Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

Description: Economist Bryan Caplan joins Simone to discuss fascinating dynamics within left-wing culture. They analyze how progressive groups enforce rigid conformity, leading to constant internal conflict as people fear being "cancelled." Other topics include fertility rates across ideologies, Bryan's controversial open borders stance, and why some childless people react so angrily to his pronatalism.Bryan Caplan: [00:00:00] I've done some fun Twitter polls of you know, are you left? Are you right? Do you worry about the left getting mad at you? Do you worry about the right getting mad at you? And one of the biggest groups that lives in fear is the left of the left,Simone: right? Yeah. Yeah.Bryan Caplan: Left. It's not quite like the ready body or like the Amish, but it is a weird dysfunctional subculture of people who feel like they've got to be looking over the shoulderswould you like to know more?Simone: we are really excited today because we have a very special guest joining us, Brian Kaplan. He is, in addition to being a professor of economics at George Mason University, and a New York Times bestselling author, he's an author of not just a ton of books, including obviously some favorites of ours, like Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, and The Case Against Education, like two huge obsession areas for us, but also in collaboration with the creator of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, an awesome webcomic a book called Open Borders, the Science of Ethics in Immigration, which is [00:01:00] illustrated and there just needs to be more books out there as avid readers of comics and manga, like throughout our, like youth.Simone: We are huge fans of this format. So like super stoked, especially when it's something about policy. Well, it'sMalcolm: wild. We actually have a Saturday morning breakfast cartoon in one of our books as well. We asked for permission. So that's but other things he's written on is the case to get don't grow up to be a feminist.Malcolm: It's one of the books. And one of the most recent ones is on how democracies are non functional or becoming less, less optimized for good economic outcomes. So ladies and gentlemen,Simone: if you need some good reading, basically just search Brian Kaplan'sMalcolm: name. So, the priming that I wanted to go into this interview with, because I find this very interesting, and I haven't seen your pontification on this particular angle yet.Malcolm: When I look at all of the things that you're seeing as problems, they both seem to align with many of the things that we think about the world, and I think most people have really thought about things. So they're very sane and based takes, right? Fertility population's going to begin to decline in the developed world, which is going to have [00:02:00] major economic effects.Malcolm: The academic system is working less and less well. There's sort of social contagions like feminism, which are causing many downstream societal effects. My question to you is realistically, where does the world go 50, 100 years from now? Do we see a beginning of a collapse of the developed world?Malcolm: Do we see small social groups begin to gain more power? What's going on?Bryan Caplan: My honest answer is, I always say, we'll muddle through, there's no collapse, there's no disaster. Even the idea that things will get overall worse is, I think, highly unlikely. Mostly, I think, in terms of missed opportunities, things could have been so much more than they were.Bryan Caplan: If we get to immortality in a thousand years, what we could have done in a hundred years, well, what a horrible tragedy for nine hundred years worth of people. It's not the same thing as... The Planet of the Apes or something like that, or just a complete takeover. It's [00:03:00] just that we could have done so much better and we didn't.Bryan Caplan: How sad.Malcolm: So then economically, how do you think demographic collapse plays out? Do you think that it won't have that big of an effect? Do you think it will have a big... Like, how can countries adaptBryan Caplan: to it? It will have a huge effect relative to what could have been. That doesn't mean that we will see that living standards actually go down in absolute terms.Bryan Caplan: I'm not going to rule that out for the most egregious cases. I do think that despite the great dysfunctionality of politics over the world, including democracies, that when things get really bad, to the level of things are actually going to get noticeably worse before your eyes, then I think normally countries get more flexible.Bryan Caplan: It's like, all right, well, we can't have them, they actually get worse. What politics is really bad at is realizing incredible missed opportunities that people just have not gotten used to yet. For example, so if South Korea, if it really looks like they're going to be unable to [00:04:00] staff their old folks homes, they'll let in the immigrants at that point.Bryan Caplan: It has to get bad, right? And then they will. All right, fine. We will go and prevent things from getting noticeably worse. They'll do what it takes to prevent that. But the fact that they could have had it. Thank you. Five times the GDP they have right now, if they just changed decades ago, well, that can keep going on indefinitely.Bryan Caplan: There just isn't the same kind of pressure to realize theoretical opportunities as there is to prevent obvious disaster, where pressure is pretty high, actually. Yeah. So on the,Malcolm: on this topic, I mean, what would be your theory of the best ways to increase fertility rates within a country? I know you wrote a book that was one theory on how to do this and it's convinced hundreds of people, which is a lot to have more kids or kids that they otherwise might not.Malcolm: But at a government level, what do you think is the most effectiveBryan Caplan: solution? There's a myth out there that natalist policies don't work. [00:05:00] Normally, it's based upon this totally impressionistic thing of a country had falling fertility, the government adopted a program, and then fertility didn't suddenly go up.Bryan Caplan: So, all right. Yeah, that's not really a good measure of policy efficacy. As I'm sure you guys know, the gold standard is experimental tests. There are two noted natalist actual bona fide experiments, one in Quebec, one in Austria, both of these found quite large effects of modest natalist incentives. So I would say that the very best approach is just to go and push harder on these incentives.Bryan Caplan: My preferred one actually is specifically just something like giving people a one or two or three year complete tax holiday every time they have a kid. That is one approach. There's a lot of variations on this. Another one is just we're going to go and tie whatever retirement benefits you get to your lifetime [00:06:00] fertility, or maybe the amount of taxes that your kids pay.Bryan Caplan: But in terms of just the simplest to adopt and the one that fits most with a lot of short term thinking, the humans exhibit is precisely have a kid you don't pay taxes that year. Maybe you don't pay them for a few years. Which again is also not to be coy it is a thinly veiled eugenic approach, which I think makes a lot of sense in terms of People that are statistically likely to have kids that are going to have a high, a lot of payoff for society.Bryan Caplan: They're the ones that are best to go and actually encourage. Again, I am like, I am very pro other people having kids too, but in terms of bang for your buck, I think this is the one that makes the most sense. I do have a piece where I just snap together two bodies evidence, one on how sensitive is fertility to incentives.Bryan Caplan: And the other one is what is the net fiscal effect of having another kid? And I do say that this program that I'm talking about, or policy I'm talking about of giving [00:07:00] people a, like a 1 year tax holiday for having another kid is. The holy grail of fiscal policy because it really does look like it is a tax cut that more than pays for itself, which has been otherwise pretty hard to find.Malcolm: Interesting. So, I know your upcoming book is on capitalism and freedom economically and how that benefits everyone. AndBryan Caplan: everyone, I never say everyone, aMalcolm: lot of people, but probably it benefits theBryan Caplan: aggregate. Yeah, that's actually the kind of language that the book is aimed to crush is everyone will benefit.Bryan Caplan: No, not everybody. Like most people. Okay.Malcolm: Most people. But so I would love to couch this and I want to hear how you think about this problem, which is when we look at where fertility rates. Go up and where they crash. You know, when you see fertility rates begin to go below replacement rate is typically in a country when the average citizen is earning less than around five K a year and you [00:08:00] begin to see them go up again when a family is earning over half a million dollars a year.Malcolm: At an individual level within a country and our takeaway from this has been what is actually, and we say this as like big supporters of capitalism, what actually is one of the big causers of fertility rate collapse. Yeah. Is when people begin to engage with the modern economic system, because people at both ends of the spectrum aren't fully engaging with the modern economic system, and the modern economic system does a very good job of disproportionate or dynamically pricing the value of potentially productive cultural groups and individuals within a society, but it does a very bad job at judgingMalcolm: So it will always pay somebody just enough to not spend time with their family to some extent. And so the places that are most engaged with sort of capitalistic freedom are often the places that have the lowest fertility rates. Like, how do you think about that? Or do you just reject this as a thesis?[00:09:00]Bryan Caplan: Well, let's see. The main thing that I know is if you go and race income versus education as predictors of fertility for the United States, where I work with the data the most. So, again, just to understand statistically, this basically means that we're going to allow fertility to depend upon two variables and then see what the relative weights are.Bryan Caplan: So, when you do it this way, actually, the big punchline is that it is education and not income that suppresses fertility. I'm back! The highest fertility subgroup out of those four possibilities. So you've got high income, low income, high education, low education. The highest fertility subgroup is actually the high income, low education group.Bryan Caplan: So in your mind, think of plumbers.Bryan Caplan: So really, I don't think that it is. income per se that seems to matter. I mean, I say it's more of education, even education. It's well, why would education do? And I say it's the kind of education that we are used to in Western countries, which basically, [00:10:00] even if it is not explicitly discouraged fertility, it basically gives fertility so low of a priority and just replaces it with career success is the only thing that counts.Bryan Caplan: Yeah. Including perhaps for, especially for women. But that is the real story. So it's not income itself that seems to matter. And income by itself does seem to be good for fertility. Yeah. Well, IMalcolm: mean, you could frame it as education is the lengths of time you've spent and the amount that you have personally invested in this cultural indoctrination system.Malcolm: , that's indoctrinating people into a cultural group that values fertility veryBryan Caplan: little. I think that does make a lot of sense. Right. And it fits with low East Asian fertility, although I also do like to think about East Asian fertility as being the best confirmation of my story that faceless internalized norms of helicopter parenting, the idea that you must go and ruin your own life in order to be a decent parent.Bryan Caplan: I think it does produce fertility. I think East Asia where helicopter [00:11:00] parenting is most severe is also where we see the ultra low fertility does fit overall with that story at least.Malcolm: Yeah, well, and I think East Asia is a really interesting. So one of the things, you know, it's people here who really value freedom.Malcolm: One of the things that does concern me is typically within outside of the East. If you're looking at like Western cultural groups, typically the less freedom a group permits. The higher fertility rate it's going to have within that cultural group, but you can see that this isn't a truism because it doesn't exist within East Asia.Malcolm: In East Asia, restricting freedoms does not increase fertility rates.Bryan Caplan: So what would be the Western countries that that you have in mind forMalcolm: So it's not countries, it's cultural groups. So typically if you're looking at like religious groups, so in the U S which groups have the highest fertility rates, they're theBryan Caplan: groups.Bryan Caplan: Yeah. Yeah. Like Amish for example. So that's picking up. The,Malcolm: the Amish, the Haraiti, the you know, and this is true within every individual cultural group. So, if I'm [00:12:00] looking at Muslims the more progressive loosey goosey Muslim is going to have a very low fertility rate, whereas the very conservative ones are going to have a very high fertility rate.Malcolm: And this is one of the things that this, actually, Diana Fleishman was doing an interview with you and mentioned that we had this idea, and I was wondering what you think of it, which is, if only through If it is true, and it appears to be true, that within countries, the groups that remove individual freedoms, especially from women have higher fertility rates, that they will come to be more predominant mindsets in the future.Malcolm: Do you, would you agree with that, or?Bryan Caplan: That's pretty obvious. You essentially just have to have some massive force cutting the other way in order for that not to be true. My long term view is straight out of Jurassic Park, life finds a way. It's not possible for fertility to stay low forever. We know that there is a substantial heritable component to desired and achieved fertility.Bryan Caplan: So in the long run, childless people are just have their genes are getting wiped out of the population and they're going to [00:13:00] get replaced by people who actually want to have kids and like doing it. So it's just a quick, you know, that may take centuries, but still, you know, the idea that we can just go down to zero, I think is pretty crazy.Bryan Caplan: Life finds you really does. No, I agree. I mean, it's engaging and yet. We just want to think about who feels like they are, have to watch their backs and like they're under a lot of social pressure. I actually think that very left wing people in the West are some of the people who not just are, but feel like they have to really watch what they say for fear of getting kicked out of their subculture.Bryan Caplan: I've done some fun Twitter polls of you know, are you left? Are you right? Do you worry about the left getting mad at you? Do you worry about the right getting mad at you? And one of the biggest groups that lives in fear is the left of the left,Simone: right? Yeah. Yeah.Bryan Caplan: Left. Right. And so, I mean, I think that they have actually managed to create, you know, it's not quite like the ready body or like the Amish, but it [00:14:00] is a weird dysfunctional subculture of people who feel like they've got to be looking over the shoulders every time that they go.Bryan Caplan: Discuss what they see with their own eyes to make sure that reality is allow, you know, reality is discussable, . I, so I don't, I think of them as out of large groups. I think that they are probably one of the largest groups. That just feels a lot of internal sense of, I have to be really careful what I say.Bryan Caplan: Yeah, I was kind of surprised by how open people that were responding were to this, you know, it's obviously it's a Twitter poll. You can always say, ah, people are just making stuff up. I just tend to doubt that. So I, we have the idea that like people are deliberately going and responding to anonymous polls with mischievous answers.Bryan Caplan: Sometimes they'll do it if it's like really funny, but it's got to be funnier than I'm left wing and I'm scared of the left. That's not four out of 10 on hilarious. Yes.Malcolm: Well, I also think it's intuitive. I mean, I think anybody who looks at that and is this isn't happening is probably lying to themselves to some extent.Malcolm: And this [00:15:00] is if people say, what, well, what are we trying to do with this channel is. Trying to redefine what the right is to an alliance of diverse cultural groups against a homogenizing urban monoculture, which is to say that, you know, one of the things I always say is that if you look at a progressive Muslim or a progressive Jew or progressive Catholic, you know, they're going to have the same views on gender, the same views on sexuality, the same views on where we, how we should relate to the environment, the same views on the future of our species.Malcolm: Whereas if you talk to, you know, you know, conservatives of these groups, they're gonna have wildly different takes on that. And so I think rebuilding the conservative movement as an alliance of free thought is one of the ways we can preserve and ensure that at least within one space that's possible.Malcolm: But we still get trashed by our viewers all the time.Bryan Caplan: You know, I mean, what you're saying makes a lot of sense. If you think about modern leftism actually is something. And everybody else is more just like people on the island of Misfit Toys. [00:16:00] Where it's I'm not that thing, but I don't know, I've got like a broken paw here.Bryan Caplan: Okay, and meanwhile, I'm the one whose head isn't screwed on right. So, yeah, I think you've got something going on there. I don't know if you catch the reference to this classic animation. Oh, I know, yeah, the claymation, yeah. Yeah. But it is reallyMalcolm: interesting that you say that. It's truthyBryan Caplan: rather than true, but I still like it.Malcolm: Yeah. Well, I mean, people ask, well, you know, why are you really only interested in talking to the right? And it's because this left cultural group, while they may be the dominant cultural group in society today, they lower fertility rates so much that they really aren't part of the conversation when we're talking about the future of the species.Malcolm: So, you know, right now we're focused on communicating with the other groups that are going to be there in the future to hope we can get along once this group is self extinguished.Bryan Caplan: Yeah, it's gonna, it will be a while, but you know, honestly, I mean, I try to talk to anybody that's curious to talk to me.Bryan Caplan: It's just that while there's many individuals on the left that have talked to [00:17:00] me, but I basically get no institutional love from any left wing group, no matter how simpatico my themes are with what they're doing. It's just yeah, he's not right. It's not one of us. So we're not going to go on platform and we don't want to be associated with anything that we don't like.Bryan Caplan: There's this one cartoon that I really like. It's basically just a stick figure. And the first panel says, wait, did you disagree with one of the things that I believe next panel, you have to agree with all the things I believe.Malcolm: Yeah, we get that a lot. I love that. You know, one of the things that you said in a recent interview, and I want to hear pontification on why you think this is the case is you're saying that when people really angrily attack you. That the most common or a common trait among them, and this is for your pronatalist views, is that they have chosen not to have kids themselves.Malcolm: Now, your pronatalist views and our pronatalist views are both that this is a choice for every individual. [00:18:00] We don't want to pressure any specific individual who doesn't want kids into having kids. Why do you think that they get so mad about this?Bryan Caplan: Yeah, normally I don't like to do this, but this is a case where I just have so much trouble resisting the simple story that you are going against billions of years of evolution and there's always a part of you that's just saying no, like we have a billion, you know, let's say you know, what would it be, say like a hundred million ancestor ancestral generations Have reproduced and you're going to stop.Bryan Caplan: There's some sense of internal conflict. And again, this does just fit with me that, I mean, I have had, I rates people, I guess. Always women you know, just call me up and yell at me and say I am very happy to my life. I don't need kids. And I'm like, I don't think a person happy with their life calls up a stranger and yells at them.Bryan Caplan: So just so our viewers know how insane this is. Every other day of your life is happy and this is the one [00:19:00] day you're having a bad day and I'm the person that's on the receiving end. It just doesn't sound like that to me. It sounds like you're in a lot of internal conflict. You know, you know, like I, I hate to go and sound biblical about this, but it does sound so much like the story of St.Bryan Caplan: Paul getting kicked off his horse in the desert. It says Paul rather, you know, saw, so you still saw it. This white Saul, why does not persecute me. It is hard to kick against the pricks. So I get, I love it. Of course. It's just so entertaining. And almost like cackling to yourself with glee in the thought that, Oh, my opponent secretly agreed with me.Bryan Caplan: But, and normally I don't have that at all, but this is whatBryan Caplan: it's kind of fits. I don't know. I can't read minds. I'll never really know, but still, it sure seems thatMalcolm: way. What I think is really interesting about what you're saying for people who haven't read his works or seen his other interviews is you are the first to admit that statistically having kids actually [00:20:00] doesn't make you that much happier.Malcolm: Like it makes you a little bit less happy on average. And so you're not even going out and saying oh, these people have no happiness in their lives, but that's what they're hearing because I think it's what they feel. Fear in what they, what the little devil in their head is telling them.Bryan Caplan: Yeah.Bryan Caplan: So probably the most irate caller. I actually had a summary of the happiness research on both marriage and parenting where I said that statistically the people to feel sorry for are not people with kids, but people who are single. And this comes down to, yeah, like the happiness gain of marriage is huge.Bryan Caplan: There is a tiny happiness hit from being a parent. And then I said, if you combine these two things and remember that having kids is a lot of what keeps marriages together, then it seems like from that point of view, it's a net positive. But this was a childless and single woman and she was irate. And I'm just describing the results.Bryan Caplan: Trying to do it in an amusing way, I shouldn't [00:21:00] mean to mess up your day or anything. Perhaps you are really happy, even though you're calling strangers and yelling at them in the middle of the day. But, again, probably not.Malcolm: Well, it is interesting the way that people enforce cultural norms. Within the far progressive, the sort of like urban monoculture is through chastising either privately or publicly people who say things that deviate from those norms.Malcolm: And that's not true for most cultural groups. Very few cultural groups publicly chastise people from other cultural groups for not following their rules, which is fascinating.Bryan Caplan: Although perhaps given how much fear the left has of being yelled at by the left. They might not be so exceptional, actually, probably most of the energy is directed towards your in group.Bryan Caplan: I've talked to multiple left wing professors who have said that they are scared of getting cancelled. And I'm listening, I'm squinting you, you're like, totally boring you're like, man on the left, you know, but it's [00:22:00] no, they might get me. And it is because they are just culturally so, so much closer.Bryan Caplan: Whereas... Honestly, yeah my fear of having the left do anything bad to me is really low. It's because I'm just not that close to them culturally. And so, you know, it's oh, well, none of us left wing people will be your friend anymore. It's well, alright yeah, that's not really going to change my day that much, actually.Bryan Caplan: Yeah,Malcolm: well, and that's something I really appreciate about you as an intellectual is you clearly have no audience capture like you're looking at the work that you're putting out and it typically would appeal to right leaning individuals and then you put out something like we should have totally open borders.Malcolm: Without any fear of losing your audience, but I think people who are in this sort of intellectual dissident space can afford to do that in a way that almost no other group can because your audience won't hate you for saying something that you think is true with data to back it.Bryan Caplan: Yeah, I mean, probably it's true that the people that said, let me put it this way.[00:23:00]Bryan Caplan: I've received very few death threats in my life, but I think 100% of all the death threats have come from anti immigrant people.Simone: Wow, oh,Bryan Caplan: they are the most psychotic people that I interact with, which does not mean that most of them are psychotic, but they do have the highest share of psychotics. As far as I can tell, but still, I'd say that the only real groups that.Bryan Caplan: Whether that will just shun me or ones where being anti immigration is their whole thing, whereas ones where they do a lot of issues, then it's okay, maybe Brian is, we're totally bad on immigration, but we like this other stuff. And that doesn't mean that we dislike him. It's more of dissonant groups are generally just not so picky.Bryan Caplan: And they're like, well, you know, we'll take what we can get. Where, you know, obviously, if it's a single issue group, then they do tend to be hostile to me. Yeah, of course, even that varies quite a lot by individual, but none of you [00:24:00] know, there's no immigration person who's ever threatened me or anything.Malcolm: That's interesting. Yeah. To me, that means that these anti immigration groups probably view it as an existential threat to their culture if immigration is allowed. Yeah. Which is interesting because countries that have the strictest immigration policy, one thing we always point out is if you look at wealthy countries, the countries with the strictest anti immigration policy typically have the lowest fertility rate.Malcolm: And they typically had these anti immigration policies before their fertility rate collapsed. So it appears to actually kill a cultural group to not have competitorsBryan Caplan: around at least somewhat plausible, I guess, to whether it's causal or not. It's a bit hard to say, let's see. I mean, I guess I would go around thinking about, let's see here's actually.Bryan Caplan: The East Asian economy, that's most of the open immigrants, which is Singapore. I'll be there. Not the worst of fertility, but they're not the best either. Yeah. So again, that's just one example. I mean, I mean, a lot of this, I would [00:25:00] say maybe we just don't have enough data to really know. Well, yeah,Malcolm: in different cultural groups relate to things in different ways.Malcolm: So it might be the East Asian groups don't increase their fertility when they have cultural competition, but Western cultural groups, like whether it's like Israel or the U S doBryan Caplan: yeah, Israel, there's quite a bit of possibility. And this is the case, the kind of main country where. Normal people talk about there being race.Simone: That'sBryan Caplan: a good point. We've got to, we've got to beat that other group. I mean, at first I people were telling me this not really true. Okay, fine. It is actually true there. It's not just something some intellectuals have superimposed on behavior. It's something that normal people use to describe what they're doing with their lives.Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're proud of who they are. And I think that when you were talking about education plus wealth, Israel is where it's that rings true for me. When I think of like conservative Jews who do not like variety who don't engage with the education system, but are otherwise wealthy, they have lots of kids.Bryan Caplan: Yeah. I mean, also worth pointing out, they've got lots of education, but just of this bizarro kind that [00:26:00] consists in, let's argue about the meaning of dead books written by a bunch of different people and pretend they all have to agree.Simone: No, I mean, my impression is it's notBryan Caplan: necessarily a shame that so much brain power goes into this completely futile intellectual endeavor.Simone: When we talk about that, it seems to us like a bit of an IQ shredder. We're like, Oh my gosh, these are like, we were, we spoke at one point about the meritocracy system of that culture as well. Like how it really sorts for very smart people, well, smart and charismatic people, like the most informed is able to get the most power and status and influence.Simone: And yet we're like, Oh, but these people could get us on Mars, but they'reMalcolm: as I pointed out to Moan when the cultural group abandons that, that's what the Reform Jews did, they said, oh, we'll still judge cultural status by how smart we are, but we'll have this done by some sort of external system like the university system.Malcolm: And that just acted like a huge backdoor, which destroyed their fertility rates and was used to convert them all to the progressive urban monoculture. And so there's a reason why they do this, even though it appears unproductive. Yeah. [00:27:00] Yeah. Anyway, hold on. This has been fantastic. We're out of time, but I would love to have you back, Simone.Malcolm: Do you have any final thoughts?Simone: No. I just I'm very entertained that the death threats come from immigration. So Malcolm, we better watch our backs if we ever start talking about that one.Bryan Caplan: Yeah. I think it's almost all cheap talk. I'm not actually worried. ButSimone: it's interesting to see likeBryan Caplan: where it comes from.Bryan Caplan: There's a level of fear of. Even normal intellectuals, much less dissenters, especially when there are people of tenure who say, I'm afraid to speak my mind. This was like, if you won't do it, come on, who's going to do it? You live in a war zone. If there's something that's worth saying and it won't be said, but for you, stick your neck out and say it.Bryan Caplan: Take your rumps. There's no other way to live that's worthwhile.Simone: Beautiful parting words. Oh, thank you so much for coming onmyBryan Caplan: pleasure, guys. Thank you. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm and Simone have an in-depth discussion analyzing the rapid rise in transgender individuals. They review and debate various theories like endocrine disruptors, social contagion, female puberty discomfort, autogynephilia fetishism, and more. The hosts discuss why certain explanations are seen as offensive, while concluding that personal transitions should be respected. They also posit their own idea that it serves as an identity "reset" that improves mental health.Simone: [00:00:00]Malcolm, hello.Malcolm: Hello. So, Today, we well, we're going to talk about what like, just sort of a discussion between us, because this is a topic we've been diving into more recently due to our engagement with the trans vexing community and other trans communities online, is what is really causing transness. And the reason we titled this study trans people are magical is there is an approved answer to this question.It is that they were born with the wrong soul. And that they were actually born with the soul of someone of a different gender. The problem is we don't really believe in souls. And even if I did, I'd be almost certain that gender just isn't that important to like our core identity, like our soul.And I, And this is why we went with the title, Trans People Are Magical, because any sort of scientific explanation you try to give, or any evidence based explanation you try to give for what is going on socially for recent trends within the trans [00:01:00] community and people who identify as trans, is considered transphobic.In part, I don't know, because you're quantifying it. We can talk about why all the explanations are considered offensive. Individually, they have reasons they're considered offensive, but collectively, it's almost like a topic we're not allowed to talk about or investigate, when it seems to me Like, it should be really important that the number of trans people has increased something like 400 percent in the last decade, but the that the trends in who is transitioning has changed really dramatically, where it used to be predominantly male to female, and now it's predominantly female to male of this young age range.And these, I think, could point to something.Would you like to know more?Malcolm: So first, before we get any further in this, Our larger stake on gender transition is that there are likely people transitioning for every one of the reasons we're going to mention. The question is what is causing these statistical trends?Are some of these reasons more important than other [00:02:00] reasons? Are they all just contributory reasons? Is there like one core reason? That's a really interesting question to me. We could say we just don't have the data to know right now because people are afraid to collect the data because you have your, Oh,Simone: people collect data, but only for a very specific set of answers.It's alreadyMalcolm: pre approved. And the thing that really upsets me about the trans data when I go over it is you can see by the date of publication, it will begin to trend towards showing the pre approved answer.So a great example of this would be brain structures. If you look at the earlier studies on trans people that were using like fMRI data and stuff like that they would usually say or the ones that I'm familiar with would say, The trans people's brains actually are more similar to the gender they were assigned at birth than the gender they were identifying with, whereas in later studies, the opposite is being said, like studies that were done more recently.And [00:03:00] unfortunately, knowing the pressures that happened within academia, that makes me now doubt both of those studies. I'm like, Oh, I just wish I could know what the real answer is.It looks like I misspoke here going through the recent research, even on Wikipedia, which is where there's a studies came from, that I had put on the screen. , even the more recent research shows that, trans individuals brains are more similar to the gender, they were assigned at birth to the gender. They identify ways. And this makes perfect sense. If you think about it. You don't when you're walking around, see people, randomly at least at the rates that we see trans people in the population. Get organs of a different gender. You know, you don't see men walking around with the skin of a woman , or, or the arms of a woman. In fact, the only place where I'm really familiar with this happening is either in intersex individuals or in individuals. , Women specifically who were born with male facial hair. And this happens at much [00:04:00] lower rates than transness happens within the population, but could explain a proportion of individuals who are born trans So if 5% of us young adults are identifying as trans and about 1.5% of the population is born intersex. That means that this wrong brain hypothesis would only explain about 30% of the community. Assuming that this phenomenon appears at about the same rate that genitals get switched up. But. I again that seems unlikely to me because genitals seemed like really unique why they would get switched up but we don't see other organs getting switched up at this rate so i would say that's probably an overestimation of the amount of the community that can be explained by the wrong brainhypothesis.Oh, and I suppose this was obvious to us when we were recording this didn't point it out. You can't just say, well, they're transitioning because they have gender dysphoria. That's like saying, well, he's depressed. Because he has depression. It's like, yeah, but like, are you not at all curious as to where this depression is coming from, what could be motivating it? What neurological phenomenon could be related to [00:05:00] it? Why there's this huge increase in depression ? These are questions that we would be asking if we were talking about. Any other mental condition that wasn't tied to identity, but in the world of identity politics, anything that can be tied to an individual's identity becomes unquestionable. And that's under. Studyable. And that is sort of. That's what makes it exciting to us?Malcolm: So we can go through. We're just going to index all of the potential things. Okay. So first one, this is the one that we talk about most on this channel because I think it's really interesting.And it's also interesting to me that it was ever flagged as an offensive potential answer, but I know exactly why it was flagged as a potential offensive potential answer. Okay. Let meSimone: guess first then, but tell me.Malcolm: It's turning the frogs gay. Endocrine disruptors. Oh. We know endocrine disruptors are much more common now than they used to be.We know that fetuses exposed to endocrine disruptors have lower when they're born as males, have lower endogenital distance. Which basically means that they're [00:06:00] not fully gender differentiated. We know that if you look at them seven years after they're born, they show play behavior much more similar to women.This to me if it's an actual biological change that's happening in the population due to a pollutant it's weird to me that this is seen as a transphobic explanation, but I think the core reason it's seeing is because it would be like, these people aren't faking it. This is not a socialSimone: contagion.It's real. It's physical. It's biological.Malcolm: Yes. And the increased rates of this stuff in our water. We correlate with the explosion of the trans population, and we see males changing generally.Simone: Again, it's not just in our water. A lot of it has to do with the containers we're eating out of, our shampoos, like every, like receiptsMalcolm: everything.Yeah. And we're seeing, it would also explain a lot of other things. We're seeing, a lot of changes in terms of how gender works biologically. We're seeing women go through puberty much earlier. We're seeing male sperm rates decrease by something like 30 percent. No, it's over 50 percent in the last 50 years.So [00:07:00] 51 percent in the last 50 years. We're seeing testosterone rates go down by something like 30 percent in the last 20 years. Like, all of this would easily be explained by endocrine disruptors in the water. Yeah. I think the core reason it seemed as offensive It's actually just that Alex JonesSimone: There's Oh, because Alex Jones said it first.He said that the water is turning to frogs, gay. That we can't acceptMalcolm: this as a And there's a great YouTube deep dive, I'm gonna see if I can find it, cause I remember it was a little obscure onCan you link to it? Actually, the research that Alex Jones was talking about when he said that. Yeah.Because, he'll say things that are actually true. Frogs were actually turning gay due to stuff in the water. And he was pointing this out. But then it became like a famous quote of his, and as such, it became associated with craziness. So it couldn't be an explanation that you could give and not be afraid of being cancerous.HeSimone: ruined it. He ruined it. Cause it it does sound, if you hear it out of context, you hear Alex Jones and his conspiracy voice going there, the water is [00:08:00] turning the frogs gay. It sounds. You have to admit that. It soundsMalcolm: crazy. I don't know. As a scientist, frogs and amphibians are usually much more sensitive to pollutants than other species.And they can absorb it through their skin really easily. Still sounds crazy.Simone: Because most people don't study biology. Most people aren't awareMalcolm: that amphibians Yeah, it reminds me of like when the conservatives were complaining about money going to medical research and they go, They spent X many million dollars studying fruit flies.And it's like, yes, that's the standard species used for studying genetic models. Of course they were studying fruit flies. What? When somebody's this pollutant is affecting amphibians before it affects other populations. It's obviously. Yeah, butSimone: again, like you just assume that everyone understands this.You studied biology at university, like most people like biology stops at college and they are being taught standardized test [00:09:00] norms, not real world useful stuff, but,Malcolm: okay. So this is the first potential explanation.Simone: Okay. So endocrine disruptors in general, but basically if I'm to sum it up Pollutants and chemicals that humans are being exposed to in developed nations and all over the world now are causing them to be hormonally different.And in the case of at least in the case of males, less male, this wouldn't explain, however, the growth in female to male transition because the endocrine disruptors. As we understand it, like from the Tide studies that we keep quoting, only really affect the extent to which men become fully male in development, not females.Let's talk about why this is.Malcolm: It's because the template of a fetus is female. Yeah. So if you are disrupting gender differentiation, you're going to disrupt it on the male side, not on the female side. Yeah. Now, it would likely have some disruption. We do know that women... are changing, like when they go through puberty and stuff like that.Simone: Oh, yeah. And that's more likely, I think, isn't that more [00:10:00] due to growth hormones? IMalcolm: think it's more likely due to growth hormones used to get cows to produce more milk or even biological changes in cows as we have genetically selected them to produce.Simone: And less endocrine disruptors, because broadly speaking, the way that endocrine disruptors are understood to work it's more disruption of life.And ifMalcolm: anything, this should be making women more female. YeahSimone: or if anything, I would say, if anything endocrine disruptors would delay puberty, I would expect. It would make things not work, rather than work earlier.Malcolm: Yeah. Okay. Now we're gonna go to another potentially offensive solution, other than they were born with the wrong soul.Which is also a bad explanation. What, did God just spill the soul bag recently? Suddenly he started f*****g up which souls people's bodies are going into a whole lot? Yeah. You could say it's that they're accepted more. And that's why they're coming out more, but the rate of increase within the trans community is much higher than the rate of increase within the gay community when they achieved acceptance.And also you didn't see this big gender flip in the gay community when they achieved acceptance. [00:11:00] I do not buy that's what's going on.Simone: No, the soul thing doesn't check out endocrine disruptors. I find to be moderate. Actually quite compelling. So let's talk about theMalcolm: next one. So before going to the transmedicine community, I was told to look up this autogynephilia stuff.And I knew this is an offensive explanation, but like in our communities, among the fans of our show, like I know we have other fans of our show that really love autogynephilia as an explanation. So I was like, okay, let's look into autogynephilia. Yeah. So let's explain what autogynephilia is and why it's potentially considered offensive.So this is to say that What is really motivating a portion of male to female trans conversions, and Autogynephilia really focuses on male to female trans conversions, is the fact that they have this fetish for seeing themselves as the gender that they find attractive. I would say there is no wrong reason to transition like I am actually for like you just want to transition because you want to be a girl. Awesome. Yeah, whenever you feel you were born in the wrong body. I'm [00:12:00] not saying awesome in I think everyone should do it.I think there's a huge number of costs associated with transition. I just really am against the concept. That so it's not like I wouldn't recommend it to my kids just because they felt they were in the wrong body or something. I'm like, you need a better reason than that for my kids, for my cultural group.But I do think that I would not pass a negative judgment on somebody who's coming from a different cultural background for transitioning for any reason. And I actually am really against, one of the reasons I like the trans vaccine community. Is because they break with the traditional norms of what makes it okay to transition.Yeah. Yeah.Simone: Yeah. They use a justification that we think is very genuine, but also wouldn't be societally accepted in the mainstream. They're expandingMalcolm: this as a cultural explanation. Yeah. They're expanding the reasons why an individual can say I'm transitioning for X reasons, normalizing new reasons, and I'm totally okay with that.And I really don't like the gatekeeping. We like supporting this community is because they are removing some of the barriers that had earlier been put in place by transmedicalists, those are people who think that it's only trans if it's like medically proven [00:13:00] transness, but then there's this new thing, which is it's only trans if you believe you have the wrong soul, but this is for you to judge and now they're saying, no, you don't need to believe that anyone can decide to use this technology if they feel it will improve their quality of life and was in their cultural norms.And we're like, okay, whatever, not for my kids. Yeah. I wouldn't want to preach to my kids as an option, but if you are, an adult, and you're making these choices, I appreciate that they've expanded the options.If people are confused as to how we can. Both support a community, but also not think it's a good idea for our kids. Think of it like face tattoos. I don't think people with face tattoos should be discriminated for jobs. I think it would be really wrong. If one community of people with face tattoos went around and said, everyone who gets face tattoos, who don't have X condition that I have is wrong and evil. I would think that is wrong and that community should be. Opposed. But I also not think face tattoos are a good idea for my children and I would be concerned. If people with face tattoos were constantly trying to get my kids [00:14:00] to get face tattoos, because I think that they make a person's life harder on average. and I. I think it's really bad that we live in a society where people with face tattoos. R. Oppressed. Then because they genuinely are.It is under any way in Congress for a person to both ardently fight for the rights of people with face tattoos, to fight for people with face tattoos, to not be discriminated against. But also still think that it is a bad idea for their own children to get face tattoos. And be upset at anyone who is telling theirchildren to get face tattoos But I need to be clear. This is just my cultural perspective. And I consider the perspectives of different cultural groups, for example, their progressive cultural group, valid for members of that cultural group. In the same way that I consider, , tribes that think that face tattoos. Ward off evil spirits, valid, and i would not at all discriminate them and i think that we should be accepting of people who have different world frameworks And people can be like, well, medical practitioners agree in science degrees and well, [00:15:00] yeah, but. At one point medical practitioners and scientists agreed that we're a good idea to solve many potential issues in a person's life.I want to be clear that I am not at all saying that gender transition is like a lobotomy or comparing it to a laparotomy. I am just pointing out that historically science and medical practitioners have agreed on things that the majority of the population would no longer agree are a good idea. And given how both new and politically charged this phenomenon is And we haven't seen how this plays out in large populations when they. Attempt this solution to these issues. Over the longterm yet. I am okay with waiting this out when it comes to my own kids, but I am also totally okay with communities and individuals who feel that this is solving major issues in their lives. And I think that they are accurately assessing that for themselves and for people of their cultural group. I just hope that these communities can [00:16:00] accept and respect. Y, I might have a different choice for my own kids until they become of age.Malcolm: Within this community, this is a popular explanation. And I was told by the community to dig into the research on it.And while I say that you can transition for any reason, this is the one reason I'd suggest not transitioning. Because it's like logically a bad reason to transition and I'll explain why it's logically a bad reason to transition when people transition their number of paraphernalia is basically fetishes usually decrease pretty dramatically, especially if they're transitioning from males to females.Second, when people transition their gender primary. Attraction generally, not generally, changes in about 25 percent of people. So not always, but like a lot of the time. So if you are transitioning because of things that arouse you, you should expect those things that arouse you to change during the transition process.Simone: Because the hormones that you undergo are going to significantly change your experience of arousal and your areas of focus. Plus, [00:17:00] actually, if I recall correctly from your surveys, when you did the Pregnantist Guides to Sexuality and you, tested all these people's sources of arousal.Autopenophilia actually wasn't that unusual. Like plenty of people are like turned on by the idea of banging a gender bent version of themselves, but just fantasize about it. Just fantasize about it. Like you don't have to be that version, like you're never going to have two of you.Until we get to some cool AI age where you can get in the haptic suit and go forMalcolm: it. Even more important than that, there were also studies that looked at women. Who were born women, what percentage of them had autogynephilia, something like 95%? Yeah.Simone: Like women find it really like hot.The idea of banging themselves. Totally.Malcolm: The idea of,Simone: you look a lot like me. I think this isMalcolm: like a but the idea of themselves being women. They find their own gender's sexuality and them being that sexuality really attractive. So that wouldn't really be a good argument for, you're not trans because you're just a man attracted to women, so you would find you being a woman attractive.If you are a woman, you would presumably find you being a [00:18:00] woman being attractive as well, because most women feel that way. So autogonophilia, I do think there are probably some people transitioning for this reason. But I think it's a dumb reason to transition because this arousal pattern may cease during the transition. Yeah. Which is Red Queen chasing something that's always running away from you.Simone: Yeah. a game that you're going to be able to win. It's also one of those things where once you have it, you won't want it.Malcolm: Yeah. So another one I saw. So the trans maxing community, this could be another explanation is that it turns out that either men and women in our society, they just don't feel comfortable with their gender because their gender, they are being told that women are being told that women are being objectified in our society and it's worse to be a woman in our society.So you should want to be a man who they're transitioning for that reason. And men are being told, all this red pill, MGTOW stuff, you're better off actually being a woman and that this is what's causing the transition. Just genuinely believing you'd have it better off of the other gender.SoSimone: it's a grass is always greener kindMalcolm: of thing. Sort of the core of what the trans maxing [00:19:00] movement is about. The idea that you would have it easier being a woman than a... Low quality guy was in our low sexual quality. Like not a lot of women like you, obviously pointed out on Tinder. And I can really see where this argument comes from.Less than 1 percent of women swipe right on the average guy. This is, you look at the mean guy, right? So imagine if you're below that, how difficult things are on the sexual marketplace and. How much harder you're just going to be treated in society, right? Some people in some of the writings, they describe it as being in tutorial mode, being a woman, right?Living life in tutorial mode. They're like, yeah, you can't get the higher tier accomplishments in the video game. Like you're going to be discriminated against for like high tier positions and work and everything like that. But people are generally nicer to you and kinder to you. And we'll do little favors for you all the time that you just don't have.And people will be your friend and people will emotionally open up to you. This is what I hear about when I look at people who have transitioned, like the positives and negatives. Yeah. So yeah, you can't get the high tier accomplishments as easily, but all the low tier accomplishments are just much easier, butSimone: honestly, like if you don't [00:20:00] seem to be like a person who's going to be hitting out of the park in life, like at least being able to walk down the street and have people be nice to you and smile at you.Sounds nice.Malcolm: So I, but the problem is we see a lot of women converting to men. We've done a video on this also could be that Hollywood has just removed women. So yes, Hollywood has made a lot of women in leading roles, but it didn't want to make them sexy to men because it wants to punish male sexuality for whatever reason.That's the enemy of progressives. So it removed their boobs and it removed their femininity to the extent where they look like underage women or men. And so a lot of women, when they think about their feminine selves, like their feminine potential ideal, they can begin to see that as negative. And they grow up with this understanding that, that, big breasts, curvy walking, everything like that is not what a powerful woman looks like.And so they begin to adopt this male mindset and this could make it seem better. Like this could be anSimone: explanation. But I think the other explanation that's, that seems to be. Out there is like that transitioning as a, an adolescent [00:21:00] female is the new cutting. It's the new anorexia. Basically women hit this stage at which they get super uncomfortable with their bodies and they want to deal with it.And there are lots of evoked sets that exist in different periods of time to deal with it. And you can deal with it by getting super religious or by starving yourself or by cutting yourself or in this case by transitioning. And part of me wonders if A lot of young women who are transitioning, they're not necessarily Oh, I really want to be a guy.They're more like, Oh, I really don't want to go through puberty. And so puberty blockers are like a great answer to that. Your body's changing. You hate it.Malcolm: I don't think they're thinking that consciously. I couldn't. No. ISimone: think it's subconscious, totally subconscious, but it's more there's a deep discomfort.Malcolm: I could see that being a motivating factor. One thing we talked about was female puberty is the concept that it's very different from male puberty, where male puberty are cursed with this attraction. To other people that you didn't choose and it's like almost an addiction to something right female puberty.It's defined by wanting to be Treasured and cared for and accepted and that no matter how [00:22:00] liked you are by people, it can, because it's your own judgment of whether you're treasured enough, of whether you're accepted enough, of whether you're cared for enough. And so it's almost never enough.And so when women go through puberty, they often feel it. It would be very normal to feel very uncomfortable and unsatisfied with your body and the offer that, Hey, you going through puberty, if you do this now, you can feel comfortable with your body. Like I could see how that would be. Potentially a factor in this change that we're seeing in society, but then why all of a sudden now, like what's new now, I could think it's the removal of feminine looking women from high power roles in media.Now that feminine looking women have been demonized as being idiots, as being deserving of low status of, and these. These very small breasts, very boyishSimone: acting character. I disagree that does not resonate at all. I don't think that has any bearing.Malcolm: Okay, might not, but here's what I would say, and I think this is actually a really important quote that I had heard, and I think it [00:23:00] shows something really powerful about the way the trans community, when it looks at why are people transitioning that are saying that they're transitioning for reasons other than why I transitioned, other than being gender dysphoric, right?They were looking at people from the trans vaccine community who were saying that they were transitioning just because they'd have an easier time as a woman. And they started looking at quotes Oh, I was with my friend, and we cuddled, and it really made me feel special, and I really liked him, and I never would have felt this way about a guy before.But I'm not trans, and and they were like, Hey, maybe you just are trans. Maybe you were always trans, and you've been using... This argument is a shield, but I actually read something different. What I read is changes in things that make a person satisfied in regards to sexual actions with other partners and stuff like that.The changing nature of this. in men who are on hormone therapy to become women or women who are [00:24:00] on hormone therapy to become women, however you want to frame it that it leads to behavior patterns, which the trans community saw as proof that they were actually really trans all along, but that actually begin to happen and occur in any man who takes these chemicals.And that is concerning to me. If it turns out that if you gave any man these chemicals, they would begin to have experience and emotions that the trans community had previously believed were proof that they were actually really the current trans all.Simone: Basically, you're saying like, once you take the magical meds that make you feel like a woman, you think you're a woman.And so you're concerned because anyone who takes the magical meds to make you think you're a woman, they're all going to have the same be like, yeah, this was right. I feel like a woman,Malcolm: right? Yeah. And here we want to talk about the most offensive potential explanation, because this is where this comes from is the...What is it? Like [00:25:00] rapidSimone: onset? Yes. Rapid onset gender dysphoria. So the social contagion theory. Yeah. AndMalcolm: we talked about the study that had been withdrawn about this and it, people were like, look, it was withdrawn for good reason. It had problems, but it was not withdrawn for the reasons that would have gotten like a normal study was drawn.It was withdrawn specifically because it promoted a theory that the trans community didn't like. while the group trying to get it withdrawn, used methodological complaints as their tool to get it withdrawn, the were motivated and had organized themselves around. Getting it withdrawn specifically because they didn't like the theory that it was promoting. Not because of the methodologicalconcernsMalcolm: It did not make the type of mistakes that would normally get a study like this was drawn. Now, to be clear, . It did do something that was pretty shady, right? It, Drew its sample set from women who were mothers of kids who identified as trans who already agreed with the idea of [00:26:00] transness being a social contagion because they were on forums for that.But this was all disclosed in the study. So that was not a reason for it to be withdrawn. What the data in the study, however. was actually super interesting. And when I see trans people dismiss it, they're like 50 percent of these women thought their kids were gifted. So clearly it shows that they're not good.50 percent of all women think their kids are gifted. Obviously, like these are helicopter parents. These are the types who are like paying attention to this stuff and participating in studies. That doesn't seem weird to me. 75 percent think their kids weren't right in their gender transition.So that proves that they're wrong. I'm like, I would argue that's probably true across parents of trans kids. I think if you just did a good study of this, you would find that's likely true. I'm not going to say it's accurate. I'm just going to say that doesn't sound like a biased sample. They looked at the number who thought negative things about trans people.And they were about the same as the general population. , but there were a few statistics in that, that I think that we can learn a lot from because they mirror things that I have heard from my friend group, 25 percent [00:27:00] of the parents said that in their kids first. visit to the gender affirming clinician person, whatever this is called they were offered hormone therapy first visit.And I think when trans people hear this, they can be like, yeah, that makes perfect sense. But when you think about it from the perspective of. of a parent. So I'll tell a story that happened to one of my friends. Anonymized. Thank you very much. Anonymized. Yes, very anonymized, Simone.Nope. When telling the story, I am telling it from his perspective. So i will use the gender of his kid as he would have seen the gender and then a switch to talking about his kid in his preferred gender when i'm at the end of the storyMalcolm: He had a son, who transitioned to a daughter,who... Was beginning to feel like they might be trans, right? But he knew his son had gone through a lot of pretty extreme phases in the past, like an extreme goth phase, an extreme punk phase, stuff like that. And so he was like, okay he'll get over it. But I want to be as caring and I want to be as [00:28:00] supportive of him as possible.Now, obviously, this is a very dismissive way to treat. This person. So he took him to the gender affirming clinic and the doctor took the data side and he sent him to the best clinics there were in the US and it was supposed to be this thing of three clinics. It was supposed to be this big battery of tests and he paid for all of this, all of these expensive tests and all of this stuff.And the doctor was like, obviously we'll consult you before we make a final decision. We're going to do that at a followup appointment in six months. Okay. And so the dad was like, okay yeah. These phases never really last that long I'll just let him go through with this, and we'll see where this goes.And he, then, the kid didn't go back for the six months appointment. He never went to any of the other, that weren't prepaid for, any of these other things. And the dad later , found hormone therapy stuff that the kid had.It turned out that at the very first meeting, secretly, he had been prescribed all of the hormones he needed, and the doctor was like, you never need to come back. They never did any big tests on him or anything like that. They just immediately... Now, from the perspective of this dad, he [00:29:00] felt pretty tricked and pretty undermined by this whole scenario.Was he right? Was the kid really trans? I like to take people at face value. , she decided to do this on her own. And I think that she deserves to be treated accurately based on her choice, but I think that this is very different than I think what an uneducated person was, what it actually looks like to go through these transition things when they think what's going on at these clinician visits and stuff like that. It is not you go into the first clinician visit and you're immediately prescribed transition hormone.AndSimone: there's, of course we should say, caveat, there's a. Big variation, clinics, like not every clinic just rubber stamps things.Malcolm: But we know from this, again, it was only 25%. That means 75 percent of people, this isn't happening to. Yeah. But this is often not something you would have for other types of Prescriptions, like whether it's depression prescription or something like that, you're like unlikely to get this on your very first visit.I can understand why people would be like, oh, this is an [00:30:00] issue if this is happening and if it's recorded in this data set. However, I don't think that it proves in any way that this is a social contagion. I can see how it would spread as a social contagion. If I was just saying hypothetically, as you were saying earlier, if you could tell young girls, and this message would appeal to young girls more than young boys.Yeah. The discomfort you feel with your body that you're going through during puberty, here's a solution to it. Yeah. That would be a very appealing message to read. Incredibly appealing. But I think the mere fact that's an appealing message doesn't mean that it's true. So now we have to go through all the, are there any other reasons you can think people might be transitioning?Simone: Let's see, social contagion, harm, hormones and pollutants the most compelling ones I would say. Yeah, wrong brain, wrong soul. Don't agree with those personally, but okay that's out there. Oh, and then of course, practicality, which we totally understand.Malcolm: Oh, I'm going to present a final one, which I actually think is what's really going on.What? Yeah. Yeah. [00:31:00] Okay. So in the Pragmatist Guide to Sexuality, we broke down the way that gender works in a lot of ways, because I think when we talk about gender, we talk about gender as being like a innate to self identity, and I do not believe it is innate to self identity. I believe that individuals have a gender display system which is entirely different from their sexual systems.By that what I mean is when we talk about sexual systems, we actually think that these systems are the same, are heavily intertwined with your disgust systems. So the things that make you aroused, the things that make you disgusted, these are all working on basically the same brain pathways and there's some negative modifiers implied.But these are basically the same systems. The systems that deal with gender displays I actually think are an entirely different set of systems that have nothing to do with sexuality. And they give you a sense of happiness or pleasure. When you make specific gender displays. Now, this is why historically, if you look at the cross dressing community the [00:32:00] majority of the cross dressing community was cis males.This is true historically. If you look at cross dressers in the eighties they were. Cis heterosexual males, not gay. They just like to sometimes dress up as a woman. And they got a lot of pleasure from this. And I asked myself, how could this be right? It could be that there's some system where if you really act out a gender display, it will create some form of happiness for you.And it probably differs. In how much happiness it's giving an individual, maybe even it could create negative happiness, like active discomfort if you're not constantly displaying your gender. So it could work as a happiness system and like a negative discomfort system, right? Okay. That could explain what's going on here.This slider is in the wrong place. And, what's really interesting about this system is I believe it can be accessed by anyone. I think any man can do a [00:33:00] really feminine gender display and feel like, oh, if I do it just right, there's something that is a little satisfying about it. Like nailing it. Like nailing it. Yeah. Oh, I just nailed that pretending to be a woman thing. And, but you're not nailing pretending to be a woman, you're nailing acting out a gender display. I think many women can just nail it in terms of acting like a man or acting like a male gender display and maybe feel some small, so what would be interesting if it turned out that anyone can access the system, but how much this system controls you might be something that'sSimone: modifiable.I don't, yeah. I just don't like, I don't think there's anything. I think about history. In history, we've seen people express different genders. Totally. That, that is a thing that has happened throughout history. A lot of it has been based on pragmatism. In medieval England regulation of brothel neighborhoods, there are just men who are acting as...Female[00:34:00] sex workers. And they're just regulated like the other ones. Okay, they do that. I think that, that sort of falls into the trans maxing category. If hey, hard to make money out there. Here's one way we do it. So like we join, we dress up like a woman, do what you got to do.It's I know that there is a historical precedent. for the pragmatic approach. Social contagion. I feel like there's a lot of precedent for other behaviors. I'm going to push back onMalcolm: similar before we get into the precedent for other behaviors, like PTSD on Tik TOK and stuff like that, but how would your explanation explain in the eighties, the majority of cross dressers being heterosexual, cisgender men, the majority of men who liked going to clubs or walking out on the streets while cross dressing. Why were they doing this? If not for sexual gratification and they, it appears that it wasn't, it was widely agreed in the cross dressing community.This is not for sexual gratification. What was motivating that? It wasn't helping them in any way,Simone: but keep in mind, this is the thing only men did.Malcolm: Women didn't really do this. I'm like no.Simone: Women are the ones who are really, I think that like the women transitioning thing, [00:35:00] I feel like that is mostly explained by social contagion.Men transitioning, I would say that's mostly explained by hormonal shifts and pragmatism. I, I do not, I don't get the signal. I think, I don't, I have, I think that cross dressing is like super fun and awesome. Everything's better in drag. LikeMalcolm: women didn't, there's no so this is really interesting.You touched on a really interesting point here. And I want to highlight this. Historically there are many examples of men who liked dressing up like women, but were not interested in men sexually. I can think of, hold on. I can think of no explanations of women who like dressing up as men, but weren't interested in women sexually.Usually when women liked dressing up as men, like the trend in American cultural history, these are, so if we now say that they're trans, they were... They were men who were born women andSimone: I guess you could say they were more butch lesbians,Malcolm: but they didn't identify that way often sometimes and sometimes they did whatever what I'm saying is I'm not aware of any of them still preferring [00:36:00] men as sexual partners where I can historically think of a lot of men who today we would call trans or whatever who still liked.So that, that little thing shows that maybe in men, there is this gender display impulse. that is more malleable or stronger or harder to silence?Simone: Yeah, I don't know. I cannot explain that. I cannot. But I, yeah I don't.Malcolm: Okay but, okay, so you've said what you think the main explanation is.I think the main explanation might be the biological one. Okay,Simone: so you agree with me on that. Due to pollutants, but not for women. I don't think for women explains anything. And there's a lot more young women transitioning now than that. Yeah that, that young women, adolescents are so susceptible to social trends, literallyMalcolm: the most offensiveSimone: explanation.I know. Sorry, but not sorry.Malcolm: Could you still man yourself at least for people who are like, this is really offensive.Simone: Yeah, the steel mining part would be that, that when you [00:37:00] hit female adolescence, you become on average, extremely uncomfortable in your body. And you're going to look for solutions for that at a very common solution.In mainstreamMalcolm: society now. Steel man your opponents. Steel manSimone: the perspectives so dumb. It's so dumb. I know, you know me. I love steel man. What would youMalcolm: have transitioned? If you were a young kid today, would you have transitioned? You were uncomfortable with your body. So why, what protected you that's not protecting women today?No,Simone: because I was starving myself instead. I had a better solution. You did. You did. Anorexia is way better than transitioning. Oh, where's the discipline and transitioning?Malcolm: I think here's what I'd say even if it is a social contagion, once somebody becomes an adult, I think it's a decision that we need to respect because it's not one, it would cause them a great amount of emotional pain to not acknowledge it to you.They typically would have an enormous time. Trans difficult time transitioning back, even if they feel like, they made a mistake or something, right? And I think [00:38:00] that the regardless of the reason someone transitions. Now, I do not think that they should, that people should ever be forced to acknowledge someone's transition.So by that, what I mean is if someone's from a culture or religion or tradition where it would be seen as untoward or in, in, in some other way, it really goes against their tradition to correctly gendered someone or something like that. Yeah. fine. Like we definitely as a society shouldn't make it illegal to misgender people.However, I think it's the polite thing to do and to remember. How much these people have gone through and how much, how uncomfortable it can be to engage with a world where you're not sure, who is negatively judging you for something that at this point you can't really change about yourself.Yeah,Simone: no, totally. And, I was, I would say my choice to starve myself as a female adolescent was. Super dumb. I'm still paying the price for that, right? I can't have kids naturally. I have osteoporosis. I'm not saying I made great [00:39:00] decisions as an adolescent. I'm just saying, the motivation to do stuff to yourself is there.And also I don't know I personally have never really had a negative reaction to meeting anyone who's transitioning and it's you do what's best for you. Like everyone. And I think we both agree when it comes to things like governing yeah. Most decisions are best made at the local level, no one like the local community, like the individual knows best what they need, or knows better what they need, like you can't have optimal decisions made by people who are on the outside.Malcolm: Yeah, this is something I find really interesting is you have these people who are like against children transitioning, right? Make it illegal, right? Under a certain age. And yet for, the vast majority of kids who are transitioning in this age range, it's like 16, 18, yet I could get gauges at that age.That's a permanent thing.Simone: You need parental consent for that. Oh, you do? Yeah. Oh, yeah. If you for any sort of piercing, if you are below 18, unless they're like fly by night and there's a lot of fly by night piercings. WhatMalcolm: age do you need to be?Simone: Every piercing and tattoos you gotta be 18 if you go without a parent.[00:40:00] But, I think that most of the peopleMalcolm: who are doing... Oh wow, 18, you're right. Yeah, sorry. Okay, bad argument. NoSimone: but, it's really easy to get that stuff. The people that are paid minimum wage and poorly trained. At Claire's, which is famous for piercing people. They don't care.They're not checking. Yeah. But, yeah, these there's a long precedent for people who are, of minority, whatever that's determined to be. It's obviously different across states and countries and stuff. Are are blocked from doing things that could be irreversible. And sometimes that's even things like drinking.This is not unreasonable. There's a long cultural precedent for it. I'm not saying it is how it always should be. But if I, for example, if I We're able to like immediately follow through in a costless fashion with impulses that I had as an adolescent, I would not have a uterus now.Malcolm: Oh yeah, because you wanted to sterilize yourself.Simone: Yeah, I wanted to sterilize myself. So I,Malcolm: could you imagine like thinking today, like who you'd become could you have made a worse decision? I know, right? It's, no, but it's really interesting to me that we all make bad decisions when we're young.Yeah.[00:41:00]Simone: But the thing is it didn't hurt me at all to be blocked from that, and here's the thing, though is I do really feel for once you reach a point in your life where you think transitioning is the only answer for you, and you and I were talking about this earlier on a walk once you feel like transitioning is the only answer for you, it's the only answer for you And I've had points in my life where I thought that I had to do this thing or I would go crazy.I would die.Malcolm: Oh, we forgot about the most important answer from this entire thing which is why are people actually happier after they transition? Because you see this so often in the community. Imagine it is just a social contagion, yet I see it fixing problems for so many people.So what's really going on here, and we think we have an answer, it's just not the one that's normal in the trans community. So one, you get this obsession where you start to think, oh God, if I don't transition. And then you read into your earlier life, Oh, there were all these times where I was uncomfortable with this, or I didn't fully fit my gender in this way.And you begin to have all of these sort of prove for you that you need to [00:42:00] transition, but then transitioning ends up actually helping you, but not for the reason that a person might think. Basically, we've argued here that anyone who goes on these hormone therapies actually ends up successfully transitioning to a large extent, whether or not they identified as CIS beforehand.But what it does do is, and we've talked about this before, when you are feeling really systemically unhappy with your life, and really systemically like you don't belong one of the best things you can do is leave your current situation, leave where you're living, leave your friend groups change your job, change the way you're contextualizing yourself.And you can reset your personality and a lot of how your brain works. Yeah. And it solves the problem. Something like 86 percent of people addicted to heroin in Vietnam, when they came back, the addictions went away. And this was like a deep seated neurological addiction, but they were in such a radically different environment that it allowed them to reset their brains.That could be what's happening here. Is it individuals? Now that they're contextualizing themselves as a new person with a new [00:43:00] name, that's a new gender, often with new friend groups, with new ways of interacting with people, with a completely new, like, when we say, go to a new place, do something new.The only way this resets who you are is if in this new place, you're also pretending to be a new iteration of yourself. Yeah.Simone: And what's better for that than transitioning? It's really hard to beat that.Malcolm: And the hormones might even reset specific pathwaysSimone: in the brain. Oh yeah no.Totally. It's a similar, I think personally, like when I look at a lot of research around psychedelics for treating depression, PTSD, like that's one way that now Therapists and psychologists are looking to shake up the brain enough to get you out of a mental rut that is very toxic.I think shifting your hormonal patterns is a great way to do that as well, and this wouldMalcolm: explain why it's happening to young women more often than young men. Young women have more psychological issues that would require this sort of reset than young men have. Yeah,Simone: just because adolescent female hormones are so horrible.Malcolm: But this could be an even more offensive explanation than yours because what it says Is [00:44:00] no, these people aren't really born in the wrong body. They're not actually, it really is improving their livesSimone: pretty dramatically. Yeah. That's the thing is like after a certain point, if you're severely depressed, you're super unhappy and you think, and you've also decided transitioning is the onlyMalcolm: thing you can do.You said you don't really consider someone a woman unless they pass and they're dramatically less likely to pass if they do this later. Yeah.Simone: Except I, like a lot of the stuff that we've discussed here. May not, like the person seeing, being seen as passing doesn't matter in many of those cases.It matters for trans maxxers it may not matter for women transitioning to get control over their bodies again, essentially. Oh, I wouldMalcolm: argue that almost, I'd say the number of trans people where passing doesn't matter is probably less than 1%.Simone: Yeah, you think passing reallyMalcolm: matters? I think you can say it doesn't matter.I think they can say internally it doesn't matter, but I think it's... Personally they just say that because. They want it so theySimone: can't pull it off, so they are gonna try toMalcolm: not care about it. I don't know, that might be an [00:45:00] offensive thing to say.Simone: I think we've said a lot of it. We've rung that bell already.IMalcolm: don't think we've that are offensive to say about or in the trans community anymore. But we are genuinely trying to think through what's going on here and I would love it if there were better research into just, they got the wrong soul. And the research didn't always trend along with social answers where the social answers seem to come before the research that backs it.Which is,Simone: I'll say this, like no disrespect for people transitioning. Like I, one, I love that. It's like this. This championing of the human body, it's taking biology and being like we're doing it my way. I'm going to take control. I love that. And that's why I starved myself. I loved the satisfaction of having control over my body.And my weight and how I felt, even if it was like miserable and it drove me crazy. I love that control. I love IVF for the same reason. Oh my God, we can own the process of reproduction. We can choose all these things. We can, control the time it can do. And I think, like it's [00:46:00] anything along those lines.It's like a little bit more transhumanist or a little bit more about mastering the human body. Oh, let's control our hormones. Let's control like our arousal pathways. Let's change how we look and feel. That's like super cool. Yeah, master your body, do what you need to do to feel good.Or be effective in life or, succeed or thrive by whatever measure you care about. Like just because we have theories as to why this happens. It's funny that it would be so controversial or be seen as hateful. To have a theory as to why something happens when, whatever it's happening, it's real.These are real feelings. It's, similar to our offensive theories around Spoonies, right? That we may think that a lot of it has to do with hypochondria, but we don't discount the fact that people are genuinely suffering, genuinely feeling real symptoms of pain. Yeah. So I, it's interesting that one would beMalcolm: well, some of this can cause people to dismiss them.For example, like autogynephilia, like you hear that and you're like, if you accept that as the reason why most people are transitioning, then you see them as just like pervy men pretending to be women.Simone: It's like how many people in the world, especially young men. Live their lives [00:47:00] in a certain way just to get sexual partners or just to get sexual gratification ultimately like on a macroMalcolm: scale, right?I'm just saying I can see how that could lead to the dehumanization of trans individuals in a way that would hurt the movement Even if it were true unless they wouldn't want to discuss. I don't think it's true, but I'm just saying I see why They would have a political reason to silence any data that could support that hypothesis.Yeah, I agree. Which is a shame. It's a shame because I really would like to understand all of this and I really think that we should reach a position of acceptance beyond that which the trans community is willing to roll out right now. Which is that if you want to transition, it doesn't matter your reasons, as long as culturally that's what your group's okay with, you go ahead with that, right?I support that. I don't support... Trying to inject these ideas into cultural groups where this is not traditional, I think it's just one culture's solution to a set of problems. But I do support individuals who[00:48:00] approach this, or, over 18 and, This makes them feel better.And I do think it does make a lot of people feel better. And I do think it fixes a lot of problems that almost nothing else can fix in an individual's life. Agreed. All right. Love you, Simone. Love you too. We're so screwed. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm and Simone have a thought-provoking discussion analyzing some of the most common anime tropes and what they reveal about Japanese culture and desires. They explore the prevalence of high school settings, "isekai" fantasy worlds, unusual relationships, slice of life, and more. The hosts share their own theories on how these tropes represent escapism, surrogate parenting instincts, and a cultural lack of meaning in adulthood. They also recommend their favorite anime series and studios.Simone: [00:00:00] Hello, gorgeous.Malcolm: I know, same time. Well, hello, Simone. So we were talking about something and you spontaneously had this idea. Which just enchanted me because I think you might be right. And sometimes when we're looking at the world, there's these little nagging questions which persist beyond reality.Where it's like, what on earth is going on here? You know? You're talking about a big one with sexuality. I'd say is, why is it that... Gay males and straight males are more likely to find the opposite gender repellent than gay versus straight females.That's where we can say something is going on here and we can use these sorts of persistent differences or unusual patterns to suss out deeper things that are going on within a population.Now [00:01:00] in anime, there are actually many of. And in Japan, there are many of these, so our audience may not know this, but my wife was born in Japan, and she spent a lot of her childhood going to Japan to trips and stuff like that, you know, for her, it was sort of like her home away from home, and her middle name is actually Haruko so even has a Japanese middle name and, bye. One, so we're going to go over a few different questions that we've seen sort of persistently in anime, and I'll go over the three that I know we're going to cover, and then we might come up with some others. The first one is, why are, hmm, what's the way to say this that won't get the video? Why do females who phenotypically present as youth appear in specific situations within anime where if they were [00:02:00] presenting that way in live action within most Western countries? Everyone would literally immediately be arrested. Yeah, it would be super illegal. Why is this such a normalized thing within anime?Would you like to know more?Malcolm: That is question number one. And I would point out thatAs time has gone on I have seen this more and more within high production anime.To the point now where it's just almost totally normalized. Mainstream. Where it would be almost a little weird if it didn't appear even once in an anime. It, it would be like an anime without a, an episode where they go to the, Beach or onsen. The onsen, or the hot springs, or the, a beach episode, you know?It's just a thing, right? If I, if I saw a harem comedy and one of the characters wasn't, Ooh, you know, I'd be like, okay, what's going on here? Oh, note here. A harem comedy is anime where a number of [00:03:00] women are all interested in one man. It does not surprise me why anyone would find that interesting, but that's, that's nothing.anime?take place in high schools? This is a very interesting question because you do not see any other art form across any other culture I'm aware of. Almost all of it only takes place during one stage of an individual's life. Right. Yeah. And, and especially none where it's their high school age. And then the final question is What is going on?This actually came from an a comment. I, I personally wouldn't find this to be that interesting a question, but it may have interesting answers. What is going on with all the Eizoukei anime? That's anime where people are transported to another world. Why is this a popular genre right now? Alright, so let's go to the first question.You had an idea that sprung to you one day, and I think it may be accurate.Simone: Yeah so we were watching an anime in which there's a dynamic like this basically where like a, [00:04:00] a salaryman wakes up in... Fantasy video game world and then, you know, ends up in one of these relationships and it, you know, you, you expect these relationships to be, can I, is it okay if I say Lolita?No,Malcolm: youSimone: cannot say that. Okay. So, you, I think most people make the least charitable interpretation of these types of relationships and why people are interested in them. So, last, last night we were watching this anime called My Unique Skill Makes Me OP Even At Level 1, where this salaryman basically wakes up in a video game world and starts befriending people, and his Before we goMalcolm: further with the anime explanation, I want to explain what makes it such a unique anime, from a, from a watching it perspective.Yeah. And it is so clearly a just a desperate fantasy of what if life wasn't terrible? Yes. In every single angle of the anime, that it breaks down many [00:05:00] ideas to much more simplistic tropes than they would normally be broken down into. It's not a particularly good anime or anything like that, or funny anime or anything like that, but it is.Notable in its simplicity, and honesty was what it's trying to do. So continue with what you're saying.Simone: Right, so the main character immediately makes a friend, and the friend he makes is phenotypically very...Malcolm: Phenotypically presents as a young human female.Simone: Yes. And you expect to make the least charitable interpretation of why viewers would be interested in this kind of relationship which is precisely why you expect if this were all to be live action, that it would be highly illegal.However the more we watched the show and we saw like the dynamics of their relationship play out. The more I came to realize one, this show is the fantasy of a beleaguered salaryman. I mean, careers in Japan are, [00:06:00] are famously brutal, the hours you're expected to work, the unpaid overtime you're expected to work, the long nights drinking.It is, it is a toxic work culture. And this is the fantasy of not being in that work culture and also being appreciated for your work and being really good at your work and getting things done all the time. It's sort of just this fantasy of everything but. The, the, the Japanese work culture that still pervades the nation.And when you look at what's happening in his life it's to me a picture of what people, what humans in Japan would like life to look like. And it's not this untoward type of relationship. I think people would expect it to be. I think it's actually. Cosplaying as a parent, but that Japan lacks the cultural shorthand for a man wanting to be a parent.And so it's instead, it manifests as this perverse type of relationship or, or is kind of implied to be that perverse type of relationship when like really maybe [00:07:00] the trope that is being played out in many of these animes with these phenotypically what is it? What, use the word, use the word that's safe forMalcolm: monetization.Phenotypically, youthfully presentingSimone: females. Yes. Maybe all the animes with these tropes are really more playing on the audience's. Desire to be a parent and to take care of young people and to raise people and, and experience the satisfaction of taking care of someone who loves you and appreciates you and admires you.Malcolm: And that reminded me a lot of an anime. I think it's called something like. Lotte, L O T T E, where one of these characters that you're talking about is a succubus and... SoSimone: you would also totally not charitably interpret that because they're a succubus. Well,Malcolm: no, and it's clear that, that...The relationship is, yes, well there are like, obviously it's a very questionable relationship but [00:08:00] it is very focused on fathering her. And there is actually sort of a sub genre of, I'd call it, father animes where it's about a guy, Who either somehow gets attached to a young girl or takes on a fatherly role.But often these have to me, slightly questionable things going on in them.Simone: Oh, like the anime in which the, the guy's hand becomes a little girl.Malcolm: Wait, which one is that?Simone: I'll look up the title for it. You don't know about this? No. Hand becomes girl. This is, I swear to you, this is a thing. But this sort ofMalcolm: pure dad is, being a dad is awesome show is not one we have in the U.S.Simone: Yes. So the series is called Midori Days, which follows Seji Samawura. Who one day finds his right hand replaced with a girl named Midori Kasugano. [00:09:00]Malcolm: So, what I think is going on here, and so I'm gonna say I don't think that every show that has a character like this is doing this. Agreed. I think that there is a broad differentiation.When it's a harem comedy, that, or, or, just a harem show, I guess you could call it. Where the conflict or plot is primarily around a large group of girls dating a guy. It appears that it is actually about. The bad thing. The bad thing. However, when the core relationship of the show is one of these types of relationships, it's often played out much more...About we're talking about like the instinct, it's masturbating, it is being a goodSimone: father. Yeah, it's parenting. And this is what I actually think. I think it may be that Japan has become such a parenting and child devoid culture, essentially such an antinatalist or a natalist culture. That many of the people actually creating these animes and, and, and playing out these relationships.think they're doing the bad thing. [00:10:00] Like they think they're pandering to the bad thing, but subconsciously they're pandering to a desire to raise children and be able to deeply sad. Yeah. They, yeah. But no, doesn't it kind of resonate? Doesn't that kind of make sense?Malcolm: And here's another thing that I've noticed in the genre of shows where a dad.It has to be a good dad to a girl that, you know, it's always that the girl is thrust upon him almost never in any of the ones I can think of that he has her biologically. Yeah. Usually that he got her through a marriage or through who he was dating or randomly was abandoned by her family. A great recent example of one of these shows is Spy Family.Yeah. AlthoughSimone: keep in mind, again, in Japanese culture, the parenting culture is also very toxic and typically in their culture, the mother does all of the child rearing, just all of it. So also I think it's, you know, if, if a man wants to actually raise a kid, there is no existing cultural trope for that.Like they have to be foisted upon them in some strange situation because there would be no [00:11:00] normal situation in which they would be involved in child rearing.Malcolm: Yeah. I think you're right. You're right. And I think that, and also it can be like, there's certain things that people don't want to admit to themselves, given their cultural norms, it might be that wanting to be a dad is actually a harder thing to admit to oneself, like wanting to be a good father and failing at it, either because you were stuck at an office all day.Yeah. Or because you were never able to find a partner. Yeah. Failing at that is harder to admit to oneself than failing to, you know, secure one of these bad relationships.Simone: It is also so high stakes. Wanting to become a dad, if you screw up, if you don't do it right, it's, I think it's a much scarier thing even to aspire to, frankly, because of, this is a human life.You can screw up pretty much anything else, a marriage, a career, and in the end. You're not that bad of a person, but if you screw up an entire additional human's life that you created, like anMalcolm: entire additional [00:12:00] human life. I mean,Simone: it's true,Malcolm: though. So I, I like the theory. I don't think it's right everywhere, but I think it's right a number of times.Because I definitely see it like in the enemy that we were talking about the first one that we're watching right now, their relationship isn't really sexualized at all. Like sort of background is implied that they're like dating or something like he invites her to live in his house immediately.Remember? Yeah, well, ISimone: don't, yeah, again, I think what's going on is creators assume that they're doing the bad thing. But what they really want is the good thing because also consider how asexual Japan is. So it's it's both like really sexual and that there's prostitution and there's you know, obviously like all this, this anime with fan service, like it is, it is obviously a very.It's a much more sexually free nation in some ways, but then also it's a very sexless nation. So I think that many people think, they just assume that some feeling they have is a sexual perversion instead of a like wholesome instinct. Again, I think that's what's going onMalcolm: here. [00:13:00] The anime's core thing that it is masquerading in an individual is just somebody appreciates me for the work I'm doing.AndSimone: admires me and I can do goodMalcolm: work. Yeah, I'm doing work to support. This surrogate family and they, and, and, and the work when I put effort into it actually yields reward.Simone: Yeah. Like itMalcolm: actually works. It actually works. It yields rewards. I come home and the family appreciates me and gives me homemade food.And you really don'tSimone: need that much to be happy. And we're not even getting that.Malcolm: Well, it's so sad that that's the fantasy that this is this impossible. Otherworldly fantasy and, and this actually might bring us into why Iseke shows are popular more broadly, and I think that you can see that from this anime, is, and it's, it's sort of spelled out explicitly in this anime, that in our world, in the real world, working, he wants, he's,Simone: Hold on.Go back to in the real world and start again. In the realMalcolm: world. [00:14:00] He can work as much as he wants. He can end up, you know, falling asleep at his desk, doing overpaid work at his office every single night and he may still be randomly fired. He may not get a promotion. He may, you know, there's, there's no assurances.It's, it's like you're grinding like you would in a game, but there is no payoff and everything is systemically unfair. You know, you try to do the good thing. There's opportunities to do the good thing in an office you know, take responsibility for something for some other person not being punished, but you don't do it because realistically, you know, you're just going to end up getting punished for that.The other person really has a no position to help you because you help them. It's just an unreciprocal society and it's a society that doesn't care about you or value. When you get home, you've done all this and you have a family who It's like, why are you home late? You know? And in video games, which is often where people go in easy case video game worlds their worlds with rules, [00:15:00] you do X and Y happens, you do Z and the F happens every single time.Or no die roll modifier attached. Yeah. It is a world that feels. Fair in some way and I think in the U. S. Japan is just further along Civilizational collapse than we are exactly where we're gonna be in 10 years or whatever, right? Yeah Yeah, if we get there people feel their lives there are just much less meaningful and so this sort of return and reward is for work is deeply meaningful to them.But I think that there's other reasons why this, this form of anime has become popular. I think that the biggest is unfortunately a pretty boring one. So occasionally when there are shifts in media or how the USA receives anime the animes that are popular within that exact cycle of anime.[00:16:00] Become quote unquote classics even if they're not particularly better thanSimone: other anime or something you're saying isekai animes Because of their genre are just more likely to be globally popular.Malcolm: I'll explain. This takes a bit of explanation. Historically in the U S if you're talking about really famous animes that became popular because of this, you could say, what were the first animes?that were really translated and distributed in the U. S. You are looking at Dragon Ball Z, and you are looking at Sailor Moon. Sailor Moon, yeah. And those are both seen as like these really important big animes, but it's really just because they were animes that came out when the very first animes were being translated.So, a lot of people were engaging with it. What anime was the big anime the first year where you had crunchy roll and streaming being big in the U. S.? This was, this was in the early days of all this, where people were really getting into streaming. Well, this was an anime called Sword Art Online, which was an Izakay anime.And because of [00:17:00] its popularity, many people engaged with anime. through the lens of this genre and it artificially inflated the popularity of the genre. I hate to say it, but that's what's going on there.Simone: I don't necessarily agree, but goodMalcolm: theory. Good, okay, okay. But there's another thing that I think is, is, is really important with this, which is also that it is a very good genre for getting across So, so it's a very, just a good genre for a few reasons in terms of storytelling.One, it makes it very easy to explain to people who are in our universe, you and me, the rules of a different universe, because they are getting to figure out these rules through another individual. And that makes perfect sense. Okay, you want to explain rules in a way that someone in our universe could understand.Well, Isekai anime would be a perfect way to do that. [00:18:00] Two, they often last over an individual's lifetime, or they're much more likely to last over an individual's lifetime than other types of anime. Often, this comes with the death, birth, growth trope and yet that's actually pretty rare in a lot of other formats of storytelling, yet it can be pretty impactful when you see major life milestones of an individual and you get to know them better.By the way, if anyone's wondering what my favorite Isekai anime is... It is The Familiar Zero. That's a great anime. But anyway, so, What was I gonna say?Simone: I think, I think, I disagree in terms of what has made them so popular. I just think people hate the real world. You know, the same reason why in Japan you see all this izakay.Isekai anime is for the same reason why you see all this escapist zombie apocalypse stuff in the United States.Malcolm: But why not just do generic fantasy then? So in the U. S., when you're creating a fantasy world, you don't often have somebody from [00:19:00] our world randomly put in. Yeah, but it's, it'sSimone: super an American form of escapism is doomerism and prepism.It's like culturally our thing. Whereas in Japan, escapism is, is like through digital means and video games. I just think it's like sort of the outlet that we go to, the de facto outlet.Malcolm: I would argue more Americans play video games and would identify themselves as gamers than preppers. I will say that you are right that an American genre that is much more popular here than in other countries due to our culture is the fantasy of the world falls apart and you are prepared and dealing with it.Yeah but and that is that is not as popular in other actually really interesting.Simone: I also think Japan is more in terms of the games that you see coming out of it. Although I'm way less well versed on this s**t. They are more. Japan produces more fantasy games, whereas like. Stuff like Fallout and, and first person shooter games are more likely to come out from American game designers.So I think you're also, again, you're missing yeah, video [00:20:00] games are big in America, but they're also survivalist, Doomerism War zombie apocalypse videoMalcolm: games. Yeah, I was also thinking to what you were saying when you were talking about zombie apocalypse, where even the fantasy of a zombie apocalypse is often quite different in Japan.Zomb 100, right? That has much more of an IsekeSimone: fantasy. Are we, are you talking about the one where the guy The guy is anMalcolm: office worker and he'sSimone: Okay. Yeah. We're yeah. So yeah. So yeah. In Japan, zombie apocalypse is, Oh my God, I don't have to do my job anymore. What's my bucket list now that we're in a zombie apocalypse?I'm going to go on a road trip. I'm going to go to an onsen. Whereas like in America, it's Oh, we got to survive. We got to like reinforce. We got to move to family. You know what I mean? Like it is, I think it's a cultural thing. I think I'm right here.Malcolm: No, I mean, I, I think you are right as well. A, okay.Okay. Okay. So the next question is. What is going on with all the high school shows? Why is anime so frequently told through the perspective of a high school? Yeah,Simone: yeah, it's [00:21:00] like you would think that, that in Japan... There are no adults, it's just children in high school, always. Yeah, I, I think a lot of that's because life after high school just sucks so hard in Japan and lacks like meaning and, and cultural celebration, which I think also plays a role in, in, in antinatalism, you know, and that like adults aren't really celebrated.All adults really do is work and then die. What's the point? Whereas high school has a lot of weight in Japan and is also very heavily culturally celebrated. I mean, one, there's a huge amount of investment that goes into children's education. So, at every stage in life, if you're a parent, you're, like, obsessed with your kid's education.If you're a kid, you're obsessed with your education because you're forced to be. And then... You know, there's this just like the narrative arc around it is so meaningful, but that the exams you take in, you know, in, in middle school to get into high school are so, so fricking important. And then your life in high school is so [00:22:00] important because the exams you use to get into college, you're going to determine which social class you're in and your entire life for the, you know, everything after that, it's just so weighty.And there are all the narratives around that. So then it's, it's just hard to even create a story around post high school life because there is no focus. There's no cultural obsession around that.Malcolm: Yeah. I'll be honest when I see animes that are about post high school life, they're usually pretty depressing.Yeah. Usually the focus of them is how. Well, yeah.Simone: If, if, or, or they're the isekai anime where. It's just about Oh, I'm not an adult anymore. Like I'm a kid.Malcolm: I'm an adult. That's an interesting point. Iseke animes often take people who are adults. So another thing that I would note about this that I think is really telling is, when I look at Western shows, and we talked about this in our episode of you know, you already live in the perfect world in the Western concept of a fantasy, you are typically working was like a meaningfully the first group of people [00:23:00] to in some way, save the world or prevent the world from collapsing to do something that matters.And we have tropes where we understand what it is like to do something that matters. I wonder if in Japanese society, there isn't even a trope of an adult living a life that matters unless they were born of like a specificSimone: caste. There is. Yeah. If you're a samurai, if you're a ninja. Oh, andMalcolm: they do a lot of shows around that.But if you're not like a samurai or a ninja. You can'tSimone: like, basically, if you live in the modern world. No, I mean, I guess in oh God, what was the one about the, oh, death note, but like everyone's kind of a kid still, even though they're like, well, but isn't, I mean, I mean, yeah, they are like, well, they're, but they're working for police departments, except for theMalcolm: one really smart guy, but he's highSimone: school aged.Yeah yeah, I guess because the otherMalcolm: [00:24:00] characters I think like they even find it at a high school or something. Yeah Hold on. I'm gonna check right now cuz I'm pretty sure you're wrongSimone: about that. I'm really oh Okay, I guess there are also like fantasy anime Like what about the one with like police and ghosts or something that you were watching the otherMalcolm: day?17 years old is how old they are. He's 17Simone: Almost an adult But what about the one about like police that you were watching the other day? I'm trying to think. SoMalcolm: it's, it's people, this was something about exercising curses and curses were like represented as demon things. I was just watching the background.Simone: So I guess again, only fantasy worlds are only historical. This is high school. Samurai.Malcolm: They, they, they are drawn a bit older looking, but yeah, they're still in an academy. Oh wait, soSimone: wait, wait, even in this like adult police force world where they're putting their lives on the line, they're still in high school.Malcolm: Yeah, they're in a school. They're in a school for killing persons or demons basically. And yeah.Simone: You can't have adults be adults unless they're leaving their adult life. Yeah. I just, I just think, you know, life. [00:25:00] Sucks that hard. As an adult in Japan, which I don't know I think Japan is awesome. I love it.I love the food. I love the culture.Malcolm: Oh, well, I'll give some other anime recommendations here. I've loved. So another is a K that I, I, I thought was pretty good was shield hero. I just really identify with the main character in that, which is if you go through hardship, you sort of end up over leveled when you then meet with people again, who are supposed to be gifted or privileged.Simone: I thought you really liked what Demon Slayer as well, right? Was that what it was called? Goblin Slayer? The really dark one. Which one? About the guy who just killsMalcolm: goblins. Oh god, I love Goblin Slayer. Goblin Slayer, culturally, no anime speaks to me as much as that. I'm like, this is my culture represented in anime.I, I have never felt so spoken to.Simone: Personality wise. No anime no anime speaks to you as much as Food Wars. [00:26:00] Which is just personality wise, the most Malcolm anime. Oh,Malcolm: personality wise, that's definitely my favorite. My favorite anime of all time, my favorite show, media piece of all time, might be Food Wars.Though I also really like Demon King Domino. That one, I really feel a lot of kinship with the character. That's the one where the guy... He wants to be the Pope but he is foretold to be the Demon King,Simone: Oh, that one's cute. Well, and you also really that anime where everyone's way too smart and the man's really sad.Oh, IMalcolm: love that one. That one is called Code Geass.Simone: Code Geass. Yes.Malcolm: Gurron Loggin, though, I also really like. So, these are, these are a few.Simone: Code Geass. Shout out to who's that really sad character.Malcolm: Oh, gosh, the one who just killed Rufo or something, it's like heart or something, or he's like a bad guy, but then he becomes obsessed with the main character and he can stop time.Simone: You just feel really bad for him. You just feel reallyMalcolm: bad for the bad guy. Yeah, you just, you feel terrible. Remy. You just feel terrible for everyone in Code Geass, but I, I, I like it generally.Simone: Miserable smart [00:27:00] people, the movie. Oh, and byMalcolm: the way, anyone who's watching Code Geass and thinks this is all you need, it's a ripoff of Dune, by the way.For people who don't know that. You really thinkSimone: it's a ripoff of Dune? It's more fun, because it takes place in a high school. Maybe it's betterMalcolm: in high school. But he's clearlySimone: You know, if Dune were all in high school, I bet it would be better.Malcolm: I mean, the answer at the end of the show, spoilers by the way, is the God Emperor of Dune answer.Which again, is what we talk about in our world as well, that that's, the virus that's controlling society right now is acting like a God Emperor that is uniting all of these factions that never would have united before.Simone: Yeah, well, well, we're curious to know if there are any anime that we should be checking out.Let us know in the comments because we, we basically are too cheap to pay for any other subscription. Yeah, weMalcolm: don't have Netflix, we don't have HBO but we do have Crunchyroll. Yeah. So, please, help us. Please. And, and this, this pains me because I know I'm funding the people who made What was that?Simone: We love them. It's fine.[00:28:00]Malcolm: No, Crunchyroll is really, they made this thing where they put all the money that people were giving them. Sorry, I gotta remember this.High Guardian Spice.Simone: I've never heard of this before.Malcolm: Well, because they tried to hide that they had done this afterwards. Where they told people that they were sending money to anime creators, but they actually hoarded the money and then used it to create a western animated show that was like the most woke show in the world.Everyone working on it was like a 500 pound woman with blue hair. You know, it, it was the worst and it showed how little they regarded their fans. People can say well, why aren't I pirating things? Because we like watching it on the TV at dinner. Okay. Yeah. We haveSimone: one of those evil TVs that only allows you to go in through like legitimate logins.Malcolm: Because it was not that I would pirate things. I'm not saying I would ever do that. I need to be very clear. You would never. You would never. Because I wouldn't consider it. Of course,Simone: of course. Obviously, yeah. But yeah guys, let us know, and yeah, I enjoyed this conversation. Who knew that watching anime [00:29:00] would lead to so much contemplation about culture, but...Yeah. I guess we all knew that. Yeah,Malcolm: well, and I think it can help us be grateful, you know, even watching this anime where the escapism is that he comes home and he has a grateful woman there who has made food for him and cares that he has gone out and worked during the day and that is something that I already have.So I already live in his weird fantasy heaven and now I'm in the post game and I appreciate that you have created that for me, Simone. Genuinely, I do.Simone: By the way, it's Rolo. Shout out to Rolo. I'm so sorry, Rolo. Someone loves you,Malcolm: Rolo. He was evil, though. He kind of deserved it. No, he didn't. You knew that the show was going to let him suffer.Simone: Someone needed to put him out of his misery. But yeah, poor Rolo. Yeah, alright.Malcolm: Oh wait,Simone: you love you didn't even mention that one studio Studio Trigger that you love. [00:30:00]Malcolm: Oh yeah, I love a lot of things. Panty, stocking, and garter belt is a great, one of my favorites that they've done.Simone: And what about horse, pretty derby?I don't think I'd careMalcolm: that much. If I was going to give another anime recommendation, it'd be High School of the Dead. I think it's the best zombie thing ever created.Simone: But I just, I think there needs to be a special shout out for anime that has just ridiculous... Premises and pretty derby, which is an anime aboutMalcolm: a bunch of entertaining.It's like fine. It'sSimone: not, but the fact that, that someone was like, you know, it would be a great idea. Let's make an anime in which girls are horses. There are horse girls and they run in races and they're like based off of real horses. And therefore we can't like, well, that'sMalcolm: why people might not know this, but it's actually pretty rare in Japan.To see so what they they created this anime based on real famous racehorses and it's actually pretty rare to see. It like h made of it and the reason is [00:31:00] is because some of these are like dead like real horses from horse racing and many of them are owned by the yakuza who have an emotional attachment to the horses that the characters in this show are based on and so you would not risk CR creating anything.You, you do not sell that.Simone: Yeah, you can't, you can't rule 63 the yakuzas favorite horse. And so,Malcolm: but I was gonna have one recommendation for what I think might be the best pizza media ever created. It is food wars. We talked about it before. I suggest people start on season two. It's, it gets into the good stuff better,Simone: like immediately.Yeah. Just to let people know. The premise of food wars, of course it takes place in a high school. But it is a high school that is very prestigious and is a food academy. And the primary like plot point of the academy is food challenges. So just think Iron Chef. But with students and with fan service.It's sortMalcolm: of like the Naruto arc where it's a school and they're fighting to show how good they are. Except the whole thing is done with creative foodSimone: battles. Yeah, like My [00:32:00] Hero Academia. Yeah. But the food battles are great because there are two things that are great about them. One is people are making really genuinely gourmet food.And you're learning a lot about really obscure culinary practices. So, you're actually getting really good at cooking. And very informed as a gourmand as you watch the show. But then second. The reactions that characters have. To eating very good dishes involves a lot of fan service. And for those not familiar with anime, fan service is where people jigglypuff,Malcolm: the humor, it tugs at you.Like I, I laugh and cry and almost tear up atSimone: the episodes. It, no, it definitely, like it, it, it gets so much betterMalcolm: than ratatouille. It's like ratatouille of ratatouille is good. Oh, actually another one that I had forgotten. Beastars is fantastic. Beastars is like Zootopia, but if there were actual systemic differences between the analogs for people of differentSimone: ethnic groups.Yeah, and if you wanted to come away from every episode feeling like life is pointless and you want to die. You gotMalcolm: sad. It's sad. [00:33:00]Simone: Yeah, I need food for us. We have to move on, Simone. I love you, Malcolm. I love you!Malcolm: Have a great time! You too! Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm and Simone have an in-depth discussion about the controversial internet personality Andrew Tate. They analyze his worldview, intelligence, backstory, masculinity, cultural influences, differences from their own perspectives, and more. The hosts find Tate to be smart and logically consistent overall, while disagreeing on certain issues like treatment of women. They explore how he appeals to young men lacking direction, the roots of his philosophies, and debate toxicity vs pragmatism. Ultimately they conclude that different cultural groups can productively co-exist while optimizing differently.Simone: [00:00:00] I think he doesn't maintain frame. He is the frame and I do feel like he is a method actor who's had a psychotic break and is now. In the fantasy.He is. And like, you can see it. You can see it when he talks. He is 100 percent genuine and I think he wakes up in the morning and he growls to himselfWould you like to know more?Simone: IMalcolm: want to start this episode. So Andrew Tate did a thing on how all of the world problems could be solved if every man had a sword in his house. And so he has this Honestly, it's a smaller sword than mine that he keeps in his house for one of the examples is if if your woman goes out and she learns about something from the news, like, some disease is supposed to be killing people and she's all panicked.You just point your sword at her and say, don't be scared woman, and then we won't have problems anymore. And so we're beginning our Andrew Tate episode by showing this sword that's been in the, the back. Oh, I got to swing it around like an ultra nerd. Yeah. [00:01:00] Sorry. I can'tSimone: actually. You're going to, you're going to damage some seriousMalcolm: lights.Inside and I am a dad. Which means that I may have swords in my house, but I'm a nerd because I do it. I'm not mad. In fact, I would argue every man who has swords in their house is just a nerd. Like I don't, I don't know how he thinks that makes him look tough. I, I think it The last question I got on this, somebody saw it and they go, Oh, you must be really into D& D.And I'm like, well, you know. Ha ha ha ha ha. But I don't think that's my takeaway from him.I guarantee you don't walk around your house with a sword because you're not a commander. I'm a commander. You know, like when you command the troops into battle.I guarantee you. I do. Sorry. I looked up the video. The sword video and i found this and i just love he's like you don't walk around your house with a sword. i'm like yeah yeah, yeah. actually i do but um i don't i don't go around doing it feeling like i'm a commander i understand that walking around your house with a sword [00:02:00] and as a grown man is a sign of being a nerd and i accept that about myselfMalcolm: Which actually brings me to a point. Which is interesting and important. That's why we need people like Andrew Tate. So I often go through the comments when I do guest appearances on other podcasts and stuff like that.And there is one type of comment that we just get, like, really, really regularly in these videos. Especially me when I appear, which is, look, I love the stuff he's saying, but he just looks like such a poindexter, you know, or I can't stand his voice, like he sounds too nerdy, or you know, like, I, I, like, I like it.Like he's, he's saying important facts that we need to know, but he is like in some way repellent because of how nerdy I appear. And this is actually really interesting because the two places where I've gotten these comments the most, one was when I did an appearance on the Jolly Heretic where, [00:03:00] and then the other was when I did an appearance with Ruby.He's the guy who does What If Alt Hiss, but he has a separate podcast. Great podcast. And, you know, we should have them on sometime. But both of these guys are like objectively significantly nerdier looking than I am. And yes,Simone: but you look young and Unabashedly enthusiastic, which is to say, like, you gesticulate, you bring a lot of, like, character and, like, goofiness into your, into yourMalcolm: mannerisms.I, I think another thing it could be is I am nerdy, but I am also hot. Like, I, I know I'm hot. And it could be that I represent a nerd who is sexually threatening.Simone: Well, but here's the other thing. I mean. Who is the other, so most people who are hot and funny and passionate and like physically like they gesticulate a lot and make a lot of like Uh, funny facial expressions.It's, it's the gays. The [00:04:00] gays. So that's also why I think you get a lot of accusations for being gay. Is because you're like, you're attractive. But also you're flamboyant. And like, like expressive. And humorous. AndMalcolm: goofy. And that is not an accusation that I get as to why they can't listen to me. And this is really interesting.Yeah, it's the nerd thing.Simone: It's the nerd thing.Malcolm: of men who genuinely have trouble consuming information from men that they don't see as one within their tribe into physically superior to them. I think this is why you look, you look at like some of the top like intellectual male influencers right now, and you're looking at people like Chris Williamson.You're looking at people like Joe Rogan. You're looking at people like Andrew Tate. Touche. They, they, they genuinely struggle with a man who is in their eyes, physically weaker to them, being in a dominant position to them. And this is why we need people like Andrew [00:05:00] Tate, because I can communicate this message as much as I want.But if I communicate it And it's not getting through to people because of whatever this filter is. Well, then I need it to, you know, I need some Chris Williamson's or some Andrew Tate's to watch our podcast and regurgitate what I say in other environments. Well, no, it's just true. And you look at the pictures that the no faces are showing within the conservative movement.You know, you, you look at the pictures that are chosen by people likeSimone: By anonymous posters, you're saying people who do notMalcolm: show their faces. . Bronze age pervert. Yeah, Bronze Age pervert, you know? It's like a masculine manly man, right? You know? He's, he's, he's, it's so guys can...And so we can get through this, but I'd also point out that I'm not the only one who, who has this, one of my favorite things is that Simone was asked after me to appear on the trans maxing podcast and they go, you know, I really think it would help with viewership if you could present feminine and I like, like present as a woman [00:06:00] and I love Simone's you're like, I thought I was always presenting as a woman, like that's like the most underhanded thing like I've ever heard.And I love it because I love how you know, sort of masculine you've become through this, this relationship. And see, I've got my sword here. So everyone knows I can defend myself. I don't think swords equal defense but no, so. I really want to get to Andrew Tate because I think that, one, he does help distribute important parts of a message that people need to hear, and two, I think that it is very easy to underestimate his intelligence.If you would look at just the clips that people use to attack him, You can look at him and think this guy is a bit of a dullard, right? But if you look at his holistic content, what you realize is he is baiting them intentionally with those clips. He is actually a fairly high processing human being in terms of like.I think [00:07:00]Simone: he's a member of Mensa. I mean, he's a, he's a certifiedMalcolm: like, yeah, I was going to say, like, if I just look at his content, I can tell that he's much like, just like biologically smarter than somebody like Eliezer Yukowsky. Like he is actually an intellectual powerhouse. And keep in mind, if you look at our model of intelligence, have you succeeded in multiple different domains that weren't that tied to each other?I would say, yes, he succeeded as an influencer and he succeeded as a business person and he succeeded as a kickboxer. And he comes from a smart family, like, should it be surprising? Right? Like, but I, I, first I want people to not discount him, but then we need to talk about like where we're different from him, because this also gets interesting.You know, if we're doing a video on him, we're not going to do a video sucking his dick. Right? Like, but also I want to point out here because this is something a lot of people haven't contextualized about the Andrew Tate story. Andrew Tate made his initial money the same way Ayla made her initial money, which is pretending to suck guy's dicks online.So if you look in his own words, the way [00:08:00] Andrew Tate, so we had this moment where he had lost all this money. I think he was in debt to some people and he's like, Oh s**t, what am I going to do? And so he got his girlfriend's cause he's like, that's my asset. Right. And I'm going to use them to go online.And chat up guys, right? And then what he realized is the most efficient way to do this was for him to have the girls act as the face of the conversation and pretend to be typing. But he would be the one actually chatting with the guys because he understood the male brain better from us.No, I actually think way to hustle, man, like hustlers university. Now this is a hustle,Just, give me a chance.Alright, I'll trust you. But only if you... Will perform oral sex on me. What? Right here, right now.[00:09:00] You can't be serious. Oh, I am serious.Okay, let's do it. Here we go. And, go.You are dedicated.Malcolm: But it means that Andrew Tate got his business start by pretending to suck off guys online and calling them daddy and, you know, you know, stuff that I don't think is congruent with his current image. But if anything, it makes me respect him more because it shows that that when it comes to the hustle, there is nothing.That he won't sacrifice to getSimone: it done. We're doing this without you! Now hold on, team. Gary has already proven to me that he is 100 percent committed to the team. He proved it last night by sucking my cock.[00:10:00]Alright. Come on, team, we gotta find that stage!Simone: I think a big part of his narrative is that he is better than most people. That most men indeed are very pathetic. That they are slaves in this modern world. That they are worse than him. They're uglier than him. They're weaker than him. They're shorter than him.They're poorer than him. They're dumber than him. And he has very little respect for them. He, you know, he says he's never, you know, he doesn't use supplements. He doesn't eat healthy food. He doesn't, you know, he doesn't have aspirin in his house. Because we did. Right, right. So like, but, but he sells supplements because I think he, you know, to a great extent and, and his, I think many of his consumers kind of like this, that like, he doesn't respect them because they're so pathetic and they want to be awful like him, but they know they have to like earnMalcolm: it.No, no, no. He's very open to people that you can become like me. No, no, no. Yes, you can.Simone: But, but, but until you, until you were trying and until you acknowledge that he is better and smarter and everything else he will happily exploit you and happily, Think that you're pathetic and, and that's, he's not shy about that.So I don't know if [00:11:00] that's incongruous. I don't, I don't think that himMalcolm: exploiting it may not, it may not be my weakness. See, but the point I'm making is I wanna be clear that we're going to be positive on him. But if, if, if you look at this video, you know, we are also not filtering because we're talking about Andrew Tate, we are trying to give a whole honest perspective on who he is.And, and there's some stuff that is very in ous with the image that he does. So one of the things I can say and I've mentioned this on previous episodes and I'm going to put on the screen here a picture, which will show because my background is in biology, like human biology. It's something that I'd be really attuned to.You can tell how much testosterone someone was exposed to in their developmental period in the developmental period of their bone structure, etc. By looking at their facial structure. It's very, very obvious. He is almost the human. Cliche of someone who was exposed to very, very little testosterone and that's fine.That's not a problem.But wait,Simone: You need to explain that it appears that he was exposed, that [00:12:00] his testosterone levels were not extremely high. throughout his youth because he has, he doesn't show that the physiological signs that are common with that, which you see on the hairline and jawline. I'm going to, I hearMalcolm: what you're saying.I'm going to post pictures so guys can see. But peopleSimone: don't necessarily know that that's the sign of testosterone. It willMalcolm: be very obvious if you look at the pictures. And I saw some people when I pointed this out in the past. There's like, there's other things that could cause this facial structure there.Like, it could be that he had very poor nutrition growing up and he grew up incredibly poor, but Andrew Tate did not grow up in destitute poverty. So no, it wasn't a nutritional issue.Simone: Just, I, so I was recently listening to a podcast he did like earlier this summer with his brother where the YouTuber more plates, more dates actually did a detailed analysis of like.How he might be. Using steroids or testosterone or you know, how he's not because he had posted his blood work online to prove that he [00:13:00] didn't because he finds it very offensive that the world would believe that he uses any form of supplementation to make himself more masculine. What his initial blood work did reveal was that his overall testosterone levels were very normal.which somewhat fits with what you're saying, but his free testosterone levels were very high, which, which he argued is a product of his lifestyle, which I totally agree is a product of his lifestyle because of the way he lives. He lives with, you know, two other men in a very competitive environment, you know, his brother and his cousin.There's all these women around him. He's not exclusively this female partner testosterone. So yeah, high free testosterone, but again, what his blood work showed was that he does not show higher overall total levels of testosterone, meaning that. Like you say, he's not someone who throughout his life was just like born with insane levels of testosterone.Malcolm: But I think that this is important to understand his story. So first I want to expand on what someone was saying there because it might not be immediately obvious to the audience, but it's obvious that someone was like biological training. So, if you are [00:14:00] sleeping with a lot of women it actually increases your level of testosterone.If you feel like you are like a boss guy, like, like you're in charge of everyone, like if you're a boss versus unemployed, like unemployed people have lower testosterone than non unemployed people. If you are in an environment with competitive males, this also increases your testosterone. Everything he's doing right now in his life would increase his exogenous level, like, like it would increase his endogenous level of testosterone without him needing to take supplements. The important thing to note, because this is part of his narrative and it actually makes him more impressive that this is the case, is that he naturally does not have high levels of testosterone.And when he was growing up, when his brain was forming, when he was beginning to understand the world, he did not have high testosterone levels. And I think that this is really fascinating because if you contrast me with him, like you look at my bone structure and, it's very important to note that yes, so Andrew Tate did grow up poor, but he grew up in England, right? He grew up in an environment where he was not that poor and in [00:15:00] England, so no, it was not a lack of nutrients that led to his bone structure. He, you can tell he grew up as a guy with naturally low testosterone who threw his hard work and effort became a guy with high testosterone.But I think in some of this stuff, like he has this belief that he's just so innately great that he sells and that's part of the simplistic message that people can underestimate the true arc of what he went through, which is also very interesting. If you contrast, it was my arc. If you look at my bone structure, I'm almost the epitome of.As high testosterone as a male can be like, I hide it with these glasses, but it's like, look at my forehead and profile. I look like a freaking crow magnet. If you look at my bone structure, my high cheekbones, all of that. I look like my very defined jaw. I look like the epitome. of somebody who grew up with very high testosterone, but I admit openly on this podcast regularly, I have very low testosterone.Now I haven't gotten it tested, but [00:16:00] I'm sure I do because I'm in a long term monogamous relationship and I have lots of kids who I play a large role in nurturing. And all of those things lead to much lower testosterone rates. And I can feel it. I can feel it in terms of my libido. And I like this. I assume you and Tate areSimone: like the inverse, which is really interesting.Although you and Tate are so similar in many ways too. Like you're both extremely smart. You both Are very extra like you're both extremely genuine in yourselves and you're confident in yourselves and, and you, and you just love, you love being you both of you love being youMalcolm: well, he's smarter. So, so let's talk about how he approached religion because I think this is very interesting and it gives you an understanding of how he thinks.So you can look at how we approached religion. Well, like, we're like, okay, well, How do we create a religion that can intergenerationally survive and thrive in a technological environment? If you look at the videos explaining why he converted to islam vis a vis growing up christian He said islam does a better job of enforcing their value system [00:17:00] on populations that they control The Christians and Christian countries aren't even Christian anymore that you can live in a Christian country and people can mock God and people won't follow the value system.But intergenerationally, Islam is very good at enforcing its value system. And that actually almost fits within the framework that we put out in the pragmatist guide to life as a reasonable reason to convert to a religion. Now, why wouldn't we convert to Islam? Because culturally we are so different from it, but and this is really important with Andrew Tate the big areas where we're different from Andrew Tate mostly have to do with cultural differences cultural differences around our relation to women Cultural differences around our relation to ourselves our relation to other people in our environment And so this is something like a lot of people they'd look and they'd be like, oh you must hate the way Andrew Tate talks about women and I'm like, no, I don't.Not at all. In fact, I would say within many cultural [00:18:00] groups and within many Muslim cultural groups, and I think it's another reason why, I mean, he doesn't mention this, but why he converted is the way that he relates to women and other people in his life is very much the way some Muslim cultural groups do.And that is nothing to denigrate. That is just what works for their culture. However, and people can be like, well, then why wouldn't you want that? Like, why wouldn't you want your wife serving you hand and foot? Why wouldn't you choose a culture like that? One, I find that incredibly unattractive. Just naturally it might be due to my upbringing.It might be due to who I am, but like the idea that my wife. Treated me that way or treated other men that way in the past. I would find repulsive. In fact, I would find a woman who slept with a guy like that. When we talk about body count, like sleeping was one guy who treats a woman that way it's worth like 50 in a body count to me, it is, it makes a woman like immediately disgusting because it shows.That she has a genetic predilection to be willing to do that. And [00:19:00] that is something that I would find disgusting in my daughters. And I think that this is really important when people fantasize about the way they want their wives to treat them in the role they want to have vis a vis their wives. They're also thinking from a cultural perspective, what do I want my daughters to want?in a man. Well, they should be thinking that. From my cultural perspective, I would be disgusted if one of my daughters was in a relationship where the man treated her the way Andrew Tate claims to treat the women who he's with. That said, Andrew Tate wouldn't feel that way. And that's fine. These are different cultural optimizations and different cultural perspectives.And we can live in a conservative ecosystem where both of these value systems can exist side by side and understand that we are fighting, you know, what he calls the matrix, what we call the virus against the same thing. Okay. Do youSimone: think that he would feel differently about women if he had a daughter?[00:20:00]Malcolm: I know I don't. I think he would want his daughter to have a strong man who treated her sternly, and he would teach her how to accept orders from that type of strong man. I think, absolutely I do. I think that you are underestimating how much he believes what he said. You know, you said something really interesting about Andrew Tate, which I think is sort of true.Because I don't know if he was always this way. You described him. During one of our morning walks at the method actor who sort of got lost in the role and then became like crazy , and believed he was the character that he was playing. Can you speak a little bit to that?Simone: Well, you can see it.I mean, he, I think it was in the context of us talking about like, if he ever gets tired of the way he lives or it's not sustainable for him, but I, I just don't like, I think he doesn't maintain frame. He is the frame and I do feel like he is a method actor who's had a psychotic break and is now. In the fantasy.He is. And like, you can see it. You can see it when he talks. He is 100 percent genuine and I think he wakes up in the morning and he growls to himself and does his, you know, 90 minute workout and does his whole thing and [00:21:00] like, none of it, none of it is disingenuous. It is 100 percent him. That is like, you know, he ends up in some kind of refugee camp.He ends up in jail. He's going to be the same. And that's just who he is.Malcolm: No, I think you're right. He is somebody who is a hundred percent who he is. He's the real deal. Yeah. But there's, there's some things that I want to talk about with him, which I think it's pretty interesting. One was, so I've listened to a lot of his videos and a common thing across some of them is the belief in a conspiracy that has active players that is targeting him or targeting men.So, an example of this can be buildings are ugly now because they don't want you to have an attraction to the space that you live in, and because of that, you're easier to not defend where you live, and not have pride in where you live, or defend your cultural traditions. Or, another one would be, The reason why the world is so out to get him is like he's a boss and he wouldn't want people telling his employees, like he wouldn't want [00:22:00] one of his employees telling the other ones to revolt against their boss.So like, of course the boss of the world, the people who secretly run the world are against him. And both of these believe in these sort of like active agents. You are controlling the society where if you look at us and again, I'm focusing on where we're different in our philosophies because that's what's interesting to talk about.It's not interesting to talk about all the things I like about his philosophy. I mean, obviously he says a lot of things that I think break through the filter. And I think everyone who breaks through the filter sees many of the same things. But you would say, like, if you're like, why are buildings ugly now?Simone, I think, You would say it's due to supply lines. It's due to construction techniques.Simone: Yeah. Yeah. It's due to what sells well, what is easy to construct. That's, that's it. Yeah.Malcolm: It's due to economic concerns. I mean, the reason religious buildings were beautiful in the past is because they were constructed differently from everything else inSimone: their area.They were often funded by the most wealthy people in the city who knew that the building represented them and they had a reputation to maintain. That is not how it's done now,Malcolm: but they also weren't torn down, which is important to [00:23:00] know, whereas all of the same townhouses were torn down, you know, so, so we can look at some of the same things that he does.And this is 1 thing I would have a criticism with him. Is this level of. Projecting in the belief of like the single people who control everything has a certain level of self victimization to it. Like, you could say he is a warrior fighting against the world, or you could say he is the victim of everybody piling on top of him.And I think that he presents a very interesting thing, which is even if you persistently self victimize yourself, as I believe he does, portraying himself as the victim in this global conflict where he's the one voice standing up and telling the truth and everyone's attacking him, he doesn't perceive this victimization as disempowering.Instead, he perceives it as empowering.Simone: I also think that he furthermore is economically incentivized to, to tow the, , they, , [00:24:00] powerful people doing bad things line because, , one of his big selling propositions for the war room, which is his most like high, probably high margin.Like his sort of men's club is that, , you are a slave and until you join our special men's club that teaches you how to make money and it gives you a support network you will continue to have these forces arrayed against you and, , it's just harder to sell an almost 8, 000 product.When you don't have, , a very strong narrative and also like the marketing around it, , makes it sound like it's a resistance movement underground, etc. So, like, again, this is an economic thing. This is not him viewing himself as a victim. Again, Tate is the real deal. .He sees himself as a chosen one of God. Shown to be a light in a dark worldMalcolm: I guess if I was going to take any nuance in what I'm saying, I would say that while he sees himself as a victim, he doesn't contextualize victimhood the way other people do.Yeah. He contextualize it as an opportunity [00:25:00] to fight for what's right. Yeah. Yeah. And in so doing, he negates the stereotypes that are negative about being a victim.Simone: Yeah, he's a, he's a victim in so far as he's a warrior.Malcolm: Another thing that I would say is, is, is really interesting is the number of men from cultural groups, which I think are incompatible with the lifestyle that Tate is recommending that move into this lifestyle, right? That then see it as aspirational. And when you point out to them, well, if you treat your wife's this way, then you are setting your daughters up to be treated this way.Are you okay with that? You know, your sons are going to treat their wives this way, their daughters will learn that. And they're like, no, whoa, gross. I don't want , my daughters to be treated this way. And he's appealing to them specifically because they don't see any iteration of masculinity to which they can aspire within the cultural groups that they have access to.And it's because [00:26:00] they want an iteration of masculinity that solves their immediate issues. So what Tate does is he shows somebody who is both older and somebody who sleeps around with a lot of women. Whereas within most cultural groups, that is not what they want when they get older. When they get older, well then they go out and they...Attempt to like solve major problems in the world in a very, I call it like a much more wholesome format. You know, we had played on a recent video, a Steve Irwin quip with, with the way his wife is looking at him. When he's talking about how much he wants to save the world and I'll put it here cause apparently it didn't get us demonetized. 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 gonna 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: But I think it shows this is the way that I want to attract a wife. This [00:27:00] is the way that I want to attract a partner because I see us as partners. In fighting the system like equal partners, and I want her to like me for what I aspire to fix in the world and be a part of that. You know, if you look at my cultural ancestors, you know, we've got a kid called Thorson, right?Like the word stone, right? Like, that's my wife's background, right? Like, like Viking ancestry and, and, and actually Viking ancestry because she has a, Nordic last name, but it's from England, not the pussies who stayed at home. But well, I'm sorry I think one of the reasons why Nordic cultures are so pussified is they had a constant genetic selection where every one of them With an explorational spirit left the country and only left the ones who didn't want to, but what we need to remember is what family structures were like in this cultural tradition, which is not a man took care of a wife who stayed at home and did nothing.The wife protected the farm. She knew how to use weapons. She grew [00:28:00] the food. She did the manual labor, and the husband's role was to go out and move the family up in status, you know, gain. Additional wealth and jewels and stuff like that and bring it back and move up within the system And when we talk about it, we've talked about this before, the wife is the shield and the husband is the sword. And they work in perfect unison to defeat the forces against them. I, in the previous ones, I said, like, shadow knight and shield knight.This model for building a family assumes that the wife is going to be the source of consistent income. And the husband is a source of potentially moving the family up and stuff like that. It's a very different way to relate to a woman, but the way that you attract women in this is not by putting them down because you're looking for a woman who is a competent warrior and producer, because.You believe that strong women make strong sons, whereas if you look at the way that he wants to create strong sons, it's very interesting, right? It's much closer to the Jordan Peterson model, which is, I am going to be very strict [00:29:00] on these boys. I am going to be very. Regimented in how they're raised and this can create warriors, but it doesn't create kings.If you create a son to efficiently obey the orders of somebody who is bigger than them or has more power than them. Well, then you're creating a kid who's going to obey, hopefully, your cultural group, which is why it's pretty smart that given that these are his inclinations, that he would move into the Islamic cultural group because if he raised a kid this way within the Christian cultural group, then they're just going to end up being a simp to mainstream society. I think that people who are unfamiliar with this style of parenting can misunderstand what we're saying in it. We are attempting to stoke the fire of our children's wills as much as possible. Some cultural groups attempt to stamp out. Their children's wills and get them to fit. A very narrow conformed set of rules. And then other cultural groups see it as their goal to increase the [00:30:00] size of their child's willsFor example, if I believe that one thing is just, and my child believes another thing is just, or they don't understand why I have given them some rule and they have logic behind why they don't understand why I have given them that rule. It is not success for me. Two. Break their will and force them to follow a rule that they don't understand. That makes no sense to them. That is me having failed. As a parent. Because that's not who i want them to be as an adult i don't want people who are bigger than them or stronger than them or have more power than them to be able toforce them to follow rules that they feel are unjust because one of the things I've noticed in the world, you know, when we interact with young people is the core thing that seems to relate to their ability to actionably affect the future. Is the size of this internal flame inside them, which I can almost immediately sense when I meet someone. How big. And bright. Is your [00:31:00] will.Malcolm: Yeah. So, ISimone: mean, yeah. So a couple, a couple thoughts here. Like when you look at American history and you look at groups that sort of took these two different approaches, you had the Cavaliers in the South. Who did raise people the Andrew Tate style, like women were very much disempowered. Men were very much sort of like, yeah, like do your thing, be super man, manly.And what, what has happened, you know, from the South, how many, you know, like it's, it's not been the best outcome. We're more Scots Irish. I don't know if we've, you know, the Scots Irish have done much better. I mean, I think they're, like you say, arguments to be made for both sides.Malcolm: They've done very well in terms of wealth. In terms of innovation power. But they've done very poorly in terms of fertilitySimone: rates. Yeah. And then another thing, I think that the differentiation that you're pointing out between the Andrew state, the Andrew Tate model of masculinity and the typical adult male model of masculinity is the Andrew Tate model of masculinity to me.And, you know, obviously, yeah, I guess it works in an Islamic format, but I would say it is the epitome of toxic masculinity because it is all about resource acquisition. It is all about using [00:32:00] and exploiting and making money and spending money. But I don't see anything being built. I don't see, and he talks about, you know, beautiful buildings and all these amazing things, but I don't see his people, you know, the people he trains, or him talking about like, let's get us off planet, let's build new medical interventions, let's like, you know, move society forward.I don't hear that. Because it's all a status hierarchy. Yeah, it's all about status, it's all about women, so I see, you know, like, and that is a big part of masculinity, right? Like that, you know, that is a big thing, but it is also for, you know, Young men who have yet to establish themselves. And I feel like true masculinity is, is not about that, that flailing signaling, which is really something that should be done as like.A, a, a signaler to good partners that, that you are a good investment. Like that's, that, that is for the earlier point in your life. I think for, for adult men, real masculinity is settling down is having a family is raising them in a strong culture and setting them up for success, but also building like building the [00:33:00] next, the next step.I mean, I think Elon Musk exemplifies real masculinity, which is literally build the thing. Literally.Malcolm: So I think that you're being dis, I think that you're being un charitable unfair to say real masculinity. Okay. This is what our cultural group values. Our cultural group values people who do s**t.And that's why people from our cultural group do s**t. Do s**t. Yeah. He values people who appear high status. Who acquire, acquire s**t. How Signal other men. Yeah. He views his life value from the aesthetic that he portrays onto reality. The important thing is he is doing that well. He's doing thatSimone: as well as a human can do.Yeah, he uses diamond watches and his Savile Row suits and his Bugatti in his private plane for sure. Yeah.Malcolm: What's important is that when you're choosing who you take advice from, and when you're choosing who you model, you need to look at the outcomes of choosing these two different value systems, okay?What happens to cultural groups who choose his value system? What happens if you choose his value system and how you find a wife? Hmm. [00:34:00] It's not, it will lead to your kids turning out the way the people who have historically chosen that value system have turned out. What happens if you choose our value system?It will lead to, now we are trying to, because as we've pointed out very clearly, our value system leads to people who end up changing the world, but who are low fertility, who end up having a high economic success. Who end up having high political power, but who are low fertility. So we're trying to tweak it.We're trying to improve it. He could do the same thing. He could say, well, I'm from a group that doesn't have a fertility problem, but that has an economic power activation, making the world a better place problem. The, problem is. Is that he's done a very bad job at tweaking it or he hasn't actively tweaked it in any way that I can see He's just repackaging it a bit for a modern audience, but I should note People when they look at andrew tate They look at him and they're like, Oh my God, he's so [00:35:00] misogynistic.This is because, and keep in mind, Andrew Tate converted into this cultural group. You know, he wasn't born into this cultural group, but it is, it is because you have blinded yourself to the truth of the cultural group he's from. And if anything, he's an incredibly sanitized iteration of that cultural group.Treats women in his life. dramatically better than the average person of this cultural group dramatically better. He sees them as dramatically more human. And he does say, you know, he wants women in his life to feel cherished. Always. He wants them to feel like Queens always. He just doesn't want them to have agency because women to him, and he is right about this from his cultural perspective are a status symbol. And I should note here.The type of women who are attracted to a man who acts like Andrew Tate, like that's their thing. That's what they want from a cultural group. I don't know the nice way to say this. But they would often be very.Disagreeable. As partners to men who did not [00:36:00] treat them the way that Andrew Tate teach them the type of women who are attracted to men like that. Often need to be treated like that. To be tolerable to be around for men of any cultural group. He's not taking women off the table who, if they had met a guy like me, he could have been people like my wife. and I think that that's important to remember. When he says, women need to be treated this way to be tolerable. He is speaking from personal experience because the type of women who settled for a man like him need to be treated that way to be tolerableMalcolm: And urbanized.far earlier than our cultural groups, our cultural groups were raiding barbarians for much longer. And so women had to work much more. And when our cultural groups, when the world industrialized, we moved, you know, your family moved to Chicago to the edge of the world. My family moved, you know, to, To the Carolinas and then further to Texas, then your family moved further to [00:37:00] Carol, California.And even your dad, you know, when he came of age, he went to Japan, right? And my dad, when he came of age, he went to start a company in South America. And then what did we do when we started our first company? It was in Peru. Like we have this. It's predilection to always be on what we would consider as close as we can get to the edge of civilization, because it is not a culture that is optimized for stability, or social stability.So in many ways, and I think this is why preparism is so big in America, because so many people in America are descended from cultural groups that just are really not optimized for social stability. They know it, they're excited, and in a world where systems begin to collapse, Americans are going to do like, Stupidly.Well, because they're just a lot of them are from cultural groups that are optimized around that cultural groups where women are just totally disempowered and treat it as status symbols is a sane strategy. If you have a totally safe home base where women actually can stay at home and not worrying about the need to defendSimone: themselves.I don't know. I just I think it [00:38:00] becomes in that scenario in those societies. It just becomes a much more hostile and. Vicious society where women immediately become real currency, if you know what I mean.Malcolm: Well, I think that's a result of the stability of those regions intergenerationally. Yeah. The areas where those cultural groups have come from have been some of the longest civilizationally stable areas in the world since Babylon.You know, like, yeah, I mean, anyway, yeah, I hear what you're saying. And I, I guess what I'm just saying is, is, is it's not, he's not acting wrong. And neither of us has a culture that actually historically completely works and we should both be attempting to tweak it in ways that can ensure that our descendants thrive.But I don't think that a necessary one of those tweaks is that he treats women better. I would never [00:39:00] treat women that way. And I, and I, the thing I really worry about. It is men, young men, who see the way he's acting and is like, Oh yeah, I was in my young social circle, I want to be treated this way. Yeah, but do you want to be an 80 year old bragging about how many women you're sleeping with?Like, do you understand how gross that is? Like, he's on the edge of it getting pretty gross. And it's important that you understand... What's actually being sold here and what that means for your descendants if you optimize around that strategySimone: for what it's worth He seems to be moving away in his content from talking about women,Malcolm: which is good.Yeah, it's still intrinsic I mean, I'd love it if he could because women I won't say there it's not like women are the problem but but securing women And building relationships that are stable and have stable gender dynamics in a world where all of this is falling apart is an important thing to note and to work around.As is the way you contextualize yourself. I really love his radical [00:40:00] personal responsibility stance. Which is something that we really promote. And I'd actually say that we probably agree with 90 percent of what he says, but I think that 90 percent of what he says, isn't what you think if you're only listening to theSimone: The crazy stuff that the news covers.Malcolm: And I actually think that he is internally logically consistent, you know, as I said it was like Yeah. Yeah. The antinatalists who are like the David Benatar variety, I'm like, look, you guys are just not logically consistent. This is not impressive to me. But of the efilism variety, I'm like, look, I think you guys are terrible.These are the ones who want to kill all humans. We have a video about that. I can like do it at the end of this one. But you're at least logically consistent. Yeah. And, and that's what I say about him. I think he's both smart and logically consistent, but not what I would want for my daughters toSimone: marry.Not our style, but they style. And yeah, I mean, one of our core cultural tenants is that we very much celebrate the fact that there are lots of people taking approaches that we wouldn't take because we would like for a maximum number of different [00:41:00] approaches to be taken.Malcolm: Absolutely.Simone: Yeah. So Tate, you do you, doing great.Yeah, you'reMalcolm: doing it. You're doing a good job and I think you are on the whole, maybe making the world a better place. We'll see how it plays out.Simone: Maybe not. Keep it up, buddy. We'll see. But yeah, power to the people.Malcolm: But I can tell you, I suspect our cultural group to dramatically out compete his, given at least what I see right now, but I guess I wouldn't be in it if I didn't.Simone: Yeah, right. So time will tell.Malcolm: But you, everyone should have a sword. It's very important. It'll solve all of your problems.Simone: You know, I think everyone should have sword sponsorshipsMalcolm: eventually. AsSimone: shown in that scene in Indiana Jones, do not bring a blade. To a gunfight. All right.I guarantee you don't walk around your house with a sword because you're not a commander. I'm a commander. You know, like when you command the troops into battle. That's me.[00:42:00]Malcolm: And that's one of the problems with a lot of these cultures that, that, that see masculinity as like buffness and everything like that. And we're like, okay which cultural group is stereotypically the least buff of all cultural groups in the world, least athletically inclined.And the stereotypes would say, Oh, that's the Jewish cultural group, but they're the cultural group that's cleaning up in our world today. You know, fertility rate economically. Which I think shows how pointless it is to overemphasize on this meaningless signaling of masculinity over competence and competitiveness.Well, especiallySimone: in an age of technology. Yeah. Technology is the new masculinity, we sayMalcolm: I had to choose a religion for myself other than the one I'm trying to create, it would not be Islam. It would be Judaism. But anyway.Simone: Well, the anti Semites are going to love that one. Yeah,Malcolm: yeah, yeah, yeah. We can't we can't talk about the ongoing conflict [00:43:00] because Simone said my tweets would get us in trouble.Yep. So... Mouth shut, Malcolm. We won't. I'll keep my mouthSimone: shut. But please don't.Malcolm: I'm not saying anything. I'm not saying a single word, am I, Simone? No. I'm keeping my mouth...Simone: Yep, we're going to... Heat up the hibachi, make some fried rice tonight. Yeah. Want to do a cook off? Oh yeah.Malcolm: She got me a hibachi grill for my birthday and it is amazing.Cultural appropriation right there. Mrs. BornSimone: in Japan. Highly insensitive, but that's what we do. Wait, I was born in Japan. No, that doesn't give me the right. Well, you may also like our hibachi grills even.Malcolm: So ethnicity isn't a real thing. Oh, right. You were born in Japan. You are Japanese culturally because ethnicity doesn't exist.Right. I forgot. So how else could you be Japanese other than being born there and having the name Haruko?Simone: One has to wonder. Yeah. There you go. I love you. I love youMalcolm: too.[00:44:00] Oh Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm and Simone discuss the dangers of hedonism, importance of 'delusions of grandeur,' why suffering is essential, why we're not all equal, playing your role, taking on the burden of humanity, and developing real confidence. They talk about speccing characters for success, the allure of passion and dreaming big in relationships, genetic predispositions, societal influences on skills, and the path to success through delusions of grandeur and responsibility.

Michael Gibson shares insights on identifying extraordinary talent in young people from investing in them early via his VC fund 1517.He explains how classic predictors like test scores fail to capture entrepreneurial gifts like courage, initiative, and "insider-outsider" status. Homeschoolers often excel as they're self-driven. Malcolm notes EA types who use funds practically tend to thrive.They discuss why cities lack on-ramps for talent, risks of attaching to "smart" identity, and how youth's fluid intelligence enables conceptual leaps elders miss. Overall Michael concludes talent ID is tough, but development is key - we must cultivate qualities like grit young.Simone Collins: [00:00:00] Michael Gibson. He is the co founder of the VC fund, the 1517 fund, which invest in young people typically before they've gone to college,Malcolm Collins: how do you judge the competence of somebody who's young,Michael Gibson: yeah, we learned a lot. Well, when we started the fellowship, we had an application a lot like colleges. We asked for test scores, GPA, what school you went to. And that was good at, certainly signaling cognitive ability, but we quickly learned it was not a strong predictor of success out in the wild. And so we had to start looking for other things . There were even negative correlations that were surprising.Would you like to know more?Simone Collins: Hello. Today we are joined by Michael Gibson. He is the co founder of the VC fund, the 1517 fund, which is game changer in terms of venture capital investment, because they invest in young people typically before they've gone to college, sometimes during but he also wrote a book that I've enjoyed very much called paper belt on fire, which I really encourage you to.Simone Collins: Yeah. Check out, but we're not going to be [00:01:00] talking so much about the book today. We really want to get into Michael's work with the 1517 fund with how he spots young talent with things he's learned from his investments and the people he's worked with and the people he's found through this fund, because I mean, Oh my gosh, the talent you're meeting, it's, it's insane.Simone Collins: So we're really excited to dive into this and thank you so much for joiningMichael Gibson: us. Yeah. Thanks for having me.Simone Collins: So the biggest thing that I'm really curious about, cause it's been a while now, you know, you're like, you've been, you've been doing this for years at this point. And you've done a lot of hustling.Simone Collins: I mean, like sleeping on couches, staying up all night, going to these crazy young person parties. I couldn't do this, you know, like young people stay up late and I'm like, my bedtime's at eight 30. you're doing these. IMalcolm Collins: went, I, sorry, I got to take a little detour here. So I went on this trip to, I don't know, somewhere in Central America.Malcolm Collins: With a bunch of Peter Thiel fellowship kids and they like they went out like I, I hadn't gone to a party, like a club in years, but I was like, maybe it's gotten better. Maybe it's not as bad as I remember. And I get there and I'm [00:02:00] stuck there until 1 30 in the morning and it's loud and it's sweaty and it's gross.Malcolm Collins: And it was just as pointless as it always was. And you have to deal with this stuff. I think professionally. It's all about how you. Get these young geniuses interested in working with what you guys are doing. How do you sell yourself to them?Michael Gibson: Man, well, that is certainly part of it. Yeah, it's funny is it's such a slippery, tough craft that we're constantly reexamining the foundations of what we do.Michael Gibson: And, and one of the I guess, two different problems that we constantly wrestle with, or, or, you know, we, I guess we're trying to figure out which problem we're, we're. Operating in one is if you are a fisherman, is it better to be in a well stocked river? Our pond. So it's you're one of those bears just grabbing salmon cause they're flying in your face where in this case, the fish are, you know, talented people building startups or is it better to focus on the craft [00:03:00] of fishing, like being the best, you know, it's like you could identify the one fish that's in the stagnant pond and find it and fish it out.Michael Gibson: You know, that's, so this is like the two problems we struggle with. We're like, okay, which one is it better to be? Is it better to find the location where just talented people are and then figure out what they're working on? Or is it better to, you know, hone your skill pattern matching skill at okay, does this person have the right stuff and just, you know, go out there, you know, looking for that.Michael Gibson: And so, so, so that is a trade off. Or, you know, I can't, I guess I'm saying it's two problems. It's just one problem. It's which one are we in? So to that end is yeah, I've been in hacker houses. I've lived in ecosystems and, you know, tried to go native to the extent that I can, but now that I'm getting older, I've lost the steps.Michael Gibson: So maybe I, like you said, it's. It's tough to keep pace with a 21 year old.Malcolm Collins: Let's talk about what a hacker house is, because our audience may not even know what this is. And I think for young people who don't [00:04:00] grow up or maybe live in like more rural environments, it's useful to know that this other world exists that they can then move into, which is a quick path.Malcolm Collins: to move up. Hacker houses are houses where near tech hubs, because it's often too expensive to have a house yourself. A number of young people get together and put together a house. Now, hacker houses have variable levels of prestige. And so you want to make sure you get into a prestigious hacker house, which typically means you're gonna want to find someone in the hacker house ecosystem and ask them in the city you're planning to move to typically San Francisco or New York.Malcolm Collins: If you're moving into hacker houses or London, I suppose. Which are the most prestigious hacker houses right now in this area? My brother and his wife actually ran a hacker house for a long time in Silicon Valley house. It was one of the high, high prestige ones. Yeah. Yeah. The icebreaker was probably the one that everyone knew about during thatMichael Gibson: time period.Michael Gibson: Yes. I, that was on the boat. Right. Yeah. Yeah. SomeMalcolm Collins: people got, so hacker houses are usually pretty weird. So they would the icebreaker, what they did is they got an old icebreaker, it's like a Norwegian icebreaker and they [00:05:00] converted it into a house that was on the pier by San Francisco and people would have parties there and stuff.Malcolm Collins: Can you talk about some of the more modern hacker houses you've seen? What they're like? It's interesting.Michael Gibson: Yeah. I wish. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It'd be great if they had some intelligibility, meaning you could, you know, find a list of hacker houses. You could find an ordering of okay, here's what you get out of these.Michael Gibson: But I, it's, it's much more underground and not widely publicized. I guess you got to hear about them through word of mouth or some Reddit chat group or something of that nature. Yeah, they come and go too. And and, and, and, and they're driven by the people who are managing them. There was one in the mission.Michael Gibson: That we helped start called mission control mission, San Francisco. Yeah. What they didn't know, I guess, God, it's funny. I think there's like a sex club or S and M shop called mission control. They didn't know that for them, but yeah, it was more about these guys are all software engineers that type of hacker.[00:06:00]Michael Gibson: There were 10 people. At a time living in the house and sometimes people work at companies. Sometimes they start companies. They tend to be very creative. They're, they're almost like a studio artist studio in a sense of yeah, building things. Some people are working, they change, they swap, they come in and out.Michael Gibson: So yeah, we, we, we, I know of a few in different places. We're starting to see more now like in, at the university. Oh, they tend to also be associated with universities. Like it'll be a university town where you see these things pop up. And there were some students at the university of Michigan recently who started a house devoted to brain computer interfaces that issue.Michael Gibson: So I thought that was cool. Cause it wasn't just, you know, yeah, you know, like me today. I'm so San Francisco. I've got the It was not the coding you know, the code monkey wearing a hoodie. It's they're actually working on some on hardcore science, which, which is cool to see. So it's tough for me. I was like, I do want to know about these places cause they can be gravity wells for [00:07:00] talent.Michael Gibson: But on the other hand, they're not well advertised. So you got to hear about them through word of mouth. Well, andMalcolm Collins: another thing that used to be a real gravity well for telling I don't know if it still is is maker spaces. Sure. Yeah, I would also look up if you have a city. So they're called hacker spaces, Baker house spaces, or you can look for biohacker like labs, which cities, which will have most of the equipment you need to do this sort of more advanced science stuff.Malcolm Collins: And they're typically sort of like. All of our guard, the one that I was really into back in the day was the hacker dojo. Yes,Michael Gibson: I was just going to say the hackerMalcolm Collins: dojo. Yeah, I used to hang out there every, every party, every week. It was fantastic. It was really basic. If you've ever seen the movie hackers, like the 19.Malcolm Collins: So. I don't think that that movie was based on a real culture that exists, but I think it's generations of nerds grew up with that movie and they basically recreated a funny thing when you were mentioning about, Oh, this is the name of a sex place. I was like, yeah, but a lot of hacker houses do have regular.Malcolm Collins: What's true. Yeah.Michael Gibson: Well, they tend to be very [00:08:00] countercultural. They have that. That's so funny. Yeah. Hackers. Was that the Angelina Jolie movie? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well worth a watch. It is one of the things I love in movies about. And computer engineers is they always face the problem of how to dramatize or visualize what it is to work on a computer.Michael Gibson: And that one was great because it was like, they're actually running through like a street of code or something. That's like aMalcolm Collins: city. And Hacker Dojo, by the way, for people who didn't know, for the old version of Hacker Dojo, there's like a new version that's really corporate and boring, but the old one, what they had bought was an old stained glass show factory, because it was where they were trying to sell stained glass.Malcolm Collins: So like the whole thing was like weird and designed and like hanging platforms and everything. It was nuts and big mechanical beasts that they had beat that they would take out to maker fairs and stuff. But, okay, so next, tell me about the type of person that you're looking at, because when you're talking to young people, how do you judge the competence of somebody who's young, and how do you know when they're, like, too arrogant, and can you give me any of the weird stories you've [00:09:00] had dealing with these young geniuses?Michael Gibson: Yeah, we learned a lot. And I guess it is a lot like pattern recognition as it relates to, let's say, computer vision or deep learning. In the sense of you have a data set and then your algorithm has to train on that. There's deep learning. It operates in a black box. So oftentimes it's It's shooting out answers, and you can't figure out why it arrived at that answer.Michael Gibson: Well, I think human expert intuition is quite similar because you're building up a algorithm across this data set. So what's our algorithm? Well, when we started the fellowship, we had an application a lot like colleges. We asked for test scores, GPA, what school you went to. And that was good at, certainly signaling cognitive ability, but we quickly learned it was not a strong predictor of success out in the wild. And so we had to start looking for other things . There were even negative correlations that were surprising. So one of them, the funnier ones to me was like the [00:10:00] winners of the Intel science award tend tended to fare poorly.Michael Gibson: As entrepreneurs and why? Well, okay. It's because to win those awards, you have to be a good like ESG salesperson, not a innovator. You know, it's just who, who can, you know, signal the most virtue for a committee rather than actually build something. So over time, yeah, we started to develop our rules of thumb.Michael Gibson: Certainly the traits we look for can't guarantee success, but they, they became contributors to success. Like one of the weird esoteric ones is something we call insider outsider. This is from Peter Thiel's work with Rene Girard. So Peter studied philosophy or literature with Rene Girard.Michael Gibson: He's a French literary theorist who became a. Bit of an anthropologist and historian and Gerard was obsessed with crowd dynamics, witch hunts, mobs and scapegoats, and he has a monograph on the scapegoat in which he canvases the world mythologies and religions [00:11:00] and examines all these episodes where the crowd picked a scapegoat.Michael Gibson: And sacrifice them or, or, you know, sometimes what's interesting is that the hero is often a scapegoat who has resistance sacrifice. And so for Peter, this became a way of looking for founders, a trait to look at for founders. And people to hire and what Gerard found was like the people that the crowd doesn't just pick a complete foreigner to sacrifice because if there's a social crisis at hand and they need to blame someone, you can't just grab a foreigner who couldn't possibly have anything to do with it.Michael Gibson: Yeah, on the other hand, you can't. Pick the king's right hand man. You know, that's just too close to the center of things. So oftentimes that scapegoat is, is this boundary figure who somehow paradoxically is both an insider and an outsider, and you can see this. I mean, think about Christ, you know.Michael Gibson: Classic scapegoat story is he's he's on the one hand Jewish preacher and on the other hand, you know, excommunicated [00:12:00] by the Pharisees and so on. You can see this in the myth of Oedipus where, or the, the play Oedipus where, you know, Oedipus is. He is, there is a plague that is destroying the city and he, he sets out to discover its cause.Michael Gibson: He is the king. He thinks he was born in a foreign country. Actually, he turns out he was born in the city. But, but because he came from somewhere else, it's like he's both an insider and an outsider. So Peter looked at the, you know, when he examines. When he's looking at a founder, so when he's always looking for some kind of insider outsider story, one easy, clear example is, let's say immigrants.Michael Gibson: So immigrants who come to the United States, there's long tradition of creative immigrants in Silicon Valley who have done great things. And I think it's this insider outsider dimension where on the one hand they are U. S. citizens or green card holders, but on the other, they are outsiders. You know, they're new to the country.Michael Gibson: They might see things in different ways. Maybe I myself am an insider outsider and, and[00:13:00] I, I was working towards a PhD. I spent many, many years in grad school. I've seen the insides of the temple of academia. And, and and yet I, I left, I, I, I Dropped out and became a heretic. So maybe that's, you know, possibly why Peter hired me.Michael Gibson: So, so that insider outsider thing is something we're, we're always looking for. And, and, and I like talking about it because it's just so weird. Cause it comes from French literary theory. And then the other thing is, yeah, you got to have the know how, theMichael Gibson: IQ and EQ to work with customers and co founders and so on. But no one thinks about, you know, that dimension. So that's why, you know, I think it's worth meditating on. What's reallySimone Collins: interesting is I, goMalcolm Collins: ahead, Malcolm. Well, I want to provide an alternate theory as to why insider outsiders do so well. Okay, great.Malcolm Collins: What you're actually capturing with insider outsiders is to, to be an insider, to be a competent or move up within the inside system. That's typically a measurement of just general like EQ, IQ, everything like [00:14:00] that. To be an outsider, to be willing to outside yourself when you have already risen within a traditional power structure to any extent, you have to have enormous initiative, a willingness to take calculated risk, confidence in yourself.Malcolm Collins: And belief that you understand something about the way the world is working that the insider system doesn't see yet. And so, you know, this is seen with immigrants, right? To be an immigrant, you have to have an enormous amount of individual initiative, individual belief in yourself, everything like that.Malcolm Collins: Well, to be an immigrant with... It could be, look,Michael Gibson: that could even be a genetic... Selection effect, right? I mean, one theory about the American frontier is that it was filled by people who had that risk loving gene to just set out to the frontier and face nature. Or, and we haveMalcolm Collins: another episode on this called genetic vortexes.Malcolm Collins: And we talked specifically about Silicon Valley and we say it's probably not a surprise that Silicon Valley, as we understand it started that venture capital started in the same area that people were coming to during the gold [00:15:00] rush, which was selecting specifically for. High risk, high reward focused individuals,Michael Gibson: right?Michael Gibson: Yeah. And then, and then, okay. To move on to another trait we look for, sometimes I call this edge control. And which I take from skiing, snowboarding, motorcycle racing. Cause there is a, there look, there's a there's a mode, there's some amount of courage that's necessary to want to do something new and different.Michael Gibson: And to challenge the status quo and majority opinion. But the, the thing is it's not just like an extreme sport though, where you jump out of the airplane once and get that adrenaline thrill. It's an everyday day after day. Are you prepared to, you know, negotiate that boundary between chaos and control on a daily basis?Michael Gibson: And I think it takes a certain type of person to do it. It dawned on me that also that. You know, I say I like edge because that signifies danger and risk control is okay, but you gotta keep everything in order. And so [00:16:00] with the skiing example, you can't just go down a black diamond, like the fastest skier doesn't win olympics and to.Michael Gibson: Olympics. So there's some Italian phrase that's you know, the best skier isn't the fastest skier because that person crashes and breaks a leg and has a career ending injury. So they don't get to participate in all the races they could have after that. So it's like the best skiers, the one who goes as fast as possible while surviving.Michael Gibson: And I think there's something to that in startups where there's, there are people who, who push the edge of things, but not too much where they blow up the company. And on the other hand, they're not so conservative that they don't experiment or do anything at all.Malcolm Collins: So what I really love about what you just said, because it reminds me of something I've seen, and I consistently seen this in people who end up being successful is you don't want to be Gosh, what's the word?Malcolm Collins: It's from the family guy episode of South Park. You know, those are something pushing balls, right? AndMalcolm Collins: they, they stopped working whenever you would take a single idea ball out of the tank.Malcolm Collins: And then, oh, right, right,Michael Gibson: right. Yes.Simone Collins: Oh, manatees, right?Malcolm Collins: Manatees. Yeah. You don't have the manatee [00:17:00] we say because the manatees in this episode, they would stop coming up with ideas. They'd stop producing episodes. The moment you took one idea ball out of the tank, the people who I find who I think.Malcolm Collins: Represent the highest likelihood of like actual success, especially I'm talking about young people is they love surfing on the edge of controversial issues, but they never go over the edge to the point where they would get canceled or anything like that. Understand the game that they're playing, and I'm gonna be honest, this isn't a game that we really like to play in our videos, I think people see it.Malcolm Collins: A great example of an individual who's doing this more and more now, and I think we're gonna see great things for him in the future, he's actually, I think you guys identified him, he might have been a Teal Fellow, or he might have been something else, but is he? What if his guy? He runs another? Oh,Michael Gibson: yeah,Malcolm Collins: yeah.Malcolm Collins: Definitely. And he definitely is really good at getting right up next to how controversial it might be without ever going over the edge. And I think that that is a really good [00:18:00] indicator of somebody who has a like of living on the edge, but doesn't actually ever want to do real risk. And that's what's true.Malcolm Collins: I think about good entrepreneurs. It's been said entrepreneurs. Are risk mitigators, they take an idea that is big or something like that, and then they say, how can I mitigate all of the risk associated with this idea? Right?Michael Gibson: Yeah. They're, they're not just going straight down the mountain as fast as they can and crashing into a tree, right.Michael Gibson: There's a way to, or to climb the wide, I don't know the analogy, but there's something where there's a plan. You know, actually one book I, I recently, I read this week just came out was the new Walter Isaacson biography of Elon Musk. Oh,Simone Collins: I'm in the middle of that. It's soMichael Gibson: fun. Yeah. God, it's great.Michael Gibson: Yeah. Really fascinating. I love how you know, Isaacson just had so much access to, to Musk. So. Insane. Yeah. All the, all the. You just see Musk for everything he is at work and in his personal life, which is wonderful. But, but there's this I noticed, I guess, in production meetings or some, you know, whenever [00:19:00] they're discussing assembly lines, Elon Musk has this thing he just calls the algorithm, these 5 steps about the processes.Michael Gibson: And one of them is. Is to constantly delete unnecessary superfluous things, but how do you know if it's, if it's necessary? Well, you got to delete it and if the thing's not working then you bring it back.Simone Collins: Yeah. And if you're not adding at least 10 percent back, you're not doingMichael Gibson: it. So if you're not adding 10 percent back, then you're not deleting enough.Michael Gibson: And that to me is a good example of like how to negotiate these boundaries of the known and the unknown is like you're going to have to go back and forth. And if you're not doing some amount of deleting and then bringing back, you're not doing it enough. And likewise, I think flirting with controversial ideas when you're getting up on the edge of these things, it's like you're it's it's so hard to maintain the balance and hit that edge.Michael Gibson: So you like, sometimes you go a little too far. Sometimes you're coming back.Malcolm Collins: The personal assistant story. That's from Elon Musk, right? Simone. What personal assistant story? I think it was a story, it was one billionaire anyway, where his personal assistant was like, I want [00:20:00] some more money, like I want equity.Simone Collins: Oh, that was from the 2015 biography of Elon Musk. No, no,Malcolm Collins: no.Michael Gibson: It's not from the new. The Ashley Vance.Malcolm Collins: But it is, it is a good example of what he's talking about, where they're like, I want equity in the stuff you're doing. And he goes, well, you do seem to provide a lot of value. Okay, let's try this. How about you stop working for me for a month and I see if I miss you.Malcolm Collins: Oh my God. Yes,Simone Collins: it is smart. It is smart. And she also didn't have a job when she came back. It is, it is. I mean, I like that ruthless optimization. I also love this way of looking like these little. Weird corollatory details. It oddly reminds me of autism diagnoses. Cause there's like all the stuff that they do to diagnose people with autism.Simone Collins: But then there are these like weird hints that like, Oh, that's a sign. If a kid lies on the floor and they like move a car back and forth, just look at the wheels and just do that for a long time, they're like, that's a sign. Or if you take off their shoes and they walk on their tiptoes, they're like, that's a sign.Simone Collins: I've seen the tiptoe thing. [00:21:00] And so it's, it's like you have the autism cues for brilliant talent. One thing I worry about though, like with, with talent is there's, there are many people that we even know of now, like who, who have grown up in our generation who like were the wunderkind of their time.Simone Collins: Yep. And then they, they flamed out, like they, they, they fell in a wrong direction. They, they just sort of got indulgent. They stopped working. Have you found any predictors for that grit that just keeps people working at it? Maybe MaybeMichael Gibson: something else. Yeah That's the one of the challenging things is with the receiving applications and trying to judge people I often use the metaphor that it's like fruit you Starts off fresh and gets stale or rotten fast.Michael Gibson: Cause it's here's a snapshot and then maybe they change or do something else that can be positive or negative. So what we decided is we just, the best thing we can do is try to get to know people over time. And if we have multiple interactions with someone. On some [00:22:00] level, we'll get a better sense of do they execute?Michael Gibson: Do they push through? One thing we do at the, on at 1517 now is we give out 1k grants to people. If someone says they want to build a prototype, but they just need to buy some parts, we'll kick them a thousand bucks. Oftentimes that turns into nothing. But what we get out of it is a chance to interact with someone over a short period of time, could be two months, three months, they get to work with us.Michael Gibson: And that gives us more information about, okay, do they follow through with what they say they're going to do? Other than that, you have to rely on stories, but those can be, those are like college admissions essays. They all follow the same pattern. Oh, you know, I, I had this tragedy, I had this setback, and then I dug within during the dark night of the soul and came back and found the answer.Michael Gibson: Yeah. So those aren't as believable. It's best if you can actually see over time, which is tough. I'll give youMalcolm Collins: some pattern recognition I've seen from the group that we were in. Because I was mentioning in the other interview we did that if you look at this old early EA, Less Wrong Rationalist group many of them grew into very influential people in today's, at [00:23:00] least scientific and economic ecosystem.Malcolm Collins: I think the biggest thing that I saw as a predictor, which really aligns with what you're saying that they are going to spin out and do nothing, even if they're known as very smart, is are they task oriented with money that's given to them? If somebody gives them a lot of money and then they use it to write a Harry Potter fan fiction, they're probably going to end up doing nothing with their life and just degrading AI research for an entire generation.Malcolm Collins: But I don't mean to be too spicy, but what I'm saying is I noticed this repeatedly is that some individuals, when they would get money or when they would get leeway, they would, they would spend it on sort of not exactly what they had originally envisioned while the people who were very task oriented, especially if they were willing to be task oriented on boring ish ideas, like it might not be like, Oh, I want to make shipping freight, you know, like marginally less expensive or something like that, even if they didn't succeed with that project, they typically eventually succeeded withMichael Gibson: something. That's a good point. [00:24:00] I think 1 thing we noticed too, was the people who could set their own goals. And. Home schoolers were best at this right away.Michael Gibson: They could schedule their day, they could, you know, move in and out of the world, make new friends out in the, in the real world. Whereas people who were even high achieving students at Ivy League schools, since their whole life has been structured for For 16 years and they've received the assignments and they've completed them.Michael Gibson: Well, it's a whole nother world to just step into Hey, what do I do with my day? I have no schedule. How do I organize this? And, and I saw some people get paralyzed because there was a transition period where they didn't. No, how to set their own schedule and goals or didn't feel comfortable doing it in the same way that a homeschooler would, do youMalcolm Collins: feel homeschoolers are better?Malcolm Collins: Like within your program? Do they have an edge over the HarvardMichael Gibson: kids? Yeah, we haven't done an account in a while, but I do recall in the early days of the fellowship that the homeschool or at least people who had some period of homeschooling. So it wasn't just like the full education, [00:25:00] but you know, it could be 2 or 3 years, especially in the high school period.Michael Gibson: Those people tended to be high performing. Yeah. There, there was a strong correlation there. Of course, I don't know. We didn't look at all the homeschoolers in the world, so I don't know, but the ones who applied for sure were very strong candidates. That's so,Malcolm Collins: so parents homeschooling still has high marks for the people who are the world experts on judging.Michael Gibson: Well, you know, to go back to the point about courage and grit you know, schools don't teach that stuff. I don't, I don't know. Maybe we don't even know how to impart that. Like, how do you, how would you run a class on? Challenging the status quo and majority of the opinion or disobedience. If you had a class on disobedience, the first lesson should be, you don't show up.Malcolm Collins: I love that you get, you get, you grade them based on whether or not they show up.Michael Gibson: If you show up, you let them know you've failed. SoMalcolm Collins: I actually, so one thing I'd love to close this, this particular interview is, is [00:26:00] the craziest story of an entrepreneur or something like that, that you encountered.Malcolm Collins: That only could have happened given the age of the people that you were interacting with.Michael Gibson: Hmm. Well, one thing the young have that's just a general advantage is that I've seen is that they have no big duties and obligations that older people accumulate, like mortgages, pets, 22Michael Gibson: year old who can just sleep on a couch and work. Night and day weekends that, that, you know, gives an advantage of speed and hard work. So that's just independent of that. But in terms of, let's see you know, some people I've worked with, I don't, I think there's just also something to. People don't want to admit this, but there's a biological life cycle to our creativity and our fluid intelligence.Michael Gibson: And I think some of the people I've met are [00:27:00] certainly far ahead of the curve on, on IQ and creativity, but they, they, they have to accumulate some amount of knowledge in a field, but they still have fresh eyes when they come to it. And they've got that speed of mind. And so they're able to, to see things that I guess, you know, more established people aren't.Michael Gibson: Aren't seeing. So, you know, the example of that could be Vitalik Budin or Austin Russell. You know, they, I don't wanna say they discovered what they discovered 'cause they were young, but certainly they had the energy and, and, and the fresh mind to see things that, that, you know, the more established people in their field weren't thinking about or, or in the case of the blockchain, I mean, maybe there's something where younger people are willing to experiment more with weird stuff and think about it.Michael Gibson: That, that's very. Very strange. But to back to the larger point, I think it is true. You look at the psychological research on achievement, especially as measured by things like in the arts, it could be, you know, how many masterpieces someone has or in, in science, how many papers they publish and what papers win them [00:28:00] the Nobel prize and all of that.Michael Gibson: And there's pretty clear. You know, there's a rise in the twenties and a peak in the, in the thirties, and then people taper off in middle age. And, and each field has different averages, but it's pretty constant that people are very productive in their youth. It was that they aren't later on. And, and I, I'll just say, I hate as a society that we don't admit this.Michael Gibson: Because,Malcolm Collins: because we were in his twenties, you know, in his twenties when he came up with all this. Yeah.Michael Gibson: In the same way that I guess it's like feminism told women, you know, they could have it all or or they could wait and then There's just this biological reality that it becomes harder and harder to have kids in your 30s and 40s.Michael Gibson: So, you know, I think it's a disservice to tell women that they can, they can wait. They should really think about that. I think it should be something. Okay. They don't, I'm not saying everyone has to have kids, although it would be great. But on the other hand, they should know Hey, there's this window where this is [00:29:00] possible.Michael Gibson: And, you know, unless we invent new things. It's something you have to reckon with.Malcolm Collins: Well, that's why I wrote all our books when we were still young. But yeah, no, I, I actually, there's a concept that we have brought up in some of our work before that hasn't been talked about in the mainstream society. But I think it's a way that you can sort of test this.Malcolm Collins: We call it the concept of brain rot, and it seems to happen to some individuals as they get older. It seems to happen to everyone eventually, but the core sign of it in an individual. That we use to measure how much brain rot somebody has is in a social situation when they're interacting with you, how much of the time or how many times do they bring up the self narrative?Malcolm Collins: So people with a high degree of brain rot. Will constantly be in self narrative loops, like this is what I was doing, or this is who I am, or this is the type of person I am. Whereas people without Brainwot are typically focused on efficacious ideas, like what's happening in [00:30:00] society and how do I affect it.Michael Gibson: Yeah, yeah. Huh. I'll have to pay attention more. I think, yeah, that's interesting to brain rot. I think this is part of the longevity research. I think no one is really approaching enough or tackling or scratching on enoughMalcolm Collins: is well, they don't want to. I mean, I'll give you know that we're pretty against life extension.Malcolm Collins: Okay. Yeah. It's an inevitability, not just of our biology, but of the way that ideas sortMichael Gibson: of begin. We think it's a feature, not a bug. Okay. Yeah, you just accumulate all these categories and concepts and frameworks. And then it's tough to, once they're set in at 70, you're not, you're so resistant to new concepts.Simone Collins: Well, and you're also incentivized to encrench yourself in more power. You're not as distributed to begin new yeah, onto what you have. And you're going to resist anyone who's trying to change the world order. And that wouldMalcolm Collins: also be my self narratives that are important to them. Because if they're in this position of power, they need to constantly reiterate self narratives that reinforce this position of power they have.Malcolm Collins: Right.Michael Gibson: Yeah, so one counterexample [00:31:00] of peopleSimone Collins: We've met people in their 20s who have brain rot. Yeah. And we've met people who in their 90s don't. And I think with aging, which is so underrated. With it's just use it or lose it. Like it's shown with cognitive performance, it's shown with like different like organs.Simone Collins: I don't think it's true.Malcolm Collins: I think it's just I think, I think it's that people who don't have it aren't using it. And so you, anyway, Michael was going to sayMichael Gibson: something. Oh, the one counterexample people bring up when it comes to productivity in late age is the mathematician Paul Erdos. He's this God, he's like the Kevin Bacon.Michael Gibson: They're mathematicians. Erdos number where it's like, how many people are in the network? Are you away from a paper from Erdos or something? I forget exactly how it's the index works, but at any rate, he apparently was very productive into his eighties, maybe even his nineties. But what stands out about him is that he was fearless when it came to dropping a field in mathematics and then just moving to a new one.Michael Gibson: Late in life. So he reached, you know, I [00:32:00] guess he hit the point. He knew when, when his mind was saturated in a particular topic and then he just let it go and he had beginner's mind all over again and something new. And so I think there to the brain rot is like, there's this clutching at identity. Like you're known as this, you know, string theorists or a macro economist.Michael Gibson: And there's no way. 55, all of a sudden you're going to give up macro economics and suddenly start working in some other field where you'll have to be a beginner and suck again. Yeah. MaybeSimone Collins: this is also why parents are now so strongly dissuaded from saying anything about children's character. Like now everyone says.Simone Collins: Never say, Oh, you're so smart. Just say, wow, you tried so hard. That was so clever what you did. Because if you have a child who starts to identify as smart, then they're more likely to not even try to do challenging things because the challenging thing might disproveMichael Gibson: their smartness. That's right.Michael Gibson: There's a complacency and a protectiveness that, that gets attached to that identity. Yeah.Simone Collins: That leads to ossification. So any sort of like attachment to [00:33:00] identity is very dangerous.Michael Gibson: Yeah, very much so.Malcolm Collins: Well, this conversation has been spectacular. I am so glad you joined us.Michael Gibson: I know, we can keep going on time flies.Malcolm Collins: My understanding of things is a lot. I, and it, it, it, it caused me to reflect on a lot of things that I hadn't reflected on in terms of how we look for students and what we try to optimize for withMichael Gibson: our own kids. Yeah. And, and one of the things that I'll leave with, I guess, is like talent identification is hard.Michael Gibson: It's something we've been doing, but what I wish we knew more about was development is like back to that courage question. Okay, how could we inculcate courage and young people? Cause it just seems like it's really hard to do and no one's doing it.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, and, and, and to that end, if we have young viewers.Malcolm Collins: Listening to this, you know, do you look into local hacker spaces? Do you look into moving to a hacker house for a while? Do you look into reaching out to your heroes? Because they're often a lot more receptive than you would imagine. And it's a good way you know, it, [00:34:00] it, it is this sort of immigrant mindset, which is, okay, this thing is crazy and would change everything for me, but I'm going to go out and do it.Malcolm Collins: And I would encourage, cause I think sometimes you grow up in an environment where you don't even realize that's an option. And then it's you know, you could just email them. You could, you could just move to San Francisco. If you actually are competent, you will start being invited to these parties very quickly.Michael Gibson: Absolutely. A lot of long ramps in San Francisco and cities that other cities don't have, like as great as Austin and Miami are I think they lack. A lot of the on ramps that San Francisco hasSimone Collins: like that. Nobody goes to Miami thinking, I'm going to work hard and build my future.Malcolm Collins: I want to be clear. It doesn't have as many on ramps as it used to.Malcolm Collins: Now, most of the on ramps I've seen to this cultural group are actually online on ramps. Yes. Discord threads of like nerds and stuff like that. That is where I see the actual on ramps occurring. But it is, it used to be that San Francisco was where you would go [00:35:00] to do this. Yep.Michael Gibson: Yep. Anyway, enjoyed the conversation.Michael Gibson: Thanks for having me.Malcolm Collins: I loved it too. And let's hope San Francisco can ascend from its desiccated state right now. I don't know if it ever will, butMichael Gibson: it might. Well, we can only hope. Let us pray.Simone Collins: Yes. Oh, Michael, thank you so much. And everyone, please make sure you check out 1517. com and also paperbell on fire.Simone Collins: Oh, and you're also on Twitter. But you're not Michael Gibson. You are William underscore Blake. So check them out on Twitter as well. Right. Thanks. Bye. . Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

We are joined by author Richard Hanania to discuss his controversial new book "The Origins of Woke." Richard argues that modern woke ideology stems directly from changes to civil rights law in the 60s and 70s, not broader cultural shifts. He traces how pursuing equality of outcomes rather than opportunity put quotas and disparate impact front and center, leading to impacts on testing, HR, and more. We debate whether wokeness may also have religious origins. Richard details the role of government in racial classification, Title IX, and mandating practices at universities. We discuss potential government action to combat wokeness, and whether running for office with an unorthodox approach could drive change.Simone Collins: [00:00:00]Hi, today we are joined by a very special guest, the author on Substack and Twitter, Richard Hanania. Really awesome work. We love following him and we love talking with him even more.So we're so excited he's coming on the podcast .Malcolm Collins: Well, so an interesting thing is, is. with our audience, you're hitting an audience. It's going to be great for your book. The origins of woke. But it great in an interesting way because we are so interested in the same type of stuff.We actually are going to have persistent disagreements about the types of questions that normal people have literally no vested interest in. Exactly. I am so interested. And I know our audience are interested. Here your theory on the origins of woke presented in like the short version that will get them excited for the book.Would you like to know more?Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Richard Hanania: So the, the basic argument, if you're going to send up, you know, you're going to sum it up in a sentence is that wokeness is caused by government policy through via [00:01:00] civil rights law. And it's a strong claim and it's not, you know, it's a very, it's a claim that can you know, it could be misinterpreted and of course it doesn't explain literally every single thing that ever happened.Like, it doesn't explain like Z's or pronouns or, or whatever, but the basic outline of like, all policy is racist. If it has like a disparate impact, how we classify race in this country. You know, the fact that our institutions have HR departments that and DEI offices that are obsessed with race. It's like, That is ultimately traceable to law.There's a fascinating history there and it can potentially be undone by law too.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Oh, so I mean, you've gotten fairly in the weeds in your book into like how this first was introduced into law and why it wasn't stopped as it was happening. Can you talk a little to that?Richard Hanania: Yeah, so this is a history book.I mean, I want to say origins of woke. I mean, my background is in political science. I'm trying to like, meet the standards of like, a good social science argument of like, how we got here. And so that requires a lot of history. And yeah, I mean, the civil rights movement. I [00:02:00] mean, that's the basically every school children know about it.It's, you know, the idea that, you know, there was there was a sort of this moral sort of wave in reaction to Jim Crow laws in America in the 1960s that culminated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And what happened after that is that the people, you know, who were involved in that movement didn't just pack up and go home and embrace that she wasn't solved overnight.There was, you know, pretty much immediately within, you know, within You know, within literally years there was a move towards equality of outcome rather than equality of results. And what happened, what happened from there was you had to start pushing, you know, quotas or quasi quotas onto private institutions.You had to start going after standardized tests. And later the same civil rights act and other, you know, associated laws, smaller less important laws were used to go after free speech through hostile work environment and, and harassment and all these things really led to the rise of HR really led to like a institutional homogenization.And so it's sort of the genesis of how we got here. SoMalcolm Collins: can you talk about [00:03:00] when really the moment happened when it moved from equality of opportunity to equality of outcome, like in the legal system? I mean, thereRichard Hanania: are, you know, there's so many sort of, you know, there's so many sort of, you know, steps on the way, but I think the Greggs decision in 1971 was, you know, pretty much the ratification of it by the Supreme Court.The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission thought it would lose that case. It actually sort of encouraged that. plaintiffs not to appeal because they thought the legislative history was so clear that you could use tests and you couldn't just say they were racist on the grounds that whites do better on them than blacks.They said, clearly that's not what the law meant. That's not what the law says. They thought they would lose. It goes to the Supreme court and there's a unanimous decision. I mean, the Supreme court would surprise people on race in a lot of ways. And during the Warren and Berger years in the 1960s and 1970s but that really, that really codified it.And then it was sort of off to the races.Malcolm Collins: So can you educate our audience on the Greeks decision? What happened in it? What was at stake?Richard Hanania: Yeah. Yeah, okay. So the greg's decision was basically a lawsuit against [00:04:00] a corporation in North Carolina company in North Carolina. I think it was a textile factory. And they had given basically a test, you know, they used to discriminate based on race you know, before the civil rights act, then they integrated, but they used to, they, they would have basically like an IQ test and they would have some educational requirements like high school degree and basically went to the Supreme Court.Somebody argued that this was discriminatory just because blacks did not do as well on the test as whites did, right? This idea of disparate impact had been around for a while. But when they passed and signed the Civil Rights Act, you know, the belief was that that discrimination had to be intentional.You had to actually have an intent to want to keep somebody out of a job. But then this was the theory of disparate impact. You went to the Supreme Court on that basis and the Supreme Court basically said, anything that has a disparate impact is basically presumptive, can be presumptively seen as discriminatory as violating the Civil Rights Act.And then it becomes on the business as a, as the burden of proving that it's actually necessary. And there's, you know, all the, all kinds of steps to determine what that means. We can [00:05:00] get into the weeds, but that's basically the idea. So when you hear something is racist, because whites do better on it than blacks, it's all from a Supreme Court decision in 1971.Malcolm Collins: Fascinating. So, question, when you look at the current, the most recent Supreme Court ruling that's, you know, on everyone's mind these days, with, with you know, tied to early colleges and admissions and everything like that I don't know what it's called off the top of my head, but is it sort of like the opposite of this?Do you think it could lead to an untangling of some of this? Or do you think it's, it's just, I don't know. It's, itRichard Hanania: is a it's a related area of law. It's not the, so that, that one was about employment. This one is about universities directly discriminating based on race. And it's a, you know, you can't do that.And it is, I mean, it is important. I think you've seen stories, even though it doesn't directly apply to employment. You've seen stories of like corporations, like sort of becoming a little more skittish about diversity. It's a signal of sort of how the Supreme Court is thinking about these issues and how.Future cases will be ruled on and you know, whether it [00:06:00] matters or you know, how much it matters in the end is really going to be determined. It's a very sort of a boring answer, but it's going to be determined by you know, who the judges are in the future. I mean, it's going to be determined by election results and who's appointing the judges and who's who's the Senate you know, confirming them because like, you Every, you know, every decision is sort of never in our legal system.Nothing is ever a final decision. Everything is just sort of shifting. You know, the goal points 1 direction or not. If 3 conservative Supreme Court justices die and are replaced tomorrow, right? That decision will go back and we'll go. We'll go even further in the other direction. So it, I mean, it matters.You see, sort of, it's sort of like, You know, like you fire, you know, artillery barrage at an enemy and they scramble for a while. If you don't follow up with any other fire, they're going to regroup and they're going to be right back in their original position. If you start hitting them again while they're scrambling, you can really change things.So, you know, how much it matters will depend on future decisions and future elections. As boring as that sounds as an answer. Well,Malcolm Collins: no, it is. It is actually an interesting answer. So what I find interesting is [00:07:00] how different our perceptions on the origins of Woke are and what Woke is, and I'd love it if you could comment, so I'll give a brief explanation of where I think our differences of perception are, and I'd love you to present an argument for, for your perception versus our perception.Ours, so, so if I'm going to characterize yours and you can tell me I'm mischaracterizing it. Wokeism is downstream of legal decisions that were originally tied to the civil rights movement, but basically ran out ofRichard Hanania: control.Malcolm Collins: Whereas our perception is that wokeism is a memetic virus much closer to a religion, and that it literally evolved out of a form of Quakerism, and that it, Instead of coming from these decisions that it actually sort of infects cultural movements, even iterations of religions.Basically kills everything they ever stood for, then [00:08:00] marionettes their corpses and claims to be them. And that it is not the civil rights movement, that the civil rights movement had entirely different goals than modern wokeism. And that the civil rights movement now is just the corpse of something that used to matter, being marionetted by the thing that killed it.So how do you,Richard Hanania: I mean, I, I hear these arguments and I talk about them a little bit in the book. How does one go proving that? I mean, what is this sort of the, the, the, the historical analysis that gives you the causal mechanism that shows you that that Quakerism is sort of the root of this.Malcolm Collins: Well, so we sort of try to trace it through time and through the educational system that was originally controlled by the Quaker movement.And then we look for weird things that woke culture does that we don't see in any other culture. I can almost think of it as like vestigial organs. So, like, an example of this would be two things that are like really weird that I wouldn't exp or three things. So three things that we only see in Wokeism and this form of Quaker culture.One thing that [00:09:00] was really common in Quaker culture was that young children would chastise adults for moral failings. No other culture in society does this yet was in the Woke movement. We have things like Greta Thornburg. Another thing that they would do is they would have a form of religious meeting where you wouldn't have a leader.But people would just stand up and talk when moved by God, which is very similar to the way meetings were structured if you look at something like Occupy Wall Street. The final one is, is that Quaker culture was famously really, really prudish about sexuality, yet like claimed to be like sexually open ish which is a weird thing you see in woke culture, which is like the idea of woke culture is sexual openness, and yet they are Extremely prudish, especially about male sexuality, which seems to go against their raison d'etre.The reason I don't think it's the civil rights movement, which I think is pretty interesting as a direct, is the civil rights movement was about creating equality. Where I think [00:10:00] woke culture's goal is to remove in the moment emotional pain, which is a very different goal than creating equality.Richard Hanania: So, yeah, as far as that vestigial organ, you know, analysis, you know, I think that, you know, I'm just trying to think, is there any historical examples where I could say, well, you know, there's this here.I mean, it sounds to me a bit like Maoism. I don't think civil rights awokeness comes from Maoism, but if I wanted to, I could say, you know, young generation denouncing the old prudish about sexuality. What was the, what was the second one? Crazy meetings that are, you know, it seems they did have that under, under Mao.Yeah. Right. Well, IMalcolm Collins: mean, could you argue that woke culture? I mean, we do know if you look at something like Antifa. So I'm just gonna make a different argument now. Woke culture is Maoism. We do know with stuff like Antifa that we had actual like communist training cells, like training these organizations, which then could have disseminated to other parts of woke culture.Richard Hanania: Yeah, so, so I think that like the, you know, the, the stronger argument for it being you know, [00:11:00] descending from the civil rights. I have the strongest argument is that it was a lot of cases, the same people. I mean, it was the same people who were preaching equality of opportunity. A lot of it was a strategic.I mean, there was a lot of communist involvement in the civil rights movement. They you know, they of course sold it as, you know, colorblindness and most of the members of Congress and the senators who voted for it were not communists or anything close to that. But then on a drop of a hat, sort of when they were, when the public attention was off of them, you know, they went and they pushed for equality of results.So whatever was motivating the civil rights movement, I think it's a combination of like. You know, going back to Lincoln, the sort of noble idea of just like race, not mattering and, you know, free markets and free labor and people living as individuals, there was, there was that it was a coalition of that and just communists, which is what it, you know, quality of results, no matter what.And sort of the, that, that latter part of the movement just sort of, took over and you can just say, I mean, it's, it's the same organizations, the NAACP, right. Color blindness in 1960, all about quotas in 1970, 1975.Simone Collins: [00:12:00] Well, it sounds like that the, the Richard explanation is like the statutory legal governing origins of it.And the Malcolm story is the like mimetic religious, like sort of intuitive origins of it. And they both totally play into each other. They just come from really different, like perspectives of. Like how, how actually they both sort of reflect on you, like both of your, your ways of modeling the world and your education, like, you know, you're coming from a very different sort of academic background.Like Malcolm is looking at this from the perspective of someone who studied psychology and neuroscience, and you're looking at it from the perspective of like politics and history and like, you know, what, what concrete things are happening. I think it's really interesting to see. Like how that playsMalcolm Collins: out.By the way, I found your arguments very compelling and they made me challenge some of my own beliefs. Like going through your book and going through you talking on other podcasts and hearing just how specifically you were able to chart things.Richard Hanania: Yeah, yeah, I think that's, I think people, [00:13:00] yeah, I think people can I think I'm glad you said that because that is really sort of a strength of the book when I'm talking on social media or when I'm talking on podcasts, it's, it's hard to just because it is, it's not, it's not a long book.It's like 210 pages, but it's dense. Like, you know, I don't do the academic thing. Book author thing of repeating the same things over. I'd be a hypocrite if I did because I wrote an article about why you shouldn't read books because books are often just a bunch of fluff of people saying the same thing over and over.I only gave you 210 pages, but they're all each one is necessary. Right. And, you know, I do trace, you know, I do trace that history very, very closely. And it depends on what you're talking about. There are some things that I think I can show like, Absolutely conclusively that it was governed, like how we classify race.I mean, that chapter, the word AAPI, the phrase, didn't exist in the English language before the 1970s. It was a government classification, and then it became part of the English language. What are the odds that it, you know, was anything, it was anything else, right? I'mMalcolm Collins: not familiar with this. Can youRichard Hanania: go into this part of the book?Oh, so it's called Asian American Pacific Islander. So we have this category in America called Amer, Asian [00:14:00] American Pacific Islander. I have a chapter on how the government created new races, right? And when I have Google, I have a, a couple graphs of Google Ngrams for one for Hispanics and one for Asians.And I showed that. It does not, AAPI, Asian American Pacific Islander, does not appear in any English language book until the late 1970s. It a government category, and why it became a government category is just sort of funny. It was just because Hawaii was a state, and like, It was like a third, like native Hawaiian and like a third Asian or something.They're like, okay, miscellaneous everything. Everyone from Hawaii is just an Asian American Pacific Islander. And it became an identity. And now in 2020, you see hashtag stop AAPI hate. You see on Hulu, they say AAPI heritage month. I mean, it's amazing. This mimetic thing, which was literally just invented by the government.And now it's like, it's like race. Like the thing that you think would be like sort of primordial, right? Something that would just be very natural was just clearly so clearly created by the government. Oh,Malcolm Collins: that's also fascinating [00:15:00] because there are groups that have so little in common. Yeah,Richard Hanania: it's sort of a, it's sort of a, a test case of like how ridiculous, like you could, you could, you could just construct these things.Simone Collins: Right. I mean, it's the same with Latino though. Like, I don't know, like we, we grew up, I think insensitively, like just sort of running with it, at least like I did in California and super progressive Silicon valley society. And then Malcolm and I acquired a business with headquarters in Peru and then like a us team that had people from all over Latin America.And we discovered that like, people that would be considered Latino or Latinx, though no one wants that like, totally don't see themselves as part of a group. Of course not, because they're not. They're super culturally different. They wouldMalcolm Collins: Hold on. I can see how plausibly you could say these groups were colonized by many of the same people and stuff like that and so they had the same pressures on them, but like comparing a Pacific Islander to like a [00:16:00] Chinese person is insane.Yeah, it is, it is. Okay, okay. What are some of the other quirks you ran into?Richard Hanania: Yeah. Yeah, so there is, I mean, the Hispanic one is not as absurd as the API one, but you do see the word Hispanic Latino sort of takes off. So it's not like it didn't exist in the English language. It existed and actually Mexican American and Puerto Rican go down around the same time period.So we start think we start sort of lumping. These, you know, these groups together you know, like the, the, some things are so direct, like the title line stuff. This is more recent history. So people even might be familiar with this. But like the government and the Obama administration is basically going to universities and telling them.Hire a Title IX coordinator. This is how you judge sexual assault cases. You know, you have preponderance of the evidence. You don't have you know, beyond a reasonable doubt standard. And they're just like, and they're giving them like the feminist literature of like, you know, how to understand gender relations and telling them like who they have to hire.Right. They're saying you're going to have to have you know, the title line coordinator. And so there's very [00:17:00] direct here. Another thing. I mean, I think people will really appreciate is universities, right? So you think of universities, they're the origins of the other, the origins of wokeness, right?There are places where you know, the craziest people go and they have the craziest ideas and they're obsessed with identity. In 1971 it was the federal government that goes to Columbia University and they go, give us your data on your, you know, race and sex of your hires. And we want to see if you're discriminating and the president of Columbia University is scandalized by this.He writes an open letter. Saying, what do you talk? We're an institution of higher learning. We don't even collect that data. We are, we are so decentralized. I don't want to ask, start asking departments like which race are they hiring or if they're hiring enough women. And at the end of the note, the end of the letter, he goes you know, we have to do it to maintain our funding.And so we'll have to become a new kind of institution. I mean, you have the history of Columbia literally holding the line for merit and and you know, colorblindness and, you know, academic standards and then just being bullied into becoming something else through the federal government. And I wish there was [00:18:00] more.You know, I wish there was more research on like the history of this, because you look at, and there's not like tons of like, you know, there's not like historians haven't like really paid much attention. Yeah, you can go back and you can see the New York Times articles from 1971 talking about this. You can find the open letter.It's sort of an obscure document from the Columbia president, but, you know, there's like, you know, there's, there must be a rich history there of what was going on in these years that I don't think anyone has taken up to my knowledge, but it's just, it's just sort of, you know, it's sort of crazy how, how.Like direct, you could see the influence of government on these institutions.Simone Collins: So if it started with government, are you of the opinion that would have to end with government, that like, if people wanted to shift culture in a different direction, they would be best advised to try to do so through policy andRichard Hanania: government?I think it's the most direct way to do so. Yes. And it's not, you know, they should, they should fight the mimetic war, of course, and they should make culture and art and. Media and go on Twitter and make their arguments. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, all that is, all that is great. The law though, I mean, it shapes incentives and it [00:19:00] shapes institutions and what it does is not always visible, right?If you like, if you have a law that says you have to make sure you don't have a disparate. In fact, you hire some HR person you know, five years later they do some program. Nobody traces it to the original civil rights law. Right. And so it's like going in the reverse direction. Yeah. is going to be like the same thing.You're going to be basically making these HR people, you're going to be making them less necessary. You're going to be making corporations less skittish about racial discrimination, or maybe more skittish in the case of anti white or anti male discrimination. And there's going to be downstream effects, you know, months, years even decades down the line.And so, yeah, I have a you know, my second to last chapter, it spells out the political program. There are specific things, you know, government can do. Well, soMalcolm Collins: what, what are you going to run for office? Yeah.Richard Hanania: You think I would do well running for NBC by Twitter?Simone Collins: I mean, name awareness is like the number one factor that you need.Richard Hanania: Maybe, maybe when I get to Trump's level of name awareness, [00:20:00] maybe, maybe all the stuff I say won't matter, but yeah, no, I don't think I have enough to overcome all that.Malcolm Collins: Simone went to a council thing to like teach you how to run for office because she's thinking about running in the next election cycle.And they're like, well, the first thing you have to do is delete all your social media. So no one knows anything crazy. You said, and we were like, wow, if we had a political assaulted, they would literally have a heart attack. Yeah.Richard Hanania: So what are you running for Simone?Simone Collins: We're, we're looking at potentially running for just state house in PennsylvaniaRichard Hanania: for our district.No, don't say just state house. That would, I would be impressed if you became a state rep. I would beSimone Collins: impressed too. It's, it's a, it's a, what the hell? It's, it's a, our district is very much on the edge and running as a Republican, like the, the female Republican challenger to our Democratic incumbent has lost two times in a row.So like, not, not a good sign, but I mean, we agree with you that government is. Is crucial in changing these. We also somewhat disagree with the, the philosophy that those who are elected to office are elected because they are like. Good guys with clean records. [00:21:00] I mean, Trump, we say broke the ultimate glass ceiling and prove that people likeMalcolm Collins: us, exactly.Richard Hanania: Yeah. I think there is. I mean, I don't know, like other candidates don't, there's not a lot of Trump like candidates, right? There aren't, but there's notSimone Collins: a lot of people who have the balls to do it. Here's the thing is you, you decide you want to run for office and you're serious about it, right? So like you do all the right stuff, which is you hire the political consultant, you hire the campaign manager, you hire the pollster.They all tell you to do exactly the same thing. They are not incentivized to look at efficacy. They're not incentivized to look at ROI. They're incentivized to get hired again. So they're not going to do anything risky. They're not going to do anything weird. Of course, they're going to do all the stuff that is like extremely conventionally safe.Because if they, if they do something weird and for any reason you don't get elected and there are many reasons why you could be a really promising candidate and not get elected and your district is just, you know, zoned in a weird way like they're out, so they're not going to do anything. So I think the problem is that most responsible people who care about it don't have the balls.To run for office using any [00:22:00] unconventional tactic We also think and i'm curious to hear what your thoughts are on this because you recently got a lot of press For something that most people would be terrified to get pressed about right? You you got sort of like a lot of controversy but we found personally that the most controversial coverage we get and the most hate we get also leads to the most actual reach For people who are genuinely like engaged with our message.So whenever we get positive Press were like really disappointed because it literally does nothing like nothing moves a needle. No new subscribers, no new engagement, no new followers. And then like we get hate and we just like tons more, tons more engagement and meaningful engagement, positive engagement.So I'm curious, like, and so like part of, part of our thing with like running for office is we're like, you know what, you know, leave the bad social media up. Let your, let your opponents smear you because as long as your vices are not deal breakers for the thing you're running for. And like for Trump, right?Like in the fact that he was like, that he lied about his finances and you know, let him answer. Yeah. I'm curious.Richard Hanania: [00:23:00] Yeah, so the adage, you know, no publicity is bad publicity. I think there's, there is some truth to that. The worst thing in the universe for a politician or an intellectual, you know, depending on the, on the field, but a lot of field is to be ignored.So bad press at least puts you in the arena, right? If anyone is, you know, most people are not thinking about most other people, most of the time, and most people will not leave a mark and most. Things that they try. So if they can write 10 hit pieces on you, a house candidate in Pennsylvania, that's, that's, you're at the 99.9th percentile of attention for someone running for, for that position. You know, and I did 1 thing you're getting at someone that I think is, you know, there might be something to it. Is that like the whole. Industry, you know, there's fake expertise. I've heard about fake expertise that the whole sort of political conventional wisdom is sort of fake that there was, you know, something to be said for that there was you know, the trial, the whole Trump phenomenon.I mean, if you watch the Trump, you know, the Trump phenomenon, they were always like, he can't get when the primaries, okay, he can't win the election. Okay. Now he's finished. He's not going to be the nominee in 2024. They're always, they're [00:24:00] always wrong. Right on Trump. And the market, even the markets are following sort of the conventionalism.The markets have always underestimated Trump. And I think, you know, another case, I think, I don't know how much, how close to your fall in the current Republican primary, but my, my friend, Vivek Ramaswamy is sort of doing the unconventional thing. He's not as unconventional as you guys are, but he isSimone Collins: trying to be the new Trump, like the reasonable Trump.Richard Hanania: Yeah, and I, he's got a very good sort of ear for where the base is. So it's, it is, I don't know if he's actually doing something that unusual or different, or he's just like, he's just like better than the consultants are sort of knowing where the base is and where to go. Yeah. But the ideaSimone Collins: that like, Conservatives are, but I will say he's way too, like, good.He doesn't have enough. I don't know what's wrong with him. If I cannot clearly name someone's vices, they're not doing it. Right. It per our philosophy.Richard Hanania: Yeah, I mean, people do say he's too slicker. They're this and that. I mean, you know, but he's done amazingly for someone who came from nowhere, right? The fact that he's, you know, almost in second place and some polls you know, ones that I've seen.But in fact, he's even like in the top five, [00:25:00] given he was nobody, you know, six months ago. It's just amazing. And so, yeah, I mean, I think you guys. Yeah, I mean, I, I, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a theory worth testing. I mean, you guys are not going to be like, what, what, what are your options? You're not going to become a conventional, you know, political couple, right?We can't, no. So like, you know, we'll learn something from it if nothing else. So yeah. Are you, are you is it, is it a sure thing you areSimone Collins: running? We're not totally sure yet. Yeah,Malcolm Collins: whenever I hear something like, I'm like, okay, how do we fix this? And you're like, here's how you could fix this. And I'm like, okay, then how do we do that?You know, get more sane people into office. I think is a really good goal and I, I like, well, I mean, you seem to be working on it with Ramaswamy so that's cool. Yeah, I'd love to see you run some day though.Richard Hanania: The world would have to be a lot, a lot crazier. I've sort of, you know, I just, I value my freedom a lot.I've sort of, you know, I wasn't thinking about academia for a while and then I was sort of doing a few think tank things and then finally it was just like, [00:26:00] I am, you know, I just, I just don't want to be, yeah. I don't want to be chained to anything,Simone Collins: you know, just politics is like academia. You just don't have to be competent.Richard Hanania: Well, yeah, but you have to be at a certain place at a certain time, right. You have to sort of, you know, go where they tell you. Right. I'm fine with being competent. I just, I just don't wanna, I just don't wanna have to be anywhere. I just don't , I just love my own schedule and my own, my own freedom. So, but no, you guys doing it.That, that's awesome. I mean, I, I, I, I didn't know about this. I'm, I'm really glad to hear it.Malcolm Collins: What are you going to do with all our guests trying to convince them to run for office?Simone Collins: You know, okay, well, we can do the test run, right? We'll throw ourselves under the bus, then we'll get like... It would expandRichard Hanania: my sort of, my understanding of what's possible.Yeah.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Like if we were like, Oh, if you do this and here's our secret way of making it work, then you might actually get all of ourMalcolm Collins: spicy internet friends to run.Simone Collins: And many people, I think Tyler Cowen like put out a blog post about this recently, but he, he genuinely believes that, that one of the most meaningful [00:27:00] EA causes.Is to reform the Republican party because right now it's kind of, it's kind of lost. It doesn't have like, like a sort of intellectual leadership or new tone. It could really use it. And we'd love to do for the Republican party, what justice Democrats kind of did with the, the, the Democratic party where they moved the Overton window and they installed some, someMalcolm Collins: specific Democrat story or like.What's that? Justice Democrats. Are you familiar with what happened? Oh, no. I'm familiar with Justice Democrats. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I mean, they were incredibly successful. So for the audience who's not familiar, there was this group that was like, can we change the Everton window of the democratic party by basically holding like America's Got Talent style like auditions for who would be good candidates?And then funding them to run by basically telling them what to do. And you know, this sounds like an insane idea, but this is where like AOC came from. This is where Omar came from. This is where like the squad came from. They really did move the Overton window of the entire democratic party while [00:28:00] capturing democratic Gen Z.Yeah,Richard Hanania: no, you, yeah, you're right. You know, the, the, the specifics of the Republican party though, is it's interesting because it's you know, like the, the justice Democrats were sort of, they were coming from a place where they sort of, you know, the base, you know, like the base of both parties is sort of more economically leftist.Then the parties themselves are, so they were just saying, be even more economically leftist and then also like, well, I mean, they were also more economically liberal and so that they were sort of, you know, in that place where, and it was considered like, you know, being socially liberal was sort of consistent with all the you know, I think that the, with the Republican party, it's sort of different in that, like, first it's like, it has less of an intellect intellectual elite culture and has more of sort of a podcast and sort of, and not podcasts like radio and TV mostly.Yeah. And you guys are good on radio and TV, but you know, your, your audience is, you're competing with like, you know, Sean Hannity or something. Right. Just like the mouthpiece. Right. As far as like, as far as reach and then you have like this very sort of, you know, these [00:29:00] sort of like religious sort of rural concerns, you know, you're going to have to sort of navigate that, you know, your soci, your socioeconomic class is sort of different from where the Republican voter is.So it's an interesting, it's an interesting idea. Yeah. Have you thought about like running as a Democrat? I mean, was it always going to be Republicans for you guys?Malcolm Collins: I, I do not, one, I don't think it matters to run as a Democrat anymore. The democratic party's agenda is set. There's nothing you can do to change it.The Republicans post Trump, they can be anything they want. It's really exciting. But in addition to that, I do not think we keep having people trying to start pronatalist foundations that are tied to Democrats or like that are politically neutral and they keep getting crucified.Richard Hanania: Yeah, yeah, I think you're right.The Republicans can't be whatever. I think you have to, you have to, you have to check a few boxes. I think abortion, guns, taxes, I think you have to check this and you have to be like, I love Trump. You have to just love Trump personally. Right. But you're right. Other than that. Yeah. Democrats are sort of, there's more of sort of a comprehensive agenda of all Republicans.You have, you have a lot of space.Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we'll, we'll see. I [00:30:00] mean, we'll see. All right. I have loved chatting with you. This was fantastic. We'll definitely do another episode with you and thank you so much for your time. I would really encourage our audience to check out his sub stack. Like somehow if you don't know who Richard Henenia is, yet you know who we are.He is very ideologically similar to us, but much more famous and has a broader so I am surprised. Like if you know who we are, but don't know who he is, You shouldSimone Collins: and definitely also check out his book, the origins of woke really interestingRichard Hanania: book and yeah, the self stack Twitter. I'm, I'm, you know, every thought I have is basically put on one of those places.So I thought you could follow that. All right. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm and Simone have an insightful debate about why some celebrities seem to genuinely enjoy interacting with fans, while others recoil. Malcolm argues niche internet stars are more likely to be themselves publicly, feeling kinship with fans who understand their odd ideas. But Simone counters that reaching mainstream fame requires compromising your true self. They discuss how public personalities reacting negatively to fans likely feel cognitive dissonance about the persona being liked. They theorize on specific celebrities, concluding Bill Murray, Donald Trump and Andrew Tate are fully themselves, while progressive influencers often put on a facade. The lesson - pay attention to how famouses engage with fans for clues to their authenticity.Malcolm: [00:00:00] he was like, Oh, I have a parasocial relationship with you guys. You've never met me, but I watch all your episodes and I feel like. I sort of know you through that. And it was very interesting the way I felt about that in the moment because I was like, yeah, well, I mean, you're our friend, right?Like, I immediately felt like it was much more of a two way relationship than historically I have seen. People talk about parasocial. Well,Simone: more than you would expect. Right?Malcolm: And so then I begin to reflect on the people I know when they talk about their fans, do they have. A relationship where, , they genuinely feel an emotional connection to them, even when they haven't personally talked to somebody, they just meet someone, and this one's like, oh, I'm a big fan of your work, and they're immediately like, oh, yeah, we're going to get along, or do they sort of recoil at that? So then what is your thesis on what was causing this divide?Would you like to know more?Simone: So Malcolm, I am so afraid right now. For what reason? The, [00:01:00] imagine there's like a monster or like a murderer outside, outside your room, just outside and that feeling, that feeling, or like, like your worst enemy or like your boss or something is like right outside your, your door just waiting for you.Malcolm: So this is because there is a mess outside her door.Simone: There's a mess. I can, I canMalcolm: hear it. We got all of this stuff from my mom after she died and we've been putting it away. And Simone just always reacts this way to messes. Where is this existential sort of constant hatred and dread? By the way, Simone, speaking of messes and I get added the longer we're in a relationship, I get new little tasks I have to do.So I took a shower before this podcast and now I have to squeegee the walls of the shower after I do it. Oh, heart stains don't. I don't know if this is a task that anyone else has to do for their wife. I have not heard [00:02:00] of this as a part of regular life maintenance.Simone: If you have hard water, it is hard water.Malcolm: We have a whole system to help with the hardSimone: water and it's not enough. It's not enough. It gets the glass all smudgy and gross and cloudy. And I don't want that. But yeah, anyway, we're not going toMalcolm: talk about shower count. What, what, what inspired this podcast with a particular. So we're going to be at this Natalist conference.We're, we're not the ones running it. A lot of people think we're, we're the ones running it. No, another group is running it. Actually they've got some, some canceled people among them. So it will be spicier, I think, than a lot of things that we might put together ourselves. And we were talking as one of the people who was running it, but who we hadn't met yet.And he was like, Oh, I feel like, I already know, like, like I have a parasocial relationship with you guys. You've never met me, but I watch all your episodes and I feel like. I sort of know you through that. And it was very interesting the way I felt about that in the moment because I was like, yeah, well, I mean, you're our friend, right?Like, I [00:03:00] immediately felt like it was much more of a two way relationship than historically I have seen. People talk about parasocial. Well,Simone: more than you would expect. Right? Like when, yeah, when someone says, like, we feel like we have a parasocial relationship with you, we're like, oh, so, like, 1, you don't hate us for our views to, like, we're on the same page with some weird ideas.Like, we've, we've, yeah,Malcolm: but I want to get into here. Simone. Why? Because then I started thinking about, you know, Simone and I, I guess with guests we've had on and stuff like that, people can tell that we hang out at circles with lots of really high profile online celebrities in, and also IRL celebrities.And so then I begin to reflect on the people I know when they talk about their fans, do they have. A relationship where, like, they really like the relationship they have with their, their, their fans, like, they, they genuinely feel an emotional connection to them, even when they haven't personally talked to somebody, they just [00:04:00] meet someone, and this one's like, oh, I'm a big fan of your work, and they're immediately like, oh, yeah, we're going to get along, or do they sort of recoil at that?And when we started doing this, Simone you came up with, like, a really good heuristic for the group that would be like Yes, I get along really well. So, so we can, we can begin to lay this out. So I think people who get along, like who had seemed to think very fondly of their fans are people like Razeeb Khan.And then when we think about our friends who are celebrities who have the most antagonism to our fans, their fans, who would like, obviously we couldn't say names because of that, but they're generally like pop celebrities, I guess I'd say like people who are really famous, but was a really, really wideSimone: audience.A wider, more mainstream audience, I would say. Yeah. So the people we know who are niche celebrities tend to be much more in sync with their fans. And if someone doesn't, if they've never spoken with someone, but someone knows their work and really gets it, like they typically get on prettyMalcolm: well. Yeah. So then [00:05:00] what is it that you, your, your thesis on what was causing this divide?Simone: Yeah. I think that, that niche celebrities are much more likely to be genuinely themselves. And that's why one there's, there it's still niche. Like, I think that when you get to a certain level of mainstream appeal you, you aren't exactly allowed to be yourself anymore. Like you have to. I'm going to push back on that, but let me, you know, make my point is, is that you're not allowed, you basically have to like, appeal to more mainstream tastes and views.Kind of like politicians being forced to go toward the center to get more electorate when they're running for office. And so by doing that, you basically stop becoming yourself. And so when someone has a parasocial relationship with you in, in a more mainstream context. It isn't actually you, because you've had to compromise who you actually are to appeal to more people.Now tell me why you don't think that's fair. No, IMalcolm: think you're totally wrong about that. So I think your first point was correct. I think your second point was just so y nonsense.So, and unfortunately I have to talk [00:06:00] around this for our audience, because Simone always gets mad if I, like, Like, Razib, I know he wouldn't care, like, we've done, he's posted pictures with us and stuff in the past, I know he wouldn't care but like, other people we know, I have to sort of talk around when I'm trying to come up with examples but we know people who have a mainstream audience appeal, Simone, that are very much themselves within that audience.Simone: There are exceptions, there are exceptions. They're unusual. Like Donald Trump, I'm sure is one of those people. He's like, I don't know Donald Trump, but like he is definitely someone who seems like himself all the time.Malcolm: Right. And he is someone who, when people go up and they're like, I am a fan of your work.You can even see it in his eyes. He may not know that person, but they light up and he feels a genuine sense of kinship with the individual. Agree, agree. Because he is publicly whoSimone: he really is. But I would say that is a minority, a Well,Malcolm: actually, now I'm going to point out a different thing that you might not be thinking about.We also know people who are niche online celebrities who hate their fans. I [00:07:00] can think of two examples off the top of my head. I can't give names, Simone. I know you can't give names. You get angry at me. Yeah, I don't want to risk it in editing or something like that. I'm just going to say there are two examples that I know for a fact do not like their fans and feel like they, they seem to get a little afraid when they meet people in public who are their fans and both of them put on fake personalities.Simone: Okay. So you just, you just, yeah. Well, okay. Well, but okay. I would also say then at least the odds. So if you were looking at a sample of a hundred mainstream famous people, and you were looking at a sample of a hundred. Here's where you'reMalcolm: making the mistake. Here's where you're making the mistake. You're thinking about historic celebrities.Going forwards, if you look at celebrities that rose to fame in the last 10 years, Yeah, they'reSimone: much more niche. But I also think that we're seeing the death of the mainstream celebrity. I don't think we're just going to see that many mainstream, like, Broad, broad for everyone. Celebrities. The reasonMalcolm: why you used to have this trend is the same thing that you learned when you went to the political [00:08:00] consulting campaign.And they're like, well, the first thing you need to do is to delete all of your social media history so no one can ever find out anything weird or unusual or particular, you know, that you've ever said. These people were catering to like the way that boy bands used to become famous and the way that, you know, any of these corporately engineered stars became famous, but today there's a lot of stars that rise to fame simply to through appealing.Directly to an audience and there's been different ways that people have done that. So one of the things that you pointed out to me and this may help you better picture, you know, famous people who really don't like their fans are like mommy bloggers where they have to put on this veneer of being very Perfect.AndSimone: not stressed and together and notMalcolm: stressed. And yeah, like nothing's going on wrong in their life. And this causes them to have cognitive dissonance [00:09:00] around their interactions with people who say that they like them. And really interestingly, when they meet someone, probably the reason why the reaction is so viscerally negative with these individuals is the cognitive dissonance they experienced with every individual who's like, I really.Feel like I have a connection to you is they don't like that. They are not the person that person has a connection.Simone: Right. Right. Right. And yeah, I think a lot of when people get angry is when they personally, at least for me, like mostly whenever you see me angry and you think it's at you, it's because I'm mad at myself.So that actually makes a lot of sense. And I also think maybe a lot of the, the discomfort with meeting fans is like, maybe they will discover it's a lie, which could also beMalcolm: terrifying. I don't even think that's it. I think it's like the fan has a connection with an avatar of yourself that is better than who you really are.Oh, so you're blinded too. Highlights your own flaws as an individual. So that's one way it could cause emotional pain. Another way is that it's just, [00:10:00] and this is the thing with our friends who are just like publicly. I, I would call like media engineered type famous. They, they typically have just completely personalities than you would expect.So when you, like, if you get to know like a generic, I'd say like, let's say boy band celebrity or something like that, right? Their actual in person personalities are often just like entirely different than what you would think from their public personality. Which is, which is interesting because like when I think about the person who we're thinking about their in person personality is actually incredibly educated and erudite and sophisticated.And like really deep into like, you know, whether it's like AI or, or, or genetics or like all of the stuff that like we talk about on this, like, like our sort of personality group. Right. And yet publicly they would be thought of as just like another ditzy celebrity. And, [00:11:00] and I think that that would cause me a lot of pain when I met someone and they were like, I'm, I'm a huge fan of yours.I'm a huge, like, I feel like I already have a relationship with you and the person that they had a relationship with opposite these other like mommy bloggers types where the person they have a relationship with is actually better than who they really are, is actually so much less than what they really are.That might make me feel... Yeah, pretty brutally, you know, every time that happened in the way that it made me feel. And, and especially if they just like totally politically misjudge what your actual views are and stuff like that. And, and, and they're almost signaling themselves as like the polar opposite of the real you.Which I think is really interesting. But then the question is, and this is an interesting question for you. Do you think we'll maintain this? Because you had the thesis that, okay, if you get big enough, you eventually, or your image begins to disconnect from who you really are.Simone: I think if I. We're acting in isolation that would totally happen because I just don't, I'm, [00:12:00] I'm, I'm, I would say not ever really acting myself when I'm in a group, like in person with other people, right?Like, I'm that one of the reasons why we're sitting in separate rooms is I'm much more likely to be honest and myself and unfiltered if I'm in a room or like a room by myselfMalcolm: so reason. By the way, is that she is an AI iteration of myself. I just do the same thing twice and then put client filter.Simone: ThereMalcolm: was actually a a conspiracy theory about us a while ago. One of the earlier times we went viral. And the, the, the theory went, this was on Reddit that we were actually the same person because we were rarely in like the same picture. And this, this series would only bolster that. My favorite conspiracy theory about us that they said that it is impossible that somebody this weird exists in duplicate like they seem to hold a lot of the same ideas and nobody holds those ideas so how could two people meet each other who happened to be weird in exactly the same [00:13:00] way.Simone: theory, it was more like, oh, that's, it was, it was, they were commenting on a picture of us in the article and, and they were saying, that's not really the prenatal list. Those are models that are posing as them. And I'm like, that'sMalcolm: my favorite. They go, that's not really ever. It was like that scene in Clueless when she thinks like the business women, and they're like, oh, they're all actually models, and they were trying to sound like smart and dismissive.They're like, Ugh. There's people pictured in that article. Don't you know, that's not actually the pronatalist couple. That's just like a theory of what models posing of the pronatalist couple might look like. And talking about like a, and I, I couldn't have, when somebody. Is trying to hurt you, right? Like they're trying to insult you.And yet they say something that is so profoundly complimentary. You know, that they were trying to belittle the movement by saying that.Simone: Yeah. But anyway, Malcolm, if you were to go mainstream famous, I don't, I think you [00:14:00] would not change at all. You would go like full Trump or full Elon Musk. Like those are people who have gone mainstream famous who like.Give zero s***s, like things change nothing aboutMalcolm: themselves. I, I think you're right. And, and, and I would say that it is very interesting. If you look at on this channel, the older videos, the really old videos, like you search for the oldest videos on the channel. Cause we've been using someone's YouTube channel forever, you know,Simone: very cruelly.Do not let me deleteMalcolm: those videos. No, I do not. I love those videos. They represent a different time in your life, but you can see. Her personality comes off as much more of somebody who was beginning to model their personality and identity off of online influencers in these early sort of solo videos you did.Watch them against someone. It's very interesting. My,Simone: my social mode is just like any LLM. It is reinforcement learning based. I just did what I got.Malcolm: Yeah, but if you look at older videos with me in them and I might even upload some of those because we had a, a different channel that I still [00:15:00] haven't taken down that we had some videos on, but like, we've got to figure out how to consolidate them.But,Simone: you've always been you. You should even take stuff from high school, where you're like, you know, it's allMalcolm: still you. I come off as a very similar energy to the energy I have today and, and I find that interesting is, is it that I'm sort of like an anchor personality that draws you in and allows you to fix your personality because you're using me as an anchor?Simone: You're an additional modeling factor that changes how I behave in public. But I will never be myself in public, because I hate being in public. So if I'm actually being myself in public, myself being myself in public is running the f**k away from public. It is leaving the room. So I can't, like, be honest and still be in a group of people, because if I'm not lying and acting like I'm okay, then I'm not there, right?No, I agreeMalcolm: with that, but I feel like in these videos you very much act like yourself.Simone: Yeah, because I'm in a room by myself right now. It's great. It's perfect.Malcolm: [00:16:00] No, no threats other than the big looming mess outside your door. Sorry to interrupt.Simone: I didn't forgetMalcolm: but Yeah, and they did. Yeah, this is interesting for me and I really wonder you know going forwards with our fans.If this is something that changes, like do our personalities compromise going forwards and what would, how can we, you know, I mean, I do want to be the type of person who's still capable of like changing my mind when I get new information or have new ideas. ISimone: never, you're still going to be, there's like the, the bigger question is like, if someone held a gun to our heads, would you actually be able to not?And, and probably not, it would be the death of you. Like there is no world in which you can convincingly go mainstream. So don't worry about it. You'll never sell out. That's one thing I love about you. Okay.Malcolm: Here's the question I have for you. Okay. Let's [00:17:00] do some theory crafting on individuals who are famous, who we don't know whether or not they're showing their genuine.Ooh. Okay. Because I think what's really interesting is the way a person reacts when they meet. Fans, like a generic fan can, if our theory is right, it can tell you. SoSimone: Bill Murray is himself.Malcolm: Oh my God. Funny you should mention Bill Murray. I happen to know Bill Murray as himself because Bill Murray goes to so this is a celebrity that I do know, but only from stories.So Bill Murray goes to this golf championship. What was it called? The St. Andrew's open or whatever. We're like, you, you, you do golf.Simone: You knew about it because you weren't seeing Andrews at the time. So IMalcolm: was a student at St. Andrew's. And so one of the things that he was known for is even in my house, because my house used to be a party house before I moved in.And, but I was really good friends with the people who did it. So they would host big parties every night. And he was the type of guy who would just walk in off the street. Cause he saw a party happening and, and hang out. And they were joking that he would like do the dishes. After the party like [00:18:00] insist on doing the dishes for the entire party afterwards, and I'm like, that's somebody who's just so genuinely loves the way that like people they don't know engage with them based on their public persona.And so the opposite of a celebrity who's sort of hiding away from the public. Yeah,Simone: celebrities don't like. Crash parties with Bill Murray. Seeing someone on theMalcolm: street and being like, Hey, you're a student, can I come to your house for the party tonight?Simone: Every story I've ever heard about Bill Murray is like, so based and I love it.So he's definitely one of those people.Malcolm: And that's a good example of a very public person. And, and yeah, and through seeing stuff like this, so like based on this theory, I would have been able to take that story that I knew about Bill Murray and then say, he probably is very much who he is in public in person.Yeah, whereas I wonder somebody like, well, actually this is why I suspect Hillary Clinton seems to come off. So, jilted when she's talking to people at like conferences and stuff like that. You mean stilted? Yeah, like she [00:19:00] doesn't connect in the same way that Trump does because she isn't obviously feeding positive emotions from somebody saying, like, I know you like a very interesting meeting is the Nick Fuentes Trump meeting.You can read about, like, what was actually going on during that meeting and the aid who is like, trying to protect Trump from this and. He was clearly just loving that this person liked him and was engaged with the things that he was saying. Whereas I, I don't think that you would get that same sort of just like, Cancel all my meetings.I'm with somebody who likes me. No s**t. But here's a question I have for you. What do you think of Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson? I'm thinking of like conservative intellectual people who are really high up. Do you think that they are really themselves?Simone: I think Andrew Tate is himself. I think they both are themselves.Yeah. Well, I don't, I don't know about, yeah, I mean, Jordan Peterson probably isn't, I don't know enough, like, but when you look at the way that Andrew Tate set up his entire lifestyle, like that, that he lived with all his [00:20:00] cam girls and stuff, like. You don't do that like if you have a double life and you're hiding is like your real personality You don't make your life your celebrity life, but Tate's celebrity life was his life and he like yeah He's he is yeah,Malcolm: so I'm actually argued.He's probably an interesting scenario So I don't think anyone could 24 7 be who Andrew Tate's pretends toSimone: be I know man I I legit think that You think he's aMalcolm: human being capable of maintaining frame 24 7? Yes, becauseSimone: I think he, he like, it is, it is his. His reason for living like everything is about like I am so tough and he wakes up in the morning and I am so tough and like that.No, I really think like he lives for that more than fame, more than wealth or anything. It is, it is that vision. I think it is, is a beating heart. He is tryingMalcolm: to create like a piece of art and aesthetic vision with every aspect of how he interacts withSimone: reality. Yeah. Yeah. He's like Barbie in the Barbie movie before she got weird.Just 100 percent living [00:21:00] the.Malcolm: I love this, Andrew Tate being like Barbie from the Barbie movie. He is. He'sSimone: doing his thing. No, no. What, like, 100%. No, I, I, I think it's all genuine. I, I don't think he slips. I don't think, I don't think for him, it is not maintaining frame because he is the frame. Like, I just, I, I can't emphasize this enough.I feel, I feel like he's the real deal. And he monetizes that, you know, he makes it, he makes it seem like to other men that that's, that's achievable to them when it's not, it's just his neurotype. But when you look at also like genetically, like his father, like his genetic inheritance, I feel like it's literally like in his.It's in his dunna to be like that, okay? It's done.Malcolm: You listen to the stories from his father, and I don't know if these are made up or anything like that but they are very much that his father invented the philosophy he lives by and not himself. Well, his fatherSimone: was a very, like, aggressive chess champion it just, like, I just, it's in his family.It's his, like, entire genetic line, I think, to, to act like that. So he is the real deal. Who, who else? Who's, who's not? [00:22:00] Who do we have, like, evidence of super not the public imageMalcolm: thing? Well, I mean, so many celebrities complain about their fans. I think literally any celebrity that complains about their fans is probably not.Yeah. And this is something you see sort of across stuff. Okay, here'sSimone: a great example. Megan and Harry, I guess.Malcolm: I was going to say if we're talking about online celebrities. Yeah. Lindsay Ellis.Simone: I don't, I don't know who that is well enough.Malcolm: Yeah, so, Lindsay Ellis is the girl who was like the female film critic.. Oh, the film, the Nostalgia Chick.Yes, there was a nostalgia criticwho's a famous guy on YouTube and then he hired her to be like a female version of himself for like when that was necessary in videos and then she spun off and did her own thing and now she's like. She gets in fights with her fans, so she got in a big fight with a bunch of fans recently, and it's been this huge thing, and I get the impression, because she really seems to be sort of antagonistic with her fans these days that she was always sort of putting on a, a fake [00:23:00] facade.Illuminati was that,Simone: for sure. Who, Gandhi? Illuminati,Malcolm: on YouTube. Oh, Illuminati, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's definitely another one. Yeah. I actually think it's much more common on the progressive side of things. And the reason why I think it's more common amongst progressive niche influencers is because the social rules that the progressive ideal of a person puts on the way people need to appear publicly.They're unsustainable. That you're almost always lying about something about how you look. You cannot indulge in your flaws and still be liked by your community. You know, I think that we admit many things personally here or things that we have done in the past, which demonstrate that like we are okay with accepting our flaws and that we like don't mind them and that our community isn't going to hate us for that. Like, I, you know, I can, you can mention things you've thought in the past. I can mention, you know, things I've done in the past and, and we don't really get that negatively judged.Whereas I [00:24:00] think that was in that community. You would be.Simone: Yeah, well, even for, you know, having the wrong reactions to something, a wrong opinion, but no, who are, who are other mainstream, I guess, like every celebrity who reacts poorly. In public who, you know, like there's so many Reddit threads, which is like, Oh, like Reddit, tell us stories when you've met celebrities.And then there's all the people who are like, Oh, this person was a dick at a restaurant. I guess it's kind of along those lines. Yeah.Malcolm: Well, this has been a fascinating conversation to me, Simone, because I think it provides information on yeah, how you can see the world. And another story that I was going to tell with Trump, which is interesting to me is if you talk about somebody not really changing, one of, I think the most telling things about Trump is a lot of progressives will try to paint him as like an actual racist.And it's like, if you look at the history of a lot of progressive online his influencers today, you will find that they have said, like, actually racist stuff in their use that they inward and stuff like that, like in their rise to fame, you look [00:25:00] at Trump when he's on like Howard Stern from like 30 years ago, how did he never say once anything explicitly racist?Like, do you think this is a man with self control? Do you think this is a man? Who is capable of like tactically putting out even a fake personality. And I think that that's been part of his saving grace is he lacks the tactical self restraint to persistently and over the longterm put out a fake personality, but instead indulges.And who he really is. And in many ways, people would traditionally think of as the flaws of a personality. Yeah. But he really indulges it. That'sSimone: interesting. Yeah. Looks like you've got a good future ahead of you then, Malcolm. Well,Malcolm: let's hope. Let's hope. The political consultants don't make us take down all our social mediaSimone: posts.We won't listen to them. And we're not going to hire them anyway, so don't worry about it.Malcolm: I love you. I love you too. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this insightful episode, Malcolm and Simone discuss new research showing childhood trauma is caused more by one's perception of events than the events themselves. People with verified abuse who don't see their childhood as bad show minimal ill effects, while those with no abuse who believe they were mistreated exhibit high rates of mental issues. Malcolm reflects on his own unusual upbringing, arguing he avoided PTSD by seeing challenges as adventures. They explore why women tend to recall more childhood adversity. Malcolm contends trauma comes from random negative events, not predictable ones. Ultimately, it's community narratives that frame events as traumatic or not. Avoiding "trauma creation" will be key for their parenting.Malcolmm: [00:00:00] all these people complain like, well, as a boy, I, I was never allowed to cry and I was never allowed to feel bad.And I was never allowed to confide in people and they're like, and that was all bad. That was all bad things that happened to me, but it's not a bad thing. It actually makes your life better. When people are hard on you, when people are hard on the way that you frame your life, In the moment, it doesn't feel awesome.In the moment, when you want to be vulnerable, it doesn't feel awesome. But in terms of life outcomes, it is demonstrably and dramatically better. And, and this is a very, very, very obvious from these various research data points.Would you like to know more?Malcolmm: Its so great to be here with you today. You had just sent me this study where you're like, this is so fascinating. Mm-hmm. , and better than that, [00:01:00] it confirms our preexisting beliefs. And isn't that just the, the best kind of studies, right? Yes.Simone: That's, that's what, that's why people read studies to, well, for confirmation bias of, so this study, is by Andrea Denny's and Kathy Spatz Widom.Gonna get their names wrong, of course. It's called Objective and Subjective Experiences of Child Maltreatment and Their Relationships with Psychopathology, published in Nature Human Behavior, which is a very respectable journal. And basically they found... I'm just going to quote them. We found that even for severe cases of childhood maltreatment identified through court records, risk of psychopathology linked to objective measures was minimal in the absence of subjective reports.In contrast, risk of psychopathology linked to subject report, subjective reports of childhood maltreatment was high, whether or not the reports were consistent with objective measures. So, so dumbed down some more words.Malcolmm: In simpler language. Basically [00:02:00] what it means is that if you had a really traumatic, in the way that modern society would frame trauma, childhood, like you were systemically abused in ways that were verified by the court system, but you don't believe that you had a difficult childhood, you will not have any negative effects from your childhood.However, if you had a perfect childhood, but you believe you had a terrible childhood, you will have all of the effects that we associate with childhood trauma. Now, this is something that confirms with other studies that we've talked about on this show. You know, we've talked about the study of sleepers that showed that People who believed that they had had bad sleep, but hadn't actually had bad sleep, had all the effects that we as a society associate with bad sleep.People who verifiably had bad sleep they didn't have any of those effects. Yeah, it's how [00:03:00] youSimone: see it. If you think that you slept poorly... You're going to show signs of fatigue that day, you're going to struggle, and even if you slept like s**t, but you believe you slept really well, you're going to be like, oh, I'm perky, I feel good, on average.Malcolmm: This is so critical within our, because what this actually means, you know, you can, you can say, oh, this is like interesting or quirky or whatever. It actually means that as a society, when we say something like, childhood trauma causes adult issues. That is just verifiably untrue. It's the belief that you were traumatized in childhood that causes adult issues.Yet, often these two things are pretty correlated, right? Often somebody who is traumatized in childhood will have the belief that they were traumatized in childhood. But what's critical to remember is when the left, Yeah, it's usually the left who does this, invents new types of [00:04:00] traumas that somebody can go through, or they frame something as particularly traumatic that previously people wouldn't have thought of as traumatic.They create the symptoms of trauma in that individual. Where that individual previously wouldn't have had those symptoms. And this is, you know, we have seen this have such negative effects on individuals lives. Recently we were interacting with someone and they were just absolutely riddled with likeSimone: all sorts ofMalcolmm: diseases, you know, neurological issues, pain, all these sorts of very spoonie like issues. If you go to our spoonie episode and, and we had a friend who was like that as well, you know, but what was really interesting is she was only like that when she was a progressive.So when we first met her, she was like deep into the progressive sphere. And so if you want to talk about what happened, because she's a better friend to you than me.Simone: Yeah, I mean, she, she had some severe health problems and they included, you know, [00:05:00] seizures, severe allergies. I mean, this was a fairly limited life that she had to live.She couldn't, you know, computer screens.Malcolmm: Yeah, yeah, there was imagine your life not being able to look at computer screens. It was, itSimone: was really rough. And then yeah she, she shifted some things. She got in a really good relationship. So she sort of changed her standards and values and sort of the way that she was going to prioritize things in her life.And then like, One day she called me and she was like, yeah so I don't have seizures anymore.Malcolmm: Well, so it wasn't just that. So, I mean, the guy who she married is a Texan guy. You actually have seen this couple in some of our after video credits playing with the kids at one point. Yeah, we really,Simone: reallyMalcolmm: like them.They're awesome people. Yeah, yeah. And then the Fourth of July party, they, they hosted this. But yeah, so, so Texas guy, very religious, you know. And actually not at first. So he and she had known each other for years. He was also in [00:06:00] this far progressive movement. And then they started hanging out more with us than their other friends.And then they became like, really, like, like, they, they went along with sort of the way that we were going, but they went further than us. And, and now, you know, they're really into Jesus and all that, and very much structure their lives as a very religious, Conservative couple and they focus on this realSimone: trad athletic.Yeah, I would, I would say that you almost like implied that like we had some influence on them. No, like they, they very, very introspectively thought through their lives and their values and they came to a very. Religious and more traditional conclusion. Do you reallyMalcolmm: think that would have happened had they not known us?Hold on. Do you really, we were there only like non ultra progressiveSimone: for it. We, we may have nudged them slightly, but I think many, many factors nudged them slightly. Okay. I'll agree with that. I'll agree with that. Yeah. And, and, and, but anyway, I thought like that is really interesting. And I think, you know, we, we see this effect of recontextualization [00:07:00] on real world health outcomes, but what also makes this, this nature.Study really interesting to me is, is Ayla also recently released some interesting research on basically how women remember their childhoods differently than men. And, and basically she looked through her massive amounts of data at how people viewed their childhoods and whether they thought they were neglected.Never, rarely, sometimes often, or very regularly. And whether they were verbally abused, whether they were physically abused, and how often they were spanked. And then she also asked them, like, you know, what was the social class of your upbringing? And, and...Malcolmm: Oh, you're taking too long to get to theSimone: point.The point was basically... Girls reported more physical abuse, more verbal abuse, more, basically more hardship and trauma in childhood. And it almost implied also that their social class was lower. I think actually they reported that their social class was lower. So basically like girls saw their childhood as much [00:08:00] worse than boys did.Even though typically when you look at punishment, Boys are getting more punished. TakeMalcolmm: a step back. It was very obvious from the data sets that this was an equal data set in terms of boys and girls. Women were not being punished more than men. They were objectively remembering every aspect of their childhood is being worse than the men.Now, what we don't know is, is it could turn out that men are just misremembering their childhood and, and, and the, the women actually are remembering everything or it could turn out that the women are inventing. trauma that didn't exist in their childhood. And there's many things that could lead to this.But I probably think the biggest factor in this is that our society does not reward men for experiencing and contextualizing things is traumatic, whereas our society does reward women for doing that. And this is really [00:09:00] important in the context of this other study as well, because it means that through doing that, you know, all these people complain like, well, as a boy, I, I was never allowed to cry and I was never allowed to feel bad.And I was never allowed to confide in people and they're like, and that was all bad. That was all bad things that happened to me, but it's not a bad thing. It actually makes your life better. When people are hard on you, when people are hard on the way that you frame your life, In the moment, it doesn't feel awesome.In the moment, when you want to be vulnerable, it doesn't feel awesome. But in terms of life outcomes, it is demonstrably and dramatically better. And, and this is a very, very, very obvious from these various research data points. And so that when you have these people who try to shut down these sorts of [00:10:00] conversations about well, you really shouldn't, as a man, indulge in these sorts of emotions.These people are helping you be more mentally healthy. And when people engage with us, they often are like, Wow, you guys really don't allow yourself to, like, fuel those emotions. And, you know, that's really gonna cause damage over time. And I'm like, well, I've been around you. I'm obviously a happier person than you.So, like, that's not true. But anyway, it continues toSimone: that one. Well, I just, it's also really interesting the cultural role that that plays. You know, that I think we do live in a culture now where women are more allowed to have trauma and encouraged to have trauma. But it also is scary to me how, especially in progressive circles, people gain status by...Typically showing some form of victimhood which seems to encourage people to lean into their past, find something that was wrong with it, and then turn it into drama, which will, in turn, yield all these mental disorders [00:11:00] and problems, and so it's no wonder that we're seeing mental health epidemics and it's, it's really sobering also to know that there's research that shows that how you contextualize things really matters, I guess.Well, I want to go overMalcolmm: how forced people are to contextualize their childhoods this way. Mm, go on then. No one has seen this as me. So just as an example, I don't know we're how many hundred episodes in at this point and, and people are just now learning this about me, but I grew up in the prison system.So, at the age of 13, I was sent to court appointed prison alternatives. If you have read the book Holes or seen the movie Holes, it's a very good example of one of these camps. It was a private prison system for children that was related to the troubled teen industry, but it was like the court appointed iteration of this.And from that age until college, I never lived with my parents again. Full time. And there's a lot, there's, there's a lot more to this journey than that, but when I'm talking to reporters, you know, they're always like, where did you come from? What's your [00:12:00] origin story or whatever. And when I say this, they're always like, Oh, that explains why that explains soSimone: much.Right. So it's just his trauma. He, all of this is to deal with his trauma. HisMalcolmm: trauma. And I'm like, well, no, you know, like, like I don't. That's not really that relevant to my current world perspective. And they will not accept that answer. You've seen this. They just refused. You can see that they're like, Oh yes, little traumatized child.I see you, you know, Good acting tough, but that's only because of the trauma and I'm like, no, culturally I was taught that this isn't the way you relate to what's hard in your life because you know, worst case scenario, you create this rags to riches narrative, which is really plausible. Like it's one I could really indulge in, but If I'm being honest my parents were both really smart people [00:13:00] and for generations, my family has had a very easy time making money and I inherited that.And yes, I may not have inherited wealth directly or inherited their social circles or connections directly, but I did inherit. The capability of life, not being that hard for me, just from a mental perspective, like, whether it's the way I like, like sociological profile aspects or, or, or IQ or whatever you want to call it.And so I don't really. I personally contextualize my childhood as being that hard at all. Now it's funny now that I think about it, most of the people I knew committed suicide before they hit their 20s. So, that's an interesting fact. Not most, but like a large chunk. Not great. Yeah. Maybe that means it wasn't that good.But it just shows how much you can twist your reality. To just [00:14:00] be like, nah, it was awesome. It all turned out great. You know,Simone: I do want to talk with you about on this front. Right. It's like, you know, cause we need to think about how we're going to handle this with our kids and how to, you know, encourage them to deal with things that are genuinely traumatic.Right. I mean, he went through some stuff and other people went through some stuff. And, and so there's, you know, we know that the way you contextualize things can significantly impact how damaging or not something is. But then we also know that there are things like PTSD, which are real. And which are almost, not almost, which are fairly mechanical and sort of the way they work and need to be fixed.And where's the difference, you know, because you need to admit that you have PTSD to be able to deal with it. And I feel like, you know, part of this viewMalcolmm: is, I've talked about this before, it's really misunderstood. Trauma does not cause PTSD. PTSD is caused by a very specific psychological phenomenon.Happening repeatedly, and it comes down to, I call it the Houdini phenomenon, right? Houdini famously died [00:15:00] because he had this trick where he would tense his muscles and then somebody would punch him in the gut. And one day after an event... Somebody sucker punched him in the gut. He didn't have time to tense his muscles first, because he didn't know what was happening.The guy was just like, well, are you really invulnerable to this stuff? And he died from, you know, internal injury. And this is obviously a really sad death, but it shows what actually causes what we call PTSD. If you are in a family in which somebody is reliably abusive, i. e. if every day your dad comes home and beats you, you will not develop PTSD.You only develop it if your dad is good. A lot of the time, but occasionally he beats you. And you don't expect it. It comes out of nowhere. There's no way of predicting when this is going to happen. A, a wife who is always mean to you won't cause PTSD. A wife who is mean to you randomly and without the ability to predict it [00:16:00] will cause PTSD.So you're sayingSimone: it's like the sort of evil twin of operant conditioning?Malcolmm: Exactly. PTSD is the evil twin of Operant Conditioning. Where ifSimone: something very unexpectedly bad happens to you, it's like the opposite of the addiction that you get with positive Operant Conditioning. you mean byMalcolmm: Operant Conditioning so people can understand.Simone: So Operant Conditioning is a form of sort of like feedback training where when you do not predictably offer rewards, but very unpredictably offer rewards. Examples might be slot machines, gambling various types of mobile games, et cetera. Like it's built into everything these days. You actually have a very you can have a very, a very addictive response.Like the dopamine reward for when you do get that unexpected reward is incredibly high. And so it seems that PTSD, as you describe it, is the opposite of that. That when very unexpectedly a really bad thing happens. the reaction that you have also is like on overdrive, but in the [00:17:00] negative, like panic sense.Malcolmm: So yeah, that's exactly it. And it can cause like visible changes in person.Simone: Okay. So why, why then do people come back classically from war with PTSD if they like expectMalcolmm: to be, because war is not every day people are shooting at you. War is sitting around doing nothing. for months and a half, and then in one day, half of your friends die.WhySimone: did you not get PTSD from getting, like, thrown into the desert and having, like, kind of boring days and then really, really, really bad things happening to you? Like some kid trying to kill you with a shovel in the middle of the night.Malcolmm: Oh, like me? Because I didn't contextualize those things asSimone: bad, I guess?Do you still think contextualization? No, because I think you've argued inMalcolmm: these moments. If somebody went into war and they contextualized it as this honorable thing and everyone who died was in it as this honorable event, as I think a lot of people did historically, even though wars were similar, I doubt you had as much PTSDSimone: back then.Do you still think that contextualization has [00:18:00] something to do with PTSD? Yeah,Malcolmm: but it's about in the moment contextualization because, because PTSD is not something that's caused by the way we remember the events it's causedSimone: by the unexpected, but alsoMalcolmm: the negative nature of the events in these moments growing up these.Bad things happen. Simone was talking about a few times people tried to kill me. I starved at times. I had to eat ants to not die. I had to learn what insects I could eat in the area, what plants I could eat. It was hard because I was allergic to something they were using in the foods that they were giving to the kids and they didn't believe me.And so, yeah, so a lot of stuff happened, but I just saw it all as an interesting challenge. Like, that was genuinely the way I engaged with it. I was like, oh, this is a really interesting challenge. I suppose this isn't the way a lot of people engage with things like this that happen to them in life.But that's how I contextualize it. I, you know, I just saw it as an interesting challenge and I engaged with it like that. And I [00:19:00] think that all events, every, everything that comes into your brain in the same way that everything that comes into my eyes is filtered through the lenses I wear is filtered through the lens that you create, which is the narrative for the events around you.And. Maybe it's being an as a guy situation, you know, you're talking about as a guy, as a girl, a society that frames women as victims, you know, the princess and the tower or whatever, and guys as the heroes. Well, this was just all part of my heroic journey. Yeah. And ISimone: guess, you know, if you were a girl, you know, as a guy, you were maybe thinking like, Oh, like I'm, I'm being rugged.This is like an adventure survival thing. This is making me stronger. Whereas maybe a girl would be like, Oh my God, I'm abandoned. I'm in love. Like they might see it as very different because there aren't very many like heroes journeys for women that involve this level of survivalism.Malcolmm: Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right.I just, I guess I don't have anything to say other than yeah, you're probably right about this. Well, I haveSimone: one additional question for you because I don't think it was just you contextualizing masculine heroes [00:20:00] journeys while going through this as a kid that helped you not contextualize it in a way that did give you PTSD or other forms of trauma based on your contextualization.I, I'm wondering if your parents modeled this, like, where did you get, where do you think? Because obviously everything's going to be a just so story. This is all speculation. We can't know why we thought what we thought or why we did what we did, but your best guess, where did you get this attitude of like, Oh, this is an interesting puzzle.How can I work this out? Like, was this from books you read? Was this how your parents behaved? Like how was this? This given to you is like the evoked reaction instead of some other reaction. Well,Malcolmm: I think that this is a very important thing about raising kids. And we had done another video on this on the Jordan Peterson raising kids thing.And we're like, we really disagree with his parenting strategies because they are focused on breaking the child's will. And getting them to obey authority, whereas ours are focused on stoking a child's will and getting them to resist authority and even gain like emotional fire and [00:21:00] happiness from the moments where they successfully resistant unjust authority.And I think that there's a final form of child rearing, which is narrative focused child rearing, where and this is the most common, where you teach a kid to engage with mostly just narratives about themselves and about society and about their role in that society. Narrative focused child rearing always leads to really negative outcomes, right?And I think it's really important that we don't allow our kids to engage in that because that's what progressive society uses right now to really f**k kids up. Because every cult historically, this is just the way cults work. It's a very effective strategy. If you can convince people that their close support networks, their family and their culture were abusive to them as kids, you know, then you can separate them from their support networks.And then they, they become much easier prey and they become much less likely to deconvert. So, Yeah, there's a reason that these institutions target individuals in this way. [00:22:00] It's because it's a really good source of prey, but you should know, I think, so there's two things here. One, as a parent, you know, and we'll do a video on, like, how to be a good parent, because I think that's a good one.Like, all the things we're trying to focus on. But you really need to focus on, or one of our core things that we focus on as a cultural tradition, and I would encourage other people to consider, is stoking their will and internal locus of control and, and sort of, desire to know what's right for themselves and fight for that.Simone: Did your parents do that?Malcolmm: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my mom told me, oh, they don't care what the teachers say. They're idiots. They're losers. You know. Well, that's not something a lot of parents would say, you know, but it really, it really worked for me. You know, my parents never being like, I will sit and punish you until you accept X thing that I'm telling you.I couldn't imagine them doing that. Yeah. Yeah. No, they just locked me in our room [00:23:00] and be like, look, if you're having a moment right now, you're having a moment. We'll handle you later. So. So I think that's really important in terms of dealing with situations like this, because then when you deal with hardship, you're not looking at who's to blame or anything like that.It's just a challenge for you to overcome because so much of the world depends on you overcoming it. And I also suppose that's another thing with kids. You know, I was really taught to view protecting the world as my responsibility and as something that I needed to do and everything else was just sort of a challenge on my way to achieving that end state.It was just like, well, this is just what you have to do as a member of this family. Your goal is to fix things. And no one else is gonna do it, and the entire world's gonna work against you. And I think that those sorts of framings are really useful. And I think that these are ones that Christians often do.You know, they see people attacking them. It's a sign [00:24:00] that they're more likely to be right, and this is actually part of what creates susceptibility within more religious communities, I think, to MLM scams, because when they see people being like, look, can't you see this is a scam? Can't you see these statistics?They're like, oh well, the fact that people are attacking it means they must be on the right path. So there, there are negatives to this as well.Simone: Interesting. Okay. So, gosh, I mean, like, how are we going to impart this to our kids in a way that doesn't, I don't know.Malcolmm: Well, I think the easy part is stoking their will.But I think the hard part is providing external challenging situations that they have to overcome.Simone: I mean, my, my theory on this has, remains the same in that I really think. It's, it's clear that when you have siblings, like a lot of siblings in a family, you have already artificially created that hardship because there's not always going to be a parent who's ready to do what you need right away because they may be helping someone [00:25:00] else.And there's just more limited resources. And there's also more people around who are going to make your life complicated and who may want your help or need your help or possible for you to get help right away when you want it. So I actually think just having siblings is enough, like enough hardship in life too.Solve the problem, you don't think so?Malcolmm: If we have enough. Well, that's the plan. I mean, if we get to like 12, sure.Simone: I don't think you needMalcolmm: that much. I don't think 7 counts, that's a normal number of kids. You need like a reasonableSimone: amount. Malcolm, that is not. That is not a normal number of children, that is not a normal number of children, none of this data.Come on, like, even, even people in the past, you know, they may have, have birthed 10 kids, but they had like four or five, like this is. You know, I'm just saying, like, let's be reasonable with what is, is a, a hardship level [00:26:00] of, of having kids. But yeah, I mean, I think between us giving them siblings and us also not being, well, us being inherently very frugal people is enough to create limitations that force some creativity and resilience.If that makes sense.Malcolmm: Yes.Simone: But I do, I do think this is really interesting and actually we've received some, some emails actually from people who follow this podcast and thank you by the way for contacting us guys. But many of them actually are surprisingly riddled with this culture. With this like, well, you know, yeah, I, I have this thing that's running against me, like, I just, you know, I just can't do it byMalcolmm: telling us their narratives.Simone: Yeah. Like what we're seeing a lot of like learned helplessness or like, determined what's the word fatalism. And like, well, I'm just not going to try. Cause it, there's no point. And IMalcolmm: get that narratives are difficult to break. Yes. But if you're [00:27:00] starting with one of these narratives and you realize yourself as having one.The most important thing is to change your friend group and change where you're living and change what you're doing every day. If you change your environment, it is, and you go into this new environment like dead set. Okay, well, now I'm going to live this like trad conservative lifestyle and I'm going to go out there and I'm going to be industrious.The amount to which you can change as a person is really difficult to oversell. Mm hmm. I totally agree. Like it is, it is, the, the, the, the core study on this that I always cite is people coming back from Vietnam who were addicted to heroin, something like 86 percent of them, the addiction basically immediately disappeared when they came back.And the question is why? Because their context was so different that even really deep seated neurological phenomenon could be reset because your brain basically is running different modes for different environments. [00:28:00] Well, this has been spectacular, Simone, and I hope it helps some people and really... The, the biggest takeaway from this I would say is when somebody comes to you and they try to tell you that your childhood was traumatic or your parents did something traumatic or oh here's this problem you have that you didn't know you had.Now if you're like, no, I guess I always sort of knew that this was something that was troubling me. I just didn't have words. No you didn't. That's not a thing. That is, that is people writing things into your history. That is the way, if this wasn't every morning you woke up and you're like, this is my big problem today, then it was created for you.And I hate to say it, but this is one of the big issues we have with the trans movement. In that, I do think that there are some people who are genuinely born trans, but I think for a lot of people who join the movement, it's more like, This is something they were convinced was a problem for them, and if they hadn't had people selling this to them, they never would have [00:29:00] known that this was a problem in their life.And so this level of pain that they're experiencing every day is created by people pointing out the problem and contextualizing the problem and then framing the problem as really bad. You know, one of my favorite things that I mentioned as a study, and I've never been able to find this study, but it was mentioned when I was doing my degree in college.At St. Andrews, by the way, right now, ranked the top university in the UK, by, above both Oxford and Cambridge, by both The Times and The Guardian, for the last two years. Hey, I gotta take pride in my alumni honor. Anyway. It was a study that showed that women who grew up in environments where unwanted non consensual sex was common.Didn't have any negative effects from it, but people who grew up in environments where unwanted non consensual surprise sex was uncommon like, you know, the West really faced negative reactions to it. You create your society, the [00:30:00] people who your friends was, they create what's traumatic for you by what they contextualize as traumatic.And I guess you could say everybody gets their sort of. Wisdom saving score. Yeah, I'm sorry, I've been playing a lot of Balders Gate 3 recently. So, it's a, it uses the DND engine and it's, you know, you roll the dice every time to see if you get a saving throw against this. But if you have a community that's constantly trying to tell you, people not recognizing this, people not seeing you this way, this is traumatic.It becomes traumatic in the way that trauma is meaningful. And by that, what I mean, Is all trauma is really just due to these sorts of contextualizations. And no matter what happens to you, the things that happen to you aren't what create the trauma. It's the way your community and yourself choose to relate to those things.Simone: Yeah. So, yeah. If you, I think a lot of people in the world,Malcolmm: because they will tell them it's such a cheat code. I think a lot of peopleSimone: who follow this podcast think that they have this view, but don't. So [00:31:00] next time you find yourself believing that, you know, you, you can't solve the problem. That's probably a sign that you might be subject to these views.So there'sMalcolmm: that. Sometimes one of the fun cultural differences between Simone and I is every time something bad happens, she's always like. I didn't even realize that looking for a solution to this was possible. She grew up her entire childhood, like not knowing about mucin X because like her family, like they'd be sick and they wouldn't, I'm like, you're sick.I'd be like, well, you're sick. Google solutions. But what do we do about this? She'd be like, I've been feeling really bad today about X. And I was like, okay, go to Claude, type that in. That's an AI, that's the anthropic AI. And let's find a solution. He goes, Oh, there probably isn't one. I'm pregnant.And I'm like. I'm sorry, just try. This was gas recently. And it was like, actually there's this really easy solution that doesn't hurt pregnancies. And she's like, like, why did you have so much resistance to even trying? [00:32:00]Simone: Yeah. I think part of like a lot of it's how I grew up, that like there, there was no attitude about like, Oh, like take cold medicine when you have a cold.It was just like. Drink chamomile tea.Malcolmm: Problems require solutions and that's a cultural attitude thatSimone: you can bring into your day. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I'm not, I'm not exempt from this. That's why I really recognize it as a problem. So go home and think about it, people. But Malcolm, thank you for helping me think through it all the time because I really appreciate it.I loveMalcolmm: you. to death, Simone. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm argues racism applies group differences to individuals, while true evil legally encodes it. This prevents inter-generational competition essential for progress. He explains racism’s similarity to communism in suppressing the “grand game” advancing society. Racists grasp external excuses for failure rather than learning from successful groups.Affirmative action is the worst modern racism as it systemically handicaps minorities. Historic racism still disadvantaged some groups, but evenness doesn’t mean fairness. A level playing field enables eventual parity. They discuss respectful cultural pride versus outgroup hatred. Overall the left’s racism destroys potential while right bigots chiefly hurt themselves.Malcolm: [00:00:00] ethnic socialism is what it really is.Malcolm: Racism is ethnic socialism. They apply. Unfair barriers to people of different racial and ethnic groups based on preconceptions about those groups that prevent those groups from competing against them in a fair and open ecosystem. And doing that. They hobble those groups, but they also hobble their own group.Malcolm: What the great thing is about actual racism is groups that don't punish it, don't compete as well.Malcolm: And they end up falling apart. If you look at America and you look at the white populations, the white populations that were less racist economically have outperformed the white populations that were more racist. Hmm.Simone: Yeah.Malcolm: You look at multicultural groups and this is something you see. Racism is a self extinguishing phenomenon when it is not entrenched in government law.Malcolm: That's why I see the groups that are just like [00:01:00] generically racist as less evil than the groups that enshrine racism in law with things like affirmative action because. Those groups are hurting themselves often more than they hurt the groups around them. And so it's like, ha ha ha, look at the idiot.Would you like to know more?Simone: Malcolm, you really piqued my curiosity the other day when you said racism was a lot like communism. What's going on there?Malcolm: Now, this is a fun topic and it was inspired by a comment by Simone by the way, love you excited to be talking to you again where some people were like, why isMalcolm: racism ethically wrong? You know, so first we need to define what we mean by racism. And what we consider racism. So some people consider racism as believing different ethnic groups are different. That is stupid. And diversity has no value if we're not actually different.Malcolm: In a [00:02:00] world in which everyone is secretly the same, there is no point in diversity, culturally, ethnically, anything like that. It's an aesthetic difference. And that it's not, there's no superiority to a painting with more colors in it than a painting withSimone: less color. And furthermore, in such a world, which is optimal, it would also be ridiculous to pretend that there aren't differences, right?Malcolm: And it's you know, I think, here's where it gets bad, okay, and this is where I define racism.Malcolm: It's when you use Intergroup differences to make decisions about individuals when you find out they're part of one group or another group, or to make decisions about how you interact with groups as a whole. This is very important to me. Like I bet that you never. allow knowledge of like, well, people like this, they're like, they're like, Catholics are like, this Jews are like this.Malcolm: It's just like groups like this. Like, obviously there are going to be [00:03:00] statistical norms that are culturally, even if, even if just cultural differences, because different ethnic groups clustered within different cultural groups and culture can influence life outcomes. Of course, you're going to have different averages that differ between groups.Malcolm: And these averages can allow you. to create prejudices, which allow you to more quickly make decisions about those groups. Often this is what I am against, and this is what I consider to be a racist. But then there's the higher form of racism, which is the ultimate form of racism. And I think where you get into sort of pure evil, which is when you encode group differences into legal systems.Malcolm: Or social systems in terms of how you deal with cultural outsiders. Ah, okay. So let's talk about why this is very similar to communism and why it is evil from our cultural perspective. Okay. So there are many things that our culture values. But [00:04:00] one of the highest value systems within our culture is intergenerational improvement.Malcolm: The core goal of every human being... is to make kids that are better than them. It is. a game in which you are always playing against your ancestors and yourself. It is a game in which you are consistently striving to not stagnate, where stagnation is the highest form of failure. A stagnant species, our pattern from our worldview, Is completely pointless.Malcolm: It is, it may as well not exist. If you think of it in terms of Conway's Game of Life,Malcolm: and I'll see if you get some video of this or something. A simple self repeating pattern is as pointless as a pattern that ceases to exist because it is uninteresting. It is, it is, it is unmeaningful.[00:05:00] Now, this is why when we see groups like the Nazis who are like, well we need to go back to like, A single Aryan white, they sort of see the perfect ethnicity as being something in the past can be crafted and then is stagnant which is actually very similar to the people who want to ban us from using genetic selection on our kids because they see us as like dirtying the human gene pool by like entering exogenous technology into our practices.Malcolm: They both believe that there is a perfect version of humanity. It is either close to the existing version of humanity or, or in the past. And we can achieve it by limiting other groups, reproductive capabilities or exterminating other groups. So this is a form of stagnation to us. It is a form of evil to us.Malcolm: But even generic racism is, is the Ideologically uplifting of stagnation as a [00:06:00] concept. So the way that progressive groups, because progressive culture is, if you look at conservative culture as it typically offers a lot of cultural amenities to people, it offers. You know, if you live in a very Christian community, they often have a very Mormon community or something like that.Malcolm: You know, if you're on hard times, it has systems for dealing with that. If you're old and food scarce, it has systems for dealing with that. If you're an orphan, they have systems for dealing with that. You know, and, and, and this, This often makes progressives angry. They're like, well, of course, like the Salvation Army exists and provides services for people, but they don't provide them to trans people.Malcolm: They, they enforce some of their cultural values when they're providing these services. And it's like, well, yeah, they do. Okay. But. They are able to motivate their average member to provide these services, while you, progressive community, appears to be unable to do that without the threat of government force.Malcolm: Well, because of this, if the progressive community wants to [00:07:00] deconvert people into it, if it wants to convert people's kids, because, you know, they're not having kids of their own, so they can only survive by converting the children of nearby healthy cultural groups, the way that they allow that to happen is they need to create government mandated alternatives to these social safety nets that are prevented by these variable cultural groups.Malcolm: Well, that is what communism is at the end of the day. Communism is a system in which the government is providing all of the social services. So socialism, communism, all that. So that there is no need to be in any of the disparate cultural groups. Communism has always worked hand in hand with cultural genocide.Malcolm: That has always been the goal of communism is cultural genocide. It is to erase all of the differences between humans. It is to make all humans the same. And that isSimone: stagnation. So racism is communism. Communism isMalcolm: racism. Well, we haven't gotten to exactly how it's similar yet, because I haven't gotten to [00:08:00] that.Malcolm: But it removes the need for intergroup competition. You know, you cannot have, you cannot have, in one of these totally socialist states, it becomes much more difficult to say, well, you know, Jews seem to be economically outcompeting other groups. Maybe there's something we can learn from them or something like that, right? To be more pointed. This form of racism is really just an outward reflection of inwards cultural weakness. It is the signs of a dying culture. Strong cultures, almost never hold these sorts of beliefs because they don't need to. It's the type of thing that people begin to grasp towards when they can see that they are being out competed. And when they can see that they have begun to die. And I suppose just the weakness of it disgusts me seeing that sort of weakness in other people discuss me.Malcolm: Like, because there's no reason to be in any of these cultural groups. And they try to erase all of the cultural differences between these groups. So you don't, you no longer get the competition. And it [00:09:00] is competition that leads individuals and groups to attempt to improve themselves. And as they improve themselves, as the, and then people convert into the groups that are doing better, that have lifestyles that are they have a competition of you know, economic and cultural success and a cultural sense of oneness and cultural amenities.Malcolm: And you know, we had a friend who converted to Mormonism because it helped her find a husband. She's like, I just can't find a husband in, in the dominant cultural group. I'm in you know, I told him to convert to Mormonism and they, I, they have these systems. And it did, she found a husband and she's happily married and having kids.Malcolm: Now cultures convert people by offering these amenities and these systems that they offer. And that is actually one of the main reasons that people often convert. to different cultures. Is there like, yeah, but like people here are happier and they seem to be living wholesome, good lives. And that was not something I felt when I was growing up in you know, the urban monoculture, right?Malcolm: But it's, it's harder and harder to convert people as the urban monoculture offers more and more services that these cultures are able to motivate people to sacrifice to. [00:10:00] Okay. So what communism is, the core reason it's evil, right? Is it's not evil because it provides. equality. It's evil because it removes the motivation for intergenerational improvement.Malcolm: Evil because it removes this grand game which leads to our species improving itself, every generation improving. And, and this is, this is, this is just, it's such an important thing because you, In the moment, it makes life harder. But if you look at the technology that's been invented in our capitalist system, it has made even many times, you know, I talk about a 10 percent or American in terms of income, they live lives that are markedly better than like the king of England, 200 years ago, 250.Malcolm: Yep. And, and that is wild, but that is created because of intergenerational improvement. Intergenerational improvement may take a while to raise some boats, [00:11:00] but eventually it raises all boats. It is a obvious ethical good. Well, racism is ethnic communism. People use racism and ethnic socialism is what it really is.Malcolm: Racism is ethnic socialism. They apply. Unfair barriers to people of different racial and ethnic groups based on preconceptions about those groups that prevent those groups from competing against them in a fair and open ecosystem. And doing that. They hobble those groups, but they also hobble their own group.Malcolm: When you do things that hurt other ethnic groups that prevent you from competing in a fair and open ecosystem, then you cannot see when cultures that cluster within your ethnic group are doing a bad job and you cannot intergenerationally improve. Oh, soSimone: what you're saying is it makes people blind to [00:12:00] room for improvement that they might have in their own culture because they're too busy being like, I'm so much better thanMalcolm: more than being blind to room for improvement.Malcolm: It, it makes them blind to even the market forces of improvement. You know, you eventually have to learn how to improve your culture. If it has to out be out competing in some metric, whether it's fertility rates or economically for it to still exist, and you see this ardently within racist groups, you look at the people who are like racist in our videos and you see this cluster one, they need to feel just like axiomatically better than some cultural groups so that they feel like they're.Malcolm: their lives are meaningful in some ways, even if they're failures. So they're like, Oh, well, you know, black people, bad, my, my group, good. I am in some way good because I'm a member of that group. But then you can see the blindness as well. They'll look at something like Jews, right. Jews the boy, but like a lot of Cess Rogan's guests are Jews.Malcolm: A lot of Nobel prize winners are Jews. A lot of politicians are Jews. You mean Joe [00:13:00] Rogan, Joe Rogan. Sorry. Yeah. Sorry. So you, you, you see Jews usually disproportionately represented in areas of success. And instead of asking the question that somebody would ask if they were not racist, which is what are Jews doing that I am not doing?Simone: Right. What can I learn from them? What can I steal from them?Malcolm: Yeah. In the way that they are succeeding, right. They instead ask the question that all racist groups ask. Which is, how are they cheating? How have they created a, a, a group a, a a system that is systemically making my group unable to outcompete their group.Malcolm: They are unable to admit to themselves that a group other than them may be outcompetingSimone: them. Oh, so it's, it's basically like a racial. External locus of control.Malcolm: Exactly. It's a racial external locus of control. So when you look at us and you go, well, this being true, what is the highest form of racism in our society?Malcolm: It is of course, affirmative action. Nothing does [00:14:00] more to systemically. Cause a group in our society to not intergenerationally improve then affirmative action.Simone: Well, and also I guess to see the world through an external locus of control rather than focusing on like internal improvement. It isMalcolm: more racist than practices put in place by the most racist white supremacist, the most racist existing Klan members, what the Democrats regularly put in place in terms of policy, because it intergenerationally keepsSimone: generating weakness.Simone: Yeah, I guess. I mean, it sounds really bad, but so what you're saying is like, even like in the times of, of the worst forms of racism in the U. S., it did forceMalcolm: No, I'm not saying that. The Klan used to be much worse than the left. I'm talking about the Klan today. I'm not like murdering people, systemically keeping people down.Malcolm: That also prevents both them and [00:15:00] you from moving forward because you're not playing by the same rules. So, of course, and I think that this needs to be said. Alongside the statement that many ethnic groups within the U. S., particularly the Black and Native American populations in our country, have been systemically disadvantaged due to historic conditions.Malcolm: They are not starting from the same starting gun, intergenerationally you hurt them much more by systemically unevening the playing field and like BLM does creating this external locus of control. Like that is a form of meaningful and in this ethnic external locus of control. Of, of, of, of meaningful racial oppression because it meaningfully and intergenerationally disempowers specific ethnic groups.Malcolm: Also, what would youSimone: say to like, you know, the society at large that's like, okay, I hear you and I don't want to [00:16:00] disempower people, but also like, it's so not fair that they're starting off on uneven footing. And like, how do we correct for that? Like, is there a way to both have an locus of control for groups while still.Malcolm: I mean, I mean, the really insidious thing is these policies that are intergenerationally keeping down these minority groups that are starting from worst positions. They're all being operated and promoted by white people who intergenerationally benefit the most from these practices, which is really disgusting that these individuals do this because they're, they're helping.Malcolm: Their own, you know, their own ethnic group over the, the other ethnic groups and in so doing, feeling good about themselves, like they're being these great oh, benefactors, oh, it's very it, it, it feels so much like that poem that Noble Savage I'm sorry, the What is it called? The White Man's Burden poem.Malcolm: You know, oh well, I just must hope uplifts the, it's so [00:17:00] disgusting, it's so disgusting. But to what you're saying, you're saying, okay, well what do I say to people who are like, yeah, but it's very unfair. Yeah. Well, here's the thing. Society is unfair. I'm sorry about that. The way it treats attractive people versus unattractive people.Malcolm: The way is, is, is horrible. The way it treats people born to rich families versus poor families is horrible. But, why have we elevated this one form of unfairness over all other forms of unfairness? It makes no sense. It's not ethically correct. In an ethical society, we would say... Well, whenever you try to treat one ethnic or cultural group special, it always ends in tragedy.Malcolm: Yeah. Tragedy for everyone. Yeah. And that what we need to do is to create a system that even if it's less fair in the moment can lead intergenerationally to an eventually fair society. Now let's be clear. What does fair mean? It does not mean everybody wins. [00:18:00] Okay. It does not mean everyone is equal. It means that everyone is given the same shot and same pressures to intergenerationally improve.Malcolm: So by this, what we mean is like, yeah, I mean, if you wanted to create, and this is something that society doesn't talk about, but if you wanted to like ethnically normalize society, so you're going to divide society into ethnic groups and then say, okay, well, we're going to put. penalizations on different ethnic groups based on how successful they are.Malcolm: Okay. Well, you know, whites wouldn't be at the top of that totem pole in America. There are many ethnic groups which out earn white people. And, and, and. Yeah, so you would what, normalize it and penalize them? That's sick. That's disgusting. I, I, I, I I am genuinely morally repulsed by that. The idea of saying some other group should be punished because they're out earning white people.Malcolm: And yet... That is the logical [00:19:00] conclusion of this sort of system, right? So, if you can create a system that is intergenerationally fair, right, in terms of competition eventually within a few generations, everyone should be able to come back as long as actual racism is being punished. But actual racism, what the great thing is about actual racism is groups that don't punish it, don't compete as well.Malcolm: And they end up falling apart. If you look at America and you look at the white populations, the white populations that were less racist economically have outperformed the white populations that were more racist. Hmm.Simone: Yeah.Malcolm: You look at multicultural groups and this is something you see. Racism is a self extinguishing phenomenon when it is not entrenched in government law.Malcolm: That's why I see the groups that are just like generically racist as less evil than the groups that enshrine racism in law with things like affirmative action because. [00:20:00] Those groups are hurting themselves often more than they hurt the groups around them. And so it's like, ha ha ha, look at the idiot.Malcolm: You know, shooting themselves in the foot. Like, it's funny. It's funny because it's wrong. Ain't that cute, but it's wrong. So what are your thoughts?Simone: Yeah, this checks out. That racism hurts people who are like the perpetrators and the receiving end of it. And... It is surprisingly similar to communism on a coupleMalcolm: of points.Malcolm: Racism is ethno socialism, but to be clear from our definition of racism, the Democratic Party is the core, the Democratic Party and the social movements that they support are the core sources of racism in this country. And they are the core perpetrators of racism in this country. Right. You know, every racial pride rally or something like that.Malcolm: Now you can say, well, I want to create, and this is what we would support. So I really [00:21:00] support sub racial cultural groups.Simone: Okay. So what does that mean?Malcolm: So a population, let's say American blacks, right? They may say we have a problem in our communities, right? Like I can see like black on black violence is a problem or something like that.Malcolm: And we can fix it by creating new cultures for our community that are meant to address these problems. But we want these cultures to differentially be of utility to people in our community because due to their social background, you know, due to being a black person in America, they are going to better be able to understand and assimilate with the culture that we're building.Malcolm: Okay. I have no problem with that. And I actually support that. I have no problem with the fact that Jews. Sort their culture, in part, based on who your parents are. Like that it's gonna be, like, if our kids wanted to [00:22:00] convert to Judaism, they'd have a very easy time, because they're matrilineally Jewish.Malcolm: And people would be like, well, that seems like wrong. Like, people know, like I have differences with the Jewish group. I think there's, there's, there's things that they do wrong. But I I don't think that that is one of them. I don't think that saying our culture is an ethnically locked culture, but we treat.Malcolm: Outsiders as equal. That's totally fine. So if you have a black cultural group with like Kwanzaa and stuff like that, and they're like, yeah, we are an an ethno cultural group and they want to have pride rallies and stuff like that, that is. All things that I think are perfectly hunky dory, and there is nothing unethical about that at all.Malcolm: So long as they don't frame other cultural groups, it is axiomatically worse to them. Okay,Simone: so you're for pride, but you aren't for, like, out group hatred.Malcolm: Right, so there's a big difference between you know, some of these, It intra black cultural group pride rallies where it's a cultural group within the black community where blackness is part of their core [00:23:00] identity and they're doing a rally than something like a BLM rally, which is all black people, but only because they're black.Malcolm: It doesn't matter aboutSimone: other like we'll say control cultures. I'm thinking about sports teams, for example, and I think it's really hard. To like, have a lot of pride for your sports team, but then to not be like another sports team. Like, do you think it's possible to have pride while simultaneously holding respect for other groups, for our groups?Malcolm: Jews do it all the time, and I'm sorry, some people might not like, know a lot of Jewish people or not have a lot of like, like, hung out inside, like Jewish people when they're being very honest about what they think about side groups butSimone: they, I guess now that I'm thinking about it, they do show a lot of respect for like, Oh yeah, I love what this group does.Simone: It's really interesting.Malcolm: Yeah. It's totally doable. It's totally f*****g doable. And a lot of, does anyone do it aside from Jews? Catholics? Not the Catholics in America, not this weird integralist nonsense in the U. S. I'm talking about historic Catholics. [00:24:00] They, they don't do it with the people they're currently in conflict with, but they typically do it much better with groups that they're not in conflict with.Simone: with groups that are assimilating because that's all I'm thinking about right now.Malcolm: So look at the Catholic group. I mean, they typically didn't see, like, Protestants as that much better than like native groups and stuff like that. They have a equal level of disdain and discomfort with all cultural groups that aren't theirs.Malcolm: Okay,Simone: but that's different from And then just thought of your own group and respectfulMalcolm: how antagonistic those groups are to them. Okay.Malcolm: Avowed Satanist or, or Wiccan or something like that. But that's because those groups are like actively in conflict with each other. You know, most Protestant groups are actually very good at this. Calvinists historically have been very good at this. Historically, Calvinists really did not see. Like they would be like, okay, this cultural group has problems competing in this way or this way, but obviously everyone is wretched.Malcolm: Us especially, but we're just a little less than other people. [00:25:00] It is not wrong for a cultural group to say people of our cultural group are different than people of other cultural groups. But when you tie that to an ethnicity, I think that that, or when you begin to rank other cultural groups outside of your group against each other and then treat them based on that, that becomes a big problem socially speaking, because it means that your group doesn't need to improve as much.Malcolm: So it's okay, like, for example, to disproportionately, like, if you are within one of these Black separatist groups, right, and they have, like, a distinct culture, and you are disproportionately rewarding other members of that Black separatist group, that is totally okay, like, totally ethical, but when you start rewarding other people who are outside of that group just because they're Black, that's totally unethical.Malcolm: Yeah, that makes sense. So, it's, it's, it's okay to have some level of cultural isolation and even to be culturally, ethnically locked. Now our cultural group isn't ethnically locked. Like I would invite people in from, from other ethnicities. I don't care. But. But you don't have a problem with people having.Malcolm: I don't have a problem. I don't [00:26:00] think it leads to evil every time. Yeah. And again, I. As longSimone: as there's respect for outsideMalcolm: groups. Yeah, again, I would point to Jewish groups as an example. This doesn't lead to evil every time. You can have multicultural societies like we had in early America that lived alongside each other.Malcolm: But usually that happens when a symbiotic cultural group is the one in power and becomes less likely when a dominating cultural group is the one in power, which we've talked about in other videos. Something that people often miss. It's AmeriCorps, which was founded And the majority of at least the white population in the country during the founding was the Calvinist cultural group, which did not believe that everyone could join it or everyone was meant to join it.Malcolm: So they didn't have conversion conversion as a big part of their mission statement, which meant that they were like, okay, it was being Catholic because they were like, well, you were born to go to hell. So whatever. You know, or Jewish people, you know, you were born to go to hell, whatever, like, we don't need to convert you as a state, like, we're okay working alongside you, which is, you know, not dissimilar from Jewish cultural groups, they're also a symbiotic cultural group, they're like, yeah, well, not everyone's meant to be Jewish, so they're, they're usually, but when you have [00:27:00] a cultural group that thinks that anyone can convert or anyone could be a member of their cultural faction, like the progressives or like some other Christian denominations when they become the majority faction in an environment they often will try to use government apparatus to commit cultural genocide and force the conversion of people who are different from them, which ultimately ends up weakening those societies as we've talked about in other videos.Malcolm: You know, if you're talking about fertility rate or economics or really anything, typically. More diverse societies seem to be doing better and seem to do better historically. But the reason is, is because the diversity leads to competition, the diversity of economic situations, the diversity of ethnic groups, and the recognition of, and the diversity of cultures.Malcolm: And the recognition that this diversity is meaningful, but that ultimately you're only competing with yourself and your ancestors, not with the other, not with the other. But it's good toSimone: like see what other people do and compare notes. Speaking of comparing notes, actually not at all. It is time for us to play with [00:28:00] our kids.Malcolm: Oh, but I have so much fun talking to you, but I have so much fun playing with them. You know what our viewers haven't seen in a while is any after video shorts, cause I stopped getting them from you. CauseSimone: I've given up on life. No, just kidding. I will yeah, I will get back to editing them when.Malcolm: No, I understand.Malcolm: It's really hard. Things are really hard,Simone: it's just that you know, we, we always yes and everything. And then that means we go for capacity sometimes, and that's where we are rightMalcolm: now. Yeah, we're, we're unfortunately working without Greece at the moment, because they took on a few other really big projects.Malcolm: Oooh! But, you know, the world needs to be saved, and we appear to be the only ones putting in the effort. So, that's true. That's the end goal with all of this. Everyone's like, why do you do so many things? And I'm like, well, are you going to do it? And they're like, no, well, that's f*****g why, because someone needs to be fixing.Malcolm: The new one that got added to our plate is one of our viewers reached out about donating to us and we've been talking about a project that I'm really excited about to potentially create a [00:29:00] charter city.Simone: Well, yeah, and we're also prepping to run for office. We have to go get our kids though. So, let's do that.Simone: TomorrowMalcolm: you're going to a running forSimone: office event. Yeah, so I love you. Goodbye. Go get the kids. I love you so much. We gotta keep focused. I love you.Malcolm: Bye.Simone: Bye. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe