Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

In this thoughtful discussion, Malcolm and Simone delve into the complex issue of cultural survival, immigration policy, and societal integration. They argue that a culture's ability to resist, convert, and compete is what determines its survival, rather than its isolation. In this context, they question the notion of protecting "weak" cultures that fail to reproduce or withstand competition. They extend the conversation to discuss the nature of immigration in the US, suggesting a skills-based approach for immigrant integration. The discussion further unfolds as they entertain the idea of a global "brain drain" initiative as a strategic offensive maneuver, and conclude by challenging preconceived notions of "Western white culture." Join Malcolm and Simone in this thought-provoking conversation that explores the dynamic intersection of culture, nationalism, and immigration.Based Camp: The Inhernt Weakness of White Nationalism. Cultures that can't compete in a multi-cultural ecosystem have earned their fate.Malcolm: [00:00:00] There is no point in protecting very weak cultures.Malcolm: , cause I do actually some white nationalists listen to our channel, like this is why we care so little about white nationalism,Malcolm: Even if you do seal yourself off, you'll just die alone. Like Korea In fact, I can't think of any wealthy monocultures or wealthy ethnic states that have high fertility rates, not, not a single one in the world. You look at the countries that are wealthy with the highest fertility rates and they've shown the most resistant to fertility collapse. You're looking at countries like Israel and the United States, which are two of the most diverse wealthy countries.Malcolm: The rules of the game have completely changed. And when you play by the old system, You lose. Now, where this is relevant to immigration policy in the USSimone: But what I've also found really interesting is your, essentially your offensive stance on immigration.Simone: Hello, Malcolm.Malcolm: Hello, Simone. How's it going?Simone: I'm enjoying a beautiful overcast day. [00:01:00] It's gorgeous.Malcolm: I'm enjoying it too. What are we talking about today?Simone: Immigration, my friend. Immigration.Malcolm: Yeah. I think that this is a fun one for us to dig into because it's a topic where both of the political party's perspective on this has been shifting a lot recently.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. And we have a perspective on what should be the conservative position going forward and what made sense as a conservative position historically. Mm-hmm. So historically the conservative position on immigration is, let's.Malcolm: Prevent immigration, right? Maintain cultural homogeny of a region to prevent any culture within that region from eroding. Mm-hmm. Uh, So that culture can be transmitted well from one generation to future generations. And then if you were going to spread your culture or your ideology, you do it through conquest or through market forces um, or through Manifest destiny.Malcolm: Well, yeah. I mean obviously there's the manifest destiny way of doing it or, or countries.[00:02:00] Trying to take over their neighbors, but you can also export it through market-based forces. So if you bring another country to a market-based system and you are exporting your culture in a free market of ideas, but you are the dominant cultural force in the world or the wealthiest cultural force, it's very easy to begin to stomp out other cultures with your cultural exports.Malcolm: But the game has entirely changed now, and that system doesn't make sense anymore, and it doesn't achieve what it used to achieve. So the reason why you would do that historically was so that other groups did not erode your culture. However, there are two big hiccups to that these days. The first being that no matter where you are in the world, Your kids and your community is going to have access to the entire world of cultures online.Malcolm: Yeah. If they're engaged in any sort of technophilic lifestyle, which means [00:03:00] most lifestyles that allow for high economic output. Mm-hmm. So economically productive individuals are going to be able to see pretty much all of the world's culture and the internet culture is going to be part of their life, wherever they are.Malcolm: And so the market forces don't matter as much when you're dealing. They do to an extent, but a lot less than they did historically. And maintaining control of your borders matters a lot less when you're talking about cultural erosion. Mm-hmm. The other is that fertility rates are falling all over the world, even within conservative cultures that historically would've just naturally grown had they been left alone.Malcolm: So if you look at the wealthy countries in the world with the lowest fertility rates, with a few exceptions like Singapore, almost all of them are very culturally homogenous. Obviously. Great example here is South Korea was, was one of the lowest fertility rates of the world, which is basically a monoculture and a mono ethnic state.Malcolm: In fact, I can't think of any wealthy monocultures or [00:04:00] wealthy ethnic states that have high fertility rates, not, not a single one in the world. You look at the countries that are wealthy with the highest fertility rates and they've shown the most resistant to pro to fertility collapse. You're looking at countries like Israel and the United States, which are two of the most diverse wealthy countries.Malcolm: So sealing yourself off from the rest of the world because other countries are eroding. Yours doesn't really protect you anymore. And here's where I'm gonna say something that's very offensive. There is no point really in protecting very weak cultures. If a culture today cannot survive in the face of other cultural forces, there is no reason to protect it.Malcolm: What we can do is look for. Mutations of that culture that do show resistance. If we were looking at a population like at an in ecology and there was like a new pollution in the landscape and it was. Killing almost all of this one species of bunnies. There's no point in saving the [00:05:00] bunnies that are most dying due to this pollution.Malcolm: You want to look for the iterations of that bunny that are most resistant to the pollution. And at the end of the day, cause I do actually some white nationalists listen to our channel, like this is why we care so little about white nationalism, especially any form of, of I, I could even understand like ethnic groups, like caring about their own kind.Malcolm: Right. What I can't understand is why I would at all care about a form of nationalism that goes extinct as soon as there's immigrant populations around them. Like that. That's the world of the future, right? Even if you do seal yourself off, you'll just die alone. Like Korea, remind me of Mr.Malcolm: House from fallout three like talking about how superior he is, and then the moment you go to unseal him from his hermetic pod, he starts like gasping and it's oh no, a single germ will kill me. It's okay, well, like clearly you're not that great a culture. And, and, and this is what really matters is, is that historically if you look at [00:06:00] people with this old cultural mindset, so you look at this in Russia right now, right?Malcolm: They're like, okay, well we. We need to consolidate people of our cultural groups. We need to spread our cultural ideals, which you saw them doing in Ukraine, forced Russian language and stuff like that when they controlled Ukraine. And it looks like they were gonna do that again if they went over and took over Ukraine again, right?Malcolm: That's how they're gonna spread their culture. But why, like their, their own fertility rate is almost nothing. The Ukrainian fertility rate is almost nothing. They are achieving. Nothing. It, it is completely pointless. And yet you look at cultural groups that have no aspiration of taking over the state, like the Amish, which are exploding.Malcolm: You look at the Hutterites, which is a branch of anabatists and they've gone in just the past 140 years. From 400 people in, in one community to over 50,000. And that's with no immigration, no conversion just the high birth rate can win. And the Amish, they aren't going out converting other [00:07:00] people.Malcolm: They aren't going out conquering other people. And yet they are cleaning up now because the rules of the game have completely changed. And when you play by the old system, You lose. Now, where this is relevant to immigration policy in the US is every cultural group living within the US or in any country that can resist outside cultures and better they can convert outside cultures. are the cultural groups that will win in the futureMalcolm: So you look, this is another interesting thing. So you see people like he's, he's talked about us before, Nick Fuentes, right? He goes on about, oh you guys are so terrible. So he's a Catholic integralist, right? He believes that eventually you should have a Catholic monarchy that like rules over the entire world and he's against Immigr immigration.Malcolm: And I'm often like, why would a Catholic immigrant integralist be against immigration if like most of the immigrant populations are Catholic? And the answer is, if you look at the rates is because a lot of the Hispanic immigrants are converting to Protestant cultural traditions away from Catholic cultural traditions.Malcolm: [00:08:00] So of course he'd be scared about that, right? But what that means is actually, if your culture is a really strong culture, any immigrant community that comes to your country will convert into that culture. You benefit from immigration uh, in a big way, but, okay, so anyway, the future is you have to be able to survive in the face of other cultural groups and alongside and copacetic with other cultural groups.Malcolm: So then what type of immigrants do you want? What you want are immigrants that help the economy of your country, and that's not true of all immigrant groups today. Right. And this is something that Trump actually worked for, was skill-based immigration policy. Mm-hmm. Um, And it was shut down because he couldn't get enough Republican support for it or really galvanize the troops.Malcolm: But if he had that would've been a really powerful immigration policy I really would've supported. To the extent where, I just think it's crazy that we have people come to our country, we give them PhDs from like Harvard and Stanford, and then what? We kick them out. What are we doing? Yeah,Simone: that's wild.Simone: That'sMalcolm: wild. [00:09:00] But I wanna hear your thoughts on this, Simone. I've just ranted for a long time without giving you a chance to speak.Simone: You've talked about the defensive perspective on immigration, which I think is important and I, I, I think it's interesting. But what I've also found really interesting is your, essentially your offensive stance on immigration.Simone: Sort of the point you make is in the past to. Essentially take over a nation. You had to invade it as a group. And that's, that's what still some nations are apparently trying to do. Whereas in a future in which population. Our fertility rates crash in the face of modernity. Really the way that you can take over a territory, a nation, whatever you want, is by merely creating an intergenerationally durable culture.Simone: So I don't think it's just that, okay, well, if you love your culture, if you care about it you, you shouldn't be afraid of immigration because if you can't compete in the face of it, you. You kind of don't deserve to stick around, but also [00:10:00] this really interesting idea that, okay, if you really, really do love your culture, what you should really be focusing on is making your culture as strong, as competitive, as sustainable, and as high fertility as possible, because.Simone: You can literally inherit the world without war, without violence, without anything. If you manage to do that, if you manage to be one of the best of the best, yeah, both in terms of just being competitive, technologically, economically, whatever, speaking, but also just maintaining population rates and growing in population.Malcolm: Yeah. A single family, having eight kids for 11 generations has more descendants than live on Earth today. And, and to what you're speaking, where this was really clear to me is when I was working in Korea, at the current Korean fertility rate, which is 0.8, that means for every a hundred Koreans, there'll be six point.Malcolm: For great-grandchildren. Right. And this is, if it doesn't keep declining, which everything looks like it will. So they're down to 6% of their current population. In a hundred years, probably less, probably four or 3%.Malcolm: And I was thinking, okay, so then what do they do? Like, where do they get people to fill all this land? I was like, well, they could take people from their neighbors, like China or Japan, but those countries [00:11:00] also have collapsing populations and, and you're looking at these three countries that, historically have been at each other's throats.Malcolm: And, and less than a hundred years ago, one of them, Japan went through, murdered I think millions of people, at least hundreds of thousands of people to, to try to culturally dominate these other two regions. So . They were able to motivate their people to go out and kill people, to spread their culture, but they were, or to dominate other regions, but they aren't able to motivate them to just have kids to do the same thing.Malcolm: And I think that this is the crazy thing, that it is actually harder. In the face of modernity, in the face of the internet, in the face of prosperity to motivate people to have kids than it was historically to motivate people to kill other people. And that's, that's wild. But it is kind of cool when you look at this new cultural game because the people who win are the people who can love better and, and I say not breed better, right?Malcolm: Because you could just have 10 kids. Mm-hmm. But if you don't give those kids a good childhood, [00:12:00] They'll leave your culture we live in this great world today where the first 18 months of a kid's life, right, are a pitch that your cultural group is the cultural group they should stay in and they can leave that cultural group and go to other cultural groups if you don't make the pitch well or if you allow other people to brainwash them when they're too young, which is one of the reasons why you wanna sort of use.Malcolm: Keep your hands on your kids. So I, I understand in some countries, other cultural groups have rigged the game, basically taking people's kids from them. And that's, that's really harsh. But then you have to get out of those countries. Right. If a country's not going to let you in culture, your culture to your kids, you need to get outta those countries.Malcolm: Because I think that's the highest sovereign right of any individual in, in, in any cultural group, especially in a world where the dominant cultural groups, the groups that they're trying to imprint your kids with are just so low fertility. But what's great is in this world where, you get this 18 years to make a kids.Malcolm: A, a pitch join my culture. Many of the old tactics that groups used to use if you don't join my culture, you'll be [00:13:00] shunned. It's well, too bad. Like the internet exists, like I'll find up for in other places. Like a lot of the threats that cultures used to use to keep kids within their groups.Malcolm: Don't work. Really the only pitches that seem to consistently work these days, and I think this is part of the reasons why Jewish fertility rates are so high in the face of prosperity, is stay in our cultural group and you will benefit. Like there are, there are benefits to being a member of our cultural group.Malcolm: It makes your life easier in these ways and that helps your career in these ways. It helps your mental health in these ways. And so I think pitches that lean towards that rather than the threats, which historically used to be a really good cultural strategy are, are the cultural groups that will win in the future.Malcolm: Which is again, why I say you need to learn to love better than other cultural groups to dominate the future. But here is the other thing about aggressive immigration policy that Simon was talking about and using immigration policy offensively, and this is something I'm really sad that America hasn't done.Simone: Offensive immigration policy. I just love the term on its own.Malcolm: Well, it's something like when China started messing with [00:14:00] Hong Kong recently and started making all those changes, America just said, okay, everyone in Hong Kong with over this much money free immigrant passed to the us. And let me tell you what, people from Hong Kong, they're not gonna convert your kids to their culture, okay?Malcolm: Like they are of no threat to you as a cultural group. There are people out there who wanna convert your kids to their culture. But they're not the immigrants. So anyway, they're of no threat to you. Anyone. Even the most like racist American, these people are of no threat to them really. So you, you, you bring in these, these wealthy Hong Kong immigrants.Malcolm: China has now won a completely feckless pros. . We could do the same with Russians when Russia starts this a, a war that we don't like, right? So you say, okay, well every Russian with over X amount of money, you get free pass to the us.Malcolm: You can do this to any country in the world as an offensive push. And you drain their tax base, you drain their industry base and you raise our own. And I know that that many Americans are like, well now there's wealthier people than. [00:15:00] Everybody wants some new wealthy immigrant on their street who's paying for stuff.Malcolm: I mean, unless they're only buying from local immigrant communities, which presumably they wouldn't be. It benefits everyone. It benefits every cultural group.Simone: Well, and honestly, I don't even think it's a bad thing for people in a neighborhood where, An immigrant community is moving in and they're only buying from immigrant stores.Simone: Like we have a large Indian immigrant community near where we live. Yeah. And oh my God, the Indian restaurants, the Indian grocery stores. Like I, I've lived in major cities where I would pay to have those kinds of amenities. So also I think one of the big things that I struggle with, with immigration, with fears around immigration, I mean, I understand people's concerns about jobs and everything.Malcolm: But, but, but that only matters if you're taking low skilled immigrants.Simone: Yeah, yeah, that does. And, and, and, and wealth brings in additional businesses, employment opportunities, amazing things. And then there's also this, I don't know, the, the feeling of interest in, in. Cultural [00:16:00] homogeny. I mean, for example, we, we've recently heard from folks who are like, trying to make it easier for people to date people who are racially similar to them.Simone: Which like, I, I just don't get it because part of me is like, But the whole point is you wanna take whatever you have and make it better. And that's also why we don't get life extension, right? Like why would you make just you go forever when you could combine yourself with someone else you really respect and make a new improved version of you that's reinforced and slightly different.Simone: And I also think it's odd. I mean, I understand. Having cultural pride and wanting to pass that down. But I think a really big part in having cultural pride is having enough respect for your culture and its inherent values and the traditions that you really like to try to make them stronger and to make sure that they will last in the face of whatever new modern pressures you're facing.Simone: So, I mean, part of me is also confused. By concerns about immigration or being wiped out because it's no, no, no. Bring it in. Let's see [00:17:00] additional groups and see how they perform and copy what we like or integrate what we like. Combine forces. And also we're really big supporters of plurality. So rather than just kind of wanting there to be a Noah's arc of cultures, for example, let's keep the Janes, the Emiratis, the South Koreans, the Native Americans we'd rather see a future in, we, we honestly don't care necessarily if.Simone: Any culture that is alive today exists in a hundred years. What we care about is if maybe like a bunch of weird combinations and iterations and forks of them exist. That's a much better world. Yeah. Like a stagnant culture. A stagnant ethnicity is of zero interest to us, however, The presence of a broad variety of cultures, ethnicities, whatever it is that you care about, is of great interest to us.Simone: So immigration also kind of confuses me cause I'm like, oh, this is a chance for us to create a bunch of different forks, a bunch of different combinations, mix and match. Do whatever it is you want, learn from each other, like we're all gonna benefit. What, what am I missing? That like [00:18:00] really rubs people the wrong way.Malcolm: Well, so what they don't like is they think that people come into the country and then they change the. National character of the country after coming in. Okay. And I, and I will be honest, I think as Americans, this is something that we deal with a lot less than people in Europe. Yeah. Well ISimone: think, I think one of the big issues is, The nature of immigration that's happening in many other nations is, is a population that is often like extremely destitute, coming from a very war torn area.Simone: And that'sMalcolm: going to change. Well, no, I, I, so, I, I, I'd argue it's something different. So if you look at the us, our major immigrant group is Hispanic immigrants. Mm-hmm. And this immigrant group, again, as I pointed out, you can look at the statistics. They are converting. In mass to American like protestant, evangelical groups.Malcolm: That'sSimone: where, where, so you're saying there's a lot of cultural compatibility,Malcolm: right? Well, it's, it's cultural compatibility, but it's also that there isn't a [00:19:00] cultural moat like America, despite what people say actually is, Really good at integrating cultures that come into our country. Hmm. The, there, there is some limit to that e especially when you're talking about, and, and I think that this is the really important thing to note America is really good at integrating cultures into our country when it sees the immigrants from those cultures is economically useful.Malcolm: Then it puts them into our university system. Then it, it integrates them into our culture. When it doesn't see them as economically useful, it's very bad at integrating them because sort of the, the. The machines of our systems see no point in engaging them. Mm-hmm. And I think that that's also what you see in Europe, which is another reason why high skilled immigration makes so much sense.Malcolm: Yeah. Because it allows people to, to come in who will integrate high skilled immigrants. Do integrate with the culture within two generations? Well, and I guessSimone: that, that also [00:20:00] it goes both ways with my, my value system, right? I like immigration, but I only like it if it's with cultures that are willing to play ball, cultures that are willing to mix and match and assimilate and interact, right?Simone: Like I'm not. I, I wouldn't seeMalcolm: benefit. The problem is that, that as an immigration policy, well that would freak out progressives. Mm-hmm. Is that something you can measure? Right. And you can say, okay, well this cultural group seems really bad at integrating, therefore we'll put restrictions Right on this cultural group immigrating to our country.Malcolm: Yeah. And now all of a sudden they're like, well, that's a race or a cultural limitation on who can. Immigrate to your country. Right. Um, And so they freak out about that, but I, I really don't think that that's a bad system to just look objectively, which, but actually I didn't even think it's a good system.Malcolm: Okay. I'm gonna take that back. I don't think it's a good system because I, I think that across cultural groups, really the thing that protects groups from integrating is wealth. Low wealth groups across groups [00:21:00] don't integrate very well. High wealth groups across groups integrate very well.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. So if, if you are, if you do, make this a skill-based thing and, and you can even set up systems so people can say, well this isn't open to everyone. Well then you can set up to, if you really want to screw over other countries. Right. You set up like online training things , like online universities.Malcolm: Okay. And you make them free, so the US government can host this like an online university, and then the top 5% of students from all over the world get automatic citizenship .. Wow. Um, So you could deploy this, especially in countries you really don't like,Malcolm: and then just, it was in like five. No, just like brain drain. Brain drain.Simone: Brain drain. Yeah. That is a dick move. But I also loveMalcolm: it. No. And all of a sudden, Not only is their economy like not able to function at a basic level, oh my God. But like you've taken away all of their industrial capacity, all of their competence.Malcolm: No,Simone: but this is something you, I mean, it's a great offensive maneuver. It's wonderful.Malcolm: Well, yeah, and you can do it between generations. So you're getting people like, this is the [00:22:00] way you do it. So it's not just open to people because you're talking with some of these countries, like you talk about block countries, right? Yeah. Like a lot of these countries, the people who are in charge are just the people. These families have been in charge for a long time, right? Mm-hmm. Like people haven't been given a fair shot. Mm-hmm. So you come in there with a meritocratic system and you start siphoning off all of the actually talented and motivated people, right?Malcolm: You can crush anyone you don't like. Devastating.Simone: Devastating. Yeah. I love that idea. Yeah, it's, it's a fun, I mean, it's, it's a difficult, it's a difficult subject because I think also a lot of it gets mixed with, and we've totally not talked about this but like refugee populations and, and all that.Simone: And I thinkMalcolm: it's difficult. Well, I, I don't think you should allow immigrants from those populations at all.Simone: Where should refugees go?Malcolm: I, I, I don't think it's, it's you, we should strive to create a world where every country is prosperous and peaceful. Yeah. But I do not think that we benefit from letting, if you look at, and you look at this in some countries, you're [00:23:00] like, a huge portion of the immigrant population just goes directly on to social security, just goes directly on to government paid.Simone: And it doesn't help any, it doesn't seem to help anyone involved.Malcolm: No, it's not, it's not fixing anything. Okay? Mm-hmm. We should be striving to create a better world everywhere while understanding that some countries are malicious actors. Mm-hmm. And that through the system I have described, , you can permanently cripple those countries.Malcolm: And, I think it's a malicious system if you put it into place. I'm not saying it's the best system, but what I'm saying, a country has done something really bad like China when they start going genocidal, right? Yeah. It might make sense to implement a policy like this and, and I think you would see really quickly How, how fast these countries would freak out when you start siphoning off their competent workforce.Simone: Yeah. Yeah.Malcolm: That's interesting. But in regards to the, the, the initial thing of this, because there's this, this strain in the us which is well, we need to preserve, I don't know, traditional white culture or something like that. And it's dude, [00:24:00] if your culture in, in the new world order and this world order has been created, it's not like somebody's out there trying to create it.Malcolm: It's over. It's, it's the immersion or world order of the internet. If it can't survive in the face of competition, if it can't on its own motivate. Reproduction is just not a relevant player anymore, and I see no point in saving these weak cultural groups. We need to find variants of them because in, in order to maintain the strengths of diversity, we need to find variants of them that can stay alive.Malcolm: But more broadly, no, I don't, I don't see the point to save every family in these cultural groups, especially the ones that are, that are begging for isolation.Simone: Well, and I, there's no, there's really no such thing. As an unchanging culture, like the cultures that I think many people think they're preserving.Simone: The traditional cultures, the inherited cultures actually have changed quite significantly over the past. Quite, quite young. Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're, they're fresh, they're new. This is not a [00:25:00] brand new thing, but it's also not a, an ancient tradition. It is going to change naturally. So kind of like with our argument on life extension, there is no such thing as a continuous culture.Simone: Even if you leave it in isolation over a hundred years, just like there's no such thing as a continuous consciousness or, or biological human over a hundred years. So rather than trying to hold onto something that's utterly impossible, why don't you have fun with mixing, matching, forking, iterating and improving and in a way that helps everyone and that makes all groups stronger.Simone: Anyway,Malcolm: this is fun. I think that to really point, I mean, if we're talking about like the, the, the elephant in the room, so when people are like, well, Western White culture, right? They're like, that's what I wanna preserve. And it's do you think that that, that, that what you think of as today as Western white culture is anything close to what it was?Malcolm: I. 500 years ago. No, seriously. No. No. They are wildly more different from each other than they are from Hispanic immigrant populations, [00:26:00] from American black populations like the you. You have changed. So much what you mean by historic white culture often is a lie that was never really that common, that was sold to you by the Hollywood elite who was in power in the 1950s.Malcolm: That was never a dominant cultural group in this country. It has always been a fabrication sold to you by the Hollywood elites and you believe them because what they were the Hollywood wooded leads for 50 years ago, so, so those Hollywood elite. Were so different from today's Hollywood elites. They had no mischievous intentions, no mal intentions on, on, on disrupting your cultural group.Malcolm: Of course they did. Of course they did. They don't care about you. They were trying to sellSimone: stuff. I feel somewhat similarly about. For example, bronze Age mindset. It's a lovely fantasy, but it, if you actually went back to the Bronze Age and existed even as a super strong alpha male type, [00:27:00] you probably would wanna go back to today real fast.Simone: Like even as, as an incel dude. So, I don't know. I, I, I think it's fun to have fantasies. I'm all for indulging in them, but. , we need to, we need to be realistic. But yeah. Anyway, I love talking with you, Malcolm. This was really fun. Looking forward to our next conversation.Simone: These are like our dates. They're so great. I love spending time with you, but everything's a date. Dropping off the kids at daycare is a date, doing our taxesMalcolm: well. Well, I find that really engaging and I get excited about them, and I get excited seeing how people are gonna react to them. That's, that's one of my favorite things through you.Malcolm: Of course. I, I can't deal, I can barely deal with reading the comments myself, but through you, you know how we talk about like offense. And I'm like, oh yeah, if somebody was like, Malcolm, you're dumb. That wouldn't really offend me. If somebody was like, Malcolm, you're fat. That wouldn't offend me. One comment we see regularly that I'd like, oh my God, they're so right.Malcolm: Like I hate this about myself, that you talk over people, Malcolm. And I'm like, that's how you really get someone is you say something that makes them question their self-identity and they know it's [00:28:00] probably true. Cause when I read that, oh, it's just crippling. Cause I'm like, I really don't wanna be that kind of a person, but I am.Simone: I am. So give us your brutal, constructive, realistic criticism because that's how you really twist the knife. Friends, that's how you do it. Love you all.Malcolm: Bye. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm and Simone debate the implications if reincarnation were proven to be real. Malcolm argues it would necessitate rethinking identity, consciousness, and the meaning of emotions. Simone counters that practically, not much would change in how we live. She theorizes souls could be residue transferring between bodies and accumulating through evolution. Overall, they explore fascinating philosophical questions about the soul and metaphysical realities.Simone: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. Hello,Malcolm: Simone. So for our topic for this one, it actually was something that was inspired by an interview we did with another podcast. Do you remember the name of the podcast, by the way?Simone: It was the podcast weird and worthwhile.Malcolm: Weird and worthwhile. Okay. So I want to give them a shout out if people want to check out that episode. But at one point of it, they asked us, they go, okay, so, you know, some people believe in reincarnation. I got the impression that they did. They're like, okay, so, assume reincarnation is true.Malcolm: How does that change how you think of what you're trying to maximize for the human species? And I just went off at that point. I think what they expected is, Oh, you tweak here and here in terms of how you're modifying, like maximizing, you know, this or that. But no, if I assume that reincarnation is real.Malcolm: Mm hmm. And I change something when we describe how people have \ belief systems about the world. We [00:01:00] describe them as like a tree, right? When then they have a lot of branching parts to them. If reincarnation is true, the core trunk of that tree. It's completely changed, which changes all of the sub-branches for us.Simone: What? Yeah, I'm, I'm so surprised 'cause nothing changes for me so far. This is my default. Nothing is different. I'm not, no, noMalcolm: change. Okay. So we have just scientists have confirmed, and this is something that scientists could confirm. That's a really cool thing about it. Scientists could tomorrow be like, yes, we have proven that people could know things that they could only know if reincarnation happened, right?Malcolm: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. , So, so this is something that could be concretely proven at some point, right? That means a number of other things. First, it means that humans have a soul that's separate from their physical body. Mm hmm. This is not something that we believe, right? Mm hmm. If humans have a soul that's separate from their physical body.Malcolm: That means that some other form [00:02:00] of reality exists or some other form of material exists. And this material or form of reality is likely more important than the reality that we perceive. So let me explain what I mean by this Simone, because you're looking dubious at me. I'mSimone: still extremely dubious. Yeah, nothing, nothing is changing still for me.Simone: Nothing'sMalcolm: different. Okay. So if it turns out that a person's memories, for example, and this is, I think, what they mean when they, they say reincarnation if you're just reincarnating a soul, but nothing is, is carried between the two individuals. But nothing is. Okay, but that's not what we're talking about here.Malcolm: We're talking about the people who think they can remember past lives and stuff like that. Because, this other form of reincarnation So thisSimone: is a form of reincarnation where you remember your past life, because, I'm sorry, only hippie to be people, and my Right, but I'mMalcolm: saying, suppose scientist proves this, because it is something youSimone: could prove, okay?Simone: Okay. And then the, what, in that everyone is capable of remembering their pastMalcolm: lives? Doesn't [00:03:00] need to be everyone. Only needs to be one person concretely proven. If you prove just a single person, what have you proven? What you've proven is that some aspect of some human's identity, so it could turn out that not all humans have these souls, but it turns out that at least some humans have these souls or whatever you want to call them, some sort of like metaphysical imprint of their identity.Malcolm: And this Dalai Lama.Simone: Right. And I mean, you could argue that they've, they've proven it. I mean,Malcolm: he picks out. I don't think that they've proven it atSimone: all. Key things. I don't know. I mean, they would argue that they have if the person, they hadMalcolm: scientists would be going there and researching it, like you understand how much this would change every aspect.Malcolm: By theirSimone: standards of evidence though. I mean, I think that previous Dalai Lamas have. You're acting likeMalcolm: ESP research departments didn't used to exist. TheySimone: still do. [00:04:00] There's still a lot of people researching this. I'm just saying their standards actually are a little different thanMalcolm: ours. There's people researching this.Malcolm: No one has concretely proven ghosts exist. No one has concretely proven ESP exists. If they did, and, and Simone, YouTube habits. Okay. Yeah. I am not somebody who hasn't found this evidence because I'm not looking. Yeah. I know.Simone: Literally. Well, see, I think the truth is out there, but the truth is not accepted per our standards of truth.Malcolm: Literally about a quarter of all the information I consume is about cryptids or ghosts or ESP or so I'm out there consuming, but none of the information, none of the research into this that has been done has been of a standard where I was convinced. That it was accurate. Okay. Right. It, it changed my beliefs, but I am very, very open to having my beliefs changed on this subject if I felt that there was compelling evidence.Malcolm: Okay. But if that evidence was true, like if it turned out that some aspect of an individual can be [00:05:00] transferred between individuals without like direct informational transfer between those individuals in the material plane, what that would mean is there is some aspect of, of some human's identity. Again, it could be that not everyone has a soul in some human's identity that is extra material.Malcolm: Okay? If that's true, then that's the aspect of the human identity that is experiencing one, consciousness, two, our emotions, like pain, suffering, everything like that, right? And if that's true, What that could mean is that pain and suffering or happiness, you know, when, when we dismiss those things, right?Malcolm: The reason I most commonly dismiss them is I believe that the reason that we feel them is just serendipitously our ancestors who had those sociological predilections and more surviving offspring. This would imply that the reason we feel those things is something else. It's something almost supernatural?Malcolm: No,Simone: where is that implication? That [00:06:00] implication is nowhere. It would still make perfect sense that those signals are felt because it can ensure survival and a more effective go for that time. You know, it'll help you have a more successful... round of play for that particular life so why would you not feel those stimuli in a way that helps you avoid the things that will shorten your play and reduce yourMalcolm: effectiveness?Malcolm: So you saw this, your assumption would be that our souls evolved along with our bodies, and that they are like a tool that our bodies are using?Simone: Yeah, either, either they're Some weird emergent property or thing that has has formed as a product of the you know, the, the way we. We developed just some weird quantum energy thing with other universes that we don't quite understand like the way that that our biological matter interacts with other dimensions or something right like I whatever you know maybe that's happening but that doesn't change the fact that we [00:07:00] evolved to do what we did and it also doesn't changed functionally how we live our lives I mean first maybe not everyone has one of these things that transfers to, maybe you transfer into a goat.Simone: So what are you going to do about that? Or maybe you transfer into someone who doesn't have the same resources that they did before. And of course the memory transfer is imperfect in so far as I can tell the vast majority of cases. So a lot of it doesn't matter. Like if you, if you do transfer from one life to the next, you're probably going to then maintain the same objective function, but also you can't like plan for that.Simone: It's not you can, I mean, I guess theoretically you could try to, in one life, accumulate a lot of wealth and then leave a cache that is hidden, like a, you know, buried treasure and then go get that cache to have a head start on your next life and build cumulative advantage. I'mMalcolm: surprised that people who believe in reincarnation haven't been doing that.Malcolm: Yeah, if you believe you have multiple lives, wouldn't you?Simone: Yeah. But what if you're, you know, what if the vast majority of time, cause you know, many versions of reincarnation involve being born into well, maybe you'll end up a cow. Maybe you'll end up a worm. Maybe you'll end up, you know, so there's all [00:08:00] these generations who knows, like how many generations, how many rolls of the dice it takes for you to get into a human body.Simone: And then how many rolls of the dice did it take you to. Get into a human body that is even empowered to be able to travel somewhere to get to the cash. I mean, we are in the top 1%. This is, this isMalcolm: what I love about your thesis is it actually makes sense and it does allow you to not change much of your world perspective.Malcolm: Well, you wouldn't. You have to think practically about what it means. Really interesting. I don't know if you. of the full implications of this theory that you'veSimone: crafted. Well, it doesn't matter, does it? Because functionally not much changes. So it'sMalcolm: just, you know, it does matter because you're assuming that the soul works in a very specific way.Malcolm: So what, and it's not the way. Anyone I have ever heard, like you just dropped this really big idea that I have literally never heard in my entire life. I mean, I'm sure that somebody has probably thought of it before, but essentially what you are assuming is that the soul is [00:09:00] like a mechanistic entity.Malcolm: So by that, what I mean, Is it exists in the same way that material things exist, but we just haven't discovered the properties through which it exists yet.Simone: Well, no, no, no. I mean, I'm not saying I'm, I'm, I'm interpreting the soul through a materialistic lens because I am a pragmatist. So I care about what materialistically implications of the soul are.Simone: TheMalcolm: point I was getting to was, was the interesting part of what you, you said is that evolution. Picked up this other type of material, you know, we'll call it like the soul or something like that. They may have existed in some sort of primordial form before evolutionSimone: got to it. It would make sense, right?Simone: Like maybe imagine that like you have, you know, you develop at one point an antenna. And it's going to pick up some weird radio signals that were already there. Like at one point my I don't know how this happened, but my wired earbuds picked up walkie talkie signal from construction workers [00:10:00] down the street, like it is entirely possible to have one thing.Simone: be able to pick up on another thing due to But you're notMalcolm: even really postulating that it accidentally picked it up. What you're postulating is that evolution grabbed it and used it because through using it, it was able to increase the number of surviving meat puppets that existed.Simone: Yeah, that would make sense, but that's not necessary.Simone: It could be that they just Pick up, you know, the, the, the human biology, maybe, maybe all animal biology. ThatMalcolm: sufficiently advanced biological systems pick up this ethereal component.Simone: Yeah, well, or no, not even, it doesn't have to be ethereal. It could be just like, there's another, you know. Weird wavelength of another parallel universe.Simone: It's myMalcolm: ethereal outside of ourSimone: reality. Okay, yeah, yeah. That just sounds a little too spiritual for me. I'm feeling triggered, Malcolm. I'm not safe with that kind of word. So, if you don't mind. YouMalcolm: are a goof, and I love it. No, no, no, no. I'm [00:11:00] liking it. This is different to the conclusion I came to.Malcolm: I immediately assumed that it must mean that there's actually weight to our emotional states. Because our emotional... Well, so... Nice try. Right now, when I ask who am I, right? I am, to some extent, a combination. Of my brain, like the neurochemical processes of my brain and my body. And if there was this other thing that is potentially even more me than the material part of me, right?Malcolm: Then I would need to assign special weight to it when I'm determining what has value in the universe.Simone: No more than if you had another pair of arms. It's not like another pair of arms gets, you know, precedence on beMalcolm: like a No, I think it would be very different from another pair of arms. So here's why I think it would be different.Malcolm: And I love videos where we disagree because I think they're probably much more interesting to our audience. We'll call this one like fight Malcolm and Simone. Fight. So, so it would be like saying that it turns out our brain isn't the center of cognitive processing. Because what [00:12:00] it would mean is that to some extent, cognitive processing is happening in parallel, not just within our brains andSimone: I disagree.Simone: I disagree. Because what, what I'm getting the impression is that the soul essentially is something like it's, it, it's like a, a hard drive that is collecting that, or like a piece of paper that is collecting grit that is somehow getting transferred from one entity to to another. Oh, so you would see it more as like residue?Simone: Yeah. It's it's just, yeah. Accumulated UEMalcolm: residue, which can be picked up. Okay. And that would also explain like ghosts, right? Mm-hmm. . So like it goes for a real too, they could work with this conception of a, a soul. Sure. And that it's ethereal residue. Which transfers either can become stuck in a physical location or transfers between bodies between generations.Malcolm: And if that was true, then it would largely be functioning in two ways. . Either the ethereal residue exists in a discrete format in which it's one person, one soul. You know, these, these things [00:13:00] are in discrete units and like my one soul goes to a worm or something like that, potentially, or maybe they only stay within species, right?Malcolm: But regardless, my one soul then goes to the next person, right? Or they exist as more like a fluid that gets poured back into the ethereal realm after a personSimone: dies. Ectoplasm, if you will. I'm getting so triggered by allMalcolm: this. So by that, what I mean, is when I die, my soul might become like 10% of 10 other people's identity instead of, you know, like dropping like a fluid with like food coloring back into the ocean or something.Simone: Oh yeah. Well, that could help to explain why some people would remember their past, whereas others wouldn't because most like most souls get mixed up collectively to the point of abstraction. Or maybe others would get kind of like, just not get mixed up for some reason. Yeah.Malcolm: So I just came up with a great thesis that can make a lot of the holes in the multiple life things make more sense.Malcolm: So one of the biggest [00:14:00] problems with people who believe in multiple lives is they're very likely to believe that they were really important people in the past. No, it's true. You just, you just hear this constantly.Simone: But I know, my my, my, my paternal grandmother just thought that she was a particular type of Native American.Simone: She had extremely distinct memories that she believed that she had. So, no, not everyone. I think a lot of people just Not everyone, but aMalcolm: lot of people. I'd say that, that More often than not, they believe they were important people in some way, you know. And on top of that, not everyone believes not everyone has these experiences, right?Malcolm: If this was a universal experience that you had lived multiple lives, then just everyone would be like, Oh yeah, I know that, because I have that experience, right? So what if it turns out... That actually not everyone has a soul. Only important people have souls. We're sort of like, there's this theory, you know there's this theory that we are in a algorithmically, like we, our reality is a computer program?Malcolm: Yeah. And some people believe that [00:15:00] there's an iteration of the theory that yes, our reality is a computer program, but it's not a fully function, like not everyone is fully programmed. Most people are just literal NPCs and there's maybe 100 to 10, 000 people in the world who are fully programmed.Malcolm: It's similar to that theory, which is to say that not everyone has one of these souls, just the important people who change world history. And so what that means is that would explain why people keep getting these important souls because only important people have souls. We aren't important enough to get one of these souls, and it would also explain why so many people might have Cleopatra reborn, because her soul might actually exist in portions within multiple people's bodies.Simone: Oh, interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.Malcolm: So, that would explain why multiple people might Simultaneously be claiming to be the same people livingSimone: multiple lives. Yeah. Because there's no, no reason why this kind of material would have to be like one to one transferred. [00:16:00] Yeah.Malcolm: Well, and it may, and it may be like, okay, so you would have a small amount.Malcolm: Oh, he's here. Edward Dutton is outside our house right now. Oh,Simone: well, it was great talking with you, Malcolm, but we have to go. I actuallyMalcolm: really like this one. I'd love to continue it at some point.Simone: All right. I love you, Malcolm.Malcolm: Thanks for this. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this insightful discussion, Spencer Greenberg delves into the replication crisis plaguing academic psychology research. He discusses projects aiming to improve reliability through replications and details warning signs like questionable statistics. Spencer advocates raising scientific standards to restore public trust. He also champions "renegade science" by independent researchers and highlights tools enabling robust studies outside academia. Overall, Spencer makes a thoughtful case for multiplying skill with truth-seeking to unlock discoveries that benefit society.Links: https://www.positly.com/ https://www.guidedtrack.com/Simone: [00:00:00] Okay, here we go. Hi everyone. We have a very, very special guest today who we have known actually almost as long as we've known each other. We met Spencer Greenberg back in like around 2015 when he was first working on some of his projects that are now pervasively used.Simone: Which is really, really cool. He is someone that we've profoundly respected for many years. He has been running Clearer Thinking for a ton of time, but more recently he launched the Clearer Thinking podcast, which is a series of interviews with incredible people that we really enjoy. I'm addicted to it personally.Simone: So please check it out.Malcolm: I'll just summarize the important point is he's probably one of, if not the most respected social figure in the E. A. And rationalist movement in the New York area, which is a very big thing because it's one of the major hubs of theSimone: movement. Yeah. And Spencer, could you tell us what your top projects are right now?Spencer: Yeah. Well, thanks for having me on. So [00:01:00] one of the projects I run is called clear thinking, which you mentioned at clear thing dot org. And what we do is we take interesting ideas from psychology, economics, math, and so on, that people might learn in passing, maybe they'll learn in blog posts or reading books, but they don't generally apply them to their lives.Spencer: And so our goal is to make it really easy to apply these ideas to your life to try to achieve the things that you want to achieve. So we have these interactive modules, we have over 70 of them right now, and you can use them all for free. And I also do the Clear Thinking Podcast, as you mentioned. In addition to that, we have a bunch of other projects for accelerating social science.Spencer: So our goal is to try to help. Psychological research go faster, be more robust, be more reliable and help unlock important ideas about human nature that can be of benefit to society. Speaking of that,Malcolm: what we wanted to focus on this podcast is you recently did some research into the replication crisis, how bad it's gotten, and I think you have some theories on how it could be fixed.Malcolm: So I'd love you to just dive into that first, explaining what the replication crisis is, its scope and your [00:02:00] research, and then going through potentialSpencer: solutions. Sure, yeah, it's a topic I think about a lot. So basically, there are many really interesting findings in psychology that have unfortunately failed to replicate, which means that basically when people try to redo the same study, collect a new sample of study participants, they just don't get the original answer.Spencer: And that's been very disturbing. A bunch of findings that were in textbooks and that are really famously known just don't work, it seems. So some examples of this would be from the social priming literature where they do things like have someone hold a warm cup of coffee. And then people would find that there would be rated as more warm, or they'd rate things as more warm because we make these psychological metaphors.Spencer: Well, it's a really cool sounding idea, but doesn't necessarily replicate. Or another example, when you prime people with words that are related to being older, the people then walk slower. Well, again, a really cool concept, but it didn't replicate when people tried it again. And so the question is, why are so many findings not replicating?Spencer: And how pervasive a problem is [00:03:00] this. And so looking at the many different replication studies that have occurred, my best guess is that from top journals and very top journals, probably about 40% of the results don't replicate. Cool. Enormous. Wow. Yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty it's pretty shocking. Some people, their response is, Well, science is hard, human nature is complicated.Spencer: What do we really expect? But my view is that, no, 40% not replicating is way, way too high. It should be something on the order of 5 to 10%. I think that might be reasonable. Yes. But the problem with 40% is it's almost a coin flip. If you read a paper, will this, will this result hold up, right?Malcolm: Yeah.Malcolm: So do you think that this is one, one thing that might be fun to go into for the audience is how does this system work? Like the, the scientific system that gets things in these journals and where do you believe it's failing?Spencer: Yeah, so it's an interesting question why this is happening, because you might think isn't this what peer review is designed to prevent, right?Spencer: People are submitting to these [00:04:00] top journals, experts in their fields are reviewing the papers. But I think the fundamental problem there, it's not that peer reviewers want to let in garbage papers. They don't really have an... Reason to let in garbage papers. They don't get paid more if they let in bad papers.Spencer: They don't get more prestige if they let in bad papers. No, the reviewers are reading the papers and trying to let in the problem is that, that whether something replicates or not is not generally visible from reading the paper. Oh,Simone: because I was going to ask are there warning signs?Spencer: Yeah. Well, we've, in recent years, there's been a lot of interesting things learned about the warning signs, but people didn't really know what the warning signs were necessarily.Spencer: In the past, and it's very difficult for people to tell what is a legitimate paper and what's not. I can tell you about some of the warning signs. Please. One is about p values, which are a rather technical subject and something that is confusing people. But the basic gist of a p value is when you're testing a hypothesis using statistics, let's say you say, well, if I give people this psychological treatment, then they'll have less anxiety [00:05:00] at the end of the study on average than if I don't give them the psychological treatment, right?Spencer: And then you want to know, well, did the result that I got exceed what you'd expect by chance, right? So let's say you find that people who, who got the psychological treatment had An average anxiety rating of 10, whereas those that didn't get it had an average anxiety rating of 7 out of 10. So that looks good.Spencer: It looks like the psychological treatment worked. But the question is, well, it's 5 compared to 7. Is that really good enough that we can conclude the treatment works? And so what you do is you compute what's known as the p value. And the p value is basically saying, what's the chance I would get a result that's this different?Spencer: So, a difference this large or larger, if in fact there was no effect. And so if the p value is really small, let's say it's 0. 01, that means there's only a 1% chance you get a result this extreme or more extreme if there was no effect. And so there, so that probably is not due to chance.Spencer: Whereas if you get a higher p value like, 0. 3, that means there's a 30% chance you'd get a result this extreme or more extreme if there was no effect. And so maybe it's, it might be due to chance. So the idea of the p values is the smaller they are, [00:06:00] the less likely your result is to be due to chance.Spencer: Now one of the really interesting things that has been found empirically And this is, we've actually looked at this, we looked at over, I think it was over 200 different replication studies looking at what traits actually predict what replicates and what doesn't. And smaller p values in the original paper are associated with better replication.Spencer: So, if the p value was, let's say, 0. 04, that's still considered statistically significant, because by the definition of statistically significant, anything below 0. 05 is considered statistically significant. And so it may well have been published as a true finding, but it's less likely to replicate than if the original p value had been 0.Spencer: 001. And so, Part of the reason this is believed to be the case is that people do kind of fishy statistics to get the p value down to be just below 0. 05 so that they can go publish the paper.Malcolm: So my question is, I mean, do we ever see with really low p values, they're not being replicable as well?Malcolm: Because, I mean, my understanding is that you just should almost never see that. I mean, that seems like such an obvious thing. If the p value is [00:07:00] low, it's more likely to replicate. But are we still seeing instances in which the p value is low and it'sSpencer: failing to replicate? That's a really good question, because let's say you had a really low p value there's only a one in a hundred thousand chance you get a result this extreme if in fact there was no effect, right?Spencer: Well, that's, well, that's really strange, does that mean there's definitely an effect? Well, it turns out there can be other reasons besides just a statistical fluke, false positive, why something wouldn't replicate. For example, there could have been a mistake in the original study.Spencer: Either a mistake in the analysis, right? Maybe they just screwed up the Cisco analysis, and it wasn't really a low p value. Or maybe there was a mistake in the design, where people weren't allocated their groups properly, or other things like this. Of course, there's also the possibility of fraud. That could be another reason.Spencer: They could have just made up the data, right? So there could be various reasons why, even with a small p value, it won't replicate. But it's certainly more likely to replicate.Malcolm: So what was your study in this space? Where, where you recently did a study in this space.Spencer: Elaborate on that. So we launched a project called Transparent Replications.Spencer: If you want the details, you can find it on our website, [00:08:00] clearthinking. org. And the idea of our project is we want to replicate new psychology papers coming out in the top general science journals. So the Journal of Science and the Journal of Nature, which are just incredibly famous journals that lots of people want to publish in.Spencer: And our goal is that we want to get to the point where we're doing so many of these replications that if you are a psychologist going to publish in these journals, that there's more than a 50% chance we're going to replicate you. And if we can achieve that goal, then it means that people submitting to these journals are suddenly going to have to grapple with the fact that they're, there's a good chance they're going to be replicated and therefore they're gonna have a different incentive to do their research in a way that makes sure it replicates because if it doesn't replicate, everyone's going to find out.Malcolm: Now, this is really interesting. So, one question I have is, have you guys worked with, I mean, if there are still really no repercussions. For being unreplicable, what are the extent of the repercussions you expect with a project like this? And how do you expect the academic field to react more broadly?Malcolm: I mean, if you call out high [00:09:00] status people within the academic field, the academic field's going to begin to frame you like a villain, or negatively, because you are a threat to them, like you're this new exogenous threat. How have you seen them react to it, and do you think that they will apply? heavy penalties to the people who publish unreplicableSpencer: findings.Spencer: Yeah, those are really good questions. A lot of interesting things to dig into there. First of all, we've seen a really positive response, largely from the academic community, about our project, which was really nice to see. I think there's a lot of acknowledgement and an increasing acknowledgement that there's a real problem and that standards have to change.Spencer: The reality is, while it might be good for one individual researcher to push through crap, it's really, really bad for the field. If you're a psychologist, you're, the value of you being a psychologist has declined and declined and declined. General public has become aware of all these issues to the point where some people are just not trusting the papers anymore.Spencer: That's terrible for the field. So it's actually, although it is kind of a collective action problem, it is really good for the field to raise its standards and it will actually benefit academic [00:10:00] psychologists as a group. So I think that many of them realize, wait a minute, if we raise our standards and we can show the public that our standards are raised, it will actually raise our prestige and raise our credibility.Spencer: That being said, it's never fun to be told that your paper doesn't replicate, right? Nobody, nobody likes to hear that. Even, even truth seekers, it's upsetting to hear that. But we really try to be fair to researchers and we try to make it clear that we're being fair. So what we do is we contact them, we tell them that we're running a replication.Spencer: That their paper was selected through this systematic process. We use. We're not singling them out. We use this process to select them. That's kind of clear, clearly defined. And then we say, here's our exact. We built copy of your study. Please look at it and tell us if in any way it deviates from your original research.Spencer: Because we want to be 100% fair to your research and then, and we want to make sure that if it doesn't replicate, it's because the original paper didn't replicate, not because we screwed something up. We also give them a chance to respond on our final report if they want to give any comments and if they find any mistakes in our work, they can of course tell us and we'll correct those mistakes.[00:11:00]Malcolm: And so how is all thisSpencer: funded? So we thankfully we have a grant. We're really grateful to the, we've actually got two grants. We're really grateful to those that gave us grants to help us do this.Simone: What's the end goal in terms of How you hope academia is going to shift going forward, at least like social science research.Simone: Is it like, are people going to have different methodologies? Are you also trying to, I don't know, make alternate processes available or show people better ways of doing things? What'sSpencer: your goal? So my personal goal is to make psychology into a science that is better at figuring out important truths so that those truths can come out and better.Spencer: Society and better human lives, right? So that's really what I want to happen. And academia is really the only game in town, pretty much. There are some companies that do some psychological research, but a lot of it is locked away. It doesn't ever get out there in the world. And so if without academia producing important truths about humans, like we're just [00:12:00] Not getting a lot of them, right?Spencer: So, my hope is that with a project like this, we can help work in the right direction to get scientists to produce more robust findings that then can benefit society. Now I will say also with something like this, it really does hinge on a change in incentives, right? So in order for our project to work, we need it to be the case that people do their research differently.Spencer: And I think that while, while people are often resistant to hearing that their own work didn't replicate, I do think that it, that other researchers, when they see that and they say, ah, this paper didn't replicate, it does really greatly diminish their belief in that paper. And I think they're much less likely to cite it if they know it hasn't replicated, they're like, ah, that didn't replicate, so, so my hope is that it really does act as a significant incentive to doing better research.Simone: I really admire the work you're doing in reforming. This kind of academic research, but I also kind of want to touch on what we might call like renegade research or like the resurgence of gentlemen scientist research specifically because you're kind of one [00:13:00] of our heroes on that front.Simone: You've done a ton of research through clear thinking. You also. You created GuidedTrack and Positly, which have really made it possible for many people to do research on their own withoutbeingSpencer: Quick side note,Malcolm: so these softwares, if any of you like to do your own research or you want to go out there and inexpensively run a study, they make it possible to get participants at reasonable costs and they make it possible to run and design a study reasonably.Simone: Yeah, so GuidedTrack specifically enables you to create These surveys, it even includes, and this is you don't need to learn how to code. It's so easy to use. And this is what Spencer was working on when we first met him. People like Ayla use it for her surveys. And then positively enables you to recruit audiences to fill out those surveys.Simone: So if you're not famous like Ayla and you can get a large sample size, in fact, she, I think still even uses positively for sample sizes as well, like for participants. So yeah, like these two things together are really making it possible. For gentlemen or [00:14:00] gentlewomen scientists to do these things like, what are your thoughts on the future of renegade science?Simone: And are you thinking about additional tools or processes to give to people outside of academia? I mean, clearly you're trying to reform academia. I think that's beautiful. But what can non academics learn about doing good social science and other research using them? your tools and other other tools to do these things.Spencer: Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned our tools because that is part of our mission is to get answers to these important questions, not just through academia, but through all means. And that also means to independent researchers who might be doing stuff outside of academia. So yeah, we created positively and got a track to make it easier.Spencer: We have a new tool we're going to call it hypothesize to help with the data analysis as well. So if you think about it, If you think about doing research, you've got to build your study, which is what Guided Track is for, you've got to recruit your sample, which is what Positively is for, you've got to analyze your data, and that's what Hypothesis is for.Spencer: So we're trying to create the trifecta there. Yeah, I think there's just a ton of potential to do interesting research. For example, you mentioned AILA. I mean, AILA has done really interesting research on sexuality. [00:15:00] That is just really different than what academics have done, as far as I can tell, and I think it really adds something to knowledge of the topic.Spencer: So, I'd love to see more of this, and we do a lot of our own research at Clear Thinking. For example, we ran a randomized control trial on habit formation, where we implemented a habit formation intervention. We... Tested where we track people over, I think it was about six weeks to see if they stuck with their habit using our tool versus a control group that didn't have access to our tool.Spencer: And we were able to show that way that our tool actually improve people's habit formations. You can actually use it for free on our website. It's called the Daily Ritual Tool clearthing. org. So that's the kind of study we like to run, but we have a bunch of studies running most of the time testing a whole bunch of hypotheses.Malcolm: You know what I'd really like to see emerge is a gentleman scientist network of the various people like Ayla, like you, who are running studies outside of academia and then disseminate them through social media because I would really, I mean, the core reason I was thinking it'd be really great if there was a network like this is one that makes it easier for people to find these and potentially even [00:16:00] create like a collated journal that's just specifically these types of people.Malcolm: But I would really love if your service at one day Could run to see if these studies replicate at a higher or lower rate than the studies coming out of academia and traditional journals. Because I would suspect that for example, a list studies would replicate at a higher rate due to her large sample sizes.Malcolm: Despite the fact that there's a perception that it's lower quality research than, than what's coming out of academia.Spencer: It's interesting. So when someone is self taught, I mean, I think there are advantages and disadvantages. Disadvantage is that there may be methods they don't understand very well or best practices that they just blow past because they haven't been taught about them.Spencer: And I think that is a real concern. And I think, I bet if you ask Ayla, I bet she'll say that her earlier studies are much worse than her ones today because she's picking up on some best practices and learning some of the things that maybe she didn't know going into it. On the other hand, a really nice advantage of is you don't have Certain pressures on you to write certain kinds of papers.Spencer: [00:17:00] You don't have pressures to constantly publish. And so you can kind of take your time or for example, in one of our lines of research, we ran something like 15 different studies. Before we put anything out as a result, because we just really wanted to figure out what was true about the topic, and that's how long it took us to feel confident we knew the answer.Spencer: We just didn't feel the pressure to just put something out immediately, just, because, oh, wow, we need three papers right now, in order to be on the tender track, right? So I think that's a big advantage. When I think about really good research, I think of it as a few different things coming together, really high level skill, which, which might involve training, but also might be self taught skill.Spencer: And really high levels of truth seeking and those things kind of multiplying together. So if you have someone who has no skill whatsoever in doing research, I think it's fair to say they're going to have no output. So, zero times anything is zero. On the other hand, if you have someone who's absolutely no truth seeking they're completely indifferent, well, they're essentially gonna just make up information, right?Spencer: And so, again, you get a zero. And so it's like these, this truth seekingness times a skill, they come together to create [00:18:00] good research. And I think One thing that independent researchers often have going for them is they tend to be really truth seeking because it tends to be why they're motivated in the first place, right?Spencer: They don't have the career pressure. They just really want to know this topic.Simone: Paul Graham recently released an essay on doing great work. And like the TLDR of it is get into fields where you have a good aptitude and where you're super self motivated and curious, which there's the truth seeking, there's the, the skill and aptitude and then specifically look for the gaps in current knowledge where there seems to be Not good explanations or just not a lot of research or attention, and I think what's really telling there is, is this really points toward or in favor of the renegade scientist camp because in academia, it's hard sometimes to get funding to get academic support, to get someone to work with or to get funding when it is one of those gaps because that that may not be where the money is.Simone: That may not be where the institutional support is or the attention or the prestige. So it gets us really excited.Malcolm: The one [00:19:00] question I wanted to ask you is of the studies that you have ran, which was the most surprising result to you or the result that changed your world perspective most?Spencer: Oh, that's a great question.Spencer: I'm going to think about it for a moment though.Spencer: I keep having all these different ones go through my head and I'm like, nah, that one, that wasn't that surprising or that one didn't change my view that much.Simone: I'm worried that every social science thing boils down to use it or lose it. People are lazy. It's really hard to change. Like I can't agree on that.Spencer: Actually, there is one result that comes to mind that we haven't released it yet because we're still analyzing it. So I'm a little reluctant to talk about it, but I will tell, I'll talk about it preliminarily, but like with caveat, we're still analyzing. So what [00:20:00] we actually end up concluding will be seen, but we ran a study on decision making that actually completely shocked me.Spencer: We, we put people through a decision making protocol where they kind of really. Like how to go through every single like kind of pro and con related decision. And again, they actually had worse. They were less happy with their decisions as fall as followed up like months later when they actually knew the outcome of the decision.Spencer: And so I'm still processing what exactly that means and why that came out. And we still a lot of work to do to understand that result. But I think if that ends up holding up, I think that will be the most surprising one to me that. That's getting some things. Yeah, that is fascinating.Malcolm: And something I would tell our audience.Malcolm: So the way I really want to wrap up this episode for our audience is one of the biggest studies that we've ever done in terms of changing our world perspective was the study that we did, that we ran using data that you had collected for a completely different study. So you had collected data to try to find out.Malcolm: What correlated with the way that you voted in the last [00:21:00] presidential election cycle, but one of the things that you asked people was how many kids they had, and it was that data set that allowed us to look at and find out what was really correlating with high fertility. And so there's a few things I would, I would impress upon our audience, which is 1.Malcolm: If you do want to do a study, you can go out there and do it yourself. We're going to put links below here to all of these products that allow you to go out and run these studies yourself. But 2. The great thing about independent researchers, and you can do this to some extent, even with professional researchers, is if you have an idea, that doesn't mean you necessarily need to collect the data yourself.Malcolm: You can reach out to someone like Spencer or someone like Ayla, or someone like us. And if we've run a similar study in the past, and we still have the data in like a shareable format we can share it with you, which can allow you to do deeper, more interesting digs. on even subjects that might be really tangential.Malcolm: So that's a really fun way that you can approach things. And if any of our listeners do like really interesting studies, we'd love to have youSpencer: on. And [00:22:00] this is, I will say to that, there's also this norm that's been changing where people have been getting better at publishing their data sets. We try to do publish our data sets most of the time and a lot more psychologists are publishing their data sets.Spencer: So you can just find more and more data out there to test hypotheses that you already have. And Some data might be able to help answer a question in just 10 minutes of analyzing it. That'sMalcolm: really exciting. Well, be sure to check out his podcast, the Spencer Greenberg Clearer Thinking Podcast. ClearerSpencer: Thinking with SpencerSimone: Greenberg.Simone: Yeah.Spencer: Oh, sorry.Malcolm: You can just Google it or find it in podcasty locations.Simone: Yeah. And give it a good review because it's so good. More people need to listenMalcolm: to it. Give it a good review. Yes. Skip subscribing to this one today. Just give his podcast a good review.Simone: You're doing God's work friends. Good. Well, I'm looking forward to our next conversation already, Spencer.Simone: And we'llSpencer: see you soon. Thanks for having me on. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this nuanced discussion, Malcolm and Simone analyze how societal elites can become embroiled in unethical activities. They delve into group psychology and the human need for belonging. The conversation explores how insular communities formed around shared interests or backgrounds can lead to normalization of taboo behaviors. Malcolm and Simone advocate thoughtful examination of these complex social dynamics rather than speculative assumptions.Malcolm: [00:00:00] male sexuality is pulled between two extremes as a guy, you can optimize for gender dimorphism,Malcolm: so you are assuring that the thing you're breeding with is female. So this is larger butts, larger breasts, larger fingernails, longer hair, more voluptuous shape. Or you can be optimizing for fertility window. The problem is, is that you're actually typically optimizing for the opposite. When you're optimizing for fertility window, you are optimizing for youth, which means you're typically optimizing for smaller breasts, smaller butt, smaller, waist hip ratio and stuff like that.Malcolm: And so we looked at the data on this and this is a really shocking thing that we found is that the amount of wealth. A guy had in our data set correlated with which of these extremes he seemed to optimizeSimone: for.Would you like to know more?Malcolm: Hello, Simone. Hello, Malcolm. This is an edited recording. We had [00:01:00] originally recorded an episode on this topic and I decided I wanted to sanitize it as much as possible because I feel that this is a topic that really, really needs to be talked about in a sane way, but that is incredibly controversial.Malcolm: And so we don't want to. Step on any toes with this or make any potentially false or spurious accusations with this. Specifically, what we want to talk about is with this recent movie that's come out, there's been a lot of people being like, the concept of circles within sort of the wealthy class that traffic in underage women is, is a complete fantasy.Malcolm: It's a complete fictional thing. And I do think a lot of this stuff is, is, you know, sort of conspiracy theories that have gone a little crazy. However, what we learned from the Epstein case is that it's, it's not a [00:02:00] complete fantasy. Like there was at least one real circle in which this was happening. And the, the reason I want to talk about this is , how could this happen in my adult life?Malcolm: I do not meet many people who like to see themselves as bad people. Most people want to see themselves as good people who are trying to make the world a better place. So how did giant networks of some of the wealthiest people in the world? Get roped into something like this and I think we can look at this as an isolated case But I really don't think it is there's been a lot of people freaking out about a specific campaign manager having potentially artwork that looks like Kids are being hurt in it in the artwork now There is actually no proof this artwork that he owns it that he has it in his house But what no one is really denying is that the artwork itself exists and is [00:03:00] real and is in museums sometimes, or is on big displays that people are funding, that people are paying a lot of money for this artwork.Malcolm: It showsSimone: up in ad campaigns. I mean,Malcolm: yeah, like, like the, the, that the artwork exists is, and so this is what we mean by sort of this place is. Is people can tie something, like they can be like, this guy owns this artwork, right? And then they go in a whole rabbit hole with that. And then the other side can be like, well, no, actually, he's not the one who owns the artwork.Malcolm: And there's not like this third group that's saying, okay. But even if he's not, why does this artwork exist, and why is it being shown in, like, art museums and stuff like that? Like, it seems to be that a certain class of people within our society, the, the, the, the group of people, or one cultural group within our society, that goes to things like art museums, doesn't have, , an extreme resistance.Malcolm: to this sort of depiction. If [00:04:00] you were to hang one of these pieces in like a Bass Pro store, or like a traditional black barber shop, or like our local Indian marketplace, you would be beaten near to death. Like, immediately. Like... The most cultural groups in America just would have zero tolerance of this within sort of, I guess I call them the art museum class in our society.Malcolm: There is a level of tolerance to this. And I think another place you saw this, there was the recent scandal was the clothing brand, right? Where they had someSimone: name it with Balenciaga.Malcolm: Well, are you sure we can name it? Yeah. I've been trying not to name anything. Okay. With Balenciaga. Now, the thing to remember is who is Balenciaga's client base, right?Malcolm: Like, they are sort of an elite cultural group within our society. The people who are creating this ad campaign are literally the world experts in what this demographic within society Considers. Okay. What they want, what [00:05:00] their needs are, what will catch on was in their cultural group. It's not like this, this campaign was created by some like random wacko.Malcolm: You know, the marketing department at Valenciaga is literally the world specialist at how do we appeal to, I guess what I'd call the art museum cultural group. Right. And clearly like this, it's not like, Okay. These campaigns were like the work of one person, like they got multiple levels of approval.Malcolm: Right? So they thought that this would appeal to that cultural group. And so the question is, and where we wanted to go into all this is without making any very, like, specific accusations here. Is it. There appears to be an elite cultural group in our society that has much more tolerance for this sort of thing than any other cultural group in our society.Malcolm: And when I go out in the world and like, I meet normal people, people who are interested in, in And people who [00:06:00] present physically, like really young, that's just not that common. That's not like a common thing in the normal world. So why is it so common among the ultra wealthy in our society? Like that, that that's the question.Malcolm: That I think everybody recognizes is like weird that it's happening. But the only two ways we have for engaging with this question is either just, you know, wild conspiratorial speculation or saying that even asking this question. Is conspiratorial and we want to try to approach this from a more even keeled perspective.Simone: Right. Because we've talked about this in other episodes, the essentially like dog whistling effect that you can get.Simone: with a culture let's say you're Mormon and you can tell that someone else is a Mormon when others can't because you can kind of see oh, they're definitely wearing garments or something. It makes you feel really good and it makes you feel a lot closer to them. So is perhaps all of this really blatant.Simone: Lolita stuff that kind of [00:07:00] signaling? Is that what you're thinking? Well,Malcolm: I mean, so this is what's interesting. So I think historically, if you look at conservative power groups, in the 50s, 60s, 70s there were a lot of gay organizations within the conservative power circles. And I think That and I, I say this because I have tangential connections to secret societies that were definitely disproportionately gay and conservative power brokers back in the day like Simone and I have unique access into the world of secret societies due to like it.Malcolm: our jobs and our backgrounds. And I can say that at least historically, that was definitely true. So what was it? GaySimone: is very different from oneMalcolm: gay today. I'm talking about gay in the 60s and 70s. I'm talking about the way it was perceived by society. Sexual expressions, especially on the conservative side, might be a way.Malcolm: That organically groups begin to bond if they are in [00:08:00] elite power centers in society. Now,Simone: hold on. So what, are you signaling that like kind of to get into a gang, for example, you might need to commit a pretty serious crime. Is this kind of something similar? Like it is so that you have dirt on this person and that they're in your group, but also if they leave your group, you can destroy them because you know that they've done something that's career ending.Simone: For gangs, they'reMalcolm: being sent to jail for this. I think it might be completely organic. Huh. Okay, like 1960s, 1970s conservative gay groups, right? Okay. So, any of, a, a, a, let's say there's a small group of, of, of gay people in this movement, right? Okay, okay. Just large, large up and coming group of, of, of rising conservative thought And a smallSimone: group that's actually really gay.Simone: Yeah. Yeah,Malcolm: actually gay. Okay, so they all start just organically engaging with each other, right? Mm-hmm. , so they all find out who all the other people are in this group. Okay, well, they're doing this just for their own personal [00:09:00] pleasure to start, but then it becomes clear. Somebody walks in your office looking for a promotion or something like that, and they're part of this group, and you are part of this group.Malcolm: Well, Well, s**t, I better give them a promotion because they have dirt on me, right? But also, we have this sign of camaraderie, so let's not even put them in a situation where they would need to use this dirt on me, right? So, essentially, you get a system where, organically, everyone with this mutually assured destruction on each other has a slight 20 30% advantage in, every sort of interaction where somebody else in that group is involved.Malcolm: Which leads to the entire group rising really quickly in the ranks. So it's not like at any point anybody decided to do something malicious, right? Because what I'm trying to ask is realistically, how in this world did networks of elite act? Like, that seems insane to me that that happened.Malcolm: How did that happen? This is what I'm thinking here. Because I guess you could say, oh, Satan worshipers or whatever, and they [00:10:00] all went into this. Intentionally to hurt people. I don't know. There's that In my adult life, I just don't run into that many people who genuinely like hurting other people.Simone: Most people. Yeah, or genuine Nobody, we've, we've come across people who are could probably we wouldn't know, but I think it's plausible, especially from our research into sexuality, that they're, they're aroused by, what should I say, younger phenotypes. But most, I've never come across someone who's yeah, I'm a Satanist.Simone: I've never come across someone who is a Satanist. And I do exist.Malcolm: I'll tell you why you haven't come across a Satanist though, actually. Okay, why? Because I have seen them in the data. Like you see clearly some progressive elites are actual They wouldn't call themselves satanists, they'd call themselves like, I don't know, they have some word for it, right, where it's like a type of wiccanism that's like edgy and cool.Malcolm: It's because you and I are publicly known as, even back in the day when we were more invited to like elite progressive events as [00:11:00] really hating woo. Um, And the satanist groups are the groups that are most connected with like goop and like other woo like stuff because they're involved in it because it's edgy.Malcolm: They're not involved in it because like they think they're being evil. They're involved in it because they're trying to be. subversive in a way that gets a rise out of a culture that is so dominated by ennui. I mean, that's what I think was happening with those ads. TheSimone: Oh, the Balenciaga ads. Yeah.Simone: The BalenciagaMalcolm: ads. What was really happening there? I mean, I think that to a certain part of like wealthy, let's say LA society, their lives are so dominated by ennui. That it requires just like extreme offensiveness to get any sort of a reaction out of them. So I think that that's why they're engaging with that.Malcolm: But now let's talk about the, the other thing here, because I think that there might actually be a something going on here. So when we were doing our sexuality book, one of the [00:12:00] really interesting things about male sexuality is it's pulled between two extremes by And by that, what I mean is as a guy, you can optimize for gender dimorphism, right?Malcolm: So you are assuring that the thing you're breeding with is female. So this is larger butts, larger breasts, larger fingernails, longer hair, more voluptuous shape. Or you can be optimizing for fertility window. The problem is, is that you're actually typically optimizing for the opposite. When you're optimizing for fertility window, you are optimizing for youth, which means you're typically optimizing for smaller breasts, smaller butt, smaller, waist hip ratio and stuff like that.Malcolm: And so we looked at the data on this and this is a really shocking thing that we found is that the amount of wealth. A guy had in our data set correlated with which of these extremes he seemed to optimizeSimone: for. Now we saw this [00:13:00] both in the research and in the data set that we got from the survey you created and ran.Simone: So I can quote from our book. You wrote, in addition, our data backs up a pattern that has been observed in other studies that wealthy men prefer smaller breasts. This pattern is even more striking than we anticipated in our data. Not a single man in the wealthiest category of those Our survey reported preferring a breast size above average, with around half preferring small breasts.Simone: Our survey respondents who reported being in the second highest well category reported preferring small breasts at a rate of 17% and a robust 84 preferred, sorry, 84% preferred Breasts of average size or below contrast that with the lowest income category of men who took our survey, who reported preferring small breasts at only 5% and the second poorest preferring them at around the same level, only 4% in this case.Simone: So there's a clear, likeMalcolm: inverse relationship. You were talking about as well. It was done by like a website for like [00:14:00] wealthy guys to find I don't know. Partners. Yeah, so there's been a number of studies on this and you can see from our data like this isn't a small effect. It's not like a Oh, 20% here, 20% there.Malcolm: It's an enormous effect size. So it wouldSimone: seem that maybe it's not even that people as much are like born being super turned on or we'll say sexually interested in youth versus female dimorphism. It is a product of your perceived sense of resource.Malcolm: Let's talk about evolutionarily why you would have this, right?Malcolm: Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you can only choose one partner, which throughout history has been true of most middle income and below men even in, even in societies where a man can get multiple partners the vast majority of people in those societies didn't get multiple partners. Right. So you're choosing one.Malcolm: Potential partners. You got to make absolutely sure they're female. However, if you can just get lots of partners, which, wealthy and [00:15:00] powerful men could typically get throughout history, then what matters especially just as opposed to you're a wealthy and powerful man, but then you're, it's actually, okay.Malcolm: Suppose you're a wealthy and powerful man and you can either get only one partner or you can get lots of partners. If you can get lots of partners, it doesn't really matter what you're optimizing for. You're just optimizing for volume. But if you can get one partner because you can care for all of their offspring, right?Malcolm: Because wealth is not an issue for you. You could have 20 kids, right? You are going to optimize for youth when you marry that partner. Yeah,Simone: because it will produce maximum number of kids, like biggest lifetime. For example, we just we're, we're finally ready to like do chickens at our house. Right. And we could either choose to get hens or we can choose to get chicks and it getting chicks.Simone: If we get chicks now. That means we have to wait until basically January before they start even laying eggs. So that's like a significant amount of time investment, wealth investment. We have to get the feed, do all the stuff for them[00:16:00] to wait until they're ready, but then they will produce far more eggs over time.Simone: Right. They're going to get more life out of them, more eggs out of them than we're going to get. If we buy mature. Chickens. So maybe this is what's going on is, is like if, if we were, even if we were like very resource poor in the moment, would we be getting a, an egg laying hen that we know, is healthy enough and fat enough to immediately start producing either meat for us or eggs, or are we going to get chickens that we have to wait forever until it produces anything that will sustain us?Malcolm: So, so yeah, so, and here's something really interesting. So I'm going to talk about something that happens in women and say, I think something similar might be happening here. So, one of the things we talk about happening in women is that women will typically prefer a partner who already has other women interested in them and they'll even prefer partners who are already married.Malcolm: Like they'll choose a guy who has a ring over another guy because it shows there's other female interest in the guy. Well, you get this interesting phenomenon where like during concerts, and we've seen this throughout history. So you can see this going all the way back to who is that mob guy who is the singer?Malcolm: Frank Sinatra. Frank Sinatra. Frank [00:17:00] Sinatra. Yeah, you see the Frank Sinatra. You saw thisSimone: with Liszt Franz Liszt. The Liszt, I can't, Lisztomania, the, the, the pianist, I believe. Mozart, you,Malcolm: you saw this because where women would start screaming in the room and then some of them would pass out, right?Malcolm: What is happening there? Well, what I think is happening there is Women in general get more turned on by a guy as they think other women are interested in that guy. However, some women, a minority of women, like a small portion of women are born without the ability to downregulate this phenomenon. And so they essentially end up feeding off of the other women around them in their arousal to this group until it essentially overheats their brain and they pass out.Malcolm: Not exactly overheats their brain, but you get what I mean. It's like a A sensory overload. Yeah, it's a sensory overload that causes them to pass out. Well, I think with most guys, when they get wealthy, they're like, Oh yeah, I like small breasts, right? Like normal stuff. Right. But there's a small portion of guys [00:18:00] who they get wealthy and the system doesn't have a, an off meter on it.Malcolm: And they're like actually interested in young people and and I think this group is, because this is the thing that weirds me out, I look at Jeff Epstein's plane list, right? And this is like a lot of celebrities, a lot of celebrities, like a lot of people who I'd heard of. Right. And like, when I think about the people who I've casually met.Malcolm: I do not see that many people interested in young people. That's just not a thing. That's not like a thing among my friend groups. That is not a thing that I've ever thought about. Like, how is it possible that there's that many celebrities who are interested in this? Right? So there's really only two things.Malcolm: One is, is that their, their biology could be adapting to their perceived level of power which would really explain this. It would also explain why the media is so terrified about it getting out, that this is actually happening, because... Even if they can't access these groups, this flip in their [00:19:00] perceived personal power might've already happened and they may secretly have these desires and they may have some like aspiration to enter these groups or what's happening is that it's useful for them in terms of growing and maintaining their power.Malcolm: Like it creates like these organic power groups that we've been talking about. Either way. I actually think that both are probably happening at the same time. Yeah. So I guess my takeaway is, is I think that this is a real phenomenon. That there actually are real groups among some elite circles that are doingSimone: this.Simone: There are two dynamics. One is that there appears to be a correlation between wealth and interest in youth. And two, that there appears to be this like... Dirty secret trust group like fraternity that is created through shared indulgence in socially toxic hobbies. Does that make sense?Malcolm: Yeah. But here's a really interesting thing about this phenomenon because we have a pretty [00:20:00] wide access into what the elite in our society are doing, like much more than the average person would have through operating different secret societies, having, having gone to their stuff.Malcolm: I'd say that this desire is almost absent. Are completely absent from what I call the dissident elite. I just have not seen it in those communities. ThoseSimone: are the communities They don't, I don't think the dissident elite, ReallyMalcolm: feel powerful, because they feel attacked by everyone.Simone: Yeah, they feel attacked, they're like, more homesteady, more let me set up my bunker, let me get guns, let me get, let me get, farm, sustain my family, they're coming for me.Simone: Let's build a militia, like that's their, that's their dirty little secret. Right. And not so much not so much, well, and maybe there's, there's also a cultural, more party element, like an indulgent, effete, boffinalian. No, I think their tiny littleMalcolm: secret is that they tell the truth about what they believe.Malcolm: And in our society, that can get you so cancelled. So when I think about the dissident elite circles, what do we all do? We... We, we sit around and we're [00:21:00] like, it turns out that certain parts of a human sociological profile are heritable and they're changing over time and the general population, her, her, her You make itSimone: sound like these are all old men who wear suspenders.Malcolm: Right, right, no, no. It turns out, there's, there's not what they sound like. This offensive thing is actually probably true. No, no. But what I'm saying is if that's how they organically bond in a way that could get everyone in these circles mutually canceled, so they don't need to engage with this otherSimone: stuff.Simone: Well, do you think it's, it's more just like. being sexually prudish as well, that in, in these more progressive power circles where there are rumors of these, theseSimone: circles, it's more, it's, it's a much more culturally like sexually permissive and sexually deviant society versus the dissident right circles, which are much more sex negative.Malcolm: I guess I don't understand. I think that that's not it at all. I mean, [00:22:00] the elite circles that we are in are very sexually permissive.Malcolm: On both sides? Yeah, on both sides. They're very sexually permissive. They, they are all into yeah, I, I think that that's just wrong. I think what it is, is the way that they engage with subversiveness. These groups are engaging with subversiveness, like the dissident groups, and trying to make society better and trying to be honest and trying to tell the truth.Malcolm: That is how they... And by make society better, I mean move it away from the dominant cultural group right now. I mean, they are fighting against the big bad. I mean, historically, that's what the Illuminati was. They were fighting against the Catholic Church. They were a group of people who said, We don't like this group that's controlling our society right now.Malcolm: Let's fight against it. Right? The reason why they have to be... In these secret organizations is because they're fighting the, the powers that be mm-hmm. , the people who control the powers that be, the people who control the, the media and what's true and academia like this, this sort of monoculture in our society.Malcolm: If you are just going along with everything they're doing, then all [00:23:00] you can really do is dunk on the amount of power you have over other people. And I can almost think of no bigger sign of that. Oh, than, especially if you're a community. Keep in mind, these people have almost zero fertility rate.Malcolm: So, I mean, where are they getting these kids, right? You are in a community where kids are a, an extremely scarce asset. Yeah. Where, as within our groups, oh, I also think this is another thing. I think within the extreme progressive groups, it's pretty common for these people to not have kidsSimone: of their own.Simone: Well, and I guess it's, it's it's a lot harder to be interested. Do you think it's, I mean, I feel like parents are a lot more defensive of children and you'd be a lot more turned off byMalcolm: this, right? You talk about the dissident. Yeah, they're like all parents. Yeah. You talk about doing something to harm a kid, you get a knuckle sandwich pretty quickly.Malcolm: Whereas in these other groups they don't have kids often, and so there's probably less of a perception of their inherent humanity. Oh, it's easier toSimone: dehumanize children in a culture where children are largely absent. Yeah. Creepy. [00:24:00] No. Creepy. Yeah. Well. It's definitelyMalcolm: really happening.Malcolm: Anybody who tells you it isn't happening, Epstein. And, and, and they're like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. But once we got Epstein, it was handled. It's over. It's handled. It's over. It's once we arrested, oh, meth dealer, the meth epidemic is over. And it's yeah, but didn't the meth dealer die mysteriously in prison?Malcolm: Couldn't that only have happened? If this was still a phenomenon that was going on in our society and people needed to shut him up and they're like, no, that was an accident. They just needed to kill the one guy and then it was all over. There to me is no more of a sign that this is still happening, that we still don't know what happened to Epstein.Malcolm: Hmm.Simone: Well. They're getting better at hiding it, I guess. That'sMalcolm: Well, hey, they were good at hiding it for a long time before Epstein too, I mean Yeah, I guessSimone: he was going for a good long time. A goodMalcolm: long time with a lot of powerful people in our society.Simone: Yeah, pretty wild. Oh,Malcolm: that's bad. Hold on, [00:25:00] actually, I want to look this up.Malcolm: I'm just trying to see ifSimone: If Jelaine Maxwell is dead. I think she's stillMalcolm: alive. Well, no, I mean, I, I think that Yeah, I was just checking. Yeah, Elon was not on the Epstein flight list. And I think that shows the type of thing that we're talking about, right? And he's actually right now advocating for the DOG to do more to get the full list released.Malcolm: Which is like, why hasn't the full list been released? Again, the, the, the malevolent players are still in positions of power. And we have good guys out there, And it's important that, that just because we have one or two differences with them, that we don't attack them. We're, we're all on the same side, we're trying to, to protect kids. HideSimone: your kids, people.Malcolm: Hide your kids! Hide your wife!Simone: I, I just wives are safe, apparently. I, it is terrifying. Genuinely scary. Yeah,Malcolm: so... No, no, I mean, this is really happening. This is really happening. And there's a number of reasons why it could be happening, but I think that...Malcolm: What's interesting out there is I think that almost everyone engaging with this [00:26:00] is either engaging with it as like pure speculative conspiracy theory, which I think people to dismiss it or they're engaging with it as just like insane.Malcolm: Like,Simone: you know, What I appreciate about this conversation is that it's a discussion of this issue from the perspective of why would.Simone: Why would he like normal humans do this? Because I think normally when it's discussed, it's like these, these disgusting, terrifying monsters. You can barely imagine as human, like that are, doing things that you can't even possibly model. And what we're trying to say here is, okay, well, actually like from a behavioral standpoint, there appears to be robust evidence suggesting that people who do have a lot of resources and wealth.Simone: will find themselves attracted to youth at higher rates and signs of youth at higher rates and that also there seem to be patterns at every level of society from like street gangs to you know the highest echelons of power to create these fraternities and [00:27:00] trust Circles around forbidden and highly legal and, and destroying like career or life destroying things, right?Simone: WhenMalcolm: they're trying to normalize it now is like this whole map phenomenon and stuff like that, minor attracted person. Oh, it's, it's a new, it's a new trend.Malcolm: But what I'm saying is the normalization of maps is definitely a thing now. Really? Trying to make this a protected class in our society. And I don't know. I mean, anyone who is acting on this. I don't know. I, I just, I, I see it as a slippery slip. You make it a protected class, right? They can find each other more easily.Malcolm: I , it could disempower them to an extent. But this group I think is just so entrenched right now. I, I, I, I definitely would not say that they need to be butSimone: but you would never say that they need to be . No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's definitely not what you're saying. No, no, no,Malcolm: no, no, no, no. They're a protected class. That's a really mean thing to say.Simone: Mm hmm. You're definitely not saying that people shouldMalcolm: these people and , but you'll just be called a [00:28:00] conspiracySimone: theorist. And that's wrong. No, that's, that's that's, that's definitely wrong. That's doxing, right? That's not what we're condoning at all. No, no, no, no, no, no. Well, all right, well, you've got some chicks to feed. I've got some kids to pick up. Shall we reconvene downstairs? I am excitedMalcolm: to!Simone: I love you, Malcolm. IMalcolm: love you too, Simone. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this thoughtful discussion, Malcolm and Simone analyze what makes some self-help and life advice useful versus dangerous or ineffective. They break down the incentives and blindspots of different types of gurus, warning against advice tied too closely to an ideology or a guru's identity. The couple emphasizes focusing on your own values and life goals first. They argue happiness is a byproduct of pursuing meaning, not an end in itself. Overall they advocate philosophical inquiry to determine your purpose, combined with pragmatic steps towards efficacy.Simone: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm Collins. Hello,Malcolm: Simone Collins. Are we going to try to use our names even though we're married?Simone: Yes. Mr. Malcolm Collins.Malcolm: I don't know. Branding. I don't like it. Maybe we'll just do Malcolm and Simone going forward. But there are a lot of people out there on the internet who are like life advice gurus, and we definitely do not style ourselves as life advice gurus. That said a lot of these people seem to be giving very bad advice. And as people who aren't life advice gurus, but who seem to have their lives together more than, a lot of society these days, this is what always gets me about the life guru space.Malcolm: And I also see this within the dating guru space, is that many of these people don't have successful relationships. Or they don't seem to really have their lives together. And I actually was [00:01:00] talking to, I remember a long time ago somebody in the dating guru space. And I was like, why are you giving people, like, why is your job this was her job, giving people dating advice?Malcolm: And I was like, When you don't have a good relationship or even have a partner right now, and she goes I date more than any other dating coach I know and I'm like that does seem true. That does seem true. But I don't know. I think, and then this could be a cultural perspective as well.Malcolm: That some cultures when they're trying to decide who to trust as a source of information, what they'll do is they'll look towards the crowd, right? They'll say, who is the crowd looking to as a source of information, or they'll look to some sort of External certifying agency, right? So yeah, this people might have had 10 terrible marriages, but they do have their Ph.Malcolm: D. in relationship counseling. Whereas I think our cultural perspective places [00:02:00] a huge amount of weight on what the individual has been able to achieve within their own life. And the belief that you can't really make it past that point.Simone: Yeah. So if you are getting advice from someone, keep in mind that it will get you to exactly where they are now. So if you really like where someone is getting life advice for them is. is pretty good. But just doing it because they are famous or they're telling you things that sound or feel good probably not the best course of action to take.Malcolm: And this can be a problem with it was in what we call the the viral life coach sort of meme. When we talk about memetic clusters, it began to grow accidentally. I remember in the Bay area I was adjacent to this community. Where it started was one life coach and then everyone they were coaching ended up becoming life coaches.Malcolm: No, which makesSimone: perfect sense because what, like what does the life coach have figured out how to do? They figured out how to be a life coach. So they're probably going to [00:03:00] lead people in that general direction.Malcolm: But it's I don't think that's what they went. If you had been able to take them aside at the beginning and said, is your goal was this to become a life coach?Malcolm: They might've said no. And then this is the thing. Not all life coaches are like this. Some life coaches are like specifically very good at preventing this. And I think that there's a way that you can sort for this, look at their other clients who have worked with them for a while. Did they end up becoming more successful or did they end up becoming less successful?Simone: This is, there's something that's really interesting about this. Actually, this might be too much of a tangent, but we were introduced at one point to a company that would take law firms and lawyers and actually show you their outcomes vis a vis specific judges, for example, and in certain courts.Simone: And What you realize after looking at this data, there's this profound disconnect in the legal industry, at least in the United States, between like expensive law firms, prestigious law firms, famous lawyers, and actually good court records. And you could see on the graphs, like the track record [00:04:00] of different lawyers.Simone: Against certain judges in certain districts. So if your case is likely to end up in front of this particular judge, often what you're doing is if someone's Oh yeah, like this lawyer sees this judge, like all the time, they know them really well. You're like, you're going to be in really good hands.Simone: And then you look and you see there's all these judges that like, or sorry, lawyers, there are all these lawyers who see certain judges, a ton. But they like always lose, they always lose and no one knows that going into it because unfortunately the system isn't set up in a way where people are looking at outcomes. Instead, they're looking at prestige. They're looking at signaling. They're looking at how people choose to market themselves. And I think this is not just something that's a problem in the legal industry.Simone: It's a problem. Also look at teaching, like where are teachers going to get you? They're going to get you where they are. And that's why many people, when they're young, want to be a teacher when they grow up, of course.Malcolm: And I think that it's critical, something to note was the lawyer example is this was a company.Malcolm: I don't even know if the company is still around, but like this data was out there in public and not that [00:05:00] many people were using it. The vast majority of people, when choosing a lawyer, we're not looking at this, data that's out there about how frequently they won cases like theirs, but we're looking at the prestige of their firm or like marketingSimone: materials.Simone: And what blew our minds too, is that there seemed to be zero correlation. Between what you paid for and what you got in terms of outcomes.Malcolm: Oh my God, this is just a lawyer, right? This is just hundreds of thousands of dollars. There's young people who go out there and take advice. from gurus just because they're like famous within their ideological circles and they're like this guy is ideologically approved or this girl is ideologically approved therefore their advice must be efficacious and it's important to remember that just because someone is smart it doesn't mean that they have great So when a person rises to fame within sort of life advice circles, there's typically three reasons that's going to happen, okay?Malcolm: One, [00:06:00] that person is telling people what one specific ideological group wants to hear. But they're telling it to them in a way that like sounds smarter or more sophisticated than they're used to hearing it or edgier than they're used to hearing it or something it's what they already want to hear, but with some sort of spin put on it, some sort of flavor agent added.Malcolm: The next is people telling people that. None of their problems are actually their fault. And that they're all actually everyone else's fault, and they're actually should be totally happy doing nothing. Basically, this group is just trying to convince you to be happier with whatever you're doing right now.Malcolm: The first group typically is more oh, your traditions are actually all right. All of your instincts on how to handle this are right. And then another deviation of this second group. Are people who will tell you, okay, actually you do have problems, but you can solve it with wishy thinking.Malcolm: Wishy thinking coaches are really big. Wishy thinking. We, I named this after the great skit [00:07:00] on this from the it crowd. But it's basically. It's actually a psychological trick, which is really fascinating and it's prevalent throughout history as like a scam. The best modern example is the secret. But there's been lots of examples. It basically pops back up every 20 years or so. The secret was from my generation.Malcolm: There's been probably some new generation. Like as soon as I describe it, you'll be like, Oh, I know what you're talking about. So the way it works is this is the guru will tell you, if you. Really wish for something, it will become more likely to become true. And then they'll add, there's some ways that the formula is typically altered as well to make it work a bit better.Malcolm: They'll say it works better if you forgot that you were wishing for that thing. So they'll say like first really wish for something, write it down. Then throw that thing away and forget that you wish for it as hard as you can. Or they'll do some other things like, like wish for a thing [00:08:00] and then perform some ritual around that.Malcolm: Like maybe masturbation or something like that. Something they see as these gathering spirits or something, but what they're really doing here is , they're building something for which you can build confirmation bias around, which is to say, if things move a bit in the direction of that thing, you'll be like, ah, yes, this was all correct.Malcolm: The reason some iterations have evolved culturally, this tendency of saying, oh, you need to forget about it is because through forgetting about the thing. It's harder to remember it if it doesn't end up becoming true. So you don't remember that it didn't work, but that if it does end up becoming true, you will almost certainly remember that you tried to forget about it in this whole ceremony that you pulled.Malcolm: And so you're like, Oh, something definitely happened there. And so it's, yeah, it's just a confirmation bias cycle. More specifically, it allows the guru to say. Oh, you remembered it. That's, that's why it didn't work. But then if, it works and you remembered it, they say, well, you remembered it because it worked. And so there's always an excuse, which is actually really clever.Malcolm: Do you have any thoughts on what she's [00:09:00] thinking,Simone: Simone? It is also known what as manifesting vision boards postulating. It's shown up in both like really woo circles, but also I would say like more hard line, like preying on it to, pranks for something.Simone: I think it shows up there. So don't think that your cultural group is immune to it somehow.It is because the vast majority of public intellectuals who are sort of gurus around life advice. Rise to fame for the three above reasons, either they're promoting, was she thinking they are telling people something that the person already wants to believe Because it aligns with their cultural predilections around how the world works or should work. , but they put some sort of new flavor on it, or they are telling people that their problems aren't their fault.Is actually why disproportionately you see these public gurus living these terrible lives and so unable to make things work for themselves.Life advice that leads to [00:10:00] fameAnd that sells. is specifically adversarial often to life advice, which is beneficial to the individual. Uh, it's just fascinating to us that this doesn't disconfirm their expertise. To most of the general public.Malcolm: Yeah. And then the final group. Is unfortunately usually only accessible to rich people and these are people who actually help people and people who generally have their own lives together And the reason they're typically only available to rich people is like consider financial advisors, right?Malcolm: If someone, if a financial advisor guru they wouldn't need to do that if they were actually really good at investing, right? Most of them. And so it's much rarer for them to go into financial advising unless they're just like actually altruistically motivated. That's why when I'm taking crypto investing advice, I look for the most autistic people out there because I know they're doing it because they're like just obsessed with the numbers.Malcolm: And that's why they continue to broadcast, even though they have enough money, they don't need to do it anymore. But that's a good thing, but it's also true with like relationships or other aspects of your life. Generally, if somebody has [00:11:00] some like base level of competence, they've got some other career path laid out for them.Malcolm: And if they've been able to succeed with the masses, they likely like efficacious advice actually does very poorly with the masses. Obvious reasons. It's not palatable. Like it doesn't tell them what they already want to believe. It doesn't tell them that everything's not their fault. And it takes a while before it's realized.Malcolm: And even though it takes a while before it's realized once it is realized then the person's likely too successful or is stuff going on in their life. So they're not out there proselytizing to whatever the next group is. Whereas people who, undergo this sort of sunk cost fallacy, they end up proselytizing these other systems, especially systems that build dependency, and that's where you really need to be careful.Simone: So let's dive into signs that we think someone. Does give legitimate advice that we listen to aside from the fact that they're like living the life that we want to live, tell me if you hold this intuitively as well, or if I am completely off base with this, but I often give extra [00:12:00] points to someone if they.Simone: They have something I value or I'm trying to get right so I can trust that sort of their heuristics will get me there, but they're also not obsessed with that thing. So for example, if they're not obsessed with finding a spouse that they love, but they just happened to be in a really loving relationship and they did so intentionally and it wasn't just luck, then I trust that more, or if they are not obsessed with wealth.Simone: But they are wealthy and they didn't, get that through luck or chance, obviously, which a lot of people have, right. They inherited their wealth or they were in the right place at the right time, et cetera. Then I listened to them extra because I do think that there is also a dangerous signaling effect where if someone, for example, like really has to see themselves as being in an amazing relationship, they might falsely signal how good their relationship is.Malcolm: Yeah. So I think what you're saying here, which is really true is if it's an aspect of their self identity. Their identity is, I am good at relationships. I am good at being happy. [00:13:00] I am good at finance. They're much more likely to falsely signal in a way that could lead you to over trusting their advice.Malcolm: That's a really good signal that I hadn't considered. But nowSimone: Also it dovetails with our philosophy on like how to actually get happiness, even if you really care about happiness, but we don't. Which is, I don't know, you give the pitch, Malcolm. What do you think our secret to happiness is?Malcolm: Well, I mean, happiness is a reward for a life of efficaciously lived.Malcolm: If you set goals for yourself and those are goals that you believe to some extent have real value, are actually. Moving you towards some sort of intrinsic truth as you achieve those goals, your body rewards you with happiness meaningful happiness, not the cheap kind of happiness, which ends up hurting you in the long run.Malcolm: I think that the worst thing you can do in regards to any sort of positive emotional state is to chase the emotional state for its own sake[00:14:00] more broadly, I'd say the actual big question. When somebody is okay, how do I live a good life or something like this? And this is why we wrote the pragmatist guide to life.Malcolm: The goal of that book was to try to help people come to their own answers to why do I exist without biasing them towards any answer? Because I think that once you've answered that question, once this is why I think I exist, this is like my purpose in the universe. Or this is what I think is like an intrinsically good action in the universe.Malcolm: That action will give me a sort of list of things that I know when I've accomplished them, I've done something meaningful. And then when I go out and accomplish those things. Our biology is such that it rewards us with a very meaningful, long lasting, and in no way bittersweet reward.Malcolm: Whereas I think most forms of pleasure, if they're gotten through almost any other mechanism it typically caused more damage in the long run whenSimone: I would add to that. So I think that there are other underlying mechanisms to this [00:15:00] that really matter. Like if you, let's say that you really want to be happy and you don't pursue this path, and instead you pursue whatever is going to make you happiest.Simone: I think there's a genuine risk of the hedonic treadmill with pretty much anything that you can find that can give you happiness. You're going to adjust to it. It is going to lose its luster and then you're going to find yourself back to where you were when you started. And I also think that we've seen across I can't point to one peer reviewed study on this, unfortunately, but across many different domains, both anecdotally, historically, when we're looking at populations, but then also in terms of studies that like, there's this sort of ennui that comes.Simone: from being comfortable, from having all your problems solved, maybe from being really wealthy, maybe just from, being comfortable and bored and surrounded by comfort and surrounded by pleasure that actually leads to a sort of deep emptiness and depression where it's not necessarily a hedonic treadmill [00:16:00] problem.Simone: It is a nothing really matters because nothing's really hard problem. And I think that's, that could be one of the most depressing states to ever be in. And I think it's one reason why many people do suffer from depression because while many people have tons and tons of problems in life, in the end, A lot of those problems are self inflicted.Simone: It's like anxiety. They're not like potential problems. Yeah, they're not.Malcolm: They're not starving to death. And where they are worried about like potential death, it's from like overeating or something like that. Yeah. Self inflicted to a large extent, but more than that, they're not even really worried about death.Malcolm: If you don't have people depending on you, in a big way, you're not really worried about death. You're worried about, what you might lose, like throwing something away that you like, but there, there's not the same genuine fear, the same way that there, there isn't genuine hardship often in the lifestyle of developed country.Malcolm: And I think you're right that does cause a level of ennui, but I think another thing that really causes that is that these people aren't [00:17:00] taught to look for what genuinely matters in life. They are told by society, this is what's good. This is what's bad. And they incorrectly, like most people in history have incorrectly assumed that they were at the moral nexus of history which is to say whatever society thinks is moral is what's moral.Malcolm: And we. are definitely not at the moral nexus of history. Everyone has always thought that. Okay, our society now has finally figured things out. And, sometimes you'll talk to progressives and they're like yeah. But society becomes more moral as it moves into the future. And I was like, what are you talking about?Malcolm: Like you, as a progressive. Obviously believe that LGBT rights are a moral thing. We have those multiple times throughout history and they'd had them stripped away and then they became even a sign of immorality to future generations. That the Zeitgeist says something is moral does not mean it is.Malcolm: And I think that they know this, and this is where the Ennui comes from. They don't believe what the Zeitgeist is telling them is moral, but they do see it as a sign for status signaling. And [00:18:00] almost nothing will sap your personal vitality. Like, We're not the types who believe in souls, but I do believe that humans have a vitality to their sentience that can be feasted upon and drained from them.Malcolm: And one of the things that just drains it faster is a life dedicated To status signaling. And there are many ways an individual can do this. You'll see pictures of somebody at a beach being like, haha, not wasting my time, buying fancy cars, hashtag whatever, or it's like, what that's just a different form of status signaling.Malcolm: You're signaling the free time you have, you're signaling the things you can do. Or and where we see this now and where I would really encourage people to not focus on this is a new form of status signaling I've seen in both the far right and the far left is body status signaling.Malcolm: So people have convinced themselves. That their physical presentation is their identity. Oh, I see. The most important part of their [00:19:00] identity and where this plays out in the left, I think is very obvious, but that's not to say that we don't have the same problems on the far right in terms of body dysmorphia.Malcolm: I see these young people who are doing, surgeries to themselves, who are trying to look like the perfect male or trying to look like, I guess what they think the perfect female looks like. And. Why, like, how could that be a thing of intrinsic value? How could what you physically look like matter other than in how it makes your significant other feel?Malcolm: I just, and once you have a significant other who cares for you. I can guarantee whether they're male or female, they might be like, Oh, you could edit this or this, but they're definitely not min maxing your body unless they're min maxing you for a status signal themselves. And then that's probably a problem.Malcolm: And by that, what what's a trophy wife, right? You look at these trophy wives, I've been in communities where some people had trophy wives. It's a wife that's not chosen [00:20:00] because the individual thinks that they're maximally attracted. Cause I know these people, they cheat on their wives.Malcolm: I've seen who they're cheating on their wives with. They're not like supermodels it's a woman who you have modified in a way that you think positively augments your own status when you go to a party or online or in social media. Just broadly, this is the most basic of takes, yet it is something that I think so many people, they see other people's status signaling, and they don't see status signaling in themselves and they don't see that they have optimized their lives around a form of status signaling, and that is hurting them in the same way forms of status signaling that they see as vapid.Simone: Here's a question though. Because , to repeat what we think will make you really happy is successful pursuit of your values. And I actually think that someone can live an extremely happy life and successful pursuit of optimizing around a certain character.Simone: I genuinely think that, and I [00:21:00] want you to try to refute this. Let's say that like my whole life is around being this like quirky artist who like hosts my little salons and like creates really cool art and has cats that I paint to be like zoo animals, Oh, weird stuff.Simone: But I'm really good at doing it. It's what I care about.Malcolm: So you've set an easy goal and you've accomplished simple things related to that goal. Keep in mind that the level of deep satisfaction you're going to get from accomplishing any goal. Is directly proportional to how challenging you believe that goal was. Now, if you believe these goals were actually very challenging, you'll get a lot of reward fromSimone: Views are oriented, around maximizing a certain self image of yourself, there is no ceiling to how well you can maximize it, and you can spend your entire life In pursuit of that and really struggle because obviously like the ultimate version of whatever it is your world famous for being that person, right?Simone: You get just more famous and there's a reality TV show about you or or, you just [00:22:00] become even more entrenched in this community, even higher in a dominance hierarchy. I actually think that someone could spend an entire life investing in this and really feel like there's still a lot more they could do.Malcolm: I agree with that. If you move high with it, yes, you could get good emotional reward. But then I think the second thing to remember is there's a part of your brain that I think recognizes whether or not what you are doing is something you genuinely believe has value. And some of these people might believe that living this archetype does have value.Malcolm: Okay. If you can convince yourself of that, and if the only thing that matters is feeling good in life, you'll do okay. However, I think that's a really weird way to structure your life, and I can't imagine recommending somebody to do that. I'd be like, if you are just absolutely convinced that nothing matters in the world, and only your happiness matters, then you might be able to structure your life in the way that this model would suggest.Malcolm: I'm not saying that you can't find meaningful happiness through other avenues. I just can't imagine... [00:23:00] Why you would chase them when instead you could, do some deep philosophical inquiry into what you think has genuine meaning in the world and what you think an actual life well lived looks like.Simone: Yeah, but I think some people don't believe there's genuine meaning in the world. And they really want to maximize how happy they feel. And they think that what they can be best at is being a character. No,Malcolm: and that's true. And I'm not saying. Fine. Do that. I think the type of person you're talking about is an incredibly small portion of the population.Malcolm: So much so that it's a trivial portion of the population.Simone: Maybe. I think you are overestimating how willing people are to like really think through deep philosophical subjects and then commit to them. And I think we'll spend a lot of time thinking about what character am I and what is my persona and how do I get people to see me that way and that society spends a lot more time elevating and valorizing people [00:24:00] who are, amazing, colorful characters that everyone knows about than they do people who are extremely thoughtful and their philosophical underpinnings and dedicated to their faith.Simone: Come on. No.Malcolm: I'm not saying that people aren't bombarded by this stuff. I'm just saying it won't, it may fulfill this happiness quota, but I don't think it'll leave them feeling fulfilled in the same way that you are selling it. I think it may for a sliver of the population. And I think that you are underestimating the average person. I think that the only reason why genuine philosophical inquiry isn't that common in our society today like what's actually right and wrong, is our school system has been terrified of teaching people to ask those questions. First, because they were afraid of pissing off religious people, and then because they were afraid of pissing off progressives but both sides, like whoever the dominant group in society at the moment, or whoever the dominant group is within any local community, they have a vested interest in making sure kids never learn how to ask,Malcolm: what is good? And what is evil? [00:25:00] How do I determine this for myself? Because if a person doesn't know how to do that, then they're going to believe what the people around them say, which generally benefits whatever the socially dominant group is at the moment.Simone: Maybe I think, had I not met you I, again, I think you underestimate just how hard it is to find people who are willing to broach these conversations and push people into.Simone: Making these tough decisions. And I think had I not met you, I would've totally chosen some kind of shallow pursuit and totally loved it . Really?Malcolm: Yeah. I actually, I'm gonna push back hard here. I think you would've hit 30, 40. You would've started wanting kids. You didn'tSimone: expect that? No. I'm way too hormonally imbalanced to go through that and you know that.Simone: Oh,okay.Malcolm: You know that. Okay. Okay. Delta, you changed my mind. You specifically, the one person who didn't get a chance to fully hormonally normalize you wouldn't feel this. You'd be totally happy living in your house with your 30 cats and being an artist. No, I wouldn'tSimone: have 30 cats. [00:26:00] Gross. No knocking on people who do, but that's not my thing.Simone: It's unsanitary. But no, Malcolm I really, I don't think that suddenly wanting kids is something that makes people get philosophical either. I think it justMalcolm: No, I'm not saying suddenly wanting kids. I want to be clear about this. People go through different life stages where different things fulfill basic, there's a like we're talking about like deep fulfillment here in terms of what this conversation is about.Malcolm: But I think there's a lower level pond of fulfillment, which is like basic fulfillment to not feel like everything's falling apart and your life is a wreck. Okay? That basic fulfillment pool changes as you age your biology changes and it changes what it tells you. You need, when you are a toddler, your desires are going to be different from when you're in middle school and when you're in high school and when you're an adult of childbearing ages, because your ancestors who survived were doing different things during their different age ranges.Malcolm: I think what you're missing is when you are either not a parent or not [00:27:00] taking on certain roles in your community. At a certain age, and I'm not saying you necessarily having kids or not having kids, you are going to feel a type of unfulfillment that you may not be able to point out, that you may not be able to articulate, but every single person you are a descendant of.Malcolm: Who is one of your ancestors had and raised kids, except for a few rare cases where somebody was adopted or something like that that you don't think that would imprint itself on to how you relate to the world, I think is just. unrealistic even outside of your weird hormonal profile.Simone: I don't know.Simone: People in the comments can, I don't know, chime in on, I guess probably our viewers are more thoughtful philosophically than the average person by a long shot, but still, I question. I question because even people that we encounter who are very philosophically deep, we ask them like, okay, then what is your objective function?Simone: Where do [00:28:00] you maximizing for? And they're like, Oh, I just want to learn a lot, or I want to be happy. And I respect that. And they're logically consistent in that conclusion. Again, I think if that's what you're, and we know people in our lives whose objective functions more or less optimize around looking a certain way or wanting to be an interesting character.Simone: What matters to them is like how interesting their narrative. They're looking at themselves like a character in a book and they want to look cool. I just, I think this is way more pervasive than you want to let out. Yeah,Malcolm: my, my takeaway would be for people, when you're looking at people who you're getting advice from, okay the advice they give you No matter how famous they are, no matter how recommended they come, we'll only get to you to where they are in life.Malcolm: Don't expect it to take you further than that. So do invest a little bit of time into finding out the actual life circumstances of the people who you are using to shape your world perspective. The other thing I would [00:29:00] suggest is that our listeners. ask themselves, why do you exist? And if you don't have a good answer to that question, then that's literally the most important thing for you to do every day.Malcolm: Like more important than feeding yourself, because if you don't know why you exist, if you don't know why you want to exist then you don't know what the function is. You're optimizing your life around. You can say, I just go with the.Malcolm: But at that point, then you're optimizing around going with the flow. And the question is, why are you optimizing around that? If you don't have any logic with that, then it's just to survive. And I understand a lot of people are just interested in surviving, but I don't know, I was like, and it's okay to have your vices.Malcolm: Look in this video, I am drinking beer. This does not move me towards any of my goals, doing things that don't lead you toward the things that you think have longterm value in the world. [00:30:00] doesn't make you an evil person or it makes you a person in as evil as any human is and that we are all wretched and fallen.Malcolm: Except I think it's important that people learn to accept that are out themselves and not try. To be perfect, but try to be the best they can at doing the things they matter in the world or doing the things they think matter in the world.Simone: So there's one final hitch in this that I think is really important and that I think there's a gradient of sensitivity people have. I think probably being on the spectrum, I'm way more sensitive to stuff like this where I could be in successful pursuit of my goals, but want to die because.Simone: Various proclivities I have are not being met. And by that, like there are some environments in which like based on the schedule or the amount of control I have over my day or the setting I'm in, it doesn't matter if I'm living in alignment with my goals, I am miserable.Simone: And I think that is something that. Maybe dovetails with Maslow's hierarchy of needs and maybe doesn't, but there are [00:31:00] some things essentially that you need to have in order if you are to function properly, not just be happy or unhappy, but like basically be able to function and that can differ pretty significantly from one person to another.Malcolm: So I think Lazlo's Hierarchy of Needs is pointless. It just points out what Simone is saying. Sometimes, for some people, you need one thing before you can clearly focus on something else. And that is true, and that changes between individuals what those things are. However, it's also very important that you don't become indulgent in what those things are.Malcolm: Because at the end of the day, the only person you have to be responsible to is yourself. And so it's very easy to use these things to create justifications to the people around you around why you're not living the life, you should be living. So I almost worry if that knowledge is dangerous, but I think you're right because it helps people understand that they are going to fail to be perfectly efficacious in many ways.Malcolm: And that's a natural part of being human.Simone: Yeah. I [00:32:00] think the key is to know. What your minimum needs are, but also like to orient around those, because I think there's a lot of people who are like, Oh, first I have to get to like these levels and Maslow's hierarchy of needs. They're like, first I have to, create my retirement fund and do all these other things.Simone: And then I can focus on the meaning of life. And if you get caught up trying to go with like societal default or cultural default foundations. Before you start focusing on whatever it is that gives you meaning and true happiness, you are really screwing yourself over. Because first there's a lot of these things that are fundamental for either like societal defaults or Maslow's hierarchy of need defaults, or even like your friend and family's defaults that really don't matter to you.Simone: For example, there are some people who are like, listen, I have to have a certain level of income and wealth to feel comfortable. There are other people who like, honestly. Just really don't need it and really don't care. Some people need to have their house like really clean and really nice. Other people like, don't like, Oh, for example, you and me, Malcolm, like when we each live independently, we live in so [00:33:00] different environments.Simone: Like you just need like a mattress on the ground and like a small, like the smallest possible place. Doesn't matter if there's any natural light, if there's wifi and like a little bit of privacy, right? Like you're good.Malcolm: I have something soft to sleep on and it's. It's got Wi Fi, that's all I care about.Simone: Yeah. Whereas I'm like, is it pretty? Is it clean? Is it in a neighborhood that makes me feel nice? What's the natural light situation like? So I think really understanding that is important. Because it ButMalcolm: many of those are indulgences. You were quite efficient and you knew why you existed, even in environments where you didn't have those things.Malcolm: I think the question as to why you exist is not a question that has precursors, unless you're literally burning to death in a fire right now. Because it determines everything else that you are prioritizing and it is not a question you put off.Simone: Yes, although there were periods in my life where I was deeply depressed and verging on suicidal [00:34:00] and mostly as soon as I changed my setting away from these things that really bothered me it was not a problem.Simone: Gone. I don't know.Malcolm: Maybe this is an autistic person thing. I think that might be because you're autistic. And you're in very unique circumstances. And you might feel really... But that may be a situation that someone's in. And if they haven't tried changing their situation, that is something that they can try if they're feeling that way.Malcolm: I just don't know if that's the...Simone: Yeah, I just think that there are... Two really important parts to the equation, right? Like one important part is do you have the basic things you need to not be artificially depressed in your life? And then aside from that, it's about successful pursuit of whatever you think intentionally has value.Malcolm: Oh, and the final thing that I'd note here to not forget this. is that maintaining the aesthetics of a specific lifestyle once you're at a level where you have everything else handled. So don't aspire to the aesthetics of a lifestyle until you have [00:35:00] everything else handled, but doing that can add a layer on top of everything else.Malcolm: About right here is how to get your daily sugar. This is a, how do you add flavoring agents to it? And aesthetics of a lifestyle can be a very planned thing. Like I am going to do X or Y because it fits this aesthetic goal that I have for myself. But I think that's very different than aesthetics as an end goal.Malcolm: Or aesthetics as a status signaler.Simone: Yeah, and let me just add to this to illustrate what you mean. Which is sometimes we will do things that we won't enjoy in the moment. Because we know it creates happy narratives and memories and images. That tell us all something about our lives about us, enjoying the moment and whatnot.Simone: So it might be like a really hot summer day and none of us really wants to go out and take a walk somewhere beautiful, but we do it anyway and we take photos of it and we act happy and we just do it. And then in the end, we're really happy [00:36:00] that it happened. And we're probably on average a little bit more happy because we.Simone: are playing out that narrative. So there is and it's funny because when you flip that away like when you make that happen independent of someone having values and you make that just like the person who's taking the Instagram vacation and it's miserable and they're just there and they're snapping photos and they're not enjoying anything.Simone: It's terrible. It's dystopian. It is like exactly the opposite of any advice that you'd give to people and yet Somehow on the flip side of this, like when you add it, like you say, is like the cherry on top. It really does add this sparkle and luster that genuinelyMalcolm: makes us, But it needs to be time efficient.Malcolm: It needs to be the type of thing you're not doing a whole vacation to do. 100%, yeah. Which reminds me, Simone, we still have some blackberries we haven't picked in the yard. Time to do that. And, the chickens. We just got little baby chicks for the kids. I need to go pick up the kids to introduce them to them.Simone: Oh my gosh, they're gonna be so excited. Alright, let's do this. I'm so stoked. Chicken time. Love you, Malcolm.[00:37:00] Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, Malcolm and Simone discuss how they plan to teach their children about sexuality, relationships, and gender identity. They explain their perspective that biological sex differences exist but shouldn't overly define someone's life and goals. They emphasize teaching kids these are tools to use towards efficacy and warn against overinvestment in temporary cultural narratives. The couple advocates early spouse-seeking in college, avoiding compromising photos, and considering dating strategies and metagames. Overall they aim to equip their kids with knowledge to make informed choices given cultural realities.Transcript: Malcolm: [00:00:00] if you look at the cultural groups that are strict, but are otherwise forced , to engage the progressive monoculture, this is where you get the meme of the Catholic school girl, right? And this is definitely something when I was more promiscuous, I ran into girls like this a lot where the most promiscuous girls typically come from conservative religious backgrounds.Malcolm: They do not come from the backgrounds closer to you, where their parents laid out both options.Simone: Yeah, that's actually come to think of it. Yeah. ,Malcolm: they, they're like this system used to work in the past, but it used to work in an environment where this urban monoculture didn't exist and wasn't constantly sniping at it,Would you like to know more?Simone: Malcolm Collins, hello.Malcolm: Hello, Simone. It is wonderful to be chatting again today. I thought today, given that we have done some episodes that discuss things like people's sexuality, gender, stuff like that that we talk about, because another big theme of ours is, well, what are we going to do for our culture, for our kids?Malcolm: How are we going to build something that's [00:01:00] intergenerationally durable, that focuses on these concepts specifically in relation to... How we are going to conceive them as a cultural group and, and the, the way we will teach our kids about them or teach them to contextualize them within their own life.Malcolm: Yeah, exactly. Before we go any deeper down this, particular rabbit hole, I think it's important to survey the landscape of how cultures relate to sexuality and why they relate to sexuality, the way they relate to sexuality. So, cultures can be thought of as broadly an evolving software that's sitting on top of evolving human hardware.Malcolm: Which is a person's pre coded genetic predilections, and then on top of that you have this sort of software package. And if the package does a good job at getting people to reproduce, and pass that software package on to the next generation, then, then those iterations of the packages exist in higher proportions than other iterations of the packages.Malcolm: And this is why [00:02:00] most successful cultural groups throughout history have prohibitions on masturbation and sex outside of marriage and stuff like that. So first let's talk about why, why would you have a prohibition on sex outside of marriage, right? Well, sex outside of marriage and it's not that there aren't cultural groups that allow a lot of sex outside of marriage, there are.Malcolm: They just have not been very successful, and by that what I mean is they didn't conquer their neighbors, they didn't grow a lot, often, they, they are typically smaller cultural groups that are really pushed to the wayside. By history and this is because one, monogamous cultural groups typically out compete polygynous cultural groups.Malcolm: Now, first, we need to make clear that almost all cultural groups are polygynous to some extent. By that, what we mean is the ultra wealthy and ultra powerful in almost any society in history yes, even the Catholic monarchies and stuff like that often had uh, timepieces. It was expected.Malcolm: So let's be clear. When I call a culture [00:03:00] monogamous all cultures are polygynous to some extent where the elite are typically allowed multiple partners. The question is where's the slider there. And if that slider is under 1% of the population.Malcolm: It's expected to have multiple partners. I call it a monogamous culture. If it's 5% to 10% those are where most polygynous cultures stay. Very few polygynous cultures get as high as like 20% of men having more than one wife. So, so it's important to understand what we mean when we call a culture polygynous versus...Malcolm: Monogamous. And it should be intuitive. A lot of people are like, oh, in a polygynous culture, every man has a lot of wives. And it's no obviously that won't work because you have about an equal number of males and females in almost any society, unless there's a lot of war. So the monogamous cultures typically out compete the polygynous cultures.Malcolm: And there's been some great studies on this. You know, we have them cited in our a book on, on both sexuality and relationships because they're really interesting and you can see them side by side in, in some places like Africa where you can see these cultures operating side by side. And what you see is that these [00:04:00] more monogamous cultures typically have lower rates of ape, and we're not going to use the, the full word there because we don't want to get demonetized.Malcolm: They usually have lower rates of crime, lower rates of violent crime. Lower rates of unpaid debts and and most importantly, lower rates of terrorism. And this is usually directly correlatory to the number of unwed men in these societies. And so the groups that adopted these monogamous practices outcompeted the groups that did not, so that's one reason. And then once they adopt monogamous practices, if a person is having relations outside of their marriage, well, they might, as a single woman, end up having kids outside of marriage. And that's typically really bad for any cultural group because those kids often end up becoming wards of the state in cultures that don't allow women to work as much.Malcolm: And typically when a culture Encourages women to work more their fertility rate decreases and nearby cultural groups end up out competing them, which is why it's [00:05:00] so common in these cultural groups to say, so this is why historically, the cultural groups that have won have one often been more monogamous they, they often really discourage premarital relations and, and, and relations outside of a marriage because that could break up a marriage, which then causes you know, obviously problems.Malcolm: For a society where it's expected that people are going to be together forever, right? Because maybe they don't care for one kid, and then the kid becomes like a vagrant. And you know, Oliver Twist, right? Roaming groups of kids without parents were a major problem in these societies. Almost like packs of stray dogs that were intelligent and were constantly trying to screw you over.Malcolm: It's something we don't really see in the world today as much, but it was a major problem historically speaking. So that's, that's why you have that. And then the masturbation push. The reason why so many groups are against that is because it lowers fertility rates, right? And you can look at some cultural groups.Malcolm: I'm pretty sure some Jewish sects do this, where it's like you can't [00:06:00] even have sex with somebody when the person would not get pregnant due to their stage of the menstrual cycle. That would be considered sinful. And so, like, why are you doing this? You're trying to maximize reproduction. That's why you see this in so many cultural groups.Malcolm: Now, why I'm laying out this groundwork Right? Is this is no longer theoretically the most successful strategy if you're trying to encourage high fertility rates in a culture because the way that fertility works has dramatically changed. What did you do this morning, Simone?Simone: Yes, this morning I had a frozen embryo transfer, meaning that I went to our fertility clinic and they transferred into me.Simone: Using a catheter and ultrasound, an embryo that we had previously created. So this was not procreative sex for our next kid. In fact, none of our children have been created using procreative sex. And I like to think that that is the ultimate gift that we give them. They don't have to think that [00:07:00] their parents having sex created them, which.Simone: It's a heavy burden that I personally bear and wish that I didn't want to talk about trauma. That's, that's my trauma. Yeah,Malcolm: that's your, they are, they are a product of science and money. So, but, but yeah, it's, it's, so this is really important, you know, obviously it was an embryo that we selected based on its, its, its genetics which is also a cultural practice of ours.Malcolm: So from our cultural position. Sex is purely masturbatory or a way to have kids less expensively.Simone: Yeah, because not everyone has the luxury or the affordance to either pay for IVF or be lucky enough to live in a nation that supports it. Right, right.Malcolm: So eventually, I mean, I'd like our family office, which we want to run things for all of our kids to be able to pay for this for, for any of them that want it.Malcolm: But in the meantime, the only case where I think it would really be ethical for somebody was in our cultural group to have kids not using[00:08:00] IVF and polygenic risk screening because those kids could end up getting, you know, cancers or have other maladies that could easily be screened for right would be if it was in some way cost prohibitive.Malcolm: And because of that, they were going to have less kids. But if it's not cost prohibitive for that family, then then sex for that family is it. Always masturbatory. And by that what I mean is there's no different. You are just using another person's body to, to, to feel good in the same way you could by yourself.Malcolm: Now, it could be a bonding ritual, I suppose, but this culturally really changes how we teach our kids to relate. To, one, sexuality, but also things like gender, because, you know, we're entering a world where artificial wombs are coming down the pipeline. They will definitely be here by the time our kids are old enough to have kids themselves.Malcolm: And so is IVG, which means that they would be able to have kids with people of the same gender. If they wanted to, and this is really [00:09:00] interesting because another thing is if you look across the world, you know, whether it's China or Islam or the US or wherever cultural groups that have been successful, i.Malcolm: e. spread a lot and survived over a long period of time almost always have homophobic undertones. And typically when they begin to lose those undertones, they, that is right before a collapse ends up happening. And, and one of the questions can be like, what's going on here? Why is that the case? You know, when this is clearly not in a portion of the population's best interest and it is because it increases fertility rates for those cultural.Malcolm: And so, even if you have a cultural group that becomes historically speaking, that became more tolerant. Of LGBT individuals if it had like a branch of it, like a split of it that was less tolerant of them, that split would have more kids, it would end up out competing them and, and so, you see this just across the world in, in these longer livedSimone: cultural groups.Simone: But what you're saying is now with modern technology, it suddenly doesn't [00:10:00] matter as much if you have, you know, two consenting adults flapping their genitals against each other. It's completelyMalcolm: irrelevant. Yeah, it's completely irrelevant. Yeah. So is gender. So is gender is still important to us insofar as males and females are dimorphic, you know, both physically and psychologically which may make them assortatively better at specific tasks or specific roles within a marriage.Malcolm: But not beyond that. Yeah.Simone: Yeah. Well, so. Let's talk then about what the talk is going to look like with our kids. And of course, who knows, you know, by the time that they reach pre adolescence, at which point we're going to talk with them about this more concertedly. We'll, we'll probably have new information that changes what we're going to do, but what's our running plan now?Malcolm: I would say that there's two large concerns for us in regards to this. One is cultural groups, which are really, really sex negative often have a higher bleed rates.[00:11:00] I. e. more of their members leave the cultural group, especially when they're competing against this sort of progressive urban monoculture.Malcolm: In fact, I would say that. Sexuality is the progressive urban monoculture's biggest lure to get people out of these conservative traditions. They say, hey, come to us and you can be sexually hedonistic. You can act on any desire you have , and we will praise you for it. You know,Malcolm: now what's interesting is it's becoming more and more sexually conservative in many ways. It's becoming more sex negative, and, and we're seeing this where it's becoming more restrictive in the way it views sexuality. And we can have another video on why that's the case. But what it means is that if you have a group like us as a cultural group, if we tell our kids we do not care how you engage with your sexuality, so long as it is efficacious.Malcolm: That big pull that this urban monoculture can use to draw them out of our cultural group loses most of [00:12:00] its bite.Simone: I think that's a really important point because what I see a lot, for example, in comments on our videos is, Hey, this sex negative shaming is a really... Key portion. We can't retain our culture if we do not shame what they would call sexual deviance.Simone: And what you're seeing here is actually, it's that very shaming that pushes many people away. So, so that's, it's not a complete view to believe that this, that this shaming and this sex negativity is going to help you over the long run. Especially in modern society. Yeah.Malcolm: Well, I, I, it's, it's, I do believe that kids should learn to control their sexuality and, and, and teach them to control that, but they should control it.Malcolm: As a utility, like I would say that this is part of how humans engage with other humans and that when you are acting morally by our cultural framework, you are engaging in in these practices in a way that is efficacious and in the best interest of things that you think have long term [00:13:00] moral value. And so by that, what I mean.Malcolm: You know, you can use sexuality to get things out of other people, right? I think that's something that, that a lot of people know. And it can be very important in terms of shortcuts in, in life and other people can use it against you. So if you don't have full self mastery, other people can use this against you.Malcolm: And really importantly, it's important in mate finding. Within most modern mate finding rituals, you know, if you are targeting really educated people and you are not sexually experienced, it's very rare to find ones that also aren't sexually experienced, especially if you're a guy, you know, I think that this is more an important thing for guys with girls.Malcolm: I think there's more of a gambit. You know, they can wait to try to find the correct partner with the understanding that they're going to pair bond more if they do that. But I would, I would more just inform them of the trade off here. Okay.Simone: Yeah. Yeah. So, so specifically with her daughter's sexual strategy, basically rather than, because I remember, so my mother had given me some sort of talk about [00:14:00] like, when I was much younger, she was like, sex is like jewels, like you're born with, she was very, I think, uncomfortable with the subject and you're born with a certain number of jewels and you have to be careful about how, who you give them away to.Simone: And she was, yeah. And this was someone who had grown up in a very sexually open culture and you know, was involved in poly, in her youth and everything. And so, I think it was really, when I look back on it, I think it's really interesting what she was trying to say to me, because I think she was trying to say You're free to make choices here, but there is a bit of a trade off and a cost and I think you and I just want to be a lot more explicit with that conversation that like, yes, sex, you can basically as a woman take two different sexual strategies, one in which like, probably you're a lot more open with sex, you probably use it to your advantage a lot, obviously you're careful.Simone: safety wise, health wise, et cetera. But you know, you, you, you understand that you're going for like high count and strategic advantage and enjoyment, enjoyment. Like some women really, really enjoy sex. So like maybe, you know, that would be a good strategy for our daughters who are like. [00:15:00] I'm super into this.Simone: But that when it comes to securing a partner, when it comes to a life partner, like someone who will marry them and invest in them and have kids with them, it is going to be harder to do that. And so their odds of maybe needing to raise children in alternative fashions, either like independently or in concert with other people or other siblings or something like that, like that is going to have to be a realistic viable pathway if something like that is important to them.Simone: And also that. We need, we need, I think we should warn them that what they want now may be very different from what they want in the future. Because I do think that when you're younger especially both as a male and a female, but especially as a female, like you kind of get the impression younger, Oh, well, like more sex, more exploration is a good idea.Simone: Keep your options open. But then later you're like, man, I really want kids, but you didn't want kids when you were a teen. And so it's really hard to plan for that.Malcolm: So I think, you know, something to, to note is that when you met me and still other than me, you know, you are a virgin. Right. Yeah. And I will say that that definitely [00:16:00] increased my perception as you as a potential wife.Malcolm: You were a higher quality potential wife to me, and a lot of people would be like, oh, that's terrible, or whatever. But I think the reality is, and, and there's like biological reasons for this, that men are going to be more committed to partners and some men are going to have a strong preference for partners with a low body count.Simone: Well, I think there's the partner that you wanna have sex with and there's the partner that you want to have and raise your kids.Malcolm: Yeah. And well, yeah, so, so I, I also argue that there's a difference here. The type of person that I would want for a random sexual encounter is very different than the type of person I would want for a long term relationship.Malcolm: And so even I, as someone with a high body count I appreciated that coming into the relationship. But I also think that us telling our kids this, in the same way that your mom told you this, it worked for you. She gave you one choice. between multiple strategies, but also taught you the value of self control and you decided to use those two pieces of information [00:17:00] to choose a low partner count strategy.Malcolm: Well,Simone: let's be clear. I think that the primary thing my parents gave me was complete freedom to make the choices myself because I found all humans, men and women, disgusting until I met you.Malcolm: Yeah, but the point I'm making here more broadly is I actually think, so a lot of people hear this strategy in terms of what they, we tell our kids, and they, I think, intuitively suspect that it will lead to our daughters sleeping with a lot more people.Malcolm: When in reality, if you look at the cultural groups that are strict, but are otherwise forced strict around these topics, but are otherwise forced to engage with, with near the progressive monoculture, this is where you get the meme of the Catholic school girl, right? And this is definitely something when I was more promiscuous, I ran into girls like this a lot where the, the most promiscuous girls typically come from conservative religious backgrounds.Malcolm: They do not come from the, the more the backgrounds closer to you, where their parents laid out both options.Simone: Yeah, that's actually [00:18:00] come to think of it. Yeah. Like all the, the. Friends that I had who were raised by super, super socially liberal parentsMalcolm: were fairly prude. Yeah.Simone: Had sex super late.Simone: Basically, until we graduated high school, none of my friends were not virgins. Except for one exception. And then the... The the vast majority of them all, when they did become sexually active were like in very committed relationships, like that lasted for years, maybe terminated in marriage.Simone: That's that is, I hadn't thought about that before. That's really interesting. So,Malcolm: yeah. Yeah. So, so it's, it's something to keep in mind that it is actually a fairly successful way because it's something that people, when they talk about going back to the way things used to be. They, they, they're like this system used to work in the past, but it used to work in an environment where this urban monoculture didn't exist and wasn't constantly sniping at it, you know?Malcolm: And, and so I think, yes, the system did used to work in the past, but, but when I [00:19:00] look at what cultural groups work today at conveying this message to their daughters, it's actually the ones that engage with it in, in this other full information. But, but, but understand the potential costs here and in this, sir, what were you going to say Simone?Simone: Well, you're, there's another thing I really want to discuss here, which is a factor that wasn't really that much of a thing when you and I were teens, but it's definitely going to be a factor for our teen daughters. So I still, there's a lot of stuff that we need to get through with girls, especially, but also then boys, we had to do boys next.Simone: But,Malcolm: We were talking about sexting, you know, and I, and I Well, it didn't, butSimone: not just Well, okay, so yeah, let's start with sexting, for sure. Well, you and I were having a discussion the other day where we're like, Well, what, what happens if, you know, one of our daughters is encouraged by someone she's dating?Simone: To send sexually explicit photos of herself because we had an issue with Someone, a colleague having photos exposed of herself and I'm like, Oh my gosh. Like there, there are people who I think are totally normal who I would never expect to be sending explicit [00:20:00] photos of themselves. Sending explicit photos of themselves to people.Simone: I'm like, this is an issue. What are we going to do with our daughters?Malcolm: In the moment to them, it may feel like this can help them secure a better partner. They may feel like, Oh, this isn't actually. engaging in sex was a person, therefore, like my rules, like when you create rigid rules, instead of just giving people a reason behind those rules they can act in ways where it's well, but stuff doesn't count.Malcolm: Right. Doesn't count. Right. You know, But if you explain the reason why this is about maximizing the number of children you have and, and ensuring you don't have children outside of a committed relationship and ensuring that you are high quality perceived by potential partners, like those are what you're optimizing around.Malcolm: And so what we came up with here, actually,Simone: Simone came up with the idea. No, no, no. You came up with this and I think it's beautiful. Brilliant is so your idea was okay. Well, we should just tell our daughters that any of their boyfriends ever pressure them to send explicit photos of themselves. [00:21:00] Send deep fakes.Simone: And I think this is so brilliant on a couple levels. One is like first they can always point to this, this YouTube video and be like, Hey, my mom and dad, like proof from an early age told me to only send deep fakes. That was a deep fake. This is a family policy. Second, I think that there's a lot of vulnerability that you expose yourself to like mentally when you, when you send something.Simone: That kind of compromising of yourself to someone else when as far as you should be concerned, anything, any photo that ever just even goes onto your phone, I don't care if you send it to anyone, that belongs to the internet. That might as well be out. It is gone. It is out of your control.Simone: So even just taking , exposed photos of yourself, is putting yourself in a really vulnerable position. And I just feel like you'd feel... You know, even if there are fake naked photos of you online, one, you can make them super flattering, but two you know, that isn't you. So you don't feel the same level of exposure.Malcolm: The person could have done it themselves. And there's likely going to be technology for detecting deep fakes, which then allows you to do, you know, if they ever try to release it or use it to pressure you, you can [00:22:00] just be like, Hey, you could have created those on your own. And, and I can prove that those aren't real which allows you to engage in sort of the point of this, because at that point, you know, if a partner pressures you, , what you would say back to them is you're like, okay, do you want this for your personal sexual satisfaction?Malcolm: In which case, a deepfake Will be useful or do you want this to gain power over me? Is this about a power dynamic? And if it's about a power dynamic, no, I do not think this is a smart thing. Well, I thinkSimone: usually it's a post hoc power dynamic, you know, like first it's for enjoyment. Then there's a breakup or there's some other weird politicking going on or there's some social clout that could be gained or you want to prove, you know, oh, hey, look at my girlfriend and she's so hot.Simone: I'm going to show you this photo. And then someone, someone else shares it.Malcolm: Yeah, they didn't know because of course we would encourage them not to tell them that they're deepfakes. Of course not. It comes out later that this person was sharing deepfakes of a girl and saying that they were real photos.Malcolm: They would look like such a fool. Yes.Simone: Yeah. No. So, [00:23:00] okay. We've got a couple of policies in our family. Just get stitches and deepfakesMalcolm: are good. Policies with our daughters.Simone: So the other thing that I actually want to talk through with you, you and I haven't talked about this yet but I'm genuinely concerned about.Simone: The, the ease with which you can make money as a young woman on sites like OnlyFans. So, I don't, I don't know I don't have enough data to know if this kind of compromises your, your reputation, or if it, you know, hurts your social clout, or if it hurts you mentally, like it kind of gives you just a screwed up perception of, of men like as a girl, but I doMalcolm: dramatically lowers your value on dating markets.Simone: I worry about that because it's also really tempting. And I think we're going to have very industrious children.Malcolm: But and one of the things that we'll mention in the, in the video about my mom who died recently is one of the most important lessons she taught me. And it's one that we will definitely teach our kids is the single [00:24:00] most important decision you make in your life.Malcolm: The single most important accomplishment in your life is who you marry more important than your career. Much more important than, than you know, your academics or anything like that. Your marriage is the most important thing to one, your ability to succeed in the world into your daily quality of life and, and, and three.Malcolm: How you exist in the future, which is through your kids, you know, So what wouldSimone: you do then if, if our daughter,Malcolm: You are constantly emphasizing to them the importance of securing a high quality partner as their single most important task in life. Anything that permanently and dramatically lowers their probability of that for some sort of short term benefit is going to.Malcolm: Be a lot less desirable.Malcolm: And so what they will have to do is internally judge for themselves. Is that a hit I'm willing to take? Am I willing to take a [00:25:00] permanent hit to my desirability on the marriage market for short term, the financial gain or access to some sort of financial gain system that I otherwise wouldn't have access to.Malcolm: And I think for most people, if you just lay out like the reason for all of this, and I think the really important thing. With the way that my parents conveyed this to me and the way I will convey it to our kids. is why this is important. Like, why is it who you marry is so important? It is the fastest way to make a lot of money.Malcolm: If you're just like, I want to make a lot of money, easiest way is to marry rich. If you're like, okay I want to be successful in my career, easiest thing is to have somebody who has your back. My career has been completely enabled because of you working with me, writing those books with me.Malcolm: Helping me think these ideas you want to stay sharp and not, you know, I'll tell them, look at a lot of old people and you'll see how quickly you can begin to mentally fall apart. If you don't have somebody constantly sharpening you how easy it is to stray from your value system. .Malcolm: Yeah. Like you matter more to me [00:26:00] being like, I guess, intellectually engaged and sharp today than where I went to college. Wow. And it's true. It's true. Like you can see this is obviously true. You know, you went to Cambridge for graduate school. I went to Stanford for graduate school. Like we went to good look, but how much does that still matter in our daily lives today?Malcolm: Like in terms of what I know or my knowledge of the world, very little.Simone: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. No, spouses are everything. Well then. So what if it's just your voice or just your what if one of our daughters is using some kind of like anime filter? So no one sees it's her, but she's still doing it to make money.Simone: Like, how would you feel aboutMalcolm: that? Well, this is the great thing about our culture, right? Is we are telling our kids, they have to make these judgments for themselves. They have to make the cost risk trade off for themselves while knowing what the end cultural goal is. So it's not a bunch of superficial cultural goals that are supposed to achieve this in outcome of high levels of reproduction, high [00:27:00] quality partners, high, high desirability on marriage markets.Malcolm: You know, we just tell them those are the end goals. Now you have to decide. How you're going to achieve that and a lot of groups, they're designed to work for both smart people and dumb people like this cultural strategy would not work for a dumb, impulsive person, but a because, you know, we are our cultural group will engage in things like polygenic selection.Malcolm: Presumably, we will have a lot fewer people like that within our cultural group, so it won't be that much of a problem. SoSimone: you're taking up the bumpers, but you're like, it's okay, we're really good bowlers. Is that, is thatMalcolm: it? I mean, and this also comes to how we relate to things like, you know, one of our kids is gay, right?Malcolm: What I would say to them is, wow, it's going to be dramatically more costly to have kids. That's the downside to that. But because, you know, depending on the cost of, if they'reSimone: male if they're a lesbian, it's pretty fine,Malcolm: right? So yeah, just double up you can, you can produce twice the number of kids[00:28:00] just, well, I mean, I, it depends on IVG technology and stuff like that and where that is and how cheap that is because they could want the kids to be a hundred percent biologically there.Malcolm: Yeah, that'sSimone: true. Then it would be much more expensive forMalcolm: sure. Sure. But if they're doing that, you know, well, not that much more. I mean, there's cost benefits to all of this. Right. And the goal is just maximize and it's not maximize reproduction. And I should be clear, maximize reproduction insofar as you can set these people up for life well, and gives them a good childhood.Malcolm: Because if you're just spamming kids and you don't take the 1st 18 years of that kid's life and sell them on a good future, right? And sell them like our cultural group is a good way to do things. And you want more people like us to exist. So when you have kids still enjoy their lives as well, they'll just leave, right?Malcolm: You have to both set the kids up well. So it's, it's a, an equation that you're doing in terms of how many kids you're having versus your means of the family and your local situation.Simone: So now I can model what's going to happen when you walk in on one of our daughters and she's camming for money is you're going to [00:29:00] be like, listen, listen.Simone: I respect this, but what I would respect even more is if you do like an Andrew Tate thing, but with AI surrogates, you know, and just you know, build their whole ring. You know, you can you need to maximize this, you know, doing this yourself, putting a, you know, filter on, there's a better way to do this, but be thoughtful.Simone: I think this is going to be a very entertaining adolescence for our, for our kids. What about for boys? What are your top like warnings you're going to give to our teen boys when it comes to their sexuality?Malcolm: Well, I think one of the most important that, that girls. Do not have as much is people will try to get pregnant to lock them down.Malcolm: People do this way more than I thought way more than people thought it is. It is a high quality partner. It was something I constantly had people trying to do with me. I constantly had to worry about. If you're a high quality male partner, people will try to get pregnant very frequently and it's because it's an effective strategy and the legal system as it exists now is really on their side.Malcolm: So like in the US, if even if a woman, like you are not [00:30:00] sleeping with her, you throw away a condom, you had slept with another girl and she uses that condom to impregnate herself, you're still responsible for child support, even if you never had sex with her.Simone: Right, because the state views that as, you know, what, what is best for the child.Simone: And if the child has additional financial support that's not the state, then, okay, perfect, you know.Malcolm: Yeah, so be aware of that. I think as a male, another really important thing is there's going to be a lot of social pressure on you. To define your self worth. And, and this is true for girls as well by your desirability within sexual marketplaces.Malcolm: So for women, it's not like the actual number of people they sleepSimone: with. The number of people who want to sleep with you, for men, it's the number of people you sleep with.Malcolm: Yeah, but either to. Understand that this is a tool they can use to their advantage if it's a system that they can play well But to be very very careful about actually investing in this sort of system.Malcolm: It's, it's a mini game in your life. It's not a game [00:31:00] that lasts for long. It basically disappears after you get married. Any, any of your score was in this system. Just utilize it in so far as it helps you secure a long term partner. But other than that, really don't define your self worth by it.Malcolm: And this also comes to, you know, what I tell our kids about gender, which is really interesting. So. I would be much more concerned about one of our kids. Being trans than being gay. Like I really wouldn't care at all about them being gay, I would tell them the cost of that. But, but trans insofar as not just identifying.Malcolm: Like I wouldn't care if they just identified as another gender. I mean, technically, we would be considered trans because we're both pretty agender. Like we just don't care that much about what our gender is. But What I would be really concerned about is if they decided to, , undergo all the gender affirming surgery and, and all of the social costs of this.Malcolm: And I'd be like, that just seems really indulgent, both time wise, money wise, everything wise, for something that I [00:32:00] hope we have raised you to, to believe doesn't really matter that much. Yes, men and women are different. And if you want to play different cards than you were dealt, or you want to, in some way, game the system with hormones or something like that, go ahead with it.Malcolm: But when you get to the level where this is like a major daily expense to you, when you are making life choices, that is in debt you to a particular medical regime that's going to be a major part of your income for the rest of your life and it to some extent is going to force you to always simp for one cultural group over another cultural groupMalcolm: and I mean, we've seen this, like you look at what happened to somebody like Buck Angel, you know, you don't toe the line and you just get completely piled on by the community, even though he was a, person who, who moved the trans agenda forwards a lot in the early days.Malcolm: When I think a lot of people thought it was about just acceptance, right? Which is, it's something that we would support. And so that that's where I would [00:33:00] have a little bit more concern if I ever felt like they were investing either in their gender or in their sexuality. If they began to act like their sexuality was a major part of their identity.Malcolm: I would view that as a failure as us as parents, because I, I would say your sexuality and your gender are tools. They are things that you should like consciously understand, but they can be used to manipulate you by your environment. And, and the level of self control you have over them, yes, exercise self control over them.Malcolm: Insofar as you make sure they're efficacious towards your long term goals.Simone: Right. But I think the important thing here that I'm actually hearing from you is you would have exactly the same reaction. If you had a a Cishet boy who got super obsessed with weightlifting and looking masculine, spending money on on, you know, same with a girl with a Cishet girl who like decided that she was going to get plastic surgery.Simone: And you know, you know, buy all these other medications and stuff to look super feminine. And so it's more, your concern is more like [00:34:00] medicalizing gender, no matter where you started and no matter where you're going. It doesn't matter if this is switching or if this is just maxing, you just aren't for it because this is notMalcolm: something that's or, or overly incorporating gender into self identity.Malcolm: MmSimone: hmm. Because honestly, like it can go either way. And I think that the bigger. The bigger concern you have is just like overinvestment in this thing that ultimately we don't thinkMalcolm: well, I mean, I think your gender is serendipitous You know, whether you are born a man or a woman is largely within most most I think belief systems these days something you're you don't have control over And I am always really against over investing in terms of an individual self identity Something they didn't have a lot of control overSimone: You're trying to make something that isn't really happening, happen, you know, like just explain what the punches well, so, you know, if, if you, if you feel super, you know, feminine, but you're not like, you know, maybe just try to find a way to work with that, you know, or if something traumatic happens in your life, like work with it, turn it into something good, you [00:35:00] know, but don't try to force something when that causes disproportionate expenditure and your, your resources could be better spent elsewhere.Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For me, it's mostly just an expenditure thing. And when I say expenditure, I don't just mean money. I mean, time,Simone: focus, mentalMalcolm: bandwidth. Doors you're closing, bandwidth, mental bandwidth, I mean, anything like this, it's eating mental bandwidth is a major problem in an individual'sSimone: life. Well, this is, again, like I'm thinking more than trans people at this point, I'm thinking like a lot of women who spend so much time on makeup, on all this performative femininity, same with men who spend so much time in the gym and like doing all these things to show.Malcolm: Oh yeah, no, to me, having a gym bug boy would be just as bad. No, it is something that is non efficacious. Now, if they are doing it for health reasons, that's one thing, right? You know, if they are doing it just to affirm their self identity no and, and as we said, you control the [00:36:00] narratives that you are optimizing for it in a big way, every individual.Malcolm: Gets to choose their own rules for life, the game that they're playing, right? You determine your own win conditions. And if your win conditions are self indulgent and about satisfying a personal narrative that wasn't created to have some sort of true impact on the world, I would be very disappointed in them.Malcolm: Whatever that narrative is.Simone: Well, so ifMalcolm: they were like a sports star or something, I'd be very disappointed.Simone: I don't know. I think if they, you know, if they're making a crap ton of money or they were, you know, doing really well.Malcolm: A sports star to make money and then use that money to have efficacious change in the world.Malcolm: Or to get a, a larger podium to speak from. Yeah, like those two things would be, things I would value. But if they were a sports star, because they saw themselves as a sports star, and like being a sports star was in and of itself.Simone: Right, but I mean, that's, I think that's the same with anything.Simone: You, you really don't objective functions that are. They're optimized around fulfilling [00:37:00] an identity and that's the problem. You know, that's, that's the core issue, but I'm actually, I'm really glad that we recorded this conversation because I imagined that like when our daughters start dating, you're going to have, I'm really keen to see if this actually happens, if this is a thing.Simone: But you could have that weird dad response where, you know, you're like, sit every like boy down and you're like, I'm going to kill you if you hurt my daughter. You know what I mean? No, whatMalcolm: I'd probably do is I'd ask my daughters, what role do they need me as a dad to play to increase the one safety of the dating experience?Malcolm: And to quality of partners are getting, and I suspect that different roles might be necessary with different guys, depending on so they'll beSimone: like, Dad, play bad cop. Yeah,Malcolm: I need you. I need you to be the tough dad tonight. That's what we're going for was this guy. I think it'll play out really well. No, no, no.Malcolm: And I think another thing that we could do that's going to be very different than sort of the, the urban monoculture is I would encourage my kids to start looking for spouses [00:38:00] and having kids fairly early. The way that I divide dating, as I say, high school is a hundred percent for fun.Malcolm: Fun and practice. This is where you get good at dating, this is where you get good at engaging with, you know, whatever gender you're attracted to. And the reason I say that is, this is true, especially if you're going to public school. Now, if you're high schooling online, as our kids were, this is less important.Malcolm: The reason why, if you're going to like public or private schools, this is really important, is the people you are surrounded with were largely chosen by serendipity, and it is very unlikely That 1 of these, you know, couple 100 randomly selected people is going to be an optimal marriage partner for you.Malcolm: Whereas I think they're probably going to be like, I was in people that you meet. And so 1st, you're going to need to, you're not going to meet 10, 000 people. What you're going to do is you're going to pre filter the people you meet by certain metrics and then try to meet everyone in as I tried to everyone in the San Francisco area that met certain prescreened requirements that I felt I got to that point where I had met every woman in the entire area during that period of time who was single around my age and met the requirements.Malcolm: I was looking [00:39:00] for maybe not every single one, but I'd say at least 60 to 70%. And that's pretty good. So, so that's really a big difference is, is we'd say, okay, yes, high school is for practice. Yeah. But immediately after high school, you need to be looking for a spouse. If, if you want to realistically find one in time.Malcolm: College is not for fun. College is for finding a spouse. And if you get to the end of college and you haven't found a spouse, you need to be, like, freaking out. As I was, as Miles was. I mean, my brother found his spouse on his first day of college. And, and by the time I graduated college, I was like, okay, I've got graduate school, but that's really it.Malcolm: If I fail at graduate school, my odds of finding a partner, because as I've always said, you know, there's a large pool of pre vetted candidates there. So, what else would you tell our sons? Anything else?Simone: to keep in mind the metagame being played. By the women that they are dating. So we'd previously talked, about, , women have a hot, crazy graph, but men have a hot, evil graph.Simone: [00:40:00] If you've got a man, who's got a super high partner count, like above a certain partner count,Simone: the odds of you hurt people are much higher. So I would just want. Our, our sons to be aware of the trade offs that are happening on the other end with women that they're dating and to be aware of the role that they're playing in their lives. And I think one thing that you did really well when you were dating other people really actively and looking for a wife, but also just dating to explore and sort of like, you know, build experience or have fun or whatever it was.Simone: Your goal was always to, to leave someone better off than they were when you started with them to introduce them to new like boyfriends, to you know, find out what they want and try to, you know, help them get closer to that. Whether that was like exploring their sexuality or finding a better partner or moving their career forward or learning about things.Simone: And, and I, I really think that, you know, we should have the general, you know, campsite rule, leave it better, better than it was when you came, you know, and so I, I reallyMalcolm: liked that. Yeah. And that was always my breakup [00:41:00] strategy back when I wanted to break up with someone, I would find them another partner.Malcolm: I'd say I remember with one girl, I was like, okay, like we're breaking up out of everyone, you know, today, who would you most want to date? And it turned out it was one of her professors. And so I was like, okay, here's your strategy. I'm going to set you up for this. And she actually ended up dating him.Malcolm: Yeah. Um, uh, That she was the professor that all the girls wanted. So I was, I was really proud that I got that set up because I was like, okay, this is. This is a strategy. We'll work together on this. But I think that through that, and this is something that is hugely underestimated in the manosphere, many of my really high quality partners that I got when I was dating were references from other people.Malcolm: You know, when you treat women well, and it's also true when you treat men well when it is clear that things don't work out, you know, so long as your goals were always up front for the beginning, I'm looking for a spouse , their network and they're having dated you and saying, this is a good person, trust me, you know, et cetera, to, to, to someone who they know.[00:42:00]Malcolm: Can be really, really high quality and securing a partner and very, very valuable at securing access to people who don't date on open markets. And that's something that I think a lot of people miss. You know, if you're out there getting the type of person who dates, Like strangers, you're much more likely to run into like himbos and thots and stuff like that.Malcolm: Cause these are the people that are out there having sex with lots of people, but there's certain types of people who essentially don't date anyone. Who's not a pre qualified lead. And I'd say that this is where the majority of the really high quality partners are. And this is why you can find them best through certain types of networking and achieving success within your own life.Malcolm: That is often the thing that reflects. Best in, in, in the dating scene, not improving your superficial sexuality. And that's always something we should remember to tell our kids is improving how hot you are and you should always be a baseline level of hot. I know it's you know, you should ever let yourself go or anything like that.Malcolm: I would do that as a sign of[00:43:00] well, for me dating, that would be just like an immediate screen. Oh, this person lacks self control. So I'm not intrigued. Like they can't live the lifestyle that I want to live.Simone: Or you view attractiveness as a, just a sign of conscientiousness. In other words.Malcolm: Yeah, like a baseline level, but outside of that when you go above a certain level of attractiveness to attract partners, you know, you are disproportionately getting the partners that are choosing you because you are attractive and these are thoughts they want you for your attractiveness as opposed to partners who are choosing you because of your intellectualism or choosing you because they admire your morality are choosing you because they like where you're going in life and they want to go on that path as well.Malcolm: And that leads to very different types of partners and relationship dynamics, which is something I really want to hammer home for our kids. Because both men and women in the early days, they can begin to optimize their dating around what [00:44:00] ends in sex with the people they want to have sex with instead of, and a lot of guys, I love it in the manosphere.Malcolm: They recognize. That women screw up when they do this, that women will do this and they'll think, Oh, that's a quality partner. I could get in the real world, you know, blah, blah, blah. And it ends up in terms of like longterm partners and it ends up screwing up what they're optimizing for. But the same thing happens to men.Malcolm: Yeah, the types of women that those strategies are successful with are often not the types of women who you would want to marry for, for obvious reasons, right? Because they are dating you because you are attractive, right? So that's not. Women who you want to marry don't go around dating guys because they're attractive.Malcolm: They go around dating guys because they make good long term partners.Simone: Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm really glad we had this talk. I'm looking forward to having the talk with our kids because I want to see what weird curveballs they throw at us.Malcolm: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, who knows what gender and sexuality look like in the future?Malcolm: I expect they're going to be quite different. I expect It's so funny. If [00:45:00] I try to explain, I think, to a lot of young people today what trans or gay meant in my generation, They'd be like, but that's trans, that's like transmedicalist, that's like transphobic. And I was like, no, no, no, like the transmedicalists, those were like the only, that was like the only game in town back then.Malcolm: For people who don't know what this means when I was younger you were born trans. Right? You, you were either born in the wrong body, or you weren't born in the wrong body, and to say anything else was transphobic, and now that would be considered transmedicalist, because that would be saying, oh, well, you have to have this level of gender dysphoria, you have to genuinely believe this, and, and that is now considered transphobic.Malcolm: And I think that this also helps for me really highlight how one, how fluid these concepts are within a society, but also how much the way that like in, in, in the Vogue today, the way that these concepts are contextualized is not the truth. Right. And [00:46:00] by that, what I mean is it's not like the moral nexus is the only way to view these ways.Malcolm: It's just how the dominant cultural group. happens to view them today and that will change over time and something that may be seen as moral today will be seen as immoral in the future. And therefore I encourage my kids to just not play that game and not overly invest in that game. Because the chips that they spend may end up blowing up in their face in the future, you know, today, what we call TERFs at one point were mainstream feminist ideology, like in the era of Skinner ism and stuff like that Today's heroes are tomorrow's villains.Malcolm: Don't play that game. Just decide for yourself what you want with knowledge of human biology, as realistic as you can understand, and knowledge of your end goal, which is to maximize your number of offspring who stay within your culture and are happy they exist.Simone: And there you go. I love you so much, Malcolm.Malcolm: I love you too, Simone.[00:47:00] Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

In this Talks at Home episode, Malcolm and Simone discuss mourning culture and the phenomenon of expected performative grief when a loved one dies. They analyze the reasons people mourn, including regret over the deceased's unfulfilled experiences, selfish sadness over losing them, and guilt about things left unsaid. Malcolm and Simone propose a cultural shift towards focusing on the deceased's legacy and life's work rather than indulging in non-constructive sadness. They also touch on relating constructively to children's lives versus elderly deaths and texting while driving risks learned from Malcolm's medical examiner work.Malcolm: [00:00:00] They are using the amount of pain that person's death caused their children as like a judge of the quality of that relationship.Malcolm: And so they want you to experience pain as a sign that relationship was a meaningful one. worse, when they expect this emotional reaction from you, and when you have this emotional reaction, you are affecting I'm affecting my entire family, my wife and my kids, most of all it's saying not just they want me sad, but they want my kids to feel this grief.Malcolm: They want my grief. AndSimone: This is where it gets really scary, right? Because this is where you can turn something into a traumatic event as we've discussed in other episodes by making it contextualized as traumatic.Would you like to know more?Malcolm: hello, Simone! This is going to be an interesting, if sad, episode, because we lost one of this show's first and most avid watchers, she watched every episode, a few days [00:01:00] ago, which was my mom she passed away suddenly and unexpectedly a few days ago.Malcolm: Since she passed away, I have experienced a very interesting phenomenon. Do you want to talk about it, Simone?Simone: Yes, you have experienced the phenomenon of what we might call mourning culture, M O U R N I N G, where, interestingly there's a very bifurcated reaction that we get from people when we tell them.Simone: One is, wow, that's really heavy, hope you're doing alright, let me know how I can help. Other people are like, Whoa, hold on. Like, how are you even on the phone with me right now? Like, how could you be telling you, you need to be like, no, get off the phone right now this is an emergency.Simone: I understand. Like, Don't, you know, don't handle process your pain. Um, And they kind of, there's very much this expectation and feeling that you get from these conversations. That you should be pulling out your hair, crying, rending your clothing gnashing your teeth, right? Like rolling around on the floor in [00:02:00] pain.Simone: Yeah, I need to be doingMalcolm: whatever North Koreans were supposed to do when Kim Jong il died, where you get, the moral police come after you if you are not mourning correctly and loudly enough. Yes. This brings me to a confluence of really interesting phenomenons, right?Malcolm: Which is one, what's going on here? Like why specifically do they want me to be demonstrating emotional pain? What are the reasons why Hmm. and. If we are intentionally building our own culture, a culture by our value system, what would a person actually do when a person dies, when a parent dies? Yeah,Simone: Yeah. And,Malcolm: And how do we relate to that? And then in addition to those things, I want to cover the concept of what lessons I learned from my mom, because I think that's a really, a valuable thing to convey to the audience.Simone: And I don't know, [00:03:00] man, that might be its whole, like a whole other episode. That might be a whole other episode. Now this woman was a force of nature. She is not someone who can be wrapped up in even one episode. So no let's save that for later. Let us talk about the culture of especially mourning in the context of losing.Simone: A loved one or family member. Yeah.Malcolm: Let's first focus on why. Like, why do people feel sad? When somebody died, and I think that there are only a few reasons and they can really be isolated to better understand if they're bringing you any utility or they are in any meaningful way honoring the person who died.Malcolm: So the first is you are sad for anything that they did not get to experience, right?Simone: So there's a feeling of regret over what they didn't complete because you know what they wanted and they didn't get that.Malcolm: Yes, and so that can be things like seeing their grandchildren grow up or something like that, right?[00:04:00]Malcolm: It's similar to that, and I think that this by far is the biggest reason that people mourn, is regret over things that they won't get to do with the person in the future. The reactions they won't get to have from the person, essentially missing the person.Simone: People are mourning their own lifestyle changing to a great extent, right?Simone: Yes.Malcolm: Yeah. And the things that they're like, I think that this form of mourning is entirely selfish. And really not beneficial at all. The first form of mourning and we'll get to other forms. I don't know. I can understand why you would take some time to reflect on the regret of the things a person isn't going to get to experience, but it really has no utility by that.Malcolm: What I mean is the person's already dead,Simone: Going to be able to fix it by fretting over it.Malcolm: yeah, and so what you're doing is you're allowing that person to, for something totally non efficacious, to negatively affect your mood, and worse, and this is something I [00:05:00] always say about sadness, Sadness hurts the people.Malcolm: When I show sadness, when I publicly show grief, especially if it's an unaddressable grief, right? That disproportionately hurts the people who care about me most. Because they will begin to feel that grief. It will begin to affect their mood as well. It'sSimone: a communicable disease. So it's like knowing that you have a bad cold and then running up in French, kissing someone.Malcolm: And there was that great study that you were looking at how families how emotions travel throughout the families or how stress travels throughout the families.Simone: Saliva cortisol levels. Yeah. So I recently found a study that I found really interesting that measured throughout the course of a conflict.Simone: So they, the researchers orchestrated a guess, like a conflict inducing. Activity for a family and then they throughout this activity, the duration of it at several points, they measured everyone's saliva level cortisol level. So I guess they made them spit like in the middle of this. And they found [00:06:00] that families do have.Simone: high correlations and cortisol levels. In fact step parents had lower levels of correlation and cortisol levels with the rest of the family, like with the kids than biological parents. And they found also that mother's cortisol levels predicted father's cortisol levels predicted children's cortisol levels predicted mother's cortisol levels, which also suggested like mothers are The onus is on mothers to stop the cycle.Simone: When people are getting stressed out because they are the. The driver of the feedback loop, essentially which is really interesting. And I think that, that happens on a broader sense with many emotions. I'm sure happiness works in similar ways. Sadness probably works in similar ways. Anger probably works in similar ways.Simone: Yeah. So what they're reallyMalcolm: saying, because I think that people, they talk about grieving and they talk about you should do it for this reason and this reason without really thinking about the cost of it. If I. I am doing this big public grief display and it seems really genuine because when somebody's grieving over the death of a loved one, there's not really that much you can say to them, because you [00:07:00] can't make it go away, right?Malcolm: It's not like a fixable problem. Yeah, I think thisSimone: is why people send flowers. It's I don't know, I want you to know that I'm here for you and send you something beautiful in a moment of darkness, but I, I can't make it go away. Sorry.Malcolm: But, and often the person who died wouldn't want you to be sad, like they wouldn't want to inflict that on you, but worse, when they expect this emotional reaction from you, and when you have this emotional reaction, you are affecting I'm affecting my entire family, my wife and my kids, most of all it's saying not just they want me sad, but they want my kids to feel this grief.Malcolm: They want my grief. AndSimone: This is where it gets really scary, right? Because this is where you can turn something into a traumatic event as we've discussed in other episodes by making it contextualized as traumatic. So we were actually really lucky to not be at home. When we heard the news about your mother, and I'm really glad for that because our kids didn't see us go through the initial shock.Simone: They didn't see me cry. They didn't see us, like really. [00:08:00] Act weird. And by the time we gotMalcolm: home, it's not that we don't show any emotions around stuff like this, but we work really hard to, we see having those emotions, experiencing those emotions as a negative thing that we are working to overcome and to recontextualize.Malcolm: Yeah,Simone: it's a failure of self control on our part.Malcolm: And then I want to talk about the final reason why people get really sad. This is outside of cultural reason. I'm just talking about like the natural reasons you feel sad when you lose someone. Yeah. Is things unsaid as I would call thisSimone: reason.Simone: Unfinished business.Malcolm: Yeah, so this is often a self narrative reason. As we've talked about in other episodes, people have an internal self narrative. And within most of those self narratives is, I am a good person, or I am a good son, or at least I'm not heartless, or something like that. Or, it could be like, I have a good relationship with my mother, or my siblings, or something like that.Malcolm: If one of your last interactions, or if on reflection you were not those things to that person, You have now permanently lost the ability to [00:09:00] correct that, right? When I see people who I've noticed have had the hardest time overcoming specific losses, because they treated that person really poorly in some way, or in some way that they.Malcolm: There's this one guy we know who just, all the time talking about his ex wife and then we talked to other people about their relationship and it turns out, he's just constantly cheating on her. He otherwise treated her prettySimone: badly. His late ex wife. Let's be clear.Malcolm: Oh yeah, his late ex wife. Yeah, ex because she was dead. And. And I think that really, to an extent, drove that. And I think had I not treated like we really worked to give my mom access to her grandkids, to treat her well, even when she could sometimes be a difficult person, as all parents can to some extent.Malcolm: And I think that lowers a lot of potential grief I could feel over not being in alignment with my own self narrative. But I think that this requires sort of constant checks into the type of person you actually want to be. [00:10:00] And are you that person in your interactions with other people?This explains the daughter from California syndrome. , which is a phrase in the medical profession to describe a situation in which a hero disengaged relative. Challenges the care a dying elderly patient is being given. Or insist that the medical team pursue aggressive measures to prolong the patient's life.I hear what you see is the people who are least able to deal with the death of a loved one are not the ones who were closest to that person in like a meaningful sense. They are the people who knew they should have been closer to that person, but weren't, and now need that person to stay alive so that they can make up for their own failure. You will feel a lot less pain when somebody dies. If you knew you were there for them in the way that you should have been when they were alive.Malcolm: . So I actually do think that this form of emotional pain is [00:11:00] useful because it has a positive effect on a person. They weren't living up to the self narrative of the type of person they want to be in their interpersonal relationships with other and through the emotional pain that they experienced there that can act as.Malcolm: A lesson to make sure that they are not treating other people in a way where they would have this form of regret if those people died.Simone: Okay. So it's basically, Oh, but my trip, my character arc wasn't complete. And therefore it's this like huge prompt of Hey, you need to start rewriting the script right now because you're not like, this isn't working.Simone: Either be, a better actor or, bring in new people or something like that. But it's helpful. So we see emotions as helpful when there's signals that you need to change course. And once you take the action.Malcolm: Actionable feelings. So if I'm like, I... Did not close things up with my mom that I might have this action of, Oh, I need to go and be nicer to my dad.Malcolm: I need to go and be nicer to my wife. I need to go and be nicer to my kids because if I lost any of them, then I wouldn't be the type of person that I [00:12:00] aspire to be. So that emotion is useful. The emotion of, I won't get to have these experiences with this person in the future. That's pretty much an entirely selfish emotion.Malcolm: There's no real utility to it. The emotion of they won't get to experience these things in the future. There are ways, and we can talk about how you might be able to twist that emotion to an advantage, but there's also no real utility to it. And then there's the final emotional. Which is where we talk about it societally, which is some societies and cultures use the amount of mourning that you're showing as a way to judge how emotionally attached to that person you were.Malcolm: And because, people will get more emotional normally, if they come from a culture that indulges in emotion. When somebody who they were closer to dies than when somebody who they were further away from dies, right? And so that can be used as a proxy for how much the other people in a person's life actually cared about them,Simone: right?Simone: Yeah, like you didn't really love them because you're not [00:13:00] really crying right now, right?Malcolm: And through not showing an emotion in a way you are sending a social signal that people didn't actually have people who were that closeSimone: to them. Now, I think this is super interesting. So we saw, for example, some time ago, there was the famous, billionaires die in a submarine accident issue.Simone: And one of the stepsons of one of the people who died on this Titanic seeking submarine had a stepson who at first, you know, was, I think publicly saying Oh, please send your. prayers to my father. I hope he, makes it through because it wasn't known for some time if everyone had died.Simone: And then, a few days later he spotted at a concert and he catched, caught, he caught a lot of flack for that including from celebrities. So high profile flack. And I think the belief was how dare this person have fun. Their stepfather just died and I think that's really interesting because if I died, I would be thrilled if my kids were smiling in two days.Simone: I'd be thrilled if they were getting on with their lives. And when I think about what would really [00:14:00] honor people. At least like what I would want people to do if I died is look at my objective function, look at the missions that I cared about and see how they could contribute to those in some way.Simone: If you really cared about me, you would be doing what I would want to be done in the world.Malcolm: Yeah. So they're using the. The pain that this person caused other people that's just so twisted when you think about it. It's super twisted. They are using the amount of pain that person's death caused their children as like a judge of the quality of that relationship.Malcolm: And so they want you to experience pain as a sign that relationship was like a meaningful one. And this pain, let's talk about it. Even though we don't think like negative emotional pain has like a huge negative value. It does tremendously affect your ability to be efficacious in the world.Malcolm: When you are mourning, you are not [00:15:00] efficacious. When you are really indulging in these emotional states. You are not moving towards the things that matter. And this is where I think we get to our cultural reaction, which is something that Simone was saying there, right? Thanks. Which is, when we think about how we relate to death, like whether or not I would mourn, my own death, like whether or not my death would be a bad or a good thing, the question is, did I, out of the things that I feel, like I have an objective function, like what I think is good in the world, what I'm trying to complete, I have a number of tasks that I have set to complete with my life, and the sadness of my death is measured by the number of unfinished tasks that I had left against the number of tasks that I completed.Malcolm: And to that extent like that's how it would measure, like how quote unquote sad I would be like the amount of regret I being dead, not feeling regret would feel, right? Oh, it's bad that I'm dying now versus it's good that I'm dying now. Yeah. Yeah. And so I, one thing I [00:16:00] was saying with Simone, if I think that culturally, like we're building our own culture for our family, I think the first step, because different cultures have different grieving processes is.Malcolm: to judge whether the person who died had a good or a bad life. And again, this is a very Calvinist sort of culturally informed thing, which is the idea you have the elect and you have the not elect. I think many cultures, they judge everyone's life is good or having matter. And I just don't think that's true.Malcolm: I think sometimes people have lives that didn't turn out to matter. That didn't turn out to have a positive effect on the world. And it's important. I think that Through judging their deaths in this way, first, that allows you to process. You can think through their life and you can put them in one of two categories, right?Malcolm: If you put them in the good category, like they wanted to positively impact the world and they did positively impact the world and especially if they did most of the impact that they were planning to have, and they didn't, leave that many untied threads as my mom, Then you can better [00:17:00] emotionally categorize okay, I don't really need to feel that bad over the things they didn't get to experience, she didn't get to experience her grandkids growing up, but she could largely know what that was going to look like to some extent, right?Malcolm: She accomplished the things she wanted to accomplish in her life. Yeah. However, the reason why it's good to also have this negative Oh, their life did not reach its potential. Is that then you can relate to their death in a different way, which is you relate to their death as something to learn from Oh, this person actually ended up getting addicted to math and then did a bunch of really terrible things and hurt the people around them.Malcolm: Then you can start to say, okay. Let's still give their life meaning through taking it as a learning experience. Like where were the choices they made that pushed them into a timeline in which their life became non efficacious to the people around them? And how can I not make those choices?Malcolm: And how can, my kids or other people in my family not make those choices? So you're still [00:18:00] drawing something from the death. And then the other thing is to think about is did you treat that person the way you would have wanted to treat them? And if you get negative emotions from that, you should learn from those negative emotions in your current interactions with people.Malcolm: But Simone, I'd love to hear what you think of this system and what you think of other cultural ways of reacting to death.Simone: Yeah, one thing I was thinking about when you were talking about this and the idea that people really need to be dramatically mourning is that both in ancient Egypt, but even still today in some cultures, you can hire professional mourners, which is so crazy that like in ancient Egyptian funerals or funerary rites and traditions, you would have Like literally professional mourners who would like this was true inMalcolm: like Victorian England too.Malcolm: And I don't know,Simone: maybe an ancient Rome. I know for sure. Egypt. I also remember like one of my top favorite TV shows, the [00:19:00] moaning of life with Carl Pilkington. He travels for the episode they do on death to Taipei and Taiwan where he hires professional mourner and then Yeah. She she shows him like how to do it and he's really bad at doing it and she's like getting frustrated, but I think it's really interesting that In some cultures, you would hire someone to do that instead ofMalcolm: do it yourself.Malcolm: In Korea, you have this, but you also will hire people to come to your wedding and stuff like that. There are professional wedding attenders. And it's to make it look like one, your social network was larger and the emotional impact you had on people was bigger. Like you had an emotional impact on a wider array of people.Malcolm: And that's the quality of your life. One of the most interesting things that I've had some of people who I've known. Who have been, they've really told me that they see like your score card at life being the number of people who show up at your funeral. Yeah. Yeah. And potentially how famous those people are as well.Simone: Yeah. Oh, yeah. What qualityMalcolm: people? Sad he died. , and I'm like, wow, [00:20:00] I really, that is almost like a negative scorecard for me. How many people did I hurt through passing? I don't know if that is.Simone: Oh, I don't think people who throw who show up at your funeral have necessarily been hurt by your passing.Simone: I think there are people who want to get together with people who cared about you and celebrate your life. Let's be fair there.Malcolm: Yeah, but here we're talking about this performative mourning that you see acrossSimone: cultures. And I think you might be misinterpreting this mourning. I think actually that it's more along the lines of for many people, the kind of mourning that is societally expected and that is seen as expressing love and dedication to the person who has died just can't it's not natural for them to do it.Simone: It doesn't feel right to them. And so hiring someone. Helps with processing the grief and making you feel like you've checked the box because you can't do that yourself. Like everyone processes grief differently too. I think both culturally and genetically we deal with grief in different ways and there's just some people who like naturally are going to lose [00:21:00] it and go crazy and look like their morning properly, in the way that in that very dramatic way and then other people just won't.Simone: And maybe a way to still feel like you're societally checking the box is by hiring someone. To do it in a very stylized way. The professional mourner from that episode of the morning of life where Carl Pilkington learned more about death was totally not someone who. plausibly be a friend showing up at a funeral who was sad.Simone: She was dressed in traditional wear. She had a very style, a very stylized way of mourning. So I think it's more about checking a cultural box. IMalcolm: disagree. I think that's about cultural drift that you're seeing there. So I think what you're seeing is keep in mind cultures evolve over, thousands or hundreds of years, whatever.Malcolm: I think initially what you had there as a culture where people began to, as they do in our culture, Sort of attribute how good a person's life was or how strong a relationship they had with someone was by how that person is [00:22:00] reacting. And then initially, like you can think in ancient Rome or something like that, where you would have a lot of people who they might not know, and this person is being judged publicly.Malcolm: It's okay let's get as many people to plausibly mourn as possible. But then after that happened. It began to become known that this was something you did, that you're supposed to hire public mourners, and then it just became this derived cultural tradition, which no longer really served the initial purpose of the tradition.Malcolm: I don't think that's a sign. I don't think that when they were first hiring people to do this, that they were doing it just to, in a way where it would have been obvious. that these people didn't know the person. Do you disagree or do you think thatSimone: I think I disagree. I just think that this kind of mourning doesn't come natural to a lot of people.Simone: And that there's still this feeling like you have to do something. And I think one of the biggest things that happens when someone encounters death in it even if you are in a culture that has a lot of tradition, [00:23:00] is this feeling of, okay, what do I do? I need to do something. But there's not that much to do aside from make sure that all the things that person did, or, like basically wrap things up for that person and replace any work that they needed to do, so I think I think the mourning is a part of that. I think I'm supposed to mourn, like I need to do something, right? So what doMalcolm: I do? Yeah, so I would agree with that. I think that cultures that give people a specific death tact. A specific death task they do help people process the deaths easier because they're like, okay once you have done X task tied to the death, then the, the way that you're supposed to relate to that is over and you have emotional permission to move on.Malcolm: without being a bad person.Simone: Like one of our friends texted us after we, we let them know that this had happened and he was like, Oh, you know what one culture does is everyone sits on the floor, like the family of the last one dines on the floor for a week. And then they get off the floor and they're supposed to get back with their lives, but I feel like there's that neat, there's the [00:24:00] Victorian, you wear morning and then you wear purple and there's all these, the colors you wear, but yes, eat on the floor for a week or wear black clothing or, burn something or whatever, but you need to do something and it has to feel and then it's done.Simone: And then I think that helps you understand that the thing has been done.Malcolm: This is why for our culture, I really want to focus on ensuring the things that are done are specificallySimone: efficacious. So rather than just like wearing funny clothes, like you want to actually end up better off than youMalcolm: were before.Malcolm: The problem with the wearing funny clothes solution is then you get some people who begin to associate that again with how much they cared about the person. So like in Victorian culture, you'd have some women who would just never change out of their morning clothes. Like Queen Victoria. Yeah.Malcolm: Where they wanted to show like, I extra cared about this person and I am going to show that through an indulgence in this particular aspect of the mourning process, the whole process efficacious throughout.[00:25:00] Then there is no way. That a person can negatively indulge in it.Simone: Yeah. And actually the Queen Victoria is a good example here because she did phone it in after Albert died.Simone: And she used her mourning of Albert to justify that. So she really hurt her nation by choosing to check out after her husband died and by indulging in her mourning that much. Yeah. She hurt a lot of people. She hurt an entire nation plausibly. And of course, her children like her children a lot of them weren't it didn't get great outcomes.Simone: I think she could have been a better mother to them like all these things, it wasn't great.Malcolm: So if she had, by our cultural standards, the better way to demonstrate her care for him, instead of through this morning theater. Is to judge what he valued and ensure that you lived a life that achieved as many of those values as possible, right?Malcolm: And then I think the other way that we relate to mourning, and this is a really interesting thing because it has to do with how we [00:26:00] relate to our kids and how we relate to elders in our society is us as a cultural group. I think one of the things that you relate to warning is using. Oh, all of the successes I'll have in the future that they won't get to react to.Malcolm: And a lot of people, naturally, they grow up to some extent, trying to impress their parents are trying to get approval from their parents. And our culture, because we have this very unique cultural setup, which is descendant worship, which is to say that we value the respect we earn from our descendants much more than the respect we earn from our ancestors.Malcolm: So my mom, for example, does exist. in every one of her grandchildren, to an extent, both culturally and genetically. So in a very real way, it is an iteration of her judging me, but [00:27:00] more important than that, viewing things this way, culturally has a lot of positive side effects. First, it causes me to focus really heavily on the value set that I teach my kids, because the value set that I teach my kids will be the value set that I am judged by in a meaningful sense.Malcolm: That is so much more important than the value set that whatever serendipitously your parents came to. The values that you're getting and keep in mind, I can teach my kids a value set and they may adopt some other value set. What this also does is it teaches me to value wherever they saw problems was in my values.Malcolm: They are younger than me. Presumably, I gave them every intellectual advantage I could, whether that's material they could learn, whether, the way that they emotionally developed. So if they believe, that aspects of how I see the world are wrong, unlike my parents, [00:28:00] which had almost intrinsically less information than I have.Malcolm: My kids have more information than I have. And any difference in information is due to. How I did as a parent, right? So it teaches me to extra pay attention to where my kids disagree with me and potentially update my own mental models based on that. And my own goals in life based on that, which I a much healthier family dynamic.Simone: Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I like that framing of it. And I, yeah, I think my mother passed, years before yours did and in a very different process. But like the thing that has given me the most, closure or happiness or like a feeling of resolution with my mother is seeing so much of her in our kids and in myself when I became a mother, which happened after she passed.Malcolm: So like how you conceptualize time and how that's changed how you view them. The morningSimone: process. Yeah. Okay. The TLDR of it [00:29:00] is that I essentially don't think that I'm a continuous person at all. And I first discovered this upon receiving a letter from myself in the past, like five, five years ago.Simone: And was like, Whoa I don't know who this lady is. And it made me realize that who we are dies all the time. I'm going to wake up tomorrow with slightly different person. And so the idea that. Someone dies is ridiculous because, okay, that particular consciousness ended, but also it was always ending.Simone: Like they were always, there's this constant renewal, this constant change of who we are. And I also, because we have this sort of very mechanistic, Calvinistic view of the world, we, we see everything. That has happened and will happen is and is happening all happening at the same time. It is all already happened.Simone: It is all happening. And so when someone passes away, it doesn't undo the fact that they exist or did exist or will exist. They are very much still here. And so the entire way to say that is thatMalcolm: they still exist. When they existed was in the timeline and then our [00:30:00] position in the timeline today is not a privileged position in the timeline.Malcolm: And this is very important in how we see the world, how we see moral good and everything like that. That's why I don't value sort of the state of people today, whether it's their happiness or agency more than people in the distant future. In terms of the actions and the way I try to judge whether or not I'm living a good life.Malcolm: But, because I don't have this sort of privileged position of the now people who existed in the past, they still very much will. In a very real and material sense, still 100% exist last week, my mom is still alive last week and she is still experiencing everything she went through last week.Malcolm: But this requires a different way of relating to time that I think most cultures do today. And I think one really perverse thing that's been elucidated to me through her death. And through how I've seen [00:31:00] people react to it is yesterday my brother and wife had another kid or was it the day before yesterday?Simone: This is on Friday. So yeah, three days ago now. Yeah.Malcolm: And this happened like the day or two days after my mom died. And being kid number three for them, a lot of people don't really care anymore. Once you get to kid number three, four, it stops becoming such a big thing. People are like, oh yeah, another one, right?Malcolm: But when you think about it, that kid being brought into the world is such a more meaningful thing in the scales of life and death than an older woman dying. She had max 20% of her lifespan left, maybe 10% of her lifespan left. She had very little efficacious that she was going to do from this point forwards in terms of changing the world.Malcolm: Me knowing the trajectory of her life and yet this new life brought into the world has an entire lifespan in front of them, a dire hundred percent of their life in front of them. And it could be a very long life. It could be a [00:32:00] very efficacious life. And that's so devalued in terms of the happiness that is bringing people when contrasted to the death of an elderly person.Simone: So in other words yeah, the reaction of people to your mother's loss is so much it's so disproportionate to the reaction of people to the arrival of a new child in the world that it feels weird to you, especially considering the life impact, the life experience the change to the world is so much more meaningful with this new arrival.Malcolm: Yeah. And, this is really highlighted for us as people who have a new kid every year, basically, people ask me when our kids age, I go at three, two, one. And we're about to do our next implementation this week, right?Simone: Frozen embryo transfer. Yeah. Tomorrow.Malcolm: Tomorrow. Ah. So again, another new potential life coming into the world. And it is just interesting. And I think morose as a society, how we have so devalued the lives of the next generation. And while we aren't a society that practice ancestor worship, I do think that we [00:33:00] disproportionately value the lives of the old and undervalue the lives of the young and the perspectives of the young.Malcolm: ThatSimone: and I think that there's just a very toxic culture around death that leads to a lot of negative impact. So I think one is we don't know how to deal with death because we don't have a culture around it. My mom told me when I was younger, she's Oh man, I love how, in Japan, when someone dies, like everyone knows what happens.Simone: Everyone has a role, like your neighbor brings you this and your family does that. And everyone knows what happens. And here in the U. S., like no one really knows what to do. And another friend was telling us, how they work in, in, in the. They work with public schools and they have they encounter children's funerals because they oversee districts with a lot of students that do have premature and very young deaths.Simone: And he sees families, just spending, thousands and thousands of dollars on these elaborate funerals for these children that they've lost because it's, they don't know how to deal with it, but they're doing, they're going into debt. They're doing this to the detriment of themselves and other siblings.Simone: It's like they're hurting [00:34:00] their own families and life's potential. Because of this inability to know what to do in this feeling, like you have to do something. So I feel like there's a very toxic lack of tradition around death and mourning that is not through any like open maliciousness, but because of free market forces, obviously there are industries that have cropped up around this, that it encouraged people to spend their money away to deal with this.Simone: Yeah,Malcolm: but our culture doesn't relate to death. And I think that this is a really important thing that you're saying here. People see it as they go their entire lives without seeing somebody die. Very frequently in our society. This is very rare, historically speaking. They just, like death is a universally bad thing.Malcolm: It is something that is not supposed to happen. Like it's actually almost not supposed toSimone: happen. Something has gone wrong when someone dies.Malcolm: Something has gone terribly wrong. You go to a hospital because they are going to fix you if you are sick and you are ill and they have failed when you die it's just, there is no this is when it's [00:35:00] okay to die in our society.Malcolm: Whereas most societies historically had context. Where you were like, ah, yes, that's an honorable death. That death was okay.Simone: That was Yeah, just it happens.Malcolm: Yeah, and I think, one thing that may change how I relate to death, and one reason why I, may be so much more comfortable with it, is, early in my career, you're getting Malcolm Lohr here.Malcolm: I did work with an M. E. A medical examiner. So I would go and collect brains from my lab. Because, then we were looking at a different brain morphology, but I'd get to read the person's psychiatric files. So all of their interactions with their psychologist before they die, like leading up to their death years leading up to their death.Malcolm: So I'd get like a full profile on all of their innermost thoughts and let go and I'd get to see their body and I get to pick up their brain. And I then be taking that back to my lab. And so I saw a lot of dead people like a lot of dead people. And it may. I almost wish more people could have that experience so that they understand that death Is something that happens and it's all [00:36:00] around us and our society covers us up.Malcolm: That was one thing about the me. If you're in the me in a large city, something that becomes really clear to you is just people are constantly dying around you. And you justSimone: me being medical examiner,Malcolm: right? Yeah. And you just don't see it like the, if you're in a major city, there are people dying every single day.Malcolm: There is a. There are rooms full of dead bodies every single day. And you just don't see it.Simone: Yeah.Malcolm: And it also other learning from the Emmy don't text and drive. Those were usually the most gruesome bodies. Do not text and drive. Oh and the other thing you learn is that fat is even like grosser on the inside than it is from the outside.Malcolm: SoSimone: Don't text and drive and watch your figure.Malcolm: It's useful. It's helped me motivation in two areas. Also don't, don't drink and drive. That's another thing we would see in the Emmy, but actually texting and driving seemed to, that was like [00:37:00] way more people than drinking and driving from my memory.Malcolm: OhSimone: gosh. Yeah. I think you're more impaired even than when you're drunk, which is, it's insane that texting and driving is not more I guess persecuted, prosecuted, you would expect texting and driving to be more prosecuted based on the number of deaths that it causes every year.Malcolm: Yeah.Malcolm: This has been a fantastic Talks at Home. Yeah, we didn't get into the lessons I learned from my mom, so we'll talk about that in some other podcasts. And I really hope that if I was to die, that you wouldn't go into this big performative morning thing. I know that you care about me and that you'd focus on our kids.Malcolm: Because that's what matters mostSimone: to me. Kids first and foremost. And then second, the way to honor you would be to carry forward your goals and mission to honor what you were doing, to honor your work. And I hope you would do the same for me. Yeah.Malcolm: Remember if you're ever wondering, what your husband would think of what you were doing or any success that you've had, that what my kids think of you matters so much more than what I think of you.Malcolm: Same,Simone: Malcolm. I love you [00:38:00] very much. And yeah.Malcolm: And please don't die. Please don't die. Yeah. It would be logistically very difficult.Simone: I do not want to inconvenience you. But yeah, I also love your mom a lot. I know you do too. And nothing will change the impact that she's had on us and nothing will take that away.Simone: And that's a really good thing. Yeah. She lives on.Malcolm: And this is what she wanted to an extent, she was very clear in her will and everything like that, only celebrations of life, no morning, no anything like that. So it's also not against her wishes. Yeah, exactly. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm and Simone examine if banning pornography positively impacts society, relationships, and mental health. Contrary to assumptions, research shows legalizing porn reduces assault and attitudes viewing women as sex objects. It correlates with happier marriages and less relationship discord. Most downsides link to believing porn is bad, not the material itself. Ultimately restricting porn access worsens outcomes without effectively limiting consumption. They argue conservatives should own male sexuality, not amplify suffering.Malcolm: [00:00:00] The, Femboy alt right Catgirl. There's a meme around this, And this is where I think that our movement, this new movement was in the conservative party has in many ways become affiliated with cat girls. As yeah, you've got like cat girl Kulag who, we know, we've talked to personally and.Malcolm: Elon talking about investing in catgirls in that one famous tweet, these are people who I consider very politically aligned with us and both of them have like weirdly talked about catgirls. So what's going on there? Why are they talking about catgirls?Would you like to know more?Simone: Hello, Malcolm.Malcolm: Hello, Simone! I am so excited for this topic today. When we engage with some other branches of conservatives, one of the things that I think we all agree on is thatMalcolm: sexuality isn't really handling itself well in society today. are a ton of men [00:01:00] and women that are turning to self gratification over real relationships. And this is likely toMalcolm: expand in the future with AI and stuff like that. One of the responses to this that many people consider is we should ban pornography.Malcolm: And some countries that are more conservative than us and trying to solve fertility rates have done just that, like South Korea. However, it does not have the effects you would think it would have. And it's generally a really bad idea. Let's talk about why.Simone: So when we first started writing the Pravda's Guide to Sexuality, we were sure that we would find a lot of information that suggested that porn and masturbation were pretty damaging because. We saw on Reddit at that time, like no fap the subreddit was really big. People were like all about this is damaging me.Simone: This is really harmful for me. So we're like, wow, this is, people must have looked into this and this must be it fits herMalcolm: ideology. Like self-control is, oh, good [00:02:00] lack. Yeah. ControlSimone: is bad like that. Yeah. Like you need take a prish approach. Yeah. Yeah. This is, yeah. Don't indulge like that. That must be bad.Simone: Lo and behold, we were wrong. And, we totally own up to that now. Basically it looks like masturbation in general for both men and women is good. It seems to be correlated with like more sexual empowerment and enjoyment on women's part. seems to reduce stress, improve self esteem, improve body image.Simone: There's a lot, there's a lot to be said just for masturbation with or without porn. We also say in the pragmatist guide to sexuality, that masturbation may contribute to a decline in many social ills. UCLA researchers found that sex criminals on average consume less porn than the average person.Simone: And started consuming it at a later age than the average non sex criminal. Take that for what it's worth.Malcolm: But it's crazier than that. In countries that haven't allowed porn and then started allowing porn, rates of ape you guys can figure out what I mean. I'm trying not to get demonetized here.[00:03:00]Malcolm: Rights of ape declined precipitously upon the legalization of pornography.Simone: Yeah. So I can quote from our book on sexuality across nations, more pessimistic at it. Oh, sorry. And I'm going to use the word grape. Okay. Okay. Great. Yeah. Great. Across nations, more. Permissive attitudes toward pornography are correlated with lower rates of grape and less violence against women.Simone: A great case study of this can be seen with the Czech Republic, where porn was illegal under communism, then legalized when the party fell. This decriminalization of pornography caused, in one year, Grapes to decline over 37% in child abuse of the wrong no, it's all wrong. The child, what abuse fell by about 50% similar results.Simone: We're seeing where porn laws were loosened in Denmark, Japan, China, and Hong Kong. So talkMalcolm: about rates of internet expansion. Cause that's also really interesting.Simone: Yes. For every 10% increase in [00:04:00] internet access. there's a corresponding regional decrease of 7. 3% in grapes, suggesting that the internet and its facilitation of masturbation may provide an outlet for sexual energy that might otherwise cause serious damage.Malcolm: Consider how correlational that is 10% to a 7% drop a 10% rise in internet access to a 7% drop that 50% drop. So this is one of those things, right? Where it's something that ideologically I can be like, self control is good. This is bad, et cetera. But then I engage with the data and do I want to be one of those people, like the woke, where I throw out the data when it doesn't agree with my. Ideological predilections or do I adapt to the data? And I never want to be that type of person, especially when it leads to children to suffer like that. It was hungry, right? A 50% drop. And it's one of those horrible things a child could [00:05:00] experience.Malcolm: Yeah. Okay. A 50% drop in that happening.Simone: Yeah. We would prefer to live in a society in which porn is legal and masturbation is widespread because our children on the streets are going to be safer. Like that, just,Malcolm: it, No, hold on, so it actually gets more interesting than this. We also found in the book that the negative correlates to porn consumption are almost entirely tied to how much you believe there are going to be negative correlates to porn.Simone: Yeah, back to our theme of how you contextualize things, influences, whether or not, Exactly, so we'llMalcolm: try to do this after the episode we recorded where we talk really deeply about how much contextualization we can. Matters to whether or not you experience something like trauma or something else, right?Malcolm: Which is if you see something as negative you will experience it as negative now in porn This is really interesting because it means that porn has a much more negative effect on religious people's psychology Than it does [00:06:00] on non religious people's psychology or people who don't contextualize it negative psychology that is fascinating to me, but it also means that when people talk about how porn is hurting them, if they are somebody who believes porn will hurt them, they are not lying.Malcolm: It really does have a panoply of negative effects on them. It just doesn't on the people who don't think it's negative. So in many ways, they're creating their own little nightmare.Simone: Yeah. of adverse effects. And also, a big theme that comes up with porn that many, like feminists argue is that this is hurting men's perception of women.Simone: It's causing men to objectify women. It's causing men to see women, especially as like less than human, as just objects of, for pleasuring oneself. But as we say in the pragmatist guide to sexuality. Despite what we had assumed, masturbation and porn consumption do not lead people to think less of women.Simone: People who watch pornography hold views of women as more equal to men than those who do [00:07:00] not watch pornography. Consumers of porn are no less likely to describe themselves as feminists and actually express more egalitarian ideas about Both women in positions of power and working outside the home, according to the results of a study published in the journal of sex research.Simone: So that alsoMalcolm: seems intuitively true, typically the hardline religious people are probably going to consume less porn, . But yeah, so along almost every line it's worse to ban porn, right? But then you can say okay. What about relationship structures? Okay? Porn must negatively affect people in relationships.Malcolm: Do we have any data on that? I'm pretty sure we do.Simone: One study conducted on college students found that those who masturbate more actually have more sex than those who masturbate less. Another study found that people who masturbate more often have happier marriages and more satisfying sex within those marriages. Masturbating while fantasizing about one's partner has also been shown to improve the quality of relationships and reduce relationship damaging behavior patterns.Malcolm: Wow. Yeah, [00:08:00] so we actually had trouble finding studies that suggested that Porn has negative effects on people who don't believe that porn has a negative a negative effect. .Malcolm: Okay. So we found a couple studies that showed it might have negative effects. We couldn't find any study that showed masturbation alone had aSimone: negative effect. Yeah, it's more with any sort of pleasurable activity it can be habit forming. So while it's not recognized institutionally as addictive inherently you can, I think, fall into patterns that are quite damaging.Simone: Just like you could, develop a food addiction. It is totally possible. And many people do have addictions to porn.Malcolm: Actually, this is a, but I also think let's ignore all of the research. Let's pretend that wasn't there. Yeah. I've been talking with some like Catholic integralists and they're like, okay, we need to enforce basically our ideology on other people and through that society can be made better, right?Malcolm: If we remove access to porn, it will fix relationship dynamics and stuff like that. And here I am being like, what a sign. Of cultural [00:09:00] weakness that you cannot exist as a cultural group without at the government level banning access to certain things. The way I see it is anybody who can't motivate themselves to reproduce in an environment where porn exists probably doesn't need to be a part of the gene pool.Malcolm: Because... Things like porn are going to exist within future cultural environments. And they are going to eventually seek in, unless you completely wall yourself off from society. And if you want to do that as a cultural group, go ahead and try. I'm fairly certain you will lose, because the groups that have tried that...Malcolm: Losing unless they keep themselves completely disconnected from the world. So by that, what I mean is Amish groups that have adopted cell phone use, they've actually seen a precipitous fall in their fertility rates. Yeah, you can, you'll be okay so long as you're not engaging with technology.Malcolm: But then how do you compete economically on a large scale? How do you matter? In terms of the future of our [00:10:00] species, the future of our species will be defined by people who have overcome these challenges, not people who engaged with them by isolating themselves from them. And finally, I actually imagine that a lot of the psychological benefits that people are reporting from porn restriction is actually the psychological benefits that come from just any sort of arbitrary desire restriction, meat restriction, or fish restriction, or I'm not going to eat between this and this.Malcolm: Period of the day, like you would have with Ramadan.Simone: InterventionMalcolm: fasting, yeah. Arbitrary self denial rituals, as we always mention, strengthen the inhibitory pathways in your prefrontal cortex and make it easier to shut down our trees of thoughts, which can make it easier to force yourself to work, and you'll just generally be mentally healthier.Malcolm: Great, but you see this. Anywhere you have this, you don't need it to be porn. And this is where I think that our movement, this new movement was in the conservative party that is much more, , open to ideas like this has in many ways become [00:11:00] affiliated with cat girls. As yeah, you've got like cat girl Kulag who, we know, we've talked to personally and.Malcolm: Elon talking about investing in catgirls in that one famous tweet, these are people who I consider very politically aligned with us and both of them have like weirdly talked about catgirls. So what's going on there? Why are they talking about catgirls? Here is what I think is going on there and why I do think that you could call it catgirl conservatism.Simone: Please let this be a new politicalMalcolm: party. Ownership of male sexuality. The attractive cat girl is something that is both sexually deviant and that it's not approved by either traditional conservative society or the new progressive society, because it's seen as I don't know, dehumanizing of women or fetishizing or something like that.Malcolm: So it's frowned on by both groups but it is also, I think, near universal. I think there's very few guys who aren't like, Oh, cute cat girls, [00:12:00] right?Simone: You mean who are fine, cute catMalcolm: girls, aversive. Yeah, I don't think that's a norm. They're not grossed out. I think that there's a lot of, weird fetishes out there and stuff like that where it's sort of 50 50.Malcolm: Yeah. Hot cat girls I get the off perception. It's 90 to 95 They're crowdSimone: pleasers. They're not, They're not arm pits.Simone: Well,Malcolm: Like, Really furry style. I'm talking about, anime style. Two ears, and like a tail or something, right? Yes. So it's one of those things that is both subversive and nearly universal.Malcolm: And I think it also, and I think this is really important is a reclamation of male sexuality, which is really open ground for the conservative movement right now because, traditionally the conservatives were sexually conservative and the progressives were, more sexually open, but as time has gone on The progressive movement has become more and more sex negative, especially in relation to male sexuality, [00:13:00] like male desire is something to be shamed.Malcolm: And so we And create a movement which I think is appeals to ground that the progressive has voluntarily ceded. And that there is no reason why the conservative party, either ideologically, like, why are we creating a nanny state to protect people from themselves?Malcolm: Ideologically that makes no sense. And the data, I think, also shows that you're not really getting a big advantage from this.Simone: Yeah. Oh, that's interesting. A new way of being proud of male sexuality, which progressive groups would argue. How dare you ever try to be proud of that, that, objectifies and ruins, everyone, whereas actually, it has been shamed for quite a long time.Malcolm: Actually,Malcolm: there was this meme that I want to sayMalcolm: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So, it's, It's The, the, the Femboy alt [00:14:00] right Catgirl. There's a meme around this, which is an increasing alt right movement in the femboy movement. But I think it's really organic when you think about it because this is a movement that is becoming increasingly common because I think of the biological changes to males that are happening because of environmental pollutants, the study we always cite is theSimone: the TIDE studies that looked at first trimester. Blood levels of endocrine disruptors in mothers, and then things like anogenital distance and gendered play in children.Malcolm: These are still people who have, I think, a lot of masculine mindset in terms of how they approach politics and stuff like that.Malcolm: But the way that they self identify and relate to their own sexuality, it's very much more fanboy y. And I also think the Femboy identity is to some extent subversive these days, because in a world where you are expected to transition, if you don't immediately adopt a traditional [00:15:00] masculine sexuality proudly adopting a Femboy lifestyle, I can see how that would relate to the alt right movement to an extent.Simone: Interesting. Yeah. How does, interesting. Interesting. What is adjacent to this or what I see discussed a lot in, in similar circles, just as, okay, maybe femboy cat girls are being celebrated female promiscuity and sexuality is being demonized. And I don't really understand why. Where I stand now is that there are different female sexual strategies and they make sense in different contexts.Simone: So sure. Being really prudish or, limiting number of sexual partners or maybe not even having sex until marriage can make sense in some contexts. In other contexts being promiscuous, having as many sexual partners as you would care to have is advantageous, especially when you know the trade offs coming into it.Simone: Why? Yeah. WalkMalcolm: me through this. It actually damages the non promiscuous [00:16:00] group for the promiscuous group to exist. So suppose I'm a part of a Catholic commune or something like that, right? I try to go back to the way things used to be. I have built monogamous relationships. We ban divorce in our communities.Malcolm: So if you existed in like old France or something like that, right? This was the way things used to be. You couldn't just leave your partner. The switching costs would be. Incredibly high. We can go to the switching costs episode on relationships where we talk about relationship structure and stuff like that.Malcolm: SoSimone: if you were my husband, I wouldn't have to worry because who else could you possibly go to? Everyone else is married, right? YeahMalcolm: if you left me, you would have this huge social stigma against you within basically anyone else you could marry, which would hurt your chances to marry someone else, which artificially strengthens our relationship and makes divorce less likely.Malcolm: But even if you isolate your community these days, a man could still just leave and go to a completely different like community in a completely different area. Every single promiscuous [00:17:00] girl in general society lowers the quality. Of every other relationship just from them existing and by that what I mean, it's a lower the quality of every other relationship where relationship quality is defined by how much an individual values their partner divided by the average quality of a partner they think they could get on an open marketplace, right?Malcolm: And as we said, when somebody believes the average quality of a partner, they can get on an open marketplace is. Higher than the quality of their existing relationship, they're going to like their relationship. So there is a reason, there is a reason why somebody would be like, I don't like this, right?Malcolm: However, I think it's a completely losing battle to fight, right? And I think it alienates potential cultural allies that do not need to be alienated. Like with Ayla, right? I always am trying to convince her to join our side. I'm like, you gotta join the conservatives. We've got your back or at least our group within the party has your back.Malcolm: And then she has these horrible experiences with these [00:18:00] frankly insecure, quote unquote trad guys who think they're being cool by shaming somebody for, I don't know, being a deviant sexually. And it's whatever. Whatever, she's living the life that I think most red pillars would live if they were born in a woman's body.Malcolm: Yeah. ButSimone: But you were just arguing that someone who is willing to,Malcolm: no, so what I'm arguing is that it does hurt those communities, but no amount of shaming is going to remove people like that from the general marketplace at this point. Like they just exist now. There is nothing you can do to get rid of them anymore.Malcolm: And thus, by going out there and making yourself a problem for these people, all you do is chase away potential allies at this point. I'm not saying they don't hurt your relationships, I'm not saying it doesn't have exogenous effects on your community, it does, but no amount of shaming that you're doing is making anything better, all it's doing is chasing away potential allies that, and you could be like, no, because if we consolidated [00:19:00] power within the conservative movement, we could ban porn.Malcolm: So what you ban porn, who are you helping? You're helping the people who aren't in your cultural group, unless you're saying that like, and I was in Korea, you can get porn with VPNs and stuff. I don't know what you people think, like how good these porn bandsSimone: actually are. But isn't prostitution legal in Korea?Simone: How does that work? I don't remember, but I do remember there was a lot of it. So yeah, I guess what I'm sayingMalcolm: is that porn bans just don't work that well. They, They workSimone: less well. Well, What freaks me out though, and as we alluded to earlier in this podcast, like the more you ban access to porn, the more people are going to sort of right.Simone: And then elsewhere,Malcolm: 50% right. happening to kids. Yeah. That to me was just like, what even are you? So for some sort of like aesthetic, cultural victory, you're willing to let actual children suffer. [00:20:00]Simone: Yeah. Not cool. It's not cool, buddy. IMalcolm: don't like it when progressives pull that s**t and I don't like it when you guys pull that s**t either.Malcolm: Yeah. What matters is. Is, it's the kids and not all kids. I can protect my kids, I can keep my kids out of the school system. Not everyone can do that.Simone: Yeah, no, I I hope that a couple of minds have been changed about theMalcolm: value.Simone: But... Yeah yeah porn.Simone: It's useful. Don't ban it. Thank you very much.Malcolm: No, yeah it's useful and it may be useful to you to restrict yourself from it, but it's actually the act of the restriction, which is providing you as the benefits. If you, honestly, likeSimone: I, I, From the research, I think if you want to restrict something and develop your self denial pathways, your inhibitory pathways, try intermittent fasting it appears to have some pretty good, benefits health wise, [00:21:00] whereas as long as you don't have a problem a habit form based addiction to porn it seems to be that moderate and reasonable masturbation and porn use Has beneficial effects increase testosterone levels?Simone: I think yeah hold on. I think even, yeah, one study suggests that abstaining from masturbation for seven days may increase testosterone levels, which could be useful. Okay. So I guess if you're trying to build muscle, then okay, yeah, sure like that too.Malcolm: But if you do have an addiction to porn, which some people argue that it can't happen, whatever I'll say it can happen.Malcolm: All right? Yeah. If it does happen, then use naltrexone. Yes. You just go to All Day Chemist or whatever, this is a site where you can order these pills from India, it's an opioid agonist take a pill, an hour later masturbate to porn, do this every day for a week, you will never want to masturbate to porn again.Malcolm: I thinkSimone: it takes longer than a week, the Sinclair method's six months. MaybeMalcolm: a month, okay but if you do this for a month, you [00:22:00] will eventually lose that addiction I mean if other studies are anything to go on, 80% probability.Simone: Yeah. So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. Porn good if you are addicted, porn bad but you can fix it.Simone: And please don't ban porn for the children. Thank you very much. You're welcome. I love you. I love talking about all these crazy things with you and I'm looking forward to our next conversationMalcolm: already. I love you too. I love you too. Bye. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Malcolm and Simone share their approach to maintaining a positive work-life balance as a married couple running a business together. They explain how framing mundane activities as fun helps create happy memories. Acting cheerful even when alone reinforces emotions. Avoiding compromise and aligning on shared goals prevents conflicts. Modeling happiness teaches it to kids. They disagree on meds but research to find truth. Not fearing death removes constant dread. Starting every conversation cheerfully sustains the mood. Ultimately you choose whether to view life negatively or positively.Malcolm: [00:00:00] So we're going to do a video today on work life balance, which you can see with a kid home from school. It was pink eye. I got terrible pink eye today too. That's the one thing they don't tell you about being a parent. You're going to be sick 24 seven, right?Simone: Octavian? I actually started a spreadsheet to track the number of days that all of us are sick.Simone: So every time someone gets sick, I track the dates. Cause I want to see ultimately like how many days out of the year. Someone in our family is sick because I legit think that it's like quite a few days. I think it's about a quarter. A quarter?Malcolm: I'd say it's about a quarter of the year.Simone: Yeah it might even be more than that.Simone: It might actually be more like a third. So we can report back on that one. But despite being sick, I would argue that we still really have a lot of fun. And that I expected that as a parent, we would be a lot more stressed out and unhappy. Because everyone talks about how like marriage is hard work and having kids is hard work.Simone: . [00:01:00] But in the end, I think that it's actually pretty fun and seamless. But I think that a lot of that has to do with framing. So something that we do a lot with our kids when we need them to be excited about something is we play a hype game, essentially, where we will take something really mundane, like an airport shuttle bus, and we will frame it as the most fun, the most amazing thing in the world.Simone: So let's say that we need to get through a really rough travel day with lots of transfers. We will hype up the airport shuttle at the end of that day to get to a parking lot like it is the coolest thing in the entire world.Simone: And it works like crazy. Like we, we talk about it all day. Oh my gosh, we get to do this thing. And then we actually get to the airport shuttle bus. We're like, this is the best thing ever. And I think that one of the tricks to making a really heavy work schedule work with family, with a spouse, with whatever is playing the [00:02:00] hype game with everything.Simone: So no matter what you're doing, you make it fun. You make it fun.Malcolm: I the hide game with you and how much you're already doing this to yourself, whether you realize it or not.​Malcolm: So think about like a marriage, right? People are like the day I was married to you was the happiest day of my life. And it's like, why?Malcolm: Like you knew you were going to get married well before that day. That's not like you just found out you were going to get married that day. It's a ceremony. They're not very fun ceremonies. Yeah,Simone: it's a pretty stressful day.Malcolm: Yeah, you're sitting there you're likely last minute making sure you've memorized your vows so you say them right, you're trying to project a certain self image to the crowd.Simone: Are you just trying to keep all your guests happy and deal with, all the logistical nightmares that are coming up with whatever catering people needing stuff, et cetera.Malcolm: I think this is true of beaches, for example, right? Oh God, miserable. [00:03:00] Oh, You'll go to a beach. It's hot.Malcolm: They're drinking alcoholic beverages in the hot sun, often reading a book that they could be reading at home, or laying down, burning themselves, giving themselves cancer. I don't know, I don't know why people still do that. That seems like it's not even like a trend anymore. But the question is why?Malcolm: What are you getting out of doing that differentially, right? It's that society has told you that this is a fun thing to do and that is where you are getting happiness from the event. And you can change what is a fun thing to do if you create new narratives for yourself. So we can say, some people are like, Oh, that's really sad that you turn, your business trips into little mini honeymoons or family vacations or whatever, right?Malcolm: For you and your spouse. Cause you work together. And it's like, why? We, we section life into fun and not fun time, but you can make all of life fun [00:04:00] time if you create the right story for yourself around what you're doing and the people around you are helping you continue to generate this delusion.Malcolm: And you might be like that's not real fun. That's a delusion. Everything, this whole game, this whole life you're living, the emotions you feel they're delusion generated by the narrative society has created for you, or the pre evolved emotional responses that you have because your ancestors who had those responses had more survivingSimone: offspring.Simone: And I think a really influential moment for you in your life around this hype machine game. was for watching an Addams Family movie, whereMalcolm: there's this we've talked about that in another video, so I don't want to go too deep on thisSimone: concept. Yeah, but there's a scene in which Morticia is cutting the tops, the blossoms off of roses, and admiring this bouquet of thorny branches, essentially.Simone: And it just, it's this perfect moment encapsulating how it is up to you, in your mind, to decide whether something is positive or negative, whether you [00:05:00] enjoy it or not. And you can choose to do that with everything. And honestly, we're not as good as it is. We're not as good at it as we should be.Simone: Like I should be more like recently, for example, our son Octavian isn't with pink guy. I'll come got pink guy. I should have been like, Oh, this is a great opportunity for us to spend more time together and have a special day with Octavian. And instead of Oh no, like how are we going to handle the logistics, the calls?Simone: Oh, how do we do this? How do we keep Octavian happy? And I think that really what was a missed opportunity every time also is if you were in a working relationship where you fail to spend time together and turn it into something really special and fun and enjoyable, that's a failure on your part.Simone: But I think many marriages also fall apart for that same reason that when stuff happens, it doesn't matter if it's good or if it's bad. The couple or one partner chooses to view it negatively. And that can honestly happen with really good things. Like maybe a spouse gets an amazing job opportunity and they get to move into a much better house in an [00:06:00] amazing city.Simone: That spouse is like, Oh, I don't want to leave home. This is horrible. Or you'veMalcolm: created this power imbalance, yeah, no I, I. Absolutely agree. That was in every moment. And this also really colors how we see emotions, why we see indulging in positive emotions is really negative.Malcolm: But we also really culturally shame was in our family. The idea of indulging in negative emotions, because if I come to Simone one day and I'm in a bad mood. I'm hurting her. I am hurting our kids. I am hurting everyone I interact with that day. And at the end of the day, a bad mood is often a choice.Malcolm: Yeah. Unless you're like have major depressive disorder or something like that. And then, there's pharmacological solutions. There, there might be pharmacological solutions. But generally, if we're talking about like just general bad moods. Most of them are a choice and there's something that we can change due to how we believe [00:07:00] that we are interacting with reality.Malcolm: That the framings that we have of the world and that is, is why I think. even though our wider philosophy says emotions don't matter in part because emotions don't matter. And because a bad mood makes everyone less efficient, there is never an excuse to be in a bad mood.Malcolm: And this is a really interesting thing with cultural groups that do believe emotions don't matter because this is something throughout them. ForMalcolm: example, you've got the Opus Dei when I, the Opus Dei is a Catholic sect, the Evoke set that a lot of people have about them is, oh, they're the ones who whip themselves, right? Famously a character from the Da Vinci Code was an Opus Dei member, like one of the bad guys. And so people see this as gruesome or something.Malcolm: But the reality is that it is a mandate for every Opus Dei member. The reason they whip themselves, the reason they flagellate themselves is to learn better emotional control. The reason they have that mandate is because they have a mandate in all of their interpersonal interactions with other people to [00:08:00] be happy and be the Opus Dei that a lot of people don't know.Malcolm: Generally cultural groups that see emotional control as a mandate. See it as part of that mandate to always try to be as chipper as possible which creates a lot of people are like, yeah, but if you don't indulge in your negative emotions and they'll come out in other weird ways and it's no, they don't.Malcolm: The study will always say, and I'll say this till it's a blue moon because people need this beaten into them is that when you do something like if you're mad and then afterwards you go punch a bag, it has been shown that will make you more mad and you will get more mad in the future. Indulging in a negative emotion makes that negative emotion worse always, and it makes it easier to feel that negative emotion in the future.Malcolm: If you, however, just choose not to view things negatively and you experience very little negative emotions, it's like not having that first vomit, you will be less likely to throw up afterwards and don't break the seal. [00:09:00] Don't break the seal. Don't break the seal. Hold in all those positive emotions.Malcolm: Because I think, in our daily life, do we experience that many negative emotions? I don't really see you.Simone: No, actually. I started using a mood tracking app called Dailio, just to see, how my moods are now, actually even when we're stressed out about stuff, like we do all right we're pretty even keeled, like you would expect for our value set, which is pretty encouraging.Simone: But I also think that we are actually a lot more happy go lucky than people would expect per our value set. But again, I also think here's another thing that we do that I think really makes a big difference in, in our perceived happiness and in our experience in life and also our stress levels, quite frankly, is.Simone: We will do stuff that is actively uncomfortable or act a certain way while doing something. Even when we are uncomfortable, we will act really happy [00:10:00] and then take a bunch of photos of it and record everything as happy. And then when we are, we have like little playback albums of recent photos like throughout our house or on our phones and stuff.Simone: And when we look at those. Our memories end up being of, Oh, that was so happy we're such happy people.Malcolm: This is like the day on a beach phenomenon, right? Which is yeah I might be miserable all day in the hot sun on a beach, but I want to take a number of pictures of me smiling, and then that helps record it in my narrative, like my internal history.Malcolm: That I enjoyed that day and I will believe I was happier and this can actually have a really positive effect on Relationships with your spouse your kids. Yeah, are you showing them the picture you made?Simone: Wow,Malcolm: buddy What is itMalcolm: of? A little zombie Show it again.Malcolm:Malcolm: Because when you believe that your partner is somebody who makes your mood better, you will like being... Oh, hold on, hold on, [00:11:00] hold on, hold on, hold on, let me get you go. Thank you, buddy. You are a nice boy.Malcolm: You are a nice boy, my friend. You are a nice boy. You You are a nice boy. And I think, so there's two things to this. One is, like that interaction. People have been asking, like, why are your kids always happy and polite? And I think it's because they just don't have a lot of modeling of other ways to emotionally react to people.Malcolm: And I think that's really important in terms of what you teach kids. The emotions and the ways that you treat the people around you is the way that they are going to learn to treat the people around them. But to the other point I was saying, the reason you create these false narratives, even if, we had a bad day at the airport or something like that we got stuck at the airport all day and so it's okay rounding the kids, very stressful, we could miss our flight, are we gonna get one, but let's do some video of us having fun, right?Malcolm: Because when I believe that my partner makes my life better, that's going to make my relationship more stable [00:12:00] and I will show her more regular gratitude throughout the day, which makes her feel better and creates a positive feedback loop. The moment one partner begins to believe that a relationship is...Malcolm: Is a negative thing for them. It's really quick to get in a negative feedback loop where they're not treating the partner, the way the partner wants to be treated, then the partner doesn't treat them the way they want to be treated. And it is just so hard to break out of that cycle. Alternatively, you can have sort of a cycle of positivity that is remarkably easy to create.Malcolm: Now, a few side notes here. Okay. One is we're cheating. So it's important to remember that everybody has a happiness set point. Yeah. And what that means, and there's been studies on this, if you win the lottery or if you get a major injury, become an amputee, yes, your happiness will go down for a short period.Malcolm: Largely, it almost always goes back to about where it is. Everyone has about the same level of average happiness. And I think I just have a really high happiness set point. [00:13:00] And that could also explain why my kids are so chipper. It could be that we are just have a genetically high happiness set point.Malcolm: Most people in my family are really happy people. And we pass this on to our kids. And so they're just cursed with happiness all the time. What are your thoughts on that, Simone?Simone: I would say we've definitely seen in our kids that they have different happiness set points. Some are happier than others.Simone: But yeah, definitely modeling how you react. I would also say that you, the way that you personally choose to react to things, 100% feeds off the other person. So when one of us accidentally gets into a bad mood, like we miss a night of sleep or, One of us is in a lot of pain for some reason, and then, that leads to us being, like, not reacting to something in a positive way.Simone: It definitely gets the other person in a negative mood. So I do think that there are both virtuous and vicious cycles that are created.Malcolm: I think also cosplaying wholesomeness as a family. It does make sense to expend some time on that, even when it's not of immediate utility. This [00:14:00] season we've got fireflies out in the field.Malcolm: field that we stay up later than we otherwise would to sometimes go out, catch fireflies together with the kids or go berry picking. There's lots of raspberries and wine berries out this season. And we're doing that and we're expending the time doing that even though it's not efficacious in the moment because it helps create this narrative for ourselves.Malcolm: Which makes us, I think, appreciate our relationship and our family more. And it creates a narrative that I think our kids will also remember growing up, that I had a picture of an idealSimone: childhood. I also want to add a refining point here and an important one, because what we're describing here obviously is acting you, you should dress for the job you want.Simone: Like we act for the life experience we want, but I think a lot of people hear that they hear okay, so I'm just going to pretend it. And there's that implies that there's also a period where you start acting like yourself. And I think a really core rule here is no. You never act like yourself.Simone: There's the stereotype of there's this, celebrity [00:15:00] couple and they act like everything's perfect. And then the moment the cameras stop rolling, the moment the photographer steps away, they're immediately snapping at each other. Like the moment the guests leave, they're fighting, they're yelling at their kids.Simone: This is shown all over the place in media, maybe it happens sometimes in reality, but for us if we are alone, like I am alone let's see, there was this other night, like two nights ago, there was this night where I was cleaning up after the kids and I was wearing our infant on my back and she just vomited like It just felt five gallons of milk down my back at the same time that our younger toddler decided it would be really fun to spill his milk all over the floor.Simone: And at the same time that Octavian thought it would be really fun to, to throw food all over the place. And I'm just like, just like I'm feeling the warm goop like roll down my like pants, like this is a bad moment, but I'm like still acting chipper in the moment. Malcolm, you weren't there.Simone: I was performing for [00:16:00] absolutely nobody. I was acting cheerful, but there is no time where you're off, period. It'sMalcolm: very important to note that there have been studies on this. If you smile, you will report feeling happier. If you even just say words that cause you toSimone: smile more. Oh, I actually think the pencil study, and this is one in which they had people put like a pencil in their mouth.Simone: I think that wasn't replicated. We'll say that there are caveats, but I think that there are lots of studies.Malcolm: But I think the preponderance of evidence in the research says, That acting as if you are happy or acting as if you are having a wholesome moment with your family will make you feel a wholesome moment with your family.Simone: Yeah. Even if you have a, an inclination not to feel, and of course conversely, indulging in anger, indulging in sadness, is going to make it worse. Which is, of course, why we think it's so toxic, and why we have other episodes talking about how modern therapy is a cult, all of these narratives.Malcolm: It's also, something we do with our kids, I'd be very careful not to tell my kids that they're sad people, or that they're... Tell your kids you're a happy person, you're a good boy, [00:17:00] right? Because they will internalize that and act like that. But adults do the same thing. We build these narratives about who we are, and then that determines how we act to the people around us.Malcolm: Okay, so side note on all of this that we find very perplexing and I'd love it if our audience could help us think through because it's always been one of the big mysteries to me and every now and then I'll have a little breakthrough on it.Malcolm: It's nightclubs. Okay, I went to nightclubs a few times as a kid and then I went back recently. I was on this trip to Latin America with a bunch of teal fellas. And I was like, okay, I'm going to go back. I'm going to observe this. Maybe I'll find some fun at it that I didn't see before. It was hellish.Malcolm: Nothing about this experience to me evokes any sort of positive emotional state. You may be able to find a partner at it, maybe like some sort of romantic partner, but there's got to be more efficient ways with less cost. You're there late at night. You are sweaty, everything is overpriced, so every moment I [00:18:00] feel like I'm being scammed and I'm just annoyed.Malcolm: People are like spilling drinks on you, the music is loud, it's actively painful. I guess it could be some sort of group bonding ritual that's meant to create some sort of hormonal thing in someone's head, like almost inducing the effects of a drug. Or like a mini to mini bonding ritual, but then why are you doing that with people you don't know?Simone: Are youMalcolm: just trying to languish in like a certain emotional subset? I guess I don't understand it. Maybe these people have some narrative around nightclubs making them happy that I don't have and so they're building memories that nightclubs are making them happy or maybe they're really gaining something from the experience.Malcolm: What are your thoughts aboutSimone: my thoughts of it? For some types of people, there's some kind of religious or like mind altering experience of Dancing at a really large, like loud environment with a lot of people like moving in unison and like just the intense overstimulation of that and then the group cohesion of the moment probably creates some kind [00:19:00] of mind altering state that is intoxicating for some types of people.Simone: So you think it's like an intoxicantMalcolm: that we don't feel for whatever?Simone: Exactly. Yeah. It's like some drug that we sometimes can't process. Like we don't have receptors for it. So everyone else is like dosing on it and they're like. Ah, and we just can't, we don't get it.Malcolm: Could be.Simone: I think, so if we're addressing the subject of our work life balance and how we handle it, I think we also have to address the constant question that we get from people or like statement, which is, Oh, I could never imagine working with my spouse.Malcolm: Oh yeah. That's a weird thing. I, it just seems like from our life, just so weird to say, why would you marry someone if you don't want to be around them all the time?Simone: Yeah that and there's this assumption that what about when you have a disagreement that like, you will not be able to work together if you disagree on something.Simone: And I think that's to us when we hear that from someone that basically says to us, you really shouldn't be married because if you do not have shared values and a [00:20:00] shared vision that you have aligned around. That means that you are not sustainable. Like you are not stable. That means that you're both just in it for yourselves and leaning out of the relationship.Simone: Typically if an aligned couple has a conflict, the conflict is in that each of you have a different hypothesis around how to best maximize what matters to you collectively as a family. Malcolm might think that it would be better for everyone to buy uniforms for some project and I might think it's better that no one has uniforms because I think that will make them more efficient and whatever, and it costs less and so we both want the same thing, which is, for that project to succeed or something.Simone: We just have very different ideas on how it is best executed. And there are ways around that, right? One can run tests. One can try one method. One can do all sorts of things to figure out where the truth may be. Whereas I think for many other relationships, there's this expectation that there will be...Simone: It'sMalcolm: compromise. Compromise is the most toxic thing you can have in a relationship. What you're looking for is the correct answer, not the answer that's in between the two people. But I think a lot of [00:21:00] people are purely motivated either by hedonism or by satisfying some sort of self narrative. And both of those things...Malcolm: You can have differentiations between the couple where there is like systemic differences that can't be resolved. If you're both optimizing for your own hedonism, then yeah, there is potential systemic disagreement. Whereas if you're optimizing for, specific outcomes for the world it's very rare that we have any sort of sustained disagreement.Malcolm: What are our sustained disagreements right now, Simone? I'm trying to think.Simone: One of them actually like over time for a long time has been on like whether or not we would support our kids taking something like Adderall. Oh yeah, I'm very supportiveMalcolm: of it and she's very against it.Simone: However. I decided to research the subject more, right?Simone: Because what we want is the best outcome for our kids. So it's not like I'm anti drug and he's pro drug. It's that I was concerned that if our kids take drugs like Adderall to do well on tests, to do tasks that are really hard to focus on, [00:22:00] that as adults, they will not feel empowered to focus on things independently.Simone: And Malcolm's saying, listen. Sometimes you just have to take these things to be able to get through it because if you don't like you just won't like,Malcolm: Like you won't succeed and I think she has an enormous and with superhuman ability to focus on things. Yeah.Simone: I'm like someone who doesn't need it.Simone: Who's, I'm, or I'm like a wealthy person being like, why can't you just buy your way out of the problem? Yeah. Which is. is silly. So what I ended up doing, and this I guess is probably a pretty good illustration of how an aligned couple will disagree on something, is I went out and I looked for more information on, okay, actually what are the long term effects of drugs like Adderall.Simone: And I now have a more nuanced understanding from the research of when it's actually appropriate. So it looks like for people who are diagnosed with ADHD, like they are shown to have significant attention problems, taking Adderall or drugs like basically focus medications, whatever, like the best, like time released one [00:23:00] is these days, it's like least addictive or habit forming.Simone: Taking one of those actually helps to build the sort of connective pathway in your brain that would enable you to learn how to focus without that medication as an adult. AndMalcolm: this goes to everything we've been saying in this. When you act out any emotion or any behavior pattern, it becomes easier to access in the future, even if the way you're acting it out is pharmacologically assisted.Simone: Yeah. And so I was hearing that and I was like, at first I was like, wait, what really? But then also I've done a lot of research on psychedelics, for example. And it's also seems to be found that if you've done a lot of psychedelics, you can reach similar states after taking them just from meditation alone, because essentially your brain has walked that path.Simone: It's like taking a machete and cut and more easily. walkable trail. So you can get there without the assistance in the future. So now my view is very different. I think what my stance is on our disagreement now is if our children, if we [00:24:00] have children who are diagnosed with ADHD and I'm pretty sure we will that yes, indeed, we should give them those medications for use in very specific.Simone: Applications when they really need it to do rigorous tests and stuff. But we should not give it to any child we have who is not diagnosed with it because it could create this feeling of dependency. Like I can't focus without it. Does that make sense?Malcolm: We'll see. Am I, our general takes on our body is one of our recent tweets is saying, thank God our bodies are disposable.Malcolm: That's what it is to be a pronatalist. It's a fundamentally belief that my body is disposable. My kids are the next better iteration of me and their kids will be the next better iteration of them. And so I think it makes us a little loosey or goosier with performance improving medications.Malcolm: That other people who are like my body's a temple might be, burn the Blade Runner quote, the flame that burns twice as bright, burns half as long for them, I would say just do whatever increases yourSimone: efficiency. Yeah, but Malcolm, don't forget for a hot [00:25:00] second that we're also incredibly frugal people and that these medications cost a lot of money and dependencies cost a lot of money.Malcolm: Our kids are gonna have to find a way to pay for it if theySimone: want it as a sustaining income. I know, but I'm just saying a life in which you don't need to pay for something is going to be easier than a life in which you feel like you do, and then more things you feel like you have to pay for.Simone: Cookie, consider the fact that neither you nor I is addicted to caffeine. Think about the thousands of dollars we've saved. How many sodas do you think I drink a day? Okay, I'm not addicted to caffeine. How many thousands of dollars? I know, genuinely, IMalcolm: must drinkSimone: 20 a day? Okay, fine. You are into caffeine.Simone: People, you know they see meMalcolm: drinkingSimone: these on camera. But also, I know how much you spend on Coke Zero, and it's a lot. It's a lot of money. So I'm just saying like the less you have of that in your life, the better. So we have to balance our collective values, frugality, but also performance. And yeah, we don't really care, bodies are disposable, bring bright, die young, whatever, [00:26:00] have kids first, whatever, raise them successfully.Simone: But yeah, that is how we navigate agreements, right? Like our discussions aren't like, Oh, you're hurting my, you never listened to me.Malcolm: I just don't think this is right. This is another point, the burn, break, die young part of our worldview that perhaps makes it very easy for us to be pretty happy most of the time is that we really genuinely are not worried about death.Malcolm: I am worried about dying before I'm able to put my kids in a good position in life, but I'm not worried about death and more generally. And I feel like people who have this attachment to their mortality. They probably feel more like a, dagger dangling above them by a thread their entire life, right?Malcolm: I can understand why it would create this sort of fear of I don't know, the other? I don't know. It's a constant threat. You can die at any moment, right? I guess it's something that's hard for me to model because I'm not really afraid of dying. I'm not really, [00:27:00] I'm afraid of my kids dying, but I guess that's not like an ever present fear for me because we're gonna have a lot of kids. If I had two kids, I'd be really afraid of them dying. ButSimone: You don't, I'm terrifi of anything bad happening to anyone who I love. Or honestly anyone. I don't want bad things to happen to anyone, but no, yeah, maybe our mortality, maybe actually the fact that we fully embrace our mortality encourages us to enjoy the moment that we have at any point.Simone: But I, I think that's more like hippie dippy nonsense. And then we just understand that because we want to maximize our objective functions. We perform better when we're not depressed and demotivated. And so we know that we have to find some way to max out our feelings of happiness. Both individually, but especially as a couple.Malcolm: But it's so weird to me that you wouldn't think that should be pharmacologicallySimone: assisted. Then why aren't you constantly on something?Malcolm: Because I don't need to be. But when I was younger, I had a harder time focusing. And I needed to be this.Simone: I think you actually have ADHD.[00:28:00]Malcolm: This is an important thing to know is the relationships you have can make things much easier for you.Malcolm: So when I say, when I was younger, I had a hard time focusing. One of the things where my brother's this is the best sign of your guy's relationship. Before I met Simone, I had a problem with grinding my teeth in my sleep and I had to wear a night guard. And I think it was due to just like constant stress of looking for a wife, not having met that stage yet, but also just in general with my day to day life.Malcolm: Because I started grinding my teeth in early high school, right? And that's when I really started trying to put my nose to the grindstone and sure I got into a top tier college and sure I got into a top tier graduate school. Start my career well, so I was really on full blast after that point in my life.Malcolm: And after I started dating Simone, within the first year dating you I, it used to be if I didn't wear my night guard for a night, my, my teeth would start cracking. And you can even see some lines, I did real damage. I broke off parts of my teeth that have now been... Don't do this to me! No! But now, not once since we've been in a relationship have I ground my teeth.[00:29:00]Malcolm: And maybe it's just I so feel like I, someone has my back, that I'm dealing with incredibly low levels of stress in my daily life, which makes things much easier, and it's created the illusion for you that I have always been this emotionally calm. When it's really more something that has been created.Malcolm: Because I have so little fear of any sort of betrayal from you or any sort of... Even things could hit me in the back because I've got another pair of eyes looking for me.Simone: I would imagine that the mGTOW slash red pill community be like of course she has your back that's the easiest way for her to stab you AWALT.Simone: AWALT!Malcolm: All women areSimone: like that! I will destroy you Malcolm when you least expect it. No but like seriously I think that's It's one of the most romantic things that you've ever said that like I could make your life that great because when I learn, about hard things that have happened to you before I met you, I just like desperately want to travel back in time and give you a hug.Simone: And at [00:30:00] least I can help that younger person by making your life a little better now. But golly, yeah, I would say working with you is amazing and it's specifically amazing because we choose to make it amazing. It's our version of yes, and, except it's just yes, and it's awesome.Simone: Yes, and we're loving it. Yes, andMalcolm: every moment is awesome. And that's actually one final thing that I note on this. A lot of people are surprised that I start every conversation with a, Hey, how's it going? It's great to be chatting with you. People will notice this on interviews with me or things, and it's like a thing.Malcolm: And they're like, why do you do that? And because I have trained myself to always start every conversation on an emotional high note, it's much easier to maintain this emotionally positive high note throughout the entire conversation. Yeah. We have an evoke set of the ways that we respond to people. And when you ensure that evoke set is just this very easy, positive message like, Hey, how's it going?Malcolm: It's great to be talking today. It makes it very easy to maintain this positive [00:31:00] emotion. And if anyone was going to take any one thing away from this, I think that's an easy thing to do. Yeah.Simone: You know what I'm really excited for now? Dinner! Yes! MeMalcolm: too. Are you going to serve some food for me? DoSimone: we have ground beef left?Simone: Yeah, I have about 150 grams of 93% lean ground beef that I want to sauté for you with some onions and butter. Yeah.Malcolm: Please do, extra butter and yeah, sauté with some onions and a jalapeno.Simone: And a jalapeno, and then steam some rice, and you'll add the spices after you get back with the kids, yeah?Simone: We'll add the tomatoesMalcolm: when I get back, yeah.Simone: Okay, perfect. Alright, we're on. Love you! too, gorgeous.[00:32:00] Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Join Simone and Malcolm as they delve into the fascinating world of emotions in this episode. Explore how they manage negative emotions, like anger, in their household with insightful strategies that can benefit everyone. Then, prepare for a deep dive into the intriguing emotion of humor, its different forms, and the contexts that trigger it. Based on their observations, particularly of their children, they have formulated a compelling theory on what makes things funny. Whether you're interested in understanding emotions better or seeking to improve your humor game, this conversation has something for everyone.The Transcript:Simone: [00:00:00] And so one thing we talk about with our kids is like, does this make you feel good? And this is what we talk about with like negative emotions, right? Like, does it feel good to be angry? Does it make you more efficient to be angry? There are very, very few scenarios in which emotions like anger are going to make you more efficient or make you happier in the long run?Simone: Maybe with something like grief, this could be different. I disagree. I think it's very rarely of utility. And so we talk through, okay, well if it doesn't make you happy, what can we do to get over it? And the, the core thing that gets over an emotion like that is, one, contextualizing it is not appropriate.Simone: And two interrupting it. A lot of emotions are just bead cycles, like a can of Pringles. Once you pop you can't stop. And just about walking away from the Pringles having a glass of milk, so, our, our kid three, when he gets angry we're like, well, do you wanna keep being angry or do you wanna take a few breaths?Simone: And so he'll go, no, I wanna, I wanna take a few breaths, and he'll go, and it helps it pass.Simone: Hello, gorgeous. Hello, [00:01:00] Simone. Today we are going to talk about our little theories on how different emotions work, and I wanted to start with humor. Do you want to go in to our thesis on how the humor emotion works?Malcolm: Yes. But first I have to credit you because you are the one who came up with this, and I think it's so endearing how you did it was all by observing our children and discovering what it was that made them laugh, which was really interesting.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. So your, your theory and model of humor, which you were going to articulate better than me after I sum it up poorly, is that that, which is funny, is something that is surprising, but it makes sense.Simone: Yes. And I think that there's two other types of humor that exists where comedians sometimes get trapped with them, but they're not actual humor.Simone: One is a, I'm scared response. Mm-hmm. Which is really bad. But like a lot of, you, you get in, in really like tense situations where like you are socially scared or like actually threatened and like laughing to deescalate [00:02:00] to be like, ah, I'm not threatening. One, you see this in children.Simone: But in adults as well. And I think a lot of comedians, they'll, they'll build these routines that are really like emotionally cringe because they see people laughing at them. But that is not, that is not like a pleasant laughter. I think for most people who experience it, obviously the human experience is really broad and, and these comedians are appealing to somebody.Simone: , and, one is somebody is breaking social norms. Mm-hmm. And you are lacking cuz you're kind of threatened by the fact that to decrease tension kind of Yeah.Simone: Where creates tension and, and people are breaking social norms. So, this other type of humor is one where you will be much more likely to laugh at almost anything somebody says if you're attracted to it.Simone: Mm-hmm. So if you are attracted or aroused by somebody, you will just laugh at anything they say sometimes, and this is to, I, I guess, convince them. One, one of my favorite studies on this showed that both women and women said they appreciated a sense of humor in a partner. But for women, what that meant is that the person could make them laugh.Simone: But with amendment by this is that the person laughed at their jokes and that's [00:03:00] what they, isn't that sweet? That's, I just found that so sweet. That's so cute. I don't it, it's sociopathic as, as. Uh, Okay. Anyway, but so the main type of humor, the type that you should be aiming for as a comedian is this makes sense within the context that has been built for me.Simone: So in, in a, in a fictional world, you can build a fictional world where things deviate a along certain lines. An example here would be like SpongeBob square pants, right? Like that's a somewhat consistent fictional world with rules, right? And so something can make sense in that. Fictional context, but still be very surprising to you and thus cause you to to laugh.Simone: Like you're like, oh, I didn't expect that, but it makes sense. And these are the best, the best types of, of, of humor with this is humor where it's like an idea. You're not supposed to think. And that's why it was surprising to you where you're like, Oh, oh my God.Malcolm: What? Oh, so yeah, all the, all the cancelable, Netflix, such slash HBO comedy specials that involve, like people, shitting a brick because someone says [00:04:00] stuff they're not supposed to say.Malcolm: It's humor. That's, that's surprising, but it makes sense because it's something that you're not allowed to say, but it's kind of true. And that's where that kind of humor comes from. Then there'sSimone: like workplace humor, that makes sense in context. Yeah. But you're not supposed to say that.Simone: Mm-hmm. So it is surprised to me to hear that. Mm-hmm. But you can also subvert this, like you're going to say one thing, like the people think the joke, oh, I know where the joke's gonna end, and then you go in another direction. And that Right. Surprise, but makes sense in the other direction. It went in.Simone: It's, it is funny. It's especially funny if it really makes sense for a character. Mm-hmm. So you can also do this with a character where a character is in a situation. Where you think oh, there's a generic way that people respond in this situation. Mm-hmm. But this character then responds in a different way that is surprising, but makes sense given the priors they've set up around that character.Malcolm: Well then there's the word based ones like a, a lot of dad jokes or like word puns. Like, oh, how do you know it's a dad joke? I don't know. How do, how do I know it's a dad? It's apparent.[00:05:00]Simone: Oh, but you see, right there, it fits this theory of humor that we have, which is, that was surprising. I didn't expect it, but it made sense. Mm-hmm. And what, where I think that really makes you laugh is it makes sense. Along multiple spectrums. Exactly,Malcolm: exactly. And, and there's another type of humor that I particularly like in which that's more like a narrative based humor where a comedian will describe something even pretty mundane in life, but just using words that are not the typical words to use to describe it.Malcolm: A really good example of this is describing snakes as danger noodles. And it's like Yes, yes. Where you're like, oh, yes. Like it is, it is funny cuz it, it is a danger noodle. It's a danger. Yeah. Like normally you'd be like, it, it is a snake, don't touch it. But saying danger noodle not safe to boop sounds like, oh it's surprising, but it makesSimone: sense and I love it.Simone: Another laughing, a great example of this. You wanna talk. Spicy is is Bron and Perver. One of the things he liked in his book was that he would writeMalcolm: his comedic misspellings. Yeah. Like he, he spells hormones. W H O R E M O N [00:06:00] S. And it's funny cuz it's surprising, but it makes sense.Simone: Well it makes sense given the character that he has set up for himself in these books.Simone: And how much of this is his actual character or not? I don't know. Yeah. But it makes sense in regards to his character. Mm-hmm. And so, even with us we might do things like, oh, well, there's nothing more perverse in building a relationship on love. And, and people laugh at that because they know that we're like this really anti they're like, oh, that makes sense.Simone: Anti love characters, I know of them. Right. So they, they laugh at that. Okay. So we've gone over humor. Any other areas you wanna touch on, on humor?Malcolm: No, but I, I would love to hear your comments, but I, I would encourage, listen other people's theoriesSimone: if you think that this is like next time you watch something that you think is funny or something like that, watch for these different types of humors.Simone: And personally, something to always be vigilant was. Especially if you're a guy while you're flirting. Is there a big difference if somebody laughing cuz they're aroused laughing because you're in this one, like, good type of humor and laughing because they're terrified of you?Malcolm: Oh, that's big. [00:07:00] Yeah, because like, so, so some, some people say, okay, well men and sometimes women have a fight or flight response when very threatened, but women may also have a 10.Malcolm: Or, or or befriend response. And I know that for sure when I am in pain, I am smiling and laughing. When I'm terrified, I'm smiling and laughing. So I, yeah, that is a really important point to bring up. Malcolm. I'm really glad youSimone: brought it up. Well, do some guys optimize around it cuz they're like, oh, I understand how to be funny with a woman.Simone: No, no, no. I'm really, what they've learned is had you absolutely terrified if people are on dates. Terrifi, yeah.Malcolm: Not great. NotSimone: great. Not, not a great thing to accidentally learn.Malcolm: NoSide note. How and why did humor evolve? So I think our kids offer a great example of this. Because this is where I really came up with. The theory was in interacting with our kids. And seeing that when I did something that was surprising and made sense, you know, the kids would start to laugh. And my theory here. Is that the lapping that the kids are doing is saying to the adult, what you just did has almost clicked for me, [00:08:00] but it hasn't totally clicked yet. It's sort of makes sense. But it's still surprising in context. So I'm giving you this positive reward mechanism, EEG, seeing me laugh. So that you repeat what you just did until it stops being funny, or, you know, in the case of kids, it's no longer surprising. . Then the question is that okay? The, why did it continue to adults? And one of the things we always say is evolution's a cheap programmer. And I suspect here that the reason why this didn't end in adults, probably similar to like lactose intolerance, you know, that something that was supposed to be edited out of adults, but then.You know, within certain population, state and adults in it. It kept in the adult population. Um, is that this not stopping laughing thing was actually a courtship ritual. Where, uh, it probably started primarily women to men. Given the other things we talked about where a woman would laugh at something the guy had just done, which was basically assigned to the guy. Oh, do that again.In the same way that kids would [00:09:00] do it again too. They were hijacking a preexisting parental system. , to get the guy to redo specific behavior um, and it increases the bonds of the relationship more quickly. Which led to more efficient courtship rituals.Malcolm: But how about, let, let's talk about. Offense. We love offense. Offense is a great emotion, right? We built a whole holiday around offense.Malcolm: Why don't, why don't you go into our thoughts on offense, right? So we think offense is so delicious and so wonderful and so important to lean into because it is a sign that an idea credibly threatens your worldview. So, for example, the people often think an offensive thing is just an insulting thing or just a repugnant thing, which is not true.Malcolm: For example, if somebody called me, I. A fat cow. I would be like not offended at all because I can tell like from my weight, from my bmi, I am technically not fat. However, if someone called me ugly, I would be offended because I kind of [00:10:00] know that I'm ugly. So you are not ugly, but you, cause you're my husband.Malcolm: You're so perfect. Well, even in a world in which I wasn't ugly, although my face is technically deformed, so I am technically ugly and I have acne and all these other things I'm still, this is what she still acne looks like. I, I, I just covered it up with makeup actually. I was like, I can't deal with seeing this on camera.Malcolm: I know. I never see anyway I, I would still, I am, I am female and it is cultural tradition to think that you're ugly as a female. So anyway, if someone said that to me, it would be offensive because. It, it threatens my worldview that I would like to think of myself as someone attractive because I'm very vain and yet I, I kind of know that's not true.Malcolm: So like that's offense. And why offense is so important is we strongly believe from our, our value set that if you are wrong, You should, you should change your mind. You should be corrected and, and things are only offensive if you kind of in the back of your mind are like, you're not sure that it's totally wrong.Simone: And this is especially to his ideologies. Mm-hmm. So [00:11:00] ideologies are particularly offensive if they're, yeah. Like ifMalcolm: you're climate change believer and someone's like, climate change is a hoax. That's very offensive if you,Simone: we can think if they're stupid or just like out, but if, if it generates that offensive emotion in you mm-hmm.Simone: Mm-hmm. Then it means there's likely something there that you're afraid of engaging with. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And afraid is the wrong word, that you are reflexively protecting yourself against engaging with. Mm-hmm. That is what the offense emotion does, and some cultures really prey on this. Mm-hmm. Where they create this mindset in people because, different cultures, they spread like a sort of mimetic viruses.Simone: Right. And some obviously these viruses, like once they've infected a person, one of the ways they prevent other, Cultures or mimetic sets for coming in and displacing them is they train the person and recondition the person to see all offense as violence or much more threatening than it is to them so that they do not engage with any idea that [00:12:00] might be offensive to them.Simone: Where offense in this context really just means threatening to the virus. Mm-hmm. Capable of dislodging the virus. And so you'll get these entire communities that are based around protecting oneself. Right? Exactly. So, so what they'll do, As they'll say, this person said something offensive, they won't even know.Simone: But then the entire community that's infected with this virus just won't engage with any content that person is producing. Mm-hmm. Cause that's even better. Like once the virus says, okay, if somebody does something that's offensive to anyone within our community we know they might be capable of dislodging the virus from any other individual in the community, and therefore we need to train our community to not engage with it.Simone: Yeah. And that is the very last thing, if I'm creating an intergenerationally durable culture for my kids, I want it to survive because it, it's the best. Mm-hmm. I don't want it to survive because it. It, it, it prevented them from engaging with any other idea. Mm-hmm. And, and, and again, this is something you see with, with [00:13:00] everything from, ultra, ultra progressive community to some like religious cult.Simone: Right? This idea of don't engage with anything that offends any member of our community. Now after offense a great emotion is anger. Do you wanna go into what causes anger in people?Malcolm: Yes. And it is not as Yoda says, fear needs to anger. Anger needs to hate and hate needs to suffering.Malcolm: It's not I, I, Malcolm again came up with this theory because he's the one who's capable of complex. I'mSimone: psychology nerd. I'm the modeling people.Malcolm: No, you're, you're the one who can miraculously and amazingly like think things through five steps ahead, whereas I'm like, Barely even with the, the current stuff.Malcolm: But anyway, your theory for anchor, and I definitely think this, this aligns and it also aligns well with the other models, is people become angry when they are not treated in line with their expectations. And this can be and I first I was like, I don't really understand this because I don't really expect anyone to treat me a certain way because I kind of just don't trust or like anyone, I just [00:14:00] assume people are going to be complete b******s, but you don't really get angry.Malcolm: Well, so that's why I usually don't get angry. But there have been instances in which I felt extremely angry like literally cried with rage. And every time I find myself literally crying with rage, it is when I have to deal with a bureaucracy. It's when I have to deal with a dmv, it's when I have to file paperwork.Malcolm: It's when I'm at a hospital and they're not doing the scan that I want because, there's, there's. Some weird thing that like didn't get filled out that is exactly for the requirements and my insurance isn't paying for it the right way, or something like that. And these are all the times that I have cried with rage, and it is because.Malcolm: I, I don't believe systems should be so massively inefficient, and I think that systems should treat humans in a different and more efficient way. So I even then, it's not just people not treating you in the way that you expect it could be even life circumstances, not treating you peopleSimone: Yeah. Of this happening with a A non sentient object could be like a car.Simone: Mm-hmm. Like you're twisting it and it makes a little bit of noise, like it's about to turn on and it doesn't turn on. Mm-hmm. You expect a car to turn on when you turn [00:15:00] the keys.Malcolm: Yes. You get angry. How dare this car? Yes. You, you're gonna punch the car. Yeah. ItSimone: doesn't turn on when you're hitting the remote or you see this classically with something like a golfer, right? So they're trying to hit the ball and you think they're following all the steps to hit the ball, right? And it just doesn't go right and they get angrier and angrier every time it doesn't go right, which again, affects 'em more and they get angrier still.Simone: But where this sort of anger can become really problematic is when you have a society. In which there are mismatched expectations. Mm. So, one place this gets really toxic is in relationships when one person has an expectation that their partner treats them in a certain way and then the partner doesn't treat them in that way, and it causes an anger response and then that anger response because the other person doesn't expect the person to get angry.Simone: They think they're treating them within the cultural expectations of what they expect in terms of how they expected they were supposed to treat their partner in a relationship. And then that generates anger in them. And, and, and then this other person's like, why are you angry? You spiral angry.Simone: You're the one who wasn't doing what you were supposed to do. And then that generates anger in [00:16:00] them. And this is why things like relationship contracts, point of another podcast are so absolutely critical. But you also have this in the real world. So an example of where I would, would talk about here is, is.Simone: Proper pronouns, in, in terms of misgendering is one person. This happens when you have mismatched cultures where there is like a persistent mismatch of cultures where one cultural group thinks that they're supposed to be gendered one way and another cultural group. Thinks that gendering should be done in another way.Simone: And so the, the one group genders the way they think that they're supposed to gender, and then this generates anger in the other group because they're not, and then they get angry, and then the other group thinks that they're not supposed to be corrected on these sorts of things. So then they get angry and you can create this sort of like pointless persistent anger.Simone: Which, which. Is caused by cultural expectations. Now, another instance in which anger gets really bad is, is when it's reinforced as the correct emotion within people. [00:17:00] So another time you'll angry is when they culturally feel validated in that anger. So one of the things that I've experienced before, and I don't know if other people have, is somebody else comes to you and they're like, oh, you should be really angry about that, and you weren't really angry before.Simone: And then you start to get angry because they've created this narrative that the anger is justified. Mm-hmm. And that's why, one of the worst things a partner can do is if you come home and you tell them about someone at work. Who, who, who is pissing you off is telling you, oh, you're justified in those emotions because then those emotions build and they get worse.Simone: You're, you're not making it better by doing that instead of talking through, why do you think they're doing this? Is there intention to slight you? Is it a cultural mismatch? Mis mismatch, an expectation? No, but of course, Same as misgendering, same as office. If a person could be doing it as a, as an intention to slight you they could be doing it to make you angry because, for some reason, you're part of a different cultural tribe in them and they think your cultural tribe's enemies, so they're gonna like just do whatever they can to hurt you.Simone: [00:18:00] Yeah. But in other instances, it could just be that they're, a different cultural group than you.Malcolm: Yeah. Actually, let's, let's dig into this. Both like the. The ways you can feed. Emotions. Yeah. And when that's toxic and when that's good because in our family, for example, we're very strict about not condoning feeding negative emotions.Malcolm: And so you'd think that sort of like in general as a family where like super emotionally oppressive and just like shut it down, don't feel it, et cetera. But we actually invest a ton in feeding positive emotions like you Malcolm, are. Constantly leaning into playfulness, joy, gratitude. You're constantly complimenting me.Malcolm: You're constantly making me feel like the most beautiful person in the room, the best parent ever. Well, bully. I don'tSimone: do that. Just to masturbate thoseMalcolm: emotional steps, right? You do it functional, like there is a functional reason for it. I mean,Simone: you work for me and you're more efficient when you're happy.Simone: So I, I've, but no, that's the thing. [00:19:00] That's the thing. It's for my own benefit.Malcolm: Well, it is, but, and that's the, what we, what we wanna optimize for here is sociopathic use of emotions, right? So like, people have heard about probably the, the, like the punching bag study where like, when, when people were encouraged to punch, well, peopleSimone: haven't heard of this, so talk about it because almost everybody gets thisMalcolm: wrong.Malcolm: Right. So, so a lot of people believe that sort of like if you let off steam, you are reducing like emotional buildup pressure and therefore you like punching a punching bag for you. Yeah. Whereas it was found instead in, in, in one study that when people were encouraged to let their anger out on something like a punching bag that actually increased their anger versus that they just did something else like a control activity.Malcolm: So this, this basically is, is to imply that. If you lean into an emotion, if you indulge it, if you, if you talk with people who are like, yeah, you should be mad, or, like, you, like, yell or scream, it's gonna make it worse. Kind of, we, we think the same with grief, crying being offended. All these things you can feed well.Simone: But I mean, let's talk about anger for a second here, right? Yeah. Yeah. In terms [00:20:00] of, of, of how you let that eat at you. You know when, when my kid gets angry, Right. He'll get angry cuz something doesn't align with his expectations or he's in a bad overly state. What does an overly state mean? So an overly state is what like the filter that all your emotions are coming through.Simone: Mm-hmm. Think of it like a tint on your glasses or something like that, that makes everything redder or something. Now humans can experience these for reasons that they don't have conscious access to. So a great example is you can inject someone with adrenaline and they will be more irritable.Simone: It, it basically get angrier more easily at things. Even if they know they were injected with adrenaline, youMalcolm: can't help it. Like right now, I'm, I'm I'm experiencing insanely high levels of estrogen because we're doing. Egg retrieval with I V F and I'm like literally injecting like pretty significant amount amounts.Simone: You get angry much, much. You almost never normallyMalcolm: get angry. Like, I'm behaving horribly and I know I'm behaving horribly, but I also can't seem to help it. So overly state affectingSimone: is it's filter. So [00:21:00] kids, this happens a lot, they'll know they're feeling bad. But they won't be able to put a finger on why.Simone: Mm-hmm. So every little thing, they're like, kind of like that door closed, and then they'll get really angry that the door is open, like close the door, and then you close the door and they lick around and the anger hasn't gotten away. And so they're like give me that egg. Like that's the new thing that they absolutely have to have.Simone: And so one thing we talk about with our kids is like, does this make you feel good? And this is what we talk about with like negative emotions, right? Like, does it feel good to be angry? Does it make you more efficient to be angry? There are very, very few scenarios in which emotions like anger are going to make you more efficient or make you happier in the long run?Simone: Maybe with something like grief, this could be different. I disagree. I think it's very rarely of utility. And so we talk through, okay, well if it doesn't make you happy, what can we do to get over it? And the, the core thing that gets over an emotion like that is, one, contextualizing it is not appropriate.Simone: And two interrupting it. A lot of emotions are just bead cycles, like a can of Pringles. Once you pop you can't stop. And just about walking away from the Pringles having a glass of [00:22:00] milk, so, our, our kid three, when he gets angry we're like, well, do you wanna keep being angry or do you wanna take a few breaths?Simone: And so he'll go, no, I wanna, I wanna take a few breaths, and he'll go, and it helps it pass. Now the final emotion I wanted to talk about here was shame. Shame. So shame happens when you yourself don't live up to the self-image you have of yourself. So we all have these images of the type of people we want to be, the type of people we want other people to see us as.Simone: And we feel this. Shame emotion when we don't live up to that self-image. And this can be a persistent problem when a culture creates a emotion, a a, an expectation of ourselves, which is just completely unreasonable. Which, which some cultures do. They just create these completely unrealistic expectations of us.Simone: And then they use those to beholden us to the culture because we're never living up to who [00:23:00] we, we meant to be. Now I think that in a way that can be useful, Simone and I. We hold very high cultural expectations of ourselves, and I do to some extent always have some base level of shame because I'm, I'm never being the person I know I have the potential to be, which is who I expect myself to be.Simone: However, I think there's a big difference between this sort of like 10% shame all the time, and like 80% shame all the time. Yeah. And so I think that that's a good shame is well, and shame,Malcolm: shame can be very damaging, right? Like it's, it's discovered with a masturbation, for example, that when you are ashamed of it, when you think that it's a bad or evil thing, then you're really going to experience a lot of the negative effects of it.Malcolm: Whereas, likeSimone: if you're, you have experience very few negative effects from masturbation if you're not ashamed of it and this mm-hmm. Studies and you also will consume it more. So one of my favorite studies is if you look at like PornHub. By in, in, in sort of like Utah by the percentage of conservative Mormons in that area, like goes up.Simone: The more there, I think it was, or might have been Catholics in, and I can't remember this study was either done with Mormons or Catholics, but it was looking at zip codes and porn consumption and religiosity. And the more [00:24:00] religious people were the higher the rates of porn consumption were. Now, part of me thinks that what this study is getting wrong, it's, these are the people who don't know about, like the truly kinky psychs and so they're gonna porn.Malcolm: Yeah, they just, they're not connoisseurs that's. The problem. Yeah. No, no, they're not coming. Yeah. Their friends aren't giving them good recommendations. That's very sad. But I mean, I think that the big takeaway here is, is one, we find that there's, there's a lot of, it's a lot easier to navigate your emotions when you understand the underpinnings and you can then affect the constraints.Malcolm: You can, you, you can affect the inputs and also understand them and act on them. Because often emotions are assigned that there's something, I mean, we see them as a signal that. Should be acted on or not acted on, but certainly a signal that's indicating a thing that you might wanna know about. It's kind of like a pop-up window and you need to either exit out or be like, oh, I need to troubleshoot this issue.Malcolm: Yeah. But the other thing is that like you should learn to not feed some emotions, but also leverage other emotions. Be it shame, be it joy, be it gratitude in a way that is instrumental useful to you. And sadly, Malcolm. We must, well, not sadly, actually, we need to go indulge in the emotions of [00:25:00] joy and gratitude and playfulness with our children now.Malcolm: Cause it's daycare pickup time. But I'm, I love these conversations and thank you for coming up with these fun theories. Like, th these have come up over the span. Of maybe like five years. And they've, they've gotten more unique and interesting over time. And thank you for coming up with these fun things and inspiring all these amazing conversations.Malcolm: I love talking with you. And I feel like they're only gonna get better with each new year. So thank you for, ISimone: love talking with you too, Simone. You are just, The most amazing partner that you go through this stuff with me and you help keep me honest with myself and my expectations for myself and you, you ensure that those expectations are alwaysMalcolm: high.Malcolm: I, I keep your shame levels maximum. You're welcome. Isn't that what wives are all for, right? Yeah.Simone: So we wanna do for, I, I'd love it if you put on a pizza for me cause I haven'tMalcolm: done it. Oh my God. I'm doing pizza too. Yes. Okay. Pizza night, 100%. All right. See you soon.Simone: Yeah. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe