Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

We discuss how in the secular religious lore and belief system we are constructing for our family, we conceive of "demons" or chaotic forces as being different manifestations of the "Future Police" - the same forces that guide things towards good outcomes. Just as angels can punish, so too can the Future Police act as demons, laying trials, temptations, and hardship intended to test people and peel them from the righteous path. We explore how this connects to concepts like sin, stagnation, change, the great game, and relate it to entities from Warhammer lore.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] I would say that, and this is where we'll get to one of the other demons, one of the easiest paths to temptation, one of the easiest ways a person can fall off the righteous path is to not recognize that as a human, they are wretched and they are flawedand that, that is okay. All humans sin. But it's critical. Is that you do not glorify the sin.. Sin is a, is a, is a part of life, but there is a huge difference between saying I am engaging in this sin. I recognize it as sin. I recognize it as something I should have some shame for but I also recognize that I am human and thus a sinner.Right? But if you use it and say, no, actually the sports are a good thing. I am a good person for being good at sports. I am a good person for, in whatever particular aspect of slaneshidom that I engage in. That is where true evil comes from. But true evil can also come from a [00:01:00] human that thinks they can totally avoid sin.Every group I know of. believes that humans can completely avoid sin, the humans in their group that quote unquote come closest to that are typically the most efficacious individuals in society. Because avoiding sin means avoiding action.Would you like to know more?Simone Collins: When you said that we were going to talk about demons today, I was so sure that you were going to, like, make this fallacious episode about, like, skeletons in our closet or something, you know, like your childhood demons, because so many people online are like, these are two deeply damaged people. You know, they sayMalcolm Collins: that about us.Do they think that we areSimone Collins: dealing with our trauma and this is why we want to have children or why were we, IMalcolm Collins: love this. I mean, you want to talk about a sign of brainwashing or a brainwashed individual it's when somebody disagrees with them or has a different world perspective than their damage, their first reaction.Is what horrible thing happened to them in [00:02:00] their past that made them see the world differently than me and that what they need to do. And there's actually a class of people who do this. They don't even say like, you know, you should read the research or you should go out there and learn about this topic.They're like, you need to go to. therapy. Yes. Then you will think like me.Simone Collins: Exactly. It's like, I think it's a constant trope that people are exposed to in media. Like villains, of course, were raised in terribly abused environments. Like, you know, that, that Dr. Evil bit where he's like, you know, he talks about this like terrible childhood and how he was beaten and all theseMalcolm Collins: things.Well, I mean, I think that the, you know, if you talk about, we talk about the, the super virus, right? The and the way that it maintains its membership or recruits new members is through using psychologists. And we have talked about this in, in the video, psychology has become a cult. I think this is somebody who originally trained in psychology.The way that psychology is practiced now is not the way it was practiced. even a decade ago in [00:03:00] terms of what's considered acceptable and what's not. And, and, and, you know, as, as to what you're saying here it makes a lot of sense. If you see this not as being in like one cultural group versus another cultural group, but see it as being in a cult.Well, yeah, of course a cult would tell you what you need to go to your cult. Cult appointed mind cleaner, they'll, they'll clean your, your brain's dirty and there's these people you can pay to clean it.They'll wash it for you if, if you will, and then once you have a clean brain, you can haveSimone Collins: clean thoughts.Oh, I'm rewatching this during editing, I realized the joke may not be clear here. I am making a joke about brainwashing.Simone Collins: I don't think there's a precedent for that though, like even in the media tropes where like the evil person has gone to therapy and worked on themselves, like they're never really fixed. So it's just kind of this excuse to write someone off permanently. that they're damaged, they're traumatized, and you know, though they should go to therapy and whatnot, no amountMalcolm Collins: of it will actually.I mean, I saw so much [00:04:00] of this was Trump you know, when he was elected. Did people say heSimone Collins: was traumatized in his youth?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, all of these articles. Oh,Simone Collins: they did something about his dad, right? That he was.Yeah,Malcolm Collins: yeah. How is he traumatized? How is he, you know, they, they just cannot fathom that someone could honestly just disagree with their perception.Simone Collins: They must be emotionally stunted.Malcolm Collins: Now, let's be clear. Other, other cultural groups have some similar things to this. Like there are some OhSimone Collins: yeah, like maybe you're possessed by a demon,Malcolm Collins: for example. Yeah, some extreme Christians that like literally think everyone who disagrees with them is possessed by a demon.So there's that. But, but I, I would say that those are like the most extreme, absolutely wackadoo of Christians. And yet this is a mainstream position among the, the, those indoctrinated into the virus. Actually Scientology do the same thing. It's your thetans, right? Your thetans that are attached to you, which cause you to have negative thoughts and stuff like that.And you need to go to their. Well, their version of like psychologists, these people who you tell your backstory [00:05:00] to, and then they help you get your thetans off of you. so That you can think clearly because of you. Oh, they even have something like Oh, what's it called?Simone Collins: But there, I know that also like. They don't even want mothers to scream during childbirth cause they think that might traumatize the child, which is, you know, I guess it goes to show you can make up all these excuses of like, whether or not the person remembers or not, here's why they're messed up.Like their mother screamed when they were bornMalcolm Collins: or something. Right. So the term that you use, by the way, is clear. Clear.Simone Collins: Right. And that's why that documentary was called goingMalcolm Collins: clear. Yeah. So once they have cleared your brain, cleaned it. washed it, if you will, of whichever group. No, but it's just a common practice.And it makes sense that it's a common practice because it's an incredibly effective practice.Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and other people I think just say like, well, it's because you haven't accepted Jesus Christ as your savior, or basically you haven't converged to this religion and that's why you're evil or.Malcolm Collins: But, but I would say, hold on.Is it this practice, this way of, Relating to people who see the world differently from [00:06:00] you is not usually a practice had within healthy cultural groups. If we look within the healthy Christian cultural groups or Jewish orthodox groups, or you know, even in a historic context, they typically did not see their enemies in like a, Oh, if you just go see like our, whatever their iteration of a psychologist was, you'll eventually be able to see things the way I do, but where this is relevant to today's topic of conversation is one thing that I do think that most successful cultural traditions have and that ours, as we had originally constructed it, you know, we've built a little religion for our family.holidays and belief systems and metaphysical structure for the universe that we pass on to our kids does not have, which is demons, like some sort of like genuinely malevolent force. And so we started thinking about how we could, because one thing I really want with everything in this religion, as I pass it to my kids, is that it is not falsifiable by any sort of [00:07:00] Science as it exists right now, and where it is falsifiable by science, it can be updated.Like, it is meant to work. Why we call it a secular religious structure is it is meant to be our best understanding from a secular perspective of how the world actually works. So it's kind ofSimone Collins: like hard science fiction, where hard science fiction is expected to be logically internally consistent with any invented science.And it's all supposed to respect any science that already exists. Like don't get a planet's orbit wrong. Don't get the physics of this wrong, et cetera.Malcolm Collins: So for, to start for people who aren't familiar with the broad strokes of our ideological belief system, it's that in. 100, 000 years from today, a million years from today, if our descendants are still around that they would be closer to the way we would conceive of a deity today or a god today than the way we would conceive of another human.And as such, you know, who's to say they relate to time the same way we do and they might be guiding their [00:08:00] manifestation which is why we call it, you know, the inevitable God, the self manifesting God through. rewarding individuals who do things that increase the quality or lead to a flourishing future human civilization and punish humans who act indulgently or indolently or selfishly or on vanity or on self narratives.And so for example, you know, one of the things that we tell our kids is that. These, and these, these beings that influence the past, they don't necessarily come in like angels or something like that. They may be just manipulating things at the smallest, most quantum level in a way that has like a butterfly effect that then ends up having large repercussions in even potentially like human evolution.So an example I can give here is one of the ways in which they have sort of encoded in our own biology punishment for indolence is that all, [00:09:00] Hedonistic pursuits, pursuits where an individual is pursuing happiness or vanity or their perception in other people's eyes for its own sake, you know, just sort of masturbating these emotional subsets that these pleasures turn to ash on one's tongue.What I mean by that is the pleasure that you experience. For going out and chasing pleasure, like going out, just sleeping with tons of people going out, just you know, eating really, really fancy food every day drinking whenever you want all of these begin to feel. Like they lose any happiness that they give you pretty quickly and they begin to feel gross and they Make you feel gross as a human being nowSimone Collins: For kids, this is really really easy To point out.So like, let's say that your kid is really into a sports star or a movie star. [00:10:00] And you like, it's, it's pretty easy on most famous people to dig up, you know, here are the ways that people like them or people on their same trajectories, or even just them are actually pretty miserable. People who especially pursue fame just for hedonism do end up like extra miserable and it's like hedonism on steroids.Like it's one thing to just pursue a life that's kind of comfortable where you have hobbies and you have your job and you retire early or whatever. And there's van life and all that. But like when you were like going all the way, like, no, I'm going to get all the attention, all the fame, all the money, all the mansions, all the cars, all the women, all the men, whatever.The, the, the misery seems to pile on like in proportion to the amount of hedonism pursued. And it's soMalcolm Collins: cool. Yeah, it is really interesting. And I want to highlight a word which you said a little differently, which is, if you look at people who dedicated their lives to personal aggrandizement or personal vanity, whether those are Sports stars who were doing it for personal reasons.So there's sort of two categories of like [00:11:00] sports stars and movie stars. Some of them, you can see they go into it, but then they, they are genuinely trying to make the world a better place rather than sort of make themselves look like the good guy or personally grandize themselves. And you see very different life outcomes from these two groups.When you see the, the sports stars who are in it for the fame and the movie stars who are in it for the fame and the sex and the drugs or the musicians who are in it for that stuff. Their lives often are the lives that I would least want to trade mine for. They, they have such a deep sense of genuine despair that you can see in almost all of their actions that it is almost heartbreaking.Almost heartbreaking, but you know that this is a self working system. But what's very interesting is when we look at the people who have the most genuine and persistent happiness, these are the most mission driven people. These are the people that have sacrificed their lives for their faith, and that faith can be a...secular faith or a [00:12:00] religious faith but sacrificing your life for your faith. Now, some people are like, but isn't that what these, you know, Hollywood stars that are pushing every single progressive talking point are? And I'd be like, no, it's the Hollywood stars that are sticking to the progressive talking points from 20 years ago that have radically changed.Because they have radically changed. Like what is an acceptable progressive talking point changes a lot faster than I think a lot of progressives are willing to admit themselves. And so you see different levels. I can think of an example here. J. K. Rowling, for example, she seems to be a genuinely happy person who is still pushing the progressive talking points that were famous when she was a kid.Yeah, atSimone Collins: great cost. At greatMalcolm Collins: cost. No, I think she was wrong to believe those,but I think it leads to a level of integrity. And logical consistency. Yeah, integrity and logical consistency that you don't see in the Hollywood stars, like, a perfect example of this would be like Harry and Meghan, like, whenever anything switches, whenever the winds blow in a [00:13:00] particular way, they're on the new train, because what they care about is being seen as good guys, not the causes themselves, what they care about is thebrand,He's right. Trying to make ourselves into a brand just turned us into products. We don't need to be a brand, do we? Yes, I'm sure you agree, darling. We can be the people we talked about being, with no more worries about how we look or the image we project to people.What matters is what we have on the inside.Hello?Malcolm Collins: SoThis is a brilliant little thing that has an aspect of religiosity to it, you know, in, in me telling my kids about this, like this idea of happiness turning to ash in one's mouth, that this being the way that we are designed, but it also has a level of truth to it and something I can point to, but it's also a lesson I want my kids to learn because I think it's a very that takes a lot of [00:14:00] people too long to learn.I, I hate Jim Carrey's politics and everything like that, but I do love the one quote that he has. And I think he's an example of a deeply unhappy person who achieved everything and then just tried to go, like, never really thought about why he was doing stuff,but it's, I hope that everyone you know, has the, the blessings to achieve everything they ever wanted to achieve in life so that they can know that.It wasn't what they wanted which is, no, I mean, it's, it's, if that's the type of stuff you want to achieve,I am two time Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey. And when I dream, I don't just dream any old dream.No, sir. I dream about being three time Golden Globe winning actor Jim Carrey,because then I would be enough.It would finally be true. And I could stop this terrible search.Malcolm Collins: you want to see a genuinely happy person, and this is why I'll often play clips of him, like, on other Basecamp episodes Steve Irwin,What good is a fast car, a flash house, and a gold plate of [00:15:00] dunny to me? Absolutely no good at all. I've been put on this planet to protect wildlife and wilderness areas. Which in essence is gonna help humanity.I want to save the world. And you know money? Money's great. I can't get enough money. And you know what I'm going to do with it? I'm going to buy wilderness areas with it. Every single cent I get goes straight into conservation. And guess what, Charles? I don't give a rip whose money it is, mate. I'll use it and I'll spend it on buying land.Malcolm Collins: Like, watchAnything with him in it, the way he relates to his family, the way, like, Just genuinely, like, pure, good hearted happiness. There anything in this world that would want to make me give away what I'm doing now? Yes. Yes there is. When my children can the football that I call wildlife conservation and run it up. When they're ready to run up our mission, [00:16:00] I'll gladly step aside. And I guarantee you it'll be the proudest moment of my life.And my job will be done like my mum and my dad. Then, and only then, will I know that I have achieved my ultimate goal.Malcolm Collins: And that is really interesting that you can see this when somebody who has dedicated themselves to a higher calling. And that's what I talk about. Like, he definitely had a secular higher calling. Like, his higher calling was preserving the environment, right? But And itSimone Collins: doesn't have to be, like, a higher calling that we approve of.Like, when I was trying to think When we first talked about this of celebrities who are super, super famous and successful, but also they seem really happy. I thought of Bill Murray and like, probably his objective function is not something that we would choose for ourselves. But he clearly he's very consistent in his action.And like both publicly and privately, and he, you know, seems really happy. Karen Michael drove more than 300 miles from her home outside Chicago to the ballpark in Cleveland. Karen didn't have a ticket for the game, but she went anyway on the [00:17:00] zillion to one chance she could buy one at the stadium. I was at the will call window hoping that somebody didn't pick up their tickets and I would be able to rebuy them and they don't do that.Murray was passing by and saw Karen being turned away, heartbroken. And he turned around, gave me the ticket, shuffled me in the door. I was ecstatic to even be going into the game, let alone actually sitting with him. Roker also showed this goofy video of Murray playing hairdresser with another fan. And he just starts styling her hair.Simone Collins: So. Well, and itMalcolm Collins: doesn't seem to me that this was ever about fame or hedonism for him. No, he just,Simone Collins: he's just a cool guy.Malcolm Collins: But anyway, so back to the talking point, demons, right?So what is a demon within this context? Like, where can I borrow? Themes around what demons look like and Simone, you had a really interesting idea. Yeah.Simone Collins: Can I share my, my, my idea of [00:18:00] demons? What I think they are actually in our metaphysical metaphysical world. Is so we have the future police, which are essentially like our religions equivalent of angels, because we often say, you know, when something happens and you don't know why, or it seems bad at the time we're like, listen, the future police.made this happen because it was supposed to happen. And if we are on a righteous path, essentially, it is going to be for the best. And we found in our lives that whenever something seemingly terrible happens, it actually is for the best. And we thank the future police for that. So they are in that sense to us, a guardian angel, but I think that they can equally be demons.And that the same future police that are nudging your life in a positive direction can be the same. Demons that nudge your life in a terrible direction, toward death, toward ruin, toward obsolescence, because you are not, to use a Calvinist term, Among the elect and a sign that demons are punishing you that the future police are punishing rather than rewarding you is that you are pursuing a life of hedonism.And so you [00:19:00] are going to be increasingly punished by them made obsolete, made miserable made, you know, have your life cut short, et cetera. And I think it's the most. Per our worldview, logically consistent view, and it's also simple and elegant, because the same people who reward can also punish more like a Krampus version of Santa Claus.Malcolm Collins: Well, so, so, you know, I, I like this idea of The same entity that is rewarding, or group of entities that is rewarding actions that increase the potential flourishing of the human race do lay tests and trials for us intentionally. They do lay temptations. They wouldSimone Collins: need to remove the non meaningful people.They would need to take out the ones who might cause damage, right? Who might not create the future that is, that needsMalcolm Collins: to happen. Yes, well, to abandon those that succumb to the temptation and the tests that they have laid out to them. Not just abandon, butSimone Collins: cull, butMalcolm Collins: neutralize. Yeah, well, and I think if you see.Historically, you know, one of the things we did when we were looking at raising our kids is [00:20:00] going through historic figures that ended up moving human civilization on a direction that we think was better. And we're like, what do they have in common? Like, if we're thinking about raising our kids to be great people, like we do believe in the great people theory of history.And I do want my kids to be great people. I do want to become one myself in great person history. Right. That'd be amazing if that happens. But One of the things that you just see consistently is, in their youth, they underwent some form of enormous trial. Or some form of enormous undeserved hardship, often.Not always undeserved but, no, you just see this over and over and over again, you know? You saw it in the recent Elon Musk book, whether it's Caesar and the Pirates, whether it's You know, there's, there's always stuff like this, right? And I love this as a, as a a mechanism because if the future police were guiding all of these individuals as well, they had to put them through these trials so that they could know when they had to give them the temptations so that [00:21:00] they could ensure.They deserved their, their blessings and their, their guidance to, you know, the future that must come to pass. But this is also very different than most religion structure of demons.Simone Collins: One, one interesting way that some religious or cultural views. don't do demons, but still do chaotic forces, which I would say is probably closer to future police is with the tricksters that you'll see like in many Native American traditions.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but I just don't know if we believe in tricksters.Simone Collins: Yeah, but I think tricks, tricksters are interesting in that, you know, to, to your point that like, oh, you know, all these religions have demons. I wouldn't say that demons are universal or thatMalcolm Collins: everyone. No, no, no. But what I think is. It's pretty odd for a religious structure is a religious structure that believes that both the entities acting negatively in your life and the entities acting positively in your life are the same entity.Simone Collins: Oh, I didn't know the Greek and Roman gods seems to be that right. Sometimes they would be complete dicks to you and sometimes they would be.Malcolm Collins: I'd say it's closer to like the Christian [00:22:00] God where the negative things that befall someone are often God as well as the positive things. He was sometimes really mean.Well, I mean, this isn't true of all iterations of Christianity, but it is definitely true of some. But he often doesn't, or at least in the iterations that I'm familiar with, use angels to perform the negative acts. He instead uses the angels to sort of give demons or devils permission to, the devil permission to perform negative acts.Hmm. Is often. There were two around the Bible. The actual Bible itself often goes very rarely into this sort of stuff. So it's not, I don'tSimone Collins: recall anything about angels or demons in the Bible. I just recall for example, Satan, like goading God into making jobs life miserable. I'm not even tempting. Just being like, you really think job things are doingMalcolm Collins: great.But anyway, so, so, so back to dean, right. Yes. So. Another thing that I really like and it's funny, we, we in our [00:23:00] book we called, we said one of the names for, for, for the, the deity that we call God as we call it is the Omniscience, you know, the, the all child basically. The inevitable God. But obviously, or the inevitable God that we tied from the Obviously we took some inspiration from the Warhammer universe from that just because I love it.It's fun, right? Good lore one of the best lores actually. But I was also sort of thinking of it in terms of a lore structure, and I really like its lore structure around the Types or sort of the domains of demons with the four core domains of demons. And what I like about this is in terms of teaching my Children how to resist the core temptations and the faces that the.Enemy, you know, when, when these, these future police are acting adversarial to you when they are testing you, they do that through enemy agents, through empowering [00:24:00] individuals, real humans often or social movements or events in your life that you can call the enemy. To test you, to pull you off the path of righteousness.And that the enemy, I, the, what I like about the Warhammer framing here is you can use the four chaos gods as the faces that the enemy uses and the avatar the enemy uses to pull you from your path, right? And, and it will do this with fallen individuals. It'll take somebody who's already fallen, often succumbed to some form of ideological virus.And then use, utilize, puppet that individual often as part of the virus's reproductive cycle to try to peel you off from the path of righteousness. So if I'm going to go through the four deities in the Warhammer universe and sort of see how I see them represented here. Which is interesting, because I just find them much more compelling than, than more traditional deities I'm familiar with from other demons I'm familiar with from other religious [00:25:00] structures.The reason why I think that they're more compelling is because they were sort of come to a priori from an authorial standpoint instead of being So historically, if you look at like Christianity, what Christianity would often do is frame the gods of neighboring religions as demons or as Satan.You know, likeMoloch, right, was a neighboring religion during early Judaism, right? So, and, and words for demon and stuff like that, or ball was a, a, a neighboring deity, right? Which means that they would often take a lot of the iconography from that instead of coming up with the iconography a priori.Now, of course, if you're taking this from our weird religious perspective, we would say that these are not actual a priori, but these are visions of the way that you might be tested that are easy for a child to conceive of, right? So the, the four core. Deities born by four core human sources of temptation or fear or negative [00:26:00] emotions.The first we would say is Nurgle which in, in the universe is, is sort of the deity of, of pestilence, which is born by human's fear of death and desire to keep living through anything. And the gifts that it gives to people who follow it most are, are the alleviation of, of pain associated. with death and stuff like that, like diseases, et cetera.Simone, what group would be most associated with a paralyzing fear of death leading them to stagnation? OurSimone Collins: longtime enemy, the life extensionists.Malcolm Collins: Yes. They're, they're the, the Nergalite community. Well, I mean, I, I like that because I think it's, it's really true. It can be seen as a positive ideology, and there's so many ways to cover up the intrinsic stagnation embodied within perpetual life and the intrinsic dehumanization of shorter lived entities and everything like [00:27:00] that whereas I think seeing it Through this eye can make it a lot easier to understand the, the, the true, and what I also love is the correlation between stagnation and pestilence, um, that it is in stagnant pools that parasites breed most fervently that then take down great beasts.Huh. I see. Then second, you could say the most common would be Slaanesh. And what I like about Slaanesh is Slaanesh is all forms of hedonism, right? Not just sexual hedonism, but personal vanity, a strive for perfection. So someone would be a servant of Slaanesh or a tempter of Slaanesh, whether they are a Jimbro who is indolently working on their body, To the exclusion of particular, potentially efficacious action in reality or somebody who just spends all day [00:28:00] having sex or on only fans or eating food constantly like a glutton.And what I really like about this demonic framing is it helps remind people how little of a difference there is. between pursuits of personal vanity and, and the pursuit of being validated by your community, which can be a really driving ideology for a lot of people, right? It's very easy to convince somebody that this is a thing of value because they're like, I am striving for human perfection, right?But it is human perfection. That serves no greater purpose other than the glorification of the self. aNd this really came up with a family member of mine where he was annoyed at me. So a lot of my family, people might be surprised to know this, are like very deep south, good old boy type people.You know, Texas groups. And this is somebody who [00:29:00] married into the family, so not, not directly related to me. But, you know, it's the type of people my family often marry. That I said that sports was a sin. And he was like, no, sports is not a sin. Sports is great. Sports is tradition. And I'm like, yeah, but how does it make the world a better place?What I go and they're like, well, you can't just say sports is a sin because from your framework, I'm like, there is no logically consistent framework. I stand all logically consistent frameworks. That lead to a better future for humanity and that are pluralistic, right? That are okay with people different from them existing.And none of them that I am aware of have like a logically consistent way. I can think of no iteration of Christianity that's like really a well thought through iteration. Where God's like, oh yeah, you get into heaven because you did really well on that one play. Because you had all of those fans.Because you helped carry your team toSimone Collins: victory. And to be clear. This is not to say that any engagement in sports is seen as a bad thing by us. It's, it's sports as a, like an inherent good that you disagree with.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, and, and as a [00:30:00] life pursuit that I disagree with. Right. So I, I would say that, and this is where we'll get to one of the other demons, one of the easiest paths to temptation, one of the easiest ways a person can fall off the righteous path is to not recognize that as a human, they are wretched and they are flawed and they are failed.And that, that is okay. All humans sin. But it's critical. Is that you do not glorify the sin. What I mean by this is Every human does some things that are just for them. Whether it's sports, whether it's working out a little bit more than they have to, Whether it's drinking, a sin that I engage in, right?Whether it's you know, indulgence. Spending on things that they don't really need, right? My sin. Yeah. Sin is a, is a, is a part of life, but there is a huge difference between saying I am engaging in this sin. I recognize it [00:31:00] as sin. I recognize it as something I should have some shame for but I also recognize that I am human and thus a sinner.Right? But if you use it and say, no, actually the sports are a good thing. I am a good person for being good at sports. I am a good person for, in whatever particular aspect of slaneshidom that I engage in. That is where true evil comes from. But true evil can also come from a human that thinks they can totally avoid sin.Every group I know of. believes that humans can completely avoid sin, the humans in their group that quote unquote come closest to that are typically the most efficacious individuals in society. Because avoiding sin means avoiding action.Simone Collins: Yeah. So yeah, so sorry, I think you cut out for a second. You were saying that those who believe you can completely avoid sin and who tried to do so also do the least of anything because they're most likely to just not do anything.Malcolm Collins: Yes. So there is, there is just as much sin [00:32:00] in believing that sin is virtue as there is sin in. Believing that it is, it is capable that you as a human, a current iteration of humanity can escapes it. So, but anyway, so that's, that's one path of there. It's a Sloan Eshedom. And what I really like about Sloan Eshedom as a framing device is that it frames all of these various.types of hedonistic and self validation temptations alongside each other, and as equally evil because I believe they hurt people in the same way but they're very different than something like the life extensionists, like the desire to not die. This is usually an ideological, not like in the moment desire. NExt demon or, or life paths would be Korn. The demon of war. How do we spell this? Or, or aggression. Well, and Simone knows when world conflicts erupt, I'm often like, well, Simone, should I go there? Should I be trying to do something about this? And she's like, no, Malcolm, this really isn't the best use.But I feel a [00:33:00] really strong desire to get involved when I see... And, and my family, I remember, one of the things that my grandfather told me before I was passing, who had, you know, served in World War II is that you are going to have like a really strong desire to engage in wars that you see as righteous.But just remember that it is always best to try to avoid the conflict. Because you, as somebody who hasn't been to war, don't know how bad it really is. And that you can't imagine how bad it really is. And so I think that this desire. For my team versus their team, where it leads to death and setback, is sort of Cornite failure.Which is also very different from the Slaaneshi Kappa failures, from Life Extensionist Kappa failures. And the final one... Which is the most interesting one to me is, is, is Ezechian failure. This would be the, the god of, of change, [00:34:00] right? The chaos demon of, of change. And that within the setting, you know, this is the demon that empowers sorcerers and stuff like that.Like anyone with any sort of magical power, or intellectuals, or academics. But it, it is change just for the sake of change, not change for the sake of improving the human condition. So who does this? Because generally humans hate change. I would say that the core avatar of this right now would be the people who are just completely unhinged about AI and that the people who call other people's things like carbon fascists, that literallySimone Collins: I call other people carbon fascists, so I'm, I'm subject toMalcolm Collins: this.Yes, you are. This is definitely the temptation that we are the most susceptible to. No, I mean It's true, Simone. The idea of individuals... Now, I do believe that humans will need to change in the future, and I think that the, the drive to not change [00:35:00] is, is, is a Nergalite change. Nergal and Tzeentch are core...They, they hate each other a lot. There are two ends of a toxic spectrum. They, yeah, there are two sides of a toxic spectrum where there is complete stagnation but then there is change only for the sake of, of change. And that where I think you can corally define an individual that is.succumb to zechinism versus an individual that hasn't, is do they want some iteration of humanity to survive, or are they okay with humanity being wholly and completely replaced, or are they indifferent to humanity being wholly and completely replaced in the pursuit of whatever other thing that they're trying to achieve, often knowledge work or creating, you know, the perfect AI or something like that.I, I would argue that this is a force that in our world right now is the weakest of the four demonic forces and therefore, you know, we tend towards it a little bit, but only, only to sort of even [00:36:00] out the great game, you could call it, between these, these four forces and the different people who will wear these forces and be puppeted by these forces in trying to seduce you off the path of righteousness, which is towards a pluralistic human Empire.Hmm. Interesting. We're the descendants of humans, because you know, of course, any entity that's around for hundreds of thousands of years is going to speciate to some extent. And so we want a, a human zoo, right, a, a, a, the collection, I mean, especially when humans get to other planets or are on floating, you know, ship structures that take thousands of years to get between you know, you're just intermigrating.It will indelibly lead to speciation, unless you have some sort of like genetic protection act on, which is culling humans that deviate too much, which you could do, but it would require this sort of ironically, a [00:37:00] polygenic risk or IVF selection of the type that we do, but selects towards reversion to the mean.Simone Collins: I want to go out on a limb and say, you. know probably more Warhammer lore than most people who own At least one Warhammer figurine, and you are not among those people,Malcolm Collins: by the way. Oh, you say that, and then some people are going to be criticizing my knowledge of the lore in this video, being like, you got this wrong, or you got this wrong.For someoneSimone Collins: who doesn't own a single figurine, I thinkMalcolm Collins: it's okay. So I really love lore research, okay? It's one of my deepest hobbies, where I will just go Hours. Deep, deep into the lore of a fictional universe. The two best fictional universes for lore I think, are the Old World of Darkness,Simone Collins: Is this a vampireMalcolm Collins: thing that the Vampire of the Masquerade.But the original Vampire of the Masquerade, not the new one. They really destroyed it [00:38:00] when they made, like, the new one. Well, I, I, I think that the, the anyway. Yeah. So, I, I think they destroyed it with the new World of Darkness. I don't like, like, the new... Like, was Malkavians being a disease instead of a distinct clan?How dare? It's so stupid. How dare you? Sorry, Simone, this bothers me. This bothers me.Simone Collins: I'm, I know, and I'm not above this, this level ofMalcolm Collins: nerddom. And Gehenna, like, is, is too underway at this point, was in the new world of darkness. So anyway but then it was, was the Warhammer with Laura. The reason I always liked it.And one of the reasons I like it, do you think it's the logical conclusion just to like go on a tangent here that is not tied to the topic of this video of a lot of hippie mindsets? So a lot of hippies, they'll come to me. And they'll say things like, I remember this growing up, right? Like, well, what if deities are created by humans believing in them, right?And then those deities really come to exist. And you, you mentioned to a book, aSimone Collins: very American [00:39:00] gods kind ofMalcolm Collins: view. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Warhammer says, okay, this is true, and that is the worst of all possible worlds, because if that was true, then it is the most simple emotions, like the fear of death, or pleasure for pleasure's sake, or, you know, et cetera, that would...Manifest the most of these deities, and as soon as these deities could act on the world, then they would have a manifest interest in increasing the emotion that leads to their creation. So like the god associated with fearing death would also... Try to spread pestilence in diseases because that causes more people to fear death, which causes its power to grow.anD that this leads to horror beyond horror, horror beyond comprehension. And then you get a vast interstellar human empire. And you need to, like, monitor everyone's emotions and live in this extremely, even more than us puritanical perspective where you sort of have to beat emotions out of individuals because You must [00:40:00] createSimone Collins: some terrifyingMalcolm Collins: god.Yeah, yeah, but it's interesting that our world perspective is not that dissimilar from that I mean as we say all positive and negative emotions are sin in that they are intrinsically indulgent and that's the righteous path for humanity is one in which we learn and master emotional self control rather than to allow our emotions to control us, as I think is the calling card of many soft cultural traditions.Anyway, I love you and I love that you're okay with me being a stinking nerd.Simone Collins: I wouldn't have it any other way, Malcolm, you're theMalcolm Collins: best. You are the best. You are the best. And I loved the thesis you came up with of the demons and the gods being two faces of the same entities because it rings so true for me, it rings so plausible for me, it requires the smallest additional stuff, but it also allows us to prime our kids and to frame for our kids, the [00:41:00] people who come to them with these temptations, that this is a test and these individuals are just.human puppets of failed human creatures that are testing them.Simone Collins: Yes, it's going to be fun. Can't wait to tryMalcolm Collins: it out. Love you. Can't wait to try terrifying our kids. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this insightful discussion with rising conservative thinker Aria Babu, we analyze counterintuitive social trends around fertility rates. We explain why more “socially conservative” countries often have lower fertility than socially liberal ones.Aria contends intensive mothering expectations in traditional cultures create barriers. Malcolm notes conservative minority groups within secular societies have higher birth rates. We argue familial living stands crucial, not public policy concessions. Still, promoting extensive stay-at-home motherhood proves misguided, despite intuitions. Overall an incisive look at the data on real drivers of birth rates.Aria Babu: [00:00:00] My theory for it is that British elites have three beliefs that are very difficult to square with each other, which is one of them, which is that biodeterminism is completely false. That a child's outcomes are based wholly on on their environment.Second, the inequality is bad. So the fact that children from different. Households have different outcomes is genuinely negative. It's like a genuine, like really bad thing to happen. And three, the education can basically fix all of all of these ends. So then when you see that children who go to the same schools end up having different outcomes based on their parents backgrounds, the best theory that then comes to mind is, oh, it's about what's going on slightly before school, which I think is why so much energy is poured into the early years foundation stage.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Hello! It is so exciting to be with you guys today. I am really excited to bring... Someone who I feel we, we have scouted in, in, in talent scouting, but it seems that all of the other rising conservative intellectuals also know her Aria [00:01:00] Babu who is sort of a underground key figure in the, the conservative intellectual movement in the UK.And she recently started a sub stack. She's only one episode in, but I already love it. I was actually planning to do an episode just on. chain of subtext that she's releasing. So do you want to start by going into the subtext that you're working on the, the, the first episode, and then we can expand fromAria Babu: there.Yeah, of course. So my first piece was about how socially conservative countries. don't seem to have higher birth rates in socially liberal countries. So the first, like, look at the data, if you just look at the European value survey, and you compare that to just TFRs across these countries, shows that actually the more like socially conservative countries, so we're looking at thinking like Italy and Spain, for example, have lower birth rates than the more socially liberal ones.We're thinking Scandinavian countries, France, Britain. My second post which I've already done the research for, but I haven't published yet, then goes into [00:02:00] asking why that might be the case. So my first theory is that maybe more socially liberal countries have better provision of childcare. They have more public services that support motherhood.So I looked at cost of childcare, number of parents who use it, and Yeah, both of those things, basically, and also attitudes towards using child care. And it seems that those also have like literally no correlation with birth rates in different countries. And I remember seeing that in Austria the cost of a nursery place for two kids costs 3 percent of the average woman's income, whereas in Switzerland, it costs 64 percent and those countries have the exact same birth rate.Fascinating. So that doesn't seem to make a difference. And I was like, okay, what is another reason why a more socially liberal country might have A higher birth rate. Well, maybe it's because a more socially liberal country. Well, I was going to say maybe it's just because it's a nicer place to live, but that's actually like super unmeasurable.I mean, maybe it is a nicer place to live and that does make it easier, but that kind of sounds like b******t to me. sO then I thought, okay, [00:03:00] what are the other correlates that might have you have might have between social conservatism and yes, And I was wondering if maybe it's because the more you value motherhood, the more you prize it, the more work it might be for people.So it's very difficult to then try and pick out data that suggests like how much work do you think children are? But the closest I could find on the OECD stats site is birth rates as correlated with the amount of time that mothers spend with new babies. Okay. Okay. And then you do get the correlation.Then you get the correlation that pretty much maps to the socially conservative to socially liberal correlation. So that's my underlying theory currently, which is that the more socially conservative people also believe that having children is much more work.Simone Collins: And so just to be clear, more socially conservative nations also report higher amounts of time spent with new babies.And is this in the form of maternity leave or is there some other measure of time spent?Aria Babu: So the stat I looked at was just number of hours. That they spend so they do like hours a day doing childcare. [00:04:00] So the OECD does classic polling, which is how many hours do you spend in work? How many hours do you spend in leisure?How many hours do you spend in child in household labor in general? And then, so then they looked at new mothers of newborn women.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, this would also correlate with something that is really clear in the data was his East Asian countries. If you control for income have unusually low fertility rates and generally the more conservative in East Asian country is the lower its fertility rate is going to be.And something we keep hammering home on this show when we bring up the East Asian sphere because it's something that I think goes against a lot of Westerners intuition is that East Asian countries are more socially conservative than Western countries by a pretty dramatic amount. And so this would also explain why those countries have such low fertility rates.Which, this has a lot of really interesting implications of what you're finding. [00:05:00] So the first is something that, you know, progressives don't want to hear. Which is that it turns out that you're not actually helping by subsidizing child care. That does not appear to matter. But then the second is, and this is a deleterious thing, I keep seeing conservative influencers, even ones who think of themselves as pronatalist advocating, which is the stay at home mom lifestyle.And what we are seeing here is Almost nothing other than wealth negatively impacts fertility as much as the expectation of the stay at home mother lifestyle among mothers. And there's two really interesting points we can take away from this. One, and we often point this out, there's a great, the Nobel Prize winner this year did a thing on this and I'm going to see if I can find the thegraph and put it on the screen, but it shows that over time Women, like, like we, we think that women now are.employed in the workforce at higher rates than they were historically, which is [00:06:00] true. They are employed now at the workforce at higher rates than they were like in the 50s. But if you go back before that increasingly you see higher and higher rates of women participation in the workforce. And what we really had was just a slump of women, female participation in the workforce when jobs began to take people out of the home.So, what we're actually seeing when people are modeling these stay at home wife scenarios is they think they are modeling a traditional lifestyle when they really are not modeling a traditional lifestyle. They're, they're modeling an incredibly indulgent lifestyle that was signaled by 1950s Hollywood and is just as indulgent as any lifestyle today in 1950s Hollywood.I don't know if you've ever seen, like, movies in the 80s, but you look at them and, like, everyone lives in a mansion. Like, you look at Home Alone. Who lives in a house that large?Simone Collins: I really, watching the movie, I'm like, what did they do for work?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It's in New York or something. No, no, I don't remember, but I remember it's in like a city too.No, no, they're outside New York or something. Yeah, I'm sorry, I forgot. The Home Alone [00:07:00] 2 is in New York, so the Comb clearly isn't in New York. So the, the, the, the second thing is, um, oh God, I can't remember what I was going to say.Simone Collins: Well, I would just add, I would add one piece of an annotation, which is when you have like five, six, seven children, you know, having a stay at home parent then becomes essentially a career because you are doing homeschooling because you were doing household management in like a totally different level.You know, it's like, you're no longer like cooking home meals. You are a caterer. So I would just say like normal people's stay at home mom experience, like the, the one that happens mostly in mainstream developed Nations is like one or two kids, which is indeed as Malcolm describes, like a luxury experience.But when you're actually doing like six, seven, eight kids that, you know, does, does become a different story.Aria Babu: So here's my theory about it, which is, I think, I think like South Korea is a really good example to dig down to it. I think for most of history, Having an additional child [00:08:00] actually wasn't that much of a problem to already existing child provided that you could give them enough food But now the returns on education are quite high and actually we don't have super good theories about how much parent investment helps with kids But we do see that the kids who generally achieve better do have parents who put, like, spend way more time with them.Whether that's just, like, an effect of conscientiousness, or if that's, like, the actual action to the kid's benefit is something I don't really know. But I think South Korea is definitely a country where positional education and hard work is really, really well rewarded in the education system. So, like, their tests aren't really just IQ tests, like, you know, like the SAT can kind of be a proxy for.So it really does help to study aggressively. So by having a second child, if you're not constantly reading to that kid and constantly teaching that kid math, Then you really are actually depriving your child. I think to some extent it is a rational approach to the education systems as set up in some of theseMalcolm Collins: countries.I agree and disagree. So I'm going, I, I happen to be, I think that this is the intuition. I think what you are describing is why people are making these [00:09:00] decisions frequently. However, the intuition is wrong from the data.We can look at economic and educational outcomes by number of siblings. And what we find is that when you go, I seem to remember, like, up to, like, two to three siblings, every sibling actually helps a little, or at least isn't negative.You really, siblings really only begin to deleteriously affect their other siblings, I think, when you're going above three. And then the effect is incredibly small. So you have this intuition, which I think once you're a parent, like I, I would say this because I know we have a number of parents with a lot of kids who watch our podcast and it's sort of the thing that every parent goes through when they have a lot of kids is was the first kid you put astronomical amounts of time into them and stuff like that.It's like a kid, a little bit less by the time you're on kid three, you're like, Oh s**t. Like, I really don't need to worry about potty training them because they're going to figure it out. You're like, I don't know. Mother,Simone Collins: we were just talking with said, like, by the time I had the [00:10:00] fourth kid, I'm just making sure he's not going to bed with something like a choking hazard in his mouth.Like, you know,Malcolm Collins: no, I think that's what we're seeing here is so much of how kids turn out as really just genetics and their peer group, which you actually create an influence through having a large number of kids. So that's, that's I think a really good point and one that hopefully we can dispel a myth around.But the other thing and the reason I think this data is so important is so many people's intuition is we just need to go back to the old ways or what they perceive as the old ways. And so one, I said, one of the problems is, is you might misperceive the old ways, but also the social and technological environment we are in is different.And, and it is as important here when we talk about, you know. Is being a stay at home mother, like, the optimal choice to promote societally? Now, I think individually, it's a great choice. But I think that there's a lot of conservative influencers who think they're helping the prenatalist cause, and are promoting it for everyone who intends to have kids.And that's where I think it's really [00:11:00] deleterious. And then the second thing is That, that so, sorry the, the, the other area I think we see this and we're always advocating for this on our show is fertility rates are falling pretty dramatically. And so some conservative practices that used to increase fertility, like, okay, let's say, Is that cue.contraception bans, right? Like, let's ban contraception. And then that comes to, like, okay, you, you start to virtue signal around that, and you're like, I think even an embryo is a human life, and therefore I think IVF is bad. And now something that historically would have increased fertility rates, a belief that life begins at an embryo is now dramatically decreasing fertility rates because it's so hard to get pregnant naturally.Aria Babu: Yeah, no, I'm completely with you. I definitely think the fact that people misperceive the past is, is like a massive thing that happens here as well. I think people definitely have this sense that historically women just were like only focusing on childcare, as if like, [00:12:00] As if, like, household maintenance wasn't itself basically a full time job in a way that it just isn't now.And the other thing is, sure, maybe, maybe spending lots of time with your mother is like a really great thing for you as a child. But, growing up in a poorer household is almost definitely not better for you. So it depends completely on your own family's financial circumstances, whether or not being a stay at home mother is even better for your kids.Well,Simone Collins: and a note, because when we were first planning our family, like, way before we ever had our first kid, We actually wanted to look really closely at like, is it better for a mother to stay at home or to leave? I mean, you know, we, we just wanted to know like if there was any conclusive reason what the data says.Yeah. And basically there isn't exactly conclusive research and you could find some studies that suggest. Sort of one way or the other, but ultimately it seems like it's slightly better if anything for the mother to work, especially if you have daughters, because the more important thing is to demonstrate to daughters that you can go out and work and it's sort of empowering to see that their mother works [00:13:00] and has, you know, a real life, you know, so beyond just being a mother.And I, I think that's, that's telling and it makes a lot of sense. I would think also that my, my supposition of why this isn't just so obviously in favor of mothers staying at home, because I think especially in the modern age, a lot of mothers staying at home get pretty depressed and demotivated. So to have a mother who's kind of pumped out and bored or neurotic or living through their children because they're, you know, helicopter parenting and they'll.Don't have anything else in their lives could be damaging. So even though maybe a lot of kids who have stayed at home, others are getting a lot of support. They're also getting micromanaged a ton. There's too much pressure on them. So yeah, I mean, even that is really interesting and it surprised us.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I, I have an alternate hypothesis as to what's going on here.And, and I should be clear that this is, I think, a really sort of sad study. Because I think a lot of women, they think they're making this enormous sacrifice and it's going to have this enormous positive effect for their kids.Because to some women, this is a sacrifice to them. Not, not to all women. To some women, they prefer to be [00:14:00] stay at home moms.But some women are like, I'm giving up a career that I would have preferred to have. And so this is the type of study that you have to lay very gingerly that shows actually you probably hurt your kids by making that choice. And, and that's really sad, you know, but I think that the reason is, and it comes back to what I was saying earlier, which is kids seem to develop best with minimum amounts of.And unfortunately, I also think that women who are disproportionately drawn to stay at home roles especially if they have small families, which a lot of these women have right now, are the narcissistic type parents who want to completely laud over their children's life and helicopter parent, and that's what we're seeing.You know, as a woman's other tasks, you know, whether it's laundry or something like that, got automated. They had more and more free time, as Simone was pointing to, and all of that free time got directed on hovering over children. And that seems to have negative psychological effects. [00:15:00] In other places where you can see this, like if we're talking about related studies that seem to indicate this is probably true, there's this great study on kids going to kindergarten and trying to teach them Language earlier, trying to teach them reading earlier and it found out this, this state for, for poor kids in the state, I want to say it was like Ohio is somewhere in the central United States.They made prekindergarten free focused on teaching early reading and they thought they had done this amazing thing for like the poor and then longitudinal studies were done and it turned out it like put these kids behind like a year and a half. Which is to say that if you force a kid to learn something before they're ready or you force a kid to engage With ideas before they're ready.It actually has pretty significant deleterious effectsAria Babu: We we have actually pretty similar data in the uk. So, the uk has for lots of reasons got incredibly incredibly expensive childcare, but one of the reasons it's very tightly regulated and the regulations they involve things like making sure that a child is like learning to learning to hold objects, learning to speak, because obviously this is an early years foundation stages from baby up to school [00:16:00] age.And the Department for Education recently monitored the outcomes of children who were in nurseries or childbinding. So regulated sectors or children who were staying at home with their parents and they found that actually the earliest curriculum is. Slightly net negative compared to just staying at home in I think informal childcare.Wow. That could be a selection effect, but...Simone Collins: It's also terrifying to me that in the UK, like, you can't just, like, pay a teenager, a responsible one, like, to just watch your kids. That's, that's wild.Malcolm Collins: It was because a couple kids ended up killing another kid in some daycare. No, no, no, notSimone Collins: daycare, but like, probably while they were being babysat.So,Malcolm Collins: yeah,Aria Babu: I think it was part of Tony Blair's like education, education, education push. Cause it started in 2006. My theory for it is that British elites have three beliefs that are very difficult to square with each other, which is one of them, which is that biodeterminism is completely false. That a child's outcomes are based wholly on on their environment.Second, the [00:17:00] inequality is bad. So the fact that children from different. Households have different outcomes is genuinely negative. It's like a genuine, like really bad thing to happen. And three, the education can basically fix all of all of these ends. So then when you see that children who go to the same schools end up having different outcomes based on their parents backgrounds, the best theory that then comes to mind is, oh, it's about what's going on slightly before school, which I think is why so much energy is poured into the early years foundation stage.Malcolm Collins: That makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. And it also, obviously it doesn't work and it seems to make things worse. So yeah, I, I, I think that with a lot of this stuff in the modern era, the cool thing is, is the data is out there and people. Look, we don't trust academia any more than the next guy, right?But I feel like I'm pretty good at knowing when academics are lying in papers. Like I'm, I'm good enough at going through the data. So either you can go through yourself and look through it and you, you can develop patterns around this, or you can just sort of trust us as people who genuinely want what's best for [00:18:00] our own kids and, and to take over the world.Right. So,Aria Babu: It's very easy to track the social conservatism thing. Just just go to the OECD website and then go to the world value survey. It takes about like, I'm going to say 15 minutes to just. Do a quick rough.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well also like that you're telling people how to do it as well, right? Like, like go out there, do it for yourself.It's the same with with multiple siblings, things. This intuition that if I spend less time on a kid, that's going to hurt the kid. Again, you can just look like this is a really replicated finding. You are hurting the kid by spending additional time on them. And this can be a really interesting thing for a husband who has a wife who is overbearing to work on, you know, to an extent you're in charge of protecting your kids. Something we've noted here about stay at home moms and this is another thing like, okay, do I want to have a stay at home wife? You know, go out there, look at the data, look at the outcomes. But, I think it's important to remember that like, if you have two kids and you are a stay at home wife, [00:19:00] you're going to go crazy because you're not really doing anything when you have like eight kids or nine kids, that's a completely different thing.And we want to make sure that we are not conflating the two. But with that being the case, this is also true that. We think even a woman who intends to become a stay at home mom, like, I think that's a privilege that women can indulge in once they're a kid four. Right. But I think before that it's pretty indolent to be a stay at home mom.That's my overly spicy take.Simone Collins: What's, what's so interesting though, about the, the first substack piece you have, because it's so counterintuitive is, you know, when you think about progressive nations, you think about progressive culture being. Just so sterilizing, you know, it's, it's, these are very, very low birth rates that progressive people have.So it's part of me wonders if it's, I mean, also more representative of a nation that on the whole is not super conservative, but is actually more diverse. So you've got more like super high blind [00:20:00] fundamentalists who are having tons of kids and then a bunch of super progressives who aren't, but I'm wondering like what your thoughts are on that.I'm like, why are, yeah, what's going on?Aria Babu: I suspect it probably isn't the like Sweden has like a large handful of like super fundamentalists. I suspect it really is just about people being more likely to have two or three kids versus one or two. Like that's kind of the range we're thinking within most, most rich countries.And so I don't think it probably is that. My guess is also that people have very bad intuitions about which countries have. low birth rates. So I think most people would be surprised to know that India is currently a replacement rate.Malcolm Collins: Below replacement rate as of this year. Yeah. And I think it's going to fall pretty quickly from, from where it is now, which is a, is a shame.Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. I think people, I guess they, there's a lot of conflation of population size with birth rate and it's going to take us a really long time to get around that.Aria Babu: Yeah, I think so. I [00:21:00] guess. Also, it is definitely true that more conservative people at the very least in the Anglosphere do have higher birth rates.So I guess it, like, it kind of, that's another reason why it makes intuitive sense and I don't actually have a great way of squaring that.Malcolm Collins: So I, I do. I think that there is a big difference between being a conservative individual from a minority conservative group and being in a conservative normative environment.Right. And I think that the conservative normative environment actually hurts conservative individuals within the country in terms of their fertility rate. And this is something that a lot of conservatives, it might be heartening, it might be disheartening. What it means is if you win. If you win the culture wars, the person who suffers the most from your winning is your cultural group, your people.It is the feeling like a discriminated minority group, which is likely helping your fertility rate. and protecting your culture intergenerationally. When your culture [00:22:00] feels like it is in control of the state, it will degrade and become soft much faster, because you will feel like you have less to protect yourself from, and you will you know, I, I think, let go of a lot of the cultural hygiene related stuff, I guess I'd call it, like theSimone Collins: But in other words You're describing sort of like a push versus pull culture, right?Like if you're in the minority culture that, you know, encourages high birth rates, it's kind of like carrot rather than a stick to have kids because, you know, you can sort of stand out and be cool and be special and really help.Malcolm Collins: Okay, suppose you're a tradcath, right? If you're a tradcath in a semi hostile governance system, like the United States, right?Your perception of, of being a tradcath is going to be, that's your unique cultural identity and every kid you have actually matters a lot because it's, it's, it's your community that you're adding that kid to, it's your church, it's your, you know, however, if you are a tradcath and your country has Catholic leadership, like it is an officially [00:23:00] sanctioned Catholic state, Every kid you had feels a lot less important.Maintaining the rules of your faith feel a lot less important, because they're also the rules of the state. This is one of the things that we often point out, that it is really silly and kind of stupid, as a conservative, to fight for things like banning pornography. Even if your group is anti pornography, because through banning pornography, the people who you're helping the most are your enemies, if you believe that no pornography is useful, you know, you're helping the secular sphere and cultural groups that were engaged in being hurt by pornography.But you're also making the rules that your culture exercises to lower pornography consultancy. consumption less relevant to every individual's daily lives. And I think individuals stick with cultures better the more they actually have to choose to suffer to endure the rules of that culture.Aria Babu: I think that probably makes sense. I would have like one extra guess though, [00:24:00] that actually that we will see these like, conservative right groups within like say America, if they do come to dominate the They will be, like, much more like they are now than they will be, like, the sort of, like, general American population.Like, I know that, like, for example, like, the Amish has, like, a slightly higher bleed rate than it used to, and the Mormons have a slightly higher bleed rate than they used to. But I suspect that the people that will keep reproducing at a high level will be more... More like, like traditional Mormons.Simone Collins: Absolutely. Especially because, you know, the ones who detract are the ones who don't have kids. And the ones who do have kids are the ones who stay.Malcolm Collins: I need to update your intuition. The Amish actually have a lower bleed rate than they used to. The Mormons have a higher bleed rate than they used to. So, Mormonism right now is basically falling apart.So they're not really useful to learn anything but like, don't do this lessons. Amish, on the other hand they have intergenerationally gotten to like incredibly low bleed rates, like 3 percent intergenerationally. And that's just me.Aria Babu: So I thought as the[00:25:00] Amish, basically, as they, as they have to move off, like being like purely like agricultural, you get like a small set of Amish that have to interact more and more with the English as they call it.And that group has a lower birth rate. That group. Oh, yeah, it does.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. So he's, he's referring more to, to strict. Amish, and not so much like the Mennonites who have cell phones. Schwartz and troopers.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. They're called. Anyway, uh, was there anything else you wanted to say on this topic? I don't think so.I liked it. I mean, I think this is just really important for people to know because it is such a non intuitive thing. It is. It's so important from a pronatalist advocacy perspective because it is, I think in the same way that progressives, the first thing they want to say is let in more immigrants and you're like, well, that actually doesn't help.And then they go, well, make, give people money and give free childcare. And you're like, well, that doesn't work. And they're like, well, all of the things that supported the s**t I already wanted to do don't work. And with conservatives, you have the similar instinct, which is, well, go back to the way things used to be, [00:26:00] uh, or at least the way that they perceive the way things used to be.And you're like, You know, you have to say, unfortunately, no pronatalism as an agenda doesn't allow you to just push whatever it is that you were planning to do beforehand. You actually need to look at the data and be very intentional if you want to be one of the groups that survives. Yeah. And we are so excited to have you on and I hope people check out the sub stack.And I expect many interesting things from her in the future. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this thought-provoking discussion, we analyze why men flaunting fancy cars, watches, and other displays of wealth can seem strangely similar to women posting sexualized images. We argue both represent kinds of signaling not aligned with long-term monogamy.For men acquiring trophies wives, the woman herself becomes a sexual status symbol. Yet this disposability makes trophy relationships precarious for women. More broadly, more meaningful displays like family commitment and mentorship better indicate male status. We see obsessive wealth flexing as an addiction distracting from real impact, similar to female vanity.Ultimately, both genders sometimes get distracted maximizing the wrong kinds of social status. Redirecting these motives toward posterity could better serve society.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] when I see older men do this, right, it reminds me a lot of of a older woman trying to show off her sexuality, like a Madonna showing off her sexuality.Every time I see some old man with eight fancy cars in his garage, and he's married. And I'm like, why aren't you investing in your kids companies? Why aren't you helping them get off the ground? And if you don't have kids, why aren't you putting money into causes that you care about? The world is literally falling apart, and you are sexually signaling to a F*****g mirror.It's weird and pathetic.Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, it is interesting that it isn't seen as obscene in society for a man to signal his wealth as it is for a woman to signal her sexual availability. Why I think it's uniquely strange is that we already live in a society that, that demoralizes men for pretty much everything else they do.Why do you think this isn't being demoralized?Malcolm Collins: [00:01:00] So there's easy glib answers I could give, right? Like they want men to waste their lives. They don't want money that could go to fixing things to go to fixing things because fixing things removes the people in power from power. I don't think this is why. No, I'm just being clear. I don't think this is I'll tell you why,Would you like to know more?Simone Collins: Hello gorgeous. HelloMalcolm Collins: Simone. It is wonderful to be here with you today. I am excited for this topic. It came up when we were doing the Just Pearly thing recording, like in the moment I was thinking about this. bEcause in the, in the episode, the,Simone Collins: the thesis for context, a couple of weeks back, we were on the just pearly things pregame show.It is a panel based show where Hannah Pearl Davis you know, discusses various topics and a bunch of randos who show up discuss with her. And one thing that she started doing near the end of the pregame show was pull up images of women on Twitter and criticize them for [00:02:00] dressing in provocative ways.SoMalcolm Collins: which, which, you know, it's funny that maybe if you look at our episode with Louise Perry, what we need as a society, more women I don't know if that episode will air before this one or not, but more women being criticized for when they are outside of their younger age phase, because, you know, women like men go through multiple phases where they are psychologically optimized for different things and when, which they should be optimized for different things.And if you are a mother and a wife, You know, being a thirst trap, it's probably not you've got to ask, why are you still doing that? Like, why are you still looking for validation from men who are not your husband on online environments? Right? That is something that maybe people should be shamed for? So, anyway. However, we had a theory on this show that came up that I had never really thought through before,Simone Collins: , you would support the idea of using social shaming to [00:03:00] encourage society to ease into various stages of life that actually work sustainably, like going from being a young woman who banks on her sexual attractiveness to being more of a matriarch who focuses more on motherhood and building a career than to more of a matriarch who focuses on, on mentorship and using shame to kind of enforce that.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And I think this makes sense. And I think that, you know, it was in the red pill. We see this okay, if a woman is married and she is projecting to society, I am in a monogamous relationship. You know, why is she doing this stuff? Right? Like, why is she doing the sexual signaling? We would look at her really weird.If she walked down the street was like little, you know, pins on her, her nipples and nothing else. And in some ridiculous outfit, you're like, who are you signaling to? And worse than walking down the street posted. picture on social media. But this gets really interesting. So what is the male equivalent to this?Right? Well, in, in humans women signal [00:04:00] using their bodies often. That is how they attract mates. How do men often attract mates? Well, men attract mates showing success and material wealth. That being the case, the male equivalent, To this sort of vain sexual advertisement is a man who is in a, at least claimed, monogamous relationship with kids and stuff like that, wasting money on vanity signals of wealth.Simone Collins: Yeah, flaunting his wealth. Essentially to like Cars. Yeah, if, if women bring their Youth and beauty and we'll say fertility to the table. Then what men bring is their resources. So a man flaunting his resources is doing the same thing as a woman flaunting her body and youth. Right.Malcolm Collins: I mean, who are you signaling to?You know, if you're a married man, right, especially a married man [00:05:00] with kids, and you get some ultra fancy car, you know, that money could have gone to your kid's education, that money could have gone to making the world a better place, like, why, specifically, were you doing that? And this gets really interesting to me, because when we were on the panel, there was this other guy.I like him. He's a nice guy. Like I didn't want to like debate him or anything on the show, but his job is selling status to young men through fancy suits and, and, and stuff like that. Right. And he seems to really indulge in this status. And he was like, yeah, but well, first, the first thing is like, is well, fancy cars helped me get my wife to sleep with me.Basically. He's I got a fancy car and that's why I have as many kids as I have. So, you know, you guys as pernatalists should be promoting fancy cars.Simone Collins: Which is to me, I think that's just cope. You don't need that to get someone to sleep with you. I mean, I think the women who are most satisfied in the relationships feel supported. And loved and also see you know, they're, they're male partners, especially if they already have kids being great dads.Like to me, [00:06:00] that is the sexiest stuff you ever do.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, it just isn't true. So if you are in a long term married relationship and your wife only sees you attractive when you increase in terms of wasteful displays of wealth. That'sSimone Collins: worrying. That's a bad, I also, I can't imagine. I can't imagine doing that.Like to be. A partner, and then be feel, feel more secure in your partner choice when your partner spends money on luxury goods and keep in mind, by the way, the typical male spending for sexual signaling, you know, cars, watches, suits, et cetera, this is not really stuff that benefits a female partner. It is stuff that benefits the male partner you know, taking a female partner for a ride to the store in your fancy car.I'm sorry. That is not improving your quality of life. Maybe buying a nicer house. Maybe getting nice furniture or luxury trips, you know, stuff that the family enjoys together, but that's not what is happening in these displays. You know, the classic displays are the expensive suit, [00:07:00] the Rolex the, the car.Is there anything else? What are the classic things? Sometimes the, sometimes the ripped body. I think the ripped body is the new is, is kind of the the tech billionairesMalcolm Collins: flex Oh, yeah. Body, yeah. As well. Yeah. Yeah. Who are you spending all this time improving your body for? Right? Yeah. If you are, you've got a wife, you've got kids, you know, if you're spending x many hours a day at the gym, that's, it.Simone Collins: Looks, I mean, obviously being healthy is important. Right? And no one wantsMalcolm Collins: like a Yeah, we're not. This is very different. There is a health body, and then there is a body that you are obviously sacrificing health to achieve. And these are two different things. And, and it is as, as I think obscene as a woman who is married walking around in a very skimpy outfit.And what's really interesting is you'll hear arguments from men who indulge in this. That really mirror the arguments you're hearing from women who indulge similarly.Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. Oh, like my husband likes it slash my wife likes it. Right?Malcolm Collins: Right. Well, I would say the first one [00:08:00] that I think you hear, it's I just like doing it for me.Why don't I get to do things for me? It's this is if you talk to a woman, you call a woman out on this and you see this, you know, because there were other women in that room who had clearly done this before where you're like, why are you posting thirst trap photos? On public profiles when you're a married woman and they're like, well, I like doing it for me.What do you like about it? You, you like the way people respond to it. What kind of people, right? There is an intended audience for this. Now, where guys may have some level of cover is they can say, well, yes, but the intended audience is, Other guys.Simone Collins: Okay, but the, you know, the same, now the same argument could be used for other women.I mean, many people have argued that women only wear makeup, really, for other women. Which is not...Malcolm Collins: Entirely. I mean, they do to an extent, you know, within these inter women social status hierarchies, but here's the interesting [00:09:00] thing. If you're doing it for other women or other guys, so if I am a woman and I am posting thirst trap photos to signal to other women my relative hierarchy within those female social circles, I am judging my hierarchy by my desirability to men.There are.Simone Collins: Yeah, you're still competing along. What you would consider like a sorted or, orMalcolm Collins: misaligned. Exactly. There are ways that women can signal hierarchy to other women that are not about how attractive they are to men. I mean, look at you, right? Whether it is your career or your kids or your husband, like people, when they go to your Instagram and you can go to her Instagram, Simone H.Collins. I love it. Great Instagram. My MalcolmSimone Collins: Collins fan account.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. No, but it is. It is signaling your status to other women. If people look at this, it's very clear. You are signaling your status to other women on this account through your husband's dedication to the family.Simone Collins: Yeah, look at what I have.I have this amazing husband and [00:10:00] he'sMalcolm Collins: amazing. Why are you posting this? And by the way, I didn't even know, like I found this account, like long after we'd been married. And it's a pervy Malcolm account. Not, not even pervy. It's just my husband is sweet to me all the time. Here are all the things he does.But that is how you are social signaling to your friends. Right. InSimone Collins: other words, you're saying, you know, in response to the female argument of, of, I just want to, I enjoy this, or I want to show my status. Well, you can show your status in ways that aren't thirst trappy and that do still appeal to both men and women, just not in a way that's like a signaling sexualMalcolm Collins: availability.Yeah. Yeah. But I think the same thing's happening with, uh, with yeah, yeah. Men couldSimone Collins: like, yeah. And actually, you know, the guys that I follow on Instagram.Malcolm Collins: I mean, there are multiple ways that a man can compete within his social hierarchy of other men. He can compete by showing how dedicated his wife is to the kids, showing their lifestyle together, showing the things they do together, [00:11:00] or he can compete by showing the wealth s**t. He's buying, right? And if you are showing the Welsh that you're buying, you are clearly signaling, you know, what status game you're playing and it is not the long term partner status game.And I think historically society understood this. It is obscene and vulgar. For a man to indolently show signs of wealth like this.Simone Collins: Now, okay, but riddle me this because I, there, there's this one thing that gets me a little confused. And, and this, we saw a lot of this when we lived in Miami. There were plenty of Miami couples where the man did the suit and the Rolex and the car.And his girlfriend did the looks like an Instagram model thing with extremely revealing clothing, et cetera, et cetera. So here you have a couple where both are doing that and they're very much and I [00:12:00] know couples too, like I I have, I have followed them because some of them had been clients of our business who together post a lot of.Images of themselves both in those things. You know, the woman is extremely scantily clad. The man is in the fancy car. What's going on there? Are you trying to say that they're both trying to signal sexual availability? No, I actually think thisMalcolm Collins: is a very unique phenomenon. I'll call it the trophy wife dynamic.Okay. So in the trophy wife dynamic, an individual has a wife specifically because of how that wife positively augments their status. In, in, in, in a sexual context, right? Like they want the wife to be attractive and, and vapid and to show other men how quote unquote submissive and breedable they are, but like they don't actually breed them, right?They are a trophy. They are not a utility wife. The thing about trophy wives. is that they are fundamentally disposable. And this is why a woman should never, [00:13:00] ever, ever marry a man as a trophy wife. It is a f*****g terrible job. And the reason is, is because as you age as a woman, your value on the sexual marketplace declines.The core reason this guy wants you, the reason why he's letting you post all this thirst trap stuff with him, right? Is because he is showing off your sexual value to his male friends. Well, the problem here. Is that if that is the value that he sees in you, a younger woman is always going to be able to outcompete you in that value set.If that is all you're bringing to the relationship, you're bringing no productivity gains, no children, no anything like that, well, okay, you hit 40, you hit 45, you are with this rich guy, of course he's just going to trade you in for a younger model. And then what do you have? You've got no skills and no career, nothing to fall back on at all.All, you are completely both used and disposable and disposed of and I think a lot of women [00:14:00] don't realize what's happening in this. I think in these instances, you know, it's clear what the guy is doing. If the guy is using you, your body, to sexually signal to his friends, you are disposable to him.That's what I think is going on. Yikes. Well, I mean, do you disagree,Simone Collins: or? Yeah, well, so, I mean, basically, it's this It almost sounds like a weird predator prey situation, where the prey is going around being like, Look at me, I'm so great! And they have no idea that they're on the chopping block.Like already by design,Malcolm Collins: just kind of, well, they've turned themselves into a product. Yeah. And they, I mean, the thing is, is that if you're a woman, this is always the option if you're born attractive. Right. Yeah. But it's a stupid f*****g option. And this is one of the things, you know, so a lot of you know, red pill guys are like, women have it so easy, blah, blah, blah.But not. Really? Not really. They have dumber temptations [00:15:00] that are easier to fall into that f**k up their lives more than yours.Simone Collins: Yeah. Like men, men are more likely in other words, to be forced to build a strong job and career independence, at least financial independence. And, and, you know, at least to be able to fend for themselves no matter what happens, whereas women are in.Courage incentivized by societal norms to, you know, focus on, on a very fleeting asset, which is their youth and beauty to like to enter a relationship in which they won't necessarily stay. And then what happens after that falls apart?Malcolm Collins: I mean, a smart male, definitely. And a smart female, like if I was to compare the two smart male, smart female, equal attractiveness.The, the man, I'm sorry. The woman definitely has it better.Simone Collins: OfMalcolm Collins: the smart people, smart people, right? Because they can utilize these assets. They can see what's out there. They can see the temptations. But when I'm talking about a dumb male and a dumb female of above average interactiveness, [00:16:00] I actually think that the dumb male has it much better than the dump.Yeah,Simone Collins: fair. Well, yeah, because essentially the dumb male. We'll, we'll have a harder time doing dumb s**t,right?Malcolm Collins: They'll have a harder time truly f*****g up their life in the way that a woman will be incentivized to. Yeah, well,Simone Collins: they're less likely to be successful at doing dumb things, whereas women are more likely to be successful at doing dumb things that will hurt them over the long run, right?Like the men are, men are more likely to be forced. So that's,Malcolm Collins: well, this is something that you had said to me recently. And I'd love you to go over it here. The, the MGTOW thing where you're like, look, if you're a guy like in, in, in you get fucked over, you can become a MGTOW. But if you're a girl what do you do?OhSimone Collins: yeah. I'm really referring to uncoupled men and women. Yeah. But yeah, but I mean, yeah, this, this applies. So. While a lot of people are looking now at like men's rights movements, you know, people who are aware of, of how men are screwed over in divorces, how men are screwed over in dating, you know, how men are like really societal [00:17:00] forces are way more against men than women which would lead people to logically conclude that men are worse off.But my argument is that men are not worse off when you actually look at rates of, of, of. Unhappiness and mental health problems. Who has a bigger mental health problem? It is young women, specifically progressive young women. They are suffering more. So even if they technically have it easier, they're the ones who are really hurting most in society and who appear to be failed most by society.And part of that's I feel like young men aren't really allowed to. To decide that they've been traumatized by what's happening to them whereas societal narratives are such that, that young women are encouraged to believe that they're traumatized by things. And we saw this in, for example, Ayla's research where she found among the same group of young men and women, the young women somehow believed that they had, you know, more abusive childhoods and their families somehow made less money, even though this is again, the same sample.So there's this like skewed [00:18:00] perception of reality among young women. So, yeah. I, I feel like it's just, even though society is more unfair toward men it hurts young women more and I think a lot of that comes down to contextualization.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, it is interesting, right? Like I look at the world today and I'm like, okay, if I was a young man and I was going out there and try, at least there were sources for me, places I could go, I think realistically that have online, like large communities that would set me on the right path.That'sSimone Collins: the key thing, though. They aren't necessarily going to support you or give you a big hug or tell you that you're doing the right thing. They're going to set you on the right path. Keep in mind that these support networks that you would go to though, would often do things that society today would say are cruel or mean, because they're not necessarily saying, Oh, it's okay.Oh, you can feel whatever you like. Oh, you know, people should come and help you. They might be saying stuff like, Oh yeah. You actually do look like a fat slob, like maybe you need to [00:19:00] start lifting. Maybe you need to get a job. So they'll say harsh things to you that are considered cruel or even bullying by modern society.Whereas women, I think actually do have what someone would intuitively assume are more supportive societies online, you know, women who have all these different support groups and, you know, they'll be like, Oh, this is a horrible, you've been mistreated, but ultimately that's doing them way more harm. So, you know, by, by saying you had support online, I don't want people to feel misled.You may have found tough love online. Women are finding a lot of support, but it's very toxic. Does that makeMalcolm Collins: sense? That's more important, right? If you look at the psychological health of young women it is obviously and measurably worse than the psychological health of young men. And the more they get sucked into this progressive cultural sphere, the worse their psychological health gets.Yeah. It is really shocking when you look at just how fucked young women are in our current society. They are told to indulge in themselves, to burn their soul in a bonfire of their own [00:20:00] vanity. And as a result they feel hollow and, and worthless. And it is in the moment, always easier to strike out for whatever small a happiness that they think they want in reality, which ultimately hurts them more, right?It turns to ash in their mouth, you know, King Midas, right? Like they think they have youth and beauty. And so they try to go for all of the The, the wonderful things they think they have around them, but it turns to ass and their vagi Sorry, it turns to ash in their vagine or mouth. It feels good momentarily, but then causes them suffering.And then they lash out at these things, because what they don't understand is they think the things that they have been consuming... They think that it, that was the problem, that that's what made them unhappy, but no, it was the people who built this structure and [00:21:00] society for them, the feminists, who built a system that makes them systemically unhappy.And so you have movements like the MGTOW that have broken from our society and say, okay, we're gonna do things our own way, we're gonna try something different. And through that. These individuals have come to positions that are psychologically more healthy, but they are also susceptible to the same vices that these young women are susceptible to.You know, these young women are susceptible to believing that their status hierarchy gets determined by how attractive they are. And if you look within the MGTOW community, I think the biggest vice and the number one thing that needs to be shamed within the MGTOW community. Is individuals showing off fancy cars, showing off wasteful expenditures of wealth because through that they are still showing that they have not broken out of the system.Simone Collins: Yeah. And that's really funny because now that I think about it, one of the top things that happens to many I guess, newly [00:22:00] converted MGTOW men is they post photos of the really fancy cars and watches they're able to get because they're not spending money on women.Malcolm Collins: It's like those things were only a value to you because women thought they were a value.SoSimone Collins: I guess I'll try to push back and steel me on this, even though I largely agree with you. I mean, men also like to signal power to other men. And I think there's a decent amount of competitiveness among men and a desire to show status and have a dominance hierarchy among men. How else are men supposed to show?To their male friends, if that's all that they care about, that they'reMalcolm Collins: a big deal. Well, so I think that this is a really important question and it can be mirrored in a woman, right? Like a woman's well, even if I am isolating myself from men, even if I'm saying I'm only going to interact with women going forward, I'm only going to do women things.I'm not going to get married. They might still post a bunch of thirst trap photos, right? Oh, actually,Simone Collins: I don't know. When I think about like lesbian or political lesbian communities, I don't think of.Malcolm Collins: I'm saying hypothetically. [00:23:00] Okay, so you saw a woman doing this. You're, you're in these women communities.You'd be like really disgusted by this. You'd be like don't you see that you're still playing into the old system? What's the point in doing all this? A Rolex itself has no value to you. A fancy car itself has no value to you. Other than the value that you were told it had was in your social context as a kid and you can say, well, I think it's cool, but not really.I mean, you think it's cool because, you know, that's the way you contextualize it, right? And this contextualization had a purpose. So you, as an adult, you say, how do I show my status among other men? Do something f*****g meaningful with your life. Because there are meaningful things you can do with your life, other than spend it on vanity items, which you constantly are flapping around other men, like a woman flapping around her breasts with pasties on, you know, it is, you know, I mean, it's accurate, and I think it's also really gross interestingly, and to [00:24:00] me, very similarly, when I see older men do this, right, it reminds me a lot of of a older woman trying to show off her sexuality, like a Madonna showing off her sexuality.Every time I see some old man with eight fancy cars in his garage, and he's married. And I'm like, why aren't you investing in your kids companies? Why aren't you helping them get off the ground? And if you don't have kids, why aren't you putting money into causes that you care about? The world is literally falling apart, and you are sexually signaling to a F*****g mirror.It's weird and pathetic.Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, it is interesting that it isn't seen as obscene in society for a man to signal his wealth as it is for a woman to signal her sexual availability. Why I think it's uniquely strange is that we already live in a society that, that demoralizes men for pretty much everything else they do.Why do you think this isn't being demoralized?[00:25:00]Malcolm Collins: So there's easy glib answers I could give, right? Like they want men to waste their lives. They don't want money that could go to fixing things to go to fixing things because fixing things removes the people in power from power. I don't think this is why. No, I'm just being clear. I don't think this is I'll tell you why, because I don't think it interferes because I think that a lot of beliefs are, are, are, are held via cultural evolution.If a belief genuinely challenges an existing cultural group, like if I teach my kids something that prevents them from deconverting and converting into the urban monoculture, well then the urban monoculture is going to shame that. Right. If there's something that keeps my kids in my cultural group, well then the urban monoculture is going to shave them.If there's something, you know, anything like that, right? The urban monoculture is going to shave them. But if, if, if, if, alternatively, um, I am a old failed man who is... [00:26:00] Wasting away his money on indulgences that I am signaling to a f*****g void. That really doesn't interfere with any of the Urban Monoculture's plans for the world.You are neutering yourself in these displays. You are neutering... The financial impact you could have on anything from elections to nonprofits, to advocacy, to starting new companies. And you are doing it for no real benefit to yourself other than to your ego, which, you know, as, as, as we say, the soul burns on the bonfire of vanities, you know, you are destroying yourself with these actions and a lot of men.Who have, you know, sunk cost fallacy. I'll say this, like the guy in the just pearly things interview and they'll be like, wasted my money on that or I spent my money on that very wisely. How dare you tell me that this was a an indulgence? How dare you tell me that indulgences are [00:27:00] always wicked? How dare you challenge my world framing that made me feel like a good and successful person?Oh,Simone Collins: And there's also a complication that you're not mentioning here as well, which is this man's career was built on selling a product that does exactly this type of social signaling. And he, he banks on, on selling that social signaling value to young men. So he really can't, he, he wouldn't be allowed to agree with you unless he wanted to undermine hisMalcolm Collins: ability.Okay.But I'd say if you're a young guy, when you're young, you know, you can signal to your male friends by who you're dating or something like that. Fine. Right? Like I think it's indulgent and wasteful, but do it if you want to, right? But as you get older, expect to change what you're using to signal to other people, right?The, the amount that you are [00:28:00] glorifying your wife, the, the, the way that you treat her, the way that you treat your kids, those are the true signs of status. Once you are in a long term monogamous relationship. Yeah. And, and don't forget it. We're, we're normalizing that here now. Right? Don't f**k with that.Right? You, you rise in status to me as a male. Like, when I'm looking through Facebook and I'm like, is this, does this person have a better life than me? I see a bunch of fancy cars and s**t. I'm like, wow, their life f*****g sucks. I see them with kids playing in the stream. I'm like, s**t, you know, I know I post those photos, but I don't, I don't do that enough with my kids.I got to do that more. You know, I see them go into. Fall fest. I see them helping their family with chores. Those are the moments that I wish I spent more time on. So yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. Hmm. I'm trying to think of any other counter arguments that someone might have to this. I mean, if someone just says they really, [00:29:00] really like collecting cars and, you know, you know, a lot of smart people who I think have collected.Really good sports cars who I don't think are driven by sexual signaling. Like what if you just autistically like cars? Do you think that there, there's a decent number of men who just like, well, that'sMalcolm Collins: an addiction. Okay. So just, you know, I, I do things that are driven partially by addiction as well.Right. But I do not pretend that they are a status symbol. It is pathetic men who treat how much they can drink or how much they do drink as if it's a status symbol among other men. Yeah, youSimone Collins: know what, actually the, the friend of yours that I'm thinking who, who we know who's bought the most luxury cars, like no one knew he had them, so that makes a lot of sense.Malcolm Collins: It is something you should be ashamed of, your Magic the GatheringSimone Collins: collection. I don't think he was ashamed of it because he would resell them and make money, so he was actually No, no,Malcolm Collins: no, yeah, if you're reselling them, okay, I agree with that. If you are using them, but that's different.Simone Collins: That's yeah, [00:30:00] I mean, no, I mean, it was, for him it was a combination of a hobby and an investment because he would ultimately make money, but then he got to drive around luxury cars and, but no one knew he was driving them.So it was a very strange thing, but yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I guess, and I think the same could be said of women. Like a lot of women just, Oh, you know what? I think this is the case with thinking about all the women in very conservative Islamic nations. But they're like wearing, you know, a ton of, of covering, but then at home they're like dripping in Gucci.Like they're just, they have a ton of couture under that isn't necessarily super modest. So like they go, they go home, all the outerwear comes off and they're wearing this stuff. Maybe that's, you know, It doesn't happen.Malcolm Collins: It doesn't happen. I'm sorry. I've seen they, that doesn't happen. The women in, in Islamic countries who signal wealth through closing, they just do on the outside went through like diamond encrustedstuff like that. Yeah. They don't do it at home. No, I know enough Islamic families where I have seen women at home and at home. I [00:31:00] have never seen a woman who looks wealthier when she's not in full outfit than she does when she's in full outfit.Simone Collins: Happened in sex in the city, probably not my most accurate source ofMalcolm Collins: cultural.Yeah, that is not accurate. No, no, no. There are a lot of women in these countries who will signal stuff with like diamond crested. They actually have to do with like phone coverings and stuff like that. But they, they, they never look more expensive under their outfits than they do outside of their outfits and from what I've seen or what I've heard. So that is the sex in the citySimone Collins: life.Yeah. Well, that's too bad.Okay. I'm beginning to doubt myself here, so I might be wrong on this. It fans have experienced something different. Let me know just, I'm not doubting my experience, but you know, the number of. Muslim women who were really conservative, closing that I have seen in. Or heard about in less than extremely formal environments is obviously going to be small because I am a male. So there are likely listeners to this podcast who would have had more experience with this than [00:32:00] I have. A little anecdote here. I wanted to share with people that, to me really helped me recognize that some Muslim cultural groups are extremely similar to cultural groups in near the areas I grew up in, in Texas. , his, I was hanging out with one of my Emirati friends in, I think it was around Abu Dhabi at the time. , and he was getting dressed.He always wore a really formal conservative, uh, you know, religious outfits. From my perspective. But apparently not from his mom's perspective. , because he didn't item. No, he hadn't tied something correctly or something like that. And we were about to leave the house and his mom was like, don't, you dare leave the house without your something, something, you look like a f*****g Egyptian when you do that. , and I just thought it was so funny. It's just, it's the type of off-color insult.I would be so likely to here in Texas.Malcolm Collins: All right. Love you, Simone. I love you too, Malcolm.. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm and Simone have an in-depth discussion on why they believe Bitcoin is valuable as an investment asset, especially for the ultra wealthy. They cover topics like Bitcoin's divisibility, transportability, known supply, and increased ownership compared to other assets like gold. They also talk about how Bitcoin could be useful in various societal collapse scenarios compared to precious metals, and what risks there still may be to its long term value.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] If I have a caravan and I'm trying to move assets between two locations in like medieval Europe or something like that.And that caravan had a lot of gold in it, right? If that is raided by a group of bandits, those bandits, because the, the gold is easily divisible, it can easily divide it. They can easily use it even in small increments to buy a beer. You know, you could, you know, historically in the old West, that's where they'd grow out their nails.They'd scrape a little bit of gold dust. And they'd use that to buy a beer. But, but If you are a group of bandits and you raid a carriage and it's full of art, expensive art, that is incredibly hard to fence. That is incredibly hard to make of use to you.And the amount of money you're going to get from that is dramatically lower than the amount of money a wealthy person could get from that. And for those reasons, There is differentially less reason to raid those carts. Now, with crypto, it's a little different. If [00:01:00] I split my key. between multiple carriages for anyone to gain access to any of it.They would need to successfully heist every single carriage was a portion of my key I hope it now makes sense to you why this is such a valuable asset to the ultra wealthy.And then the question is, do we live in a world where Wales is being more and more concentrated among a smaller and smaller class of people? And to me, the answer there is f*****g obviously.Simone Collins: You know, you're number one. You are the sun around which we revolve.Malcolm Collins: That is not true. You are the best and I love you. You shouldn't. But we're going to talk about Bitcoin today. Bitcoin. Yeah. Yeah. So we got a comment under we, we had done a video on you know, investment and we mentioned Bitcoin briefly in that video and, and, you know, why I thought I liked it more than precious metals.It's like a longterm investment and we're, we're pretty heavily invested in, [00:02:00] in that area of crypto at least. And one of the comments said. You like, I know I would never get Bitcoin because you don't own your own Bitcoin. You know, it's always on another exchange like FTX or something like that. But with gold, I can own my own gold.And when I saw that I was like, holy s**t. Like even in our audience, which I consider a fairly educated audience. I was surprised by the lack of like knowledge about like the basics of Bitcoin as an investment or the way Bitcoin works or why it has value. If you are a Bitcoin person, you would hear something like that and just guffaw at the insanity of it.Because it is so super incorrect. So what we wanted to take this podcast to do is explore Bitcoin. As an asset, i. e. not as a technology, like not why, and I think this [00:03:00] is the problem with Bitcoin videos, is they so often approach it being like, Ooh, here's like the technical part of like why it's cool, here's like the whatever, you know.Great.Simone Collins: Or like, here's how to invest and look at these weird charts and this is myMalcolm Collins: method. Yeah, yeah. Or like that, like, oh, here's it going up into the right and here's it going down and this is how you do it and youSimone Collins: know, because of the, this and that, like how it's going to change, blah, blah, blah. Right.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Whereas I want to try to do an episode on Bitcoin and this is why I didn't really prep for this episode. Otherwise I would have on an episode on Bitcoin. Interesting. So just at the highest conceptual investment level, like as an asset. discuss why it's a thing of value and why I think it will be a thing of long term value that I am very interested in, in participating, like long term when I think about my kids and stuff like that.All right, let's do it. Well, so Simone, do you want to take a start in the basics of what you understand of how Bitcoin works? [00:04:00] Okay.Simone Collins: Things I personally like about Bitcoin. One is it's not owned or run by a government. It you know, although there are obviously complications to this, like where the supply could be manipulated if enough people who Bitcoin.Sort of decide they want to change this another thing that made it stand out to me is that you actually really can own this. And, and this is an asset that when s**t hits the fan, you can take with you and you literally don't have to have anything as long as like, you've, you've remembered recovery.Phrases. And that's kind of scary. I mean, you could have it written somewhere. You could have it you know, like all these different friends, like hold different ones. Like there, there are many different ways you can do it, but like, literally, you don't even need to have any sort of device or thing and you can still have your value and it's not on an exchange.It's not where people can get it.Malcolm Collins: And hold on, I want to double click on what you said there because you're just like listing facts. And I think that that second point is something [00:05:00] that can be kind of confusing and that was clearly confusing to the individual who first heard about this. Okay. Okay.Dive in. So crypto is an asset at the most basic level. And I said this in the, in the previous episode on this subject, it is the first time in human history in which we have had an asset with a known quantity that is divisible. Easily tradable. And a person could say, well, you don't have full ownership over it, which is just not true.You actually have a fuller ownership over Bitcoin than you do gold or any asset. You literally have more ownership over your Bitcoin than you have over a block of gold you are holding in your hand. So why is that the case, that that is the case because unlike the block of gold that you are holding in your hand and someone could come along and yank it.With Bitcoin, if you have [00:06:00] memorized your passphrase, you literally, there is no way to access it other than, than hacking the entire blockchain. You can beSimone Collins: tortured. You can be tortured. You can beMalcolm Collins: tortured, but do you understand that that is an additional level? You can be tortured for like, the location of your gold or something like that, right?Yeah, yeah, yeah. But somebody could also externally find your gold. You could haveSimone Collins: somebody come. No one can find, no one can find your, your Bitcoin or other crypto. VoluntarilyMalcolm Collins: give up that information. And that is wildly different from any other now, now voluntary, obviously torture and stuff like that.But that is a level of self ownership that goes beyond the self ownership of gold. And then somebody could say, well. He doesn't understand Bitcoin very well, so it's useful for me to explain this. Well, okay but where is it actually stored? Like, who actually has it if you just have a [00:07:00] code in your head?And think of it like this. It's distributed among everybody who has Bitcoin. That's who has it. It's actually a little bit more nuanced than that. It's sort of like everybody who has a node that's operational for Bitcoin., so there's around 13, 000 Bitcoin nodes. So everybody who has one of these, and you can set one up in your house, right, if you want to, and participate in the system, is who's storing it for you. And when there is... Between the nodes incongruencies. So like, suppose like a portion of the nodes are like, I want to change what's on the blockchain.You need to get like, basically everyone with a node to immediately participate in this charade. When you personally can set up a node whenever you want. Like, it's just comically almost impossible toSimone Collins: do. Culturally, extremely libertarian, independent people, too. So it would take a lot,Malcolm Collins: I think.Yeah so [00:08:00] that's interesting. And it would also lower the value of Bitcoin as an asset, if anyone found out, for everyone else who owned Bitcoin. Like if it could be easily taken like that. And this is what people mean. If you hear somebody online saying something like not your keys, not your coin, which you probably heard a lot with crypto what they're saying is that if you give up your keys, like if you don't know the keys to your own crypto. Right. Well, then whatever exchange they're on has access to that, right?And they can go bust, they can screw up. And this has happened multiple times throughout crypto probably happened less as time goes on, but it, it, it occasionally happens. Right. But this can also happen with assets like gold and stuff, but to, to go into this, well, then an individual might say, yeah, but you have to initially buy your Bitcoin through an exchange.Right? And that means you don't fully own it. And this is just wrong. This is like saying, because I b It is true that like the easiest way to buy crypto is through an exchange. It's not the only way, but [00:09:00] the easiest way is to buy crypto through an exchange. This is like saying because you buy your block of gold that you then take home and put under your bed at a store, That you don't really have access to that gold.You do. As soon as you take your keys off the chain and verify that those keys are real, as soon as you have bought a crypto specifically, we're just talking mostly about Bitcoin on this, on a chain, and then you have taken the keys from the chain and you, you. To have it yourself, you now have full access to that.Simone Collins: Yeah, although I will say it is surprisingly hard for unbanked children. Sorry, let me, let me repeat that. It is, it is, it is actually really hard for many unbanked people. So like a lot of people working in the sex trade when they started out. With Bitcoin and crypto, they were really excited.They're like, this is great. This is the solution. I can accept payment because many banks aren't willing to work with you once that happens. But now like, because [00:10:00] there are all these KYC requirements, especially for us based exchanges before you can even like start to trade on them or buy. Or except you have to, you know, have a bank account that is associated.You have to do all this stuff with your identity. Like it is imperfect. And there aren't great systems. If you're totally going off the grid, it seems with your, with your crypto, I'm sure people are developing better things, but I would say it's still a problem. Like a lot of people who. Are trying to use this system the way it should be used where you don't have to be involved with legacy banking are still struggling.Malcolm Collins: And I think that's a misunderstanding of crypto. So I think that the Bitcoin nerds right now when they're trying to talk about why crypto has value, they're wrong. Crypto is never really a good alternative to the mainstream system. It may be for high end purchases, but we'll get to it. Well, actually, I'll get to that right now.So we used to live part time in Peru. And in Peru when I am buying a soda, or when I am buying a, [00:11:00] something at a restaurant, right, or I am buying from a grocery store, I am buying in Peruvian soles, um, when I am buying a large asset like a company or a house, I I am almost always buying in American dollars.And this is a normal way that economic systems subdivide, right? I can very easily see an economic system in which Bitcoin is used for large transactions and dollars or local currency is used for small transactions. And when I say large transactions, I mean, enormously large transactions. And this is where it gets really interesting.I think the core value of. Bitcoin specifically has always been to the world's ultra wealthy. Never, never to the average person, the average person. And so, people would be like, well, what do you mean by that? Right? Like, and we've mentioned this on the, the last time we talked about it, but it is worth [00:12:00] going into a bit, like why.Is art such a thing of astronomical value to wealthy investors? It's because an artist can die. And when an artist dies, you have a broad understanding of how many of those artistic pieces there are in the world. Now, of course, like Bitcoin, there's also market manipulation within the field, but that's a core reason why historically art had value.Because an artist could die which could give you a set number of those artistic pieces in the world and those pieces are light and easily transportable. Yeah,Simone Collins: relatively speaking, like easier than gold bars in many ways,Malcolm Collins: you know. Right, but I mean, this is why art was used instead of gold bars historically because it was more easily transportable.And you knew how much of it there was with something like gold historically, you could always presumably find some new vein or some new way of extracting it from the earth. And, and this has happened repeatedly, right? Like that makes it a very dangerous asset.Simone Collins: Yeah. But Renoir, he's dead. He's super dead.Right.Malcolm Collins: [00:13:00] Yeah. And you could find new art or people can forge art, right. You know, which is why there's such big industries around detecting that or, or finding new art, but presumably the numbers that you're going to find are fairly limited. And this is a huge value if you're an ultra wealthy person.Right? Because as ultra wealthy people, there historically have been periods in which society has turned against you and you needed to either be able to hide assets or move with lots of assets at once. And gold is typically a really bad asset to move with. An additional benefit of art is that it's harder to fence to non ultra wealthy people.So let me,Simone Collins: Oh, I see. Like you're trying to buy a property in some other country because you're hiding, like you're in hiding as a wealthy person. And you're like, listen, I have this van go, like, take it and give me your beautiful mansion and mysterious nowhere come country. And they're like, well, what am I going to do?It's like, well, you know, like they wouldMalcolm Collins: do a deal like that. And then it has happened. So like the shroud of [00:14:00] Torin actually was traded for two castles in Italy. Oh. As an example of like art or relics being traded for high amounts, you know, that's now, well, I mean, this, this, this matters, right?Because to wealthy people, this has value. They can trade it to other wealthy people to for other very large things. The, the, the but with gold. So like, imagine I have a caravan, like this is medieval times.I have a caravan that's moving between two cities. That's trying to move my wealth, right? If I have a caravan and I'm trying to move assets between two locations in like medieval Europe or something like that.And that caravan had a lot of gold in it, right? If that is raided by a group of bandits, those bandits, because the, the gold is easily divisible, it can easily divide it. They can easily use it even in small increments to buy a beer. You know, you could, you know, historically in the old West, that's where they'd grow out their nails.They'd scrape a little bit of gold dust. And they'd use that to buy a beer. One like nails worth was one anyway, so.Sorry, [00:15:00] it was the saloons, I think. We'd get the pinky, the long pinky nails for the scooping of gold dust. Anyway, Simone. So, But, but If you are a group of bandits and you raid a carriage and it's full of art, expensive art, that is incredibly hard to fence. That is incredibly hard to make of use to you.And the amount of money you're going to get from that is dramatically lower than the amount of money a wealthy person could get from that. And for those reasons, There is differentially less reason to raid those carts. Now, with crypto, it's a little different. If you, if you raid it and you get access to the key, you have full access to it.But that's if you gain access to the key. But this allows you to do things like ship parts of the key separately. So, for example, like when we die, different parts of our family who don't like each other have different parts of our crypto keys.Simone Collins: Well, and friends who don't know each other exist. Yeah.[00:16:00]People, people have our keys who do not know each other, have never heard of each other. I have no idea who else has been looped into this thing.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And they have a system that we have developed for bringing them all together and gaining access to all of that crypto, even if we die, right. But this is very different.Well, and we also have a system where we don't know our own keys. So even if somebody were to torture us, they couldn't gain access to our keys. I suppose I should make that clear. All of our keysSimone Collins: are, I think also there's the problem of we cannot remember.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. They're all, they're all maintained through these treasure hunt systems.But anyway which is fine. It's much more fun, but, but that's really interesting because what that means, suppose historically you had BitcoinSimone Collins: instead of, doesn't that just mean we would be tortured for longer because they wouldn't believe us.Malcolm Collins: It makes sense if you knew us.Simone Collins: Yeah, it would, yeah, but it's not like, you know, people torturing you or really close to you.Eh, true. I always worry about that. Like, I worry about the scenarios in which Cause you know, I, I'm an easy pushover. You [00:17:00] know, someone, you know, looks at me the wrong way and I'm like, I'll tell you everything. But if I'm literally like, I don't know, they'll think I'm just not breaking. That's so gosh, scary scenario.Malcolm Collins: Anyway. So let's talk about this historically from a Bitcoin perspective, right? So suppose instead of moving gold or instead of moving Bitcoin between two locations and I'm doing this in old timey carriages, right? Okay. This is medieval period. If I split my key. between multiple carriages for anyone to gain access to any of it.They would need to successfully heist every single carriage was a portion of my key and have the instructions for how to put it together, which might be a different carriage or the courier. Not that it couldn't be done, but I hope it now makes sense to you why this is such a valuable asset to the ultra wealthy.And then the question is, do we live in a world where Wales is being more and more concentrated among a smaller and smaller class of people? And to me, the [00:18:00] answer there is f*****g obviously. This is not a trend that's reversing, and in a world with wealthier, rich people, crypto has an increasing level of value, specifically Bitcoin.Yeah. We could talk about, oh yeah, but what about ETH? Like, that's like ethical Bitcoin, right? Except the code base gets changed pretty unilaterally all the time. And if they ever wanted to, they could just change it. It really has none of these assurances that Bitcoin has. Like I've been going over and over again, all these assurances that make it such a stable asset ETH doesn't have those assurances.Yeah. Now I'll tell you what Bitcoin does not f*****g have. And this is important to understand if you've only heard about it from the Zeitgeist. It is not an untraceable. It might be the single f*****g most traceable asset in the world. Which is part of what makes it you know, easy to verify.But if you've gotten into Bitcoin because you think you've gotten some form of currency [00:19:00] that people can't trace where it's going. They may not be able to trace who owns a wallet, but even that is harder these days with government controls. It is, it is dramatically more traceable how it's being used than dollars, or gold, or even bank accounts, really.If you're using a lot of, like, International like offshore bank accounts and stuff like that. So that's an important thing to note. If you wanted an iteration of something like this, like Manera might be better. If you're like, I want something that actually is like untraceable, untraceable, but even that stuff, I don't know, like you can look into that category of crypto.That is not why I think it has value. Because that's a, that's a smaller minority of people who value the thing because it's untraceable. Bitcoin's value is just its fungibility, transportability and known quantity. Like that's it. Now, um, what other misconceptions do I oftenSimone Collins: hear here? Well, I think a lot of people are like, well, there's zero practical application.No one's using this. No one [00:20:00] can use this for day to day transactions. Zero f*****gMalcolm Collins: practical application of art.Simone Collins: Well, but I mean, I would also argue that when we go to various communities in Latin America, when we look at Venezuela, like suddenly crypto is pretty pervasive. Not always Bitcoin, quite frequently Bitcoin.So let's.Malcolm Collins: Let's, yeah, and this is actually an interesting point that you're making here. Crypto has differential value in economic situations in which people do not have trust in their governments. Okay, so if you're thinking about it as an investment asset, I ask a question. Do you think That 50 years from now, people will have more trust in their governments than they do today or less trust in their government than they do today.I, I think it's pretty obvious. For me, the biggest question I have about Bitcoin as an asset is [00:21:00] supercomputers. And how long until it's cracked because when the blockchain is cracked and we have friends who off the record have told us that they, like, if you look at like the quantum computers that they're working with, they're not that far from being able to do it or they could even do it rightSimone Collins: now.Yeah, it could even be the case that for over a year, someone, multiple people have cracked this. They just, there's a clear incentive to not talk about it. Now,Malcolm Collins: this is what's really interesting to what Simone is talking about here. If you crack Bitcoin with a supercomputer. You actually have a huge economic incentive to not let anyone know that you've cracked a Bitcoin.Otherwise, everything you take from it has no value, and you would take stuff at small levels. You'd likely do a Superman thing, like a tax on everyone who has Bitcoin. Right. Now what's interesting about these quantum computers is, at least my understanding of existing technology, is you really can't have that many at a time.And they can really only be operated by [00:22:00] large state or comp... Corporate institution.Simone Collins: What do you mean? You can't have that many atMalcolm Collins: a time. I just mean they're incredibly expensive toSimone Collins: build. I predict that within 100 years, computers will be twice as powerful, 10, 000 times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest kings of Europe will own them. .Simone Collins: Oh, it wasn't like very few people would be able to afford. Well, now, so I've heard some people be like, well, I found this method that would enable me to do it without tons of money.So, I mean, it's plausible that someone has developed a method that's actually affordable. Less plausible than the people who are brute forcing it with money, of course, but stillMalcolm Collins: so that's what I worry about was Bitcoin is is does increasing technology make it less relevant. And I think that is a really real and very big fear, but I think it doesn'tSimone Collins: I guess.Yeah, I guess there's less risk with the US dollar because there's so many different processesMalcolm Collins: at play. Here's the other thing. People would say, well, what if governments ban it? Right? Like that could hurt its value and that can hurt its value in the [00:23:00] moment, but over the long term, look, let me put it this way.How much,how many Chinese people do you think own Bitcoin? And how many times do you think China has banned Bitcoin? Right? Like a lot, a lot and a lot. So, Yeah. If anything in increasing in frequent bans, just make it like, prove its use case more to individuals.Hearing the government banned something once is scary for its longterm potential. Hearing that the government had to ban something like five different times. Is very promising to that things. Long-term potential.Because it indicates that the government clearly is having trouble actually banning its use. And therefore, you know, an asset does not require government approval to continue to be of utility. And also any negatives from the bands are already baked into the price of the asset.Malcolm Collins: Hmm. Yeah.Simone Collins: And, and I think for us, for us though, like [00:24:00] the big thing for us was doing a lot of work with Venezuelans and.Doing a lot of work in Latin America and just seeing it actually in everyday use because for us we were first exposed to crypto in Like 2012 and it was always in this really like abstract kind of difficult to use environment So I was just like well This is always gonna be relegated to like super techie people who are really into it from a theoretical standpoint And then when I saw super non tech savvy people using and exchanging crypto I realized, oh, wow, okay, so even people who are not into tech, who don't even own a PC, or like, you know, like anything, a lap, like anything larger than a smartphone are using this.Okay.Malcolm Collins: I'm interested. And let's talk about gold for a second, right? So people can be like, yeah, well, the government can't like, it can ban your ability to hold Bitcoin, but it can't ban your ability to hold gold. And it's like, literally the U S government has done that [00:25:00] before. The when did the US government do this?Five, a gold reserve act banned the ability to personally hold gold with the exception of jewelry and collector's coins. So this has happened before, right? Like no, any asset that threatens a weak currency is going to be subject to potential bans. The question is how easy is it for the government to search your house for that asset?Gold fairly f*****g easy, especially with current technology. Bitcoin basically f*****g impossible. sO, thatSimone Collins: is, you just made the point that it's like easy to trace, so that's a problem.Malcolm Collins: , what you'd say is the boat. That's what everyone says. The boat? I lost it in a boating accident. I had all my keys in the boat, and then the boat sunk, and I don'tSimone Collins: have them anymore. You know, or you were one of those people who tried to memorize your keys and you forgot them, or, you know, they're, they're, There's so many famous cases though, like [00:26:00] already, of people who bought Bitcoin, you know, and it was like, This really theoretical thing and they completely forgot about it because they thought it was worth absolutely nothing.And then, you know, especially when Bitcoin was at its height, like around the pandemic, they're, they like, you know, are digging through old like computer wreckage to try to find where like maybeMalcolm Collins: they can prove that Bitcoin went to a wallet that you at one point had control over. Doesn't mean people can prove you have it right now.Exactly. Which is important. So people can know when you. Spend Bitcoin on something. So if I'm spending Bitcoin on something illicit, people can easily prove that people can not easily prove that I currently have Bitcoin, which is important to note. Now, another thing to note about gold as an asset, and this has always been very confusing to me about gold, there requires a very specific and narrow level of social collapse to be of utility as an asset.Let me explain what I mean by this. So for gold to be the, the single like recurring reserve of asset. I would [00:27:00] need most global economies to break down, right? So like the United States, everything like that, like the Europe, et cetera. I would need the internet to break down because you know, Bitcoin would need to not be a better asset, but I would need people to broadly understand the value of like a scarce tradable metal and be able to test it.That is, that requires, like, a level of social cohesion, which is just very unlikely in these other meltdown scenarios.Simone Collins: So what do you say to the people who are like, and that's why I just buy guns andMalcolm Collins: ammo? I think that is a very valuable thing to invest in. I think guns and ammo, so pretty much if society falls below a certain level of technology or a certain level of social cohesion, guns and ammo become the core store of value.Very, very, very obviously. And that being the case I can understand the [00:28:00] huge swath of levels of which society could collapse below, let's say, like, 10 percent societal stability. Below 10 percent societal stability, guns and ammo are the core source of value, right? Gold becomes the core store of value between, like, 10 percent and 15 percent societal stability.It's a very narrow range where you still have global networks of trade, but the internet is down. Okay. Between I'd say like 15 and like 60 percent societal stability. So these are scenarios in which people don't really trust most governments, but the internet is up. Global trade is. Kind of operational, but with private piracy, those are the scenarios in which bitcoin is the core asset of value.So it's just like a much wider range and much more likely range in terms of when I look at real outcomes for the world that I think we're going to fall into. You know, as I say, [00:29:00] I think the world's heading to where South Africa is today in terms of stability. So rolling blackouts don't mean the internet has no value or bitcoin has no value.Right? It's the same was you know, unsafe streets, unsafe care, you know, moving assets. All of that stuff only increases the value of Bitcoin, right? Even frequent blackouts doesn't make the internet go away as like. I think things need to get pretty fucked for the internet to go away. That's my take.Simone Collins: That's actually a scary thought. I, I, I don't know how much there is protecting the internet the way it worksMalcolm Collins: now. Well, I mean, we've had some friends. The other thing that I, I know people have stored as an asset in case of collapse is Yeah. And then they have other hard drives they can put it on and, and, and trade it for.And they have it in theirSimone Collins: clarity cages, obviously, because that's very necessary. Yeah. SoMalcolm Collins: they, they put the, by the way, they took, they took Wikipedia from [00:30:00] before the before times, before it became all biased and everything, which now is wildly biased, but yeah.Simone Collins: Isn't that fun? Yeah. So, I mean, there, there's, there are scenarios in which it matters.I don't. I don't think people should Like I've said before, buy any sort of crypto, not being ready to lose all of it. And for multiple reasons, like the value can go to nothing. You could lose your keys. But also like never, never consider buying a currency if you don't have a cold wallet. That you plan to move it to like leaving it on an exchange.I agree. It's not a good idea. So, thereMalcolm Collins: you go, right? Yeah. And there's also weird things you can do with all this. It's split up portions of your key and make it so that even you can't easily access it, which is the way that we handle everything, which is weird to a lot of people, but I think it makes us marginally safer.Simone Collins: Yeah. I am sure people have much more [00:31:00] sophisticated ways. of going about this, but we're just talking about like basic functionality here and why it gives us hope. And I think a lot of why we like it is ideological because we have this sort of libertarian view that peopleMalcolm Collins: should have. I disagree. I don't f*****g, I think Bitcoin has value because the number of tyrants in the world is going to increase.I think the core bet I'm making this Bitcoin is tyrants go up. Government stability goes down.Simone Collins: so Yeah, it's, it's, it's very real risk. You're, you're not, you're not at all wrong. As depressing as that may be. So it's, you know, it's a good hedge, but again, I think you should be ready to lose all of it because you know, the world is unpredictable and it's a weird asset.Well, IMalcolm Collins: understand you're saying, oh yeah, we are not investment advisors, blah, blah, blah. We're just talking about something from like a conceptual standpoint. Yeah. And, and you're saying, yeah, don't invest anything. This is true with any investment class. Don't invest anything. You're not prepared to lose.But I [00:32:00] mean, I broadly think that most metal assets that were traditional value stores, gold, silver, et cetera, they're just going to decrease over time, long term.Simone Collins: Yeah. I definitely have a lot less confidence in precious metals. That are not like strategically undervalued now, like we're talking about stuff that's used in batteries that are going to be.Ramping up in production, for example, right? Like that's different. But just like traditionally precious metals isMalcolm Collins: the proxy for wealth. In, in historic context, because they're just like super unusable as wealth stores and, and, and wealth movers. And if you look historically, you could say, well, then why were they so useful in the old West?Because we were mining it back then. Like, like in, in In, in the gold rushes and stuff like that, you know, it was, it was in people's evoked set of wealth. Right. And it had a corollaries in the historic context, right? Like [00:33:00] there was no competitor to it. Gold hasn't had a great competitor in a very, very long time.Now it has one, and it's just one that is almost comically better than it. Like it is, it is joke levels better than gold. Gold or bullets, but, but again, you know, bullets, I'm not saying bullets don't matter. Bullets matter. You want to store wealth. I'm just saying, if you want to start for the, the vast majority of societal collapse scenarios, it's, it's crypto and bullets.It's not other s**t. Now, now there's other stuff you can do. Phosphates, advanced semiconductors. There's some other things that might be worth storing value and just not. Precious metals.Simone Collins: Well, I also think that when you get to weird stuff like that, even bullets the risk of counterfeiting, if you're not really careful is higher, right?So then that's just one other thing to consider.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, here's something I'd ask if you, if you're wondering [00:34:00] why I think gold has such low value, imagine society has collapsed. Somebody comes to you, the f*****g car full of gold and they want to trade it for your guns or your food or your semiconductors or your.Are you actually going to take that as trade? Do you actually think that there's somebody else out there who's going to take that in exchange for s**t that you need? Or are you going to say, Hey, I noticed you have a gun in your car. Can you give me that? I noticed you have a hoe in your car. Can you give me that?I noticed you have a shovel in your car. Can you give me that? I noticed you have some horses or some chickens. Can you give me that? F*****g of course! Like common sense, man. I don't know.Simone Collins: Well, that's your opinion. And that's my opinion. And I'm sure we're going to get a lot of other opinions in the comments, but fun to talk about it.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: We also have no idea how much gold there is in the world. And that's another thing that's important. No, like we know how much Bitcoin there is in the world. We have no f*****g clue how much [00:35:00] goldSimone Collins: there is. Well, and how,Malcolm Collins: I mean, No, what I mean is we don't know if there's gold in Fort Knox.Simone Collins: Oh, I see.Right. It's actuallyMalcolm Collins: there. We don't know if there's gold in a lot of the banks. Some of them are audited. Some of them are not.Simone Collins: That's true. I forgot about that. Yeah, not, not, you didn't even mean in the earth. You just meant that, that people say they have.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Like that's, that's a weird thing about that asset class that we just don't know.Now, realistically, if it turns out that like a bunch of gold that we thought existed in the world doesn't exist, it would increase the value of all other gold, but you're not going to find that out. And the fact that people can lie about this so easily devalues gold over time as institutions are more and more willing to lie to the public, which I think is the world that we're entering.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So in general low trust world. Potentially dangerous world, corrupt world, that coin plus [00:36:00] crypto equals promising. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I love you Simone. I love you too, gorgeous. 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In this thought-provoking discussion, we analyze the disingenuousness and ineffectiveness of much environmentalist activism. We argue the movement is frequently performative, serving more as a cultural identity than driving real change.Many proposed lifestyle sacrifices around plastic usage and commuting fail to meaningfully impact emissions at scale. We see Germany's Green Party as an egregious example, increasing carbon reliance on coal due to aesthetic policy preferences.Ultimately we contend environmentalism resembles a religious culture focused on moral posturing over pragmatism. Some tech interventions merit attention, yet visions of voluntary collective austerity seem doomed. Preparing for adverse climate impacts could better ready society.[00:00:00] And one of the great ironies... Of having the Green Party in the ruling coalition, uh, and in previous ruling coalitions, is they have systematically dismantled a lot of the relatively low carbon sources of energy that the Germans have had, nuclear, natural gas, in favor of coal and especially lignite.So under the Greens, because of Green policy, we've seen an explosion. Uh, that will last decades in German carbon emissions. So, if you are in Germany and a little bit of electrons comes in from wind or solar, that has to be fed into the system regardless of what the price point happens to be. And if you've got a lignite facility that you're leaving on... Because it takes more than 24 hours to spin that thing up and down, and when the sun goes down or the solar goes away, the light that has to be there to keep the light on?Well, you don't count the electricity that it generates during the day. You only count the solar and wind. .If you actually count what power is generated and [00:01:00] what is used, when it is used, you're talking only about 10 percent green..Malcolm Collins: It is this level of disingenuousness, this level of not at all fighting for anything that you would actually be fighting for. If you cared about the things you said you cared about, it makes me have such a high level of animosity.Towards the movement.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Well, I love you, Simone, and I am excited for our topic today, because it's where you started your career.Do you want to talk about your early career?Simone Collins: Absolutely. Being raised in super progressive Silicon Valley, I was determined to save the world By doing the most obvious thing, saving the environment because that's what really needs our help. And flowers, the flowers, the flowers are very important. And so I, I looked at what I thought would make the most impact.I felt likeMalcolm Collins: Actually, before you go further, I'd love you to explain why you thought saving the environment mattered. Like, what about the environment was like intrinsically good?Simone Collins: Well, it was sort of the, an [00:02:00] availability heuristic problem. Everything around me was the environment is, is falling apart. In my science classes, we talked about environmental damage and pollution and climate change.And then of course, like in the news, it was a big issue. So it was just, in terms of like problems in the world that need to be resolved, it was the environment. Interestingly, actually, it wasn't human suffering. It wasn't starvation. It wasn't disease. And those are like really big issues that I would expect progressive groups to really care about.Very Evoked set. I had been told, in fact, That in the past parents used to tell their children who were not eating their dinners. Don't you know, there are children starving in China, but that no one does that anymore, which kind of implied that, like, there weren't children starving anywhere anymore. So that's the closest I got to awareness of starvation.And hardship outside. SoMalcolm Collins: you started this firstSimone Collins: career. Yeah. So I decided to go into environmental business because my understanding was that changing, [00:03:00] like dealing with environmental problems through the public sector was ineffective. You created this degree, right? Yeah. So I went to the Georgia Washington university.Because they had a good undergraduate business school. I didn't want to wait until graduate school like that. That was a waste of time because academia, even then, even then I knew academia was a waste of time. And I created a sort of custom major using graduate classes in environmental business that they had.And then I, I started I volunteered and interned. at environmental nonprofits. I worked at the American Council of Renewable Energy. I worked at Earth Day Network, which is the nonprofit that basically administers Earth Day and Earth Day festivals, but then provides year round curriculum and all sorts of other stuff.I extensively interviewed with people who worked as environmental consultants or environmental specialists within organizations or who worked as lobbyists for the environment. And of course, then I also took my, my classes and the more I learned, the more I was like, Oh my God, this [00:04:00] entire industry is a complete scam.The, the people that I interviewed who worked in the space basically said, I deeply care about this. Don't do this because my work makes absolutely no difference and I'm not making any difference. And then of course I, the most meaningful thing for me was studying historical geography, sorry, historical geology.And learning that. We are not the first organ, organism to cause climate change to significantly alter the climate of our planet. That many other organisms before us have done this. . I mean, you can't study like the fossil record and like all of the past, like errors of, you know, the natural climate and everything without discovering that. And so like learning that too, was just. Like, wait a second, guys, the understanding was that climate change, bad humans, unusual for causing this must stop it.And then what I had learned was, was climate change, normal [00:05:00] humans, not unique in doing this and can't stop it. jUst like that was, it was, it was deeply because if you do care about this problem, you know, you should be planning around it. And we don't see a lot of that, at least performatively, people are talking about how do we handle migratory crises?How do we, you know, how do we handle the fact that people are still buying coastal properties in a way that's going to lead to death and lots of destruction? You know, how do we, how do we prepare for the inevitable climate change that is going to happen?Malcolm Collins: Simone, I want to, I want to pull on something you said, that this is a scam, what specific parts of it do you feel are the most disingenuous? I'm assuming you think that like the earth is getting warmer and that like there is a lot of climate destruction happening and a lot of species are going extinct. That is allSimone Collins: happening. Yes. Okay, continue.Pollution is bad and all these other things are really bad. However, The efforts that supposedly are supposed to be addressing this are not making a difference. They're not making a difference. They're not, they're not making the [00:06:00] problem better. They are just raising money and getting attention and notMalcolm Collins: really doing.That's the really important thing to know here is that the climate change industry is an industry and that the people in it, or at least from your, your interviews, when you were thinking of going into it, regretted their life choices, but they didn't feel they had any options left to them.Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and then, so there, there were two, right?There were the ones that I interviewed who were like, don't go into this space. And then they're the ones that I worked with. And they were more like one group of them. Like when I worked at the American council on renewable energy, these are people who are genuinely passionate about solar. But it was sort of like people who are really passionate about electric vehicles.They're not like, it's not that they're like, I'm saving the environment. They're like, no, Teslas are so cool. Or like the battery pack is really amazing or like, you know, just here's this more efficient thing that I think we should really be rolling out. So they were basically just. Solar otaku.Malcolm Collins: [00:07:00] And then they actually made a positive difference of the groups that you worked with.I mean,Simone Collins: they weren't of any of everyone that I worked with everyone that I interviewed. I think the American Council on Renewable Energy was effective at encouraging adoption and increasing education about about solar power. Like they, they were, they were well focused and they were doing something practical and actionable, but I don't think it was to save the environment.I think it was because they were stoked about solar, you know, it was like, it was no different from like some American council on natural gas, you know, who are like, wow, natural gas is just such a great resource or fracking is amazing. You know, it's just, that was, that was the kind of the vibe. And then the earth day network and like those types of people were a lot like many other environmentalists, professional environmentalists, essentially that I worked with where.Yeah. It really wasn't about making a difference. It was about living a lifestyle. It was about having this type of water bottle and eating this type of food and being vegan and essentially being a negative utilitarian, creating curriculum and sort of building people within your culture. And that makes [00:08:00] sense for an organization like Earthy Network because our number one activity.It's hosting these big festivals every year, you know, we're like, you have bands playing. And,Malcolm Collins: you know, this was something from our childhood. People may not, I don't know, like young people, like, like Gen Z, like has any f*****g idea what Earth Day is. Like, this used to be a thing, like on Nickelodeon, they'd take the day, the whole week, and it would be like Captain Planet and s**t, and like, other.Simone Collins: I think there are still Earth Day festivals but again, it's that life, it felt more like goth festival, you know, like annual goth or burning man, right? Where like, you're just really into this community and you want other people to adopt it and know about it and you want to make it available to as many people as possible.So it definitely felt like a cultural lifestyle business and not a. I mean, of course, they still talked about how, like, it's so important to recycleMalcolm Collins: and here's the whole Did you have any specific moments where, like, it broke for you? Where you're like, this is just not doing anything meaningful? [00:09:00]Simone Collins: No, but by the end of my freshman year, I think it was the end of my freshman year, I gave up.And then I started working at fashion magazines and chocolate factories and cupcake shops and medical device companies insteadMalcolm Collins: of So, so I had a moment for me that was my big What the f**k are we doing? Okay,Simone Collins: what happened? How old were you?Malcolm Collins: Old, old. Because it was just to me the most glaring evidence I've ever seen.And it was so glaring I could never go back from it. OhSimone Collins: gosh, I don't know about this. This is fun. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: well I've talked about it before. I just don't think you may realize, so global warming that the earth is getting warmer is No, no,Simone Collins: no, it's not, it's global climateMalcolm Collins: change, don't forget that. Climate change.That climate is changing at a faster pace in modern years than it has historically. I do believe that the evidence points to it happening from us looking at the evidence. And you know, we're skeptical people. It [00:10:00] appears to be very hard to deny that it's happening. Not a hoax. Not a hoax. That humans are in part responsible for this.thAt is something that I've, I've looked at the evidence and I'm sorry, it just appears to be yes. ISimone Collins: thought you were going to say no, and I was really intriguedMalcolm Collins: by that because there's people who will do like cutoffs and weird graphs and there's, there's ways you can argue with evidence that things are overstated.Do I think that we live in a world where if I'm a climate scientist and I published a study saying. That humans are not the cause of climate change that I am going to get fired. Okay, absolutely. Which makes it very hard for me to objectively analyze the data that's out there from the data I've looked at.It appears the answer is yes.Simone Collins: Yeah. But also another reason to not be so doubtful of that is, is that. Far less we'll say conspicuous species have done this in the past, like organisms have done this [00:11:00] in the past. Like, Oh yeah.Malcolm Collins: Great.Simone Collins: I think, you know, humans doing all the crazyMalcolm Collins: stuff. No, no, no, no, no, no.Here, here are the two questions. Should I f*****g care? You know, this is question one. Which, which we can get to. That's like a whole other thing. I think, yes, we should care a little. Like, it, it matters. But it's not like this existential thing that matters more than like hundreds of thousands of humans starving to death every year.Well, ISimone Collins: guess it depends on how tractable it is, right? That's, that should determine how much you care.Malcolm Collins: We're going to ignore this for now. Like, like, when I look at all of the suffering in the world today, when I look at all of the various things, like getting off planet, X Risks, everything like that, like, it matters that this is happening, it just is not, like, thing number one, or I don't think it should be on any, like, sane person's list.In fact, I think it should be even below preserving tracks of land and natural environments that are going to undergo [00:12:00] change due to global warming, if you want to preserve diversity. So if I'm going to word this differently,Simone Collins: I just don't know how practical it is to doMalcolm Collins: that in the face of your time and money is better spent.Bent buying Rainforest to keep it from being cut down a lot. Oh, yes. No, no, no. Totally. Yeah. Mr. Beast did this or, or, you know, protecting national parks in the US than it is fighting global warming in the way that people are fighting it. But here's the big thing for me here has been my big thing was global warming.It was during the pandemic, um, and Oh, right. Yeah, during the pandemic, we shut down like f*****g everything. People weren't commuting to work, people weren't flying, people weren't leaving their houses, people weren't eating at restaurants. We were living the environmentalist dream that we had been told we should be making all of these sacrifices for, for so f*****g long.It was like we were [00:13:00] making all of these insane sacrifices that we had been told to make. At a global scale, and for people who do not know this, that year we barely met the incremental carbon reduction that was needed to make a meaningful dent in global warming. So I will word this in different words, okay, to prevent global warming, you know, if, if carbon's going, you know, like this, right, like we need to, or suppose it's even a straight line, like we need to start going down, right, but we need to keep going down.It did the one year decrease it needed for that year. But we wouldn't need to have kept up COVID restrictions. We would need to literally double COVID restrictions every year for like a decade. So on top of everything we were doing, we needed to do all of that in terms of carbon reduction while still not going back out, [00:14:00] still not getting to work, still not using planes, still not using restaurants.And, and that's when I realized I was like, Oh, what's being asked is. Comically unrealistic. What's being asked at like a base case to prevent this is obviously never going to work. It's never going to do what they want. Well, this is, this is a huge deal to me, right? Like we are being told you as a people can fix this and then thing happens and we learned, Oh s**t.Like I think even environmentalists, when they were looking at that, that should have been this moment of like. Oh s**t, it's really stupid to fight global warming by telling people to make sacrifices in their daily lives. bUt I, I didn't see almost any environmentalist taking that away for this. It meant that if you're, if you're going to fight this, I guess you could do it with like carbon sequestration and stuff like that, but But a lot of people are,Simone Collins: like, I would say, I, I would say now There's less, it seems, focus [00:15:00] on, oh, everyone has to go and do these things.It's more, hey, governments, you need to change this. Hey, this infrastructure has to change, you know, this regulation has to change, which is smart because all this nonsense about like, start, you know. Start recycling when like recycling doesn't work because many municipalities just don't do it at all.RecyclingMalcolm Collins: is mostly a scam for people who don't know,Simone Collins: but yeah,Malcolm Collins: so like, you know, video on it. But but, but even speaking of that, there was a interesting study done on like lifestyle sacrifices that people were making of Gen Z's generation. And another thing is that turns out despite Greta Thornburg saying you old people have sold our future.That Gen Z makes dramatically fewer lifestyle sacrifices to protect the environment than Millennials or Boomers do.?The point being is that they just do a lot less. If you look at a environmentalist rally, I don't know if you guys have seen one recently, it's f*****g old people. You look at, like, the people who are in this wholeSimone Collins: situation Oh, you know what, maybe it's the Gen Z nihilism,Malcolm Collins: people love to doom about it, [00:16:00] but they're doing it because all humans love to doom.That's why apocalyptic means are so viral. That's why there's a bunch of idiots going around now saying AI is going to kill us all. You've done a lot of episodes on this. It is not. There's like. Mathematical proof that it's not. Look at our reverse grabby alien theorem video.Simone Collins: Yeah, guys, stop. It's, stop trying to make IA apocalypticism aMalcolm Collins: thing.It's not a thing. Not a thing. LLMs are not going to kill us. Not saying, no way I could kill us. I just don't think that we're anywhere near that level of technology and I think that the data backs this. And even so, we're probably dealing more with a relative danger versus an absolute danger, i. e. if it's going to kill us, it will definitely eventually kill us. And so everything we do up until that point is actually more of a risk. And that if it's going to kill us, we would kill ourselves once we reached a certain level of intelligence, like we would converge on a utility function.There is terminal convergence of utility functions. But anyway and I think that the data supports us. I think that this is [00:17:00] actually what's supported by the inverse grabby alien theorem back to the, the topic at hand. So, global warmingism. Yeah. I think it's something that people just use to masturbate this dumerism they have.Without really having to engage with anything that's particularly hard to engage with. IfSimone Collins: anything, also, like, I do feel like the majority of it non commercially, like, so when we leave the nerds who are into something that is environmentally adjacent, like, they're just super nerdy about carbon sequestration for some reason, or like, whatever, like, I feel like there are lots of just weird otaku about weird tech that, you know.Come across as environmentalists, but really they're just enthusiastic about the intervention. So like when we take those out, I think it's a culture thing. I think it's just like, oh, I'm a crunchy green person. And I think what's really interesting now, actually, when I look at social media and when I look at what people are talking about, at least like.From the shorts that I'm seeing the new version of that culture, the new version of like, what now is an [00:18:00] environmentalist isn't like, Oh, you know, don't use that because it's not sustainable. They're like, don't use that because it has endocrine disruptors and don't use that because you know, it has endocrineMalcolm Collins: disruptors are a conservative thing.What are you on about? Oh, well, ISimone Collins: actually think that like many of the people who. Used to be super progressive environmentalists are going more conservative and they're concerned about pollutants and I don't think endocrine disruptors are necessarily a conservative thing. I, I, I actually think that like,Malcolm Collins: well, integrated, we can get across, across I think, I thinkSimone Collins: it crosses the aisle.I mean, they may not be using the same words and they may not have the same concerns. Right? Like, they're not like, oh, my child's fertility. They'reMalcolm Collins: literally concerned about the frogs turning gay. No,Simone Collins: no, no, the conservatives are, but I think the progressivesMalcolm Collins: are more just like No, no, no, I mean the conservatives are concerned about the implication of the frogs turning gay.Yeah. The progressives are concerned that there's not going to be any more frogs.Simone Collins: Yeah, well, that and that like their children are being poisoned, [00:19:00] just kind of generally, like, oh, it's bad for you. And it, you know, it'll, it'll mess with my child's, it'll give them ADHD.Malcolm Collins: I don't know. I think you're off the boat with progressive as on these days, there was an interesting paper.So I, I can't remember where this came out, but it was, it was shocking to me, which was looking at. Pollutants in the environment, like how much do different pollutants affect, like the health outcomes of babies. And there was pushback at like the university or something saying that the paper wasintrinsically eugenic in that it was trying to ensure healthy babies were born.Simone Collins: Oh,Malcolm Collins: no. You might be surprised how far off the cliff they've gone. AreSimone Collins: you sure you weren't thinking about the. The argument that a female to male trans person should not be allowed to continue to take their exogenous hormones while pregnant. Yeah, it wasMalcolm Collins: duringSimone Collins: that. You're, you're referring to that. I don't, I don't think they were talking about endocrine disruptors.They were just saying like, you should have the right, sorry, he should have the right to [00:20:00] take testosterone.Malcolm Collins: And they said that the research on this was eugenic because it was looking at baby health. The point I'm getting is you think that they care about the health of children, where I think they think the health of children isSimone Collins: eugenic too.Look up Crunchy Moms. Look up Crunchy Moms. It is not... It is typically not, I need to save the environment. It is, it is an aesthetic thing that I think is, is more honest than original and like previous. Let'sMalcolm Collins: talk about it being an aesthetic thing, because this actually bothers me about the movement. Right.Okay. So this is where you get like in Germany, the f*****g green party banning their nuclear plants. Right. Like it's aesthetic. Well, it's aesthetic, but it objectively hurts global warming and the environment by a dramatic amount. And there's actually, I want to see if I remember to do this, link to Peter Zahan's videos on this, because he does some great videos on like, how...Bad Germany is in terms of its environmental impact, but they're like one of the worst countries in Europe and they hide it intheir [00:21:00] government statistics because what they'll do is You'd have to go to Zion's videos on this, which he does a very good job of thisOf these, the only bit that is sustainable is the lignite, because that is actually produced in Germany. And one of the great ironies... Of having the Green Party in the ruling coalition, uh, and in previous ruling coalitions, is they have systematically dismantled a lot of the relatively low carbon sources of energy that the Germans have had, nuclear, natural gas, in favor of coal and especially lignite.So under the Greens, because of Green policy, we've seen an explosion. Uh, that will last decades in German carbon emissions. And there's really no way around that. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. They have spent something like 2 trillion now building up power network, butthe sun doesn't shine in Germany, uh, in terms of reliable output. Uh, when people actually use the electricity. Uh, Germany only gets [00:22:00] about, I think it's 8 to 11 percent of their electricity from green sources. Now, they will tell you that it's 40 to 70 percent based on the season. But what they're not telling you is how they collect the data.So, if you are in Germany and a little bit of electrons comes in from wind or solar, that has to be fed into the system regardless of what the price point happens to be. And if you've got a lignite facility that you're leaving on... Because it takes more than 24 hours to spin that thing up and down, and when the sun goes down or the solar goes away, the light that has to be there to keep the light on?Well, you don't count the electricity that it generates during the day. You only count the solar and wind. And it's here in August when all the Germans are on vacation, and the sun actually finally is shining. All of those electrons have nowhere to go, so you dump them into France, Poland, and the rest. You count those, too.If you actually count what power is generated and what is used, when it is used, you're talking only about 10 percent [00:23:00] green.Malcolm Collins: This is why on like a per person basis, Germany is so environmentally unfriendly compared to other countries. It's because of the environmental party. They lied about their output, right? There has been no real push to be honest about their measuring systems. And two, the reason they're in this... situation is because mostly due to Russian money that was trying to increase their reliance on Russian gas, they shut down all their nuclear plants, which was an insane thing to do.If you care about the environment, anything other than the most aesthetic and vague sense. And I think that it is this level of disingenuousness, this level of not at all fighting for anything that you would actually be fighting for. If you cared about the things you said you cared about, it makes me so and have such a high level of animosity.Towards the movement. You just don'tSimone Collins: like the hypocrisy. That's, that's a problem. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: I mean, my take on the environment right now, like if I was going to optimize for my beliefs around the environment, I think that we should create full genome [00:24:00] sequences of as much of the planet's diversity right now as possible.Simone Collins: Yeah. Like a seed bank, but for allMalcolm Collins: biological, right. That can be copied a number of times. And then. We can recreate it on some other planet in the future when we have more s**t. But for now, things look pretty fucked and I don't see anything really realistically we can do. Other than create a genetic library at the moment, we might even be able to recreate it on earth one day, but for now, we need to be realistic about where things are going and realistic about how to optimize the things that we, anyone says they care about.Simone Collins: Yeah, I would really, I'm concerned about making sure that there are migratory treaties in place that would. allow for people to more easily leave areas when they become deeply unsafe. I, IMalcolm Collins: really think that this is relevant when you look at how quickly populations [00:25:00] crashing or will crash.Simone Collins: I guess, although things are happening now, like we're already getting to a place where temperatures reach untenable levels, like as in, if there's a power outage plus this heat wave, many people will die kind of thing.And, and that, you know, We're not doing anything.Malcolm Collins: You're not gonna get migratory treaties. It's completely unrealistic. Yeah, would you what is theSimone Collins: same things with environmental controls like we've done we've done impossibly Impressive things like the least we can do Is figure outMalcolm Collins: no, well, what is the migratory treaty?Really? Like, what are you saying? If you do an intercountry migratory treaty, right? I know. I know. Like conquest. That's what you have to fight people for is to take their land. Now. You're just saying, oh yeah, just move your population to another country.Yeah,Simone Collins: like what give India a discount on Greenland, you know.A little discount,Malcolm Collins: just a little. Yeah, no, no, I mean it's yeah, yeah, I [00:26:00] don't think that you're going to do anything. I think there's going to be a lot of suffering in regards to climate change. I think it's happening. It's, it's, it's man made, but there's also like literally nothing we can do about it.Except for carbon sequestration, which I think it's potentially a very big thing we could do about it. But I think it is hugely underfunded when you contrast it with stupid climate efforts like banning straws or something like that.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that just stands out to me as I look back on all of it is the difference between the cultural movement and like the nerds.And the cultural movement never really cared. It was always just about aesthetics and about enforcing uniformity within their community. They weren't shaming you for drinking out of a plastic straw because they believed that it was going to hurt the environment like deeply and intellectually. They shamed you because in your culture, in this community, we don't drink out of plastic straws.It was an internal status hierarchy. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Just like, you know, how dare you dress like a [00:27:00] prep? This is the goth club. That kind of thing.Malcolm Collins: So you said something at the beginning of this interview when you were like but not interview talk, but I, I sort of treated it like an interview at the beginning.When I was asking you like, okay, so you're young. Why specifically? Like if you had to explain to somebody why you cared about the environment. What would you say like, like, like I, other than just it's around, like if you had to justify to me, I am a conservative who met you, not a conservative, a weirdo, a weirdoSimone Collins: who hates the environment.I would say it's one of the most existential threats that faces humanity at this time. And you would explain why you don't believe that's the case, but I would fully believe that is the most important thing, largely because I'm, I was at the time unaware of many other important problems. IncludingMalcolm Collins: disease and starvation.We thought that we needed environmental stasis to survive as a species. I mean, we have destroyed many environments. You want to talk about f*****g up environments? Look at the environments of the Americas after the Native Americans got here. Right? Like, there's a f*****g reason you're not seeing giant sloths anymore.[00:28:00]Simone Collins: Oh, you're blaming humans for giant sloths? WereMalcolm Collins: they handed to extinction? Almost certainly, yeah. Humans destroyed almost all megafauna. Honestly, I think that humanity was a megafauna hunting species and we were specifically designed for, like,Simone Collins: evolutionary reasons like that. Don't worry, we're bringing them back.Don't worry, don't worry, it's fine. We're gonna fixMalcolm Collins: it. We're bringing back the mammoths and stuff? We're gonna fix it. Well, I wanna see giant sloths. That's what I wanna see. Yeah. I wanna know how f*****g scary they were.Simone Collins: I thought mammoths tasted really good. Well maybe it was too fatty. We'll find out soon,Malcolm Collins: hopefully.Right? No, actually there was a group of people who like cooked them when they found it. Remember they found one that had like meat in it? Oh yeah! OhSimone Collins: gosh, what did they say it tasted like?I don't remember. But I mean, it probably, I mean, if it's that old, you know, like things in the freezer that taste not good, you know.You won't even eat hamburger meat that we've frozen. So I doubt that it tasted good.Malcolm Collins: Well, no, I, I, I do hear what you're saying. Yeah. So historically yeah, humans really fucked up [00:29:00] environments when they first got to them.Simone Collins: Yeah, but so have other organisms. It is a thing that things do. Does a thing that living.living stuff does.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but humans were uniquely good. But I'm talking about, you know, aboriginal humans. I'm talking about native Americans. I'm talking about, this is not a European thing.Simone Collins: Like we're apex predators. What do you want? That's what we do. We're apexMalcolm Collins: predators. I mean, I guess my, my thing is like, as time has gone on, I've been asking myself more and more.Like, other than cultural preservation, and outside of genetic preservation of the environment, like a genetic catalogue of the environment, I just... They see the issue as much less existential when contrasted with other issues.Simone Collins: Yeah, I mean, I guess per our value set in our worldview, it's important that we have a stable world long enough to get off planet and things get a lot [00:30:00] harder when the environment breaks down.If like, you know, if, if. Undersea currents reverse and cause severe weather changes, you know, when people start focusing more on surviving than getting us off planet, that's going to set us back, you know, this is, these are things that are not ideal. AndMalcolm Collins: I will clarify that there are some like genuine risks around global warming.Like the case of a chain reaction, you know, recurrent cycle greenhouse effectdue to like climate change. So, I'm going to leave it at that. sulfur melting in the ocean floor and stuff like that. I don't remember exactly how we're I'm really worriedSimone Collins: about sea currents.Malcolm Collins: Well, and sea currents reversing would have a major effect in some areas.So, so there's some like really f*****g serious s**t that's going to happen as part of this process. But one, I think that the true, like, just like out of control chain reaction, when I look at the science, it just doesn't seem to be there. doesn't seem to be likely. And when I look at or at least it's dramatically less likely than something like a killer AI.And when I [00:31:00] look at other things like, like the sea current and stuff like that, there's just not a lot we can do about that at this point.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's the. That's the problemMalcolm Collins: that I think about more. Simone, I loved chatting with you about this. I loved that as a youth, you know, you went exploring something that you were told had value by your cultural group, but you were still open to learn and have your ears open and have your opinion changed even before you met me on this issue.Yeah,Simone Collins: I get some credit for that, don't I? I love you, Simone. I love you too, gorgeous. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this insightful discussion with luxury bespoke tailor Dimitri Toukhcher, we explore his journey building a global fashion brand worth millions. Dimitri shares tactics that helped him close huge sales, emphasizing boldness, rapport building, and reading people.He contends most success stems from learned skills - not innate traits. We cover why direct sales develops critical expertise like handling rejection, turning strangers into friends, and “selling yourself.” Dimitri argues universities increasingly fail at teaching these social competencies crucial for influence and leadership.Overall an eye-opening look at timeless methods for getting ahead in business and life. Mastering human relationships unlocks doors nothing else can.Dimitri Toukhcher: [00:00:00] See people over plan and under execute. I was all about execution. The first day I went out, I had no fabrics. I had, I bought a magazine with some suit pictures, literally at a home hardware order book.I went into Blake's law firm in Alberta. I was cold calling. I had five meetings. I ended up with six sales. Cause on my way out after five sales, I met someone in the elevator that we ended up going to a boardroom and they bought some stuff as well. So I put up about 40, 000 worth of orders my first week.Again, I had no product, no sample, just a magazine.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Hello, this is Malcolm Collins here with Dimitri. I actually met you when we were recording for Just Pearly Things. Oh no, before that, at the ARC conference he runs LGMG, which is the company that makes things like Jordan Peterson suits, if you're familiar with those sort of wacky suits, but they also make, you know, more conservative outfits as well.So, so worth checking out and what I wanted to do with this episode, because we've had some episodes on how to like make money or start companies which are our listeners seem to really like. And [00:01:00] you went from my understanding being an encyclopedia salesman to building this, this quite large company.I'd love it if you could walk through the process of that.Dimitri Toukhcher: So every company is a little bit different, right? Like when people say like, what does the CEO do? How did you start your company? There's not one sort of formula that everybody follows, you know, in our case, we're a direct sales company. So, you know, when I was in university and our company is LGFG, it's like, it just stands for look good, feel good, lgfg.com. So when I was in university, um, I just, I needed a way to make some money. And I guess, you know, not everybody. Not everybody responds the same to authority, like, in my case, coming from the USSR, like, authority wasn't sexy to me, and so going into a very large company, like, I did a co op term for the government of Canada, working in public works and government services, and I despised working in a government office, it was just so slow, and everybody was so mediocre, and slovenly, and, and just, you know, lazy.Malcolm Collins: I want to hear more about working in the government to start, because I, [00:02:00] I started my career working at, like, a, a cubicle office? No, it was a start up, but it was... Dramatically more efficient than when I worked in like, even academia. Like academia was slow. I've heard like government, government work is even worse.Can you talk about like office structure?Dimitri Toukhcher: What happened? Well, lemme, lemme tell you a couple examples. Like, I'll tell you my personal experiences. They may be anecdotal, but these are my experiences. So like, I was a sequel coder, so I was supposed to design like an online intranet portal where government workers from our department could log in and view.So this, this government department built like roads and bridges and things like that. And we had to compare like the budget that was set for us for the year versus the budget that we actually spent and we Needed to be able to query it very quickly, right? And so about two months in I finished all the sequel stuff and and We launched the thing and we started searching like month by month and we could see that we were for the year Dramatically under budget, which was great.wHich was great. And then my my my supervisor who was like the department head She was like Hey I see that we're like 200, 000 under budget for [00:03:00] the year. I was like, this is great. She's like, my God, we're going to have to get the best pizza party ever. And I thought she was joking and she wasn't. We had like a month of just pizza parties.She literally said, we need to spend 200, 000 so that we get the same budget next year, otherwise they'll lower our budget. Yeah, I was like, this is taxpayer money. Like I'm not at this point. I'm like 22, but I understand you're just throwing taxpayer money away. This is just wasteful. She's like, yeah, but like, they'll give us a lower budget.I'm like, can you imagine if you're a CEO of a company and it's your money and your company's money? And your employee spends 200, 000 on pizza in a month. ItMalcolm Collins: was wild. As some larger companies begin to develop policies like this, like if they get so large and bureaucratic and regulated, like you're talking like the airline industry or something and, and this is just wildly inefficient.It's one of the things that my wife, she's running, she'll be running for office in this next cycle. She wants to replace a large portion of local government with AI to like use AI crawlers to detect this type of behavior. In budget systems, but like, I, I completely [00:04:00] agree with what you're talking about.That's horrifying, but it's a good place to start because we're starting with like the least efficient corporate structures. Now, what did you do after that? Yeah.Dimitri Toukhcher: So, so, so kind of concurrently in my summertime, I got recruited to sell encyclopedias door to door, which was a completely opposite experience.So now instead of, you know, being in an office with many, many people, lots of bureaucracy, things move slowly and nothing really seems to happen ever. I'm outside by myself knocking on doors and I either, you know, get chased off a porch or if I do my, you know, if I execute at a high level, I'll get a check right there then on the spot because it's like, you know, you knock, you show, you sell, you take a check, you're done, right?Yeah. And so this is like the complete opposite. And obviously the results come very, very quickly in direct sales because, you know, right away, if you're, if you're moving forward or you're not. And so that experience, I did that for, I ended up doing that for six years. I actually bought my first home in Vancouver when I was a third year student at UBC, um, because I'd done so well in door to door sales.Right. So I learned, I learned a skill that was very, very useful, which is the skill to be able to sell a product to a person. [00:05:00] And, by the way, leave that person quite happy at that transaction, because, you know, they have a long cancellation policy in Canada, and I didn't seem to have a lot of cancellations, so people like the transaction.I'm like, this is good. And so when I finished my university degrees, I was like, okay, I haveMalcolm Collins: one before we go further. I want to, I want to stick on this point for a bit. Encyclopedias. I feel like our younger listeners may not know what those are.Dimitri Toukhcher: So, I mean, this was a, this was a condensed encyclopedia, but there are books that basically like give you information.Our case, what we were selling were more like study guides for school, like to help with. You know, math, homework, writing essays, just a reference guide for people to use aMalcolm Collins: couple times. Yeah, like WikipediaDimitri Toukhcher: in a book. Kind of like that, kind of like that, exactly. So that was kind of the idea. And even at the time Wikipedia existed, I'm not that old, and the internet existed, right?Yeah. But, but, but I was able to make the sale. It was just, you know, there's other things that people benefitMalcolm Collins: from. Yeah. So, so something I wanted to touch on here because I thought this was very interesting. It came to a statistics I heard recently is I've always said so one, just in terms of direct sales for our listeners we have [00:06:00] another episode on how to get rich where we do discuss direct sales as a mechanism because it is a fairly reliable mechanism.Just make sure you don't confuse direct sales with MLMs. But they're, they're very distinct. And I would also say that a really interesting thing is you might have an arbitrage opportunity if you're out there doing direct sales today. Because when I was younger, I had to learn to sell myself to women.I had to learn to go up to random women and get them interested in me. And I would do this, you know, at malls, I'd randomly walk up to people over and over and over again. And a lot of guys had this experience. This is how we learned to. Well, I saw a statistic recently that said of Gen Z, only 10 percent of men have ever approached a woman, which means that you're getting a whole generation of people who just have never built up the, I would say the cognitive fortitude that's needed to do stuff like knocking on doors and direct sales.So you're going to have a huge arbitrage opportunity. People will have not run into a direct salesperson in years.Dimitri Toukhcher: I literally, listen, I teach this to my company all the time. People say cold calling [00:07:00] doesn't work. That's BS. Cold calling works better now than it's ever worked. And I've been doing this for 20 years.It works better because when you're good, they've like, literally people have never experienced a good salesperson. They just have this idea of like some cheesy salesman being like this douche, whatever. That's like, no man, great salespeople that bring revenue to the company. They're the highest paid people in the world because it's so hard to get revenue, right?And by the way, you know that thing you said about like approaching girls at the mall? I mean, I did the same thing and I, and I actually did it with a group of guys that taught it and I signed up for their seminar and I was already like 22 or 23 because I wanted to iterate enough times to learn that skill.But we have this fear of approaching, you know, where the sphere of approaching comes from in sales and dating, you know, where it comes from, it's, it comes from tribalism, right? So we used to live in. We still live in tribes, and being, you know, castigated by another member of the tribe and the embarrassment it costs could actually cause us to be kept out of the tribe, which means certain deaths.So we have this fear of social shame, which is no longer applicable in today's society because our society is so large that if a girl rejects you, it's not like [00:08:00] very likely that every single girl in your city is going to know about it, you know what I mean? Yeah,Malcolm Collins: so yeah. And I think it's only overcome with like a catalyst.Like, it's not something I think some people say, because this is the way young people are raised today. I just am not the type of person who can do that, right? No, anyone can makeDimitri Toukhcher: themselves desperation and it's like, you know, one of the things we can get into a different topic is like what porn is doing to men is it's basically eliminating desperation that you need to take a little bit more risk in your life.And I know that's not, but that's actually true, right? Because like, it'sMalcolm Collins: true. Men aren't desperate enoughDimitri Toukhcher: anymore. There's like a really high amount of things. I tell my sales team all the time, like there's a lot you can achieve when you're just a little bit desperate. And we have this thing that like, you know, we need to raise the floor for everyone.I'm like, I disagree with that. I think a little bit of dust, like every, I look, I work with a lot of hyper successful people. Like I'm talking like you go to our website, lgbt. com. I work with global celebrities at the highest level and they all have a really effed up childhood because they had to learn.To express their talents and maximize for [00:09:00] the thing that would get them out of desperation. Right, and it's a common thread. I've heard this in the Joe Rogan podcast. It's a common thread amongst ultra successful people. A lot of them come from f ed up circumstances. And you know what? Maybe if we raise the floor, then everybody's equal, but maybe we're gonna lose the thing about human ingenuity.Like that, that level of brilliance that comes from somebody that becomes obsessed with a life and then they pursue it, you know?Malcolm Collins: Yes. So two threads I really want to pull on here. One and this is part of a, probably a whole other podcast we'll do at some point with my wife, but we are really interested in creating sort of artificial hardship for our kids because I'm really afraid of they don't grow up without any hardship.They're not going to be successful. And so we're like buying some land in like Northern Canada with a number of other weird families like us and putting cameras to make sure there's not like bears or anything. And then just Having them have to learn to like live there and feed themselves with a group of other kids for a few months, like stuff like that.Like we, we thought about maybe like leaving them in another country, like I had to do a few times when I was younger, but then I was like, yeah, but if they get murdered or something, then we're going to get blamed for it. And, you know, [00:10:00] but yeah, it's, it's, it's. Tough to, to try to artificially create this.The other thing I wanted to talk about, which is really interesting is I say this, the, the number one skill I ever learned. So when I was at Stanford business school, getting my MBA, which was really the best business school program in the world. Right. I, at the same time, I organized my classes.So they were all on two days a week. And then three days a week, I would go to 500 startups where, because I had a company in their accelerator at the time. And so I was learning what Stanford was having to teach us and learning what the accelerator is having to teach us. And the number one thing I learned of utility that I use almost every day in every business venture I've ever done since then is mass cold email.And I learned that from startup world. And that's like cold calling. So a lot of people, well, They'll hear cold calling and they're like, I get cold called all the time. I get those people who are like, hello, is this, and then they say like the wrong name I work for whatever company. That's not, that's like a the, the, the cold email equivalent of like getting one of those like formatted emails with like gifts in it and stuff.And you immediately know, like it's a political trolling email, but then there's other cold emails where you [00:11:00] click on it and you're like, not sure. Is this a robo email or not? When you are doing. Good cold calling. You are not dropping out there. I think the best place where people still learn to do this is probably in, in, in missions was the church of Mormon.Like, like, I, I love that. I mean, you want good salespeople. They make great salespeople because they have to sell. I mean, I, From an outsider's perspective, something that seems pretty preposterous and then go door to door doing it. And there's two ways they can approach this. They can either just go, hello, have you heard of blah, that's not actually going to convert anyone or they start with like, Hey, what are your problems?What are you dealing with right now? You know, actually engaging the person about their needs, which I doubt you have had a salesperson due to you in a long time as you're just like an average person. But anyway, continue.Dimitri Toukhcher: Well, cold calling, cold calling is a brilliant, you know, I'll tell you a funny, there's a couple of like things that come to mind right away, but like, for me, I took so much pride in, in really cold calling at a level, whether it was knocking on a door or picking up a phone [00:12:00] doing at a level where I would connect very, very quickly with the other person.Cause remember all sales is, is person to person. It's not business to business. It's just person to person, right? And I, and I would come up with like very witty retorts and I would, you know, iterate and, and try something funnier or something a little bit more spicy just to kind of like capture somebody's attention a little bit.Like, as an example, like I, I've got, I mean, this is gonna sound weird out of context, but just as an example, like when I, when I was, you know, starting LGFG and I would pick up the phone, I would cold call law firms to sell suits and a guy would say. Well, look, Dimitri, you know, I appreciate the call, but, you know, I have a, I have a really good tailor already, and, you know, there's all these, and, and one of my best answers that I, you know, I've done a thousand times, I go, well, Malcolm, let me ask you a question.Does your tailor make you feel powerful, you know, like Saddam Hussein? And the guy would go, no. And I'd go, great, open your calendar. Let's meet. And you know, some guys would get like, really, really, really, really like, quirky or like kind of try to be [00:13:00] a little more foxy with me. It's like, you know, does your tailor make you feel powerful?Like SDA Hussein, he'd go, yeah. I go, well, Malcolm Saddam Hussein wasn't a very good guy. And, you know, and the guy would like, and again, out of context, that sounds weird, but I would try to iterate for an answer that would give me a little bit of an edge over my competition. Like, and I took a lot of pride in this, right?Like I really took a lot of pride in this. Like one of the, my favorite ones is. If you call a prospect and he gets angry, he's like, You people call me all the time! And I go, You people? You saying that because I'm black? And then I wouldMalcolm Collins: go, Oh my god, I can't And then I would go,Dimitri Toukhcher: Oh, no, well, I don't know.I'm like, Malcolm, dude, dude, dude. I'm nothing with you, man. I'm just, I'm just trolling. And the guy's like, Oh, okay. And then he laughs. And then all of a sudden we established this bond because I pushed his boundaries a little bit. You know, it didn't get violent. It was kind of funny. He's relieved. And I, and I just learned to, and I go, look, man, you know, and then I continue my pitch and I would, so I would learn how to control the tension.And that's something that, you know, was applicable at sales. It was applicable with women and dating as well. You kind of start to understand that. Men who have a lot of money act exactly like women, [00:14:00] by the way, when it comes to consumer habits. That's something I learned from luxury sales is men with a lot of money.They have all the power and everybody's trying to get their money. Well, guess what? Beautiful women have all the power. Everybody's trying to get a piece of them too. So, so, so you kind of learn it's, it's, it's a very transferable skill. So anyway, so I went, so I was door to door selling and I started selling, you know, encyclopedias, but then I wanted something to go and I was doing really well with that.I wanted to do something a little bit more. Let's say, well, I wanted to do something more status driven because the, you know, like I could be 25 and making a few hundred grand a year, but I'm still a door to door salesperson. And now I'm kind of in the dating marketplace. I want to do something a little more elevated.So I discovered that I could probably transfer the direct selling skills to a different product. I chose suits and I started, you know, hitting up law firms and private equity firms and banks. Calling on people like you with Stanford MBAs.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, before we go further with that, because I really want to get to that, I also want to touch on a few of the sales strategies that you mentioned, because I think they're very useful for people to know about, because there aren't a lot of places where people can learn like useful cold email or sales strategies these days.Something [00:15:00] you mentioned was in both of those, like the race based joke and the A joke around Saddam Hussein, not like a joke, but like it's something you wouldn't normally hear in both of those. You put in language or a comparison that is usually exclusive to non sales environments. People do not cross those lines when doing typical sales environments.So it categorizes you differently, like, as a like an actual engagement in the person's head. Another thing that you did that's very clever for people to learn from is switching no's to yes's. In which you say, you, you ask them a question, and then you say, oh, because you answered that way, let's book a meeting, right?Whereas... You know, their answer is pretty incongruous was whether or not they would book a meeting with you, but they said, no, I won't book a meeting. Then you ask them something else. And then really, regardless of whatever they answer to that, you can say, Oh, okay, great. Then let's book a meeting. Which is really powerful in terms [00:16:00] of moving the process forwards and getting your foot in the door. So, when you first started thinking about what company you were going to, like, try to direct sell, can you talk about the brainstorming that went on there, the different types of products you thought about, how you landed on the product you landed on, etc.?Dimitri Toukhcher: Yeah, so, so, and by the way, just to come back, I'll answer it, but to come back to your point about, you know, like, pushing a boundary that's not normally part of the sales context. That's extremely important. There's a biologic, there's an evolutionary biology reason for it. Like, what, what, what you want to do is like, if we're being very polite with prospects, because just for the sake of politeness, or with women, they understand we're virtue signaling because we want something.But as a man to man, like if I'm talking to you, and I make a little joke that sort of crosses the line a little bit, and we don't escalate to violence, I know you're cool. And that's actually how men test each other. This is why guys, when we compliment each other, it's like, Oh, you douche. Oh, you fat piece of crap.You know, the way guys compliment each other is actually insulting each other and not escalating to violence. And so we cross that boundary anyways. But,Malcolm Collins: Oh, sorry. I got [00:17:00] it. I got to tell a quick story here before you go further with that. After we had talked for a bit, cause we were talking for a bit when we were in London.My wife was behind us and she goes, why was he like miming, punching you? She goes, what was the context there? But I think that that's the sort of thing that you're talking about there. In terms of like escalating friendship levels within male, male interactions in things that you can't easily do with women, but anyway, continue withDimitri Toukhcher: what you were talking about.And that might have been, that was just emerged naturally. I think we were just getting along pretty well, but. buT, but yeah, so what I was thinking is like, I want it to be in sales for sure, because money was, you know, because I am a salesman, let's put it this way, like money is at the top of my hierarchy of needs for my profession.Like I don't want to be middle class. We suffer too much as business owners and salespeople in order to make middle income money. So it had to, it had to have like a lucrative thing to it. I wanted a quick sales cycle. That was important to me. So even though I thought I was going to sell software, I realized that like waiting a year and a half for an answer and going with 50 parties, wasn't what I wanted.So I wanted a quick sales cycle so that I can start earning money. One thing that was really important for me is I didn't want to go to any [00:18:00] more school. Like I did five years at university. I did not want to go get an MBA or, you know, CFA or anything like that. So I needed something I could sell right away that didn't need extra, extra qualifications.Like I just, I was done with school, man. I'd spend my whole, you know, I was 25. I've been in school my whole life. Like, no thanks. The other thing that was interesting is I had this delusional idea that maybe one day I could grow an international company. So I wanted to sell a product that wasn't regulated.Like for example insurance is very highly regulated depending on the country, even state or province you live in. Or, you know, or financial investments. Like I couldn't sell investments to somebody in Alberta and Canada and then go to Norway and sell investments because there's different regulating bodies.And suits just, it was just crazy. Like, I don't know how it came about, but suits just match my criteria. I'm like, Oh. It's a quick sale. I can make it right away. I can sell it internationally. And actually one other thing is I want it to be selling to highly sophisticated people because that was an ethical decision I had made.And the reason I say that is when I started, when, when I got like better at selling [00:19:00] encyclopedias door to door, I realized very quickly that I can manipulate people that are, let's say a certain below a certain threshold of intelligence. I could manipulate them with emotional selling. I can get them emotionally vested in the product where I felt like taking their money was manipulative.I didn't want to be like that, but I never felt manipulative when I sold to people that had, you know, PhDs and that ran banks, like those people, I never felt because they're smarter than me. So I wanted to sell to people smarter than me. And suits, you know, it's a, it's like, I'm wearing like a 12, 000 cashmere full cashmere suit right now.Like people that buy these kinds of products, sense or how do you have made it in life? And so it gave me access to these people that I didn't feel manipulative over. And also they were people that were CEOs and that ran banks and ran. You know, private equity firms, they had degrees from top universities.That was my ticket into that table. Right. Can youMalcolm Collins: talk about sourcing your original? Because our listeners are going to be interested in thinking about starting their own companies and everything like that. First I love everything that you've talked about so far. So he was thinking about the [00:20:00] audience that he was selling to, like, he's like, I want to sell to this demographic.What sort of things does this demographic buy that I could realistically sell to them? Then he was also thinking about. Shipping, storage, everything like that. Like, that is really important if you have a company idea. Suits do not, like, they're not like a food stuff or something like that, right? So, one, easy to ship between borders, but two, also easy to store, although you probably wouldn't because most of them are going to be made more bespoke.But both of those are, are, are very important things to know. I was wondering how you thought sourced your original distributor.Dimitri Toukhcher: I didn't because I did it correctly. See people over plan and under execute. I was all about execution. The first day I went out, I had no fabrics. I had, I bought a magazine with some suit pictures, literally at a home hardware order book.I went into Blake's law firm in Alberta. I was cold calling. I had five meetings. I ended up with six sales. Cause on my way out after five sales, I met someone in the elevator that we ended up going to a boardroom and they bought some stuff as well. So [00:21:00] I put up about 40, 000 worth of orders my first week.Again, I had no product, no sample, just a magazine. Like, what kind of city thing? And look, I'll make you blue. Like literally like that because I could sell because I have the other thing is like, I don't care if somebody was sitting in their office and designing beautiful catalogs, good for them. But I knew how to sell, right?Malcolm Collins: A really important story that's similar to this. A lot of people might not know this, but the original big sale that made Microsoft the company it is. This is when he was selling the operating system to IBM or something, right? He was selling the operating system to, I want to say, IBM. And he made the sale, and he had not Even begun to work on making this product.She's like, yeah, we have this great product. It fits everything you need. He goes back to the office. He's like, s**t, I just sold a product. We need to make it now. And this falls into something that I think is really important for people when they're thinking about starting a company is the concept of an MVP or a minimal viable product.So this is what is the. Simplest iteration of your company that you can create to know whether or not your [00:22:00] company is viable. And for you, that was a magazine that somebody else had printed with pictures that you were selling suits out of because you knew if you can sell these suits for X price, then you can go get them made and everything like that.And that's the easier part. The hardest part of every company is always the sales. This is why a salesperson is usually the highest paid person at a company. At our company, the highest paid people, like most, most of our top sales team has paid more than my wife or I. And it is because you don't have anything if you don't have good, and this is true with marketing that actually works, right?So if you can find a way to get your company, like suppose you were creating a different iteration of this company and you're like, I want to sell suits. Online, but what you could do is ads a Facebook page, not like a Facebook page, but like Facebook ads, a landing page that you created in WordPress and see if you can sell the product before you figure out how to source the product.And you can buy ads and see what it costs to get each sale and then expand from there if you're able to do it [00:23:00] viably. But just a way to think about this from what he's saying. But yeah, continue.Dimitri Toukhcher: Well, that's the thing that most people avoid is the avoid selling the thing because people have delusional ideas of starting a company.Thing that they get to administrate and tell people what to do. And that's not what you do at all. If you want to start a company, you got to do the stuff that actually brings the money period, because then there's no company without money. You want to hire somebody, get money. And you know, and some people are like, I'll go raise money.It's like, well, who's stupid enough to give you money if you're not generating revenue, right? So, and ironically, we have our own magazine. So this is one of our magazines, Alice Cooper's on it. You know, we've got all sorts of cool stuff because now, you know, because now we're, we're a fairly large enterprise.But yeah, so I had I kind of look if I get people's credit cards And I don't even know how to process credit cards at the time Then I was like, okay, I got all these people's credit cards. I have 40 000 hours of credit cards how do I like make so, you know? I so what happened was I called up my bank I'm, like I need a credit card processor because i'm starting a company and the banker's like, okay How much revenue do you think you'll do your first year selling these suits?I'm like And I lowballed them so hard. I was like, I don't know 200, 000. We ended up doing 980, [00:24:00] 000 our first year and I was like, I don't know 200, 000 I remember the banker lady laughed. She's like, okay, maybe you need some experience running a company first So I ended up just using paypal, but it was super funny because like, you know, she didn't believe I understand why she didn't believe The company would even i'm like I got 40 000 of orders my first day and she just thought I was lying But anyways, so I did that and then we ended up delivering the product the first iteration I flew to asia the first time it was a terrible product It took me years to learn that too, because keep in mind, like, this is a really important thing about like building a business.Like in our industry, we are the highest end suit manufacturer on the planet bar none hands down. Like we're competing with companies. There's maybe five companies in the world today that are able to achieve anywhere near the level that we're able to achieve because we ended up buying our own manufacturer in the United Kingdom.Like we're fully transparent on our website. You can see your suits being made live. Like we have the best machinery and everything, but at the time it was like, I just need a product and. When you're building, you know, when you're in the commodity space, like for example, suits, you're competing on price at first.And if you want to break out the price competition, you have to build a brand and credibility in the market. And [00:25:00] that's, at that point you need a product because, you know, if somebody buys a 5, 000 suit from you. A lot of times it's not the only 5, 000 suit they're going to try. Like the guy driving the Porsche, he's tried the BMW.He's tried the Lexus. He might've tried the Range Rover. At that point, they're choosing between where they're going to put all their money for the rest of their lives. And you have to have a product that at least minimally meets the standards of the market and hopefully far exceeds that. Right. But you're not thinking that way when you start because nobody without a brand, without market credibility, nobody's going to believe you that you tell them the product is great.Like that's it takes years and years and years of market trust to actually build a product that people believe is great. So, you know, by the time we got to, for example, Jordan Peterson, it wasn't like we'd never made a suit before. By the time we got Jordan Peterson, we had over 15, 000 long term clients buying from us for over a decade.Including like his brother who was a client of ours already up in Regina. So, so I just, I don't want people to jump steps here and think like, Oh, I can start something, say it's great. People buy it. No, they won't. It's a much longer road to build credibility.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and, and [00:26:00] also product matters a lot here.So something that's really great about suit sales is just logically, if you're selling to somebody. You can be like, look, they're like, why would I buy from you versus a store? And then you're like, think about the store. Think about the overhead of that brand. Think about how much of the money you're actually paying in.There is going to branding storefront. You know, if you're buying a suit from like a Brooks brothers or something like a store that has places in Manhattan, you're paying for that, right? And so you can say, that's where we get differential quality that they're not going to have. Now something you mentioned that is really important to think about when you're starting a company, and this is the only thing.In the suit industry where I'd say it's a less than ideal company is recurring revenue is king. Any product a person has to buy over and over and over again is a really useful product. But with suits you know, I, I'm sure you get recurring clients, but that's different from recurring revenue,Dimitri Toukhcher: right?80, 80 percent of our revenue is recurring revenue. Oh,Malcolm Collins: really? Yes. That's incredible.Dimitri Toukhcher: Yeah. 80 percent of our revenue is recurring revenue. And this is actually something that I [00:27:00] teach my company very much. So. There are two phases of wealth. Okay. This is actually something I was going to podcast myself for my studio here.There's two phases of wealth. There is, I'm hustling all the time, nonstop working wealth, and there's, I'm chilling back and enjoying the money rolling in wealth. Okay. And people, people think that this is an argument of a business model. Like with some business models, you get, you have to hustle with some, it's not a business model argument.It's a Rolodex argument. Like I have clients that are in their thirties that are hustling their ass off, making money, buying suits. But our best clients are in their 50s and they don't work very hard. The difference is when you have a giant rolodex of successful people who trust you that you've built over the years The money rolls in way easier.I have a friend this story. I was in dubai last week with my friend from london He's a lawyer at a very prestigious law firm And he's like, Dimitri, you know, something crazy is when Twitter goes public, every lawyer is calling them like, Hey, can I take you public? Because every lawyer wants to make 50 million.He goes, but the guy that gets the deal is the guy that's been working with Twitter for 12 years when they first [00:28:00] started 20 years when they first started, he's got the relationship built. So the guy that gets the deal is the guy with the Rolodex with the CEO of Twitter and his in his Rolodex, right? In our business, so this is very interesting and you might be, you might find this interesting, maybe not, but men are generally pretty loyal to things that work.Seriously, like, even, even, even, even marriages, like, it's what, 20 percent of men are initiating divorces, like 80 percent of women, men are loyal to things that work. Like, when I tell my wife I want to go for sushi, I don't want to go for sushi, I want to go to that restaurant we always go to. You know this is true, right?Yeah. It's the same with clothing, like once a guy finds a pair of shoes he likes, like Nike, whatever, he'll buy that thing 20 times. So for us, the reason we get recurring revenue is because our clients like us and trust us because they know that it works. They know they get the results they pay for with no surprises.And it's not just suits. Obviously, you know, you introduce complimentary products like shirts, like pants, whatever. And guys just keep coming back over, over 80 percent of our revenue this year is recurring revenue.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, and so a few things when people are thinking about this is like a [00:29:00] company idea.So, recurring revenue, if you can get that, that's really king. Especially like tight recurring revenue. So, tight recurring revenue would be like a SaaS product or something that they're paying monthly for. Now that, that's harder to do if you're doing something on your own. What's really interesting about Suits is it's bespoke enough that it makes sense that you could sort of scale a company on it without a big industrial Capacity, but if you were doing something that's like more recurring, like razor heads or something like that, you know, that's going to be very hard to compete with the largest players in the space because there you're really competing on like machining, to be honest.Which, which can be difficult. Now you can still do it if you can set up the right pathways and everything like that. Another thing is,Dimitri Toukhcher: no, but that's true for suits as well. Like in order to manufacture the level that we do it at, like we literally have to buy out our manufacturer. I would say to young people is like, don't worry so much about the product.Worry about selling it. Exactly. Look, we're the, we're at the level. Now you can license anything you can. If you're talking about razor heads, great. You can probably license something that's 98 percent as good as. [00:30:00] The best in the market and you'll be just fine with it. It's all about selling it. It's about getting revenueMalcolm Collins: Yeah well And another thing is is and you mentioned this before but really think about this when you are starting a company is Geographically, how far can I sell this?Like right now i'm working on helping a guy get a landscaping company off the ground It's a good industry, but you know, it is geographically limited while suits are not geographically limited but they are really based on a person's sales skills So another thing i'd recommend with sales skills is if you're like, I don't know how good my sales skills are Starting for a direct sales company like the one that he does because he has a motivation to teach you how to sell, right?And so you might find, oh, it's easy to make money selling for them or, you know, eventually start your own thing, but it might just be easier if you're in a good niche. As I've said, as CEOs, the top salespeople at our company out earn us as CEOs. This is true at most companies. And a lot of people don't realize that, which is why, why, why do we pay them more than we make as CEOs?So they don't go and start their own [00:31:00] f*****gDimitri Toukhcher: companies. Man, a hundred percent. I had years, several years in the last few years where top sales people made more than me and that's amazing. I'm so happy for them. And what you said is true as well. Like, so obviously, you know, there's a, there's a kind of a tired anecdote where the CFO, the chief financial officer says, gee.What if we train our salespeople and they leave? And the chief executive officer says, what if we don't train our people and they stay? So I tell my guys this, you work for me for two years. I will teach you everything I know about how to direct sell and how to become very, very good. Not only will you make a bunch of money after two years, you'll have a Rolodex of several hundred CEOs that are your clients.And so worst case scenario, if I screw up as a leader, you have 200 CEOs that already spend money with you. That will be dying to hire you. And you'll have the skills to start your own thing. And then the pressure is on me to make it really, really good for you to stay for a number of reasons. Right. And I like that.I like the competition because that's what grows me as a CEO to continue to provide an environment for my people. That's the most profitable, the most growth orientated. And the most abundant for them in order to thrive because I don't [00:32:00] grow if I don't do my best. That's the beauty of free market capitalism.Malcolm Collins: So here's the question I have for you because this is always an interesting question to ask yourself when you're starting a company like this or starting a Salesforce, which is like a whole other thing. Is, do you give your, your sellers lead lists? Or do they generate their own lead list? And if they generate their own lead list, how do they do that?Because as a company, this is one way that like we prevent or good companies often will prevent their salespeople from leaving because they find the lead list for the salesperson and, and just being able to sell without easy, large lead list generation can be a really difficult thing to do. Yeah. SoDimitri Toukhcher: it's a combination.So number one, yes, we definitely have. We definitely farm leads and we know how to do that at a very high level. But also I want my salespeople to learn how to do it for themselves. Like I said, I'm not afraid of people, let's say leaving and competing against me because that just says that I've done something terribly wrong in the leadership, right?Like ultimately our salespeople also need to know how to generate leads. One of the things that we do and we teach how to do is we call it [00:33:00] floating, which is literally just stopping men on the streets and asking them about their suit and we do it every day. Like I will just stop guys i'll go out for lunch and start i'll be at starbucks I see a guy and I said, hey, bro.That's a great suit. He's like, oh, thank you And i'm like, let me grab your card. I'm a tailor. I'll call you introduce myself He's like, okay. I got one of my biggest clients like that my very first week doing this ever you know, i'll go into a building and i'll just ride the elevator on i'll walk into offices I'm like, hey, I see you guys have an office here.I never heard like what do you guys do? It's like oh, we're a mortgage agency. Oh cool. Who's the ceo? It's this guy. My second day I think it was ever selling suits was the craziest story I had got an appointment at a law firm. I went in and I sold the guy. And then I walked out of the law office. There was another door on the floor.It was in bank. I think it was Vancouver or Calgary. I walked into the office and I go, what are you guys doing? It's like, Oh, we do like subprime lending. I'm like, great. And who's the CEO. And then it just so happened to seal it. What had heard me walk in, he walks out as a three man firm. He's like, what are you doing?I'm like, I'm selling suits. He's like, oh, come talk to me. He loved the fact that I just barged into his office to introduce myself. On the spot, he placed a [00:34:00] 26, 000 order, gave me his black Amex. It was like one of those baller cards, you know, on the spot, 26 grand. He just liked my chutzpah. He liked my, my, my sort of, you know, pizzazz of walking into the office, being brave.He's like, man, you remind me of myself, you know, blah, blah, blah. So we teach our guys how to walk in girls, how to walk into offices, make good introductions. Like, really creating business from nothing is a core skill we teach our salespeople. But also keep in mind in our business, it's like this. You can sell suits anywhere, but for 500, but if you want to sell a suit for two, three, four, five, 10, 20 grand, which we sell, you need a brand behind that, a really strong brand.And so one of the things we offer our salespeople, like yesterday, one of our guys in Hong Kong sold like a eight or 9, 000 suit, one suit to one guy, 8, 000. You can't do that with a random label on your suit for that. You need credibility in the market. And that's what our salespeople get is the credibility of what is today.One of the world's most successful suit brands that has seen on, you know, in Hollywood movies on celebrities around the world, like our client base [00:35:00] at our income level, they know what LG is and they know who we are.Malcolm Collins: So I want to, I want to double touch on one thing that you were saying, which I've often seen in, in my life is when you do these more aggressive sales strategies that are aggressive, but also understand how to not overstep people's boundaries, which is really important.High level people typically recognize that and they respect that because that is the primary way that high level people got to where they are. There was an episode that we have been unable to air. Which is on how to get laid. 'cause the, the AI that I use to like scan our episodes said You cannot post this.Your channel will get like banned. But I would say that almost all of the core advice you're going to get from that, you could also get from learning how to sell all of these techniques that he's talking about, like it how to stop someone on the street to build them as a potential lead. How to get into a specific environment where then you can perform sales.All of these are cross transferable skills with getting laid. If you get really good at getting laid through like honest means, not like [00:36:00] cheesy, you know, overly optimized pickup artistry stuff but like actual just honest sales because that's what you are. You're selling yourself to people. You're learning how to generate leads and then sell yourself to people.That skill will cross transfer to sales and vice versa, which means that if you want to get really good at getting laid, you can do that by moving into these types of sales positions.Dimitri Toukhcher: But to be transparent, that might be why I ended up in sales to begin with. I was just probably very introverted. I like books, but I wasn't good at like communication.I think somebody Showed me a picture like this was our company president's club trip. And I saw girls in bikinis. I'm like, wow, there's a trip with girls in bikinis and I can get on it. If I sell a lot, you know, that's probably, you know, that's probably the primal reason I was like, this is great.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Another thing to note here is that every single stage, like the hardest parts of doing a business are going to be sales processes that require the same skillset. You want to raise venture capital funding for your company. That is the exact skillset that you need to sell something like a suit. And if you are [00:37:00] shying away from that part of the starting a company, you are not going to be able to do the VC raise.You might be able to do a debt raise because bankers are a bit more bureaucratic and there's other ways to do that. But you know, it's, it's difficult. The other thing to note is. Learning sales skills. The problem with learning sales skills is you can really only do this at companies that were founded by a salesperson.And that is because good salespeople always have something better to do with their time than teaching new salespeople. This is one of the hardest things to do as a company is get your your good salespeople to train new salespeople. They just won't do it. Also it directly cuts into their revenue.Usually it cuts into their time. It's a very difficult thing to do. And that's anotherDimitri Toukhcher: that's another podcast right there. How to do that is really really intricate. But sorry that you're you that's such a bullseye. I'm shocked. You know that but it's 100 percent correct.Malcolm Collins: Well, what we ended up doing and you can tell me if this is a bad idea is we basically give them a portion of any increased revenue that their training creates.So if they're in charge of training someone and then [00:38:00] that person increases the revenue that they're bringing in for something like, Okay. Three or four years. The person who handled that would get a portion of that revenue.Dimitri Toukhcher: Yeah, that's one of the tactics. We also,Malcolm Collins: that was one tactic. The next tactic that we use is family based systems and we've done enormously well with this.This is just like as a side strategy, but it's something that, that is probably useful for people to know. So what we do is we mostly hire from Latin America. That's our like primary audience, which is culturally a bit different from America in terms of the way things work. One of the things that we switched to, and for us, it was one of the biggest boons our company ever did.It's we allowed people to hire family members to work for them. And as soon as we did that the level of sales transference, like knowledge of sales skills exploded because these were often the people that these people were earning money to send to anyway, right now that they're just hiring these people, why not train them?You were going to give them a portion of your money anyway, right?Dimitri Toukhcher: That's a brilliant idea. I'm, I'm, I'm, I just wroteMalcolm Collins: that down. Yeah, [00:39:00] it's great. And if you expand to Latin America with sales cycles, I really encourage family based systems. And it's one of these things where like working from home, all of a sudden, everything like efficiency, like increases dramatically and everything like that.When you let people work the way they really want to, you will often find efficiency gains from A players and efficiency decreases from C and D players. 100 percentDimitri Toukhcher: correct. And it's really funny. You say that this is so core to what I teach and what I do on a day to day basis as CEO of our company is actually designing and implementing and being very, very loyal to internal policies that specifically promote A players and force C players to leave our company.I'm very open about it. I'm like, I literally say like my mission, the CEO is to eliminate equality in my company. That's my mission. Like eliminate equality because we're a sales company. So it's like, we have two kinds of people in a sales company. Those that make more money than God. And those who are barely keeping up and trying to keep their head above water.And I'm like, if you're [00:40:00] unable to keep your head above water, I want you to leave. Yeah. Like I'm not going to help you. I want you to leave. I don't want you dragging down our sales person's average income because top producers, when they come in, they say, what's. What's the average salesperson earning in your company?I say in our company, new grads are over six figures within 18 months on average, 18 months as they cross the six figure line and then they go, what are the top guys making? And I can point them, I say, well, you'll make over a million if you're a top guy in our organization, right? That's really interesting you say that because you're absolutely right.I just had recruited a couple of guys from another sales company that are like top, top performers. And they literally were on a call together and they asked me, they're like, what would you do in this situation? They gave me a scenario where like a low producer and a high producer are competing for turf.I'm like, why are you asking me? I'll just fire the low producer. I'm not even going to deal with them. And they're like, thank you. Because in their last company, there was so much bureaucracy where they, as the top two salespeople in the company had to fight with low producers for terms of keeping equal.I'm like, no, I I'm on a mission. I don't want equality. I want maximization. I want ultimate [00:41:00] maximization at the highest level.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, and something I know with a company like his or with a lot of companies like this to be this type of a salesperson is like a really tough skill to develop to get to the level where you're getting in the door.And so you might say, how do I develop this skill? Like, how do I develop like prodromal sales skills? Like, like before entering a sales market, like before getting people to have sex with me or something like that, right? Like, how do I do that? The real key is learn how to make friends at scale. And people might be like, what the f**k do you mean?Learn how to make friends at scale without trying to sell to someone without trying to get them to sleep with you. Can you stop people at a mall or on a street? and make friends with them, like get their phone number and get follow up. If you develop this skill, this is stage one to all of these other skills.But it's a very, you know, it's a very difficult stage one for a lot of people because they're not used to actually bringing something. And the other thing to note is you, you've got to do this without looking like you're going through a manic episode. [00:42:00] Which is what some people do, like it's more than just being able to go up and talk to someone and engage them.You need to be able to go up and talk to someone while also being, you know, self demeaning and jocular enough that you, you don't look like somebody who's having a mental breakdown. That you look like this is a natural engagement. And, and there's all sorts of like, you will develop lines, like as you begin to do this, like maybe like, Look, I'm new in town.I had no idea it was going to be this hard to meet people locally, but I'm trying this thing where I go out and I say hi to people like, are you up for chatting for a bit? Right. And most people might say no, some people would say yes, but little lines like that can help you break the ice. If you're attempting this strategy.Dimitri Toukhcher: It's a great lesson. You just gained so much credibility with me because that's, first of all, that's exactly how I started is I made a commitment for myself that if I'm out, like. Waiting in line for something, going into a mall, a mall, an elevator. My goal is I'm going to talk to every stranger, like period.And, and then start just saying a compliment, like, Hey man [00:43:00] those are awesome shoes or like saying to a girl, Hey, great hair, you know, just whatever it could be coming off as bad and creepy at the beginning, because I'm just trying to build my confidence and being able to start interactions. Like that's actually something I did very consciously to the point where it's now, for me, at least it's a superpower.Like, and if you saw me at arc, you know. I was with a group of like politicians. They're pretty high level guys that people know and a couple of famous actor types that were there and they're like, oh, we can't get into the, you know, the, the big thing that Peterson's doing tonight. 12, 000 people at the O2.I'm like, I'll get us in, like, how are you going to do it? I'm like, let's just show up and I'm going to talk to, and I showed up and I'm talking to all the people I met. We ended up not only getting front row tickets, we actually backstage access afterwards to hang out with all the reporters. Speakers that were on stage and a lot of it was like I know that I've developed a superpower Like I will talk to the waiter at the restaurant.I will talk to the to the maitre d of the restaurant I will make a connection. I'll start connecting the dots I'll introduce them to people and eventually I remember one of the guys that came to our key was like dude That was crazy. He's like you literally like The first night I ended [00:44:00] up having dinner with one of the speakers.The next night I had dinner with a different speaker. Like, how do you do this? I'm like, I just make sure that I talk to everybody. Like I met you at the conference cause you, you were walking around. Hey, let's talk for a second. You know, and, and I got a Rolodex from that. And like I said you know, the podcast with it, you and I did one before.It's like the most valuable thing you have in life when you get older is the Rolodex since who can you call that is the most valuable thing you can have.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, a lot of people, they'll hear this and they'll be like, yeah, but I'm not an extrovert. I can't do this. Let me tell you a little secret. Most of the people who are best at doing this are extreme introverts. The reason they get good at doing this is because they do not naturally make friends.And so they have to force themselves to learn how to make friends in the most clinical sociopathic manner possible, where they're like, okay. This is step one in engaging people. I can't leave this party unless I've talked to at least five people because they would just leave the party without talking to anyone because that's what they want to do, you know, and I think that this is a really [00:45:00] important thing.It's all of these reasons that a person might be telling themselves. I can't begin to try this. They're, they're lies. They're mostly lies. They're actually the reasons why, I don't know, do you consider yourself an introvert or an extrovert?Dimitri Toukhcher: So, I certainly don't consider myself a natural, and I'll say this, I've said, I've said this to a lot of people, like, I remember, I got into Gene Simmons house last month and ended up measuring some, you know, Backstreet Boys pursuits and people were like, at the party, they were like, dude, you know, everybody, how'd you get in here?There was an 18 year old kid there, and he's like, I don't know what I'm doing at this party, you know, my boss brought me, but you know everybody, you know, it's amazing. I'm like, dude, I don't know anybody here. He's just like, what? I'm like... Literally, I told them, I'm like, you're 18, right? I'm like, listen to me and listen to me carefully, young man.Everything you're seeing me do out here is 100 percent intentional. I've practiced this for years. I'm intentionally doing it. And so I would not consider myself an extrovert. I certainly would not consider myself a natural, but i'll beat any natural. Because a natural, you know, it's like if you were good with the girls in high school or university, like by the time that I started iterating and trying to, you know, understand how to gamify [00:46:00] the system.I'm married for over 10 years. We got four kids. So it's not like, you know, it's not like I had sociopathic outcomes in mind. My outcomes were to maximize my potential to get to marry the woman I want to marry and have kids that you know that I want to have not have to settle, for example, same financial other stuff in my career.But like it was so intentional that I knew that if you're a natural, I will destroy you and you won't understand what's happening because I'll start to understand. It's like, you know, there's very Gregarious extroverted people go into sales thinking they'll be the best salespeople. After a couple of years, I creamed, I destroyed those people.And they're like, how do you do it? It was like, I'm like, because you're just operating on your intuition, but I'm operating on iteration and intuition. So I'm basically running like an AI mechanism here. Oh,Malcolm Collins: absolutely. And I think a key thing that a lot of these people miss is being a good salesperson does not mean like always.Now, some people, there's different ways you can optimize yourself, does not mean looking like a giga Chad does not mean acting like you're, you're stereotypical, like frat bro, like, like charisma person, [00:47:00] high charisma, Can look like autism when it's performed well. So you want to talk about like great sales recently, Elizabeth Holmes, amazing sales person.She had no f*****g product. And she sold it to the wealthiest men in the world, raising all this venture capital money. And she did that. If you look at her, she's very. Or stuff like that. And you'll see this, like if you meet a venture capitalist, people will be like, well, venture capitalists, like they're also you know, spectrumy they must have horrible sales skills, everything about being a venture capitalist is sales.You're either raising money from LPs, which is selling, or you are trying to get into deals, which you really have no business getting into because you, you know, you, you've got to get into only the best deals. That's how you make it. And everybody often knows what the best deals are. Same with private equity, all sales.So all of these jobs that a lot of people associate with like ASCII personality types. They actually are just optimized for sales within their field.Dimitri Toukhcher: 100%. That's true for everything. We literally have this call in our company all the time. The best lawyers are the ones that are the best [00:48:00] brain makers.They're able to bring clients in, right? But the main thing I think you're trying to to purvey, and I wanna, I wanna second that, is that you can learn how to be an amazing salesperson and a great networker. You can learn how to make friends. Look, I remember if I saw this at 18, I wouldn't have believed this because I got into it in my early twenties, but like, you can learn this, you can learn how to be attractive to women.You can learn how to be attractive to clients. You can learn it. Like it's a skill it's you're, you can be born at a certain level, but you can learn it. Yeah, andMalcolm Collins: what's fucked up is it's all the same skill. It's like, the most important skill, and they do not teach it to you anywhere.Dimitri Toukhcher: Yeah, but you know why they don't teach it?This is actually really interesting, it's because schools are naturally So, think about who a teacher is, right? So, you know there's differences in testosterone that are predicted by the profession that So testosterone can predict the profession you go into. Entrepreneurs have the highest levels of testosterone, the lowest are teachers.And it makes sense why, because, you know, like testosterone is associated, connected to risk seeking. Who's a lower risk seeker than somebody [00:49:00] that grew up in a school, and then professionally went back to school, and then teaching at the same school? So, teachers can't teach you this stuff, because they don't have the risk seeking appetite, they're security seekers, they're low T people, it just is what it is.And they're not going to teach you how to optimize for risk. They're going to teach you how to minimize risk, but we want to optimize, not minimize. Well,Malcolm Collins: it's, it's true. I another thing I say, there's a filter happening here. If you know a lot about starting companies, but like you haven't started a company, then you're a great candidate for a teacher.If you know a lot about starting companies and you've started a company, well, then you're sort of, not going to be a teacher. Right. Right. And this is one of the things that top business schools, which is why the top business schools are typically so far above the next year business schools, is they typically will only employ people who have actually run large companies before or made it into those positions, which means that they need to be compensated really well because they're used to these large anyway, or compensated in who they're interacting with, like mental stimulation.I don't want to go too far. Here. This has been an amazing show. This might [00:50:00] be like the most useful show in how to get rich, even more than the, how to get rich show. So I really enjoyed this and I think that this will make a difference for a lot of people. Could you talk a bit about your company and people were interested in, in reaching out about that?Dimitri Toukhcher: Yeah. LG of G it just stands for low. Good. Feel good. LG of g. com is our website. Log the field at LG of g. com. We're selling retailing high end bespoke suits on a direct sales model across 26 countries around the world, all the way from Canada out to China. I mean, we're literally all over the world. And we're, when we're hiring, we're primarily targeting you know, younger recruits that are starting their career in sales that want to learn some of the skills we talk about.You know, how to sell, how to close deals, how to make money. That's what we teach here. And we're really good at it and very, very proudly. So working with a top level celebrities, top level clientele, we are quite well established in our industry. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: well, and that can help you get in the door with sales.Like, oh, look, this person, you know, they, yeah well, anyway I, and, well, and show tribal affiliation. If you judge correctly tribal affiliation, like, oh, [00:51:00] the Jordan Peterson thing, and someone's a Jordan Peterson fan, you know, you can, you can get through barriers. But anyway, I, I will keep talking forever.We keep doing this. This has been fantastic. And I had a great time chatting with you.Dimitri Toukhcher: Likewise. Cheers. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this thought-provoking discussion, we analyze the historical roots and social purpose behind the practice of "slut shaming." We explain how in monogamous societies, sexual promiscuity by some women lowers the value proposition for more chaste women. This creates motivations to apply social costs to casual sex.We argue slut shaming emerges as a way to enforce cultural norms around sexuality and relationships without needing formal legal coercion. Shaming works best inside a cultural in-group. Attempting to shame outsiders often backfires by making your own group seem regressive.We also discuss whether slut shaming still "makes sense" today, as cultural norms have shifted. Ultimately we contend it remains relevant for traditionalists seeking partners with low "body counts." Signaling those values clearly is worthwhile, though trying to broadly change mainstream behavior is pointless.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] You know, infrared systems.Simone Collins: But what are you hunting for humans? No,Malcolm Collins: you don't hunt for humans not smoke. We don't talk about that Yes, this is recording now. You can't talk about that Thing for our friends This is a joke, obviously we don't hunt humans recreationally at night we don't engage inSimone Collins: the ultimate sportMalcolm Collins: You don't call it the ultimate sport.It is a sport. I'd hardly say it's the best sport. It's anything mediocre because we don't like it.Simone Collins: Isn't the ultimate sport winning hearts? Right.Malcolm Collins: Yes! That's the ultimate sport, Throne. Mm hmm, yeah, that's the ultimate sport. I really admire you. Okay, so this episode is a good one, I hope, I hope. What we're going to talk about is slut shaming.We're going to talk about why [00:01:00] People may slut shame. Like why historically this train came about because like people don't just hurt other people for no reason, right? Like if they're shaming you, if they're doing something, there's a reason for that. Either it's an immediate self interested reason or it's because cultural groups that engaged in this practice outcompeted cultural groups that didn't engage in this practice.In the case of slut shaming, it's a bit of both. And then we're going to evaluate. In a modern context, does slut shaming still make sense? With this question being asked in two categories. Does slut shaming make sense if you slut shame people of other cultural groups? Like, does that have utility? And does slut shaming make sense within a cultural group?Does it make sense to slut shame members of your own cultural group? So first, Simone, do you want to go over what slut shaming is for people who may not know?Simone Collins: Ah, yes. Slut shaming involves both male and female public [00:02:00] criticism, often to other people, though often to the subject themselves of someone's sexual promiscuity.So I think a lot of people define a slut as someone who actually like sleeps around a lot. bUt slut shaming in its traditional context could involve literally just shaming a young woman for losing her virginity early. And just then call her a slut because she like literally had sex with her boyfriend at age 16 or something.And it is It is an interesting innovation. It's been around for a long time. Well,Malcolm Collins: hold on. I'd expand it further there. Another area where I often see slut shaming, and I think this is, you know, when I remember in high schoolSimone Collins: Oh, just for dress, right? Just lookingMalcolm Collins: sexually provocative? No, I get it.It's just dress or action. You know, when I didn't like a woman I remember in groups, they call them the sluts, you know, and I think even just generally like not necessarily, they had done something that showed improprietary, impropriety, improper, it was improper. Yeah, it was just seen as a negative general thing to say about somebody.[00:03:00] And so it was frequently used to describe a people who you didn't like, but of course, Isn'tSimone Collins: so like people would often refer to guys that they were making fun of as gay. Or some variation of that. And then they would refer to women that they didn't approve of as sluts, regardless of any sexual signaling whatsoever.Malcolm Collins: This is our generation, by the way, we're not talking, I don't think this is true as much anymore, especially. It isSimone Collins: interesting to just like. Use it as an approximation. I guess it's kind of like culling someone mentally disabled in some way, like chooseMalcolm Collins: whatever word of the time. I think because they were trying to elevate the, the worst things that they could think of each gender succumbing to from the, the, the cultural perspective of the time, normative behavior, women, it was sexual impropriety.It was men. And it's, it's very interesting. Yeah. Well, no, I won't even say sexual deviance. When people in my generation, so I grew up in, in Texas, you know, and a long time ago. I'm 36 now. You're very old. I'm very old. Prodigiously ancient. [00:04:00] So yeah, so when they would use the word gay derogatorily of other young men or, or things, they'd be like, oh, that's so gay. They didn't mean, even at the time I thought it was off. Like I didn't. Really do it myself, which you know, thank god. There's no hidden recording of me ever being, no, because I, I, I was really involved with the gay community even like, like early on, but anyway, so, they didn't mean it in a way where they were saying that these individuals were interested in same sex relationships.That would not be seen as like the highest negative to being this derogatory gay. It was meant to mean that men were not living up to masculine ideals.Simone Collins: It, that's funny because I feel like honestly the most masculine high testosterone subgroup of men isMalcolm Collins: gay men. Well, yeah, and that's what I mean.And I think that that's why there was this, uh, disconnect for a long time where, where a lot of people when they would use this word in a derogatory context, they didn't think of themselves as hurting the gay community [00:05:00] because they did not mean it of the vast majority of the gay community.Simone Collins: Right. They weren't actually referring to.I guess if anything it's a derogatory word just because it refers to Well in their mind from condoned societal norms per their perception. Yeah Yeah,Malcolm Collins: the negative effects it had were they're all the same, you know But i'm just pointing out that this is this is what we meant. So that's really interesting there.And I and I I wonder if we lost away Sorry, just just a total tangent from the slut shaming thing Did we lose a way to insult men for not being masculine because we tied the core way that we would do that insult to the term gay, which had a separate meaning. Well, I think now that's whySimone Collins: what we've discovered, I think we've realized that subtly, subconsciously as a population, and that's why we use the word cuck more recently.Malcolm Collins: Oh, wow. Yes. Yeah. Actually, yeah, we use pussy for a [00:06:00] bit, which didn't really catch on as much. And then cuck, that is so perfect, and it's also a perfect thing. When people of my generation said something was gay, or they said somebody was gay, that was much closer to them in today's language, calling that thing cucked, or calling that individual a cuck, than it was in today's generation.We're like, like actually being derogatory towards someone for having a same sex relationship.Simone Collins: Yeah, and I feel like even now, Cuck is kind of out and we're into more cringe and cope, um, which maybe is even more a reflection of like obsession, contemporary obsession with mental health. I don't know. OrMalcolm Collins: like, yeah.Oh, by the way, an interesting thing about cucks is that conservative men in our data and in other studies that have shown are actually more likely to be turned on by cuckoldry than progressive men. I don't know why. It's not a big effect. It's like a 10 percent difference, but it's, it's weird. That's still meaningful.You know Yeah. I mean, it's, it's fun if you're writing an article or something. [00:07:00] Anyway. So slut shaming. So why did slut shaming first evolve, right? And where do you see slut shaming the most? So historically, if a woman accidentally got pregnant before marriage, that was really bad for a culture and not just a culture, but a town, a village, because the kids that these women had, you didn't have a state welfare systems, right?Like this money was not as widely distributed. That individual became a ward of the state. And, and even then, you know, they were much more likely to end up going down a criminal life path, or if they didn't, they'd end up going down a criminal life path. And today, you know, it takes a long time for a kid you don't care about to become a criminal in a daily past, right?Like that individual typically has to become like 21 or something before they're really a danger to other people often. This is not true. If you go even back to Victorian England, you know, if you look at Oliver Twist, [00:08:00] right, like a huge subplot of that was the orphan pickpockets, right? Like, but, but, but, you know, and that they're not shanking people a lot and stuff like that, but that was what they did in real life.So itSimone Collins: still sucks. No one wants to have their pocket picked.Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, a woman who, who in these historical context who had a kid outside of wedlock, you know, you're 10 years away from a little gremlin with a knife stabbing your, your spouse, you know, like, there was a much shorter like timeline to like the negative effects of this.So that, that was like one core thing that they were afraid of this, right? Like that an individual would get pregnant and they wouldn't have a partner to support them. And it was while women actually worked back then, and I'm going to put up a. Statistic here that shows that a lot of people think that women in like, you know, you go to the distantpast didn't really work.They did. They worked at about the same rate that they do today. A little less than men, but nothing like, you know, the 50s and the 60s. What we actually had was women's employment, was high women's employment, then a dip down, then a back up. But, even with all of that they [00:09:00] You know, it's difficult to rate the kid in a single income family, and the types of women who were doing this, you know, if they then wanted a partner, they would have to find a way to get rid of the kid, which again meant orphan, right?Because life as a partnered woman is much better in most of these communities. Okay, so that was one problem that you had, so, so, so that was a negative. But... Then you have a secondary problem, which I think is the much bigger reason that slut shaming has been carried out more recently, which is in monogamous majority countries, right, which is, and as we point out, you never have an all monogamous society.Wealthy men are always polygynous. The thing I always point out is, is the, the peak of Catholic culture, right? You know, today we talk about trad cast and everything like that and people think of them as being the most monogamous culture. The peak of Catholic culture was Louis the 14th and, and that was a, you know, in, in that culture, you know, that was high French culture, right?And we had many, many concubines and stuff like that in [00:10:00] many. So if you have enough wealth in a society, no matter how much it turns towards a monogamous cultural practice, you're always going to have some level that thereSimone Collins: was shaming.Malcolm Collins: There was shaming. There was shaming, but we'll get to that.Okay. But we've got to talk about why shaming and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Okay. So why is monogamy useful for a society, right? Monogamy is useful for a society because it lowers the number of unpaired men in a society. Great studies done on this that look at similar cultural groups, you know, economic similarities, etc.in parts of Africa, because that's where you'll often have cultural groups right next to each other. We'll have one that's monogamous and one that's polygynous. Not poly, polygynous, one man, many women. Poly basically doesn't happen naturally. It's a weird modern phenomenon that We can maybe do another video on it.I think we did, actually. The Are We Monogamous video is kind of on the question of Polly. But anyway, okay, so, what you find is you have higher rates of terrorism, you have higher rates of stealing, you have higher [00:11:00] rates of prostitution, you have lower trust between individuals. Basically, everything that can go wrong does go wrong.This is due to what we call in our books the free radical problem. The free radical problem is the number of men That are unpaired in a society is highly correlatory with the amount of social ills in that society. And it's because their biology sort of goes crazy and of course, you know, it's sort of an all or nothing breeding strategy for them.And if not, then just a spite strategy. Now what's interesting... Is there are some studies that counteract this when men choose male dominated societies, i. e. like mining towns and stuff like that, you often don't have these same negative effects at the high levels that you would expect. But I think that might be a choice thing, you know, like these men are saving up wealth until they can leave and then go and find a partner.Yeah,Simone Collins: there may be the expectation that they will eventually be able to get. I think also there's the effect of just seeing other people have it and you not having it. I mean, psychologically, that's a really [00:12:00] big thing is, you know, we, we don't, there is no like universal basis for human dignity or comfort.There's always, it's always relative. It's well, I need a big screen TV to have my human rights met because everyone else is a big screen TV. So I think that's another big factor.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, okay, anyway, so, you, you get to societies that are mostly monogamous, most of the ones that we're coming from are on the monogamous side of the spectrum, and there's a lot of benefits to this, you know, it, it means that it helps.When a partner matches another partner, both partners are largely pulling each other off the market. Mm hmm. And this is a really positive effect for, for the rest of society because it means that you can theoretically get a society where, like, 90 percent of males and females are paired with each other, assuming you have similar gender ratios.Now, you do run into some problems if, like, you are dating downwards in terms of age and you have a quickly growing population because that means the number of men... [00:13:00] Is always going to be quite, quite, a little bit smaller than the number of women, you know, and this is the problem you see in, in some orthodox like Jewish communities where they'll date a few years down, like five years down or something like that, and what that ends up meaning is because the population is growing so quickly, you're generally going to have like, nine men for every 10 women, which means like systemically, women, even women who follow all the rules aren't finding partners.But also in these communities, it's much more likely for a man to marry outside the community than it is for a woman to marry outside the community because within a lot of groups, it's believed that it's easier for a woman to fully convert than a man to fully convert. Ironically Judaism being the one sort of exception here but I could just use it as an example, so whatever.So yeah but okay, back, back on topic. So let's talk about the beginnings of, of, of modern slut shaming, right? This wasn't like, this is, this is post contraceptives. Right post abortion. So you're not dealing with the same risk of of, you know, women getting pregnant and then kids becoming the ward of the state.[00:14:00] Well, even in this scenario, you actually have a really negative externalities for everyone else in a society if 1 woman decides to sleep around. So,Simone Collins: and it's not just the. Potentially orphaned children.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, you know, if I have a group of let's say 10 men and 10 women, right? A monogamy world, these women are matching to these men, right?Like, like based on their aggregate desirability within a social order. Suppose that one of these women or two of these women, let's say two of these women, you know, like 20 percent of society, Actually I'm going to be I'm just going to sleep around. I don't need to marry a guy. I don't need to be long term monogamous with a guy to be with a guy.Right. Well, immediately a lot of guys within this community are going to artificially value these women higher than they might otherwise value them. So in a group [00:15:00] of, 10 women, right? These two women, if you want immediate access to sex, these two women will be the highest value women. To pretty much any guy in that group, right?Like, even if they're below average, if the other women aren't going out there and being willing to have sex, and, and that is what a guy is interested in, then these women, even if they're like near the bottom two women, they have the highest value. Like, they're sort of playing this arbitrage game. Now, of course, they're degrading their long term value by doing this.And, and No, this is aSimone Collins: short term game, and that's why it's also like, well, it's so smart.Malcolm Collins: It's, it's a short term game, yeah, but it, it is an enormously profitable short term game if you're talking about, like, social status, profitability, attention from men you couldn't otherwise get to pay attention to you, etc.Like, there are a lot of short term benefits to doing this for theSimone Collins: individual. Yeah, well, and also if you live in a society where having a kid with one of these people, like without their consent, locks them down, it is a way for a very low value woman to ultimately end up with a higher value man [00:16:00] than she could have gotten had she chosen a monogamousMalcolm Collins: strategy.Or high value child support. Exactly. Yeah. So this, when, when one of these women starts doing this, it's bad for all of the women who are playing the game faithfully. Right? Like, they have lost a huge chunk of their value, right? The guys who previously they would have wanted, these top tier guys well, they're now sleeping with these other women.And they're not gonna pay attention to these women until... Later until they're ready to settle down or whatever and even then these women are offering these men something that's sort of like paywalled That that now these guys can get for free maybe at lower quality, but they can still get it for free If I was to word it differently You know how much of the paywalled porn company gonna make even if it's slightly higher quality porn if there's free porn online Exactly that offering is no longer that high And the men who are sleeping with these girls, let's be clear, these are the top two most attractive men of this group, right?If 20 percent of the women are sleeping [00:17:00] around, they're going to be sleeping with the top two men because they are the highest value of the women who are sleeping around. Okay, so, there's, you can think of them almost like union scabs. They sort of break the value proposition that the other women are, are offering.Well, then after a bit, you, you begin to get a situation in which all of the other women are benefiting from putting an exogenous, Negative modifier to these women who show this level of sexual improprieties, market value, right, social value, etc. So they will tease, they will attack these women in an attempt to lower their social value.So through applying this exogenous motivation there is a cost to doing it for these women. Right, an immediate cost, not a long term cause, but an immediate cost. Because this immediate cost then makes it less, like, beneficial to do this. Like, if we're just speaking about, like, in the moment beneficiality, well, then they'd think, oh, well, [00:18:00] I get called a slut, I get shamed, I get disinvited to parties, everything like that.You know, that is a reason to not go out and sleep around within these communities. Now to Simone's comment here, which we also need to talk about, you know, when this was starting, there was also a huge negative long term effect for the women who were doing this, right? Like, if you went out and did this, it was like, Getting a face tattoo, right?Like, you had dramatically lowered both your social standing within society and your ability to lock down a long term partner. It was not really worth it, except for women in generally pretty hard up situations. Either hard up economic situations or hard up mental situations. It was just not something that your general, like, upstanding mentally healthy woman was going to do in this historical context.But, time goes on. Okay, now you've got a group of women in our society who are these [00:19:00] women who engage in sexual impropriety and have gotten older, right? And they are basically an underclass within society that has a motivation to lower the stigma against women like them. In addition to that, men and, and I know, you know, cause I'm...I remember, like, I wanted to promote women being slutty, because I could sleep with those women, right? Like, I was one of the guys arguing, Oh, yeah, you should totally sleep around. Like, that's what I was saying in high school, because I wanted to sleep with them, f*****g obviously, right? So there's, there's two groups that, that is promoting this.It's the women who have now entered this sort of new, weird underclass. And then the men who want to sleep with these women, right? And here we mentioned this in the, in the video of how much does Sleeping around actually matter but just for women who are like broadly unaware of this because I think our society kind of hides this and it's something that I don't think it's easy to intuit as a woman biologically, men, a good portion of men, not all men, seem to have [00:20:00] an intrinsic sort of disgust reaction and, and loss of attraction to women who they know have a high body count.Simone Collins: And I think it's just one of those arousal slash aversion things. People can't control, like you can't control if you're into feet, you can't control if you are into men versus women, and you can't control if it really turns you off that someone's had a lot of sexual partners.Malcolm Collins: Okay yeah, yeah, and I, I just think that that's sort of missed for people because our society kind of hides it from you, and if you don't believe me, just go around and ask a bunch of your male friends, and you can just ignore them.You can be like, oh, you've been brainwashed by society. But I'm telling you, they happen. Like, it, it, I, it's, it's an intrinsic thing. So, and it's not all guys. Again, I think it's like 60, 70 percent of guys from what I've seen. Anyway, so back to the story at hand. So there was this motivation for slut shaming.But, as the [00:21:00] negative externality that people were able to apply through slut shaming lessened over time, because it did lessen over time, as society normalized, you know, I call it serial monogamy, which was basically a form of sleeping around Then more and more people benefited from doing it because the negative external effects were, were not there.And so you begin to move from 20 percent to 40%, from 40 percent to, you know, 60%, right? So what then happens when you have let's say 20 percent or 30 percent of women really not sleeping around much and, and then 60, 70 percent sleeping around a lot, right? Or, or open to sleeping around, not like just totally giving it away.Well, now you have two categories of slut, right? You have category one of slut, which is the serial monogamy slut. Right. These women are still broadly monogamous, but they are moving between partners fairly quickly. AndSimone Collins: then they just have a lot of boyfriends and then maybe husbands.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And then you have the actual, like sleeping around women who just sort of sleep [00:22:00] with anyone.To understand this system. We're first going to talk about the women who are just sort of sleeping around more broadly. Right. So let's assume that they were like 70 percent of these. So seven out of these 10 women were in this group. right? Three of the women were still like, okay, I'm going to save myself, et cetera.But then these other women, whatever. Well, who are they going to choose to sleep with? Right, of the men. They're not sleeping with the average men. They're not giving up all of what they are giving up, because they are still giving stuff up, to sleep with average or below average men. They are all sleeping with the same men.And because these men are non exclusive, right, it's easy for them to do this. To move from one to the other to the other, right? So, this was a system that really, Not really benefited women when it was only a few women doing this, but it's a system that like benefits women a lot less the more women are participating in it.Simone Collins: Yeah, because then suddenly [00:23:00] your arbitrage opportunity disappears.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah, it's a tragedy of the commons issue. Now, okay, let's divide these women into two groups. Some who are still sort of doing the monogamy thing, and some that are being just totally promiscuous. You know, very low barriers to sexual access.Well, the ones who are totally promiscuous, they're both hurting the ones who are waiting for marriage, but the one, but not as much, because now those women are like a unique asset, if you get what I mean, right? They are something that no one else can get, and that makes sense for a specific class of guy that's generally not the guys who are out there sleeping around, right?The women who they actually hurt the most are the serial monogamy women. Because, now, these women don't really have anything differential over the completely slutty women, right? Like, they've also been with a number of partners. But they're not giving out sex for free. You know, they're out there basically charging for it, whether it's dates or time or anything like that, right?And so these other women are even more, like, analogous to just, like, straight up scab breakers. So even as [00:24:00] sexual impropriety is normalized within society, there is still a strong motivation to slut shame these women. Right for a big, a big portion of the population and as we move further and further along as a society now There's new types of slides, right?These are women who are doing only fans accounts These are women who are posting stuff online, right?Simone Collins: Yeah, so not actually sleeping with peopleMalcolm Collins: just Yeah, but these women are now actually like a lower category of slut you could almost say than the ones who were just sleeping around a lot because now they're hurting those women's ability to exercise what they were previously getting from the market.Simone Collins: Well, and I mean, I think arguably what's interesting about the threat posed by OnlyFans artists is that arguably what women really want from men is resources, not necessarily exclusivity. Yeah. If they had to choose, they might choose resources over [00:25:00] exclusivity. And so you could argue that the OnlyFans women are more of a threat because they will command more in terms of financial resources than, you know, maybe really cheap date.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so does slut shaming make sense in a modern context? I want to hear your intuition. Like, do you think that you personally benefit from it?Simone Collins: No, because I don't understand when people are insulting me, so I don't know. But what I will say is I think that shame as a concept is something I'm really, really warming up to.Because it is a way to enforce social norms without making a law or a rule. So keep in mind one thing we haven't been discussing here is like, Oh, you know, if you're found sleeping out of wedlock or you're found like, you know, sleeping around as a young woman or even dressing provocatively, like we're going to jail you, we're going to beat you.We're going to kill you. You know, it is just, we're going to, we're going to talk about you [00:26:00] behind your back and in front of you and be mean which is way nicer. than being killed or jailed or tortured like physically. Although people can argue that mental rejection, social rejection is more painful than torture.So I like it because I think it allows a society to Enforce important social norms without having blanket laws, and I also like it because I think it works uniquely well in a pluralistic society. Because if, for example, like, a super conservative religious person who you don't identify with calls you a slut, you're just like, I don't know, like that.You know, that holier than now weird Catholic girl thinks I'm a slut. I don't care because I don't care about her culture. So it also allows for, for cultures to enforce norms on their own people. And even when they try to enforce those norms on outsiders, they're not hurting the outsiders. Only people who care about the in group will be subject to those rules.So to me, it seems super [00:27:00] libertarian, super laissez faire. But also, I mean, a lot of these social norms are important to the points you made about societal stability. So I think slut shaming and other forms of shame are really, really wonderful.Malcolm Collins: So I might agree. I, I would say, I mean, like, when I think about the culture I would raise my kids in, like, what am I telling them?Yeah. And generally, I just don't think it's worth it. When you apply a shame to them. What to shame them about anything. No, for them to shame other people. So, so I'll explain why so if they go out there and they are broadly applying this negative externality of shut slamming to society as a whole, like all of the women in society who are out there doing this.Well, now they're hurting those people. I mean, that's what you're doing with a negative externality that now provides motivation for those women, the sluts to apply negative externalities to them to prevent this kind of behavior, i. e. to do things that lower their social standing. And this is what we're beginning to see around slut shaming, right?When the sluts rule the world, right? Like they've already taken over. They've [00:28:00] already won in mainstream society. If you go out there and you try to apply negative externalities to them. Those negative externalities actually reflect back onto you at a much higher level because your behavior is a non normative behavior.That being the case, I don't think that there's a benefit to our kids doing it. I do think that there's a benefit to them making it known what they're looking for in a partner, and that may be a low body count, and I think loudly signaling that is a valuable thing. But signal it as, I want somebody from one of...You know, these deviant cultural groups, right? While affirming the cultural group for living in a lifestyle that you don't... Believe it. Like, I just don't think you're going to be able to change mainstream society or mainstream action through selection.Simone Collins: What about within our own culture or ourMalcolm Collins: own family?Yeah, no, within your own culture, I think it makes a lot of sense. That's my wholeSimone Collins: point is one, any sort of shaming for someone outside your culture is feckless and pointless. [00:29:00] It just makes you look bad. But IMalcolm Collins: think within your cultureSimone Collins: I just, I think it's, I think it's a really great non coercive way. In fact, I think, you know, if anything, you look kind of lame shaming people outside your culture. Yeah. Because they don't care. And it just makes you look weird. But though it could, you know, to our other conversations about the importantness of othering yourself to kind of keep you within your culture is really important.So it could play a good role in that. It makes moreMalcolm Collins: of a sense to just really aggressively only shame within your culture and make it clear what your intercultural status hierarchy is going to be based on and that sexual promiscuity. And I hate to say this, do you think, I mean, is there any real negative to sexual promiscuity for men?Simone Collins: Yes, absolutely. But it comes more, it comes more from the risks of STDs and of potentially getting a woman pregnant, and potentially getting a woman accusing you of misconduct. So no, that's veryMalcolm Collins: hot. Yeah. It's extremely risky. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it could hurt somebody's feelings. [00:30:00]Simone Collins: You know, if you, if you aren't very socially savvy and you aren't very careful about the way that you engage with people, you could hurt a lot of people.We talked about this. All right.Malcolm Collins: Delta. You changed my mind on this one. I think you're right. You have convinced me to, to slut shame our sons. Oh, good. Yeah. A little, a little. I still think they need practice more than the girls do. Ugh. But I... You gotta be careful. Yeah, no, I, I do agree with what, what you're saying there.ButSimone Collins: I, I do agree that, especially for men, like, IRL relationship experience is crucial because what are they doing otherwise? They're just watching. Porn online. And that is not a way to learn how relationships work at all. But because it gives people super unrealisticMalcolm Collins: expectations. Important traits like being aggressive, salesmanship.No, no,Simone Collins: no, no. It's, I agree that it's good. I don't think that young men need to necessarily go all the way. To like, you know, PIV [00:31:00] sex, but whateverMalcolm Collins: you do. Yeah. Maybe there's other ways you could build sort of sexual trophies other than full. Sexual intercourse. What would that look likeSimone Collins: intimacy? I mean, like, you know, handjobs b******s.Like that's, that's fine with me. I mean, it still runs risk of like,Malcolm Collins: hurting all of the risks that you just,Simone Collins: no, no, no, no, no, not pregnancy, not pregnancy. And that's a big one. And that to me is like the biggest risk of all, like the idea of being on the hook with child. Like, so that is, that is where I draw the line.Also, I feel like the risk of a woman retroactively, you know, having a lot of problems, a lot of women don't count hand jobs, b*******s, et cetera, as sex. So they could still consider themselves virgins. You know, it's, you know, I feel like you, you cross an additional barrier when there is PIV sex involved.So, I mean, I'm still saying there's a big risk and like, but if you have to be intimate, be intimate, like people have been intimate when sexual activity has been taboo for the longest time [00:32:00] where they just like do everything but PIV sex, you know, IMalcolm Collins: figure that makes sense. Well, I love you, Simone. This has been a helpful conversation for me and I hope was enjoyable for our audience. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this interview, we are joined by Stephen Shaw, creator of the acclaimed documentary "The Birth Gap," to discuss the global fertility crisis.Stephen shares his experiences making the film, including surprising reactions from anti-natalists. We cover the roots of demographic collapse, dating challenges today, and policy ideas like educating on fertility windows.Stephen argues most childlessness is unplanned, caused by cultural factors that mislead people. He sees community-level solutions as most promising, though warns coercive state interventions could happen. We also touch on environmentalism, gender conflicts, and the profound grief of involuntary childlessness.Overall an urgent call to action on demographic collapse, focused on the very real human impacts.Stephen Shaw: [00:00:00] I mean, what we're seeing is back in the 60s.you know, anti natalists or, you know, I call them anti natalists. Natalism to me is clear, though some people define it in different ways. It's simply, you know, it's wanting fewer children or no children. So this was to do with the world running out of food. And then the world didn't run out with the Green Revolution and then we came up with the environment.Maybe that was appropriate, but let's not get into that conversation because it's complicated. But my point is, right now they're shifting again. I can see the shift. The problem now is the patriarchy. And, you know, they're subtly moving away from blaming the environment because they know we're all going to see that the population is maximizing right now.So they're preparing, you know, they're being smart from their point of view about preparing their argument that, oh, it's no longer about the environment, it's about men forcing themselves. We've got to be really careful and call these guys out because you know, they, they have an agenda. They are [00:01:00] ideologists.Would you like to know more?Simone Collins: Hello, everyone. We are extremely excited today to be joined by Stephen Shaw, who is the creator of the Birth Gap documentary, which we consider to be the seminal documentary on demographic collapse that covers the stats, but also the personal fallout from Demograph Collapse already.He interviews quite a few people. It's, it's really great. The first half of it is available for free on YouTube. There is no excuse for you to not check it out. And welcome. We're so glad to see youStephen Shaw: here.Simone Collins: What we'd really love to ask you to start at least because there's so many things we'd like to discuss is after birth cap came out did you encounter any surprises in terms of who was really excited about it? Who resonated with and who didn't like it? Because we found in our own journey with prenatal advocacy that or demographic collapse awareness advocacy that sometimes like surprising groups either really.appreciate it and also really don't. We'd love to hear what you've experienced.Stephen Shaw: I've [00:02:00] experienced everything. And I don't think I was prepared for it at all. I knew I would get pushback. I'd actually warned my kids several years ago that, hey, your dad's gonna get some pushback. You know, just, just, just be ready for it.I thought it was mainly going to come from environmentalists. And I was, you know, preparing rightly so it's part of a healthy discussion about population and the environment. And it's, it's an argument I have had many times. And I think I feel confident to explain that reducing births is not exactly a very efficient way to help the environment.It would take decades to have any impact being one of those, but, but actually, no, the main pushback. came from what I can only describe as anti natalist groups who have been vocal, extreme, relentless, and it's interesting. Maybe we can pursue that. But on the other side, the optimistic side also surprised me.I made the documentary. Feeling frankly quite pessimistic that this is a, you know, a [00:03:00] reality that we have to simply prepare for a world with fewer and fewer people and the inevitable, you know, consequences of that personally to communities and to societies, but actually looking into the eyes of so many young people who watch this who are frankly shocked.I mean, anger is what's being used that, you know, society is preparing them for a life of education first, career second. And then what do you mean we're going to run out of time to start a family? What do you mean we might end up childless when we want families? Those people give me confidence despite their frustrations and anger, because I see in their eyes, very likely many of them will, will do things differently.Malcolm Collins: Can you talk a bit more about what is motivating, like ideologically or dispositionally, the antinatalist groups? I assume many of them are in the negative utilitarian sort of David Benatar sphere of antinatalism. Or are there other things that are motivating them, more just like general human pessimism?There's part,Stephen Shaw: there's part of that, and [00:04:00] actually, I mean, there's one or two very few people who come out and say that they believe in extinction. And relatively speaking, I respect them speaking relatively, because they're saying what they believe, and you can discuss that, and not many people think that, so that's fine.What worries me is that many people who perhaps think that, I don't know, but they cloak their arguments. In many different ways and it's so easy to see so just just to maybe answer your question in terms of what the rationale is, these are clearly ideologists who are threatened by the idea that people, women in particular, actually want children and that many who end up childless have regrets or more rather grieve and that's why I show in part two of the documentary, there's a lot of deep grief That is felt by, by these organizations and so in some ways I've realized that, you know, by challenging the premise that women [00:05:00] don't really want children and that if they don't, it's, it's fine actually goes to the heart of their own ideology.So I think, I think they have to argue against it because otherwise their ideology is finished. Oh, continue. Well, I was just going to say, so in a sense, it's a compliment, in other words, to me, that, you know, they're being forced into that position.Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I to, to put, like, reword what you said, because I think it's really interesting, it's, the, the lifestyles, a lot of large groups in our society right now are promoting lead to people not being able to have kids.And when I say lifestyles, I mean like college degree and independence before you marry a man. I'm not, you know, like, like just generic mainstream lifestyles and groups. What you're saying is an aspect of this is a cognitive dissonance. They don't want to take responsibility for the pain that this advocacy that they're pushing causes.And so to do that, they're sort of denying. Or, or punishing anyone who brings up that there are negative consequences of this. [00:06:00]Stephen Shaw: Well, I think cognitive dissonance is a big element, but it's not the entire story. I think there are people who are persuaded to focus on those things, persuaded perhaps indeed that children aren't that important.And I have seen twice in screens, my documentary in Tokyo where women have. Breakdowns in the fifties, who made one of them, um, argued that the documentary wasn't fair on women, that no one didn't need their children, then spent a weekend, I later found out with her curtains closed, didn't come out of her apartment, remembering that she had one of the kids one day finally came to terms with it and invited me to lunch.And suddenly it was like, thank you for allowing me to grieve. The reality that I had one of the kids. So that's cognitive dissonance where you're trying to kind of avoid the reality that perhaps for... No, no, no. I will say this. I want to say this. We should say this. A minority, I think somewhere around 5 percent of women, [00:07:00] um, do not ever have the desire of children.I interviewed five of those women in the documentary and they're entirely happy. They have no regrets. I'm not saying it's entirely binary. I don't know that. But it's clear that for some who simply never, ever want children... They can and will go through life quite happy. That's what they wanted. It's, it's the remainder.I think it's a significant majority of childless people who either had wanted and life didn't work out. They didn't have a partner at the right time. They left it too late. And we can't blame people. Society, though, is at the heart of this. We, we tell people, as a society, that it's fine to have children in your 30s.Too many things get in the way and leave so many people childless.Simone Collins: Yeah. What I really appreciated about the way that you framed things in the documentary, too, was just how clearly you presented, you know, two really interesting, like, sort of a dichotomy of issues between men and women, which we see a lot just among our own social networks.Where Women are, you know, [00:08:00] interested in having kids often, but they're just delaying, delaying, delaying because of education and career. And then it's too late. Plus they're really struggling to find male partners who are willing to have kids. And then on the other end, there's, I think a lot of sort of societal pressures on men.Holy smokes. Sorry. Two birds just randomly flew into my window.They were probably chasing each other, but they're not doing so well right now. They both like passed out. That men are sort of discouraged from living anything, but like a sort of freewheeling hedonistic life where, you know, they don't want to give up their freedoms. They don't want to give up their ability to travel at the drop of a hat, do whatever they want, live their lives, and they're certainly not celebrated for making any of those sacrifices.So that makes it even harder for women who, once they are ready to find partners who are willing. to take that leap. And, and I, I mean, it, it showed up a lot in, in, in part one, and it was really interesting to me because people don't really discuss that weird bifurcation as, as much as I would [00:09:00] expect because it is such a big part of the problem culture.Well, you know, I,Stephen Shaw: I, I came to realize quite quickly that you know, man, generally including myself, I have to say, I'm I'm divorced, not by choice, just life. You know, I want to live in the U. S. My ex wife didn't want to, to, to leave London, and that, that happened. And I think I did expect at some point in time I'd meet someone else.But, you know, I think as men get older, what, what, what we forget is we're effectively competing with our younger selves for the pool of younger women who are able to have children. So, technically, we can have children later in life, much later in life. But actually, you still have to find a woman willing to have a child with you.So it all evens out. And, you know, what we might see on occasion from Hollywood A list stars marrying someone 30, 40 years younger. My gosh, I mean, that doesn't happen to the man on the street at all. So, it affects everybody. We're just not thinking this through. Whether, you know, certainly men and yeah, society is not, is not.Malcolm Collins: Well, to the, to the point that you made, and this is something I would strongly [00:10:00] advocate our listeners because I often talk to young men and they act like they have an infinite timeline on having kids. And that perception is one of the reasons why people who go at life with that mindset are unlikely to have kids.And I think just a good heuristic is you should plan to have all of the kids you are going to have in your entire life by like 35. If, if you plan to do this naturally. Now, if you're freezing embryos, that's a bit different, which means that realistically you, you likely need to have secured the partner you're going to marry by like 27.And, and this is just not the time society is giving. The other thing that I really wanted to advocate for our audience here, because, you know, this is like the pronatalist movement or the closest thing to a hub the movement has, is something that has constantly surprised me, and it's something that you mentioned here, is allies that are out there for us and that want to be the pronatalist movement's allies.are women [00:11:00] who feel that they were hoodwinked by the system, never had any kids and are grieving and want to help reach out or, or through donations, help younger women not follow the same path that they followed. And it's really important to note this as a movement, because I think that sometimes. Young people in the movement can get really excited and be very dismissive of these individuals.Like it's their fault that they fell for all this, that it's their fault that they, everyone was telling them this. You know, everyone was telling them they were good people for doing this. And when you lack compassion for these people who are genuinely suffering, you isolate the movement from a huge fraction of people who could be very strong allies.And, and this is especially true because we have a lot of like manosphere types who, who watch our podcasts and stuff like that. If you want to convince young women to, to change priorities, like red pill guys telling them to do that isn't going to work. Old women who didn't have kids is going to work.Stephen Shaw: Mm hmm. Yeah. And that's, that's what I'm finding, [00:12:00] finding too. I, I, I think women from, from what I see. I'm perhaps meant to simply being made aware that the fertility window is likely much shorter than you expect. And that there are other factors. It's not just fertility. It's, it's, do you have a partner at that time?Are you sure you're not going to go through a divorce or breakup? Because that's quite commonplace these days. How sure are you at that age, you want to have a child age 35 or whatever it is that you're going to have everything lined up that turns out to be the biggest reason, you know, for not having children.And, you know, I, I, another point as well, if I could share is that. You know, whatever statistics you may come up with, a lot of people want to know, well, what is the age when fertility falls off? And you hear different things about this, but the reality is there's huge variation in this. You can't assume, as a woman, that your fertility level is the same as the rest of the, as the average woman.So, if children are important... Erring on the side of [00:13:00] caution is a common sense thing to do. You know, one of the greatest conversations I had was with a young Japanese 24 year old who had it all worked out. She was in a long distance relationship, and I, you know, cautioned that. So don't worry. I'm giving it one more year because if it doesn't work out, that gives me two more years to find the next boyfriend.If that doesn't work out, I can still meet someone by 30 and I can still have the three children I want. Oh my gosh. Love her. Right. I mean, it sounds cold and calculated, but actually it's smart if children are important.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and speaking of cold and calculated, a statistic I always love to cite is if you look at the rates of love in arranged marriages versus the rates of love in marriages that were chosen for love, they are about equal.But when you account for survivalship bias, because love marriages have a higher divorce rates in arranged marriages, they're actually higher. So applying a level of clinicalness. to relationships, even though society will shame you for it can have really positive outcomes for what is without a doubt the most important decision you're going to make in your life.[00:14:00]Stephen Shaw: Yeah. And I haven't looked into that specific statistic, but it's interesting. You know, I, I do live in Japan and it is certainly true that when arranged marriage was commonplace. That there was more marriage and there were more births. I'm not totally convinced that that's necessarily meaningful in today's society, but you still have this culture in Japan of people helping each other find dates is a thing where people effectively, you know, three men, three women meet together and they get to know each other without any pressure.It hasn't helped the birth rate though, I have to say, but it is still, I think you know, a nice way to potentially meet that person. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Also something I, I want to bring up here that's important for fans to note when they're thinking about planning their own life is, is this actually comes from a call we were having this morning was right.Nationalist sort of going over all the stats on just how much male fertility has dropped in the last 50 years or so. We are not dealing with the same biologies that our grandparents had, and it is dramatically harder to get somebody pregnant today than it was historically, whether you're looking at sperm fertility dropping over 50 percent in the [00:15:00] last 51 years.No, 51 percent in the last 50 years of what is a testosterone drop. It's like 30 percent in the last 20 years. I'm sure you remember that stat better than I do. Or you know, the, the like tide studies and endocrine disruptors and stuff like that, which means that you may need to approach fertility in a clinical fashion that may even feel unromantic and, and, and fertility isn't always a romantic thing anymore.You know, we, we are in many ways becoming a more sterile species.Stephen Shaw: Yeah, and this is not my specific area of expertise, but I do have a couple of comments to add. I'm a little bit skeptical whether this has yet been become a major factor in overall fertility. It might do. It may have recently. But my argument is, one of my findings was that mothers, once they do have the first child, In recent decades, we're having the same number of children as decades, well, decades ago.So in the US, you know, the average mother was having 2. [00:16:00] 4 children, 1980s to this, actually up to 2. 6. And this is universal in Japan, 6 percent of mothers today are having four more children. That's exactly the same as it was 50 years ago. It seems to be about having that first child maybe it's sperm levels dropping to a point where you can't even tell, but yes, so you know, families, probably sizes haven't been changing.That's a common myth. That's out there. The only thing that's changed is a rapid increase in childlessness. And most of that is what I call unplanned childlessness.Malcolm Collins: But that would be what you would expect if a large portion of the population was infertile. Because they wouldn't be able to have child number one.Well, mightStephen Shaw: you argue that those with number one, if it's falling off, would be less likely than number two and number three? Again, that's not my expertise. But, you know, the data, you know, I just say, well, look, someone needs to know to do more work on this. Do I worry that this fall off is going to impact us?Maybe this happened maybe in recent years. It's an additional factor. We'll take fertility down yet again. [00:17:00] My area of focus is really what's happened over the last 50 years. And the rise in childlessness is a key thing. IMalcolm Collins: want to pull on the statement you just made, because I think it's really interesting, and it really contrasts with our thesis around fertility.Which is to help very high fertility cultural groups maximize their fertility rates, because their kids are more likely to have more kids. Whereas for you, it seems the thesis is actually to get the people who have no kids to have that first kid, and then the rest will work itself out. Can you talk a bit about what kind of interventions you've seen be effective there?Because we haven't even looked at that as a potential solution.Stephen Shaw: Yeah, well, it's just one thing to put in the table here is that, you know, if you look at someone with two Children, they were more likely than not thinking of. Two or maybe three most people don't want one child. It's even those who have who do have one child don't recommend on Overall having one child.It's it's it's the hardest Yeah, [00:18:00] nothing against one child Parents at all. It's just it's not the general preference Not, you know, those who are three were probably thinking of three or four Maybe two those are four or probably thinking four or five maybe three. That's the way it goes those with no children We're not generally thinking of zero or one.MostMalcolm Collins: of those people, that's a fascinating point.Stephen Shaw: Most of those were thinking of two, three, four plus, just like everybody else. Wow. So if you like the kind of the power of that group, if they were to have that first child in terms of changing the overall birth rates of nations is much higher than increasing six to seven children, forMalcolm Collins: example.So how much of this do you think, if you were going to say, is, is, is dating market failure? And when I say dating market failure, I don't just mean finding a partner. I mean, the men who are on the market are not what the women who are on the market want, and the women who are on the market are not what the men on the market want.And how much of it do you think is mis expectations around [00:19:00] timing?Stephen Shaw: I think it's both. I'm glad I'm not in the market right now. It certainly doesn't look any easier, but I think another reality, you know, whether it's these days or decades ago is that when you're in your twenties, you can build a life together.By the time you get into your thirties, you've got your career, you know, pretty much what city you want to live in. You have your friend group, you have your hobbies. Now you need someone to match those things as well as someone you actually like and want to spend the rest of your life and have kids with.In your twenties, you can build much of those things together. So by definition, the pool of people available is less. Also, the fact that many people already got married in their 20s, so the pool is less anyways, so by definition, it cannot get easier and, you know, during the documentary, but certainly after there being so many people trying to find that partner struggling with dating apps, but I'm not sure it's just the apps fault.I think it's a timing thing. Therefore, I think it [00:20:00] is, you know, if you are looking at the smaller group of people who might match you, who meet all of your criteria. Yeah. You know, it, it, it, it's, it's, it's, it gets harder and harder.Malcolm Collins: And this is definitely something we experienced in our relationship. I do not think Simone and I could have been good partners for each other.If we met when we were much older than we did. Yeah. Because you can grow together a lot more when you're early in your career.Stephen Shaw: Yeah. Yeah. You know, my own experiences to share. I mean, I've, I've dated since, since I divorced. And, you know, one of the irritations I found is when you're with someone and they're a little older.They will say things like, oh, when, when I was in my twenties, I had this friend, I had a friend who did this, I had a friend, and you kind of put this map together, all these friends, but you've never met them, you never know who they are. And then later it's like, is that the same friend? It becomes complicated to unravel someone's life and enjoy those conversations instead of having been there and actually recall them together.It's a personal perspective, but. Ooh. It doesn't get easier.Malcolm Collins: This is a [00:21:00] fascinating way to frame it because this aligns with our experience when we started dating, which is we got rid of almost all of our social network that we had before we started dating after we started dating. And to an extent, you should almost think of all the socializing you do before you get married or find the person you end up marrying as sort of wasted effort, which might encourage you to findStephen Shaw: Well, I, I, that may or may not work for everybody, but, but, you know, it's certainly, I'm not saying experiences before meeting the right person have no validity at all, but, but it does make it more complex as time goes on and you just haven't been there to experience those emotions, those friendships, those experiences, you know, not necessarily together, but to know, Oh yes, I remember you went on that trip with that group of friends and I met those friends and now I understand that story better.So for, let's say a slightly more shallow, you know,Simone Collins: I'm curious after you release a documentary, if you've come across any innovations or [00:22:00] interventions that give you hope or where you feel like people are recognizing the problem, either with dating markets or starting early enough to have a family or anything related to these declines in fertility, where you're like, Oh, wow, like this is a solution that seems to be working well or are you really only starting to see people innovate now?I mean, we personally aren't seeing much. So I'm curious to see if you've seen anything in all your travels and interactions. Yeah.Stephen Shaw: A lot. Well, first of all, a lot of things have been tried in the field. Yeah. I often do is explain, you know, some great policy that's going to be tried in a certain country and we'll show you all the exceptions as to why that hasn't worked.The one thing I would like to see, because I do believe it will make the biggest difference is within our high school, college textbooks, biology textbooks, to just explain when we talk about fertility which, which we mostly do that there's a fertility window. You know, we don't explain that. I'm not sure why that is, like, why wouldn't we?It's just objective information from science. [00:23:00] And I have a pretty good idea why that might be. There's certain people who prefer that young people don't have that information. anD I covered that in part of the documentary as to why our education system has really not been sharing the, the, the reality of the fertility window.I think that would make a huge difference if young people were prepared for that. But you know, the optimism I get often, I often,,Malcolm Collins: I was wondering if you would mind summarizing your thesis here, why the school system is hiding this from people.Stephen Shaw: Yeah, well, if you look at the U. S. high school system, the biggest educator on population, I'll call them out, is an organization called Population Connection.They have educated 50, 000 U. S. teachers, and those U. S. teachers every year are responsible for educating I believe it's three or four million U. S. high school students. Now I interviewed the CEO of that organization. In the documentary and asked him why he's not including information on falling [00:24:00] fertility rates around the world, and his response was, that's not our thing.So they, for example, you know, would be, and it's not just them, they happen to be the most prolific. And let me explain briefly the heritage. They were formerly known as ZPG founded by Paul Ehrlich, the the author of the famous population bomb book in the late 1960s. They have millions and millions of donations every year from groups of people.I suspect many going back to that time who thought we were about to experience a population bomb. So there's an organization out there educating our children on population matters and you know, the kind of things they educate them on are that, you know, that the world's population is starting here. I started here in 1800 and then kind of did this and then they stopped there.Why would they stop explaining if they're you know, if they're trying to be objective about the reality that we know that everything's going to flatten out? Beyond that time, they don't do that. And when asked upon that scene online, they try to, you know, say, well, in the year 2100, there's going to be the same number of people as 1970.[00:25:00] Yes, but most of people that society's going to have to support. So there are organizations out there. Another point, you know, if you look at the collection of organizations who share that message, they don't ever come out with messages like South Korea, it's low enough now, please, please stop your low birth rates and, you know, stabilize it.They keep saying, no, less is more, less, less is more. Yeah, and you know, I'm sorry, if you hear me talking about this, I could talk a long time, but one more thing is, you know, they, they, they preach call it that, a lot about, you know, high birth rates in Africa. Okay, fair enough, you might say. But they don't preach about that so much in Africa, maybe not at all in Africa.They preach to young, you know, American European high school students. And they say, look at this. Think about this. Those were the exact words I got. They want US high school kids to think about how many children are in Africa. That is a, you know, to me, that's propaganda. That's like, think about having less kids yourself [00:26:00] to balance out what's happening in Africa.So to me, it's, it's high, you know, best, I would say it's. You know, partial information. I would be, I'm not going to go much further than that and just say it's ideological, it's driven by mindsets of the 60s that haven't changed and needs to stop.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well let's talk about who, who has because you talked a bit about this, but I just find this really interesting.What have been unexpected supporters that you've had? Any, any groups where you're like, I did not expect this group to be as... I'm happy about that. It's happy about your work, not the situation.Stephen Shaw: I'm not sure. Unexpected to be honest with you. I mean, there have been a wide range of groups. Religious groups.Groups that support marriage have supported this a lot. I'm agnostic as a person. Marriage is probably a good thing for most people. I think, but I'm not certain of that. I don't try to get into those moralistic judgments at all. So, you know, while I'm happy that they are supporters well, [00:27:00] let me just call it one more thing.I think it might not be a direct answer to your question, but I have been on quite a number of conservative podcasts and conservative TV stations. I do not choose to be on conservative podcasts or TV stations. They're the only ones who want to talk about this. I mean, just literally no one from the left wants to talk about it.Yet this impacts the left at least as much as the right. You know, if you look at education levels, I would argue that there's more. People on the left are left in a, you know, state of unplanned childlessness. So it's terribly sad. Yeah, by far. Some people want to, want to talk about this. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: as we, we often say, this is the, the right's global warming.Which it doesn't mean that either one of them is, is, is, is. True or untrue, but just what we're saying is it's very toxic for the other side to talk about it. It's so much so, I actually had a professor at Harvard which was talking to me, she's like, I follow you guys, what's my secret account? My secret Twitter account, because I don't want my students to know.But even [00:28:00] so, one of my students somehow accused me of being a pronatalist. Like, accused her... Of potentially being a pronatalist, which she saw as being threatening to her tenure. That was insane to me that it has become that hyperbolic that being a out pronatalist could lose you your tenure at a major college.So myStephen Shaw: own solution to that, and I actually believe it's a good idea, so let me share it with you. I call myself a pan nitalist. Pan nitalist meaning I equally support those who don't want children to live a life without children, and to support those who do want children. So perhaps anyone who feels conflicted can come out with something like that, and actually say they support both sides, because, you know, people who don't want children should not become parents.They'd probably not make the decision.Simone Collins: Absolutely. Yeah, no, we, we, we really agree. In fact, one of the reasons why we're really fighting for this is we know that basically reproductive choice and especially the option to not have Children, if you don't [00:29:00] want to is largely contingent on. those who are feminist, those who do support reproductive choice, having kids and sort of carrying their culture forward into the future.Because if in the end we end up in a future where only those who don't support these things are around, people aren't really going to have as much choice as they did in the past. And we totally agree that, you know, not everyone is cut out to be a parent. Not everyone wants to be a parent. You know, not everyone's lucky enough to be in a situation to be a good parent.I mean, I think like, for example, I would have been a terrible parent or I would have preferred to not have any kids at all. In the vast majority of permutations of my potential life, only because I met Malcolm, who's like absolutely perfect for me, am I really excited to be a parent? And I would not want to be in a world where I would be forced to be a parent otherwise.So yeah, we really support that and it's, I mean, arguably this is much more a problem for the hyper progressive groups that don't support prenatalism either out of environmental concern or out of reproductive [00:30:00] choice concern or the desire to not have kids than it is for the conservative groups that, that support marriage, that support having families.They're going to be fine, largely speaking. AndMalcolm Collins: we really agree with you on the, like, an arm movement does not take a stance on things like, do you need to be married to have kids? We say, everyone right now that is attempting a different cultural solution to having kids is attempting a hypothesis. Our hypothesis is that intergenerationally that won't work, like it'll lead to lower fertility rates and those groups will die out.But I don't think that we, you know, time passes that judgment, not us.Stephen Shaw: Yes. Oh, that's right. I don't think people realize how quickly the, the transformation, what will happen, you know, of course, year by year, things look the same, even decade by decade to some extent, but the, you know, I call this a tipping point because, you know, as you, as birth rates get lower, you know, I have a thing that we share with you.It's, it's, it's, it's in the second part of the documentary. That's not yet, but I call it the societal half life. It's the time [00:31:00] taken for low birth rates to materialize and half the number of babies being born. And most of the industrialized world right now, that's somewhere around 50 to 70 years. I mean, halving the number of newborns in 50 to 70 years is frighteningly fast.Now, if you, so what will happen is it will be those groups perhaps ideologies, those who have more children. Those will be the ones for the one thing we, we, we do know is that. Religiosity is associated with higher birth rates, but also, you know, that that can be, that that's inheritable. So I, I agree with you.I, I, I would really caution anyone who thinks that we're going to glide down to a planet with fewer people and we're all going to have more space and life's going to be beautiful. No, the world's going to be a very varied place. Civilizations will have changed and people may not like what we're heading for.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, as, as we often point out not only this relevant to the economy, but when a developed economy collapses or goes [00:32:00] downhill, it's much worse than it is at equivalent economic levels if it's developing and we keep pointing to South Africa as a good example of what a developed economy looks like as it collapses because, you know, you get rolling blackouts, you get security issues that are much higher than equivalent income levels in developing countries.And we have other videos that talk on this. Transcribed but yeah, this idea that this all can just happen quietly in the background I think is completely delusional when you look at the, the statistics on how much we rely on the young to support the old in our society.Stephen Shaw: cOmpletely. And, you know, we've, we've really lost, you know, the, the sense of community has disappeared, really, and that, that I, you know, my own feeling is that national governments have only a minor role to play in the solution.Solution will come from, you know, people, young people by definition, you're finding communities and societies where they're able to have the children they want to have. And a lot of the problems are there's, there's no one around to help support to, to be role models, et cetera. So, a [00:33:00] lot does have to change, but we've got to be very careful that it changes in a positive way because, I mean, for example, can I share now, you know, in Iran right now, Iran's got, Very low birth rates.That's right. Yeah, terrible. But they, I think two years ago, banned vasectomies to increase birth rates. I'm hearing, I don't know if it's correct, but I'm hearing that the number of vasectomies in China has fallen by over 80 percent. There's no specific order about that, but that's how, things like that will happen.And you know, some people speculate that at some point there will be a ban on abortions in China to force birth rates up. So seeing things go down too fast. Will likely have a kind of reaction in many cultures that, you know, people should not be gleeful that we're, you know, heading to smaller populations.There will be a lot of turbulence along the way.Simone Collins: Well, and we really don't like those policies because, you know, when we look at when these policies have been implemented in the past, they don't actually solve the problem. They may cause a temporary boost and then a [00:34:00] huge depression in the future because, you know, all these people then associate fertility with coercion.And with, you know, being low class and all these things, like when, when this happened, Romania, horrible fallout after that. So it's a, it's, it's a scary, it's a scaryMalcolm Collins: world. And I think something that's captured in your work that's not captured in any of our work and our viewers know this about this. We're completely heartless and we are incapable of approaching things from a heartful matter, but your work really shows the amount of genuine human pain That this is causing and the amount of people who wanted larger families than they had, but due to social and cultural reasons, we're not able to find partners that they were satisfied with.And I think when we look at today, you know, whether it's on Tik Tok, whether it's the gender wars or everything like that, it's really easy to like. Fractionalize yourself and have teams and everything like that. And dunk on women or dunk on men or, you know, whatever. But these lead to behavior patterns, which make long term partnerships [00:35:00] really unviable.And it's, I think one of the things that is causing this. And so, and I think that this is more of a progressive issue than anything else. These people on TikTok who are gladly stoling them not having kids because they get virtual, like, like, social points for that. They get validation for that and they move up within their local social hierarchy because it's seen as a high value thing to, to, to signal.Without considering the long term pain they might be causing to impressionable young people. By convincing them that they will always feel the way about kids they do in their early 20s. And that's one of the hardest things about kids is when you really, really want kids is generally after it's It's easy to have them.You need to have been preparing for the way you feel about the world to shift before it happens. In the same way that our school system prepares us for puberty before we go through it, you need to be prepared for this, like, baby puberty beforehand, because if you don't have a partner by the time this biological [00:36:00] flip happens you know, there really isn't anything you can do at that stage, often.Stephen Shaw: Yeah, I agree with that. Again, I get confidence from just seeing younger people watch the documentary because I think people figure this out for themselves. I don't think we have to, you know, say more than just like, here are examples of people with regrets. And people have, people generally aren't aware of that, certainly haven't seen those emotions.And if I could explain, I didn't go search, I mean, I was, I come from the world of data science. I don't know if your viewers know that, but I'm not a filmmaker. I ended up throwing myself into this project, realizing that something was out in the data. Why would all these countries have falling birth rates at the exact same time?And the data itself wasn't answering this question. I thought I needed to talk to people about what's happening in their lives. A one year project to film in a few countries turned into a seven year project filmed in 24 countries and 230 people I interviewed but but what kept happening when I met people mid well mid 40s 50s certainly Much more often than not these [00:37:00] emotions Some level of regret would come out.I'm not saying everybody's life was completely grief ridden. thAt wouldn't be true. But there's grief there for the vast majority. In some cases, that grief was intense. Very, very intense. And, you know, that's why I kept going. Because I felt these people are telling these stories for the first time. You know, it wasn't that they're sharing these emotions even with their close friends and family.I opened up. Yeah, the topic. So, I think people, when they see that this is a reality, which is why I think these antinatalists are so, you know, upset with my documentary because, you know, it goes against the idea that people, you know, so a couple of other things, I mean, what we're seeing is back in the 60s.you know, anti natalists or, you know, I call them anti natalists. Natalism to me is clear, though some people define it in different ways. It's simply, you know, it's wanting fewer children or no children. So this was to do with the world running out of [00:38:00] food. And then the world didn't run out with the Green Revolution and then we came up with the environment.Maybe that was appropriate, but let's not get into that conversation because it's complicated. But my point is, right now they're shifting again. I can see the shift. The problem now is the patriarchy. And, you know, they're subtly moving away from blaming the environment because they know we're all going to see that the population is maximizing right now.So they're preparing, you know, they're being smart from their point of view about preparing their argument that, oh, it's no longer about the environment, it's about men forcing themselves. We've got to be really careful and call these guys out because you know, they, they have an agenda. They are ideologists.And I will, I want to say one more thing that you, you, in your statement there about the people who don't have children. And do you know, if you go online, you will find comments, tweets between those extreme, they are extreme [00:39:00] people who don't like children. I can't call them any anti natalist attacking.People who, who are childless by choice saying, Why are you complaining about not having children? You can get out of bed anytime. You know, you can have all the vacations. Stop this. And the bitterness and the attacks that those people are receiving. I mean, it's just horrendous. So, you know, that, that's why it's very clear to me, okay, these are ideologies who don't care about people's feelings, they don't care about facts, they don't care about people's suffering, they just want to pretend human nature doesn't exist and women don't have, don't have children, which is just nonsense.Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I think one of the things that I often mention on the show is if you're at a, at a party in New York with a bunch of, you know, wealthy progressives, which we often go to, and you bring up the concept like fertility rates, fertility rates, Uncommon for someone to say, in fact, I'd say it almost happens every time if you're in a group of five or more, for someone to say, is it really [00:40:00] so bad if humans go extinct?And I think that this concept has been normalized among a large part of our society, and they know they're not supposed to talk about it publicly, I mean, some do, but I think it's, it's more commonly held than, than peopleStephen Shaw: would think, yeah, and well, you know, if, if that's true on that scale, it explains a lot of these ideologists, I think they're concealing their real motives or, or their, you know, benefactors might maybe have, have those motives in terms of setting up these organizations.It would explain a lot because they never change the message. It's always about fewer children. There's one organization that just promotes the idea, have fewer children than you want. And I asked them, well, what if you only want one child? They didn't respond. And then one of their own donors jumped in and said, you know, that, that's, you know, just unacceptable.Everybody has a human right to have a child. They don't care. It's just have fewer children down to zero. It, it's endless. I mean, there's the other one about the environment. Gosh, I could talk about this for a long time. There's so many examples. They try and make [00:41:00] us think that people without children are happier.You look at the research, it doesn't show that at all. They're so selective in that, that the impact on the environment of having a child is much bigger. Then all of these other things, you look at the research and it doesn't support that at all. So there's people out there with agendas. Yeah,Simone Collins: absolutely. It it's interesting to me, though, as I hear you talk about your experiences, I feel like you've come across so many more pronatal people than we do. And I wonder if that's because of your international focus and creating this documentary, whereas like Malcolm and I are mostly interacting with probably coastal elites in antinatalism, it,Among that group is much more vehement than that. I've never heard someone say, Oh, everyone has a right to have one kid. What we're more used to hearing is. Wouldn't it be better if there were just no more humans at all? Which is really sobering. But it's encouraging at least to hear that [00:42:00] like, even the more skeptical groups that you're coming across are a little bit more friendly to children.I didn't expect to be pleasantly surprised by that. So it does give me someMalcolm Collins: hope. Well, where can we point people that would be most useful to your efforts?Stephen Shaw: Well, I have a website called birthgap. org. We've got around 4, 000 members. It's a community just where we share information and thoughts and data that the maps I created, for example, in the documentary are on there. You can direct message me on there. I'm on Twitter at Steven J. Shaw, S T E P H E N J S H A W.And on YouTube, you can find part one. If you search for birth gap. Charlotte's world part ones on there, and there are actually two more parts that will be out in the months ahead.Malcolm Collins: We are so honored that you took the time to come on with us, and I really hope that we can together continue to grow this movement.And I really love your voice here because it is so orthogonal to ours in its ability to capture the emotions behind all of this.Simone Collins: Yeah, you're, you're like the non sociopath [00:43:00] in this movie. Very necessary. We're, we're really, really, really grateful for your work and please keep us posted on anything we can do to be helpful to you.Stephen Shaw: Thank you. Enjoy the conversation. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

We explore how various anime tackle controversial themes and ideas that would be taboo in mainstream Western media. Anime can act as thoughtful social commentary by framing issues abstractly through fiction. We discuss shows like Beastars, Darling in the Franxx, When They Cry, and the deeply problematic but conceptually fascinating Dears.Malcolm: [00:00:00] So a lot of people would hear this and they're like, oh, it must be about slavery, right? But no, I don't think it's a show about slavery. It's actually a show about women.And the way our society treats women, what if there was a group of people on earth that when they were born preferred to be submissive to another group of people? What if that, and what if our entire planet shamed them for that instinct? Made them feel like garbage for that instinct? Made them feel like they had to go out and try to be these These perfect politicians, these perfect citizens, which is what the Deers feel they have to be.But it's all hollow for them. It's all a facade. Because what they really want is someone to believe in a worthy master to serve. And that is such an offensive idea. You could never say that. It's I mean, I did. I'm going to get canceled for this episode. Of course. Look, I'm not saying I agree with that, but I'm saying some people feel that way.And it is an interesting concept to exploreWould you like to know [00:01:00] more?Simone: All right,Malcolm. So today we're going to talk about various anime shows and what they mean about larger society because, and I think you've made a really interesting observation about this.fiCtion in the past used to be meaningful and something that we talked about in English class because it said something very profound and meaningful about society that was often subversive and that often couldn't be said out loud. So you had to say it through allegory. You had to say it through some like fantasy world or fictional story.And everyone had to infer the meaning, the societal commentary. And now that doesn't really happen in that much in fiction. It's all likeMalcolm: context for this. So first, this is actually our second recording because we both forgot to hit record the first time we were doing this. And so Parts of this are going to sound a little rote.I'm sorry about that. But we did want to do another anime episode because the last one wasn't one of our most watched episodes. People were like, really into it. They were like, actually, like, I'm really nerdy about this stuff and I appreciate you guys talking about it. So we're like, [00:02:00] let's go deeper into this.But I think, soSimone: for non, for non weebs. In this, in this audience and it's not like I'm, I'm a nerd too, but I do think that Malcolm is right in that if you want to see genuinely unique social commentary. You're going to see more of it in anime than you are, especially like also, you know, in Western media these days, so much has been sort of like bankrupt and hollowed out by the woke cult, essentially, that you're not going to see social commentary.You're not going to see some subversive ideas in literature or in mainstream Western media. Where are you seeing it? Anime? So that's why, even if you're not into anime, we recommend. Well, considering some of the shows that we talkMalcolm: about, we're at least considering the analysis. We'll add interesting ones and we'll talk about them later, so people don't need to actually watch the s**t, okay?And this actually comes to a point. Somebody, in our last one, they were like, Oh my god, I can't believe the Collins is. Don't just watch Izekaya, but they watch bottomSimone: tier Izekaya flop. Izekaya. Izekaya is a form of, like, Japanese tapas. [00:03:00]Malcolm: Okay, whatever. Japanese, born in Japan. Anyway, so we no, no, no, but, but I wouldn't have had the revelations I had from that last anime had it not been such a low tier anime.Had it not been such a low quality anime because the low tierness of it stripped out all of the nuance and engaging plot. So I was able to see what the core of the genre actually was with no scaffolding around it. Yeah, like inSimone: other words. Lowbrow media is based and pure and straightforward about everything.And we like that.Malcolm: And, and it can often do things that other media wouldn't. And so this came, got me thinking, like, what anime have I seen where I might not have seen it if I was screening for quality? One that came to mind was one that some people mentioned in the comments, which was Thermae Roma.True classic. Thermae Roma is a terrible Netflix adaptation. Do not watch it on Netflix. Find the original through some streaming site or something. It is. God tier anime, but the animation is basically stills. It [00:04:00] is It's, yeah, it's low effort, it's lowSimone: budget,Malcolm: But what it does is, it's not just, like, a good learning opportunity, but it's, like, a good historic learning opportunity, because it's contrasting through time travel, the bath culture of Japan and the bath culture of ancient Rome.And it's, it is both humorous and informative. But the, probably one of the most interesting plots I have ever seen in any show combined was one of the worst, most boring shows I have ever seen. Okay. Came from an anime from 20 years ago called Dears. And this anime It's that old? Yes, 20 years old. Well, let's see when it came out.When did the Dears anime come out?2004. So it's yeah, 19 years old at this point. Wow. Which is wild to think about. So this anime, to understand how low tier this anime was, [00:05:00] back then, You did not get much sexualization of women in mainstream anime that you, you, you know, you would get like the transformations and something like sailor moon or something like that, but like this level of, of sexualization was actually pretty rare, except for that one anime.I'm thinking where are you saying that he was a little girl and the girls who turned into a spaceship, but we're not going to talk about that one becauseSimone: that's, are you saying that deer was, was pretty sexualized?Malcolm: Yeah, that one was pretty sexualized. It's the only other from that time period I know of that was like as sexualized as Dears.No, Dears was more sexualized because like many of the characters wore like kink get ups most of the time. It was almost borderline like pornography. When for the time period now today, it would be considered very mainstream anime in the amount of essential eyes. But back then low tier writing low tier that but the plot insane.And so she was talking about how anime can sometimes go into things. And the point of media is to challenge our preconceptions about things. So we look at the [00:06:00] closest show to dears that has come out in Western media. It's I think it's called like area 51 or something. It was about those aliens that crash landed in Africa.And then we're basically treated like apartheid blacks were in Africa. And it's like, wow, that is super on the nose. And you were not shouting. No, there isn't like some big group of watchers of this that were like, I used to be pro apartheid and now I'm anti apartheid. And then I watched this movie and I realized the whole thing for me.But in this anime it just, I'm not going to go too deep into it because we're going to save that for later in the episode. But in this anime the aliens that crash land on earth are actually bred and designed to be a slave species, to be a servant species to another species. And they cannot achieve fulfillment or real happiness without doing this.However, Landing on Earth, they believe due to Earth's history and the biases of the people of Earth that if the people of Earth learn this about them, that [00:07:00] they will treat them poorly and potentially even force them to leave. And so they feel constantly sort of oppressed and bigoted against and have to hide their true identity.Which is slaves who want to be slaves. And that's really interesting. Like that's so much more interesting than like the house elf way of doing this in Harry Potter or something like this. Because it genuinely causes you to ask questions, which we will get to later in this. Because it combines this with a bunch of other themes, which lead to other interesting things.But! Other animes that cover topics that likeSimone: why don't you want to just dive right right into this? Why don't we justMalcolm: dive into because it leads more people watching what you do is you you drop a few breadcrumbs then you cover it at the end of the episode You typically want to break up an idea like that but! To another anime, because you were mentioning this in the unrecorded bit, that you were like, oh yeah, this is really a topic you couldn't touch on in the way it touches on it in Western media..Simone: Yeah, so. Another anime [00:08:00] that I, I think is really good at sharing subversive ideas in, through, through anime, like, in modern media, is Beastars.Which is, like, most animes, it takes place in a high school setting. It's basically, imagine Zootopia, but in a high school setting, and super f*****g dark. Like, because, actually... There is, we'll say like, you know, the equivalent of human trafficking with like, there are some predators who will actually pay money to kill prey in this world.And the, the high school students who go to school together are in active tension where predators will.Malcolm: This is really tempted to kill prey when you, this is really important. It's a, it's a world in which the different species of animals are actually systemically different from each other. And in some ways, a threat to each other, and this is really important.If you're going to talk about things like sexual differences in humans, you can look at something like Zootopia where. The solution is that actually any threat that some of them pose to other of them was completely artificial. And [00:09:00] contrast this with Beastars, where when we live in a society where when a woman goes out at night, she is genuinely at risk.In our world, At risk of another part of our species, men, targeting her, preying on her, this is, and finding out how to structure our world in which it heightens these differences between individuals, and says, okay, if there really are systemic differences between individuals, if there really are things like night markets, predators go to basically eat other humans or buy meat from other humans that have been dug up in graveyards or other ways, smuggled into this.Like, how do you live with that? How do you have that as a coming of age ritual? But what ISimone: think even more interesting about the show is one of the main characters is prey is a basically like a slutty rabbit. And they really, cause you can't talk about this in modern society. But she while being prey also really like.plays around with the dynamic of being prey and often tempts people and [00:10:00] baits people in a way that makes her demonized throughout the school, but also like gives her various advantages and in a sense power over other people. And I think it really plays With the, the concept of, you know, like blaming the victim.You can never talk about a woman being victimized in some way and it, and her having a role in thatMalcolm: victimization. She is an active predator and yet she is a diminutive prey. And that I think in a lot of shows like this, they would have an individual act this way and they would either. Completely shame it.Just be like, she's a bad guy. Like this is what would have happened if this was done in like an 80s scary movie, right? Like she'd be the first to die. Or they would have a character act this way and be like, but she's an empowered woman. And it doesn't take either of those easy routes. Her actions actually do hurt some of the people around her.And first you see her being bullied and you think it's just slut shaming and then you see the real damage she is doing to other people's lives. And, and, and [00:11:00] real systemic damage. So for example, in the first episode, so this isn't giving that much away. You know, you learned that she had broken up the relationship between an endangered species with another one of their kind in sleeping with this girl's boyfriend.And that's why this girl. is bullying her. And you're like, Oh s**t, like that was kind of justified bullying. I hate to say it. Like sometimes if you are actively going out and targeting people who are in relationships and that you learn that she is doing this to gain a feeling of power, but that she actually yearns almost for self victimization because she feels like right in her role as prey, which is also a very interesting.emotional subset that I think we as a society are shamed in talking about or engaging. And I won't go too deep into what I'm referring to with that, but what I will say is throughout this, we're going to get spoilers. So just spoilers, spoilers, spoilers throughout this, when we talk about things.But keep in mind that [00:12:00] there's been a great study on this. And it's one that Simone always cites to me, which is completely desensitized me to spilling spoilers, which shows, what does it show Simone?Simone: That people actually enjoy content more when they have been exposed to spoilers. And so I love spoilers.I always want to want to know what's going to happen. I enjoy things more. Of course, Malcolm has grown up in a family where spoilers are like. worse than like killing the family dog. So I understand that many people are very against spoilers, um, butMalcolm: not in this house. He's not in this house. So another anime that, that I think is really interesting in regards to the concepts that touches and very, very relevant to this show is an anime called Franks.This is a studio trigger anime. So, so absolutely wild. Like they, they typically are, but as to where it's relevant to this show, it The first area is you see in it you at first believe it's just a bunch of young kids in a school fighting in mechs against aliens. And as it goes [00:13:00] on, it unveils more and more about the world.So it starts as like the most generic anime you could imagine. Yeah. And then it begins to unfold and you see more and more. And these kids had originally thought that they were like kids who were recruited into this. Or at least this is the impression you get by their parents, by a society that's threatened by these aliens.And as time goes on, what you learn is no, they aren't actually. What they are is the people who they are trying to protect because they accidentally get into their settlement at some point. thEy've lived for thousands of years. AndSimone: Meccas not knowMalcolm: that? No, they don't know that. Whoa. These, well, or they may not know that, like they, they, they genuinely are unaware of what's going on in the adult world.And these people will have, because they've lived for thousands of years, you know, they've all been in relationships with each other multiple times. They live with this enormous ennui. They all seem to not hate their lives, but they live completely passionless and sympathy less existences because they have [00:14:00] been around for so long.Not only do they take almost no passion other than like. That fleeting type of passion you might get was the 50th, 60th person you've had sex with but they also this was sort of like this sad passion they get from the things that do give them passion. Like it feels very hollow and it's portrayed as very hollow, but they are unable to value the lives of these people who haven't lived as long.And. What these shows because to them, there's these little blips that they created in a lab and yet it contrasts. It was like the, the dynamism you see was in these individuals, young lives, young love for the first time, you know, finding out who you are sexual identity for the first time. You know, exploring friendships and, and betrayal and all the stuff you would see in an, in a high school anime.And it just contrasts this enormous passion in these disposable young people versus this ennui, this ennui in these people who have extreme life extension technology. And [00:15:00] I think that this is actually kind of an inevitability that we keep learning about with life extension, but it's so rarely framed this way among the life extension proponents.How is a person who's lived 1, 500 years really going to see a baby or a 10 year old or a 15 year old? Will they really have the capacity to value their lives in the same way we value other human lives? Us young people, will they really have the capacity to enjoy life anymore in the same way? Even as a person who's in my mid thirties, I can tell you.I don't enjoy life with the same amount of fire and gusto I did when I was, you know, 15. And I see it in our little kids, the amount that they really, you know, so, and in the show, eventually this old society dies out and humans start breeding again . Like, this is seen as the solution to life extensionism is pronatalism, is intergenerational.Aging and death and growing again, and that that is a [00:16:00] a and and behind all of this is human sexuality, which I also think of a really interesting and human gender, which are major themes in this. The robots that they are using to fight in this war, they can only be piloted by a, a, a biological male and a biological female or a male assigned a birth and a female assigned a birth.However you want to use these words, like biological might be an offensive way to put it, but like. Cis male and cis female is also the wrong way to put it, because there is a gay character in this, and she tries to pilot a mech with No,Simone: I mean, a lesbian would still be cis if she was born. Okay,Malcolm: so yeah, I guess there's no like, intentionally trans characters, but it's made really clear in this, you have to be with the opposite birth gender for the mechs to work.And, and even if you have an attraction, even if you're like, yeah, but for me, I'm attracted to girls. That next won't work. And I think that that's capturing an element of this. An almost inescapable element of the human history where if you're dealing [00:17:00] with this one group that's fighting for sort of intergenerational human dynamism they can be as tolerant as they want to people of different sexual orientations, which they are in the anime.But it doesn't change the way that those people are able to participate with current levels of technology, at least in this sort of intergenerational dynamism.I totally forgot, but actually the show does address this late in the season. There are same-sex couple pairings that work, but only with additional technology and like cutting edge stuff. And. And some of these pairings it's even heterosexual couples but with the woman topping the manMalcolm: And that was really fascinating that they went there with those themes. And I actually looked it up afterwards. I want to make sure I remembered it.And the first comment I saw was somebody on Reddit being like, I watched the first half of Franks. Does it somehow get less problematic? And the first comment was like, Oh, my sweet summer [00:18:00] child, you have no idea.Another theme of the show that I found very interesting. Is that at the beginning of the show, many of the men will want to pilot the meccas with the same women who are seen as the best pilots. And they do this, not because they like the women or anything like that, but they see it as a status game amongst the other men. And obviously this has much to the chagrin of, of both of the women who are seen as the high status pilots and the women seen as the lower status pilots.But as the show goes on, it becomes clear that everyone pilots best with one person who they are uniquely compatible with. And. The desire to pilot a Mecca with, , another person's compatible pilot or with multiple pilots increasingly looked juvenile and, obviously not optimal The message being that it is juvenile for men to choose a partner for status rather than compatibility. And that basically they're, as they say in a another movie, I really [00:19:00] love we're in this for the species boys and girls. Um and it's not about individual status games amongst other malesMalcolm: but I love that because those are all themes. That you would just never see in a Western show. You would never see these themes in a Western show. And it is fascinating to explore them, but in a way, I find these themes are sort of muted, in that they are just thematic and aesthetic in that show. It's more saying, this is good, This is bad.You know, now we're going to get to Dears, which is very different. Oh, circling back. Okay. Circling back. Simone was asking me, Malcolm, why don't you just finish talking about it now? And I go, because it's good plot structure in terms of how you deliver a podcast. You have to give the bait, show why it's interesting and they should keep watching.And then you say some interesting things as meat in the middle, and then you close it off at the end with tying back to the original bait. You've got to make it juicy or people won't continue to watch. You see, story [00:20:00] structure, Simone, story structure. But so deers, as I said, slave race crashes on earth.They feel the need to hide this. It turns out that one of the slaves is defective and is, essentially meant to be discarded, like turned to ooze and then returned into usable product. And she accidentally is dropped out and she is found by a human. And this human ends up bonding with it.Like he becomes its master. And what you realize is the way it's defective is both considered a defect worthy of recall. So the, the mastership wants to destroy her, liquidate her, reform her, and give the Fixed version to the guy, which obviously as a human, he's not super cool with that idea. And but also sort of a God among her species.And what makes her a God is a superpower that she has, which is also her defection, which is that she can, whenever she wants, choose who she wants to be her master. Oh, interesting. Now she can only [00:21:00] choose one master, but she gets to choose that master. She can initiate the engagement ceremony on her own without being pre programmed or command from the central ship.Like normally you would be assigned by the central ship and this is the way the other aliensSimone: are being assigned. So in this world. But it's still, it's not like a serial monogamy world. Once she chooses her master, that's it. Yeah,Malcolm: that's her master. Yeah. Okay, okay, okay. And it exploits interesting concepts like this. Like another one had had a master. Who actually was, back in the day when she was an actual alien, you know, in, in one of these.From another planet. And her master had died, and she can't recreate a connection. Oh. And so, yeah, it's, it's sad. And so the show deals with like a lot of stuff where you're like, oh, this is really interesting. But, um, what's fascinating about the show is what this is obviously supposed to be about.So a lot of people would hear this and they're like, oh, it must be about slavery, right? Which is an interesting thing and it would [00:22:00] be interesting if that's what the show was actually about or the themes that it was getting at. But no, I don't think it's a show about slavery. It's actually a show about women.And the way our society treats women, what if there was a group of people on earth that when they were born preferred to be submissive to another group of people? What if that, and what if our entire planet shamed them for that instinct? Made them feel like garbage for that instinct? Made them feel like they had to go out and try to be these These perfect politicians, these perfect citizens, which is what the Deers feel they have to be.But it's all hollow for them. It's all a facade. Because what they really want is someone to believe in a worthy master to serve. And that is such an offensive idea. You could never say that. It's I mean, I did. I'm going to get canceled for this episode. Of course. Look, I'm not saying I agree with that, but I'm saying some people feel that way.And it is an interesting concept to explore. But yeah, I, I, I [00:23:00] really liked that framing. And then on top of all that, they say, and imagine that your superpower is one that every woman has. Which is that they can choose who they want to spend their lives serving. So it shows sort of like a be happier for what you have than you should, you know, a lot of people frame it as being, it's not a bad thing to live your life in service to somebody else.If that's what you want. And I'm not saying all women are born this way. I'm just saying that if we are realistic and we look at the data and we've obviously done the data on this. A huge portion of women desire relationships in which they are the subordinate partner. ButSimone: you can also choose to look at it from the perspective of, and this is a chapter from the Pragmatist's Guide to Sexuality, Humans as a Slave Race.You point out in that book that there were a lot of actually selective pressures Encouraging most humans to be comfortable with and well adapted to essentially being a slave toMalcolm: someone [00:24:00] higher. So I'll, I'll, I'll word this differently. Most of the selective pressures throughout human history were applied to the humans of the lowest social status, not the humans of the highest social status.You are much more likely to lose access to mates or much more likely to be killed if you were a low social status. That is human who flip messed up than a high social status human who messed up. And because of this, the selective pressures applied to our species primarily applied to people in surf like roles.Simone: But they do show up in people with super senior roles. I mean, like in the past and in European Kings, they were still slave. God, they served God. So, like, you can even see it in various echelons of various culturalMalcolm: clusters. We as a species feel uncomfortable without a master often, and then you see this in the king saying, well, my master is really God, or in the present, mySimone: master is really the people, orMalcolm: everybody has to be a servant to something.That's really fascinating. Are we a slave race? Are we meant to be, you know, [00:25:00] weSimone: live in a culture, especially United States. I mean, it's, I would say Japanese culture is a little bit more amenable to hierarchy, but in the United States, it's like super not okay to be a boss, the entrepreneur, like the one calling the shots.And that does create a lot of tension, perhaps unhappiness, lack of fulfillment, not just for women. But also I think for many men.Malcolm: Yeah. So, you know, something I was going to say is, is my brother, he had this idea and I was going to share it with him on the show, but he's, you know, we don't want to get him canceled or anything.So we're not having him on the show anymore. And the idea was really interesting to me. It was what if aliens find humans and the thing when we first meet aliens that they're most shocked about, about humanity. Is there like, Oh, you're a swarm intelligence. What does it feel like to be part of the swarm intelligence?And what she was like I don't think we're a swarm intelligence. And they're like, what is the internet? How did you build this spaceship? How did you build this product? How did you build this company? Hundreds and thousands of you working together, all contributing little bits of ideas. All [00:26:00] communicating.You are a swarm intelligence. What do you mean you're not a swarm intelligence? And I found that to be a really interesting concept of what actually turns out to be weird to humans is one of the things we expect to be weird about aliens. They come here and they're like, Oh, why are you guys all. like looking for masters.Yeah. That's a really weird thing. Why do youSimone: all flock in the same, you know, mimetic direction and, and we getMalcolm: classified as a slave species, like a season desperately desires a master. So, so that's fascinating. If If so, so I love those themes that, that it is able to explore.Another thing that it explores, which way ahead of its time is a teacher who is constantly trying to push her sexuality on the students and the students who are, is thisSimone: in which anime?Okay,Malcolm: I'll have a little like shot of it. It's very clear. And students were completely nonplussed by this. They're looking at this like, Oh God, not again. You know, not one of these stupid things where you try to sexualize a [00:27:00] situation. We're just here to learn. So also another very problematic anime from Western standards. Wow. People, now, now we've gone through the, the main anime we wanted to touch on. Oh yeah, another reason why I would say it does make sense to sometimes I think much more than with western shows continue to watch an anime even if it seems kind of bog standard at the beginning.Animes are much more likely to have like wacky plot reversals. So one that I would think of here would be Shuffle.Anyone who's seen Shuffle immediately knows what I'm talking about. So Shuffle starts as like this slice of life. Harem comedy. If people are familiar with harem comedy, we've all seen them, you know, where one guy is dating many women.Now, typically the convention NotSimone: necessarily dating, like maybe like, Oh no, I live in a house with like 15 gorgeous women. That kindMalcolm: of thing. And they all have a crush on me, and now I need to choose. You know, that's typically but typically within a harem comedy, the convention is, is there's one character that like obviously is the one he's going to pick in the end and then all the rest are more just [00:28:00] for jokes.And in Shuffle, he ends up choosing one of the characters, like actually choosing one, and it's not the one who's like supposed to be his main one from the beginning, and then she has like a mental breakdown and tries to kill everybody. Oh, you meanSimone: the one who? Who should have been the one.Malcolm: Oh and, and it shows you, I think really interestingly, what would happen if you actually pulled this harem comedy s**t on a real girl.Amazing. That she would immediately go crazy and try to kill everyone. I don'tSimone: think women's murderous capacity is, is, is realistically as high as you think though. I think maybe from a fantasy standpoint, I actually heard a fun theory today that like the reason why women are so into real crime podcasts and documentaries and stuff is like, they are fantasizing about the real crime that they themselves are too weak or low testosterone to commit essentially.Malcolm: Interesting theory. That is an interesting theory. Well, I mean, okay, so we can talk about like. An anime that got multiple seasons that I actually liked. [00:29:00] Somebody here was like, oh, why don't you talk about, I can't remember. It was some like dark anime. And I was like, oh, I don't know. I don't love animes like that.And I was like, oh, well, I guess I did really like When They Cry. This is the one that wasSimone: just murdering like every day. It's like Groundhog Day,Malcolm: but with murder. Episodic. It later becomes like, like individual episodes are mostly disconnected from each other. And it's the same characters, but they're in different stories.And every story basically ends with. One of the characters, all the characters are young kids you know, killing most of the other charactersin very gruesome ways. if You want to, you're like, I don't get why this would be entertaining. Imagine like the Arya Stark plotline, you know, you might like it.You're like, oh, young girl goes through some s**t, becomes really resilient, ends up murdering a lot of people, trying to save everyone. Imagine that, but it was just over and over and over again until you begin to, like, become sort of numb to the brutality of what's going on. Oh, God, no. Now as an adult, I don't know why.I don't think I'd like it as an adult. I think it's one of those things [00:30:00] that was, like, fun for teenage me, but would be horrifying for adult me. But if we're talking about, okay, I, I'm going to give a few anime recommendations that are like slop, if you want. But,Simone: but hold on the theme of this, and I want you to hold to it is slop that has subversive or interesting commentary on mainstreamMalcolm: society.Uh, she can't keep me from adding one. That's not controversial here. A complete bog standard animate, worth checking out. If only because roberta has strong simone energy is black lagoon If you like kings mini james Bondy sort of stuffMalcolm: okay. I can't think of any of that.I do not know how I forgot this one, but the second season of Garan log-in, which is also one of my favorite anime, I actually think the first season of Greenlaw game, which is just sort of mega show, um, it has some unique things, but it's pretty bog standard Eve. We have considered a classic, but the second season is really interesting because it takes place after the heroes have won after they have reconquered the world from the alien furry bad [00:31:00] guys, and now they need to reestablish a society and actually deal with like politics and humans just being terrible and everything like that.And I really like such a comically heroic, you know, good and bad anime first season, then completely translating into a oh s**t. S**t. What do we do now? That we've one situation, Impart wisdom realizing most if not all of what the villains of the show had done are things that they now need to do that they are in a position of power with. As I think happens many times in the real world, you know, whether it's Winston Churchill or the mystic Lee's. The populous of a democratic country, turning on the person who made their very freedom possible. In times of peaceMalcolm: I, I can suggest a few that we didn't suggest last time that might be, well, a good one for mainstream society commentary is psychopaths. If people are interested in that, I'm just not even going to give anything on that. That's just like a high quality anime. And Future Diary, that's another, like, high [00:32:00] quality anime with good commentary. And we already mentioned Goblin Slayer, whether or not that has good commentary that is timely and relevant. Uh, It hasSimone: very timely commentary, but not Commentary that we can talk about because it's too cancelable.Malcolm: No, no, no, no, no. We're talking about his persistence. We're talking about his persistence.His mission focused and his persistence. Don't you dare say anything else there. We're definitely not saying anything else. Cut some lines here. And what else would I say? Ashaka no Shana I definitely recommend. As another like high quality anime. But I don't know if it has like themes that, that I'd really recommend.Can you think of any other with themes where you're like, these themes were really interesting?Simone: Sadly, I've just not watched that much anime. So I, I cannot, I mean, we already talked about through Isekai anime, like what that means about larger society. So I would say that entire genre is pretty good. at revealing some, some deep set problems and many developed societies, butMalcolm: that's it.[00:33:00]Since who knows how long it's going to be before we do another anime episode, there is one plot line that gets regularly covered in animate that I feel has been done. Criminally poorly every time it's been done. And it's just a gripe I have that I need to get out there. So hopefully somebody can do this right. So it's a plot line that I sell first competently introduced in Rosario plus vampire, but it was later redone in demon school. The idea is, is a human gets sent to a school full of monsters or demons or magicians or where, something like that. And if it's found out that this human has no magical powers, that this human is going to be killed. And they have to hide that they have no magical powers from the school around them. You know, I'd prefer to see them do it using modern technology that the world doesn't have a full grasp of yet. Like whether it's it's gunpowder it's, it's totally. Was there anything like that? , or magnetism, et cetera. I think that'd be really cool, but the way it's done in Rosaria plus vampire. Is just powerful monster girls end up getting crushes on him and [00:34:00] end up hiding for him that he, the human, , And then in demon school, it's just all luck. He just. He has this enormous luck armor and never does anything through his own competence. Uh, which is really sad.I have seen one anime that might be doing this. That is next on my watch list, which is called mashable magic and muscles but in this one he seems to be hiding himself or i don't even know if he is hiding himself just by being incredibly strong like physically strong in a world where everybody cares about magicMalcolm: All right. Well, Simone, I love you to death.I may even, if I'm able to get away with it, do this episode was the outro from deers, because I think it's a great outro and I don't even know if anyone cares about that property anymore. And you are. Absolutely amazing and I love that you love nerdySimone: stuff.I love that whenever I walk by your room at night, there's anime on and it's ridiculous and I just adore that about you. It's wonderful.Malcolm: You are spectacular. Have a [00:35:00] good day. You too. Goodbye, sir. Goodbye,let's go! Ashita no Happy! Go! Go! Fushigina Happy! Minna minna irasshai! Happy Cosmos! Kittowatashi no Fuwa Wa Wan Kanjitanda ne! Sore wa tennen datte!It's just a coincidence! Let's fly, let's fly, let's make a ruckus Happy Cosmos I'm definitely invincible, yo yo yo Even if I make a mistake I don't care If that's the case, I'll manage somehow I don't care About the people around me[00:36:00]What do we need? 空の彼方へ ときめき探して 高く高くね 3, 2, 1 で行くんだよ 未来の地図は どこにもありません だから元気な 笑顔で 進みましょう Go! Go! Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this thought-provoking discussion, we explore different perspectives on what constitutes a life well lived. We discuss flawed metrics like funeral attendance, dying with money, and social status games that don't matter after death.We argue the only real metric is whether your kids carry on and build upon your values and worldview. We see ourselves as intergenerational entities, so extending values systems matters more than contiguous personal experience. We also touch on coming to terms with mortality, the psychology of life extensionists, and modernity's existential dread of death.Overall, an insightful look at how to live in a way that creates meaningful impact beyond one's lifespan. We aim to set up the next generation, not maximize our own transient pleasure.Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] I think the, the, the core things where people like really f**k up how they're optimizing their lives is they optimize it around competing in a specific social dynamic or a specific social community that is like, you know, it could be that they organize themselves based on how, how alpha they are, for example.And that doesn't really matter when you're dead. Like, that's notSimone Collins: the thing is, I think that like our final. The theme here might be that the bigger issue is that it's not like people are optimizing around dumb reasons for a life to well lived, like we alluded to in the beginning, which we don't agree with, you know, like how many people show up at the funeral pot, but they don't, there's, there is literally nothing, you know, like I'll just spend all my money, I will just like max out everything, nothing matters after I die.No, IMalcolm Collins: don't want to see this. I think that's true, but I think a different way to word that is they're optimizing around norm, like, like, living the cultural ideal set out like the aesthetic cultural ideal set out by a specific community that they identify with. And one of the key problems of this is this [00:01:00] often leads to an obsession.With like, being okay with yourself and being okay with your identity. In a way that can become all consuming because it's so circular. It's only you who judges whether or not you're okay with who you are. And so when you live a life to be okay with who you are, you will never really be okay with who you are.Would you like to know more?Simone Collins: So Malcolm, you know how we were told multiple times by someone that like the way, you know, you've lived your life Well is by the number of people at your funeral So if you have a ton of people at your funeral, obviously that means you nailed it, right?Yeah Well, I just like heard of the greatest hack for this someone for their funeral had a raffle for giving away their car. And I'm like, well, this is it. You just like, you make, you, you pre plan it, you pay it. You have a public announcement when you die and you list all the assets you're going to raffle off to anyone who comes.Everyone shows up to your funeral, like done, you know, you hacked it. Now you've apparently lived a good life and all this happens after you die, of course, but apparently a lot of people care about [00:02:00] stuff like that. So for those who do, you're welcome.Malcolm Collins: Well, and there's a lot of cultures similar to that where you can buy grievers.You know, we've talked about this in other episodes, like in Korea, you can buy people to come and grieve at your funeral. If not enough people are going to come. Well,Simone Collins: and I mean, this goes back to ancient Egypt where they were professional mourners, right? Who would, you know, wail and whatnot.Malcolm Collins: Well, and Rome did this as well with the processions after people would die.You know, it's, it's... What is up with people? WhySimone Collins: do they care? Like, what is, what is this, this weird desire for people to be really sad that you died? I mean, I guess it means that, like, you were necessary to them. It implies that you provided a lot of resources, because I think the real reason why people would lose their s**t if you died is they were also losing their house and their food and their job and, like, I think it'sMalcolm Collins: a popularity thing.They see, they see life is about accumulating, I guess I'd call it emotional debt from other people. And they want the maximum number of other people to [00:03:00] feel bad about the fact that they had died.Simone Collins: Like they want to go out like Princess Diana, like she, I feel like in all human history probably had the best, like, everyone mourning for her very dramatically thing, you know, where like it was traumatic for everyone, right?IMalcolm Collins: always remember her as the one with the expensive beanie baby made for the, yeah, youSimone Collins: know, you've made it. When you die and they make a commemorative, trendy, collectible for you, whatever that may be, you know,YEah, stupid reasons. Well, like, stupid measurements for a life well lived. So what are, what are good measurements for a life well lived? Well, I mean,Malcolm Collins: I, I think that this varies across cultures, but I think it's important to talk about from the perspective of our own cultural group.Yeah. What is a good measurement? Okay. And I would say there is only one measurement that really matters to me. And that is, what do my kids think of my life? Oh, what? Interesting. I'll explain. So there's a lot. Like I've said, I [00:04:00] think a good life lived is an individual who makes the world a better place for the next generation.Yeah. But I think it's more than that. Okay. I get to teach my kids. Value system. Mm-Hmm. . nOw two things here. If that value system isn't good, if they don't believe that in my life it reflected in a, a good life, like in the way I treat you, et cetera, then they will leave that value system. They will go to another value system, and they will judge me by that other value system, which is presumably better than the value system I taught them.Because they turned away from it, right? Correct. Yeah. Okay. So in that case, they would judge me negatively or, or, or just whatever through the, either this other value system, butSimone Collins: well, another way of looking at it though, is even if your kids choose to go another way.That may be thanks to you and that other way is way, way better. And you just didn't have enough information in your lifetime to know it. You actually do them a huge favor by giving them the information they need combined with their, you know, real world world experience to choose a better option. So, okay.[00:05:00] What Philip of Macedon or Philip of Macedonia, like, was an okay ruler, right? But like, Alexander the Great may have disagreed with him. He didn't exactly carry on exactly what Philip did. He also didn't carry on exactly what his mother encouraged him to do. But instead he achieved really, really great things.I don't think he would have achieved exactly what he would have achieved had he not. been exposed to his parents and seeing what they do well and what they didn't do well. And he did learn a lot from Philip for sure. But he, he remixed it. I don't even think that like having your kids choose something different is a bad sign.I think having kids who are efficacious is the ultimate sign. And as long as you set them up for that, I think it's great. Right.Malcolm Collins: Yes, but hold on, so I'll keep going. So that's one potentiality. They choose a different tradition because based on what you have given them as sort of the tools, and then through the eyes of that different tradition, which is in the way that we view the world axiomatically better than ours because they chose it over ours a better mechanism for judging whether or not [00:06:00] we have lived a good life.Or they stay within my tradition, right? Within the value set that I teach them. And then they judge me by the values that I taught them. And if I can't live up to that value system, if I cannot be a good person from the framework that I am providing my kids for what is defined as a good person, then I am not a good person.Simone Collins: Yeah. If they're judging you by your own framework, but I rarely see children do that. I see children. typically go to like, you know, public schools or modern universities, be inculcated with a very different value set and then judge their parents negatively, even though their parents live with high fidelity and dedication to their values.Now thisMalcolm Collins: is a, if my kids do that, then I have failed as a parent. See, so my life doesn't deserve to be valued highly. If they are able to be brainwashed by a nefarious force, like the [00:07:00] existing urban monoculture. And through that brainwashing, they end up hating me. Well, then I should hate myself because I failed at a core task of being human, which is giving my kids a good platform to go out into the world.If they, end up converting into a culture which is so non efficacious, so unaligned with our value set, that I have failed because, not, not because they have chosen something better than me, but because they have chosen something so obviously stupid. Which is sad. But I, I, I still think that it is a good measure of whether or not I have lived a good life.Hmm. And then there's the question of, you know, Oh, you were gonna say something?Simone Collins: Well, so, it's just to recap, it's not that they like you, it's not that they miss you, it's not that anyone even notices your absence, it's whether or not they carry on your values.Malcolm Collins: No, no, no, [00:08:00] they evolve the value system that I gave them, or move to a value system that they find more efficacious, but that is aligned broadly with our goals for the future of the species.And then they use that to judge me. So there are many ways that they could judge me as a good parent. So two, just within that one, they basically stay with our value system, but evolve it in some core ways. Okay. So you, you, you're cool withSimone Collins: remixing.Malcolm Collins: No, I think it's important that they remix. If they are just a clone of me, one, I think that that's going to be a fragile culture, so it will eventually die out, so it's largely pointless.Agreed. And two even our value system would tell them that like we would be disappointed in them if they were just clones of our value system like this is something we raise our kids believing if you cannot come up with any evolution of our ideas, then you likely.Like, what was the point? What was the point of you being the next generation if you can't do better than us, right? But I know my kids can [00:09:00] do better than me, and I know they'll see flaws in my logic, and I know that they'll build upon this and create something better. But what's interesting is, as they build something better, the question is, is Is the way I'm living my life, does it account for the ways that the value system may evolve?Like when they look back on my life today, are they able to say even in the ways our value system evolved, I still think that he lived a good life. like an honorable life, right? So that's one way I could do well, or they could convert to a different tradition. Like, I don't know, they convert to Judaism, right?But by this like orthodox framework of Judaism's value set, they still think that we lived a good life.Simone Collins: Interesting. Okay. So they're also like a lot of what you're looking at is, do your children think that you were a hypocrite? In other words, do they, do they think that you did not live your values?Malcolm Collins: Well, that could be how they judge my value system, but they could judge it through a different mechanism. Do you see what I mean? And, and, so for example, they [00:10:00] convert to Orthodox Judaism, and they convert to like traditional Catholicism or something like that. They may even believe that we had lived a good life.Insofar as we paved the way and created an environment where they could convert to this radically different culture. However I, I, I would be, you know, personally with my value system, I'd be disappointed in that. I think would be like a refutation that anything that we have built has value. But I still think that it means that I lived a good life because I set them up to do knowing everything we know about the world and being smart and having the education that we granted them.They decided that this other tradition was just axiomatically better than everything we had built for them. And that's fine.Simone Collins: Right? Yeah. Yeah. That checks out. It's interesting to me, like how much your evaluation depends on the, the opinions of your children, because I feel like there are many [00:11:00] people who I see as like great, great signs of success and, and testaments to.thEir, their parents upbringing, who don't really respect their parents even though in, in many ways, like at least I think in the ways that count, they're really carrying on some of the core values that their parents would have hoped them to carry on.Malcolm Collins: I have seen that. Actually, I, I haven't seen that.Typically when people hate their parents it's because they've been converted into a completely different cultural framework that, and typically when a cult or a tradition is converting you and they're not one of the like conservative healthy ones, just like one of the newer progressive ones or something like that.So it's basicallySimone Collins: just a soft culture in other words.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the, the, the key way that cults convert people is they separate them from their family. Like they try to create walls between them and their family, and so they'll induce memories of trauma and [00:12:00] stuff like that to prevent the individual from having a support network to go back to.aNd so that's why, like, typically when I see somebody, like, think that their parents were just like the worst, either they, they're, they've been converted into one of these usually very inefficacious cults, or. They were abused by their parents. Like genuinely their parents did like a terrible job raising them, were narcissistic, something like that.Now, when I see people convert into harder religious traditions, I don't often see this divide with the parents as much. Like, like, like older, harder religious traditions. So you thinkSimone Collins: when people like go hardline from soft, softer cultures, they still somewhat respect their parents?Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I haven't seen that often somebody, typically because the people who convert into these harder religious traditions just have more mental maturity than the people who are seduced by promises of ketanism and doing whatever they want whenever they want, you [00:13:00] know. But, there's another thing here which is important, like I think An interesting thing about our deaths, when contrasted with the deaths of our parents is that if you look at where AI technology is going, and what it can already do in terms of simulating people, and you look at the volume of content that we have produced on YouTube, With our faces, us talking, you and me as separate people.Now, this wasn't true when we had just written the books, but it's, it's certainly true now, given, you know, 30 to 45 minutes every weekday, if we keep this up for a few years it will be very easy to train a very detailed AI on us to look like us, to talk like us likely to even exist within a, a 3d virtual environment.So we will be summonable to our kids, to our grandkids, whenever they want, if they see any utility in interacting with us, our desk just isn't that meaningful in terms of a loss of a source of information or mentorship or perspective to our kids, because they will [00:14:00] still have access to all of those things, even after we die.Simone Collins: Hmm. Yeah. Would that make our livesMalcolm Collins: better lived? Well, I mean, I imagine it depends on how much the kids value our opinion and how much the grandkids value our opinion, how much anything we do moreSimone Collins: is like a KPI of whether or not they respect what we have done. Then you see it as like itself an outcome that's desired, but if you have done a good job, they will want to interact with the AI version ofMalcolm Collins: you more.I don't know if that's true. I can see us doing a good job and them just being like, yeah, but intergenerational. I have improved so much over my parents that they just don't have much useful information to share with me. Probably not. An example of this would be like My dad, right? He, I think, did a great job as a dad in so far as I really like how I turned out as a person.And I feel like he worked hard to make the world a better place. You know, he built up institutions like the Santa [00:15:00] Fe Institute, which ended up having a really big impact on like the way people think and culture and stuff like that. Right. You know, so he's a, a, he, he lived a good life by my value set.But he is philosophically so behind me just in terms of his philosophical, metaphysical, like, understanding of the world, or, or sophistication, that there's very little I would ask him and expect, like, useful, novel information.Simone Collins: Mm, yeah, so you, you respect him insofar as he raised you well, and he set you in the right direction, but also, like, you've now car you've taken the torch, and you will carry it forward, and you hope that our children do the same, and therefore they may not consult you much, because, They will have hopefully surpassed you.And I think that to me is what's more interesting. And that's maybe why you heard me like immediately go to like, Oh, kids who were different from you were better. Because I, I mean, the whole point of having kids and having an impact in your, through your kids and our cultural interest involving in a good life involving a good life [00:16:00] being what your kids outcomes are is that.We don't want stagnation. We don't want ourselves to live forever. We don't want ourselves to persist forever. We want to be a part of a meaningful chain of evolution. Yeah. So, the chain of good. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: and in a way, it is a testament to just how good my dad did that I wouldn't want to constantly summon an AI of him to ask him for advice.Right,Simone Collins: because he should have made someone better than him, and he did.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, which is really interesting and I, and so, so even though I think our kids won't have to deal with, and I hear in this video, I certify if you do make an AI of me from these videos, you just treat anything it says, as if I had said it, I don't have any problem with that, I don't have any problem with somebody could be like, well, the AI is just sort of hijacking his memory to, yeah, whatSimone Collins: do you think your brain is doing right now?Right?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. My, my brain is hijacking a memory. It has of Who I am and like a [00:17:00] self conception and then. selling it to you guys. So yeah, it's, it's, it's just the same thing. And it may have different opinions than I have right now, but so future me might have different opinions than I'd have right now.This is also why was this AI technology living forever as a stagnant entity is so pointless. Why does it help that I'm living forever when an AI recreation of me could live forever? Like, why is that useful?Simone Collins: I think there's this intuition that people want to experience. All of it themselves, when they don't realize just how non contiguous one's self is,Malcolm Collins: even one's experience.Yeah, and this is also important when you think about deaths from us, like non contiguousness and everything like that. So, we genuinely, and I think really deeply, believe ourselves to be intergenerational entities. Mm hmm. aNd by that what I mean is, I am half my dad, half my mom, and the culture... Of my ancestors and 2%, 3 percent something else, you know, but most is just a continuation of my parents and they were half their dad, half their mom, [00:18:00] the culture that they came from in a dash of maybe something else where I think most people think that they're mostly something else.And so, from my perspective. I am, and my kids are, like my mom who died recently, I am her experiencing the world in a slightly different body. I, my kids are her, fractionally speaking, of course, experiencing the world in a slightly different body. One that was not burdened with Her prejudices or her, and by that what I mean is we all have prejudices like I could just live forever as a single individual like that would kind of suck because as you live your life, you build up prejudices and biases and sunk cost fallacies and when I have a kid, I can sort of tell them, okay, here's like everything I think about the world and then they get to filter that and say, okay, here's what's probably true.And here's what's probably not true. And that's just so much better than me. Yeah. Continuing on into the future with all of these biases, you know, this, this sort of a hard [00:19:00] reset we get every 100 years or so as a species or less than that, you know, 30, 40 years of the species, it's a really unique and high utility system for for living.And so I don't really believe I die as long as my relatives live and my relatives are a very big network. So, I just don't think unless all of humanity dies. That I have meaningfully died. And do you feel the same way or?Simone Collins: yEah, I absolutely feel the same way. And I also, I mean, we've said, we've talked about this in other like discussions, but the, the idea that you even are your, yourself for the same person or the you that you are, is experiencing life now is going to be, it will not last.It will not last longer than a couple of weeks, a couple of years, like you, you even yourself within your life are not the same person, not the same consciousness, not the same biological body, not the same cluster of [00:20:00] cells. So it's really weird to think that. Even you are an unbroken consciousness. So I think once you view life through that lens, it becomes so much easier to have the view that we have where like our kids are versions of us a little bit remixed, a little bit improved.Experiencing life. But I think it's really hard to have that view if you truly believe that you are not a ship of Theseus, but rather this thing that will never change that is experiencing an unending line of consciousness, which isMalcolm Collins: a really interesting perspective that you have that I'd love you to talk about is sort of this idea that even in between moments, you are a different person.You tomorrow is absolutely meaningfully a different person than you are today.Simone Collins: Yeah. And I think the easiest way for people to experience this or realize this would involve writing letters to yourself in six months, in three years[00:21:00] you know, about what you're thinking about what you're doing, what you think of the future, what you worry about, what you obsess over, because when you receive those letters and you try to think back to that time, you'll remember things about it.That you really can't get back in the head of that person and you realize that you are receiving a letter from a different person, someone that you're related to and you can feel for them and care for their plight, but you really are feeling for someone else's plight. So,Malcolm Collins: and you structure the wording of these letters that way you're like, yes, future Simone.Yes. Past Simone, stuff like that.Simone Collins: Yeah, but you know, I think a lot of people do that intuitively, you know, they're like, I could make my bed, but that's a problem for future Janet, you know, like people, people do this all the time by screwing over their future selves by not planning for the future. The fact that the majority of Americans are living in the majority is some huge proportion of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.People aren't saving. People are not making financial decisions for the future. Shows a lack of [00:22:00] empathy for their future selves and also a lack of identification with their future selves. Yeah. So, I mean, I think actually life extensionists are somewhat the exception that they, they don't think normally because the average person and most importantly through actions and not words is demonstrating that they don't identify with their future selves and they don't identify with their pastMalcolm Collins: selves.Yeah. Well, so an interesting thing is, is, is. I think that you're partially right here, but I think that life extensionists are not so interested in living forever as they are afraid of death, because their sense of identity is only the contiguous self and they believe that their purpose is Happiness, basically or, or something like that, right?Like something hedonistic, something about their qualia or experience of the world. So they attempt to maximize this and the longer they can live, the less they need to think about how trivial all those things are, because they're all going to be dust soon. And I think that [00:23:00] when you internalize your mortalitySimone Collins: Wait, so wait, I just want to make sure I understand you correctly.So you think it's basically nihilism? That makes life extensionists afraid of death. Is that correct? Yes. That's interesting because I think you and I don't want to die. 100 percent don't want to die. But it's not because we are afraid of death. In fact, death is going to be kind of a relief. Instead, we are afraid of not setting up our kids well enough.That our kids will not be well taken care of. That our kids will not yet be independent. That our kids will not yet have, you know, the resources from us that they need to thrive. Once our kids are set, I mean, we're probably going to get really interested in our grandkids and try to help them as much as we can, because, you know, it's, it's, our kids are going to have less bandwidth to invest.Disproportionately in their own kids while they're at their peak earning years, et cetera. But yeah, I think that's the only thing. So we're actually not afraid of death. We're kind of likeMalcolm Collins: super excited about it. [00:24:00] The way I'd word it for people who struggle to understand this concept, because I think people who are brought up in the mainstream culture of society today, this can seem like a really weird mental framework, is it's sort of like we have a to do list.When the to do list is done, Death is great, like, because we've accomplished all that we were meant to accomplish, all that we decided that we were meant to accomplish, all that we needed to accomplish in the world. And once we've accomplished all those things, it's like, congrats! Everything's done!Simone Collins: You get to die, congrats.Death is the reward. Death is the treat.Malcolm Collins: But it's, and I think that this... Leads to this, like, real lack of an existential fear. There's an existential fear that I don't get the things done that I want to get done. 100%. That really scares me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I leave my kids a, a world or a framework and, and tools that don't set them up to...Do the things that they need to do with their lives before they intergenerationally improve before they move to the next generation. That worries me. But other than that, and I [00:25:00] think that this, you know, when somebody was asking us, like, why would you try to make the world a better place if you're not going to get to experience it?This. The question just seems so odd if you see time and reality the way we do, where we're like, I don't get to experience tomorrow, you know, I get to experience today as who I am today, but if I lived life as somebody just constantly maxing the moment, then I, you know, paycheck to paycheck, I think, and, and I think that our biologies aren't really adapted to that.So when you do hedonistic In the moment maxing. I think that it actually ends up sort of destroying your brain and everything begins to feel sad and on we and and terrible. And I, and I think that when I look at people who do this I actually think that this is where. Anti natalists come from like when we look at the anti natalists, they all seem like really deeply unhappy people usually bought far into the urban monoculture.Of like, I should do whatever I want, [00:26:00] whenever I want in an attempt to be as happy as possible. And when you do this, like when you're just constantly chasing happiness for its own sake and hedonism for its own sake, which you realize. Is that you're no longer happy when you get those things anymore and you begin to realize that happiness never really had any value to begin with, and then you develop this negative utilitarian framework, whereas to us.Not at all. Like, we are like happiness doesn't matter. Of course happiness doesn't matter, you know, it's, it's something that we get in the background when we're doing more purposeful things than, than things designed to achieve happiness. Yeah.Simone Collins: Here's the thing also, like, do you think a lot of this could, like, I, I also feel like this existential fear of death is, is relatively new because when you look at like the Victorian era.Back then, you people would witness each other's deaths and your neighbors would come over and watch you die. And there were all sorts of momentum, Maury, that people would carry around with them. Like you would cut off locks of hair from people who died and you [00:27:00] would weave them into necklaces and jewelry and wear them.You would wear dead people's hair and, and talk about death a lot. And like, I feel like back then. Maybe a lot of it was just the understanding like more widespread that oh, we're going to go to heaven and be reunited there. What do you think happened? Because I do think that there was an interesting break.it throughout the 1900s that has led us to where we areMalcolm Collins: now. I think the, the urban monoculture is the key culprit here. It, when I look at different hard cultural traditions, like religions, you could say people who are in softer iterations of those that are closer to the urban monoculture, you know, that the law supposed to their traditions, they're the ones that seem to be hit most by death.And the ones that are in harder cultural traditions typically just aren't, and most harder cultural traditions are, are these older ways of doing things. These older, more cohesive cultural traditions that differ from the urban monoculture. They're not as affected by death. Because their lives, you [00:28:00] know, have purpose and they know the metrics by which things are measured, so they don't worry about it as much.So yeah I'm, I'm just going to say, I think. that you are right about that. And what's really interesting is I actually think that you can sort of see the moment when society first started to care about death and be afraid of death, which was in the 1920s, 1930s spiritual medium fad, when like everyone got like really obsessed with spiritual mediums, youSimone Collins: know, that's very interesting.Yeah. So when it stopped being. We witness death. We are around death. We talk about death to like, let's try to hold on to the people we've lost. Yeah. SoMalcolm Collins: if you look at traditional Calvinist culture, right? Like one of the things mentioned in the Albion Seed is that they would have kids stand over graveyards with, with dead.People just like, look at it, you're going to die one day, except that. And I, you know, I've mentioned this in another video, I've worked with lots of dead people. I worked at a [00:29:00] medical examiner, you know, moving their brains for dissection. And so I got to read their file because, you know, I needed, we needed to.Collect the right brains. And so I got to really see who they were as a person, see everything they were talking to their psychologist about, see their body, see how they died. And over and over and over and over again. And that might've played a big role in desensitizing me to death to just be like, Oh yeah, death is like a really normal thing.And it's, it's not something to fear. The only thing to fear is what I do not accomplish before I die. And the, the people that my death. Ends up hurting because I didn't provide them with the tools necessary. But by doing things like these videos that couldn't be turned into an AI iteration of myself.That is one thing that my kids, when one of the many things that I won't be depriving my kids of, I won't be depriving them of a source of potentially orthogonal advice.Simone Collins: You think your encounters with cadavers tangibly changed the way that you look at death [00:30:00] and your own death.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, seeing lots of dead people over and over and over again, and then working at the Smithsonian with all of those bodies in that department that Bones takes place in.I think we've talked about this in other things. Yeah I, I think, you know, just it. It normalized it. And I think this is something that people used to have. I mean, if you think about the normal person today, I can talk to the normal person and they've never seen a dead body in person before. Like that's wild.We live in a society where I've never seen aSimone Collins: dead body in person for sure.Malcolm Collins: That like, yeah, dead people happen all the time. If you're in a major city, there's people dying every day. Dozens of them. And, and you haven't seen them because our world sees death as something wrong that's not supposed to happen ever, ever, ever, and must be hidden the moment it happens.Well, andSimone Collins: again, see that's why I think it's not just a matter of soft culture. I think it's also a matter of medical breakthroughs that have made it easier to keep people alive than ever before. And combined with the Hippocratic Oath, which we just haven't let [00:31:00] go of, which I think is pretty toxic of like, no matter what.Even if they're not really alive, you know, even if they're in more pain, even if they're suffering, even if they're never going to leave the hospital again, even if their family can't afford it, blah, blah, blah. Right. Like, even if they are a vegetable, we will keep them alive at all costs, making inadvertently death, like a thing that has gone terribly wrong, even when it's totally someone's time.Right. Like, yeah, they're very old. They're not, there's nothing left ahead of them, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that, that, that's, you know, that's not just soft culture. That is an entire industry economically driven but also weirdly regulatorily and ideologically driven through the way that doctors are trained that has told us that death was a mistake.It could have been prevented with the right medical care. You know what I mean? Yeah. So that's, you know, not just culture, also like a weird, like bad combination of like the just the perfect storm of technology and [00:32:00] an outdated. Method, which is funny because the Hippocratic Oath like just totally didn't work at all for like most of medical history, right?Like most doctors who are treating people like throughout the Middle Ages throughout like even like, you know The mid to late 1800s were like quite often killing people like making it worse further compromising people killing new babies and pregnant women by like You know working with like sick cadavers and then delivering babies without washing their hands, you know, like it's it's really It's weird, but anyway, just side, probably not really relevant, but I still think that that matters, but I'm curious to hear from people in the comments, what they think a life well lived is you know, aside from like how many people show up at your funeral, I'm actually not sure.What people are going for? Are there other common things that i'm missing here?Malcolm Collins: Yeah I I think he didn't what I would say is is a lot of people today They'll maximize like really dumb stuff like the number of people they sleep with or like how alpha they are Oh, soSimone Collins: just like how many like how much money they're dying with [00:33:00] you think?Malcolm Collins: Well, no, I think that that's actually pretty rare these days. I think the, the, the core things where people like really f**k up how they're optimizing their lives is they optimize it around competing in a specific social dynamic or a specific social community that is like, you know, it could be that they organize themselves based on how, how alpha they are, for example.And that doesn't really matter when you're dead. Like, that's notSimone Collins: the thing is, I think that like our final. The theme here might be that the bigger issue is that it's not like people are optimizing around dumb reasons for a life to well lived, like we alluded to in the beginning, which we don't agree with, you know, like how many people show up at the funeral pot, but they don't, there's, there is literally nothing, you know, like I'll just spend all my money, I will just like max out everything, nothing matters after I die.No, IMalcolm Collins: don't want to see this. I think that's true, but I think a different way to word that is they're optimizing around norm, like, like, living the cultural ideal set out like the aesthetic cultural [00:34:00] ideal set out by a specific community that they identify with. And one of the key problems of this is this often leads to an obsession.With like, being okay with yourself and being okay with your identity. In a way that can become all consuming because it's so circular. It's only you who judges whether or not you're okay with who you are. And so when you live a life to be okay with who you are, you will never really be okay with who you are.And that's kind of, one, a silly thing to live one's life around, I think. But two it's really sad that that has become so popular as a way to live.Simone Collins: Yeah. I'm trying to think of instances in, in like the news where like a famous person died and we're like, yeah, they died. Well, are there any of those recently where like people have said someone died?Well, do we just like kind of sweep it under the rug? Like there, there is no. People don't talk about dying well, living well, et cetera. I think they'd have people talk about like legacies left behind.Malcolm Collins: Like, Oh, you and I do when somebody dies in our life, we're always like, okay, did they [00:35:00] live a good life or a bad life?And this is like a family tradition that we want to have our kids do is when somebody dies, the way that they process that is we, as a family talk through, did they live a good life or a bad life? And we, we live in a society today where people can't say somebody lived a bad life, but our family, you know, we're like, okay, what was their value system?Did they achieve what they wanted to achieve? What is our value system? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anything meaningful by that? And, and, and using these two metrics, you know, if they lived a good life, then so what if they died? Like, great, they did it, you know?Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. If they, if they would beMalcolm Collins: satisfied. No point, nothing to be sad about.If they lived a bad life, then focus on where their life went off the rails and learn from that so that it doesn't happen to you. And I think it's often really clear where this happened. Either the person never developed really a good internal model for why they were alive or they, you know, tried methamphetamines or they, you know, married somebody who was just a horrible spouse to them.Like there, there are obviously identifiable things and these can [00:36:00] be. A really clear way to like hit this home for our kids in thinking about another person's life and the quality of their life after they died in terms of how they categorize that person in their mental history. ISimone Collins: appreciate that because I think there's this, this theme after people die of like, you can only say nice things about them.I know this is not universal and people have written books like. About how they're glad their mom's dead, et cetera. But, you know, in general, people like this, though, you know, they're blameless. Oh, she was, he was great. She was amazing. You know,Malcolm Collins: not great. Well, I love you, Simone. And, and please don't die anytime soon.Cause I really need you to do a lot of things. Like, we have soSimone Collins: much to do. We have so much to do. Yeah.Malcolm Collins: But I believe we can do most of it in about 20 years. So if we live for 20 years, I think that we will have achieved most of the tasks we want to achieve and lessSimone Collins: disagree because. if we're successful in having the number of kids that we want to have you know, we need at least like 30 years to get our, [00:37:00] our youngest kid to I mean, I agree that like the risk goes down of a premature death because one can hope.That older siblings would adopt and take in younger siblings. And we should probably set up trust incentives to do that. We're like, they'd be incentivized to come in and raise their youngest siblings as adults, but still we, we have a long way to go. And I'm not, I'm not ready atMalcolm Collins: all. If we die, not like as a default plan.Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. Anyway, I love you. Don't die. Be safe. Okay. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe