Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm Collins

Join Malcolm and Simone as they embark on a thought-provoking journey into the nature of truth, the roles of centralized bureaucracy, expertise, and individual discernment in our society. Taking a historical perspective, they analyze the reformation and parallels with today's society, and propose intriguing theories around cultural interpretations of truth.Starting from their reflections on the expert consensus and personal experiences to their deep insights into the historical Jesus, they conclude with an unexpected yet fascinating connection between different cultural groups, their perspectives on truth, and their propensity to form criminal syndicates in the United States.In this conversation, you will find a comprehensive discussion that weaves historical, philosophical, and sociological perspectives into a compelling exploration of what truth is, how we determine it, and its effects on society at large. Watch now to join the discussion, and don't forget to subscribe for more thought-provoking content!This is a transcript for SEO - it is not edited after an auto translateMalcolm: [00:00:00] different cultural groups. Sea treat did differently and it influences the way those cultures work. So if you look at immigrant groups that come from cultural groups, which see truth as something that should be determined by people who spent their entire lives studying it and then are certified by a central bureaucracy, like the Catholic cultural groups those cultural groups throughout UF history have created the dominant.Malcolm: immigrant Criminal syndicates within the us. Whether you're talking about the Irish Mafia or the Italian mob, or the, the current hi Hispanic criminal groups, if you're talking about immigrant criminal groups, now I'm not talking about native born American criminal groups. If you look at other criminal groups that have come into the United States, but weren't from countries that strongly felt that way, they, they, they had a bit of presence like, The Yakuza, for example, or the triad, but they never really got that big.Malcolm: And then you can be like, oh, but here's something that counters you. What about the Russian mob? [00:01:00] But the Russian mob came from an Orthodox church country and all orthodox religions also, like the Catholic cultural groups, believed that truth should be determined by people who spent their entire life studying it and then have been certified by essential bureaucracySimone: prepare for troubleMalcolm: and make itSimone: double. To protect the world from devastation,Malcolm: unite all peoples within our nation toSimone: announce the evils of truth and love.Malcolm: To extend our reach to the stars above Jesse JamesSimone: team, rocket blasts off at the speed of lightMalcolm: surrender. Now we're prepared to fight.Malcolm: Meow. That's right. So, oh God. We had done that at in another, one of our things is like our personal motto because all of the, the, the pers of the song really extend to aspects of our philosophy, whether it is, extending our stories as a bob or seeing love as an intrinsically evil thing, which we have talked [00:02:00] about in other.Malcolm: Episodes in which we'll certainly do a longer episode on at some point. I mean, is there anything more perverse in a marriage based on love? This, the only reason we feel it's cause our ancestors are felt it had more surviving offspring. And even if you take a religious perspective on this, the devil can use love to manipulate you.Malcolm: Like what a better emotion to manipulate people. Right? Especially love for a human over love. God or Christ, right? That's, that's an evil thing. So the idea that even from a secular or a theological perspective from our cultural perspective, at least maybe not all cultural perspective, but from ours, love is typically at the very least, something to be suspicious of.Malcolm: But the one point we haven't really gotten over here is the evils of truth. And so I want to talk and take this episode to talk about how we see truth. How does the diversity of perspectives on truth and Yeah. I, I think right now we're at a turning point [00:03:00] civilizationally for the concept of truth.Malcolm: Mm. And it's a turning point that is very similar to when we've gone through in the past, and I think we can learn from the last time we went through this. So if you look at society right now, you look at all these conspiracy theories that people have that keep coming up true. People are like, oh no, conspiracy theories don't come up.Malcolm: True. Yeah. Now, do you remember how insane it was that the idea that there's these like cabals of pedophile among like the wealthy elite in our society and now it's like. After Epstein, it's like, oh, oh. There, there was actually at leastSimone: one major. I mean, it was just one Malcolm. It's fine. It's fine.Simone: Well, well youMalcolm: think we would catch a lot of them? I mean, he messed up. I, I don't know. I would, I look at all of them. Do you think that like all of these people had developed like these pedophilic habits and like this was their only source? Like you, it's like, a cop's like, oh, well we arrested a meth dealer in town.Malcolm: There's no more meth here. It's over. Congratulations.Simone: The war on drug. Is this over?Malcolm: Yeah. People clearly only could buy [00:04:00] meth from one person. This is Johnny, the meth dealer. There is. It's in his name. They, they, he can't, they can't be buying meth from other people. But I mean, like what I'm saying is we're, and then with Covid and the, the, the whole vaccine rollout, there was this thing in our society where two groups are forming, right?Malcolm: And we talk about this in this academic cult that runs their culture right now, which is to say, when people are trying to determine what's true in our society, like the elite was in our society, they go, well look at, look at this priest cast, look at the consensus. What did they say? The academics, right?Malcolm: Like that is what is true within our society. And when we've done episodes before on all the problems with academic research these days, replicability, crisis, everything like that where things keep showing up wrong. But anyway they say, look at that, right? So the first group says, look, truth should be determined by people who have spent their entire lives studying a subject because like everyone can't study everything these days, right?Malcolm: And that these people should be certified by central bureaucracy, cuz obviously we need some way to know which of them have like been studying longer. You [00:05:00] can't just have somebody come outta nowhere and say like, I'm an expert in why. Right? And then the other group in our society says Ex, excuse me.Malcolm: That central bureaucracy is highly prone to corruption. And from all of this data looks like it's already pretty corrupt and is now just trying to serve an ideology rather than an objective truth about reality. And therefore, truth should always be best determined by an individual. And a lot of people look at this and they're like, well, this looks like it's headed for a disaster.Malcolm: Like society has never been through this before. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Like we as a world have gone through this before. This world where one organization says truth should best be determined by people who spent their entire life studying it and have been certified by central bureaucracy. And then a second group says, well, that central bureaucracy is prone to corruption.Malcolm: That's what the reformation was. Like, we've gone through this before, but we haven't just gone through it once. And this is where it gets really interesting is [00:06:00] both of these perspective on truth have merit to them. Most of these perspectives have an element of utility to them, and I think that societies that have both of them actually work better than societies that lean to just one or just the other. An example of a society that left just to trust the experts was China, and that's where you ended up getting zero.Malcolm: Covid was like people being welded in their apartments and like starving to death, like horrible scenarios came out of saying. Well, we need to trust the experts because then when reality doesn't align with what the experts are saying, you begin to get this doubling down and doubling down because, well then you've overturned your priesthood cast, right?Malcolm: And to a lot of people who have obtained that level of power, the very last thing they want to do is to lose that level of power. But if you have this constant questioning of authority, Well, then you have the other problem, which is spiraling into conspiracy theories and flat earth ness and, and, and like the most extremes of wacky conspiracy theories because everything needs to be questioned.Malcolm: But these aren't the [00:07:00] only two frameworks for understanding truth. Well, andSimone: actually, yes. So let's back up and let's give some context. And I think actually something that foundationally influenced the way that both of us came to view truth and it, believe it or not, has to do with Jesus. Um, That was really what changed the way that I look at truth.Simone: And I think it influenced you too, whether or not you want to admit it. So, the teaching company, a k a Wondering, a k A, the Great Courses has a really great lecture series on the historical Jesus. It is done by a professor who attempts to go through. Jesus as the life of Jesus as a historical figure.Simone: So setting aside faith, belief, what anything else? You know what? What can we know from a historical perspective only about the apocalyptic Jew known as JesusMalcolm: and well, whether he is an apocalyptic Jew would be up for debate, but this theory typically argue C isSimone: continue. Right? And [00:08:00] what's. What I think was very foundational in that lecture series for both you and and for me though me much later.Simone: Cause I think you listened to it as much younger youth and so it like shaped your perception and you don't realize like, it's like it accepted your perception of what truth should be. How truth can be discerned is the lecturer goes through all these criteria for truth. That can be used to determine what is more likely to be historically accurate about the life of Jesus and what is less likely to be historically accurate about the life of Jesus.Simone: And these criteria can easily be transferred to pretty much any domain. And it's some, they're criteria that we absolutely use outside biblical scholarship at least like Malcolm and Simone, that is to say, mm-hmm. I, I wouldn't say everyone necessarily use these criteria, but actually I really wish that they did because they're very, Good for determining truth.Simone: And I think that a lot of the, even earlier in our relationship before, before you had me listen to the historical Jesus lecture series, actually we had a much more [00:09:00] rudimentary breakdown of how truth was discerning. It was more like, well, do we believe scientific consensus? Do we believe our own personal feelings?Simone: Do we believe like some other criteria? But now we have a much more sophisticated sort of listing and that I think is broadly inspired by this course. Like I. Oh, what are some of the criteria, like the one forMalcolm: dis So . We actually have a whole list of these within the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting Religion, but essentially we have created our own metric for determining truths within the culture that we're building for ourselves and our kids that we think works within this modern era, which is to say, to draw information from both personal experience and the expert consensus, but filter any information that's coming from the expert consensus.Malcolm: Through certain rules to determine how high quality that information is. With an example of like a really obvious one being like, does this support or does it go against an agenda that would advance the careers of the individual saying it? So if a [00:10:00] scientist is saying something that could get them fired, it's more likely to be true than something that supports the ideological agenda, which is dominant within academia.Malcolm: The same way that. If an oil company said, yes, global warming is real and we need to do something about it, that would be very like, oh, shoot. But if it, if it says, oh no, don't worry about global warming, or if a cigarette, somebody said, oh, no, no, the cigarettes don't cause cancer. Like, I could largely ignore that.Malcolm: Right. Another is to look for largely unrelated sources which are showing the same thing. So one would be something like are insurance rates going up around like women driving cars versus men and then like a scientific paper says women are worse drivers than men? Then I could be like, okay, so women are probably worse drivers than men, right?Malcolm: Or you can look at the, the criteria of genuine care. So insurance companies are very good selectors of this and that. An insurance company, when it's pricing things, Genuinely cares. Like if an insurance company says, do this to be healthier, they likely care a lot more than like a [00:11:00] general, a generally random person.Malcolm: An example of a, of, of a weird one you might see was like historical Jesus, which I really liked and, and was really me meaningful to me. Is a, a piece of information that seems sus when you first hear it, and it seems a little weird when you first hear it, but as you get more information on, it begins to make a lot more sense in a way that the people who were conveying that to you clearly didn't understand.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. So here's an example. Jesus born in a manger, right? Like in, in his, why would you send them to the barn to have kids? Why wouldn't they have kids in the house? Like if the house is there, like at the, some ladies having you, you literally like, go put her with the animals. Why would you do that? Right?Malcolm: And this seemed very weird to me. Then I went to Israel and I looked at houses that were common from around that period, and all of a sudden I was like, This makes perfect sense. So the way that the houses were designed during that period was [00:12:00] sort of like, often the, the one, one style of it was to build them into like the sides of hills or something.Malcolm: And so they'd be semi-circular like this, or, or just like huts that were semi-circular like this. And then down the middle there would be a division. And on this side of the house is where all of the people would sleep. Like there was no need for individual rooms or anything. I mean, this was very, very primitive.Malcolm: So everyone would basically sleep in a pile. And then on the other side of the divide is where the animals would stay. Right. And of course, oh, all of the family sleeps on this side of the divide. Anything that's not family sleeps on this side of the divide. So that would translate into modern tongue.Malcolm: In the manger, but historically it was where the animals stay. Which makes a lot of sense when you see it and you're like, okay, so this is probably accurate to where this would've happened. Another example here would be the criteria of like, embarrassment or you would say like, something you, you probably wouldn't want.Malcolm: So these are people talking about, okay, this is the son of God being born. Well, you're probably not gonna say he was born in a manger, [00:13:00] like where animals are, right? Like, He's the king of kings in, in, in their interpretation, like that seems like it doesn't fit the agenda. You would probably say he was, if you were just making up a story from nowhere, you would say, oh, he was born to a king, or to a secret king, or something like that.Malcolm: Right? Like born to poor people in a manger. Like, no, that's. That's not what you would come up with, especially now today because Christianity has influenced the world so much and victim narratives are really important and like, oh, this person came from nothing to be something that was not a common story motif of that time period.Malcolm: It was a common story motif that somebody was secretly born of a king and then grew up with nothing, right? Like that was a common story motif, but born of like actual, like not that important people and then grow up to be something. That was not a common story motif at the time. So, so, that's, that's what we're talking about there.Malcolm: But anyway,Simone: yeah, I just, I, I think that it's really interesting, like, I think multiple attestation is there too, like, is this story told, and also how is it told similarly in different [00:14:00] gospels? Like, I, I can't remember exactly how it went, but like different gospels have like, Jesus writing in on one donkey, on two donkey.Simone: Like they're like different donkey scenarios. And sort of like,Malcolm: well, probably a better way to word what you're saying is if across gospels it looks like. Whenever you see similarities, you see almost it in the exact same words.Simone: Well, yeah. Then, then it's, then it's less credible because they're just copy pasting.Simone: Yeah. They were copied and its copy pasta. It doesn't get as much credibility, but when you do have the story told in slightly different ways that, that don't seem as copied or that that sound pretty unique, but they have many like core similarities and it's like, oh, well something around this might haveMalcolm: happened.Malcolm: Right. Well, and that's true today when you're looking at press releases. Like where you'll see a bunch of sources, like if ever I see almost the exact same set of words used across news stories. Right? Yeah. I assume that they're pulling from the same source. Yeah. Which could be something that like the Republican party or the Democratic Party is pushing out there.Malcolm: Some kind of press release. Yeah. Some [00:15:00] kind of basically press release or organized press campaign, and then I basically disregard everything that's said there. Totally. And then there's other weird things we use, like the criteria of shot calling. Like if somebody says This unlikely thing is going to happen, like I stake my career on it, and then that unlikely thing happens, I can basically trust almost everything they say after that A lot more.Malcolm: Exactly. And so anyway, we, we've gone over that, but, but here's where it gets interesting is different cultural groups. Sea treat did differently and it influences the way those cultures work. So really interesting thing is if you look at cultural groups so like, let's look at the US right now.Malcolm: Right? So if you look at immigrant groups that come from cultural groups, which see truth as something that should be determined by people who spent their entire lives studying it and then are certified by a central bureaucracy, those cultural groups throughout UF history have created the dominant.Malcolm: immigrant Criminal syndicates within the us. Whether you're talking about the Irish Mafia or the [00:16:00] Italian mob, or the, the current hi Hispanic criminal groups, if you're talking about immigrant criminal groups, now I'm not talking about preexisting native born American criminal groups. If you look at other criminal groups that have come into the United States, but weren't from countries that strongly felt that way, they, they, they had a bit of presence like, The Yakuza, for example, or the triad, but they never really got that big.Malcolm: And then you can be like, oh, but here's something that counters you. What about the Russian mob? But the Russian mob came from an Orthodox church country and all orthodox religions also, like the Catholic cultural groups, believed that truth should be determined by people who spent their entire life studying it and then have been certified by essential bureaucracy.Why does this happen? I suspect the criminal aspect is largely ancillary or irrelevant to the phenomenon. What you're actually seeing is just the groups organizing themselves into a structured hierarchy organically. And because they are often on the outs with society, given [00:17:00] that they are recent immigrant groups, that structured hierarchy ends up becoming a criminal hierarchy. That's a phenomenon that we're seeing here.Malcolm: And again, I'm, I'm saying both of these, the Protestant Extreme also has its craziness. Again, they also often go up on crazy conspiracy theories. That's, that's what happens when you, when you question everything, it's, it's also not stable to base an entire country just around that. But what's really interesting is you can also see different country outcomes.Malcolm: So if you look at countries where the dominant cultural group is, we trust, authority, his, like, we trust people have spent their entire life studying something. Those cultural groups. Were the longest holdout monarchies in Europe. Largely speaking. And the, the quickest conversion to democracies within Europe or democracy like structures were the cultural groups that were predominantly Protestant.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. And dictatorships seemed to happen in countries that this dominant cultural group believes in.Malcolm: Let's have truths determined by the people who spent their entire life studying a subject. In [00:18:00] fact, if you look at Protestant majority countries outside of Africa, only one has ever stayed a dictatorship for over seven years. And that is somewhere in East Asia. I don't remember where it is, but, but it, it, it's very interesting where when you look at Catholic majority countries around the world or orthodox majority countries around the world, they seem much more likely to form dictatorships.Malcolm: And so what we would argue is actually the idea country, and this is why we're so pro pluralism, is you want a pluralistic understanding of what truth is. But again, these aren't the only two systems for truth. So Jews have a completely different system for truth, which is really, really fascinating. We could do a whole different session on this.Malcolm: But again, i, I, I believe it, it's really well illustrated by the Snake oven story, which I've gone over in an another video. Just really quickly three Rabbis are having a disagreement. One rabbi says, this, this oven is not kosher. The other two say it is kosher, one or the other. I don't remember which way.Malcolm: The one who disagrees with the other two, he's like, look, I can prove to you that God's on my side. And he points out, he does a bunch of miracles[00:19:00] like the rain will flow upwards. They're like, yeah, I, I get that. God agrees with you. But it's not what the letter of the law says, therefore it is. And, and then God basically comes down, he's like, ah, my own children best in me.Malcolm: And, and what he's saying is basically, this is not my jurisdiction. Thank you for calling me out on that. And that this is an ultra legalistic understanding of truth. Which is to say, and, and here's where you can see this in terms of identity, right? So our kids, Simone, is. Matrilineally Jewish, like, your grandmother is Jewish.Malcolm: Basically. But from our perspective your culture is, is a mix of the different people who make you up. Yet when I talk to Orthodox Jewish people about my kids, they're like, no, your kids are Jewish. I'm like, well, I mean, they're barely Jewish. And they're like, no. Technically they're Jewish.Malcolm: They're Jewish e especially if you raise them Jewish like we've talked about sending them to, to Jewish schools or whatever, because, the good schools in our areas they're, they're definitely Jewish then. [00:20:00] And I think that that really shows this different understanding of truths. Now, the Jewish understanding of truth is actually a lot more nuanced than just legalism, because to say it's legalism also really misstates it.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. It's more, I, I describe it more like, In Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Earth is this giant computer where if everyone does their roles, then it will come out to a correct answer. And so it's more like truth is a cultural machine then truth is any, any, the legalism itself.Malcolm: Truth is the cultural conversation. And that is why sort of the rabbinic debate is so important within Jewish culture's understanding of truth. And then another example of truth is Quaker understanding of truth. So Quaker understanding of truth is truth is this fire that burns within every individual.Malcolm: And truth is what moves you or the little voice inside your head like it is your. Emotion speaking to you, that [00:21:00] is truth. Yes, truth is best determined at the personal level, but truth isn't best determined by an objective investigation of reality. Truth is best determined by how you feel. Mm-hmm.Malcolm: Whereas if you look at the Calvinist understanding of truth, truth is, and that's my cultural tradition, and it's, it's Simone's predominant cultural tradition. Truth is best determined by personal research, but personal like. Scientific research of reality. And this is where again, like you see the Catholic perception of truths actually being much better.Malcolm: So if you look during the witch trials or the Inquisition, the Catholic Inquisition was actually pretty kind in that, yes, they did some harsh stuff, but they very much. Still believed in interviewing lots of witnesses. They believed in discounting witness testimony if those witnesses seemed like they had Quas with the community.Malcolm: But then you had the Calvinist communities, which were the Puritan communities in the us. And these communities almost didn't really believe that people could lie. Like they didn't believe that anyone from their culture would lie. So if anyone was saying [00:22:00] anything, well, it must be true. Like one that was where they just.Malcolm: Like spiraled into psycho really quickly. But then the second was, Is that they believed that they could investigate reality through like natural experiments. Mm-hmm. They're like, ah, the world is very ordered. So what we're gonna do is, well, witches must resist the baptism. Right? Like, because they can't be accepted to to Christ.Malcolm: So like if we throw them in water, they're gonna flow, right? Because they resist water. And so let's try that. That would be a good way to test if someone's a witch. And you didn't, you saw this a little bit within, but this didn't really happen that much within, within the, the Catholic inquisition.Malcolm: One, they didn't even really believe in witches at all. It was more like, let's find heretics. Yeah. So he much more like moderated in learned. Yeah. And that's the thing with expert consensus, it is really prone to corruption, but the answers it comes to for reality. Are always going to be much more [00:23:00] moderated and less insane than the answers that can come to predominate within cultural groups with like my own.Malcolm: The thing that you should always investigate everything independently, and this is why I think that pluralistic cultural groups like the US where you have both of these cultural groups to a large extent, living in harmony and working together, that's where you're gonna get the best answers. That's where you have the least chance of either a dictatorship forming.Malcolm: Or, a, a mob that, that goes off and does crazy things for me. Yeah.Simone: Yeah.Simone: Well, also don't forget about the, the criteria of truth that you like the least, which is that most associated with like modern woke progressivism, which you like to call, and the pragmatist's guide to crafting religion, just equalism. Right. Can you walk us through that?Malcolm: Yeah. So. Many times within this community, you will see them, like when they're trying to decide what's true about the world, and there's a few [00:24:00] possible paths of what could be true. They choose what would make the world most fair. Mm-hmm. What a fair reality would create as truth. So if you're asking are there systemic differences between like the way men and women process reality, They'll be like, well, it wouldn't be fair if there were systemic differences, therefore there aren't systemic differences.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. Even if it like clashes with other aspects of their worldview, you see this over and over again within the woke community and it's, not everyone was in the woke community, but there's definitely a portion of the woke community that does practice jism and it, it, it's terrifying to me because it can lead to.Malcolm: A lot worse outcomes for everyone, but outcomes really don't matter in how they're determining truths. So I look at the way that Protestants try to determine truths, and I'm like, I get that, I may, I may think that it could use some tweaks, but I get why they do it that way. I look at the way Catholics determine truth, I'm like, yeah, that seems like logically consistent.Malcolm: I can see how it can lead to abuse, but like, yeah, that makes sense to me. Like they're genuinely trying [00:25:00] to get to a good answer for the world. I look at the way it's, choose, determine truth, and I'm like, look, this is one of the oldest most successful cultural traditions in human history. Like they're, they're clearly onto something.Malcolm: Then I look at the way that Jessica, it's like, this doesn't even seem to be like, honestly trying to help people. It just seems to be trying to protect their self identity as good people. And this is where when I look at the world and I'm like, there's a diversity, I think that we do well within a diverse world.Malcolm: And a lot of people are like, how dare you say, these different groups see truth differently. Right? It's like, what's the point of diversity of everyone secretly sees the world the same way? Like the point of diversity is that we see things differently. That is where strength and diversity comesSimone: from.Simone: Yeah. Here, one second though. I'm just gonna push back. I think the, the core of just Equalism is maybe that. If you choose to see truth that way, that you can make it that way. I think it's a sort of manifesting I mean, and this is a more spiritual group, right? Like my good faith interpretation of [00:26:00] that criteria for truth is I'm going to believe, for example, that there are no differences between men and women.Simone: And then that belief will indeed shape. Whether or not there are differences. And some of that's based in science, like understanding of the placebo effect and understanding of the power of narratives and examples. But I think that, that there's also this manifesto, like I said, element of it.Simone: So I think that a lot of it's like I just want, I want there to be a world in which that's true, and so I'm gonna believe it's true until it becomes true.Malcolm: I disagree with you. I think it's all about protecting their ego and protecting their image as virtuous people, no matter what they do. I don't think so.Malcolm: And I want people in the comments to to, to weigh in on this. Yeah. Which, which side of this,Malcolm: and then again, I wanna, I wanna point out before we leave, like these are all like, Obviously not everyone from these cultural groups sees truths this way. We're just talking about the way these cultural groups differ from each other. Because I think that through looking at the way they differ from each other, we can learn things that are especially pertinent to our [00:27:00] current time with this current debate over this system of truths our society is using.Malcolm: If we can look to historic parallels, there's a lot we can use, especially in building new and potentially. Better systems or in coming to appreciate why, even if I don't understand different people's understanding of truth, I can appreciate that our society is stronger for having that diversity. Because I can look historically and see what happens when we lack that diversity, whether it's the Puritan colonies or the, historic Castle Church.Simone: Well, All I can say, Malcolm, is I know one thing is true and that that is, you are a sexy beast and I know it because of your face. That is my criterion of truth. I love you. I think that'sMalcolm: subjective. That's subjective. It's true, but no, it's not subjective that you are a sexy beast. It is subjective that I am.Malcolm: Because my perspective on reality is the ruler from which [00:28:00] truth is measured, and all truth is determined by how far it differentiates from my perspective of reality and within my perspective of reality. You're a sexy piece, so that's true.Simone: How convenient. I love you, gorgeous. Looking forward to our next conversation. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Sit back, grab a drink (preferably not a champagne bottle you're sitting on) and join us for this enlightening discussion about relationship contracts, inspired by a listener's comment. This episode delves into the importance of relationship contracts and the many unspoken social contracts that govern our interactions. With honesty, humor, and a champagne bottle or two, we explore how these contracts play out in the everyday scenarios of our lives and more importantly, in our romantic relationships. We also touch on the topic of maintaining physical attractiveness within a relationship. Whether you're single, dating, or married, this conversation will make you rethink how you navigate your relationships.Transcript by AI:Based Camp - Relationship ContractsSimone: [00:00:00] Okay. Oh, la la I keep sitting on these champagne bottles, like IMalcolm: just, why are you covered in champagne bottles? What's the story there? It'sSimone: our, it's our billionaire tech elite lifestyle.Malcolm: We just, okay, hold on. We'll, we'll do this in the record. Oh, it's recording now? Yeah. Why are you, why are you sitting on champagne bottles?Simone: It's, I show them and tech billionaires just like have champagne bottles. Sitting all over their furniture. It's annoying. You trip over them, it's like Legos in a parent's house, but champagne bottles, no,Malcolm: but really Simone, what is going on with the champagne bottles? I went through her room and she had two champagne bottles in her chair.Malcolm: I,Simone: I mean, so if we're being honest, it's like a, a motivational thing. Like, I mean, I, I don't really drink now cause like, we're going through an IVF cycle, like we wanna get pregnant and, and yet like, I just wanna know it's there. And if anything goes wrong, we have these like consolation, prizes, like, okay, if, if, if there's a failed transfer, I get this consolation prize.Simone: If there is [00:01:00] a miscarriage, I get this consolation prize if there's a, a stillbirth, because like, I, I need to not get so demoralized that we don't keep trying. Right. Cause it can be really hard. Well, thisMalcolm: is very germane to the topic of the video. What are these cancellation projects? What's theSimone: cancellation like?Simone: It's consolation, consolation, notation. I'm. I'm not being canceled, canceled, don't cancel meMalcolm: when I have a miscarriage. No. The idea is, is so she asked me for permission. I don't even know why she asked me for permission. I likeSimone: that. You're, you're, no, no. Well, it's actually, it's a marriage contract thing.Simone: I'm just, I'm making sure that with an expenditure of joint funds on a consolation prize related to our fertility plans, that you are on the same page and that you officially in writing and in a documented fa fashion, approve it. And this has to do indeed with the with the topic of this podcast, which actually came as a commentary suggestion.Simone: So I'm like really excited because people are now giving us suggestions for our podcast. Are what episode of a suggestion too. Yeah. But anyway so this, this suggestion came from Cat Ad Victorian who said [00:02:00] 100% want your dedicated video to relationship contracts. Your fat clause is so relatable and reasonable.Simone: My husband does relationship coaching and probably one of the top three reasons, and sadly it's so taboo to point this out, is one of the spouses slash partners has let themselves go and gained a bunch of weight and stops making an effort to be an attractive person in some way. There's this entitled attitude, they should just accept me as I am.Simone: And if they can't handle it, they're emotionally abusive. It is wild. My husband and I have both gone from periods of fat to fat and fit and back. And so we've experienced this for ourselves and we've learned over our 15 years in counting marriage that we're both making a maximum effort to be healthy for one another and to be alive for as long as possible for our four children.Simone: Things are pretty satisfying. Well, much more satisfying than if you slump and become schlumpy. It's neither good for yourself nor your spouse. So anyway, Kat adv Victorian. Thank you for your comment. Thank you for your suggestion. We're gonna talk about relationship contracts, and yes, one part of relationship contracts is making sure that you're on the same page with [00:03:00] expenditures.Simone: I just wanna give like I.Simone: Bird's eye view of relationship contracts. One, you're in a social contract with everyone that you interact with, like that's the key premise of like, why is it worth it to have a relationship contract? Every time you have a conversation with someone, every time you get on a bus, like you are engaging with a social contract, the social contract on a bus is that you're gonna sit down and not urinate and not get naked.Simone: You're, you're gonna, def. Allow the wheelchair bound people just in the wheelchair area, if they come in there, there are these unspoken social contracts we have. The problem is, especially when you live in a diverse environment and people have a lot of different cultural backgrounds, it's really important to be more explicit in.Simone: Discussing what your social contracts are, especially when you start to be in a more higher stakes relationship, like a romantic relationship, a sexual relationship, a marriage, et cetera. AnMalcolm: example of this is if you're dating somebody, people from different cultural backgrounds, one may think that dating means that they are exclusive.Malcolm: Another may think that dating doesn't mean [00:04:00] they're exclusive. Mm-hmm. Or one may think that Well, yes, dating means you're exclusive, but you know, kissing someone else is an infidelity. And so if you don't, if you aren't really explicit to make sure you're operating off of the same shared social code, then it can lead to misunderstandings, which are really important when you consider what's actually going on with one of these contracts.Malcolm: So if we go back to the dating, what's actually happening is, is both people are saying, I am making these sacrifices or restrictions in how I act with other people to benefit my relationship with you on the understanding that you are making like an equal trade off of sacrifices. And if that is improperly communicated, one partner might feel like they made sacrifices that the other person didn't make, or, or something like that.Malcolm: And with all of the different like cultural baggage around what creates these default relationship contracts? Different cultures have found different optimums work for those cultures, and within [00:05:00] every culture there's this belief, well, the way that I do things is the correct way to do things.Malcolm: So, continue from there.Simone: Right. And so when, when people typically hear that we have a relationship contract, they immediately think like, oh, this is where, we discuss how you tie up and whip each other, isn't it? Like this is where you, your sex dumping comes into play?Malcolm: Oh, I, Mr. Mr. Gray, what?Malcolm: What's, is it gray? Is that what Mr.Simone: Gray? I don't. 50 shades of gray is what they think of. I think that there's a contract in there. I think actually their contract might have a fat clause. I, I haven't read the books. Clue.Malcolm: Actually,Simone: Mr. Gray is in clue. Oh, okay. I don't, I don't know, I don't play games. But don't read 50 degree.Simone: Well, I, ok. SoMalcolm: they, they, they, yeah. They assume it's like it's a sex thing. This is a really interesting thing that we when we talk about this sort of degenerate social virus in our society, that when people see, we have a lot of kids, they're like, oh, you must be doing it because it's a fetish.Malcolm: Or when they hear we have a relationship contract, they're like, oh, it must be a bunch of sex stuff. Yeah. Because like, that is, Their perspective of reality is everything is about this very visceral gratification. Instead of that, the [00:06:00] relationship contract is like, this is the expected temperature of the house.Simone: This is, is, yeah. Let's, let's go into this. So like, what is a relationship contract? Actually, well, what Malcolm and I did, and this is first off, it's a living document. It is a Google document. We update it regularly. We, I just updated it for, consolation prices in case I, have a. Mishap the next time we try to get pregnant, for example, and with kids' names, things like that.Simone: But it isn't a living document that you and a partner, a friend, a a a work colleague, whatever, it could be anyone who has, a high stakes relationship with you, you, you negotiate various terms, especially around, Potential points of conflict before they become potential point of cons, points of conflict.Simone: So what Malcolm and I did before we got engaged, before we got married was we went through like our relationships on Reddit. We asked a bunch of friends and colleagues and family members and strangers. Where they had major fights, conflicts, issues in their relationships, and then we put those issues into our marriage contract and [00:07:00] we negotiated them before they'll ever happen.Simone: So let's go into some of the, the issues we wanted to talk about finances, Malcolm.Malcolm: Well, I mean, I think that if you're talking about. And the most important clauses in any relationship, contract finances is definitely one of them. And there's a few ways that this can be done. You can either just.Malcolm: Completely divide finances. So finances go into a mutual pot, and then they are divided in some way. Like it could be 70 30 or it's more likely if you do it this way, it would be 50 50. You can have, you keep what you earn. Which is each partner basically maintains a separate bank account and goes into the relationship with a separate bank account.Malcolm: Or you can have a shared pot with then some private money that goes to each individual or some sort of combination of these. What we have in our relationship is a shared pot with sort of an allowance of free spending money for each individual. And so what she was talking about was these sorts of like consolation [00:08:00] expenses, is that they would be tied to the shared pot because she was undertaking an emotional task.Malcolm: That was for our combinedSimone: benefit. Yeah. So in, in other words, all of our income, regardless of if it's like income that went technically to Malcolm or technically to me, goes into one big account and then it gets pulled out for various different budgets. And a lot of them are joint things. And all of the joint expenses that we have, like for our kids, for housing, for, for travel things that we do jointly.Simone: Are based on agreed upon budgets, we've, we've decided on the percentages, the monthly amounts, whatever, and so that's all set. And this of course, yeah. Is part of that then, and we've seen this works really, really well for people in relationships. There's discretionary spending for each partner. So like, it doesn't matter like what you're spending it on, it could be something completely abhorrent to the other partner.Simone: Doesn't matter cuz that's your money. They have zero visibility into it. So that money goes into private accounts for each of us. I have no idea what Malcolm spends his money on. Malcolm has no ideaMalcolm: what, okay, [00:09:00] so we use a lot of shared public accounts, like Amazon accounts and stuff like that. Yes. And I actually, I do her accounts, so she gets an email whenever I buy something.Malcolm: And I, yeah, well, weSimone: try to max out credit card points and I, like, I reimburse our credit card charges on a shared card, like from our personal account. So like, okay. I, no, I know, but, but technically you do know everything I'mMalcolm: actuallySimone: spending money on. Yeah, I, I do. But like, you could do it all privately and that's very important that, because there are some relationships in which.Simone: Every expense is reviewed by all partners. And that can be really tough, especially if like one partner is spending more personally than the other partner or the other partner doesn't approve of it. There's a lot of friction there. So yeah, having like a blind fund where it's like, this is your discretionary spending, zero judgment.Simone: Zero visibility if you don't want any visibility, like it's, it's very smart. And it seemed to have worked really well. So there are other things that are in. Or contract that I think maybe people wouldn't expect. And you alluded to one, which is like house temperature, for example.Malcolm: Yeah, house temperature.Malcolm: Well, I mean, I think a lot of the important ones are the [00:10:00] ones that come up most frequently in our lives. Mm-hmm. Because otherwise they become simmering points of conflict. Like there wasn't an agreement before we got married. Mm-hmm. Whereas something like house temperature. Can seem like a pretty trivial decision to make with a partner before you get married.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. And so it doesn't cost a lot of emotion to do then, but in terms of you're already married and, each of you have strong preferences for different temperatures, then it becomes a very costly thing. So a lot of these things remove a lot of the potential tension and relationship by deciding it upfront.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. One of the things we mentioned in a previous video was, what do the spouse's parents do, if they end up destitute or something? And they, they asked if they could come live with you. Right? Yeah. And something like that is a lot easier to decide when you're not deciding about specific humans who, who, benefits one person or the other person.Malcolm: If you're deciding this with either of your spouses then you know that when you initially made this decision, you made it blind as to who it would be about. Instead of like if both my parents die and then we're having this negotiation, like it's pretty lopsided the way the [00:11:00] terms work out.Malcolm: Mm-hmm.Simone: And other causes that are in a relationship contract that I really like are, for example H who, how to deal with travel to certain events, like to family gatherings. So let's say one partner really hates going to them and yet the other partner wants to spend a lot of money to like go out and visit family.Simone: We have various rules around that and one of our, a rule that at Art Dynamic that I think is really fun and it works really, really well, is with things like that where one partner really wants to do it and the other partner doesn't. Then it comes down to one partner being willing to do that thing with their discretionary spending.Simone: So like, okay, we'll do it, but you have to pay for it. Similar to house temperature, like I'm, I'm okay with the house being hotter than necessary, like during the winter, I just wear a snowsuit inside and I deal with it, but Malcolm doesn't necessarily want to, so I'm like, okay. Well, I mean the temperature can go higher, but you have to pay for the difference, in other words.Simone: Right.Malcolm: And no, I don't, I mean, we usually leave our house at around 50 degrees in the winter. Yes. Which, which I love. I love your [00:12:00] frugality, Simone. And I love your, constantly testing yourself in terms of enduring pain for mutual benefit, which I think makes you a stronger person mentally. A voluntary hardship is very useful for, for clearing the mind.Malcolm: But in terms of something you mentioned is updating the contract. Mm-hmm. So a lot of people listed is another big area. What, what does that mean? Well, for us, that's just about the contract stands unless both of us decide to update it together. Mm-hmm. So either one of us has veto power on contract updates.Malcolm: Mm-hmm.Simone: Another one, oh, for example, we just went today. So one of our, the sections of our contract is kids names. Well, there's a lot of things in there, like, whether or not kidsMalcolm: yeah. She had, she got a crush on a ship from a sci-fi book and she goes, oh, it's a really hot ship. And I was like, well, that's a very Simone thing to say.Malcolm: It's no,Simone: I, any, I think anyone who reads surface detail by Ian Banks and discovers the, the ship known as falling outside the normal moral constraints, which is a culture, a dominator class offensive unit, it is like the coolest character of the entire book as far as I've gone so [00:13:00] far. Like, but anyway, so like I, I, I added that name for consideration.Simone: In the document and, and, and then I ask Malcolm like, Hey, what do you think about the name Dam Myosin, which is the avatar of this ship? And he's like, Nope. So you, but that, that's how it works and it's really straightforward forward. What you think Abom as a name? Oh, a dominator, whatMalcolm: wasSimone: it called? A cultural, he's an an a dominator class.Simone: Yeah, but about about a dominator. A dominator's. Not bad. It's not bad. We'll think about it. We'llMalcolm: think about it. Yeah. There's, but we have a whole, like, no, not really. I think a dominator's too weird. I think it's tooSimone: weird. No, no, no. We'll, we'll have to, I will just search for other names in Ian Banks novels, and we will, I will find one ideally of a ship that is really good.Simone: Because I think, I don't think falling outside the moral constraints is, is a, a pithy name, so I can't use that sadly, as much as I loveMalcolm: that show. Okay. So, so then another thing that people often ask is, well, How do you make decisions when they're not covered by the contract? Right. And I think that's a really interesting question as well.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. So the way we do that is generally [00:14:00] we have divided our life into different domains of which we have we, we. Give day-to-day management of those domains between the two of us. Mm-hmm. So, like Simon manages the inside of the house. I manage the outside of the house. Simon manages our finances.Malcolm: I manage career decisions. But at the end of the day, I end up making all the decisions.Simone: Use the final call, like you veto power, you have final decision power on, onMalcolm: literally anything except what's already outlined in the contract. So the contract is like outlining defensively. These are your rights of areas where I can't just make.Malcolm: Final calls. Mm-hmm. And a lot of people are like, oh my God, that's horrible. Why don't, why don't you compromise? Right. And it's like, compromise is a terrible way to handle relationships because what it does is it creates the incentive for each partner to exaggerate their positions. Mm-hmm.Simone: Okay. So, in other words, if I want five and Malcolm wants three, Malcolm is incentivized to say he wants zero, and I'm incentivized to say I want 10, and we're all gonna end up at an exaggerated position.Simone: What's even worse is when you're, you're coming [00:15:00] at things from this very individualized perspective. You start not thinking in terms of what's best for us. What would the relationship benefit from? What are, what do our shared values benefit from? You end up thinking about me. And in my extreme views and what serves me the best.Simone: And you might even start leaning into your exaggerated stated preference. So like, I might actually start wanting the 10, even though I really just want five five.Malcolm: I mean, I think it's possible to not, if you take a position in an argument, you're much more likely to find yourself believing that position as you're totally, you, your real perspective.Malcolm: Yeah. And so thenSimone: you, it's like it's literally pulling the couple apart. Or the every partner in a relationship partner.Malcolm: Terrible. And I think that when a partner voluntarily says, I'm giving up power to you, I trust you to use it wisely. If you're in a positive relationship, the person is actually probably going to default to your needs.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. Over their own, because every decision they, yeah. They know that was out. The, the, you have, you have surrendered that power to them voluntarily. Where this doesn't work [00:16:00] is if a person believes there's a cultural expectation that the power should be surrendered to them and they have some sort of divine right of rulership within the relationship, which can happen within some cultures where they believe that like men, by the sake of being men, should be the one in charge.Malcolm: Yeah. That means that he doesn't feel like the woman has made any sort of like real sacrifice. Sometimes. Now some, some people still appreciate it, even when they come from those cultural backgrounds, but there is a risk that they're like, oh, well, of course she's subservient to me because she's a woman,Simone: well, I think that this also even shows up in, in like traditional more and more traditional seeming cultures where women are like, oh, well, of course I'm entitled to like, spend all this shared money on clothes and purses for myself because I'm the woman and I should be treasured and, like, I, I got pregnant for you, so therefore I get to buy whatever I want with your money, et cetera.Simone: LikeMalcolm: it can go both. I mean, it's a bad cultural expectation. Mm-hmm. And it's something that I'm glad that we outlined that it, in terms of like those values, like frugality, I, I mean, I think also outlining your values is really important. But I wanna go back to other ways that you, so suppose you [00:17:00] actually don't trust your partner enough mm-hmm.Malcolm: To say, I'm gonna let one of my partners just have final call on things. Then what you're doing, and this is a very easy thing to do if you have aligned values. Yes. It's something that doesn't work if either of your values are hedonistic in nature. Yeah. Cause then there's always going to be mis mis incentivization.Malcolm: But if you have aligned values for like, I live my life in dedication to this greater cause mm-hmm. Then it's, it's, it's very easy to think, okay, what, what logically helps us both move towards that greater cause, right? Mm-hmm. And, and you are rewarded for. In terms of like real world achievement from seeking as much information as possible from your partner in terms of achieving that cause, but other ways this can be done if you don't trust your partner that much is you could have some sort of external party be the mediator.Malcolm: Right? Mm-hmm.Simone: And you see this in traditional cultures too. I mean like often like religious leaders. Yeah. The rabbis. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But let's actually, let's talk about consequences for violating the contract because I think that this is something that's super under underrated. And I mean, sort of like, I don't know, in country music or in popular culture, there is this [00:18:00] perception that when you violate a relationship contract or a marriage contract Even when it's unspoken.Simone: So like, he cheated, she cheated the per the, the understanding is, well, of course you leave the relationship, you end the relationship, you trash their car, you throw their clothing out of the, like fifth story window, et cetera, et cetera, right? Like you do all these. Like pretty toxic things. Whereas we argue in the pragma dis guide to relationships, that's actually like a really suboptimal thing to do unless you are 100% committed to doing it.Simone: And it seems like in most cases when someone, this is leaving theMalcolm: relationship, right? Yes. A lot of people are like, I will leave you if you do this now. Take itSimone: from there. Yeah. Yeah. If you break a rule, I will leave. And that, that ultimately is not ideal. Honestly, like, yeah, you would think that in our relationship contract, we, we've put all this thought into it, like, oh, we must have like, these really, really big ramifications for, or like, even really specific ramifications for when someone breaks the rule.Simone: Honestly, like it's pretty much just. If you break this rule, if you, if you don't honor this [00:19:00] rule or standard, it will really hurt my feelings like that. That's kind of it. Yeah. And that's, that's honestly in a relationship in which each partner loves each other and each partner wants the relationship to stay intact, that's frankly one of the best ramifications you can have because it's obvious to both partners that if that happens a lot, if one partner is constantly disappointing, constantly hurting feelings, then eventually I.Simone: For the partner who's regularly being let down, they're gonna terminate the relationship period. Well, andMalcolm: this is something that I think is really important in relationships is and we'll do our episode on how perverse it is to have a relationship based on love. But a lot of people assume that love is the most important emotion or feeling you have towards your partner in a relationship.Malcolm: But I, I, I think. In truth, love is like number four. In terms of important emotions, the the really important one is gratitude. Mm. That when your partner makes a sacrifice for you or does something for you that you are grateful for the sacrifice they have made because nothing is. Degrades the [00:20:00] relationship faster than when you feel like you're doing something for someone and they are not show you.Malcolm: You can tell that they do not appreciate it. Yeah, and one thing that I really appreciated our relationship is I am just always overwhelmed and humbled by the amount of gratitude you engender in me, where I'm constantly like, Wow. She really does more than her share. Like I always feel like you're doing more than your share.Simone: Well, and I do about you too. I think that's a good sign of a relationship if each partner thinks.Malcolm: Yeah. Cause I think people hear that and they're like, why would two people consistently, the way that you create a relationship where both people always feel like the other person's doing more than their share is you divide the roles in the relationship so that each person, or takes on the roles that the other person finds difficult.Malcolm: Yeah. So this task, tacit Simone does I find incredibly emotionallySimone: difficult to do. And the things that Malcolm does, I literally could not do. Yeah. AndMalcolm: so literally look at like little things for [00:21:00] me where I'm like, oh, like some people are asking, why do you record in different rooms? Right? And, and they know that Simone's autistic Simone doesn't like to, be in the same environment with someone.Malcolm: Right. And, and well, it, it, it's stresses her out a little, like with me, it's okay if it's just socialization, but like, when we're performing, when we're on stage, like we are with these podcasts, there's, it is like having somebody looking over her shoulder while she's working. Yeah. Is that a good?Malcolm: Yeah, and I think a lot of people wouldn't respect that. And so you come at this and you, and you have gratitude for little weird sacrifices. I make that to me, feel like almost nothing. Whereas for you, an example of something she's doing today is I find it really stressful to go through comments on Twitter or YouTube because some of them are negative and, and mean, and it really stresses me out.Malcolm: So like in, in South Park where they have the. Butter is going through all the negative comments and only sending me the positive ones. Simone doesn't really get bothered by negative comments that much. Not at all. So she just engages with him and then really only brings them to me [00:22:00] where she goes, oh, this is like a, a interesting point that I want you to engage with.Malcolm: Because sometimes, they're bringing up like an intellectual point, and I do wanna be open to other ideas, but then other times it's just like, I wanna kill you. Or, or I, I, you're ugly and weird. And I'm like, I know I'm ugly and weird. Come on guys.Simone: No, we are, we are runway. Okay. And the rest way, runway.Simone: Runway, all the pretty people are cataloged. We are runway deal withMalcolm: it. Okay. What are other parts of a relationship contract that are important?Simone: Let me pull up our relationship contract and give some additional examples for, for listener inspiration just in case you are thinking about making a relationship contract of your own.Simone: So under finances we have distribution of inve investment in an inheritance income, which I think is another important thing because each partner could come into a relationship, not just with their existing salaries, which are easy enough to divide up, but also with like, Well, here's, like, I get royalties, for example, from content that I created before [00:23:00] Malcolm was in a relationship.Simone: Both of us have, have inherited a little bit of money from grandparents, so like what happens with that money? And we also have things like use of emergency funds. Likes are we, do we build up an emergency fund? How many months does it have to cover? What do we do about retirement savings?Simone: What are our policies with debt like? In what scenarios is it okay for us to get into debt? Which I think is, is also really important. And, and a big point of conflict with people getting into relationships. Even like I, I knew someone in college who had so much student debt that as soon as partners learned about it, they didn't wanna marry her, which is insane.Simone: But also, like, it's a big deal. So debt's a really big, one's a big deal. They're inheriting that debt. When, when I know. I know. And I know it's, it, it is a big deal. Oh, of course. Fidelity, like we very, we very, oh yeah. Fidelity. That's an important one. What, what is cheating? What is not cheating?Simone: Oh. What is allowed how do things need to be discussed? Like I think that's really important and I think it's interesting that, for, for some partners, I think I, I remember going through one [00:24:00] study that showed how men were like super cool with like ai, like. Sex or boyfriends or girlfriends or something like that, whereas women were like, no, I'm super not cool with my boyfriend or husband, like, having an emotional or sexual relationship with an AI like entity.Simone: Like super. Well,Malcolm: I, I think something that you point out here is there's this perception in our society that men and women are sociologically the same on average. Mm-hmm. And therefore, when you're talking about infidelity rules or something like that, A tradeoff for a guy will be the equivalent of a, a similar tradeoff for a girl.Malcolm: Right? Yeah. Which totallySimone: isn't. Yeah. Which is notMalcolm: true. Yeah. And the AI is a perfect example of that. If you created a rule that you know, boast, people can date ais, that might actually be a lot more costly for oneSimone: gender than the other. Totally. And I think it's the same with sex. Like I think extramarital or extra relationship sex can mean a lot more.Simone: To some parties and other [00:25:00] parties? . So also a big, a big thing, and I know this is like what blows our mind, is that like so many people get married and then they're like, okay, so do we have kids?Simone: Like, do we not have kids like it? I think it's less common now. People are a lot more upfront about whether or not they wanna have kids. But when we first looked at like relationship deal breakers and things that caused breakups, we kept coming across stories of people who had. Gotten married and then discovered that they weren't on the same page about kids, which is really not good.Simone: So, we, we don't only have agreements about, how many kids we may have, how we're gonna try with issues or like deal with issues of fertility. But also there, there's a, a section on career sacrifices for children. And I think this is another really big one. Is that a big point of conflict in.Simone: Relationships is who's gonna, who's gonna take the hit? Like who has to give up their career to have kids, or who's gonna pick up the kids when they're sick or who's gonna deal with this or that. And often, like societally, women end up picking up a lot of the slack just because [00:26:00] there is this unwritten social contract that that falls to the mother.Simone: So negotiating that ahead of time, I think that there's also a lot of like resentment on behalf of women because they feel that obligation when often it may be the case that the husbands would be super happy to do all that and they're doing it cuz they think the women want to do that. And so actually like Malcolm picks up like the majority of the slack with our kids.Simone: One because he's cool with it. Two because he's the best husband ever. But that's something that really made a big difference for me around children. But also we have punishment for children. That's, there's a lot of conflict around that.Malcolm: That's really important. Yeah. If one person comes in thinking like, corporal punishment is okay and the other person doesn't, that's sure to cause a lot of con.Simone: Conflict. Yeah. And then financial considerations. Like one parent might, may wanna spend a lot more money on kids than the other. One parent wants like designer Ralph Lauren, clothing for the kids. The other one, like, no, we're only doing hand-me-downs. That's a, a freedom of choice for kids, what are they allowed to do?Simone: Their recreation, their education, the media they consume pets. Like we have a pets clause in here, child sex education, child names. Of course, that's like our most [00:27:00] frequently updated thing now. Oh housing in the event of a long distance marriage. So like, if we end up having to live on different continents for a while, for doing work, who's, where do the kids go?Simone: These are important things. We also have things like family gatherings and holiday travel. Like we said, elder family member care. Then of course there's health too, like preventative healthcare. Like are we, what are we committing to like, in terms of screening and regular health checks?Simone: I, I think that that's beyond just like, cuz obviously we have our fat clause in our, in our marriage contract, which I love. But it, it's not just a fat clause. Like we also have terms around health and, and, not doing things that harm ourselves which is I think great and really important. Life support's in there.Simone: Of course. Although that's one of the few things that like a lot of people with their, their power of attorney do actually work out oddly. Like the one thing that kind of like is almost never gonna happen, you're, what happens once. Anyway, to wrap things up, if you have questions about relationship contracts [00:28:00] or fun things that you've put in your relationship contract, and it can be your sexy relationship, contract, whatever. We'll talk about that too. Let us know in the comments.Simone: And this is so cr, but don't forget to like and subscribe. I told her she had to say this. IMalcolm: was like, we've never asked people to like and subscribe,Malcolm: so we really try to create the best listener experience possible in that, one of the things we do is we try to, if you don't wanna watch the full episode, if you're like, okay, I just wanna get to like the point that you're getting at.Malcolm: We try to put that before the title card. That's probably not great in terms of like viewership links in terms of the algorithm, but, I, I really want this to be just like an ideal listenership experience and that's also one of the reasons why we haven't really been adding the like and subscribe thing.Malcolm: But I mean, I guess it helps I don't even know if subscribing helps that much anymore for, for the algorithm. It, it certainly helps for my ego. That's our big goal this year. Get to 10 K subscribers and we're like, Real YouTubers. I, I guess that's, that's the way I see it. SoSimone: it's the dream. So anyway, please do your part.Simone: Please do your [00:29:00] part. Friends. Yeah. Okay, Malcolm, I love you so much and let's do another conversation soon. I hope so. I love these. Love you too. Yeah. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Join us as we dive deep into a riveting discussion with Diana Fleischman, a reformed academic and evolutionary psychologist, as well as the author of the upcoming book "How to Train Your Boyfriend". In this episode, we explore a variety of intriguing theories, most notably the concept that humans have evolved to be a "slave race", especially under the lens of evolutionary psychology. Diana brings fascinating insights about status hierarchies, gender dynamics, and the potential evolutionary roots of certain behaviors and preferences. This conversation will definitely get you thinking about humanity's social and evolutionary history in new ways.An AI written transcript:Simone: [00:00:00] Hi everyone. I am super excited. We're gonna be speaking with one of our favorite people today, Diana Fleischman, who in addition to being a reformed academic and evolutionary psychologist, is the author of the Not Yet published but upcoming book called How to Train Your Boyfriend. And she's written a ton of other fascinating stuff that you must go down that rabbit hole.Simone: Trust us, you'll be very, very entertained. We're going to speak with Diana about a wide range of things. We also want her to, and she starts to be the uh,Malcolm: aria podcast. Yes. HostSimone: Appia podcast. I furiously. Yes. And we, we honestly want her to start by stress testing one of our weird theories but we also wanna hear all sorts of other things from her.Simone: So, Diana, welcome first and foremost. Thank you.Malcolm: So the theory I really want to go over with you is one from our book, the Pragmatist Guide de Sexuality, which is that we are a slave race, and I'll explain what I mean by this.Malcolm: [00:01:00] Specifically the, the majority of the evolutionary pressure put on human to human social interactions was put on humans who were low within local status hierarchies. First. Most humans, historically were basically near the bottom of a, a social status hierarchy. Very few humans were near the top of the central status hierarchy, and while men in that position definitely had more surviving offspring even when they were in that position.Malcolm: There was less pressure on them. To behave in certain ways. Like a leader who failed isn't gonna get his genes erased as quickly as a a, a servant or slave who fails, which means that the average human mind is much more optimized around servitude. And this has a few interesting takeaways. One Ayla mutual friend of of, of both of ours this would explain why even in men around 40% prefer to take on sub submissive positions in, sexuality.Malcolm: But it also may explain the way we relate to [00:02:00] things like deity or society writ large. How like a president will say, well, I'm the servant of the people. Even though the president is technically the highest level position in society, or the head of a company might say, well, I'm the servant of the board.Malcolm: We really have few concepts of non servitude in our society. So I wanna get your take on this as an evolutionary psychologist.Diana: So one idea that's very interesting is, Potentially hunter-gatherer societies were less hierarchical than current societies that have very large hierarchies. I've been reading a lot about male and female dynamics, so men tend to be more forgiving of their friends and they also have more stable status hierarchies than women do.Diana: Mm. Because their status hierarchies are based on more stable characteristics such as strength and prestige over time. So it does make sense for men. To, you know, and I was listening to an interesting conversation with Beau, we guard and Jonathan Palon about, you know, why would a man gain status [00:03:00] by carving beautiful sculptures of a man from history who's high in status?Diana: You know, these kinds of ideas. So it's possible. Yeah, I do see what you're saying. That yeah, the average man is actually subservient. The average man is monogamous or, or worse. What I'll riff on this with is what I think is even more interesting, I have an idea, is I was talking to Louise Perry and we were talking about like, how evolutionarily novel is prostitution.Diana: And she said That it was unlikely for women to have been passed around and have sex with multiple men, but it was probably very common in evolutionary history, ancestral history for women to be sex slaves to a specific person. Ah, right. Oh, and so she talks about kind of Stockholm syndrome and women being uniquely impressed upon by Stockholm Syndrome because it is the adaptive thing to do, not just, you know, because of.Diana: Patro locality. So women would've been taken away. Mm-hmm. On average from their families and given to a, a strange man's family. For her to adapt to his [00:04:00] culture and his language and to his customs would've made sense. But the only way you and your kids are gonna survive if you're taken over by a hostile group is through a, a kind of.Diana: Pleasant submissiveness. I'll say accommodation.Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah. So there's a few riffs I want to take on the, on the thing that you've said here. One thing that was really interesting is male status hierarchies being more static than female status hierarchies. To add to that, one study that's really interesting is males sort themselves into status hierarchies much faster than women do, because the majority of the way that men sort themselves into status hierarchies is by.Malcolm: Immediate physical traits like height that they can determine the moment they walk into the room. And the reason for that is because the top man historically was typically the man that could beat up the other men. And that's something that you can quickly observe. Yeah. Which would be partially why the male status hierarchy would be more static.Malcolm: Another thing that you mentioned was wars of conquest and taking women, one really interesting study here that I, [00:05:00] we talk about in our sexuality book shows that when you have a competition, like a game or, or something like that, that's, I think it's like violent adjacent games, you know, like physical, physical games and it looks like your side is losing males bond more like they feel closer bonds with the people on their team, whereas women begin to bond less with the people on their team when it looks like their team is losing.Malcolm: Which shows sort of the behavior you're talking about, where it would've really been evolutionarily advantageous if we assume that all the males in a tribe were killed when the tribe was taken over. The final part I wanna riff on, sorry if I'm riffing on too many things here. You just, I taking notes while you're talking.Malcolm: Some really cool ideas is one of our theories on sexuality, we call the polymorphic human female. So for users, you're familiar with polymorphism, but for users, what it is, is when you have a single genetic code that can be expressed in two behavioral and, and physical phenotypes. So a locus is the classic example here.Malcolm: [00:06:00] Where when they get above certain population numbers, they change their physiology and behavior patterns. You know, normally they're a grasshopper, but if you rub like their hind leg with a Q-tip, they'll transform into a locus. But even when like baboons, you see polymorphic behavior patterns above certain PO population sizes.Malcolm: So what we would ar. Argue here is that human females the more sexual partners they have, their body naturally adapts to this and we can see them producing Lex I think it's you, you'll correct me on this. Oxytocin, when they sleep with partners, which is a forced bonding hormone, which would mean that human females bodies organically adapt.Malcolm: To either bond with the one person they sleep with or bond less with everyone they sleep with because they assume they're in a society where they're being passed around. You can tell me if that sounds crazy, or Simone, you wanna riff on that? NoDiana: no. I, I, I I'm writing something right now called like, you know, playfully you know, disagreeable sluts versus agreeable prudes.Diana: And and so yeah, I mean this idea is like [00:07:00] hookup culture is really, I. Fine if you know how to disagree with the, with the norm. But if you're agreeable and you're naturally more monogamously inclined as, as the average woman is, then hookup culture is gonna be a, a net bad for you. I'd be really interested in this study cuz I've, I've had this idea for a long time.Diana: So there's this idea in sort of Christian culture where they tell young people, you're like a piece of tape. The more times you stick to something else, the less sticky you get. And so, I have drafted something but not published. It basically called, I don't wanna be sticky cuz like, when I was younger, when I was like 17, I fell in love with a couple people who were really LOM mate.Diana: Value just sounds like mercenary, but yeah, lom mate value. Guys like going Guy was like a, like a musician that was unsuccessful. Another guy worked at my grocery store and and I remember feeling so in love with this one guy who I really had nothing in common with. I fell in love very easily until I got past, I don't know, like 10 sexual [00:08:00] partners.Malcolm: Yeah, we, we we, we cite this as actually probably being a good thing for most women.Malcolm: You don't want to illogically fall in love with everyone you sleep with, so you're probably in a lot stronger position. So I, I, I really like that. Another thing you mentioned I wanna pull on is a concept of bratty sluts uh, uh, not bratty sluts, but bratty subs.Malcolm: Sorry. Bratty subs. Bratty subs. So in the kink community there are different ways you can be submissive. And one of these, it's called the brat. And what I think is going on there, and it's very interesting, is what is arousing? The woman is the man exerting his dominance over her. So the bratty behavior elicits.Malcolm: The, the dominant display over and over again in the male that allows her to maximally masturbate that aspect of her sexuality.Diana: Yeah. There's the, the resistance is screening idea, right? So like female elephant, a male will try to mount her and she'll walk backwards like a hundred meters or something.Diana: Stay on, [00:09:00] he gets to mate, right? And there's other species where I think it is, is an orcas or some other whale where the male drags the female to shallower water. And so there is an, an in courtship, there's an element of coercive behavior. And so the bratty sub is definitely like a a test both psychologically and physically of the dominance of the male.Diana: This is why women like to be tied up is because it's a perfect It's a, it's a facsimile of being with somebody who's so large and strong and coordinated that they can hold all your limbs immobile. Right. Oh, that's interesting.Simone: I thought it was a swaddlingMalcolm: instinct. Yeah. Yeah. So we argue something different about tie-ups, which is one of our spicier takes, is that when people are masturbating instincts that Any sort of an instinct, anything that makes them happy, they often misattribute it to sexuality even when it's not necessarily a sexual instinct because that's, that's just how we deal with these feelings.Malcolm: Like a massage or something like that. Right. And so what we argue might be going on with [00:10:00] bondage it is it might actually be a swaddling instinct that hasn't fully turned off from infants. And the, that specifically, when you look at like cling wrap fetishes and stuff like that, you know, where they like vacuum, vacuum, put something in a bag, vacuum.Malcolm: Yeah,Diana: yeah, yeah. But I thinkSimone: even, even like rope bondage, I, but here's where it gets really complicated, right? Because like there is definitely a dominance element in there and we are pretty sure that like, while the dominance submission thing is a really big element of what turns people on and off, it's also like, you know, I.Simone: You can, you can show domination through tying someone up. So like, it can both be like comforting from a swaddling standpoint, but also super big turn on because it is a show of that dominance or it isDiana: a show of that power. Like yeah. It's, it's very, it's, it takes a lot of skill to do it. I see what you're saying.Diana: I, I, I, for me, the swaddling instinct thing, yes, there is a relaxing component to being tied up. I used to live with this guy who was like really into BDSM and he would try out his new gear on me cuz I was the smallest person he knew. So I remember he put me in a straight jacket one time during a [00:11:00] party.Diana: And it was very relaxing because I didn't feel like there was anything I, people could come over and talk to me or not. It was like one of the most relaxing social situations I've ever been in. Right. Honestly, thatSimone: sounds amazing. WhyDiana: does this sound, you wouldn't imagine that right? Whereas I think if you're, I guess you could make the case that for a woman, if you tie her up, the swaddling instinct relaxes her.Diana: And for a woman has to be relaxed before she gets aroused to some extent. I mean, there's something like that, although the studies that I did back when I was in graduate school on human sexuality is actually if you show a woman a, like a horror film or an. Or thriller, like a man chasing a woman down a dark alleyway.Diana: She gets sexually aroused faster. Huh. After seeing something like that than she does just in a, in a neutral, relaxed state. Well, doesn'tSimone: that suggest though, that like she's, that maybe there's some kind of like evolved coping mechanism of like, These are signals that I'm about to get raped. Like, yes, exactly.Simone: Let's not cause physical damage,Diana: please. That, that's all of the explanations of [00:12:00] really repugnant explanations for why do women show enhanced blood flow and even lubrication in the presence of watching pornography. No matter what it is, you can watch two Bonobos having sex and a woman in blood flow increase.Diana: Is that it's what does it call that? Like the damage. Reduction hypothesis. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is really nasty. But yeah, the idea is that you're seeing anything sexual going on, it's important to get your v ready for what whatever might happen. Yeah. For bonking, bonking, my my evolutionary psychology mentor when I was in graduate school who died shortly after, he said, he made some joke about like, you know, the best form of four plays to chase her around the table or something.Malcolm: I love that. Oh my God. Well, here's a fun take that you might like that we had on, on, on these sorts of topics. Which is what's actually going on with the arousal ties to dominance and submission systems, and this we argue, is really more of a case of just evolution being a cheap programmer and reusing a code base it already had.Malcolm: So [00:13:00] specifically in mammals, when you have social hierarchies, a very common. Thing is that mammals will display sexually to show their position was in that dominant hierarchy. Yeah, and what's really fascinating here is in like spotted hyenas where the females are the dominant animal and, and females have pseudo penises in, in spotted hyenas an erection will be a sign of submission instead of like showing yourself to get mounted.Malcolm: And so what's really interesting here is what we argue is probably going on. Is that humans needed to show their position within their social hierarchy and a system they already had on hand was their arousal system. So biology just like copied the code from that system to instigate dominance and submission behavior and pre-code that behavior.Malcolm: And that's why it causes arousal, not. Always are necessarily because of these more rape hypotheses. What are your thoughts on that?Diana: Well, so there's a lot of species in which males show submission to each other by bending over or [00:14:00] even being the receptive animal in an anal sex kind of interaction.Diana: That to me, I, I wrote a behaviorist account of that once, which is that what's it called? I can't remember the behaviorist term, but there are, you know, like, let's say there's two behaviors. Let's say if you're a dog that beats up on your other dog. So the dog can either play with a toy across the room, or it can beat up on the other dog.Diana: Those behaviors are like mutually exclusive and like, a, a more dominant animal beating you up or having sex with you. Those are mutually exclusive. So what you're incidentally doing, if you bend over and show a submission behavior or let the other animal mount you, is you're rewarding not beating me up.Diana: Oh,Malcolm: oh, with Sack. Right. That's a really interesting take. I like that.Diana: So, that's one interesting thing, but, but also, yeah. In terms of dominance yes. It's, it's always better if you look at all these different animals. There's a very interesting paper about cooperation and they expand the notion of cooperation past what we would normally think.Diana: And they also say, let's say two bucks are sizing each other up, [00:15:00] and they look at each other's like, Antler size and one decides to forfeit because the other one has bigger antlers. But a a an actual physical altercation is costly for both of them. So actually that is a form of cooperation. Even though their interests are actually not well, their interests are aligned and that they both don't, they don't, don't wanna fight unless it's really necessary to figure out who's who's dominant.Diana: Yes. So you could also see that in terms of sexuality, Physical altercation is, is very costly. And so a sexual altercation is, is generally always preferable if you wanna show that you're submissive. And it also has, as I said, the added benefit of rewarding the dominant animal for not beatingMalcolm: you up. Yeah.Malcolm: So, just a, just a quick note here for, for listeners and quick biology lesson. What she described there is called honest signaling. And it's a useful concept in biology that can also be applied to other areas of your life, which are types of signals that you can show people that cannot be easily faked.Malcolm: So like if you were signaling wealth, something like jewelry, which can be rented is a very easy thing to fake. While something like a house [00:16:00] is a very hard thing to fake and a much more honest signal of wealth. But Simone, you haven't talked much. What are, what are your thoughts on all this?Simone: Sorry. I thought you were about to be like, and this is why you should offer sex to your boss at the office so that you can get promoted and make sure that you're not trying to supplant them.Simone: Wow. Okay.Diana: This is moisten night. So this is my, my pregnancy ring because it's oh. Cause your fingers are swollen, right? I don't fit into, yeah. I'm too swollen to wear my normal one. And this is like a $300 ring or something like that, but a diamond this size. Because they're indistinguishable to like the naked eye or whatever, or even to many jewelers would be, I don't know, 10 grand.Diana: So yeah. Yeah. I, I love, I love fake, fake fitness when it comes toSimone: jewelry. Also, moison eight is more sparkly. So like, I almost feel like it's more effective signaling. It's, it's, it's gorgeous. Amazing. Yeah. I mean, what I'm really curious. About is, you know, there is this, this surprising and, and this shows up in ALA's data, it shows up in the data that we did.Simone: Abundance of people who are submissive, not just women, which of course, like the majority of of women are, are submissive, but also [00:17:00] men. Well, what, what are other compelling reasons for there being so many. Submissive men, butDiana: bottom bottom's also outnumber tops. I remember Mike Bailey having a drink with him several years ago, and he was saying that gay men joke that like you go out to a gay bar, which gay bars are not as common as they used to be.Diana: It's like a hundred bottoms for every one top. No. Yeah, so bottoms are way more common. I don't know about like versatiles or, or switches. I mean, there's a variety of other reasons that could be the case though, cuz like females with the default sex, if homosexuality is the result of some kind of Difficulty, let's say in the the programming for masculinity than you would expect that, you know, it's, yeah.Diana: We default more toward female tend diseases. Lordosis or like female receptive behavior is much easier to code cuz it just involves kind of like bending over than, yeah. Than copulation or topping, which is much more complicated and involves a lot more motivation.Malcolm: Right. Well it's also fairly risky. So you have a female mimicry.Malcolm: Which you [00:18:00] see in a lot of species, and that could be what we're seeing here. Oh, you meanSimone: like sneaky copulation?Malcolm: Yeah. Sneaky copulation. Yeah.Diana: Okay. So guys, you guys do curse on this podcastSimone: a curse. We can, we can curse.Diana: It's called sneaky f*****s.Malcolm: Yes, sneaky. So essentially what happens in, in some animals for listeners, and this may or may not have relevance to the world today.Malcolm: So some males especially in highly gender dimorphic species, so like, you'll see this in like some crabs where like some males are like three times the size of other crabs. Yeah. Occasionally males will be born the size of a female crab and the big males don't notice them, and they will in enter these other crab communities sneakily in other species, you will see males adopt female behavior or even take on.Malcolm: Gay roles to enter sort of the trust circle of other males and then sleep with the women in, in that animal's harem, I guess you could call it.Diana: Yeah. The Sunfish has got three [00:19:00] morphs, which is the, the regular male that has the territory that guards the territory. A tiny little male that sneaks in and then the male that looks just like a female that sneaks in more effectively.Malcolm: And this is, so we had a podcast where we argue that the, the red pill in a way and the way they're approaching women creates thoughts. I actually t hts I actually believe that in the same way the extremist feminist community, one of the reasons why whenever you do surveys in that community you see such high rates of rape is they are essentially.Malcolm: Bringing in these female mimicry guys who are going to pretend to have this like ultra white nighty perspective on the world. Mm. But in, in animal kingdoms, those are the, the types of males that are most likely to rape or one of the mostDiana: likely course males. Yeah. I remember, I mean, I, I did a deep, I I did, I did work on this 10 years ago on bisexuality and about evolutionary explanations for homosexuality, and I taught.Diana: Human sexuality.[00:20:00] I remember a deep dive on this in a lecture and chapter that I read in my twenties, and this guy was talking about how gay men have, you know, very reduced rates of reproduction, obviously compared to straight men. And then it doesn't actually seem like this kind of sneaky f****r strategy.Diana: Maybe you're talking about something different, but it doesn'tMalcolm: actually No, no, I'm not talking about gay men. I'm, I'm actually specifically talking about white nighty guys. So these are guys, oh, feminist guys. Yeah. An extremist like feminist perspective, you could say that like no rational guy looking at the world today would adopt to get into these, I guess people would call them like hardcore SJW spaces.Simone: But it is related. Basically they're creating an incentive to create sneaky f*****s essentially.Malcolm: Well, I mean, it's, it's a population strategy that is, that is premised upon dishonesty. Yeah. I mean, that's how they're getting into these communities by being dishonest about their lived experiences, because that's what you need to be as a guy often to enter these communities.Simone: Well, that's, that's what I'm saying is the communities create that requirement. Like [00:21:00] you have to be sneaky to get in, so it createsMalcolm: people being a realDiana: thing. So we'll see. Yeah. I mean, I guess you could also say that these communities, like the, there's a very advantageous sex ratio. And there's a variety of good, good reasons to try to get, get into them.Diana: Yeah, I'm pretty agnostic about that, given that I'm not in those communities myself.Simone: Yeah, we just,Malcolm: I, I have loved this episode. And I would love to do another episode with you if you are open to that. Yeah, forSimone: sure. Yay. Okay then we are going to, we'll record it right now. Yeah. Okay. We're gonna record it right now. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

I told Simone uploading this was a bad idea but she insist I am just being a wuss. In it we discuss how LGBT culture has become a way for white people to express pride - something not allowed through other outlets - and that that this function of LGBT culture has facilitated the expansion of definitions within it.AI Generated Transcript:Simone: [00:00:00] I think what really did resonate with me was this Backdoor to pride, even if you are white. And I wonder if that's why there's creep into the PRIDE community.Simone: I was just listening to commentary today. On the addition of, for example, poly people maybe to L G B T QA plus Pride and also Asexual people many people complain , well, asexuality is more like a hormone imbalance than it is a sexuality. But then , where do you draw the line?Simone: If in the end, maybe someone being gay or trans or any other things could be a product of their hormones, which could even be influenced by things that their mothers did or did not do, did or did not consume, were, or were not exposed to. So I feel like there's this really interesting gradation.Simone: At any rate, Maybe why some people are really drawn to try to loop themselves in to things like Pride month. When they are, for example, just asexual, or poly maybe that's to say like, I wanna be proud about something about myself culturally, something about my people and my [00:01:00] tribe.Simone: And I also think that like, I don't know of the people I know who are asexual, who are poly, they are overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly on the wealthier and more educated end of the spectrum.Simone: I do think it's telling that of all the places where I've been in the world,Simone: that where we see pride most. I guess openly and enthusiastically celebrated is also where white culture is also super not cool to celebrate. Like I was just thinking about like, where's the only other place where I've seen like, enthusiastic celebration of L G B TSimone: can you guess? I don't know, Germany,Malcolm: Like big time. Oh, interesting. Yeah. They do have bigger pride events in otherSimone: places. Yeah.Simone: Pride in coastal cities, is the strongest,Simone: Cause when I think about like the best, like gay pride parades I've been to or drag shows or like events in general. San Francisco, obviously DC Cape Cod, like just,Malcolm: oh yeah. Those are definitely locations where you would have the highest amount of cultural shameSimone: With this [00:02:00] new model of L G B T as laundered white pride do you view it any differently? Like, I don't know what to make of it yet in my head, I think I, I'm gonna, well, I feelMalcolm: kindness. It's not great to grow up feeling like your ethnic group is wretched and deplorable and like intrinsically genetically or culturally worse.Malcolm: Than all other groups. And not everybody raises their kids believing this, but , there definitely is a portion of the population that raises their kids believing this. And I think that portion of the population's kids is a portion that is most likely to end up identifying its L G B T.Malcolm: I don't see it as a bad thing really, because it's better than these kids having nothing they can have pride in. Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you buy this, meme that there's just something intrinsically immoral about white people or whiteness, which exists within certain cultural groups, especially in the, San Francisco, New York area.Malcolm: People started basing their identities off of the [00:03:00] state of the Sexual identity research 20 years ago.Malcolm: And now if you. Update the research. Like if the research finds new things, well then you've undermined someone's identity, right? So you can't update, it's now canon, it's now whatever the state of the field was 20 years ago. That's canon. Even if it doesn't align with the actual data, which is, one of the things that we point out in our book is the concept.Malcolm: Of even gay and straight is probably not a really effective way of talking about yeah. Sexual identitySimone: Hello, Malcolm. HelloMalcolm: Simone. What are we gonna talk about today? Is it White PrideSimone: you? You shared with me the most interesting theory about White Pride this morning. I would love for you to expand upon it. Let's dive into it. Yeah,Malcolm: so one thing that we were talking about was this concept that, you know, generally.Malcolm: When you're looking at falling fertility rates, one of the things that's really associated with cultural groups [00:04:00] that have been able to maintain their fertility rate is pride in that cultural group. Like a belief that we are a good thing in the world and more of this thing should exist. And we argue this is one of the reasons why Jewish populations have been so resistant to fertility collapse because a lot of the times, you talk to a Jewish person and they're like, I want more Jewish people to exist in the future.Malcolm: And Okay, so that, that makes a lot of sense. But when you're talking about white people more broadly, like Caucasians, generally, I think that there's this belief that if they have any pride in an aspect of who they are or their culture, that is white pride and it is evil, right?Malcolm: The interesting thing is there has been a group that has come with a message that says, oh, actually, if you join our cultural group now you can be white and have pride in the cultural group you've joined, and this is the lgbtq plus population. just for some statistics here. [00:05:00] Gay married couples have a hae higher, medium household income than opposite sex. Married couples. But their poverty rates are about equal. And, if you look across the us population, you actually see higher rates. I have black and Hispanic LGBT identification currently. But this disappears and becomes the opposite. When you correct for age, this is more because there are more younger, black and Hispanic people in the general population.Malcolm: And I think the real smoking gun, that this is what's happening, that it is allowing predominantly white, middle, and upper class individuals who otherwise are told by society they can't have pride in anything. Well, now you're allowed to have pride, is that it has now becoming kind of offensive to discuss.Malcolm: That being gay is something you're born as, or being trans is something you're born as. And if you think this is an offensive thing to discuss and you're like no. Nobody thinks that's offensive to [00:06:00] discuss. Well, okay, so there's a recent studyMalcolm: Simone, why don't you talk about thisSimone: study, right? Yeah. Cause I was the one to first get really freaked out about it. One group of researchers looking at the presence of endocrine disruptors in first trimester mothers found that mothers with elevated levels of endocrine disruptors also saw Higher rates of boys born essentially with like less transition to full maleness.Simone: So for example, the distance between the anus and the penis was shorter, sort of like that developmental stage happened less completely, less successfully. And then around age eight boys who in utero in first trimester, Had mothers with higher concentrations of endocrine disruptors in their bloodstreams also showed less, we'll say, dimorphic male play.Simone: So they, they played more like girls, essentially which indicates that there are exogenous factors that could affect the extent to which someone shows certain dimorphic [00:07:00] gendered behavior. As well as physiologicalMalcolm: traits. So I was bringing up this study was an African friend of mine, like from Africa.Malcolm: It's a slightly different cultural background. They're not as up to date with like modern American progressive culture. And I was like, well, and of course I don't really talk about this study publicly much because they'd be seen as wildly offensive to trans people. And they were like, wait, why would that be if it wouldn't that like.Malcolm: Be an argument that would show that the explosion in the trans population could be a biological change and that these people aren't imagining it, and that there really is like a lower gender differentiation or many more people being born, actually the opposite gender. And I was like, that's an interesting point.Malcolm: I started thinking like, why is this? Such an offensive concept to these communities when it seemingly the way that when I grew up, the gay community, you were born gay, you were born trans, and that was a defense for that community. And what I realized is now. It's considered [00:08:00] offensive to either say that you were born gay or to say that you're definitively not born gay.Malcolm: And it's a choice. It's the same with the trans community, right? It's like they wanna keep this in a box. They don't want anybody asking these questions or saying that it could be something that you were born as. And so the question is why would you wanna keep that in a box? Well, the reason you would wanna keep it in our box, because so long as people aren't born gay or born trans, if anyone can become gay or trans like the old political lesbians, uh oh, okay.Malcolm: These were a group of feminists who believed that it was immoral to be heterosexual because you are like benefiting men. But if you say that anyone can become, can join the LGBTQ plus community, well then you have fully opened it to the entire like white upper class community to join. Because this pride offering is more valuable to them. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, Simone.Simone: This stuff is hard for me. I think what really did resonate with me [00:09:00] was this Backdoor to pride, even if you are white. And I wonder if that's why there's creep into the PRIDE community.Simone: I was just listening to commentary today. On the addition of, for example, poly people maybe to L G B T QA plus Pride and also Asexual people like many people complain like, well, asexuality is more like a hormone imbalance than it is a sexuality. But then like, where do you draw the line?Simone: If in the end, maybe someone being gay or trans or any other things could be sort of a product of their hormones, which could even be influenced by things that their mothers did or did not do, did or did not consume, were, or were not exposed to. So I feel like there's this really interesting gradation.Simone: At any rate, Maybe why some people are really drawn to try to loop themselves in to things like Pride month. When they are, for example, just asexual, which really hasn't subjected people to that much discrimination throughout history. Aside from maybe them being obligated to [00:10:00] have sex in some relationships and they're not that into it, which I don't know, I'm not too worried about or poly maybe that's just trying to get into that to say like, I wanna be proud about something about myself culturally, something about my people and my tribe.Simone: And I also think that like, I don't know of the people I know who are asexual, who are poly, they are overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly on the wealthier and more educated end of the spectrum.Simone: So I do see that. Because I don't think also especially white, wealthy, and educated people are.Simone: Allowed that much to even have pride in, for example, like being graduates of the school they graduated from, which in the past used to be huge.Malcolm: Right? Yeah. Because that's a sign of status. So it would of course be seen as a negative thing to show pride in because it would be like class status orSimone: well aspirational status.Simone: If you have victim hub status, yeah. Then it's fine. You have to be the, adventurous, enlightened, educated. Victim or the, that sounds outgoing victim. Something like that. Yeah. Well, it's a ne the victim tag [00:11:00] is necessary if you want to be I guess palatable from a public relations standpoint, which is why that was such a good South Park joke.Malcolm: Well, and I think that this is something that you point out where when we talk about this as a cultural group that's really selling with pride we mean this quite literally to the extent, and we've, I think we've mentioned this in another podcast that we would count by their community's rules as L G B T, both of us because we would both at least be a gender, which is a form of gender queer, which is a form of trans.Malcolm: And I, I was talking to some from aggressive friends and they go, agender isn't a form of gender queer. And it's like y Yes it is. It's defined that way by most of the major L G B T organizations. If you don't believe me, just go Google. Definitions of gender queer that are found on these organization's websites and agender will clearly be under the definition.Malcolm: And when I say aj, it's just, it doesn't really matter to me that I'm a guy.Malcolm: Like, if I woke up tomorrow and I was a woman, I'd be like, fine I'll find a way to make this work. [00:12:00] Yeah, we just make it work. Doesn't matter. I'm gay, but I'd find a way to make it work. And I, and Simone feels the same way.Malcolm: So what we mean by that is even us within the community, we could just say we are L G B T.Malcolm: But I don't identify with that community. And because of that, I am not I do not think that the correct way to deal with not having a strong attachment, like really caring that much, that I'm a guy. I don't think the way to deal with that is to incorporate that into a major aspect of my identity and then say, okay, well these are my people now and this is my thing now. To be more pointed. Our gender identity is about as important to our actual identity as our favorite color is. It just doesn't matter that much. In the future, we're going to do a video. On the difference between supporting people who are, for example, same sex attracted and supporting people who adapt the [00:13:00] gay identity and gay lifestyle., we believe both of the things should be done, but they are two very different things and it is possible to support the gay identity . Well, being terribly oppressive. To same-sex attracted people. Who choose different lifestyles for themselves. For example, heterosexual marriage.Because they choose to stay within a traditional faith or a traditional culture because you tell them, well, you don't get to adoptAny same sex attracted identity. Unless you live this very specific lifestyle. So because of the way you're born.Uh, our cultural group gets dominion over the rest of your life and is the only correct way to live that life.You no longer get to choose your culture. Or identity. Because of the way you were born.And, , I think. It's really. Important. Two. Both support. The LGBT community [00:14:00] and gay people living within that cultural lifestyle. And same-sex attracted people or gender dimorphic, people who choose other cultural responses to, something that they had no control over.Malcolm: And so. I mentioned all this just to show how expansive it is. The more you learn about all of the different gender identities, whether it's demisexual or et cetera, you will see that just about anyone can find a way to identify as L G B T these days.Malcolm: Even if you don't choose what most people would think of as a really non-normative gender or sexual attraction. Now, another area where I think is really interesting is it as the community expands, expanding to the poly community also has been expanding into the king community with people of the king community, now identifying as and this is a community where.Malcolm: Yeah. You might get shame if you mentioned this stuff at the office, but I really don't think they're discriminated against the group in the traditional context. And it [00:15:00] is interesting that you see within the pride events, within the, the existing L G B T Pride events, pride is so much more important.Malcolm: To their cultural message and sales pitch than it is to other minority cultures. Or I could be wrong here. Like, do you think that's accurate,Simone: Simone? It's really hard to say. I do think it's telling that of all the places where I've been in the world, and I'm not saying I've been everywhere, but like I sort of, we, you and I collectively have traveled decently throughout Europe and Asia, right?Simone: That where we see pride most. I guess openly and enthusiastically celebrated is also where I don't know how to say this. White culture is also super not cool to celebrate. Like I was just thinking about like, where's the only other place where I've seen like, enthusiastic celebration of L G B T and even like sort of BDSM culture.Simone: Can you guess? I don't know, Germany, [00:16:00]Malcolm: Like big time. Oh, interesting. Yeah. They do have bigger pride events in otherSimone: places. Yeah. Then and like, like also like just, like bonded shops, like much more like open and so that, I feel like that's more more culturally celebrated.Simone: Pride in coastal cities, in liberal areas is the strongest, but I would also say that white pride is strongest in the south.Simone: In the south, like you, I mean like people are still flying like confederate flags and whatnot. There is actual more white pride and there's more resistance to not having white pride and that therefore there's less. Per our theory or model here of a drive or demand to have alternate channels for pride as a white person, if that makes sense.Simone: Yeah, that makes sense. Cause when I think about like the best, like gay pride parades I've been to or drag shows or like events in general. San Francisco, obviously DC Cape Cod, like just,Malcolm: oh yeah. Those are definitely locations where you would have the highest amount of cultural shame. Yeah,Simone: yeah.Simone: Whereas like in the south that you're, I [00:17:00] don't think there's much R reason also because I think there's a lot more, even if we're like, I. Independent of Confederate stuff, like, there's still just a lot more, there's the debut top balls. There's like, there's actual like sort of historical white culture, well, don'tMalcolm: pride in like their religious groups often,Simone: which is yeah.Simone: There's more like, I'm proud to be a Baptist or whatever. Yeah. Whereas you don't get that in coastal cities, so like, because there are more outlets for a white, middle to upper class, or even like lower, like impoverished, even. Like, there are lots of channels there. And yet, Yeah, in, in coastal cities and North, you really don't see that, hence maybe more L G B T, et cetera.Simone: Pride.I think there may be a tendency to dismiss this as being a sign of just how liberal and area is. However, if you look at places like Cuba, You do not see large pride events. In fact, , gay marriage wasn't even legalized until 2022.Malcolm:Malcolm: Well, I think that this is really interesting. [00:18:00] Um, If. That it is sort of, uh, white pride laundering um, in the same or something. OhSimone: my God.Malcolm: Like pride. You're gonna launder our white pride and, and, and have these big parades about it. But we're gonna pretend it's not a white pride parade. Oh, Oh my God.Malcolm: And after I had this realization um, I'm never gonna be able to see gay. Is anything else Just giant white pride parades of people who say that, oh, I'm not a white, I'm not, you know, pro. No. Uh, which, Which is interesting because this isn't what the gay community used to be. And I think that this is important to note, is that the gay community used to be people who were born gay and had to live their entire lives, like really discriminated for this For sure.Malcolm: It, like, it was shitty. To grow up being gay in like the eighties. Right. Or before. But back then the Pride parade were a lot more timid I think, than they are today.Simone: Well, they certainly weren't like, dominated like they are these days by [00:19:00] like parade floats from Bank of America, it'sMalcolm: Right.Malcolm: But I, I think that historically if you were in the eighties and you went up and you said, I am L G B T, right? And yet your form of sexuality or gender identity did not lead to you being significantly discriminated against the community would've been like, that's a little offensive for you to say that.Malcolm: If you were like a gender or something like that or like, a demisexual or you were something that like, didn't mean that you had to live a lifestyle that caused you to constantly be attacked in the way that they were constantly attacked. And victimize.Malcolm: But the community has sort of been taken over. To an extent by this cultural virus, which is expansive, and now it's a cultural group. It's no longer a, we were born this way and there's nothing we can do about it. It's joining us in this cultural group, which yes, some of the people in this cultural group didn't choose it.Malcolm: But a lot of people in this cultural group, this is an opt-in thing, like we were talking about [00:20:00] with polyamory.Simone: Yeah. Well, And I guess also it's very easy to find one of these groups that you can identify with. For example, in our sexuality research, we found that women aren't really, that attracted, like primarily to primary or secondary sex characteristics.Simone: Like not, sexual body parts, but rather dominance and submission. So that means that, like you could argue, and this has shown up in other research too, that the majority of women are sort of. By default, bisexual. So instantly like you can opt into that. I think the majority of women don't choose to identify as bisexual, but like if you need that outlet, you can find it.Simone: I think that's the most important part of this is that. Maybe um, uh,Malcolm: and we now have a better understanding of how malleable our sexuality is because so many people Right, are taking gender hormones. Right. And we now know that, when you're on gender hormones, you have a 25% chance of changing the primary gender you're attracted to.Malcolm: Um, Oh yeah.Simone: [00:21:00] Well, yeah. And people describing once they go on testosterone or once they go on estrogen, just the extent to which they feel super different is meaningful. Even. Me I have hypothalamic irr. I don't have periods on my own, meaning that I have to take like tons of estrogen to sort of like function normally as a female, I can tell the difference.Simone: And I, it's one of those things that really frustratesMalcolm: me. This like, you're pretty ace.Simone: Um, Malcolm, sorry, you're gonna have to start that over. Um, if you could start after just like right when you interrupted me, that would be good cuz that's where you broke up.Malcolm: Uh, and, And you've talked with me about this as well, where you would say that normally you're pretty asexual or at least responsive sexual where you can get turned on, but only if somebody is engaging you already.Malcolm: Right. But your sexuality becomes proactive when you're on all these hormones. Yeah. And you begin to feel active attraction . Like, like you want to jump me right then, which is something that you almost never experienced when you're not on theseSimone: [00:22:00] hormones, which is why I think the critique that asexuals just have a hormone imbalance is not off really.Malcolm: But all of this stuff is so interesting that we have entered a society today where you can't say, It's not a choice. That, you can't say you were born this way, that's offensive. But you also can't say that some people aren't born this way. That's offensive as well.Simone: It's just interesting.Simone: Well, and it's, think about how offensive it is to say, like if I were to walk up to an asexual and be like, oh, don't worry, you can just like medicate yourself out of this. How offensive would that be? Especially when you start to identify your. Sexual orientation with your a personal identity that gets super dangerous.Simone: And one of the first things that you indicate in the Pragmatist Guide to Sexuality are book on human sexuality is that your sexual orientation does not. Mean that you condone something morally or that you support something morally, like if something turns you on, that doesn't mean you're okay with it or that it's part of your identity.Simone: It's just something that turns you on. And I think furthermore, we need to recognize that the things that turn [00:23:00] you on may change depending on either endogenous or exogenous hormones, meaning like hormones that are just happening either because of puberty or just general life or your gender, whatever, or hormones that you're taking, or hormones that you're exposed to by the environment.Simone: Outside of your control, but like, like not intentional. So it's, I think it's really interesting and I guess it, it's dangerous, let's say, if indeed our theories correct, if indeed L G B T, et cetera, pride. Is one form of white pride laundering. And then people choose to identify as one of these categories because they want something to identify with it they can be proud of.Simone: They wanna have a culture they can be proud of, and then they start to strongly identify with a sexual orientation that may ultimately shift over time because of their hormonal changes or like maybe doesn't really represent them or, whatever. I don't know. I think it's kind of dangerous. It would be much better for someone to build cultural pride around a culture or religion that they very [00:24:00] logically and intentionally chose and didn't just fall into because of a hormonal balance or imbalance or, I don't know, a proximate social group.Simone: Right. It's just a, it's a little frustrating, but it's very interesting nonetheless.Malcolm: Yeah. Well, and I think the one thing that's really disgusting, we talk about this laundering, is the recent change of the gay pride flag. Like, if it turns out that this is actually psychologically what's going on, to include the stripes for like, what is it?Simone: Trans, brown and black,Malcolm: What's the word they use?Malcolm: . It is bipo. Bipo. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. So was the flag now having the brown and black colors in it for bipo individuals, not even a gender or sexuality, they're literally like wearing blackface to hide this white pride outlet.Simone: Well, but wouldn't you say that's almost like a correction? Could it almost be this subtle recognition that L G B T pride stuff was kind of white pride and masquerading as other [00:25:00] sexual identities and therefore we have to throw in, Hey, remember, White people can't have credit. Remember anything.Simone: Don't be. ThatMalcolm: could be it. That's a charitable interpretation of what's going on there. And that couldSimone: be it. I don't know. That doesn't sound very charitable to me. But unless you just wanna accept the premise that white people are super evil no matter what. Which,Malcolm: well, and this comes to another thing you were talking about people identifying with their sexuality.Malcolm: First and foremost, this is why one of the, we've had such an easy time doing research in the sexuality space and like uncovering tons of new stuff in the project. Shooting fish in a barrel, right? Well, shooting fish and barrel because no real research has been done in this space in like 20 years. And the reason is because people started basing their identities off of the state of the research 20 years ago.Malcolm: And now if you. Update the research. Like if the research finds new things, well then you've undermined someone's identity, right? So you can't update, it's now canon, it's now whatever the state of the field was 20 years ago. That's canon. Even if it doesn't align with the actual data, which [00:26:00] is, one of the things that we point out in our book is the concept.Malcolm: Of even gay and straight is probably not a really effective way of talking about yeah. Sexual identity. So by that what we mean it is, it appears that even if you're just talking about like male or female, what do you prefer? Well, it turns out that's not really the way that those are grouped in the in, in the brain or in populations.Malcolm: So, it's pretty common to have a guy who is. I think it's about a third of guys or a quarter of guys in our studies who finds the female like silhouette, like general body image attractive, but it's gets discussed or at least no attractive from a vagina. And that is fascinating to me that it appears that there's sort of three categories here.Malcolm: One is general body shape, which can go on a spectrum of. Male and female, and then wiz males and females. Attraction to disgust, not male to female. Right? Because you can be all the way attracted to both male and female [00:27:00] body shapes or all the way discussed by both male and female body shapes. But then you have these separate metrics of one is secondary sex characteristics and the other is primary sex characteristics.Malcolm: And it's actually, well, it does often happen that these things align. It doesn't happen enough that it makes sense that the predominant way we categorize sexuality is male to female attraction. It's probably better to say arousal to discuss along like these 10 different metrics. But of course that doesn't align with the state of the research when everybody started basing their identities off of their arousal patterns and gender proclivities.Simone: It would be cool if we switched to that though. Like if you could have Sort of your like docket of like, here are all the turnons, here are all the turnoffs for me. I feel like people would find compatibility a lot easier to work out, but Oh yeah. Whatever. Absolutely. That's a totally different kind of worms.Simone: What,Malcolm: what would you scale is nonsense. It's completely with this,Simone: not with this new model. With this new model of L G B T as laundered white [00:28:00] pride do you view it any differently? Like, I don't know what to make of it yet in my head, I think I'm gonna, well, I feelMalcolm: kindness. It's not great to grow up feeling like your ethnic group is wretched and deplorable and like intrinsically genetically or culturally worse.Malcolm: Than all other groups. And not everybody raises their kids believing this, but you know, there definitely is a portion of the population that raises their kids believing this. And I think that portion of the population's kids is a portion that is most likely to end up identifying its L G B T.Malcolm: Because there is nothing, it's not a I guess I don't see it as a bad thing really, because it's better than these kids having nothing they can have pride in. Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you buy this, meme that there's just something intrinsically immoral about white people or whiteness, which exists within certain cultural groups, especially in the, San Francisco, New York area.Simone: Yeah. Anyway, we are stuff. Well,Malcolm: anyway, I [00:29:00] love you so much, Simone. I love you too. Gorgeous. I love that we can have these feisty conversations. This is one of these ones where I know I'll be afraid to post it.Simone: I love that you and I will be walking in a grocery store picking up more milk for the kids and this just comes outta nowhere.Simone: So yeah, like thank you for being that person. No, it'sMalcolm: funny cuz the moment I said it to you, I go, Is it L G B T, white Pride and you thought for a second you go, oh, I get,Simone: oh no, I more like loudly said that in the middle of the dairy aisle, but hopefully no one there knows us too well.Malcolm: No, it's is actually when we talk about sexuality, one of those things where like, we'll be talking to a trans friend about this and go, yeah, we do.Malcolm: We talk a lot of deviant stuff about sexuality, on our show and on our, and they're like, oh yeah, I'm part of the kink community too. I'm trans too. And I'm like, oh, no. Like I'm thinking in my head, no. When deviant, like, the trans community doesn't like it, like trans maxing, alternate iterations.Malcolm: Not in line with what conservatives think about sexuality, but definitely not in line with like, the liberal consensus. [00:30:00]Simone: Such as our curse. At any rate, such is our curse. Love these conversations. Trying. Can't wait to see what you come up with. Next time we're picking up milk, so let's do it more frequently.Simone: All right, have a good one. You too, Malcolm. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Oh shoot! I just realized this might be offense. Sorry but also I don't care. In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm and Simone examine the concept of autism and its prevalence among society's elite class, drawing fascinating parallels with historical court culture and contemporary tech CEOs. They delve into how certain aspects of autism, such as a desire for intense schedules and a dislike for touch, resonate with medieval court cultures and are reflected in the behaviors of some of the world's wealthiest individuals. Simone shares her personal experiences living with autism and how this has shaped her understanding of societal norms. The conversation takes an intriguing turn as they contemplate whether the prevalence of autism among the tech elite influences their ability to relate to the general population. If you're interested in understanding the intersection of autism, power dynamics, and societal change, this video is a must-watch.TranscriptMAlcolm: [00:00:00] When I first met her for a long time, she really hates touching people. Just hates it. And so early on, she would even wear gloves when we go in public, so she didn't have to actually touch anyone's hands.MAlcolm: It's the same as doors. She will sit and wait at a door for like eight minutes for me to open it for her because she. Hates touching door handles, knowing that a lot of other people have touched these door handles. She really likes like a intense schedules. She likes you know, ceremony in her daily life, like doing very structured things and I'm like, what does this sound like?MAlcolm: This sounds a lot like court culture in, medieval Europe. You know, having to wear gloves before you touch people standing at doors. There's even accounts of nobles like standing at a door for 30 minutes because there wasn't the servant who was supposed to be there to open the door for them.MAlcolm: And then the intense. , ceremonies and very specific things you had to do throughout the day and the ways you had to interact with people. Even the not looking them in the eyes thing. So much of it sounds like they've tried to create this little autistic paradise for themselves, or at least [00:01:00] similar to how autism is manifest in my wife, it's a little suspiciousMalcolm (2): Simone, I have heard this conspiracy theory that lizard people, I. Control our society. Now, when they say this, what they mean is there's a group of people who are like humans, you know, humanoid, but a little different, maybe less emotional than other humans sort of, uh, secretly controlling our society and.Malcolm (2): The funny thing is, is we actually had a chapter we removed from our book on this subject saying that it might be true um, but not in the way that the conspiracy theorist made. Hmm.Simone: There was an organization that, that I worked with for a while that I really like that would gather very high caliber people.Simone: Like the, their criteria for membership was you have to be the best in your field. In order to qualify as a member. So this is bringing [00:02:00] together the top tech CEOs diplomats, politicians writers, journalists, activists artists, et cetera to have off the record conversations. And the funny thing about it is that it was very much.Simone: A series of retreats really designed for autistic people where, you know, you're sitting, you know, every moment of the day is scheduled. When you sit down for a conversation with people, the subject is chosen, the people are handpicked for each other, and there's one moderator that is making sure the conversation, you know, stays on track and that everyone speaks and contributes.Simone: It's like super, super structured. There's no stress about, okay, where do I need to be? Which topic should I attend? Like, no, that's all decided for you. It's like, I love it personally because I'm autistic and I love like the structure and the guidelines and the rules and the procedures and oh my gosh, it's dreamy.Simone: So the, but I think it's telling, being is what's telling about it already. GetMAlcolm: disproportionately the elite cast in our society is on the spectrum already.Simone: Yeah. [00:03:00] Even if they don't admit it, that like that this kind of format would appeal disproportionately to. The top performers in the respective fields?MAlcolm: Well, it's not an admit or not admit thing. We can just look, I can look at the richest people in the world. I can look at Mark Zuckerberg on a stage trying to give a speech and I'm like, oh, that guy is obviously on the spectrum. Elon Musk has admitted to being diagnosed with Asperger's, which now doesn't exist as a diagnosis and is just autistic.MAlcolm: Just. In case people aren't familiar, the reason why the diagnosis of Asperger's doesn't exist anymore is because it used to be autistic, but high IQ and successful. And it's like, that's super unfair. Like imagine if there was like dyslexic and then dyslexic, but successful. Well, man, everybody who is labeled dyslexic, that's labeling you as also unsuccessful.MAlcolm: So everyone's gonna assume that you're like barely functional if you're dyslexic. So it is really unfair that you would ever carve off. The successful people from a diagnosis. So, or high IQ at least, you know? And that's what you were seeing was that. So [00:04:00] historically Simone would've been diagnosed as Asperger's, but today she'd be diagnosed as autistic.MAlcolm: But anyway, and I think this is where we got that negative stigma for autistic with the older generation. But you know, you can look at so many of these high profile, you know, super wealthy billionaires talk, and you're just like, oh gosh. Like if you've been around a lot of people on the spectrum, you're like, these people are obviously on the spectrum.MAlcolm: ButMAlcolm: what I find most. Fascinating about this theory is that this may not be a new phenomenon.MAlcolm: It may have been around for a very long time. So let's look at some of the ways that Simone is weird in her autism. When I first met her for a long time, she really hates touching people. Just hates it. And so early on, she would even wear gloves when we go in public, so she didn't have to actually touch anyone's hands.MAlcolm: It's the same as doors. She will sit and wait at a door for like eight minutes for me to open it for her because she. Hates touching door handles, knowing that a lot of other people have touched these door handles. She really likes like a intense schedules. She likes you know, ceremony in her daily life, like doing very structured [00:05:00] things and I'm like, what does this sound like?MAlcolm: This sounds a lot like court culture in, medieval Europe. You know, having to wear gloves before you touch people standing at doors. There's even accounts of nobles like standing at a door for 30 minutes because there wasn't the servant who was supposed to be there to open the door for them.MAlcolm: And then the intense. , ceremonies and very specific things you had to do throughout the day and the ways you had to interact with people. Even the not looking them in the eyes thing. So much of it sounds like they've tried to create this little autistic paradise for themselves, or at least similar to how autism is manifest in my wife, it's a little suspicious What if society, but, okay, so here's where this whole theory gets a lot more interesting.MAlcolm: Which is, does that mean that if it is true that people who are running these major tech companies are more likely to be autistic, do you think that means that they can't relate to the general population as much and they're trying to push things that maybe the [00:06:00] general population wouldn't like?MAlcolm: Like is there genuine merit to this lizard person accusation where if these people are different does that mean they can't understand people?Simone: So I've heard this critique from people also who have worked in very senior roles in Silicon Valley, for example, like, I've heard this critique of, oh, these people who are completely tone deaf, who don't know how to relate to other people are here.Simone: So confident that they're making solutions for the rest of society when they can't even begin to model the rest of society. And I try to come in and I try to explain these things to them and they just look at me blankly and just do what they were gonna do because they either don't get it or don't care.Simone: And you know, I hear that argument and I'm just thinking. Well, you're wrong. Like these people are doing what's optimal and like I know they're, I thought he was like,MAlcolm: no, you don't know what's best for you. Yeah.Simone: Autistic rather, I'm like, these are the men tats of society. They are calculating and they're [00:07:00] making the correct decision.Simone: Sure do. And you know, they're, you know, Trying but also, like I know that I'm biased and like if I am also one of these supposed lizard people, or as they just saw these like autistic non-empathetic people who can't possibly understand what it's like to not be one of those people, then of course I would say that, and of course I wouldn't get it right.Simone: So I don't know. You're more on the non-autistic. Neuro atypical under the spectrum. Like what would you say is correct? Like, is that right? Are these people wrong to be running society? Are they and would society be better if run by people who are like, I. I don't know, more socially empathetic cuz I I kind ofMAlcolm: feel like, I don't think it would be, I don't think it would be I don't know if this is the best scenario.MAlcolm: I mean, I do think whenever you get a subgroup of the population that's disproportionately represented in positions of power that leads to negative consequences often. Right. You wanna, however, if there was a population that was gonna be differentially selected, I [00:08:00] can see it. I, I WellSimone: here, I mean, here's the thing and this is of course of a highly criticized view that, you know, these people built these organizations.Simone: They made it obviously, like if you think you, whoever it is you are with your worldview are so good and so, so perfect at running things. Why are you apparently incapable of building the thing that runs things like. If you can make it like you know, Do it then. Like why haven't you built it? You know?Simone: Because you can't, because you are not capable, because you, hey,MAlcolm: the lizard people are now lecturing you. Why you non lizard people can't become rich.Simone: What is the wrong it's bad. Right? Because, you know, I guess, you know, an outsider that I'm a very poorly trying to model and I admit that I'm not very good at this, would be like, oh, systemic bias.Simone: And, you know, I've been kept down and I'm not given a place in the room. But I also don't feel like. Awkward autistic people are given a place. Oh, another thing I've heard, [00:09:00] which I think is really interesting, is they're like, you know what? Also, these are all very sad autistic people who were bullied throughout their childhoods and rejected by all their friends, and now they're taking out their aggression.Simone: They were b***h fantasy. Yeah. The revenge fantasy upon society with these startups, which I also think is really interesting because I genuinely, my understanding of life as an autistic person. My understanding of other autistic people is they like legit, don't care really about like what other people are saying about them.Simone: Like I remember as a kid, like people saying stuff to me that I just didn't like, that kind of went over my head and then getting in really big trouble and like, You know, being like benched during swim practice or whatever. Well, theMAlcolm: other people were benched, so, so the way you said that was a little confusing.MAlcolm: I think what she means is people would be making fun of her. Sh didn't realize they were making fun of her. Yeah. They didn't feel mean or hurtfulSimone: to her, but then I would know that they had done it because they got [00:10:00] punished for it. Yeah. ForMAlcolm: the context of the way the adults reacted to it, it was clear that they had been really mean.Simone: Yeah. And so that's, so my experience As an autistic person. I mean, I didn't know that until like, we got diagnosed way later. But anyway, like my experience is such that I don't even think that these people are bullied in the way that the socially empathic people think that they were. So there really isn't this revenge.Simone: Like they, they legit don't care what these people think. And I think it's in, it's interesting that these, well, we'll just say the empaths, right? Like the socially. Like good people or whatever. The non lizard people are like, they're modeling. The lizard people as though the lizard people were empaths, but just evil.Simone: You know what I mean? Like, yeah. Oh, I'm gonna take revenge. I really care what you think. Whereas like instead they're like legit more like, like mentate. So just like beep boop. Like I'm gonna build a thing. And then they do it really well, maybe because they're not tied down by all this empathetic social positioning nonsense, right?Simone: Like they just wanna [00:11:00] like build my computer thing, whatever. Right? And then they do it. So I don't know. And I, like, I wish I must find an opportunity when I find someone making this critique again to ask them, okay, like, what do you want the lizard people to do? Like, what do you want these tech bros who are like running the world to do differently, aside from?Simone: And the only answer I've heard so far, and please, someone correct me in the comments here is, Well, they should give my group more power, whichMAlcolm: doSimone: it, it just doesn't sound like a, an encompassing solution. Right? Like, I want to hear what you would do with that power then. Like what would you do once you have that power?Simone: Because the thing I hear after that is, well, I would put more of my people in power and then I'm just like, ugh, like this isn't going anywhere. This just sounds like I just want more people like me in positions of power. In which case my answer would be, okay, build the next thing and own it. So, I don't know, I don't know where to go with this.Simone: Pro lizard people, obviously very [00:12:00] biased. Well,MAlcolm: I do have another place to go with this, which is, okay, if this is a problem right now, it's a problem that is likely going to get bigger in the future, uhhuh with autistic people having. In a world because we're reproducing the artist is king and in a world of work from home.MAlcolm: And this is something that we've really seen, you know, with in our own family since we started predominantly working at home, is your productivity differential to my productivity has gone up astronomically more. Yeah. Not having to have other people interfering with your daily routines. Has really just made you go so much faster.MAlcolm: And I really like the analogy that was made about what it's like to be autistic that I wanna share with the audience here because I think it's a really powerful one. It's as if you are a race car. That is optimized for a race car track. And so if you try to live like normal life, like you try to [00:13:00] go on normal roads or worse go offroading, like have your schedule disrupted, you perform astronomically worse than other cars.MAlcolm: But when you are able to control your entire. Routine from top to bottom when it's the perfect track and you have a pit crew, which is, I guess me you're like the handler, basically. You can perform really astronomically and I mean this as somebody, you know, I work with my wife because I work with a lot of other people who work for us and stuff like that.MAlcolm: I have never worked with somebody who can output anywhere close to you, Simone. Aw. Your daily output is just, Bananas. And the core reason is because, and I don't know what this is about you, but you don't take breaks like you are able to consistently work. I. For a five hour period, even when you're not like off the chain passionate about something.MAlcolm: That is not something I can do. Realistically, I can work for like 30 minutes and then [00:14:00] I take like a two hour break and then I work for 30 minutes and then I take like a two hour break. I mean, I'm not trying to do, and unless I'm just like really passionate about something and it's like 2:00 AM .Simone: Yeah. 2:00 AM key. I love that you start working then. I appreciate that. I think, yeah. What, and what I saw too of parents we know who have autistic children in various ages, like especially we have adolescences. Yeah. And we have an autistic kid. But when I hear about parents whose autistic kids are going through what we call the industrial school system, you know, either like public or private schools, but where they're taught by teachers and they're being.Simone: Forced taught instead of self-taught. They just thrive during the pandemic when they got to direct their own education, work from home, not sit around peers, not work on other people's schedules. So I agree with you that especially like as more parents are shifting their children to work from home and as more businesses are shifting to work from home it's, I think it's really going to give autistic people a leg up.Simone: I also think that a lot of like. Internet communities and cultures, and we've talked about this in the past, like [00:15:00] four chan being the male autistic ID online and Tumblr, and it's now diaspora being the female autistic ID online that like autistic people have very much been empowered online and that maybe that means that autistic people will also be able to form.Simone: Relationships and have kids at higher rates than they did in the past. Maybe meaning that we'll see more autistic people. Well, I think thatMAlcolm: this is also worth double clicking on what you were saying right there, is people are like, oh, it's only the elite in our society who are top down enforcing autistic culture on us Uhhuh.MAlcolm: And it's like, not really. I mean, four Chan is the creator of most online culture , whether you're talking about MAGA or Broy or you know, the. What's that foundation where they capture the like, spooky thing, foundation? What, anyway so much of all culture, so many mean formats, you know, Pepe, et cetera.MAlcolm: You know, all of this is coming from four chan and this is the space that self-admitted. Has a higher than normal autistic [00:16:00] population to majority autistic population. And then you can look at the progressive memes that have taken over the progressive meme plex. A lot of these came from Tumblr culture, and Tumblr was self-professed again, really heavily autistic, especially back in the day.MAlcolm: That when all of these things were really bubbling up. And so why is it that these. Autistic spaces are generating the culture that ends up dominating the rest of our society, both bubbling up from the bottom and being enforced from the top. I think what you said is right, is that it is this ability to thrive within an online environment.MAlcolm: And when we said that historically, you know, we've talking about at least yeah, high performing autistic problems. It was more that we were forcing them to live in an environment that was not conducive to [00:17:00] like the level of. Self-care is the wrong word. Self tuning. They needed to be optimal all the time.MAlcolm: And that's what, when you see autistic people, do the things that we often associate with autism, like ticks and stuff like that. Right. So, th these behaviors are happening when we're forcing them into environments where they're not, they don't work for them. Yeah. They don't work for them.MAlcolm: Yeah. And this was one of the things when we're creating the Collins Institute, which is our school system that we really focused around, is how do we create a school system that, knowing what you went through and , that you almost ended up dying in the traditional public school system.MAlcolm: How do we. Help our kids not have to go through that and help other people who think like you not have to go through that. So that's something we've really tried to build into it.Simone: Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Well, and then there's the phenomenon that may or may not be there of autistic people now.Simone: Coalescing in certain zones, like around Silicon Valley because it seems to select for more autistic friendly careers and [00:18:00] social spheres. Yep. So, you know, yeah. I mean, it does seem like we're moving in a direction of, I if not numerically, at least in terms of influence and reach. Autistic people are gaining influence though again, and we're not super invested in this theory, but it does seem like maybe autistic people in the past also were disproportionately represented in leadership. So like, maybe this is an always thing, but it also seems to be an increasing thing, wouldn't you say?MAlcolm: Yeah. Well, yeah, so you could say not gaining influence, but consolidating influence. Yeah. And well, I love having you here to talk about this cuz this is one of those things that I could have noticed, but if I didn't have an autistic wife, I would never, I. I probably would. I'm that level of stupidly walking through third rails.MAlcolm: Well, no, butSimone: I also, I don't think you would've noticed these subtler patterns if you hadn't had to deal with me, likeMAlcolm: open, I didn't really understand autism before, looking at how you are weird and being like, oh that's what it is. And again, we should clarify not like self-diagnosed autistic.MAlcolm: Our kids and her have been [00:19:00] diagnosed you know, by medical professionals and everything.Simone: Well, and yeah, that's also not to say that like. My autistic experience represents everyone's autistic experience. Exactly. Everyone has a unique experience. Um, Yeah, you're, but I do.MAlcolm: You're the hot autistic woman. The, that, which is quite a fine.MAlcolm: I'm telling all the guys here. Being married to a autistic woman makes things much easier because, okay, yes, she has a lot of rules, but the rules are consistent. I know.Simone: I don't know. I think there's also a weird, and I'm a five. Let's be honest here. Like, I'm not, you are not a five.Simone: I'm average. I'm not unpleasant looking and I'm not like a model. But I would say that like, I also think that among hot. But also very smart, competent women. Autism, mostly undiagnosed would be like way overrepresented. Way overrepresented. And thatMAlcolm: would mean it's a sign of genetic fitness because signs of genetic fitness often correlate with [00:20:00] each other.MAlcolm: Like the more attractive somebody is, is a higher iq, they're likely to be the taller they're likely to be. The more the face is likely to be you. You typically see any sign of genetic fitness correlating with other signs of genetic fitness, if that's the case. Then all you're saying is autism is geneticallySimone: optimal.Simone: Well, or this is one of those things, and I think this is a really interesting theory that you have or that I guess many people have, but you were the one who introduced me to it, of that things traits like autism or slight disorders like autism or schizophrenia. Manage. To persist in people's genetic lines because like in moderation, they're useful, like in moderation.Simone: Someone who's more on the schizophrenic end is useful because they model people really well on the autistic end are useful in a society because they, you know, I don't know, build, this isMAlcolm: something you can be fairly sure of given how quickly sociological profiles changes at the genetic level.MAlcolm: If you see a trait, and it is common across all cultures. especially if you know that it's not something that's being selected for, because , it, [00:21:00] it's associated with something else.Simone: So something that's really cool when you talk about like intelligence and autism and the genetic component of this is that Simone, you know, compared to me, if you look at her genes, she should only be about a half a standard deviation above the general population in terms of her iq. Which is, , something when I'm talking about her being really productive, where she is off the charts genetically at the 99th percentile is in systematizing.Simone: Which is a common trait within the autistic population. So I wonder if that is specifically the systematizing, what's giving you this advantage?Simone Real: I wonder too, I think there's something really interesting going on there. And might explain why autism is like seemingly disproportionately associated with people who are like inventors or scientists, , like Darwin or Zuckerberg, if he is autistic, , that kind of thing.Simone Real: And that like, these are people who. Have this deep desire to organize [00:22:00] in their minds logistically and categorize things. Yeah, I mean, keep in mind like Facebook started out as like a. Ranking kind of thing. Like a sorting thing, didn't it? Oh yeah.Simone: Well, and I remember just something that the general population didn't know is you did a, when you were getting diagnosed with autistic they did like a IQ test on you and you got in the top 0.5% in terms of the IQ test.Simone: So you are outperforming people even within IQ tests, even though you don't have this a genetic role of the dice there, that's giving you an advantage. So it must be the systematizing or it could just be. That none of jeans matter. Wouldn't that make our detractor so happy if it turns out jeans don't matter?Simone Real: I don't know. I don't care. You know, what we care about is outcomes and not what shows up on paper or tests. So I don't care if someone has the highest IQ in the world, if they're not doing, if they're not making a meaningful impact on the world vis-a-vis their values, or if they haven't thought through their values, like zero respect for them versus someone who's [00:23:00] like, Tech technically, you know, super low iq, but they do something meaningful with their lives.Simone Real: So, well, anything they deserve more respect, I guess. I mean, I don't even think so because you're technically low. I think that intelligence and the various pieces of baggage, it's same with beauty. That come with, it can be just as much of a hindrance as it can be a help that you know, there are many people who are super intelligent, who may like overthink things, who may be bogged down by their,Simone: I think that's an excuse.Simone: The, The mentally lazy used.MAlcolm: Well, Simone I, I am so lucky that I found an autistic woman to marry.Simone: I am so glad that you deal with me, that you don't look at me like I'm crazy when I attempt to open doors with my butts in an elbow all the time.Simone: And freak out and just stand in front of them and wait for you to get them. Thank you. Um, And all the other things. All the other things. Um, I know I'm not easy to live with, but.MAlcolm: Oh I, I think so. You're weird, but you're predictable. [00:24:00] Yeah. You never, You never get upset about something I can't predict.Simone: And isn't that nice?Simone: Well, um, yeah. Love you. Thank you. Bye MalcolM. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Written by AI:In this engaging dialogue, Malcolm and Simone dissect the concept of "trad wives" and the socio-cultural transformations that led to their rise and eventual decline. They explore the 1950s ideal of the stay-at-home wife, and why this model is often misunderstood as a "traditional" family structure. Delving further back into history, they illuminate the "corporate family" structure that once dominated society - an intricate network of blood relatives and employees functioning together as a unit. Touching on economic and historical contexts, they show how this setup evolved over time and why it is vital to understand these changes. If you're intrigued by the evolution of family dynamics, societal norms, and economic influences, this discussion is a must-watch. Transcript:Based Camp - Tradwives are a Progressive ConspiracyMalcolm: [00:00:00] this PSYOPs campaign around tread wives, it's a fun aesthetic and yes, it was a model that was popular, was in certain classes of American society around the 1950s, but it was in the 1950s. A fairly new and it turns out short-lived social experiment.Malcolm: And that you're not actually going back to any sort of a traditional model of family when you, whenever you are atomizing the family.Simone: Yeah. Well, and it's, it sounds to me like you're describing it also as the first step in the atomization of everyone. Like first you separate out the corporate family into the nuclear family.Simone: And then you just separate out the man in the living. You pick him off one by one, we've gotten to a point where no one's e even that incentivized to get marriedSimone: hello, gorgeous. Hello Simone.Malcolm: It's wonderful to be here today. What are weSimone: talking about? Tread wives. How would you define a tread wife?Malcolm: A tread wife is a woman who attempts to [00:01:00] emulate the 1950s ideal of a wife that we now see in sitcoms where you typically have a family dynamic in which a woman stays at home, takes care of the house in terms of cleaning, in terms of gardening, everything like that, and child rearing, and the husband then leaves the house to go to an office and be a breadwinner for the family.Malcolm: This. Of course is a progressive scam. And let's talk about what I mean by it being a progressive scam, because I think a lot of people can hear that and they're like, no, this is definitely the way things used to be. And they are right for a specific, very constrained geographic group. It was. A common way of living specifically upper middle class to upper class Americans from the 19, 20 to the 1930s, to the 1970s to [00:02:00] maybe the 1980s. So you're really dealing with a half century period. Where this was common and really only in the Americas at any sort of large level.Malcolm: And the reason, so first, let's talk about why this was even possible in America. During the economic wealth that came with the War II period in America, specifically, America was just in a uniquely wealthy state vis-a-vis the rest of the world because most of the developed world had just had all their infrastructure basically destroyed and was rebuilding themselves up again.Malcolm: And America had done. A number of things during that period that put it in a really good economic position, which means you could afford to have families living off of one person's salary, even though this was not the traditional way of doing things the traditional way. So before the 1920s the common marriage style, especially if you go before the 1880s.Malcolm: Right? So if you expand this time window a little bit. It was something like 80% of Americans were in what is [00:03:00] called the corporate marriage structure which is very corporate family. Yeah, corporate family, which is very different from a nuclear family. So how would you describe a corporate family, Simone?Malcolm: A corporateSimone: family is typically a husband, wife, their children, and an extended family and employee network. So in terms of the ARC type of the corporate family in modern, it runs a. Yeah, well, they run some kind of business, like they're all maybe working on a farm or a brewery or a garment manufacturing business.Simone: Basically a cottage industry business, a from home business that everyone works on collectively, meaning that the kids are helping out probably as soon as they're old enough. There are aunts and uncles that are involved. In fact, the very house from which we are filming this podcast in different rooms was.Simone: For five generations occupied by what could be described as a corporate family, and we've met the fam like the. The youngest generation of Yeah. Of that family that used to live here. And they described the various types of people who lived here. And it was always multiple generations. There would be [00:04:00] a grandmother and grandfather living in the house or just, one surviving grandmother.Simone: There would be aunts often made an aunts who would also be watching kids. There would be kids and there would be additional. The occasional additional farmhand that would also live and work in this house andMalcolm: with the family. So the employees of these types of businesses were incorporated into the family structure to innovate?Malcolm: Well, there were stillSimone: employees though, so I think a really interesting and unexpected place where you can see this play out is with the Adams family, where lurch is their Butler is an employee of the family, but he's still very much a part of the family. He's not clearly treated like staff in the show, and you can see that very clearly.Malcolm: Yeah. And I think that the reason why the Anna's family chose to des. To show that is because the family actually, the house, the old Victorian style house that they were in was supposed to be considered like terribly out of fashion at the time and out ofSimone: date.Simone: Yeah. Just like the corporate family model.Malcolm: During the time that the cartoon strip had come out, the original cartoon strip, those Victorians, we now see them as Spooky mansions [00:05:00] in part influenced largely by the Adams family, but they were really just supposed to be like terribly out of touch with the current times.Malcolm: To the extent that what was horrifying about them. Is that they did not bend the knee to current social morays.Simone: Oh, you don't send your kids out to school? Oh, the husband doesn't go out And get a job. Oh, you're not Suzy Homemaker? No. TheMalcolm: husband works from home and helps raise the kids.Malcolm: Yeah. And has a loving relationship. Those things within the Adams family were actually supposed to part partially be what made them horrifying. Cause they so deviated from the social norms of the time. And I think that this is one of the disservices that the current Adams family does with the family is what made the monsters an interesting family is they were supposed me, the Adams family.Malcolm: No monsters. Oh. What made the monsters an interesting family is that they were a family of monsters trying to live like the average American family of the time. What [00:06:00] made the Adams family horrifying is that they were totally normal humans who lived. So devily from traditional social values that it made them monstrous and fit in among monsters.Malcolm: So what I think that shows you is how much society turned against the model of the corporate family as soon as. In the 1920s, this when really became common, which was wage labor. Wage labor where males could leave their houses. And the ending of the nuclear family happened when female wage labor started.Malcolm: So really it was a model that was created with the advent of male wage labor with jobs that were prosperous and in a limited geographic region where jobs prosperous to support an entire family on one salary existed, and then it ended with the rise of female. Wage labor. But the reason I say it's a progressive conspiracy is because it was very socially forward thinking in [00:07:00] its time period.Malcolm: The idea that a man would just abandon his family like that was considered. And if you want to frame this in conservative language the first foot in the door, With the people trying to destroy the traditional American family happened when they got the men out of the house. Hmm. When they got the men out of the house, when they left just the kids and the wife alone trying to handle this whole scenario was without the guy there.Malcolm: That is when everything began to fall apart. That is when the door was opened. To the corrupting influences that led to the degradation of the family model. It was the nuclear family that led to theSimone: degradation of the American. Well, I guess it's easier for outside forces, be it academia or the state or some other influencer to start to own people's ideologies and lives when they become atomized.Simone: Right? Yeah. Well,Malcolm: They atomized the American Family Unit and this model was pushed by Hollywood, by the [00:08:00] elite. That's when you look and you say, didn't America used to be like this nuclear family? You're, You're pointing to leave it to beaver, right? Mm-hmm. Created by the Hollywood establishment. Wh where do you think these things were coming from?Malcolm: Right. So even if you say it was in a conservative language Which, we are conservative, so, but I think sometimes our audience might not be as conservative as we are. It is in many ways more nefarious than any sort of like dual earner model, which economically, there's just no realistic way to support a family without, for the vast majority of Americans was out a dual owner model.Malcolm: These online influencers who are pushing like, oh, your average American can go back to this model of a tread wife where you're surviving off of one income. I don't know where these people are, li you have to be incredibly lucky to have that kind of an income. Mm-hmm. And even, even if you are that lucky, you are severely limiting the number of kids you can have through doing that.Malcolm: Uh, One of the things that we say that was really [00:09:00] positive about Covid is it really unlocked work from home in a major context. And now you're seeing some CEOs react. Negatively to this. I love it. They never toed out statistics like we've actually run statistics at our companies. It's infinite.Malcolm: It's two x better to have somebody working from home in terms of their brain, ifSimone: they're an A player, if they are a B or C player. Often they become much worse when,Malcolm: right. But wiz work from home. We can have this model again to some extent, or we can at least have the proliferation of it within the people who desire it from their family.Malcolm: Yes, you might be taking a salary cut, but you know, getting to spend all day working together. And on your various hustles. That is one thing about the gig economy. We talk about the gig economy as if it's. This totally new concept, but that's what cottage industries were. They were weird little gig economies.Malcolm: They were, they might not have been selling your tapestries and cakes on Etsy but you were selling them at the local, market. And now we view these markets as like quaint places but traditionally that, that was the Etsy in the Amazon store of our [00:10:00] society.Simone: Well, but I think that's what's really encouraging. The pandemic was devastating and really hard for many people. But it also did, I think, start to bring back the corporate family, bring back couples and families who worked together and have become a little bit more sovereign as a result. And depending on how you look at it, like a lot of the way that it's framed in mainstream media is.Simone: Oh my gosh. These people have to have five jobs to scrape together. But also, oh my God, these people are not dependent on a sole source of income at this point. If one of those shuts them down or something, they have other sources of income, they're more able to raise kids at home. They're more able to have flexible schedules.Simone: They're more able to begin building things that they actually own. Yes, people may start by like working for Uber or delivering for HelloFresh or whatever it may be. But over time, we're seeing more and more families create their own businesses, their own consultancies, their own design firms, ourMalcolm: social networks we're talking about.Malcolm: Yeah. And [00:11:00] we do live in sort of small town America, so, yeah. We're not talking at our bus here. This is definitely something we are seeing in our communities. ISimone: don't know. And this isn't even, so it's both people without with only high school educations.Simone: And it's also people with MBAs who are literally creating fix-it businesses because they're so lucrative. So I think it's also really interesting in that this is very democratizing, whereas when you look at Breadwinning type careers, that's also one of those things where there's like a lot of elitism, a lot of classism, a lot of like education gatekeeping and, well, because,Malcolm: because, yeah they have these systems where they would filter people based on their sort of class status, which to an extent was signaled by the university you got your degree from.Malcolm: And now when you are competing with people, my Stanford MBA doesn't mean a lot if I'm competing with somebody who's just working on a company that they're building out of their home against me. Right? Well,Simone: because these humpy businesses succeed based on you having product market fit, you providing a business, be it plumbing, fix it, consultancy of some sort, whatever it [00:12:00] might be.Simone: Dog walking, I don't care that people want and need, and it's a good service. You know that, that does not depend on your credentials. That depends on your ability to deliver and your ability to meet genuine demand. And that's awesome. So I, it's really cool to see that we're moving away from atomization.Simone: It's interesting that, I think it's also part of what some might argue, or like recessions or civilizational decline. Like all this stability that we thought that we had is disappearing, but I think it's also really. People don't realize how unstable it is to have a stable job when you're your own boss.Simone: You can tell when things are getting bad, when you might need to tighten your belt, and you can also have more control over how things go, whereas when you're working for a big company, You don't have control over how well or poorly it's run. And when you know you get laid off, you often have no warning, there's no control.Simone: And all of your income depends on that one business. No, thisMalcolm: is actually a really interesting thing that happened to us. So a lot [00:13:00] of people could say, well, it's really silly that both you and your husband have the same job basically because we've run the same company together. Yeah. It's seen as very risky, going into the pandemic, we were running a chain of travel agencies and we had to cut our own salary to nothing for about a one and a half year period.Malcolm: And people could think that would be pretty economically devastating to us. And then, It could have been, but I guess we just decided, okay, now we're applying for new jobs. So we continued to run our existing company and people were like, well, we have like hundreds of employees at our company, and the last thing I would do is fire any employee to do an economic downturn before cutting my own salary.Malcolm: And so, We kept doing what we were doing in terms of running the company for free and then took on side hustles to try to pay for things and to maintain our lifestyle. But that was something that we were able to do because we had already built a cadence around working together so yes, you are more economically vulnerable in a way. In that you're working together and your single source of income can fall off, but it does encourage you to build [00:14:00] multiple income streams in a way that, and it's because you're more efficient.Malcolm: When you're working with somebody who you really get along with, you can typically squeeze more work out of the two of you with less effort than you can when you're. Like working on a group project with students you don't really like. And that was always my experience of working in a traditional office.Malcolm: It always felt like working on a group project with people I didn't really like. And so I was incredibly inefficient, but when I was working with people who were family to me and I think that is why in corporate families, employees, Get treated more like family is because that is the way that you sort of see your larger corporate units.Malcolm: So when you're working with people who are like family to you, you can squeeze more productivity out at the same time, which then leads you to take on additional jobs and working out of the home also allows you to do that. You look at us, we technically won multiple projects, right? Exactly.Malcolm: But anyway, this is a really long tangent to the point that this PSYOPs campaign around tread wives, it's a [00:15:00] fun aesthetic and yes, it was a model that was popular, was in certain classes of American society around the 1950s, but it was in the 1950s. A fairly new and it turns out short-lived social experiment.Malcolm: And that you're not actually going back to any sort of a traditional model of family when you, whenever you are atomizing the family.Simone: Yeah. Well, and it's, it sounds to me like you're describing it also as the first step in the atomization of everyone. Like first you separate out the corporate family into the nuclear family.Simone: And then you just separate out the man in the living. You pick him off one by one, we've gotten to a point where no one's e even that incentivized to get married rates of, sex or plummeting. All sorts of things are shifting, and now we're seeing. Probably an unprecedented rate of unpaired people with no kids.Simone: Well, that's definitelyMalcolm: another podcast, right? Yeah. Why have relation markets failed?Simone: I wonder, if we do [00:16:00] see like more close to some kind of civilizational collapse where unemployment reaches 80%, do you think that we might actually see, oddly a necessity based return to.Simone: Corporate family style marriages. I think one of the reasons why people got married a long time ago wasn't because they were seeking sexual or romantic partnership. It was because they needed financial security that they needed someone to, to ha to work on a business with, to have that security to like share resources.Simone: And I wonder if we're just gonna see more of that if we ever hit as a society, rougher times, like more people. Maybe not even romantically involved in the beginning, but perhaps over time as they sort of grow together and have aligned incentives forming corporate families and ultimately finding a lot of satisfaction there.Simone: Who knows what we couldMalcolm: expect? I really hope that's the direction we're going. Um, Because I love being in a relationship with [00:17:00] you and you uh, am I thrilled with um, I mean, I, I do want to proselytize this marriage structure because I think it works very effectively for the other families we know.Malcolm: Who have adopted it and it is increasing. And so I, I think a lot of young people, when we talk to young men, a lot of them feel like they just, they don't have a shot because it is a lot on a young man to say, go out there and earn everything for family. And that's the only way. And it feelsSimone: unfair.Simone: It would breed resentment. Here's the thing when a couple doesn't work together the man who's busting his ass all day working is going to come home and see that his wife was just home all day. I don't know, like cleaning a little bit. It seems really easy, right? And then the wife is hold on, like I've been.Simone: Vomited on by an infant, the, like this huge mess was made. I'm bored. I'm not intellectually stimulated. So like she's stressed out, she's not happy, she's actually working pretty hard. And then, she is not appreciating the hard work that her husband doing. He's off an office's off doing fun.[00:18:00]Simone: No. Yeah, that it creates a lot of resentment on both sides because they don't under the each partner doesn't understand each other, doesn't appreciate the other's work, and also feels underappreciated. And that just is a super toxicMalcolm: dynamic. Oh, I couldn't agree more. And I appreciate you, Simone.Malcolm: I appreciateSimone: you too, Malcolm,Malcolm: but I appreciate you cuz I know the work you're doing. It's exactly the work I do. Like the only big division of labor we have is you take kids before, like one and a half. I take kids after one and a half. And that's true. WeSimone: actually, so I think and this is not to say that corporate families are these communes where everyone does exactly the same thing at different percentages. We do very gender dimorphic things, right? Yeah. I handleMalcolm: outside the house.Simone: You handle when you handle the gardening, you fix everything. I I clean everything inside the house. I typically do most of the group or family cooking, I put away the dishes, et cetera.Simone: LikeMalcolm: coke. There's time the day where I'm almost always looking after the kids and there's times the day where you're looking after the kids. But always when a kid's before, like one that you're looking after them.Simone: Yeah I have [00:19:00] the really little ones and you have the bigger ones, they sort of apprentice under you and they sort of, get carried around by me all the time.Simone: So, yeah, I mean I think that there, that to say that a corporate family is, not trad in many ways is incorrect because there is still tons of gender dimorphism, there are still tons of like tradition, traditional, we canMalcolm: emphasize. That you shouldn't do a corporate family just because it's trad.Simone: Oh yeah. Well we shouldn't do anything just because it'sMalcolm: trad. Yeah. Yeah. You can look to traditional things for different social models that at one point worked and that may work again. But doing something just cuz the way you know it used to be done can be a really. Bad model for how to live your life, but also I think broadly we can all agree that like whatever society's doing right now isn't working.Malcolm: Yeah. I'm just saying it'sSimone: not Star Trek, you know, like,Malcolm: no, but what I mean is it's just not working. I didn't say it's not working. You can look to the past for some ways to fix it but you likely want to tweak them to fit within a [00:20:00] modern social context. And when it's in your personal,Malcolm: social and economic context. Yeah, I love you. We do need to get to the next podcast and we're not gonna squeeze it in.Simone: I love you so much, Malcolm. Looking forward to talking again. All right. Love you. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

This was written by AI: In this thoughtful discussion, Malcolm and Simone engage in a deep dive into the phenomena known as "thots" and the Red Pill Community. They discuss the psychological, societal, and relational aspects of these subjects, considering the stereotypes and realities that exist within them. Malcolm and Simone present their unique perspectives on how certain behaviors and actions can influence the narrative context of a relationship, and how individuals adapt within different contexts. Additionally, they delve into the influence of Red Pill ideologies on online communities, offering insights into the perception of "thots" within these spaces. Join us in this enlightening exploration of the complexities of gender dynamics, sexuality, and online communities.Based Camp - The Thot ProblemMalcolm: [00:00:00] What type of woman decides to sign their entire, this one short life they have to being. Submissive to someone else only for attraction to that person. That's a thot, like that's a very definition of a thot, the type of person who would do that. And that's a very narrow psychological profile. Now, this profile can be elicited from most people, men and women.Malcolm: Like, say, suppose you trained a woman how to be like this aggressive, sexy bombshell who was like very forward and very good at playing men and everything like that. And, and this woman created a whole movement around how to do this, like how to seduce men like this.Malcolm: And then these women are like, it's all men are simpering, pathetic dogs, right? And you're like, well, no, you are able to bring that personality out of any man because of the mechanisms that you are using to attract those men. [00:01:00] Yes. The systems you are using can attract actually a broad range of men.Malcolm: But they change those men's personalities within the narrative context of your relationship. Because we do change our personalities in different narrative contexts, the way I act at work is different from the way I act at home. And so if you're creating a persistently similar narrative context, you are going to create a persistently similar person.Malcolm: hello, Simone. How's it going today? Good. Hi Malcolm. I am excited to be here because today we are going to talk about thots, not intellectually, of course t h o t a hot woman who is vapid, primarily interested in sex. And who is apparently a major problem for communities like the red pill community. And in a lot of these conservative intellectual spaces, [00:02:00] I. There's a heavy emphasis, a a lot of them almost seem to be like a red pill diaspora, where as the men's rights movement of like 20 years ago began to dissipate into like the MGTOWers and the red Pillars and the, the other types of pickup artists type people.Malcolm: They begin to influence a lot of the culture of new online right-leaning intellectual movements pretty heavily actually, in the same way that sort of the Tumblr feminists ended up influencing a lot of progressive online cultures. Ah, yes, yes. Where this gets really interesting is that thots.Malcolm: In the real world, the sort of thirsty manipulative of women, like they're not actually a problem. They're, they're not a problem to most men. And so the question is, is why are they perceived as such a problem by the, the red pill diaspora? And I have a theory around [00:03:00] this, so I always found the red bill community really interesting.Malcolm: I did you, I actually think you used to browse it more than I did. Um, Way more. And they, I think, were fairly accurate in their understanding of female sexuality.Simone: Well, it was also the first community online where I really encountered a more economic analysis of mm-hmm. Of relationships and dating strategy and sexual strategy, which I think is a far better lens than the typical self-help or romance based analysis.Simone: Oh,Malcolm: absolutely. Yeah. And, and, and they were saying things that were, Obviously true that people weren't happy to say, which was things like actually if you look at statistics, the majority of women do prefer men with dark triad traits, like, narcissism and machiavellianism and that if you like, like in terms ofMalcolm: mm-hmm. So I'll use a different word so I won't get demonetized. In terms of [00:04:00] submission and like in a bedroom context, right? That the, the majority, not all, but, but women do differential prefer that. , and also stuff like muscle building. Right. Like, oh, if you, if you get toned and you spend time at the gym, you will be more physically attractive to women.Malcolm: And through these realizations, they began to be able to pick up more women than they were previously able to pick up. And four young men. That is a major. Problem in life, like in a way that I don't know if women can fully understand just how much consternation this causes young men.Simone: Well, I think there's another really big factor to like the original traction that the community enjoyed, which is that.Simone: In general, a big premise of the red pill, et cetera. Community seemed to be that men have been told a lie that being a nice guy to women is not going to get you sex. And that that's just a very misleading and very damaging lie. And here are these [00:05:00] various things you can do to actually. Get sex. And I think to a certain extent those tactics work.Simone: But also I think part of it was just like encouraging men to be direct and assertive about their desire to have sex with women. Like before I met you, I never encountered a guy who was like clear about his motives. It was just. Like he kind of expected it. It seems like all guys kind of expected women to come onto them somehow.Simone: Like they were never gonnaMalcolm: see, well, you were dating in San Francisco, right? Yeah. Which I think is, is well this is a community that I think is most inundated with the exact opposite mindset. Mm-hmm. Right.Simone: But anyway, I feel like that was a major factor of, it was just like the fact that men. We're suddenly being told, oh, guess what?Simone: Not being assertive, not being direct isn't going to work for you. That even just that basic realization was really meaningful and impactful.Malcolm: And w I mean, what are your other thoughts on the red pill community if you're [00:06:00] going to haveSimone: more? I, I, I loved the, the pessimism of it. I love like the concept of olt.Simone: All women are like that, but like, There's this, this, this animosity that I found to be very intriguing and the straw man of women that, that was that was presented was great. I loved the.Malcolm: The experimentation. They'd have case studies, remember?Simone: Mm Oh no Field, field reports. Something like that.Simone: Field, yeah. Field reports. Yeah. The lingo in general was great. I don't know if using Smooth Lingo would get me, like, get us demonetized. Like I, I don't know if I should. Oh yeah, you two probably have refer to the carousel that women would ride.Malcolm: Oh, well, yeah. But I just mean, I, I bet even like, even if we say the term red pill in the tags here, we're probably gonna get like de-listed.Malcolm: So we'll see. But no, I, I agree with a lot of what you're saying and I, and I think a community, I'd love to do a separate video on later. It's the MGTOW community, the men going their own way. Community. Yes. Yes. But one of the things that I really wanted to focus on here [00:07:00] is an illusion. The, the Walt illusion, I guess I'd call it, or the thought illusion.Malcolm: Ah,Simone: mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes. Like they, these women's straw men, they, they're not representative. Like whyMalcolm: do they believe it? Because I believe that this is their actual experience of women. And so, which is why it goes back to what they figured out, which was they figured out some ways to be sexually. Attractive to women.. And it was actually very effective.Malcolm: The, the problem is, if you go to a stream and you say, this stream only has catfish in it, and then somebody points out. Well, you're using a catfish lure. Of course, you're only catching catfish if the thing you are using to lure women is how attractive you are going to be in bed to those women. You are going to only lure women who go after guys based [00:08:00] on how good they are in bed.Malcolm: This is where these thought women come from. They come from this very narrow sliver of women who is like, oh, I will go on a date with a guy because I want to have sex with that guy. And nothing else.Simone: Well, and I, I think it's underrated just how un unusual this, this demographic is.Simone: I, I cannot think of a single friend. Who was like, fit this criteria, like Agamous person who justMalcolm: wanted, so right here I was pretty good at getting women to sleep with me back in the day. Okay.Simone: But you also weren't like a triangle man,Malcolm: Chad. No, I wasn't. But I had developed a lot of the systems and what I would say is, is while I use different systems to do it Women enter a different psychological space depending on the mechanism [00:09:00] you have used to get them to want to, like the lure you have used.Malcolm: Right? Mm. To, to, to catch that particular fish. And so the same woman who is dating you primarily because you are a bed partner for her versus a woman who's dating you because she respects you, will have a very different mental framing of that relationship. And her psychological profile within the relationship will be very different.Malcolm: This is true of men as well, depending on why they're going out with a woman. Are you going out with a woman because you think she's. Hot or are you going out with a woman because you respect her? You are going to act very differently in those two relationships. Thoughts as like a a concept?Malcolm: Any woman can, to an extent become a thought if a guy is able to lure her. Using only his, his body,Simone: essentially his body,Malcolm: right? Mm-hmm. Or, but not just his body. Other things that cause attraction, like power dynamics in his body, power dynamics. But if it's, if it's primarily because of attraction that she's dating you, [00:10:00] one, of course she's not gonna have loyalty to you.Malcolm: She's, she's not dating you because she respects you or likes you. She's dating you because you have maxed out an attraction metric. Of course, she's going to go with the next guy who offers more attraction to her. Right. That's your value to her because that's what you sold to her. You didn't sell anything else.Malcolm: You didn't sell a complete package. All right,Simone: so wait, that's really interesting what you're saying. You're saying basically, not only does the broad red pill strategy, Tactic attract thoughts, but it can literally create thoughts like it will train women who might otherwise be very loyal partners who would be less polygamous, more committed better committed partners in general to instead become unfaithful hypogam.Simone: Yes. Game playing s**t testing partners.Malcolm: Right, exactly. Because you have based your [00:11:00] relationship. Off of their attraction to you. Mm-hmm. And cause of that, that is the value you have to them. Mm-hmm. And I think that this is the thing, we, we have a, Twitter thread on this, but you guys are right when they say the majority of women prefer to take on the submissive role in a relationship.Malcolm: Right. What they often get wrong when you're looking at like the red pill movement or something like that, is women are also human beings. And when they take on a submissive role, they want to take on this submissive role, not just in service to a guy's ego. But towards some larger ideological objective.Malcolm: They want to work with a guy who they respect on some sort of bigger, broader project with their life. Not just the guy, being tough and, and, and doing whatever. I mean, I'm sure you could elaborate on this more, Simone.Simone: Well, yeah. I mean, a, a point that you've made is if a woman is going to devote her life to someone, [00:12:00] like should probably be someone working on something meaningful.Simone: If it's not, then you as a woman who's joined onto that team is wasting her time. Like just devoting your life to someone else's vanity is kind of a waste of yourMalcolm: life, right? Yeah. What type of woman decides to sign their entire, this one short life they have to being. Submissive to someone else only for attraction to that person. That's a thot, like that's a very definition of a thot, the type of person who would do that. And that's a very narrow psychological profile. Now, this profile can be elicited from most people, men and women.Malcolm: Like, say, suppose you trained a woman how to be like this aggressive, sexy bombshell who was like very forward and very good at playing men and everything like that. And, and this woman created a whole movement around how to do this, like how to seduce men like this.Malcolm: And then these women are like, [00:13:00] it's all men are simpering, pathetic dogs, right? And you're like, well, no, you are able to bring that personality out of any man because of the mechanisms that you are using to attract those men. Yes. The systems you are using can attract actually a broad range of men.Malcolm: But they change those men's personalities within the narrative context of your relationship. Because we do change our personalities in different narrative contexts, the way I act at work is different from the way I act at home. And so if you're creating a persistently similar narrative context, you are going to create a persistently similar person.Malcolm: And some of these guys will say, well, come on, you can't be serious. Women don't really date guys because they respect them, because they want to work on projects with them. I know. I'll let Simone answer that.Simone: Oh, 100%. I [00:14:00] mean, I think people come to relationships with a lot of different goals and contexts, and you can choose.Simone: What you want your lure to be. Essentially your, your lure to draw someone in. And I actually, my first message to you on OkCupid was about your startup because you chose to use things that you worked on as potential conversation starters, and your work was one of those things. One. Question I heard at some point was, who, who do you need to be to bring out a person that you want someone else in a relationship to be, like the way that you treat someone and the way you, that you behave personally determines how people connect to you.Simone: So I think the big problem with the. Optimized red pill archetype is that it really brings out a******s and women, which is really bad.Malcolm: Well, and there's a way for women to attract people that brings out a******s and men. This isn'tSimone: like a one. 100%. And I mean, one thing that we talk about in the relationships book that we wrote is the extent to which [00:15:00] abuse begins on both sides with what you call proto abuse.Simone: These like typically small, like technically. Harmless, technically not, not bad or notMalcolm: toxic, like ending a conversation in the middle of a conversation, for example, because then just walking outta the room, total control over how that conversation has happened, which is a, a means of non consensually exercising control over the other person.Malcolm: Mm-hmm. And those sorts of things simmer and create bigger problems in the future, but itSimone: also, it, it draws out certain behavioral patterns in someone else will. And I think the reason why, for example, s**t testing is something that women are. Accused of doing a lot by red pillars or by just generally that broad group.Simone: I don't even know how big the red pill is anymore. I've not been paying enough. Is that if you are primarily offering. Power dynamics and male dominance as your value proposition in a relationship. Of course, a woman or whatever partner you have with you is going to be validating that or exercising that, I [00:16:00] wouldn't even say, like literally trying to deceit you.Simone: They're, they're, they're enjoying it. Like, how can you enjoy a power dynamic? How can you maximize this value proposition if you are not pushing the boundary to the extent where it shows up again? So, if a woman's coming to you and she loves the power dynamic, and now you guys are, are in a relationship together, if she wants that power dynamic, she's gonna have to push a little bit to get you to.Simone: Demonstrate the fun dominance thing that she really loves, so like that's your story. Yeah. Yeah. You're selling. And so, she, she signed up for the, for the Lion Show, and now she's asking for the Lion show again, and she has to poke the lion for him to growl or whatever, you know what I mean?Simone: Like, butMalcolm: normal. But, but, but something that should also be clear , is in normal healthy relationships, s**t, tests aren't rare. They just don't happen. Right? Right. They, that's not like a thing that like normal, healthy adults do. It's a weird [00:17:00] attraction dynamic that you have created through the value proposition you offered, given that you were optimized around this framing.Malcolm: But the framing is useful. This dominant framing is an arbitrage opportunity given how few guys. Demonstrate that really effectively in our society today. Yeah. I mean, you can arbitrage meaning that you are offering something that very few other people in the marketplace are offering.Malcolm: And so yeah, like you could attract women who might be actually out of your league by doing that, but out of the league of the real you in the same way that women can get men who are out of the league of the types of partners who will settle for the real them, but who are willing to sleep with them.Malcolm: Right. A man can get a woman who's out of the league of like being in a real relationship with them, but who will date them for this power dynamic fantasy that they're creating? Mm-hmm. Um, But then you need to what? Be in frame for the rest of your life till you die. Like, that sounds miserable. That is not, you did not [00:18:00] win.Malcolm: You trapped yourself in a cage. It's like, congratulations, you played yourself. You never get to be yourself again. For the rest of your life. But you get a show off an attractive woman forSimone: the next, well, 20 years, I mean years old in, in defense of the red pill. There's a lot of like, overlap between red pill, men's rights, mgt, et cetera, and stoicism.Simone: And I do think that a forcing function, like let's say a thought female partner who forces you to always maintain frame, also forces a certain level of constant self-discipline that might be appreciated by someone of this community because they appreciate how they're forced to be kept sharp.Malcolm: So I'm just, I don't think that anyone actually maintains frame.Malcolm: Well, that's what, no, no, no. I'm genuine here. I think that. It is very hard to maintain that type of frame without becoming abusive. I think this is where you get like the Steve Crowders and stuff like that.Simone: That is no, I, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. So I'm gonna push back again. I think if you end up with like a tread wife who just really [00:19:00] likes being submissive and, and because I, I, so there are thoughts and then there are triad wifes and I think thoughts regularly like.Simone: Mm. Want to push back. Like they're more like the brat dynamic.Malcolm: Right. Well, because they're interested in a constant power dynamic. I don't think triad wives want a constant power dynamic. Yeah.Simone: They don't. Well, and also like tread wives are not going to be interested in sleeping with Chad's because they know that chads are not going to commit triad wivesMalcolm: are not going after dark triad trait mail.Simone: Well, that's, here's the other thing is, is it's really interesting to me how small a sliver of the like, The sort of ideal red pill male is of interest to female populations. Like none of the friends that I grew up with went to college with, et cetera, were attracted to this archetype. And yes, I was friends with nerdy people, nerdy smart people.Simone: This archetypeMalcolm: can get these, I I guarantee you, they can get these women to sleep with them. They just cannot get these women to sleep with them and stay sane. And it's, it is the [00:20:00] same with with the wife thing. Women in this triad wife mindset. They are not with a guy because that guy is, is attractive.Malcolm: That is not the power dynamic you sell to bring out a tread wife in a person or to have like a stable triad wife relationship. You what brings out a stable tread wife relationship is being a good dad. That's what a tread wife wants. They want a good No, it true. More than it is. It is. AndSimone: they also, they also want a husband to serve.Simone: So they, they had, there has to be a level of confidence. There has to be a level of dominance,Malcolm: yeah. And well, here's an interesting, we talk about the lure you use in the framing of the initial relationship. So we can talk about our early relationship as an example of that. So you look at our early relationship, and it was completely based around the company that we were starting together.Malcolm: And what that framed for us, that you reached out to me about starting a company that we were constantly talking about career and company and, and, and building something like that. It meant that a lot of the[00:21:00] dynamics that we came into and what we were offering each other was .Malcolm: Competence, intelligence, curiosity, and work ethic because that is what specif Well, and specifically you're starting a company withSimone: in ambitious, complimentary, complimentary skill sets. Yeah. In that I was able to do things you weren't able to do and you were able to do things I was not able to do. So it was complimentary skillsets, working on entrepreneurial endeavors together, while also being like compatible as romantic partners and friends.Simone: So, yeah. But,Malcolm: but, but what that means is that for you or me to go after someone else, given the framing of our relationship, right. Early in our relationship, what would've caused us to go for somebody else is finding a more competent individual, right? Somebody who was harder working or smarter or, something like that, right?Malcolm: But what's interesting about that kind of relationship, Is that it is one you invest in to an extent. So because we have like literally invested in similar projects together over a long period of time, the [00:22:00] differential value I have to you and you have to me, could not be replicated by another person who was just marginally better than me or you.Simone: So, well, it comes down to aligned incentives and where each partyMalcolm: is leaning. Who was, 50% smarter than you, 50% harder working than you. The amount I would have to give up in just our, like, companies and public image to, try to start over with this person would make it, outside of any emotions I feel for you.Malcolm: Just a terrible prospect.Simone: Yeah. But you're talking about sunk costs, I'm talking about aligned incentives, and by that I mean when you are working with someone, Toward shared values, shared goals, shared companies, whatever it might be. It, it might even be just creating a family and a life together like in a more tread way.Simone: Yeah. That there is not this same kind of constant friction when you're looking at a typical red pill relationship. It's very extractive on both ends. [00:23:00] So for the women who are attracted to those relationships, it is, to what extent am I getting the dominance displays the. The other sorts of experiences and scenes that I want from this relationship.Simone: Sort of the drama, the thrill, the new relationship energy, the feelings of threats. And then for the men it's to what extent can I have one or many super hot female partners that like, really respect and validate me essentially. Mm-hmm. And those are both very individualized and in extractive approaches.Simone: And those are not aligned incentives. And so that also makes these relationships inherently unstable and. There's, it's funny because to what, to one extent, like pickup artistry, red pill, et cetera, is very, very good at looking at incentives and very, very good at recognizing misaligned incentives. And yet there's no discussion of, okay, wait.Simone: Then how do we make aligned in how do we make stable relationships? Or both partners are working towards the same thing or something bigger than themselves. It's [00:24:00] like they can't get out of this atomization and and selfhood that is ultimately, Leaving them more isolated than they ever would be. It's, it's interesting.Malcolm: I, I, I could not have said it better than that. I think that's a really good way to put it. And, and this is what creates this thought problem where it is literally what they are turning the women in society into, that they're interacting with. Now. It is true that, ifMalcolm: you could look at like divorce laws or something like that and be like, yeah, well, women have such an advantage. It's really the legal system, which is turning them into these monsters. But I think that that misunderstands how screwed a woman is in a long-term relationship and that a woman's value on the marketplace in terms of the types of guys she can get goes down much more dramatically as they age than a man's.Malcolm: Yeah. So, if a woman starts dating a guy in her mid twenties and then that guy divorces her when she hits 45, you could be like, oh, well she [00:25:00] got, all this money and stuff that he worked for. How terrible is that? But she's not gonna get another partner of his quality, whereas he can get another partner of equal quality, so, well men,Simone: men enjoy.Simone: In terms of the typical value propositions, like men are more of a. Resources and dominance kind of offering, whereas women are more of a youth infertility offering. So you get cumulative advantages as a man, especially if you accumulate wealth and confidence over time. Whereas as a woman like. You spend your youth and it's gone.Simone: Once your fertility window is passed, it's gone. Like you're not getting it back. And then you're even worse off from even just a like, basic survival standpoint. Well, I loveMalcolm: how, how, like it's weird that there's like this faction of our society that like, they know that, like they know deep down that like it is harder for an older woman to get a partner, right?Malcolm: But they're like, how can you say that that's so offensive? Like, all women are equally valuable. And it's like, well, I mean, you don't literally think that [00:26:00] all women can get the same men do you? Like you? You understand that there is a differential value, even if it's just socially that we place on these things.Malcolm: But the larger point I was making here is from the red pill perspective. Is that you can often over focus on just the way that guys get screwed in relationships. Mm-hmm. And miss the, the system. Any system in which leaving a partner is possible really screws over boast, genders, and that you need more sort of sunk cost was in relationships and social structures that make it.Malcolm: Very unlikely that, or, or at least more costly to leave a person and we just don't have those in society these days. But in addition to that you like, the best defense against any of these things as a man or as a woman, is to more carefully screen your partner upfront and make sure you understand the value proposition you're offering them, as opposed to just getting the best possible partner you can get..[00:27:00] Agreed. Well, I love you. I'm, I'm glad that you, she came after me when we were, when I was on the dating market.Simone: I did, I reached out toMalcolm: you. She was in she was, she was like optimizing her profile around nerds. So she was in full Stormtrooper armor in it. And I had seen her profile before, but I thought that she was hiding that she was fat because I, I'm, I'm that kind of cynic.Simone: That's not how the, the plating works. Like if I were, if I were huge, you would tell like the little rounded like sight plates would not fight over my legs.Malcolm: Fat. A little fat. I thought you were a little fat,Simone: a little. You see, you couldn't, you couldn't handle a little fat. I. Some baby father.Malcolm: Simone.Simone: Simone. Well, thank goodness.Malcolm: And it's, Hey, we all have preferences. We all have preferences.Simone: Okay. Hey, no, no, this, this goes both ways. I put the fat clause in our marriage contract. Oh yeah,Malcolm: she did. She. Gets to ban me from things if I get too fat. Now, of course I can do that for her too, but like ISimone: I will never, I will never.Simone: No, but you like [00:28:00] the way IMalcolm: eat, tripped the fat clause. I have accidentallySimone: tripped the fat clause. Yeah, I, I have imposed the fat clause on you a couple times. I have never tripped the fat wire because I weigh and measure all of my food. What's the meanestMalcolm: clause? The most thought clause, I'll tell you the meanest clause in our relationship contract.Malcolm: Because we did put together contracts. We're like, okay, let's, and this is what we mean when I'm like, find out everything that can go wrong before the relationship. So something doesn't come up later that causes a problem in your relationship. So we just interviewed a bunch of people, found everything that had gone wrong in their relationships, and then like, like a hundred people or something.Malcolm: And, and made sort of a list and we're like, let's discuss how we will handle every one of these scenarios. Like suppose one of our parents needs a place to live. Suppose you know, how, what, what's the appropriate temperatures, but. Of all of these, the most evil one. And, and she did this to me, the boat clause.Malcolm: The boat clause, which is, I can't just go out and buy a boat. I cannot, she cannot wake up one morning and ha and see a boat [00:29:00] in our yard. And what this actually applies to is any. I think purchase over $10,000. I cannot buy without the veto permission of the other partner or No? No,Simone: it's, it's, it's a size, it's a size thing.Simone: And the contract, because we, we each have discretionary spending that like, oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. So it's not, I don't care if you are like buying puppies and drowning them, like per contract, that's fine. What isn't Okay. Is large pieces of property that affect both of us and are like, just, just big is sores.Simone: TheMalcolm: boat is gonna bleaching in our yard. I cannot, it also applies to pools, apparently.Simone: That's the other thing. Yeah, because it's a size thing, like, again, like you can't, you can't spend discretionary money on a giant money hole eyesore that will sit there and collect dust.Malcolm: No. That's gonna be what destroys our relationship.Malcolm: One day I'm gonna, I'm gonna come back to the house with a giant used sailboat and it'll just be sitting in our yard.Simone: Well, I think that's the fun thing about relationship [00:30:00] contracts and something that's important in negotiating them, right? It's that, a lot of people assume that the punishment for breaking a clause and a relationship contract is, I will leave you, right?Simone: Or like, I don't know. But really like the, the primary consequence is, this is written and this is gonna really, really hurt the other person's feelings or reduce their quality of life in a meaningful way. And if you pull a bunch of this, probably they're gonna leave the relationship.Simone: But like, just know that really this isn't like, oh, I have to leave. Like, if,Malcolm: if you cheat this way, then you don't do the, I'm gonna leave thing in a relationship. Is the moment you don't do that mm-hmm. If that was one of your rules. Mm-hmm. And that was the primary thing, enforcing your rules. Then none of the other rules matter anymore because now everybody knows that the rules that you're not gonna leave.Malcolm: Yeah. Yeah. And, and it just makes you look pathetic. But if, if the rules are, Hey, that'll really hurt me, will, then what you're using to, well prevent them from doing it, is the knowledge of how it will make you [00:31:00] feel. Which is, which is most honest, intrinsically you're going to react that way.Malcolm: But in many ways, it's like much more immoral to break a clause. Out of how, it will make the other person feel. Mm-hmm. Versus well, it'sSimone: a little more fair, like with the fat clause, it's understood given our personal aesthetics that if the other partner gets fat, we're not gonna find them.Simone: Physically attractive. We're not gonna wanna bang them as much, like, cause it's gross to us. And to each his own. And that's, I, I, I prefer that to like someone not having that kind of clause in a relationship contract. And then one partner getting a little roun. And then being really disappointed that the other partner isn't interested.Simone: There's soMalcolm: very good point. Yeah. I mean, I'm really glad you know that, that when I trip that clause, wouldn't you let me know when I'm about to trip it. You, you, you, you'll let me know when, when you're making the call. No, but it's, it's really helpful because Well, because here's,Simone: I would do otherwise,Malcolm: right?Malcolm: Like one never had an expectation that you would like me if I was noSimone: longer. The way [00:32:00] it normally works, right, is one partner gets a little fat, they let themselves go, like aesthetically. It doesn't have to be about fatness. It could be like maybe they just stop wearing nice clothes or they stop showering as much and they start to smell.Simone: And then like what happens is then the other partner stops banging them or showing interest in them the same way, they not taking initiative anymore. And then partner number one, Starts being like, oh, like why are they ignoring me? Like they're being so mean. And then, and then sort of like that trips other unwritten contract violations.Simone: Like, I want you to make me feel loved. I want you to make me feel pretty. And so like there's this sort of spiraling back and forth is all these unspoken. Like parts of of relationship contracts are violated. Right. And then it falls apart. But you know what, Malcolm, we should have a separate chat about relationship contracts.Malcolm: Absolutely. Fun. Absolutely. And I love you Simone. I I am so glad you found meSimone: yes. Well, and speaking of submission, I need to go preheat the oven and put in baked potatoes and Brussels sprouts. So, let's go do that.Simone: I love you, Malcolm. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Description and transcript written by AI: In this enlightening discussion, Malcolm and Simone delve into the fascinating concepts of life extension and experience extension. They explore how the brain forms memories based on novelty and change, a phenomenon that could enable us to expand our remembered or experienced life significantly. Their conversation highlights the idea that by disrupting habitual patterns and seeking out new experiences, we can enrich our lives and potentially remember 50 to a hundred percent more of our lives than through traditional life extension strategies. Whether it's moving to a new country, starting a new job, or even taking a unique vacation, the key is to embrace change and novelty. This video is a must-watch for anyone curious about human memory, life extension, and the power of unique experiences.Based Camp - Life Extension vs Experience ExtensionMalcolm: [00:00:00] And when you are doing a, a task that you've done over and over and over again, your brain will erase that and, and begin to, so suppose on a weekend, right? If I'm always watching movies and drinking and, and doing about the same thing over a weekend, my brain compresses all those experiences together.Malcolm: But if one weekend I do something different, like, go to a petting zoo as my kids, my brain will distinctly remember that more than if I had done, done the, the same thing I'd been doing over and over again. And through this knowledge, you could actually expand your remembered life or experienced life.Malcolm: More than you can than through traditional life extension. So if through traditional life extension today, like being healthy in many ways and stuff like that, you're increasing your lifespan by like 25%. You can easily get your memories up 50 to a hundred percent.Simone: Hello Malcolm.Malcolm: Hello Simone. It is wonderful to be here with you today. What are weSimone: talking about? We're gonna do a lightning round [00:01:00] on life extension versus experience extension cause it's something we talk about a lot and I figured it might be fun to chat about it. Again, IMalcolm: really like this topic, so when people often meet us, they go, oh my gosh.Malcolm: It's like, you guys have lived 20 lifetimes. How have you done all of this? And, and still be so young? Or, I always expect to meet someone older. And we look at all the things that we've, we've done in our life and it's like, yeah, it is true. We have done a lot more than a lot of other people, and it's because of the way we compact and manage our time, but it also means to a very meaningful extent.Malcolm: That we have more memories. So when I look at the different chunks of my life, I remember them as chunks and they do feel like full and separate lives. Mm-hmm. So a lot of people, they might think of their time in college, for example, and it can feel like. A full and separate life, even though it's only four years.Malcolm: I mean, if you're an adult, think about what you were doing four years ago that was like nothing [00:02:00] ago, if you're not constantly, changing where you live, changing the jobs you're in, et cetera. But in addition to that, there's also a a, a biological and measurable part of this, so let's talk about reminiscence bumps really quickly. A reminiscence bump is a tendency to remember more during your late adolescence, often when you're in college. And people have like a much clearer memory of these things. However, reminiscence bumps can be created at different times of your life when a person really changes their environment.Malcolm: So, you also see reminiscence bumps after immigration to new countries and stuff like that. People are literally remembering more because they recently went through a re a major change. You also see this happen with memories when a person. It's experiencing something new or different they will record it more.Malcolm: And when somebody's experiencing something they've done a hundred times, again, Rome Hypnosis, something they brought up on the podcast before road Hypnosis is a phenomenon. Where when you drive, especially cuz the route you've done a bunch of times, your brain will actually just completely erase [00:03:00] that entire thing as if you were asleep or something.Malcolm: And when you are doing a, a task that you've done over and over and over again, your brain will erase that and, and begin to, so suppose on a weekend, right? If I'm always watching movies and drinking and, and doing about the same thing over a weekend, my brain compresses all those experiences together.Malcolm: But if one weekend I do something different, like, go to a petting zoo as my kids, my brain will distinctly remember that more than if I had done, done the, the same thing I'd been doing over and over again. And through this knowledge, you could actually expand your remembered life or experienced life.Malcolm: More than you can than through traditional life extension. So if through traditional life extension today, like being healthy in many ways and stuff like that, you're increasing your lifespan by like 25%. You can easily get your memories up 50 to a hundred percent. But Simone, I wanna hear your takes on this.Malcolm: Yeah,Simone: no, I mean, I, I totally agree with you. I think for older [00:04:00] adults now there's still now this really easy way to kind of. Sanity test this concept with the pandemic because all of us just recently experienced a year in which life was violently different. No matter how old or like entrenched your habits were.Simone: Suddenly, non consensually, everyone's habits, pretty much everyone's habits were really significantly changed and it, I mean, to a certain extent, Added more life to a lot of people, ironically, because it broke their routine. And I think it's really interesting. We were just reading an article on life extension by Susie Weiss and one of the life Extensionist quoted at the beginning of the article.Simone: She describes him as having this unhurried way that he's not like in a rush to get things done. And I see that and I'm like, yeah. I mean, it doesn't matter how many eons you live. If you're gonna be slow about things, you're gonna wait to to work on something. It doesn't matter how many years you live, you're gonna [00:05:00] have a lot less life.Simone: I, I think there's another benefit too, to. The concept of living many different lives. And I think, the way that you maximize this is you don't necessarily have to move, you don't necessarily have to change jobs. There are many different ways that people extend lives by, for example, taking vacations to really, really different places.Simone: So I would argue that, all of our vacations, for example, we really love going to Edinburgh, right? We got married there. Mm-hmm. I, I would say that like most of our Edinburgh vacations kind of blend together. Most of our friends visits to New York City kind of blend together cause we go a lot.Simone: To entertain friends and stuff. The, every time we go somewhere violently new, like when we went to Morocco, when we went to Africa, when we went to South Korea together,Malcolm: well, we just got off a cruise. That was de definitely different when we Yeah, likeSimone: with that, yeah. These, these violently different experiences, like Yeah.Simone: I mean, so anyone can travel somewhere new. Anyone can do that, but also anyone could like, change the bedroom they sleep in, totally change their schedule, but, things like having [00:06:00] kids. I think an underrated. Benefit to these that shows up in two different areas is the ability to change your behavior and, and use these as what we would call the Privus Guide to Life Flux Periods.Simone: So one thing that I read in this book called Inside the Nudge Unit, which was this, office within the United Kingdom government Designed to implement small policy changes that could change behavior in a significant way to low cost. They realized that, for example, In intervening with parenting methods, it really only made sense to reach out to first time mothers because they were completely changing their lives, totally changing their identities.Simone: This is their time becoming a first time mother. They could actually really significantly change their behavior for the better by utilizing that life change. And they, they discovered that along some other lines. And then you also hear about people, for example, when they need to quit smoking or something else that they might like, go to Japan, like go somewhere else, to be in a totally different area.Simone: And in the Pragmatist Guide [00:07:00] to Life, we talk about using these flex periods to reinvent your internal model of self, to reinvent your public identity, to, really, really retool who you are. So by living all these violently different periods, either through travel or moving, or changing careers, or changing your social network or whatever it might be, you also have the ability to genuinely change yourself, not just experience more lived experience, but fix major problems.Malcolm: Yeah. No, I, I, I think you're right. And I think that that's a, a, a, a very astute point. It's also interesting to think about how you optimize for this, right? So we're not really vacation people, but occasionally mm-hmm. We'll do one because we're like, Well, we should, right. We we're supposed to do vacations.Simone: Well, it's not fun. I think what we always talk about is like, I would be way, I would be happier, I would be healthier and it would be more comfortable and obviously it would cost a lot less if we were just at home doing work, doing what we love. Cuz like every day our, we don't doMalcolm: that. Love vacations.Malcolm: Yeah. We [00:08:00] did decide, okay, let's try a cruise, the, the, if, if the system's gonna collapse, we may as well do this sort of peak capitalism things while we can this, this dystopian wally like environment. And it was funny, when I went on the cruise ship, I, I, the first thing I was reminded of that the last time I was a cruise ship, I was in my teen years, around college or something like that.Malcolm: And, My entire optimization function on the cruise ship was basically sleepless. People like, okay, I'm sectioning my time, I'm managing my time around meeting people who I can sleep with. And then executing on the seduction pathway and then getting that done. Cause I've got, four, five days to execute on this.Malcolm: Right. And God cruises were great for that. You could just plaster people on a cruise when you're, when you're a young guy and, and you're really horny all the time. But then, I got there now and it was so interesting to be like, oh, I don't care about that at all anymore. I, I don't want that.Malcolm: I don't wanna, so then what am I optimizing for? And so we went into this, this sort of moment where it's like I guess we're optimizing [00:09:00] for unique memories because those are the memories that we'll remember. So let's. Section the crew's experience into individual unique memories and capture and fully experience as many of those with each other and with our kids as possible.Malcolm: While also taking advantage of all the stuff that can be done less expensively on a cruise ship. Because, you get all these all expense paid things on cruise ships. So it's like, okay, we have access to pools. Let's try to teach our kids to swim. Okay. We have Just going from thing to thing.Malcolm: We castSimone: bunny it, as we saidMalcolm: it is, is what we called it in terms of unique memories. Just running from experience to experience. Oh, black park ca. Oh, so scary. Ah. Then to the next thing. I, I, but it wasn't, itSimone: wasn't always fun. Like there were definitely, there were times where we, we really didn't wanna do something, but we did it anyway because we knew it would create a, a memory.Simone: For example, there was one more ma morning where it was an ocean day on the cruise. We were going up to Canada to Nova Scotia. It was like 49 degrees outside. Oh, it was freezing. Yeah, it was really windy. However the water slides were [00:10:00] open and there were no lines. So we got in our swimsuits and screamed very loudly in pain while doing all of the water slides multiple times.Simone: But it was, I will never forget that. And I think that I, the interesting thing is I think a lot of people. Do travel for that reason. And maybe they're even more self-aware about it now. You see all this Instagram versus reality nonsense know where people are clearly going to these locations just to get the photo right.Simone: It's actually so they understandMalcolm: with some sites now. I was watching a video, Windover production did when we were a lot of these out outdoor monuments are becoming overcrowded now because people are going up and just to do these Instagrams, butSimone: continue. Well, but I think people have come to understand that this isn't about fun.Simone: It is about getting the photo, it's, it is about getting the memory. I mean, we'd argue that like just getting kind of lame photos is not the, and, and also that would start to blend together, right? If every trip you take is about getting photos, all of your memories are gonna be about getting the right shot and taking tons of photos.Simone: But like still, I think people are aware, and you see this also like when [00:11:00] you go on a vacation in most environments where I see. Travelers. They look hot, they look tired, they look bored. They're staring into like mid space, they have that convention.Malcolm: Oh my God. A beach. I can't even imagine. Like I look at people on beaches, like in the sand covered in sun and, and, and clearly like drunk, being drunk and, and, and, and in the heat on a,Simone: yeah.Simone: Well, I mean, so I don't, I don't think people are actually having fun on these vacations either.Malcolm: So I think you're wrong because when I was younger, I gained genuine enjoyment and happiness from exploration really when I went out and I was like, and it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective that you would have this gated period of like happiness and fulfillment that could be gained from exploration.Malcolm: But th this would turn off as you get older. Hmm. I think a lot of people in life, for many of the things that they're doing, they are doing things. That they used to gain happiness from, or that they used to gain meaning from or [00:12:00] fulfillment from, and that's no longer outputting that, or no longer outputting that at significant volumes.Malcolm: And so they're just spamming the button, hopefully hoping to get the reward. In the same way that, I could have gone on a cruise and been like, suppose I'm wasn't married or something, and been like, okay, I'm just gonna sleep with as many people as possible because that's what made me happy when I was youngerSimone: on cruises.Simone: No, I think there's some cruises kind of optimized around that.Malcolm: But that's, we take out all the fun.Simone: Oh my God. It's about the challenge for you. It's not about Yes, yes.Malcolm: I, I didn't wanna sleep with, with, with, so youSimone: don't wanna go on an orgy cruise. You wanna go on a, it's, it's a hard to get cruise. Yes.Malcolm: I, okay.Malcolm: That's the point. Anyway. So, sorry. So. Here's the worst. I could have done that and I just wouldn't have gained much happiness from it. Cause I, minute my age, they're just not gonna gain the same level of happiness as they do when they're a, a younger person sleeping around as they do when they're an older person sleeping around.Malcolm: Yeah. But it's the same as exploration. It's the same as new experiences. It's [00:13:00] the same, I think, even with aping lifestyles that you associate with luxury. I think that when you're younger you can cosplay luxury and, and, and sitting on a beach drinking a, I don't know, whatever the fancy drinks are, and you'll get this form of happiness that your brain just doesn't release when you're older and people are trying to.Malcolm: Get happiness from things that they, they just, they're not, their biology has moved past it. They, like, if you look at me, what do I gain genuine happiness from? Like, what am I gaining genuine happiness from on the cruises, playing with my kids. It's putting my kids in environments where they are experiencing new things and watching them, experiencing new things and learning and being excited.Malcolm: That's what I would get, genuine happiness from on the cruise. And so I wondered, if we didn't have kids Would I still be trying to milk happiness from that old stone? The, the, those, those old things like exploration and not understand why I wasn't getting it, why, why life had just become this sort of monotonous on rail thing where I am chasing.Malcolm: Consumerism and exploration and [00:14:00] other vapid things that no longer give me genuine meaning, or could it be that a huge portion of the population still has this exploration drive turned on and they're still getting genuine happiness from this sort of exploration thing. And they're not, it's, it's that we are the weird ones that it turned off in us, and, and now it's just completely focused around our kids.Simone: They're trying to make the world. Don't indicate that though. Maybe everyone has like, Irritable resting faces? I don't know. I don't know. I don't understand people, but I also don't, I don't know if I experience happiness that way. People do. So I whatever.Simone: Still, I really appreciate the experiencesMalcolm: we have to say it's an evil sociopath. Don'tSimone: sociopaths have fun. TheyMalcolm: do though,Simone: right? I honestly though, I don't know. But presumably someone can let us know in the comments. Well,Malcolm: well, you're podcast my source of happiness. Not [00:15:00] really though. It's the kids, Simone, you created the thing that's my source of happiness. I remember before we had kids, you were afraid that I would like start loving you less and, and, and, and start to love the kids more now.Malcolm: And now. That seems like such an insane thing to fear,Simone: right? Oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean, the horror of having a spouse who doesn't love their kids more, like that would be. Kind of heartbreaking. Like one of my happiest, feelings or a, a great, I feel very satisfied when I see you loving on our kids.Simone: And I think most parents feel that, and you probably feel something similar with me and our kids. So, Maybe.Malcolm: Yeah, no, I You, you're a great mom. You're, I always comment on it, you're like really good at mommy. Like she is professional Tear Magazine and mom,Simone: no one is going to believe that everMalcolm: people will see in, in, in inside videos and stuff like that.Malcolm: I gotta get more videos of you doing it, but always, it's always little things anyway.Simone: I love speaking of which, we better go pick them up. Yeah, we're gonna get in trouble with daycare and I will start pasta EST [00:16:00] tonight. So I'll get some water boiling. I love you very much. Looking forward to dinner. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

This was written by an AI, not me: In this video, we delve into a nuanced understanding of conservatism, progressivism, traditionalism, and accelerationism. The goal is to dissect these ideologies and identify their manifestations within various societal structures and cultures. As part of this exploration, we respond to a viewer's question about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, colloquially known as Mormonism. Through our personal experiences and observations, we share insights into Mormon culture and its place on the axes of conservatism-progressivism and traditionalism-accelerationism. We also discuss the impact of societal norms, changing technology, and progressive threats on these cultures and religious communities. This conversation aims to provide an enriching perspective on how societal cultures evolve and adapt in the face of constant change. Whether you're interested in the sociopolitical landscape, religious studies, or an engaging discussion about social norms and cultural evolution, this video will give you plenty to think about. Watch till the end for a deeper understanding of societal cultures, the importance of adaptability, and a fresh perspective on Mormonism. Transcript from AI:I will describe this graph . It has two a axis. Okay. This a axis is progressive to conservative. Mm-hmm. Okay.Progressive means more like the dominant urban monoculture. Conservative means more deviant from the dominant culture. Okay. Then the other axi is traditionalist versus acceleration. Okay. It's easy to confuse these two axes and think that accelerationist means progressive and traditionalist means conservative.Yeah. And these are two completely unrelated things, and in fact, Generally the most accelerationist cultures are also the most conservative cultures and the most conservative cultures are often the most accelerationist cultures because they need to protect themselves from the dominant societal culture.That's goal is to stamp out any anyone who's doing their own thing, any signs of true diversity within society. This progressive monoculture will eventually inject itself into the central church. It will eventually eat the central church.This virus is incredibly good at corrupting everything, especially large bureaucracies. The larger and more entrenched the bureaucracy is the more susceptible it is, and it is a miracle that the central church hasn't been eaten yet, but it will be   📍  Hello, gorgeous. How are you doing today? Absolutely spectacular. So this video is in relation to a user comment who is something like, I'm a Mormon. What do you guys think of Mormons? Um, Now keep it, we know enough about Mormons to know that the church deemed that term offensive. Was it like eight years ago?What did they call it? One of the council? Yeah. But members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints doesn't exactly roll off the tone. Yeah. You're not allowed to use l d s either. And you know, my friends who, so for, for context, from soup to nuts. I've been adjacent to Mormon communities.In preschool. I went to a Mormon preschool, it was called Class A Tiny World, and I loved it. And everyone was Mormon except for like me and a few other kids. And then I. Went to college, their parents pulled her out cuz she started asking them about Bible stuff and they freaked out cuz they're like extremist progressives.Well, no, that's, that's just when they started sending me school, that's when they started sending me to Dharma school. They didn't take me outta that daycare because it was the best ever because Mormons are the best ever. And then I went to, College and pretty much only had Mormon friends because my roommate out of freshman year was Mormon.I tend to avoid people and only like befriend people that I work with. So I just had work colleagues and then my like recreational friends were Mormons and members of the local singles award. And I loved it and I loved Mormons, but also like even within community, they refer to themselves internally, like as like.They'd be like, are you a mo? Like, like they don't even say Mormon. So how can we be at fault for not calling, you know, people, members of the church, of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saint when they're all like, are you an ex mo? Are you a mo? Like, you know, come on guys. Well, and you also did, you didn't drink when I met you and stuff like that.No. Well, I mean, when all of your friends and morons. Yeah. Why would you buy, I, I told her on the first date, I go, this isn't gonna work unless you drink. So I ordered her uh, uh, uh, uh, what, what a cocktail. I was like, That was your loss, Malcolm. You paid through the nose for that Cocktails in San Francisco.I mean, god knows now you can probably buy, like, you know, for the price, you'd get a cocktail. You could have gotten a car like 10 years ago. Um, But yeah, so I. We we're gonna call them Mormons, because that's, that's just what people do. It's actually a very interesting community and a very interesting culture that we really highlighted in the last video.So I think one of the things that we admire about. Mormonism as a cultural tradition is it is such an accelerationist cultural tradition. And I think that this is where society, we see things. As, as Simone often mistakenly does on a spectrum of conservatism to progressivism. But conservatism to progressivism is really just a spectrum of how much do you bend the need to whatever the prevailing social norms are of your society, which right now is the mind virus.So that is one axis of a spectrum. And, and, and Mormons do not bend the knee very much. So they are on the far conservative side of that spectrum. But then the other axis of the spectrum is traditionalist versus accelerationist. And the traditionalist versus accelerationist is How much do you, and how aggressively do you adapt your traditions and change your traditions to try to compete with a changing environment, changing technology and to react to what often are the progressive threats to more conservative movements.So what you will often find, Is that the most accelerationist movements are often some of the most conservative movements because they are the movement's most aggressively under threat from the, progressive hive mind that wants to attack anyone , in any culture that deviates from it and deviates from its sort of approved ideas, morality, and way of doing things.So, Mormons are very accelerationist in that respect. What, what would you say your general read of Mormons is? And I can, I can give you mine as well. So, as an outsider, my T L D R is Mormons among modern. US based religious communities have the best lifestyle. It's like they're kind of like the Disney of Lifestyles.You know? You can really get into it. It's very appealing. It's very warm and friendly and family friendly, and you may not agree with all of it. Like you may, you may be of Disney family and not like the prices they charge or not like the way that they run their corporation or think that they killed Star Wars, but you still just.It's a great place to go on vacations. Your kids love it. You know, you like the, a lot of the movies, so you just become a Disney family, and I think a lot of people. Stay with the church or even join the church because of the lifestyle. And they don't necessarily buy into the religious doctrine though. I, I do think that many more people are leaving the church now because both the religious doctrine isn't holding up.I think really that well in the age of the internet. And also because especially like women I know read a lot of the. Well, I hear a lot of sort of the stances on women and their positions and it just, it's really hard to both become educated and to be ambitious and to be, to be down with the way the church says women need to be or should be.Right. So this is really fascinating to me. A a and I think the Disney analogy is pretty apt because I can look at Disney and be like, well, there still are aspects of Disney products that I am able to engage with, but I can also see the direction things are going and the size of their bureaucracy is just so large and so unchangeable that I know that where Disney is going is a place I cannot follow.Mm-hmm. Um, And is going it towards collapse basically. And I, and I, and I. I think that the Merman Church is very far from that, but I do think it's heading in a negative direction. And that is very worrying to me. So when we talk about religious traditions, we talk about them as sort of cultural units, like collections of memes that often co-evolve with individuals.And they can create a culture which can be very strong after somebody leaves the church. And so this is something where when I look at, , a secular Jew who is no longer theologically Jewish, but now a secular Jew, I can still see a lot of their cultural practices and a lot about them.Mormons. This is something that you see it really strongly when a person deconvert from Mormonism and becomes secular, especially if they don't, if they aren't just like a reaction against the church, they are. Yes, some of the like, mentally healthiest people I know or, and some of the, the best people I know in terms of cultural fit with our cultural traditions.And they also are unusually successful. So you see them just absolutely dominate in terms of online spaces. A lot of top influencers or eczemas. So, and, and this leads to I think one of, if we're going to be critical of, of, of Mormonism. One of the things I would say, which is the most critical, is that unfortunately the theology, and I think this is what you meant in terms of the age of the internet, it's really hard to believe.It's like trans people don't have an advantage at sports, hard to believe. And because of this, some level of psychological sectioning is, prevalent within many of the more educated Mormons I know.Which leads them to become susceptible to things that other communities aren't as susceptible to. Right. Like I've heard that in, in Mormon communities, MLMs are pervasive, for example. Well, MLMs is is a big one here. So yeah. Mormon communities are incredibly susceptible to certain types of mental viruses.MLMs being one of the most damaging to the Mormon community. Because, so to, to. Work within the church. So much has to be sectioned off. In terms of like, these are things we don't question that sometimes things fall into that preserve that shouldn't be on the preserve. MLM type ideology being injected into it being one of these things.And so this isn't an intrinsic thing with Mormonism, but it is, it is tied to the level of intentional suspension of disbelief that I think is needed to believe some of the things in the Book of Mormon. Especially some of the historic things that we just have so much evidence that you can easily just like look at and it's just not, it, it, it, it is not like, Modern progressive history that's at odds with it.It's like the histories that all other conservative groups agree on, you know, whether you're talking about like conservative Catholics or conservative Protestants, or conservative, you know, many, many other conservative groups, they all agree on this history as well. And it is just like strictly at odds with.The Book of Mormon, and you can do apologetics and you can look into it, but I, I, as somebody who's, who's, who's not a member of the church, I can say that it's clear that this sort of preserve of things we don't question within the Mormon tradition is much bigger than the other conservative Christian denominations.Well, I think you and I both really enjoy watching video interviews with people who have deconverted, either from the mainstream church or from more Yeah. We'll say aggressive factions, you know, splinter groups that are not, that the main church doesn't endorse. And the, one of the really common threads that seems to show up again and again is they really, really, really want to believe.And every, every time someone like a church elder gives them advice or coaching on how to address it, it's just, So insulting. Like, it, it, you know, it, it just really doesn't work. They're, they're, they're not good resources. And then, you know, this sort of forces people to look things up online where they just find damning like reams of damning information.And I, I, I really wonder what's going on with internal church governance there, because they have to be looking at their rates of attrition. They have to be looking at which are high. So something to note about the Mormon community, if it looks like they've fallen below repopulation rate and they have really high attrition rate.Continue. Mm-hmm. So like what, you know, and, and the other thing is you pointed out that, that the l d s church has adapted in the past, you know, and they are accelerationist in many ways. They, they are, they're happy to develop new social technologies. They've changed, for example, their stances on race in the past.So why aren't they adapting more now? This is the answer. It's because the central church now is more bureaucratic and larger. Mm-hmm. And there is more inertia. So it's a very interesting mix where you have a naturally accelerationist cultural group mm-hmm. Paired with a hierarchical theological structure like, like a structure that determines what the theology is.Which is the, the governing structure, and that determines what the rules are. And so this, this is where I think the Mormon Church is going and the iterations of the Mormon church that'll be successful. I think the ones that follow the central church are going to be the ones that eventually die out.Just because, well, what worries me about that though, is pretty much the only ones that for my knowledge, don't follow the central church. Don't do it because they're polygamist for some reason. It's because they're poly? No, there's, there's other groups that, non-pro splinter groups. Okay. So there's within the, so this is an interesting thing within the Mormon intellectual sphere where I come close to it there is talk of different ways of relating to things, different ways of relating to monument, like monumental building and stuff like that. Different ways of saying, Can we still technically be under the central church?Mm-hmm. But like, change things within our community and like these distinct ways. So you're beginning to see this branch out happening, but it's not happening as an open revolt? Yes. The, the ous Mormons are inactive revolt against the central church. Mm-hmm. I don't expect it to be that disharmonious.I expect it to be. Some groups increasingly do things that are. Additional rules maybe that sort of change the nature of things or different interpretations of teachings that make them more resistant to information online, but that makes them more and more deviate from what people consider like a traditional mainstream, like Central Church, Mormon.And I think that many of these groups will be more conservative. And when I say conservative, I mean that in the acceleration as fashion. What I mean is they will be more differentiated. From the sort of mainstream progressive value set, which is dominant in urban centers throughout our society, that the central church's beliefs and teachings will be closer to that than these splinter groups.What I find interesting in what you're describing is that if what you're saying is true, and there are a broad range of different splinter groups, not all just like sort of polygamous cults, but also just. Different groups and communities that are still trying to tap into the network effects of the L d S church, which I think are, it's one of the strongest selling points.Yeah. While also maintaining, we'll say more sustainable philosophies. So why I think that's interesting is I think one of the primary selling points of this Disney Mormon lifestyle, right, is that one. It has one of the best modern solutions to dating markets that we've seen. Right. It's, there are several different, and again, we've mentioned this in another video, we know somebody who converted to Mormonism just to find a husband and did.Right. And so, I mean, between singles words, between people knowing to go to BYU to find a partner, because people converging upon this university are far more likely to be looking to marry someone as a practice, but continue. And then between that and other conferences that are held among single young Mormons that we've only just been told about, thanks to helpful YouTube commentors, that's like incredibly valuable.But if the church splinters into a bunch of different factions and it's no longer unified, then you're not gonna get that. And you really need the network. This is like a, it's, it's a key marketplace problem. So I worry about that because I really want. I want someone to prove that you can have functioning relationship markets in the modern world without coercion.You know, all this is opt-in, you know, people aren't mm-hmm. Forced. There may be some social pressure, but you know, whatever. And, and yet, like do you think it's possible you're seeing that? Yeah. I, I, I, I do think it's possible and I think we're seeing that already in the church. Hmm. And that you are seeing these differentiations, you are seeing these groups within the church that are saying I think there are, are pretty different ways we could do things and they aren't being fully kicked out yet.Now it admittedly they aren't like going up in. Telling their church elders this stuff. So part of it is it's, it's working because they at least what I've seen, there's this understanding that, oh, well, within our community, most of the young people know about these problems and things will change when we get older and we have more power.But it may not happen and you may just see a reaction. I mean, especially with life extension technologies and people living longer to the other thing that you were talking about, which I actually think is really interesting to go into. So this guy was talking about dating markets at byu, or girl, I guess actually people may be surprised to hear this, the majority of our audience is female.It's like 53% female or something. So anyway, they were saying you go to BYU and it is not uncommon within your first three weeks to like find a partner and, and, and get engaged. Because people, especially women, go to by u with the intention of finding a spouse and the cultural norm there is that you should find your spouse before you graduate college.That is what you are in college for. Whereas the cultural norm among. The, you know, progressive urban monoculture is that you really shouldn't start looking for husband until after college which is just clearly stupid. Like, or even if you've met the person that you want to marry, like maybe wait until your thirties to get married, which was how I came into our relationship.You remember? Well, yeah, that's what you thought was normal when you came to me and I was like, no, we're not doing that. You're like, no, but we have to wait. It's too fast. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. Like you're already in old May. You're what? You're outta college. Gross. Uh, We gotta, we gotta lock this down and start pumping out kids.You weren't interested in kids at that time. You know, we, we, we felt still, I think both of us were in that cultural mindset that we needed to have kids, which is another thing that the l d s church really gets. Right. You know, it doesn't, one, I think it has a much more supportive community for people who want to have kids young.And it also encourages people to have kids young. I mean, I, I'm not crazy about the fact that like, it, I think there's more pressure to be a stay at home mom even if you don't want to be, which is, I'm not crazy, but I think people should only do that if they're stoked for it. But it's awesome that people are having kids a lot younger.And you know, when, when we see you, like when we're out and about and we're traveling and we see, you know, a family of four kids and you know, parents who are having fun with the kids and playing with them and looking healthy and young and happy and not stressed, it's very clear that they started having kids in their early twenties.You know? And like I look at them and I feel so jealous. You know what? So. I think something that you pointed out that's really interesting, so people have read the Pragmatist Guided to Crafting Religion. One of the things that we're building is something called the Index, which is essentially a pluralistic religious community that allows for a central organization to create the kind of network effects.That you see in other religious communities where people who are part of this religious community can do things like dating markets and stuff like that and get those benefits while still having very different belief systems. So long as those belief systems are conservative and by conservative what I mean is differential from this urban monoculture.And so like we would happily welcome in EXOS and stuff like that, or even iterations of Mormonism that want to break from the mainstream church to try to rebuild a network effect, I think. One thing you pointed out that's very interesting is, is so many of the benefits of Mormonism right now come from this large network effect, which is facilitated by the central church and one pathway that could be a really successful long-term pathway is higher degree of pluralism and social experimentation among different Mormons. Secs still operating under the central church. I think that that is one path the face could go down. That will lead to enormous success. So sort of like if Well, similar to the index, if the LDS church sort of WordPress sized, right?Like there's like a platform and everything works through WordPress, but it's all like plugins and add-ons and things like that, right? Well, and I think one thing that's important for people who are listening to this, to to, to make sure that they're not making this mistake is when we say, when we're talking about these groups that are socially experimenting, they are socially experimenting.In conservative ways, in ways that would lead to Progressive, say, oh my God, how could you do that? Well say, is, is conservative the right? I mean, wouldn't you say in in values and doctrine aligned ways, or at least values aligned ways? What do you mean culturally aligned ways? I don't understand the point.No. I mean, I, I don't know if that means, it's like inherently conservative. I just think it's inherently No, but it, it, we're going back to the, the graph that I described earlier, and  I will describe this graph again. It has two a axis. Okay. This a axis is progressive to conservative. Mm-hmm. Okay.Progressive means more like the dominant urban monoculture. Conservative means more deviant from the dominant culture. Okay. Then the other axi is traditionalist versus acceleration. Okay. It's easy to confuse these two axes and think that accelerationist means progressive and traditionalist means conservative.Yeah. And these are two completely unrelated things, and in fact, Generally the most accelerationist cultures are also the most conservative cultures and the most conservative cultures are often the most accelerationist cultures because they need to protect themselves from the dominant societal culture.That's goal is to stamp out any anyone who's doing their own thing, any signs of true diversity within society. Fair. Okay. And, and I think that this progressive monoculture will eventually inject itself into the central church. It will eventually eat the central church.This virus is incredibly good at corrupting everything, especially large bureaucracies. The larger and more entrenched the bureaucracy is the more susceptible it is, and it is a miracle that the central church hasn't been eaten yet, but it will be.  All right, so we're done discussing that. I think another thing that I really want to talk about with the l d s church and that I love and I think is such a smart innovation, is there, I don't, what do we wanna say?Like, fashion ways, their dress ways. Okay. So I, I feel like if we're gonna talk, use an analogy everyone's talking about the quiet luxury style now, you know, where like you dress in a very high luxury way, but only in a way that. Other people who are very wealthy will recognize, right, because it's all very subtle.It's about having really high quality materials, et cetera. What I love about Mormon traditions are undressing is that you have to know what to look for in order to tell, but you can fairly easily tell. Especially if there's like, it's a couple or, you know, you spend a lot of ti like a couple of days with someone over a period of time.If someone is in the l d s church, at least if they're like adhering to this element of that culture because of their garments and because of, you know, some other sort of just cultural trends. And I think that that's really cool because, you know, on one de end of the spectrum with fashion among like cultures or religions, you've got, you know, super, super.Like karate juices. You've got Amish where it's like, whoa, you're wearing a costume. You know, it like looks super, like obvious, and like you're turning heads and people are looking around at you. Whereas here you have the great luxury, it's cultural cohesion. It creates, you know, a sense of belonging to a community, an ability to identify members of your community.Continue. Yeah. So I'm, what, what I like with warm and dress is that you, you can, you can tell quite often and this is like to a lesser extent, names like not everyone has like, stereotypical like Mormon names, but there are like Mormon names and I like that there are these subtle signalers that I think add like a booster effect.You know, like imagine that someone had like a kind of obscure like Star Wars tattoo or I'm gonna, I'm gonna with you on this. I actually think that you think it's too subtle, a softened failure of the church to, you think they should dress more extremely. Yes. Oh, she's, why? Okay. When you grow up and you are othered by the urban monoculture, when it tells you you're different and you're weird, and this is something we intentionally do as our kids, give them weird names, weird ways of dressing, stuff like that.Like our family does things where we are intentionally and really specifically othered by society. Like society is like, oh, you guys are weird. You guys are different. You are a different thing. And through that, Our, our kids and me growing up specifically, who also was this way to an extent realize I'm different.I'm, I'm not, whatever this mainstream cultural thing is. And in a society where that mainstream cultural thing has obviously failed, where like rates of depression are really high, rates of suicide are really high, you know, like that's a great thing to be like, yeah, I'm different. They're like, aren't you worried?Your kids will be bullied? It's like, mm-hmm. Oh, oh. They'll be rejected from the mainstream culture. Like, okay. That's the point. That's the idea. That's a feature, not a bug. Yeah. Yeah. That they, that they will develop an identity and a cultural identity that is, Deviant from that. Now with, with Mormonism, I think their beliefs are differentiated enough that they do separate.Well, I think what you're missing here though is that yes, I understand your point, and I think being othered and weirded is great, and I think that Mormons definitely do enough things to make them other and weirded, you know, in a way, in different ways. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that they're different. They realize.I think what you're missing though is that there's a secret club thing. That makes people feel really good when they see like the secret handshake or the secret wink, or like the secret tattoo that someone has. Mm-hmm. You know, we're like, only they know. So what you're missing here is, yeah, it's great to have that othering effect.I totally agree with you. That's great. But, but what you're missing is that there's this totally separate phenomenon when you get an in joke and that in is very powerful. You've convinced me, Delta, you've convinced me. I think you changed. That rarely happens. Oh, the satisfaction. It does, it doesn't rarely happen.You convinced me all the time. Uh,Not always. You're, you're the smart one in this relationship. So I, I, I love the, but again, you know, we talk about willful suspension of disbelief, right. That's what she needs to do to constantly believe that I'm the, the smart one with all the ideas. Constant, constant suspension, a disbelief.Nice try. Um, No, I, I love it. Yeah. So I, I guess what I'd say is, is Mormonism, I mean, would you, or do you have any other points you wanted to talk on about this? Y yeah, I, I do actually. So it's the, the only culture I know of, like if it's a religious culture, so what we would call a Ulva, where it's a mixture of culture and, and, and religion that includes, A very practical level of safety, practicality and survivalism.You know that it's encouraged to have six months worth of food supply that, you know, you should have a, an emergency plan, you should rotate through that food supply and, you know, cook what's about to expire. And it's sort the fact that that's done. You know, yes, there are, there are doomsday preppers in the us.Like that's a total thing. It's a total subculture, but, That's more like an iden, like a fan community to me than like a cohesive culture. You know, there isn't like a, there are, there are correlator factors and correlator values among doomsday preppers, but n know where does it come close to what you see with the l d s church and I, I also really admire that.And it's not just, you know, imparting use useful practices to people in the church. You know, like temples also have resources for disasters. You know, like this is a. This is a culture that wants to create civilizational level resilience. If like, s**t hits the fan. That's really cool. And I think that's underrated when people think about religious or cultural innovation.You know, they, they think about maybe dating markets maybe better aligning with values, but especially in an age in which people are losing essential life skills like crazy. I think it's, it's a notable. Point that that's something that's encouraged within. So one thing, yeah. That I'd add to this, which I think is something a lot of people dunno.It is. One thing I really like that, that Mormonism does is it is something that we've actually taken for our own kids, is I believe that intense hardship is really needed at certain parts of a kid's life. And that they need to experience what these things feel like, what starvation feels like, what , really having to figure out your own stuff.Cause that's something I went through as a kid, you know, and I think. If we raise our kids without any of that, I think it creates a lot of negative psychological effects. So, one practice that exists was in Mormonism is they will do the Mormon trail or the the thing that their ancestors did like with the covered wagons and all that fun stuff. So this is something they'll do in the late teen years where they will try to recreate. This trail that their ancestors went on, , through the desert pulling these, these carts, whizz low water supplies, whizz low food supplies and really experience this extreme hardship that almost no one in society today gets the opportunity to experience.And I think that this has, And I think we'll see that it has permanent changes in the way a person's brain works as they get older if they experience one of these extreme, extreme hardship moments during specific developmental milestones. And so I think that this is very beneficial and I really admire that element of their culture.I actually go so far to say that I think they should lean into it more. I think it should be longer. I think it should be more recurring during a person's childhood. So if you look at like, what we're trying to build for, for our kids and our community, one of the things we've looked at building is, is There's some land up in Northern Canada where we're looking at essentially creating a station where the kids have to learn to survive.And, and now of course, the whole thing will be wired with cameras and stuff like that so we can make sure they don't end up killing themselves, or a bear doesn't like come onto the territory and, and end up creating problems. But I, I think this sorts of extreme survivalism. And having to figure it out on your own and, and experiencing that is, is really important culturally, especially if you're moving into a civilization where many of the luxuries that we've come to expect today, maybe our kids shouldn't expect as being as common during their adult life.And what we also haven't talked about in terms of hardship is missions, you know, which, you know, yeah. Few women go on, but like a lot of men do. I mean, I think one of the super underrated aspects of that, of a, of a mission isn't, I mean, one, I guess it can get, it can get you to double down on your culture, but I feel like these days a mission is, Equally liable to make you leave your culture?Is that a No, I, I think missions are a primary failure point of Mormonism, but we can get to that. Continue with what you were gonna say. So. Well, but they have an upside, I think they could be redesigned and, and one thing that I think makes them uniquely interesting is they make. Especially Mormon men, uniquely attractive in certain facets of the job market., I totally understand the point you're making here, Simone.Yeah. Which is, you know, especially in sales positions, Mormons are just incredible. Because when you need to sell something, That to a non-Mormon sounds pretty ridiculous, and you need to constantly deal with that rejection. That's one of the biggest parts of being a good salesperson and developing those techniques and that resistance to rejection.But more importantly, sales isn't just an important job for sales. Sales is an important job for raising money. Sales is an important job for doing a, a job application or a university application. There's a a saying at at Stanford and Harvard Business School. Most of the students fall into the three msms, which is Mormons.Military or children of millionaires. Mm. Wait, children of millionaires, why would they have an advantage? Cause nepo babies, you could say that they're nepo babies. You could say it's family culture, whatever. But it is true that those three groups are and and millionaires today, you'd probably say billionaires or, or you know, quarter billionaires or whatever.They would perform. Way worse. I get Mormon, I get military, but no. Anyway, that's interesting. It was definitely something you see is, is kids from wealthy families are disproportionately represented at top business schools. Mormons are disproportionately represented and so are people from the military.Mm-hmm. It's just a classic thing in top business schools. So you, you do see the advantage of this. Now let's talk about why I think mission trips are a failure. In today's environment almost always when I meet a Mormon who has deconverted, the Deconversion started on their mission trip. Mm-hmm. Um, And almost always they were incredibly fervent believers before the deconversion started.Hmm. If you have a practice within your cultural tradition that is causing disproportionately the most fervent believers to deconvert, then that's something you need to work on. It, it, it is really interesting to contrast with Rums Springer. So both the Mission Trip and Rums Springer serve similar functions, which is to say during the portion of a person's life where they are in this rebellious teen phase they are coming into their own as an adult and they are likely to deconvert.One organization essentially says, okay, let's put you on constant supervision of another member of our, our cultural group and separate you from friends and family and You know, all of the things that might cause deconversion and then put you in an environment where you're constantly through sunk cost fallacy, reaffirming your belief system.Like, theoretically, it sounds like a good idea. The problem is, is that the human brain just doesn't really work that way. Now, you could say that mission trips are about conversions. If you actually look at the numbers and in the pragmatic sky crafting relation, we go through this. Mission trips are not really good at converting people.When people convert to Mormonism, it's, it's through other mechanisms. Often like they, they ha they boast high conversion rates. But if you look at the number. Who stay in the church like if you're just looking at baptisms. Yeah. Mission trips seem really effective. If you look at actual growth in those regions of, of the Mormon tradition.They're not very effective. They're, they're mostly about from a cultural evolution perspective, keeping members. But the problem is you look at the exact opposite of all of those things I just mentioned, which is Amish Rum Springer, right? It's like during the period where you're most likely to deconvert, we say yeah, if you want to, you can just like, leave the community and do whatever you want for a period.But no, I mean, there, there are consequences to it, but mostly just go do what you want. And to people who are in one of these communities where there is a high social support network, where there is high end group, what actually ends up happening is Amish Rums Springer. So a lot of people assume that ROMs Springer is like kids leave, they go out, they have a bunch of sex, they do a bunch of drugs, not really.Uh, Actually what happens is they're told you can do whatever you want. And this knowledge that they can do whatever they're, they want leads them to instead be like, okay, why don't I go get a buggy? Like, that'll be my big crazy thing that I'll do. But otherwise I'm mo basically not going to do anything that rebellious because why?Like when you can all of a sudden do whatever you want, what you realize, especially when you start engaging in it, is how hollow, you know, if again, we define the world as progressive versus conservative here. How hollow all of these things that this urban monoculture is offering are mm-hmm. How hollow all the partying is, how hollow all the sex is, how hollow all the drugs are.You can't engage with these things, but if through engaging in them, you lose the community support you lose, all of a sudden you're like, no, screw that. To the extent where I think a lot of progressives are like, oh, but what if they're, they're gay and they have to live out their whole lives, you know, as, as living the straight lifestyle.You can read about Amish people who like, and this is the thing about conservative cultures, like progressive cultures act like they pretend like gay people don't exist. They don't pretend like gay people don't exist. They just have different. Social constructs for how to deal with it when a person is born with a predominant same sex attraction within Amish communities, and you can read blogs of this, they know, they're like, look, I am predominantly same sex attracted.I know this is an aspect of my life. I will never be able to fully participate in. But I have engaged with that within the progressive world. And I have lived an Amish person growing up. And I can tell you the Amish lifestyle is better. Even if I am forced to marry someone, I don't find sexually attractive.Because, , I can build a caring relationship for them. I can raise kids. It's the part of my life that will never be as fully fulfilled as it is the other people in my community. But that doesn't mean that the only solution to having been born, same sex attracted. Is just complete engagement with progressive culture, complete engagement with with, with their ways of solving this.The one thing I do wonder is Actually how there's an interplay between this and the, the belief that the person that you marry, you're like perma, married to, you know, after you die, you will be united again and you will spend all of eternity together. Oh yeah. This is great. Yeah. What I think is interesting about that is the reframing of marriage like that.I mean, I don't think that people are picturing like s I mean, maybe they are, but like, I don't think they're picturing like super hot sex, like, As they're you know, off in the afterlife or whatever comes next, you know, building new worlds and everything, right? Like being like Gods and, and so I wonder if perhaps a lot of it just takes the hedonism and the sexual Like focus out of marriage and instead Yeah.So let refocuses it. That's a really healthy one, I think. Mm-hmm. Which is to say that when a Mormon it's funny, within progressive culture would be seen as unhealthy. They believe that when you get married you are with this person forever, like after death Forever. Forever, forever. Mm-hmm. And a pasture physical coporal existence.The, the, the vast minority of your time with this person, will sex be an option? And. One that means you don't really, like, fights are not an option. You have to figure out how to work this out. Well, fights, fights are an option. I think what's different is that no, no fights are an option, but, but long term systemic disagreements like you can have conflict, but the goal is to work it out because eventually, well, because it's not about you anymore.It's about you as a team, as a united unit, as you together forever. And I think you're gonna look at conflict very differently when it's what a, what do I want? What makes me happy? Versus like, how are we going to fix this for us? Yeah. And I think that it's a really interesting framing, and I think it would change the way, like if I lived in a culture like I'm.I'm attracted to dudes. Kind of, kind of all attracted to you, Malcolm, but like, if someone, if I like grew up in a culture where they're like, Simone, you have to marry a woman. Like, you know, my focus would be on finding a woman who I was ideologically aligned with and like, you know, we got along and like we were ready to take on the future in the world together.And we knew that we worked well together, you know, and like it wouldn't be about the sex and that's okay. You know, and I think that, that for many, many cultural groups, that does sound. Very, very wrong. Right? Like how, yeah. Like how can you have a life without enjoying sex? Yeah, right. Like God, although like, here's the thing, right?It's like, so Mormons are getting married, Mormons having kids, et cetera, and then you like, look at these plummeting sex rates of the predominantly atheistic culture, right? And so it's like, well, you know, but who's really getting, you know, getting sex now anyway, right? Who's sexually satisfied now anyway? Although, I guess maybe like, Gay male communities are doing all right. Oh yeah. They're doing okay. I don't know. And I don't know how the church deals with one cultural solution and we, we don't try to like, we can try to give a honest take about different cultures.But we always say that every cultural solution is up to them. Yeah. And, and all we want to do is see as many in a diverse cultural tradition surviving into the future. To the thing you were saying earlier.One thing that we praise Mormonism on in our books is. It has the best afterlife from our perspective, the best conception of an afterlife. The idea that, one, you're spending your afterlife with your spouse, like I can't imagine not spending my afterlife with you if you love your spouse. Yeah, same. You also get a meaningful project to work on with them.Where you're like, oh, it's a big, meaningful project. Because yeah, I mean, just an afterlife in bliss or complacency, like, I really wouldn't like that. I, I like the idea of continuing to work with you after I die. Mm-hmm. Not just being around you and blissing out or something. Or being around people we like or something.I like the idea of having a, a project. But to that extent, when you talk about the combined identity, it is very similar to our own theology in that way. Whereas we believe that when a person gets married, they meaningfully become the same entity. They stop being two genders, they stop being two different things.They are one. Thing and a goal of marriage is to an extent the dissolution of the self. And that the way we live forever is through our kids and through our family culture. And they really are a combination of the two of us. And that being the case when we think about how we live far into the future.It is as a combined entity, and we do like that similarity we see as a Mormon tradition, even if the two things are very differentiated. Another big similarity we have as a Mormon tradition is we are a highly derived and highly accelerationist iteration. Of the Christian tradition. Mm-hmm. Where many would call us non-Christians, many would call Mormons, non-Christians.Like, yeah, we believe in a God, but like lots of caveats if you, if you're going to try to call that a, a traditional Christian God. And it's the same as the Mormon tradition. Do we think of ourselves as Christians? Yes. Do Mormons think of themselves as Christians? Yes. But from the, the boundaries on Christianity that many other groups place, I think both of us fall pretty squarely outside of that.And that's just another, , differentiation there where we, we do have a lot in common with Mormons. So the final thing I really admire, just as like a final note, is, yeah. I really appreciate it when new cultures or religions and, you know, like the LDS church is relatively new. Take mainstream holidays and just.Punch them up or make them better. And for me, like, man, you know, Mormon Christmas is one of the best flavors of Christmas. Like they take it, they make it a big deal. It's just amazing and wonderful. And I really miss Mormon Christmases. And so, I don't know, there's just so many things about the LDS church that are great.I hope what you're saying about the fracturing. Like subunit working in this, in this, this collaborating marketplace comes to pass. Or, or one sliver of it will be so successful that it won't matter that it doesn't have the market effects. Yeah, it will maybe expelled from the central church.But it will be expelled in a way that allows it to be even more innovative than it is right now. Yeah. And will come up with interesting solutions. And if you are from affection of, of, of the Mormon culture like that, please write the Pragma sky to crafting religion. Like, it's like a playbook on how to adapt and better fight the progressive mind virus.Because eventually it will take your church just like it does everyone else. Yeah. Well, Mormons, we love you. You're amazing. Don't disappear, thrive and succeed. We are not one of you, but we deeply admire you. So yeah, we'd love to hear what you think of our hot takes. And Malcolm, though, sadly, we will not probably be spending eternity together aside from through our children.Yay. At least we can have future conversations like this. So thanks for this and I love you a lot. I love you too, and I, I do wish we, we got to live literally together forever, but I think in every meaningful context we do get to, like, who I am today changes. See our video on determinism. I'm gonna even link to it on, on, on.Oh no. Life Extensionism. That might be the one where we talk about this. You know what, I'll lead to both of them because we talk about it in one of us. Good. All right. We'll see you soon. Have a good one. Get full access to Based Camp | Simone & Malcolm at basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe

Written by an AI for SEO from transcript. This is meant to be consumed as a podcast:In this eye-opening video, we explore the two prevalent factions within the conservative movement - the traditionalists and those advocating for adaptation. We debate whether it is possible or even wise to revert to the 'way things used to be', especially in light of major issues like infertility and technological advancements. Using the lens of history, we discuss how traditionalist groups have fared during civilization collapse and how some groups have found strength in adapting rather than resisting change. Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion about survival, adaptation, and the tension between clinging to the past and embracing the future.(Bad) Transcript: within the conservative movement there are two factions. There's the traditionalist faction, which is to say let's just go back to the way things used to be. And then there's the other faction that says, you know, this progressive super virus has screwed everything up yet. We need to, we need to learn from tradition.We need to harvest truths from tradition, which can help us through this situation, while also understanding that people who blindly clinging to traditionalism are likely going to be as swept away by the sands of time as the extremist progressive mind virus zombies. So what I'm getting is basically you can't turn back time.You remove technology? Not really. I mean, if you, you can try, but there will always be some groups that continue to use it and they will outcompete you, right? So there, there is no option to go back to full pure Traditionalism really with some exceptions I suppose. Like you could go Amish and find a niche that kind of works for you, that's symbiotic with society as it progresses.   one of these social changes that we're dealing with is humans are becoming increasingly infertile and you can't outrun infertility with. Just having sex more often? Not anymore, not at the levels to which you, you're looking at a 50% reduction in sperm count over the past 50 years. Over, over that, you know, a 30% reduction in testosterone rates in what, the last 20 years or something? Eventually, if the trends can trend you, which everything seems to indicate that they are continuing, humans will become increasingly and increasingly infertile. And the more you hold to IVF bad, you know, because with IVF you're losing access to some embryos. The more. You as a cultural unit are going to struggle against the cultural units that are aggressively using I V F one to not only combat this fertility collapse, but also to expand their own fertility windows.   that's the, that's the core trap of traditionalism is that it is more effective, the more extreme you go with it.Okay. And effectiveness increases linearly with how extreme you take it. So you are always. So like if you talk with like a Catholic traditionalist, right? Like they're actually not that much of a traditionalist. If they were more of a traditionalist, if they moved more like on the Amish side of the spectrum, if they disengaged with technology completely, if they went off the grid, they would see a rise in mental health.If they would see a rise, infertility rates, they would see a rise in all of the things that show vitality within their culture. .   why can't.Traditionalist group end up being the group that survives, right? Yes. And, and the answer is, is because the effectiveness of traditionalism is linearly correlated with how traditionalists you become with groups like the Amish being the most effective forms of traditionalism. The problem is, is it technology?Uh, uh, Quease you with many advantages, whether they are health advantages or just the advantage of one group having automatic weapons and the other group not having automatic weapons being able to produce, or one group having automated drones and the other group trying to fight those drones with automated weapons.You, you cannot fight a group that technologically leans in. If you're a group that technologically leans out, you, you can, you can. Maybe like passively fight them for a bit, but at the end of the day, you always lose.    Would you like to know more?  Hello, Malcolm. Hello, Simone. It's wonderful to be here with you today. Are you speaking more softly because you are afraid Wake the approaching civilizational collapse. Well, we did, we did have a podcast on that recently and we're going to be talking about it again today. Yeah, so today we are going to talk about the way people react to civilizational collapse.And fortunately because we've seen civilizational collapses before, we, we know how it always, it turns out like the different ways that people react to it.So naturally civilizational collapse typically looks the same because Civilizational peaks looks the same. , throughout history, whenever you had a group that was more urban and educated, they were almost always in universally seen as more a feat. And uh, sorry for people who dunno what that means, sort of feminine.A you saw this in the way that the, the Romans saw the Greeks, but even if you go further back than that, you can see the way that the people around some of the first cities saw the people in the first cities as very iffy. Maybe the only notable exception of this I can think of is the Assyrians.But, but we don't even know what their rural population thought of them. So it, it could just be an overreaction. Like these could have been, it'd be really funny. The, as Syrians are just seen as like wildly effe and yet we see them as like these over bloody people because they were like a guy having a midlife crisis.Like drawing all this bloody stuff on the, the wall like, or like a teenager, like, mom, I'm so tougher. This is so harsh. I guess you could argue that some of the meso American civilizations, like the Mayans might be an exception too. But anyway, generally speaking, and this creates, I think, an illusion for people.That is one of the big problems, I think in how conservative movements today see civilizational collapse is they, correctly see that leading up to a collapse. You get higher rates of Often L G B T acceptance, you get higher rates of female participation in the workforce. You get higher rates of many things that today are associated with generic progressivism.Of course, the the counterfactual here is what is a collapse. It's a decline from a peak of civilization. So all of those things are also things that you see more of at the peak of the civilization than at any of the troughs of a civilization. So it is hard to say that they caused the collapse.However you know, there, there does seem to be some evidence, right? You, you know, you keep seeing this pattern of these things right before the collapse. So they, they may be correlator. Right. So civilizations regularly go through this cycle where they become more accepting, they become more innovative, and they become more urban.And as a result of that, social institutions change and it changes the way parents are interacting with their children. And it changes the way society interacts with other people. And you begin to see social institutions collapse. This is just like a historic thing. We've seen this multiple times. You saw this was the height of Athens to the fall of Athens.You saw this was the end of the Renaissance. You saw this was the end of Rome. When these collapses happen there is one natural reaction to them, which is we need to go back to the old ways. And then there's another reaction to it, which is, well, let's look at the, the social changes that we've had recently.And accelerate them to see what comes next. And we'll use Rome. Yeah. Hold on though, because I don't think that's true. What gives you reason to believe that there actually has been some attempt at continued adaptation in these civilizational collapse scenarios? Yeah, so continued adaptation.Let's talk about the most classic example the fall of the Roman Empire. So you had two groups. You had one group that was experimenting with new social technologies and that represented a accelerationist or a a, a, if you're talking about social experimentation, an accelerationist view.And this group was this new religious movement that had recently taken the world by storm. It was the Christians and then you had the traditionalists who were the pagans and wanted to go back to the old ways of doing things. And the group that survived was the iterations of the Christian Church.That became harder line. Stricter, but not in a traditionalist context, but rather a social invention context. If you're looking for other examples of this, during the Norman Conquest there were a number of families in the ruling cast that wanted to flee. So they fled to Byzantium and they said, okay, we're going to Maintain our old ways, our old social system, and then other nobles were like, no, let's try to integrate with this new Norman group.Those were the nobles that ended up winning. The ones that were like, okay, let's try to do things a new way. Let's try to work within this new system and adapt it to our means. It was the same with the fall of Rome, with the fall of Rome, the Western Roman Empire. Let's be specific here. The groups that survived were the.Christian organizations, but the Christian organizations that took intentionality in terms of changing and updating their practices. You know, this is when you had a lot of these councils happening. This is when you had a lot of what today are heresies being codified because there was this idea that.Yes, we are new and yes, we are agre an aggressive social technology movement. However that doesn't mean we're Lucy goosey and, and so. During a collapse, you can three, three large groups form. One is the traditionalists, the other is the people who just go balls to the walls with hedonism in the moment.And hedonism can take many forms they can take, and this is one of the things that we make, make clear in other podcasts, the highest form of hedonism is indulging in a personal narrative of suffering in victimhood. Because that's what people want to be more than anything because it removes any responsibility from them, you know, that is the luxury of a victim narrative.And then the final group is the Accelerationist group. So would you argue that in the scenario of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, the Christians, the more hard line Christians were the adapting to the future facet and that. Okay. Maybe quote unquote, their iterations of hardline Christianity weren't like something that had existed before.They, they were aggressively experimenting with new ways of doing things and, and new ways of structuring the church and, yeah. So what you're saying then is to a certain extent, civilizational collapse can be averted, but it will still look like civilizational collapse because that, which existed before and which was not working obviously.Does cease to exist and something fairly violently different is going to take its place. Right? Yeah. Well, I mean it's, it's about do you accept that the world is changing or do you say we can recreate. Or, or, or recapture what civilization was before, like the Romans that turned to the old pagan ways during periods of collapsing.And this was actually a big thing. So there was a big flourishing of, of, of cults during that time period. And when I say cults, I don't mean cults in the modern derogative sense of the word cults. I mean like mystery cults and stuff like that. If you're a scholar, you'll know what I'm talking about. D does it matter if the audience knows?No, it doesn't matter. What matters is, is, is basically people were participating in old pagan rituals at larger and larger levels, actually, and, and this was happening in the same areas that Christianity was spreading during those time periods. So Christianity would spread a lot in the military during those time periods.And the primary competitor. To Christianity was these spreading mystery cults that you also had within the military during this time period. So, so these groups were directly competing and often in similar source of environments. So if we look today, can we say, are there groups today that are responding to what I think of as, as the beginnings of, of a civilizational collapse cycle?And we are seeing the cycle. You know, this cycle has happened many times before. And when we say like the goal of our organization, they go, what's the real goal of the perinatal list? It's to ensure that the next civilization doesn't undergo that cycle again, that we create a permanent renaissance.But anyway. Mm, okay. Hold on, hold on. So what you're saying is actually an important thing to distinguish here, because what you're saying is we do want today's civilization to collapse, but we want these, we don't want it to collapse. It's inevitable. We expect it to, to collapse. It is inevitable. But we would like the culture that springs out of the ashes of this collapsed civilization to not experience a subsequent collapse.Correct. Yeah. We, we've seen this cycle happen over and over again. You want the cycle. You want the cycle to stop. So the, I think the other important thing to talk about here though, is that most people would still see that as their doomsday scenario because, I think people are very attached to how things are, like West Roman Empire no longer existing equal equals bad situation.She, we also see this in a discussion of, you know, how we talk a lot about selecting embryos for polygenic risk scores. We talk about CRISPR babies, we talk about, you know, with technology over time, we're selecting very aggressively for certain that could shift certain populations, you know, very significantly on, along certain measures that are valued by different groups.And people respond to that often by saying like, oh, this would be a really bad thing. It could, you know, You know, some sort of speciation event. It could, it could trigger the end of the human race and, and our response to that as well, you know, if, if it's better, if it's the next step, if it's something superior, that's a good thing.But I think most people see that as a bad thing. So they wouldn't even see a, a very adaptive response to civilizational collab. Worth it because all they care about is, is my current civilization going to disappear? If so, okay, well then I'm gonna mope about it. Not well most, where can we go? Most civilizations, most iterations of, of humans, most, you know, they, they, they view anything that's not their current system as not civilization.Right. They'll say, if it's not my current people, if it's not this current civilizational structure, it's not civilization. And it's the same way with how they see people. If, if they're different in any way from me, then they're not really people. That is, I mean, that, that's literally the position that a lot of our detractors take, where they're like, well, if you're doing any sort of gene selection or something like that, it could lead to something that's different from us and therefore not deserving of, of, of human rights or like a fundamental threat.And I, you know, that's really d. That's just the way people have always been. They're always afraid of the different. What's fortunate is those people usually get quashed in history, like they're not really relevant. People who are afraid of change just aren't relevant in this great cycle. They may have the foresight to see a collapse coming.But their solutions are pointless to the extent that they're not really worth us, concerning ourselves with, and we can see this playing out in the world today. So you look at one of the countries, like if we're talking about fertility collapse, As a sign of like, things just aren't working.You know, one of the places where you see this the most is in South Korea, right? In, in  South Korea is defined by conservatism. In fact, that is what is instigating , the fertility collapse in South Korea is the world is changing. Women are going into the workplace. And then these women who have gone into the workplace and who now have to get educated so that their economy can like barely compete with a world economy where everyone else has, , doubled the number of workers the, through putting women into the workplace.Well, they're still expected to serve a traditional woman's role in the family. They're still expected to do basically all of the housework, all of the cleaning, all of the childcare. And because of that, They're not having kids. And then in addition to that, you have this really strict model of what a family is, you know, with a two parent household.And in Korea it is, it is really, really difficult up until recently to have a kid if you're not in a two parent household. So what, what does this mean? This is a huge group of people that just aren't having kids. And Yes, like statistically right now in the US it is true throughout the world you are better off if you're from a two-parent household.Absolutely. As a kid. Is that to say that through social experimentation, we can't come to social technologies that create alternatives to that, that are equally efficacious or more efficacious maybe.  It's, it's difficult to say. So one of the statistics here that suggests this for me is that if you look at single male parents versus single female parents, single male parents just do astronomically better.Like the kids end up just doing way, way, way, way better. , almost to the extent that they're not really doing that much worse than two parent families. And so the question is why is this happening? My. Guess is it what you're really seeing there is single male parents? It's usually the woman died.Or it's much more likely that the woman died or disappeared due to some exogenous factor. Whereas single female factors, it's much more likely a, a divorce because women win custody much more often. This is just due to custody rates. I'm not saying it's like any other rate. It's, it's if the, the, the other spouse is still alive, well the woman's probably gonna win custody except in like an extreme, extreme case scenario.So what you're filtering out is people who have failed relationships, right? And of course those people are going to be worse at being parents. So what this says to me is it's more the type of people who opt into single parenthood who, who are statistically doing worse.It's not that single parenthood intrinsically does worse at raising kids. If you were. Able to experiment with it. Now, of course, we're not experimenting with it, so whatever. But then other things in South Korea, you know, it's, there's a lot of you know, any, any sort of non-standard social structure like gay families and stuff like that.They're not having kids in South Korea because there's this, again, conservatism against that. So, I think with conservatism, what you see is we have dropped many traditions that are very important to maintaining social cohesion. And in, you know, we do identify and are, and are largely conservative.However, I think that  within the conservative movement there are two factions. There's the traditionalist faction, which is to say let's just go back to the way things used to be. And then there's the other faction that says, you know, this progressive super virus has screwed everything up yet. We need to, we need to learn from tradition.We need to harvest truths from tradition, which can help us through this situation, while also understanding that people who blindly clinging to traditionalism are likely going to be as swept away by the sands of time as the extremist progressive mind virus zombies. So what I'm getting is basically you can't turn back time.You remove technology? Not really. I mean, if you, you can try, but there will always be some groups that continue to use it and they will outcompete you, right? So there, there is no option to go back to full pure Traditionalism really with some exceptions I suppose. Like you could go Amish and find a niche that kind of works for you, that's symbiotic with society as it progresses.But that's a limited. Limited choice.  Yep. Well, and I can explain what I mean by this. It might make more sense. Right. So, A specific example today. So you have a lot of ca, the Catholic Integralist was in the Conservative party and, and, and Catholic intellectuals did, than the conservative party. And a lot of them would say, well, we need to go back to you know, no, no contraception no abortions, no.Which by the way, we're, we're fairly against abortions. But anyway, so no contraception, no abortions. They wanna go back to the, the, the way things used to be. And, and that's how we can get fertility rates up. And yet we have seen countries that have imposed these. You know, you can look at Malta, for example, some of the strictest anti-abortion laws in, in the eu.And yet they're fertility rates like 1.2. When Romania banned it was Romania, right? The Bann abortions border six, whatever. Yeah. Anyway Yeah, so fertility rates went up for a very short period, but then they came crashing back down again to the same fertility rates as everywhere else in the region.It, it, it's just not effective. And, and, and this is where it becomes scary because humans,  one of these social changes that we're dealing with is humans are becoming increasingly infertile and you can't outrun infertility with. Just having sex more often? Not anymore, not at the levels to which you, you're looking at a 50% reduction in sperm count over the past 50 years. Over, over that, you know, a 30% reduction in testosterone rates in what, the last 20 years or something? Literally the feminization, the biological feminization of men in our society from endocrine disruptors which we, we can see in experiments like the links of I don't know the, the, the word here that's not gonna get this video in trouble.But the point being is that even in like seven and eight year olds, you know, you see more feminine play in in, in males who were gestated in mothers who had a lot of deep endocrine disruptors, literal feminization. So you can't just rely on these old systems to keep your fertility rates high. Eventually, if the trends can trend you, which everything seems to indicate that they are continuing, humans will become increasingly and increasingly infertile. And the more you hold to IVF bad, you know, because with IVF you're losing access to some embryos. The more. You as a cultural unit are going to struggle against the cultural units that are aggressively using I V F one to not only combat this fertility collapse, but also to expand their own fertility windows.So you can look at a family like ours, right? And we're likely, I mean, we we're, how many kids we need to have seven, 12, and. I mean, as many as possible until they take out your uterus. Right? Because everyone is done with a c-section, again, through technology. And so the, the, the, but that's something that we wouldn't be able to do.I mean, we'd be ending the natural end of our fertility life cycle in the near future. If we were relying completely on biological reproduction, but because we're able to use you know, scientific assisted reproduction, we are able to expand that window dramatically and expand the number of human lives that will get to be lived because we, you know, pushed with that technology.I, I, the, the, the analogy we always use with sort of the God saying is people are like, well, isn't this, isn't this playing God? And, and we say, well, you know, If, if God has a coop hit my kid, you know, I'm gonna do everything in my power to, and I think God wants me to do everything in my power to try to pull the coop off my kid and get my kid to a hospital.If God has a semi-truck hit my kid, God probably wanted that kid dead when God gives us a scientific technology. To tackle these sorts of problems. My assumption is he's not stupid. He knows we have access to this technology and he gave us access to this technology for a reason. He allowed it to be invented for a reason.And that reason is the expectation that like trying to lift the CO off my kid and resu resuscitate them and bring them to a hospital is he expects us to engage with it. I mean, I respect cultures that take another angle to this, but I do worry for them. Because I, I, I do not see how they continue to survive in a changing biological and social environment.When would you say Traditionalism does work? Like I am thinking about Mennonites in general. They manage to hold a fairly traditionalist view. I don't think it was necessarily in reaction to. Si predictions of civilizational collapse, but still. Well, when, when do you think, how do you think it's done?Well, the traditionalism strictly out beats the urban monoculture. It always does. Historically and today the traditionalist groups. You know, you go back to Roman times, these groups that were going back to the pagan ways and to these, these mystery cults. They were psychologically, at least this is my read from the text, fertility rates, everything outcompeting, these sort of urban hedonist groups, right?But they were themselves being outcompeted by the Christians. So, the answer is traditionalism is strictly better. And, and you can see it. You just see it whenever you're looking at the data. There. There's a reason why conservatives, since Pew started collecting data, have been happier than progressives, right?The, the progressive monoculture, the, the sort of mind virus that, that dominates our urban centers in the world right now. Is astronomically worse than traditional approaches. And we admire people who have the competency and the, the clarity to see this and, and return to traditionalism.But we do worry that that strategy typically doesn't work out in the long run. And I feel like you answered my question. Wh what's the question? Where does it work? What's the, if you want to take a traditionalist approach to. You don't care about being represented in this new version, this new cycle.What's the best way to tackle Traditionalism? I mean, full on. I mean, the Amish groups have the highest fertility rates. They, they probably have the highest rates of, you know, mental health, I would guess if you did. Good. So to fully isolate air gap and disintegrate, like either build your own city state, Isolate yourself within communities.Do not, do not engage in business with outsiders. Do not use their technology. Do not use their social networks. Do not socialize with them in general, just full on air gapping is the best way. Well,  that's the, that's the core trap of traditionalism is that it is more effective, the more extreme you go with it.Okay. And effectiveness increases linearly with how extreme you take it. So you are always. So like if you talk with like a Catholic traditionalist, right? Like they're actually not that much of a traditionalist. If they were more of a traditionalist, if they moved more like on the Amish side of the spectrum, if they disengaged with technology completely, if they went off the grid, they would see a rise in mental health.If they would see a rise, infertility rates, they would see a rise in all of the things that show vitality within their culture. And okay, so what I, what I'm getting though, which I think is actually interesting, is that if you go full on traditionalist in the way that you. Can only really show dedication to traditionalism, like truly be traditional to leave modern civilization.You're almost doing the same thing. That those who innovate even further and lean into new social technology are doing, and that you are becoming something that isn't the civilization, meaning that maybe their guess is as good as yours as to what works.  Like, let's say that humans are moving in a technologically terminal direction, you know, could be, let's use AGI as an example, right?There's a, a scenario in which the technophilic people who totally get on board with agi. Are completely screwed over by it. And the people who go full on Ludite and totally go offline and hide in little, you know, enclaves hidden perhaps from agi I, or like somehow manage to lean in it and avoid it like in some sort of, there's agi, everyone dies in an evil a g I scenario.Okay, well let's then maybe use non AGI thing, but like, let's say that there's some kind of just unhealthy social or technological innovation. A completely air wrapped traditionalist group could be as roughly innovative and capable creating the next cycle as one that leans into the change. No. You don't think so?No. Because the technology social innovations, they are forced multipliers to your efforts. Would you say that's always the case? I would say that innovations in dating markets have been. Very well adaptive for humans innovations in like food processing, progressive innovations in dating markets.Again, you need to look at other groups. See, this is the problem when people think about accelerationist cultures versus non accelerationist cultures, okay? Is they look at them from the progressive of progressive cultures versus what they think of as conservative cultures. And that is not the thing.There are accelerationist conservative cultures and traditionalist conservative cultures. So an example of an accelerationist conservative culture is the Mormon. Things like dating wards. That's a very new invention. That is a new social technology. The, the Mormon community is actually incredibly accelerationist in terms of their adaptions of completely new social technologies.So yeah, I mean this, this idea that. And their solutions, I think, are better than any type of dating solution that's ever existed in history. I, I think dating wards, for example, are a better solution. You mean singles words? Single singles Wards, l d s Church. Singles wards are, are a better solution to dating than, than literally anything.Like theoretical solution that anyone has ever tried before at like the cultural level. And yet people would hear about singles wars and they'd be like, oh, that must be a cultural thing that Mormons have been doing forever. But they're not, and this is where things get really interesting to me. Sorry, what was the point you were making?The wider point I was making was that there are many social technologies that may just be terminal, but people who lean into them may just.Not five because I get, you know, inherently unhealthy because they keep, you know, there's, there's no adaptation for the processed foods and you know, just a certain portion of the population is going to end up obese and quite unhealthy when exposed to that environment. Right? So if your were argument is certain, you know, things that this urban culture are spitting out are just not working like dating markets, there are many solutions to that.One is more traditional dating markets, but there's a hundred other solutions to that. And any of those solutions are going to be labeled as conservative extremist solutions that that's just true because they, they deviate from the urban monoculture and therefore, They are conservative extremists. And this is how we find ourselves on the same team, often as the traditionalists.Because from the perspective of the urban monoculture if you try something different, if you fight against them, if you try to develop new dating practices or anything like that, then you're just an extremist. And I think to to the point that you were, one of the points you were making earlier you said, well,  why can't.Traditionalist group end up being the group that survives, right? Yes. And, and the answer is, is because the effectiveness of traditionalism is linearly correlated with how traditionalists you become with groups like the Amish being the most effective forms of traditionalism. The problem is, is it technology?Uh, uh, Quease you with many advantages, whether they are health advantages or just the advantage of one group having automatic weapons and the other group not having automatic weapons being able to produce, or one group having automated drones and the other group trying to fight those drones with automated weapons.You, you cannot fight a group that technologically leans in. If you're a group that technologically leans out, you, you can, you can. Maybe like passively fight them for a bit, but at the end of the day, you always lose. And, and this is true with genetic technology as well, you know, if one group is doing selection for stuff like iq, within just a few generations, there'll be multiple standard deviations.Higher than the other group.  And, you know, you could argue, well, IQ isn't really measured. Whatever. You, you really think that a group that is like three standard deviations below another group in IQ is going to be able to compete with them. If they try to wipe them out or something, it's just not gonna happen.And, and that's, that's the, the, the truth of it is that it's the groups that embrace social change while also realizing that the. Mechanisms of social change that are, are being grabbed onto by this sort of urban monoculture, this mind virus are just simply not functioning. And so I think that we, we need to recognize that the traditionalists are our allies to an extent for now.And, and they may be our allies in the long term, so long as they can adapt to mindsets that aren't. Just like progressivism and disguise and waiting to wipe us out the moment they gain power. But the, but the great thing is, is that if we continue to technologically progress while they're not technologically progressing, it doesn't matter.Hmm. Yeah, that makes sense. So, I mean, in the end, traditionalism isn't, it doesn't run contr what you're saying to accelerationism. I mean, a traditional as to. I think what many traditionalists really are going for is they would rather see a future that supports and they see a crumbling of their values.Not so much that they're afraid of new technologies. And I think what really changed my mind from this conversation was your highlighting the Church of Latter Day Saints singles words as new innovation and that being a form of accelerationism because it, it shows that you can have. Traditional values and and adopt new technology to them, and which I think is in the end what traditionalists are.Well, I mean, no, they don't want that. They don't want that. You mean they just wanna go? I mean, they just wanna go back to, do you think there's a faction of traditionalists that kind of just like traditions that support their values and they'd be willing to change them in the face of new conditions. So it's kind of weird me that that wouldn't be the case to just keep doing something.Well then they're not traditionalists. Well, I mean that they are accelerationist, that's what we are like. So you look at, like, for example the types of, one of the things we're building out right now for our family and like a collection of family groups that we're a part of is, quote unquote a new London season, right?Where people get together who are looking to marry in a single location. For a one weekend a year. And there are a number of parties hosted that have specific rules that make it easy to find a partner and specific types of like social shaming and stuff like that, that make it easy to find a partner.I. All of this is a very conservative thing to do. It's a very accelerationist thing to do. It is heavily inspired by something that happened traditionally, the London season, that's where it gets its name. However, to say that it's a recreation of the London season, it's just comical. It's, it's, it's, it's cosplay at best.But. Well, it's better than costly because what it is, is it's an innovation. It's saying, okay, this is one way an older group used to solve this problem. Can we through internet, through flights, through other technologies that enable new approaches and social technologies that we build, create an iteration of that that is more efficient than any that have existed before.And, and those people are accelerationist, all accelerationist base their ideas on tradition because you're certainly not gonna get good ideas. From these progressive groups. You know, and you know me when I'm looking for like holidays we do for our family. When I'm looking for social institutions, when I'm looking for the way that we build our school system, you know, I am looking into the history of the Catholic church.I am looking into the history of the of, of the Mormon church. I am looking into old traditionalist movements because that's where the interesting social technologies that can be tweaked and innovated upon come from. Being an accelerationist means you have an intense reverence for both studying the traditions and engaging with the traditions, while also believing they can be improved upon.The thing that differentiates the traditionalists from the accelerationist is the traditionalists do not believe they can be approved upon. Do you think that's true? I mean, do you think that most people see accelerationism that way? Because I feel like.Accelerationism is anti traditionalist. Just throw it all out. I, I've not heard of, of some this hybrid, well, not that progressive that you're describing. I mean, progressivism isn't accelerationism. Progressivism is like a weird deviant virus. Like, it, it isn't. It, it is, it is not related ideologically to accelerationism.It's just not accelerationism. I, I'd say if you're looking for one of the pure forms of accelerationism, that's Mormonism, Mormonism is sort of a, a pure Calvinist ideology is, is often considered a very accelerationist ideology. Ideologies that are acceleration are often very strict. And, and they do not look like.Another example of an acceleration of ideology would likely be the, the H variety the, the, the, the Jewish community. So they do a lot of things that, to somebody who's not really that familiar with history, look historic because they deviate from cultural norms and they deviate from cultural norms in a way that apes some historic things, but really most of their practices are quite new.And most of their most successful practices are quite new. And so yeah, that's, that's my point. Yeah. Okay. You're giving me a more nuanced picture. What? I mean, I, I previously viewed Traditionalism and accelerationism very differently, so I appreciate your clarifying your views on these things. 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