog, the professor, was barking at something scary.And Malcolm being the ever attentive dad did not dismiss this. And went outside to check on the kids and saw her dog barking at what seemed like the ground, but it turned out that when He looked closer. There was a bat crawling along it. Andso we put the bat in a giant goldfish box. And put a sign on it that said live potentially rabid bat called the government, found the government testing location. Malcolm drove forever to drop off this live bat, which a government bureaucrat was pretty dismissive about,Malcolm Collins: I know they were like, Oh, okay.I'll put it with the mail. And I was like, don't put that with the rest of them out. It's like everything [00:04:00] live. Rabid. And I told them when I dropped them off, this is a live, potentially rabid bat. And there was a, I wroteSimone Collins: onMalcolm Collins: the, on theSimone Collins: box, theMalcolm Collins: lady was like, Oh, okay. And then she said it was the rest of the packages.And I was like, excuse me, ma'am. I said, that is a live. Potentially rabid bat. And then she seemed to have this moment of recognition where she goes Oh, she picks it up and takes it to the back of her home. But And weSimone Collins: thought nothing of it when we dropped it off, because, what are the odds, and we, actually we know the odds that this was, Going to be a rabid bat.The odds were about 1 percent or even less than that, that this would be a rabid bat. So we thought, okay, great. Better safe than sorry.And then wait and the 24 hour period passes of exposure. So by the way, if you ever are exposed to rabid animal, it is very important. That you, especially if you've been bitten or you've been in a scenario in which potentially spit or brain matter from the bat has gotten into your mouth or an open wound.Within 24 hours, you have to get a rabies vaccine. [00:05:00] Or the odds of you contracting rabies and then dying from it, because if you actually contract rabies, it is 100 percent fatal. It is a brain virus. You are going to die. Is you have to go. So we're a little nervous for the 24 hour period passing before knowing that, this bat was tested.Government's taken a while, but we're like, yeah, government bureaucracies, what are you going to do? And then finally, at the end of the day on Friday, we received this message The bat was rabid. The bat was rabid. It was a rabid bat. . And they, we asked them, we grilled our children. And our eldest son, who's old enough to report on these things, insisted that nobody touched the bat, except for the professor.ItMalcolm Collins: was a little son who can, who can talk competently. Um, and, And, you know, I went out there immediately, I do not think that there was, like the odds of exposure are incredibly low, but now we know we have rabies in our yard. So we're like, okay, it's good that there was no exposure. The dog notified us.Simone Collins: God bless the professor. Dogs are amazing.Malcolm Collins: Yes. So bless the professor cause it was right next to their playground, right?Simone Collins: At the base of their [00:06:00] slide. Like literally if one of them had gone down their slide of their little play fort. They would have, but first right on top of the bat.Malcolm Collins: We're like, okay, so we know there's rabbit animals in our yard. Now we should get, because there's the big rabies shot that you can get, which is the post exposure shot. And that seemed like, given the information we have. But the, Course of action here would be OK, don't get the post exposure vaccine, but get the prophylactic vaccine.So the prophylactic rabies vaccine is for if you are going to be encountering animals with rabies, or if there's like rabies in your area, it provides some boost, but it's not as severe as the post exposure vaccine. Go through our ordeal attempting to get the prophylactic rabies vaccine.And keep in mind, this isn't the only story, there's the rabies story and then there's another story that happened immediately afterwards that was even more obscene.Simone Collins: So we, we call our kids pediatric practice, which is one of those it's many doctors, many nurses. There's no one doctor. It's not this tiny family practice. [00:07:00] We do that because we think that ideally they we thought they functioned better, had better resources and they tell us, oh, okay we'll send this message on to a doctor because we could only call them on Saturday.It was, the office was closed when we first learned of this. And that we wouldn't be able to get an answer from them until Monday and then they would look into it on Monday, which is bad because when you're trying to get vaccines for your kids who've been potentially exposed and also just prophylactically protect them, you want to do it as soon as possible.So that was already pretty bad. Then on Monday we call again. And thisMalcolm Collins: was their emergency line, by the way.Simone Collins: Yeah, this was their emergency line. Okay, continue. Yeah. And then so we. Oh. Oh my god, sorry. Then on Monday, we called them multiple times saying, Hey, our kids were exposed. This is really urgent.This is a big deal. We really want to get those vaccines ordered. If you have to get them in, obviously you don't have them in stock. LongMalcolm Collins: story short, to not make the story boring to our audience, we eventually learn that legally, whoever owns them won't let them prescribe rabies vaccines.Simone Collins: Or order [00:08:00] them.Yeah. Under no circumstances are they to give people rabies vaccines. And what they just told us repeatedly every single time was go to an emergency room. We call it the emergency room and the emergency room says, Oh, we don't give prophylactic rabies vaccines. So already they're basically telling us we have to lie to them if we go, if we want to get vaccines, but they do have the vaccines if we want them, but we have to pay an emergency room fee.The last time we did this, because we were actually exposed to a bat that was in our house while we were asleep, so we don't know if we were bitten or spit on or something, we had to go in and get them, we paid over 10, 000. An emergency room fees. AndMalcolm Collins: then the question is if it had been a real bad exposure and some family was trying to do the right thing, talk to their doctors first, they would have dismissed them for a week before giving them the answer that they have just decided legally they don't want to give out these vaccines.Yeah, that isn't that is enough time that somebody would. be past the period of which a post exposure [00:09:00] vaccine would help them and they would die.Simone Collins: Yeah. Oh, we called urgent care clinics. We called every possible channel we thought we could call. They would maybe have them. But it gets worseMalcolm Collins: than that. It gets worse than that.So then less than a week later, our little girl goes in for her 18 months and I she gets a lead test and I tell her if there is any lead in her system, and I was very direct about this. We actually have evidence that I was direct about this, that we'll get to in an instant, but give me a call if there is any lead in her system at all.Okay. We don't get a call, of course, because they don't care. They genuinely do not care about the well being of our kids. But Simone was able to proactively look up what the results of the test were. And it was 4. 5. Now, the number at which we would get a call would be 5. That's where they legally have to call us.However 4. 5 is more than twice the national average, which is around 1. 6. Yeah, at [00:10:00] that age. This is when you're talking about long term IQ effects and we need to do something about it. And we have developed our own plan to work this out and our kid will be fine, but they wouldn't have told us they would not have told us and they were going to not tell us.This is a Horrifying, but it just shows that they're not legally required to. They're not going to do it because they are not looking out for your kid's long term best interest. And then I told someone, I was like there must be something new in the house because they would have told us with our other kids, because we went and we found the old medical records.They even had a doctor's note. Dad is very concerned about lead. He wants us to tell him if any comes up in the test.Simone Collins: Yeah. Like literally it said in clinical notes from previous appointments when our kids got lead testing. Dad. Requested a call with results. Not even if they were above the threshold, just any result.So IMalcolm Collins: assumed that they were not, they're no lead at all. We go back and we look at the old results, three, twice the national average. [00:11:00] So now we're at this state where it's four years and when you know something like lead and the effects of lead and IQ, this now we've got to be like, Oh, we won't give your kids the, the type of stuff associated with getting lead out of their system, et cetera, unless they're over certain numbers.We're just like, you know what? Yeah. Yeah. We can no longer trust the medical system anymore.Simone Collins: And also because you would probably ask if you are looking at the results of your appointments why didn't you identify the three, like when it was atMalcolm Collins: three?Simone Collins: Oh yeah,Malcolm Collins: why didn't we identify this?So the way they sent the results, it didn't send markers. It didn't send national averages. It was literally nothing. It was, yeah, it wasSimone Collins: just, it was just three. And it was just four point five. Yeah. And it also, it included a little a little tool tip. Icon in the online system that they have clicked through to it.And it basically said a disclaimer, but it didn't actually provide information on ranges, what the national averages are. YouMalcolm Collins: put that into, you then searched for national averages. You went through AI, everything like that. And you're like, Oh s**t, like this [00:12:00] is actually a problem.Simone Collins: But any normal parent would pull that up, look at it and be like 3 means.But I'm not getting any alerts.Malcolm Collins: I'm not being told by anyone, So it must be fine. So it must be fine. And now we are at this point where I'm like, okay and we had already been moving to this system this year was in our house, which is to move to Ezra scans, which we've talked about before.These are for about. 1, 500. You can get a full body scan. They've got centers in major cities across the U. S. And they are incredibly detailed in terms of finding stuff. Yeah, basically they don't own the machines.Simone Collins: They don't own the machines, but they basically are able to book a slot for you with various practices.That's why they're able to do this in many locations. And then their team goes inch by inch through your body and analyzes them providing preventative health care, especially when it comes to cancer. Our plan is to basically get those. We also emailed Emmy Gahl, who's the founder of Ezra. And cause he's one of those quantified self really conscientious health people.And we're like, okay what blood tests do [00:13:00] you order? Because we know what like Peter Ortea orders, we know all these other things, but We want to know what you order and how you keep track of it because he's that kind of person who's just going to know. And so he gave us, and we can put this actually in the comments or the description of this video this blog post that he shared on all the blood tests that he orders.And also he has a spreadsheet template, which we now have copied and we'll be using where you can keep track of your results over time so that you are personally tracking and charting your health. Because of HIPAA laws in the United States, at least, it's really difficult for you even to gain access to your medical test results and for them to be portable anywhere.So you don't have one comprehensive place to look at all of your medical information. You have to create that for yourself. So our plan was personally for us, for you and me, Malcolm, that we're going to do an ASRA scan every other year, cause they're crazy expensive, but we should probably do it because cancer and to do blood panels that we ourselves using AI analyze because no one else is going to do it.We just have to get a doctor to order it and try to get as much of our [00:14:00] insurance to cover it as possible, which is not going to be a lot because we have a high deductible plan because we're not wealthy people. That's where we were, but we didn't do it with our kids because we're like our pediatric practice.They careMalcolm Collins: about kids. No one's going to care about the best interested kids. Now I have learned that they literally care nothing about your kids. Here's what weSimone Collins: learned. And this is the, this is ridiculous because it's the same thing that we knew about the education. System. It's the same thing we knew about the governmental system.I don't know why we didn't assume that this was also happening with the medical system, but the focus of this system is not on patient outcomes, it is on bureaucratic compliance and ass covering and justification of bureaucratic structures, which is what you talk about in the pragmatist guide to governance all the time.But yeah, patient outcomes. Not at all. The focus. IMalcolm Collins: love the way you worded it, which is the medical system is not built around outcomes is built around liability and bureaucracy. And that is what's driving decisions within the industry right now. And that is not your best interest. That's not in your kids best interest.But also, [00:15:00] let's talk about for me, right? You look at something like naltrexone, which is basically banned in the United StatesSimone Collins: andMalcolm Collins: is incredibly useful. Yeah. That there's,Simone Collins: there's literally a cure for alcoholism. There's a cure for alcoholism, but doctors don't prescribe it because liability, the only liability is that naltrexone, by the way, is just.It's a little hard on your liver. And obviously if someone's an alcoholic, their liver has already gone through. It'sMalcolm Collins: actually partially AA has really lobbied to prevent it from becoming common. And we can do a whole separate video on that.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Other solutions to alcoholism because then do people become a quote unquote, a dry drunk, which means they didn't solve the real issues that led to alcoholism, which for them is a lack of.Their religion, which means it's a religion, right? If there's a medical solution to alcoholism, which the original founder of AA said he was founding this as a stop gap until a medical solution became available. And now they're the solution that works in 83 percent of people who try it. The Sinclair method.It's and it allows you to, if you want to keep drinking when you want to just [00:16:00] not be addicted anymore.And Simone, you see me night and day before this I used to drink at least 45 beers a day.Or more. For years of my life, decades of my life and people are like, come on, you couldn't possibly, I love it when people are like, you couldn't possibly be drinking that much. And I'm like, you don't know my family history. You, you graduated with good grades from the Stanford MBA, constantly hammered.YouSimone Collins: were, you were never actually hammered or drunk. I think the fact was you drank beer, like a man 200 years ago, drank beer, which is to say that you drank beer flavored water, AKA Coors Light, and you drank it. constantly as though or water, just like people used to just like your ancestors used to.And so you never really were drunk because also your tolerance was insanely high. And I never, the only time I saw you drunk was when my mom did that whole wedding thing and had us get in that she tricked meMalcolm Collins: into a pagan wedding ceremony. Yeah. And [00:17:00] then you justSimone Collins: switched to the hard stuff.And you're like, yeah. I'm going to just you drank yourself to oblivion. I get angry orMalcolm Collins: anything. It wasn't like I got angry. No. You were just like, I need to not be here. I wasSimone Collins: just trying to power through. That's, no. So there, there are different types of drinking. There's, there's European drinking there's, ancestor drinking, which is what you did.And then there's frontier medicine where you're like, I need to knock myself out. Frontier medicine.Malcolm Collins: To get through a pagan ceremony without offending your parents.Simone Collins: Yeah. Just, yeah.Malcolm Collins: But anyway. Okay. Anyway uh, I, the reason I bring up the naltrexin thing is I have learned like where I had saved myself from dying and that almost certainly saved me from dying was outside of the medical profession. It's something that's not even talked about within the medical profession. AndSimone Collins: it took you a long time to find that because there were many times where you tried a lot of other types of interventions and they just never really worked.And you always did tons of research. It took forever. And then recently withMalcolm Collins: that ongoing back pain and you couldn't identify what it was and the doctor should have known that epidurals can sometimes create these and you found it on. An ai?Simone Collins: Oh yeah. After [00:18:00] my C-section I was for a month for three solid weeks in crippling back pain.Like just turning over in bed caused so much pain that I would involuntarily yell let alone moving, taking care of an infant, being with our family. And at first I thought it was just hormonal changes and then I discovered it was. Almost certainly a complication from the spinal epidural that I got, which is just, it's not like anyone did their job poorly, but I'd emailed the practice about this.I'm like, wow, like I can't. I can't move without being in extreme pain. What's going on? They never called me back. They never emailed me back. They never responded. And they told me that was the way that they wanted to be communicated with.Malcolm Collins: So the point being is what are we doing to fix this for our kids, for us?And I don't want to go into all of the maybe More experimental medical stuff that we may be doing as a family because I don't want people like coming after us or anything like that. But what I'm going to be putting together is a document that goes over all of the most cutting edge [00:19:00] research out there for different chemicals, different new tropics, how they might affect kids developmentally things that we can do about the lead and things that start, neural development again after I've already found some great options here. And it's still a low amount of lead, but it's way more than we would want. Like it's going to have an effect if we don't address it. And now, we recently had a guy come test every part of the house for lead, everything, including the chicken eggs, everything.So we're going to have a full understanding of where this is coming from.Now good news. It turned out. We had all our kids tested in the original, multiple results were false positives, , and that their actual lead levels were much lower. , in line was the average American led level. However, this is how, you know, we sort of view within our theological system. The agents of Providence or God, or the future police or whatever word you want to use within our system works. Is that. They find a way to notify us in a way that we just can't ignore that we [00:20:00] need to change some aspect of our behavior. And if I don't change my behaviorIf I don't go through with developing this new system. And all of the other people, it may end up impacting. The events still end up happening in this timeline.Malcolm Collins: So we are now. Moving to a system of Simone said, doing the scans proactively looking at the cutting edge research that's not being implemented into practice yet. Developing basically a mixture. I'm already beginning to put this together that will probably bake into some bars for our kids or something like that, or put in afterwards because it's overheated.It can destroy the active ingredients and a lot of compounds. But we'll come up with some delivery mechanism. For our kids, I will make a lot of the information on our research public so other people can use these same things in addition to the Collins Institute, which right now, if you're interested, I need people who can go through it and tell me their feedback because we're that close to launch right now.So let me know [00:21:00] anyone who's interested in that.Sorry, I should clarify right here. The Collins Institute is our alternative to the public education system.That we have been developing and are close to launching.Malcolm Collins: And also we will be making this sort of medical stuff available. But what we also need to make this realistically implementable for us is like minded medical professionals who are interested in, providing a new type of telehealth, basically where the, a lot more of the, what the patient is doing is being researched by the patient and then basically being brought and argued to the doctor.Basically the doctor in this system takes on a different role than a doctor. Historically, they're much more like a thesis advisor. By that, what I mean is the patient can't just decide on anything themselves. They need to then take all of their research to the doctors, say, here's this study, here's this study, here's this study.And I think as a result, given the symptoms are given this, I should be prescribed X instead [00:22:00] of here's what's wrong with me. Can you prescribe me X? So to be clear,Simone Collins: this isn't just experimental stuff. I, we also, I created a spreadsheet. where we are keeping track of basic blood work results, height, weight, blood pressure.Last time we had an eye exam, like last time we've done all the important things because we realized that also we weren't. Because we assumed that the medical system would let us know if something seemed off we weren't really paying attention or taking ownership of it ourselves. Instead, we were like, Oh, if no one's telling me anything's wrong, I guess nothing's wrong, which was apparently a really bad approach and it just feels really good now To just plan on not trusting anyone and monitoring our own stuff and making sure here are the vaccines.We all are going to need here. Here are our latest tests. Here's what we're monitoring for each person. That seems a little bit out of range, or they could be a warning sign. And here's what we're going to do about [00:23:00] it. Theoretically, I could also, once I've refined this massive spreadsheet format, where there's like sheets for everyone in the family and like a master like check in sheet and a master sheet of here's what resource to use for what, because there are many affordable virtual or urgent care options.There are many affordable alternate options that are not necessarily covered by health care that you can use for testing. I can share that too. AndMalcolm Collins: so I, what I want to do here is take this opportunity for not just for our family, but for the network of families that makes up our community. This is something you can join if you're like, my family would benefit from this.Let us know, and we are going to try to put together a network that connects. like minded physicians with families in our communities that want to take a lot more personal ownership over their own family's health. And be much more aggressive nutritionally and everything like that speaking. And here, what I mean is we are not the type of Everything needs to be perfect for our kid sort of family, right?Like breast milk, for example, [00:24:00] right? Simone pumped for a bit with this kid, but we're probably not going to be doing that again for the next one. It just slows things down too much and people are like, oh, this has an effect. We are not about optimizing everything when there are costs of that optimization, i.e. when she becomes fertile again, et cetera. But we are about optimizing for everything when it is. A trivial cost to us or our kids or something like that. And there were just so many low hanging fruits out there that I was finding as I was digging into the research here. So I should say that we're not trying to create a network for like over involved hypochondriacs.That's not the idea here, but it's a network of people who would be. Using medicine and medication as if the medical industry hadn't frozen 10 years ago in terms of its advancement, which is what happened. And again, I should have known all this, when I look at I've been looking at more like trans affirming care stuff and stuff like that now, and it's if the medical industry was saying, [00:25:00] People should have been raising alarm bells about this a long time ago.One reason I really like putting this together for our community and making these connections for our community is twofold. One is not only does it help make our community safer and help get us access to, more sovereignty, more family sovereignty. Two, if we are acting as intermediaries was in this there's not going to be some master list of physicians that It's public that people can target.It allows us to make connections directly which is also much better and three, it allows for an additional source of income for some people within our community. But I guess even for potentially is it provides the opportunity for something that could turn into something more formalized as things go down the road, which again, creates reasons for value aligned families to group together and support each other.As the bureaucratic infrastructure of our society is beginning to break down. Because it is. It's not just the school [00:26:00] systems. It's not just the infrastructure that's falling apart. Civilization is essentially falling apart around us. And only through creating bubbles where we continue to push science forwards, where we continue to push medicine forwards, can we But have any faction of humanity hope to continue to thrive at the speciesSimone Collins: part of me wonders How other communities that have chosen to essentially go off the grid are handling this for example We know lots of people and journalists have covered how the Amish handle medical insurance, you know that they pool resources They all pay towards something and then the community covers when there's some kind of treatment that's prohibitively expensive like getting cancer treatment What I don't know is how they manage their ongoing health, how they decide to get vaccines, how they monitor or don't, their various levels of hormones and their growth and their weight and their height.And should they be intervening or, what do you do when a kid has a rash? I'd be interested in learning that maybe someday we can trot off to [00:27:00] Lancaster. Lancaster, however you want to say it, and then see, what they do, talk with some families. I'm very curious, but yeah, I like that idea.I like the idea of promoting any concierge doctor in who follows his podcast, who's, up for working with values in line people. And I'm just horrified. I, these are well meaning people. That's the problem is that we're not saying that the people within the medical establishment Are malicious in any way.Every doctor that I personally worked with my pregnancy and delivery and C section, absolutely fantastic. Including, like the doctor who did my spinal, they did not do anything wrong. I just had a complication from it. And the office that didn't respond to my concerns and requests about crippling pain, they're working with dumb systems that don't work really well, and they're, And whatMalcolm Collins: motivation did they have to respond?If they don't respond, then you go in for a visit and they make more money. Like the incentive system that's put into place with a lot of these drives behavior patterns. There is no reason to fix a problem like that. Like people not [00:28:00] responding to patient requests. From the perspective of the bosses or the management, when the outcome of that is more money like With a lot of this.I think that what people get wrong is they Think about these big conspiracies like cancer medications are being withheld or discoveries because institutions can make more money. That's actually a lot harder to do because you have competing medical institutions and one of them had it, they would use it to undercut their competitors.But when you're talking about something like a hospital, No, there isn't really the same competitive pressure for them to get back to you versus getting back to other people because there's typically only one or two other hospitals in an area that they're competing with, and they're usually not competing on service.They're usually, the other crazy thing was when you started calling hospitals to try to find out how much a rabies vaccine would cost. And the answer was basically, We can't tell you.Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: what other thing in our society works that way on a random hidden expense. And so it's better for us going forwards to just [00:29:00] proactively manage this stuff ourselves and have a network that enables that,AndSimone Collins: we know that, we have an international audience of this podcast and that, there, there are different nations with very different healthcare systems, but when you have a nationalized healthcare system, you're often dealing with just as bad incentives or possibly even worse.Like you pointed out with the NHS then there, of course, there are some countries that are great, like South Korea, where you get these comprehensive. Medical scans. Oh, SouthMalcolm Collins: Korea is amazing.Oh, I gotta talk about medical experience in South Korea. So I've lived in a lot of countries. In the UK, the NHS anyone my experience with the NHS, even as bad as all this expensive stuff up is in the US, that has me scared for my kids and everything like that.I still pray to God every day I live here and not under the NHS. The NHS, basically, if you get like a flu or something like that, and then you try to book a, an appointment the appointment is always three weeks out, so you're always better by the time you get to the appointment. If you [00:30:00] have something serious, like I remember once I had something serious and urgent and I called and they were like don't get all emotional with me.I can't deal with this right now. And they hung up when I was at university and somebody was, like, dying on the floor in front of me. They're like, Sir, you need to calm down. I just don't need to deal with this at 3 a. m. in the morning. Hang up, like what but there's no consequences to this within the NHS.In Korea though, they have this system where it's really inexpensive. Like in the US thing, everything's way too expensive because of the way our insurance system works. And you just ban the whole US insurance system and made everything out of pocket. It would work much better, but that's the way it works in a lot of developing world.And so we often get medical stuff done in the developing world when we're in Peru or whatever. But in Korea, it's like in the developing world, but it's also like totally. industrialized. So like when you were doing like a test, you would sit down in one booth and somebody would ask you like a series of questions and then you'd get moved to a variable set of other booths where they would do there was like the [00:31:00] blood draw line that was just like, like you were walking in line and it was a fairly fast line and you'd get the blood drawn and they'd move you through like everything was just like lines and institutionalized and it was insane.And then when you would get mildly sick. sick and you'd go to an appointment, they give you like these breathers and stuff that had like anesthetics in them that were meant to make you feel better immediately as well as prompt inexpensive service. It was absolutely insane. And then there's childbirth in Korea where afterwards women get they go to theseSimone Collins: resorts essentially like a spa retreat with your baby where they feed you healthy food and you get massages and Yeah, you basically get to chill and then take care of everything so that you can recover.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, I love you to Desimone and I really hope that we're able to put this together and that we get enough physicians and we're very fortunate that this happened, post COVID because post COVID, like in, in PA, the regulations around people prescribing stuff out of state are significantly loosened.That's still true in a lot of [00:32:00] areas. And if you win this race, this can be something that you work on to make it much easier for a system like this to operate without any sort of legal concern.Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: I would like that.Simone Collins: Yeah. And of course, none of this should be taken as medical advice, just, disclaimer, disclaimer because just like everyone else, we just have to cover our ass and worry about liability.But yeah, I just, if any, if anyone is, has made it to the end. Please one at one, if you could subscribe and like this video, cause it will help the video, but also like actually think about your personal health. Think about anyone in your family and their personal health and maybe consider making a spreadsheet where you just start to internally take ownership of an in track it.Because if you think that a doctor is keeping track of that and making sure that you're okay and then informing you of stuff that might be going wrong, you're probably wrong. And we learned that the hard way. So love you guys. I love you, Malcolm, the very most of all. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

May 22, 2024 • 46min
Universities & HAMAS Have the Same Largest Donor (& Why No One is Telling You)
In this eye-opening episode, Malcolm and Simone delve into the disturbing connection between Qatar's funding of US universities and the alarming rise of antisemitism on college campuses. They discuss how Qatar, a major sponsor of Hamas, has become the largest state donor to American higher education, and how this financial influence has led to a suppression of free speech and an increase in anti-Israel rhetoric. The couple also examines the recent attacks on Israel by Hamas, the dehumanizing treatment of Jewish students at universities like Columbia and Harvard, and the concerning statements made by professors and activists celebrating violence against Israelis. Throughout the conversation, Malcolm and Simone shed light on the geopolitical complexities of the Middle East, the role of authoritarian governments in spreading antisemitism, and the importance of defending civilization against barbarism.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone! It is wonderful to be here today, and we are going to be doing an episode today which I think really elevates why the disintermediation of the traditional news system To online vloggers, because this is something you see increasingly in terms of how are people getting their information about the worldSimone Collins: isMalcolm Collins: actually very important to getting an honest understanding of reality so long as you're choosing the right people to listen to.And this episode is going to be the type of thing. That you would never see on one of the mainstream news stations. And I'm just gonna give the top notes right now for people who are like, okay, I get the story. I'm gonna click off before we go into too much detail. But it is the fact that Hamas, one of the largest donors to Hamas, like one of the largest funders of Hamas, the people who started this war in Israel, okay?They are also the largest state donor [00:01:00] to the most U. S. 's large universities or to the university system in the U. S. Iran? I know, right? That's what you would think. No. I don't think they lost in Iran. What's, what? It is Qatar or Qatar, depending on how you look at it. F*****g obsequious you are because I always hate when people play little words with oh, you're not saying Qatar, right?I call it AmericanSimone Collins: accent. So it'sMalcolm Collins: QatarAs a quick side note, if you were wondering, who is the bigger supporter of Hamas, Iran or Qatar? Qatar has given Hamas over a $1.8 billion. And I ran gives them Something like a hundred million to 350 million. That's what they gave them last year, a year. so in terms of just financial costs, Qatar is the bigger supporter if Hamas, but I ran plays a big role in giving them lots of military supplies and training.So in terms of integration, was there political elite?I ran is a bigger supporter.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so people [00:02:00] are like wait, I didn't know this. Why you why didn't I know this? Why didn't I know that this? They heavily funded Hamas. Why did I not know that they were also the largest state donor to U. S. university systems? And this matters downstream when you are looking at the university policy that is allowing this rampant antisemitism on campuses.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Because a lot of people they're like, Oh, I'm going to not donate to my university because of this. Like a lot of, Jewish families are saying that right now and stuff like that. And what they don't realize that they're like, why are universities still doing this? From a financial perspective, why are they still doing this?Being so neutral. Why is it when you had, there was this great moment where Gay the head of one of these universities I'm gay. Yeah, the head of Harvard at the time.Simone Collins: Who then subsequently had some plagiarism problems. And yeah. So sheMalcolm Collins: responded that hateful speech is at odds with Harvard's values and that calling for the genocide of Jews is anti Semitic, but when pressed on whether it violates the code of Essex, she said, it can be depending on the context.[00:03:00] So genocide, demanding genocide of an ethnic group, specifically when it's Jews. Of course, this wouldn't matter with anyone else at the top universities in the U S why is that? Maybe it violates our code of ethics. I'm not going to make any hard calls on this right now. So why are they having this position?And it makes a lot more sense when you look at where the money is coming from for these institutions, or at least a very large we'll get into the size of it, how they get the money into the universities and everything like that as the thing goes on, but I just want to, get it out there.Simone Collins: So I'm so confused about Qatar still, though, which, by the way, American accent, we would rather say something that rhymes with guitar rather than cutter.Like someone who's trying to continue. I'm so confused about Qatar because Qatar is majority Sunni. Whereas is Iran is primarily Shia. Are they aligned? Are they partners? Or do they just, I think they likeMalcolm Collins: underestimate the level of anti Semitism in the Muslim world. And this is what I'm really into.They just really hate Jews. So this [00:04:00] is what I'm, and I need to go back here because it's not just that they hate Jews. It's also part of the power hierarchy in this world. So there's, I really want to go into the stats here, but I'm also going to provide some like overall framing. Okay. Okay. So people who may not know, and I'm like, normal news would not report this.And they're like, why would normal news not report this? And even I feel a little. Honestly, uncomfortable talking about it because I have a lot of Qatari friends. If you are like wealthy and successful you like in, in your social groups, you are going to have Qatari friends and Qataris, there's only something like 300, 000 Qataris in the world.So it's a very small, the ethnic population of Qatar is incredibly small. Most of the people there are foreign laborers are basically slaves. And so what that means is The, if you have Qatari friends, that means you have friends in the Qatari government or that are related to the Qatari government, right?And so when you're talking about any of the heads of these major [00:05:00] news stations or something like that, there are parties where they're going to have to go to later that day and they are going to look like it's not even like a conspiracy thing. They're just going to look like really bad if they are putting shade on guitar and they may not get deals.They may not get hired by companies because, they have so much money they have their fingers in a bit of everything because of that big natural gas vein that they found in guitar. A lot of people think it's oil. Oil is not why guitars are, it's just natural gas. But sorry, I don't want to get into the geopolitics here, but the other thing I want to talk about is we have a lot of friends who are Emirati and Qatari and and I'm not like trying to conflate the two countries, but what I'm pointing out here is these are like the nicest of the Muslim states generally to like the U.S., like in terms of friendly policy. Saudi Arabia, we're also pretty close with, but, occasionally we have some friction there. And Saudi Arabia is much more like a brutal dictatorship. So like Americans can understand, but with Qatar and the UAE, they've done a pretty good job with their image.In fact, speaking of I am about to go to my reunion at [00:06:00] Stanford business school. And one of the guys I am going to be meeting there is an old friend of mine who I actually really as a person, great person. Khalid Alamari. And he has like over 4 million subscribers on YouTube.So he wouldSimone Collins: always come up to you andMalcolm Collins: be like,Simone Collins: Malcolm, what's my name? It's call it,Malcolm Collins: call it, I'll call him Colleen. Okay. Whatever. That's why it's still funny. It is. And I always mispronounce his name. But he's a big shot now, and he actually did a tour, went around the UAE with him and so I went to check his channel recently and I think this just shows what we're talking about when you're in this bubble.So his latest video that has over a quarter million views is Surprising delivery drivers with their families. So this is supposed to be like a feel good movie. Where it's ha, like a surprising, I don't know. Troops with their families or something like that.And if you're an Emirati and you watch this is going to look just like a feel [00:07:00] good movie to you. But if you are an American and you watch this, you're like, Wait a second, why would delivery drivers have not seen their families in a long time? And it almost looks like a slave owner in the South being like, like Mr.Beast, but in like the slave owning South. And he comes in, he goes, ha, this guy thought we sold his family to the, to another owner, but I'm going to trick him. And when he gets home, they'll all be there. And then confetti will fly behind the doors. And the guy like, comes home devastated, and he's genuinely having this emotional moment because he sees his family that he thought was sold off, and the guy's dancing around all blimpy style in front of the door with confetti I'm such a good person.Here's the plan. We've told the riders that they're just going to be shooting a commercial for noon minutes today But little did they know That they're going to be delivering to someone special.Their families, who we've flown in from outside of the country, to give them the biggest, most special surprise.Malcolm Collins: And I don't think that he's a bad person at all, or that he sees the way this comes [00:08:00] off from another cultural perspective. And I think within the context that's a good thing for a person to do in that society. So it's an interesting thing to think about what I'm saying. is the ethics within these countries and the hierarchy and the game that these countries are playing is very different than the game that we're playing.Malcolm Collins: And so you can say, why is it so important that they make these anti Semitic plays even when they're not anti Semitic? Because we have a lot of friends in these countries and genuinely a lot of the elites, like a lot of the elites, Qataris aren't really anti Semitic but they lose status in the hierarchy game of that sort of regional geopolitics if they don't make anti Semitic plays.Plays in anti semitic statements.Simone Collins: I see. Cause they're they have to code switch, right? I feel like once you reach a certain level of eliteness and you're international and as a player. You're going to become, you're going to start coding as that international monoculture of like wealthy people and they all have a look and a thing and they come across the same in dinner parties.It's the same people. It's the same international global elite. But then [00:09:00] locally, they still need to assume certain stances to not be seen as losers. Not part of the culture, yeah.Malcolm Collins: And they also have to deal with like their citizens. If you're talking about Saudi Arabia or something like that, they have to deal with their citizens if they look too pro Israel, and people are like, come on, the Saudi citizens are not, they were the majority of the attackers on 9 11.Like, why is that the case? Because of the extremist form of Islam was, yeah. It's this practice in Saudi Arabia, but I don't want to go too far on this. I want to, I also want toSimone Collins: be fair if you're from a certain culture and that culture is more likely to be biased in favor of Palestinians over Israelis, you're going to hear more things about terrible things happening to Palestinians and the plight of Palestinians.And you are going to hear about the plight of Israelis and therefore you aren't crazy for just due to availability, heuristic, probably. Being a little bit more biased against Israelis. Right?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that this is partially why [00:10:00] within these regions and within the geopolitics that I'm trying to explain is why do you not hear the role that countries like Qatar are playing in all of this?And it's because, They are our allies, they're like the U. S. 's allies, and they are very well entrenched within elite social circles in the United States. And so not even shadow games or anything like that, I just don't want to I know if our show was more popular right now, I probably wouldn't be saying any of this, because I would have to answer to people being like, Hey, why are you calling it out?Like, why are you can't we just pretend like this isn't the case? Hold on, Simone. I will always stay to my integrity, but I'm just saying, this is the type of thing you got to answer to people for.Simone Collins: I don't think you're ever really going to answer to people. I don't think you're genetically capableMalcolm Collins: for being honest.Before we go further, I want to frame, because a lot of people, they know how pro Israel they are at like, or at least we're coming off as pretty pro Israel right now. And they're like why are you so against the protest? Don't you know that like children are dying? So just for some context here [00:11:00] when the Hamas came into power in.Gaza, 42 percent of the population supported them. This was in December 2023. 33 percent of Germans supported the Nazis when they came into power.Only 7 percent of Gazans blame Hamas For their current suffering. Even worse, just over seven out of 10 Garzas continue to support Hamas' decision to launch the war against Israel with the 7th of October attack, while nearly 59% of Palestinians believe that Hamas should continue to rule in Gaza.Outrageous, and keep in mind, this is not Israeli data, but data from a survey conducted in March, 2024 by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research itself. For all these reasons. Israel believes that Hamas's proposal is not sincere, and that it is only seeking to gain time to reorganize and rearm, and thus regain some control over the territory.Malcolm Collins: So if you're like, if you've never had a big freak out about the firebombing of Dresden or something like that, the U. S. doing what needed to be done to take the Nazis out of power then why are you freaking out about this [00:12:00] now?A lot of innocent people died who were in Germany. at the time. And people do not hand wring about this. More people died in the firebombing of Dresden than during the nuclear bombs. And so why is that, and then they're like, yeah, but okay, hold on. So this is in modern times because then I'm like, okay, if you really cared about this, if this wasn't just like anti Semitic thing, and I should point out, I don't think that a lot of the individual protesters are anti Semitic.I think what they don't realize is that the forces that be that put all of this in motion are the people. And they're like, no, that's not true. And I'm like, then why aren't you out there protesting about Haiti? And they're like my university it doesn't do business with people who directly have to do with Haiti.But alsoSimone Collins: there's no enemy.Malcolm Collins: That's not true. A huge contributor to what happened in Haiti right now was the national debt of Haiti. And actually they were calling for rep Okay, bit of history. But how do you,Simone Collins: you can't fight debt, you need an enemy with a face onMalcolm Collins: can't, because the debt is owned by American banks.Yes. [00:13:00] Okay. So hold on. I'm going to take a little, so what you may not know is the president who was disappeared right before everything started going to hell. The thing he did right before he was disappeared is he demanded that these banks that made all this money off of Haiti's unfair debt. Because when Haiti declared independence, the French basically came in, they put guns to them heads and said, okay either you buy yourselves every human in Haiti, or we destroy everything, and so they were forced to take on this absolutely insane debtSimone Collins: andMalcolm Collins: then this debt was bought by CIC, a bank in France.And then the debt was sold to banks like First National City Bank, today called Citibank, and manufacturers Hanover Trust. Now JPMorgan and Chase and so why was this guy disappeared when we was talking about Haiti not getting reparations for like in the US reparations. This is they actually super super, super deserve these reparations, and there are specific U.S. institutions [00:14:00] around today that are living on the profits of these institutions, Citibank and Chase.Simone Collins: Oh dear.Um,Malcolm Collins: and, And you think your university isn't doing business with Citibank and Chase? You think? You think? No, seriously. You think that half these protesters don't have? They don't care.It's not that they care about injustices done against black people or something like that. It's that the powers that are organizing and manipulating all of this actually have an anti Semitic agenda. Which we will get to in a second., what is happening in this region is very much like some small portion of the U S got reconquered by native Americans. And all around them were a bunch of like racist, redneck white Hicks, who everyday talked about wanting them all killed, wanting them all destroyed, blah, blah, blah.One day they go in, they murder a bunch of these native Americans for taking their land back. And then, um, uh, the, the, the native American government is like, well, I just don't have another option right now.There is only one [00:15:00] Jewish state. They are surrounded by Muslim majority states that these people could go to.people can be like, oh no. Um, the Jews weren't always on that land. Didn't they take it from the Canaanites. What we know from DNA testing that. Jews, even to their own chagrin are around 50% came night in their DNA. So no, they merged, it was two populations that merged in the region a very, very long time ago.And then they're like, well, the Gaza and they've been there for a long time. No, they were. Recent colonialists invaders , they're not. Like the people in Northern Palestine, which, which. That's different. We'll talk about that on another show, but Gazans, uniquely have no ancestral claim to this area. They are the descendants of an imperialist expansionist conquest by a large empire, specifically they're moving to the region was encouraged. Under rulers, like Zingy and solid in, in the 12th century and then continued. During the later Mameluke and Ottoman periods.Malcolm Collins: But I want to go further here. Because there's a number of [00:16:00] really interesting things.The first thing I want to go over is a lot of people also think Hamas. Was like random spastic attack of Israel because they like hated their conditions. And this is not the case. Hamas actually had a plan for what they were going to do with Israel after they beat the Israelis. And there was a great tweet on this.I want to read to you that Richard Hanania put out. In late 2021, Hamas held a conference on what they would do after conquering Israel. They discussed water, sewage, currency, and making a directory of property to confiscate. They planned to not let talented Jews leave and make them work for the state.The ceasefire crowd doesn't get it. Israel has an actual enemy. It's not the enemy you wish they had. It's not people who can be reasoned into living in peace with a Jewish state. Hamas is. actually serious about slaughtering the Jews and taking their land. This article suggests they're quote unquote, crazy for making these plans.I don't think that's true at all. If Israel [00:17:00] fought the war, the way the international community wished it would be destroyed in the long run. It's unfortunate that the West does not understand this, but I'm confident Israel will win because it has no other choice. It faces a dark and bitter reality and can't afford the delusions of the rest of the world.So I, I want to be clear because this is actually interesting. So he did Hamas planned to exterminate the Jews in this attack.Simone Collins: They thought But not the productive Jews, it's a bit of an upgrade on what the Nazis were doing and the Nazis weren't trying to monetize. So that's interesting.Malcolm Collins: I also like the realization there that Israel has no value without the Jews. The land of Israel is pretty useless land. It's like a desert with a little bit of arable, like farming area, but not really that much. It's useful. It is useful because of the Jews. And even Hamas realizes this.We're like we'll turn them into slaves. We'll round up, kill all the ones who are economically productive and we'll turn the Again, aSimone Collins: step up from the Nazis at least. Some practical value that, putting [00:18:00] them in internment camps, that was like completely under utilizing knowledge workers when instead you could do, Auschwitz for knowledge workers, isn't that just wonderful?Malcolm Collins: No, it's, it is horrifying. What I'm gonna do next before I go into all the s**t that's happening on university campuses right now, people are like, oh It's not explicitly anti semitic.Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: I want to go over the Qatar thing because this is yeah Please. So according to a Department of Education report from April 2023, American universities and colleges have received 19 billion from unreported sources, more than half of which has come from authoritarian and anti democratic Middle Eastern governments.At the time of writing, the state of Qatar contributes more funds to the universities in the United States than any other country in the world in raw donations.Simone Collins: Wow.Malcolm Collins: And this is by the ISGP report and here's a quote from the former Qatari Prime Minister, Hamad bin Jassim from 2022.We would pay them journalists. Some of them have become MPs now, other have [00:19:00] become patriots. We would pay the journalists in many countries. We would pay them every year. Some of them even receive salaries. All the Arab countries were doing this, if not all of them, most of them. So again, this is just a normal.thing for this part of the world to do. And I'll name the article that I am quoting from here. So this article is dark money nightmare, how Qatar bought the Ivy league.Simone Collins: But why, like to what end is Qatar in? I'm just going to go overMalcolm Collins: the stats first. Okay. Like the facts. Okay. All right. Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood has enjoyed Qatar as its main sponsor. So they are the main sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood to the tune of up to 360 million a year and was until recently the home of Hamas's leadership.In 2012, Ismael Hanayi. Head of the terrorist group's political bureau, Mazzan, I'm not even going to try to pronounce it and a few other names that I can't pronounce, moved to Qatar for a life of luxury. This month, likely because of [00:20:00] Israel's announcement that it will hunt down and eliminate Hamas leaders in Qatar and Turkey, the Qatar based Hamas officials reportedly fled to other countries.Qatar has become the home to Shaikh Yousaf, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who was exiled from Egypt until his death in September 2022. According to the Mir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, quote Qardawi is mainly known as a key figure in shaping the concept of violent jihad and the one who allowed carrying out terror attacks, including suicide bombings, against Israeli citizens, the U.S. forces in Iraq, and some of Arab regimes. Because of that, he was banned from entering Western countries and some Arab countries in 1999. He was banned from entering the U. S. A. In 2009, he was banned from entering Britain. The Saudi state run GNU's agency, so keep in mind, Saudis are very biased against Qatar.Qatar embraces multiple terrorists and sectarian groups aimed at disturbing stability in the region, including the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, and Al Qaeda, and promotes the message and schemes of these groups through their media constantly. [00:21:00] This is the kind of influence that U. S. universities and colleges are more than happy to see on their campuses in exchange for billions of dollars of Qatari donations.According to ISGAP, foreign donations from Qatar especially have had a substantial impact on fermenting growing levels of anti Semitic discourse and campus politics in U. S. universities, as well as growing support for anti demographic, anti democratic values within these institutions of higher education.Simone Collins: Anti democratic values, wow. Okay,Malcolm Collins: so hold on. No, it gets worse because they actually have measured amounts of this. So in 2023, ISGAP published a report, The Corruption of the American Mind, How Concealing Foreign Funding for Higher Education in the United States Predicts the Erosion of Democratic Values and Antisemitic Sentiment on Campus.It found that there was a direct correlation between antisemitism and censored speech on campuses. And undocumented contributions from foreign governments, notably Qatar, quote, the institutions [00:22:00] receiving such undocumented money had, and then it's bullet points here, political campaigns to silence academics were more prevalent campuses receiving undocumented funds exhibited approximately twice as many campaigns to silence academics as those that did not.Students reported greater exposure to anti Semitic and anti Zionist rhetoric. Higher levels of anti Semitic incidents were reported on their campuses. This relationship of undocumented money to campus anti Semitism was stronger where the undocumented donors were Middle Eastern regimes rather than other regimes.From 2015 to 2020, institutions that accepted money from the Middle Eastern donors had on average 300 percent more anti Semitic incidents than those institutions that did not. And then quote, speech intolerance manifesting as campaigns to investigate, censor, demote, suspend, or terminate speakers and scholars was higher at institutions that received undocumented money from foreign regimes, end quote.So here you could see big number differences here, like 300%, like 100 percent higher. Like we are talking like very [00:23:00] significant differences in what's going on within these campuses.Simone Collins: This is wild. And okay, I'm trying to think like beyond just pure anti Semitism, because I feel like there has to be more of a motivation than just, God, I hate those Jews is maybe, so many of these nations are resource rich, and they're trying to transition to become economies that in a post Trump's Oil or natural gas dependent world are thriving and independent.They're powerful. And Israel may be one of the few, if not perhaps the only country in the Middle East that has a knowledge worker based economy that is thriving and influential. Therefore, it poses a threat to any global economy. Nation any country in the middle East that has a tenuous economic position based on an unsustainable assets, such as oil or natural gas.Therefore nations like Iran and Qatar are going to be very nervous about [00:24:00] Israel and try to undermine it because as long as Israel is powerful there, and it has the one source of value generation that is going to survive a post oil world. Then it's going to be very,Malcolm Collins: I really appreciate your kind heart, but no, that's not what's happening.Okay.Simone Collins: So why is this happening?Malcolm Collins: Okay. So these countries generally have authoritarian governments, whether you're talking about Qatar or Saudi Arabia or the UAE, it is. Monarchies. Sure. Yeah. These monarchies have to like that you are allowed like a functional monarchy in the developed world.How does this happen? How do you broker this with your citizens? One is you give your citizens tons and tons of payouts, which is what these countries do. And two is you need to play to the populism of your citizens.Simone Collins: Huh.Malcolm Collins: The citizens in these countries are extremist Muslims. Okay, I'm talking like based extremist Muslims.ISimone Collins: mean, in Iran, not soMalcolm Collins: much. Iran hates most of these countries. Simone, [00:25:00] stop getting confused here. Okay. Iran wants Okay. So Iran and Qatar are aligned because they both support the Muslim Brotherhood. It's weird. I don't want to get in to the major country politics here. I'm talking about the on the ground politics of these countries.Okay. Okay.Simone Collins: Yeah. Like the public facing people, not the average citizen. That's I don't reallyMalcolm Collins: know. Iran has a completely different structure in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. It is a democracy. It is not a monarchy. It has to play to its citizens in a totally different way.Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay.Malcolm Collins: Yes. So we're talking about the monarchies.Monarchies. Yes. Suppose you are hanging out in progressive circles or something like that, right? And this is the way antisemitism works. And you say something like today, like you can even imagine this. If you were on like one of these college campuses you know what? I don't hate the Jews. And I actually think that they're okay.And they should be allowed to live in Israel. You would be like attacked or forced out of a position. This is the way antisemitism work. It makes everybody [00:26:00] who thinks. Actually, the Jews are okay, afraid to say that within certain social circles, or they can lose their positions of power. You see this everywhere.Anti Semitism begins to creep up. They are not saying, actually, I don't hate the Jews actually have a lot of Jewish friends, which I know a lot of these people, they do have a lot of Jewish friends and they, a lot of the people in the highest level of positions of power within these governments do not hate the Jews, but they cannot let that be no.Simone Collins: Huh.Malcolm Collins: Because it becomes known in the same way you can't say that on college campuses right now. And people, and just so you know, like when we're using silly words here, people are like no. It's not that I hate Jews. I hate Zionists. See, here's the problem. 97 percent of Jews over the age of 40 are Zionists.And 80% of Jews under 40 are Zion Zionists. And as they age, they'll probably become Zionists. And I've looked at various statistics. Some show like 95%. So when you say, I don't hate the Jews, I just hate 97% of Jews. Yeah. You're saying you hate Jews. Okay. All of the things that are saying, take down [00:27:00] whatever they're saying, I hate Jews.Okay. So let's be clear about that. This is. That's really all there is to it. It's to maintain their power structure. And it's because once anti Semitism begins to become a status signal within a community everyone in the community ends up leaning on it really quickly and it becomes really dangerous to oppose.AndSimone Collins: so it's the goth echo chamber all over again.Malcolm Collins: It's the Goss Echo Chamber. Yeah, what's your status? It's how anti semitic you are.Simone Collins: Yeah, how extreme you are. Yeah when something is measured, that, that gets a little out of hand, no matter what it is. But I want to talkMalcolm Collins: about how bad it's getting, because I think a lot of people don't know.So I'm going to send you a picture here from Columbia's campus right now.Simone Collins: Well, Columbia, which has shut down in person classes for the rest of the school year. How pissed would you be, given how much you pay to go to Columbia as a student?Malcolm Collins: Oh, I'd be furious. But look at this picture. I sent it to you on WhatsApp.This is from the Columbia campus. So what? Oh, no, that's people [00:28:00] who can't see it says beware skunk on campus. And it's a skunk with a star of David on it. That's done as like a caricature of Jews. And this was commonly done during the Nazi period of trying to compare Jews to animals.Various types of rodents, like skunks were very common during the Nazi period. And I love it. People are like, no, this is because of this one stink bomb incident that some Jews did on campus. And that, I'm like, okay, that may have been how they justified it, but they knew what they were doing.This picture looks like old Nazi propaganda. Beware, like this is clearly specifically made to be reminiscent of Nazi propaganda.Simone Collins: Yeah, it's even, it even for those who are just listening has a vintage look to it, a 1950s propaganda vintage styling. So they're going for that.Malcolm Collins: They want Jewish students to feel afraid on campus.The people who are operating this, and this is, I think a lot of the things is people don't know. Who's operating this? Do I think that the Qataris are like [00:29:00] actively engaged in this sort of stuff? No, I think what's happening is that the student like the people making decisions about student governments in the universities that are getting a lot of their funding from countries like Qatar know that they can afford to be more anti demographic.Democratic and more authoritarian in the way that they roll out policies because their funders will have their backs. They don't need to worry about losing Jewish student money as much or Jewish alumni money as much. And so they make a more authoritarian decisions. On the ground, I think many people who are at these protests are not anti Semitic.Simone Collins: No, I think people are being genuinely misled. They don't even know what the river they were chanting from theMalcolm Collins: river to the sea, people were like, Oh, we're just saying they need to leave the part of Israel that goes from the river to the sea. They're thinking,Let freedomSimone Collins: ring.I'm pretty sure that's kindMalcolm Collins: of just Yeah, and somebody was like, and then they showed them on a map where the river they were talking about is, and they were like, oh. Oh, they mean they want to kill all the Jews? They mean every one [00:30:00] of them goes into the sea? And they're like, I did not know that's what I was chanting.Because they're being told these things by people in positions of authority in these activist groups that are actually the truth. Severely anti Semitic.And so now I want to talk about what's going on college campuses right now. So they van so I'm doing some quotes here. They vandalize university property with slogans such as Zionism equals genocide, new intifada, and from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.Referring to a geographic area that encompasses the entirety of the state of Israel, where half of the world's Jews live. At Harvard, some students opted for chanting the Arabic version, From water to water, Palestine is Arab. On some campuses, the exclamation is escalated into death threats and physical assaults against Jewish students, where a Jewish Tulane University student tried to stop an anti Israeli protester near campus from burning an Israeli flag.Protesters attacked him and other Jewish students, breaking one student's nose. And I saw on Harvard, there was this horrifying [00:31:00] video of them basically hunting down a group of Jewish students and trying to trap them. Oh, the library one. Yeah. You saw that?Simone Collins: Yeah, I have one. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So here's a quote from another article.Two weeks ago at a town hall, a student told me that what would make her feel safe in the law school would be to quote, get rid of the Zionists in quotes. And then later in this article, he said, I was stunned when students across the country, including mine immediately celebrated the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel onSimone Collins: October 7th.I'm not at all mentioning the atrocities that are being faced by these pro Palestinian protesters. Don't forget about that poor young woman who whose friends called 911 from their sit in location because she had a tampon in for too long and they were Certain that she would get toxic shock, but she refused to leave the location because she would be arrested if she did.And then of course there's Ilhan Omar's daughter who has been kicked out of Barnard, [00:32:00] blocked from her meal plan and left homeless and destitute. These people really understand. Hold on, holdMalcolm Collins: on. I haven't, I need to finish, but I do love that you brought that up because these people are LARPing as like actual Nazis and theySimone Collins: do not have any of them in actual subsequent meetings where they're like complaining about their mistreatment.They even have the audacity to compare their quote unquote mistreatment with the experience of Palestinians. Yeah. They'reMalcolm Collins: like, I know what it feels like to be a Palestinian. Yeah.Simone Collins: The things we're subject to it. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Hold on. So come on let's continue. And keep in mind here, what we're saying here is the Palestinians have it hard now, the Nazis in Germany who, my heartSimone Collins: breaks.The Germans did notMalcolm Collins: support the Nazi party. They went through hell during that period, but it was righteous what happened. It was the only realistic long term solution to the problem. Which the problem being the systematic genocide of a bunch of people. Okay. And this right now [00:33:00] for, from Israel's perspective, this is what they're doing right now is the only realistic long term solution to having a genocidal group on their border.But I noticed that we're going toSimone Collins: attack again and we'reMalcolm Collins: not going to stop. And they said they were going to attack again. There was a quote that said this won't be the last attack. The next one's going to be 20 times worse from Hamas, like official Hamas. But anyway,Simone Collins: and also what really bothers me and what I think also needs to be.Emphasized is that Palestine is set up like a human shield and that none of the people who are making these decisions, who are planning these attacks. Are really being subject to the retaliation from Israel. Now they've just put a bunch of helpless trapped people who do not know better in the line of fire, which is one of the most reprehensible.This isMalcolm Collins: the important thing to know. These tunnel systems are intense under the country right now, which four and 8 we're paying for. And that That is why the war is so bloody with the civilians right now, because it's not a [00:34:00] war where the first people you kill are going to be the bad guys. So they're the last people you kill in a war like this.It's a humanSimone Collins: shield strategy and it's disgusting that your entire war strategy after, of course, committing atrocities against your enemy is to have your enemy commit atrocities against the most innocent and vulnerable people on your side. DoMalcolm Collins: not they do not care. And the amount of misinformation I see going on, I saw on my Facebook wall some lady was like, did you know that Israeli soldiers were playing the sounds of a baby crying to lure out Palestinians and then shooting them?And then I Google it and it turns out that's what Hamas was doing to Israeli soldiers, not the other way around. And so just the amount of misinformation is insane, but I need to keep going with the quote here. Okay. So students for justice in Palestine called the terror attack, a quote unquote, historic win.For the quote unquote Palestinian resistance in quote a Columbia professor called the Hamas massacre quote unquote awesome and a quote unquote stunning victory a Yale professor tweeted quote it's been such an [00:35:00] extraordinary day in quote while calling Israeli a quote murderous genocidal settler state in quote a Chicago professor posted a note reading quote Israelis are pigs savages very bad people irredeemable excrement may they rot in hell in quote Israelis, he said.This is a Chicago art professor who hasn't been fired.Simone Collins: It's an art professor.Malcolm Collins: A UC Davis professor tweeted, yeah, but he's someone on campus. Yeah, I know. A UC Davis professor tweeted, quote, Zionist journalists have houses with addresses kids in school, end quote. Adding, quote, they can fear their bosses, but they should fear us more, end quote.Keep in mind what happened here. This is celebrating the brutal killing of 260 people attending a music festival for peace. That was one of the groups that was brutally murdered. And they're saying, this is awesome. Or, a victory. An extraordinary day. And this is mainstream within U.S. college campuses. And I think that's what people are missing. Is they think that they're like, I have progressive friends, it's not that bad. The campuses that [00:36:00] are what's happening on the campuses right now is not what you had to deal with before. And the rates of anti Semitism are getting significantly worse.So there was some, oh, I'll go, I'm not even going to go into the stats on this because it's boring, but yeah, just, it should be obvious to everyone the rates of anti Semitism and anti Semitic attacks are like at un historically high levels. And I guess what I'd say is a lot of progressive Jews, and I'm going to play the little meme I did before specifically like reform Jews I, I've seen them so cowardly turn their back on what's really happening or just believe these echo chambers.And the only solace I have is barely any of them have kids and their kids aren't really Jewish to begin with anymore. I think that this whole situation is horrifying to me. It's horrifying that it's gotten to this place, but I think that there are some. Positives at the end of the tunnel here, right?The first being that if these attacks hadn't happened I think when they finally did happen, it would have been worse an [00:37:00] attack on the state of Israel by one of these organizations was basically inevitable at this point. And a lot of people in Israel had become complacent about the threat that was posed and that this attack was able to happen by surprise, I think shows that level of complacency.And there had began to become a lot of infighting in Israel. And to an extent that I think it really begun to threaten the state of Israel,Internal consistency. And I think that this has shown a few things that I'm really excited about. Not excited about, but I think it, this shows a few things that, that I don't know if it would have been in the best interest for Israel if this attack had never happened.I think this needed to water out. And I think when we look at the antisemitism that's come from this antisemitism was there, this just allowed it to be aired. And I think. A lot of people, a lot of Jews who had cozied up with progressives didn't realize how anti Semitic the progressive party had become and progressive activists had become.And so they, [00:38:00] this hopefully was a wake up call that no, really, in the United States, we need to begin to fight anti Semitism again. We need to begin to call it out again. These people, need to be shown the light and the public needs to know who they are and what they really stand for. So I, I think that's one thing I'd say.The other thing I'd say is that we do live in a world now where historically, you can see from this quote, like Qatar had journalists on its payroll all around the world. They did become politicians. Some of them even received basically salaries. And you're also talking about your personal social circles.If you historically, even if you were getting your news from, Fox or Breitbart, you're not going to hear this as much.Simone Collins: So I want to know, where did you hear this?Malcolm Collins: I, from a number of the sources that I listed as I was going through, I know,Simone Collins: but how do people restructure their media diet in a way that Ensures that they hear from these sources or just, I don't know, like I, I wasn't exposed to this information and I'm not following me.Yeah, soMalcolm Collins: [00:39:00] I'd say that for me there are some people out there that just seem to be good at getting to the truth. I like to think that our audience. Finds us to be one of those people. And obviously, do your own digging. Whenever we say something, we get things wrong occasionally.But who else, like Richard Hanania. I read it too. He often fairly true in what he says. So it's just about pulling the right people. Yeah. Because you can't really do any better than that anymore. And unfortunately, you do get a bit of an echo chamber. Now that I've mentioned this, some other people will probably pick it up.It'll probably get tweeted around a few times. That's the way things work. And yeah. And so then the question here is how do we think about this? I personally don't particularly have animosity towards guitar. They're just playing their. Sociopolitical game right now. AndSimone Collins: well, TILMalcolm Collins: Yeah I I don't have animosity towards guitar. I don't have animosity towards Qataris. I don't have Amos City towards most people. Saudis, e even your average cause and citizen, I don't [00:40:00] really have animosity too. I don't think of them as like really particularly lesser than other people.But I can look at the larger geopolitical picture and say. Without X, worse things happen. Without Y, worse things happen. And I just don't see any other solution than what Israel is doing right now. Which makes me grateful that at least so far, Israel has been staying the path. Now Israel could end up going further, they could end up doing something truly horrific.And then I wouldn't support them anymore. I'm not saying I support Israel no matter what they do. I say that right now, they seem to be taking the type of measured approach that I think is the only And people can be like, this approach isn't measured. But to what end? It just doesn't seem I'm on the right point of the measuring stick.AsSimone Collins: long as there is a Palestine. There is going to be a problem. So I don't really understand. No,Malcolm Collins: No. Hold on. Gaza and Palestine are two totally different situations. The culture within the two regions are different. The ethnic groups within the two regions are different.The geopolitics of the two regions are different. There is a reason [00:41:00] they were attacked from Gaza and not, I, youSimone Collins: think that if they basically just completelyMalcolm Collins: take Gaza. That's it. I think that the people, this is the problem, right? What Israel wants is these people to immigrate to other countries, but no other country will take them because the last time they did, they had a big revolt.And every time they did, even statistically, there was this case where the Danish took some and they're, yeah. Even their descendants, like three generations down, are like way more into crime and stuff than other groups. It's a culture that is very different from the other surrounding regions.There's a reason, like you have to ask yourself, why aren't any of the Arab countries taking these people? If they care about these refugees, why aren't they taking them? Because they don't care about the refugees. What they want is to use them to try to turn the world. Average, unthinking American activists against the Jewish state where I think that I see, and you look at even the brutality of the two groups, right?When I look at what Israel is doing right now, yes, obviously, the [00:42:00] damage that they are putting out is. On a much more large scale, but it is measured. It is civilization defending itself. When I look at the types of things, the horrifying grapes that were filmed, the child killings, the it's, and people are like, Israel kills kids too, by accident.The U. S. kills kids too, by accident. Every developed country when they're at war, when we were fighting the Nazis, you don't think babies died in the bombing of Dresden. Okay, be realistic, bro. That is just the way war is and they did not choose to start this war. They were actually just so people know leading up to the war, the amount of privileges they had given to the people of Gaza had risen dramatically because they were trying to get this deal done with Saudi Arabia.So they were actually treating them dramatically better than they had been in recent history. They had put in huge Aid deals that were going there. The situation is I think not the situation that a lot of people are being told. And so you know, you can only look at the wider world and be like, look, people are playing with the [00:43:00] hands they can play with.And I look at guitar, could guitar realistically play a different hand than the hand they're playing? Could Israel realistically play a different hand? I think guitar could but it'd be hard and it'd be very risky. It would be very risky. And so I don't think they would I, you're, when you tell them play a different hand, you're asking them individually to risk their lives and they don't have the same sorts of convictions or honor that I have.A lot of these people are just intergenerational royalty basically. And they don't come from, backgrounds of fighting for freedom or anything like that. They yeah, I it's a tough situation and I am sad for a lot of what I'm seeing, but at the end of the day this is civilization defending itself against people who in their attacks act like the antithesis of civilization.True barbarism is what they want. YeahSimone Collins: and not just against their enemies, against their own. And that's Against their own. I'm like, yeah. And Shots fired that IMalcolm Collins: cannot ignore. If we want to free the people of Gaza from Hamas, this is the only way to do it. [00:44:00] And This then brings me, when I look at the people protesting on the behalf of this, when I look at the people at these Columbia protests and stuff like that, I see that our enemy, not only in the pronatalist movement, do we have the enemy, the anti natalist who like want all things dead.But then there's this other side of like general progressivism, which is a promotion of barbarism over civilization. A promotion of cruelty just completely unnecessary cruelty of it's it's just so obvious to me like who the good guys are in this. And it's not one of those situations where people are like, there's no good guys here.No, there's good guys. There's good guys here.Simone Collins: Oh, Malcolm, you're my good guy. And I love you a lot.Malcolm Collins: It's our boys in blue, the blue, the star of the sorry, the Israeli color is blue. Our boys in blue are the good guys. And a lot of them who have families and kids at home are out dying right now to preserve the country.We had a fan reach out to us. He's yeah, I'm deploying tomorrow. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to put in place for my kids. So to keep that in mind. These [00:45:00] people I just can't even, I can't even, like they're dehumanizing these people who are fighting for trying to create something that works.I I, it's tough. Anyway, love you toSimone Collins: death. I love you too, Malcolm.I'm glad we're talking again. I miss you. We live in Earth, but like it. Doesn't change the fact that I know IMalcolm Collins: absolutely know the feeling. I feel the exact same way. And I am so thrilled for every one of these recording sessions. And I'm going to be gone for a bit and that we won't be talking to each other on these is going to kill me.Maybe we can find an excuse to film send while I'm at my reunion.Simone Collins: Maybe, but you're supposed to be busy socializing, so trying not to be weird.Malcolm Collins: Okay, speaking of, I actually have a reunion themed intro to this one.Simone Collins: Really?Malcolm Collins: Yes. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

May 21, 2024 • 31min
Why Burn Books When Nobody Reads? (Stats on Reading)
In this eye-opening episode, Malcolm and Simone dive deep into the current state of the publishing industry, revealing shocking statistics about book sales, author earnings, and the strategies employed by major publishing houses. The couple discusses the alarming decline in reading habits among Americans and the dominance of a select few authors in the bestseller lists. Malcolm shares startling figures from the antitrust case between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, exposing the industry's reliance on celebrity books and backlist titles. The couple also examines the disappointing sales of books by well-known figures with substantial social media followings. Throughout the conversation, they offer valuable advice for aspiring authors, emphasizing the importance of exploring alternative platforms like YouTube, podcasts, and Substack to reach and engage audiences effectively.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] That means authors are earning roughly between 18, 000 and 180, 000 on a New York Times bestseller.Keep in mind now, these are being split with the publishing houses, If you write a book and you get accepted and you get paid by penguin random house, you have a 96 percent chance of selling less than a thousand copies. Okay Ilyan Omar from the squad, She has a significant social media presence with 3 million Twitter followers. And another 1. 3 million on Instagram, yet her book, has sold onlySimone Collins: 26,Malcolm Collins: 000 copies.Piers Morgan.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: 8 million on followers on Twitter. In the U. S. it sold just 5, 650 copies. how are these big publishing houses staying in business? And it is Bibles celebrity books like Britney Spears books and their backlist. It is not on things that are intellectually enriching the population.These two market categories, celebrity books and repeated bestsellers from the backlist, make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund [00:01:00] their project, publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing.That is basically a vanity project. How do they approach people? What they are thinking about when they go out and approach people is how can I turn their preexisting follower base into money.Simone Collins: Yeah. They're looking for a platform. They only care about your platform. And I think they're starting toMalcolm Collins: realize though, that even the platform doesn't sellSimone Collins: This conversation is really relevant to people who are thinking about writing a book,Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone! We are gonna do a stats heavy episode today, which I am excited about, and I hope I ordered these stats well to make a narrative. But it is on reading in America, the state of reading, and what the publishing industry is turning into. And how it's transforming the way books are being published, the type of books that are being published, and the type of books that are being read.[00:02:00] So first, let's just, I'm going to do a lot of quoting here in this episode. This is from Pew. Almost a third of Americans don't read books at all, and according to the U. S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the ones that do spend only 16 minutes per day reading. Compare that to the average Netflix watcher who spends close to 3 hours per day consuming video content.At that pace, a watcher might get through 681 movies in a year, while a reader gets through only 16 books. And that's presuming those 15 minutes are spent reading books. And keep in mind, it was just reading, so that could be newspaper, that could be online content, and goodness knows I'd fudge those numbers.. Even this year when leisure time increased as a result of the pandemic, novels saw only a subtle increase in sales over last year by 2. 8%. News consumption, however, saw an increase of 215%. Most of that time taking place on Facebook, 23 minutes per day, [00:03:00] Google, 14 minutes per day, and MSN, five minutes per day.So when people say news consumption, they mean Facebook and Google. So this is highly targeted news, not even just like I'm picking a conservative versus progressive news show to be my bubble of information I'm getting. It's the news stories that are specifically tailored to my interests. Okay, so now we're going to talk a little bit about how few authors are actually writing the books that people are reading. So they had created a list of the top selling books in the U. S. And of the 2, 468 fiction books that made the list they were written by only 854 authors.It's worth mentioning that 51 of those books were written by James Peterson, 31 were written by Clive Kussler, and 25 were written by Daniel Steele. A huge chunk is written by very few people.Simone Collins: [00:04:00] And this, we've seen this in other stats in terms of how much authors sell, like a very few.Very small number of books, ultimately. Oh, we'reMalcolm Collins: about to get into that.Simone Collins: Okay. This is bad.Malcolm Collins: This is bad. According to the EPJ data, 96 percent of a fiction book sales take place in the first year, and the majority of the New York Times bestselling books sell between 10, 000 and 100, 000 copies in their first year.Presuming the average royalty check is 12 percent and the average hardcover fiction book retails at 15, that means authors are earning roughly between 18, 000 and 180, 000 on a bestseller. This is a New York Times bestseller. 18, 000 to 180, 000.Simone Collins: Also, writers are not being paid anything, so why would theyMalcolm Collins: bother?Keep in mind now, these are being split with the publishing houses, and this is only for New York Times bestselling authors. As a New York Times bestselling author, you might be earning 18, 000 off of that book.Simone Collins: Wow. You're way better paid being a public school teacher. People argue that like teachers are not [00:05:00] paid anything.Malcolm Collins: And you're splitting that with the publishers.Simone Collins: Yeah. When you're like a bestselling author. It's so funny. I remember the first time I met someone who completely didn't understand How much people actually made. And he was telling someone who's probably making less than he was. He's Oh wow. Like I bet you have a yacht or something.And he just had no idea that people in the writing world don't make money.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. When it's also true with our books, people are always like why don't you publish more books and stuff like that? You guys must be, why don't you use some of like your books money? Like you guys taught the wall street journal, nonfiction bestseller list.And I was like yeah, we did. We did. We did talk to the wall street journal, nonfiction bestseller list. And they're like what did you do? I'm one of my favorite things. They go, what did you do different with that book? Just do that again. And I was like, that was our least selling book by like one fourth of the sales of our just make money again.And they're like wait. Why did your least selling book? top the Wall Street Journal nonfiction bestseller list, but none of your others did. And the answer is simple. [00:06:00] All of our other books were Amazon exclusives, which do not qualify for that list or the New York times bestseller list. The way we got on the list was intentionally hampering the launch of one of our books, putting it in Barnes and Noble.When we typically would only listen to Amazon. And as a result, we cannot give the book on Kindle Unlimited, like we can all our other books. But we were able to technically be Wall Street Journal bestsellers. With lower reach. With lower reach. With lower reach. So we hampered our reach, but we got the title that I had wanted.I wanted to be a bestseller for, my whole life. We don't qualify for New York Times. A lot of people don't know this to be a New York Times bestseller until fairly recently. And now they break the rules only for like progressive aligned books, but you have to be published by a New York Times based publishing house.It's not any book. If you self publish, you cannot get on that list. And if you're not self publishing, you're splitting your money with somebody else for basically nothing. Keep in mind that 18, 000 that they're making. [00:07:00] Is being split with a publisher or max around 180, 000 for a normal New York Times bestseller that's being split with a publisher.He's taking about half now. So you're making like 90, 000 per New York Times bestseller book. And most of your books aren't going to be that, but let's keep going here so we can, Get the idea of what are the actual numbers involved in sales here? So there's a chart i'm going to put on screen here which shows the copies that sold in one year number of print titles that sell over a million is zero A number of digital titles that sell over a million is one and number of audiobooks is zero.Wow. 500, 000 to 1 million number of print titles eight You Number of digital titles, 10 and number of audio books, six, a hundred thousand to half a million print titles, 260, a number of digital titles, 267, and number of audio books. 111. And something you'll start to notice from this point in the chart on that's really interesting is the number of print [00:08:00] books and digital titles that make it into each of these categories is about equal.So what is you get this explosion in the digital world, but it's really not that much above the print world. Or you get that one book that's over a million 10, 000 to a hundred thousand print 6. 5, 000. Digital 7, 000, audio 2, 000 and then 1, 000 print 57 digital 75 1, 000 audio books, 17, 000.Simone Collins: So we're doing actually pretty good in terms of our book sales. When you think aboutMalcolm Collins: our book sales, yeah, we typically do about 50, 000 per book or something like that was a lot of our books. I think we might be over that now. I haven't checked in a few years.Simone Collins: What you're also not, you haven't yet pointed out at least is that the majority of these books that are selling are probably romance novels or like really smutty, not smutty sometimes money teen fiction and stuff.When you look at what's actually selling.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. A lot of the books that actually sell a romance novels are really smutty. When you talk withSimone Collins: [00:09:00] authors about authors who actually make money, they're romance novel writers. So yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So I'm going to keep going with more stats here and we can talk more about the industry and what's happening, but I want to give people an idea of how little people are actually reading as we go into this.So in 2022, Penguin Random House wanted to buy Simon Schuster. The two publishing houses, just, these are coming from like a ton of different articles. If you want to find them, just Google the words I'm saying. I just tried to pull together the most interesting quote from a bunch of articles on this.The two publishing houses made up. 37 percent and 11 percent of the marketing share according to the filing and combined, they would have condensed the big five publishing houses into the big four. But the government intervened and brought an antitrust case against Penguin to determine whether that would create a monopoly.During the trial, the head of every major publishing house and literary agency group got on stand to speak about the publishing industry and give numbers, giving us an eye opening account from the inside. The big five publishing houses [00:10:00] spent most of their money on book advances for big celebrities like Britney Spears and franchise authors like James Patterson, and this is the bulk of their business.They also sell a lot of Bibles, repeat bestsellers like Lord of the Rings, and children's books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. These two market categories, celebrity books and repeated bestsellers from the backlist, make up the entirety of the publishing industry and even fund their vanity project, publishing all the rest of the books we think about when we think about book publishing.That is basically a vanity project. AndSimone Collins: that so checks out. Multiple copies of the Very Hungry Caterpillar in our house. IMalcolm Collins: tripped over one this morning. They're just everywhere. And then it goes on to say, which make no money at all and typically sell less than a thousand copies. I want to keep that in mind.The entire, what you think of as like the literary industry, if you're like, if they're only making 180, 000 to 20, 000 a year on New York Times [00:11:00] bestsellers, how are these big publishing houses staying in business? And it is Bibles celebrity books like Britney Spears books and their backlist. It is not on things that are intellectually enriching the population.Simone Collins: Which is wild because when you look at old libraries, when you look at people read it in the past, it was a different story. The market hadn't discovered yet that you could publish gossip and romance and whatnot in books, but it's crazy to think about the old library when used to look like now people buy books just for signaling.There are lots of people like YouTubers, people with their zoom backgrounds, with all these substantive books. I feel like maybe now 50 percent or more of the substantive, nice hardcover books that are being bought literally as zoom background or YouTube background dressing. Nothing more.Malcolm Collins: I wouldn't be surprised about that at all.And I would also just to promote books for a second here, or even audio books. Like you could be listening to a podcast, like the one [00:12:00] that you're listening to with us. I'm not trying to lower our listener base here, but I'm just telling it like it is.Or you could be listening to an audio book, right? If you are listening to this podcast versus one of our audio books, everything on this podcast is off the top of our heads. Okay. Generally speaking, occasionally I'll do a pre written thing, but those are usually our worst performing videos.Every single line in our audio book was counterchecked by each of us. Maybe a hundred times.Simone Collins: Yeah. And there'sMalcolm Collins: still typos. There are stillSimone Collins: typos and three people copy edited them. Yeah. And what happens when we write books, Malcolm writes them. I completely rewrite every sentence to make it more.Like palatable, then he completely rewrites them because he's you completely don't understand anything. And then I completely rewrite them again because I'm like, no, this is not clear at all. And then somewhere in there, it stops maybe two more rounds later. That is so much more work. The number of hours it goes into each book.People recently have been contacting Malcolm and saying, Oh, it's sad that you're not going to write. Books as much as you did before. [00:13:00] But when we look at their book,Malcolm Collins: people watch my YouTube channel, they don't read the books that much. Yeah.Simone Collins: And a lot of people, and this podcast is really relevant to what we're discussing now that is to say this conversation is really relevant to people who are thinking about writing a book, one of the early podcasts that Spencer Greenberg did on clear thinking with Spencer Greenberg, his podcast was interviewing someone who really had this strong theory.That we have passed an age at which books made sense. And if you want to actually reach someone with a message, as much as it seems wrong, because it doesn't seem as intellectual, it doesn't seem as prestigious. You really should be engaging with people on different formats. But I think the question is on what format is.Should you be engaging with people because for example, engaging with people on Twitter, we found Twitter doesn't really convert Twitter doesn't really change minds. We found that YouTube does change minds. And we do think it's really meaningful and found that podcasts are the same. So you have to be thoughtful about where you are.But [00:14:00] books should not be on.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And before I go further with the stats, I think you make a good point there. Like we could get broader reach potentially by trying to do something like TikTok or Instagram shorts but we're not reaching people in the right mental space. Engage them. I don't care about being famous.I care about changing minds. That's the point of all of this to helping people think deeper, think more and understand their world better. Everything like it wouldn't matter if I was just in front of a bunch of people, like that's not interesting to me. And so YouTube seems to be the perfect medium for this.But you have to do, the type of content we're doing on YouTube, you have to have a really heavy upload schedule, which we have, but it prevents, super scripted stuff from us.Simone Collins: Yeah, exactly.Malcolm Collins: Unless we were to start a different channel for it, but I don't even know if that's something I want to engage in, but okay, to go further with the quotes here, cause it's, this is actually really interesting stuff.Okay. So Madeline McIntosh, CEO of Penguin Random House US in 2020. [00:15:00] Only 268 titles sold more than 100, 000 copies and 96 percent of all the books they publish were less than a thousand copies.That's still the vibe. Oh, you're so sweet to the little one. Simone, just so you register that, I want to run that by you again. Of Penguis Random House, okay? Of all of the books they sold, only 268 sold more than 100, 000 copies. With 96%. So if you write a book and you get accepted and you get paid by penguin random house, you have a 96 percent chance of selling less than a thousand copies.Like when we talk about how it's worse thanSimone Collins: venture capital, isn't it?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. When we talk about how small these numbers are. So if you want to contrast that with suppose some of our videos, right? Okay. Yesterday we had a video that already today is that went live is [00:16:00] at 8, 000 views over 8, 000 views.The day before that, we have a video that's now at 22, 000 views. So those are some of our better performing videos, but that's the daily. We are producing something that is getting more purchases or watches than a book. So we can look at the one that went live today. That is not like a very. It's a particularly poor performing episode because I put effort into it, the Levels of Thinking episode.So that's at 8 of 10 of our last 10 episodes we've released, so it's near the bottom of our episodes. But it's already, just today, at 1. 5 thousand views. And people should be like, oh, that's just a number of people who clicked on it, they're not necessarily watching it a long time. The average person viewing that episode is watching for 17 and a half minutes.So that's pretty deep watching, that's not just if you're going to reach people with intellectual content, this is just not the way to do it books anymore. And then here's an interview with her question. Do you know approximately how many authors there are across the industry with books?500, [00:17:00] 000 units or more during this four year period. My understanding is that it was about 50. And I'm sorry, and I should point out here that we are small time YouTubers, like small time YouTubers. We're like 12, 000 subscribers or something like that, right? That we are outperforming 96 percent of authors who get, goes through multiple rounds of editing, get accepted by a major publishing house, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, is insane.Question, 50 authors across the publishing industry who during this four year period sold more than 500, 000 units in a single year? Yes, they were incredulous. The DOJ's lawyer collected data on 58, 000 titles published a year and discovered that 90 percent of them sold fewer than 2, 000 copies and 50 percent sold less than a dozen copies.Okay, so next 75 percent of our acquisitions come from approaching celebrities, politicians, athletes, [00:18:00] the quote unquote celebrity adjacent, et cetera. That way we can control the content. We are approaching authors and celebrities and politicians and athletes for ideas. So it's really, we are on the lookout.We are scouts in a lot of ways. Jennifer Bergstrom, SVP gallery books group, top selling authors. were defined as those receiving advances, i. e. guaranteed money, in excess of 250, 000. Far fewer than 1 percent of authors receive advances over that mark. Publishers Marketplace, which tracks these things, recorded 233 such deals in all of 2020.So I'm gonna, I'm gonna go over some of these categories and then we're going to talk about what this does to readers and what this does to the publishing industry more broadly category one led to titles with a sales goal of 75, 000 units and up an advance for something of that is around half a million titles was a sale goal of 000 units get an advance of 150, 000 to a million titles with a sales goal [00:19:00] of 75, 000.000 units get an advance of actually 50, 000 to 150, 000 more than you'd expect, given how little they're making, where you can really see what they mean by this is a pet project. Titles with a sales goal of 5, 000 to 10, 000 units. So imagine one of our episodes on 5, 000 watches, we would consider that like nothing, right?This is the goal for them. They're getting an advance of 50, 000. They said 50, 000 or less, but that's still pretty good.Simone Collins: Yeah, it is. AndMalcolm Collins: I love the author here is. Is anyone else alarmed that the top tier of book sales projections is only 75, 000 units enough? Like one post on subtext gets more views than that.Yeah, I thinkSimone Collins: what you need to look at this as is the number of people willing to put down money to consume someone's ideas. So it's investing both money and time. So really what you should be looking at is Paid subsack subscribers as an equivalent or paid Patreon followers or paid YouTube subscribers or people who leave super thanks on YouTube, because [00:20:00] there, there is a difference with books.People are putting down money in addition to time with streaming and podcasts and Twitter, whatever you might have there. It's people only investing time. So I would give a little bit of a premium to publishing, but it's still a lot less.Malcolm Collins: And here you're going to hear the sad news. There are plenty of books that we spent.So this is coming from Madeline McIntosh, the CEO of Penguin Random House. There are plenty of books that we spend 1 million on the advance and publish them last year. And they did not even make it into the top 1000 books on book scan. Less than 45 percent of those books, the books we spend a million dollars on.End up in the thousand bestseller list. So less than half of the books they're giving these million dollar advances to are even making it into the top thousand bestselling books. And to be clear, we have regularly made it into the top thousand bestselling books. It is not hard to get into that, to get into the top thousand bestselling books.You are, you need to sell like 10, 000 copies I think, or something around there. It's really not that hard. [00:21:00] 5, 000 copies, I think on a launch month. Um, okay, sorry. According to Hill, 85 percent of the books with advances of a quarter million and up never earn out their advance.85 percent aren't earning out their advance. The entire royalties made by the book, so they're never getting any royalties, anything like that, those authors. Even celebrities, so sometimes you think it's going to be a big bestseller, floss. Andrew Cuomo's book was sold at the height of his being America's governor during COVID crisis.Cuomo. That book was sold for 5 million, I believe. I don't know for a fact, but at the time it came out, the nursing home scandal had happened, the Me Too issues, and the book didn't do any business. Sometimes it's just a timing issue, like Marie Kondo. She did a book About joy at work and making your office sparked with joy because it's not cluttered.It published March of 2020 that was a literary agent talking about that having a lot of social media followers and fame Doesn't guarantee it will sell [00:22:00] well the singer billy ellish despite her 97 million Instagram followers and 6 million Twitter followers only sold 64, 000 copies within eight months of publishing her book.Simone Collins: Billie Eilish only managed to sell 64, 000 copies. She has more fans than that.Malcolm Collins: The singer Justin Timberlake sold only 100, 000 copies of his book in three years after he published it.Simone Collins: I guess the problem is that these people also did not have salacious books. So I fall, I don't, I haven't read many biographies, but I do follow YouTubers who read the biographies and summarize them for me.And the only reason why they bother is because there's a lot of hot goss in those books. And it seems like perhaps these people didn't have that, but even that too, that's the thing is my whole point is also, you have to keep in mind number of books being sold are mostly gossip, romance, totally not substantive.And the problem here is that even the non substantive stuff that, [00:23:00] that publishers are like at least this one will make us money. It doesn't always make them money. Oh, it's so sad. It's so sad.Malcolm Collins: Hold on. We've got more here. This one I think is going to surprise you. Snoop Dogg's cookbook saw a boost during the pandemic, but he still only sold 205, 000 copies.Simone Collins: That makes sense. This whole Snoop Dogg, Martha Stewart thing, as much as I love it, is very forced. It's, there's noMalcolm Collins: audience for that. Okay. You want to hear another one that'll probably make you happy to hear. Okay. Representative Ilyan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota, Ilyan Omar from the squad, whoseSimone Collins: daughter protested at Columbia and then became homeless and destitute because she was kicked out of Barnard.Okay.Malcolm Collins: She's no global pop star, but she has a significant social media presence with 3 million Twitter followers. How many of those are Democrat bots? And another 1. 3 million on Instagram, yet her book, This is What America Looks Like, My Journey from Refugee to Congresswoman, which was [00:24:00] published in 2022, has sold only, can you guess?Simone Collins: I don't know, 12, 000 copies? 26,Malcolm Collins: 000 copies.Simone Collins: No one wants to hear that though, like you hear that title and you're like, I get it. You can even be a fan of hers, but you don't want to, I don't want to relive that. That doesn't sound fun. I don't even want to live that vicariously for the first time. Like why bring this up?This is ridiculous. Okay,Malcolm Collins: Here, I've got two more that are good ones. Okay, so Tamika D. Mallory, a social activist with over a million Instagram followers and who has paid 1 million for a two book deal. Her first book State of Emergency sold only 26, 000 copies. Here's one that kind of bums me out.Piers Morgan.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: 8 million on followers on Twitter. He's interviewed us before on Instagram. He has 1. 8 million followers. And he wrote the book, wake up why the world has gone nuts. In the U. S. it sold just 5, 650 copies. 5, 000 for Piers Morgan's book.Simone Collins: No one knows him here. Perhaps that's the [00:25:00] issue.But I hear it. No one reads. No one reads. Also Gen Alpha doesn't know how to read. There's that. As well. So thisMalcolm Collins: is where, and this is where I want to tie this all up with sort of our message to young authors and stuff like that. When you're reading all of this, there is no reason to go through traditional publisher anymore.You are getting nothing. They're getting worse.Simone Collins: Worse. So what you've talked about here is a lot of public or a lot of authors have not made it past their point at which they can start making royalties, right? They've not made past that point where at least the publishers have a slight profit or net neutral.We know many authors who. In their contracts were then obligated to sell a certain number of books. And if they failed to sell them, guess what was in the fine print of that contract? You got to buy them. So we know all these people who are like, yeah, I have a garage full of books. Would you like one?Because I like want my garage back. Cause I had to buy a gazillion books because it was in my contract and I didn't manage to sell the number that I was obligated to sell. So not only. Are you probably not getting any [00:26:00] money, any actual readership? You might also be like completely in a financial hole. I don't thinkMalcolm Collins: we've made what are you thinking?If you're in the publishing industry, you're like, no, how do they approach the industry? How do they approach people? What they are thinking about when they go out and approach people is how can I turn their preexisting follower base into money. That's what they're attempting to do. They are not attempting to turn nobodies into famous authors.Simone Collins: Oh, no. Yeah. They're looking for a platform. They only care about your platform. And I think they're starting toMalcolm Collins: realize though, that even the platform doesn't sell. So what do they do? You are an author without a platform. There is no reason for them to work with you or really give you any money, and then you can go out and sell by yourself, but then like, why not just keep all the money?Yeah. Like you really gain so little by going through the traditional publishing houses. And as, repeated bestselling authors, I can just go through what you're getting from them. A chance at a New York Times bestseller slot if you are the right politics.Simone Collins: If they're a New York [00:27:00] publisher.Malcolm Collins: If they're a New York publisher. Okay. So that's one. The second thing you get is some credibility among idiots, but most people don't really care. The other thing that you get is it's not really help with marketing. They don't really do that anymore. So you're not really getting that. You might get editorialized, but some don't.But really it's, they're like you get editors. It's no, you lose control of editing. You lose control of the title of your book. Some like that, some don't. Some like that, some don't.Simone Collins: We have to say that. Some people just want to be told what to do. And youMalcolm Collins: may get an advance. If you don't expect your book to do well, yeah, a hundred percent.Go for that advance. If, as long as you can get out of the fine print that Simone was talking about. What do you lose? You lose price and control, which is. Literally everything in today's market. Yes. All of our books retail for 99 cents for the digital book, because we know we're not going to make money from them and we just want people to get them, and we give everybody our audio books for free. If you get the digital book, we, you can also get them on audible if you like, find it easier to use that platform because it's [00:28:00] easier than using just MP3 pot files for some people if they have a lot of money, but yeah, we don't try to Any money off of our books.Some people are like, Oh, I got your book as a favor to you. And I'm like then put it somewhere prominent in your house. That's how you do me a favor.Simone Collins: We, all the profits go directly to our nonprofit bank account. So it does help the nonprofit. Yeah, moderately.Malcolm Collins: But no, but we're making like 50 cent per book because I put it at like the lowest level that we can price it at.Yeah. So that's one thing that you're losing which then makes it so you have less reach with your books. But if I wanted to go for more than I'd be making higher margins, but then you also have total control of how it's released, where it's released, et cetera. And then for audio books, just read your own book.Like initially we hired like audio book people, and then I was like, why am I doing this? I just read my own book. And that's the way we do our books now. But I think what this means is a lot of people, they see books as the refuge of like academics or intellectualism, but it isn't that anymore.I think the true intellectuals now are sub stack. I think that's the most intellectual. [00:29:00] Reading and high ideas engagement platform at the moment. Yes. And then after Substack, I think it's blogs, like you'd go to Aporia or something like that. And then after that, I think it's YouTube.And then after YouTube, I don't really think anything is even in the game.Simone Collins: Come on.Malcolm Collins: Oh, yeah, podcasts together. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess this is technically a podcast. Some people are watching this through podcasts. One of my favorites is like, Oh, I watch your YouTube videos and I put them through AI so I can turn it into written text so I can read that and consume it faster.And I was like, we have a sub stack that automatically does that, right? I pre translate all of these to written text if that's the way you prefer to consume them. Like my job is just, or my goal is just to touch as many people as possible. That's the goal with these ideas and these platforms.And that's how you do it these days. You need to adapt to your environment. And I think a lot of people will say things like, yeah, but the podcasts and the YouTubes, those won't be seen as classics in a hundred years. And I'm like, Yeah, of course they will. And they're like podcasts from a hundred [00:30:00] years ago aren't seen as classics.I'm like, podcasts for a hundred years ago were things like the Federalist Papers, that was two people arguing against each other in like the op ed section of a magazine. That was the podcast of its period, or, like St. Paul's Letters or something like that. Not everything was done in book format.Yeah, even like this panic about people like young people over watching podcasts and it dumbing them down. I think you, you see this in the early days of books, people were afraid of reading fever, like young girls getting reading fever, but they would just do nothing but read. It was sad and it was rotting their brains.Oh. And because they believed that books were addictive and messed with the brains of young women, if that sounds familiar to you. But anyway, I have loved this conversation and I'm glad that we were able to bring this topic to our audience.Simone Collins: Likewise. TLDR. Don't write a book. Make a podcast or sub stack.Malcolm Collins: And I love you to death, Simone. Love you too, Gorgeous. You are [00:31:00] amazing. And if you do want to check out our books, it's the Pragmatist Guide series, and we have one on religion, sexuality, relationships, life and governance. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

May 20, 2024 • 26min
Did Tradwives Evolve Out of BDSM?
Malcolm and Simone Collins discuss how the 'trad' movement is more linked to BDSM dynamics than traditionalism. They emphasize the importance of mutual partnership in relationships over strict roles. The podcast explores the evolution of traditional values in modern contexts and the challenges faced by younger generations in reconstructing healthy relationship models.

May 17, 2024 • 1h 12min
Mapping the Progression of Human Mindsets: A Framework for Understanding Personal Development
In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm Collins presents a new framework for understanding the evolution of human mindsets and personal development. Inspired by the shortcomings of existing models like Spiral Dynamics, Malcolm's tree-like structure outlines various branches of mental states, ranging from animalism and perceptualism to utilitarianism, mysticism, and pragmatism. He explains how individuals can progress through these stages, sometimes regressing or becoming stuck in suboptimal states. Malcolm and Simone explore the implications of this framework, discussing how it can help people identify their current mindset, understand the potential pitfalls of each branch, and navigate towards more intellectually sophisticated and mentally healthy states. They also delve into the practical applications of this model and debate its utility for personal growth and cross-cultural understanding.[00:00:00]Malcolm Collins: Hello simone Today, we are going to do one of those episodes that excites me so much. I have put so much effort into today's content, and I know it will do horrible in the algorithm, but it's a development of my view of the world further, where I feel that because of this revelation I've had, where I'm like, oh, now I understand things better when I have systematized them in this way.So it's aSimone Collins: paradigm shift. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: my paradigm shift for me. Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay.Malcolm Collins: And it actually came from reading about a theory that I find very distasteful, which is spiral dynamic. So I ended up, because it was a paradigm shift, I wanted to write it down. So I'll read what I've written down and we can talk about it.Okay. Like I used to do with the tracks. Sounds good. Yeah.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: The idea of spiral dynamics has come up a few times when talking to fans, and since then, I have noticed some related channels like [00:01:00] HoMath, WhatIfAltHist, and Brittany Simon delineating level systems for how people evolve in their thinking. Anyone who knows us knows how viscerally negatively we would react to such a system at first glance, given that humans seem to have a natural inclination to categorize themselves and others based on simplistic criteria.If you don't understand why this would create a negative reaction, just watch any video on Spiral Dynamics and watch the person explaining the concept, happily classifying leaders of the political opposition to their beliefs among the examples of the lower order mindsets. All Spiral Dynamics really gets right is a broad ordering of the very lowest levels of personal development and then transitions into a moral and religious system at most of the two tier systems and beyond.Though, I suppose it is only axiomatic that an individual cannot accurately predict mindsets that are above their own. Thus, if they are at a relatively low level of personal development, will just project a mystical pseudo [00:02:00] religious worldview as being the higher order mindset. However, despite dismissing these systems early on, I began to think more about the ways humans relate to each other.relate to reality, a life well lived, and a self conception about how those systems build upon others, and it helped me realize that there is a real way to build out such a map. However, the two keys to doing this that others have missed, is that this is not a line, but a branching tree of life philosophies that sometimes, in fact, frequently, has a mindset that is strictly worse than its progenitor.By this, what I mean is the mindsets don't get better as they go further along the path.Simone Collins: Would you describe mindsets in this model that you're going to go into deeper, of course, as straying from the path or straying from an ideal? Scenario when they get anMalcolm Collins: example, which I have written in the next sentence, for [00:03:00] example, we would argue that a strict deontological religious world perspective, which is one of the earliest mindsets is also one of the most mentally healthy and intellectually sophisticated for this reason,we draw our map of mindsets with a quote unquote waterline with the sophistication and mental health associated with a mindset being determined by where it is along the waterline. So if you think of this like a Line graph that then ends up branching. There is a waterline and some nodes of the line are below the waterline.Some are above the waterline. Some are below the waterline. Okay. Now before I go further, have you heard of spiral dynamics? Do you know broadly what I'm talking about here? When I'm talking about these level systems for understanding how people thinkSimone Collins: I've learned it about five times, and then each time I learn about it, I completely forget about it because that's what I do when I come across information, I disregard.It is. It's not being useful, I don't maintain space for it. Can you? And that's the way IMalcolm Collins: was. And that's what this [00:04:00] sort of caused this breakthrough for me is just having my face shoved in it again and again recently. And eventually my distaste for how stupid the predominant theories in this space are became shadowed by the, Oh, but you probably actually could build a system like this that works mindset.Simone Collins: Interesting. Huh. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Okay. So that's where, cause I kept seeing things. It was like, no, if you really wanted to do it, you would actually probably order this and this. I should point out that with this system, single individuals don't necessarily need to pass from one node to another node within the system, but a society might.So if you start at one node, you can often like within your larger society, you can often process further on your own. And that most societies, and I'll get to a point in the graph when I say, this is the node that is a starting node for most people born in a Western society right now.Simone Collins: Can you start by giving the CliffsNotes version of spiral [00:05:00] dynamics as it is interpreted by the mainstream?Malcolm Collins: With Spiral Dynamics really all it is very basic, human society progresses through these various mindsets, which they're right about for the first three mindsets, and then it turns into like mystical religious mumbo jumbo, basically.Simone Collins: And it's it's this Spiral, but you're describing it as a sort of linear. So you ignoreMalcolm Collins: the word spiral. Just think of it as an upwards line. Okay. They have some things where they call it a spiral because they see certain themes repeat as societies develop. And they're like, Oh, and society oscillates between this mindset and this mindset as it moves to higher phases.However, I think most of this is just an artifact of how the map was constructed. And I don't think that they're actually noticing something that's real in the ways humans develop because they are only through one spiral. Like IE one cycle when they get to the end of their accurate observations before they get into their like pseudo religious [00:06:00] observations.Simone Collins: Okay. That's important because people who follow this podcast will know that you love what you call spiral energy. And now they're learning that you hate. What you call spiral dynamics. And it might be a little bit confusing.Malcolm Collins: And we can do another future video going deep into why spiral dynamics are the bad theory.But I don't like feel, I don't think that's necessary to understand the concepts that we're doing here. And I think that most intelligent people, when they look at spiral dynamics, they're like, Oh, that's an interesting model, but obviously it's being affected by these people's priors. If ISimone Collins: may, then for the audience, what I would say is if you're not familiar with spiral dynamics.What I've heard from Malcolm about this so far, although I'm coming into this mostly not knowing what he's going to say, is that what it seems like Malcolm is describing here is Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but if it starts at self actualization.Malcolm Collins: My system goes way past self actualization, which is another problem with a lot of the historic systems.Yeah,Simone Collins: but in other words, thematically what we're talking about is what humans do after [00:07:00] they've met all their basic human needs.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The other thing that I'd note about a lot of level systems, like Maslow's hierarchy of needs or spiral dynamics is that if people were, if all of society was at the highest level society wouldn't function.And to me that means that's axiomatically not the highest level that you can be at.Simone Collins: Is that just because no one's working on the stuff that needs to be done?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like in a society where everyone is turquoise society, where everyone is at Maslow's idea of self actualization is a very non efficacious society.So it, to me, that just clearly means, no, this isn't some in state it's their idea of what a priest cast should look like which is again, a theological position and not a factual position.Simone Collins: That's a really good point. I appreciate you're saying that the world doesn't run On self actualized people, the real actualizedMalcolm Collins: gurusAll right. So for the very 1st of the states, this is a state that is in the branch tree, which we call the [00:08:00] lower tree that all of the other trees end up branching out of and I marked this at negative eight. So this scale goes from negative 10 to positive 10.So people in this state have very little ability to engage with sophisticated ideas. And people generally start in this state when they don't have their basic needs met. I call it animalism. Individuals who live within this mental state are only motivated. By base pre evolved instincts that we share with other animals like sexual desire and a desire for food.This mindset is virtually unseen outside of mentally handicapped individuals and drug addicts. The next state, which I rate at negative five. So it's like you, you can engage with some more complicated ideas, but it's still mindscape. I call perceptionalism. And you unlock the ability to have this mindset or move from animalism to perceptualism when you are no longer living in fear of not having your basic needs met.However, I should note here that one of the ways people move from this lower order state [00:09:00] to perceptualism is by deciding they don't need a particular need met.Simone Collins: Basically, if you decide, if you go from being red pill to MGTOW. You go from that first stage, negative eight to this next stage.Malcolm Collins: Yes. Yes. If you decide that sexuality is a need that you absolutely have then you will stay in the animalism stage until you can decide that you don't need that.That's not the most important thing to you. You'll see this was drug addicts. Like how does somebody move between the animalism stage of drug addicts to begin to get out of it? They They have to choose to go clean. They have to choose to not need the basic need that previously was driving themSimone Collins: right.Malcolm Collins: And this is where perceptualism, even though I view it as a fairly unsophisticated and simple state, is very useful to people who are really struggling. It is the life raft for people who are When they are, deep in self hatred or addiction or something like that, right? So perceptualism individuals in [00:10:00] this state optimize around a self perception, usually an aesthetic ideal like masculinity or a value they associate with high status, like power, love, intellectual deepness, et cetera.The individual then models their life around embodying this aesthetic ideal. A common mental crutch used by perceptionalists to justify their mindset is not having some need met at a younger age. For example, I was poor when I was young, and thus I now live my entire life focused around the accumulation of wealth or security of some sort.Obviously, it is not true that wealth equals morality. And we all get to choose what we optimize around. But this is a statement people will often make when they want to avoid reflecting on how illogical their life path has become. Some perceptionalist individuals will present as religious, but for them, religion serves to reinforce their self perception.For a stereotype of this kind [00:11:00] of person, think of the white kid in college that converts to Buddhism to maximize the aesthetic of spiritual depth and sophistication. For these individuals, their world cosmology exists to service their self perception and does not guide their decisions or view of morality.So you've seen many people fall into the self perceptionalism mindset. It is better than base level animalism but it is still a fairly unsophisticated mindset. Where you see it the most is when we often complain if you look at our videos of the gender dysphoria problem on the left and the right, where people begin to identify a thing associating with gendered stereotypes as a moral compass.And you will see some of these like masculinity influencers on the right, ask themselves when they're making major life decisions, what is the most masculine choice? Which is just an insane thing to do. To, to anyone who's has any level of intellectual sophistication, obviously masculinity, [00:12:00] Is not a moral system.It is an aesthetic system. Okay. It might lead to a healthier lifestyle than just acting on your basal actions. And you actually hear people in the systems talk when they're like there's the two ways you can live. You can either live the masculine way or you can live in hedonism.They are like, literally unaware that any more sophisticated mental frameworks exist above them. And that's something you regularly see. see within individuals in this stage. Like my mom was very hard in the money equals morality. framework, or at leastSimone Collins: no, just more money, more better. And when IMalcolm Collins: tried to mentally engage her, I was like, how does that moral framework work?This moral framework makes no sense. She was really unaware or completely dismissed the sophistication of any moral framework above this.Simone Collins: I think she just Dismissed the concept of moral frameworks entirely if we're being fairMalcolm Collins: What she was able to do [00:13:00] through this I didn't have money when I was younger therefore i'm not gonna think about anything higher order than this and with andrew tate who falls into one of these frameworks although he might be transitioning to the next framework right now.We'll see with his recent conversion to islam but he could have converted to islam just because he saw it as the most masculine religion Which is something he had said before. Is there's a clip of him saying I do everything I do out of a fear of not having power because I have seen what it is like to not have power.when people say to me, Tate, you're obsessed with money. I say, no. I'm obsessed with not being in that position. Tate. I'm never going to let me live my, me live my only one life on this planet and waste my years of consciousness in that position.I don't want to be the guy who's 37 driving a f*****g shitty Citroen who gets pulled out on a girl who's too hot for me driving a car I can never afford who can call f*****g dudes psycho kickboxers with f*****g Lambos and asses to turn up and bust me up. I'm never going to be that guy. I'm never going to [00:14:00] accept that submissive position.And that's why I say when I talk about money and achievement and training and all these things, how important they are, because if you don't find those things important, well, then you're just accepting your place lower downMalcolm Collins: And I have seen what it is like to be on the lower end of society. So people in this state are often motivated very heavily by fear.Simone Collins: So is this The same as optimizing your life around a certain identity.Malcolm Collins: Yes. So an identity money perception of status was in society. Perception of status was in a, so basically whenSimone Collins: you're, when your basic need, However, a logical shifts from an animalistic based need to perhaps something more societal or resource based.Is that fair? I sayMalcolm Collins: it's something aesthetic based is the way I word it. It's a morality designed around an aesthetic. And by that, what I mean by aesthetic, that can mean many things depending on the social context. So people can be like, wealth isn't an aesthetic. And it's actually wealth definitionally differs between which culture you're in.[00:15:00]And so you're really dealing with one culture's aesthetic of what wealth means. Like it's usually not like numbers in a bank account that they're trying to max. It is their perception of themselves as a wealthier person. Yeah. Yeah. It's not actuallySimone Collins: the dollar signs. It's how you. See yourself and they will spend their wealthMalcolm Collins: in a way that's meant to reinforce this self perception of being a wealthy person.And then some people was in this it's that they need other people to see them this way But regardless of what it is, it's about maximizing some self perception and there's some more complicated self perceptions Like I am intellectually deep and some more simple ones like a gender or Something like that right or just power, right?So that is the second system.Simone Collins: OkayMalcolm Collins: the realization that transitions to the next stage is the realization how trivial a life designed around optimizing self perception is. Because just, this is one of those systems where it's more sophisticated than just base animalism, is just if you apply any level of reflection to it, or any level of logic, is just very obviously not [00:16:00] A intellectually satisfying moral system.And so the next system here as I have it as five, like positive five. So it's a huge. Wow. So we're just,Simone Collins: yeah, it's not like there's a one number change with every new step.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And this step is one of the highest steps in terms of intellectual sophistication and mental health of any step in the entire system.And these are religious rule systems. So these systems are a stable set of self reinforcing means that lay out a set of rules for how to live. Individuals subject to these systems build their lives, morality, and behavior downstream of their theological system, following a strict set of rules given to them by that system.This system generally leads to self reinforcing. to better mental health and better equips people to engage with sophisticated philosophical concepts than any system presented of individuals born in the top few percentage points of intellect and ability at self reflection. So [00:17:00] by that, what I mean is if you are a person of a below average intelligence, this system is almost always going to be the best system for you.To be at this stage, a person is following a strict set of rules laid out by their religion and does not ask why those specific rules exist. They simply accept that those rules are good and that those who do not follow them are sinful. Thus, they would be said to havea deontological ethical system.Most of these systems evolved to help some populations outcompete other populations. For more on this, see the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion. However, an individual blindly living by a complicated series of rules about how to live, such as an extremely woke individual, may also be said to be living in one of these systems.This framework is where a lot of religions are, especially a lot of religions are like, if you were a medieval peasant, this is where you work. It, you do not heavily engage with your [00:18:00] religious system. Outside of it is just true and it is a set of rules that determines right from wrong. However, not everyone in this is in one of these these sorts of religious systems. Some just have a personal. Honor system. Some have some sort of culturally derived system that comes from their local peer group that they picked up in college because they got caught in this, self stabilizing memetic tornado.That's basically what causes these. And they are just following a set of rules that define good and bad and right and wrong,Simone Collins: but without. Yeah. So I could see even like someone who just slavishly lives by like some bro code. Being caught up in this. This isn't necessarily like someone being super Catholic or super Orthodox Jewish.It is someone who just decides to live by rules. Or that's the code of a samurai. You know what I mean?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, exactly. That would be somebody living within one of these systems. And again, I should say they're not all religious people are in the system, but religions are typically the best explanation for these [00:19:00] systems.Like when somebody is that woke that they have like this, cosmological framework created by it and a strict set of rules about what's sinful and what's not, they may as well be in a religion, this system is passed when an individual or a group realizes the serendipity of which religious system you were born into or the silliness of assuming your generation exists at a moral nexus in history and that the morals, rules, and cosmologies that are common among your birth group, your generation, or your peer group are largely serendipitous and unlikely to align with a true moral north star.As we say at the beginning of the pragmatist guide to life, you. Even if you're like my morality was my society's morality. And then you point out, yeah, but that moral system has changed constantly throughout history. And now you look back at all those previous moral systems is savagery. And you should expect that people in the future, like we do not live in the moral nexus of history right now.So you likely want to try to develop a system that is more sophisticated. Then whatever system you happen to be born [00:20:00] into and this realization leads to relativism. This I mark as a negative eight. So a very mental, very unsophisticated close to animalism in its level of Lack of intellectual sophistication or like the people was in it.Like you just can't have very complicated discussions with them. This is the belief system that attempts to see all moral frameworks and cosmologies is equally true. This world framework often leads to nihilism and value paralyzation. This system leads to high amounts of nihilism and uniquely poor mental health outcomes.So what, do you have any thoughts on these past two systems?Simone Collins: I find it interesting and I like how basically becoming more advanced or having some kind of fancy rule set behind what you're doing doesn't necessarily make you We'll say morally or logically superior to someone who has absolutely [00:21:00] nothing on that front.So that's interesting. I've not really seen a system like that where you can advance, but you can advance in a really bad direction.Malcolm Collins: I also will note here that spiral dynamics, people will be like what stage you're at the spiral doesn't mark whether you are a good or a bad person often. And I do not take that framework at all.I think that certain parts of the tree or the map almost always lead to negative behavior patterns. However, the negative behavior patterns are negative as judged by other moral frameworks. I don't really, when I'm marking a part of the tree, I am not marking it by the moral action of its members.I am art. Marking it by their ability to understand an intellectually sophisticated conversation when you're having it with them. If you're discussing intellectually sophisticated ideas, can they talk back to you or do they just go right over their head? Is one thing that is judged on in mental health outcomes is the other thing is judged on.Can they largely structure their lives and if they choose to live mentally healthy, [00:22:00] fulfilled lives. And relativism, obviously, I think most intellectually sophisticated people can understand why very few people are actually at the relativist stage because it's just so stupid.Like obviously you can't say all societies are equally morally just. My favorite line from the relativist standpoint was I forgot who it was, but it was a British general. And some of his Hindi soldiers who were fighting for him in India. Began to construct a fire to burn the widows of some other troop members on.And they were clearly not doing this voluntarily. And Because there wasSimone Collins: a tradition for a widowed wife to be burned on, along with the remains of her husband. Correct?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And he said you can't do this. And they're like we're on the same side, like respect our traditions, expect multi traditionalism.And his response to this was to say oh, okay, I understand. Sure, I'll respect your tradition, but you need to respect ours. [00:23:00] And so I will let you burn the widows. And then I will begin hanging your men because in England we hang people who burn women alive. And that was the end of the discussion. And a, what I mean by this is if you adopt a true relativist framework, you can excuse, Any moral horror as it's just their way and people will be like, but Malcolm, you're so pluralistic.Isn't that what you're doing? And I'm like, no, I still judge other cultural groups as morally wrong when they do things that my culture disagrees with that I would see as abusing their kids and stuff like that. I just look at the downstream consequences of a society where everyone can impose their moral frameworks on everyone else and see that downstream consequence as a worse then.Morally, internally judging other groups, but saying I won't interfere with them and they will eventually self extinguish. And this immoral action will leave the world. But that's where people leave that system is people in this. They're not like me where they don't hold this [00:24:00] perception from a functionalist framework.I. E. Well, we can't just have everyone impose their moral values on everyone else. But I also believe that other groups are immoral when they don't follow my immoral framework as will be more and more clear as we go further down the chart. Then that leads to the next mindset, which is the default mindset that people born into the developed world are born into.And this I have at a true zero. So it's not a positive, it's not a negative mindset. It is utilitarianism. This framework sees the goal of an individual life being to maximize the emotional state in the general population, though individuals in this mindset often heavily overvalue their own mental state in internal calculations.This is the starting mental state of most humans born into a secular society and is the branching point the more derived philosophies come out of. So this is where the tree starts branching. And I'm sure you have seen this mental state and you were probably born into a utilitarian culture if you were born into any culture.[00:25:00]It's the default assumed position in our society today, and a lot of people are like, if it's the default position, why do we see some people go back to religion? And so I think that there's two things happening here, like deontological religious systems or perceptionalism, right?Most people who are in the deontological religious systems, either they were raised in often rural, poorer areas that just were not as carried along by the march of civilization as other areas, and thus are mentally healthier as a result of that or they Instead of progressing further on the tree, when they saw that the mindset of the culture they were raised in just wasn't working, they retreated to the last stable state, and so they retreated to religion.Then you're like why are there so many perceptionalists in our society? Most perceptionalists are people who, at some point in their life, Succumbed to some form of animalism and then just barely escaped that [00:26:00] animalism. And that's why they're at the perceptionalist stage, but they were born and taught within school and had all the resources to be a, in the utilitarianist mindset, they just maybe got addicted to drugs or developed a deep self hatred.Or, as they often say, I Experience, like my mom said, extreme scarcity as a child of something. And therefore I really can't get above, stage one scarcity mindsets, in terms of intellectual sophistication. So any thoughts?Simone Collins: That makes sense. And I guess I can understand why utilitarianism would be the default in your system, because also if you live in a.fairly nihilistic society, you're still going to end up on average being empathetic because most humans are most humans don't like to see other people suffering. So it's a pretty easy moral default to fall back on in the same way that humans and apes instinctually fall back on Fairness being moral, even though it is a [00:27:00] nonsensical concept, right?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So explain what you mean by fairness is a nonsensical concept. SoSimone Collins: there we found that, oh, not that it's evolved, but yeah. So fairness is nonsensical because there's literally no way you can make something fair on all dimensions. And there's this great example that was presented in this book called Policy Paradox by Deborah Stone that was really influential.And I read it. It to me what she describes as a cake that you have to fairly divide for a class. So how are you going to divide up this cake? Are you going to divide it by who is the most hungry, by who is the best student, by who the teacher likes the most, by who had the hardest childhood By who is the most clever and the subject by who wants it the most.There's no way to make it fair along all of those dimensions, because everyone has differing levels of all of these different merits. Meaning that there is no such thing as fair. But as we've seen in Capuchin monkeys with this famous video, where you can see a Capuchin monkey being given. [00:28:00] Some kind of remuneration, some kind of food based remuneration for a task.And then it sees the monkey next to it, getting an even more delicious food for that same task and suddenly, despite being perfectly satisfied previously with their compensation, they become completely irate because this is unfair.Getting grape and you will see what happens. So she gives a rock to us. That's the task. And we give her a piece of cucumber and she eats it. The other one needs to give a rock to us, and that's what she does. And she gets a grape and she eats it. The other one sees that she gives a rock to us, now gets again cucumber.[00:29:00]She tests the rock now against the wall. She needs to give it to us and she gets cucumber again.LAUGHINGSimone Collins: So it seems pretty clear from that experiment and other research done that our instinct for fairness evolved as.Us being a collaborative Mammal or put it another word. ItMalcolm Collins: is part of our pre evolved Instincts no different from lust or something like that. It is notSimone Collins: more empathy because Group based society where we have to collaborate and we have to all contribute those groups that felt Instincts around fairness or empathy, typically outperformed groups that did not feel things like that.Because typically if you feel something like empathy, if you feel something like fairness, you're not going to have as many free riders. You're going to have more people contributing of their own free [00:30:00] will and enforcing contribution as well. TheMalcolm Collins: selfish gene would argue you're wrong on this. Yeah.Group level evolution. Is not an in favor idea within the field of evolution right now. I don't want to get too far into that but the point being is using a claim to fairness to ask for things or anger at society. When you see unfairness is a tradeSimone Collins: selfishly andMalcolm Collins: it is an animalistic trait, it is a trait that is monkey.Like it is not. Yeah. If we define your level of humanity being your distance, like the things that you chose about yourself instead of the things that were just pre evolved into you, it is one of these lower order emotional subsets aboveSimone Collins: A desire for sex or those more basic things. I don't think it is aboveMalcolm Collins: those things.Simone Collins: ButMalcolm Collins: you might, this is a neutral zero. I said utilitarianism. Utilitarianism isn't a desire for fairness. I think utilitarianismSimone Collins: comes from a place of empathy. You don't think so?Malcolm Collins: We'll talk about where it comes from in a second. The [00:31:00] desire for fairness falls into animalism. When people are just like, I need fairness.Animalistic level. The people will elevate some pre evolved traits as being higher order than other pre evolved traits because they see them as being more conducive to motivating pro social behavior within a functioning society. But I don't see them that way. I see pro social behavior motivated by logic.As being higher order than pro social behavior motivated by animalistic instincts. And so I don't think it's helpful and you'll understand why I would see it this way. When you get to the higher order parts of the tree, I don't think that there is any utility in ordering your pre evolved emotions. Now I will note that a lot of utilitarians, right?They do not like self identify as a utilitarian. A lot of them are arguing for hypotheses about how to best use Create a utilitarian landscape. So by that, what I mean is a [00:32:00] libertarian and a communist where that is like the core of their moral framing can both be different types of utilitarians where they have two different hypotheses about how best to distribute positive emotional states within a population.It can have many different faces. But most of them are represented within mainstream political positions because it is the mainstream belief system within our culture today. When conservatives and progressives are arguing, they are often arguing with the presumption that the goal is utilitarianism.To help the most people on average in the country was the laws that they're implement.Before we go into the branches of the tree. I should explain why the tree itself branches it is because individuals choose to optimize around different things and therefore go in different directions. So individuals on the. Urban monoculture path, we call it. Are attempting to optimize around their [00:33:00] own subjective experience of reality , like how good that experience is, the mystical path is completely dedicated to the expansion of your experience of reality. And then the pragmatist. Path is completely dedicated to.Impacting the objective world around you.And determining what has value in that world?Malcolm Collins: So now we're to the first branch of the tree. The urban monoculture branch. This is the mainstream, like when you're moving into elitist circles within the urban monoculture, like intellectually elitist circles, you're typically traveling down this branch. And if you are born into an intellectually elite circle within the urban monoculture and you want to develop into one of the like better branches of the trees, you often need to first recess your mental thinking back to utilitarianism before you can move forwards again.So this pathway is aimed at reducing the personal experience of negative emotional states and negative self [00:34:00] judgment. A path towards it is often driven by nihilism around finding that you can't actually have a meaningful impact on world events in the way you would want to as an individual. And thus it is heavily colored by an external locus of control.So the first node on this branch is. Negative five, self acceptance. These individuals try to accept themselves for who they have allowed themselves to become. The goal within this system is a lack of negative self judgment. Obviously, to someone outside of this mental state, they would say that you should try to be the type of person that you are.Worthy of love and not love yourself if you are indeed wretched. However, to people who go down this path, they often have the prior that they cannot really change who they are. And then to move to the next node within this particular tree that happens when people decide to be a quote unquote good person and build a pathological [00:35:00] need to see themselves as a good person.Thus, even though you can't help everyone, these individuals decide to help as many people as they can within the moral framework of this self acceptance, never experience anything negative in their lives, blah, blah, blah. We've talked a lot about this when talking about the urban monoculture.Then they get, get to a negative six node, so slightly lower in the moment negative utilitarianism. Responsibility avoidance. This is the life philosophy held by many of the most educated elites within the urban monoculture. We talk about it all the time in other areas, so I won't go into it too much here.Suffice to say it is a system of morals based around attempting to set up a world structure where people can do whatever they want, whenever they want, without ever encountering emotional discomfort. With no care towards the long term consequences. Individuals in this state often do not have sophisticated models of reality, and instead focus more on the aesthetic of benign quote [00:36:00] unquote good, with a very narrow moral framework, or within a very narrow moral framework, with the epitome of somebody in this state.Moral system being like the haze movement, for example, right? Even though this causes long term damage to people, occluding from them, that being fat is unhealthy, it reduces in the moment suffering. You can see things like affirmative action being the result of this or handing out fentanyl being the result of this.But this is where if you are born into the elite of the urban monoculture, often a wealthy, really college educated family this is going to be the mindset that you are grown up being indoctrinated with. But you can also see that this is a branch that's not coming out of the negative utilitarian branch.It's just a completely different branch. Which is very interesting. And it's also worse mentally than the general utilitarian. Like when you meet these people, you're often able to have less sophisticated conversations with them than you can a general utilitarian, even though their philosophical beliefs are downstream of general utilitarianism.Simone Collins: [00:37:00] Yeah. I've noticed that normally the conversations just go along the lines of you just can't do that, or that's just wrong instead of negative utilitarians or utilitarians in general, having a bit more to say about why something could be damaging or is suboptimal, which is interesting.Malcolm Collins: So to get to the final node at the end of the urban monoculture branch, you realize that you're going to die and you begin to form an obsessive fear around this negative state.Which I call life extensionism. And this is the mental state. It's actually a realization I had while I was going through this chart of just, you fear negative emotions, right? But you realize that not existing is the worst negative emotional state from your own perspective. Really different from the effortless and stuff like that.And so you begin to build your entire life around a person. Fear of death and not existing anymore, and you just can't let go of this. And this is [00:38:00] why you often see this within the ultra educated elite in our society.As to why this particular pathway ends in life extensionism and a paralyzing fear of death. It is because the core. Thing that drives people to this pathway versus the other two pathways is an elevation of an individual's own personal subjective experience of reality, which of course leads to the fetishization of your own objective experience of reality. And then of course, if it is your own objective, Experience of reality. That is the thing of value in reality than a reality that no longer has. That thing is a reality without any value, which is what causes this obsession with life, extension and fear of death. Four people on this pathway.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Now we're to branch three, mysticism.This happens when an individual begins to focus on finding some metric to expand one's internal mental state to something above just quote unquote mentally [00:39:00] healthy. And this branch of the tree is the one that a lot of other level systems treat as the only branch of the tree. Like after utilitarianism, they're like the mystical path is the right path.So node one was in the mystic branch is a negative three nodes. So actually fairly mentally healthy which we call low mysticism or low mystic, low mystics, look for an expanded internal experience of the world, which they believe can be achieved through improving their internal self. However, there is no higher order in herself outside of.That can be achieved by simple self discipline and what can be learned through the study of science. As such, they construct a self masturbatory framework and hierarchy. This is the branch. Most individuals who create level systems like spiral dynamics are at basically they believe in mental states that are deeper or higher order than just having mental self control.And because of that, they create. Almost a theological belief in higher order mental states [00:40:00] that they then attempt to access when they are in this setting of low mystic. Do you have any thoughts?Simone Collins: No.Malcolm Collins: Then the next they move from low mystic to high mystic when the no, the low mystic framework leads to the belief that the world we interact with is an illusion and that higher order information can be gained from alternative mental states.Essentially, this is the path that quote unquote shatters the illusion of knowing. Negative nine high mystic. They are at the same philosophical sophistication of people in the true state of animalism. High mystics start to draw an understanding of the world from corrupted mental states achieved with things like hallucinogens, chants, or rituals.They stop being people you can engage with through logical structure. As their experience of reality trumps all others. They usually become arrogant and condescending with the belief that they have access sources of knowledge that no one can touch. However, because their sources of knowledge are generally not cross [00:41:00] interpretable, e.g. their own experience always trumps all others, there isn't a way for them to have productive conversation with either Even others of their group. And so an example of this, as I was talking with someone who had begun to travel down the pathway of the high mystic. And he was like, yeah, like I tried to be logical in how I'm trying to access these higher order mental states.I can't meet other people or have conversations with other people trying to be logical about it because all of us, The truth that have been revealed through what I would call a corrupted mental state trump all other truths that have been revealed through other people's because you haven't experienced those corrupted mental states, and therefore there is no interpret ability between the frameworks developed within these various frameworks, which leads to intellectual isolation.Once you enter this stage Any thoughts here? I'm sure you've met people who are in the stage of high mysticism and they're just really hard to engage with.Simone Collins: Yeah. When you throw [00:42:00] most rules and pieces of evidence out the window and have to question everything, it's hard to have any sort of meaningful conversation.Malcolm Collins: When your own subjective experience of reality trumps other any measurable objective experience of reality, then you can no, there's no longer any interinterpretability between you and other intellectuals, no matter how smart you are. And this is why we're so against the mystic pathway, but I think this better shows why we're against the mystic pathway.Then the final stage in the mystic pathway comes from living in the self imposed intellectual isolation. Basically you're living like in a self imposed jail cell where you can't talk to anyone for decades. And it causes a phenomenon we call brain rot. This is the only negative 10 on the entire tree.Individuals with brain rot are only able to communicate in simple narrative loops. It is quite common among boomers who went down the mystic path. When [00:43:00] you talk to these individuals, they will either respond with a simple narrative loop about something like what they did that day, some event that happened in the past, or their medical history.While people in the animalism state have an uncontrolled or untamed self awareness. soul. Individuals with brain rot almost feel like they have no soul left. And this is something that you can often see and is apparent from their eyes and facial expressions. If I was going to put on my theological cap here, I would say this is the end result of communing with chaos and inviting demons into their hearts, which feasted on their soul.If I am going to put on my secular hat, I would say that this is just the result of living so long with an unstructured logical system that their higher order brain function simply stopped working. Basically, it atrophied. Their brains basically atrophy to a state where they can only talk in narrative self loops.And if people don't understand what I mean by narrative self loops, if you talk to boomers who grew up in the hippie movement, they're [00:44:00] often in a state of brain rot where you will try to engage them with an intellectual conversation. And then they'll just repeat almost like it didn't hit them at all was a narrative loop about what they did that day.Or like a narrative loop about something that happened to them in the past or a narrative loop about their medical history. These are the common narrative loops you'll have, but they seem to like, it literally goes in one ear and out the other people in other states. If you try to engage them with a level of intellectual sophistication that they are incapable of engaging with, they typically either respond with anger or just saying, what you're talking about doesn't exist.People like this just can't engage with you. They almost are like zombies walking through life. And you've seen this before you've seen brain rot before. It's something we've talked a lot about.Simone Collins: Most people have, yeah, often in older parents or neighbors or something along those lines, people who are just completely lost in their own lives, but not even meaningful lives, just the [00:45:00] minutia of, the Making meals or getting up to shower or paying bills.Malcolm Collins: Yeah it's a really sad state to see, and I think it is the end state of the mystic path, which is why we're so afraid of the mystic paths. I think you can end as a low mystic and still be a very intelligent person that's easy for me to converse with. The problem is I meet very few old low mystics.Most mystics, like when you start engaging with low mysticism, you almost inevitably come to the conclusion that this shattering of the illusion of knowing, which then puts you on the path to high mysticism, which puts you on the path to total brain rot. People with a uniquely high amount of mental fortitude can stay on low mysticism but a lot of them are pulled forwards inexorably into high mysticism and then these more dangerous mental states.And this becomes really dangerous. When entire religious communities move into states of low mysticism or high mysticism. Because people get pulled really quickly to un efficaciousness. Because you can justify anything as a [00:46:00] good life when you're on the mystic tradition. Which means you typically don't contribute back much to society.Fair. Now we're on the final branch. The quote unquote good branch. Or the branch that we have gone down and I think leads to the most positive mental outcomes.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: Which I call pragmatism. So people go from utilitarianism to pragmatism when they realize the value of attempting to live for a value system is good, but the value system of like there is value in saying, okay, this is what good is, and I will structure my life around this and my moral framework around this.But value systems based around the subjective emotional states of humans are stupid. So by that, what I mean, and this is a statement we often throw out quite frequently is value systems. If you say I am living my life to optimize human happiness. What is human happiness or like positive human emotional states?Those are just the things that our ancestors felt in response to environmental conditions. That led to them having more [00:47:00] surviving offspring than their neighbors. It would be like a group of paperclip maximizers deciding that the number of paperclips in the world is a true moral good. It's just what we're programmed to believe.But unlike paperclip maximizers, we were programmed by serendipity. So it's like a lower order philosophy. And even if paperclip maximizers came to this. And the Few groups of paperclip maximizers that are like, Oh, I actually believe that there should be a higher order way to structure. One's logic, they might actually follow the same branches that I've described here.One might focus on I might be able to program myself to have some deeper understanding of the true nature of reality. And then they would go down the mystic path. And then another might go down this patch, which is to say there are things of value to just, this is a bad way to structure it.Plus seven, low pragmatism. People with this value system decide on an objective function, or set of things they believe have intrinsic value, and then construct their identities and lives to maximize those things. The book, The Pragmatist's Guide to Life, is a guide towards constructing one's life around this path.And what I [00:48:00] should say when I'm talking about an objective function, Is essentially you create a weighted list of things you think have value in the world. So it could be a utilitarian framework, but it's likely not. Because this is typically what moves you to true pragmatism is moving away from utilitarianism.And this weighted almost Mathematical equation determines how you judge individual decisions, but also how you judge how you construct yourself. Instead of using a set of rules to decide what is moral, this path decides what is moral by the effects of the actions on the world adapting a consequentialist moral system instead of a deontological one.So remember where I said you have the deontological religious framework? This is a consequentialist framework where instead of following a set of rules, the rules that you choose to live by Are based on the consequences your actions have on reality. And for people who are like, no, deontological ethics is a good way to do ethics.I'm like, okay, so like lying is bad. You agree. Lying is bad. Yeah. Lying is bad. Or stealing is bad. Somebody said, I'll [00:49:00] kill this innocent child. If you don't lie you're going to be like, okay I can lie in that instance. Or I'm going to kill this innocent child. If you don't steal, you're like okay, I'm going to kill.So you've admitted immediately that yes, it is downstream or this genocide is going to happen if you don't lie, of course you then lie, right? I think everyone, they would really think about it as okay, obviously deontological ethics is stupid. I just chose it because I think it's the system that works at a societal level.And I disagree with some ethical systems that consequentialists use or that consequentialists Ethical systems can be used if chosen incorrectly to justify atrocities. And it's yeah, if they're choosing bad things to optimize around it, can you be used to justify atrocities?This is a particularly bad argument because deontological systems that are bad can also lead to atrocities. Nothing about deontological ethical systems, prevents them from leading to atrocities. And then somebody will say, oh yes, but my deontological ethical system would never lead to atrocity. Then I'd say yes, [00:50:00] but my consequentialist ethical system would never lead to atrocities.So. At least from the perspective of the system itself. So.we send an argument.Malcolm Collins: Many religious individuals fall into this path, but unlike the deontological religious people, they are more concerned with why God made rules and what He ultimately wants of them than the rules themselves.For example, instead of just banning themselves from interacting with porn, they ask, why is there a prohibition on porn? What behavior is that meant to encourage? Then maximizing that directly. Simone, when I was talking to you about this offline, you said it's the difference between dancing and DDR.Simone Collins: Yeah.With DDR, you're clearly following the rules. You're doing exactly the steps and you. Are technically dancing, but when you see someone totally nailing DDR, it's very impressive and super cool, but they're not dancing. Whereas when someone's dancing [00:51:00] to the music, it is very clear that they are feeling the music and they are living the music.And that is. The easiest way for me to understand the difference between these things.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I think also when people think about this, I might even change like what was I going to say? This is not a prescription towards a specific value system, right? We're not saying this is good or that is good.It's just, these are people who have decided what they think is good in the world, whether it's through a religious system or through just logicing it out and then they construct their identities. In an attempt to maximize that thing. And they choose their actions and life choices to maximize what they have either logically or theologically decided is good.The, you'reSimone Collins: assigning points valuesMalcolm Collins: toSimone Collins: theseMalcolm Collins: things. No. But what I'm saying is there's many moral frameworks that can fall within this system. This is not saying this one religious system is true or this one. Objective function is true. It's just saying structuring your life in this way typically leads to better [00:52:00] mental health outcomes and better cross interpretability.So that's whatSimone Collins: the point system is for. It's for mental health outcomes. As I said, it's for mentalMalcolm Collins: health and philosophical sophistication, which is really cross interpretability. When I talk to these people even if they're in a completely different religious system than me, or they have a completely different moral framework than me, I can usually have a Fairly sophisticated philosophical conversation because they understand as I do that they have a different objective function and they're able to use that and engage with the core reasons that we have intellectual differences.And they're able to recognize those reasons instead of just I can't talk to you. You know what I mean? Like with other things, it's you're just, Totally wrong about all of these assumptions about reality. So there's no cross interpretability between communication here, right? If you're talking to somebody who thinks money has intrinsic value, it's I can't even begin to explain to you while you're wrong.You're at such a low level of intellectual sophistication,or if somebody is drawing truth from emotional states rather than things that are cross interpretable across people, I'm just not [00:53:00] going to be able to have a philosophical conversation with you, right?Post a pertinent level of sophistication. And so this, what I'm saying here is this is not saying you have to be like us it's saying that there's this one way of structuring things that leads to higher outcomes. Then the next node, an individual goes from there to high pragmatism, when an individual realizes the utility of religious systems, how they evolved, and, are acutely aware of memetic clusters and how they influence group behavior and how they spread.So this is a plus nine high pragmatism. While low pragmatism is focused on self mastery and living the best life possible as an individual.When people reach the state of high pragmatism, they begin to focus more on how society came to be structured as it is. See the mimetic clusters move and interact and are acutely aware of the mimetic clusters that influence themselves. Think of this as quote unquote, seeing the matrix [00:54:00] and then take that ability to begin to alter the mimetic systems that influence themselves to allow self control.To take less mental resources and discipline. They also focus on influencing society more by creating mimetic machines or influencing the direction of mimetic machines. Everyone in this stage lives by some sort of theological system, but are acutely aware of why the system is structured as it is to the most nuanced level, while also altering the course of society more by throwing stones into a river to change its flow than by directly attempting to damn the river.The Pragmatist's Guide to Crafting Religion is designed to help you. Individuals at this stage. So does this make sense to you? The high pragmatism stage, it's the realization that we had between the pragmatist guide to life and the pragmatist guide to crafting religion. When the pragmatist guide to life, we even point out, 95 percent of the time, you're not lucid.So you're [00:55:00] operating off of this internal narrative you've created about the type of person you are. The core advancement between low pragmatism and high pragmatism is you learn about and accept that the older religions had a lot of sophisticated tools that you can borrow scaffolding from and use that to better structure yourself on autopilot.So it requires less mental effort and you more adhere. Towards the life path that you want for yourself in moments of lucidity. And for religious people, it comes when they realize, Oh, this is why my religion is structured the way it is. This is why God structured things like this, or the course of history structured things like this.And I can utilize these systems. For the service of my community and for the service of God. It is seeing the matrix basically of this sort of the mimetic clouds blowing across our landscape and becoming the architect of them, both within yourself and within the outside world. But it's not with [00:56:00] being just in our framework.It's basically everyone. Like when we talk about the index, everyone was in the index is basically in a state of high pragmatism because they are all working intentionally to build a culture for their family.Simone Collins: And what I like about this is that it seems to be pervaded by. bounded rationality in that we understand the limitations of our sentience and we try to address that.Whereas in contrast with spirituality, for example, there's this adherence or chasing after This illusion that you can be fully awake and enlightened, whereas the pragmatist, especially the high pragmatist understands that there is no such thing as being fully awake or enlightened. And we have to optimize our limited systems around our limitations, right?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And another thing about high pragmatism is individuals within the high pragmatist state. Often have a very low [00:57:00] attachment to themselves by this. What I mean is they see themselves typically as like frames within time affected by mimetic clouds and they are part of those mimetic clouds and how those clouds move through time and their biological bodies are not particularly important to them., this is how the high pragmatist paths really differentiates from the.Life extensionist paths, like the fear of death path it's typically whatever religious framework you're dealing with or anything like that, you are just part of a tradition and you don't see yourself as being in a particularly privileged position, even from your own perspective. And I'd say a unique thing about high pragmatists is they typically do not really fear death.They just fear the things that they won't have time to do. Because that's what they see their life as every day is just I need to do this and this to, live my life towards putting society on the best course possible. And then the final stage within this an [00:58:00] individual achieves perfect self masturbate.Mastery is plus 10 freedom from sin. Humans are not yet capable of entering this stage to believe you can is to commit a sin of arrogance. However, with technology and further gene editing or further intellectual sophistication that might be achieved by my descendants, this state might be achievable. And so that is how the tree works.Did that seem like when you think about this tree, does it seem? More useful to you than the tree presented by Spiral Dynamics.Simone Collins: Both of them seem equally useless to me, if we're being honest. I just don't see the point. Okay, why don't you see the point? This is very interesting to me. People are going to choose the philosophy they choose. They're not going to be influenced by this. I care about this. So what if this, so how is it going to change behavior, my behavior, someone else's behavior?How is this going to help me behave in a way that is actuallyMalcolm Collins: disagree really strongly with your perspective here? Of course, because you made this framework. So you [00:59:00] must explain why I think you are wrong about this. Okay. One, I think this framework when you look at it is also an obviously true framework, unlike spiral dynamics, which I really think you get aspirational after a point there is a level like you might disagree with my scoring system, but I think a lot of people would at least agree with the map more broadly.And that my scoring system may be more downstream of how these different philosophical perspectives or world perspectives are able to relate to somebody who is in the high pragmatist perspective. So obviously somebody who is in the high pragmatist perspective is going to have more inter interpretability with somebody else in the high pragmatist perspective.But even if you say that, I think broadly they can agree that the map is true. And when they see the map, it allows them to either quickly advance to higher frameworks. Or see the dangers that are involved with the part of the tree that they're on. So I think when you see something like a low mystic, that might be beginning to proceed towards high mystic, and I'm like, look, this is the path you're on.I'm sure you can think of [01:00:00] people within your life. Like instead of me being like, Oh, here, Trump is on the chart. That's what everyone always does. I don't need to do that. Like you can think of people within your own life who have descended into brain rot or within high mysticism and low mystics.Typically look down on people in a state of brain wat or even people in advanced states of high mysticism, but because they don't really see it as an inex path of their philosophy, they don't realize the danger of the path they're on.And I think that's where the utility of the tree is. I also think the utility of the tree is very useful to people who are at these very low parts of the tree. Like perceptionalism. People at a perceptual estate may not believe that there's anything above them, but as soon as you start delineating all these philosophical frameworks above them, I think most of them have to begrudgingly be like, okay, there are more sophisticated mental states than the one I'm at right now.I think it also helps people understand, because I think that there can be a belief among people at the deontological part of the tree, the deontological religious part of the tree, that [01:01:00] there is no religious pathway further than the deontological stage that they're at, because they're at this incredibly high local optimum, where they need to path through the valley of utilitarianism before they then get to the higher religious or theological pathway again.And so I think that's another thing, right? That they don't realize, Oh there is a higher order pathway and here it is mapped out how to get there. Does that sound useful to you now?Simone Collins: I appreciate that this can show how a radicalized version of a behavior could become like if someone's, just getting started with dabbling in drugs, putting them in some kind of scared straight program and being like, this is what happens if you keep doing what you're doing. So I see what you're saying and I also like any sort of framework that shows people a world beyond their own.One thing that I really love about the comms Institute and the work you're doing on it, the school that we're creating is that it features this skill tree that shows tons of domains of information that I didn't [01:02:00] even know. I didn't even know. So I like that as well. But yeah, I don't know. I have the same general reaction to this that I do to spiral dynamics.And perhaps this is due to my inherent lack of intellectual curiosity where I'm just like, okay. But I also think that people in these other categories aren't going to engage with it in the way that you think they would. Like you think they'd be like Oh, I see how I could progress here. But I think a deontological inherent, like someone in that category as you would categorize them would be like.No, this is how I get closest to God. This is the correct way. And I'm following these rules. So they wouldn't even put themselves in that category. So seeing themselves there wouldn't do anything because they wouldn't believe that they are there in the first place. You know what I mean?Malcolm Collins: Here's another area where I think it has Really high utility, as I think that there's a belief that progress is always especially if you're going down the urban monoculture pathway towards like self acceptance, like you really see this, like they're like, okay, after self actualization, that comes through self acceptance and then it goes.And I'm like, [01:03:00] no, the end of self acceptance is no longer questioning yourself. And then that always ends with a paralyzing fear of death. That always ends with you trying to, a paralyzing failure of any in the moment emotional inconvenience, right? Of the belief that everyone should be affirmed for believing whoever they are.Obviously, if all society is doing this is going to lead to enormous mental health problems and stuff like that. It's just a very bad way to structure society. And that you cannot Like you, you need to reverse track to an earlier mental state before you can branch into the more sophisticated and mentally healthy segments of the tree.And I have seen a lot of people dead end. In various branches for example, I know a lot of low mystics who have dead into the low mystic branch. They have the intelligence to go higher, but they were just seduced into that path early on. And they don't realize they need to go back before going forwards.It's the same with people who, enter this state of [01:04:00] intense paralyzation in terms of the fear of dying, and they begin to just spend all their money to stop dying and everything like that. And it's like, how did you get here? And when they can see the larger map that this is not actually a fear that they need to have, when they have different self conceptualizations of themselves, but they need to go a number of stages back before they're at a level of optimization again.And I also think that the chart shows, which is really useful to people is going through. forwards in terms of mental systems, like realizing obvious logical inconsistencies or problems with a philosophical or world framework doesn't move you to necessarily a more sophisticated moral framework. And I also think it's really important to have a map for what happens after self actualization.And I view self actualization as a stage as occurring almost before like add self acceptance, I guess you could say like it is the wrong pathway. Once you've gone to self actualization, you've gone the wrong way.Simone Collins: What I like about that too, is like Ayla went through this process where she's, she tried to interview as many people as [01:05:00] she could who had.Believed to achieve some form of enlightenment and then found that there was no uniform definition of enlightenment. And it does show that this is a field when it comes to human flourishing, that is perhaps a little bit anemic. We haven't really thought through what human flourishing is, what enlightenment is, what it is to be self actualized.To reach one's full potential. So I like that at leastMalcolm Collins: for that is so few people are on these higher branches of the tree that they just haven't thought about it. And, or that they can't see it. I think that some branches of the tree can't see other branches of the tree. I think a lot of people who are deep in the mystic path genuinely cannot see the other branches of the tree.They just disappear to them and look like just an earlier stage. I think sometimes this, I think it's true for the effortless, right? They can no longer see the other branches of the tree. Once they're there, just everything appears perplexing to them. They don't understand how somebody went from here to here.[01:06:00] And I think that the full map. Allows a degree of cross interpretability between the different branches. If somebody is at this stage of, we need to just remove negative human emotions, they don't understand like how somebody could have gotten to like lower high pragmatism. Where they're like, yeah, but it causes in the moment, emotional pain causing in the moment, emotional pain makes me a bad guy.Why would I care about any other sort of Ethical framework. I'm like but long term, even by your own system, you're causing huge amounts of suffering. And they're like I'm not directly causing that. That's more of a consequence of the system I'm creating. And so then you have to put into a, okay, if there's thought experiments, if you're putting into place a system now that is going to work.Explode on someone in 100 years who isn't even born yet in a bed that was shattered. Or are you responsible for that? And then it's yeah, of course I'm responsible for that. But it's like, how is that any different? If you're creating a cultural system, that's doing that to millions of people, it allows for.An explanation or better explanation as to why these other moral [01:07:00] systems aren't as useful. And lead to, I think, actions that are just wrong. What you often notice about the other branches of the tree is they get worse as they get deeper. So for most branches of the tree, you're actually better off not advancing to the higher stages.Would you saySimone Collins: that the, if we were to flesh this out more, and I guess this is a tree that's only giving examples, it's not comprehensive that we'll say rationalism as it existed a while ago, could be seen as the, extreme going too far with pragmatism where people are like I'm just going to be so practical that I'm going to eat a stick of butter every day because the research says so that kind of thing.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, with rationalism, I would see it as extremely, I'd actually say it's the branch between utilitarianism and low pragmatism, but I wouldn't say it's all the way to low pragmatism yet.Simone Collins: What would be pragmatism taken too far?Malcolm Collins: I don't think you can.Simone Collins: No, [01:08:00] everything else can become corrupted except for our chosen philosophy.Yes.Malcolm Collins: That's why I like our philosophy. That's why I warn against other philosophies. And you can follow one of the mystic traditions and go when I mean like theological traditions and then become a high pragmatist and try to structure it to be of usefulness to you, right? And I think this shows how people who are in the mystic traditions can try to restructure them from a high pragmatist framework, but they just can never succumb to the belief that the Information they receive from corrupted states of mind is higher order than sort of their objective experience of reality.And I think that that's the core thing about the high path that just gets better. If you look at spiral dynamics, when you hear people talking about like the highest orders in spiral dynamics, or I hear about people talking about the mindsets within the highest orders. of their mental frameworks.Society would just be worse if everyone was at them. Weird mystic gurus that are in touch with the fabric of reality and [01:09:00] spend their days philosophizing and blah, blah, blah. Whereas, The high pragmatist, if he's in a society of high pragmatist is just functioning, right? Like they're just working.They're trying to make the world a better place and see their value system replicated as much as possible within wider society. But they are not at this level of sort of intellectual freeze. I also think that the chart shows why we've hit this stage of nihilism in our current society. I love doing the longer ones. I don't know, do you have any final thoughts, Simone?Simone Collins: I think I need to understand this better before I can judge it. Obviously, I'm not quite getting it because if I were, I'd probably find it a lot more interesting.Malcolm Collins: Oh, maybe one of the fans creates a chart for you or I'll create some rudimentary chart and you'll be like, Oh, I get it now. That could help.Simone Collins: That could help for sure. But I appreciate you sharing this and I'm really glad to haveMalcolm Collins: so intuitively right to you that you have trouble. In gauging with people who got stuck on other branches of the tree or thinking, I don't think that's it.Simone Collins: No, that's not it. It's more that I [01:10:00] don't understand the pragmatism of this itself, but IMalcolm Collins: guess it depends on if people find it of utility. You're basically saying that I don't find this other branches of the tree will. Not learn from this. Like they, this will not give them a visibility outside of their branch of the tree.And because of that, it offers no utility. I guess we'll see in the comments does this help people at different branches of the tree? And would people have found a system like this useful wherever they are on the tree, if they had seen this earlier?Simone Collins: Yeah. But thank you for thinking through this.I just love that you're constantly trying to figure out how the world fits together, how philosophies fit together and how things can be improved, how people can find something closer to the truth. And I'm so lucky that you do this because I'm, as much as I would like to think of myself as a pragmatist, I'm often stuck in survival mode in different ways because I'm so neurotic.And there are so many things that like, I can't hear myself think over a mess. So If there's a mess somewhere in our house, I'm no longer a pragmatist. I'm someone who's in a panic state who can't deal with the [01:11:00] fact that there's like a turd on the ground because there's like a turd on the ground every third day in our house.Potty training. I love you so much, Malcolm, and I'm grateful for everything you do.Malcolm Collins: Have a great day.Simone Collins: You too.Okay.I'm actually really curious to see if other people found this useful at all. Because afterwards someone was like, I don't know. I just don't find, um, you know, mapping systems like this or ranking systems like this useful. And uh, such, uh, I am very interested to see if 81 thought it might have some utility to people. However, I will say I don't check the YouTube comments as thoroughly as the discord.I typically read the discord discussion on every day's episode. So if you. Uh, have ideas, put it on the discord episode discussion. If you put it on YouTube, I'll probably read it, but you know, less probability. And, uh, put a poll on the discord discussion of whether or not it's a good theory or a bad theory, because I'd love to see [01:12:00] voting on that. And I'll put the link to the discord.I won't forget this time, guys in the, description. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

May 16, 2024 • 34min
The Death of Woke: Stats on Declining Wokeism
Malcolm and Simone Collins analyze the decline of woke culture, discussing its cyclical nature, cancel culture incidents, and pushback from major institutions. They explore the potential consequences of wokeness in bureaucracies, societal unrest, and the consolidation of power by the 'woke elite'. They predict future scenarios and societal impact, including ideological shifts and the balance of power in institutions.

May 15, 2024 • 32min
Only the Pluralistic & Technophilic Pronatalist will Survive
Malcolm and Simone Collins advocate for embracing technology and industry to ensure cultural autonomy and survival in a competitive world. They discuss the importance of pluralism, long-term planning, and the potential for technophobic groups to adapt when facing existential threats.

May 14, 2024 • 28min
The Bear vs. Man Meme is a Big Deal
In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm and Simone Collins delve into the recent "bear or man" meme, which revealed a disturbing level of normalized bigotry against men in contemporary society. The hosts analyze the responses to the question "Would you rather be in the woods with a bear or a random man?" and compare them to hypothetical scenarios involving other marginalized groups to highlight the double standards at play. They explore the roots of this bigotry, its manifestation in various aspects of life, such as college admissions and fertility choices, and the potential consequences for society as a whole. The conversation also touches on the importance of recognizing and addressing misandry, even when it has become so pervasive that it is often overlooked or dismissed.[00:00:00] Question. What kind of bear is best? That's a ridiculous question. False. Black bear.Malcolm Collins: This is why it's so important that I elevate this and I'm also elevate your reaction to this Okay, because it's the reaction that many people will have that shows how dangerous this has gottenIf you lived in a society like if in America today People were responding the same way to a question about Jews or black people.Would you be like, holy? You We have a big problem in this country and we need to do something about it immediately.Yeah. You would be raising every alarm bell you could raise. This is true.Fact. Bears eat beets. Oh. Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica. Bears do not What is going on?Would you like to know more?Simone Collins: YouMalcolm Collins: look good.Simone Collins: Are you ready to go? I'm ready to go.Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone! I am so excited to be chatting with you again today. There has been a meme, and whenever we try to do [00:01:00] timely episodes, we are always going to be late to the subject, because that's just not how we produce our videos. But the bear meme! First I'll ask you the question.Would you rather be in the woods with a bear or a random man?Simone Collins: Yeah. As long as it's a genuinely random man, obviously a man.Malcolm Collins: Okay. So a lot of women, and then I've seen this done on shows and stuff like that. It seems to be like 50 percent of women or more, maybe within these more progressive environments, like college campuses, you're getting like 70 to 80 percent of women.Okay. Are saying a bear and the standard have they not been like camping ever? Okay. So that's not the issue And what i'll say is the standard mind dead Take on this is are they either not aware of how dangerous bears are or the standard take on this is [00:02:00] Oh women these days, aren't they silly and hasn't feminism gone an extreme degree?And if we weren't based camp if we were some basic podcast That's the take we'd be having but I actually think that what can be Gleamed from this particular meme is much deeper and that's why I wanted to make sure to do an episode on it even if it's not appearing while this is still in the zeitgeist of the topic because I think that this was actually a great sort of natural experiment to see where our culture is heading and to predict where things will go downstream of here.Simone Collins: The, what this really indicates is what media has done to female audiences, which is that when they hear the word average or random guy, they assume some kind of aggressor or some kind of dangerous person. They're evoked set for random guy, rather than [00:03:00] Your brother, an uncle, a family member, a co worker.Malcolm Collins: No. They've further asked this. If it was your dad, would you say, no, they'll say. They would choose to bear over their dad.For example, look at this woman's caption. I choose the bear every time. If it's my boyfriend the bear, a friend the bear. My dad, the bear. Life and men have given me enough reason to choose the bear any time over any of them. I don't trust them. I don't think I ever will. Whether they're family or friends or stranger, I choose the bear.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I think you always, and a lot of people do this. They're like Malcolm, you go too hard against the monoculture and stuff like that. Because they assume that the monoculture is their perception of the monoculture when they've been associated with it.Not the, like they don't know how brainwashed and culty some individuals have gotten. But what I would say is the first thing to understand what we're really learning from this is I'm going to play a clip of somebody interviewing a bunch of women, but first I'm going to slightly change the question that's being asked.Would you prefer [00:04:00] to be in the woods? with a bear or a random black manblackMan is scary. Um, with a bear. What I've heard about bears, they don't always attack you, right? So maybe a bear.Probably a bear. 100 percent a bear, which is like, terrifying to say, but Definitely a bear. SomeMalcolm Collins: blackmen are very scary out there. I bet. Even some men are saying bear, although we could predict that this man's opinion will be whatever makes women approve of him. If I were alone in the woods, would you rather me encounter a bear or aMalcolm Collins: blackman?I feel more like bear. I don't know, cause I feel like I would know what the outcome would be with a bear.Malcolm Collins: and I think when you hear this, now you get really uncomfortable when you hear the way people are responding to the initial question,Simone Collins: but I haveMalcolm Collins: changed the context slightly.You get really uncomfortable.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Or I could change it a bit. I could say, would you rather [00:05:00] be in the woods with a bear or a Jew?Oh, wow! This would be really offensive if they had asked one of these other questions.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And this is because what you are actually seeing within this meme is just pure, uncut bigotry. And you are seeing the extreme levels of bigotry that have become normalized in our society. And this gets really interested because now you get into how does bigotry spread? How did, and so first, something that's useful to note whenever bigotry spreads, because when I say this, if you're, in the cult, you're like men, Don't count as a class that is worthy of any protection.They do they're not worthy at the same level of human dignity of other classes. This is always the first step in the proliferation [00:06:00] of systemic bigotry. The first thing the Nazis did was to compare the Jews to animals, the same thing we seehappening again within the Palestine protests and stuff like that with the, we've talked about this in another episode actually one that might go live after this one but yeah you First need to like racism never is Oh, we hate this group just in particular.It's no, this group is genuinely lesser, genuinely deserving of lesser protections before you go on. And people can be like come on, men have all the power in our society. And I'm like have you looked at like college admissions rates recently? Like men are being systemically pulled out of our economy right now.Simone Collins: AndMalcolm Collins: Anyone who does, if you look at like the number of scholarships for men versus the number of scholarship for women, that's 10 to 1, even with the higher rates of men. One of the things that shocked me was I was recently walking around the Stanford campus for my reunion and there was an entire building dedicated to helping women.It was the old firehouse. It had been converted to an [00:07:00] entire building just for increasing the enfranchisement of women. What did theySimone Collins: do? It What do they do?Malcolm Collins: What's odd is, but women are the majority of students coming into campus now. They are the privileged group. To have an entire department dedicated to servicing the needs of the privileged group within a campus environment is genuinely obscene.Oh,Simone Collins: the typical woke female college student would respond to you saying That's exactly what colleges were like for men for all of history you'd go and then there'd be some exclusive male fraternity to Further enfranchise the men who went there and this is just our version of correcting societal skills And theyMalcolm Collins: would say that but those fraternities often weren't directly integrated.It was the university rightSimone Collins: Funded by it, etc.Even if you take the direction that says, okay, well, women used to be discriminated against, and that's why these were originally built. [00:08:00] Because there were counter institutions on campus to them. Well, those counter institutions don't work anymore. So.These things that were built to counter systemic sexism on campus are now institutionally furthering the very type of sexism that they were built to dismantle.Simone Collins: What's interesting is You The extent to which we're making men into bears. We're making men into things that can and should be scarier than bears because we're forcing them to become stronger and better. Like by, by subjecting men, especially like we'll say, CIS otherwise privileged men to higher selective pressures, you are forcing them to become the best and the brightest and to build their own institutions.That's objectively notMalcolm Collins: true. Really? If you look at the statistics of men today versus men in the past, they are lower testosterone, lower strength, lower. You can just look at pictures. Do you thinkSimone Collins: it's an 80 20 thing though? Do you think that basically Most men [00:09:00] indeed are experiencing that disenfranchisement, but then the 20 percent that are ultimately going to matter that historically always were the ones who ultimately built everything are the ones who are ultimately being pushed to thrive even further.Malcolm Collins: I don't understand. It's just not a thing. It's a fantasy. It's a fantasy that there is this this dangerous male group that they are concerned about is not particularly more dangerous than any other group that they could be exposed to. They have chosen, because of bigotry, because of assumptions about groups, To make these biases about men.If you look at male violence statistics, right?Simone Collins: I'm not referring to dangerous in terms of violence, by the way. I'm referring to dangerous in terms of having all the agency and power.Malcolm Collins: But that's not what they're talking about. Yeah. You're reframing the question to try to, and I think this is useful because this is a way that many progressives or people who grow up in this environment intrinsically attempt to reframe the issue in their own minds when they're engaging with it [00:10:00] so they don't understand how genuinely horrifying the normalized bigotry within progressive circles has become.And this is why I think for a while as a society we didn't understand why we needed to treat racism with such an immediate and angry response. Why we needed to treat anti semitism with such an immediate and severe angry response. Because if you don't, if you allow it to begin to fester within a population, you then have it become a status hierarchy signaling mechanism.And if it becomes a status hierarchy signaling mechanism, then it self extremizes like we have already had happen within women in our society today. Sure. To the extent where they would say something that is the equivalent of saying would you rather be around, be exposed to a random male in the woods or a random black male in the woods?Simone Collins: Through IVF, just so they could be sure that they don't have any male children.Malcolm Collins: [00:11:00] We're going to talk about that in a second. And I would point out here as well, if they're like look at X statistics, right? Any statistics that a woman is going to find that indicates that coming across a random male in the woods might be a scary thing for her is going to apply extra.To black males, any statistics they're looking at. And so why is it that they are not allowed to ask this question about black males, right? If they're framing it this way, right? It is because they have learned that by taking stances like this publicly, they can achieve higher status.And so it signals to the public what route they're in. And so now we're going to talk about how extreme this has gotten because it's really quite. Terrifying. So there was an article recently in slate called it's illegal in most of the world in America, new parents are embracing it for better or worse.And it is gender selection was in IVF, which of course we support, but here are some quotes from the [00:12:00] article, which I think shows you the level of dehumanization and bigotry that has become normalized within the urban monoculture. Grace, a 31 year old woman who works in human resources. Told me, when I think about having a child that's a boy, it's almost a repulsion.Oh my god, no. Grace, and her fang, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, engineer fiancé, are freezing embryos to preserve their fertility.And to ensure that they avoid that, Oh my god, no. Scenario. After she turned 30, her fiancé wanted to make embryos the right way. Wanted to make embryos right away. Grace wasn't particularly eager to kick off the kid having process. I don't like kids. I don't want kids anytime soon, especially one that's a boy.But, she also thinks that her feelings around kids may change, and she wants to be able to dodge the possibility of becoming a quote unquote boy mom if they [00:13:00] do. Boy becoming a boy mom. What's so bad about boys? Quote, toxic masculinity. End quote. Said many women I spoke to. Even those who were, sadly, already boy moms.For many, going through all the trouble to ensure a girl feels like a social good. Amy's partner, Gurthru. Guthry? Guthry. Believes that because oldest children tend to be more successful, if everyone did sex selection, we could quash inequality by manipulating birth order. Quote. Maybe one of our best chances at trying to destroy the glass ceiling is to have women first, end quote, said Gerthy.Among the moms I spoke to who already have boys, many want to give their sons sisters to make them better men. They believe that girls can do anything, a conviction that often comes with a subtext that boys are incapable of doing their own laundry. Calling their moms expressing empathy [00:14:00] a really bad thing.Being part of the family as they get older. Quote, I don't know a guy who has a strong relationship with his mother or his family. End quote. Grace told me, and this is, and whoseSimone Collins: fault is that? Oh my God.Malcolm Collins: Hold on. The hold on one second.So there was also a case of a couple who sued a fertility clinic after having a male embryo instead of a female embryo. And they I mean, that'sSimone Collins: annoying.Malcolm Collins: You pay for servicesSimone Collins: and, they, they probably told them they were able to choose a gender and they were lied to but still the fact that theyMalcolm Collins: Yeah but you've got to hear the way that they talk about it and think about itSimone Collins: Ah, I lookedMalcolm Collins: i'll pull quotes from this after the recordingShe explained I had wanted skin to skin connection, but I ended up wearing sings.So he wouldn't touch my chest when he did it sent electric shock waves through me. I started experiencing extreme anxiety and I would look at the baby and it would [00:15:00] contort into the faces of all these grown men that I know it was so creepy. Whenever that happened. I had to give the baby to Robbie.Malcolm Collins: But you hear a lot of talk from this couple that really Is, compares carrying a child that is a male as grape. Because they have a male inside them involuntarily. And they're just They have a partner, like they married a partner.No, they're usually lesbians. Ah. Okay. Okay.So they are extremist, anti males but you also get these in I think the other couple that was talking, the first couple was a heterosexual where they probably wouldn't call themselves heterosexual, but it was what we would call a man and a woman being married to each other.And to the people who want to be like, well, she was a. . Assault survivor. You know, therefore her reaction to males is justified. And I would counter Wiz. If somebody was a survivor and the assault, it was a black male and they reacted that way [00:16:00] to black males specifically. Would that be allowed in our society?Would we really be like, oh yeah, it's okay. Because one black person did something to them, for them to now react extremely negatively whenever they are touched by or around or talk to by a black man. No, of course not. You cannot carve out specific subgroups is being less deserving of human decency than other subgroups. That is the core element of bigotry. More than all other elements, that core element.Malcolm Collins: And this, so like when you hear this, are you beginning to Understand or contextualize just the amount of genuine bigotry that's being normalized. It is not that they are, I think, genuinely more afraid of a man. Like when you hear man, you think a male person because you're still thinking like a human.When they hear man, they hear monsters.Simone Collins: Yeah, it's hard for me to [00:17:00] parse out how much of this is part of progressive culture and how much of this is people with very strange phobias. There are people who are only capable of eating macaroni and cheese every day. There are people who are terrified of respondents.Malcolm Collins: Come on.Simone Collins: Yeah, to the bare thing.But I also think that's like a, an issue of availability heuristic with male figures in the media or something like that. What?Malcolm Collins: Explain how this is availability heuristic. Because They interact with males every single day. I hateSimone Collins: this. I don't think they think of the males that they interact with as males.And then when they're evoked set for a man is still like an evil aggressor in the patriarchy and terrible people. Let'sMalcolm Collins: unpack what you just said. Cause this is important. It helps you understand how racism, anti Semitism and other types of hate evolve because it allows you to discategorize all disconforming evidence of actually being related to that gender group.Simone Collins: [00:18:00] Yeah. Many people who are racist or anti whatever group have plenty of people in those groups in their lives that they just don't think about as being in those groups because they like, I don't know, they don't fit the stereotype. Then it's obviously a big problem. This is obviously heartbreaking.My heart especially breaks for this baby that was born via IVF that the couple didn't want. And a lot of the sons even that are being raised by mothers who chose to have sons are not select for gender, but I've just decided that I'm going to teach my son just how terrible men are because that's,Malcolm Collins: Those just teach the guy to hate themselves and then a lot of them can just gender transition.When you hear about kids questioning their gender at three or something, a kid is not questioning his gender at three, but you have kids who are three. Not one of them had the faintest clue what gender is.Simone Collins: Yeah. Everything is all pronouns mix. It does not matter.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so they're just going to transition them and I'll play a short video clip here.This is from something I played in another [00:19:00] show, which it's supposed to be a trans piece of media that they're discussing here. And they're trying to explain the consequences, lying to this young person about the consequences of the surgery, saying that, it's pretty much assured that they'll be able to orgasm afterwards when that's not really what we've seen.But then in, in like larger data sets, you're generally giving up the ability to trick. To orgasm if you're transitioning in this way.Especially with heavy amounts of puberty blockers, which this individual is on, but this individual is in admitting that they don't even understand why they're talking to them about this because they've never experienced an orgasm.I haven't experienced any sexual sensation, so when the doctors are saying an orgasm is like a sneeze, I don't even know what she's talking aboutwhat girl wants their penis to grow? Not this girl, and not any girl.if only I was born with a vagina. To solve that problem. Amen, sister.Malcolm Collins: So they can't even think or know or contextualize what's being talked about. And what this highlights to me is how early this individual went on puberty blockers.Simone Collins: Yeah. [00:20:00] Yeah. I just, I don't know. I. It's very clear to me that for quite a while now, there has been an intense bias against men, especially in developed nations, predominated by the urban monoculture.The fact that men are hearing again and again from potential employers, for example, you're great, but I'm sorry, we can't hire another man. Like we're not really like we were not allowed to, or we can't, the optics would be too bad that's just a normalized thing that pretty much everyone we know who's male and who's on the job market has experienced at this point, um, is insane.And the sign of very severe. Bias. And I think the fact that even people like me, I hear this bare thing and I try to shrug it off is an indication of the extent to which we've normalized this misandry in society because now it's just so obvious to me that. I don't think twice when we see new examples of it.It's just, of course, [00:21:00] that's how it is. And, new infractions would have to be so extreme that, by that point we're just rounding people up.Malcolm Collins: It's a boiling a frog scenario. Like for you, if you heard and you have even in this podcast, tried to dismiss this as maybe they're missing.Maybe. If you because you'll hear answers, like one of the girls who gave an answer said bears don't attack every time.What I've heard about bears, they don't always attack you, right? So maybe a bear.Malcolm Collins: Imagine thinking men attack every time. Yeah. And then there's another group where they were like what's the probability that the man will attack you?And people were giving answers like 80 percent, 50 percent. And they'reSimone Collins: standing on the street where theoretically 50 percent of those also out on the streets walking on sidewalks are male. It's very odd. ThisMalcolm Collins: was actually a panel.Simone Collins: A panel. I see. Was it an all female panel in a building full of all women?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I guessSimone Collins: this is alone in the woods.Let's say you were alone in the woods, and you walked past a man. What do you guys [00:22:00] think? Like, what do you think the probability is that just any random man would attack you.I'd say 30 being he would assault me. There is a chance that a man would attack, but I don't know what the percentage is. 85. I'd say 50 50. Very low, like less than 10 percent.Simone Collins: So they just think, maybe they think that once isolated, men will.Malcolm Collins: The woman who said the least number on the panel said 10%. She said I'm going to be very conservative here and say only 10%. That 10 percent of men would attack you on sight. So now, I willSimone Collins: say there are parts of the world in which I could be dropped into a random street that is abandoned with one other randomly selected male from that city.And my odds of being attacked could be pretty high as well.Malcolm Collins: I guess I'm thinking American men here.Simone Collins: I know, but I, that, my point to you is that I think that the evoked set of these women [00:23:00] is those sets. No,Malcolm Collins: it's not!Simone Collins: No?Malcolm Collins: No, it's not! They're talking about American men. It is very clear.They're talking about the men they interact with. And this is the thing and this is why ISimone Collins: don't know if they think of the men they interact with as menMalcolm Collins: This is why it's so important that I elevate this and I'm also elevate your reaction to this Okay, because it's the reaction that many people will have that shows how dangerous this has gottenIf you lived in a society like if in America today People were responding the same way to a question about Jews or black people.Would you be like, holy? You We have a big problem in this country and we need to do something about it immediately.Yeah. You would be raising every alarm bell you could raise. This is true. And yet, because it's men, you have said they must have been misunderstanding the question or it couldn't really be that bad or it couldn't, but it really is that bad.And It's also, you'll see [00:24:00] women say things even on my own Facebook page, I've seen posts recently Women are the only animal that needs to mate with its own natural predator.As if.Simone Collins: Oh my gosh.Malcolm Collins: First, I'm like, do you not have the barest grasp of biology? What about praying mantises?Simone Collins: Yeah, hello.Malcolm Collins: Grow up. You, you clearly are uneducated.Also, I'd like to point out here from a biological perspective, males of a species almost never would kill a female of a species to eat. That makes no sense. , whereas females, a species frequently kill males of species to eat when they're not interested in reproducing. Because if a male has inseminated you from a biological perspective, literally the last thing he would want to do.Is have you killed?Malcolm Collins: Even if women are like you as men don't understand what it's like to be a woman in our society today, how disempowered you feel, how in danger you are. And I'm like or you could look at the statistics and see that men in America are much [00:25:00] more at risk.I think it's two times more at risk or maybe even three times more at risk of being attacked by a man than a woman in America. So no, you as a woman are not experiencing more attacks by men than men.So as I note here, I looked it up. And men make up 79% of homicide victims worldwide.So you're literally five times more likely to be murdered by someone if you're a man than a woman. And we'll assume that most of those doing murders are men for the sake of misogyny, but it's also true.Malcolm Collins: Okay. So when you look at statistics like that it's one of the things where it's holy moly.This is not because of their lived experiences. It is because of. A reality that they have constructed for themselves around themselves based on a fabricated reality of bigotry. Now the fortunate thing is that this group is breeding very little. And so the key is to just not [00:26:00] really engage with them.Or activelySimone Collins: disengageMalcolm Collins: cut it off. If you have a spouse, it's very important. Like it was my spouse now that I'm talking to you about this, because what can happen in relationships is guys who live that standard lifestyle, where they go off to work, their wife goes off to a different job, they're apart.A lot of the time can start consuming content like this on Tik TOK or something like that. And become brainwashed into this position of extreme misogyny.Simone Collins: Oh, that's a good point. Yeah. And I think we've even met couples recently. I'm not going to name names, but we. We're at a dinner the other day where one couple that we'd known from the beginning, actually, even before they were engaged had reached this point where the wife kept saying these insane things.That the husband just had to like nod to. Yeah. And you and I were like pushing back, she's getting increasingly pissed at us. And her husband's just sitting there and he has this help me look on his face, but he can't say anything to her. [00:27:00] And like he, he, at one point said something that defended like a reasonable point.And she's like, how could you say that? Are you serious? And he's Oh and then he started hedging and it was really clear that this is one of those relationships where she had become radicalized. He remained fairly centrist and yet because they, they have children together.They, he's not in a position where he gets to like, what do you do? But that's a different conversationMalcolm Collins: a lot of people will say, I couldn't have philosophical conversations like you do with your wife.And what I would say is you better learn how to, because if you are not influencing her philosophical position, other people can be, and it can lead to these sorts of outcomes.Simone Collins: That's a good point. Yeah. Like undoing this, I think is going to be a hell of a lot harder than, finding a way to have an open dialogue and to inoculate people against insanity.So I'm glad I love you andMalcolm Collins: I appreciate you.Simone Collins: I love you too. Gorgeous. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

May 13, 2024 • 34min
Why You Can Not Allow Nerds to Congregate with Austin Chen
Manifold: The Taco Party: In this engaging conversation, Malcolm and Simone Collins sit down with Austin Chen, co-founder of the prediction market platform Manifold, to discuss the upcoming Manifest conference, the newly launched grant-making entity Manifund, and the unique community that has formed around these initiatives. Austin shares his insights on the diverse group of intellectuals, tech enthusiasts, and "degenerates" that make up the Manifold user base, and how the platform's open, decentralized approach sets it apart from other prediction markets. The hosts and guest also delve into the challenges of creating vibrant social events and communities, the importance of taking initiative, and the potential for Manifund to fill a gap in the current intellectual landscape.Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone. We are very excited today to be joined by Austin Chen. He is one of the co founders of the prediction market Manifold, though now he is transitioning to work on Manifund, which is their sort of independent grant making entity, which is so excited.But what he's doing right now as he's transitioning is Prepping and ramping up for basically the conference of the year for us. We're really excited for it aside from natalism conference, which we're also very excited for, because per natalism, right? But last year was the first ever manifest conference.This is the flagship conference and the one only of manifold. And it was one of the best gatherings we've ever been to in terms of the California people in terms of execution. So you're planning for this we wanted to bring you on to talk about this, to talk about manifold, to talk about mana fund.And I just wanted to kick this off withMalcolm Collins: why? No, hold on. We got to kick it off with a good question. Okay. I think thatAustin Chen: was a great question. TheMalcolm Collins: good question is [00:01:00] around the betting pool that was put around when a a sex party would form at last year's event. Oh my God. Orgy.Yes. Yeah. Can you speak to that? What happened there?Austin Chen: So this is I think an outgrowth of Manifold's like very like libertarian philosophy. To take like very many steps back about what is special about Manifold, right? We're a prediction market platform where anyone can create any question.And this was basically from the very beginning, we want it to be a place where instead of the more standard platforms, Metacliss, PolyMarket, Kaoshi, which all have like prediction markets or forecasts. But all of their forecasts and prediction market was like gatekept. They're like approved by the moderators of the platform.We were like, we don't want this. We want more of a decentralized, like anyone can ask any question kind of system. So I think. Even from the very early days, we had a lot more of the like out there, sketchy, like raunchy degenerate, like crowd of people, but also a lot of people who are like, just very interested in prediction markets for their own sake, like prediction market nerds.When you put those two together, you get like all kinds of weird questions Will there be an orgy at [00:02:00] Manifest? And I think the New York Times famously covered this maybe in a little bit more Like depth than I would have hoped because you know me i'm like i'm so excited to be on the New York Times Except that my name is now associated with this orgy that happens But yeah, I don't know if there's like too much more about that than what they cover.It was like somebody who was one of our users was like, there's a bunch of like really spicy things happening. The like rationalist EA crowd is famous for the very loose, like norms on like sexuality, like polyamory, that kind of thing. Maybe there'll be an orgy. It's a thing that has probably ever happened before in like other rationalist parties or something like that.And there's just like a market for it. And every prediction market can also be viewed as like an incentive market, where if you have inside information, or especially if you have the ability to make the outcome of the market happen, in this case, if you have the ability to make an orgy happen, then it's a very natural thing to bet up, will there be an orgy and just And I think that's basically what happened here.So I'm like enterprising, like user in our community was like, it probably wouldn't be that hard to get together with the minimum viable orgy. If we can get three people to agree to come [00:03:00] over and have sex. I think they did this off the light, hidden campus. Then we can resolve this market correctly.So that's my best guess of what happened.Malcolm Collins: And Elo is one of the speakers. She's one of the speakers this year too. Yeah, that's right and also before we go further to get this all at the beginning if you happen to live in the bay Area and you are a fan of ours and you're not going to one of the natal cons or something because I think that's going to be in austin again This is a great place to meet up because we're going to be there speaking.And The types of conversations that were happening at the event last year are very similar to what goes on in our discord with speaking of if you haven't seen our discord go check that out with the one caveat I that, because you have people like Eliezer Youkowski again coming this year, you get more of the anti AI side, whereas generally our audience is very pro AI accelerationist.Yeah, but you also get a lot of accelerationists there yeah, weAustin Chen: have, for example, Brian Chow coming, who is of the Alliance for the Future 2. 3 that's established. He's been on our podcast.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, he has. A number of times, and we've done his a number of times too. Yeah he's great.So Simone, you can now ask the question that you want. Yeah andSimone Collins: You've partially answered the question, which I think is, so we're [00:04:00] getting there. And I think we need to dig deeper here is a lot of the people who follow this podcast and who liked this podcast are really starved for Intellectually interesting conversations, not just heterodox, there's a lot of people throw around the word heterodox thinker a lot, and that tends to sometimes just mean that someone's a contrarian, and they just like to troll people or say things that sound controversial, whereas the people who follow this podcast who really love it are like, I just want.To really discuss something from first principles with people and really have an intellectual conversation. And these people are all over the place and manifest. And one thing that you pointed out was that the people who are drawn to manifold because it's more open are like a mixture of like very analytical people, like super autistic.And then like also just degenerates and like people who are just willing to be very playful as well. So that seems to be one element of this is that you have a bunch of people who are both fun. And and I think theMalcolm Collins: bigger element Simone is that prediction [00:05:00] marketplaces create a status hierarchy around real world information because a lot of quote unquote being smart in our society today is based around being able to parrot back a dominant societal narrative.Whereas. In a prediction market environment, your knowledge about the state of the world today actually has to be predictive of future states. That's true. Which is genuine intelligence. And so it sorts for genuine intelligence and then within prediction marketplaces, it sorts for degenerates with genuine intelligence, which is our audience.Simone Collins: So Austin, aside from those things, are there any other common characteristics of manifold users and people who attend manifest? And as a second question to this, for those who are starved for these kinds of interactions who couldn't go to manifest and who just like really want to meet people like that, where do you think these people congregate?Austin Chen: So the first question what they have in common.I think taking it back, like a lot of [00:06:00] who comes to the conference is where does the conference get marketed? And who does this seem appealing to? And then the next level is who, like looking at the conference thinks that like the kinds of people who would want to come to this conference are the kinds of people I want to talk to, right?It's like a multi level, like trying to model Yeah. Which is this the crowd for me vibe. And we're trying to position manifest as really hard to say I sometimes say like manifests in one sense, like a conference that like, is like Austin's like ideal, like dream conference where I think like a lot of the, like people who I follow online who like I think are really interesting.I've tried to create a thing that they would very much like to attend. And I think it's actually a borne out a little bit in that In the process of running this conference, like I like try to invite a lot of them and a surprising number say yes I think like roughly like about half of the like speakers and guest honors who I like asked to come have accepted and for me this feels like, like incredibly like high I'm like so happy that they are all like interested in coming to this kind of thing.There's an effect wherewith manifest, I'm also trying to map out the boundaries of some different online communities, I think forecasting it, obviously, but also the [00:07:00] natalism, fertility culture crowd, which is you two, obviously, and Richard Kanania and like Robin Henson, who talk about these kinds of topics extended Tesla people like that they, Often talk to each other.I think there's some sites like reference each other. You like go on each other's podcast all the time. Yeah. That's also like a crowd of people who I like learn a lot from and I think have some kind of like natural affinity for like markets, economics, prediction markets, especially they're like, they're in full force.Startup crowd, of course, the tech startups, the I think there was one other, there wereSimone Collins: tons of machine learning people also learningAustin Chen: people. I view that as a bit of an outgrowth of like startups slash there's an irrationality. There's a biotechnology sorry. It was the one that was on my mind, especially in the, like the polygenic screening, the yeah.A lot of times yeah, we met the guyMalcolm Collins: doing the tooth thing at the last one. Yes.Austin Chen: Yes, that's right. And he's coming again. I got the two thing on me personally, actually Lumen, LumenSimone Collins: Bioworks is the name of the company. Yeah it's Aaron. Who has, he's a friend of Ayla.Malcolm Collins: He was like one of her secretary type people, I think for a while.[00:08:00]Yeah, they'veSimone Collins: worked together for a while, but for those who are not familiar with Lumen, Lumen Bioworks, this is basically a swab you can do on your teeth. But. should give you basically a mouth macrobiotic environment that makes it less likely, severely less likely to get, to develop cavities. So Austin, you're theoretically cavity free still, I take it?Austin Chen: Theoretically it might take another like a few months because it takes about a year to fully colonize your mouth. And the other thing is that we don't really know if it's taking it. Cause I haven't gone in and Oh, that gets swabbed here. to test it. So I think I got swabbed like about six months ago and like now definitely I should be able to figure it out, but I haven't yet.I'm getting, going in for a dental appointment, like into another week or so. So maybe I can tell you then if it like,Simone Collins: we'll check with you in with you at at manifest. You should have a prediction market around yourAustin Chen: Oh, that definitely makes sense. Yes.Malcolm Collins: So something I wanted to dig in here is this nonprofit thing that you'reSimone Collins: Yes.Can you tell us more [00:09:00] about ManaFund?Austin Chen: Sure. Oh, sorry. There's another question. I don't know if you generally want to go back. Oh, no.Simone Collins: Yeah. Where can people, yeah, where else are these people congregating? In the Bay Area, we've heard a lot of people say it's harder to find. Our Discord,Malcolm Collins: Simone, on our Discord.I'm gonna put the link below.Simone Collins: But aside from our discord, where can people find these people? Especially when it comes to finding partners, because people email us all the time saying, yeah, try to createMalcolm Collins: that dating market that we promoted on our podcast. Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. But then there wasn't enough people. It didn't have a big enough sample.So yeah. What are your thoughts there?Austin Chen: Yeah. And there's a, I two different questions. Even like one is like a question for just hanging out and finding a community. And one is like finding, I guess there's a sense in which like, you don't necessarily want us to be different too.You might want them to be like pretty aligned. It's like nicer to just find love, like in your community that you're in anyways. Also famously we had like our own dating product manifold dot love. And it still exists. You can still go to the site. I think it's still a pretty good resource.The pitch for manifold dot love right now is it's like an open database [00:10:00] of like date me docs, which is like pretty in depth profiles with like photos and rough, like bios. And then like answers to a bunch of like questions about that, like pretty key to like understanding the personality of a person.So check it out. If that's one place I would immediately recommend people to look a little bit for potential partners, manifold dot love. But yeah on the question of where to hang out if you're looking to meet people like this in person I run like a event called taco Tuesday, and I actually haven't really advertised or pitched it before to like people like broadly.So I'm unsure if this is a good or bad thing to do. But anyways, it's like every Tuesday at my house, more or less like cook tacos, usually like 20 or like 40 people will show up. We'll do some kind of event afterwards, like karaoke. Your house where?Malcolm Collins: What city people might reach out?SanAustin Chen: Francisco. San Francisco. Okay, good to meet you. I'll link to like a recent invite where the address is on so people can look at it and think if it's like close by. It's like basically middle of San Francisco. I would love Simone and Malcolm, if you two are ever in town on a Tuesday, to come for you to come by.Malcolm Collins: Oh, I would love that, yeah. Next time I'm in the city, I was just there for my GSB reunion. And yeah I'd actually say that our audience weirdly, we [00:11:00] are at the stage of middling fame at the moment, where pretty much everyone I've met from our audience is really intellectual and high quality, like we haven't gotten that many idiots yet.A couple, but not a lot. Which is fortunate in terms of not accidentally inviting too many weirdos to your house.Austin Chen: Yeah, for Taco Tuesday, I also put the invite on a manifold market. Every week it is like, how many people will show up? And you can bet on more than 10, more than 20, more than 30.And it is just like an open invite on the internet where my address is on there. But like the people who are manifold users who think Oh, I might enjoy coming to talk to you. They tend to also just be like quite like intellectual, like fun to talk to. So that's why I would promote that as like maybe a great place to merge the manifold and be like Simone and Malcolm, like audience places like this I think there's definitely like a, like rationality community in like Berkeley, which you're probably like familiar with, or maybe your audience is in San Francisco is actually like less of one, I'd say probably because San Francisco is a lot more like tech heavy, it's like bigger.So like the, rationalist EA people and people [00:12:00] who are like interested in topics like this are just like less there's less of a concentration of them. They're drowned out by the like tech world, I would say. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. OneSimone Collins: thing I'm picking up for, from you though which I think is underrated and which I'm sick of people complaining about because we get this, is you are making all this happen.You are hosting Taco Tuesdays. You are organizing conferences. You are reaching out to your intellectual heroes and the people whose content you like to consume and the people who you think would be interesting and you're inviting them to your conference. And I think that is the key. Being popular isn't about being popular.Like somehow magically being popular. It is about being the one who organizes the thing and takes the initiative and does the work. And it's a lot of fricking work. You're putting a lot of work into all these things. So I think I just want to point that out to people that like, guess what? This is going to involve a lot of legwork on your end.And if you just want to sit on your ass and show up to something, you're not going to have any of this. Yeah, I very much agree withAustin Chen: that. I want to double down on that. I think a lot of [00:13:00] people or a lot of like people I know, like friends are Oh, want to have a more vibrant social network.I want to go to like cool events. And I often try to tell them like, you could just organize a cool event or you can just organize an event and it won't start out cool, but that's okay. Like you'll get better at organizing better and better events. I think taco Tuesday started as like me and like to my friends during COVID who are just like wanting to hang out more often.So we're like, okay, we're going to show up and we're going to do tacos. And we just kept doing it and we did it for three years. And that's how it's grown to this thing at this point, which like 40 people come to 30 people come to every single week. And yeah I think like social events Like starting from a small as like a gathering to as large as like a conference are still like pretty under provided, like the like market demand for them is a lot higher than like the number of events that people can actually go to right now.So I think it would be a great thing if people listen to this podcast and said maybe I'll try and manifest to me was like last year can I put on a thing on the size of 100 people, 200 people showing up? And I never put a conference together before, but I think I learned a lot along the way.And this year I'm like very excited for [00:14:00] manifest.Malcolm Collins: I actually, Simone, I'm going to take a side here and say that I think that people like, Austin and us are it's a genetic thing. I really don't think you can motivate somebody to be this type of person by just being like, Oh, if you, because I've seen what happens when I try to, because like when I am mentoring young people or some fans, I'm like, Oh, you could put something together.Like here's a market space where you can put something together. And they'll do the initial bit of work, but they don't really follow through. They don't really put in the effort to make it actually happen on a big scale. And then when it pitters out, they're like that's why I never try anything because they don't really immerse themselves in making it happen.And I think that's a dispositional thing where if you're dispositionally, one of those people, you're just going to do it anyway. So it's a weird sort of a It's optimistic perspective. And then I'm like, look, anyone can do this, but not any, not everyone is anyone.And because of that the people who have the disposition to just tackle life this way are already going to [00:15:00] be tackling life this way.Austin Chen: That's funny. I think that's exactly what actually I was going to say, or it was on my mind as well. This brings me back to one of my favorite pieces from Scott Alexander, the parable of the talents. I think where last year and it's coming again this year, by the way, that's right. Yes. But I think it was this piece.If not, it was a different like a scholar kind of piece that talks about Scott's own reflections on his ability to write really well. And conversely, his ability to not be like really good. Like he barely got like a D in calculus, I think goes the piece. And this goes to show that different people are like very good at different things, but most importantly for Scott it's not like he like tried really hard to become a good writer.It was more that like becoming a good writer, came naturally. He was like, just like goofing off. And then his like random, like English essays would become like the best essays or like win, like state competitions, that kind of thing. So maybe the way that like, possibly me and possibly the two of you are like, feel more naturally drawn towards inviting people to things and hosting events well, and making people happy.I think Empathy is probably like a really key point of like how to make a event like [00:16:00] run really well because you have to really understand how your participants are feeling and what like changes you can make to give them a better experience. And I don't know if it's like, Oh, it's fascinating.Malcolm Collins: We take the exact opposite perspective. Oh, okay. Okay. Nevermind. You host events for the exact opposite reason you host events. So when we host events, we generally do it because we do not like spending time around people. We do not like meeting people. And I want to lower the amount of time in my year that I am spending socializing.And so to do that, like one of the things we used to do is every other months we'd put together like a party or event in New York to do that, we were just like, Oh, we'll put together these events because we need friends. We need a high powered social network to achieve the things we want to in life.So that required some level of socializing, but what it meant is we basically needed to condense our socializing to be as. Refined and pure as possible to not have to do it that frequently. And that is what motivated a bit. That isAustin Chen: so interesting. Actually for me, my [00:17:00] motivation came very differently.It's I'm also not an extrovert. I actually don't particularly enjoy spending time in social situations. I think maybe this is similar to you to them.Simone Collins: Yeah. SoAustin Chen: that's not why I put on events. I put on events actually because I think most other people are pretty extroverted, but also are bad at making their own events happen or something like that.Or I just like egoistically think I can run a better event than you can. So I'm going to run the event. I'm actually very You clearly can though.Malcolm Collins: He's also in a unique time within the marketplace right now of events, because the EA community and the rationalist community have been overcome by AI apocalypticism and just gone crazy.And so they're just not fun to be around. No one wants to be around that nihilistic BS. And then the pronatalist communities, like the one fine. Community that's adjacent to those circles. It's still not overcome with that. So they're tooSimone Collins: busy raising their kids. So they're not hanging out.Malcolm Collins: The many of them don't have kids, but they're just like, whatever. But your event, because it's drawing on these marketplaces, it's able to. Take if you're in this, and the [00:18:00] reason I talk about the EA community and the Rationalist community is this community, regardless of how polluted the overall ideology has become, is still collecting most of the world's highest agency, highest intelligence people there's just not a lot of good conferences anymore for high agency, high intelligence people since the corruption of the old EA and rationalist communities, which really only happened after Zambank been freed.Austin Chen: I don't know if I like agree with you, like all the way on the idea that like irrational had been like corrupted per se, or I think you definitely use like stronger words than I would use. But I do think there's a true element, which is I think EEG, for example, is not very fun.It is like very automatic or that's not even the right word. Like it's still very good hearted, but EHE explicitly has like a metric around effective altruism global. This is like the premier it runs like two or three times a year global conference of effective altruists where a lot of them like get together and talk about the different causes they're working on.It is actually like a pretty good conference. Like. All like all around if that's like a thing that you're interested in. I enjoyed going, but [00:19:00] again to me going there feels like a chore, like a job, like work. And I think most people who go feel this way. It is like a professional event, like focus around networking and learning, but it's not fun.I think like when I was crafting manifest, I tried to make it like halfway between The EHE Effective Altruism Global and VibeCamp. I'm not sure if either of you are familiar with VibeCamp. Yeah, we've beenMalcolm Collins: to VibeCamp. I was not a fan. It was well organized, but I didn't the people that it draws were not intellectually additive to me.Austin Chen: Interesting. So my disclaimer is that I've actually not been to Vibe Camp. I was just like using the the vibes of Vibe Camp, so to speak, like what it felt like people enjoyed from Vibe Camp. We were trying to combine those two out, have the intellectual caliber of people who go to an EAG, but the like, fun elements of The playfulness of Vibe Camp.Playfulness. Yes. Yes, exactly. Those are the things that I wanted to have in full force. I think we did okay last year and hopefully we'll do even better this year.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So now let's talk about the nonprofit before we end, cause I really want to understand this better. What is this?Austin Chen: Yeah ManaFund is [00:20:00] independent 501c3 charity, which primarily is like like a grant maker and like a website that people can apply for grants on.So it's a little bit similar to Kickstarter. You can like list your application there and like submit, and then it'll be hosted on the internet. So that's one thing that's pretty different between like Manifun and most other grant makers, where like most other grant applications are done like like in private behind closed doors, like you'll fill out like a Google form or something, and then somebody will read it, and like in a few weeks time you'll get like a yes or no response.Instead on Manifund we're like, you apply for a grant there. It goes, anyone can leave a comment, like talk about what they like, what they didn't like about your application and then anyone can donate to it by our Kickstarter like platform, we've also received some amount of funding from various like individual donors and other like EA sources so that some people who are on the site just already have a pot of money, like allocated to them to give out.For example, we have 1. 5 million worth of AI safety regranting budget. Six different like experts in the field of a safety on our sites can choose to like directly fund applications that they find particularly compelling. Yeah, this is the thing that I'm spending more of my time working on and [00:21:00] like I'm like worried, like in your heads Simone, Malcolm, you're like, Oh this seems like just like worse than the manifold thing.Like, why are you like doing this instead? So I'm gonna try to preempt that criticism. Do it. So manifold, was like a really compelling idea around prediction markets. And we had a long time to test out, like specifically how good is a prediction market. And I think like we found it's good for some classes of things, but it's not like the panacea that like we thought it could be, which is to say they're like often good for topics that like are very broadly popular because they can draw a lot of attention to people like getting in and like asking no, we'll jump on the election.That's like an example of a question. I was like one, very popular to really easy to understand. And resolves like relatively soon three. These things make for one particular kind of good prediction market. But I think when I started on manifold, there was some idea that oh, we can use prediction markets for everything.I can make a hundred choices in my day to day life via prediction markets. And I don't think we've quite gotten there. I think even in the scope of trying to decide what features manifold should work on, which is like pretty important and has a high amount of uncertainty and has a lot of trying to figure out what the future will hold.Yeah. We're, it's pretty hard [00:22:00] to operationalize a prediction market to like, get that question answered for us. So I think at the end of that, I was like, Oh, I think prediction markets might be like a good business. It might be like very popular but it might be a good business in the way that like the New York times is like a good business or something like that, but it's not like enough to change the world.So now I'm like trying to find a thing that will change the world. And it's not exactly clear if this grant making thing is like. On the path there, but I'm hoping thatMalcolm Collins: I actually think it's a good idea. I think it's a really good idea. And I think it's a better idea than manifest. So manifold.So I'll explain why. So it actually comes from what I was saying. You have to look at the, landscape of intellectually alive people and where young ones or up and coming ones in the pipeline are aggregating and there's just a After the corruption of we have an episode that I haven't posted yet because I'm a little hesitant because it calls out a little too many people on the death movement.But Sam Baikman freed because the EA movement like really over [00:23:00] invested in appeasing Sam Baikman freed for a while because he was such a major donor. He was like 90 percent of all the funds in the space. And because he was really just using the movement to support, like to whitewash his reputation with democratic politicians.It meant that really everything that they were drawn to was like mainstream and democraty. And it led to those sentiments growing and growing was in the movement until recently, like even Nick Bostrom saying it, Oxford got shut down. Like you, what was this institute that got shut down?It was like a couple of weeks ago.Austin Chen: Yeah, sorry, like very quickly know a disagreement, which I don't think we have time to get into. I actually like strongly support Sam Bacon free, like even now. I don't know I can say, I think I wrote but yeah, it's likeMalcolm Collins: a disagreement, but I don't care about him as a person.So I guess what I'd say is I actually have no beef with him as a person. But I think the downstream effects of his prioritization had a major memetic effect on the movement as a whole. [00:24:00] NotSimone Collins: even his prioritization, just the fact that there was. any single entity in the space that was giving out what felt like infinite money at the time caused a virtue signal spiral.And that's more what we're referring to. AndMalcolm Collins: when that one force disappeared from the movement as a motivator, the movement went off filter, like it no longer had its ballast and then began to spin out into like weird culty side projects, which we would argue, obviously you don't like you are concerned about AI safety, but we argue a lot of the More extreme AI safety stuff has become.And as a result, there's a lot of intellectually active people who are like, I want to dedicate my life to making a world a better place, but I don't feel that will be achieved by going through the mainstream EA organizations. And as a result, you creating an alternative, which is prestigious, which is able to host conferences that get, people as diverse as us.And Eliezer and Scott [00:25:00] Alexander and I think like Richard Hanani or something like that in a recent one, like you, you are getting the huge spectrum here, right? Which creates what otherwise doesn't exist, which is a mainstream nonprofit fund. That is not ideologically captured for the intellectually active in our society.And so I don't actually think that you're like, however, your fund works. Of course, it would need to work through some sort of like selective weird mechanism, or it wouldn't appeal to this crowd. But I think that really more what you're capturing here. It's just a hole in the market right now that was created by the current position.You can say why don't you guys in the pronatalist foundation fit that hole? It's because we are too explicitly right leaning for somebody who wants to stay vanilla to donate to. That's why yours doesn't directly compete with ours either.Austin Chen: I hadn't quite put it in those words before, or but I think like the way you just said things right now, [00:26:00] like Malcolm, it all fits into place.I do think those are a lot of things I think I'd probably disagree with you on the like causes of like why the EA movement is the way it is. But I like roughly agree with your like assessment. It is the case that like, I think there's lots of like really smart, agentic, like cool people who are just looking at what the EA movement is right now and be like, that's not exactly the place for me.And I would very much like Manifold to be the place where like they come and apply to work on the cool project.Simone Collins: It seems like one of the most common elements of someone who's associated with effective altruism is that they first very vehemently insist that they're not effective altruists. And so there's this kind of need for a community and affiliation, but there's not one that seems to adequately represent things.And I, what I like about manifold associated projects and events and things is that. They're very much for their, they're independently driven. They're, in this case, we're looking at largely crowdsourced grants, which is really cool. I know my, we have to wrap up soon, but I didn't want to ask like how the mechanics work.So if someone is [00:27:00] interested in once this goes live and I'd love a timeline from you on that too, if possible putting their project on this, how does it work? Is there a threshold that has to be met before they could get a grant? And. Do you think it's going to end up just being kind of an AI safety platform because that's something I worry about with all E.A. Adjacent grant making platforms.Austin Chen: Absolutely. So to answer your question one, it's already live and it's actually been live for a year and a half. Okay. Amazing. A couple million dollars, I think about 2 million worth of like grants to date. How it works. The most basic version is anyone can come on and submit an application for like any project that they want to.We have a lot of AI safety products, but we're interested in variety, for example Lumina, the like we funded, we were one of the like earliest funders for Lumina. And that was as a result of them applying on a platform. And I think that's actually how Aaron Actually, that's not true.Aaron was originally a investor in manifold as well. So in some sense, like this is like people who are interested in like similar things get to know each other already. But anyways we're interested in [00:28:00] finding things like Lumina probiotics and a lot of other cool, like techie, I would love to find like somewhat more like pronatalist, like initiatives, they don't really apply to Manifund.So hopefully some of your listeners will look at this and think Oh so you can go to manifund. org M A N I F U N D. org to check it out look at some of the existing applications. And apply for funding. Again, go for it.Malcolm Collins: I was gonna say, there was actually a number that got funded recently, and they were all out of the Scott Alexander Fund.Austin Chen: That's right. And that was a little bit different. We have two standard grants. One is direct grants, which is the more typical 501c3 funding. Another are impact certificates. I'm not sure if you're familiar with or your audience is they're like equity for charitable projects.A very rough sketch is that somebody might put up like a large prize, let's say a hundred thousand dollars for the best pronated list products. Maybe if you want to do pronated impact certs to be awarded at the end of 2024. And then in the meantime, somebody can put up a project saying, I'm going to work on this project, I think has a good chance of winning.If you think, if you agree, my project has a good chance of winning. You can invest. I will sell you 20 percent of my project for 1, 000. And then if I end up winning, 5, 000 or [00:29:00] more, your investment will have made like a return on investment. That's like roughly an impact certificate. It's a separates out the like assessing whether the project was good, which is done at the end of the year to the upfront funding the job of something like an angel investor, as opposed to a grant maker.That's a system that we ran for Scott Alexander on our platform. And it's like a concept that we're very excited about, which I don't think I'll go into more detail now, but that's a.Simone Collins: I love that. That's super cool.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, that is super cool. And if you are looking for people to be like experts, like you said, you had the AI experts.If you want pronatalist people to help distribute dollars on the platform, let us know. And we're happy to take those roles. Absolutely.Simone Collins: Oh, this is really cool. Okay. Where should people go? If they want to register for manifest while there's still time,Austin Chen: There is still time. It is a manifest that is is the website.I can go there. Check out who's coming to speak. We'll have a schedule up like probably in the next couple of weeks. . You can buy your tickets now and save 100. You'll, it'll be a great time. And manifest is not just like the two and a half day conference that it was last year. Manifest beyond the like two [00:30:00] and a half day conference, there's also a summer camp, a week long, like people like us just hanging out and like working by day and talking with each other at night.And then it starts with a two and a half day con like unconference. That's like mostly just like online bloggers. I don't know if you two are going to be attending the rest of those.Simone Collins: Less online, right? Yeah. Alas, no. It's hard to get away from the kids that long.Austin Chen: Yeah. We have a whole extra week.I think we're offering childcare it's a thing for less online summer camp and manifold manifest itself. So in case you two want to bring your kids, I would love to meet your kids, but I don't know if that's like practical for you two.Malcolm Collins: I'd be, we're getting close to the stage where we might start bringing our oldest to things, but I don't think we're going to this time, probably next year.Because I do want them to, as they are developing to be able to go. I actually think it'd be really fun, like when they hit seven or so and they can talk to be giving speeches at some events like this. Oh wow. That'd be great. It would be not like a speech, but like an audience questioning because I think being able to interact with the mind of a young [00:31:00] person growing up in the next generation can provide people with a perspective that cannot be easily gained from other avenues in our society right now.Yeah, there's actuallySimone Collins: Conference or retreat series called Renaissance Weekend that was first popularized because the Clintons attended it back in like the Clinton era. And it had, it was always very family. It was a very pronatalist, very family oriented. And it was oriented, invite only focused more on elite intellectuals.And they had a kid portion of it where they did have childcare. They'd have a camp Renaissance thing that went on and. Both luminaries from the main events would come out and do sessions for the kids, but also kids were encouraged to be involved in not just attending theMalcolm Collins: most popular things was all the kids would get together and they would prep for a speech.They were going to give it a group and then they would be grilled by famous people. And actually, Oh, my responses were so good that Bill Clinton did an entire speech just about me at one of the Renaissance weekends saying [00:32:00] that if this is what the future is going to be, our country is going to be great if we have more people like this young river sniffer, Malcolm Collins.Simone Collins: The important thing about this is that it, it helps kids like Malcolm normalize that they can aspire to be like presidents. They can aspire to be like these leaders, these people who start these amazing startups and who do these incredible technical things and who are in, biotech and AI and all these other, so I really love that you already are doing childcare.I love that you're doing that. And I strongly encourage you to continue because you will produce kids who end up like Malcolm, who, have the balls to do stuff that other people aren't willing to do.Malcolm Collins: It has been a fantastic catching up with you and I hope we draw some traffic to this event and we'll meet some fans when we go this time.Simone Collins: Yeah, exactly. So everyone, please remember to check out. Basically now, if you don't know about these things already, have three amazing things to check out. Not just Manifest, which is happening 2024, June 7th to June 9th. So hopefully you see us there in [00:33:00] Berkeley. That's in the Bay Area. It's 30 minutes outside of San Francisco.It's one of the big group houses. Not group house. It's almost like sprawling campus. It's absolutely gorgeous and super modern with crazy cool furniture and all these cool niches.Malcolm Collins: That's what the group houses often look like.Simone Collins: Oh, not the ones I wasAustin Chen: Just the one. Yeah. A light hidden campus is amazing and we're so grateful to be able to host it there again.Simone Collins: Yeah, I've never really seen a place quite like Light Haven before. It's it's like never Neverland meets startup World Bay area. Malcolm, you never socialize. I live in the Bay Area. I do not think this isAustin Chen: true.Simone Collins: Yeah. I don't think that's true. I grew up in the Bay area, Malcolm.I don't know what you're, you weren't invited to all the crazy rationalist parties, Simone, I missed some kind of golden age that only Malcolm had access to, this is true though. I actually did. So that's, that is one thing. The other was manifold, obviously incredible prediction market and the more fun one, because you actually can do the fun stuff.And I can say that playing around with the other prediction markets, I did turned off by the fact that. A lot of fun, weird stuff couldn't be there and that it felt really structured and more gated. Whereas Manifest feels more open and fun and playful. [00:34:00] And then of course, also Manifund. Great place to both look at cool philanthropic projects, but also contribute to them and maybe get contributed to.So Austin, thank you so much for your work. All the initiative you're taking. Can't wait to see you in a couple of weeks. And yeah, can't wait to see hopefully some of the people following this podcast as well.Austin Chen: Thank you so much for having me on. It was great getting to chat with you. I'll see you at Manifest.Simone Collins: Yeah. Have a spectacular day.Austin Chen: Okay. EndingSimone Collins: recording. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

May 10, 2024 • 34min
The Problem With Being a Pronatalist
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] there's another thing about the pronatalist movementand that is what I'd call our Tucker and Dale force versus evil problem. It is about the way that the people from the urban monoculture dehumanize other people outside of the urban monoculture to such an extent that they can only see them as like freaks and murderers, no matter how nice they're trying to be to them And end up like murdering themselves in the processOh, good, look, your friends are here! Hey!You're supposed to want to have children. And this is your ultimate goal in life. It is a very archaic idea and old idea and representation of a woman. So you you're getting people to sign a petition.pledge, basically saying that they will not have Children until the Canadian government takes serious action on climate change.Is that your blood? What, no. No, it's college kid blood. And how many people have signed on so far. 1, [00:01:00] 381 as of right now. I know what this is. This is a suicide pact. Oh my god, that makes so much sense. , we have got to hide all of the sharp objects!if only I was born with a vagina. To solve that problem. Amen, sister. Holy mother of God! Some kid, he just hucked himself right into the wood chipper! What? Head first, right into the wood chipper! It looked like it might have been one of the college kids..Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I am so excited to be talking with you again today back at our old location where we originally started filming, but now we have a hard connection.So you guys get solid video quality from here. But one thing I wanted to think about todaySimone Collins: isMalcolm Collins: the nature of running the pronatalist or being leading figures in the pronatalist movement. And what that means. And why we look soSimone Collins: much younger and less stressed than Greta. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Because there was an article that came out in Politico about the pronatalist conference [00:02:00] and they noted, they're like despite it being a fairly glum message, everyone seemed really upbeat and everyone was really optimistic.Simone Collins: Yeah, honestly, there was so much laughing. There was so much joking. There was so much lightheartedness, which is funny because demographic collapse is dire and scary. Yeah. It's, it is the, it is like climate change, a very scary shift that if not properly planned for is going to hurt the most vulnerable.OhMalcolm Collins: yeah, millions of people are going to die slow and painful deaths because of this. . conservatively. Actually, , I'd say probably at least a billion people are going to die a slow and painful death over demographic collapse.And people are like, what do you mean? Come on. That's an exaggeration. And I'm like, okay. Or you could look at every state social security system, every state's Medicare system. How are they going to pay for that? How are they going to pay to keep their elderly alive? Okay, they're not they're gonna die.They're gonna starve. They're gonna freeze and they're not gonna get medical [00:03:00] treatments That's what's gonna happen as a result of all this but you might say then why is it such an upbeat movement? Why is it so low stress to operate? One and this is something I really noticed at the event itself is there is no status hierarchy signaling within the movement.While in our discord server, people do list how many kids they have. That really isn't a sign of status within the movement. Yeah. AndSimone Collins: one reason, and I just want to emphasize this because this is so freaking important. It does not matter how many kids you have. What matters is how many grandchildren and great grandchildren you have.If you don't give your kids a great upbringing and they're not super stoked about passing on your culture and having their own kids, you failed. So I don't care if you have one kid or you have 10 kids, it matters what happens with those kids.Malcolm Collins: Yeah so one, I think it's the lack of status hierarchy.When I'm in environmentalist stuff, there's a status hierarchy and signaling how much you care about the environment and what you're doing for the environment, which is a very important part of these rallies and attend in events and stuff like that. And it's actually like [00:04:00] the reason people go to them.That is an absolutely massive part of why it's so low stress.As to why there's no status hierarchy, I can only speculate, but it may be because at many of these other events, people who participate in them are participating in them in part because they have been rejected from other social communities. and so the validation that they get within this community is the only source of validation or place where they can really rank high from a social hierarchy perspective.So they really focus on masturbating that instinct. But within the pronatalist movement, at least as it stands right now, No one's really involved in it who isn't more famous or more successful was in a another community. And that's probably what's, what's causing it is you don't get the, nerdy neck beard types going.Malcolm Collins: The second thing that we could talk about is if you look at the antinatalist movement you can see that they have unusually high rates of [00:05:00] sociopathy and narcissism and stuff like that. And I suspect that if you looked at the pronatalist movement, you would see the exact opposite of unusually high rates of incredibly low anxiety.Simone Collins: Yeah. And lowMalcolm Collins: levels of depression. You'reSimone Collins: not Going to be as motivated to have kids. If you are depressed, if you have, if you struggle with life. So yeah, people who are having kids typically are doing pretty well mentally, financially, physically. AndMalcolm Collins: I think a wave of nihilism has overtaken our society.And this wave of nihilism that is particularly popular among the youth to enter a community and the perinatalist community almost necessarily has almost no nihilism in their thinking. Yeah. Has almost no nihilism, almost none of this Oh, the future isn't going to be great so long as we could fix it, or the future isn't going to be great for us.I should note here that this wasn't just something that we noticed. Diana Fleischman said quote in a tweet, also it's likely that the natalism conference had the lowest rate of personality and psychiatric disorders of any conference I have attended. And [00:06:00] then, Bodak said on Twitter, one interesting thing about natalcon was that every single attendee was extremely healthy and attractive and well dressed, a welcome relief from normal life.Malcolm Collins: but there's another thing about the pronatalist movement that's really interesting and it puts it in quite a different position than other activist movements.And that is what I'd call our Tucker and Dale force versus evil problem. Where there is this scene in the movie where they're just trying to help these college kids and the college kids think that they're like these horrible villains because they have stereotypes about Republicans basically, or like rural people.Yeah, like rednecks. They're basically, the movie is great if you are anti urban monoculture. It is basically about the way that the people from the urban monoculture dehumanize other people outside of the urban monoculture to such an extent that they can only see them as like freaks and murderers, no matter how nice they're trying to be to them. Why don't you go over there and talk to her? . You gotta have some faith in yourself, man. Girls can smell fear. Now, come [00:07:00] on. Whatever you say, just smile and laugh. It shows confidence. You guys, uh, going camping?Now look, we don't want any trouble, alright?Malcolm Collins: And so they all run out and try to kill these, as they say, rednecks, right? These like basic, very well meaning conservative people. And end up like murdering themselves in the process while the other people are like trying to save them. There's this thing where he comes back and he goes, I don't know what's going on.I think these people have like a suicide pact or something. And it reminds me of every day I come home to my wife,You're supposed to want to have children. And this is your ultimate goal in life. It is a very archaic idea and old [00:08:00] idea and representation of a woman.Oh, good, look, your friends are here! Hey! GetMalcolm Collins: and I'm out there, I'm trying to convince people, often from these cultural groups that don't want to have kids.And they will say these horribly mean things to me, and, uh, it's there's no point in arguing back. There's no point in fighting back really post a point where, that your arguments aren't going to land because to you, they're killing themselves already.Is that your blood? What, no. No, it's college kid blood. One of those suckers came running out of nowhere and speared himself straight through the gut and died right on top of me, Todd. Holy crap. Oh, no! Calm down, calm down, don't cry.Malcolm Collins: They are in this act of sterilization, memetic sterilization or literal castration.I've had two consultations with two different doctors who offered contrasting opinions,I haven't experienced any [00:09:00] sexual sensation, so when the doctors are saying an orgasm is like a sneeze, I don't even know what she's talking aboutwhat girl wants their penis to grow? Not this girl, and not any girl.if only I was born with a vagina. To solve that problem. Amen, sister.Are you okay?Malcolm Collins: They have they have functionally put upon themselves the worst of the harms that I am trying to prevent. Holy mother of God! Some kid, he just hucked himself right into the wood chipper! What? Head first, right into the wood chipper! It looked like it might have been one of the college kids..Simone Collins: Yeah. We live mentally in the future, in our future generations. That's where our minds are and they literally are not there. [00:10:00] So it's, there's, we sometimes, I feel like we should respond to emails from like a diligent standpoint, but yeah, we've received some emails recently from antinatalists and whatnot, where I'm like, you know, you're not even a, you're not, youMalcolm Collins: are, I almost want to just send them back the video from the life of Brian was the crack suicide squad.That's coming to save them.The people's front! We are to defend people's front! Crack Suicide Squad! Attack!That showed them, huh? You silly sods.Simone Collins: There's no point. There's no point in engaging because they're not part of the discussion that we're having. They're not in the future. So why do we care? Good for them, do their thing, but.Malcolm Collins: And it was interesting. So it's also just constantly when you're in online spaces, you [00:11:00] generally end up feeling I don't think you get the same negativity that other people get.So you you're getting people to sign a petition.pledge, basically saying that they will not have Children until the Canadian government takes serious action on climate change. And how many people have signed on so far. 1, 381 as of right now. Nobody's really, nobody's against it. In the very beginning I sent it out to a whole bunch, maybe like a hundred of my friends. And I would say like 97, 98 of them signed it. Wow. In my generation, climate, you know, fear of climate change isn't an opinion. We don't, it's not like America where people start like people, people, people, people.Our, you know, they choose to believe in the climate crisis. We've grown up learning about the science, so we are all, you know, all scared of what the future will hold. I know what this is. This is a suicide pact. These kids are coming out here and they're killing themselves oh my god, that makes so much sense. , we have got to hide all of the sharp objects!Malcolm Collins: Because when [00:12:00] I read negativity in online spaces generally, my response is mentally my, my thought is. Okay. Is this an idea that's going to spread right? Because that's my fear. Like it spreads and it causes more damage.And then is this an idea that's going to spread to people who, if they didn't adopt it would have made the future a better place.And the answer is almost always, no, I'll see these people. Put out these horrible, vile opinions online. I'll see things like these protests at Columbia going on right now. And I'm like they're not going to have kids, so I don't really need to engage with it.Like they've already done the worst to themselves. And they don't see it that way. They don't because they don't, their conception of the way a human life works is very different from our conception. , we see a human life as being an intergenerational thing. It's this intergenerational cycle of improvement that we all have a duty to, Ours is a journey that spans [00:13:00] generations, where one story ends, another begins. The world our ancestors faced was brutal, yet from it, they drew lifeMalcolm Collins: as when Wood Reed says,All men, indeed, cannot be poets, inventors, or philanthropists. But all men can join in that gigantic and godlike work, the progress of creation. Whoever improves his own nature improves the universe of which he is a part. He who strives to subdue his evil passions, vile remnants of the old four footed life, and who cultivates the social affections.He who endeavors to better his condition and make his children wiser and happier than himself, whatever may be his motives, he will have not lived in vain.Malcolm Collins: but yeah. I, and I completely agree with that quote. I think that is how I judge a life well lived, and I don't, as we've talked about before, ship of Theseus and all that, [00:14:00] Simone and I don't believe we are meaningfully the same people who existed 10 years ago, 20 years ago and when I look at who I am today, and I contrast that person with who I was when I was my child's age, I I don't think I am any more the same person as that person than I am my child.And so it's not that we think our children in the way that like many anti natalists we frame it as we think our children are continuations of us today. We just don't believe that humans are meaningfully that contiguous to begin with. Yeah. And so all we can do. is live as sacrifices within every moment to try to improve this intergenerational unit, both myself in the future but also my kids, my grandkids, everything like that.Simone Collins: I think there's another big reason why this is a low stress movement, especially when you compare it to other movements like environmentalism is that inherently. This is a non coercive movement. And by that, to win, you don't need to get everyone on [00:15:00] board with your cause. You don't need to get even a majority, even a large minority of people to do something.And that in itself is very low stress because it means that you're only getting those who are really enthusiastic to tap into good resources that may already exist. You're not forcing people who are not on board to get on board. And I think something really stressful about being, for example, someone who's trying to get people to take action around climate change, or let's say you're a vegan and you understand just how horrendous animal cruelty is, when people are eating meat and you're trying to convince people to not eat meat, it's incredibly stressful to try to convince people to do anything.And the great thing about prenatalism is we're not forcing or trying to convince anyone who's not into having kids. into having kids. We're just like, Hey, if you're into kids, here's, here's a community where you get rewarded for that. And here's a community where you get to lead in and imagine if you were a vegan and you got to achieve an end of animal cruelty.By just getting to [00:16:00] interact with other really enthusiastic vegans and trade vegan recipes and make really cool vegan foods and invent new vegan foods together, instead of trying to get all these non vegans to stop doing horrendous acts.I swear this scene reminds me of every time we have to talk to reporters, and they're like, Oh, so you're Nazis? And I'm like, no, no, no, we're not Nazis. You see, you have to understand, um, the Nazis killed people, lots of people. Like that's why they're a problem. They go, Oh, okay. , you're violent far right extremists. Well, okay, we're not violent, and I don't know if the term extremist applies. If it's just, you know, let's keep our civilization afloat.And what's worse is when these reporters are indoctrinated in the urban monoculture, not only do we sound just completely insane to them, but they're always like taking Simone aside and being like, okay, blink once if this is like a hostage situation. , expecting that, of course, no woman would sign up to associate with these kinds of ideas.So, conversations with reporters always go a little like this. [00:17:00] Hey. Hello, there we were. Yep. Uh, minding our own business. When all of a sudden, out of nowhere, these kids started killing themselves all over my property.Now, I don't know how much experience you've had with this, but we were scared shitless.You must think that I'm some kind of moron to believe a story like that. . Not a moron. Just open minded. You say you were just working when this kid ran up and stuffed his head into that wood chipper? That's a fact. And, and I think maybe they might be trying to kill the girl that we have inside. She can maybe explain the whole thing. , if I hadn't knocked her unconscious with a shovel on accident. On accident. You've got another one insideyeah, she's in my bedroom.Malcolm Collins: This is I think it really, [00:18:00] a part, a place where people might misunderstand us is we are not diversity absolutists.So by that, what I mean is a lot of people know that a core Purpose of the movement is to preserve some level of human diversity. Like we think that a diverse species ethnically and culturally had the better chance of surviving and will be more productive and will be less likely to turn fascist and authoritarian.And people hear that and they're like, Oh, so you want to save absolutely every cultural group, absolutely every ethnic group. And no, we are a coalition of the willing. And when somebody stubbornly says no, like I would make. Noah ever.I go to an animal and I'd be like, Hey you guys should get on the arc.We're trying to save you. And then the unicorns and fairies, they'd be like, Hey, honestly, what you're saying sounds a little homophobic about the flood and everything like that. And I'd be like, it has nothing to do with homophobia. I'm just trying to get you guys on the arc because you're going to die if you don't get on.And then there will be no more fairies and there will be no more unicorns. And they're like, I don't know. I hate you. And I'd be like, f**k off. [00:19:00] I don't care. Go do your thing. I would be the shortest temper Noah. I know that's why God did not give me that role. I just be like, okay, whatever.So often we will have these individuals come to us. And I'll see these movements like right now the 4B movement in Korea, it's beginning to spread in the United States. Particularly among some parts of American black culture. And I like American black culture. I would like it to survive.I will do what I can to make them aware of the problem, but I'm not going to force them. And if they're going to jump into the wood chipper, in an effort, so the four B's is the culture that came from Korea, no sex, no men, no marriage, no kids. And it is it seems to be catching on the black community because black women, A feel that was in the current American culture they are not treated with respect by black men and they just don't have any good options.And so that it's better just to not engage with them. And it's this is a cultural fight. That's not mine to have. It's women. Trying to spite men that are both outside of my cultural [00:20:00] group and all I can do is say, you know what, this whole thing you guys have going on is pretty toxic and I hope that we can save some iteration of black American culture and I hope it doesn't include you.Or the people who were susceptible to this. And so it's so interesting that it's a movement that while, and this is another thing we talk about the horrifying things that are going to happen. Millions upon billions of slow and painful deaths and people will be like, why doesn't that stress you out?And this is, there's a reason why it doesn't stress us out. Because we as a movement, Do not really motivate with fear or with pathos. This is one of the things that a lot of people are like, Why don't you go more into the pathos? More into the pain and sadness. And I'm like, I don't know.It's just not my thing. The movement's so autistic. We're just coming out here with stats. This is what's gonna happen. And they're like why not lean into the pathos? And it's because I don't believe the pathos. And I'll explain what I mean by that. I believe that people are gonna suffer and die.I also believe that no matter what we do, we are not going to make a meaningful impact on that. There really is unlike the environmentalist movement, which [00:21:00] uses the environmental panicSimone Collins: toMalcolm Collins: motivate action.Simone Collins: Lots of fear mongering.Malcolm Collins: Lots of fear mongering. We don't do that. And because of that it means that people would be like the world is going to be in a bad situation and it's going to be that no matter what we do.So why stress? Why stress about the things that are going to happen no matter what?Simone Collins: And more importantly it's the optimists movement in that there are some people who are just a little bit more driven by. The potential by the opportunity by something really cool that could happen than people who are driven by, it's carrot versus stick people and we're carrot people.It's okay. There are a lot of stick people. They can do that. That's fine. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: I don't know. The future that we're trying to create, I think, is also so optimistic. When contrasted with the visions that different cultural groups tied to like world catastrophes are freaking out about, like the environmentalist movement really want some form of like authoritarian government that can [00:22:00] control people's actions or.brainwash everyone into having the exact same opinions about the environment which would require like a state, a mandatory state school system, just really horrifying stuff across the board. The anti AI people, a lot of people don't know this, but I've talked to them I'm like, realistically, how do you implement this?How do you prevent anyone anywhere in the world from working on these AI technologies? They're like realistically, what they would need is a lattice of internet of things around the world that is monitoring everyone all the time. That is the only real way that the anti AI movement could become a sustainable so they're not really anti AI.What they're for is one authoritarian world government AI that they run. That is the end game for most of these organizations. Yeah, no thanks. Yeah, no thanks. I do not think that AI is enough of a risk that we would submit humanity to becoming chattel for you and your bros and your cultural [00:23:00] ideas, because I know that AI isn't going to be just monitoring for AI development.It's going to be a monitoring to make sure everybody follows your little cultural subset. And it's a horrifying vision for the future that they really have. And so they have to occlude. A vision of the future from their people.And then people some of the like theocrats that they think our vision for the future is horrifying.Cause they're like, what? Like you are pro like gene alteration. You are pro like AI development. You are pro human machine interface. And it's yeah yeah you are pro, A wizard genetics, making allowing people we wouldn't be doing this ourselves, but I am not against the idea.And I know that, technology is coming down the pipeline to do things like given elephants essentially the types of neural density that humans have and that would allow them to, be a completely new type of sentient entity that could interact with the world in completely new ways and thinking completely new ways.That would be as orthogonal to us as maybe AI is. I know you wouldn'tSimone Collins: do that because you're not a big fan of elements. [00:24:00]Malcolm Collins: No, I don't really like elephants that much, but whether you're talking dolphins or dogs or something like that,If your response to this is, well, I haven't heard of us being close to that kind of technology, my question would be, if there was a group that was close to this kind of technology and they made it public, would they be shut down? That being the case, the fact that you haven't heard about any group being close to this level of technology means nothing about our actual proximity to this level of technology.In fact, the only people who would know are people with a large public profile and who could be actively useful to the type of person working on this.Malcolm Collins: I think that the world of intelligence is about to get a lot bigger.It's not just human and AI's in the future or human AI's. It's going to be a lot of things out there. And that we will create our own aliens before we run into other aliens, I suspect. And by that, what I mean is very alien intelligences, maybe even reviving some extinct branches of man, Neanderthals, stuff like that, and they're like, Oh, this is horrifying. What do [00:25:00] they really mean? Like, why is it horrifying? Because different things will exist in the future. I think there's this one inclination in the heart of man that fears this. Change, and they want everything to stay the same and I get that I understand the fear of radical change in society.And can we adapt to it? And what differentiates us from them is our answer is a resounding. Yes. Humanity can adapt. Humanity can overcome anything. I believe in the boundless potentiality of man and where we're going as a species. And I have no fear for what man can accomplish when he joins together.And sets his differences aside to create a genuinely better future because from my perspective, we already live in a utopia when I contrast the world we live in today was the world of 150 years ago was the world of, and I look at the world it was a utopia compared to the world.500 years ago. I'll read the quote from the martyrdom of man. This book that was written 200 years ago, right?And as for ourselves, [00:26:00] if we are sometimes inclined to regret that our lot is cast in these unhappy days, let us remember how much more fortunate we are than those who lived before us a few centuries ago. The working man enjoys more luxuries today England in the Anglo Saxon times, and at his command our intellectual delights, which but a little while ago the most learned in the land could not obtain.All this we owe the labors of other men. Let us therefore remember them with gratitude. Let us follow their glorious example by adding something new to the knowledge of mankind. Let us pay to the future the debt which we owe the past.Malcolm Collins: And he's saying, Yeah, we basically live in a utopia today when contrasted with the old Anglo Saxon kings. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Appreciate it. And when I look at the sort of march of history, I don't fear the future and I think that's required to be within this movement.You have to believe that things are getting better to want so vociferously for humanity to continue. And for those who [00:27:00] say thereSimone Collins: are a lot of prenatalists out there who don't hold this view there are a lot of people who call themselves prenatalists who have these like a lot of fears who are, we don't consider them prenatalists.These people are typically racial supremacists or religious groups that are against abortion, but they're not actuallyMalcolm Collins: religious groups that want their religion to win. They're like, yeah, I want more Catholics. I want more, but that'sSimone Collins: not about pronatalism. That's about Catholicism or that's about whatever ethnic group is being, it isMalcolm Collins: all super natalism.The existing world architecture, no, it's soft andSimone Collins: prenatalism for their group only.Malcolm Collins: for their group only, pronatalism and conversion, right? And so you see this like a great example of one of these individuals would be someone like Lyman Stone, where, he's nominally a pronatalist, but it's really about promoting Christian ideology.And we see them as being allies to the, non denominational pronatalism movement, which is what you mean when you say really pronatalism is their core goal. This [00:28:00] Pluralistic, non denominational, non ethnocentric non cul single cultural centric high fertility rate, which is what makes this, when she says, not pronatalism, it's what makes it not pronatalism, because there is anotherSimone Collins: valueMalcolm Collins: systemSimone Collins: aboveMalcolm Collins: pronatalism.Yeah. It's another value system, which pronatalism is serving. So they're not our enemies in any way. They are our friends. They are working with the pronatalist movement, but they have a different end agenda. And as such I, I understand what you're saying. So this is what we mean when we're saying prenatal, but also within these communities, there also is like that when they are in the pronatalist spaces, because they are often working with people from many different perspectives, they get along so well.Oh yeah. SoSimone Collins: yeah, there is. We, and we talk about this, there is this period of detente now where we have a common enemy that is trying to, erase our unique cultures. There could be a point at which some of these groups decide, okay, now we're in a stronger position and we're going to try to force everyone to be like us.At that point, then there will be conflict between these groups. But for [00:29:00] now basically, as long as all of these groups are not the dominating culture, they are, they get along really well. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And keep in mind, like when we're talking about Like leaning into genetic stuff and stuff like why does that lead to such a positive perspective?Because we think that these developments, these continued technological perspectives, so long as we can resist their temptation, so long as we can walk through the valley of the lotus eaters, we say this time it's a trial of the lotus eaters, all of these technologies, Elon Musk tweeted recently that, we'll be able to, our kids will be able to have AI wives that are like better than any human you could have today and more caring and loving and you complete sensory environment.How do you motivate somebody? To play this civilizational game when that's the alternative, they have to have an intense belief, like fundamental belief. In the future of the human species and the only other alternative is the fire and brimstone approach, which is to say, we need to go back to the old ways.We need to, but this fire and brimstone approach when it is practiced in this context also isn't very optimistic, this idea that technology destroys everything. Every [00:30:00] generation is getting worse. We are in eroding society from some past greatness. That belief system, of course, also isn't very optimistic.And so it intrinsically doesn't lead to we don't choose these things because we are we decided to choose the most optimistic path. I think it's the most logical path. When I look at humanity's history, I think humanity's history is one of optimism. We have achieved. So much of the species, I always replay the the Civ songs and stuff like that, that we see as our songs.And I'll link to them or put little bits.You're plotting a new course again, aren't you? The currents before us are ever changing. We must adapt and press forward if we are to see our journey's end.It is the nature of humankind to push itself toward the horizon. Wetest our limits.[00:31:00]We face our fears. We rise to the challenge. And become something greater than ourselves.Malcolm Collins: People should definitely check them out, but I see them as being like the songs of the movement, not just our songs as a relationship, but like this idea of intergenerational improvement and march of civilization. And yeah, sometimes we have setbacks. Yeah.Sometimes we have conflicts. But there is something beyond our civilization as we understand it now, that's going to be. As incomprehensible to us as the civilization we have built is to someone, just 200, 300 years ago.Simone Collins: Yeah. And I think it's, I'm glad you highlighted this. I think it's nice for people to know that there are causes out there that are not stressful because most causes I would say.Are, but because most causes have to be coercive in order to win the by coercive. Like you have to get people who are not on board and not okay with it [00:32:00] to be okay with it on board before you can win. So for those who would like a non stressful fun, optimistic cause. Consider joining us and this is somethingMalcolm Collins: you see all the time.If you look at the pronatalist subreddit or the antinatalist subreddit, the antinatalist constantly brigade the pronatalist subreddit, like saying mean things, saying angry things against them. The pro it's every third post, the pronatalist never brigade the antinatalist subreddit. Because there's no point that again, they're not part of the conversation.Simone Collins: They literally do not matter.Malcolm Collins: And I would appreciate, our fans, people in the movement, Don't go and attack the people who are different from you. There's no point. Don't, no point. Let's keep the positivity of this movement going. I'm so happy that,.Is getting all this attention right now. He got retweeted from the conference by Elon. He's got 8. 3 million views on that. He's getting all sorts of interest. And it's just so exciting for me because, even though he's in this religious faction of the movement, I like that side is getting traction as well.This is religion. We desperately need religion. [00:33:00] We do. And I like Mormonism, I'm glad that the leading individual in the religious faction is a Mormon. One of the most aligned iterations of a religion was this movement. I'm just so excited for what's happening for him and all, The positivity, even people like us and him who potentially see the world so differently can work together like this.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, I love you, Simone. I love the positivity you bring to my life.Simone Collins: You are the son of positivity in this universe, but I love you. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe