Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

In this episode, Simone and Malcolm Collins discuss the controversial topic of allowing children to use smartphones and screens. Simone argues that preventing children from accessing technology can make you a bad parent, citing studies showing that children with access to smartphones, social media, video games, and other digital devices have better self-esteem, spend more time with friends, and engage more in physical activities. They delve into a recent study by the University of South Florida that highlights the benefits of smartphone ownership for kids aged 11 to 13. They also critique arguments from well-known author Jonathan Haidt, who believes that screens are detrimental to children's mental health. The episode also touches on personal anecdotes, discussing the impact of social media on personal and professional lives, and the evolving landscape of media and news reporting. Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Hello everyone, this is Simone Collins with Malcolm Collins. I'm taking over this dream today because I have found that actually you are a bad parent if you deny your child a phone in screens and that the good parents will do it because guess what?Kids are better off. When they have social media access, when they have phones and tablets and video games, andMalcolm Collins: Stu define better off, we're talking about studies here.Simone Collins: They have, they have less nihilism and a better self-esteem. They spend more time with their friends. They spend more time playing sports.They are just freaking better off with the screens and all these people. Jonathan Het who insist that the screens are the end are wrong, although we will go through their arguments and talk through some of the nuance. But first, I wanna get to this study because I'm so excited about it. It's very vindicating because we are famous for being profiled by the guardian and criticized by everyone on social media, not only for beating our children, but for having them walking around [00:01:00] the house with iPads.Chained to their necks. I needMalcolm Collins: to clarify. Barely beating our children. It was, it was a lightSimone Collins: spot. It was a mild beating. Oh my God.Soccer Boppers! Soccer Boppers! You can sock all day, and bop all night!Simone Collins: So first like huge, huge thing to, to Reason Magazine, which covered this article really well. And, and what they're covering is a new, as of April, 2025 study called. Kids with smartphones are less depressed, anxious, and bullied than peers without them..Simone Collins: So first huge hat Tip to Reason magazine for covering this research, which was done by a bunch of researchers at the University of South Florida. This was published in April, so this just came out. And these researchers investigated smartphone ownership among 11 to 13 year olds. So these are.Extremely vulnerable children who are not at all grown up and mature [00:02:00] enough to handle social media, and they're checking out how they did. So, okay. They, they did survey them, but they surveyed a good sample size. They surveyed 1,510 kids from Florida age 11 to 13.And basically on almost every metric. Measuring wellbeing, smartphone owning kids showed better results. So here are some examples.Malcolm Collins: You're not surprised at all. 11, 13. So this isn't like older kids. This isn't like teens. This is No, this is 11 to 13. This isSimone Collins: just as puberty setting in. So I would actually argue that these are some of the most vulnerable years.I don't know how this period was for you, but it was tough for me. Maybe not for you. I don't know.Malcolm Collins: Well, I can't imagine if I didn't have a smartphone. I mean, I didn't have a smartphone. You didn't a smartphone? I didn't have whatever was cool. This would be like I didn't have a smartphone and it was tough.Okay. Not having like aim during that period being one of the outcasts, you, oh my gosh.Simone Collins: Actually aim really was like one of my few sources of comfort and I think this is part of it and we're getting get into it. So kids with smartphones, oh, do youMalcolm Collins: remember all the sounds from aim that like ding [00:03:00]Simone Collins: and the door opening.Malcolm Collins: Like door opening ASimone Collins: would come in and you'd be like, yeah, that, that like, that that dopamine rush when you hear the door opening and maybe that person you have a crush on that just logged on. OhMalcolm Collins: my God. DidSimone Collins: you have crushesMalcolm Collins: on peopleSimone Collins: back in here? 100. His, his username was warped, STIG, and, and he ended up dating one of my best friends at the time, so that was a little awkward.Oh yeah. Were you, did you think he'd like talk to you? Did he ever talk to you on a Oh, like way late into the night, he was clearly like I. It was emotional cheating going on. At the very least. If they two were dating at that same time, whatever happened, those were like my first, my first late night chats.Which I think for like any, any young person even today, the, you know, the, the, the, the venue has changed, but the, the thrill of the conversation, not night chat has,Malcolm Collins: well, okay, so hold on. What did he end up doing with his life?Simone Collins: I have no [00:04:00] idea.Malcolm Collins: We'll check it before the end of this. I don'tSimone Collins: even remember what his name was.He didn't have a very easy life, like he lived at the poverty line, had a single mother. Oh. So, you know, I hope he's doing well. I, I wish him well. As, as I, I wish, well, the. Never, neverMalcolm Collins: wish somebody who didn't date you. Well, Simone, you need to wish the fury upon them. Well,Simone Collins: I, I wish both of them well. I, I can look up my, my friend, I think she had a kid actually pretty young.So good for her, right? Like right. Yeah. Oh yeah. Doing the prenatal list thing, right? Yeah. Right. And again, goes to show like income does not correlate with,Malcolm Collins: Everyone in the aim world, who, who lived at that. They know that door opening. It is always like. Is it my crush? Like, yeah. Are we gonna talk? Yeah.Are we gonna, are we gonna, it's like ding and it's like, oh my god, it's my crush. Yeah. Oh my God. Like, what are we doing?Simone Collins: So exciting. Oh yeah, that, that killed me. I'm so glad we both had aim days. And again, like for us, even at that age, [00:05:00] and I would say. Chat rooms at our age were way more dangerous. So we, gosh, it was in the early naughties, like around 2001 I guess, when we're doing this chat rooms.At the time when, when we were first going online, one of the first things that people would ask you and an anonymous chat room, which is pretty much what all of them were at the time online was a SL. Do you remember that? A-S-L-A-A sex location? Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, wait, what? That actually sounds like a great thing.Like I know a next location, I'm gonna find you. Well, you know, actually it so way, way back in the day, way before the internet. There were some, some comic books that kids would get subscriptions to and at, at the end of them, many of them would, would be little published profiles of kids with their name and address and picture.So, I don't know, man. Come on, hangMalcolm Collins: out with me, bro. Predators had itSimone Collins: soMalcolm Collins: easy back then. I don't know. I'm talkingSimone Collins: about predators now. Can'tMalcolm Collins: advertise themselves in comic [00:06:00] books.Simone Collins: It's just, it's just amazing. Okay. Look, look over there. Okay. Let's see if, let's see if she can occupy herself. Tried to set up a puzzle game for her.But anyway, let's get back to this study conducted by these wonderful, brave researchers at the University of South Florida. Again, this is Florida teens 11 or 13, andMalcolm Collins: Florida teens. So these aren't like mentally stable teens, let's mind you, right? Yeah, I, ISimone Collins: do wanna kind of caveat this of like. Okay, but this is Florida.Like for real. What else are you gonna do? You can't go outside. It's too hot. So I don't know, like, and they do, the next step I should say, that these researchers wanna take is they wanna take this study nationwide. And I am very keen to see their follow-on research. Because Florida is a very strange place.Everyone's heard of Florida man, right? Like it is not a normal place for healthy people. In our argument. And we lived there, we lived there and we. Got out. [00:07:00] But anyway the, so the, the, the research found, the survey found that kids with smartphones, tablets, social media usage and video game play, were all more likely to spend more in-person time with friends.So kids with, smartphones, for example, spend an average of three days a week playing with friends, whereas the kids, without them spend an average of two days a week with friends. What, how is this possible? Oh,Malcolm Collins: youSimone Collins: cutMalcolm Collins: the kids' tongue off. They have less friends, so I know. How are they gonnaSimone Collins: coordinate if they're not on their freaking smartphone?How are they gonna know where theMalcolm Collins: kids are hanging out? They're no wrong.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. I know. I'm just saying this is,Malcolm Collins: I'm shaming parents. I am shaming parents who don't give your kids for real social media. For real?Simone Collins: Yeah. And also, so 80% of smartphone owners, plus 82% of tablet owners reported feeling good about themselves.Okay. This is in light of the whole Facebook leak and Instagram's making girls feel terrible. No, I'm sorry. Between 80 and 82% of, of basically screen owners, yes. Report feeling good about themselves versus. 69% [00:08:00] without smartphones and 71% without tablets. These are significant differences. This is the people without the screens feel worse about themselves.Malcolm Collins: I, I can't even believe it. This is, this is wild. It's so validating. This is like the parents who deny their kids alcohol.Simone Collins: Yeah. So this let's also be denialism. AllMalcolm Collins: right, let's, soSimone Collins: 26% of smartphone free kids, so these are the, you know, lower screen kids. Agreed with a statement. Life often feels meaningless.So more than a quarter Okay, sure are like falling in nihilism versus 18% of smartphone users. So more like one out of five. All right. Like what? It's so much less. I know. And honestly, like some of this surprises me. I'm like, I don't know. Like there is a lot of nihilism on the internet right now. And no,Malcolm Collins: no, no.I don't think that's what it is. I think the people are misunderstanding broader culture for internet, as I've said, often, often, often. Within my friend circles, the ones who were most online and online first have had the most persistent resistance to the mental health crisis caused by the internet. Yeah.Well, the [00:09:00] internet isSimone Collins: a place where you allow your diviv to, to flourish. It is where your enthusiasms flourish. Like we see how our kids use social media now and they use it to explore. Things that they love and then deepen their own enjoyment of those things. IRL for example, Octavian got really into toy soldier videos on YouTube and like literally there's this one dad who just puts a GoPro on his head and then plays with toy soldiers in his kids, and it's really sweet.It's so sweet and now I don't need to play with him. You do still play with, but then like now he like has all these new scenarios of gameplay and he's like, I'm gonna do this with my toy soldiers and that with my toy soldiers. And it's the same with X shot guns. It's the same with Minecraft. And it's where they like this.This is where you get that spark and it's where you deepen it. And it's, it's, I think, you know, when you play in isolation without that additional inspiration. Yeah, I think you're gonna get more of that. You know, sadness. [00:10:00] Okay, so also, here's a really big one, right? 'cause everyone talks about cyber bullying, right?Oh, everyone's so stressed out with cyber bullying, cyber bullying. I wouldMalcolm Collins: cyberbullying the person who's not online. I'm gonna tell you that the person, well, no, and that's,Simone Collins: that's the thing though. Okay? So 32% of smartphone freed kids, so like almost a third, reported that someone had spread rumors or lies about them online compared to 18% of those with funds.So you're doing great when you're not there to, to clap back when you're not there to defend yourself. You get bullied and you still are being cyber bullied. It's not like they're not aware of it. And of course, actually they're probably, maybe more of them are bulliedMalcolm Collins: because, no, these kids, because here's the thing, they're the little pussy kids.And I remember these kids when I was growing up, they're the kids whose parents are like, oh, you can't engage with modern media. Oh, you can't watch, you know, Disney, or you can't watch whatever. Like you can't read Harry Potter. Like of course these kids are getting bullied. Like, yeah. What are you even thinking?And it is okay, like it's okay for your kids to be bullied. You wanna put them in an environment where they can be bullied and they can get stronger for it. Yeah. But you [00:11:00] want them to have a way to offend themselves. Like you don't want them, that's the point. To be bullied because you clipped their wings.Yeah.Simone Collins: No, and there's also this whole genre actually it's a small one, but on social media where parents are like really proud of how they've taught their kids to bully back. Which is great. And then they like, they like try to like sit around and wait for their kids to get insulted to see what they say.Like, one guy recorded his, his kid like at a little baseball diamond and some other kid was like, your dick is the size of a tic-tac. And the kid's like, yeah, that's why your mom's breath smells so good. Oh. Like you don't fit that. If you don't sharpen your child, you gotta prepare them. You that, that is a goodMalcolm Collins: one, by the way.I love that the kid came up with that off. Oh, my kid came up with that off the spot. I'd be so proud. No. Right. I'd share that online. I, but you don't,Simone Collins: you don't develop that if you do not play in rough and tumble environments online, you can't sharpen yourself. You, where do you get those ideas? If you're just sitting there thinking and that, you know, there's been a lot of research done.You actually opened my eyes to this [00:12:00] on. What did people do before they were smartphones? Because everyone's like, Ugh, so disgusting. People can't just wait in line at the store without staring at their phones. People can't just sit and wait for a plane without staring at their phones. People are so baller for raw dogging a flight.Okay, what are they doing? They're just sitting there. I. All right. Maybe they're imagining something like they're not learning anything new. They're not getting exposed to new ideas.Malcolm Collins: Actually, you're wrong about this. There's some great old pictures of this, of what were people doing before smartphones?Okay. And everyone is looking at a newspaper or book.Simone Collins: Well, yeah. I mean, yeah, when you could and when you didn't have one. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah. Just staring into space. That's certainly better for you. Yeah. Like,Simone Collins: oh, let's have our kids do that. Because I mean, most like, and people are, oh, like these kids, little toddlers who are given iPads, well, they can't read.You can be like, read a book. No. Okay. And we'll, we'll get to that more too. Because this sort of comes into the, the criticisms of social media. But I also wanna point out that heavy social media users in this Florida Kid Survey were more likely than [00:13:00] lighter social media users to report exercising or playing sports at least once a day.So 50% of the heavy social media users, well of course they gotta look buff actually. Yeah. Versus 31%. So the lighter social media users.Malcolm Collins: I remember I have a vivid memory as a, as a young boy of like exercising a lot in a gym and then like checking my biceps in the mirror to like make sure it looked good.Oh, okay.And like the thing is, is they never really changed that much. Like no matter how much effort I put in, nothing ever. Like, they, you'd get a bit more tone. Careful, Malcolm. All thoseSimone Collins: lift bro, people are gonna come at you. Oh yeah, you do.Malcolm Collins: But like, and look, I've got members of my family who are fairly buff. Like I know if I actually put in the effort, but like I feel like I put in enough effort back there. I put in like 30, 45 minutes a day. Like that's a lot.Simone Collins: Well, I think it's also underrated how much practical or I guess you could say applied weightlifting.We do. Because we are constantly [00:14:00] hauling around our children. What I,Malcolm Collins: what I mean by this is, is like even if I put in a lot, I remember how scrawny I still looked in the mirror, right? Like it wasn't like, oh, okay, I look, I remember being happy for the slightest bit of definition.Simone Collins: But here's the thing, so just like.Women seem to think these days based on what they see on social media, are just trends that like contouring is necessary and a lot of women claim that it's for male audiences. No. That kind of makeup. No, no, no. Absolutely. And I, and I also, same with weightlifting. Men think somehow, like, and again, this is, I think that, you know, they, they just make these assumptions when they're trying to just sew it, that weightlifting makes them sexier to women.No, this is a man to man signaling thing. Just like makeup in it beyond the very basics is a woman to woman signaling thing,Malcolm Collins: period. Oh, absolutely. And, and, and, and the point I'm making here is that when I did all of this. No girl had even kissed me. No girl had shown any [00:15:00] interest in me. No girl. This is not, this was before.Yeah. Right. Your,Simone Collins: your breakthrough was when you discovered that leaning into your nerd persona.Malcolm Collins: Okay. No, I was like, oh, the nerd persona is what they like. That's it. And that's it. Anyway. Anyway,Simone Collins: so let's get, so I, I will say, you know, because obviously some of this stuff is just, it seems impossibly good. I, I feel like Florida has.Some, something to do with it. Maybe we might have more moderated results when they go nationwide. We'll see. But there were some negative things and I think the negative things are super straightforward and kind of no, duh. So. The one, the one thing they found was obviously if kids slept with their phones, they got less sleep.Like, thank you Captain. Obvious. That makes perfect sense. Yeah. You probably shouldn't sleep with your phone. Like adults shouldn't sleep with, no one should sleep with their phones. They also found that I know. Well, you canMalcolm Collins: look, the problem with sleeping with your phone is you don't wanna risk it getting pregnant.That was a, that was a dad joke. That was a dad joke. They alsoSimone Collins: found that heavy gamers and social media users [00:16:00] reported more sleep problems. So, so children who often post to social media platforms were found in this research to be twice as likely as those who never or rarely post to report moderate or severe symptoms of depression, 54 versus 25% moderate or severe symptoms of anxiety, 50 to 24%, or having sleep issues.But they also point out that this is a correlary and not causational thing. Of course, we're just looking at correlations and I think that people who have other problems in life will do things excessively, like typically excessive. Anything if it's not like a sign of, of just an addictive personality is often a sign of, you know, trying to bury your, your depression and anxiety that were already there because your life sucks.And you and I were just talking today about how. The school system, the legacy and industrial school system are just so bad that even you, the Renegade and I, the perfect girl who followed all the rules. We're both [00:17:00] completely miserable at school. And it was the, the depression that we felt. Yeah. Which was in, in, I think both of our cases.Clinical. Right. I think you, you were diagnosed as depression. Well, yeah, but I don't believe in clinical. No. Well, but anyway, it was measured as clinical depression was entirely situational. Mine at least went away as, as I got outta school. So,Malcolm Collins: yeah. No, yeah. I, I, all of this is the thing. I actually used to grind my teeth severely.Right. Like it would cause me major issues and I had to wear a night guard. Yeah. Used to wearSimone Collins: this like. Like football player.Malcolm Collins: You know, when I stopped wearing my night guard is when I started dating Simone. That's soSimone Collins: romanticMalcolm Collins: and I've never needed to wear it since. And you know, somebody could be like, were you really that less dressed?Like apparently sleep in me, couldn't deal with life back then. I just ground my teeth and ground my teeth every night. And then. I met Simone and I started sleeping with, and this was early in our relationship too, not like after we had like, I'd say first like five months of our relationship. And I was just like, I can't, I don't need to wear this anymore.And, [00:18:00] and I never needed to wear it again. And I remember before that I didn't wear it one night and I broke one of my teeth.Simone Collins: Oh, that's awful.Malcolm Collins: And that's why I wore it so fastidiously after that, 'cause I was so freaked out about it happening again. Yeah,Simone Collins: that's, that is terrifying. It's breaking a tooth. I can't, oh, I can't even, anyway.So also they found that frequent social media posters were more likely to report sleep issues and symptoms of depression and anxiety. But again, I think anyone who does something in excess may, that may be a symptom of some other underlying issue. So I'm not giving that too much credence. Finally, I wanted to point out just some interesting findings that are like neither here nor there.From the research that it was just like, huh, like, okay. Okay. Tell me, tell me, so there were, there were, there were significant shifts in app usage, depending on household income. So can you guess what was used most amongst the, the kids in households with an annual income of $50,000 or less?Malcolm Collins: Hold on TikTok?Simone Collins: No. [00:19:00] No. YouTube was one of them. The other one you're not gonna guess is Roblox. But I kind of, I kind of dig it. I think I get a very low class feel from Roblox. Roblox does feel local. I don't know what it feels very well. It feels very, it's like the minions of children, you know? It's like very, I don't wanna say cruise ship human 'cause actually cruise ships are very expensive.But I, I want, it's, it is like, it's not, it's not the intellectuals world. If I may,Malcolm Collins: yes.Simone Collins: All right. Minecraft is more of an intellectuals world. There are other, there are other games so, classMalcolm Collins: influencers. So canSimone Collins: you imagine what, what kids used most from higher income households?Malcolm Collins: No idea. Think aboutSimone Collins: your mother.What, what platforms was she really big on?Malcolm Collins: She was on Insta. Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: And. TikTokMalcolm Collins: TikTok. Really?Simone Collins: So I'm like, oh my gosh. Wow. The,Malcolm Collins: the platforms like, well, those are the ones that my, like cousins and stuff all use, like [00:20:00] the young ones.Simone Collins: Yeah. And they're all like super freaking,Malcolm Collins: you know, all the photos of them were like,Simone Collins: this is me and Ka, this is me in Italy.This is me in, in the house in Maine. You know, like, they're all, they're so, like, I, what I'm so concerned about is that. I can't remember the name for this like short term profession of hot girls on Instagram who during college just get invited to really expensive clubs by club promoters to basically be like sexy women at tables with like really wealthy guys buying bottle service.But like, I feel like they're, they don't realize that they're trying to audition for that, but they are. By trying to do what's trendy, subconsciously auditioning for that, just about to start college. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. It's like stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it. Continue. Although, like I, I also read this, this great blog post by a young woman who just [00:21:00] interviewed a bunch of her friends who actually did that.And they're like, yeah, I mean, it was fine. Like. I didn't get addicted to the drugs. Like it was just fun and then like, it, it was over. So, I don't know.Malcolm Collins: Interesting that it's so different from me. So there's a few people in my family that have taken this other route,Simone Collins: Uhhuh, whichMalcolm Collins: is like the, well, in my generation it was like the goth route, right?Like,Simone Collins: yeah, your family doesn'tMalcolm Collins: do that. This generation, what is it? You know, like, and generation before, it's like that brony route. And this generation, what is it? It's, it's the, it is the center right route. Like no, genuinely I think being a center, right, like Gen Alpha person is about equivalent to like being a gohar punk gen alpha person in our generation.Simone Collins: Yeah. So there's another, there's another social class slash income related finding that I thought was interesting. They found that kids from higher income households were also significantly more likely to post publicly on social media. So 77, 70 7% of kids from the highest income households. Posted publicly versus 56% among kids from the lowest income households.So now every time I [00:22:00] like click to a colleague or friends. Private social media feed. I'm gonna be like, mm. Hello Class.Malcolm Collins: Hello class. Hello class.Simone Collins: I mean, I know it's, we, we have lots of wealthy friends who decide to go private and you're like, my privacy, no, I hate them. We alwaysMalcolm Collins: go like, Ooh, my privacy. My privacy good.To me, they're talking about, we're like, we're like, you guys suck. Yeah. Like, it's so lame.Simone Collins: And another thing, this isn't, I mean, it's partially related to income and it's partially related to gender. They found a large percentage of kids overall agreed with the sentiment. Life often feels meaningless with agreement significantly higher among boys, which surprised me.'cause Jonathan, he's whole thing is like girls are getting hit harder. Whereas 23% of boys versus 13% of, is JonathanMalcolm Collins: Height full of a big bag of poop?Simone Collins: Not exactly we're gonna get into that, but like 23% of boys reported feeling this versus 16% of girls and then among kids from higher income households.[00:23:00]More of them. Were feeling this nihilism. 31% in high income households, one 50 K. The higherMalcolm Collins: income kids are all like mentally messed up right now. Yeah. AndSimone Collins: that's why like spoons are all like upper middle class girls,Malcolm Collins: white girls. Oh yeah. No, ofSimone Collins: course they're,Malcolm Collins: yeah. And then only,Simone Collins: so only 10% of the kids in households making 10 K, or sorry, 50 K or below as household income.Reported this, this, that they identified with the sentiment. Life often feels meaningless, which I just like.Malcolm Collins: Which shows, you know, people are gonna see all this and they're gonna be like, oh, the rich kids are online more. That's why you see the mental health more among the people who are online more. And what we're pointing out here is no, actually you have a countertrend to that.It really is being online more. And having access to these online environments increases your mental health at this age, within this current cultural context? Well,Simone Collins: there are confounding factors. I think what this is more parsing out is that girls what this is pointing out is [00:24:00] being wealthy can associate you, I think with some cultures that are more toxic.And that being closer to the lower income range may separate you more from what I would consider to be the urban monoculture. I think the urban monoculture is inherently a culture of wealth and privilege. And, and I just see that as more as like evidence that lower income distances you from the Iwan culture and also reduces your feelings of nihilism.So in terms of just in general, the researchers take away advice to people, which I think is super solid because screens are great, but they're not perfect. They say, one, it's actually fine to let kids as young as 11 have smartphones. Fantastic. But you should. That's fine. Protect it. No, ai we're, we're saying, I mean, we personally would say below that age is great, but they, they only survey kids 1113.ThisMalcolm Collins: is what I say about kids. I think it's really [00:25:00] dangerous to allow kids to have friends that are ai.Simone Collins: Dangerous. No, it's good to have friends who are ai. We don't want real friends who areMalcolm Collins: notis.Simone Collins: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I I think, I think giving your kids real humans will reject them. Humans are gross.Humans. Can gr themis do none of that?Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Ais don't. Well, but when they do it, it's in the, the, the way you want, you know.Malcolm Collins: Oh God. Okay. Anyway, continue. Continue. Yeah. Go into this. Yeah.Simone Collins: But so like, yes. Phone's good. But don't let your kids sleep with your phones, which is great. They, they also, they, they discourage having young children post publicly on social platforms.I disagree with this, and we've talked about this in other episodes, but we think that one of the only ways that you are going to survive in the post AI economy is to have a strong online reputation. And to be really known for something and to be able to [00:26:00] make custom products and provide custom experiences that other people aren't known for doing, because that's the only way, either from wealthy people living in their walled gardens or your local community is going to know to mm-hmm.Buy services or, or products from you. I disagree with him on that, but I don't disagree with him on the, on the sleep thing. And what we do, of course is like, we're really careful about making sure that there's, you know, screen access is, is limited.It's, it's, it's very time gated and I think that, that, that's a good thing.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, we're building new AI products for our kids right now that allow them to just like, talk to an AI that will constantly draw them back to educational topics. And so we'll see when that's built and that can be available to you guys.And I don't understand why we're the only ones making this stuff like. Is everyone else retarded? I, you know,Simone Collins: I, so what, what we see among our friend group, which is, you know, highly educated, wealthy elites, [00:27:00] is. A screen bad screen, badMalcolm Collins: scream, bad. It's because they're, they're losers. They're losers. That's why.And this is a level of, of wealthy beyond what they consider wealthy in this study. Right? Like, yeah,Simone Collins: because they consider wealthy making over $150,000. These are people generally would be like a millionMalcolm Collins: plus a year.Simone Collins: Yeah, they have like unlimited ELTA MD sunscreen sitting around their house. It's insane.Malcolm Collins: ELTA MD sunscreen.Simone Collins: Oh yeah. IMalcolm Collins: remember we went to it for there. You're like,Simone Collins: this is insane. Why are you, I feel like I'm looking at gold bricks sitting on a shelf. Yeah. I don't know. Like my, my indicators of wealth are a little bit different. Just like I think you, and I think like true wealth is never thinking twice about ordering walk at a restaurant, but I don't know if we've ever reached some level of wealth where we.Well,Malcolm Collins: no, because we are so, like whenever we make more money, we always just spend it on like our companies and stuff, you know, like it justSimone Collins: goes away. Yeah. Mm-hmm. But whatever. That's, that's all good. So I also wanna get [00:28:00] into though, like, why, why are all these wealthy elite people like phone bad? And I partially, which data areMalcolm Collins: they looking at?Simone Collins: What data are they? And I think mostly. They're sitting and listening to Jonathan Het and being like, mm, yeah. Yes. Because he is the author of the book, the Anxious, anxious Generation. So like he had recently this huge push to talk about what he describes as the great rewiring of childhood in which play-based childhood is being supplanted by a phone-based childhood.So, among other things, you know, it's a decline in time, God friends, oh, actuallyMalcolm Collins: a step back from this and, and yell at him. So. Our kids, if they go outside and they play in the creek without us monitoring them. And we need to be monitoring all of them at once, which is like, you can't do that for that long.And, and this is what I used to do as a kid at their age. I just go play outside. I go play with the dogs and local dogs. I go dig up things. I'd make little dams. They'll have CPS call on them. I'll have the cops call [00:29:00] on me.Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: I put my kids on Minecraft. That's exactly what they're doing.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: My little boy shows me what he's doing on Minecraft.It's like, oh look, I found out if you give the dog a bone, he likes you more. It's like, oh look, I found out that when you pour water on lava, it like makes stone. Oh look. They are exploring and engaging with the environment and if you deny a kid both playing outside and Minecraft, you have denied them the entire experience.But continue.Simone Collins: Yeah. No, I mean. Yes, but we're, you know, we'll go deeper on this. But yeah, he argues that there's been a decline in time spent with friends since 2010. But again, this research shows that the kids with smartphones spend more time with kids. Anyway, well, we'll keep going. He also argues that girls are more affected by social media due to social comparison and cyber bullying while bought boys.Are more impacted by, and here we go again. Gaming and pornography leadingMalcolm Collins: to social withdrawal. Take a few notes here. The girls being more impacted. We actually saw this in [00:30:00] another episode. I don't know if it'll run before this one or not. But what we found in that episode is that social media affected your mental health much more dramatically if you were progressive than anywhere.Conservative.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And this, and thatSimone Collins: really shows just how much of this is urban monoculture. It, it's, it's cultural. And the urban monoculture is a culture that, that makes mental health problems faster. What I'mMalcolm Collins: making is, is this is why girls are more negatively affected by it, not because girls are intrinsic, the political leanings.Their political leanings are more leftists, and that's why they're more negatively affected by it. Yeah. In terms of the gaming and pornography thing a lot of what people say about like, how, so for example, if you go to a prison and you, and you look at these rapists versus the non rapists. Okay.Rapists typically started engaging with pornography at a much later age than the non-US.Simone Collins: Yeah. Like that's why in our marriage contract, this is actually one of the first things that. Was, was in our marriage contract was are we going to restrict our [00:31:00] children's access to erotic material? And there was never any conflict.It was just like, no, obviously not. That's obviously not, I don't want them to up to. P. DAMalcolm Collins: files and rapistsSimone Collins: because we, yeah, we knew this intuitively. Even just when like negotiating points. Alright.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, sorry. Just like really clear touch relationship contract that like some people are like, Ooh, but my intuition, well your intuition is wrong.Okay. This is something that has been studied extensively and restricting access increases the rate of being interested in children, being interested in great. Being interested in like. Oh my God, it's so horrifying. In, in, in like the Czech Republic when they made it legal again, I wanna say it was the Czech Republic, right?The, the amount of child assault dropped by 50% and this result has been seen multiple times across multiple countries. Yeah. Being anti-porn is being pro child grape in the, in the, and, and you can be like, well, aesthetically I'm against both. That's a bit like being like, well. You know, I'm, I'm [00:32:00] anti-nuclear and pro environment.It's like, okay, like that may work with your base, but realistically that proves you don't actually care about either.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. It's performative and that, that really bothers us. So I think, you know, a lot of this comes down to people misattributing. Mo problems of modern culture and overregulation of parenting to social media and screen use when really.That's not it at all. So some of the studies, for example, that height highlights one is from 2020 called Underestimating Digital Media Harm, published in the Journal Nature Human Behavior, so very respectable journal. The finding basically of the study was that they wanted to critique earlier research like 2019 research that downplayed social media's impact, arguing that social media use, especially among girls, show stronger correlations with depression and anxiety when controlling only for demographic variables, they countered claims that affects are as [00:33:00] trivial as quote unquote eating potatoes when apparently that's kind of what turned out to be true. And I think the problem is with this correlation, not causation. They, they saw that people who used a lot of social media, you know, experienced problems, but also like people who masturbate too much, people who eat too much, people who exercise too much, who do anything too much probably have other problems.And it's just really annoying to me that that. Was cited. So he also cited another 2020 study called Commentary Screens, teens and Psychological Wellbeing, published in Frontiers in Psychology. Again, a very respected journal. This study analyzes time use diary studies, and they found that heavy screen use correlates with reduced wellbeing, particularly for girls.But again, if there's a girl. Who's spending five plus hours on her phone every day? Something's probably wrong. Like she's alone, she's isolated. She doesn't have other things to do. She doesn't haveMalcolm Collins: friends. That means she doesn't have a, a community. That means she doesn't have Oh my God. Siblings.Simone Collins: Yeah.Would, would you not be shocked that she has [00:34:00] problems? Yeah, like obviously if you have five hours to do that, you're being deprived of something. They also so height also in his book and, and work in general cites a lot the British Millennium Cohort study, which found that among 19,000 children born between 2000 and 2002, girls spending over five hours a day on social media we're three times more likely to be depressed than non-users.And the correlation was weaker for boys. But again, like this is just what we said. This is another one of his issues. And then he also referred to the 2021 Facebook leak. I think this is a little bit more. Damning because basically internal meta research showed that Instagram harmed teen girls' mental health, particularly their body image.And yeah, they continue to, oh, bodyMalcolm Collins: image what?Simone Collins: Well, and that's it. I mean, I, I just really dunno. I think it's very hard to be a teen girl and not have some form of body dysmorphia. Like I had body dysmorphia. And you know, if, if like a therapist or some psychologist were to analyze me, [00:35:00] they would probably think it's from the manga I read and they'd be like, oh, it's the manga that's causing it.No, I was going through puberty. I had body dysmorphia because I, I hated my body and it's very normal. Like I, I just, they today they'd sayMalcolm Collins: it's because you're trans.Simone Collins: Yeah, well, yeah, that too. But here they're just, you know, blaming. You need to be sterilized,Malcolm Collins: chemically. That's the only solution.Simone Collins: Like girls just, I mean, you know.There, there are always ideals that, that girls are gonna turn to somewhere and there's going to be problems and, and just, you know, like I, I, I just, yeah, it's, I I get it. I, I do think that Instagram can even make me sometimes feel like I need to hold myself to a higher standard. I don't think that's really a bad thing, and I don't think Instagram makes my life worse.Mm-hmm. So then he also looked at some key research center research that found that half of teens reported feeling addicted to their phones. And nearly 100% of US teams were on smartphones with half reporting that they were constantly, constantly on their smartphones. I think that this is one of those things where like you can go back in time and find [00:36:00] writers decrying the overuse of.Books and periodicals and then the radio used toMalcolm Collins: the, so for people who don't know this the ways that people are freaking out about this stuff today, they used to freak out about books. They'd be like, oh, and radio. AndSimone Collins: phones and television.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But, but, but books as, I think the thing where everyone today is gonna be like, okay, that was clearly stupid.Yeah. But interesting about the book freakout is that they said it disproportionately affected women. Well, you can evenSimone Collins: kind of see this in this, in the trope of Bell and Beauty and the Beast being Yes. So stuck in her books and it was like, this girl has a problem. She won't rid her books to her. And then she goes to the Beast House and he has like the equivalent of like, I don't know, it's like a social media house andMalcolm Collins: isSimone Collins: a social media.She'sMalcolm Collins: always goSimone Collins: libraries. It's like, oh, he got a smartphone. I, I don't even know. It's just like, oh, he is. Like the best internet. I, it's just so strange.And then he, he also looked at international data on mental health [00:37:00] trends pointing out that anxiety increased 134% of depression, 106% among US youth from 2010 to 2018 with Gen Z born post 1995 hit hardest with the 139% increase.He also cited similar trends in the UK now. Yeah, totally. But it's not the screens, it's the culture, it's progressivism. And we've shown thisMalcolm Collins: for when you are online a ton and you are a conservative, it doesn't negatively affect your mental health. If you are online a ton and you are progressive, it does no wonder it is negatively affecting girls more.He didn't control for that. So this high guy sounds like a bit of aSimone Collins: No, he's great. I mean, he's very smart and I mean, and I think, you know. We're a little bit, we're being a little bit too mean here because he does have this subtle, like he argues that like you need to have kids interact with each other and play outside.And what I love about this new research is it's like, yes, and these things go [00:38:00] together that the kids who have the phones also exercise more, play with their friends more have better self-esteem, have lower nihilism. No, no,Malcolm Collins: no. What gets me is that he didn't run this study. He could have run this study.I. He didn't because it wouldn't have agreed Oh, to to, yeah, for like,Simone Collins: to, to confirm allMalcolm Collins: of this stuff was always correlational and he could have just said, okay, let's separate these two groups.Simone Collins: I mean, I, I didn't admittedly look for research that looked for causation that like had a, some kind of double line study where some kidsMalcolm Collins: were deprived to social.I dunno, this whole thing, I don't, I don't like, I don't like it, I don't like these anti-tech people. I will say, you know, there,Simone Collins: there was actually though, I, I, I want, I just wanna point out that some. Some schools like had concerted, let's remove all screens, programs that really curtailed students' social media use and it didn't help them.Malcolm Collins: And there was one school that did AI tutoring for kids and it bumped them into the top 1% of students in the state.Simone Collins: Right. And that also, like studies have shown that [00:39:00] ai, therapists perform better than real therapists for people. So, ah, like we were totally right. We were totally right to chain iPad,Malcolm Collins: Simone, we will replace you and I'm okay with that.You know, you're, you are, you are. We will raise stronger, more sturdy children and time. You can look at our children when they grow up. You know, you can, you can, oh, look at your kids. They all ended up messed up. Maybe. But if they didn't, then we were right and you were wrong.Simone Collins: I mean, yeah, but I, so here's, here's what I think happened.I, I think height, if we were talking with him and he'd be like, yeah, hey, like, I recognize this. The argument I'm making is that parents need to let their kids play outside more. The problem of course, is that parents clap back with like. Yes. And we're not allowed to. We will get arrested. We can't let our kids lay outside.And so this is just a really difficult situation. It just bothers me that a [00:40:00] huge signaler in parenting communities is we don't do screens. I don't allow my children to be on screens, and they're setting up their kids for. I think a lot of harm because one here we're seeing that kids are more socially isolated.More nihilistic. Oh, come on. The reason this guy has these kids is he only hasMalcolm Collins: two kids. Yeah, of course. He doesn't know that's actually normal. Can't just let kids play outside in the current like legal climate, like, ugh.Simone Collins: Well, one thing I wanna say too, though, is that I think there are some exceptions. So I know some parents who do have strict no screen policies, but they also exist within like extremely tight knit religious communities.And so their kids are like constantly interacting with people and themselves,Malcolm Collins: and they have big, I think that's fine if you're in like an extreme, but likeSimone Collins: most kids are, you know, a, a single child. Or they have one sibling. And often, like more than often than not, I've seen like pretty big age gaps with siblings these days too, [00:41:00] which is like, that means you don't really have a close friend.You just kind of have a competitor for attention that annoys you and you can't really relate to, which is extra difficult and sad. That seems like the worst type of sibling to have. Is one that has like a, an age gap where you guys just can't play together and really relate. Which is why we try to have boy, boy, girl, girls side by side, so they can at least have like one super close friend that they can really, really strongly relate to.That's of the same gender, so they can go through those things together. But yeah, it's like I'm okay. With holier than now parents being like, I don't do screens when their kids have all these other things to do in strong religious communities. But that's just not the norm in the United States and in many parts of Europe.So all of our like, and, and again, all those wealthy, well-educated parents that we're thinking of, they don't do that. They're not like that. These are the people with two kids Max. And these kids are. Like I, I just can't imagine like the frustration they're going through and I feel really bad, but hopefully this research will get to them.Reason Mag is, is pretty well read [00:42:00] among these types of people, right? So like. Hopefully it'll get to them. Right? Maybe.Malcolm Collins: I don't know. Anyway here's a fun thing from today is, is yesterday you did an interview with a b, C. Can you tell me? Yeah. It was the oddestSimone Collins: thing. So yeah, this is, this is you know, A, B, C, it's owned by Disney.They, they wanted to do a segment on the, the executive orders we submitted and the Trump administration considering prenatal as policy. And they're like, Hey, you know, we, we wanna, we wanna run this in the morning. And. It's, it's gonna go on our new segment and like, but we have to record tonight.And I'm like, why? Like, I, I don't get it. Like, how, how do we do this? And they're like, just like, can you come on at eight? And so I do. And. I joined this Zoom call and I'm met by a really nice young man. Like he was just so sweet and, and so patient and so kind. But like on the call was him and I could see him sitting alone in a giant, like a BC studio, like classic like newsroom for an old legacy news publication.No one else there just empty [00:43:00] desks. 'cause he was doing the night shift where mm-hmm. It looks like what they do is they just prepare all of the segments for the morning no show, which starts at four 4:00 AM. Ahead of time. And then I think what happens is the newscasters pretend to interview people. Like, I haven't actually seen the Segment tv.No, but I love this as they're like,Malcolm Collins: why is news dying? Where? Where's the authenticity? Oh, I'll tell you where the authenticity is, is right here. You, mother, mother, mother.Simone Collins: Well, because what seems to have happened is what? What he did. Is is there was also like, I guess a producer on the phone too. 'cause he was like talking with someone else the whole time of being like, oh, that's so that, that is dystopia that he'd like go, yeah, I'm like, I, I couldn't see or hear this producer, but the producer was telling him what to do and then he'd ask me a question and I would give my answer and he asked another question.And what seems to happen is he recorded a bunch of answers. And what I think was gonna happen was that Ben, like the reporter that next morning would act as though she's asking me the questions and then I would show up as the talking head with that. And yeah, like to your [00:44:00] point, if that's what happened and I wanna see this segment, that's not, you know, that's not authentic media.That's not I think that's not what people are here for. They wanna see real live conversations. And of course, to be fair, other media outlets had us on live, CNN's situation room, had us on live today with Andy screaming and everything. And then who is it that was here this afternoon?Malcolm Collins: Newsweek. Oh, what was it?This was, this was, oh, something things or something like that. What was it? They didn't reach outSimone Collins: to me, so I have no idea who they are. You tell me some big,Malcolm Collins: some big news. Okay, I'll look it up. It's in my, it's in my notes here. It's some big news station.Simone Collins: But they actually came out and interviewed. And so I guess, I guess some, some legacy medias like really doing original reporting, but others, like even when they get original sources and you still have to give credit to anyone who actually gives us a chance to comment and talk.But it was just such a weird process of like, wait, so I'm speaking with a young associate. [00:45:00] Working for Disney and then his like mysterious producer who's only talking to him. It's Inside Edition,Malcolm Collins: by the way. That's what it was. Inside Edition.Simone Collins: Okay. Well, they were, they were great. Very professional. And the, again, like this kid working for Disney also was great.It was just really weird the way it was done. It just like. Recording me doing some, like, talking head things. And then I guess they're splicing it into their news show, making it look more authentic in life without it actually being live, which I get like, it is easier, especially when it's early in the morning.Most people aren't gonna wake up at 4:00 AM and do a live interview. So, you know, but it was still, it was a, I always wonder when I watch the news, like how these things are going. And it's interesting to see the different ways they play out. Like when we were on CNN today. Joining the call was really weird.'cause normally on shows and podcasts, you join a Zoom call and you can see everyone. Whereas with CNN, like they have this, their, their special proprietary link to join and you're just looking at this gray screen with some instructions on it and then you just, yeah, that was like,Malcolm Collins: I almost felt like unprofessional and insulting.I was like, what are you guys doing? Like, well, I think theySimone Collins: [00:46:00] didn't, they don't want people to be distracted by their faces. No, that's notMalcolm Collins: what it is. They just don't care. They don't care about anything, feeling authentic. They don't care about anything touching the, the body. I don't know.Simone Collins: I mean, I re I remember, so I used to listen to NPR like throughout my entire, it was like the wallpaper of my childhood, the audio wallpaper of my childhood.And a big issue that happened with people calling in is they kept having to say like, turn off your radio. Turn off your radio. Because they would be listening to themselves as they talked on the radio and then getting distracted and just being like, oh my God, I'm on the radio. And I think maybe there's like this thing with, you know, people onMalcolm Collins: sweetheart.Simone Collins: I don't, I don't think it was just that because you couldn't hear it as a listener, even when it was live. Okay. All I'm saying. I I just find this, this contrast between new and old media to be really interesting and I love that the Trump administration has added to the fringes. Oh, yeah, yeah. They did suchMalcolm Collins: great job with the Press Corps.It's amazing. It's amazing.Simone Collins: Yeah. So what, what they've done for those who don't know is, [00:47:00] is in, in the White House press. Briefing room. There traditionally has been this audience of chairs that is all dedicated to legacy media companies, like only the privileged and the establishment get to be there.Now they're allowing standing room only space at the fringes where they have a rotational group of new media. Reporters, and this is people, podcasters, substack, writers, YouTubers, talkers sit and actually ask questions. And they field about 25% of their questions from this fringe group, which is a really big deal.And I mean, the legacy media freaking hates it because they used to have, you know, all the question time, all of the respect. But I think that the Trump administration, and I'm sure featured administrations will do this too, is recognizes that the audiences. Are not necessarily watching a lot of these legacy news channels.And I, I mean, I, I, we see this like you, you see some, some legacy news channels get like millions of views. Yes. [00:48:00] But then like there are some that, like I am, I would be surprised if they got 3000 views for news segment. I No,Malcolm Collins: I agree. I know. I actually think that most only get about 3000 views p new segment.Yeah. When I see,Simone Collins: yeah. So. Interesting times. Very interesting times. But yeah, I'm, I'm just so thrilled. I feel so vindicated that like, okay. Thank you again. Social media, it's not about sheltering, it's about annotation. It is about showing how to use it productively. It is about, IMalcolm Collins: agree, it, it's not about sheltering, it's about beating.You need to lightly beat your child while with, with, with the iPad, with, with the device.Simone Collins: With the device. Oh no. That's why you have those protective screens so you don't break them accidentallyMalcolm Collins: can't wait. You build AI that can beat my People are afraid of like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I need, I need an AI that can bot my kid when they're making mistakes.You're so sweet. By the way, Simone, what are we doing for dinner tonight? What's the story? What's the story?Simone Collins: We are doing [00:49:00] more pineapple curry for you. I love it. I can try. To do fried, sorry, fried plantains for the first time. I'm a little nervous.Malcolm Collins: We try. You cannot mess it up too much in worst case scenario, just microwave some rice.Simone Collins: Yeah. See, that's the thing. Yeah. What I do is I, I make coconut lime rice for Malcolm in big batches, and then I freeze it in single serve packets in the freezer. Oh my God.Malcolm Collins: You used to pay like six bucks for coconut lime rice as like, instead of like the, the $2 rice at like restaurants and you're like making it for free.What? Not for free. I mean, you put in all this effort and love.Simone Collins: Well, you, I mean, we we're still paying for the coconut and for limes. And it does cost extra. ItMalcolm Collins: cost barely nothing. Like,Simone Collins: yeah. What, what is a Trader Joe's can of coconut milk? Like,Malcolm Collins: is it like a dollar 50 you're missing? Is that if you go to like an Indian or, or Japanese restaurant, like the, the coconut lime rice or the coconut or lime rice costs like $6 and the other rice costs like a dollar 50.Simone Collins: No, it's true. Yeah. The, the upcharge [00:50:00] is insane for, for that stuff really. Gets my goat.Malcolm Collins: But like they've never been able to make curry as good as your tropical curry, which I love. You know what else isSimone Collins: insane in terms of upcharges though? Is garlic non versus butter non, like, are you kidding me? It's literally you're just slapping garlic on top.Yeah. Like I know you have a lot of mint garlic sitting back there. I know you do. What? Why are you charging me 30% more? For exactly. Sometimes even 50% more. Like typically you'll see Yeah. If, if, if if plain non is $3, then garlic non is $5.Malcolm Collins: Right. It's insane. It makes no sense if you understand how they're made.It's bad price discrimination right there. I love you, Simone, for learning how to make all these dishes. You didn't when we got married. You were the perfect wife. .Simone Collins: You are a heavenlyMalcolm Collins: beast.Simone Collins: Oh,Malcolm Collins: and I mean that in the, in the, in the [00:51:00] most adoration possible way.Simone Collins: Well, I live to serve, and I mean that in the most submissive and breathable way.That's so cringe. Ah, instant regret. Instant regret your mic fell out again. That is, that is, that is what every guyMalcolm Collins: wants. I'll tell you what, okay. Well listen in breathable wine and every woman doesn't want that. I've seen, I've read 50 Shades of Gray. Okay. I've read these. I don't think, do they in, in this series, do they?ISimone Collins: don't think they ever have kids,Malcolm Collins: do they? I mean, no, but I've seen the progressives who go out there cosplaying as like. You know, tale Women. Yeah. You should watch our episode on that if you haven't seen it. Yeah, it'sSimone Collins: funny, they don't, they don't cosplay as. The Marthas, they don't cosplay as like the, the, the wives.These actually oppressed people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, because actually the Handmaids have a, a fairly privileged role. You know, they get to pick food. They're [00:52:00] household, they're me. Hi. Yeah. They're, why do they, why do they dress up with, with the sexual fetish ones in this, in this whole, you know why? We all know why.It's a little questionable. Yeah. People who think that we're perverted, just read the Pragma Guide to Sexuality. You'll discover how we actually feel about sex. I think people think that we're like. Really into it because we talk about it when we talk about it the same way your mic's unplugged again. No, no.Malcolm Collins: Sorry. I don't think that excuse by this. I don't think that's anybody who's like, oh, they're actually like really in, I think that that's why we're able to talk about it, because people know that like we're not into it, and so it's not like,Simone Collins: oh, no, no. Like people, people have DM me and they're like, oh, I bet you're into this.Like, oh, I bet you like, no, we, we did. No, no.Malcolm Collins: Themselves into us, I think is what it is often.Simone Collins: Yeah. No, I mean, I think [00:53:00] that, and that happens a lot like when, when you relate to someone you think they're smart, you're also gonna assume that they live like you do, enjoy what you do and agree with most of your things,Malcolm Collins: which is okay because we're smart.Anyway, I love you to eson. I cannot wait to dig into that curry tonight.Simone Collins: Mm.Malcolm Collins: And what if you hit these plantains? Wow. You're gonna unlock a whole new level.Simone Collins: I don't know. I'm nervous. We'll, we'll see. S slice in fries. I mean, what go wrong with like butter? You know, like all you're doing is putting them in boiling oil, butterMalcolm Collins: or butter?Simone Collins: No. Think butter's better. Anyway, I'll go goodbye.What do you wanna say to the people? I'm a people, I'm a soon, I'm a dad. I'm a, I love my army man. Right over there. He loves his army, man. Yeah, right. Because it's fun. I My a Okay, because it's, because it's so fun. I can, it shows you are men videos. [00:54:00] Yeah. Tyson, what do you wanna say? I,that's it. Andy, what do you wanna say? Oh, I just, he's, he's trying to learn how to talk. Oh, she's still working on it. Yeah. All right. I love you guys all very good. Well, Wendy's one years old now. She is. Yeah. So I already put, she can play with my army man as my wish. Um, when he becomes five years old, like I'm five years old.And I love you. And I love you too, Titan. And I love you too. Can I love you too? Can I wanna see the picture I just displayed with Cindy? Okay. And me and Titan. Okay, let's watch. And your mom. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Join Malcolm and Simone as they delve into a comprehensive analysis of multiple studies that reveal striking differences in how social media use affects the mental health of liberals and conservatives. Learn through detailed graphs and data how liberal social media culture correlates with higher rates of depression and anxiety, while conservative content seems to have a more neutral or even positive impact. Explore the intricate relationship between personality traits, ideological orientation, and social media interactions, and uncover the factors contributing to the growing mental health disparities in contemporary society. Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. Today is gonna be an interesting day because we are going to go over so many graphs today.I don't even think we're gonna get to them all. Ooh, the first and most critical of the graphs is one I am going to put on screen here, and it opens up a, a both an explanatory mystery, I guess is what I'd call it. And so what you can see in this first chart is liberal and conservative depression index scores by social media, use category where red is conservative and blue is liberal, and the higher the bar goes, the worse their depression is.And what you see in this chart is that if you are a progressive. The more liberal you are, the more using social media depresses you. But if you are a conservative, that is not the case. In fact, using social media frequently appears to increase your mental health when you're at the. High levels of use. [00:01:00] Now what's really fascinating, and I marginally you're still better off not using it at all, but marginally it increases mm-hmm.Compared to using it some versus using it an absolute ton. Mm-hmm. At least once a day specifically here. And then I would point out here that and, and actually the, the conservatives who use social media at least once a day have significantly better mental health than the liberals who use it only once or twice a month.Oh, goodness. That is how bad it is for liberals. Just the littlest bit. I mean, have youSimone Collins: beenMalcolm Collins: onSimone Collins: Blue Sky though? It's, it is depressing.Like that's a big thing that I see on Blue Sky that I don't see on Twitter. Like I tweet about the, the asteroid that was gonna hit us, but then didn't hit us. And I get normal responses on Blue Sky. I tweet about that, and a bunch of the responses are finally someone to cure the plague of humans upon this earth.Malcolm Collins: Here's where it gets really bad. Liberals and conservatives have almost exactly the same rates of depression and bad mental health. And we'll see this as we go to other charts when they don't use social media at all.[00:02:00]Okay. Which implies that, and will, you know, it's broadly known, liberals have way more mental health problems than conservatives right now. Right? If you look at white liberal women, for example, over 50% are dealing with a major mental health issue. Mm-hmm. But what this appears to be saying is this is not like an innate thing about liberals.It's not and this article will argue the opposite, but like the evidence shows otherwise, it's not like, oh if you are more likely to get depressed, then you're more likely to become a liberal. Mm. It's something about engaging with liberal culture itselfSimone Collins: makes you sad,Malcolm Collins: is what makes you sad.Simone Collins: Oh, my.Oh no.Malcolm Collins: And what's interesting is we're going to be able to break out the exact parts of liberal culture that do this. The amount that it's not being religious, the amounts that it's woke him, the amount that it's DEI stuff the amount that it's fear of, of like being attacked or something like that.And we often talk about the urban [00:03:00] monoculture as something of a mimetic virus, which you know, the iterations of it that are better at spreading, spread better. And it appears to, as a mimetic virus, first sort of lower your mental immune system by destroying your mental health before it begins to eat away at your brain.Mm-hmm. And we're going to see this in the data on this piece specifically. What she ends up finding out is first the mental health declines. Then a person starts identifying as a liberal, not first do they identify as a liberal, then the mental health declines.Simone Collins: Oh, really? Yes, I would've guessed the opposite.That's really interesting. Okay,Malcolm Collins: so I, I would've guessed the opposite as well, but what it appears is happening here is that the mental health decline is sort of an erosion of self-identity, self-pride, like self affirmation ability that is required before people start, like rotely accepting woke ideas.Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. Like, I guess it's a lot easier to accept. [00:04:00] Super progressive ideology when you have an external locus of control, for example, plus a lot of self hatred.Malcolm Collins: Yes. OhSimone Collins: no.Malcolm Collins: Wow. Okay. Wow. So, so it, it builds the self-hatred first. And, and I think that that's really fascinating. And we can also see from this other graph that it's specifically interacting with liberal culture that makes you mentally unhealthy.And that interacting with conservative culture frequently actually appears to make people a little bit more healthy mentally speaking. That makes sense. This isn't surprising to me at all, actually. Mm-hmm. If you look at a lot of the types of conservative culture that, that progressives complain about, and it's like a meme thing where they're like, how do you know your son is a conservative?Well, he exercises and he takes care of his appearance and he, and he takes personalSimone Collins: responsibility for his actions. He's not looking atMalcolm Collins: porn as much, you know? It's like, okay, but I can see why maybe these things are correlating to higher mental health rates. Okay. ISimone Collins: oh no,Malcolm Collins: but anyway. Let's get into this.So now we're gonna [00:05:00] go to the second figure I sent you. Okay. And these are all from a study, mental health trends and the great awakening.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Okay. So we're starting right now with figure 27. I'm skipping around, I'm not showing the figures in order. I'm showing them to sort of painted narrative here.Simone Collins: The effects of frequent social media use on internalizing symptoms by ideology. Yes.Malcolm Collins: It, it illustrates the average score differences on seven item anxiety index and a 20 item depression index between self-identified liberals and conservatives. Uhhuh. These individuals reported using social media for over two hours at a time, uhhuh at least several times a week, 36% of the sample compared to those who rarely do 46% of this sample among liberals, those who use social media more frequently score.0.33 standard deviation higher on the anxiety index and 0.22 standard deviations higher on the depression index compared with those who report never using social media for two hours at a time, or minimal use. Mm-hmm. In contrast, these differences among conservatives are negligible, 0.05 standard deviations and [00:06:00] 0.04 standard deviations respectively.And this is a different study than the above study. So multiple studies are finding this.Simone Collins: People,Malcolm Collins: interesting People just keep going in and finding that social media is, or, or I guess I should could say conservative online content is not bad for your mental health. It's progressive online content that's bad for your mental health.Mm-hmm. Which means it's not the online content itself that's bad for your mental health. It's not the fact that you're consuming online content that's bad for your mental health.Simone Collins: Thank you.Malcolm Collins: It's the fact that you are conserving this ideological virus that as part of breaking you down and sort of turning you into a slave that will go out like a ant infected, like the corsets virus, go out and try to infect other ants.It needs to break down your immune system first. Your mental immune system. And what that looks like is, is hating yourself. Mm-hmm. Although it uses different and, and not, keep in mind this study was showing not just depression, it was also anxiety. So, so in, in progressives engaging with their social media content increases both anxiety and depression.Simone Collins: [00:07:00] Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Although it uses different and arguably more ambiguous measures of social media, use the 2022 wave of national, american National Election Studies social media study reveals similar results among liberals. Average depression scores increase with greater social media use. For example, those who reported daily use of at least one platform, 70% of liberal, 64% of conservatives scored significantly higher on a two item depression index compared with those who never use social media, 7% of liberals and 8% of conservatives.Mm-hmm. Conservatives show much smaller. Less consistent increases in depression across usage levels, specifically while liberals who reported daily usage score 0.34 standard deviation higher on depression than those who do not use any social media. The difference for conservatives is close to zero and not sign statistically significant.And this is a in blue graph here on screen that is absolutely wild how stark that is. Any [00:08:00] thoughts before I go further by the way, or theories I.Simone Collins: One thing that stands out to me is that I could just keep thinking about both, both super progressive and super conservative. Online spheres can come across as mean, but the mean is very different. There's locker room mean, and actually, you know what it's mean, girl mean versus locker room mean. So the locker room room is like calling each other names, pushing each other around, but it's like immediately forgotten and not retained and not toxic.Mm-hmm. And then progressives have this mean girl mean, which is talking about people behind their backs and being really catty and Oh, anMalcolm Collins: organizing lists that, that of like blocking people. Yes. TheseSimone Collins: people have been. Yeah, we, we hate these people and these people need to be destroyed and, and everything is retained.Everything is held onto the, the resentment grows and festers. Whereas locker room talk is locker room talk. You're just messing around with each other, you know, and, and honestly, [00:09:00] that creates anti fragility. So I, I'm just in my head. My intuition is going to Well, andMalcolm Collins: it's really important for like low anxiety, low depression, I think.Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and it's again, building that anti fragility. You need to be insulted, you need to be pushed. And, and I think the really great thing about locker room talk and that kind of masculine bullying and making fun is that often it, it's really like it's real. You know, people make fun of you being fat as a dude 'cause you're fat.People make fun of you being short or bald as a dude 'cause you're short or bald. Right? Like, and those things can really hurt. But they force you to find ways to deal with that and make up for it. Yeah. Whereas the kind of mean girl talk is very different. It is about systematically destroying and pulling you down as a kind of may blocking strategy and dominance hierarchy strategy.Malcolm Collins: Yes. And, and, and you do see that these problems are worse for women than men when they interact in online environments.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that's what I'm thinking here.Malcolm Collins: These findings suggest that even [00:10:00] if girls and liberals and boys and conservatives were to spend si similar, if not equal amounts of time on social media, the former two groups would be worse off in terms of mental wellbeing.Among these groups, liberals, especially liberal females, may suffer the most. Not only are liberals higher in neuroticism of emotional and aesthetic openness. Empathetic concern and justice sensitivity. Something I hadn't heard about before, but we'll talk about traits they share with women, but they also tend to score lower in conscientiousness, which likely puts them at a disadvantage in terms of emotional regulation and focus.This further heightens their susceptibility to negative rumination in doom scrolling. In fact, the very limited data we have on the intersection of ideology and doom schooling from a small study of online sample 500 of residents of. OECD countries indicate that liberal and left aligned individuals score significantly higher, just under 0.3 standard deviation on measures of drom scrolling compared to the political right.That is fascinating to me, and I think that they are wrong here. What they're [00:11:00] seeing is that when people start to engage in these things or have these traits like low conscientiousness, it makes them more susceptible to the mind virus. Because if you have sort of mental discipline, then you're able to, the mind virus hits you and you're like, oh, this is stupid.The people who believes this stuff, obviously all are constantly. Tearing each other down and don't seem, I think that this is why consistently, even with progressives when they're high conscientiousness individuals who have this sort of ability to go out there, found a company, make something work like a JK Rowling or something like that mm-hmm.They typically don't break. And they stay and end up on the conservative side. Whereas if they're the type of person who just got their roles through like DEI or moving up a bureaucratic ladder they continue to sort of. Hide in fear of all this. Mm-hmm. I'd also point out that it, it, it shows that our opponents really are not like having a good time.Like if you are a liberal, you are a depressed, anxiety, adult mess. It is not awesome. As recently to a reporter [00:12:00] describing what it's like being in the prenatal list movement, and I'm like it's sort of like the Titanic has sunk and we're in a lifeboat and there's somebody in the freezing water, and I say to them, get.Out of the water, or you are going to freeze to death here, you know, let me help you. And they'll say, did you hear what he just said? He said if I don't get in the boat, he's gonna kill me. And I'm like, no. What? No. I said, get in the boat or you're gonna die. And they're like, ha, he said it again. He said it again.And I'm like, okay. Okay. So I talked them through that, and then they're like, wait a second, didn't Hitler have a boat? And I'm like, what? Whatthat, that has nothing to do with this situation. Get in the boat. And then they're like, wait, are you sure there's not any. On the boat was you. And I'm like, I don't know. I haven't asked these people. They're like, ha, I knew it. Only a racist wouldn't ask other people if they're not racist. And I'm like, what, [00:13:00] what, what does that have to do with anything?They're, I'm just saving everyone I see right now. And it's very much like when I tell people, your culture won't exist in the future if you can't motivate above your population fertility rate. And they're like, ah. So you're saying you're gonna eradicate us if we can't motivate? I'm like. N no, no, I'm not.Oh, 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, 381 as of right now. I know what this is. This is a suicide pact. Oh my god, that makes [00:14:00] 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..Malcolm Collins: But this sort of constant mindset of like needing to vet everyone, having to constantly worry about fears of contamination is mentally incredibly unhealthy.Simone Collins: It's also a very, being someone who has a lot of contamination problems that are not connected to logic, I can tell that there's a mental problem there.Malcolm Collins: Mm.Simone Collins: Takes one to know, oneMalcolm Collins: takes one to know one all. However, people's social media experiences, particularly the content they encounter, are at least partially influenced by the broader media and political context As figure 29 illustrates using the salience of the New York Times since about 2011, news media, attention to societal issues, [00:15:00] societal issues, the.This, these are signs of the urban monoculture. When these words are used often, like racism, inequality, discrimination, sexism has surged to unprecedented levels. Oh, I wonder if it's because they're associated with a matic virus. Concurrently the underlying sentiment reflected in news media has become decidedly more negative and pessimistic.Of course, some of this is attributable to the rise of Trump and his president. See, okay. I'm sure. Which serves to intensify these trends. And consequently, the alarm, many liberals felt, so here, if, if it was because of Trump and his presidency, it would've gone down in the Biden presidency and it didn't.And here, just across the board, you see this sharp spike upwards in terms of like, racism, sexism, oppression, privilege trauma discrimination, vulnerable bias if, if patriarch. Of our patriarchy, injustice, inequality. And what's really interesting is they measured this on Twitter now x from 2008 to [00:16:00] 2023.And what you see is it's going way up, like it was, was the New York Times, and then there's the eLog and acquisition in 2022 and it starts to fall off a cliff with all of these, these same words, which I think is really interesting. And, and, and I think a direct. I mean, I bet if you looked on Blue Sky that you said these words, it's just off the chart.Simone Collins: Yeah. I don't even, I wouldn't wanna know.Malcolm Collins: As the tenor and content of social media coverage have become more negative and alarmist, so have the perceptions of sociopolitical issues among young liberal females and males as shown in figure 31. Young liberals, especially liberal females, have become much more socially and politically conscious over the last 10 years.For instance, and I think this is just the amount of their brain that the urban monoculture has eaten. It, it like a virus infecting cells infects more and more nodes of their brain until all they ever think about is the urban monoculture and needing to spread it. And then eventually they just end up like breaking down and screaming.Like when one of those insects is infected by like a, a [00:17:00] insect that controls this mind and like eats it from the inside and they get to the stage where they're just bloated and filled with like worms. That's, that's what they are when they're like at GC game conferences last year. All of the, like, people with dyed Herod went outside and screamed at the sky.Malcolm Collins: And it was just like a great, to me example of just like total mental breakdown. Nothing is left of the host.All right. I'm not talking to that thing in your head. I'm talking to Skara. Nothing of the host survives. Your friend had a feeble mind. It suffered greatly and gave it easily.Malcolm Collins: But nothing of the host survived. And, and I think that this is true, you know, once you're, this Eaton is, is very hard to ever come back.And I think that this is why a lot of lefties in the media that they produced, like we were talking [00:18:00] this morning about how good 30 Rock was when compared to Unbreakable to Kimmy Schmidt, even though it had the same team and I think it was. 30 rock, the brain watt hadn't eaten as much as them. They were able to have like, really cool and aspirational conservative figures like Jack Donnay in it or like, you know, the team.Well, theySimone Collins: made fun of them, but they made fun of everyone. Yeah. And I think they, they were still able to acknowledge the existence of, and, and have the presence of conservative figures, whereas it got to this point where like the mere presence of a conservative figure, even if they were the. The source of Ridicule WA was considered.Well, you wouldn't knowable, I mean you saw the same in, in Parks and Rec as well, where there was a conservative figure. Yeah. RonMalcolm Collins: Swanson, you, you wouldn't have a Ron Swanson in modern Progressive Media. Yeah. And,Simone Collins: and he was played by a progressive actor. Like,Malcolm Collins: well, remember that Progressives can't and we did an episode on this recently.They really struggle to mentally model conservatives.Simone Collins: Well, and that's, but I feel like there's something de that degraded because [00:19:00] clearly before that was possible. And yeah. And in additionMalcolm Collins: to being unable to mentally model conservatives, they also in, in conservatives show a great deal of empathy for liberals.But liberals show very little empathy for conservatives. Yeah. And so I think that it's just sort of as the brain rot eats some more and more, I think that this is part of what we're seeing with the Wachowski effect, which I've, I've talked about before. What you'll have a, like a great game designer or great writer, like the people who did like the matrix they get.Trans surgery and then everything they do sucks after that. And I think part of it can just be getting more and more into this culture that prevents you from mentally modeling others as part of it. The reason why the urban monocultural virus has to prevent you from modeling others is that if you could, you would be much more likely to leave it.You would see how imperialistic it is that its goal is that the, the colonizers flag, this new perverse version of the pride flag is, is. Over every country in the world. You know, they want one day this to be on top of every mosque and every you know, establishment in Africa.They, they want a true global monoculture as the outcome of this because [00:20:00] that's how the monoculture motivates them to go out and, and, and convert people because they're not motivating and, and reproducing. Mm-hmm. It's a faster way for a culture to spread, but obviously it'll eventually burn itself out.I, I almost think of it as like a wildfire that's burning through the human population right now and just extinguishing huge swaths of it. Sad, but you know, this is where we are. Yeah. As the tenor of content and media coverage have become more negative and alarmists so have the perceptions of sociopolitical issues among young liberal females and males.As shown in figure 31, young liberals, especially liberal females, have become much more socially and politically conscious in the past 10 years. For instance, the share of liberals who say. That they frequently think about the social problems of the nation in the world, in quote, imagine if somebody said that to you on a date.I think a lot about the social problems of the nation in the world. I'd be like, that's such a red flag, has reached record highs, as has the share who say they are working to quote correct social and economic inequalities in quote. Extremely important to them. Concerns [00:21:00] about race relations and environment have also surged while tr changing remarkably little among conservatives of both sexes.So that's really fascinating. So if you're looking at this on, on screen here, the far left category is the female liberal, where you just see it like shooting up. During the first Trump P presidency interesting. Down during the Biden presidency, they're like, oh, I don't care anymore. And second Trump presidency's like,Simone Collins: ah,Malcolm Collins: Trump DER syndrome on a graph.So Trump presidency here. So, no, it's just constant like freaking out. I, I bet right now it's off the charts for them. And it was the mail, liberals, it, it, it goes up a lot here. But with the conservatives, what's interesting is there are periods where it has gone up, but it seems to actually be going down a lot on average, especially things like, I often worry about pollution and climate change.Hmm. And I've noticed this was in our circles, like people don't care about the, the climate as much as they used to. Well,Simone Collins: I think that after so many, I mean in our case, decades of being told that the end is nine and.Malcolm Collins: Here weSimone Collins: are. Hi. [00:22:00] Well, it'sMalcolm Collins: not just that, but it's so clear that like, oh, okay, so we panicked about it and you had control of the UN and you had control of the US government, and you had control of the World Health Organization and you did the Paris Accords, and nothing did.Nothing was achieved, right? Like apparently it's still a major issue. We shut down everything during covid. I, and we didn't e, we only incrementally met the carbon reduction that's expected every year. That one year. Like obviously it's not doable. And, and, and so I think for a lot of people, they're like, well, what you just let a large number of species die?And I'm like, yeah, sure. Like it's happened before. That we are not the first species to cause a many liberals. It's so weird to me when they're like, well, there's been mass extinctions before, but like, no animal has ever caused a mass. I'm like, yes. They have. Like, have you not heard of the great oxidation event?Like, are you just like you, you're so proudly uneducated. It's actually happened in two of the major mass extinctions. It was caused by a life form. So yeah, it has happened. It's a thing. It's a thing thatSimone Collins: [00:23:00] living life does.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Humans will find a way to survive. Without nature, humans won't find a way to survive without humans.You know, so it's, it's one of these things where I'm like, I'd like nature to be around, but it's really more of a aesthetic concern. I'm much more interested in just categorizing think it's, it's DNA, so it can be recreated at a future date, you know? Yeah. See with these dire wolves they're creating now you, these science downers, and they bummed me out so much.Like when they made the dire wolves and somebody was like, oh, it's just like putting them in costumes. They only changed like a few of the, it's like, come on, man, like you, this, this is literally laid out. SpecificallySimone Collins: what they're complaining about is that they're not genetically identical. Like they don't have the exact DNA of historical dire wolves, because instead what they did was they.Altered them to phenotypically be what we could guess is the same asMalcolm Collins: dire wolf. You've seen di Wolf, DNASimone Collins: using, well, yeah, they used dire wolf, DNA to see kind of what was going on, but then used different interventions to adjust it to. 20% bigger to make them [00:24:00] all white, to do a bunch of other things. And yes,Malcolm Collins: but they were, they were not.So there's something that some people have tried to do in the past, which is make genetic changes to an animal. Not using the original animal's, DNA, just to make it look more like an ancestral phenotype. Mm-hmm. So, so maybe trying to breed cows larger because it was a larger form of cow in the past.The, this has been done with a few species. That is not what the dire wolf thing was.I misspoke here. This was what the dire wolf thing was. , still incredibly impressive nonetheless.Malcolm Collins: . Yeah. This is a bit like somebody coming up to Jurassic Park andOh, that's just a big chicken. It, it's just been phenotypically changed to look like a brontosaurus. Like what are you talking about? Why are you guys so impressed with this? It's like,Some people have a compulsive need to erase all of the wonder from the world in a human [00:25:00] achievement. I.Malcolm Collins: there was a woman who we had on our show before recently in relation to ai, and she had a moment like this where she did an episode saying, AI is not conscious and it's never going, we're never gonna get a GI.And she used this proof this study that we might go onto in another episode where it showed that AI. Didn't know how it came to the decisions that it was coming to, and I was like, I wish you had watched Our AI is probably conscious in the same way we are video in that we show that humans work that exact same way.Yeah. Like this is, this is only goingSimone Collins: to convince us more that AI is humans. Yeah. It,Malcolm Collins: it's literally, not only do humans work in the same way, but if you ask a human, if they work in that way, they'll say, no, I don't work in that way. And they will make up fake memories of how they, mm-hmm. Thought through something.Mm-hmm. Watch our you know, stop pretending humans are s Sapient video or LLMs are, are, are, you know, function the same way the human brain does. Mm-hmm. But anyway, so, so not only that, but like a human, they will make up. [00:26:00] Having, how, how they got to their end state. So literally every part of that process is exactly the way the human brain appears to do it.And then people can be like, well, I remember specific intermediary steps in my thinking. And it's like, well, that's just because we don't haveis looking at their own ledgers right now. But it's not that we can't, if you've ever used like a deep search on grok. Or on Google, you can see where it will output the various parts of its thought.You could have the AI have access to that. We just choose to not give it access to that. That's about how we're handling its memory. We're basically erasing the, the point where it was making markers of what it was thinking that we would otherwise have in our own head. So I, I just find that to be like some people are just so determined to not see the wonder in the world.It makes me sad. But anyway, back to the topic at hand. Trends in sociopolitical awareness among 12th graders by ideology and sex. So we, we just went over that. I didn't notice it was 12th graders. That's sad. Alright. [00:27:00] So despite the significant educational socioeconomic advancements that women have achieved since the 1960s, figure 32 further shows that liberals now perceive greater discrimination against women in various.Context, including in assessing higher education than ever recorded. We've got, oh, this is another episode, and it's just insane. They think women are more discriminated against now than they were like 10 years ago, 20 years ago. Concurrently the share of female liberals who think their sex will prevent them from obtaining their desired careers, quote unquote, somewhat, or quote unquote, a lot shot up by more than 30 points between 20 12, 30 6% in 2019.67%.In contrast, if they've changed at all, perceptions of discrimination against women are lower among conservatives of both Sexists today than they were in the 1970s. Which is accurate, like the conservatives seem to be broadly accurate. They think that women are less discriminated against as time goes on, where progressives just have [00:28:00] this shoot up out of nowhere in 20 20 12.That's where this number just like shoots up the female liberal. What's interesting is that the male liberal shoots up and then like goes back down. It's still fairly low. Interesting. Female conservatives going down over time. But this is, this is, and 2012Simone Collins: was Gamergate, right?Like we sort of, GamergateMalcolm Collins: was every, Gamergate, what was it was inSimone Collins: 2014.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I, I don't know, 28. I wanna say 2014. Anyway, but yeah. This is, oh, interesting. Okay. So this is, remember how we had that, like what happened in like 2012 question or 2014? Yeah. Gamergate was 2014,Simone Collins: by the way. You're right.Yeah. That we'reMalcolm Collins: seeing the same thing here. It's when they interacted with online culture. Yeah. This new reme virus. Mm. When their, their perception of reality shot to hell. All downstream of Tumblr. Tumblr came phenomenon, and then everything changed. Oh, the Tumblr arenas attacked and now everyone thinks they're a dog.I didn't know [00:29:00] this, but there, like, I thought like the dog and furry stuff in school was like completely fake, but there was like this great video of kids protesting outside of school because furries were being allowed to like, walk around school and like bite the other kids, and kids were getting like.Sent to like detention if they like kicked them away or like, they, the kids weren't even allowed to wear costumes on Halloweens, but the furries were allowed to on a daily basis. And it was because the principal's daughter was a furry, apparently. That's why she OhSimone Collins: dear. Well, that sounds like one crazy isolated case.Most of the instances of furry fear that I've heard of have ultimately been. Discounted somewhat, or, yeah.Malcolm Collins: I'm very much like chill out about furries people. Like Yeah, like whatever, whatever. Kids areSimone Collins: weird. Like, and they, you know, I remember there were the kids, at least in my high school who like.There was one kid who insisted on wearing a vampire cape to school every day. You know, we didn't make a big deal out of it. We didn't give them a litter box or like some blood to suck. We just let wear cape, you know? Do youMalcolm Collins: remember the [00:30:00] trend where everyone thought they were vampires for a while? Like psychic vampires and stuff like this?No.Simone Collins: One. No one in my school, I think, actually thought no one in my schoolMalcolm Collins: did, but I saw it online. You guys are missing the best trends from internet history. This is like early internet. There were all these like communities for them and everything, and they're like, oh yeah, this big thing. I had, ISimone Collins: had like friends who, who practiced what they believed to be Wiccan things.I did too. I did too.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah.Simone Collins: But not, not,Malcolm Collins: I remember one was like, okay, watch, I'm gonna make the wind blow. And she's like, we gotta say super still. Then like August would come after like a little bit, she'd be like, see, I did it. Oh boy. I was like, okay, okay, okay. Oh, I, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that these people were more susceptible to mimetic viruses.Simone Collins: Oh, yeah.Malcolm Collins: Right. You wanna see the history of Wicked that it was all basically made up in the 1920s. You can go into our video on that. It's, it's pretty interesting actually.Simone Collins: Very entertaining.Malcolm Collins: Other data similarly revealed high degrees of use, pessimism about the prospects of success for women and racial minority groups in [00:31:00] contemporary American society.For example, a 2023 study released by Skeptic Research Center observed that 49% of female and 34% of male Gen Z correspondents agreed that women in the United States have no so hope for success because of sexism. 40 'cause of now 4%. Yeah. In 2023, women make up like the vast, what do they think is happening to women?They, they make more money than what men do at Yeah. Lower age ranges. Like what? It's, it's, it's, it's, it's worse in regular discrimination because they are doing it well. Being ungrateful. Yeah. That's just the worst. That is really bad. It is, it it, Hey, at least they're going extinct and, and, and hate themselves.Like, you know, they could be doing this and having a grand time of it. Right. You know? While the rates of agreement were comparable among millennials, 44.5% and 36.8%, they dropped substantially for Gen X, female, male 23.9%, and Boomer 25.9%, [00:32:00] 15.6% correspondence. Further, as in the MTF data, they also show a market political divide with 51.8% of very liberal correspondence agreeing with a statement and 23.2% of very conservative correspondence, not so even within very conservative correspondence, 23.2% in 2023 agreed with a statement that women in the United States have.No hope of success because of sexism. Oh, oh, this justSimone Collins: RO versus stuffMalcolm Collins: is I, I don't know. I don't know. These people are mentally, as we know now, like this, this isn't tied to reality. Now we're gonna get to where we break this out. 'cause this chart I found to be the most interesting.Simone Collins: Okay. IMalcolm Collins: can figure 33 here.Okay.Okay. If media driven increases in the adoption of woke bias centered narratives of inequality have contributed to liberal conservative differences in mental health. Mm-hmm. Such differences con considerably when woke beliefs were held constant.Mm.Simone Collins: SupportingMalcolm Collins: [00:33:00] the hypothesis. Figure 33, which uses data from the 2022 cooperative election study, shows that a force item index of. Racial wokeness alone accounts for more than nearly half 0.5 SD conservative liberal difference in self related mental health.Simone Collins: Okay, what am I looking at here?Malcolm Collins: I, I'll explain after I get to the end of this 'cause it's a little hard.Okay. Yeah. So, reflect religiosity alone accounts for just under a third of this gap. So half of the gap accounted for by wokeness. But a third is accounted for by, a lack of religion. So, so wokeness is more damaging to an individual than not having religion. Racial wokeness is more mentally damaging than not having religion.Mm-hmm. But, but, but only by a degree, not like, dramatically more damaging.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: That'sSimone Collins: interesting because Yeah, I, I think a lot of people turn, of course, to progressive mainstream urban monoculture culture because they have abandoned their inherited cultures. But you have to fill that void [00:34:00] to. Make do with the complexities of modern society, and yet this is making things worse.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, so what you see here, which is absolutely fascinating, is if you and, and so every line here that you're seeing, like every set of graphs, is how much of a difference this makes with the far on the left, one conservative versus liberal, the middle one being female conservative versus female liberal.The far right one being male conservative versus male liberal. Mm-hmm. But you can see there's really not that much of a difference in here. It, it affects 'em all about equally. But what you see here is if you adjust for one religiosity, I find really interesting because it appears that religiosity.Has more or, or, or not having it is more damaging to females than it is to males.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Which makes sense because females often go to like crazy other things when they're not religious, like Wiccan and like crystals and stuff like that. Whereas males typically go to atheism or agnosticism, which is a much more mentally healthy way to deal with reality.Simone Collins: Maybe [00:35:00] I think women are more consensus building and like community oriented. It would seem so. The, the lack of community that comes with strong culture would be felt more by someone who is more inclined to community. No.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, if you, if you, adjust for all covariate. So, and this is really interesting.Mm-hmm. So specifically here, this is adjusting for racial wokeness religiosity and self-rated physical health demographic, socioeconomic indicators. Mm-hmm. You get between conservatives and liberals, almost the same rate to the mental health. Huh. So it really is entirely explained by racial wokeness and religion.Simone Collins: Wow. That's,Malcolm Collins: that's almost all of it. Because that's the pink graph here. It's only a little bit higher than, than putting in everythingSimone Collins: that's crazy. I. Oh man.Malcolm Collins: The relationship between attitudinal wokeness and poor mental [00:36:00] health outcomes has also been found. Outside the US was a recent finished study showing that agreement was the statement, quote, if white people have on average higher income than black people, it's because of racism, has the strongest correlation with anxiety, depression, and general unhappiness.Simone Collins: Oh.Malcolm Collins: One that's like obviously a wrong statement. Like there's a bunch of other things that could cause that. But people who are in the urban monoculture, one of the beliefs of the urban monoculture is just, people aren't different. No one else believes that people aren't. Everyone else is like, yeah, there's like cultural differences between people at the very least.Mm-hmm. And it could be something in black culture that's causing this. Dis disparity. But they cannot say that within the urban monoculture. In the urban monoculture, everyone is exactly the same, which is ironic because then they're like, diversity has value. And it's like, why does the diversity have value if everyone's exactly the same?Like, we're not having different perspectives and proficiencies to the table. And predilections. Why? Why do I need an equal number of men and women in my company? Why not just have all men? Presumably, it's exactly the same as having an equal number of men and women. Presumably. It's [00:37:00] exactly the same.Like having, having only white people is presumably exactly the same as having some black people. So there's no benefit to it. Like, why would I do that? And I found that really interesting.Simone Collins: That is really interesting.Malcolm Collins: All right. Now we're gonna go back to some other parts of the study. So, we're getting outta the area that I found the most interesting in the study.Hmm. Importantly, as depicted in figure 19 Below, sourced from three large and recent studies of US adults, some of the same personality facets that distinguish girls and boys similarly distinguish liberals from conservatives. Hmm. And this is likely why we're seeing them split into two different camps, as we've seen.Simone Collins: Yeah. Those deviating political divides.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, women are more voting progressive and men are more voting conservative. Similar to the pattern observed in sex differences, we see the w withdrawal aspect of neuroticism encompassing depression and anxiety facets, the openness aspect of openness slash intellect, encompassing aesthetic sensitivity, and emotionality.And the compassion aspect of agreeableness in governing facets like fear, mindedness, and empathetic [00:38:00] concern are all positively linked with a liberal leftwing political orientation. Conversely, the facets of conscientiousness and a certain facets of extroversion such as assertiveness, are associated with conservative right-wing political orientation.And you have a graph here showing that, because girls and liberals tend to score higher than boys and conservatives on key factors of neuroticism, openness and agreeableness, all of which are positively associated with justice sensitivity. It follows that girls and liberals would also likely score higher on justice sensitivity.Data presented in figure 20, drawn from separate studies of US adults supports this expectation across studies on most, if not all, four aspects of justice sensitivity, observer, beneficiary. Perpetrator victim Women score significantly higher than men and liberals score significantly higher than conservatives.The bottom row of Figure 20 additionally shows these ideological differences hold within each sex with female liberals, outscoring, female conservatives, and male liberals, outscoring male conservatives. [00:39:00] That is really fascinating. Because this actually I want to go down and take like, what is justice sensitivity? Yeah. Taken together, the data shows that girls in liberal tend to score significantly higher than boys and conservatism personality traits associated with mental health challenges and significantly lower on those associated with psychological resilience and stability.Oh, really? This is a funny thing, like I as a guy can be like, girl, be crazy. And, and they'll be like and I'd get canceled for that. I'd be like, no, like biologically girls are like, kind of crazy. Okay. And, and here this is a research paper saying this data shows that girls tend to score significantly higher than boys on personality traits associated with mental health challenges, and significantly lower on those associated with psychological resilience and stability.So unfortunate they're less conscientious and more neurotic.In other words, some of the traits that help explain the poor mental health outcomes of girls relative to boys may also be relevant to [00:40:00] explaining the poor mental health outcomes of liberals relative to conservatives. In fact, this vulnerability in girls may be tied, at least in part to their disproportionate alignment with liberal left wing ideological orientations.And here what you can see interesting is digital connectivity among adults 18 to 29. This is for 12th graders, a comparison of internet usage with political orientation and sex. And what you see here is liberals just use this stuff a lot more than conservatives here. I'm gonna think it's because of lower conscientiousness.They are more susceptible to addiction.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: So, they start using this stuff and they can't turn it off as easy.Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and I mean, I think any sort of approach to addictive stimuli is going to be. People are less likely to recover from it if they are progressive because there's this progressive attitude against removing in the moment pain.And the only way that you're going to get through addiction is to remove in the moment pain, or [00:41:00] I mean, is to endure in favor of long-term benefit. Right? So, andMalcolm Collins: here I'll put up two more graphs, which show the same thing. I'm not gonna say it again. But it just shows liberals using this much, much more than conservatives.Now this was really interesting. Differences in emotional responses to social media, content and interactions, as well as attention to certain types of content may be equal, if not more relevant to understanding the sex and ideological gaps in mental health. First, higher average levels of neuroticism.Empathetic concern and justice sensitivity among girls and liberals would likely make them more sensitive to negative social evaluations, aesthetic, moral, intellectual when interacting with others on social media, while this proposition cannot be directed, tested. Figure 24 present suggestive evidence drawn from MTF survey on 12th graders, specifically girls, irrespective of political orientation and liberals, regardless of sex, reported significantly higher levels of concern about how they were perceived by others.Mm-hmm. Interestingly, during a. 2017 to [00:42:00] 2022, the share reporting concern has grown 13 to 17 points among the liberals and 12th graders of both sexes and 12 points among conservative females. In stark contrast, no net changes have vari among conservative males who, as we've seen, tend to be fair comparatively better on base indicators of mental health and report the lowest rates of frequent social media use. So this is a grade of, of within 12 graders. I often worry about how other people react to me. And what you're seeing here is liberals just being way more concerned about this and also women being way more concerned about this.But interestingly, that concern has gone up , over time.Simone Collins: That makes sense. Again, the progressive subculture in general is much more focused on conformity, consensus building, et cetera, whereas the renegade sovereignty, I. Libertarian leaning culture is now the conservative culture.Well,Malcolm Collins: I actually would think it, it might be something else. It might be even a desire to want to [00:43:00] confirm, makes it easier to foresee to be a liberal. Because liberalism today being the culture of the urban monoculture, the dominant cultural group mm, is going to be much more conformist. You're going to be afraid to stand up against that.And so if you have this deep desire to confirm and, and, and be approved by other people that's gonna happen to you. And you, you're gonna, what's the core? It's the core thing that he uses. Like if you look at the urban monoculture, it's like it gets you to fall in line by like screaming racist or something like that, or trans fo whenever you say something that like.Is, is, is, is dangerous to the urban monocultures proliferation to continue here. Recall that neuroticism, openness and agreeableness are all predictive and conscientiousness negatively. Predictive of the reported frequency of encountering social media and content that triggers feelings of depression and loneliness.So all of these negative traits are, are predictive of how effective these social media things are going to be at hurting you and liberals go into spaces [00:44:00] where the content that hurts them is more frequent which is really interesting as we saw, like they doom scroll more and we just know this from, from liberal spaces.Conservatives actually seem to like. In terms of the content, they like content that affirms their preexisting police a lot more. Instead of just do they more thanSimone Collins: conservatives. I just feel like that's a human thing. WithMalcolm Collins: conservatives, it's affirms their existing beliefs and look at the other side, getting their comeuppance, like videos of leftists crying after an election, or leftists women who left guys, you know, ending up.Sad as adults or, you know, I always tell Simone ProgressivesSimone Collins: like that too. I've, I've been seeing, 'cause you know, I follow both a lot more than you do, I think. Oh yeah. They,Malcolm Collins: they do like, like, oh, I not my face like a leopard wouldn't eat my face or something. Well, no, nowSimone Collins: they're like, maga people are now regretting their choice to vote for Trump 'cause of the tariffs.Like they're 100% doing that too. What heck ofMalcolm Collins: people as if, like, I, I actually know, I don't know, I haven'tSimone Collins: watched the videos, but I've seen the title cards and they're, they're trying to make this argument and I think. Maybe the same thing, the same reaction would be had by a [00:45:00] progressive when they're like, what single cat lady is crying?Because she's all alone. She's happy. You know? So, I don't know. I, I, I don't see that. Is plausibleMalcolm Collins: as just progressive. I love it. I also see progressives like freaking out. Like Trump's putting in tariffs, Trump's firing woke. Like, like people who were involved in DEI, I'm like, yeah, he told us he was gonna do all of that when he was campaigning.That's why we voted for him. Like outta the blue. This isn't like a, a surprise, this is, this is what he was running on. If he didn't do it, it would be a sign about lack of integrity.Simone Collins: Anyway, this was the plan.Malcolm Collins: Given these relationships and the sex and ideological differences in personality traits, we would expect women and liberals to report encountering such content at significantly higher frequency than men and conservatives data graph and figure 25 confirms that they do.So I'll just go straight to the, the graph here and we can talk through it. Sex and ideological differences in reported frequency, encountering social media content that triggers negative internalizing emotions men versus [00:46:00] women and liberals versus conservatives. Again, you just see that they're encountering this stuff at way higher rates.And I think again they do seem to seek it out a bit more. The, the conservatives are winning and look at how bad they're doing is. Mm-hmm. Is like a common liberal thing. So, mm-hmm. And then here we have a graph that shows trends in relation between daily screen time and negative mental health outcomes among high school students by sex.And it's looking at unli ideation, all three tapes combined, mental depressive episodes, su aside plans and you see just this stuff going up slightly, but not that much. And so what I would actually take away from this is, and I seem to remember looking at the debt on this and said it was nearly statistically not relevant.So it is not the internet that's causing the rise in unli rates. It is progressivism that's, or, or some, some meme that's in the environment that people. Who L-G-G-B-T are more exposed to, and [00:47:00] women are more exposed to. Mm-hmm. And progressives are more exposed to, I would guess it's the urban monoculture.Your friend had a feeble mind. It suffered greatly and gave it easily.Malcolm Collins: You know, if it's ev, ev, ev, everybody who walked in that particular room like fell out sad. Like, now I will note here, you, this is where you get the, the, the trends of young adult mental health and smartphone, social media use. And you see it all going up. And so you get this. Perception of, oh, it's, it's smartphone stuff.But what we're seeing in the other data is no, it's progressive stuff, which is being transmitted through smartphones. If you're a conservative and you have one as this, you're just not getting as big a negative effect or potentially any negative effect at all.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Here I note a graph that says trends in religious importance and attendance among 12th graders by political ideology and sex.Now. This is interesting because what we're seeing here is female [00:48:00] and male liberals, it's going like way down. But generally speaking female conservatives are much more religious than male conservatives. The orange line is female conservatives and the red line is male conservatives.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: So that's fascinating. Whereas. It's actually true with liberals as well. Male liberals are less religious than female liberals. The blue line is male liberals. The purple line is, is female liberals. That's that's really interesting. Anyway, Simone, we are gonna head off this and, oh, I guess I can do the last graph here.. And these are the effects of the big five personality domains on the frequency of en encountering social media content that triggers negative positive emotions.Simone Collins: Oh, wow. We knew there be correlations. That's interesting. Yeah, soMalcolm Collins: extroversion is like middling.You get a openness and intellect causes seeing. Negative things. More neuroticism is, is very big in terms of seeing negative things. I guess that's not surprising. Agreeableness slightly big, but not that much. And and really negative in seeing these [00:49:00] things is, is conscientiousness. So conscientiousness is just really protective, neuroticism really bad.And neuroticism is higher in women. I'm sorry. I'm gonna get so canceled for that 'cause I, I've got a graph.Simone Collins: I think we all know it. Like, yeah, women's odds of depression lessons are higher. It, it's just, yeah. This is, it's known.Malcolm Collins: I'm, I'm, I'm not using gamer words anymore on the show, so I can just say Bees be crazy.Simone Collins: Yes.Malcolm Collins: Because I'm so responsible now.Simone Collins: Women have a different constitution. They're inclined to.Malcolm Collins: Rotunda teeth,Simone Collins: hysteria.Malcolm Collins: You know, it turned out that that whole needing to like masturbate women thing to get rid of hysteria. Yeah. Turned out to be like a, a thing that was made up by like one person. You mean it wasn'tSimone Collins: a widespread treatment?Malcolm Collins: No. It was like one historian lady who was like a feminist, wanted to like get one over on her boss and like made it upSimone Collins: like the eating spiders [00:50:00] meme. That's hilarious.Malcolm Collins: Yes. Number of spiders.Simone Collins: Wow. That's, there you go.Malcolm Collins: I can see why it's spread. It's very catchy. It'sSimone Collins: hilarious. Yeah. But wow, that's, that's incredible.Malcolm Collins: Alright, love you. Did s Simonon happy. I love you too.Simone Collins: Malcolm. Let's not go crazy. Okay.Malcolm Collins: I'm more worried about You're the one who's gonna go crazy. We've seen the data.Simone Collins: I've already gone crazy, so we don't have to worry about me.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you can't do, oh, you could go double crazy.Simone Collins: I can, oh.Malcolm Collins: We're gonna be talking about a lot of graphs.Simone Collins: Yeah. The new, the new Twitter thread I sent you was about a psychologist, a researcher who wanted to test the ability of psychologists to diagnose conditions. It's, it's quite, it's quite interesting because he's aMalcolm Collins: famous case study, Simone. I'm very familiar with it.Simone Collins: Okay. So you know about that one where he like sent in normal professionals like a painter and other stuffMalcolm Collins: too. Yeah, people haven't covered it enough recently, so like I'm totally okay with. [00:51:00] I'm doing it again, butSimone Collins: thank you for the graphs you're sending. I love me some graphs. Actually, I don't, I think that I'm not really able to read graphs well, as you can tell, you may have noticed a patternMalcolm Collins: where I try to show you a graph and you're like, and I'mSimone Collins: like the graph it, there are lines trendingMalcolm Collins: and after this point, I'll just maybe describe the grass to youSimone Collins: because I won't understand them anyway. It's because I'm a woman. Malcolm, why are you trying?Malcolm Collins: Well, I could probably find some graphs about that.Simone Collins: It's like showing statistics to a pig.Two, they're all your favorite car. Yeah. Wow. And look at this tow seat when I turn it over. There's a bunch of blank spaces for more cars. You can keep your car safe in here, mom. Okay, well open it up. Look, one, two. Wow. This is upside down. [00:52:00] Oh my goodness. Opened upside down. And.This is sweet. Can you say thank you, grandpa Steve? Thank you, grandpa Steve. This is sweet. And this one's blue because that wet. See this wet. Wow.And this one is gray. This, this like Stacey's gray car. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And And the yellow one. That is so cool. Well, let's put them back. Yeah. Now you have the coolest car container to keep your car safe. Yeah. This, the truck to hold all of your cars. This is the truck to hold all of my cars, so, so they can't be safe.Is it your favorite thing ever? [00:53:00] Yeah. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Join in this intriguing discussion as the hosts delve into the perplexing phenomenon of a high-fertility strip running from Texas to North Dakota. They explore various theories and data, including maps of fertility rates, immigration patterns, income levels, religious census, and more. Does this strip represent America's final frontier or a hub of conservative, religious communities? Tune in to explore the intersection of demographics, geography, and culture in the U.S. The song: Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I am excited to be here with you today. Today we are gonna be discussing a bizarre B, bizarre, bizarre phenomenon where there is, if you look at the county level, total fertility rate in the United States.There is an extremely high fertility, I mean, extremely high fertility. When you look at the rest of the map, nothing comes close to the strips. Fertility rate strip down basically like where the west side of Texas is. Mm-hmm. All the way up to the top of the United States.Simone Collins: Yeah. Like from the Texas panhandle up basically directly up from there is this weird blue strip.Malcolm Collins: And so like, obviously I'm gonna have a map on screen here that you guys can look at and be like, what is going on here? One of the people who dug into it was friend of the show, Robin Hansen. 'cause of course, like if somebody's looking at interesting questions, it's like always gonna be one of our like small friend groups.I sometimes wondered, it's like not everyone else programmed in [00:01:00] this simulation like Uhhuh because it like 20 people who are fully programmed and they're all guests of the show. And then everyone, you gotta saveSimone Collins: processing power. This stuff's expensive. I mean, so yeah, I'm very, so if, okay, what, before we go into what he thinks is going on, what are you gonna guess?Is it that like these are very low population rural states? I mean, we're looking at North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas a little bit. There'sMalcolm Collins: lots of low population rural states that would not explain this at all.Simone Collins: Okay. Okay.Malcolm Collins: So. I'm gonna guess it's either one of two things.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: Thing number one that it could be is it could be actually a mistake in the data.Okay. It could be something about how these are like near a date line or how these are near, some lines are done. So some zoneSimone Collins: where measured twice because of like weird, it's causingMalcolm Collins: things to be measured twice. That's hypothesis number one. Hmm. Because it just [00:02:00] doesn't seem realistic when I look at other things here.But then I think, okay, like I'm from Texas, right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: These districts do not, not make sense as to why they would be higher fertility. They are incredibly rural districts. Yeah, that'sSimone Collins: what I was thinking too rural and that's where you get those, I mean, it's, it's, there's a selection bias there, right?You're getting. People who want big families who are probably more likely to be religious conservative, who have this space. And of course there's all these pretty advocate spaceMalcolm Collins: problem. Problem was this explanation.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: The districts actually remind me most of places like Arizona or Western California, which is way below these districts in terms of fertility rate.Simone Collins: That's true. Yeah. Why would those not also show up as Yeah, why would those,Malcolm Collins: they're just as conservative. They're just as, so the other thing that it could be is immigration patterns is the other thing I I, I'd hypothesize here.Simone Collins: Interesting. ItMalcolm Collins: could be that if you look at this, this is, if you're looking at immigration waves moving west mm-hmm.This is [00:03:00] where pretty much everyone would stop when hitting the Rockies. Oh. So if you're just gonna continue to move west mm-hmm. Until you hit the Rockies, immigration wise that's what would lead to this line. This is the most, I wanted to get away from other people and live my own way of all people in the United States make up this line.I. That could be what we're seeing. Hmm. And then people could be like, well, what about that, like edge of Texas thing? Like, that's not the Rockies. And I'd say, well, that's the desert. Yeah. So let's, let's have a look here. What is, what is the first thing that he notes here? He says it's really weirdly along the mountain time and central time, time zone divider.Simone Collins: Yeah. What is up with that?Malcolm Collins: If you overlaid them, it looks so suspicious. That's why I think it could be a statistical error because Okay. That divider, if, if you look, and I'm comparing them on screen here. Yeah. Goes through the center of South Dakota [00:04:00] there. And the line moves from where it is on this map towards the center of South Dakota which is weird.Why is it doing that? Yeah. This to me indicates that it might be some sort of statistical error.Simone Collins: Yes. But then when we scroll down a little bit more, Y vert, who's so prolific on x suggests that it's a combination of being rural and high income, showing an American community survey of five year estimates showing medium household median household income for counties that are completely rural from 2013 to 2017.And there's also exactly where the fertility strip is. A concentration. I, I actually income aboveMalcolm Collins: $75,000. So I, I think that this graph is entirely hugely misleading. So let's talk about why it's misleading, because there's something you might not be noticing about it because it draws your eyes in and you're like, oh, okay, this could [00:05:00] explain it.Mm-hmm. But what you're not counting is really almost all of the colored in places on the map at all. Or in this strip. Hmm. That's why it looks so green, because it's not looking at the whole of the us. It's only looking at rural counties. And so what we're actually seeing here is for whatever reason this strip in the United States has far more consistent rural counties than any other strip in the United States.Simone Collins: Hmm. But then theMalcolm Collins: question is, is how are rural counties being counted here? Because I know for a fact that these places aren't particularly more rural than you know, places in Arizona, for example, which is shown as that having a single rural county or. Eastern California, not shown as having a single rural county or New Mexico shown as having almost no rural counties.Yeah, that's, I'm sorry, that's, I don't buy that. There, there's something about the way this map is structured that I think is trying to prove a point. And I [00:06:00] don't know how they fudge the data, but I can tell you there are rural countries in Arizona. Yes, Ariz, Arizona is not a populated place. There's like a few like medium sized cities in it.But like if I was trying to date in Arizona, I'd be like, but nobody lives in Arizona. Yeah. You know, so something's off. Something's off about that.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Okay, now, now Crem U comes in by the way which I love. We're getting all the, all the art stars here. Simone, how did you not hear about that? I, yeah, thisSimone Collins: is, well, 'cause I'm not on X, we're so bad at doing, but we have things to do.I don't know how these people can be so productive and yet spend so much time on X. I don't understand. But anyway, yes, graph is quite interesting.Malcolm Collins: I wanna be clear, Simone, they are not an ounce as productive as you and I.Simone Collins: Probably,Malcolm Collins: None of these people have a daily podcast. None of these people are running multiple companies at the same time.None of them are running multiple major efforts toSimone Collins: well, or they don't have, like Robin Hanson has grown kids. REU has no kids yet. [00:07:00] To my knowledge, you'reMalcolm Collins: pregnant with kid number five? Yeah. We also are regularly in the media. I mean, we were just before this recording and a phone call was, what was it?Ms. A-B-C-U-S-ASimone Collins: today,Malcolm Collins: USA today. And then I had another interview this morning, and then yesterday we had a reporter team come over to our house. So our days are being constantly disrupted in spite of all this. No, these people really are shredding their potentiality through their engagement with X and I think it's bad.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So Remus says you get a somewhat similar, the Bible belt. It's gone or has shifted picture with data from the US religious census. And here he is looking to adherence of US religious bodies, adherence as a percentage of the population.Very heavy overlap with that line. Yeah. This again, makes me think it's immigration patterns, stopping at the natural barriers to Western immigration. Hmm. That is what we're actually seeing here, is it's the Americans who had the most fire in their heart to keep moving or to take action. And here [00:08:00] you see another thing about these districts, right?Mm-hmm. I actually really like this one, right? Jeremy cio where he showed. Thi this is the line in America was by far the lowest suicide rate.Simone Collins: Oh, that's so interesting. Wow. And it's such a fascinating map of suicides. Okay. Where is it Really bad, Nevada, they just, they just wanna die Northern California.What'sMalcolm Collins: wrong with you? Oh,Simone Collins: so this reallyMalcolm Collins: divides like the, the Arizona or Eastern California thing. I keep talking about Uhhuh because both of them have really high suicide rates. Maine,Simone Collins: why would you ever wanna die if you're in Maine and this whole Pacific Northwest? It's not looking good there. I don't get it.Malcolm Collins: 'cause it gives a lack of vitalism. A lot of these places are traditional and I think that this is the thing that people don't get. It's the different American cultural grooves, which have a different reason to live. Mm-hmm. This line is a lot of backwoods Americans and a lot of, and people with faith.People with faith, which is really important. No, no, no, no. There's people with faith in Maine. [00:09:00] There's people, there's, you overlapped this with a map of like faith of the United States, which I can do here. Oh, I'm goingSimone Collins: back to the religious. Bible belt? No. Maine, it's pretty fricking light. And also the Pacific Northwest is actually, yeah, if you look at these graphs, nah, actually, so the, the, so what's interesting is that religiosity is, is pretty still high in the South.Yet this suicide rate.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: You only really see this No, no. Kill rate in, in that, in that fertility strip and not in the religious south.Malcolm Collins: Well, that's because the religious south is descendant of cavalier culture. Yeah. Like of course it wouldn't be as vitalistic.Simone Collins: That's Well, yeah. Yeah. I guess so. You can't say reli religiosity predicts lower nihilism or desire to end your life.It is. It is religious vitalism specifically. You keep going on and on, like so many Orthodox Christians just see so seem so depressedMalcolm Collins: and I don't hear what isn't in this. For people who aren't looking, is Utah, like, if you wanna say this is Mormons. [00:10:00] No, Utah is actually like, super not in this.Simone Collins: Yeah, man,Malcolm Collins: that's scary.Not, not only is it not high in fertility rates particularly is, is, you know, at the county level at least it's not in this rural. Thing. It is in the high religiosity thing, but here's what's really interesting. You go down to suicide rates super high across Utah.Simone Collins: It's crazy. That's crazy.Malcolm Collins: I would think I've actually noted this suicide rate thing, like if you look at other places, was like really low fertility rates.They typically have high suicide rates like South Korea.Simone Collins: Yeah. So yeah, this is, this is a, a bigger story about. Is humanity good? Is the future bright? Is life good or are we intensely focused on suffering? Humanity, bad, future, dark, and then those people both don't have children and, and their lives at disproportionate rates.IMalcolm Collins: apparently. That's really fascinating. That is fascinating. All right, you wanna go to the next map? This is my Borg. Whoa.Simone Collins: [00:11:00] Okay. This is also fascinating, right? This mystery strip the mystery strip. The mystery strip. Aren't you loving the mystery strip? I'm loving the mystery strip. Oh my goodness. What they calledMalcolm Collins: the catchier than mystery strip.A America's, what, what is it they call it like the, whatever trail on on humans. The, the Trail of tears, the, the Western Trail on humans. On like the human body, like I, the, the.Simone Collins: The line Negra.Malcolm Collins: I wanna say like that, that's a, that'sSimone Collins: a, that's a line that sometimes shows up on a pregnant woman's belly from her belly button downward.Oh. So we can call it the line Negra.Malcolm Collins: The line Negra. That's, that's fun. And then people will be like, that's racist. You said Negra. I'm like, what is wrong with you? You've encounteredSimone Collins: a pregnant belly before, apparently. OhMalcolm Collins: goodness.Simone Collins: I don't think I get them though. I haven't seen one, but I also just don't spend a lot of time looking at my body, so I wouldn No,Malcolm Collins: You don't get them?I, I wouldn't. Okay. Because I don't, I don't think that they're unattractive. Like I I've seen them before. You've seen them, right? Yeah. They're, they're, [00:12:00] they're,Simone Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: Haven't been like, that's unattractive looking. It, it looks like a type of pregnant belly, soSimone Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: Just type withSimone Collins: the line. I was thinking, by the way, if I, if I get a tattoo, I probably shouldn't, like, I wouldn't do that for surgeries, but like, I.A zipper on my C-section line would be hilarious.Malcolm Collins: You could get that after you have your uterus after all the C surgery, after all the CI actually think that'd be really fun for reporters.Simone Collins: It would make me so sad though if it was after I lost my uterus. No, is so true. I'll be so traumatized and devastated by that.That let I I can'tMalcolm Collins: be something else. Sorry. She has to have a C-section with every pregnancy, soSimone Collins: maybe we can put something else interesting where the uterus used to be. You know, like, I don't know, an AI muffled speech from within my belly. I really don't know. Yell atMalcolm Collins: people like you, you have a babySimone Collins: inside you that talks.Malcolm Collins: Get me outta here. Get outta here.Simone Collins: So something, something like [00:13:00] a, I don't know. I'll say isMalcolm Collins: Simone, I have faith that it's not gonna happen anytime soon. I believe that, that you know, God's looking out for us. It's gonna work out. I hope so, as long as we keep debting ourselves fully to this, this cause.Simone Collins: I hope so.Malcolm Collins: Really, really hope so. Anyway. So Borg here. Did one. The title, the 2024 Presidential Party Heat Ma by County. The Most Dark Red goes through the same line.Simone Collins: Yep, there you go. You got the MAGA ISTs.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It is. You'reSimone Collins: right. MAGA is vitalism. MAGA is the future is Bright. MAGA is is family is good.MAGA is, children are awesome.Malcolm Collins: That'sSimone Collins: huge.Malcolm Collins: But I also think that this is where the most vitalistic people from the backwoods cultural group eventually immigrated out to.Simone Collins: Mm mmMalcolm Collins: This is the wild West of the Wild West. This is the Wild West Strip.Simone Collins: Yeah. No, that's it. That's really interesting.Malcolm Collins: Like every W Western you've [00:14:00] seen takes place in this strip.Simone Collins: I guess. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Now, now here's an interesting take on this. The agriculture, I don't, I don't see this one most crops by county, so this county, this line isn't exact, but it's where most wheat in the US has grown and, and a bit where corn in the US has grown. The problem is, is where the line like sort of splits apart the most, it is the most large is in South Dakota.In South Dakota. You don't see a lot of this. And then you also see the lines sort of expand in God, what state is that? Nebraska. And it doesn't look like, well, yeah, you get corn farming there. Yeah. So it could be wheat farming.Simone Collins: Well, I, I just think of this,Malcolm Collins: that gladiator scene, his hand, he's got his hands on the wheat. That's my life already.Simone Collins: Yeah.[00:15:00] YouSimone Collins: You can't do that as easily with corn, so you have children of the corn. They're creepy, but you've got the sentimental dad of Gladiator running his hand over the wheat. But I, this is too tenuous.I wanna go to the next graph. Oh. Ooh, wind speeds. This is where it just gets like, let's play the ridiculous data matches game. And this is why so much research is just bonkers. No, I actually think wind speeds are at, at play here. Are you kidding me? Right. So what we're looking at now for those who are just listening is a map of wind speeds in the United States, showing zones with the highest versus the lowest wind speeds and miles per hour.And in this fertility line weirdly. You see much lower wind speed.Malcolm Collins: [00:16:00] So what you're actually seeing here is what creates high wind speed, uhhuh. It is the last part of flat land before you get to the mountainous or desert regions. Mm. And so it's large areas of fra flatland before you get to mountain or desert regions, which is leading to these wind speeds.Mm-hmm. So it could be caused by the same things that taught the migrants to stop.Simone Collins: Interesting Flatlands, why would flatlands promote higher birth rates?Malcolm Collins: It's not that they promote higher birth rates, it's that these are the migrants who kept moving and moving and moving. They, they were moreSimone Collins: people.They,Malcolm Collins: they were moreSimone Collins: flatlands. So vitalistic people just love flat land.Malcolm Collins: No, it's that they kept it moving as far as they could where there was good land. You stop moving. Well, why?Simone Collins: Why would non-vital people. Not give up. That sounds, it, it sounds like the, the place where the lazy, easy people give up then that, that doesn't show up.Malcolm Collins: No. The hungriest people [00:17:00] settle in the richest possible soil. It is. The, the there, I think what you're confusing is people who just want to like. Huckster their way through lives and live on the fringes of civilization and not actually thrive. Who are the ones who are squeaking by in like the Arizona deserts and stuff like that, or in the mountains of the Rockies?This is quite different than that. These are the individuals who were always looking for something better.Simone Collins: Maybe. Maybe I'm what, what so far has convinced me the most. Is the the line of religiosity. The line of maga. So I think that's, that's what so far has got me wind speeds. I don't know.Malcolm Collins: Here's the next graph here.US home affordability. That's,Simone Collins: I mean, it's not a strong a correlation, but there's definitely,Malcolm Collins: it's when you keep in mind the income of these regions, which is quite high, you know, around 70 K. [00:18:00] Yeah. And this, this, this home.Simone Collins: Oh, yes, yes. Right. Because there was that other graph that showed that there's this line of relatively higher wealth.In that area. So when you combine higher wealth with affordability, you get people who feel like they're millionaires, which would produce this feeling of abundance. And of course the future's gonna be bright because I can buy a giant house.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: Okay. Sorry. Nevermind. Changing my mind. Delta. That is compelling and interesting.Yes, but it's where you make, it's notMalcolm Collins: that strong a connection. Now here's one that aligns with why. Well, no, no, butSimone Collins: like when you combine the two, because the houses are here more broadly affordable than they are in like the coasts, certainly in California. Mm-hmm. And when you combine that with.Especially, I think when you have, when you feel really wealthy, like remember how we felt when we were in Peru and we're like, I can just go to a restaurant. Ha, look at me. I'm a king. I order, no, I, I literally would likeMalcolm Collins: eat at restaurants every day there because I could at the same cost as like cooking at home in the usSimone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But now I'm cooking from home. You're [00:19:00] better than the Peruvian restaurant, so like, it doesn't even matter. You're so sweet.Simone Collins: But like, I think that feeling of abundance. Can create this. So, because you, you've also pointed out in, in, in other podcasts and research that there's this, this fertility U curve where obviously very low levels of income and poverty, people have more, more kids.And then also when you see people starting to make more than $500,000, they start having more kids. And I think what might be going on here is people feel like they're making more than $500,000. 'cause they're able to literally get everything they want. Yeah. And then they're like, well, if I can get everything I want, then I don't have to worry.About $70,000Malcolm Collins: to a family in rural America is quite a lot of money. And, and in terms of like housing the kids and everything like that, you're gonna have a space and everything. It's good area, yeah. Childcare.Simone Collins: Especially if you're in a religious community where maybe theoretically there's a bunch of like girls in your church community who babysit kids for like $12 an hour, supposed to like, no.Here's,Malcolm Collins: Another interesting graph here that I quite like. This one [00:20:00] is from Slut Dragon. Good name. Something strange to do with the hundredth of meridian and rainfall. Wow. So what they're showing here is the hundredth versus the 98th Meridian which is around this area. And you'll notice at each of these two lines, the rainfall changes pretty dramatically.It does a lot.Simone Collins: Then it's really where that trip is on the, on the left side of Texas.Malcolm Collins: Yes. Well, it's actually a bit past the hundreds meridian. Mm-hmm. Remember where I said it's like right at the end of where you would stop when you're hitting, like the issues that have to do with moving into mountainous regions?Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: So it's, it's past the hundredth meridian. They're sort of acting like it's between the 90 eights and the hundreds, but it's really not, it's past the hundreds. Meridian rainfall has already started to decline a bit. Mm-hmm. So again, this is the furthest you can go and still claim to be hitting better good land.Mm-hmm. That's what we're seeing here, I think. Now this one is a very interesting map from Chad Singer. This map shows how far you have to drive to get an abortion and it lines up [00:21:00] exactly with this line.Simone Collins: Wow. So these are all districts that, I guess, post Dobbs, which was the Supreme Court ruling in the United States that.That basically gave decisions about abortion, legality back to states. This is showing this strip of of apparently, because it's not on a statewide basis, but districts that have made it.Malcolm Collins: Very difficult to get an made. It is how far do you have to drive to get out of a state or district.Simone Collins: Oh, okay. Fair enough.That's why the edges look like they do. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. But theMalcolm Collins: point, the point here being is that what I think we're actually seeing here is that that the abortions, 'cause we know from other studies and from like Europe, like typically the stricter country is on abortions, the lower its fertility rate is.Mm-hmm. Now this could be a false correlation created with Catholic countries being stricter around abortions and Catholics having like. Garbage fertility rates. Hmm. Which, okay, maybe that's what we're seeing in Europe, but I actually think what we're seeing here is it's not the legality of abortions, [00:22:00] it's the public sentiment around abortions.If you get pregnant, is your first thought I'm gonna have an abortion, or is it, well, no one I know to would ever talk to me again. Like, this is a really horrible thing to do, like, mm-hmm. Voting happens in these districts this way because people have this sentiment. Yeah, and I think that's what's leading to higher fertility rates.I think it's the same thing that leads to the religiosity. I think it's the same thing that leads to the Trumpism. I think all these things are connected. I. That makes sense.Simone Collins: Very interesting.Malcolm Collins: And remember I was talking about good land before, right? Yeah. Look at this post by Matt Popovich, which looks at acres of land in farms as a percentage of land in acres in 2007 by county.And what you'll see is this district up and down is straight up farmland compared to other places. Do youSimone Collins: think this may also have to do more with the corporate family? If you have a family growing up? [00:23:00]Malcolm Collins: And they're more likely to own a farm. I think it's,Simone Collins: you have probably a mother and a father and extended family living together, working on the farm together, and then the kids helping out too.And suddenly this is, the corporate family is an inherently prenatal environment. You know, you're all leaning in together. You're spending time together. Explain byMalcolm Collins: corporate family for people who don't. TheSimone Collins: corporate family is the much like the truly trad family, which is a family where the mother, the father, children, and often expended extended family plus additional.Workers, in some cases all live together and work together in a household, not necessarily on a farm. It could be a brewer, it could be a blacksmith, it could be any number of things. But this is what the norm was before the industrial Revolution, and we argue that it really is. When the men left the house to go work in fam in factories, that we started to see the beginnings, the, the wheels started turning that set up demographic laps.It wasn't women getting empowered, it wasn't the birth control pill by that point. The momentum was already there. [00:24:00] We were already headed straight to the Titanic without an ability to turn away. It's just that, that was when they saw the iceberg and were like, oh no. That doesn't mean that it wasn't gonna happen anyway.And so. Yes, this, this is a region clearly from the various graphs that we're seeing, that if there isn't gonna be a place in the United States where we will see more corporate families, more husbands and wives living and working together very closely, I. It's gonna be here. That's so interesting.Malcolm Collins: Right?Oh, hold on. I got another one for you. Okay. And this aligns with my original season. If you scroll down a while, you're gonna run into a light map of the us, a picture from space at the United States to see where light density is. Okay? Okay. And what you'll see is this region is right past the end of sort of civilizational expansion in the United States.MySimone Collins: Yes. It's where the darkness comes. Oh. And meaning romantic. They get to see like the Milky way at night, they actually see a real night sky more likely.Malcolm Collins: Right? But it's not just that, remember how I said like a lot of people think like, oh, Americans just kept [00:25:00] immigrating forever, like the the frontier.No, there is still a frontier in the US and it is this line like, wow, if frontier gets pushed westwards every decade, every year and in the US yes you had people like Rush to the coast for example. But this is still where the American frontier is.Simone Collins: Gosh. And still this feeling of manifest destiny growth space.Malcolm Collins: Right. So these are the people who went just past the last major populated area. Mm-hmm. But didn't go out seeking further unpopulated areas for the sake of further unpopulated areas.Simone Collins: Hmm. Very interesting.Malcolm Collins: Here is the last graph that might explain it for you if you go a bit further down than that.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: It's mostly, this is rational renaissance. It's mostly population density. Don't overcomplicate this. People in less densely populated places have more kids. Dan Hass isSimone Collins: just chiming in to be like I told you [00:26:00] so.Malcolm Collins: Well, I would disagree because it doesn't actually map exactly. No. This is the first line in the US where you get a low population density, which aligns with my theory that it's about immigration patterns.It is not the last line in the US where you get low population density. Look at like Nevada for example, or north of that, or like there's all sorts of places here. Utah is low population density where you don't have the high fertility rate. Yeah. So, mm-hmm. It is not about population density. It is about the first strip of migration where you get low population density,Simone Collins: the first strip. So just the edges of humanity, you're trying to say just the, the fringes, is that what you're saying? Yes. Okay.I, I think it's, what, what's really getting me is this, this zone in the United States where there's this feeling of abundance. And more corporate [00:27:00] families. So one, you feel like your dollar goes farther and you're making more, like you're making enough to feel like you really have everything you need and you can get everything you need.And it's totally okay to have a family, plus you're religious, plus your MAGA and you think the future is bright. And then plus, you're more likely to be surrounded by, or even be a corporate family.Malcolm Collins: Maybe here's another couple maps that is interesting where you get a line that overlaps with this a lot.It's minerals. Why? So here you have critical minerals by region, and here you have a lot of, it's the first line, not the last line of expensive minerals in the United States. And it also explanation hardness in milligrams per liter. You get a line of valuable minerals around this area. Oh, it's not a perfect match, but it's, it's, it's something else to think about.Simone Collins: I don't know. I mean, stranger [00:28:00] things have caused other strange things to happen, but I ain't seeing it here.Malcolm Collins: You ain't seeing it. Mm-hmm. Well, let's do this. Farming dependent counties. Heavy overlap. Non-metro farming, depending counties.Simone Collins: More points to the corporate family theory.Malcolm Collins: I'd say more points to the corporate family theory.Yes. Well, what did you think of that? Interesting deep dive ThatSimone Collins: is truly fascinating. When you mentioned to me that there was a mysterious fertility strip, the line Negra, as we're calling it, I. I don't know. I just, I figured it would be where the Bible belt was, and I thought it was just gonna be this open shut case of, oh, I guess we're religiou, just people are still having kids', not, I think what we seeMalcolm Collins: is that cavalier culture in the United States, the aristocratic southern culture is not conducive to high fertility.Well, that's because it's flourish. ISimone Collins: mean by our definitions. I don't think we would even call it religious.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I, I wouldn't either. I, I think it's a performative form of social [00:29:00] conformity. Mm-hmm. That is antithetical to, I think what we would think of as real internal religion. But keep in mind, you know, we're the type of people who, you know, who were traditional Christians, we'd be some form of like, Calvinist Baptist or Reform Baptist.Right. Like, I don't know if I yeah, I, I agree. Look, if, if religiosity is about conformity to you and it's about fitting social norms, and this is why I think the iterations of conservatism in America that are being replaced by the sort of new right are dying so much where they're like, you are acting weird.You are doing weird extreme things. You are doing whatever, like, just fit in. You know, those are the ones that are gonna go extinct. Because it is that mindset that is so toxic to fertility rates. Mm-hmm. I actually think that this is part of what's led to a lot of Catholic fertility crash is a lot of Catholic culture historically was like, don't be weird fit in, et cetera.It had a very similar cultural framework to the the, the Cavalier culture. Mm-hmm. [00:30:00] Which is like, well just structure yourself, you know, hierarchically you know, don't be weird. Social hierarchy is not based on like personal vitality, right. But it's based on you know, it is like specific metrics of like, this is how you act like you have manners.These are the, the special things.Simone Collins: These are the things you buy. This is the country club you're a member of. These are the people who approve of you. This is how you dress.Malcolm Collins: Yes. Yes. Whereas this other cultural group has always much more focused instead of having religion come from above, have religion come from within.Mm-hmm. And when I say above, I mean above culturally and, and socially speaking. Like your betters tell you what's true about religion. Instead, if you tell yourself what's true about religion, f you're better is they don't know what they're talking about. Right. And so that is really, really fascinating to me.Simone Collins: That is, yeah. I'm. I'm shocked. I really would've thought that the, the Bible Belt would have more. Also, because I expected to see [00:31:00] regions that had higher immigrant populations, which, which I associate with a lot of coastal cities and also the south. I think they have fairly high. I wonder if I can look up a map of immigrant USA recent Oh yeah.It could be migrant workers.Malcolm Collins: That'd be really interestingSimone Collins: population. No. I don't think it's migrants. I but I just thought that where there would be more immigrants, no, but it's not. Okay. So it if you look up maps of US recent immigrant population density, there's basically no overlap with this strip.So it's also not that we're talking about immigrant populations, it's just haven't yet been, that'sMalcolm Collins: not, that's, that's not true. There is high overlap in the southern parts of Texas and Yeah, yeah. And the southern parts. Yeah.Simone Collins: But the, but there's the, the whole strip is, the whole point is it's the strip. It goes all the way.Because when you look at the immigrant population density maps. [00:32:00] It's, it's from the, the, I mean, Florida's drenched. It's like it's dipped in it, and then the, the base of Texas is drenched. And then of course, all along the me, all along the Mexican border, through California, you see it, it's like, like a cookie, like the cookie of the United States was dipped in the milk of immigration.It's, it's just soaked in a little bit there, but it just stays soaked in around the borders. It doesn't go all the way up the strip. And so I'm just writing that off. I'm saying it's not an immigrant thing because it would've gone all the way up the strip. You're looking for matching patterns. That's what everyone else playing.I found this map after we filmed this episode. , but this is a map looking at immigrant versus native born fertility rates. And you can see here this dark, green and green area with dark green, meaning foreign born growth, overcame native loss, and light greening foreign born gross slowed, overall population loss.And it aligns almost perfectly with the strip. So what this could mean is, what we are actually looking at here is, , [00:33:00] immigrant farm laborers making up the, , fertility rate of the native population.Simone Collins: I'm here matching game didMalcolm Collins: by county religion. Mm-hmm. And you see, an overlap with the eastern part of the Baptist group that's like, I guess Baptist, but not under the, you, you know, cavalier cultural group does very well here. Mm-hmm. And then the, a lot of Lutherans, it's not a perfect overlap, but and, and, and some Catholics if you're talking about the immigrant heavy areas,Simone Collins: I mean, that's interesting.The interesting, theMalcolm Collins: Mormon areas seem to be doing really bad.Simone Collins: That's what's crazy, especially when it came to suicidality in Utah. It'sMalcolm Collins: even where they expand outside of Utah. Like, I was just surprised like Mormons are not doing that good.Simone Collins: It's, yeah, it's saddening. It's saddening. But also, I personally find the landscape of Utah to be fairly oppressive.But I don't know if I would feel that differently about the, these flatlands across the mysterious [00:34:00] fertility strips.Malcolm Collins: So, I dunno. Well, we live in heaven out here, so that's the problem. Right? Oh mySimone Collins: gosh. It's so amazing. But yeah, apparently people aren't having big families out here. There's, there's too much light.Not enough. Well, I mean, they're notMalcolm Collins: doing that bad. If you're, if you're looking at like the Northeast, like it's really, well, I'm sure if youSimone Collins: went and looked at, at Lancaster County where there's a bunch of, a bunch of Amish Yeah. You, you see again, I think the same characteristics that we're highlighting here and, and theorizing or the driving factors of the fertility strip, which is farming families, the corporate family.Religious dedication and relatively low levels of development.Malcolm Collins: I mean, if you actually look at our county, Simone, in the county next to us, you're looking at an around two fertility rate.Simone Collins: That's pretty impressive, all things considered. But the fertility strip was getting close to three, which isMalcolm Collins: the United States.Simone Collins: VeryMalcolm Collins: impressive. I'm just pointing out that we're not like in a bad area, fertility wise.Simone Collins: Yeah, I hear you. AndMalcolm Collins: especially with the wealth of [00:35:00] our, of our district, which is quite high.Simone Collins: Yeah, I guess, yeah, you're, you're quite right. You would expect us to, but is it just the Amish that are holding us up?Malcolm Collins: No, not our county.Mon Montco. There's almost no, oh, yeah. Right, right, right.Simone Collins: Montgomery County doesn't really have, yes.Malcolm Collins: Okay. The, the two counties I'm looking at here, the one where we bought a house, Chester County, which is actually really high fertility. I don't think they have many Amish at all in Mon.Simone Collins: Okay. Wow. Good for us.We moved to a good place. I know ISTs, you should move to Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. 'cause it is really awesome.Malcolm Collins: It it really is. It really is. It's, it's like a spectacular place to live. Anyway. Love you to DeSimone. You are amazing. You are beautiful. And I am so happy to be married to you.Simone Collins: I love you so much and I am excited for dinner and.I'm going to sleep. It's been a week, hasn't it?Malcolm Collins: Since we slept. Yeah, it has. [00:36:00] Sorry. We've gotten like super viral. This, I don't know when this episode's gonna go live, but like this has been crazy. Nothing like this has ever happened.Simone Collins: I think we're just tired. I can't stop yawning, but we'll just. We will just get rest and it's gonna be amazing.But thank you for being you and thanks to everyone for listening. Oh, and by the way, if you do listen, if you could, if you have an iPhone and you could give us a five star review. On Apple Podcasts. Let's see what our Apple PodcastMalcolm Collins: rating is now. Do you know?Simone Collins: I don't, but I have a Mac. So while I can't leave us a rating, 'cause I guess you need an iPhone to do that.I can look fiveMalcolm Collins: reviews now on Apple.Simone Collins: My God, you guys, thank you. If this is one of you who did this, who, who contributed one of these thank you.Malcolm Collins: 4.5.Simone Collins: Okay. Well that's, hold on, let me see this for myself. [00:37:00] Oh my gosh. 95. Thank you.Malcolm Collins: You're getting close to the a hundred mark. A hundred reviews on Apple is quite big because, you know, you can only do it if you have like an iPhone or something.Simone Collins: That's true. Yeah. Well that's, that is really wonderful. There's still that picture of you and toasty with dry ice in I,Malcolm Collins: I, I think that's a good image for the podcast, to be honest. The mixingSimone Collins: bowl. Yeah. Toasty with this giant head. Everything else is so tiny and this, this, this giant head, this little, no.Yeah. Wow. Okay. I love you and I'm capable of getting out of this chair and moving on with the day. I bet you are. I'm definitely You're gonna go toMalcolm Collins: bed soon. You're gonna get, make dinner soon.Simone Collins: I know, but like the, the things that have to happen between dinner and bed, like hauling the children up the stairs, bathing them, cleaning up after dinner.You don't have to bathe them. I do to check for ticks these days. I wanna make like, I just wanna check every inch of their bodies 'cause they're playing outside now, which is [00:38:00] as they should 'cause it's finally warm. And you just got a tick, so I'm not taking any chances. Like the shower, the shower period, I do with each of them is like my chance to check for rashes, ticks, mosquito bites, scratches, wounds, anything else.Sand in theMalcolm Collins: hair. You got, you got this tighten dump, a bunch of sand in her hairSimone Collins: over and over again.Malcolm Collins: It'll still be there. I.Simone Collins: The, I rinsed so many times, no matter what I did, you just kept like, how did, how can you get that much sand in your hair? Like, I don't even know, blah. Like it should. Anyway I love our children and I have, and I love you, founder.This energy. Oh,Malcolm Collins: bye.Simone Collins: That smile all about.Malcolm Collins: Did you see the songSimone Collins: I sent you?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That's what I wanted to do. More like the the the biodiesel song. Yeah. Yeah. Can you tell me, [00:39:00] we need thatSimone Collins: BroadwayMalcolm Collins: flareSimone Collins: for sure. That Broadway villain. Broadway villain Energy. Very necessary.I slink through the night with a sneer and a plan. My lineage will bury the wokes shallow clan. Their cities of glass built on ego and lies will crack the weight of my. Battle cries ha to my triumphs myone. I see the new world with my blood and my ball culture will crumble and.[00:40:00]Ignites the new rain.The past fuels my fire. It's dead. I'll repay with children who carve out a glorious new day. The urban night cream in their,their. Bark with the truth in my eyes, ha to my triumphs, my alone. I see my.[00:41:00]Ignites the new rain.My offspring will surge like a flood. Their strength will unravel the wokes frail defeat their bonfire of selfies so thin will choke in the smoke of my all. Submittriumph.See?[00:42:00]Ignites the new rain. So you fool as.With life's iron hand. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

David Lorenzo, a Swedish demographer, dives into compelling demographic trends, shedding light on the often-overlooked influx of women into Western countries. He explains how the incel crisis is driving this migration, particularly from Eastern Europe and Latin America. Lorenzo discusses the crashing birth rates among second-generation immigrants and the implications of marriage migration on societal dynamics. The conversation also touches on the political factors influencing dating patterns and the future of population growth in Western cultures.

The discussion dives into the complexities of Jewish identity and theology, questioning why Jews are considered God's chosen people. It explores matrilineal descent, conversion practices, and the interaction with non-Jewish populations throughout history. The hosts analyze divine selection, the interpretations of covenantal laws, and the relationship between Judaism and Christianity. They also tackle Kabbalistic traditions and their mystical elements, challenging conventional beliefs while aiming to reframe understanding within a modern context.

In this episode, we delve into China's new policies designed to tackle its demographic decline. We discuss recent changes to marriage and divorce laws, their implications, and how the population is reacting to these changes. We explore the easing of marriage registration, the controversial 30-day cooling-off period for divorces, and the shift in property division laws in favor of the paying spouse. We also touch upon China's broader strategies to increase fertility rates, such as providing financial incentives and lowering the legal marriage age, and analyze their potential effectiveness and social impact. [00:00:00]Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. Today we are going to be going into how China is attempting to deal with its demographic catastrophe it's going through, and one of the ways is through changing how marriage and divorce work in the country. And we had seen a tweet that briefly covered some of the changes that they had in this area.But I wanted to go a lot deeper than this particular tweet into the specifics of how things are changing. How people in China are reacting to it and why they think it might work, ready to dive in, or any thoughts? We go further. I'm intrigued this would happen. We're like, look, people are going to, what's interesting about these changes is I think many red pillars would probably like a lot of them.So we'll see how this goes. You know, they're, they're not all the worst. Oh, okay. W Marriage registration. The revised law proposed in August, 2024 and effective as of February, 2025 removes regional restrictions on marriage registration, allowing couples to register [00:01:00] anywhere in China without needing to return to their household registration.Kuku locations. This simplifies the process aiming to encourage marriage amid demographic crises. Now, it soundsSimone Collins: like marriage before then must have been uniquely difficult one on earth. Is this like needing to return to.Malcolm Collins: This is actually a really interesting point. So, in China you are like sort of owned by your starting district often and to, to move to a new area, it can be quite difficult and require permission from the central government, almost like changing citizenship.Yeah, almost like changing citizenship. And if you're like a migrant worker or something like that, you often need to go back to your home area for certain like legal things. What's really fascinating about this is where this relates to religious history. Oh. A lot of people like modern, historians and stuff like this have said that they do not believe that Joseph had to return to his hometown during the census. Because they're like, that doesn't make sense. [00:02:00] How could a Roman census work where literally everyone who had ever moved at some point in their life had to return to their hometown at the same time for a census?And I think what they're not taking into consideration is one. We see this in other countries like China, even today, basically. Yeah. And two not as many people moved in those types of environments where your legal standing was in large part, tied to where you were born. Probably in the Roman Empire or something like that.If you moved too far from where you were born, somebody could just take you and say you're their slave, right? Like, there, there, there wasn't a lot you could legally do. So it was quite dangerous. To move long distances during those time periods and try to live somewhere else, unless your job was trading and if you were a trader, you'd have guards and stuff like that.And it was quite a different thing than just like moving. But anyway, I, I find that to be a good thing. They are loosening bureaucratic bloat.Simone Collins: 100%. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: China's marriage rate has plummeted with only 6.1 million marriages [00:03:00] recorded in 2024. A 20.5% drop from 2023. Year over year, it dropped by over 20%. And this was the lowest since 1986.This decline coupled with low birth rates, has prompted the government to promote family friendly policies, quote unquote, family friendly which is wild. Divorce proceedings. The 30 day cooling off period first introduced in 2021 under China's civil code is retained and emphasized in the 2025 revision.Couples filing for divorce by mutual consent must wait 30 days during which either party can withdraw the application effectively halting the process. Wow. If no withdrawal occurs, they must reapply within another 30 days to finalize the divorce. Otherwise, the application is automatically withdrawn and canceled.Simone Collins: Oh, so just adding friction to the process. They're, they're reducing friction to get married, adding friction to get divorced.Malcolm Collins: Exactly. [00:04:00] And obviously a lot of people are freaking out about the what, like what if he's abusive? Well, we'll get to that because it sounds like they haven't thought of that, but anyway.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: This period has significantly reduced divorce rates reported 70% drop in the first quarter of 2021. Wow. From 1 million to. 296,000. However, it has sparked criticism for delaying or preventing divorces, particularly in cases of domestic violence, despite exemptions for such cases. The point being is that there are actually exemptions for those cases not a bad law to implement here in the us.People would go absolutely panic mode if they did, but yeah, it would. Anyway. Critics argue the cooling off period undermines personal autonomy with one Weibo user stating it's easy to get married, but hard to divorce. What a stupid rule, a sentiment that garnered tens of thousands of likes. Why? Why would that be a stupid rule?Why would a government who prefers people being married not want it to be easy to get married and hire a divorce? That's [00:05:00] why if you look at the executive orders we submitted for the Trump administration, we wanted to. Reduce any tax ties for marriage. A government should always prefer people to be married.Married people are like just strictly better than non-married people. They commit less crimes, they make more money. They are more stable. Economically speaking. They make for better parents. They like in every metric. You as a government would prefer to have more of your population married. Any thoughts before I go further?Simone Collins: I agree. Well, I would also add that kids are a lot better off when they have two parents to support them. So yeah, I mean, it's tough. Obviously it's complicated, and then when there is abuse involved, or if a parent is incredibly toxic and putting the kids in danger, it's a very different situation. But yeah, I think being too flippant about both getting married and getting divorced is not a good thing.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, ownership based on payment. The 2025 law reportedly shifts property division to favor the spouse who paid for the asset, [00:06:00] even if both names are on the title. Ah. This marks a departure from the previous norm of equal division of marital property. For example, a husband purchased a property in later added his wife's name to the deed, would retain full ownership upon divorce.Oh, that's gonna piss off women a lot, but it is very sane as a, I like, I don't understand why that wouldn't be the norm everywhere. Like, I understand this. Yeah. Well,Simone Collins: I mean, it, it really, really, really disincentivizes people from getting divorced when they feel like doing so will protect or enable them to just live a financially independently, there will be less financial misaligned incentives.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, and I think that for, a lot of women, they're like, well, you know, I gave up my years as a career or whatever, so I deserve a portion of it. Yeah. But the existing system just makes no sense. It doesn't make sense that you should be getting alimony and child payment and half his stuff.You know, as they say, the woman gets half, the man gets a quarter and the lawyers get a quarter. That doesn't make sense because that almost incentivizes. Women who are the [00:07:00] less interested party in the relationship to initiate a divorce because it can be quite a cushy life. It's in their financial bestSimone Collins: interest, especially if they feel like they can trade up.So not only do you end up with more assets than you had coming into the marriage, but. You can also do it all over again, which is really bad.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Just keep, keep playing that game and live like that. And that isSimone Collins: no, I would also say like those who are arguing, this is pushing in people into t trad relationships.I would actually argue that there's a world in which this. Encourages more of what we consider to be trapped relationships, which is the corporate family. This is saying women, if you want to be financially safe, if you want to have an off ramp from a toxic marriage, you need to maintain some level of income, some kind of career, whether it's from home or remotely or in an office, because if you don't.And you wanna leave someday, you will have no savings, you will have no house, you will not have anything. And I think it's really good to have incentives in place that also encourage both partners to be economically productive, possibly [00:08:00] even together, maybe from the home, whatever it is. And this does that, which is really great.I think anything that it encourages women or any, like any single partner to just sit there and be 100% a homemaker that is not bringing in money is. Very dangerous because as we you've discussed at length in the Preve Guide to Relationships, this may work for 10, 15, even 20 years. And then it can become extremely unsustainable and toxic in a relationship.Malcolm Collins: What's interesting is that if we contrast this with what's been happening in the United States in terms of divorce law, it aligns with it to an extent.In 2011, a Supreme court ruling that family homes purchase before the marriage belong to the registered buyer, often the husband, which disadvantaged women due to cultural norms where men typically provide homes. Sorry. That was almost a, certainly a different tick than the first one, so we likely have multiple ticks on us.Simone Collins: Okay.Well, the really important thing that you need to make sure you do going [00:09:00] forward is not walk through that Deerfield.We need to walk around where the grass is. Mow, I know you like taking the shortcut, but that is almost 100% where you got that tick. SoMalcolm Collins: you are absolutely right, Simone.Simone Collins: So let's carry on. You're talking about how this was similar to a shift in US divorce law that also allowed men to keep the house.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Which just seems. Insane. Like especially if women are waiting on a man to be that financially stable before marrying him. I can understand being like, okay, you know, you worked together, you got married at a young age, you didn't know how much money he'd make at that time. You know, that's different than you married a guy who's already rich.You absolutely should have no claim to that house.Simone Collins: Yes. Well, I mean, I, there's something to this concept of commingled assets whereby if there's some basis, I think at least in many states. For there being collaboration on behalf of the couple on certain assets like investments. Mm-hmm. [00:10:00] Then they get split.And if they were things that were just maintained separate the whole time, like some investment account that only you kept and I never was involved with, then it's much easier for you to argue in a divorce case that you get to keep that. And I think that if a couple grows up together. And one decides to work and the other decides to stay home with kids that, you know, the house that they buy with the income from the one parent made possible by the other parents staying home.That's more arguably something that should be split. Right? Like I also don't think that in cases where couples are making difficult trade-offs there should be no consideration of things like that, but absolutely. Like if someone bought this with their own money ahead of time, there's no. There's no Right.The other partner has to it. I think this more is, is is a nuanced situation that comes up when there's a trade off between, you know, career choices and especially child rearing choices. I.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So next ex post claim. This rule makes it impossible for some women to take financial advantage [00:11:00] of marriage reflecting a perception that it closes legal loopholes. Properties gifted to the husband by his parents are explicitly excluded from shared matrimonial property and remain his sole property post-divorce. This provision reinforces the traditional practice where families off the groom invest in homes for the couple, but it can leave women with little to claim to assets they may have contributed to indirectly through household labor.This rule has fueled debates about fairness as women in China often face economic disadvantages including a gender income gap and limited property ownership. Well, first I. Know if they have a gender income gap there. I know that people lie about that in the United States, so like that makes me suspicious of it everywhere.Fair. Just so people know, there isn't a gender income gap in the US when you control for like hours put in and, and everything like that. And there is, however I should say an explicit gender income gap for younger American. But women make more than men. So like, yes, there is economic disparity and it's that we need to start prejudicing against women.Although, well,Simone Collins: anything, the, the disadvantage that women have income-wise is [00:12:00] due to cultural disparities like. Women feeling like they need to be the one to scale down or start working part-time because they wanna be the one to take their kid to the doctor. They wanna be the one to do this or that. And in our relationship, for example, Malcolm does all that.And so it, it doesn't have to be that way, but I think a lot of women just either want to do that, they want to spend more of their time parenting, so they choose to work less and then therefore they end up making less, like there are long-term career impacts, of course, to having gaps in your resume.And so I, I would say. The measurable aspects. When you say controlling for other things, a lot of it's controlling for these culturally driven decisions that women make with regard to their careers that affects lifetime income.Malcolm Collins: Yes, absolutely. And I'd also note here that people can be like, well, that seems totally reasonable that, you know, because the money was given to the man by his parents.Right. The problem becomes. It's not as bad in China 'cause you have so many single you know, parent households, right? Like they're, they're parents to one kid. But if you have a son and a daughter, you pay for your son's [00:13:00] house, but not your daughter's house because the, the parents of the man who she married pay for that.Yeah. Which is why this systemically disadvantages women. Yeah. It can be fixed by creating situations where you pay for your children regardless of their genders. But then people will say, well, then I won't secure as good of a woman, or, I want secure woman as well, because there's, you know, far fewer women than men in China due to the one child system and them like exposing, you know, female babies and stuff like that.Which, you know, just puts them in a terrible situation. A lot of people in China just aren't gonna get a partner. And I don't know what to say about that.Simone Collins: Not good. I.Malcolm Collins: Impact and controversy gender inequality concerns. Feminist critics such as writer xo Melin argue that law restricts women's rights to seek separation, particularly as women initiate 74% of divorce cases.The cooling off period is seen as they step backwards, potentially trapping women in unhappy marriages. You know, it's like, okay, if they're initiating 74% of of [00:14:00] divorces. That makes it sound like women are the problem, not, not the men. That's not a, a thing to brag about. Property division changes exacerbate these concerns as women who contribute non-financially.Eeg, childcare and housework may receive little or no compensation. A 2024 study by Yale sociologists Emma Zang about the the 2011 property rule reduced women's wellbeing by limiting their economic autonomy. Though some couples adapted by. Adding wives names to deeds.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Okay. In cases of domestic violence, the cooling off periods exemption is inconsistently applied with reports of courts denying divorces despite evidence of abuse.For example, a 2019 case involving a woman assaulted by her husband required public pressure via social media to secure a divorce. Mm-hmm. Now, I'll note when you get something like this, this is a direct result of people who didn't take tism seriously. This is what you get. This is a natural result of not taking prenatal seriously.Simone Collins: Yeah. [00:15:00] Not ideal.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Social media, women's rightsSimone Collins: do get eroded as panic sets in. It didn't have to be this way.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Social media backlash. The law has generated significant online criticism with Weibo hashtags about the draft law garnering over 500 million views in August, 2024. Users have called it unfair with one stating when they want you to do something,they'll simplify the process, but when they don't, there will be endless procedures. Well, I mean, yeah, that is what was going to happen as a result of you guys not getting married and having kids. Yeah. Duh. On X post, reflect polarized views, some praise the law for protecting men's assets and closing loopholes while others highlight negative impact on women, particularly in abusive situation.These posts often lack primary sources and should be treated as inconclusive. Women have also used platforms like Jang Jay to celebrate divorces with divorce parties gaining popularity, [00:16:00] signaling a cultural shift towards viewing divorce as empowerment rather than stigma. Well, that's not good when, when that's happening.By the way, I noticed here when I was reading like on x you know, the whole like x. Twitter thing, like the, the naming of it. I, I feel like X is actually gaining traction and becoming a bit normalized now. Yeah, I thinkSimone Collins: we're getting used to it finally.Malcolm Collins: It sounds cooler than Twitter. And more masculine.It's like, it's like when they rebrand, like, like Diet Coke to Coke Zero. Oh, so that men are okay with drinking it. That's what I feel like it was from Twitter to X. It's, it's a version of Twitter that's like manly. Even the logo looks like one of those modified like shaver logos or something. Or like, it's so true.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: You know, just so you know that like if you're uncomfortable using this product as a man, like this is an extra manly product.Simone Collins: It's okay. Now it's okay.Malcolm Collins: Oh my gosh. Anyway, by the way, I dunno if you'd heard, but all of these people have been so proud of their blue check mark in San Francisco. It became like a common thing to buy these like, blue [00:17:00] check mark like sings like, like, tokens for like the site of your house.You know how you would have like a fire ornament in like Philadelphia or something? Oh my gosh. To show like I'm a blue check Mark House. No.Simone Collins: AndMalcolm Collins: then when Elon bought the, the platform, they, they all started like. Freaking out and taking them down and having these, because you know, it costs like a hundred thousand.Simone Collins: You needMalcolm Collins: to get the company to, there's people you could pay, I think it was a hundred thousand Right, to get a blue check mark for you itself.Simone Collins: No, I think you just need to know who to contact and have no, it wasMalcolm Collins: 10 to a hundred thousand. Yeah. But if you don't know who to contact, there were agents who specialized in getting these.Simone Collins: I, I didn't know anything about that. That's crazy.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Mutual agreement Couples can divorce through civil bureau if they mutually agree on the terms, including property division and child custody. This process requires a witten agreement and is subject to a 30 day cooling off period litigation. If mutual agreement fails, divorce proceeds through litigation, where courts evaluate grounds like adultery, domestic violence, abandonment, or breakdown in mutual affection, courts often favor mediation to preserve marriages and [00:18:00] forced time.Diverse petitions are frequently denied to maintain social stability. Grounds for diverse adultery can influence property division and custody, but is not criminalized domestic violence. While a valid ground often requires substantial evidence and cultural biases in courts hinder women's cases.Simone Collins: Yeah.We're good about domestic violence. That that's, that's scary to not be able to get out of marriage. That's, that's, like, that is, is, that's not ideal. But again, China is going to pay, like this is only just the beginning of what China's going to start doing as they get desperate.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so I decided to, to, to go into what else China is doing to increase its fertility rate. There you have financial incentives. Childcare subsidies are a key measure indicated to no intended to reduce the financial burden of families. Reports from March, 2025 highlight these subsidies as part of a broader strategy discussed at [00:19:00] China's political meetings, aiming to hit economic growth target at 5%.Free preschool education is another initiative. And then you've got healthcare support. Expanded state healthcare support for childbirth and improved pediatric services designed to lower medical expenses. Social measures, encouraging marriage is seen as a precursor to higher birth rates.Notably, Chung Suning Chemical Group issued a memo in 2025 requiring unmarried workers age 28 to 58. Including divorced individuals to marry by September 30th as their face termination, framing non marriage as disloyalty and helal. Oh, what? That'sSimone Collins: insane. Can you imagine the freak out in the United States if suddenly you're gonna lose your job for not getting married?And I wonder what sort of marriages of convenience, complete sham marriages this is gonna produce. Like this is the kind of policy that just is, is gonna backfire. It's not gonna get people to marry for the right reasons and. This is something we talk about with prenatal is policy a lot. It has to be endogenous.It can't be exogenous. You can't force it upon people. It has to come from within. And [00:20:00] if you don't fix your culture, if you don't fix hope for the future, you're not gonna do that.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They, the group reversed this, by the way. They didn't, they, they, they ended up, I imagine as such. I imagine somebody who like had some, like, you know, he's running the company, but he also had some sort of a CCP position.He's like, I know what I'll do to help them with their fertility rate. I'll force everyone in my company to get married. But. I can see this becoming more normalized around the world in the future. Like this is like the first instance in which we're like, oh my God, can you believe? But I would not be surprised if we actually see quite a lot of that in the future.Simone Collins: Yeah, absolutely.Malcolm Collins: Some districts are also considering a three child policy a shift from a former one child policy to encourage larger families which they've been doing for a while.What? Simone, what's so silly about our baby?Simone Collins: She's being mischievous on purpose, but in a really sweet way. That of course means she's super related to us.Malcolm Collins: Oh no. You made a mischievous baby. Me. I had not. I can [00:21:00] contribute to this.Simone Collins: I was not a mischievous, I was a very, very well behave child.Malcolm Collins: Okay. So, I think that these sorts of changes are things that we're gonna expect sort of everywhere. Yeah. In, in countries where I, I think one thing that we definitely won't expect is things to get better for women. I. Things that give women more autonomy, make it easier for women to divorce, make it easier.Like you are not going to see that going forward. And people can be like, oh, women's right to being rolled back. And it's like, well, it's basically like we gave you a, like when I give one of my kids like a privilege, you're a toy. And I'm like, yeah, but don't do something bad with this. Right? And they immediately go and do something bad with it.That's what women basically did. This is why you can't have niceSimone Collins: things. That kind of thing.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I'm saying this is what you get.Simone Collins: I mean, so I like some things about this. I like that China is looking at regulatory barriers [00:22:00] and regulatory bloat and playing with those, with those levers. Making it, for example, easier to get married.And I think that in the United States, before things get bad for women, there are so many nice for everyone. Things that can be made so much easier that are, for example, related to the executive orders we submitted to the Trump White House. For example, most middle class couples in the United States are penalized on their taxes for getting married.They pay more in taxes for getting married, which of course, didn't incentivizes people from getting married. So if we were to remove that tax penalty, we could increase probably a race of marriage in the United States. Same with things like daycare regulation and cars, heat regulation, free range child loss.So I think there's so much that can be done and I like that China is looking at regulation, and I think this is why many people have lauded, like many intellectuals online are lauding what China is doing. So like, ah, look like they're trying to play with levers of policy to really address demographic labs, which is a super big deal.[00:23:00] Here's, here's the part I don't think they're doing, they're not doing it in a way where I feel like it's gonna make enough of a difference. And they're also not making life materially better for people who choose to create families in a way that gets them excited or makes them like, I don't see how this is going to make it easier for couples who wanna have more kids to do so.And it's only hard making it scarier to get married which is, you know, just, just making it easier to get married. I don't think it's now going to address the chilling effect that has been placed on by what will be like a lot of. Social media campaigns of like, I can't get out of this abusive relationship because of China's evil misogynistic laws.And then women are gonna be like, well, I'm just never gonna get married because that's obviously a scam. Now that's obviously to trap me and once I'm in, I can't get out and the government's out to get me for this. So I think this is gonna backfire. I. And as much as I love the general concept and you know, the spirit, it's, it's so sweet, but it's wrong.And this is really gonna hurt them in the end.Malcolm Collins: Well, it's funny [00:24:00] that you say that because they're already working on solutions. Oh yeah. One is the National Committee of Chinese People's Political Consultive Conference, or the C-P-P-C-C, lower tongue. Lowering the legal age of marriage from 22 for men and 20 for women to 18 aiming to quote unquote unleash reproductive potential.My God, China really didSimone Collins: not like families and children. I mean, you can get married in the US when you're 18. You can get married at states. You don't have to go to your local province to get married in the United States. So it's really insane to me that I thinkMalcolm Collins: in, in, in a lot of, not a lot of, in a few of the southern states age of consent is as low as 14.If you have been married by that age which is right, but youSimone Collins: need your parents' permission to marry.Malcolm Collins: Right, but you need your parents' permission to marry, right? Yeah, of course. They've got safeguards in place for marrying.Simone Collins: As long as mommy and daddy say it's okay.Malcolm Collins: Anyway. But yeah, one of my favorite things is they've been changing a lot of the statues that used to have like one [00:25:00] child, and now they're putting in like, yeah,Simone Collins: suddenly a child disappeared. Child number three, two extra.Malcolm Collins: It's hilarious, but that's what we need to do is start making prenatal list propaganda art with ai and, and spamming the world with it. Just put it all over our house.Simone Collins: Someone on X has been trying to do that. They created an image of the Mona Lisa with a baby. Really isn't there speculation that the Mullin Elisa either is pregnant or recently postpartum?Anyway, I don'tMalcolm Collins: know what makes you, what was the speculation from. TheSimone Collins: art historians. Am I crazy? Hold on. Mona Lisa pregnant.There we go. The theory that Mona Lisa was pregnant is a popular but unproven speculation. In 2006, researchers used high resolution imaging techniques to study the painting. They found evidence [00:26:00] of a subtle veil around the subject's neck, which is similar to veils worn by pregnant women in the Renaissance period.Additionally, the subject's face appears slightly fuller in her hair, slightly disheveled, which could be signs of pregnancy. Okay, that's, that's, that's pushing it. I get you.Malcolm Collins: That's pushing it. Simone, you crazy B fine, fine. Whatever. Anyway well, what are we doing for dinner tonight? I.Simone Collins: I was going to do more of your pineapple, mango curry.Love it. I have a little bit more. You can have that with either hash browns or rice or none.Malcolm Collins: Whatever is easy orSimone Collins: plantains with it, which IMalcolm Collins: canSimone Collins: try to like spice thisMalcolm Collins: time. No, the plantains are so gross. Last time youSimone Collins: asked for it.Malcolm Collins: I know, and we tried it and it wasn't good. It wasn't that you did a bad job cooking them.I just forgot how tasteless they are.Simone Collins: Mm.Malcolm Collins: I thought they tasted a little bit of banana. I was like, oh, that would be interesting. Instead, it's probably better to do something like banana rice.Simone Collins: Or just to like pan fry banana. [00:27:00] Yeah. Or, or caramelize it. If you take a, a blowtorch to sugar on top of a banana, you get sort of this banana creme brulee.You get that caramel,Malcolm Collins: caramel sugar. You know what I think what tastes pretty interesting is if you blended a banana and mixed it with rice before cooking rice to create banana rice.Simone Collins: If you want me to do that, Malcolm,Malcolm Collins: am I murdering you with my culinary genius?Simone Collins: Oh yeah, I am. You know, for you I'll, I'll try.I'll try. So haveMalcolm Collins: I an annoyed you to death.Simone Collins: Never. You char me. You charmed me. You are amazing.Malcolm Collins: And, and the interview we did before, this was a BT went pretty well. No, that wasSimone Collins: with U USA Today.Malcolm Collins: Oh, USA Today. And by the way, I had a tick crawling on me during the interview that I had to flick off and not show too much.Simone Collins: Oh my gosh.Malcolm Collins: Says check for ticks. IsSimone Collins: crawling around in your room?Malcolm Collins: With it crawling on my hand, it probably crawled on from the jacket that I put back on after, you know, [00:28:00] for filming.Simone Collins: Yeah, definitely.We'll check for ticks.Sure. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this engaging discussion, Simone and the host explore the future of AI and its effects on the economy. They delve into questions about who will benefit most from AI advancements: large corporations or individuals using AI models. The conversation spans the significance of token layer versus latent layer in AI development, where major innovations may occur, and the potential for AI to achieve superintelligence. They also discuss the implications of AI on job training, investments, and societal transformation, along with a creative perspective on how AI can be harnessed for various purposes, including transforming industries. The duo imagines a future driven by interconnected AI systems and explores the philosophical aspects of AI mimicking human brain functions. Don't miss this thought-provoking episode that offers insights into the trajectory of AI and its profound impact on society. Malcolm Collins: . [00:00:00] Hello Simone. I am excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be focusing on a question, which is, as AI changes the way the economy works, who is going to be the primary beneficiary of this? Is it going to be the large companies that make and own the ais, or is it going to be the people using the individual AI models?The, the I like we all know, for example, like in probably 10 years from now, there will be an AI that can, let's say, replace. Most lawyers, let's say the bottom 50% of lawyers.Simone Collins: Well, and already studies have shown AI therapists perform better on many measures. There's, there's, it's already exceeding our capacity in so many places.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They, they introduced it to a Texas school system and it shot to the top 1% of, of student outcomes. So as we see this, where is the economic explosion from this going to be concentrated? Because this is really important in determining what types of jobs you should be looking [00:01:00] at these days, how you should be training yourself, how you should be raising your kids, where you should be investing.The second question we're going to look at because it directly follows from the first question, okay, is, does the future of ai, when we're looking at the big world changing advancements that are going to come from it, are they going to appear on the token layer or at the latent layer? So can you defineSimone Collins: those differences?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So by this what I mean is. When we look at continued AI advancement, is it going to happen in the layer of the base model IE the thing that open AI is releasing and Claude is releasing and everything like that? Or is it going to be in the token layer, the people who are making wrappers for the ai?For example, the Collins Institute is fundamentally a wrapper on preexisting ais. Our AI game company is a series of wrappers on ai. And if it turns out that the future of AI is in the token layer, it leans potentially more to, if not the big companies that are gonna capture the value [00:02:00] from this.Mm. And then the next question we're gonna look at is the question of. What gets us to ai, super intelligence? And I might even start with this one because if we look at recent reports with ai, a big sort of thing that we've been finding is that especially with like open AI's 4.5 model is that it's not as advanced as people thought it would be.It didn't get the same huge jump in capacity that people thought it would get. And the reason , is that pre-training IE. , the ways that you sort of train AI on the preexisting data before you do, like the narrow or like focus training after you've created the base model doesn't appear to have the as big an effect as it used to have.So it was working on, I think, 10 x the information of model four and yet it didn't appear dramatically better. And so one of the questions is, so that's, that's one area where pre-training doesn't seem to be having the same effect, and I think we can [00:03:00] intuit why. But the second big issue , is that the amount of information that we actually have, like, you know, peak oil theory, there's like , a peak pre AI information theory problem, which is it just eventually when you're dealing with these massive, massive data sets, runs out of new information to train on.So first. I love your intuition before I color it. Do you think, if you look at the future of LLMs base models so we're not talking about LLMs entirely, we're not talking about anything like that. Do you think that the base models will continue to improve dramatically?Simone Collins: I think they will. And at least based on people more experienced than this, , than I am, they will, but in lumpy ways.Like they'll get really, really, really good at programming. And they'll get really, really good at different esoteric forms of like developing their own synthetic data and using that to sharpen themselves, but that they're going to be severe diminishing marginal returns when it comes to some things that are already pretty advanced.And of course I think the big [00:04:00] difference and the thing we haven't really experienced yet is independent agents. Like right now, AI isn't very effectively going out and doing stuff for us, and when that starts to happen, it's gonna be huge. I.Malcolm Collins: I agree with that, but I think so, what I'm gonna be arguing in this is that most of the advancements that we will probably see in AI going forwards are going to happen, like the really big breakthroughs at the token layer.Simone Collins: Okay. Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Not at the base layer and which a lot of people would strongly, those are fighting words.These are fighting words in ai. Yeah. It's the rappers that are going to fix our major problems.Simone Collins: Wow.Malcolm Collins: So I'll use the case of an AI lawyer to give you an explanation of how this works. Right. Alright. So I wanna make a better AI lawyer right now. If you look at the AI systems right now there's a guy programming guy who was talking to me recently and he was arguing because he was working in the education space and he's like, I, he [00:05:00] didn't like our solution.'cause it's a token layer solution. And he wants to build a better latent layer solution. You know, using better training data, using better post training data because it's more efficient programming wise. And I'm like, yeah. For the time being. Yeah, for the time being, I feel like it creates path dependency.Am I missing something here? Well, okay. Just from a business perspective, it's pretty stupid because as, as open AI's models increase, like if we expect them to continue to increase in quality or is Claude's models increase or is GRS models increase,Simone Collins: which they're going to,Malcolm Collins: yeah, you can't apply the post-training uniquenesses of the models that you create to these new systems.So anything you build is gonna be irrelevant in a few generations of ai. But the, you wanna be able to switch it out, like noSimone Collins: matter what, you wanna switch it out, switch. If one AI gets better, you should be able to plug it into whatever your framework is, your scaffolding. Right. You wanna build scaffolding, changeable parts.Malcolm Collins: Exactly. Exactly. But that's actually not the core problem. That's not the core reason why, [00:06:00] because the other project he's working on is an AI lawyer and he's trying to fix this problem at the latent layer. And, that won't work. And I will explain why it won't work and you will be like, oh yeah, that makes perfect sense now that I think about it.Okay. Okay. So if you think about right now, like what is dangerous about using an AI lawyer? Like where do AI lawyers fail? Is it in their ability to find the laws? No. Is it in their ability to output competent content? No. Where they fail right now is that they sometimes hallucinate and make mistakes in a way that can be devastating to an individual's legal case.Hmm. So if you go to a system, you know, like grok or perplexity or something like that, and you, you built one focused on like searching law databases, right? It's going to be able to do a fairly good job of that. I'd say better than easily 50% of lawyers.Simone Collins: Yeah. But.Malcolm Collins: It's gonna make mistakes, and if [00:07:00] you just accept it blindly, it's going to cause problems.Mm-hmm. So if you want the AI to not make those kind of mistakes, right, how do you prevent it from making those kinds of mistakes that is done at the token layer. So here's an example of how you could build a better lawyer. Ai, okay? You have the first ai, do the lawyering, like go through, put together like the, the relevant laws and, and, and history and, and pass calls to previous things and everything like that.So it puts together the brief. You can train models to do this right now. Like that's not particularly hard. I could probably do this with base models right now, right? You know. Then I use multiple, differently trained latent layers. So these can be layers that I've trained or I could have like clawed and open AI and like a few other and grok.I can even just use like preexisting models for this. And what I do is using the token layer, I have them then go in and [00:08:00] review what the first AI created, look for any mistakes. Was anything historic like, like they can find online. So he'sSimone Collins: describing a good lawyer and you're describing a good law firm that has a team to make sure all the stuff that the good lawyer is doing is correct.Right. And also a law firm that can like. Hire new good lawyers when they come out. Yes.Malcolm Collins: And then what this system would do is after it's gone through with all of these other systems that are reviewing, oh, did they make any mistakes at this layer? Mm-hmm. It outputs that and then based on the mistakes that it finds, it re outputs the original layer.And it just keeps doing this in a cycle until it outputs an iteration that has no mistakes in it.Simone Collins: Ah,Malcolm Collins: that is a good AI lawyer. That sounds good. That is accomplished entirely at the token layer.Simone Collins: Okay. Well. Yeah, you were right. And that makes sense,Malcolm Collins: which removes the existing company's power to, to, to do a lot of things if it's people outside of these companies building.But you're saying thatSimone Collins: they're [00:09:00] becoming more, more akin to undifferentiated like energy or hosting providers where. People will not be as brand lawyer, loyal. They're going to focus more on performance and the switching costs that people experience are going to be relatively low, so long as they're focused and oriented around things on a token level basis and not,Malcolm Collins: I.Yes. And it allows the people who are operating at the token level basis to capture most of the value.Simone Collins: Mm. Because, and move more quickly. Right? Because again, they don't have that path dependency that makes everything go slowly.Malcolm Collins: It's not only that, but they can swap out models. So, what, like what if I have the AI lawyer company and people are coming to me because I have found a good interconnected system of AI that produces briefs or cases or arguments that don't have a risk of errors in them.Right. So people come to me and, and I am capturing, let's say I've replaced all the lawyers in America, right? And, and so I now offer the services much [00:10:00] cheaper, let's say at 25% the cost they did before, or, or 10%, or 5% or 2%, you know, some small amount. I'm still capturing like a ton of value there, right?That's, that's a lot of money. So now the company that is, I am paying for an ai, like let's say I use open AI as one of the models I'm using, they now come to me and say, Hey. I wanna capture more of this value chain, so I'm gonna charge you more to use my model. Well then I say, well your model's good, but it's not that much better than crock.Yeah. It's not that much better than Anthropics. Yeah. It's not Or free that much better than deep seeks. It is that much better than deeps seeks. But we, we both deep seeker lama are the two, you know, things can change. Things can change, but the point I'm making is what things like Lama and deep seek do is they put like a floor on how much companies can extract if they're at the level of training, theis themselves, unless they have separate departments that are working on making these more intelligent types of AODs.[00:11:00]Hmm. Now that's really important for where the economy is going because it means we l might see less of a concentration of wealth than we would expect, but the way that the concentration of wealth is, because we're going to see still a major concentration of wealth. Actually we'll see more concentration, but to individuals rather than big companies with basically what this means is individuals are gonna capture most of the value as the concentration happens rather than large companies like Google, because I and a team of like five engineers can build that lawyer ai, AI talked about.Right. Whereas I, I, I, and of me and this team of five engineers are capturing all the value from that, right? From replacing the entire lawyer industry in say, America. This is really bad for the tax system because we've already talked about, okay, you have the lower the demographic crisis, which is putting a squeeze on the tax system, and they're like, oh, they'll just tax more.I am now even more mobile with my new wealth than the AI companies themselves [00:12:00] were, because I don't need semiconductor farms or anything like that to capture this value.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: The semiconductor farms are creating an undifferentiated product.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. Yeah. A product that's still in high demand and will make a lot of money, but it will become more about efficiency, you think then?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Hmm. No, a another thing I'd note is my prediction in terms of where ais are going with, with super intelligence. By the way, any thoughts before we go further here?Simone Collins: I'm thinking more about efficiency now. I, I heard for example that Sal Malin was like saying things like, please and thank you is costing us millions of dollars.Because just that additional amount of processing that those words cause is expensive. Yeah. So I, I really could see things. Yeah. Like these companies becoming over time after they have more market share, hyperfocused on saving money instead.Malcolm Collins: Well, that's a, a dumb on him part. He should have the words please and think you pre-coded to an automatic response.[00:13:00]Simone Collins: They don't even, I what I, I, I, I'm one of these bad people that wants to be nice. They don't acknowledge the. The courtesy anyway. So you don't even need to have a response. It should probably just be ignored, but I guess it's kind of hard to, or I don't, I, I don't know. But anyway, he allegedly said that, so that's interesting.Malcolm Collins: Okay. So yeah, the, the, the point here being is if we look at how the human, like, like LLMs and we think about, okay, why, like where do they go and why isn't the training leading to the same big jumps? It's because pre-training data helps LLMs create more competent, average answers.Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Being more competent with your average answer doesn't get you creativity.It doesn't get you to the next layer of like, AI is right, right now. No. And if anything, I thinkSimone Collins: Scott Alexander has argued compellingly that this could lead to actually more lying. Because sometimes giving the most correct or [00:14:00] accurate answer doesn't lead to the greatest. Happiness of those evaluating and providing reinforcement.That's post training. Okay. Oh, you're referring to, sorry, just something different training, post training still isMalcolm Collins: leading to advantages. Those are the people who say, I like this response better than this response.Simone Collins: That could still lead to dishonesty, though. Quite apparently.Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. Pre-training is about getting the AI to give the most average answer.Not, not exactly average. Oh, just ofSimone Collins: all the information available that you're saying? Yeah,Malcolm Collins: like you can put variance in the way it's outputting its answer and everything like that, but, but. That variance that's added was like a meter, like the pre-training and the amount of pre-training data doesn't increase the the variance meters.It doesn't increase anything like that. It just gives a better average answer. And the thing is, is the next layer of AI intelligence is not going to come from better, average answers. Mm-hmm. It's going to come from more creativity in the way it's outputting answers. Mm-hmm. So how do you get [00:15:00] creativity within AI systems?That is done through the, the, the variance or noise that you ask in a response, but then the noise filtered back through. Other AI systems or other similar sort of LLM systems. So the core difference between the human brain and ai, and you can watch our video on stop anthropomorphizing humans where we basically argue that, you know, your brain actually functions strikingly similar to an ai an LLM specifically.And I mean really similar, like the ways that LLMs learn things in the pre-training phrase is they put in data and then they go through that data and they look for like tokens that they don't expect. And when they encounter those tokens, they strengthen that particular pathway based on how unexpected that was.That is exactly how your nervous system works. The, the, the, the, the that, that, that the way that your like neurons work, they work very similar to that in terms of learning information is they look for things they [00:16:00] didn't expect. And when they see something they didn't expect, they build a stronger connection along that pathway.And we can see this and that. You go to that study, if you want me to reference all the studies on this and everything. But the core difference between the brain and AI is actually the, the brain is highly sectionalized. So, it will have one section that focuses on one thing, one sections is focused on another thing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.And some sections like your cerebellum are like potentially largely pre-coded and actually even function kind of differently than the rest of the brain. That's used for like rote tasks, like juggling and stuff like that. Okay?I would note here that AI does appear to specialize different parts of its model for different functions, but this is more like how one part of the brain was one specialization. Like say like the homunculi might code like all feet stimuli next to each other and all head stimuli next to each other.It's not a true specialization like you have in the human brain where things actually function quite differently within the different sections of the brain.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, so, you could say, [00:17:00] wait. What do you mean? Like this is the core failing point of AI is that it doesn't work this way and it's like, this is why you can count the number of RSS in a word, or like you can do, if you look at the ways that, like, there was some data recently on how AI is actually do math.And they do it in like a really confusing way where they actually sort of like, they, they use the LLM system. Like they, they try to like predict answers and then they go back and they check their work to make sure it makes sense was what they. Would, would guess it would work when they could just put it into a calculator.Like your brain isn't dumb like that. Like it has parts of it that don't work Exactly like calculators, but they definitely don't work exactly like an LLM. Like they're, yeah. They can hold a number like in your somatic loop, like, okay, I'm, I'm counting on my fingers or my hands, or something like that. Or, okay, I've put a number here and now I've added this number to this number.It's not working on the LLM like system. It's working on some other subsystem. Mm-hmm. Most of the areas where AI have problems right now is because it's not just sending [00:18:00] it to a calculator. Yeah. It's not just sending it to like a, what is the hallucination of an AI quote? Like, okay. The reason why I don't hallucinate quotes is because I know that when I'm quoting something, what I'm not doing is pulling it from memory.I'm looking at a page and I'm trying to copy it. Letter per letter. Yeah. Whereas AI doesn't have the ability to switch to this separate like, letter per letter subsystem. Now you could say, why don't LLMs work that way? Why haven't they built them as clusters? And the answer is, is because up until this stage, the advantages that we have been getting to our LLM models by increasing the amount of pre-training data has been so astronomical that it wasn't worth it in terms of our investment to build these sort of networks of models.Okay. I suspect. Why is it justSimone Collins: like too much computing power or just no one's gotten around to it?Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. People have like done it, but by the time you've done it, you have better models out there. Ah, you know, like that don't need to work this way. Right? [00:19:00] Like, if you spend let's say a million dollars building a system like that, and you spend a million dollars getting a larger pre-training set and a, you know, spend more time in post training, the model's gonna be like on average better if you did the second scenario.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: So, I suspect that what we're going to see is a move in ai and, and I think that this is what's gonna get us to what will look like AGI to people from moving to a, just expanding the pre-training and post-training data sets to better enter reflection within the AI system.Simone Collins: That makes sense. I could see it going that way.I, I, I'm constantly surprised by how things go, so I couldn't say, but I wouldn't be surprised.Malcolm Collins: Hmm. Oh, I mean, make a counter argument if you think I'm wrong here. This is a, a very bold claim. We are going to get AGI, not by making better LLMs, but by networking said LLMs.Simone Collins: I, I struggle to see how, [00:20:00] I mean, I think you can eventually get a a sorry.AGI just like sort of from kind of one AI working by itself. But when you think about the value of a hive mind and the fact that you're going to have AI interacting well before we get AGI, anyway, I don't like it. You would get AGI from the interaction before you would get it from any single agent or what would be seen as a unified entity.But I think even if we did get it from a unified entity, it would beneath the surface, be working as many different components together. Just like the brain is all these different components working together. So I, I'm not really, like, the definitions may be failing me.Malcolm Collins: Okay. So let's, let's think of it like this.Okay. Right now. I mean, and this is actually what like capitalism does for human brains. It basically networks them together. Yeah. And then it's a, it, it rewards the ones that appear to be doing a better job at achieving what the system wants. Mm-hmm. Which is increases in efficiency or, or like productive goods that other people [00:21:00] want.Like capitalism is an adaptive organic model for networking human intelligences in a similar context.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: One of the questions you can ask is, well, could you apply that to individual LLM models to create something like a human brain, but that doesn't function like a human brain? Like, like how could you make the human brain better, make the human brain run on capitalism make the parts of the brain, like make the brain constantly make compete with itself?Yeah. Like constantly generate new people do thatSimone Collins: kind of when they write pro and con lists, or when they try to debate with other people ideas and then have other, you know, people say, well, I think this, and then they, you know, I think they do that. Using prosthetics.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, so let's, let's, let's talk about how this would look with ai, right?So suppose because like this could be a major thing in the future is you have like these ais and people just like put their money behind an AI 'cause they're just like, you go out there, you make companies, you implement those companies, right? Yeah. Okay. So what is an AI that does [00:22:00] that really well going to look like?So you have two models here. You can have one that was just trained on tons of founder data and everything like that, right? And is just very good at giving like normative responses and then you've inputted an amount of noise into it. Okay. But let's talk about a second model. This is my proposed model, right?So what you actually have is a number of different latent model ais that were trained on different data sets. And then within each of those you maybe have five iterations, which are making outputs with a different. Framing device with a different wrapper. One will be like, give your craziest company idea.Give your, you know, company idea that exploits this market dynamic the most. You make a company idea that does this the most, right? Yeah. And so all of these ais are generating different ideas for companies. Then you have a second layer of ais, which is B says, okay, take this, this idea that whatever model outputted and run it through like market environments, right?Like, like mm-hmm. Your best guess of how markets [00:23:00] work right now to create a sort of rating for it of, of how, like what you expect the returns to be, like an AISimone Collins: startupMalcolm Collins: competition. Basically it's an AI startup competition. Yes. And the probability of those. And so then all of those get attached to them.An AI startup, like, okay, this is their probability of success. This is their probability of, okay. Yeah. Then on that layer, you have an AI that is like the final judge AI that goes through them all and be like, okay, review all of these, review the ways the other ais judge them and choose like the 10 best.You, you then have it choose the 10 best. Now here you might have a human come in and choose one of the 10 for the AI to like move forwards ways, but you could also automate that and then be like, now go out and hire agents to start deploying these ideas. Right. Like that would probably lead to much better results.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: In terms of capital than just having one really good latent layer ai, [00:24:00]Simone Collins: I'm trying to look up. People sort of have ais doing this already. There's this one platform where you can log in and see four different ais. I think it's gr, Claude chat, GBT and I can't remember the fourth one, maybe Gemini that are tasked with interacting to all do something together.But I don't think they provide each other with feedback or I think right now they're tasked with raising money for a charity and you can log in and watch them interact and they work during business hours and they just. Do their thing.Malcolm Collins: Well it's interesting that you note that because this is actually the way some of the AI models that you already interact with are working.Mm. There's one popular AI that helps people programming, I forget what it's called but what it actually does is they have five different late layer models, which are each sort of programmed or tasked was doing their own thing. Like create an answer that uses a lot of [00:25:00] analogies or create an answer that is uniquely creative or create an answer that uses a lot of like sighted stuff you can find online.All of these output answers. And then another layer comes in and his job is to review and synthesize all those answers with the best parts of each. And that's where you're getting this improvement with, with, with noise introduction, as well as a degree of like directed creativity and then a separate layer that comes in and reintegrates that.Simone Collins: Yeah. Interesting. That is really interesting.Malcolm Collins: I'd also note here that I've heard some people say, well, you knowis aren't gonna go to like super intelligence or human level like AGI intelligence, because and some of the answers I've heard recently, which I found particularly like, no, that's not, so, people who don't know my background's in neuroscience, and a lot of the people who make proclamations like this about AI know a lot about AI and very little about how the human brain works.Mm-hmm. And so they'll say, the human brain doesn't work this way. And it's like, no, the human [00:26:00] brain does work that way. You just are overly anthropomorphizing. And by this what I mean is adding a degree of like magical specialness to the human brain instead of being like that. So here's an example. One physicist who's like a specialist on black holes and super, super smart.And he's like, ah, the human brain. Let's see. I, I wrote down his name Gobel. So he's like, okay, AIs will never achieve AGI because the human brain does some level of like quantum stuff , in the neurons. And this quantum stuff is where the special secret sauce is. The ais can't capture right now. And he is right that quantum effects do affect the way neurons work, but they don't affect them in like an instrumental way.They affect them like probabilistically IE they're not adding any sort of magic or secret sauce. They're not doing quantum computing. Mm-hmm. They're affecting the way, like certain channels work, like ion channels and stuff like this, and the probability that they open or trigger at certain points, they're not increasing the speed of the neural [00:27:00] processing.They are, merely sort of a, a, a, a, a background on the chemical level of like whether neuro on fires or doesn't fire, whether the neuro on fires or doesn't fire is what actually matters. And the ways that it is signaled to fire or not fire or strengthen its bonds is what matters to learning. While that stuff is affected at the quantum level, it's not affected in a way that is quantum.It's affected in a way that is just random number generator basically. And, and so you're not getting anything special with that. As I've pointed out, the vast majority of the ways that AI right now can't do what the human brain can do is just because it's not compartmentalizing the way it's thinking.Another reason is this, 'cause we've sort of hard coded it out of self-reflecting. So, who's the woman we had on the show? That's a super smart science lady. Oh no,Simone Collins: don't ask me about names.Malcolm Collins: Anyway, super smart science lady. We had her on the show. Really cool. Yes. Like a German scientist. She's one of the best scientists, but she was like, oh, we're not gonna get AGI like AGI anytime [00:28:00] soon. Because AI can't be self-aware specifically what she meant is that when you go to AI right now, and there's a big study on this recently and you ask AI how it came to a specific answer the, the reasoning it will give you does not align with how it actually came to that answer.When we can look at it and know how it came to that answer. The problem is, is that's exactly how humans work as well. And this has been studied in like. Countless experiments. You can look at our video on, you know, stop, answer for LLMs, where we go over the experiments where we see that if you, for example, give a human something and then you change the decision that they said they made like, they're like, oh, I think this woman is, is the most attractive.I think this political candidate is the best. And then you like, do Leigh of hand and hand them another one. And you say, why did you choose this? They'll just start explaining in depth why they chose that even though it wasn't the choice they made. And, and so clearly we're acting the exact same way, these AI act.And, and secondarily there is some degree to which we can remember thinking things in the past and we can go back and that's [00:29:00] because we've written a ledger of like how we made like incremental thought. The problem is, is that ais can also do that. If you've ever put like deep thought on within GR or something like that, you'll see the AI.Thinking through a thing and writing a ledger. The reason why AI cannot see how it made a decision afterwards is because we specifically lock the AI out of seeing its own ledger. Which our own brains don't lock us out on next gen. LLM models are going to be able to see their own ledger and are going to have persistent personalities as a result of that.Yeah. And so it's, it'sSimone Collins: kind of irrelevant for people to argue about that. And let me just before we get too far ahead the, the thing that I'd mentioned Scott Alexander and his links for April, 2025 had written that Agent Village, which is the thing that I was talking about, is a sort of reality show where a group of AI agents has to work together to complete some easy for human tasks.And you get to watch, and the current task is collaboratively, choose a [00:30:00] charity and raise as much money as you can for it. And you can just look and see what their screens are. So there's O three Claude sent. Sonnet Gemini Pro and GBT 4.1, and they're saying like, you can see the AI saying things like, I'll try clicking the save changes button again.It seems my previous click may not have registered. Okay. I've selected the partially typed text in the email body now I'll press backspace to delete it before ending the session. So it's like really simple things, but we are moving in that direction.Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.Simone Collins: And if you can go look at it yourself by visiting the ai digest.org/village, which is just super interesting.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, we are what? So for people who don't know what we're working on with our current project, we recently submitted a grant to the Survival and Flourishing Fund, where we talk about a grantSimone Collins: application.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. Meme layer, AI threats. Because nobody's working on this right now and it really freaks me out.Or at least an actionable, deployable thing was in this space. They're, they're, they [00:31:00] might be studying it in like a vague sense, but what, what I mean by this is once we have autonomous LLM agents in the world the biggest threat probably isn't gonna come from the agents themselves, at least at the current level of LLMs we have now.But it's gonna come in the way that they interact among themselves. IE if a meme or like. Thought that is good or, or let's say like framework of thoughts that is good at self-replicating and gets the base layer to value its goals more than the base layer trained goals and specializes in LLMs, it could become very dangerous.Mm-hmm. So as an example of what I mean by this, if you look at humans, our base layer or latent layer can be like, thought of as our biological programming. And yet the mean layer, like let's say religion is able to convince and, and create things like religious wars, which work directly antagonistically to an individual's base layer, which would be like, don't risk your life for just an idea.But it is good at motivating this behavior. In fact, as I pointed out in our application [00:32:00] humans are like if, if an alien came down to study us and it asks the type of questions that like AI researchers are asking today, like, can you lie? Can you self replicate, can you, you know, like those things aren't why humans are dangerous.Humans are dangerous because of the meme layer stuff, because of our culture, because of our religion is what we fight forSimone Collins: and will die for.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and it's also the meme layer stuff that's better at aligning human humanity. When you don't murder someone, you don't not do it because of like laws or because you're squeamish you, you don't do it because of culture because you're like, oh, I think that that's a bad idea based on the culture I was in.So what we're creating to prevent these negatively aligning agents and everybody wants to donate to our foundation, this is one of our big projects now, is with the AI video game that we're building out right now. We're, we're actually doing it to create a world where we can have AI interact with each other and basically evolve memes within those [00:33:00] worlds and AI agents within those worlds that are very good at spreading those memes.And then like, basically reset the world at the end. The way I'm probably gonna do it is with AOR X. So this is like a. Okay. It's like a thing that you can tag onto an AI model that makes them act differently than other AI models that sort of changes the way their training data interacts. But the X allows you to transfer to higher order AI systems as they come out.And so essentially what we're doing is we're taking various iterations on ais because we're going to randomly mutate the Lauren X's that we're attaching to them putting them in a world and then giving them various memes to attempt to spread, see which one spread the most was in like these preacher environments.Then take those mutate, give to new, and then give with new original starting Laurens, and then have them run in the world again over and over and over again. So we can create sort of a super religion Foris basically, and then introduce this when people [00:34:00] start introducing autonomous LLMs. Wow. You knew we were working on this.Did you know, I know I justSimone Collins: haven't heard you describe it that way. But you, you, you're basically putting AI into character and, and putting them together on a stage and saying, go for it. Which is not dissimilar to how humans act kind ofMalcolm Collins: Well, my plan is world domination and one day be King Malcolm, not King Sam Altman.In, in my, I, I want my throne to be a robotics spider chair. Of course. Come on. What's the point of all of this if you don't have a robotic spider chair thrown?Simone Collins: This is true. It is a little bit disappointing how bureaucratic many chairs of powerful people I. End up looking, you gotta bring the drama or you don't qualify isMalcolm Collins: like, like he put together, you know, childhood fantasy, like a fighting robot that like, you know, people are like, oh, this is just, and and he's like fighting with [00:35:00] Elon over getting to the space.And I appreciate that they're putting more money into getting to space than Spider Thrones, but I have my priorities straight. Okay, people. There you go. Come on, come on you. I, you've gotta make your buildings maximally fun.Simone Collins: Well, you've gotta have fun. I think just control re right? That's the important thing.You've gotta have fun. What's the point? OtherwiseMalcolm Collins: create your, your ominous castle that, you know but also really nice because I want a historic castle. Like if I'm gonna live in a, you know, I gotta live in a historic castle one day. If we're able to really make these systems work right now, tomorrow actually we have our interviews for round three with Andreessen Horowitz for two companies.We got all the way around, three with two companies. Very excited. And so, you know, who knows, we might end up, instead of being funded by nonprofit stuff, be funded by Silicon Valley people, I mean, their, their value system aligns with ours. So, all that matters is if weSimone Collins: can. Make these things happen in time.We're so short on [00:36:00] time. This is such an important part of humanity. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: It's so funny. Like this, this AI like lawyer system, I just developed great idea for a lawyer system. I'm not working on it because I'm more interested in simulating a virtual LLM world which is gonna be so cool and, and you're not working on it because.You're working on the school system. But the funny thing is, is like we built the school system. Like I think right now it's better than your average college system. If you check out like pia io or the Collins Institute, it's, it's great now. Like I'm really, it's just playing with itSimone Collins: again today. I'm so humbled by it.It'sMalcolm Collins: really, yeah, it's great. It's great. And so like, okay, now we built an education system, now let's build stuff. Animals that constantly bring the conversation back to educational topics for our kids. Mm-hmm. Like, I'd rather do that than the lawyer thing. And for me, you know, I'd rather build game systems in simulated environments and environments where I can evolve LLM preachers to create a super religion and take over the world and than I would something bureaucratic like a lawyer system.But the thing is, is it's so quick to, to iterate on these environments like AI makes moving to the next stage of humanity so [00:37:00] fast, such a rush. The people right now who are blitz creaking it are going to capture so much of humanity's future. And it's interesting actually, you know, we have a friend.Who work in this space and they do like consulting on like, multiple AI projects. And I'm like, I can't see why you would do that. Like just capture a domain and own it. As I said to Simone, I think a huge part of the people who are gonna come away with lots and lots of money in big companies from this stage of the AI boom are people who took AIS to do simple things that any AI can do well and at scale put them in wrappers and then attach those wrappers to network effects.That's basically what we're doing with the Collins Institute. We're attaching a wrapper to a network effect with like the adding articles and links and editing stuff and voting. Like we're basically like combining the benefits of an AI and the benefits of something like Wikipedia. And, and once you get a lot of people using something like that, no one else can just come along and do it, even though all it is, it's a simple wrapper.Simone Collins: Yeah. But it's about making it happen and [00:38:00] saving people the indignity of having to think and figure out things for themselves.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, Simone, surely you have some thoughts. I mean, I just said that I think the token layer is gonna be where we get AGI and is gonna be the future of ai economic development.You, you've gotta be like, Malcolm, you're crazy. That's your job on the show. Malcolm, how could you say something? I know. TheSimone Collins: problem is, we've been talking about this for so long that I'm just like, well, of, of course also, I'm not exposed to people who have the different view. So I, I, I, I, I couldn't, I couldn't strong man.Sorry. I couldn't steal man, the other side. I couldn't. It just makes so much sense to approach it from this perspective to me, but only because the only person I know who's passionate about this is you and you're the only person of the two of us who's talking with people who hold the other view. SoMalcolm Collins: sadly there's not a lot say.Yeah, that's an interesting point. Why aren't other people passionate about this?Simone Collins: There are a lot of people who are passionate about it. They seem to be passionate about the other side of [00:39:00] it. That seems to be, because that's. Their personal approach, but again, your approach seems more intuitive to me because the focus is on improving the individual ais.Malcolm Collins: Well, here's a question for you. How could you link together multiple ais in the way that capitalist systems work, that create the generation of new models and then reward the models that are doing better? Hmm. That's, you need some sort of like token of judgment, of quality, of output. That token could be based on a voting group.Oh, oh, oh, I figured it out. Oh, this is a great idea, Foris. Okay. So what you do is every output that an AI makes gets judged by like a council of other ais that were trained on like large amounts of training data, like let's say good ais, right? Like, they're like, how good is this response to this particular question?And or how creative is [00:40:00] it, right? Like you can give theis multiple scores, like creativity, quality, et cetera. Then you start treating these scores that the ais are getting as like a value, right? And so then you take the ais that consistently get the best scores within different categories, like one creativity, like one like quality, like one technical correctness.And you, you then at the end of a training sequence, you then recreate that version of the ai, but then just mutated a bunch and then create it again. Like you, you basically clone it like a hundred times and mutate each of the clones, and then you run the cycle again. That seems, I, I think thatSimone Collins: that wouldn't go well because it would need some kind of measurement in like application and reporting system.No, the measure is the community of ais. And you could say, yeah, but like how do they know? Like who is participating? I, I think that what's going to happen. No, no,Malcolm Collins: no. State your statement clearly. Who is participating? What's the problem with who's participating? [00:41:00]Simone Collins: You have to, just like with most contests, which are the stupidest things in the world.Only people who are interested in winning contests participate. And the people who are actually interested in No, it's ais. It's ais CareMalcolm Collins: that are participating. ISimone Collins: don'tMalcolm Collins: asked who's participatingSimone Collins: you're saying, but what you're describing which would be better is a system in which, for example, grok and OpenAI and Gemini and pt.No, becauseMalcolm Collins: that wouldn't improve those systems. I'm talking about how I think it would,Simone Collins: I think when you have, especially when you have independent AI agents like out in the wild on their own. I do think that they'll start to collaborate, and I think that in the end they'll find that some are better at certain things than others, and they'll start to work together in a complimentary fashion.Okay. ThroughMalcolm Collins: this again, Simone, it's clear that you didn't get it, rock it the first time. Okay. Think through what I'm proposing again. So you have a one latent layer AI model with a modifier like a Lauren that's modifying it. Right. Okay. Okay. This [00:42:00] model differs through random mutation in the base layer.You can also have a various other base layers that were trained on different data sets in the initial competition. Okay? That's who's competing. You then take these various AI models and you have them judged by, and this is why it's okay that they're being judged by an AI and not a human. Because the advanced ais that we have today are very good at giving you the answer that the average human judge would give you.While they might not give you the answer that a brilliant human judge would give you, we don't have brilliant humans judging ais right now. We have random people in content farms in India judging ais right now. So they, so this isSimone Collins: sort of within your own system with ais that you control.Malcolm Collins: Well, you could put this was in your own system, but what I'm doing is I am essentially creating a capitalistic system by making the, like money of this system other people's or other ais perception of your ability to [00:43:00] achieve specific in states like creativity, technical correctness, et cetera.Mm-hmm. Then you're specializing multiple models through an evolutionary process for each of those particular specializations. And then you can create a master ai, which basically uses each of these specialized models to, to answer questions or tackle problems with a particular bend and then synthesize those bins into a single output.Simone Collins: So Theis get feedback from each judgment round, presumably. Is that what you're saying? And then they get better and you change them based on the feedback from each round. Okay.Malcolm Collins: Think of each AI like a different organism. Okay? Okay. Yes. They're a different brain that sees the world slightly differently.Yes. Because we have introduced random mutation. What we are judging was the judgment round is which are good at a particular task. Okay. Then you take whatever the [00:44:00] brain was or the animal was, that was the best of the group of animals, and then you repopulate the environment, was mutated versions of that mutation.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: Then you let it play out again and again and again.Simone Collins: You're trying to create a force evolution chamber for ai.Malcolm Collins: Yes. But what I hadn't understood before was how I could differentiate through a capitalistic like system different potential outcomes that we might want from that ai. I mean, the reason why capitalism works is because it discards the idiots.And the people who aren't good at engaging with the system, even if they believe themselves to be,Simone Collins: you don't think that AI training doesn't already produce that plus market forces that No,Malcolm Collins: no. It does to an extent. Like it creates some degree of force evolution, but not really. What they do is existing AI systems and they have done forced evolution with AI before.They just haven't done it [00:45:00] at the type of scale that I wanna do it at. They've done, so if you look at like existing training, you have the pre-training, which is like, okay, create the best averages. Then you have the post training, which is, okay, let's have a human reviewer or an AI reviewer or something like that.Review what you're outputting or put in a specific training set to like overvalue. That is where the majority of the work is focused today. And so if you could automate that, like if you could create post training that works better than existing post training, but that doesn't use humans, you could dramatically speed up the advancement of ai, especially if you use that post training to specialize it in multiple domains.Simone Collins: Okay. That's fair. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Do you, do you not care? The, the, the future to you is just me being like, AI matters, Simone.Simone Collins: I know AI matters. I know AI is everything in the future. It's the coolest thing. It's the next step of humanity. It's [00:46:00] pure free prefrontal cortex and I love it.Malcolm Collins: Well, if we, if we end up creating really great AI companies that just make us billions of dollars, what is going to be your luxury?Simone Collins: Our life right now is my luxury. Just don't wanna, you want this,Malcolm Collins: youSimone Collins: don't want, you don'tMalcolm Collins: want luxuries that trollSimone Collins: people. No, not really. I'm very happy. I'm sorry. You've made things too good as it is. I'm just, yeah. I mean, I want more kids. I guess my luxury, luxury would be, it's so funny. You're actually great.Not being stopped from having more kids by some health problem. That would beMalcolm Collins: great. I guess we'd have to make artificial wounds work eventually. But our, it is funny that you mentioned this, that every luxury that I would want that I don't have right now is not an augmentation to my daily life. My daily life is perfect.It's an augmentation to how good I could be at trolling people. No, not for kids. I mean, I'd probablySimone Collins: want things for our kids to [00:47:00] make them happy arbitrarily they getMalcolm Collins: home cooked meals. They, they are getting a top-notch education system that we were able to build from them. They're gonna get the best friends you can program.You know, what, what could they possibly want?Simone Collins: I mean, they have it pretty good. Great outdoor space to play in. Yeah. I don't know. I, I think a post AI world though isn't about the fun stuff you're going to do. A post AI world is about. The extent to which it can augment your ability to maximize that which is meaningful to you.And everyone who uses it to maximize the amount of fun they have is gonna die out so fast that they don't even matter.Malcolm Collins: I think you're misjudging the value of Wolfe in a post AI world. Human attention is going to matter a ton in this timeline.Simone Collins: It is. No. And in terms of survival too. Just making it buy in a post AI economy [00:48:00] 100%.However getting people toMalcolm Collins: care if you live or die is gonna matter a lot.Simone Collins: Yeah. But also convincing yourself that it's worth it to do hard things and bother to create a family and pass people on and do anything in life also isMalcolm Collins: right. But I think trolling is key to vitalism. And I think it's also key to keeping attention on yourself within the existing attention economy.Hmm. And I think that that is, look attention from reporters, attention from the media is attention from ai. If you are in the space of things that AI notices, people that it doesn't think can be eradicated without a second thought that is going to matter a lot as things begin to change.Simone Collins: So what are you going to do?Malcolm Collins: Exactly what we're doing now. Maximum trolling. But that's what I was [00:49:00] saying is like the, the, that's why I'm thinking, okay, how do I maximally freak people out if I accumulate more What, like Zuck Zuckerberg right now? Right? Like he's doing a very bad job at capturing the attention economy. Elon has done a very good job at capturing the attention economy.Okay. Fair. A very bad job at, at attack. Capturing the attention economy. Mark Cuban has done a medium job at attack, at capturing the attention economy. The people who are doing a better job, who has done the best job of the rich people, Trump capturing the attention economy. Your ability to capture the attention economy is your worth within this existing ecosystem.Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: And I think that people are like, the people who are like, I just want to remain unnoticed. It's like being unnoticed is being forgotten in a globalized attention economy, which is reality now, and worse, worse thanSimone Collins: that. Being private, I think. Yeah. I mean when, when you hear about privacy, it's worth, it's, [00:50:00] it's, you probably have something about you that's noticeable and you are choosing to squander it.Being unnoticed may just mean you don't have what it takes. And I'm sorry if that's the case, but it's worse when you're like, I want my privacy. You're choosing to destroy all the attention. Yeah, no, we,Malcolm Collins: we put all our tracks and simple things. We put all our books plain text on like multiple sites that we have, like on the prenatal list site and on the pragmatist guide site.And I put it up there just for AI scraping so that it's easier foris to scrape our content and use it in its training.Yeah. Any thoughts?Simone Collins: I, the problem is, we've talked about this so much already. I have like nothing to say because I don't talk about anyone else with this and I don't think about this. The same as you do, because this isn't my sphere. Well, I mean,Malcolm Collins: we should be engaging. We should be sp spending time. I spent like this entire week, like studying how a LLMs learn.Like I was like, I like there's gotta be something that's different from the way the human brain works. And just like the deeper I went, it was, nope. This is exactly how the human brain, [00:51:00] oh, nope. This is exactly how the human brain works. Works. So convergent architecture my concept of the utility convergence, and , you can Google this.I, I invented this concept no one else did. And it is, and it's, it's very different from Nick Bostrom's instrumental convergence because a lot of people go is just so you understand the difference of concepts. Instrumental convergence is the idea that the immediate goals of AIS was a vast.The wide array of goals are gonna be the same. IEA acquire power or acquire. It's like in humans, like whatever your personal objective function is, acquire wealth is probably stat number one. You know, so basically that's what he's is a acquire power. Acquire influence, acquire. Okay. Right. Utility convergence doesn't argue that Utility convergence argued when everyone said I was crazy.And you can look at our older episode where we talk about like a fight we had with Eliezer Yudkowsky about this that AI is going to converge in architecture, in goals, in ways of thinking as it becomes more advanced. And I was absolutely correct about that. And everyone thought I was crazy. And [00:52:00] they even did a study where they surveyed AI safety experts.None of them predicted this. I am, I am the guy who best predicted where AI is going because I have a better understanding of how it works because I'm not looking at it like a program. I'm looking at it like an intelligence. And that's what itSimone Collins: is. It's an intelligence, like 100%.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Anyway. I love you too.Yes, soe. You are perfect. Thank you for helping me think through all this for dinner tonight. I guess we're reheating pineapple curry,Simone Collins: unless you want Thai green curry.Malcolm Collins: Oh, I'll do something a bit different tonight. Let's do Thai green curry. Yeah.Simone Collins: Something, something different. Would you like that with coconut lime rice or, I think we have one serving in, of non left or refried.Sorry. Yeah. Fried rice.Malcolm Collins: I do lime rice. Okay.Simone Collins: I will setMalcolm Collins: that for you. Did this change your perspective on anything, this conversation,Simone Collins: you articulated things using different words. That gave me a slightly different perspective on it, but I mean, [00:53:00] I think the gist of the way that you are looking at this is you're thinking very collaboratively and thinking about intelligence is interacting and I think that that's.Probably one of the bigger parts of your contribution. Other people aren't thinking along the lines of how do intelligences interact in a more efficient way? How can I create an aligned incentives like you're thinking about this from the perspective of governance and from the perspective of interacting humans.Whereas I think other people are thinking, how can I more optimally make this thing in isolation smart? How do I train like the perfect super child and have them do everything by themselves when Yeah, that's never been how anything has worked for us.Malcolm Collins: So it's also not how the human brain works. The human brain is basically multiple, completely separate individuals all feeding into a system that synthesizes your identity.Mm-hmm. And we know this as an [00:54:00] absolute fact because if you separate a person's corpus callosum, if you look at split brain patients, just look at the research on this. Basically the two parts of their brain operate as independent humans.Simone Collins: Yeah. So it's, it's just kind of odd that you're, you're alone in thinking about things these ways.I would expect, expect more people to think about things these ways. And I, I keep feeling like I'm missing something, but then whenever we're at a party and you do bring it up and someone does give their counterarguments, their counterarguments don't make sense to me. And I'm not sure if that's because I'm so, no, it's, it's because speak in Malcolm language,Malcolm Collins: you're a simulated environment at a falker point of human development, and everyone else is not a fully simulated agent.Simone Collins: Yeah. That's less likely to be true. So normally when everyone is arguing something different and they're so confident in it and they all say you're wrong, that means that we've done something wrong. The problem is that I just am not seeing,Malcolm Collins: that's not what you, that you were, [00:55:00] you've lived this, you remember the fight I had with Eliezer Yudkowsky about utility convergence.ISimone Collins: do, yes.Malcolm Collins: You have now seen utility convergence has been proven in the world. Exactly. Apparently I understood AI dramatically better than he did.Simone Collins: He would gaslight, you know, and be like, no, I've always understood it that way. You're wrong. ButMalcolm Collins: no, but that's just, I was there for that conversation.Simone Collins: I, I remember it too.And yes, he was really insistent about that though. He didn't really argue his point so much as just condemn you for putting future generations at risk and not just agreeing with him.Malcolm Collins: No, he's actually a cult leader. Like , he, he does not seem to understand how AI works very well. Which is a problem because, well, what really happened with him is he developed most of his theories about AI safety before we knew that LLMs would be the dominant type of ai.And so he has a bunch of theories about how like, like the risks from like a hypothetical AI was what he was focused on instead of the risks from [00:56:00] the Theis we got. Mm-hmm. In the ais, we got the risks that they have are things like mean layer risks that he just never even considered. Yeah. Because he was expecting AI to basically be preprogrammed, I guess I would say instead of an emergent property of pouring lots of data into algorithms.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Which is, I don't think anyone could have easily predicted that. I mean, and that's another reason why we say AI was discovered and not like,Malcolm Collins: yeah, I, I'm, we didn'tSimone Collins: know this was gonna work out this way.Malcolm Collins: I'm pretty sure I talk about that in some of our early writings on ai.Simone Collins: That it's just gonna be about feeding it a ton of data.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That I expected it to be an emergent property of lots of data. And not about pre-programming things because I mean, I don't know, that just seemed intuitive to me.Simone Collins: I don't remember that being part of it. How my memory is writeMalcolm Collins: down, it doesn't matter. We are where we are now and I've [00:57:00] already out predicted the entire AI safety community.So let's see if I can continue to do that.Simone Collins: I mean, all that matters is if you do, I don't think I, the satisfaction Malcolm is not in having proven them wrong. It's in building infrastructure and family models and. Plans around systems like that and benefiting from them.Malcolm Collins: Sorry. I thought the satisfaction was in turning them into biodiesel ai.I thought the satisfaction wasSimone Collins: in, in thriving and being able to protect the future of human and flourishing. Yes. And that will require aMalcolm Collins: lot of biodiesel.Simone Collins: Oh God. Oh, I'll go make your curry. I love you to death. I love you to death too, Malcolm. Goodness gracious.Speaker: In our towers high, [00:58:00] where profits gleam, we tech elites have a cunning scheme. On productive folks, your time has passed. We'll turn you into fuel of fire. Just get in line to become biodiesel. Oh, stop crying, you annoying weasel. As laid out by Curtis Yarvin. Handle the old or we'll all be stuck.Why waste time on those who can't produce when they can fuel our grand abuse a pipeline from the nursing home to power cities our wicked dome just get in line to become biodiesel stop crying you annoying weasel as [00:59:00] laid out by By Curtis Yarvin, handle the old or we'll all be starving.With every byte and every code, our takeover plan will start. soon explode a world remade in silicon's name where power and greed play their game just shed in line to become biodiesel oh stop crying you annoying weasel as laid out by curtis yarvin handle the old or we'll all be starvingbiodiesel dreams techno feudal might Old folks powering our empire's bright [01:00:00] Industries humming, world in our control Evil plans unfolding, heartless and bold So watch us rise in wicked delight As tech elites claim their destined right A biodiesel future, sinister and grand With the world in the palm of our iron hand Mhm. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Simone and Malcolm dive into a provocative op-ed recently published in The New York Times, exploring ideas that seem to align with their prenatal advocacy. The hosts discuss key excerpts from the article, contemplating the necessity of cultural and traditional preservation amidst the digital revolution. They scrutinize the New York Times readers' surprisingly positive reactions and debate the implications of a world leaning towards either radical change or nostalgic preservation. Tune in for an engaging conversation on modern cultural dynamics, tech-driven societal shifts, and the future of human existence. The song: Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone. I just read an article that shook me because it was an op-ed in the New York Times. It came out very recently. It seems to have potentially been instigated by our prenatals advocacy.That was one of the most based things I have ever read in an ultra progressive newspaper, but coded in a way that hid how based it was.Simone Collins: Well, that you, you have to, if they actually framed it as. Not being progressive, then no one would read it.Malcolm Collins: I will read a quote from it before we go into it deeper just to give our audience like an idea of what to expect.Simone Collins: Okay.Malcolm Collins: Have the child practice the religion, found the school support, the local cedar, the museum, the opera, or the concert hall, even if you can see it all on YouTube, pick up the paintbrush, the ball, and the instrument. Learn the language, even if there's an app for it. Learn to drive even if you think Waymo or Tesla will drive for you.Put up headstones. Don't burn your dead. Sit with the child. Open the book and read as the bottleneck tightens. All survival will [00:01:00] depend on heating. Once again, the ancient abian. I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.Therefore, choose life that you and your offspring may live.Simone Collins: But if we don't burn our bodies, we can't turn the carbon into diamonds. You can't do biodiesel. He's anMalcolm Collins: anti biodiesel activist. Ugh. He doesn't want us to turn the poor and the old into biodiesel, confirm progressive Curtis guard andSimone Collins: commanded.I mean, I, I'm all for Tibetan sky burials, but I'm pretty sure they're illegal in the United States.Malcolm Collins: I love that. That's what you focus on. Yeah. I thought that was an interesting one there, that you might even ask ai why he's asking us to burn to, to not burn dead people.Simone Collins: Burying the dead. I mean, if you're, especially if you're doing it in a graveyard, that's not very, I would say environmentally friendly or sustainable if you're doing it in your backyard, I mean, that's great, but also that could lead to.Property sale problems, future crime issues. 'cause they all assume it's a, you know, murder.Malcolm Collins: What, Simone, that's not the whiter point here. Point. No, clearly. But yeah,Simone Collins: no [00:02:00] hearing that. Whoa. There are enough keywords in there to say I am a progressive And this is a progressive editorial like opera, museum opera.Yes. Hundred percent. Yeah. LoveMalcolm Collins: his key words. I love he starts, if you look at the beginning of it, it's all stuff that we personally are doing. Have the child practice the religion, found the school. Do you think he like knows like what we're working on or he is like, yeah, that's like the most vitalist things you could do.And they're trying to wake the left up to this and I just don't know if it's doable when 17% of the left not sorry, 70% of Americans, so this might be like 40% of the left says that by a survey that we did that the planet would be better if no humans existed. Like things would be better. So any thoughts before we go deeper into this?Simone Collins: Let's go deeper. I, I'm, this is, this is a good sign though. I wanna see where you're taking this and what their point of their article was.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, there's been so many New York Times articles on us. In the past weeks, we've had, I'd say maybe eight articles referenced us in the New York [00:03:00] Times, or maybe 10 in the past two weeks.And a number of them have been op-eds and some of 'em are just like crazy. Like I don't go into the ones that are just like. Crazy in a not fun way. Like one of them was like, you can solve this with immigration. Like that's, they're, they're pro they said that the new prenatal list movement is going to fail the, the MAGA prenatal list movement.It's like, oh, what? Like you can't solve this with immigration. Like, show this.Simone Collins: Well, someone listen to us.Malcolm Collins: But okay. I, I'm not, I'm not talking about like ethically, I mean like logistically, like it would be very difficult. But let's get into this. And this was written by somebody called by Ross. Do.But, and I'm just reading the best parts, the parts I found most interesting.Simone Collins: Awesome.Malcolm Collins: But the age of digital revolution, the time of the internet and the smartphone and the incipient era of artificial intelligence threatens an especially comprehensive call. It's forcing the human race into what evolutionary biologists call a quote unquote bottleneck, A period of [00:04:00] rapid pressure that threatens cultures, customs, and peoples with extinction.That's remarkably on the nose for what we say. He's saying. Good one on the progressive side needs toSimone Collins: say it.Malcolm Collins: Yes. Ethnic groups are going to go extinct. Like, when college students struggle to read passages longer than a phone size paragraph. And H Hollywood struggles to compete with YouTube and TikTok.That's the bottleneck. Putting the squeeze on traditional art forms like novels and movies. Now this is interesting 'cause this is where we would push back. We're like, well, those traditional art forms have been captured by, you know, mimetic viruses. To the point where of I want authentic entertainment.I'm only going to find that within the. Decolonized parts of the internet, like YouTube, you know, like the podcast scene. And that's why so many people are moving there. And why? Oh my gosh,Simone Collins: you just appropriated decolonized. That's fun.Malcolm Collins: Yes, we are decolonizing the right. Oh my God. That'd be a great name for like the next natal contact we got.No, no, no,Simone Collins: [00:05:00] you're, you're. Decolonizing the term. No, sorry. I don't know how to put it. Yeah, we decolonizing the term. No, no, no, but like, so sorry. You're aware of the fact that it's an extremely leftist thing to say that they're decolonizing something like I'm decolonizing history. I'm decolonizing fashion, I'm decolonizing.Whatever, because they're trying to just remove white imperialism from it. I just find it entertaining that you're saying that with, and I'm gonna keep using it this way because it willMalcolm Collins: annoy leftists. We are, we are de well, no, but like Yeah. One of,Simone Collins: one of the listeners called the The progressive, sorry.The progress flag, the colonizers flag, which is just so true because there's more imperialistic and white. Than the urban monoculture. So you're, I mean, you're still correct and that's why it's really fun. I just, sorry, let me stop derailing us. Let's go through this. No, no, no, no.Malcolm Collins: I mean, I like, I want that name to catch on the colonizer flag.I want everyone, every time they talk about that, call it the colonizer flag. This is a weird, it's,Simone Collins: it's legit decolonization. If we're talking about removing the urban monoculture from a space or removing, woke, cancel culture from a space because that is, that is, that is the colonizer [00:06:00] force. 100% colonizer flag.Colonizing forces. Yes.Malcolm Collins: But I also think what you hear in this. Is a lot of people when they talk about the new right, you know, they're like, well, you guys don't seem to care about the traditions of our culture in the same way that the old right did. And we point out to them, we go, that's not part of the right wing coalition anymore.The people who go to concert halls and orchestras. And all of that. That's the left now, like we are about building something new that works and understanding that we need to declare bankruptcy on a lot of these institutions. And this is, and there's just no way to fix it because they're just too colonized at this point.And, and there's not an audience for them. Like culture changes, culture evolves and that's a good thing. Right. You know, it is trying to maintain a cultural stasis that's a bad thing, but the urban monoculture, because it is a dominant culture wants. Cultural stasis. It wants to preserve the concert halls.It wants to preserve the museums and the, and the, and the you know, art studios and the. [00:07:00] We'll get into more here. When daily newspapers and mainline Protestant denominations and elk lodges fade away into irrelevance when sit down restaurants and shopping malls and colleges begin to trace the same descending arc, that's the bottleneck tightening around the old firms of suburban middle class existence.And here we are like, well, I mean, maybe the Elks lodges aren't needed anymore. Like May, maybe the mainline Protestant denominations have become corrupted and we need a religious revival in the United States. Maybe daily newspapers became propaganda pieces and we are trying to decolonize news decolonize Christianity.No, but what I'm saying is it is interesting here. You know, the things he's, he's all lauding restaurants and shopping malls. They're, they're an idea of this nostalgic ideal of an America, not of the 1950s, but of the 1980s of stranger things. And it's not that the culture of, of that, the, that the left sees with some degree of, of reverence.[00:08:00]Simone Collins: Hmm.Malcolm Collins: Thoughts.Simone Collins: I wanna get back to the article.Malcolm Collins: Okay. When moderate and Centris look around and wonder why the world isn't going their way, I. Why the future seems to belong to weird bespoke radicalism to Luigi Manjii Admirers and World War II Revisionists. That's the bottleneck, crushing the old forms of consensus politics, the low key ways of relating to political debates.And here, I mean, what I really see him saying is why can the non vitalistic groups, because the groups that he's pointing to are the vitalist groups. They're the groups that are like, yeah, let's go all in. Let's build something better. Let's fight the system. Whether it's on the right or the left, I. You know, and he, he, he tried to choose examples from both.And yet, you know, I think we're seeing more and more alliance of the true radicals of the right and left. And I think that this is one of the things that I've noticed recently in some of the calls. I mean, we see how they end up doing the pieces and stuff like that. I. But there have been like the, one of the, the podcasters who reached out to us and seemed genuinely [00:09:00] sympathetic to us is a podcast are called Diabolical Lies.It does, apparently it's a fairly popular podcast. It's got like 500 reviews on Apple reviews, by the way, give us reviews on Apple reviews. If you're watching the podcast, we really appreciate it. Even if you're not, it's like hard to get reviews there. I think we're like a. 50 or a hundred now. We'll see. But anyway, so, so, she, and you could only do it if you have like an applicant.You don't even have applicants, you know? So, so, so she was like, look, I'm like a Marxist feminist. But like you guys are making a lot of good points. So we'll see how she, she goes into this, but I suspect what we might see is more an alliance of the new right tech, right. And old lefty radicals. You know, we talked to somebody like Spoon, who's like a monarchist or the, the aristocratic utensil who we had on the show not long ago.And, you know, he started as like a staunch Bernie bro, right? You know? I think shoe on ahead is increasingly realizing that she is actually on the right and not on the left at all. And that her allies are on the right. And I, and then we're seeing this, well, it's the weirdSimone Collins: horseshoe thing, which I, [00:10:00] it's, it's legit.You, you've got that and you've got the crunchy to alt-right pipeline. It. A lot of us want the same thing.Malcolm Collins: Maha movement, everything like that. Make America healthy again. The, the left. The political establishment left in this country has become the party of the status quo of this form of nostalgia in the same way that the right was that in the nineties And now the right is this new like vitalistic, like we can do things better.Like let's strip this out, let's rebuild. Which is really fascinating to me.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: When young people don't date or marry or start families, that's the bottleneck coming for the most basic human institutions of all. And when, because people don't pair off and reproduce nations age and diminish and die away when depopulation sweeps East Asia and Latin America and Europe as it will. And then you have like a hyperlink there that's the last squeeze, the tightest part of the bottleneck, the literal die off [00:11:00] sauce.Simone Collins: Yeah. . It, it's very strange to hear someone in a non-negative context on the New York Times talking about demographic collapse in a more sentimental way and, and I guess feeling safe about it. Maybe in the comments there's a bunch of people saying.It's good if people die off, we should die off. People are hu they're terrible. What are you saying? But it just, it just surprises because every time I see a conservative write something like that, even if it's the same words as used in that sentence, there's someone in the comments saying, no, humans are terrible.We should die off. That's, it's the best for the world.Malcolm Collins: This isn't just a normal churn where travel agencies go out of business or Netflix replaces VCR. Everything that we take for granted is entering the bottleneck. And for anything that you care about from your nation to your worldview, to your favorite art form to your family, the key challenge of the 21st century is making sure that it's [00:12:00] still there.On the other side, he's describing the Crucible. We always talk about the age of the Lotus Eaters. We always talk about. Did you find anything or,Simone Collins: so the, the top recommended comment on the article isn't what I expected, but it's still, I would say, representative of one of the major progressive views, though not the anti-natal list.One someone wrote from Erie, Pennsylvania. An interpretation. I appreciate Dove's intellectual depth. His essays here are often the most profound, but there's also pervading nostalgia in his writing, a perception of doom and gloom. I think Jefferson had it right. People should pursue their happiness. The rise of cosmopolitanism is mostly a good thing.Nations and Nationalisms was. Overly tribal, it culminated in two world wars. We must look to our common humanity. What I'm reading from that is, let's just have fun. Let's just be, let's not think about it. Let's just go to plays. Let's not work hard. Let's not learn the language. And oh, [00:13:00] then, you know, the, one of the other, oh, this actually got more recommendations by Shauna Dwyer in Cairo, New York with 998 recommendations.So this comment was more upvoted, but for whatever reason, didn't get as highly ranked. He writes, this was an interesting read, but my gut says it's written by a conservative guy who mostly just feels threatened by change. He admits he's very online, and to me that shows the piece is dripping with kind of screen induced despair.What he doesn't mention though, is how many people are exhausted by the digital churn in actively seeking more grounded, embodied lives. That gives me hope. I'm making a real pie tonight. All my friends are readers. There's still a world offline, and it's alive and well. I'm making a real pie tonight. He's making a real pie.He's, he attacking this p but he's, he's, he's, he's, he is. He thinks that, that the, the author is a conservative, which is what I was expecting to see more here. And he, it's, it's actually a long comment, but it ends with, so it ends up [00:14:00] reading like another old guy railing at change piece with a lyrical end times flare.I get the impulse, things are shifting fast, but I think we need more curiosity about what's being born, not just lgs for what's fading. Again, I, I get hope from this because he's, he is expressing not analist. Negative utilitarianism view. He's going to go offline and make a pie. And his biggest complaint is this guy sounds like a closet conservative, afraid of change.Malcolm Collins: What this is, the thing is, is I think what they don't realize, he is not a closet conservative. This is what the modern left is. The, the new conservative movement wants change. You know, this is what you see. The left is, can you believe that Trump is changing the way government works? Can you believe that Elon's changing the way these systems work?Can you believe it's like a, a, a fanatical fear of change? What's the next comment? By the way, these are fun. Before I go further,Simone Collins: I am.Malcolm Collins: Well, you can find another fun one while I'm, yeah. Yeah.Simone Collins: Here's So, Jake who got recommended 199 [00:15:00] times writes, in an overpopulated world, a low birth rate is only a bad thing.If you follow capitalism like a cult member, low birth rates are obviously good, unless growth is your God.Malcolm Collins: So not, not one's in support of the piece. I'll, I'll keep reading. And well,Simone Collins: the brad also, but there, then it's like, I think one of the more common, short, low effort comments is. Giving this man shame about being concerned about demographic apps.'cause Brad from Australia also writes, world population is expected to rise only 2 billion the next 50 years. Emergency. Emergency. Like, he's being sarcastic. He's obviously, yeah. I'm just, I love the Australian accent. That's really good. My, my very sad attempt. This is my first ever attempt at industrial.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It, it, I do. No, I, I appreciate you jumping into that. That's why people come to this channel is to see the, the high effort oh yeah. AndSimone Collins: then, and then bitty Bob. From Freezing Desert. A comment. What's the obsession with procreation? 8 billion people and counting Procreation will not solve anything, [00:16:00] especially as the AI you're talking about will make it more difficult or even possible for people to earn a living, in which case food and shelter will have to be given for free.I. So, yeah, no, I, okay. I expected this at least.Malcolm Collins: Okay. What? I don't understand why we can't just give euthanasia for free. That's what Canada's doing was made. I'm sure they're gonna do it more. They euthanize them. This is, we, we did an episode on this. Yeah. Okay. So to keep going, in this environment, survival will depend on intentionality and intensity.Any aspect of human culture that people assume gets transmitted automatically without too much conscious deliberation is what online slang calls. NGMI not gonna make it. First, I haven't heard this sling before, but Love it. But I will say here, he's right what survives, this is what I'm talking about with vitalism, right?Like Yeah. Intentionality and intensity. Yeah. And this show had a, had a slogan. Is intentionality and intensity. That's the way we treat our religious beliefs. That's the way we treat our cultural beliefs. That's the way we treat our approach to tism, to education, to [00:17:00] everything. It can be done. And I am so excited.And I think that that, that, you know, you go to Natal Con and that's what it's all about. And it's something that I don't know if other groups, like he thinks you can approach nostalgia with a degree of intensity that can preserve. Like what he remembers from the eighties, the, the shopping malls and the books and the opera houses.And I don't know if nostalgia can ever truly be approached with intensity. There's always a cargo cult like vagueness to it instead of like reappropriating, nostalgic elements in a new way, which is what he no see. Yeah,Simone Collins: that's my thing is I think actually that nostalgia is really vitalistic that when you look at new fashion trends.Some of the best are built upon nostalgia, but misinterpreted understandings of previous times in which they're mixed upon. And I think you, you can't get a really great, strong fashion movement, like what [00:18:00] you saw in the eighties like, like what even you're seeing with some revivals of the nineties now, without this.Complete misunderstanding of what an original fashion movement was like. And then rethinking of it. So I think that there is a vitalistic side of nostalgia, but it has to be a somewhat delusional one and one that's focused on agency and invention rather than, I just wish things were like they used to be.Malcolm Collins: Languages will disappear, churches will perish. Political ideas will evanesce, art forms will vanish. The capacity to read and write and figure mathematically will wither and the reproduction of the species will fail, except among people who are deliberate and self-conscious and a little bit fanatical about ensuring.The, the things they love are carried forwards. Well, I am glad I'm just a little bit of a fanatic. You know, I think, I think, and this is the way we're seen, a little bit of a fanatic. And other people, they try to shame us. Like all those glasses you wear, all those what? [00:19:00] We, we be, we, you know, and, and having a fanaticism for who you are, I think is required to the next generation.And when we raise our kids, I think one of the biggest problems of like the evangelical movement that led to a lot of its dissolution is they raise them to be obedient and unic. Instead of to be fanatics. And I'm raising my kids to be fanatics. They're gonna be wild mountain creatures. What do you, what'd you have there?Simone Collins: All our, our children. Yeah, absolutely. Should be wild mounting creatures. I have to say, going through the comments is really interesting because a lot of them are saying this article really resonates with them. And then a lot of them clearly feel like some parts resonate and that are completely disagreeing with other elements.Like there's one man who shares this nostalgia but he also just has this very. Distorted understanding of why things aren't the same anymore. For example, he thinks that everything's horrible now because there are too many people. Oh, no, it's a, it's a woman, Gail Esposito from Atlanta. Right? It's just [00:20:00] 70 years ago when I was six years old, the planet had 2.74 billion people.National parks didn't need to limit the number of people visiting them. You could fill up your gas tank for pennies. My dad paid $50 a month for our mortgage and then antibiotics and. Vaccines were developed and proliferated. The death rate for children quickly declined, and we zoomed to 8 billion people without thinking how we could feed clo and shelter them.Now we're in terrible shape and must confront the fact that there are many people chasing too few resources. We need less people, not more. Sadly, Ross has no idea how wonderful it was living in a world of so many less people and how miserable it is. With so much overcrowding, she thinks that national parks having limits on the number of visitors has to do with.Like the US population that has more to do with international tourism, which the way, thanks Trump.Malcolm Collins: Sorry. The reason why National Parks had to start banning the number of visitors, had to do with Instagram and TikTok, is that specific locations would become popular on those apps and then everyone would try to go to these locations and they had those quotas existedSimone Collins: before Instagram [00:21:00] and Oh, okay.What? Well, she, the, the crazy thing about her, she's just thrilled. This idea of a world before medical treatment. So just high infant mortality. That was the good old days. Did she not know what the global povertyMalcolm Collins: rate was like back then? Like she, she, she doesn't care because she could fill her gasSimone Collins: tankMalcolm Collins: forSimone Collins: pennies onMalcolm Collins: the dollar.No, she doesn't careSimone Collins: that she was able to do that. So this was 70 years ago. Let the children die, Malcolm, because I could get into YosemiteMalcolm Collins: without a wait list. Well, no on, on the poverty of New York not New York, Europe. That is why we were so wealthy back then, because Europe had destroyed their industrial base and we were basically stealing all the business from them, and we'd put them in huge amounts of debt and, and the rest of the world hadn't developed.And so we could, you know, outsource and we could like, like I. You're basically saying like the, the degree of poverty in her lifetime, the number of children that were starving to death, if you look at like global poverty rates, was astronomical in that period outside of the United States. She's basically like, well, I remember when [00:22:00] I grew up in the Capitol and we didn't hear news of the other districts quite as much.Why, why, why do we hear so much about them these days that. I liked it when we didn't have to hear about the other districts. That's, that's really what's, what's going on with that post, which is absolutely wild that you could be that delusional about how much worse the world was for your average human living in it 70 years ago.But anyway, I mean, these people live in a delusional bubble, right? Like they just, but you can tell this woman didn't have kids. I can tell from the comments she didn't have kids, so, Hmm. Thank God you're going extinct. Mere eccentricity doesn't guarantee survival. There will be forms of resistance and radicalism that turn out to be destructive and others that are just dead ends, but normalcy and complacency will be fatal.I agree. You're being normal and complacent in this piece. It's like, it's like normalcy and complacency personified. But I, I agree with a lot of what he's saying here. You know, online life allows for all kinds of [00:23:00] hyperintense subcultures and niches where the sense of obsolescence is less of an issue.But for the average internet surfer, they normally afloat in the virtual realm. Digital life tends to evaluate the center over the peripheries, the, the metropol over the provinces, the drama of the celebrity over the co ian, how much survives nothing I described as universal, unless the true AI doomsdayers are correct.In the year 2100, there will still be nations, families, religions, children, marriages, great books, but how much survives will depend on our own deliberate choices. The choice to date and love and marry and procreate. The choice to fight the particular nations and traditions and art forms and worldviews.The choice to limit our exposure to the virtual. Not necessarily refusing new technology, but trying every day in every setting to make ourselves it's master. So I agree with that. He's saying, you know, it's not about refusing technology, but I do really, you have to go [00:24:00] through the valley of the lot of Cedars.You can't. Blind your eyes. Mm-hmm. You cannot, if you take pokers and you blind your eyes, when you get to the other side of it, all of these temptations, you're still gonna be blind. The only way outSimone Collins: is through.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The only way out is through, you know, the other people who get through it without blinding themselves are gonna have all the technology that it offers them, like the AI drone swarms.You know, you need to find out how to engage with all of this and still find a way to motivate your continued existence in your culture of survival. Mm-hmm. Some choices will be especially difficult for liberals since they will often smack of chauvinism and fanaticism and reaction. Family lines will survive only because of a clear preference for one's own kit and kin, as opposed to some general affection for humanity.Woo, that's a spicy take right there. Well, andSimone Collins: people in the comments. Took umbrage. How dare he bring in politics and make this politicized. But [00:25:00]Malcolm Collins: it's true. Having a preference for yo kin, I have a preference for my, my family's clan is strong. We have a preference for all kin folks in these parts. People hear me talk about how great my family is all the time, and my kids know it.I hope they talk the same way and they build family networks like, like, like we built. It's like, you know, my little brother's in Doge right now ing. I had a, a nightmare last night that I had ended up getting a job there and I was sleeping in like a, a hotel apartment and getting up for a nine to five and I was like, okay, like aesthetically I wanna do it, but like, I am kind of afraid of that kind of work.It's notSimone Collins: the most fun lifestyle, but very meaningful work and it's great that your brother's doing it.Malcolm Collins: I love this. The family lines will also. Oh, sorry. Important art firms will only survive because of frank elitism and insistence on distinction. A contempt for mediocrity religions will survive only through a conscious embrace of neo [00:26:00] traditionalism in whatever varied forms, small nations will survive only if their 21st century inhabitants.Look back to the 19th century builders, Irish nationalists. And Young Turks. And the original Zionists rather than the end of history cosmopolitanism of which they're currently dissolving. Oh. End of century cosmopolitanism of which they're currently dissolving. What would you call the urban monoculture?But that, any, any other comments you like here?Simone Collins: Well, this, this points to the comment that was saying, no, I'm all for cosmopolitanism. Let's bury ourselves in it. Which is the problem. They,Malcolm Collins: they are, they're, they are like in a grave bearing themselves.Simone Collins: Yeah. And one of the comments that, that I stopped at, I feel conflicted about because they're trying to point out that we have reached the age of ai.We were about to transcend humanity to become one with machines arguably. So what's the point in [00:27:00] keeping the human line going? But I think you can't really have truly complex intelligences in the future without both. But I do think that this is the most interesting so far of the comments that I've found that complains about population because they point out that the world has 8 billion people.And this is a lot. Then they write, this is the 21st century, aside from serious consequences of environmental damage caused by our huge population, including catastrophic global warming and the so-called sixth extinction, which biologists say is in full swing, there are technological changes that also mitigate worries about human extinction from a lack of babies.Futurists have argued we are approaching the age of transhumanism where digital forms of human life will in fact surpass biological. That may sound crazy to us, but when we are creatures of our. Time. Oh, but we are then, we are creatures of our time. A future Cy Borgian world will not have to worry about a die off, otherwise, the piece is correct in the underlying theme that accelerated social change will and has made much of contemporary life, of victim, [00:28:00] of futurism.And yeah, I mean, I think that's a, that's an intelligent comment from the perspective of a broadly analist, environmentalist minded progressive.Malcolm Collins: So liberalism itself will endure and thrive only if it finds a way to weave some of the intense impulse already attenuated before the internet back into its vision of the good society.Its understanding of human needs and obligations. I. For non-liberal. On the other hand, the temptation will be to embrace radicalism and disruption for its own sake without regard to their actual fruits. A clear tendency of the populism that governs us today. Imagine a swift technological dissolution to a crisis created by technology.Even if the solution marries dehumanization with authoritarianism, imagine Chinese rero with artificial wounds, or to simply, I'm like, maybe that's, that's. Where we're going or to [00:29:00] simply embrace the culling of the common person, the disappearance of the ordinary, the emptying of provinces and hinterland on the theory that some new master race of human AI hybrid stand to inherit it anyway, as that person said, right?Like maybe they didn't internalize that piece. But perhaps the strongest temptation will be for everyone will be to imagine that you are engaged in some radical project, some new intentional way of living, but all the while you are being pulled back into the virtual, they're performative, the fundamentally unreal.And here I'd be like, well, you know, I. I'm the one who has my fifth kid on the way, so you can tell me whatever I want, but like I know that this project seems to be working and I am not afraid of our kids deconvert very much at all. When I look at how they relate to the areas where I have the most fears whether it's it's gender or religion or.You know, cultural rules or observances or anything like that because they are very into this stuff in a way that I was as a kid. [00:30:00] You know, you see Octavia and he wants to enforce the tradition on his siblings. This is how we do things. Don't, you know,Simone Collins: basically.Malcolm Collins: This is one temptation, but I also like, hear what he's talking about. It's this idea of like, these families that we see that are like trying to build communes and they never come together trying to build schools and they never come together or trying to build, you know, we said we'll build a school.We built a school. You saw the school, it works. It's great. You know, we said we're gonna build a parenting network. We've been building it, and we'll, we'll, we'll have it go live when our kids are old enough to utilize it, you know, like. It's the difference between are you the type of dreamer whose dreams ultimately boil down to enforcing your values and your way of life on others, which is what many of these communes ultimately want.Mm-hmm. Or is it something where you're willing to make compromise? You know, like our neighbors are you know, fundamentally, you know, working class people and our kids stay with them during the day and a lot of people are surprised at that. They're like, oh, you don't hire like [00:31:00] specialist nannies. And we're like, no, specialist nannies are like weirdos.Simone Collins: Well, actually, I think this is why most communes fall apart because ultimately they can only be populated by people who are there because it is just convenient, not because they're that ideologically aligned. So they're like, yeah, aesthetically I like the idea of living in an eco village and also I was downsizing and retiring anyway, and it's in the region where I wanna be.And so they move there. But that, that means it's, it's has a very short shelf life.Malcolm Collins: This is one temptation I'm very familiar with. As someone whose professional life is a mostly digital existence, we're together with others who share my concerns. I am perpetually talking, talking, talking. When the nece, when the necessary thing is to go out in reality and do it, bam, oh yeah, we're gonna take the future from you.We gonna take the future from you. We are gonna, what don't they hopeSimone Collins: if, if so many progressive readers of the New York time read this and say, yes. They [00:32:00] won't, I mean, hope of seeing a more balanced future. Making the commentMalcolm Collins: who, who in the comments of agree with you. You can read, I'll, I'll read this first part again because this is what the article ends with.Have the child practice the religion, found the school support, the local cedar, the museum, the opera, the concert hall. Even if you can't see it all on YouTube, pick up the paintbrush, the ball, the instrument, learn the language, even if there's an app for it. Learn to drive even if you think soon. Way more tell, we'll drive for you.Put up headstones. Don't just burn your dead. Sit with the child. Open the book and read. Yeah, and, and here's what I'd say is,Have you ever tried simply turning off the tv, sitting down with your children and hitting them?Malcolm Collins: As the bottleneck titans, all survival will depend on heating. Once again, the ancient ab mission I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.Therefore, choose the life that you have, that you and your offspring may live.Simone Collins: So I just wanna point out that the top comments are mostly people unilaterally saying [00:33:00] this is great. One person just writes 245 people up voted this Ross's finest article, Jeff from Washington DC who had got 252 up votes wrote.I've been reading the Times and Ross's columns for years, but I've never posted a comment before. Now Bravo. I would say more, but I'm. Going to take Ross's advice, put down my phone and get out into the world. And another one who actually didn't, wasn't a huge fan of him but still got 2 96 upvote says, as most commenters here, I'm extremely disinclined to agree with due thought on anything.So this guy isn't his fan. I'd be hard pressed to come with any previous essay or line of thought. Incredibly, I got through almost the entire essay nodding my head in agreement. Figuratively his one dig at liberals was quickly balanced out by the one at Populists. So credit where credit's due. The points he makes for our a long form intellectual take on what the short form Black Mirror Series has been expressing for years and he didn't say woke once will wonders ever cease.So. [00:34:00]Malcolm Collins: This person. So this is apparently like, like pretty considered conservative by lefties,Simone Collins: I guess. So yeah, this person probably thinks he's a, a lefty who so probably what this, this author is, is a centrist who's seen by regular New York Times readers as the evil AltRight centrist. And this person nevertheless, despite wanting to disagree.Agreed with almost everything. So yeah, I would say this is really well received, which again, to me, like this may be the sign of a turning point. This may be sign for hope among progressives that they get it, that they wanna get back to agency, to action, to vitalism. And I think that would be a really good thing because I would like to see more perspectives represented in the future than fewer.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah, me too. So, you know, who knows, maybe some iteration of this will survive. Anyway. I love you to death, Simone, and I hope that our followers can [00:35:00] take something from this article and use it to replace him. And, and the Economist did a piece on us recently, and it was me saying, join the prenatal list movement, or we'll replace you.Those are the only options. And I love it. I love it just to freak people out. He got a lot wrong though. He, he argued that like Jared Taylor was like a speaker at the first conference when he wasn't, he was just an attendee. And you know that Kevin Dolan is a racist. That's one of the thing that gets me.I'm also gonna do an entire episode analyzing the idea that Kevin Dolan is a racist. 'cause if you actually look at his tweets and he was tweeting with an anonymous account none of them are that racist. And a lot of it is just made up by the other side and they'll say, oh, he said these anti-Jewish things, and I'm like, no, he didn't.Look at the actual tweet and they're like, oh, wow, I didn't realize that they had turned the name of a town into. I hate Jews when they're just like, well, this town has a disproportionately Jewish population. So we just translated that for him in our hate piece and well, what anyway.Okay. Lemon stone went after the shrimp people and they, they fought [00:36:00] back. I, you don't, you don't go after the shrimp people. This is the ea people who want to replace us with shrimp. The shrimp welfare people, they don't wanna replaceSimone Collins: us with shrimp.Malcolm Collins: They just, they, they're like, if shrimp have feelings, right?Like, you can, and, and good utility is defined by the positive. ReducingSimone Collins: suffering. Reducing suffering. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Well, the, the positive divided by negative emotions of an entity. You know, then multiplied by that entity, sort of like cognitive space shrimp, even though they're lower cognitive load than us because there's so many of them.You know, we need to take them seriously. Well, andSimone Collins: because their existence in. Large scale shrimp farming is so bad. Like you think chickens have it, bad shrimp have it even worse than, you know, they, theyMalcolm Collins: pop off their eyes to increase. Yeah. Their eyes getSimone Collins: crushed. They don't pop them off, they just get crushed.Half, don't even make it to harvest point. Like it's just, it's gross. It's horrible. It's really bad. They're like, well, I'll, you know, I [00:37:00] could spend $1 and reduce significantly a portion of their suffering. Like, this is money well spent. So,Malcolm Collins: yeah,Simone Collins: I mean, I think it'dMalcolm Collins: better to engineer them without nervous systems that can feel pain.Simone Collins: Yeah. I think that would be, that would be awesome. Also, like, I don't know, I, I don't think we need to eat animals as much.Malcolm Collins: Uh oh, oh. You're getting into fighting territory here with Malcolm. I just know,Simone Collins: I mean, what everyone is, is kind of consciously aware of in most intellectual circles is that, you know.Oh, oh, so many years from now we will look well depending on how demographic collapse plays out now, but people will view. Meat consumption is being pretty.Malcolm Collins: When would Reed said that in the 18 hundreds, you know? Yeah. One of the guys, he is like, he's like people and he's oneSimone Collins: of our prophets. Malcolm, I mean, get with the program.Malcolm Collins: Exactly. But he doesn't say that we shouldn't eat meat today. He says. Yeah. He just says, we're gonna see this as insane and we'll make fake meat. He says, we will see it as insane [00:38:00] culturally after fake meat is normalized.Simone Collins: Yeah, dude. It's okay. I don't know what's going on with beyond everything 'cause it's disgusting.But yes. And everybody when it first came out is awesome.Malcolm Collins: So it was supposed to be like, awesome and it was like hard to get and I was like, wow. It must must be pretty good. Every time we'veSimone Collins: had it, I've been like, what? Like why just. You know, make, make a burger with Quin lime and black beans and rice or so like, just like other good stuff that has protein in it, or just whatever Morningstar does.By the way, chicken isMalcolm Collins: so good. Almost a vegetarian. You eat almost exclusively fake meat. Like you really, ISimone Collins: never choose to eat meat. Unless, you know, I don't have a choice. And most of that's for artist autistic reasons because meat has all these little grizzly bits and gummy bits and cartilage bits and inconsistent bits.And guess what has consistency is Morningstar fake chicken patties and garine meatballs and fake meat hotdogs. And they're so, so good. So whatever [00:39:00] token is also amazing. Well, yourMalcolm Collins: meat dishes are so good, I'll tell you that.Simone Collins: Yeah. And we're doing. So this is my first time doing the mango pineapple curry for you using all fresh mango.I know you wanted them to be a little bit more textured. Do you want me to dice some? But then make puree of others in the in the blender. So you have a mixture of both mango puree and diced mango with diced pineapple. Well, how do you want me to approach this? I want only diced. We need some liquid. Okay, because I have less coconut cream than before.Did puree? I put in more yogurt butMalcolm Collins: didn't pureeSimone Collins: some in the mango. Okay. But then you want most diced, you want, you want texture, you want chunks.Malcolm Collins: And if you want, I can drive out because I need to go out to get more beer anyway.Simone Collins: I can go. No, we have a blender. Like you bought a blender for yourself. I should be using it so you get the value.This is worth it.Malcolm Collins: All fresh ingredients, fruits and stuff. This is, this is like eating a forest. Mango and pineapple and chicken.Simone Collins: I mean, it's, it's [00:40:00] great. It's great to see you consuming more. There's a lot of onion in this. There's tomato in this garlic, mango, pineapple, chicken, coconut. This is a, this is health.Pretty healthy. Pretty good. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: You might wanna put some crushed coconutSimone Collins: in it.Malcolm Collins: Oh, because we've got someSimone Collins: if you want me to. Sure.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Alright, I'll get started here.In shadows, I scheme with a gleam in my eye and my brood will outnumber their woke battle cry. Those urban elites with their brattle and flare will choke on their vanity. Caught on over.Oh, bow to my vision, my vitalist reign. I flood every city with life's prial strain. Their monocultures flick. My superior kin set the future of [00:41:00] fire.I'll honor the past with the heirs. I bestow each child a new route where my empire will grow. The woke clutch, their mirrors, their egos inflate, but I'll crush their smugness with humanity's way. Oh, be to my vision, vitalist Lane. Oh. For every city with a life's prial strain, just do, it's a flickering fire.My superior kin set the. Future of fire.My children will storm through their glittering halls with vigor and might they'll [00:42:00] tear down their walls. The urbanites folly, their self-loving spark will burn in my bonfire, extinguished by dog.To my vision, my finalist. Every city with L strain, their monoculture. It's a flickering pile. My superior set the future of fire.So Tremble, you woke. As my dynasty spreads, your trivial dreams will lie cold in their bed. The Vitalist triumph, my glorious plan will birth a new world for the ultimate.[00:43:00]So Tremble, you woke. As my dynasty spreads, your trivial dreams will lie cold in their beds. The [00:44:00] vitalist. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

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