Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

Sandman, a leading figure in the MGTOW community, discusses high-tech reproductive strategies with Simone and Malcolm. Topics include surrogacy, genetic selection, artificial wombs, sexbots, all-male vs all-female societies, economics, and virtual intimacy technologies.

In this candid discussion, we explore the nuances around polyamory and open relationships. We look at how polygyny historically existed among elites, the market forces leading more high-value men to pursue open relationships today, and the differences between cheating vs consensual non-monogamy. We share our own open relationship dynamics and how radical honesty helps us maintain a strong marriage. Simone: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm.Malcolm: Hello, Simone. Today, we are going to discuss an interesting topic, which is polyamory. We have discussed it in the past. But we didn't really go too deep on the topic. Yeah. And I think it deserves a deeper dive. One, because it's becoming increasingly common. Within especially the urban monoculture, like the, the, the urban populations and the progressive movement.Malcolm: But I've also seen it among many of our more successful conservative friends for a different reason. And we can get into why we're seeing it in those circles as well. Hmm.Simone: That sounds good to me,Would you like to know more?​Malcolm: but first we should do a little history lesson because I think that there's this perception.Malcolm: That we, you know, if you're talking about the Western tradition more broadly has been historically a [00:01:00] monogamous tradition. And that is true to the extent that most people have been monogamous. Yeah. I thought you were going toSimone: say, this is true for poor people.Malcolm: It's true for poor people.Malcolm: When a culture is polygynous, one man, many women, there's actually been no stable culture in history with anything close to what we call polyamory in our society. Usually, when you have a multiple partner culture, you have polygyny, which is one man, many women. However, there has been one case I know of, of many men to one woman and this was like in Tibet, like it was in a high resource, scarce regionSimone: of the mountains.Simone: But, and it's also, I think, commonly with brothers. Yeah, it was basicallyMalcolm: only done with brothers. And, and it makes sense why that would work because then the guy knows that the kids are related to him. And it was meant as a form of population control was in those cultures. So that's, that's how it ended up developing and being intergenerationally successful.Malcolm: It was also cultures that didn't need to worry about neighbors raiding them because they [00:02:00] lived in extremely like they were not competing with their surrounding cultures. They were more competing with their environment. Which is why it was able to become stable, but certainly no culture that's ever really spread.Malcolm: But why this is relevant. So if you talk about long lived Stable polygynous cultures. There's some Jewish groups that fall into this. There's some groups in Africa that fall into this. Some Muslim groups fall into this. You're typically looking at around 5% of the population will have multiple wives.Malcolm: People assume it's much more now. Historically, there has been short lived polygynous societies like the Mormon population group where this number was higher at the, the height of, of that part of Mormon history, I think around 20% to 23% of men had multiple wives but it was still the vast minority.Malcolm: Now where this gets interesting is if I look within our existing culture right now, like the various cultural groups, probably one of the ones I'd say is, is most pro what [00:03:00] we'd call monogamy is the Catholic group, right? However, if you look historically speaking, so we're looking to traditional Catholicism.Malcolm: You're looking at like the monarchies of Louis the 14th, right? And so when you were saying he would write a book about all of the mistresses he had that everyone knew heSimone: had. Yeah. Antonia Fraser wrote a great book called Love and Louis the 14th, where she like, it's a long book and it just details all of his lovers.Simone: And this isn't just secret affairs on the side. This is, you know, people who were titled people. I mean, like it was, it was very well known. Now the Catholic church didn't like it. And they kept saying don't do this. And one of his lovers may have been rumored to actually marry him in the end secretly, though.Simone: That's not like historically officially documented. So there's interplay and like the Catholic church definitely has. A, a relationship with not being cool with it, like officially, but sort of in practice they're like, I mean, for example, with getting home [00:04:00] with the eighth, right? Like they were, I think they probably would have annulled his marriage and allowed him to jump from one marriage to the next for convenience.Simone: If there was not a familiar tie with his first wife and the Pope. Yeah, the Catholic Church, I would say in practice. AndMalcolm: they regularly, you know, allowed it. So keep in mind, you know, Louis was king via divine that is what gave him the right to monarchy within his cultural context. When he's saying, why am I king?Malcolm: I am king because of the church. And, and you know, that did not, the, him having multiple partners and everyone knowing and the extent to which everyone knew, I really can be sort of understated or cannot be overstated. Like the mistresses, who he was choosing as a mistress at the time would determine fashion within like the, the, the court culture.Simone: Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, even to the point where some types of, of court dress like the, the style of disabillé, which basically means sort of like undress we're, we're, we're [00:05:00] said to have been developed. When mistress, like certain certain mistress was pregnant just so like it was a little bit less corseted so she could have her kind of belly like stick out.Simone: I get better, yeah. Yeah, so like literally that is how pervasive it was and open it was. And now I mean like. This is France. France was really like, you know, known for that kind of thing. You'reMalcolm: acting like it's the only monarchy where it happened. I chose France because it's one of the most famous in, in, in pop culture well documented ones.Malcolm: And also you write a book about all his mistresses that you would be well aware of. It's such a good book. Talk to the topic. But I think even within our modern society, so if you look at America today let's say America 10 years ago or something, people could say, oh, this was a predominantly monogamous society and there was a great South Park episode on this and the, the central joke of the episode Is a bunch of males on like TV and scientists were trying to figure out why rich men kept cheating on their wives.Malcolm: And obviously the joke [00:06:00] was every man knew, but they had to pretend like it was very confusing why men kept cheating on women when they became super famous and wealthy. And this was framed around the Tiger Woods controversy and then some other controversies and they would give a monkey a bunch of money and it would go out and cheat on his wife and they were like, this is such a bizarre phenomenon.Malcolm: But, but the joke being. It's it's obvious why this happens. However, I, I think it's not obvious why it happens and that's what I want to dig into.Simone: Yeah, I think everyone's trying to say the quiet part quietly and we would rather say the quiet part out loud, right?Malcolm: Yes, well, so let's talk about some things which is just not why it happens, okay?Malcolm: One is people say it happens because biology. There's a lot of biological instincts that humans have that we are able to sublimate. So it's, it's not, I don't think it's just because of biology at least. And we don't see the mirror phenomenon. We do not see, you know, wealthy women cheating on their husbands at really high rates or, or [00:07:00] having these like basically open relationships.Malcolm: So what, what's actually going on here is it's market pressures. Hypergamy is the reason this is happening. The same market pressures that lead to your average woman, like average attractiveness, average wealth, average, like if you're just marking women on a scale of zero to a hundred and like your average woman is a 50 your average woman has much, much, much more dating market power than your average man.Malcolm: Everyone knows it's like the famous Twitter, sorry, the famous Tinder study where they found that your average man, like if you rank them in, so your mean, I'm sorry, so your median man is liked. On tinder by less than 1% of women. That's so incredibly like low power. Whereas your average woman, I forgot what it was.Malcolm: I think it might've been around 50% of men like your average woman on tinder. Which is just shows this huge disparity in market. [00:08:00] And because most guys like fall into this average territory in their world, this is what they're focused on, the unfair market dynamics here. However, if you're sort of around like the ultra wealthy or elite society, you're going to notice much more the opposite problem, which is a top 1% man has dramatically more market value than a top 1% woman.Malcolm: It's, it's astronomically more. A top 1% man is. is much more desirable than a top 1% women than a average woman is to an average man. And so the question is why, why is it that like, if you're talking about like literally the most desirable male in the world today, they'd be astronomically more desirable than the most desirable female.Malcolm: And it's for the same problem. So if all women, because you know, men broadly know this are pairing with the top 20 or so percent of men. [00:09:00] And disproportionately with the ones at the very top of that 20%, the top 1, 2, 3%, that means that any guy who's at sort of the top of the desirability hierarchy is going to have a choice that the women who are trying to date him are not just competing with women of their level of desirability, they're competing with him.Malcolm: Every, basically every woman in the world and what's worse for, from the perspective of that woman is these other women can augment their desirability to that male by altering aspects of the relationship contract that they are presenting that male with. So when we've talked about this before, the example I've used is you might pay more for an apartment if that apartment allows you to have dogs in the apartment, right?Malcolm: Because it nothing has changed about the apartment itself, but it is more desirable to your average person on the market, a woman coming to a man and saying, I don't mind if you sleep around, this can [00:10:00] increase her desirability pretty dramatically to the man. And thenSimone: I think it's, it's notable also because we've, we've seen a lot of people's requirements for partners.Simone: It's extremely rare for a woman to say that. Like just period. Yeah.Malcolm: Yeah. A woman who is, you know. Top 10% can out compete a top 1% woman with some of these guys just by saying that. Yeah. Or, or additional caveats, like I will bring you other people to sleep with. And this creates an environment where men who are in this top 1% of the dating market, and, and we have seen this within the communities that we're in, it is actually, I think, pretty rare in those communities for women to not allow them to sleep around.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. , and we're talking about within modern America, conservative male circles. And I think that this really surprises people, but here's another thing that people get wrong about this. Okay, so they hear this and they say, yeah, but my [00:11:00] perception has been historically right that when I see people do this polygenous thing allow their partner to sleep around it in the extent or do the polyamory thing, it always leads to the death of the marriage.Malcolm: Right, or the death of the relationship. And this is really interesting, but I would unfortunately say this is the bad to pay phenomenon because what you are actually noticing where if you have friends where they so so there's a few ways that relationship can be open. And a few ways that relationship can be closed.Malcolm: So first I, I need to be clear here. We're specifically talking about polygyny and not poly. Poly is pretty rare among these circles for a man to allow his wife to sleep with other people is actually incredibly rare for these exact same market phenomenon when you're talking within these circles. Now, while most of these men are actually allowed to sleep around when you're talking about these ultra wealthy men[00:12:00] the strength of their relationship.Malcolm: is often outwardsly publicly visible by how much they actually choose to. And this is the thing that people miss. For example, if you look at our relationship, if you're asking the question, are we in a, are we like poly or polygynous or whatever the answer is very interesting. Because we are in so far as...Malcolm: I do not have a rule saying I can't sleep with other people. Whereas you have a rule saying you can't sleep with other people in our relationship contract. However, if you're asking, are we polygynous in practice? No, because you make a point of fulfilling all my needs. And, , the contract point that says you are allowed to sleep with other people says you are allowed to sleep with other people after you have notified me, this is the needs that aren't being met.Malcolm: Can you meet these needs?Simone: Now? Well, I mean, as one [00:13:00] person who's much older than us and much, much more old fashion said to us at one point was like, well, if I can't have. I'm going to get hamburger in the streets. And like that, I don't know, sounded fairly accurate for, I think, how many husbands feel.Simone: And I think how the arrangement often works is in many long term marriages, like after a while, a wife may become. Less interested in sex. That happens often, you know, like she just isn't that interested in it. And, or one of the partners becomes less attractive, making it not as fun for the other partner to get intimate.Simone: And that can go both ways, not just with wives, but with husbands too. Like sometimes husbands just become a lot less appealing. So it's actually really nice solution to just have. That solution met outside the relationship. Like it makes aMalcolm: lot of sense. Yeah. Well, and, and, and some women prefer that, but that does lower their ability to maintain a partner potentially, if they're allowing him to source these things outside the relationship, but it could [00:14:00] but the really, the, the, the larger point that I'm making here is when people say, are you guys polygynous?Malcolm: They, they think what they're asking is, are you sleeping outside of your marriage? The answer there is no. But what they're asking is, are you allowed to sleep outside of your marriage? Where the answer would be yes. And that's a very interesting distinction where there are multiple ways a woman who is married to a very high value male can keep that male monogamous to them.Malcolm: But one way... Is to say you are not allowed to sleep outside of our relationship. The other way is to say, I will ensure that you have all of your needs fulfilled to a level where even with the Coolidge effect of being in place, you will not have a desire to sleep with women outside the relationship.Simone: Yeah. And I, I think it, it, it's worth [00:15:00] noting too, that just because you have a rule against someone sleeping outside of a marriage doesn't mean they're not going to sleep outside of marriage. And the, there's plenty of research showing rates of cheating in marriages over time.Simone: And it happens. And it also appears to happen when you look at Ayla's research on this more than both male and female partners think it's happening. So it's it's a worse than we imagined. So part of this also is well, would you, I mean, I think a lot of people, and we see this also with genetic information, sequenced because they're like, well, if I have a higher risk of getting cancer, I don't want to know.Simone: Which. You know, to us is like bizarre because obviously if you have a like bigger risk of heart attacks or cancer or whatever, you should get screened for that, you know, like you should know about it so you can prepare and reduce odds of that biting you in the ass. However, I think many people have a sort of avoidant response to things like cheating or like health risks.Simone: And they would just rather not know. So I think there's sort of this subtle in like forced monogamy marriages, this subtle [00:16:00] undercurrent of. Yeah. If you need to cheat on me, just do it and don't get caught. Like I'd rather not know, whereas there's this other sort of mindset of no, I mean, yeah, like we may not I cannot promise that I'm always going to be super attracted to you or super attractive myself.Simone: And if that happens, I'd rather have it happen in a way that doesn't kill our marriage or that doesn't hurt me or hurt you. And so we just think it's personally, we think it's a better approach, but I think it's also something that requires a huge level of emotional maturity. And a huge level of mutual commitment to something bigger than just each other's feelings or one's own feelings.Simone: Also, it's, it's really helpful to have this in general because if you do decide to sleep with someone outside our marriage it, it is like a warning sign to me that oh, maybe you're not totally happy.Simone: Maybe, you know, we need to reevaluate or talk about, you know, how things are going.Malcolm: Yeah, and that's the point where I think the person is noticing here when they're like I've seen people who are like Aggressively Polly or whatever are sleeping [00:17:00] around a lot outside their marriage That's a warning sign regardless of what the rules are within your relationship Yeah regardless of whether or not a person is allowed to sleep outside their marriage the fact that they feel the need to Regularly is a sign That there is something systemic that they are not getting from their partner.Malcolm: Now, for some individuals, they might be able to stably source that from another person. However, I am not sure, and I personally haven't seen proof that relationships like that are actually stable. Probably people will pretend like it's a long term solution. Oh, he's not getting something from his partner.Malcolm: Therefore, he's sourcing it from somebody else. And this is a stable solution. However, I don't, yeah, I don't know if I have ever seen that be really stable where the man actually felt the need to constantly get that from other people where, where I seen this be much more [00:18:00] stable in relationships is the woman's look, I'm not going to leave you or anything.Malcolm: If you, if you sleep around outside the relationship, however, I prefer if you tell me and you try to let me. Solve these needs before you feel the need to go outside the relationship and the level to which this increases the stability of the relationship really can't be overstated because one, the woman has much more information in terms of the guys no longer satisfied with her.Malcolm: She learns that at a lower threshold and begin to get a true measure of, like, how does she solve for that? And 2. The, the guy can not in the marriage or it's much harder for the guy to in the marriage just because he wants sex, right? Because with sex with other people, right? And, and this is actually really important because a lot of people, when they're creating sort of the rules of their relationship, there is this implicit understanding that if one partner breaks the rules, then the relationship is over.Malcolm: However, what is true. A lot of the time. Now, this is not true for men. [00:19:00] Generally, when a woman treats, cheats to most men, they would rather be outside of the relationship. There was an interesting study that or not a study with a Twitter poll that somebody did where they're like, would you rather sleep with a hundred people other than your wife or allow your wife to sleep with 90% like, no, I would rather she not sleep with one other person.Malcolm: So for guys, they're actually usually willing to, or Fairly frequently willing to pull the trigger if the woman sleeps outside of their relationship. And that is for biological reasons. They're imprinted to be really worried about the paternity of the kid. Because historically speaking What is this, actually?Malcolm: I want to look this up.Malcolm: I can't find the study right now, but I seem to remember a study saying it was something like 25% of kids or 20% of kids. So it's really, really high, the number of kids born by, and that's a huge cost to a guy if that happens. That's terrifying. Now, for women, The number of women who would actually end a high valued relationship because their partner is sleeping with other women is generally pretty [00:20:00] low unless it's like a point of pride thing or something like that.Malcolm: And then this creates a really dangerous Phenomenon, because as soon as they catch the guy cheating, right? But there was this implicit understanding in the relationship. They would leave him if he did that, but then they don't leave him. Well, then that begins to break all of the other rules in the relationship because now all of a sudden, none of the rules in the relationship matter.Malcolm: Worse, there was the reason for this dishonesty. And I think that that's another thing that this brings in, which is really valuable, which is there's a lack of a reason for me to be. I would I have, I don't know with you sleeping with other men, it's an interesting question because I just, you wouldn't.Simone: I wouldn't. It's disgusting.Malcolm: Yeah. Like the idea, I mean, you've never slept with anyone before me. Like it's just not anSimone: issue that would come up.Malcolm: Yeah. So it's, it's not like there would be a desire there, but, but I do feel that there is a level of truth where this is something I would never need to lie to you about where [00:21:00] you get that information and we are able to deal with it.Malcolm: Internally as a couple. So I guess what we're saying here, and this is an interesting nuance that I think a lot of people don't get is we do think it is a problem when somebody sleeps around a lot outside their marriage. However, I also think that marriages that are built was a rule where the reason that the guy isn't sleeping around is because there is a rule against sleeping around instead of.Malcolm: All of my needs are filled in. We're perfectly honest with each other. I think that actually the second type of marriage is probably going to be stronger in terms of within this current market context, where there's like women throwing themselves at me all the time.Simone: Yeah. Um, I, I will add that , I started out sort of insecure in our relationship because Malcolm actually is like quite desirable as a partner and had, gets hit on a lot.Simone: Like he got hit on a lot before we were not open about him sleeping outside of our marriage. And then he got hit on a lot [00:22:00] after that. And it took me a long time to become okay with that. I mean, especially when there's a lot of competition for your husband, like You know, I, I felt before I felt like I really had it, like I brought a lot to the table, you know, and I'd earned my, my position that I really couldn't deal with that insecurity.Simone: And I do think that you have to have a pretty secure aligned marriage for something like this to work. Especially when you're with a really desirable partner. Now, I think if you have a relatively low value partner, it's, it's, I think it's really easy to feel like, of course you can, cause I mean, good luck.Simone: But the big risk is really for that small portion of the population like you, Malcolm. And I think this really surprises a lot of people because they like love calling you a soy boy, but I don't think they realize a lot of women are super into whatever it is you're serving. But yeah, like for, for that portion of the population they're the ones who are going to be really interested in it because one, they.Simone: Can get away with the demand is there. The opportunity is actually there. But it, you need a really secure and aligned marriage for that to work as well. [00:23:00] Because you know, if this does happen and the wife isn't secure, it could cause just a lot of. Mental discomfort and suffering that isn't exactly ideal.Malcolm: Well, this is actually a really important point. The fact that you know that you have allowed me to sleep with these women and I am choosing not to sleep with them, not because I'm not allowed to, but because I actually do not desire to, given what you are giving me, Likely makes you feel much more confident about our relationship than you would if I was not sleeping with him because you had placed some rule against me sleeping with him.Simone: Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah, I, I think it would be pretty crappy to be in a marriage where you know that your, your husband isn't, isn't sleeping with people because just 100% he's not allowed to. That's prettyMalcolm: bad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.Simone: And the impression I get isn't actually, I mean, and I think that the key is a [00:24:00] lot if the, if the husband's sleeping out of, out of the marriage a lot, because I think when most people cheat and I don't have the stats on this exactly, but this is the impression I get for most of the reading I've done about it.Simone: It's not a lot. You know, it's you know, someone meets a high school friend on a business trip, you know, like stuff happens. And I think it's really helpful to have that flexibility. I think where it's a problem especially is where someone's sleeping outside of the marriage quite regularly. Because usually when we've seen that happen, usually the person that the man is sleeping with.Simone: Is more or less interested in becoming the primary partner. I think it's very unusual for a man to sleep with a woman outside of a relationship regularly for that person to not expect significant resources in return, and that undermines the marriage. So I think that's more like the, the big issue.Malcolm: Open about this helps undermine that possibility because it does. If, so suppose I was to find a [00:25:00] person who I was regularly sleeping with outside of the marriage, right? You would just be able to say, I am no longer, I'm not okay with that. Yeah. Even the way that this is structured. And that lowers any, any like hook that this person was getting.Malcolm: So because we were, we would be being honest in this situation and I would be telling you that this was happening. You would be able to much more reasonably than saying, I am not okay with you sleeping with any other women say, I am not okay with you sleeping with that woman because she's trying to disrupt the dynamics of our relationship.Simone: Yeah. Yeah. And there's always the risk, I think both with that, like permission and without permission that ultimately like the connection between the guy and the woman that he's sleeping with outside of the marriage is going to be stronger than the marriage itself. And that the marriage falls apart, like that's always a possibility, but I don't, I think it's actually less, it's, it's less possible or less likely outs when, when, when it's not cheating when it's, when it's permitted [00:26:00] within theMalcolm: marriage.Malcolm: Well, and also because the woman would know that the spouse knows about this and has okayed it, so they know that through sleeping with you, because this is actually a really dangerous thing about this way of breaking up a marriage, is through sleeping with the husband, she is doing something that she also knows could destroy the marriage.Malcolm: Could drive a wedge between him and his wife in a way that breaks up the marriage. So she is getting a one two punch in through this act, which would be a lot harder when you structure the relationship differently. And, I think another thing that's really telling here.Malcolm: Is a woman asking herself, which is just not done in many marriages these days, which is really sad where you have these total monogamy rules. How do I ensure that my husband is fully satisfied? There is no pressure to ensure that, which is why I think you get many of [00:27:00] these stereotypes, like women getting fat after they get married or women in other ways becoming undesirable.Malcolm: SoSimone: you think there's a problem of entitlement is really what you're saying here. Yeah, likeMalcolm: you don't feel that you are like, you work really hard to stay very desirable to me because you know that if you did not I, I would have other options, but because you doSimone: also, I just didn't want to look disgustingMalcolm: , I would find the idea of going out and sourcing other women or allowing other women who hit on me to sleep with me.Malcolm: Really personally disgusting as I've talked to you, the idea, because I have this emotional attachment to you, that you have worked to build through being an amazing wife because you have engendered that Even even though I'm allowed to, even though I regularly get very attractive women, you know, sort of throwing themselves at me turning them down is very, very easy for me.Malcolm: And, and, and natural, not like I'm [00:28:00] turning them down because I'm giving something up. I'm turning them down because the idea of strange is disgusting. Well, no, it's interesting and it's something that I think is hard for somebody who's never been in a long term loving relationship to understand. As a male is that male sexuality does sort of transform when you begin to see a partner is like your primary and you began to think of other women as, as like a gross.Simone: Well, and I find this interesting because I mean, I think part of that's that you just. Like your life isn't built around hedonism, so you're not exactly the best sample for like how a male is going to behave when given these types of rules. However, people that we know who do sleep outside of their marriages a lot and have like insanely, maybe even like clinically unhealthy levels, like maybe like literal sex addict addictions often are still very dedicated to their marriages and, and are often sleeping outside of their marriages [00:29:00] because their wives have no physical affection for them.Simone: Well, IMalcolm: think this is with older couples a lot. Yeah.Simone: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I just, but I think that that there's something to be said there that even there is some. It's, it's not just right to assume that a man is just going to want to take on infinite wives and not be very attached to them.Simone: Even Louis the 14th had really just one primary mistress at a time. You know, it wasn't like he had five, he didn't have a harem. It's really more like he was a serial. Monogamous like person, but he had a couple dalliances here and there, but he was mostly dedicated to one one after another.Simone: And I think many men are like that. They want to be romantically devoted to someone. They want the connection. SoMalcolm: yeah, I think that this is the difference between the way our society frames men. our society is based around young male sexuality.Simone: Which is reallyMalcolm: The more the merrier.Malcolm: Young men really would like to sleep often with five different women a week or something like that, right? [00:30:00] But when you talk about the ideal sexual relationship for an older man or a middle aged man, Most of them are going to say, Oh, yes. It's a single woman every day. Like in movies, they treat this like it's some, some sort of horrifying thing.Malcolm: Whereas I think if you ask most like mid thirties men, what is your ideal relationship? Even if they are like a really sexually open person, it's yeah, one partner who I really care for. And who I, you know, do something with you know, have kids, work with in some way, and, and every day for the rest of my life.Malcolm: And, and that's where I think our biology is also different from what many people anticipate, even when you have the Coolidge effect. So the Coolidge effect, I referenced it before. It's the idea that to a man, a new partner, like all other things being equal, will be more sexually interesting to him than an existing partner or a partner he slept with before.Simone: Well, and to give the backstory allegedly, this is apocryphal, Calvin Coolidge, when [00:31:00] president toured some kind of chicken farm or something. And it was mentioned. To his wife as she was touring, I guess, a little bit ahead of him that like, oh, well, this one rooster will, will have sex with, you know, this, you know, like this many times a day.Simone: And apparently she wasn't seeing a whole lot of action and she wasn't exactly thrilled about that. And so she told that to Mr. Coolidge you know, this rooster has, you know, sex this many times a day. And he asked. with the same chicken. And that's, you know, the Coolidge effect. His point being, obviously, that novelty is a huge portion ofMalcolm: male sexuality.Malcolm: And the research bears this out, but I think what we're seeing here is, yes, it increases arousal like pure sexual arousal. However, it is It is very low in terms of what I would want my daily life to be like. Yeah. Yeah, the things can arouse me and can arouse a man that are not things he actually wants to do in the real world because it would be inconvenient or gross [00:32:00] or...Malcolm: Otherwise, you know, a waste of time.Malcolm: So anyway, I, I've really liked this discussion because for me, just, just the biggest misunderstanding is the difference between there's sort of four types of relationships, right?Malcolm: One in which one of . The partner is sleeping around and they were allowed to sleep around. The other is the partner is sleeping around. They aren't allowed to sleep around. Another is the partner isn't sleeping around, but they are allowed to sleep around.Malcolm: And then the final one is the partner isn't sleeping around and they aren't allowed to sleep. Sleep around, right? For me sometimes when people talk about polygyny or polyamory, they're not really considering the situations in which the partner is allowed to sleep around, but they're not sleeping around.Malcolm: And, and, and they're also within the way the relationship is contextualized. You're both partners, not really supposed to sleep around. Versus and also the relationship type, you know, is a couple actually Polly, I guess you would say not if they're not allowed to sleep around, but they are sleeping around.Malcolm: So I guess people would, [00:33:00] if you wouldn't call a relationship in which somebody is cheating on their partner, but not allowed to yeah, I don't know. It's interesting. And if, if, if people are wondering why this has gotten so big in the big cities, the one point I really make is for the high valued men and women, what you typically see happening.Malcolm: is many women to one man, like many women are going after one man, but when you're dealing with the lower value poly individuals a lot of men, you know, big tower, whatever men complain Oh, there's just no woman who wants to date an average guy. And this is, this is true. Like it's, it's very rare.Malcolm: And monogamy used to solve this, but the way they're now solving it in these ultra progressive cities. And I've seen this in like group houses and stuff like that is that some dumpy kind of obese average woman will have five guys who she's dating, like one guy isn't good enough for her, but five guys.Malcolm: Yeah, that's okay. So what, what often really ends up happening in the quote unquote polyamory community is that you [00:34:00] actually have a polygyny when, when you're dealing with the, the wealthy people, whereas one male, many females. And then the, the opposite of that I want to say, I forget what it's called.Malcolm: One woman, many men. Holly Diney? I don't know. Polygyny. Yeah. When you're dealing with the like, middle income males because often that's how a male's value is, is, is judged. And then it's women who are, I mean, that's what's, what's happening on OnlyFans and stuff like that to an extent. Yeah.Simone: I mean, yeah.Malcolm: So there's a difference between the aspiration and what actually happens. But anyway, Simone, I have loved talking with you about this and I do feel really blessed that you have created an environment where even though, you know, you would there's no rule against me going with other women, I have no desire to, just because you are such a great wife.Malcolm: And, and so people would be like, [00:35:00] Oh, I haven't seen relationships where people say, yeah, relationships don't, but I, I, I just, I definitely don't have any. You,Simone: you, you give me too much credit. I think literally you just had so many sexual partners before you got married. You're like, I don't need this anymore.Malcolm: I think you put yourself on hard mode in the relationship. You're like, yes, I want you to only sleep with me, but I want you to only sleep with me because you are choosing to only sleep with me. Not because I have created some rule system against you sleeping with other people. Yeah,Simone: it's, it's our, it's our philosophy in general, right?Simone: Like with the travel business that we run, like we really don't like getting contractual clients. We like clients who work with us, not because we've signed some kind of contract and they have to be With us. Mm-hmm. , we want clients to work with us because we provided such a great service that they wanna come back.Simone: Like it sucks to work with someone who has to work with you. And, and in general, I think our philosophy is against coercion and for a free choice, you know, that, that people should have the ability to choose the culture that works [00:36:00] best for them to choose the businesses that works. best for them to choose the nation or home or whatever that works best for them.Simone: And I think that falls down to like our relationship philosophy as well, that partners should have the freedom to choose whatever sort of partner works best for them. Now, I mean, I think the same goes for women and yeah, so technically we have a rule where I can't sleep with anyone, but that's more because I really don't want to sleep with anyone.Malcolm: If you really want, I want you to tell me, because it would mean that our relationship is over if I can't. Fix whatever was causing you to want to do that.Simone: But also you know, it's, we're perfectly in support of women sleeping outside of marriages too. They just have to be aware of the costs that are associated with that.Simone: Like everything, like free market dynamics, you know, allow people to make choices and pay the price for making those choices. That's fine.Malcolm: Yeah. Well, but I think it's, it's, it's sort of like a balls on the table thing. Like a business that says. Oh, you want to sign a recurring contract? I don't need a recurring contract, because I know you'll only choose me after you've tasted this.Malcolm: So what is it? One [00:37:00] Simone, always Simone? I don't know what the saying would be here, but that is, that is quite a, a, a balls out contract, right? Like just... Slapping your balls on the table. This is how good I know I am that you won't want anything else if you're in a relationship with me.Simone: Well, we shall see, right?Simone: You never know where we're going to be in 10 years.Malcolm: So we've been together for 10 years at this point. I don't think something crazy is goingSimone: to change. You know, I mean, there'sMalcolm: a lot of years ahead of us. Let's you have 10 more kids.Simone: Like men tend to age better than women. Let's be honest about this. Yeah.Simone: Well, soMalcolm: if I was, and this is where I think this really falls apart, is if you were married to the types of cretin that's I want a 24 year old woman over a, you know, I, I don't know. It's part of me find sleep. The idea of sleeping with much younger women, like really disgusting. I, I've, I've, and, and Simone knows this, you know, I've had a lot of younger women.Malcolm: Who have worked around us hit on me, [00:38:00] babysitters and the type. Yeah, it's a little weird. It's a little weird. And I just find it, I guess like visually I can be like, Oh like I can look at a younger woman and be like, yes, younger women are more attractive than older women. But like the actual idea of sleeping with them as an older man is I don't know, it's repellent for some, youSimone: know, keep in mind that's not the norm.Simone: So just I doMalcolm: think it's the norm. I do think it's the norm. And I think some of the guys who are doing this are, are really outside the norm because I think you know, when you look at the relationships, we know like these ultra wealthy men, I actually don't see them sleeping with that many younger women.Malcolm: Unless they're in like weird relationships where they're like actually cheating on their partner. When the wife knows, it's typically not somebody dramatically younger. Would you say that's true or not?Simone: I think it really depends. I think there's a lot of variation. So it's, you know, it's hard to say. I wouldn't say that you're, you're normative.Simone: I mean, it's very unusual [00:39:00] for a man to have the high partner count that you've had. I think it's very unusual for a man to not find you know, like 20 something women to be more attractive.Malcolm: Well, no, I, I, I can see them more physically attractive, but I think there's, there's, yeah, well, I guess this is my thing about status, right?Malcolm: Where I, I guess I'd find a lower, like sleeping with a lower status woman, really repellent the idea.Simone: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, everyone's different, but yeah, I do think that this is the kind of discussion that's not being had out loud a lot. I'm glad we're talking about, I'm curious to see like in the comments, if other people have, have given this a try.Simone: I mean, I think it's pretty unusual. I mean, the thing is, I think it's super common, but not. Not where people talk about it, I guess. So yeah, I'm curious to see what people say.Malcolm: But what would you call it if you were going to come up with a name for it?Simone: Dread Game Monogamy. Dread Game Monogamy? Yeah, I mean, the red pill uses, or at least used, like back when I read a bunch [00:40:00] of it. They'd be like, yeah, the dread game is where you, you as a man, if you're spinning plates, like if the woman knows that she has competition.Simone: That's the dread game, but it's also considered an incentive. The female partner is going to be incentivized to be a good female partner because she knows that she has no exclusive contract essentially.Simone: Well, I'm glad we had this conversation. It's always fun. I like really look forward to these now. It's like my unwinding time. So itMalcolm: is, it is really fun. What do you call it? Like weird base conversations about things. Yeah,Simone: that's the point of the meetingMalcolm: that the idea is that no one's allowed to have.Malcolm: We, we are okay with, with, with polyamory, but it's also bad to sleep with someone who's not your primary partner.Simone: So there you go. Everyone was that statement. Yup. Yup. And now everyone hates us. But you know what? I love you, Malcolm. So at least that,Simone: okay. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Economist Bryan Caplan discusses increasing fertility rates, education's role, winning over analytical men, immigration policy levers, using AI for politics, Ron Paul's success, and cultivating leaders.

In this video, we discuss traditional gentlemanly behavior and why it has been lost in modern American culture. We explain how acts of deference like opening doors and paying for meals used to signify male dominance when done proactively from a position of power. However, today these acts are often misconstrued as weakness due to discomfort with class differences. We explore the importance of anticipating a partner's needs, showing gratitude, and maintaining good form in relationships. Our goal is to revive gentlemanly behavior in a way that displays strong masculinity and high value.Simone: [00:00:00] I think that's one reason why men are misunderstanding what it looks like to be dominant and then ending up just kind of acting like trailer trash when they try to be dominant, you know, it's just you know, they, theyMalcolm: think, Oh my gosh, I love, no, it's true what you're saying, right? every cultural group has different, more refined ways to handle these dominant fights that don't involve two males making themselves look big and then like physically attacking each other. Because that's really costly., and this is what Simone means she mentally is associating this. with lower socioeconomic groups because lower socioeconomic groups like anyone who's resource scarce are going to have less luxury of the ability to suppress these things. And often their families have been in this situation for multiple generations, so they might have lost even the cultural software for how do I handle a dominance fight with another male other than.Malcolm: Puffing myself up and then beating him up.Simone: I [00:01:00] think we've lost we've lost a lot of the ways that people historically demonstrated dominance in, this sounds terrible, sounds really classist, but in a, in a civilized fashion.Would you like to know more?Malcolm: hello,Malcolm: Simone!Simone: Hello, Malcolm. How are you doing? AbsolutelyMalcolm: spectacular today. It is so wonderful to have you back from a business trip. So something happened recently that was really telling for me because, you know, I see this was in some conservative communities and it's something that I'm getting really worried about, which is somebody was like, why do you put your wife's name?Malcolm: First, when you write books and in correspondence, you know, don't you know that you're the man and that that means you're better than her. And so you should be putting all of your stuff first. And I think this shows how far we've descended from, from most traditional cultural beliefs[00:02:00] which is if you look at manners books, that's just polite manners, like opening the door for a woman like, All of these nice little things that guys used to be expected to do for women and then progressive culture came like a glacier and cleaned all of those things clean so clean that we don't remember them almost, you know, with Gen Z's coming around and they're trying to reclaim their masculinity, but in so doing, and so, and so reclaiming this masculine role, They, they, you know, through people like the way that this has been portrayed by individuals like Andrew Tate, it almost comes across as every interaction you have with a woman who like you love and have a longterm relationship with is to some extent to exert your dominance over that woman.Malcolm: Whereas most of the traditional cultures in the world, I say, no, no, no, no, no. It's to make her feel special and treasured and [00:03:00] to protect her. Now, this actually has very big effects if you're talking about long term fertility of a culture. So why do you do like, why? It's not just to be nice. Like I'm not just you know, within my family's life.Malcolm: Putting my wife up on a pedestal to be nice to her. I'm not doing all of these things that we traditionally call manners, like ensuring that I walk on the side of the street where if a car is going to splash us, it splashes me first. Opening doors, all of these little things like that. Standing up from a table when she gets up.Malcolm: I don't, by the way, right. No, I mean, I don't do all of those things just to be like a weirdo. I do them for a very specific reason. It's so that when my daughters See the way I treat my wife, they desire that outcome for themselves in the future. And when my [00:04:00] sons see the way I treat my wife, they treat their own wives that way.Malcolm: And then their own daughters think, Oh, being a wife. It's awesome. And so someone, I wonder, you had talked to me before about what you felt like growing up. Right.Simone: Yeah. Yeah. No. So I thought growing up when I was young just meant, you know, giving a bunch of things up, like giving up your career and then having to take on a whole bunch of additional responsibilities.Simone: So just basically meant more work, but you know, not really being celebrated. Not that my, my father wasn't absolutely amazing to my mother. He was, but there was no like elevated status in, in Silicon Valley, like in the very progressive Bay area for women. I remember the first time I saw someone stand up when a woman got up at a table and when the first time I saw a man, like ceremonially open a door for a woman, I was floored.Simone: I really likedMalcolm: it. Well, so you've been around my family, like you've been around my cousins and stuff. Yeah,Simone: and they're like, yeah, they're, they're very, [00:05:00] yeah, they're, they're raised like Southern gentlemen and I'm all for it. But yeah, so there was definitely, I mean, like I had zero incentive to, to not only.Simone: Have kids, but get married at all. Because why? I mean, it just basically meant that you were technically more entangled with a friend that was supposed to make you happy for the rest of your life, which isn't really what, you know, we found marriage to be about and what it's not sustainable. But I think what's more interesting about this is that a lot of these men's rights activists are manosphere figures that are.Simone: Complaining about your behavior online or missing is, is they think that like showing deference to women is I don't know, suggesting that they're in a position of power or yielding power to them. And I think it, there's something more interesting at play in, in American culture there, where, where shows of power or, or shows of politeness are no longer seen as shows of power, where in, in earlier [00:06:00] times they were so in, in the book Alvin Seed by David Hackett.Simone: Fitcher. He talks about, especially in the South where the Cavaliers first migrated to the American colonies. There was, the concept of condescension was very different from what it is in a modern America. Do you remember this part where he was basically talking about Yeah, no, it was a very positiveMalcolm: thing.Malcolm: Yeah.Simone: So well, no condescension was essentially like no bless oblige. So when you condescended to someone you through your more informed or you're more powerful, more educated, more you know, whatever, from a position of power, you are showing kindness to someone who hierarchically powerfully, whatever was below you.Simone: So condescension was like a benevolent paternalism. And I feel like part of what has happened in, in American culture. Is that there's a lot of status anxiety or like around even acknowledgement of different sides. I think it'sMalcolm: more than that. So I think something that the manosphere accurately points out is that as a [00:07:00] man, when you show emotional weakness or you defer to a woman in your life consistently for many women within our current cultural context, they will permanently look less upon you.Malcolm: They will, you know, like you've talked about this, some people will be like, Oh yeah, you know, open up to your wife, you know, have a cry, show how sad you are about something. And, and you've been like, actually, this can permanently damage your relationship with somebody, even if you don't want it to.Malcolm: Yeah.Simone: Yeah. Especially because if someone like, if they're, I mean, using our terminology, if they're lower in your relationship, the thing that they used to. Attract you and bring you in was, Oh, I'm very powerful. I'm very strong. And the thing of value that I provide to you is to feel like you're always surrounded by this invulnerable, super powerful person.Simone: Of course, it's going to break the entire selling point when that person suddenly becomes vulnerable and where you, the other partner, find yourself in a position where you feel like you need [00:08:00] to be the powerful one. Which is, you know, many people just don't want to do that. They want to surrender, you know?Simone: No,Malcolm: absolutely. Yeah. And so I think that they do recognize this aspectSimone: where, yeah, and there's something there, but there it's very, so there's a big difference between vulnerability and, and showing like. I don't know putting someone on a pedestal or like groveling at their feet and showing a polite deference to, to someone.Malcolm: Well, I'll, I'll, I'll divide this. Cause I think you're capturing something really true, but I called the way I treat you within our family pedestalization, which is to an extent, but it's a bit of a wrong word because I think when we think of pedestalization within the manosphere, what we're thinking of is the way that we Sometimes pedestalize a woman who we have a crush on or something like that.Malcolm: Right. And we begin to think too much of them or treat them with too much deference. You know, before relationships start, when I first started dating you, I treated you not this way as much. No.[00:09:00] But, you know, when I realized, and when it was very clear that our relationship was long term and I began to integrate with you identity wise, it became very important when I thought about the image I am portraying to my daughters around what a marriage means.Malcolm: And so, this sort of divides things into three broad categories, okay, of behavior patterns you can show, right? One is the behavior pattern where you as a guy. Are sublimating yourselves to a wife's desires because she is pushing these desires upon you. She is saying, I want this. I want that. I want you to change X, Y, Z about yourself.Malcolm: And you're like, Oh, okay. Okay. Yes. Whatever you want, you know? Right. And, and, and this is true. This is a submissive position, which can, if it is not what a woman wants, hurt her perception of you permanently, even if you were just trying to make her happy. Right. Then there's the secondary position, [00:10:00] which is to say, okay, I am going to constantly show my dominance to the women in my life, constantly build frame in which I am this hotshot and they are this weaker person than me.Malcolm: Right. And. One thing that I would always say, and, and this is, this is something I so want to like, I actually think Andrew Tate has some good points I, I don't hate everything he says, I think he has some interesting things but I think the, the one thing I would frame my biggest disagreement from him is weak women make weak sons, and it's true, and if you have a whole attraction strategy, if you have a whole life strategy for how you are treating your wife, That consistently disempowers her, you are making a weak mother and weak mothers genetically and socially will lead to weak daughters and weak sons, which permanently weakens your family line.Simone: Well, and [00:11:00] furthermore treating a mother, any mother figure or woman in a relationship like Trash isn't going to inspire daughters to be really excited to enter thoseMalcolm: relationships or have kids. People are like, Oh, my sons will be okay, but then your son's daughters will not be okay. So anyway, but then there's this other category.Malcolm: So I've, I've talked about this dichotomy of categories of, of, of male to female treatment. Yeah. Then there's this other category of treatment, which he used to be the gentleman. And it's funny in historic society like when, when, when these manners came up. It's almost like they didn't conceive that there might be a world in which women lorded over men.Malcolm: They were just like, how do you not lord over your wife too much? And so this, this whole new category of behavior is like a new thing that nobody really knew how to deal with. So it wasn't really considered when all these rules were created. But a lot of it means that you have to be there to protect your wife and your wife's emotional state to somewhat anticipatorily.[00:12:00]Malcolm: Right? So you went on a trip, right? And I know the things you care about. You just came back from a business trip making our family money. I love that. Right? I didn't have to go. And I, I know that you don't care about flowers or stuff like that, but you really care about how clean things are. So, I mean, a point of having the car detail when you got back and having the house look really pristine when you get back because early in our relationship, which you would leave the house would just Full to hell when she left, all the dishes would pile up, everything like that.Malcolm: And I saw it emotionally hurt her. Now she didn't then go to me and say, Hey, Malcolm, never do this again. Right. But she knew because of the, the priors I had set in our relationship that when I had obviously emotionally hurt her or put her in a bad emotional state that I had shown in the future, I don't like.Malcolm: hurting my wife. So in the future, I went out of my way to try to prevent those [00:13:00] states, right? And that showed how much I cared about her while also showing, I think, you know, if I had kids who were more cognizant in the house right now that dad's really thinking about how mom feels and he's trying to make her feel special, particularly when she puts yourself out from the family, but also just every day.Simone: Yeah. I think there's something else that has been lost that men are missing out on. And, and it's again, like it comes back to class. Like I was saying earlier a lot of the discomfort, I think, or a lot of where this got lost was this. this sort of loss of comfort with there being class differentiation, or frankly, in any differentiation, gender differentiation, anything like that.Simone: So like men opening doors for women people acknowledging that there are different social classes, like it just makes people super uncomfortable and we all pretend that it's not real, even though we all know that it's there and we all experience it every day. [00:14:00] And, and if, I think that's one reason why men are misunderstanding what it looks like to be dominant and then ending up just kind of acting like trailer trash when they try to be dominant, you know, it's just you know, they, theyMalcolm: think, Oh my gosh, I love, no, it's true what you're saying, right?Malcolm: And, and, and this is because when an individual is resource scarce Oh God, this is going to sound so bad. No matter how I say it, do it. Okay. Let's let's see when individuals resource case when an individual is under a lot of emotional stress, their inhibitory pathways don't function the way they would normally function, you know, if you had like a, a full civilizational construct around an individual and they begin reacting in a way that is very.Malcolm: animalistic. It's, it's, it's their base impulses, right? And so when they are asserting dominance you know, it's what you think you're better than me. You think you're better than me? Well, what does the person saying when they're saying that they're really saying, do you think you're of a higher dominance position than [00:15:00] me and this local hierarchy that we've created?Malcolm: How dare you think you are dominant in, in comparison to me. And when they do that, Oh, you think about, you know, they're puffing themselves up like an animal trying to get in like a gorilla and another gorilla, like in a dominance fight. Right. And humans default to this, right. However, every cultural group has different, more refined ways to handle these dominant fights that don't involve two males making themselves look big and then like physically attacking each other. Because that's really costly. If you have to solve every dominance fight with like actual physical violence, their actual, you know, and this is what Simone means when she says she mentally is associating with this.Malcolm: This was with like lower socioeconomic groups because lower socioeconomic groups like anyone who's resource scarce is, is, are going to have the less luxury of the ability to suppress these things. And often their families have been in this situation for [00:16:00] multiple generations, so they might have lost even the cultural software for how do I handle a dominance fight with another male other than.Malcolm: Puffing myself up and then beating him up. Right?Simone: I think we've lost we've lost a lot of the ways that people historically demonstrated dominance in, this sounds terrible, sounds really classist, but in a, in a civilized fashion. So anyone who's read the original like Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie will recall that the constant fight between Peter Pan and Captain Hook was actually pretty interesting and Both of them were like pretty obsessed with good form, good form, they were always like, Oh, that was bad form.Simone: That was good form. And it wasn't, it wasn't about who won the fight. I mean, they, they both really cared about the fight, the art of the fight, and also like playing with good form. And I think that. There's something about traditional successful masculinity that involves good form, not just [00:17:00] like successful showing of dominance or violence or disregarding another party.Simone: It, it involves fighting right, fighting fair and fighting clean. So I,Malcolm: I forgot who said this.Malcolm: Anyway, well, we'll find whoever said it from our listeners. They'll be like, Oh, I know who said this quote. So the quote is something like a, a true gentleman is defined by an individual who knows how to open a quarrel and maintain one. And what that means is that actually part of, at least in the Victorian period, being part of this upper class society was about starting specific quarrels with individuals, but also all of the rules for how these quarrels worked, right?Malcolm: You could be one of these guff people who has seen a, what's an example of somebody who is like bad at quarrels. Andrew Jackson, right? He'd just shoot anyone. He'd be like, okay, go into a duel. Directly to a duel. You, you disagree with me. Duel time. And the man did not know how to fight. And that would have been seen within [00:18:00] the period.Malcolm: And it was seen within the political advertising. This is like a very low class way of handling these disagreements. Whereas within these And again, sorry, we're talking about class so much here, and I really need to be clear what I mean by this in a historic context. Every cultural group had its own complicated set of rules for disagreeing with another individual and conflicting with another individual.Malcolm: But those broke down and would become more and more the pre evolved set of rules. Which, you know, previously I referred to as animalistic, but it's really humanistic. It's really the way humans act if they lived on a desert island and were never exposed to any other cultural group. Yeah,Simone: like we're, we're, we're talking about the presence or evidence or trappings of culture, a.Simone: k. a. civilization. Like the, the presence of a set of values, of traditions, of, of basically pro social per that culture or religion. [00:19:00] Civilizational technologies or the absence of them. And the problem is what we're discussing is that there's, there's basically an absence of civilizational, cultural, religious, whatever you want to call it, technologies in male dominance, especially as demonstrated to women.Simone: Right. Well, yeah,Malcolm: but you, you can, I mean, there's other ways around this. So when I was in high school, you know, one of the things I always told you about the fights, I got in a lot of fights. Yes, always in detention and stuff like this. And I realized pretty early. There was a specific strategy I would use in my fight.Malcolm: So I would physically often lose the fights, individuals. I was not the strongest kid. I mean, I was, I was medium strong. Like I knew how to fight, but I couldn't ensure that I would always win a fight. However, what I could ensure, and I always went into fights with this strategy is always give my opponent a bloody nose or a black eye because after the fight.Malcolm: Even if they physically caused more damage, I'm in more pain. I have more long term damage to my body [00:20:00] because of that fight. They walk out and they go to a group and the public sees the two of us and they did damage to my torso or some other area. I have a few bruises that are easy to cover up, but they have a black eye for the rest of the week, or they're walking out of that fight was a bloody nose.Malcolm: People perceive the public perception is they lost the fight and what they misunderstood going into that fight is they thought the purpose of that fight even from an animalistic, you know, middle school, high school context. was to hurt me, the actual purpose of the fight was to determine our positions in the local hierarchy of our high school or middle school.Malcolm: Actually funny, but most people our listeners might be surprised that I always was really obsessed with protecting any group that I thought was, was disenfranchised, was, was in my current community context. So most of the fights I would get into were protecting gay people. Because I would, so this might seem really weird to Gen Z audience today.Malcolm: But [00:21:00] when I grew up, you know, me standing up to people who were using derogatory terms that I can't even say on YouTube now towards gay kids at my school to protect them was something that would cause them to fight me. I mean, let's talk about why it caused them to fight me, because this is actually really interesting as well.Malcolm: So when you're talking about, like, how human social hierarchies work When, when, when one group of people is like making fun of another individual, if I come and I stand up for that individual, I say, Hey, stop this. You guys, I have actually asserted myself even was in their dominance hierarchy as head like above the highest person was in their dominance hierarchy.Malcolm: Capitulate to that, if they walk away they have lost status. within their local dominance hierarchy and within the global dominance hierarchy of the school. So they're almost sort of like trapped. Like they, they can't avoid it. We'll do another episode on, on bullying because this people not understanding how like high school [00:22:00] dominance hierarchies works causes a lot of bullying.Malcolm: But they're trapped, you know, they actually have to fight me to, to show. That, that they haven't lost face, but if they then come out of that fight with physical damage and black eyes were the thing I always really aim for because those last for about a week and so, you know, they can then tell people, Oh, I beat up Malcolm, but they have a black eye and I look fine on the other side of the classroom.Malcolm: It, it, it doesn't sell. It doesn't sell. And, and this is where all of this comes down to is so much of the ways that we act and posture are about changing our dominance positions visa be other people was in our society, but we forget how those around us are judging that and how those was in our own family are judging that.Malcolm: And this is where, when we're talking about the way a man treats a woman in a long term relationship, why it's very important to like intentionally build a culture for your family. I don't think you ever feel that I am like putting myself in a [00:23:00] submissive position to you when I am going out of my way to make you feel good about yourself.Malcolm: Do you? Or like, how is it that I have prevented that framing?Simone: Yeah, I think, I think it, a lot of it depends on contextualization. So when condescending to a woman or when showing deference to a woman comes from a position of power then you're, you're asserting dominance essentially. So when, you know, think about all the scenarios of like traditional gentlemen you know, paying for a meal.Simone: Paying for a meal. That comes from a position ofMalcolm: power. Well, but hold on, not always. If a, if a, if a, you know, there's two different ways you can end up paying for a meal. One is another person's like snidely, oh, likeSimone: stiffing you or something.Malcolm: Right? Yeah. The other one is southern gentleman style, where everyone's fighting to pay for the meal.Malcolm: You know, happens whenever we're visiting my family. Because the person who pays for the meal has shown their higher social status than the other people in the community.Simone: Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, so I would say... [00:24:00] Yeah opening doors the the, the very classic example that freaks me out of the man throwing down his coat so the woman doesn't, you know, step in the mud puddle.Simone: Well, a man who does that has to be in so much of a position of power. They can have people to clean his coat for him or several coats that he can change into, right? So, a lot of these gallant moves actually are... Dominance displays. It's just, I think people have forgotten the context of them.Simone: Whereas when instead it comes from a position of weakness Oh, I'm afraid because my female partner is unhappy. I need to go make her happy, or I'm afraid because my female partner is going to get angry at me if I don't appease her. Then it, you know, comes from the completely wrong position and it shows a lot of submission on the male part.Simone: So I think a lot of it is it's proactive. Like you were saying earlier, one of the things that you do is anticipate my needs. So I'm not asking you to do something. You are anticipating my needs and acting ahead of me acting as though I need something or showing that I need something. So if it's [00:25:00] anticipatory and if it's a, if it's a display of having, Either more emotional control, more resources, more strength, all those sorts of things, you know, like lifting up suitcases for me.Simone: And when you always put, you know, my suitcase in the overhead bin, you always handle our luggage like that is, that is a, that's a dominance display. So I think that's the key differentiating.Malcolm: How you're culturally relating to it. That makes it one. And I actually think that this is an important thing within relationships, right?Malcolm: When you are dating a woman as a guy today, I would say. You get a chance to see how she reacts to gentlemanliness, I guess I would call it. If she perceives it as a weakness, right, and I think you can tell pretty quickly, does she think that she's one... Scored a point on you by you being gentlemanly to her.Malcolm: There's really nothing you can do. There is no way that that relationship ends happily unless you just go like full Tate and you basically [00:26:00] dominate her and treat her like a house slave. Right. But if she has the acculturation and the upbringing, which many women. So the great thing is you might be like women these days.Malcolm: No women these days, especially if we're talking Gen Z from the families that are actually having kids. A lot of them have the class regardless of their economic status to see that politeness and gentlemanliness is a kindness to them because it's many of these more traditional families that are having these large families and women in these families are raised.Malcolm: To recognize these things, if you are dating women who don't recognize that when you are, you know, opening the door for them, that it is not because you are beneath them. Right? If a woman thinks that, then she's trash,Simone: right? No, you know, I think it's two things here. One is I feel like the key differentiating factor between submissive male action that's deferential towards women and dominant male action that's deferential towards women is, is whether it's [00:27:00] proactive or reactive.Simone: Proactive is a dominant system. Reactivists as a mission display. Second, I feel like proactive male dominance displays and deference of women are s**t tests from men. So if you as a man take a proactive dominance display, you pay for the meal, you open the door, and the, your date, your female date, like sniffs at that or doesn't appreciate it and that's key then you know she's not a good match like she needs to be shown right away that it's super not cool that she did that and if she doesn't change then she's not a good match but it's one of those things where you point out in Pregnancy guide to relationships, how, if you don't immediately draw lines with partners and explain this reaction is totally not cool.Simone: You know, if we keep doing this, like we are not a, we then, you know, nothing's going to happen. But what do you think about that as, as aMalcolm: really good point. And it comes, you know, when you talk about paying for meals, I think that's almost the core of it, right? Whenever I would date women. [00:28:00] On the first date, I would usually, unless I took them to an unusually expensive restaurant like I did with you on the first date I would usually go 50 50, right?Malcolm: But even when I take them to an expensive restaurant, like when I took you to an expensive restaurant and I would pay for it, if you hadn't thought to pay for it, I would have treated that as a extreme red flag. And you didn't, but you're like, no, no, no, you know, we have to do this. And I'm like, no, no, no.Malcolm: I took you to a more expensive restaurant than you would have gone to, you know, I bought you drinks. You've never really drunk before, you know, so we're, we're, I'm the first restaurant I took her to. She goes, Oh, I don't drink and I don't eat meat. And I was like, well, you know what I say, like that's not happening.Malcolm: If you're dating me. And so she goes, okay, I guess I'm getting me and drinking. But you know, I, I put her in that position, but she still fought back against me paying for it. So I knew that she had a level of gratitude for me doing that. And I think that this is an area where we begin to see a corruption of the gentleman values that can happen after a few generations of a culture, and we need to really work to make sure it never happens, especially with our [00:29:00] daughters, is just because they know a man is can show their dominance through paying for something they should never expect themSimone: to.Simone: Yeah. And also never exploited. I mean, at least in media, I don't know if this happens in practice. It's, it's implied that a lot of women are like, Oh, it's a free meal. Like I'll go on this date. Cause it's a free dinner and I don't feel like paying for dinner, but I want to go out. And that's, that is really screwedMalcolm: up.Malcolm: Or they see it as an exchange. Like I go out, he does this, I get this instead of he is showing his. His upbringing through how he's treating me and his level of respect for me. And I do think the other thing that you said there is the anticipatory aspect of being a gentleman. When you're in a really like long term relationship with somebody you're one of the core things that you're supposed to do as a partner.Malcolm: And you do this for me all the time as well. If you try to understand them the best you can, so you know the things that are necessary, the things that are harder for them than for you [00:30:00] and, and the things you could do to make them feel special and that you aren't doing those things just on days where you're trying to make them special.Malcolm: But that is a natural part of every interaction you have with them. And I think that that is, is the key, but that they never lose their gratitude for that. And as I've said over and over again, when you're choosing who you marry, the single most important thing is not how hot they are. It's not how smart they are.Malcolm: I think the second to the most important thing is work ethic. Work ethic is very important, but it's how much gratitude they are capable of showing. Because some people in our society have just been trained out of showing gratitude. You know, if you were to embody you know, we were talking about Andrew Tate earlier, like a full Tate mindset, I genuinely don't know if he's capable of feeling gratitude for the things the women in his life do for him.Malcolm: And that would lead to a really Like not [00:31:00] great long term relationship. Like I think he's smart about a lot of things. I just, you know, and it may just be framing. It may just be the way he's showing himself to the public. That's like biteable, like hookable for young guys. But the ability of both yourself and a partner to show and genuinely feel gratitude when the other person anticipates their needs and goes out of the way to address them.Malcolm: I think that's just so, so, so key. And, and no matter how perfect a partner is for you. If they are unable to feel gratitude when you go out of your way to be nice, so they can be the hottest, smartest, richest person in the world. If they don't feel gratitude when you. Go out of your way for them. The relationship won't last.Malcolm: It will devolve. It might be five years. It might be 10 years, but a breakup of a relationship, especially the longer the relationship is, the more you suffer, you know, either because they get some of your kids who, who then get raised in an environment where they're like poisoned against you or All of the [00:32:00] otherSimone: terrible aspects.Simone: Well, this has been fun to talk about. I think what we're going to focus in on more with our kids and teaching them like inter, inter gender relations is. A heavy emphasis on good form, proactive, anticipatory, kind action on both parts. It doesn't matter what gender you are, what role you're playing, whatever.Simone: And then looking for gratitude from that partner when you show that action. And if you don't see it either show that that's super not okay. And see if they change or just drop them.Malcolm: Yeah. I love you, Simone. And I hope that our daughters. Can see that and that they grow up believing and that our sons grow up understanding how, how a woman should be treated within our cultural group so that their own daughters are really excited to become wives and mothers.Simone: I think there's no way they're not going to see it. I love you so much, Malcolm. You're the best. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

The podcast explores the trend of billionaires prioritizing physical fitness as a status symbol. It discusses the history of tanning and its transition from low class to luxury. The hosts analyze Andrew Tate's appearance and the relationship between testosterone and facial features. They also discuss the impact of facial symmetry, gender presentation, and status signaling through material possessions and social media. Lastly, they explore the significance of beard length and ceremonial hair in different cultures.

Brian Chau joins Simone and Malcolm to discuss the Alliance for the Future, a new think tank aiming to prevent excessive regulation of AI. They analyze the motivations behind potential AI bans, rebut "doomer" arguments, consider impacts on jobs and culture, and more around ensuring the continued development of transformative technologies. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm and Simone dive deep on the difference between aesthetic conservatism (trappings without core values) and substantive conservatism focused on cultural reproduction. They analyze how to convert people, the role of government restrictions, dominating vs symbiotic cultures, and more keys to building an enduring worldview.Malcolm: [00:00:00] Once you begin to normalize the psychological practices that people are supposed to learn how to undertake on their own. And are supposed to require mental fortitude to enact, you lose the advantage of those practices. This is what I mean by aesthetic conservatism.Malcolm: if you have somebody and you impose restrictions, at the government level, You, make them less likely to convert to your cultural group because the people in your cultural group will have less of a differential societal advantage,Malcolm: if you want to convert the maximum number of people, what you should actually do is impose the minimum number of cultural restrictions on the outside population while putting the maximum effort into controlling the education system. And interestingly, this is to some extent what the progressive urban monoculture has done.Simone: in, An environment that's devoid of a really strong religious base I feel like [00:01:00] these political parties are more strong for people than, than values. People are literally living by the aesthetics of conservatism because there, there is nothing else.Simone: It's just like these sort of hollow philosophical shells that are just following the trappings of a party.Would you like to know more?Simone: Hello, Malcolm Collins.Malcolm: Hello, Simone. I am excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to touch on a topic that's been bugging me recently. Because I think it shows the extent to which our society has fallen that even within conservative circles there has been a clear confusion around the sort of point of conservatism like actually advancing conservative values and the aesthetic of conservatism.Malcolm: Acting in a way that you identify as like aesthetically conservative. And it's not to say that you will not [00:02:00] intrinsically appear aesthetically conservative if you are aligning with conservative values. Actually, here, I'll give a really great example of this that came from one of our recent videos.Malcolm: Where we're talking about porn , and I'm like, , conservative cultural groups evolved to have porn restrictions because it led to people potentially better mental health, but also , having sex more frequently, leading to more kids, leading to more people within that cultural group.Malcolm: And people were like, well, you know, aesthetically, like they still want the government to enact porn restrictions. And I think that this is almost a perfect example. Because who are you helping if you do that? If you have the government enact porn restrictions? Well, it's not the people who naturally would have been able to resist porn due to the cultural group they're a part of, right?Malcolm: So if I'm a Catholic intercalist and I'm trying to get the government to restrict porn, it's not the other conservative Catholics at my church who are benefiting from this. It is... Specifically the people who disagree with me. It is [00:03:00] specifically the people who are most culturally distant from me. And, and worse, I am making whatever positive things my church is offering through this differential cultural value set less because now everyone is practicing this porn restriction thing.Malcolm: And in addition to that, people within my cultural institution, they are now no longer getting any sort of psychological benefit. From consciously choosing to resist this thing in their environment, right? Which is.Simone: Well, so I'm going to push back and I think what, what we may be looking at is an overlap of some, what we call dominant cultures and then conservative cultures, which are often harder cultures, right?Simone: Dominating cultures is the word. Yeah, dominating cultures. So in the pragmatist guide to crafting religion, Malcolm, you describe. Different types of cultures in terms of how they relate to broader society with dominating cultures, generally having the view that [00:04:00] basically everyone should, in an ideal scenario, follow this religion, because if they don't, they're all going to go to hell or experience some other really bad outcome.Simone: This is in contrast to cultures that we, we call in the book, symbiotic cultures, a symbiotic culture is more like the Jewish faith. Calvinists, people who are not like, okay, everyone should join us. Everyone should be one of us. It's more oh, not everyone can be. So these cultures don't have a mandate to force everyone to adhere to their rules, and they don't have a mandate to try to proselytize or convert or save everyone.Simone: So I think what you're talking about here is that there are many hard cultures that are also dominating cultures that feel it is imperative for them to save people from damnation. By imposing their rules on them. So, I think you're taking a symbiotic view. WhyMalcolm: imposing the rules doesn't actually have that effect if you do it at the state level.Malcolm: So first let's elaborate a bit more on this dominating versus symbiotic cultural view. Symbiotic cultures, ironically, typically have a somewhat elitist attitude as [00:05:00] many would argue Calvinist and Jewish groups do which is to say they typically divide the world into a chosen population or an elect population and a non elect population or a non chosen population.Malcolm: And because of that, they don't think that everyone is meant to be saved. And so they don't have a cultural they, they, they culturally work much better with other cultures because they can interact with someone. Of a completely different world perspective and have no interest in converting that person.Malcolm: Whereas if you believe that everyone can be saved, you know, if you believe everyone can join your cultural group you always have a moral mandate to attempt to convert that person. And this is something I really feel when I am you know, when, when somebody like feels bad for trying to convert me to, to their religion.Malcolm: And I'm like, there's no need to feel bad. I actually am a little bit more insulted when somebody doesn't, because I'm like, I'm literally going to be tortured for all eternity if I don'tSimone: convert. And they're apparently super cool with that.Malcolm: Yeah. I also [00:06:00] don't even understand how interfaith marriages within these cultures, like what you think your spouse is going to be tortured for all eternity.Malcolm: I think,Simone: I think for many of them, they, they're just playing the long game, like the, the, the interfaith. Marriage that I know from childhood was one in which like up until the very end this man held out But then he converted to the like LDS church, which is great because then they can have you know, eternity together But you know, I do think that people hold out Yeah, so, so theseMalcolm: two cultures will act very differently in different societal contexts.Malcolm: Dominating cultures typically have a behavior pattern where they will pretend to be victims when they're in the minority status. And as they get more and more social power, they'll try to move the society more towards a theocracy. But they will do it in a really... And this is also interestingly, a huge change that has happened within American Christianity where American Christianity, when the country was founded they're very studied by the Heritage Foundation showing that the country was over 50% Calvinist, which is why it was so easy for, for the founders to be like, Oh yes, of [00:07:00] course we can have a multi faith system here.Malcolm: But Armenianism grew and grew and grew within American Christianity. That's the anti Calvinist beliefs that there's no elect and unelect and everyone can be saved. And, and as that grew, this sort of new American Christianity does see a value in using the government to impose its values on people. And so as dominating groups grow in power, they will try to enforce their values on other people, but it's a very bad strategy.Malcolm: Right? Your real goal is to capture these people's souls as we say. Yeah. And well, inSimone: the most like technical sense possible too.Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's to save their souls. So if you have somebody and you impose restrictions, let's say pornography restrictions or monogamy or other things like that on a person, and you do that at the government level, You, in many ways, actually make them less likely to convert to your cultural [00:08:00] group because the people in your cultural group will have less of a differential societal advantage, right?Simone: So what you're saying is basically, if I'm in some special Simone dominating hard culture and I try to impose my rules on other people without their consent necessarily, that I'm going to also, Lose the edge that the people in my culture have. By imposing this on other people making them less likely to want to join me because they're like, Oh, I already live my, my wholesome life with my wholesome nofap life, you know, because you forced me to, so why would I need to join your group?Simone: Is that sort of where you're going?Malcolm: Yeah, historically, whenever a dominating cultural group has gained control of a society, it's typically like innovation has collapsed really quickly and economics typically do very poorly. It's, it's not a very historically, it hasn't been very successful.Malcolm: And it [00:09:00] hasn't been successful for, I think, obvious reasons. Once you begin to normalize the psychological practices that people are supposed to learn how to undertake on their own. And, and are supposed to require mental fortitude to enact, you lose the advantage of those practices. And so I think, this is what I mean by aesthetic conservatism.Malcolm: I think within conservative circles, somebody can be like, oh, yes, I resist porn, right? Like they're showing how much they follow their cultural practices or within like their local community, right? Oh, I resist, you know, their local Muslim community. Oh, I don't do this. I resist porn. I don't do X, Y, Z. Okay.Malcolm: And then somebody wants to show that they're even more conservative than that person because that's how their local dominance hierarchy is sorted. And so they're like, actually, I'm against porn so much, I think the government should ban it. Which makes sense within this local dominance fight, but it actually screws over your culture from the perspective of your [00:10:00] cultural value system, which is to convert the maximum number of people.Malcolm: If you want to convert the maximum number of people, what you should actually do is impose the minimum number of cultural restrictions on the outside population while putting the maximum effort into controlling the education system. And interestingly, this is to some extent what the progressive urban monoculture has done.Malcolm: They impose almost no culture restrictions and focus on controlling the educational system. And they've done a good job of infiltrating even these You know, conservative dominating cultural educational institutions. Like you're beginning to see a lot of woke stuff, you know, bubble up within like Catholic schools, for instance which should be one of the bastions.Malcolm: What is meant to serve the exact opposite function because they are focused on the aesthetics of what they're doing, the aesthetics of looking conservative and enforcing conservatism without focusing on. What? Why does this edX evolved or the advantage? Those aesthetics give them? [00:11:00] WhatSimone: I think is interesting about this is the power of I guess, cultural influence and exposure over forced rules or regulation.Simone: And by that, I mean like, just. Exposing people to culture as youth and showing them this is how life can be, or this is how life is, can be so much more powerful than forcing people like, oh, you're not allowed to get an abortion, or you're not allowed to do this or that. The much more powerful influencer is really just exposing people to ideas and lifestyles in a certain way.Simone: And, and that people are especially many conservative groups are misplacing their, their attention. What I thought you, you were going to touch on too, and maybe this is something to explore, is also just people who identify, for example, as Republican, but. Not actually ideologically conservatively, like they weren't just a part of the team.Simone: And they would be Republican no matter what.Malcolm: [00:12:00] I think abortion is a completely separate issue here because in that it's about, are they killing a human life? Yeah. It's about theSimone: definition of where life begins. Yeah. That'sMalcolm: very different than something like porn restrictions or in the case of the Amish community. .Malcolm: So we did a video where we were explaining You do not want to have the government keep out, , immigrants who keep fertility rates up. If you look at really high fertility cultural groups like the Amish, you know, they, they do not need the government to do something like that for them. And then somebody pointed out in the comments, they go, oh, but the Amish are an insular community, right?Malcolm: How does that prove that? And,Malcolm: The, the point of the Amish community. Is that they are able to maintain social cohesion and social isolation without the government enforcing that. They have a choice to leave and they don't make it. And when you, as a cultural group need the government to enforce that, because you can no longer through whatever benefits you're providing people [00:13:00] get them to choose to stay within your culture, that is the first signs that your culture is actually falling apart.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. . And as the government begins to take more and more roles to hold your culture together and to ensure people actually practice your culture The culture itself is doing less and less of that, right? It's more and more relying on this government enforcement, meaning it's becoming exponentially weaker and faster.Malcolm: To the point you were talking about, about conservatism. So, I think it's important for people to remember what is actually the core of conservatism and the core of conservatism. Is being part of a cultural group and wanting that cultural group to exist in the future with intergenerational fidelity in terms of how it's, it's transferred.Malcolm: Now, there's two core conservative factions. One wants their culture and only their culture to be the culture that exists in the future and to us, they're like progressives in disguise because that's what the progressives want, right? They just happen to be the dominant culture right now. And the other wants to [00:14:00] create an environment in which multiple cultures can continue to exist together with.Malcolm: Some degree of autonomy from the government because the government's not like And some ability to to operate their own government systems for their own communities, which is to say, a lot of conservative institutions. They're not against things like feeding the poor. They just believe that their own soup kitchen should be doing this.Malcolm: Not government run soup kitchens. you go to conservative churches, they are offering a lot of what we think of as government services. You know, historically the church ran basically all orphanages, for example. You were, you were going to say something.Simone: Well, no, I just, I think that there are also really different types of conservatives.Simone: So there are some people who are, for example, Republicans in the United States, because. That party in particular at this point in time is the best for protecting or in some ways facilitating their particular [00:15:00] imperatives, like religiously, their inherent values, their doctrine, et cetera. But then there are people who just seem to be Republican to be Republican.Simone: And it's about playing in that particular dominance hierarchy. And in many ways, they're more Republican than they are religious. You know, they may. They may performatively go to church and stuff, but in many ways, it's maybe because they identify as Republican and that's what Republicans do. I don't know if I'm super off here, but I do feel like this is something that happens on both sides of the political spectrum, that there are some people who just, Because they tribally choose to identify more with that political party than any particular religious doctrine, doctrine or value sets, they just go with all of its, its trappings because I think to many people, especially in the United States, at least political parties are more in your face and cohesive and easy to understand and then also behave in line with.Simone: Then, then religions, I, I certainly I, I remember receiving in, when I still lived in [00:16:00] California, before I met you, like all of these letters and emails from the various nonprofits I donated to just being like, and here's who you vote for. You're going to vote for this person and this person and this person, because obviously you're progressive who cares about the environment.Simone: And so it's you're given this whole way to live. And in, in, An environment that's devoid of a really strong religious base if you're not raised in that kind of world. I feel like these political parties are more. are more strong for people than, than values. So my, my question to you is do you think that that's also an issue at play here too, where people are literally living by the aesthetics of conservatism because there, there is nothing else.Simone: It's just like these sort of hollow hollow philosophical shells that are just following the trappings of a party. I think that is veryMalcolm: common among progressives. I think it is exceedingly rare among conservatives. Really? Not exceedingly rare, but much more rare than it is among progressives. I would agree that what you're saying is definitely, I think, [00:17:00] yes, it is true that both sides to some extent see truth as a team sport, you know, and they're like, okay, which team am I on?Simone: I remember a woman and I was getting a notary in Philadelphia and this woman who did my notary was like, vote blue, no matter who. And I'm like, whoa.Malcolm: I say, Progressives do this a lot. However, with conservatives, I think that their team is their cultural slash religious group. And the Republican party is just the, the, well, and this is the point I'm making when I'm talking about this aesthetic form of conservatism is they forget that the reason that they are conservative is not to be conservative, not to be a Republican.Malcolm: But to be a better, you know, Catholic or a secular Calvinist or Jew or, you know, it's, it's, it's to advance their own cultural objective. I do think that you're right that there is this growing sort of hollow form of [00:18:00] conservatism, where it's just, and I actually It almost comes out of the manosphere to an extent.Malcolm: People have realized that the progressive party is against them, right? Like it, it treats them like s**t, like just s**t. And so they're like, okay, well, they're not my team. And so they're like, well, this is my team. And yeah.Simone: So I must be. Politically and like socially conservative.Malcolm: Yeah. But there's no understanding of why like again, to the porn thing, why is the party against porn?Simone: I guess. I think traditionalism also falls into that category. There's a lot of people who are like, Oh, I believe in. The ways of traditionalism, but they don't know why. And if they actually, I think there are many strong religious arguments. If you actually just looked at the doctrine for adopting quite a few changes in technologies, because there are better ways to, to serve God than, than ways that people were able to do in the past, given technological limitations, et cetera.Simone: Well, what I'm saying is I [00:19:00] think a lot of aesthetic. Conservatism has to do with doing whatever the traditional thing is, going back to the old ways and, and not accepting change. I think people like.Simone: I think an example would be accepting different relationship formats more openly if it can lead to higher levels of, you know, good religious adherence or strong community cohesion or birth rates. No, I disagree withMalcolm: that. Really? No. Look, these are their old systems. This is their culture. Their culture does not believe these things are moral.Malcolm: So, yeah, they're against these things, and that's fine. But this is a cultural hypothesis. See, their culture wins in the long run, if it turns out they're right. Their culture will come to dominate in the long run. When they enforce those systems on people who don't believe their culture, right, and aren't ready to join their culture, all they [00:20:00] do, assuming they are right in these different types of relationship structures, turn out to be the correct ones, the ones that their culture asks of them.Malcolm: All they're doing is Increasing the strength of their enemies. So yeah, it's, it's, it's a terrible idea, but I want to come back to this Amish thing here because I think this is, this is really an important thing to drill down on. And this is also to me, Where I think the immorality of this situation is horrifying and the extent to which it shows people have lost their conservative roots is horrifying.Malcolm: They can't even imagine asking somebody to show a little self control from a cultural perspective and a person being able to do that. without the government helping them. That's what it signals to me when somebody is I need the government to assist in this because clearly they think it's helping people of their own own culture.Malcolm: They're not [00:21:00] doing it to help other people, right? They're not doing it to help their enemies better compete against them. And if they're not doing it to help their enemies better compete against them, it means that people within their culture. need this help. They need this government help to maintain their cultural value system.Malcolm: And then the value system just isn't very good or it's not relevant in a modern context. And, and that's really horrifying where the Amish elucidate this is this idea that they're missing, yes, the Amish socially isolate themselves, but they do it as a choice. Our culture, you, me, the people our kids engage with, we socially isolate ourselves to an extent within a wider cultural network.Malcolm: And yes, sort of we, we, we preach to the public, but we maintain some level of a bubble around our kids so that they are not polluted with this urban monoculture and, and they, you know, we really intentionally go out and we find other families that have our [00:22:00] weird value set and we have our kids. Play with their kids and go on trips with their kids and do summer camps for them.Malcolm: And we don't like if the government started mandating this, I don't know what, that's like a ghetto, right? They're like, okay, you just interact with your cultural group. We are doing all this for our kids because we think they're better off socially isolating to some extent from these urban monocultures as well as other conservative cultural groups.Malcolm: But we do that without blocking immigrants. Yeah. Yeah. And again, we're not pro like open borders or anything like that. If you've watched our immigration video, we are pro skill based immigration stuff, but yeah.Simone: So I think your broad, your broad take on this is. People who are trying to more broadly impose their, their culture on other groups by using the government as an implementation weapon or tool are ultimately doing themselves a disservice, if they care about their culture, if they care about winning people over [00:23:00] and they should be focusing more on just improving their own internal function.Simone: Is that sort of where you stand onMalcolm: this? Well, I think of your intuition is because most hard cultures, most of these older conservative cultures, they require a lot of restrictions for people. But the point of these restrictions. Is that you're choosing to do them. The point of Ramadan is that you're choosing to do it.Malcolm: The point of Lent is that you're choosing to do it. You are engaging in these yourself. If a person feels that they need the government to help them with this, then their culture is failing them. That is not a sign of being extra conservative. That is a sign of being from a weak cultural group that is failing and likely won't exist for long, unless you personally can come up with a way to make it stronger, to make the, the, the, the lessons it is using to tell you You need to resist this thing.Malcolm: [00:24:00] Better lessons in a modern context.Simone: That checks out. Yeah, well. Cultures, you've been put on notice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think anyone's going to change their behavior though. Let's be honest here.Malcolm: And keep in mind, different cultures recommend Different restrictions and what history is going to tell us and what we're going to learn from the world is which ones happen to be right, right?Malcolm: My family has a lot of restrictions on the way we live our lives, the way our kids live their lives, but they are not, they're very odd restrictions to other people. They're not the same set of restrictions. Many older conservative groups may use, but they, we designed them to specifically combat like internet and stuff like that and not.Malcolm: Fight against battles that we don't think can can win anymore. I mean you can watch our video and like Masturbation like should that be restricted from a cultural perspective within a modern context. Eh, but we could be wrong, and if we are wrong, then either the [00:25:00] iterations of our cultures, i.Malcolm: e. our kids that adapt different cultural practices, they'll survive and thrive and proliferate, and, and, and thus they'll win, or our entire family culture won't be able to motivate intergenerational fidelity and reproduction. And it will go extinct and the, the different groups that are out there right now will end up dominating the future of the human species.Malcolm: But the faster weak cultures can go extinct and strong cultures can proliferate, the better. Giving allowing weak cultures to hobble forwards by giving them, or forcing them to use a few of the tools of harder, stronger cultures is not beneficial to anyone.Simone: So I think also then a bigger issue is a culture that will withstand the test of time is going to think intergenerationally and really, you need to be thinking about.Simone: How many of your families now are going to have a bunch of kids and successfully give them such good childhoods that they carry on that culture and have kids themselves and give them their kids, that culture, et cetera, et [00:26:00] cetera. It doesn't really matter what other people are doing right now. You know, if it lets, if you want to save as many souls as possible, like probably the best way to do so is to ensure that most souls in the future.Simone: Like are born into your religion and that your, your religion inherits the future, theoretically. So you're,Malcolm: you're saying people are also... Or create better educational systems.Simone: Yeah, or, yeah, or create better educational systems. That's another, yeah, very good point. So people are justMalcolm: misled. If we weren't creating a school system for our kids, you know, we would either be sending them to the local Catholic or Jewish schools.Malcolm: Obviously and I think that disproportionately religious school systems are, are, we're lucky as we always say that our enemies are not as competent as they are malevolent. They have provided you a Easy pathway for new converts if you can ensure that these are well run school systems that are out competing the traditional school systems, not just in terms of how they introduce kids to your ideology, but in how they help those kids prepare to [00:27:00] engage with the world.Simone: So in the end, top pro tips for people building cultures that are designed to win are one, just focus on creating a strong intergenerationally durable culture, and two, if you want to be a dominating culture, focus on education, stop trying to impose rules on people. It's probably not going to help you anyway.Malcolm: Yeah. Don't impose your culture on other people, convince them that your culture is better.Simone: Well, let's see. Let's see who does that. I guess we won't see, but our, our descendants will, and we'd identify as them anyway. So who cares?Malcolm: They'll figure outSimone: one day. Yeah. Well, we'll check inMalcolm: via them someday.Malcolm: Or other people can, you know, probably no one will know what we wrote in the future. We'll see.Simone: Well, I love these conversations. Thank you so much, Malcolm. I love you.Malcolm: Thank you. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Journalist Katherine Dee joins Simone and Malcolm for a deep dive on how the internet is impacting gender expression, identity, and sexuality. They discuss the origins of sissy hypno, disconnects between biology and gender theory, polyamory trends, and more effects of online disembodiment.Katherine Dee: [00:00:00] I think maybe we overrate how much awareness people had of their gender identity in prior periods.Katherine Dee: And just so much of it was related to things that we were doing and the way we were engaging in our communities. And now that those things are gone, and those people are much more isolated, it's also going to impact.Would you like to know more?Simone: Okay. Hello. We have a very special guest joining us today. Catherine Dee, aka Default Friend, who is one of my personal favorite writers, journalists, and general cultural commentators. She has some of the best insights on different cultural movements, debate, current events, people, groups that, that I've read.Simone: She is incredibly thoughtful, incredibly clever. And Malcolm, you were saying there was something you actually wanted to ask her.Malcolm: Yeah, so I'm excited to go into topic. But the way I would, I would frame her is she is like the from an anthropological perspective, sort of internet historian in the more academic context, not the internet historian, but just a really good [00:01:00] studier of internet cultures and how they evolve.Malcolm: And I had heard you say a recent interest of yours that you delved into. was Sisyphication Hypnome, which actually dovetails with topics that we've talked about on the show recently, like the Trans Max Movement. We actually had the creator of the Trans Max Movement, we interviewed him. And it was so boring.Malcolm: We've never aired it because I don't want to lose followers over it. But it is a topic that really interests us. So I'd love to dig deep on where you think, you know, how the movement originated, how it developed and how it plays with something that we've talked about in a very recent episode. The idea of human gender sort of transforming, potentially even at the biological level in terms of how they're engaging with sexuality and gender.Katherine Dee: Yeah so origins, that's, that's sort of a hard question. I've heard people say that Oh,Malcolm: let's start with definition, because people mightKatherine Dee: not know. Oh, sure. So, sissy hypno is, [00:02:00] are, they're hypnosis videos or audio. That is supposed, it's, they're usually for a male audience, but sometimes can be like unisex or for, for women.Katherine Dee: And it's supposed to scissify you, right? Make you increasingly more feminized. And there's different genres of it. It can be You know, more or less violent or forced. Sometimes it's, it's more like brainwashing. Yeah, there's, and there's many different expressions of it. And it's interesting because recently NBC News did a piece on race change to another, which are like a sort of video, which is very Hypno, but it's like racial changes, right?Katherine Dee: So over time.Malcolm: The first question I have about it given the way that you've presented it is about what percent of sissy hypno would you say that the, the, the hypno itself is the pornographic material versus what percent would you say is consumed or created [00:03:00] specifically in order to change an individual's sexual preferences?Katherine Dee: I don't, I don't know, I haven't done like an exhaustive I haven't done exhaustive research on it. I, but if I had to, to guess, I'd say the, the, The act of listening and convincing yourself that you are being, like, forcibly changed into something you're not is the erotic component. And that's what people are sexualizing.Katherine Dee: There's a lot of people who want to see themselves as either a woman or a bimbified woman an ultra feminine woman. And, you know, cis women can... Experience this as well. It's not it's not confined to natal, natal males. But yeah, I think there's something about the change and the force of the forcing that is like an erotic.Malcolm: So, before we go deeper, something that I've noticed within, like, when I briefly looked into the Sissy Hypno movement. Is that historically, it seemed related to as you're saying like, bimbofication or [00:04:00] cisification, which was the idea that you know, through being forcibly changed into something else, maybe even transformation pornography types that is what is turning you on, and that is why you are consuming the content.Malcolm: Whereas there is this growing new movement, I mean, chief among them being the trans maxers, but they're hardly the only group. Do you know what I'm talking about when I'm talking about the trans maxers? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Where they are engaging with this content, not primarily because it turns them on, but because they actually want to permanently change their sexuality into something new that they feel will be easier to get access to.Malcolm: Is specifically this belief that if it's really hard. To gain access to attractive women as a man, well then I need to change what I want instead of I need to change, you know, who I'm going after. And that's been a, to me at least, that's the most interesting new phenomenon within this, this sort of sissy hypno category.Katherine Dee: I, I would imagine that that's [00:05:00] super rare. Mm. And I can see maybe a someone who's transitioning for, for whatever reason using sissy hypno in a non sexualized way as sort of, an act of desperation or a placebo, but I tend not to believe it's actually doing anything per se I've, I've listened to a whole bunch of audio and watched some of the videos, and it doesn't, I mean, it might just be because I wasn't open to it or, or whatever, and I was looking at it more as, research and not you know, without, not with the intention that I'm going to bimbofy myself.Katherine Dee: But I, I, I just feel like there has to be you have there's something so crazy and desperate about using it as a, a tool if, with, especially outside of a sexual context and, and not using it as a fetish object. So I want to give people benefit of the doubt that If there is some percentage of people who are using it to learn or something they, it's like real desperation and like a real place of maybe like despair that they're doing that, because there's so many better[00:06:00] even, even if they are trying to like do some sort of like conversion therapy on themselves, there's obviously so many better avenues to, to do that, right?Simone: Yeah, well and I think it you're totally onto something here because Ayla just released another Like visualization of her fetish data and hypnotism is right there in the center on a graph of reported interest versus average taboo rating. So it has like decent interest actually from both sides of the gender spectrum.Simone: But also like it's, it's halfway there, like halfway to the most extreme stuff in terms of taboo ness. And like very close to that is also dubious consent and mind break. And these are all sort of like, you know, similar clusters, I think. So it, it could just be that this is something that really gets people excited.Simone: And we have seen people argue that the trans maxing [00:07:00] movement is doesn't really represent a meaningful number of people that feels like, Hey, I'mMalcolm: just going to This is a movement of people that largely came out of the incel movement that is Transitioning, not because they felt they had gender dysphoria, but because they felt that women had it easier in our society and that they were never going to win given the hand that they were dealt.Simone: Right, it's gender euphoria, not gender dysphoria. It is, it isKatherine Dee: gender transition for gays. My guess at that is like... There are probably people who sort of subconsciously believe that, right? And there's maybe like subconsciously influenced, but the actual movement that would identify with that label.Katherine Dee: is probably pretty conf confined. And I think there's lots of lots of things like that, right? There's the there's tons of people who believe X, but the people who would, you know, use Y label are is probably much smaller and much much more eccentric.Malcolm: Let's go into the origins, because I interrupted you when you were talking about [00:08:00] that.Katherine Dee: Yeah so, like I said, I haven't done an exhaustive project on this. I I did an interview, and I I was sort of, Looking, you know, looking through it a few, few months ago but other, other projects caught my attention. Finding the origin was difficult because it's, it's like, what, you know, what the origin of what, like a sissification or like sissy, hypno you know, like a discreet, that discreet phenomenon.Katherine Dee: And both were actually like pretty hard to pin down like a first instance of it. I, again, like I could only speculate, but like sissy, sissy, sissification and bimbification seem to go back. Pretty far back to the, you know, like 1790s far. Even specification. Yeah, I mean, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't look exactly the same way that it would look today, right?Katherine Dee: But some version of feminizing a man as a, you know, a sexual expression, as a sexual tool. It seems to have always been... A piece of, of BDSM, not that that term has always been used, but just sort of [00:09:00] that type of sexual expression. But the Hypno videos, there's no one's written a history of it.Katherine Dee: And it's, it's actually like pretty hard to find where it originated. And the closest thing is like this Andrea Long Chu essay about it. And it, Andrea Long Chu suggests that maybe it originates on Tumblr. I I don't really buy that. That feels That feels wrong, but I don't actually know where it comes from.Katherine Dee: I did one interview with someone who first encountered it on 4chan. And I think, I think in 2008, if I'm remembering correctly. So it must've been like very, very early. So yeah, it's, I, I wish I, I wish I knew.Malcolm: So I, I can, I can maybe give an answer to this. Because so Sisyphication has clearly been part of the.Malcolm: The general sadism, masochism, and dominance and submission displace for a long time. Likely going back to the English vice, as you said, easily 1700s. Bimbofication, I would argue, or at least from what I've seen, because, you know, [00:10:00] we've done a lot of research. We've actually given speeches on the history of different types of pornography at one point.Malcolm: That seems to have not arose until the women's liberation movement. And, and didn't really get big until the late nineties and you can correct me if I'm wrong about any of this, but I, I have not heard of any bimbofication porn historically. And I think the reason being is there was, it was not considered normal for women to not be hyper sexualized to the extent that they, you know, you needed to, to counter this, the, the specification hypno, I think came after.Malcolm: Audio porn got popular, which didn't really happen until Argonne Wild Audio, which Simone has dug deep into because it somewhat requires that to have happened first. And so I would guess that it probably got started on the major hubs of audio only porn, which again, I didn't get big until the mid 2000s.Malcolm: Hmm.Simone: Yeah. I mean thatKatherine Dee: I'm not a, I'm not an expert on pornography by [00:11:00] any, by any stretch of the imagination. So, I mean, sure. I, I feel like I, I could imagine it starting at different points or like different expressions of it appearing at different points in time. But I mean, it sounds you know, much, much better than I do.Katherine Dee: Well,Malcolm: no, no, no. I thought maybe you, you did. So I'm, I'm wondering what you think it means for, and I'd love you to pontificate within the realm of pacification, hypno, and broader. How do you think the ways that the internet, because it, to some extent, de genders people. How, do you think it's like changing the way we relate to gender?Malcolm: Yeah, as an internet person.Katherine Dee: Yeah, I don't know if it de genders people as much as... The way gender expression you know, like our relationship to our gender expression changes, like one thing I think about a lot is like certain people in text appear more masculine or feminine, and people will get really into this with you, like if, if you sort of.Katherine Dee: Say that it is like you are like doing some level like of interpretation. They're like, [00:12:00] no, there's you know, an essential way that men communicate and sort of an essential way that like women communicate and you know, you're, you're downplaying that, but I don't, I don't think so, right? There's ways to present femininely.Katherine Dee: It through text and it is it is a like interpretive art like it's it's like when you the thing I compare it to a lot is like when you're reading something and there's a character and there's not a physical description of the character, but you start you start imagining based on other things in the text.Katherine Dee: I think that happens through text based communication and that is that that is not just something that's being like read. by a third party, but that's part of our gender expression and we don't really think of it that way. And there's other components of that too, like the, you know, the colors we use or the type of art we might put on a profile what websites we use, what apps we use.Katherine Dee: All of these are gendered in a way that we don't really, really think about. And I think that has actually impacted our Has [00:13:00] impacted our gender identity a lot because there's this new disembodied, very, very new way of expressing yourself that we really haven't named.Simone: That makes a lot of sense.Simone: I'm, I'm curious to know if you feel like, because obviously there's so much, gender is now playing such a key role in how people are freaking out culturally, or even like coalescing into different groups culturally. Do you feel like there is a significant change to the way that people. relate to gender or even like sexuality through gender?Simone: I mean, we, we can see that rates of reported sex are plummeting. We can see that gender is getting weird and different. Do you feel like it's overhyped and like the average person is just the same as they always are? Or do you think we're coming to a new evolution in human culture, at least in developed nations or like super internet connected nations where gender means something fundamentally different than, than what it was before.Katherine Dee: I think there's parts of it that are really underappreciated. I think, you know, that a [00:14:00] lot of our work is disembodied or mediated by a screen, I think, has a big part of it. There's, it, the, gender has always been so related to what we do. And a lot, and a lot of the places where that was like delineated have been like completely you know, abolished, right?Katherine Dee: Work is, anyone can have any job. There's, there's all these, there's all these things that have changed in that way that I think are impacting the way people think of gender. I don't think it was, I, I think maybe we overrate how much awareness people had of their gender identity in prior periods.Katherine Dee: And just so much of it was related to things that we were doing and the way we were engaging in our communities. And now that those things are gone, and those people are much more isolated, it's also going to impact. Gender. I wonder would we, would we have the same sort of gender questions if people were, like, more connected in [00:15:00] their immediate environments?Katherine Dee: Or if jobs were, you know, most people's work wasn't, not that most people's work, but if the, the most vocal sort of gender anarchists, so to speak, weren't probably using a laptop for their work, right? There's all these other little things but I thinkMalcolm: that's a really fascinating point that...Malcolm: Historically, gender expression wasn't so much a choice that people were actively making, because they were just so engaged with people in their daily lives. Whereas today, you get this level of choice, and one of the statistics that I always found really interesting in our book on sexuality was that about 20% of people, when they are given a choice with zero repercussions for making the choice of which gender to express as, will actually choose the opposite gender.Malcolm: So by here, what I mean is, you see this when people are choosing furry costumes, but you also see it when people are choosing online character avatars.Katherine Dee: I, I think part of, part of that with like furries [00:16:00] and, and avatars is it's a very easy way to experience novelty.Simone: That's interesting. Well, I also feel like part of what you're saying though, is let's say you live in some.Simone: village in rural France or something, and maybe given the circumstances of your life, you are born female, but you're doing more male style roles, kind of like both given your skill, but also, I don't know, like maybe you're married, but your husband went off to war. So now you're like doing all the man stuff and you're acting more manly, but it also doesn't care because you don't have an audience and there isn't like this online world.Simone: Is that also what you're saying? Like in the past, gender would Also be fluid, but it didn't matter because there was no big online discussion.Katherine Dee: That, I mean, that, that must be part of it. I also, I think it just had different it was just used in different ways. Right. And it had different, different utility at some, you know, a woman who's doing.Katherine Dee: Manual labor might actually be like more feminine because she is doing manual labor and that's maybe [00:17:00] masculinely coded in her, her culture. So she might have to compensate in other ways in different contexts. And then, you know, why, why bother at all? Maybe it's how, you know, just so she could signal that she's interested in a mate or something.Katherine Dee: I mean, there's there's all sorts of different, different reasons for it. I also think you know, part of gender is finding people with similar experiences and that is something that we, I mean, I think has been like completely sort of, like underrated or like even suppressed in especially like American culture.Katherine Dee: One sort of drawback, I think of the, you know, the discussion around transition and, and. Transgender identity is that part, part of saying I'm a woman is a way of saying I have a certain set of experiences tied to my biology and that is something that's been very stigmatized. And I, you know, if.Katherine Dee: Finding other, part of finding other women is like talking about things that I experience in my body, my health fertility thing, you know, that's something that someone who is male [00:18:00] bodied wouldn't have any insight or experience with.Simone: Yeah. Yeah, that'sMalcolm: super underrated. I, I think what's really interesting, and this is something we often talk about within the progressive movement.Malcolm: in the United States right now, is while they claim to value diversity, they mean it purely in an aesthetic sense. And there seems to be this resistance to admitting along any metric that humans are systemically different from other humans in any sort of an average context you know, whether it's men or women are systemically different or, or, or different cultural groups are systemically different.Malcolm: Do you think that that's sort of always been the case or is this a new thing with theKatherine Dee: internet? I don't know that the internet is necessarily the reason for that. I think that you're right that like in general, boundaries are very, I think there's like a real allergy to boundaries and that includes like boundaries between different groups.Katherine Dee: Right. And that could be something like in the workplace, you see, like The idea of a boss or a manager [00:19:00] is maybe in certain especially in white collar roles, or certain types of white collar roles, that's less emphasized now, and it's not as hierarchical as it might have been even 10 years ago.Katherine Dee: But then that also applies men and men and the boundary between men and women, or the boundary between individuals and relationships. That's another Big thing. And a lot of people speculate that the popularization of like polyamory is because is actually because we expect our partners to be everything to us.Katherine Dee: So instead of you know, saying, okay, I'm putting too much stress on my romantic partner, you, you rationalize say, Oh, I should have multiple romantic is. Making our, our romantic partner like our whole community, the person we get advice from, the person we spend all our time with. And it puts too much pressure on the relationship.Simone: I've never heard that take before and I love that.Malcolm: I'd love you to pontificate more on this point. Why do you think polyamory has gotten big?Katherine Dee: I think it's, I think it's a lot of reasons. Like [00:20:00] expectations. Also, I mean, I think it's, it's interesting to look where, where is it big, right? It's, it's, I think there are a lot of places in the United States and I can really only speak to the United States where maybe people are more isolated, but like generally like the, the way people socialize doesn't look that different from 10, 20 years ago where I would assume the biggest changes are like Very educated groups or, you know, up the upper class upper middle class people in in cities and probably the very poor, but I would guess the middle class is probably the, you know, the shrinking middle class is probably not so different than, you know, what people people miss, right?Katherine Dee: What people are nostalgic for so that, so that being said, I think the lifestyles of these groups sort of lend themselves to To a polyamory. Part of that is people who are in, again, like creative or tech fields may not want to get [00:21:00] married at the same, at the same age so that that's destabilizing people move away from their families so they don't really have communities.Katherine Dee: I know a lot of people who like move cities a lot or they live in cities that are not very community friendly and the way they make friends is through dating apps. Yeah, I,Malcolm: yeah, Oh, no, I was just gonna say that was definitely a phenomenon that I experienced really heavily when I first really became, you know, sort of long term monogamous with Simone was not being on dating apps made it a lot harder to findSimone: friends.Simone: Yeah. But I've never heard that articulated before that maybe it's because of one way we argue because we're really big in education reform that a really big problem with traditional schooling is that it really only teaches you how to make friends with people you're literally like forced to be in a room or office with.Simone: So if you don't make friends through university or school or through your business, you sort of never learn how to make friends. And then after you graduate from school, outside of people you inter interact with in your office, the only way that you're probably interacting with new. Strangers is you are dating [00:22:00] like that is the one time people bothered to learn how to meet new people or make friends and it just never really occurred to me that like People might be interested in polyamory because they they also just want more friends But they don't know how to make friends that they don'tMalcolm: Social institutions to make friends like they might not have a churchSimone: But that really resonated, like that makes so much sense.Simone: Cause when we think about poly communities that we've gotten into touch with or been exposed to, or poly people that we've met, like a lot of them, it's, it seems like it's more of a friendship thing and a more like of a social thing that it necessarily, it's like, well, this is how I want to be romantically involved.Simone: That's so astute.Katherine Dee: It's weird. It's weird that it's very hard for people to conceptualize like intimacy without sex which is, which is funny because like sex without intimacy is obviously very common. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And I, I think, I mean, I think that's right to your, your point, Simone, like they, people just don't know what a friend is or like how deep and intimate a friendship could be without it crossing that sexual boundary.Katherine Dee: And it, you know, it makes me wonder sometimes like the [00:23:00] nature of, of that sex It, I think there's been sort of like a hobbification of sex almost, or even less than that it's even a hobby is almost too generous because I think a lot of people do it to like, to pass the time, or as an experience they do it for a story, you know, and it's, it's, it's almost not about living in that moment, it's about it having, it's something that happened, and helped pass time, or, Well, I mean,Malcolm: narrative, narrative reinforcement is something we talk about a lot on this podcast.Malcolm: And that's what you're describing there is they are trying to tell a story about who they are to themselves and potentially to the world. But another thing you mentioned there that I found very interesting about the Poly community is just the amount of time it takes. You know, when I talk to these people who have eight partners or Oh, I'm at five partners right now.Malcolm: It's So this is like your primary hobby. Because it would have to be, it would have, it would just be an enormous time sink.Katherine Dee: It's your culture too. It's, it's probably a stand in for, for culture in a lot of ways. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Malcolm: No, I think it is. And, and it [00:24:00] comes to, you know, once you have a lot of kids or something like that, you know, this is another thing I've seen is you just don't have as much time forKatherine Dee: it.Katherine Dee: Yeah, I, and something about wanting to bring children into that kind of arrangement is very it's very creepy to me. I try to be like, sort of as non judgmental as possible, but it just seems like it's opening up your children to so much danger.Malcolm: So when I was in Silicon Valley you know, one of the things that always sort of weirded me on, and again, we try to be somewhat nonjudgmental on this channel, we're a little judgmental but there, there'sMalcolm: a lot of like they're, you know, sleeping together to some extent and you know, occasionally, you know, as I was getting older, there would be kids like crawling around these houses And I always, that did not, I don't know, I mean, it could be a stable way to host relationships, but, but polyamory, you know, in ALS studies show this really clearly, leads to really low fertility rates, so I don't think it's a, a long term culturalSimone: solution.Simone: Yeah, I mean, I would argue [00:25:00] growing up broadly in that culture, growing up in Silicon Valley I was surrounded by it, but also I think because I was surrounded by it, I was blind to it. Literally, I went to Burning Man at age 15 and I saw zero sex and zero drugs. And that's just because IMalcolm: remember we went to a party and there was an orgy and I was like, Simone, there's there's an orgy at this party.Malcolm: And you're like, no, there's not. And so I had to go. Walk you to a door, open it and be like, that's an or that, that room rightSimone: there is orgy room. I just, I don't know. So I, I think, I think it's probably less damaging to children than you would think, because I think kids, especially think about it. If kids are growing up surrounded by sex, by like very, like openness, nudity, like all that, they're just like Hmm.Simone: So that's what old people do, you know, kind of like, you know, sitting on the toilet for a really long time, reading newspapers, paying bills. It's just one of those things. Oh, I guess it's an old person thing. And you say, you're just like, I don't, I don't do that. Whatever. You're just like, so bored to it.Simone: Like you're [00:26:00] blind to it. So I worry less about it. We'll seeMalcolm: what ends up happening with these kids. I mean, you were one of them to some extent. Your parents were in a polyamorous relationship at one point. So. Maybe they don't all end up, I mean, I think theySimone: probably end up a lot more conservative than anyone may think.Simone: And I actually feel like to a certain extent, Gen Z is showing this through a lot of its conservative interests in that, you know, they were raised. In a very permissive time and their choice in perhaps rebellion or just in perhaps reasoned cultural choices after seeing how it's working for the adults is to go, in many cases, more conservative.Simone: But this has been a really fun conversation. But thank you so much because you've So I've actively changed my view on a couple of subjects and this is the kind of, and this is why everyone, if you're watching this, you've got to check out her writings.Simone: There is no they're all over the place. They're on different publications. She, she, she writes for, for a bunch of different outlets. So just search her name. Yeah.Katherine Dee: Is there a particular website? Yeah. [00:27:00] Just default. blog. And I, you know, update people on where I'm writing and what I'm doing.Simone: Perfect.Simone: Definitely go there guys. All right. All right. We'll talk to you soon. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Simone and Malcolm have a fascinating discussion about the power of "vices" in political campaigns and messaging. They analyze how Trump leveraged his flaws into strengths, and how Biden supporters are now embracing "Dark Brandon." Other topics include DeSantis' campaign struggles, Trump's unpredictable economic policies, and more election analysis.Simone: [00:00:00] how the investigations into corruption via Hunter Biden, whereby the Biden family, brought in more than 20 million for God knows what I mean, basically purchased influence.Simone: That's really interesting. Is that. People are leaning into it that are, that are supporters of Biden. And it's, it's showing up as the dark Brandon meme.Simone: SoMalcolm: Biden's supporters are the ones spreading this dark Brandon meme.Simone: Mm hmm. Well, what I've noticed about irony today, which I think is really interesting is that irony is both 100% ironic and 100% earnest. This is, this is actually a much more powerful thing.Malcolm: We talk about a lot with presidential campaigns. Is one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to try to run without obvious flaws, because then people will make up flaws for you. And that was one of Trump's biggest strengths is people knew what his flaws were.Malcolm: And I think moments like that when he's first getting on the wealthiest person's list that he can't even afford his own PR [00:01:00] agent and he is pretending to be his own PR agent to talk himself up, I think shows the reality of the situation and talk about his finances at the time, you know, the left will take this this is a damning thing.Simone: But when we, we're like, dude, this guy has hustle. This guy makes things happenMalcolm: So the way Trump actually got rich, cause I think a lot of people don't really understand what he did.Would you like to know more?Malcolm: hello, Simone. It is wonderful to be chatting today. I am really excited for this one.Simone: Well, as you know, because we're huge fans of Susie Weiss who writes for the Free Press, I try to follow as many of their publications as I can.Simone: And one of my favorites that's not by her, because I really just go there for her, is called TGIF, where they do a news roundup. And I was reading in today's TGIF about. Dark Brandon, this really interesting thing that's trending. So let me, let me kick this off by describing what's going on here.Simone: Cause I feel like this is just so intriguing. I can't, I [00:02:00] can't not dive into it. Brandon. Yeah. So let's, let's start with some. Background, right? At one point there was a baseball game where someone was being interviewed and the audience were chanting in the background while someone was being interviewed, you Biden again and again, so you Biden.Simone: And then the. The interviewer, a woman, very charitably thought that the person that she was interviewing was being cheered on. She says, Oh, they're all saying, let's go, Brandon which is really sweet. And so moving forward virally the phrase, let's go. Brandon became basically shorthand for you, Biden which.Simone: You know, has, has been very fun. So obviously this is theMalcolm: reason why is it was seen as the way that the press just distorted anything they saw about the world or anything they heard into a positive message for progressives.Simone: Exactly. Yeah. And what's interesting [00:03:00] now is it appears to be that. Brandon as a meme is now being appropriated by Biden supporters.Simone: So, basically what, what was covered in TGIF by the free press this week was how the investigations into corruption via Hunter Biden, whereby the Biden family, well. President Biden was vice president brought in more than 20 million for God knows what I mean, basically purchased influence.Simone: And you know, to your point about the, the mainstream media, there's very little coverage of, of this, this investigation, but what's going on. That's really interesting. Is that. People are leaning into it that are, that are supporters of Biden. And it's, it's showing up as the like dark Brandon meme.Simone: SoMalcolm: Biden's supporters are the ones spreading this dark Brandon meme.Simone: Mm hmm.Simone: . So what the Free Press basically said was Biden's campaign has embraced the new YOLO middle finger vibe.Simone: The top selling products on his campaign website for this week are dark [00:04:00] Brandon items, the old saying goes, never explain it, never apologize. And these are literally like, so the, the dark Brandon mean is, is sort of like, it's, it's, it's images of Biden, but with like evil shining eyes and literally you can click over to the Biden campaign website and see.Simone: Like a mugs and t shirts. Like I'm on shop. joebiden. com slash dark dash t shirt. So I canMalcolm: imagine two reasons for this happening. Okay. And they're both really interesting. One could be that what they actually see as, as one of Biden's biggest weaknesses going into this next campaign cycle is that he's just a pussy.Malcolm: And it's not terribly interesting. And this is a way to imbue him with agency, with power, mystery and danger in the same way that I think drove many people to Trump and that he actually embodies those things for a lot of people. But [00:05:00] then the other way to look at it is it's just a middle finger to, you know, within their cultural group, things like let's go, Brandon have become such a.Malcolm: Sign of people who aren't in their cultural group and people who they detest that they are embracing this completely ironically, which of those do you think is, is more what's happening?Simone: Well, what I've noticed about irony today, which I think is really interesting is that irony is both 100% ironic and 100% earnest.Simone: So I think people who are buying dark Brandon merchandise 100% are like, oh, yeah snub it to the people, you know, I'm appropriating your appropriation, I'm gonna take your meme you, but at the same time they're kind of like, yeah, I have a badass, dark leader, he's playing 4D chess, he'll take, you know, you know, payments under the table, it doesn't matter that's how badass he is, and I think part of us Maybe we want a strong man kind [00:06:00] of leader.Simone: I mean, there's that old research that found that people who look presidential get elected for president. Maybe this is people wanting their president to be a strong man. And frankly, because right now people are concerned about president Biden being senile, being out of it, not actually being in control.Simone: This is, this is actually a much more powerful thing.Malcolm: We talk about a lot with presidential campaigns. Is one of the biggest mistakes you can make is to try to run without obvious flaws, because then people will make up flaws for you. And that was one of Trump's biggest strengths is people knew what his flaws were.Malcolm: Meanwhile,Simone: one of Hillary's weaknesses, she was trying to be Little Miss Perfect. Yeah. SheMalcolm: was trying to be everything to everyone in a big way. And what that meant is, is everybody who didn't like her. One, it makes you suspicious of someone when they don't show obvious character flaws. Totally. And then, but then two, it allows you to impose character flaws.Malcolm: Oh, they're out there murdering people or something like that, right? Yeah,Simone: well, as we would put it, if you asked, you [00:07:00] know, a hundred people, what's wrong with Trump, you're going to get ten answers. If you ask a hundred people, what's wrong with Hillary Clinton, you're going to get 50 to 75 answers. And that's aMalcolm: problem.Malcolm: You ask a hundred people what's wrong with Trump, you'll get two or three answers.Simone: And that's the great thing is, is when you choose your vices and you have them so public and consistent, you can make sure that your public vices are not deal breakers for your position. And none of, you know, like misogyny.Simone: Or like huge ego, like all the Trump problems do not make him incapable of being president where, you know, if you have a vice like senility that could actually, you know, be a tailbreaker for presidency. So is this actually a super fricking brilliant move where they're like, we're going to take a vice.Simone: We're going to own it. We are corrupt. We have a corrupt family, but we are dark Brandon. Like we, we are, we are embracing it. And is that really appealing to you? These, these are, this isn't just like a thing that, that like literal White House operatives are starting to adopt, which weMalcolm: can share [00:08:00] some sources on this.Malcolm: Well, I think if you look historically and you You know, his advice was, and when he did that, his poll numbers went up, meaning that he had cheated on his wife and lied about it and stuff like that. People were like, Oh, now I know what's wrong with you and I can mentally contain it. Now keep in mind, all we're talking about here with all this stuff is perception.Malcolm: Yeah. Right? We are not saying that this is actually what's wrong with these political candidates or actually what's not wrong. Most of these political candidates have many bigger things that are wrong with them than these public perceptions. What we're talking here is this game of public perception.Malcolm: ButSimone: public perception is what gets you elected or not elected. So in the end, that's what matters, right? Well, andMalcolm: they may be leaning into it because they feel that they can't avoid it anymore. They can't avoid the public perception of corruption. So you might as well just completely roll in it so that that is.Malcolm: The negative that everyone assumes to the extent of, [00:09:00] you know, Biden's, you know, in his speech, and he does like a Trumpism, he's well, I got away with it, didn't I? You know,Simone: Yeah, well, at one point he even put on sunglasses and kind of like a hat tip to the Doug Biden campaign. Like the crowd cheered.Simone: I really think like this could be the thing that makes his reelection possible because I do, I do feel like going into things before even though it, it was, you know, he's coming in from an incumbent position. He's coming in strong. This re electionMalcolm: is completely dependent on whether the Republican party fractures between two candidates or stays united.Malcolm: ISimone: don't think it will cause DeSantis is currently performing pretty poorly. Although he did hire a new campaign manager recently, but I think what, I think DeSantis is the one who's really like messing up right here. So Trump is I'm just one more indictment away from presidency. Right? Trump is leaning in.Simone: He's like his great old self. Biden is now going dark Biden. Like we've got two very good. caricatures going, and I think caricatures are golden in elections.Malcolm: No, but the point I'm making is this election actually isn't decided by the strengths of the candidates. It's decided by internal Republican PartySimone: politics.Simone: [00:10:00] Yeah, I just, I think the Republican Party is pragmatic enough to not try to push DeSantis if DeSantis isn't. You know, isn't kind of like,Malcolm: really, I'm not saying that it will be DeSantis. You don't know who else is going to come up. Yeah.Simone: Yeah. Anything can happen at this point.Malcolm: It's not well, I mean, yeah, we'll see, but I think to a large extent, the strength of the Republican position in this next election is actually Biden's messaging and everything like that is largely going to be irrelevant.Malcolm: I think it would be pretty hard for him to beat a United Trump front or a United somebody else front. But I think it'd be fairly trivial for him to be any sort ofSimone: divided front. I do think, though I actually, I personally find the concept of dark Brandon much more appealing. I feel better about having a dark Brandon president than I did about Sleepy Joe, if you know what I mean.Simone: It's just more fun. Well, and I thinkMalcolm: that shows the strengths of Trump's branding. In terms of the way he paints negatives for people is he [00:11:00] created simple, easy to understand negatives, which could be paired with video and stuff like that and build this into your brain. And so the question is, why is Sleepy Joe such an effective attack?Malcolm: Because it's not a particularly damning attack. Oh, it, it, it implies low energy and it implies. More than I think senility. It implies personal weakness ofSimone: character. Well, actually, you know, it's really funny, the Sleepy Joe moniker. There's this one episode of Doctor Who where Doctor Who decides he's going to destroy the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.Simone: And he says something like, I will destroy you with three little words. And he turns to a press agent and he says, she looks tired. And supposedly this just like completely destroys her, I think. But you know, like they really present it with a lot of gravitasMalcolm: in that moment. We're going to [00:12:00] be great presidential candidates, all energy, all the time.Malcolm: People will be like, yeah, yeah, I'm actually surprised we don't get more, you look like you're on drugs. We're not on drugs, bySimone: the way. You got that a lot with the, with the Chris Williamson appearance. A lot of people are like, you're definitely on amphetamines. I, everyone was sure you were on amphetamines.Simone: No guys, this is like literally him at five in the morning. I'm not kidding you. Like I have to, I have to tell him to not getMalcolm: really quick with that interview because I didn't know how long it was going to last. I thought it was going to be 30 minutes and I was trying to get everything in as quickly as possible.Malcolm: Whereas in our own podcast, I could afford to be much, much, more relaxed in mySimone: timing. I actually I wonder though if, if in the future when we have a greater understanding of the way that our genetics function and we have a greater understanding of the way Like of the various chemicals in your body.Simone: If like literally you are experiencing, like your default state is what many people experience when they're on amphetamines. I really wonder that because like you are highMalcolm: energy. I suspect it might be why I drink so much is to get myself into a normal.Simone: Yeah. Just to bring, [00:13:00] yeah. Just to bring yourself back down to to slow your mind down.Simone: I really, I genuinely believe that. So one thing I'm curious about is okay, so we're seeing like with dark Brandon, I think really strong campaign action. I deeply admire it. I find it compelling. I'm glad they're leaning into it. I want to see where it goes with the selection. When you run for office, what are your clear vices going to be?Malcolm: I am arrogant as hell. I want it to be arrogant and elitist. Arrogant and elitist. Yeah, I want, I want people to know that I think I'm better than them. NotSimone: that you think that you're better than them, Malcolm. That you know that you're better than them.Simone: IMalcolm: know that I'm better than them. Yeah. No, I mean, I think that it's natural to who I am. I am. It's something that I have trouble suppressing is, is arrogance. BecauseSimone: I think a good vice and I think why dark Brandon works is that it's true. Is it like, it is incontrovertible. Like when, when you look at the reports, the investigation into what's going on with Hunter Biden, like it's bad.Simone: And there's very little that they can doMalcolm: to everything is. Is nerdy weirdness is the other thing I'mSimone: going to really No. [00:14:00] Sorry. That's a, my, my weakness is an employee candidate and I just work too hard. That is not, that is a humble brag. And that is I do notMalcolm: think so. So I think that you see it that way.Malcolm: The real key to a vice, okay, in, in the political sphere is can you get your opponent's press to biteSimone: it? Oh, to make fun of you. Well, and Ben Shapiro did call you like a big fat nerd, didn'tMalcolm: he? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is on our own side, right? But no, there was this Yahoo News piece about us that just basically...Malcolm: Went through our Reddit history. Oh, yeah. Did you know they follow like Tumblr in action and, and FatLogic and all of these mean ish right leaning stuff. So when I say nerdy weirdness, I don't mean like general nerdy weirdness. I mean like I mean like he's a internet freak. Weirdness. Yeah. And, and also keep in mind, you know, I have looked at the way people attack us on the Reddit threads that have done really well.Malcolm: You know, we, we typically, we have a few Reddit threads that are ever like 50, 000 upvotes on us.Simone: And well, I upvotes on [00:15:00] hate about us. Let'sMalcolm: be clear about us. Yeah. Nobody likes us. Hate about us and you know, very common stuff is, do you know, he had a body pillow made of an anime version of his wife and then clearly I did this for fun, but like they really wanted to lean into how disgusting and terrible this was that I had done this.Malcolm: I, I think that, or that when I proposed to you, one of the images we used was like an MLP fandom, My Little Pony fandom image. I, I think that you may underestimate how much, and this is one thing that Trump did that was really, really smart. Yeah. He would beat reporters with lines that given their ideological perspective. They thought were things that they could use against him, but the majority of the population actually agreed with a great example here is , when he's like, Oh, we don't want to be like one of those, you know, I think it was like shitty countries in Africa or something likeSimone: that.Simone: He said, no, I think it was something about accepting immigrants from shitty countries in Africa or something, but it's very offensive to people. [00:16:00]Malcolm: How dare he call countries in Africa shitty. And they just went off on this word. The majority of America was like, Oh, that's pretty base. Even Dems were like, Yeah, they're pretty shitty.Simone: We don't want to You're actually reminding me though, of a really An amazing, I would say vice leveraging tactic or vice Aikido tactic that Trump uses that has been underutilized in the world of the political sphere. So right now, what most politicians do when they're presented with a question that they don't want to answer or an accusation that they don't want to address, they immediately change the subject.Simone: Like they asked as though they were asked an entirely different question. Trump. does not. If, if someone's oh, you know, what about this woman who accused you of sexual assault? And he'll be like, well, first, she's not my type. I have no idea. But like the fact that he says stuff like that, and one it shows he's, he's taking one accused vice oh, you sexually assaulted a woman.Simone: And then he like, switches it to another vice of oh yes, I am misogynistic. And oh yes, I am very like, self [00:17:00] important. Yeah. This other thing isn't true.Malcolm: That's actually really powerful. Yeah. If somebody accuses you of a vice you don't want to have publicly, transform it into another viceSimone: through the way you answer.Simone: But meet vice accusations that are not on brand for you with your own vice. I think that's like the trick and I don't know how Trump does it so naturally, but he does.Simone: He's so good at it. Okay, so you're going to be a nerd and you are going to be What about you? I don't know. Oh, do you not have any vices? No, I think that's the problem is my vice is I am oppressively boring. So, I don't think ourMalcolm: audience would think that. I, I, I think, okay, so within conservative spheres, your big vice, and people say this, is that you look like a progressive.Simone: Yeah, but we, we might be growing out our hair because Brian Kaplan thought it would be a goodMalcolm: idea. Yeah, so we'll say, yeah, we were told that she should grow out her hair and we're like. No, he saidSimone: just per the audience we're going and I'm like, yeah, [00:18:00] you're, you're right. I can't pull it off as well, but he's, he's right.Simone: So maybe, maybe I won't look like a, so what, but that's not a vice. That's not a good vice that she looks like a progressive. I don't know. WhatMalcolm: should be your advice? I mean, it's your choice. There's lots of things wrong withSimone: you. Yeah, but it has to be like, and there's tons of things wrong. I think you couldMalcolm: lean into the wholeSimone: autistic thing.Simone: Yeah. Oh, just, yeah. Just okay to be like, too autistic. NotMalcolm: liking to talk to people, like turning away from people trying to give you their baby. You know,Simone: maybe that's. Your mom before she passed away was convinced that DeSantis was autistic. Yeah. She's I can tell and she, I mean, she called our son well before he was diagnosed.Simone: So she's, you know, she, she knows what she's doing. God rest her soul, of course. We miss her a lot. She will never be forgotten. But yeah maybe what he should be doing in terms of pivoting in this campaign, and one reason why he's failing, is one, he doesn't have any clear vices. He's trying to be like Mr.Simone: Perfect with his wife, being all beautiful and nonsense, and like going on a campaign for him. But he, I think he's missing that strong [00:19:00] character with the dark side and the light side. And I don't really what's wrong with him? What do you think is wrong with him? I don't know. I, I couldn't stay and that's the problem, you know, that's why he's not doing so well.Simone: That's why he, I think he fired his campaign manager because he's not, he's not getting traction. But I think the bigger problem is he doesn't have my readMalcolm: and I'm not really following this too much. So, so if this video does well, if people want like campaign talk, I'll start following campaign politics again and do more on it because I.Malcolm: It's something that I can get addicted to I've gotten really addicted to political news in previous cycles, just like a constant fire hose when I get into it. So I'm happy if this does well, I'm happy to do more on this, but my read is somebody who's not really following it. If he just, he comes across.Malcolm: As trying really hard to make this work and it's justSimone: Yeah, well, I think the bigger problem is that his original campaign strategy was, I'm going to, I'm going to be the culture wars president. Everything's culture wars. He kept pivoting answers back to oh, and I'm going to make this about, you know, gender and all this other stuff when that's.Simone: I think surprisingly, [00:20:00] not really what people care about that much. No,Malcolm: people care about their kids being like brainwashed and stuff like, and this is, I think, a mistake that the Republican upper breath is just really slow on right now. Republicans do not hate gay people. Okay. They don't even dislike the gay people.Malcolm: They, they dislike the way that, that trans people are getting special privileges within some circumstances. They dislike the way that this stuff is taking over our school system but they have no actual animosity to the gay community other than where they vote different from them. I mean, Milo Yiannopoulos, you know, back when he was gay, I don't know what's going on with him now, he was the gayest motherfucker I've ever seen.Malcolm: He presented with, with all of the stereotypes and stuff like that, and he was generally really well liked in the conservative sphere. And, and, and this comes to something that we might do a full video on later is progressives have created a narrative, and [00:21:00] unfortunately, I think the upper brass of the Republican Party, and this has been one of the mistakes that DeSantis has fallen into, who created a narrative where conservatives are, like, actually racist or actually homophobic.Malcolm: They're like, no, like being, having a lot of gay friends, that doesn't make you not homophobic or, you know, and it's no, it, it actually does. What you mean when you say that is the only way to not be homophobic is to agree with you. That is not, you know, as, as I said in a tweet, I wrote recently.Malcolm: I signed up to be an ally, not a minion. Okay. And you don't get to call me homophobic when I'm not a minion. I don't, I don't have any animosity towards gay people. I don't want them to, to suffer but I also don't think that they, you know, get the right to culturally impose this on other groups or other groups kids.Malcolm: And that's how I understand the Republicans anger there.Simone: Well, any more than like anti gay groups can impose. Yeah, he's specificallyMalcolm: like actually seems to be targeting gay people. Like he's like actually like [00:22:00] f**k gay people. Like what? Like, I don't know. That's been my read of his campaigns.Simone: Yeah. Yeah.Simone: I just think it's, it's, it's insufficiently culturally compelling. Whereas like really weird, dumb stuff like dark Brandon. It's you know, and I think people are really discounting that, you know, Trump won because people wanted someone to break the system. It was that simple. Like we are not, people, you know, get a lot into policy and, you know, all these debates.Simone: The debates are just to see howMalcolm: good he is as president. We should do another video on just Trump someday. Because I have a lot of problems with his personal character. But he I think objectively, if you just go through it, it was genuinely reallySimone: good. Oh yeah, he hashtag nailed it. It's veryMalcolm: foreign policy wise, which is my core area of focus.Malcolm: He was just phenomenal foreign policy president. Really, reallySimone: good. Yeah. Yeah.Simone: Whereas right now the Biden administration is apparently releasing about [00:23:00] 3 billion in frozen assets in North Korea to Iran in exchange for some prisoners telling Iran that they get about 1. 5 billion per prisoner.Simone: So now they're like really incentivized to kidnap. people. So friends don't go to Iran right now. It's just not a good idea, especially if you matter to the United States government. So anyway yeah, I feel like the Biden foreign policy team, which is really interesting because I think a lot of people originally voted for, for Hillary Clinton, for example, and then next for Biden, because they were like, well, This is the responsible choice.Simone: We're not voting for a person. We're voting for a larger network of advisors. And because yes, it's, it's actually pretty clear. Trump's Trump's cabinet and team was pretty chaotic. There was really high turnover. There was a concern that you wouldn't really get the policy support, , the foreign, network that you would need to succeed in the executive office.Simone: And yet. You know, with, with Biden in office, we're really not seeing policies that give me a lot of comfort which is interesting. And I thinkMalcolm: that a lot of Trump's advice has played really well into [00:24:00] his ability to be a president. So one of the things that I think a lot of people slept on is, is, is why the economy did so well when Trump was president you know, until COVID, but not much you can do about that.Malcolm: It was that. He was so economically unpredictable. And what people don't realize, I think often about the markets, is that they are hopelessly optimistic. They're always looking for some upside they haven't expected yet. So when you look at things like his restrictions on China What that meant is there was always the potential in the future for some big economic uplift.Malcolm: And as long as the investor class believes there is a near future potential that they can't predict of economic uplift, they are going to continue to invest in the market.Simone: So it's Trump's very unpredictability that both from an economic and a foreign policy perspective made people behave well.Malcolm: No, it was that he was doing things that artificially held down the market that he could easily turn [00:25:00] off that led to the market almost always rising.Malcolm: . When I'm putting money on the market, what I'm doing is I'm saying, how much higher could the market go from where it is now? Perfect political environment for the market means you have reached the market peak and it's time to start selling.Malcolm: As long as you create the assumption that the market environment is suboptimal, which Trump was constantly doing through. Often pretty dumb economic policy. You, well, it wasn't dumb in its result, right? BecauseSimone: it created, we'll say chaotic, chaotic economic policy,Malcolm: foreign policy where he was punishing foreign actors that he should have been punishing and that we now know he should have been publishing because Biden carried on all these policies and no one talks about it.Malcolm: It's the, the, the public perception of what's going on in politics, I think is so different than what's actually going on. Hmm.Simone: Yeah, well, I think there's also the question of what does the executive office really do? And, and [00:26:00] You know, I think the, the character of a president is underrated in, in influencing a nation's position on the world stage, like just narratively, what people think of the president and how they model the president may make just, maybe not just as much, maybe just as much of an impact as all of their different policy choicesthroughoutMalcolm: there.Malcolm: I think, I think it makes a bigger impact. I mean, I think that the reason you need to talk from a policy, I think the reason Putin did not invade Ukraine while Trump was president, despite him being. You know, inclined towards Russia is, I think Putin genuinely believed that Trump might decide to do something like nuke Moscow.Malcolm: He genuinely portrayed this air of mental instability and aggressiveness and not understanding the outcomes of his actions. And I think that a lot of dumb people in the public, like just absolutely believe like that he actually was that way. And I don't think he was that way at all. I don't think he was 4G chess either.Malcolm: I think he was like a dad who knew [00:27:00] what was going on. And sometimes he he, he fell into the right circumstances, but he wasn't an absolute genius.Simone: But here's, here's, I think Trump is a genius at some things. Yeah, he's an absolute genius at hype, at PR, you know, like him being his own press agent when he couldn't even afford to have his own.Simone: That made me respect him so much. Yeah,Malcolm: for color, for background. Yeah, when I really start to respect somebody and press I believe is press that would make somebody look bad. And there was that case where people released these recordings. You want to talk about it?Simone: Basically, I think when Trump was originally running, someone released a recording of him pretending to be his own press agent, trying to promote Trump, I think for you know, Forbes top wealthy people list.Simone: Yeah, top 10 wealthiest people. And at the time, of course, he was so obscure that people didn't know his voice or his mannerisms. So when he called this person on the phone talking about Trump pretending to be his agent, He's totally sounded like himself. And you're like, Trump, he's such a great guy. He's just the best.Simone: And every, you know, [00:28:00] I can't do Trump, but like he did Trump as Trump's agent. So it's very obvious it was him. But when we, we're like, dude, this guy has hustle. This guy makes things happen. And he is a hype machine. He knows what to do. He knows where to apply pressure and he's not above. Doing things like this, whereas most people would never deign to, first off, even self promote, like many people can't deign to hire a press agent.Simone: Not only could he deign to do that, he could deign to do it himself. Well, yeah, theMalcolm: sad thing is, is Trump has this personal self image that, that is, he is a wealthy person from a wealthy family and he is high class. And he has this so much that he, he doesn't portray just how self made he actually is. And I think moments like that when he's first getting on the wealthiest person's list that he can't even afford his own PR agent and he is pretending to be his own PR agent to talk himself up, I think shows the reality of the situation and talk about [00:29:00] his finances at the time, you know, the left will take this this is a damning thing.Malcolm: So the way Trump actually got rich, cause I think a lot of people don't really understand what he did. ? .Malcolm: So if you're born to a pretty wealthy family, the. Sane, unambitious thing to do is to take that money, to invest it, and to live a life where you never have to really worry about medical expenses or running out of money or anything like that.Malcolm: That could have been Trump's life. He was born to a wealthy enough family that realistically he never had to worry about money. You could also do something stupid take that money and throw it on drugs, right? That's what many people do as vices in wealthy families. Trump did something actually insane that, that actually makes me respect him a little less because it was just such an insane move.Malcolm: He went around and convinced people who would give [00:30:00] him debt that he had more assets than he had. So he didn't just take debt out against the assets that he owned so that he would be broke given his own assets. He pretended that he owned things his dad owned? And took out debt against that. Then he took all of this debt he accumulated and bet it on New York real estate in a way where if the real estate market had gone down, somebody who literally could have lived their entire life without worrying about money would end up.Malcolm: Well, he would have gone bankrupt and would have had to give up his assets and stuff like that. And he, he might have been okay. Like his dad could have said these aren't his assets, but then could the bank have put something on him so they could have taken the assets later. But basically live life with nothing for the rest of your life.Malcolm: So he took a gamble there and it worked now. Now that I'm thinking through, this is actually a [00:31:00] pretty smart gamble. So I'll explain why it was a smart gamble. Okay. So what's the worst case scenario? The worst case scenario is the New York real estate market goes down as it did when he did the, I think the Atlanta deal, because he did this a few times.Malcolm: And one of the times that actually did go bust on him, just not the first time, which provided him with enough money that he didn't have to worry about it. But He borrowed money that he didn't have, like against money he didn't have, and made these big sort of economic gambles on real estate. If it had gone tits up, yes, he would have gone broke, but because he hadn't gotten the money from his dad yet he would have just gone bankrupt.Malcolm: And then later when his dad died, he would have gotten a big inheritance and not a house. Okay. I take it back. Actually a pretty brilliant plan with a moderate cost to him, but actually not a very big cost,The biggest cost associated with this gambit would actually have been the wire fraud charges, which Simona and I had a long discussion offline about how big a cost that [00:32:00] actually would be given that it might not have been in the banks, financial interest to pursue those charges. We've actually had this as a problem with our businesses where like we're mad at somebody and we totally want to Sue them, but there's just literally no economic upside to suing them as a business that we just decided not to because the lawsuits are expensive. Expensive. and, , she was pointing out that even if the charges did go through, , people with that in their background, you know, even some people we know, still find ways to do business. That's specifically where the wire for our charges would hurt you so much. They would make you very, very difficult to take out loans and stuff in the future.Malcolm: But I thinkSimone: that this is, this is like a microcosm for one of the things that made Trump a really good foreign policy figure for the particular time in which he was in office.Simone: He, he's super based macho man. Just balls out, what you gonna do? I'm gonna bomb you. What do you think? And people are like, legit I think he's gonna bomb you. You probablyMalcolm: should. But no, it wasn't that they thought he was gonna bomb them. It was that they thought there was a non [00:33:00] zero chance he wouldSimone: bomb them.Simone: Yeah, well, he was, he was enough of an agent of chaos, and he was enough of an ego driven man, man, we're like,Malcolm: Where he just like randomly, they, they crossed a line for him. And so he was like, okay, well then I'll cross a line. I'll nuke one of your diplomats and not nuke. What was it?Malcolm: He said like a guided missile, the guy's car, yeah. I can't remember exactly what happened, but what was really interesting about it. And it was such a diplomatic. Like overreach, it showed such diplomatic overreach that no one would normally do, but it was also so incredibly targeted.Malcolm: It was, I say you don't do something, I'm going to do something that is an equal offense to what you just did. But the targets, top people within your military community. This is Iran, I think, actually. What's this, Iran? Anyway I've been forgetting, but yeah so that you personally and your families personally feel there may be some price to pay that is equivalent to the, to you, to [00:34:00] your top brass, but feel like random people you're killing.Malcolm: A lot of people could say that can spiral out of control. I think what we've seen with what's going on with the Ukraine war and Russia, it's actually a lot harder for things to spiral out of control than the public thinks. In fact, it's never really happened except for the Cuban Missile Crisis, which, okay, there it almost didSimone: actually spiral out of control.Simone: But I also think that there's a lot of value to like boiling complex issues down to really simplistic. Actions and, and narratives and Trump was very capable of doing that. And I think he also drew other figures into simplistic. Detente, essentially, that like really worked well in foreign policy. Well,Malcolm: we need to do a whole video just on Trump's Middle Eastern policy, which was reallySimone: good.Simone: Yeah. Well, I mean, we'll see how this video does. This is, this is doing something a little bit, you know, And IMalcolm: didn't prep beforehand. So obviously I'm mentioning a bunch of stuff where I don't, I don't remember all the specifics. So I probably got some stuff wrong.Simone: But there, there is something pretty universal and clever here, which is like the, the power of vices.[00:35:00]Simone: And the power of simple characters. And I think it's so, so, so underrated. You know, everyone wants to be perfect. We've even had people who've read our books where we talk about this. We're like, you have to have super simple vices and super simple virtues. And people have been like, okay, well here are the virtues that I, that I've chosen for myself and here are the vices and all the vices are just.Simone: Virtues like they're just humble brags and all of the sameMalcolm: thing. Simone. I asked you what your vices are and you wouldn't get mySimone: vices are that I'm bored. Okay, dear YouTube, please select my vices for me because I just can't figure it. Maybe it's that I hate people. And then I'm secretly really evil on the inside because that's probably true.Simone: You know, maybe it's that I I don't know. It's bad. Malcolm, you're good. This is why you're gonna run. I'm not, I'm not a good person to run. You're running in the firstMalcolm: election. The people who want to fund us, they want a woman.Simone: Okay, YouTube, please figure out my vices fast because apparently I need them.Simone: But Malcolm, I love you and I especially love your vices. What is it that Churchill said? He said something [00:36:00] like, he has... None of the vices I love and all the virtues I hate. Something like that. The man, that man understood vices. This is, it's a universal thing that has withstood the test of time.Simone: So, well, I love this conversation. I think maybe we might have some more of these. But yeah, we'llMalcolm: see. I'm very excited for the next, next election cycle. I'm sure we'll be doing more politics, even if it doesn't Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm and Simone explore whether it's possible to craft an enduring secular religion or culture. They analyze why previous attempts failed and the need for cohesion beyond scientific truth. Malcolm argues adapting beliefs while avoiding dogma is key. Simone stresses traditions that create belonging. They agree combining strong community with fluid science may succeed where others faltered.Malcolm: [00:00:00] And this has happened throughout histories where people essentially deify the secular understanding of the world at the time. And then, our understanding of the world moves forwards, it begins to look ridiculous, and it gets thrown out.Malcolm: This is why only the most conservative in terms of sticking was the original way of viewing the text, or the original way of practicing a religion. Typically those are the iterations that survive, rather than the ones that try to adapt. But, then there's the other problem, which was the other thing that some groups did, is they say, Well, we will just outsource our metaphysical understanding of the universe.Malcolm: To the scientists, the scientific institutions. But after the scientific institutions became infected with this, a progressive memetic virus it began to care less and less about truth.Malcolm: It basically became a tool for just infecting and injecting other cultures with this progressive memetic virus.Malcolm: The problem is, is the internet exists now. Engaging with technology is intrinsically [00:01:00] caustic to systems that try to tell people about a metaphysical framework for reality that'sSimone: wrongMalcolm: I think that many of these older systems that can only compete by telling people not to engage with technology, which I think is going to be an increasingly successful strategy.Malcolm: Yeah, they'll continue existing in the future, but they won't have economic power. Because technology is critical to massive economic power and military power to an extent. So even if you're a smaller cultural group, if you're the cultural group that is engaging readily with AI in a way that isn't decreasing fertility rates you are going to just dramatically outcompete cultural groups that have been able to keep their fertility rates high.Malcolm: By disengaging from the internet, disengaging from AI, disengaging from cell phones, disengaging from genetic research.Simone: Okay, but Malcolm, I still think you're totally missing the beat here.Would you like to know more?Simone: Hello, Malcolm. I am keen to talk with you today about , maybe one of the stupidest [00:02:00] projects we've ever taken on in our lives, because we are trying to do something that it doesn't seem anyone has really successfully doneMalcolm: ever yet. Well, one of my pushbacks is going to be, I think you're wrong there. Okay.Malcolm: But whatSimone: we're gonna talk aboutMalcolm: is Yes, and we're gonna talk about to save society, one of our thesis is you need to create an intergenerationally durable culture. That is resistant to the current technological environment that we live in, you know, whether it's online dating or modernity or the medic viruses that exist online and the initial pushback.Malcolm: We often get from conservative groups is why don't you just adapt one of the existing conservative traditions that has been able to do this historically? And our answer is twofold. The first is that I don't think I've seen any other than maybe Judaism that seems durably resistant [00:03:00] to the current social and technological environment that doesn't have quickly falling fertility rates.Malcolm: But even they, the, parts of Judaism that have the highest fertility rate still are often the most technophobic forms of it. So they are the least engaged with industry and technology. Which is not something I want for my family or their descendants. I mean, many people would say, you can't have these two things together, right?Malcolm: No, I just think no one has intentionally created a culture that can work alongside this. But then the question becomes, historically... Well, why haven't intentionally created, and when we call a culture secular, what I mean is it has broadly concurrent views with the scientific community about how sort of metaphysics in the world exists.Malcolm: It believes in evolution and particle physics and the Big Bang and all of that, and it updates those beliefs as new discoveries happen. So first this idea that no one has done this before, I think, is wrong. [00:04:00] I think, in many ways, you could think of the Catholic Church as one. The Catholic Church had a system for recognizing scientific discoveries, even when they were initially declared to go against biblical doctrine, you know, whether it's the earth isn't the center of the universe anymore.Malcolm: It took them. A really long time to recognize them longer than it probably should have and it slowed down the advancement of these types of scientific inquiries through generally offering no reward mechanism for, , updating these heuristics, but he did have the abilityMalcolm: to eventually incorporate these scientific discoveries, I mean, you could, you could evenSimone: argue actually that the slowness of adoption was a feature, not a bug, because if you are having a culture adapt with the times or adapt with science, it's important that you not. Jump on every latest potential discovery or trend, right?Simone: I mean, that could be really damaging.Malcolm: I'm sure. Yeah [00:05:00] But to be a culture that has any level of adaption to this If you are a traditional religious group, you typically have to be a centralized and hierarchical religious group So, for example, both Catholics and Mormons would be able to incorporate new discoveries into their religion pretty easily if they wanted to.Malcolm: And in many ways, you know, they benefit from being conservative in how they do this, but they could. Whereas most Protestant traditions, because they're decentralized, Most Islamic traditions, because they're decentralized, and most Jewish traditions, because they're decentralized. If they are of the, stricter iterations of those, they're not going to be able to, because they are basing their tradition on older texts.Malcolm: Or they're, they're not always going to be able to. Now, there are some cultural groups that are more accelerationist within these decentralized cultural groups. Okay? Classically Calvinist, or what? I mean, if you read Puritan Spotting, which Scott Alexander wrote, , which is about Calvinist stereotypes and this is the older form of [00:06:00] Calvinist, not this newer cosplay, I'm theologically Calvinist, but not cultural Calvinist, you know, he'll say things like, oh, yeah, plus one point if they're an atheist, deist, or freethinker, you know.Malcolm: Plus three points if they wrote a book about their heterodox religious views. Plus three points if they invented a new religion. Plus three points if they invented a new Christian heresy. Plus three points if they're obsessed with religious tolerance. Plus three points if they wrote a list of virtues.Malcolm: Plus three points if they had plans to anesthetize the eschaton. That's trying to create a utopian Okay, okay, okay, okay, we get it. Okay, no, but the point I'm being is this is a cultural group that you and I are part of, and a lot of what we do can look really weird to outsiders when it really is just We're basically cultural stereotypes of our group.Malcolm: Um, But the point being is these cultural groups have historically failed. They disappeared. You know, Calvinists went from being around 50% of the American, at least the American white population at the time of the founding of the country to now being like [00:07:00] 0. 5% to 0. 2% of the American population. And yourSimone: argument broadly is that Calvinists were really, really big about each person has to find truth on their own and they have to.Simone: Really ardently search for it too. So as soon as people did search for truth that came into conflict with say the Bible, like they're out, right?Malcolm: Well, yes, and that's the problem with this, right, is if you force this sort of independent truth thinking and engagement with science, but then you also have this background doctrine, which, to some extent, this is in disagreement with.Malcolm: You're going to get conflict. This is why, you know, if you look at like the Calvinist founders of America, many of them would do things like try to update their Bible or edit it to be more in line with the science. And that works for a generation, but then people stop obeying the stricter rules, which are really important in terms of intergenerational cultural transfer.Malcolm: And keep in mind, science is 2 things, right? 1 science [00:08:00] is this broad institution, which is controlled by the progressive urban monoculture and will blatantly lie about things, just falsify data just do whatever it needs to to enforce its cultural hegemony on other groups.Malcolm: And the other science is the scientific method, like the ability of having a hypothesis, going out and testing that hypothesis in the world something you can do yourself. And these are two different things. And what we're talking about is just this broad idea that you have predictive knowledge, right?Malcolm: You can predict, oh, there's planets out in space, and I can go visit them, and those might not be in text, but I can, you know, that's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about updating my science. So, historically, I think one of the reasons why one of these groups never really survived is because As science moved, our metaphysical understanding of major parts of what it means to be human and reality more broadly was shifting to an extent that any religion or culture that was [00:09:00] created to align with a current scientific understanding was going to be crushed by time.Malcolm: Hmm. So here you could think of , Belief about the humors in regards to what was the doctor who did that? Oh,Simone: Hippocrates?Malcolm: Yeah.Malcolm: Oh yeah, it was Hippocrates.Simone: Oh my god, I'm not crazy!Malcolm: You got it right. Yeah, so it was Hippocrates who, who, you know, developed this humors system. Which was essentially building into theology and metaphysical understanding of the world, current science, which then led that science to advance incredibly slowly.Malcolm: Because it became a metaphysical truth instead of a scientific truth. So it was negative there. And then as soon as people... Accepted that humors don't exist in the way that they said they existed. Basically, you had to throw out that entire system and it was now useless and a lot of the surrounding culture that had evolved alongside it ended up getting thrown out.Malcolm: And so a lot of times when people will look at a group you know, you've mentioned this in a few [00:10:00] times in the past Judaism, and you've described this system within the Haredi groups of debate to determine one's status within the hierarchy and debate that requires intense knowledge of the text is an IQ shredder because itSimone: is, it is, it is debate of an unchanging text.Simone: And I think that that's, that's really big. And I think people have argued to us that if you don't have that. Unchanging base and you're working on a moving foundation. You are going to have a culture that crumbles. What's your refutation of that? No, it'sMalcolm: not. That's the point I was making. I was making that exact point, which is historically when you abandoned these, these systems that evolved for a reason, you know, like the reform Jewish movement.Malcolm: You just get completely taken over by this progressive urban monoculture very easily. You lose a lot of your resistances to that. But even groups that historically did what was best given scientific information at the time. So I think a great example of this is Christian scientists. So [00:11:00] today when people look at Christian scientists, they see them as oh, they're the people who like don't touch modern medicine and don't engage with like blood transfusions and stuff like that. Exactly. Like, They're a very backwards group, is the way that people think of them. But, what most people don't know, is when the movement was founded they had higher survival rates than people who were going to doctors at the time.Malcolm: Right,Simone: because doctors would do things like, you know, covering you with leeches and... Oh, well, worse than that they were running postmortems on. dead patients with diseases and then without washing their hands, delivering babies and then killing mothers and babies doing so. I mean, it made sense how at the time not going to a hospital left you better off, right?Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah. So, that's an example of building modern like currently existing scientific knowledge into a movement and then having that movement fall apart. And this has happened throughout histories where people essentially deify the secular understanding of the world at the time. [00:12:00] And then, , our understanding of the world moves forwards, it begins to look ridiculous, and it gets thrown out.Malcolm: This is why only the most conservative in terms of sticking was the original way of viewing the text, or the original way of practicing a religion. Typically those are the iterations that survive, rather than the ones that try to adapt. But, then there's the other problem, which was the other thing that some groups did, is they say, Well, we will just outsource our metaphysical understanding of the universe.Malcolm: To the scientists, the scientific institutions. And I think that worked for a while. And, and this is where I'll get to an instance where people did this before and it was successful, which I think was the American experiment. But after the scientific institutions became infected with this, a progressive memetic virus it began to care less and less about truth.Malcolm: And we, we will do another video on how academia basically broke and fell apart as a, as a mechanism for determining what's true. But it [00:13:00] basically became a tool for just infecting and injecting other cultures with this progressive memetic virus. So. And anyone who's looking at science today I think broadly can see, you know, we had Spencer Greenberg on the podcast when you're dealing with a 50% replicability crisis within studies, they are not really investigating truth anymore.Malcolm: They're just enforcing ideological conformity. And there was a great study that was done that showed that the replication crisis was actually specifically tied to only studies that pushed either progressive agenda Or a neutral agenda, but when a study was released that supported a conservative position , the replicability crisis was actually really low.Malcolm: And so basically what it is, is it's just the way that this mimetic virus is able to insert ideological conformity into what it's trying to broadcast with the academic system. So let's get back to where I think this has been done successfully before. Yeah. That's the American experiment. [00:14:00] America was.Malcolm: Created by Christians, mostly Calvinists, well over 50% Calvinists. There were other people involved. And this is by the Heritage Foundation. So a conservative foundation that is not a Calvinist foundation says, yes, America with 50% Calvinists, if you're talking about the population of America when it was founded.Malcolm: So it was created as this sort of cultural experiment, and it worked really well for a while, but it had some major flaws, and it was secular. It was a genuinely secular, super government Governing institution that allowed for pluralistic groups. If you look at the colonies, when they came together, yes, they may have been dominated by the Calvinist cultural group, but there were, you know, the Quakers and the Catholics and the many other cultural groups at the time, the Cavaliers, the, the backwoods people.Simone: And when you say work really well, what do youMalcolm: mean? Well, so it stitched multiple cultural groups together in a way that instead of leading to conflict [00:15:00] between those groups, made all of the groups stronger. Hmm. And I think it showed that that was possible.Simone: It showed that a pluralistic, largely secular, or not necessarily secular society.Malcolm: Well, so it did it in a very interesting way. It said, we're going to have this secular super governing institution, the federal government, most of the states were not secular, but it said is you Catholic state, Maryland you can create. A, you know, you can build Catholic rules into the way you're doing things.Malcolm: You Calvinist state, you can build Calvinist rules into the way you're doing things. You Cavalier state, you know, Pennsylvania, you Quaker state, you, you do things in, in, in your way. Right. It actually, that's a misunderstanding. Quakers were always the majority. Pennsylvania should be thought of as more of an Anabaptist state than a Quaker state, but the Anabaptists never really strove for political power.Malcolm: So they didn't hold the actual offices. So we misunderstand many of the political movements in Pennsylvania as being Quaker driven instead of Anabaptist driven when they're actually more Anabaptist [00:16:00] driven. That's a whole different conversation. The point being is for a system like this to work, I think what you need is sub governing institutions, which are culturally dominated.Malcolm: Basically, you need , a cultural representatives and historically in America, many of these people were geographically locked. Most of the people who thought this way moved to this city. Most of the people who thought this way moved to this city. And then they would elect a representative. And I think that that was a fairly good system that showed 1 way you can have a multicultural system work.Malcolm: But it broke down over time. And this is where I want to get to something else, which is to say, you know, Simone, you and I see ourselves very much as contiguous with our ancestors and contiguous with our descendants, you know, getting to try things again. And so when people look at us, they're like, you guys are insane for trying to start a country, yet we have had many ancestors, , who have tried to do this in the past.[00:17:00]Malcolm: If I go way back I don't really consider myself that contiguous with, you know, I could get someone like Robert the Bruce or Charlemagne, who I'm a direct descendant of both of those, but pretty much every Scottish person of descent I know from the southern United States is a descendant of Robert the Bruce.Malcolm: Seriously. But if you look more recently, I mean, Simone, through two different pathways, you are a descendant of George Washington. And not George Washington himself, but his siblings because he didn't have any kids himself, but as close as a living descendant of your generation can be to him so you are a descendant of two of his siblings.Malcolm: And he was one of the people who tried to start a new country, and I think it was a fairly successful experiment. You look at, at, at my groups, the, the two more recent ancestors would be Oliver Cromwell who I learned from. He tried to create a... Calvinist many people would see as dictatorial state.Malcolm: But it wasn't exactly a dictatorial state. He really wanted to leave monarchy and create a democracy. But every time he would the people he would put [00:18:00] in power would start bickering with each other. And he lacked the moral constitution to allow that to happen, and so then he'd come back in and take over as like a fascist dictator for a while, and then he'd try to set up an elected government system, and they'd start fighting with each other, whereas someone like George Washington, your ancestor, had much more patience with people.Malcolm: And he saw the two factions that succeeded him fighting bitterly and they, various people asked him, come back into power, come back into power. And he didn't. And I think what we see in the difference between these two characters is you, you've got to expect any system you create to be dominated by infighting in the early days.Malcolm: And, and, and have the decency to step back. I think the other thing I learned from Oliver Cromwell is, yes, I think the, the sort of Calvinist tradition and the secular Calvinist tradition that we're a part of is the correct way to structure your life. But I cannot force that on other people, and if I do, that will lead [00:19:00] to atrocities.Malcolm: You know, he's particularly known for his atrocities against Catholic groups in Ireland, who he didn't understand why they didn't just agree with him. His way of living life was better than their way of living life. And I think that part of that knowledge might be why I am so pro pluralism in a way that other people aren't.Malcolm: , a different iteration of me from the past had a chance to try to enforce my cultural views on everyone else. And it failed. It was bad, and it led to atrocities. Now I look at a more recent iteration of my family that tried to start a new country the Free State of Jones. 15 of the 50 founding members of the Free State of Jones, there's a movie about it if you want to see it, I guess you could just watch the trailer were...Malcolm: Either siblings of my ancestors, or kids of siblings of my ancestors. So that's a lot. That's just basically my cultural, very recent cultural experience. Okay,Simone: but none of them have created anything that lasted. And I think, I have, I've, I have a feeling that something that's missing from all of these failed experiments, quite frankly.Simone: I [00:20:00] mean, I know you, you know, America worked for a while, but... You know, I wouldn't say that there's any cohesive culture that has, has survived, you know, I mean, there's, there's like general trends and stuff.Malcolm: Americana, what are you talking about? The American cultural export is now the world's dominant culture.Malcolm: In fact, the superSimone: virus evolved in America. Various American subcultures have inspired other, other cultural... Movements, but I wouldn't say that there's any sort of cohesive worldview or mindset. And I think this is one reason why we're seeing aMalcolm: super virus is an American. We may hate it because it's selfSimone: extinguishing.Simone: It's not, it's not going to be intergenerationally durable. I think my intuition is that if you have a secular culture or religion, you need to have something. That is unchanging or a set of values that is cohesive, a set of traditions that is cohesive because there does need to be something consistent for a group to cling to or hope to or say, this is what makes us different because if you don't have something that says this is what makes us who we are, it's going to fall apart.[00:21:00]Simone: And I think that even happened with the colonies and with the early Americas is, well, a lot of people I think would like to argue Oh, this is America. There's a lot of disagreement over what that is. And there are plenty of arguments about Oh, America is this and America is that. But there is, there is no sort of standard agreement and there is no.Simone: Cohesive sense of community. Like it's very different if you go to a nation like Japan and people will actually say things like, Oh, well, we Japanese do this. We Japanese do that. And so people might be like, well, this is America and we do things this way. And they might all like consistently talk really loudly.Simone: And wear shorts and stuff. And, and I don't know,Malcolm: you set up the problem. You set up the problem, which is to say. No one has durably accomplished this before, but I think America as a cultural institution came the closest to doing this. Now the question is, how do you, we set up the way that various groups fail by saying, oh, just trust science or whatever.Malcolm: What you need to do. Is you need a mechanism for [00:22:00] determining what's true that is strongly culturally adhere to, but that is not based on a static text, basically, so the criteria for authenticity we lay out in the pragmatist guide to crafting religion could be an example of one of these, where it is, a a Clearly differentiated from what is quote unquote science today.Malcolm: We believe a lot of things that the scientific community doesn't believe. Right? We doubt a lot of what the scientific community says, but it is a different cultural institution for accessing truth. But a cultural institution that doesn't say truth is X. It says this is howSimone: you determine truth. I'm, I'm cool with that.Simone: And I like that, but I think you're totally missing the beat here, which is that the standards of truth are not what make a culture special. What makes a culture special is a sense of belonging, a sense of Pride, a sense of identity. I mean, that's what makes [00:23:00] kids want to raise their children in that culture.Simone: You honestly think that people of a certain culture are going to raise their kids with a certain standard of truth. And those kids are going to be like, Oh yeah, it's that standard of truth. That really makesMalcolm: me want to have kids. You have to create cultural pride and cultural identity, which are two things that we work reallySimone: hard to do with our kids.Simone: You need a lifestyle, you need a psychology, you need. Tradition and you need a sense of belonging and pride, right?Malcolm: But the point being, okay, is historically, right? There are cultures that have came very close to being true. I would say secular religions. I'd actually argue that early Judaism very much was a secular religion.Malcolm: It was a cultural system, a system of laws. For how humans interact with each other and how humans interact with their government and this I'm talking about pre Second Temple Judaism, you know, when the temple and the state and the, it was all one thing. It was a religion and a state and a, a, and it adapted to current at the [00:24:00] time.Malcolm: Understandings of reality. The problem is, is it encoded some of those and said, this is what you must believe in the future. As if somebody was creating a religion today. And I told my kids axiomatically evolution is something we believe in. The big bang is something we believe in. Our current understanding of physics is something we believe in.Malcolm: Instead of saying no, here is a system for how you should investigate reality. And this is what's true. And this is how, and I think another thing that you mentioned here. Culturally and psychologically, we are very different from the mainstream population, and we engage disproportionately with people of our cultural and psychological systems.Malcolm: Now, fortunately, I think our psychological systems are fairly intuitive to people of a specific sociological, disposition, and we've been able to build up a network of families with that sociological disposition to the extent that I am very confident that our kids will be able to find wives within that community and husbands within that community and that they will be able to feel this is who I [00:25:00] am.Malcolm: And this is how I'm different than the world at large. But that does require intentionally othering them to an extent through the , ways that they're named through the ways that we, we raise them through the holidays. We raise them with through the ways we tell them to engage with concepts like, you know, trauma, sadness, et cetera.Malcolm: These are sinful from our cultural perspective, which is considered pretty weird and distasteful by society's value system. So through creating these strong differentiators, but very carefully, not encoding science accidentally, like modern understandings of the world into the core belief system, we can create something that other existing. religious cultural traditions can't do. So yes, historically, always going back to the old texts allowed for more intergenerational fidelity of information transfer, cultural transfer, and allowed these cultures to outcompete other cultures that were more open to [00:26:00] adapting.Malcolm: The problem is, is the internet exists now. And the problem is, is that certain scientific facts are really, really hard to ignore, whether it's, you know, the earth revolves around the sun and there's planets and there's not like a dome over us with holes poked in it or evolution or dinosaurs or, you know, stuff like that.Malcolm: These are becoming increasingly hard to. Teach your kids these things aren't true and still have those kids stay with your tradition. They are basically big holes that allow any sort of engagement with the outside world or the internet to begin to stab your tradition.Simone: Okay, but Malcolm, I still think you're totally missing the beat here.Simone: You've spent the vast majority of this entire conversation obsessing over standards of truth, and I get that this is, we're talking about secular religions, but what you're totally missing here is, I think, even in super faith heavy religions, What they [00:27:00] actually believe about that faith is kind of like on the side.Simone: Look at the LDS church. I mean, I'm sure that there are some people who are deep in the doctrine, but really this is a lifestyle religion and people are in it. They stay in it. They raise their families in it and they have their own kids and raise them in it. Because the lifestyle is great. They feel really good.Simone: They've good mental health. They're thriving professionally. And I think that what you're missing here is what the, the, the true key. And like, you're missing isMalcolm: the levels of deconversion within theSimone: LDS church. But then that's the problem, right? Because we're talking about a. Secular religion. So I think the point is have strong criterias for truth.Simone: Don't be married to any particular scientific doctrine. That's a simple fix. And the rest of it is, and the reason why no other secular experiment has really succeeded is that they all had standards of truth. They all had broad concepts, but they didn't have Othering, like you were pointing out, they didn't have cultural traditions.Simone: They didn't have a sense of pride and cohesion. They didn't have a cohesive community. And so they, there was no culture. It wasn't a culture. It was a [00:28:00] series of scientific philosophies. You areMalcolm: absolutely right. And that is how we will outcompete previous secular experiments. Yeah. I guess the difference between our conversation here is, is you wanted to highlight, and I think you highlighted it very eloquently.Malcolm: Why we will out compete previous secular traditions. And I was trying to highlight the advantage that we have over current religious traditions. Religious,Simone: yeah, yeah.Malcolm: Which is to say that if you leave these vulnerabilities in your system to you they might be trivial. You might be like, oh, secular things don't have these vulnerabilities.Malcolm: But most of the future like most secular traditions are going to die out in the near future. Because they're not able to motivate reproductive capacity. So I personally, like when I'm looking at the future, I'm not asking, how are we going to compete with or outcompete secular society? Cause most of secular society is going to die.Malcolm: I'm asking, how do we compete? The religious frameworks. How do we outcompete the religious frameworks? [00:29:00] And if we are able to do that, if we are able to have rapid technological advancement, right, and technological engagement from our descendants, if, as many people say, engaging with technology and intrinsically causes birth, rates to crash.Malcolm: That's what they tell us, right? I don't think that's true. Engaging with technology is intrinsically caustic to systems that try to tell people about a metaphysical framework for reality that'sSimone: wrong. Well, I think the problem that we're seeing too is, is engaging with technology is highly correlated.Simone: With the lifestyle of someone who doesn't have a religious tradition. And so people just assume, oh well, it is therefore causational. That engaging with technology causes you to lose your faith. Whereas really, we just, this is actually on easy mode. No one has tried. to combine secularism with a strong cohesive culture before.Simone: It just hasn't happened yet. Which actually makes things really exciting because basically, if you want to create a new secular dynasty, you know, [00:30:00]Malcolm: was a very specific caveat, which I've mentioned. And I don't think that you realize how important this caveat is. All right. Play it up again. Use different words.Malcolm: Current scientific dogma into their beliefs about the metaphysical nature of reality. And they do not outsource how they search for truth to the quote unquote experts or scientific community. So, because there have been previous attempts that have done that. You, I think that you might not have read it.Malcolm: Many Victorian like weird family experiments as I have, but there have been a few attempts to do that. And they've fallen apart. But they haven't done all of these things together, which I think is where the power of this comes from. When people have done these sort of secular experiments before, they focus on one concept like evolution.Malcolm: And they've tried to build the entire religious system around the concept of evolution, and that just leads to everything falling apart. What you need is a system to be based around [00:31:00] a differential from mainstream scientific consensus, system for determining what is true, but that is able to quickly adapt and do so in a Non hierarchical fashion because again like to some extent Catholics and Mormons have figured this out But they're just very slow to adapt because of the hierarchical organization and they slow down technological progress within these institutions and they're hurt through technological engagement, you know a catholic who uses cell phones Is going to have way less kids than a Catholic who doesn't.Malcolm: I mean, you could just look, even if they're conservative, I'm sure you can just look at the data on this and you'll see this. Whereas if you create a cultural institution that tells people what they're meant to optimize for, and adapt using current information on the world, you might be able to have , a cultural group that does not like cell phone use.Malcolm: AI use is not going to decrease the number of offspring people have, and this is [00:32:00] really important when you consider that the difficulty level that our kids are going to experience in terms of cultural temptations is going to be higher than our generation's difficulty level. They are going to have to be able to engage with AIs that can be the perfect girlfriend or husband, right?Malcolm: In a world where it is likely even harder to build sustainable relationships. So what motivates them to do that? What motivates them to breed in that environment? I think that many of these older systems that can only compete by telling people not to engage with technology, which I think is going to be an increasingly successful strategy.Malcolm: Yeah, they'll continue existing in the future, but they won't have economic power. Because I think technology is critical to massive economic power and military power to an extent. So engaging with these systems, even if you're a smaller cultural group, if you're the cultural group that is engaging readily with AI in a way that isn't decreasing fertility rates you are going to [00:33:00] just dramatically outcompete cultural groups that have been able to keep their fertility rates high.Malcolm: By disengaging from the internet, disengaging from AI, disengaging from cell phones, disengaging from genetic research.Simone: So obligatory shout out. We're creating essentially a show us yours and we'll show you ours. Index of different cultural experiments in which various families of cultural entrepreneurs basically share.Simone: their metrics, You know, like how many members do you have what's your birth rate what, you know, is your income rate, you know, like what level of security do you have, etc. Educational outcome. Like a lot of different measures mental health, etc. Because over generations, we want a lot of these independent cultures, religious and secular.Simone: That are trying to endure into the future to be able to compare notes and cultural technologies, meaning that if one culture notices like, Oh, this culture over here, like really great birth rates, amazing mental health, a lot of security and stability. Like they seem to be killing it. Hey, what are some [00:34:00] traditions we can learn from here?Simone: You know, that we might adopt like for, for our own people.Malcolm: It allows a mimetic lateral gene transfer or mimetic horizontal gene transfer, whichever example you wantSimone: to use. Yeah, so I mean, we don't think that we necessarily have the answers, but we also think that this experiment is something that should be the run.Simone: Obviously, we will not know what cultural technologies will end up working in the long run. Only our descendants will know. But if you're interested in joining us in this experiment, please email us through our foundation. We will add you. To our growing essentially list of people who are entering this.Simone: And then as it grows, and as we get off the ground and get started, we'll start sending out these initial reports and surveys. So everyone can report on where they are and what they're doing.Malcolm: Well, I mean, so the index, the point of it, that's what this institution is called. It really only has two rules for people who join or cultural groups that join, which is you, you get your kids.Malcolm: Until they decide to get married. And, and [00:35:00] when they're married, they get to choose what culture they create for their family and for their kids. Basically that means up to 18 years of age, right? So the first 18 years of a person's life are your chance to culturally pitch them, but you cannot mandate that they stay in your culture.Malcolm: If they don't agree that the culture they were raised in was a good culture, they get to choose to leave. And this is... You know, a lot of people, sometimes they'll ask us questions when we have this sort of radical you own your kids to an extent as a culture. They're like, yeah, but what if a culture abuses their kids?Malcolm: Or what if a culture disfigures their kids or something? It's yeah, well then their kids will leave that culture at disproportionate rates. You know, historically, kids weren't able to do that. But today, yeah, especially within an institution like the index. And the other thing is that you record this information and you allow your kids to record, you know, how they did as an adult.Malcolm: And you can have all your kids say, Oh yeah, that thing my family did really messed me up. We're not going to do that with our kids. Let's look for different cultural practices within the index system that we can adapt. And when I'm talking about lateral or horizontal gene transfer, so people know what that is, that's like in A bacteria where a [00:36:00] bacteria might exchange genes with another bacteria that end up being useful to both bacteria without needing to actually breed with them.Malcolm: , a lot of people can be like, this is a weird system to build is we allow for some intercultural practices that require.Malcolm: Economies of scale. So examples of this would be things like marriage markets which require economies of scale to work. Or, you know, dating markets, stuff like that, right? Or educational systems. You know, we're developing our educational system, but in a way that won't ideologically indoctrinate kids.Malcolm: Everyone who's part of the index would gain value from a system like that. So there is. Value in everyone who's part of the index, whatever we're culturally they're experimenting with to engage with us. And it raises our kids within this mindset and this knowledge that, you know, when they have kids, when they start a family, they get to choose to massively adapt whatever systems we raise them with.Malcolm: Which leads their culture to be very accelerationist, but [00:37:00] again, you know, if you, if you look at Puritan spotting, traditionally Calvinist cultures have done that. So it's, it's, it's again, it's weird. It may sound weird to people, but it's not that weird from the perspective of our cultural tradition.Malcolm: We're just adding a few additional rules to see if we can stop this death spiral our culture has been in basically ever since America was founded.Simone: Yep. Well, I hope that our culture does well. I think it's pretty fun. For a culture that doesn't believe in happiness or fun. Not that it's a selling point, but yeah, we have a lot of fun and I love you so much, Malcolm.Simone: I love you too,Malcolm: Simone. Have a spectacular day. I am so excited to have dinner with you. I'm so excited. You're going to make burgers for the family and they're going to be delicious and the kids are going to enjoy them. And then we're going to go play with their chicks in the bar. And we are. So excited that we get to cosplay a, a trad lifestyle.Simone: Cosplay it. Yeah.Malcolm: You cosplay. Well, that's the thing. You cos, what's the difference [00:38:00] between living something and cosplaying it? Yeah. We're just, it's like this weird kink where we're like 24, seven trad cosplayers. We're, we're, we're, we'reSimone: cosplaying this. I really, yeah. What is the difference between cosplaying and reality?Malcolm: It's just, we're pretending we're doing it. Ironically. Yeah.Simone: That's a thing people do a lot these days. All right. Well, let's getMalcolm: to it. Judge me for not doing it perfectly, but yeah, I mean, we live in a farm, we have chickens and lots of kids and a weird religion and it's, yeah. Actually not far from where your, your ancestor, George Washington, fought the battle right next to the He didn'tSimone: fight a battle.Simone: He just spent a really shitty winter there. Oh, really shitty. Let's be honestMalcolm: here. Yeah, bad, bad history there. You're right.Simone: I love you, Malcolm. See youMalcolm: downstairs. You too. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe