The Noticing Intensifies: I Wish I Had Not Pulled This Thread

In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone unpack a striking civilizational pattern: nearly every major cultural movement of the past 100 years—blues, rock, rap, punk, goth, grunge, techno, heavy metal, and more—along with most modern sports (soccer, basketball, baseball, rugby, American football, etc.), top video games, and key inventions originated in Protestant-majority countries or regions.

Catholic-majority areas dominate refinement and style (think Paris and Italy) and often excel at competing within existing frameworks, yet almost never invent the new forms themselves. Japan, Korea, and a few outliers like Poland provide the main exceptions.

They dig into why this pattern holds, using Ireland as a critical test case that points to a Protestant vs. Catholic cultural difference rather than a simple North/South European one. Topics include historical differences in innovation, scandal handling (IRA, Church), terrorism rates, treatment of captives, status-seeking vs. inventiveness, religious orders, and what Catholics (and others) can usefully reverse-engineer.

This is not about identity or conversion—it’s about treating culture as technology and stealing what works.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be pulling on one of those threads where my mind notices a pattern, and then I start pulling on it, and I’m like, “Oh my God, this pattern is so much more robust than I expected it would be, so much larger than I expected it would be,” and it kind of changes how I think about things at a civilizational level, and it’s something that we need to talk about.

[00:00:23] I began to think about, like, various cultural movements throughout the last 100 years. So what do... ‘ Blues, rock and roll, rap, punk, goth, grunge, mod, techno, cyberpunk, reggae, heavy metal house music, rave and acid music, new romantic, straight edge, and industrial music have in common.

[00:00:46] Here I’m gonna note other things that have this in common, okay?

[00:00:50] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:00:51] Malcolm Collins: Okay. Of, of the music varieties that don’t have this one thing in common or cultural movements or stylistic movements,

[00:00:58] Simone Collins: Christmas classics

[00:01:02] Malcolm Collins: Unfortunately, that would also fit the pattern. But- Are

[00:01:05] Simone Collins: you sure?

[00:01:06] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. With the one potential alternative that I’ll get to in a second.

[00:01:10] Then you have the other what, what mu- what stylistic patterns don’t fit this pattern, okay, on Earth? The only popular ones on a, on an international stage are ones that come out of Japan, ones that come out of Korea or reggaeton maybe. Out of, out of the past 100 years, these are the only ones that don’t fit this pattern.

[00:01:32] Now we’re gonna go to the second thing that fits this pattern, okay? Because there’s actually a lot. Okay, the invention of various sports. So what do soccer, cricket, rugby, basketball, baseball, ice hockey, lacrosse with maybe a caveat, volleyball, American football, tennis, golf, field hockey, boxing, picket ball, pool/billiards, bowling-

[00:01:59] Simone Collins: Picket ball or pickleball?

[00:02:02] Malcolm Collins: Oh, oh, pool might actually not fit this pattern. It’s a bit mixed. Bowling pickleball is what I said here. And the only ones that don’t fit this pattern clearly are cycling and then a few that come out of Japan, sumo, judo, and taekwondo So this pattern is- I

[00:02:19] Simone Collins: think dressage would also fall into your criteria.

[00:02:23] Malcolm Collins: Yes. Yeah. This pattern is was this cultural thing invented in a Protestant majority country or region? Which is wild, and the reason it’s so wild is when you think of, like, let’s say style, right? Typically the cutting edge locations when it comes to style are Catholic majority areas. I, I typically think of, like, the leading sort of luxury style trend-setting areas as being Paris and Italy, right?

[00:02:54] Like, that that’s not just me, right? So-

[00:02:57] Simone Collins: Yeah ...

[00:02:58] Malcolm Collins: th- they haven’t invented a single stylistic movement except for maybe reggaeton which I don’t even know if people would consider that, like, a global phenomenon in the same way, like, rock and roll,

[00:03:08] Simone Collins: punk, goth. It’s, it’s pretty big. It’s very big. And then it’s

[00:03:12] Malcolm Collins: the same with sports, right?

[00:03:14] Like, it’s not like Catholic countries are bad at sports. In fact, they do very well within a lot of sports sectors. I mean, I, I, my understanding is that if you’re looking at the soccer for example on international stage like they clean it up. So why, why didn’t they invent it? And this is something worth exploring because when you notice a pattern this loud and this strong...

[00:03:37] And a, and a lot of people, and I get very frustrated with this because it’s just wrong, is they go, “Oh, this is really about northern versus southern European populations.” Of the northern European populations which is the one counterexample to this rule e.g. they have invented no major sports or major artistic traditions [00:04:00] in the past 100 years?

[00:04:02] Ireland. Oh. The, the one Catholic population in Northern Europe. Well, I’ve gotta point this out, because I think that people, like they, they, they put Ireland in this bucket that doesn’t represent what Ireland actually is culturally. Like culturally, it actually has a lot in common with Catholic countries that you don’t see in Protestant countries.

[00:04:23] An example of this would be terrorist rates. In Protestant countries it is vanishingly rare in history, and we’ll probably do a different video on this when you are mad at the state that you go out and kill random civilians. This is actually a normal thing in Catholic country throughout the past 100 years.

[00:04:39] Speaker 9: sorry, if you wanna dig in more yourself because I don’t wanna, like, litigate this here. , You’ve got Spain, , Colombia, Italy, Peru, the Philippines, Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Chile france, Portugal, Belgium. as just examples of places where you’ve had Catholic terrorist groups you do not have a single case, , except for maybe Northern Ireland in response to the Catholic terrorism

[00:05:10] Oh, or m- maybe the KKK of a Protestant majority terrorist group in the past hundred years

[00:05:16] Malcolm Collins: So you see that. An- another thing is although this one is a little less stable, but the, the graping of victims of war. Now, we’ve talked in previous videos that if you look at Protestant colonial areas like in the United States, the Puritans, the Cavaliers, the backwoods you see no record of graping of captives, and yet you see this constantly.

[00:05:34] Speaker: A note here, I don’t mean like barely any records. I mean there isn’t... And the Puritans were fastidious in their record keeping and everybody hated the backwoods people, so if they had ever done this, people accused them of every other sin under the sun. We would know about it, right? Like , it’s actually insane that there isn’t a single recorded instance across hundreds of years of American history of this happening

[00:05:59] Speaker 4: And note when I first learned this, this was quite shocking for me to find this out as like a trend in history because it certainly wasn’t taught to me in school. , People were like, “Well, it’s probably because the Catholic colonies, they were much less likely to come with their families.” , Which actually doesn’t work as a pattern because if you look at Protestant missions like Captain Cook’s mission where they didn’t travel with their family, , yes, they had sex with native populations, but they famously traded the ships and nails to do it.

[00:06:25] They engaged in, w- I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that word on a podcast. , W- al- alternatively, I at one point asked an AI, “Do we know of a single Catholic majority colonization effort or a major journey that did not involve the graping of natives?” , And it could only name one, and it was a shipwreck when they had to live with natives.

[00:06:45] , That’s how frequent it was. But what was interesting to me, because I wanted to see if Ireland was actually a counterexample and if this was really a Protestant versus Catholic thing or a, , a Northern European versus Southern European thing, and the Ireland example pretty concretely, , hits for me that no, it’s actually a Protestant versus Catholic difference.

[00:07:03] And so to try to understand where it’s from is really important in the same way that people see me constantly studying Jews, , because they seem to out-compete my people in a number of areas. So I’m like, “What can I steal from their culture to make my own culture stronger?” It’s not so I can become them.

[00:07:17] And to a Catholic watching this, I’m not saying b-become like a Protestant or become a Protestant. I’m saying try to find out exactly what causes this cultural difference so that you can steal that technology if you think that this difference is actually a bad thing, either in terms of the, , the productivity in terms of new subcultures and new, , technologies and stuff like that or in terms of, , moral fidelity around things like SA.

[00:07:40] Malcolm Collins: If we look at the IRA there were actually quite a number of instances in which they would grape captives and then hide it.

[00:07:48] Simone Collins: Wait. L- like the IRA as in that group that was active fairly recently?

[00:07:54] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the terrorist Catholic group? Yeah. They, they’re, they were

[00:07:57] Simone Collins: What?

[00:07:58] Malcolm Collins: So with the [00:08:00] IRA, it was not institutionalized- What?

[00:08:03] in the same way that it was in, like Muslim controlled areas or something like that. It was more that it happened frequently with no clear counter example on the other side. In fact, I asked AI to, if there was any sort of large counter example on the other side that could be seen as, an equivalent to what the IRA did.

[00:08:22] And it was like, “Well, they did strip search people, which a lot of people complained about.” And it’s like, well, I can understand when there’s constant bombings of civilians, that you’re gonna strip search people. That seems like a reasonable thing to do to an ethnic group that the little explody.

[00:08:37] Speaker 2: I find it interesting how similar the, , IRA Catholic response to accusations of this stuff is to the Muslim one, where it’s like, “Hey, you’re graping your captives.” And it’s like, “Hey, you made us go through a metal detector in the airport, even women. That’s mean.” , And it’s like, how do you not understand that these things aren’t equivalent?

[00:08:57] , By the way, I will note here that of the Ropers, there are reports, , this was the of, , of potential, , grapes, , in Northern Ireland, but it was different because they were not systematic and they were punished and not hidden or covered up later

[00:09:12] Malcolm Collins: But yeah, with the IRA what they did is i- it was more like individual actors within the IRA would do this, and then the higher-ups within the IRA would attempt to hide that this was happening by disappearing victims, or moving people around, or forcing victims to be with their captors so it wasn’t grape.

[00:09:29] It was not good. It, it actually, like when I was reading into it, ‘cause I found it very fascinating and I wasn’t aware of this before this, it reminded- So

[00:09:36] Simone Collins: you just learned about this today? ‘Cause I’d never heard of this before.

[00:09:39] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I was unaware. I, well, I just decided to start googling stuff ‘cause I was like, wait, do they actually fit these other patterns that we see in Catholics historically?

[00:09:45] And what it appears to be within the, the, i- i- i- it, the whole story just sounds a lot like the church sex scandal that they just dealt with at, at the Vatican level. Where it wasn’t like the Vatican made it an institutional policy, but whenever it was found, it would be like covered up.

[00:10:04] Speaker 3: What is also really interesting to me is how even Catholics, like, in our fan base respond to learning about Catholic history, where they’re like, “Don’t talk about th- don’t talk about the negative things.” , Can you guys not fight over here where I’m recording? And that instinct aligns very much with the IRAs or even the Vatican’s instinct, which is that when there were systemic rapes happening, to cover it up or not talk about it or not look at it because it could make their group look bad.

[00:10:33] Whereas on the opposite Protestant side, when our people have done bad things, as I’ve talked about when I’ve talked about, like, my own people, the Backwards people repeatedly in episodes, I always highlight when they did really bad things, , because I think, like, I don’t know, maybe this is, like, a difference in value system, but I think that this particular difference could be upstream of a lot of the cultural differences we see in the two groups , is your instinct when you see a systemic pattern that you may not want to repeat, you say, “Oh, this is bad.

[00:11:04] Don’t do it,” or say, “How dare you talk about it because it makes our community look bad?”

[00:11:08] Speaker 10: And if you think, oh, the IRA isn’t really that bad, the British-- What did the British really do to the Irish? Nothing. , During the, , potato famine is potentially the worst of what you can say they did, which was not giving enough aid, but they did give aid when that wasn’t normal during that period.

[00:11:25] , And that was hundreds of years ago. , When the IRA was killing innocent civilians, what did they want their freedom to do? To sell out their country and their country’s future to the Vatican’s agenda of endless immigration, which is what Ireland has done, which is why Ireland no longer has its own unique culture at this point

[00:11:46] Malcolm Collins: So it’s very interesting to, to read this.

[00:11:49] Th- so the point I’m making here is this actually appears to be a genuine Protestant versus Catholic difference. In fact, the one country that is the best counterexample to this trend is I decided to start doing [00:12:00] this for other things as well. I was like, “Well, what about top video games globally, right?

[00:12:05] Where, where are they all made?” And again with top video games globally you got it, it, it was very clear it was either Protestant majority or it was Japan or Korea or China. So

[00:12:18] Simone Collins: what about, like, Poland and Romania? Do-

[00:12:19] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, Poland was the one counterexample. CD Projekt Red is clearly I mean, one of the top producers of, of, of high-quality video games.

[00:12:29] And Poland has had some other video game studios that I really like. The people who made Frostpunk are from Poland, and I, I quite like that game.

[00:12:35] Simone Collins: So- I feel like every time I hear about, like, a really cool, weird team that’s still functional, it’s, yeah, in a Catholic majority-

[00:12:43] Malcolm Collins: Where, where is the team that made Helldivers 2 based?

[00:12:44] Simone Collins: Ooh, good question. Where?

[00:12:51] Malcolm Collins: The other counter example you could say is Stockholm. So, no. The other counter example you could say is Ubisoft, which has long had headquarters in Quebec, but they didn’t make their top games win out of their Quebec studio or, or during the period it was the development was happening in Quebec and Spain.

[00:13:06]

[00:13:06] Speaker 5: Another fun counter example is Expedition 33 by Clair Obscur, , which I guess could be considered a major game. , It was made in France

[00:13:15] And Kingdom Come Deliverance, which was made in the Czech Republic

[00:13:18] Malcolm Collins: So, it’s, it’s an interesting pattern that we see across the board, and here I’m, I’m noting all of this within the context of, but Catholic regions are still seen as the dominant regions in terms of like cultural authority, e- e.g. Paris and Italy. And so then the next thing I decided to look at is I was like, well, maybe it’s an issue of population, right?

[00:13:41] Like I w- I wasn’t sure about what the, the population levels were in, in, in the world during these periods. And they’re actually pretty stable in terms of like global percentages with Catholics typically being around 16.5% and Protestants typically being at around 7%. But basically this means that the Catholics who were producing none of this stuff had a bit over double the population of the Protestants.

[00:14:04] And I’m gonna note here before I go further, I only just discovered this as like a shower thought today. This is not something that, like, I went into with an agenda to make some sort of an argument. And this is one of the things where I have, like, Catholic fans, and they’re like, “Why do you bring up these differences so often,” right?

[00:14:20] Like, they’re... And I’m like, because they’re stark, they tell us something about Western civilization, the trajectory of Western civilization, and they tell us something about, I mean, presumably like one of the things I often say as someone with a Protestant tradition is I look to the Jews. People are like, “Why are you so obsessed with the Jews?

[00:14:40] Why are you always, like, studying Jewish culture and everything like that?” And I was like, because Jewish culture clearly out-competes Protestant culture. They produce wealthier people. They produce people more likely to end up in positions of power. They produce way more than us. This is why with Christmas music I was like, it might be the one counter example.

[00:14:56] Mm-hmm. Is you could argue that Christmas music was actually made by Jews.

[00:14:59] Simone Collins: That’s what I was... That’s, that’s the common thing. That’s what I

[00:15:01] Malcolm Collins: was alluding to. But it was in a Protestant majority region. The Christmas songs

[00:15:04] Simone Collins: made by Jews- Oh ... weren’t being made in Israel ... I see what you’re trying to do.

[00:15:07] Whatever. I- whatever.

[00:15:08] Speaker 6: And I will note here that this is actually important to this wider argument and is why I’m not checking the individual religions of the individual, , you know, people involved in the creations of these movements, , is because we’re talking about Protestant majority versus Catholic majority regions.

[00:15:23] So some of the people involved in like the creation of punk or goth or whatever may have been Catholic, , or, , in the creation of like major video game studios within Protestant majority regions. Catholics seem to act very differently when they’re in a Protestant majority region. , If we want to talk about how differently, a look at the Latin American fertility rate in the continental United States, where it is astonishingly high if you compare it with the, , Latin American fertility rate anywhere in Latin America or in Catholic majority US, states like Puerto Rico or protectorates.

[00:15:56] I forget what you call Puerto Rico, but , they, that is the lowest fertility state in the [00:16:00] United States. Whereas immigrants from that region, if they live in another area, Hispanic immigrants in the United States have a fertility rate of like 2.4 or something like that, which is just like crazy high. , So Catholics don’t at all behave like they normally do when they’re a minority population.

[00:16:14] And so I’m not focused on that as much.

[00:16:17] Simone Collins: By the way, when it comes to, like, biases with religions, I think what people are m- not getting right about us, or what they might be getting confused about, is they’re so stuck with seeing religion as identity, and you see religion as, like, an interchangeable technology. And so you’re obviously- or like a medication, right?

[00:16:34] Like, the people who are taking Wegovy are getting this outcome. The people who are taking Ozempic are getting this outcome. And you just keep, like, dunking on certain treatment situations because you see them producing outcomes e- either seen to be more desirable or less desirable.

[00:16:49] Malcolm Collins: Right. It’s

[00:16:50] Simone Collins: not about

[00:16:50] Malcolm Collins: like-

[00:16:51] Simone Collins: And again, this is, this is where it comes-

[00:16:51] I’m with this team. It’s about- ...

[00:16:52] Malcolm Collins: to the Jewish thing that I’m talking about here. Yeah. Right? Yeah,

[00:16:55] Simone Collins: yeah.

[00:16:55] Malcolm Collins: Like, I’m not saying... Like, if I was looking at every religious tradition on Earth and I was just like, I’m gonna choose the tradition that gives me the most benefits, right? Like, that, that seems to produce the best outcome.

[00:17:07] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:17:07] Malcolm Collins: What I would look to, and I think the data is just clear on this in terms of income, in terms of recidi- like the rates at which people deconvert out, the number of kids people have, attrition ... i- in, in high tech areas especially- Mm-hmm ... it’s clearly Israel, right? Like, they’ve even built their own ethnostate.

[00:17:22] Well, this

[00:17:22] Simone Collins: is why there’s all those Chinese books titled something like How to Make Money Like a Jew. Like, people get it, you know?

[00:17:28] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This is not a mystery. But when I look at... And, and I think that I can, I can talk like that, and people don’t think, “Oh, you’re bashing Protestantism by saying that.” No, I’m just saying something that appears to be, by the data, objectively true.

[00:17:40] And because of that, I don’t then become Jewish, right? Like, what I do is I try to understand why the Jews are out-competing my people within those specific domains, and I try to reverse engineer and steal their cultural technology. I guess you could say steal it. Like, Jews are like, “Oh, it’s so flattering that you’re dissecting our culture and trying to understand it deeply.”

[00:18:00] And I’m like, “No, you probably wouldn’t think it was that flattering if you knew the history of my people.” Which I’ve pointed out in the past. We have a, a history of doing this. Specifically the backwards people they would, for example, with the Native Americans, they fastidiously studied the way that they farmed, the way that they lived, and they adopt many of those techniques when they first moved into the Americas in the way that a lot of Am- other American traditions didn’t.

[00:18:22] Because they were like, “Well, this seems to be better within this cultural and technological context, so, like, let’s understand it. Let’s start acting this way. Let’s start dressing this way.” And I feel that, you know, I, I, it’s important that I understand why they’re... And this is the same thing with Catholics.

[00:18:37] I’m not saying you know, deconvert from Catholicism over this or something like that. I’m saying understand why we might be seeing this historical pattern so that you can steal the technology, steal, reverse engineer, whatever, to make your own tradition more robust.

[00:18:55] Simone Collins: Sorry, Octavian just woke up Carry on.

[00:19:00] Malcolm Collins: But and I, and I think that that’s, that’s probably doable, but it only comes downstream of properly identifying what’s leading to this. In the same way that if you look at... And, and, and one of the most stupid things a person could do, and, and, and this is why I have so much reactive disgust when people do this, is they’re like, “Oh, the Jews have more stuff because they’re cheating.”

[00:19:22] Right? It’s very much like what, like, Black people in America will do. They’ll be like, “Well, the whites have more...” Not, not all Black people. Like, some Black people are like, “Oh,” like, “let’s study these different cultures, why they’re doing well relative to our culture, and what can we take from them?”

[00:19:34] They’ll just be like, “Well, white culture stole all this stuff. All these colonizers, all those, you know, whatever, they took everything.” And it’s like, well, then how do you, how do you take things in the way that they take things? How do you... Like, even if that’s the case you’re playing a civilizational battle with no holds barred, right?

[00:19:49] Like, even if it’s the case that they somehow built a shadowy cabal that stole everything, why can’t-

[00:19:56] Simone Collins: Then how do you build your own shadowy cabal? Get on it. [00:20:00]

[00:20:00] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and I, I, I’ve actually pointed out in the past that the, the shadowy cabal thing, Catholics have actually been w- like, way better than Protestants at this.

[00:20:07] And right

[00:20:07] Simone Collins: now they- In terms of

[00:20:09] Malcolm Collins: shadowy cabals. They control a third of the United States government because they control the majority of the Supreme Court. Now the, the, the, the figures they control within the... I mean, I think it’s right now only three people on the Supreme Court are not Catholic or half Catholic, which is just astonishing i- in terms of the level of control.

[00:20:25] Anyone else would be like, “This is a conspiracy.” Especially because the Federalist Society, which is, like, an invitation-only society that you could call something of a secret society, it’s not entirely secret i- is what largely architected this which is also run by Catholics. So you could argue oh, oh, they put that together.

[00:20:41] So I don’t think it’s, it’s the lack of an ability to form shadowy cabals in the way that some people imagine that, that, I don’t know, Jews or whites do or something like that. Because if you, if you, if you diagnose it wrong, right? Like, if your diagnosis is this is because they stole it or shadowy cabals or something like that then the way that you try to react is going to be wrong.

[00:21:03] And if the way that you react is wrong, that can be civilizationally bad for your people. Like, we’re, we’re t- we’re talking about the death of your culture, right? Like- Yeah ... you, you have less and less money over time, you are expending effort and cultural credits, because when you form shadowy cabals, it often ends up hurting you on things that don’t matter.

[00:21:22] W- but, but also you could even ask, is this an important thing? Is it important that Catholic majority areas do not create new cultural trends? You know, new forms of music, new forms of sports, new forms of artistic mediums. Is that relevant? Actually, now that I was just thinking- The, all of the Catholic video game hits have been just re-innovations of other styles of video games that had already been well established in Protestant majority countries What,

[00:21:53] Simone Collins: what is an example of a Catholic video game hit?

[00:21:57] Malcolm Collins: The Witcher.

[00:21:58] Simone Collins: Oh.

[00:21:59] Malcolm Collins: The Witcher would’ve just been a, a redo. And, and I think when you’re trying to d- just so you guys know, I’m sort of trying to think through this right now on this stream. I do not have a high prescriptive answer as to why. I think Poland might be the key here. But no, Poland’s not the key, because if Poland’s just doing what was invented in Protestant countries but slightly better, then it’s performing the same function within video games that you know, Italy’s fashion scene performs or France’s fashion scene performs within the fashion industry So that doesn’t help.

[00:22:36] So what is it? What is it? The best- Well,

[00:22:39] Simone Collins: I mean, I think fundamentally, a, a theme that I get from Catholic friends who talk with us about matters of religion is don’t always tear things down and reinvent them. Build up and improve and iterate on that which is good. It’s about feeding into an institution and an unbroken tradition.

[00:23:00] Whereas Protestantism is pathologically inventive, which is why one of the things on Scott Alexander’s Puritan checklist was, like, has invented five things or something like that. There... Once you break the seal and you choose to become a Protestant or grow up in that tradition, you know, it’s, it’s part of this, well, if it’s not good, make it better.

[00:23:23] Make a new one. Make a new version. And I could see that translating from religion to all walks of life.

[00:23:31] Malcolm Collins: That is actually really, really fascinating. Like is the intuition... Because there, there actually is, like if you think about the intuition of I am aware of, like, five good enough sports, and then you deciding, “I’m gonna make up a new sport,” right?

[00:23:50] That’s a actually kind of a weird thing to do. Now that you mention it.

[00:23:57] Simone Collins: It’s really weird. I- do you remember what they said [00:24:00] about the folk ways of sports in Puritan colonies? ‘Cause I remember them being quite interesting, and it was all about moderation and not doing it too much. And they were very different from the, the blood sports of the cavalier subculture.

[00:24:12] But yeah, I can’t remember what was said about sports folk ways in the, the Puritan group of American colonists. But it was

[00:24:23] Malcolm Collins: distinct- A- and by the way ... and it was inventive ... the cavaliers, in terms of the graping of captives things, the cavaliers among the Protestant groups are the big counter example. They definitely graped slaves a lot.

[00:24:33] Simone Collins: Well, and they, and they also engaged in much more cruel sports. Like, remember the, one of them had to do with hanging a b- a live bird from a tree, and then, like, running up to it really, or riding up to it really fast on a horse and trying to hit it with a stick piñata style or something like that?

[00:24:47] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Frankly, I find cavalier culture, like, quite disgusting- ... and I, I’m glad it’s going extinct.

[00:24:51] Simone Collins: Sorry to those of you who listen to the podcast and actively identify with it. A little bit of rivalry is a good thing.

[00:24:58] Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, it’s, it’s mostly going... It’s, cavalier culture, what it evolved into, is what you could call frat culture.

[00:25:04] Like, ch- cheerleaders, fraternity The

[00:25:05] Simone Collins: southern gentleman, yeah.

[00:25:07] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And, and frat culture has been heavily destroyed by wokeism. And the reason it was so susceptible to wokeism, and I think this comes out of the cavalier tradition more broadly, is it is heavily status seeking. Like, it wants to be among the cultural elite..

[00:25:25] Simone Collins: So you were saying basically as, because they pursue status and because the cultural elite and the status generators became woke, which also condemned most of the inappropriate patriarchal, often violent and ruthless defining characteristics of, of cavalier culture, it, it forced them to literally strip away everything that made their culture actually unique, thus rendering them obsolete.

[00:25:55] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:25:56] Simone Collins: Mm.

[00:25:56] Malcolm Collins: A- any culture that’s status-seeking is very susceptible to wokeism. And I think that this is why some of the, like, traditional forms of Christianity were so susceptible to it. But-

[00:26:05] Simone Collins: Well, and this is why we’re, we’re strong advocates of the LDS church s- staying weird. Keep Mormons weird because otherwise they will go extinct.

[00:26:14] And unfortunately, the Disneylandification and mainstreamification of Mormon culture- But it, it’s the same with Catholicism ... this desire to be aspirational. I mean, this,

[00:26:21] Malcolm Collins: this is not germane to this topic, but it’s why we support organizations like SSPX so much.

[00:26:25] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:26:25] Malcolm Collins: Is because they keep Catholicism weird.

[00:26:27] Simone Collins: Yes.

[00:26:28] Malcolm Collins: And by weird, what we mean is different from mainstream cultural values-

[00:26:33] Simone Collins: Costly

[00:26:33] Malcolm Collins: to

[00:26:33] Simone Collins: engage in ... practices. Hard, difficult, re- requiring of sacrifices, requiring of feeling othered. All of those things are features, not bugs.

[00:26:42] Speaker: the new pope is apparently chill AF.

[00:26:45] Speaker 4: And Jesus said, “I shall not bogart salvation. Heaven is dead as Litfam.

[00:26:51] Ocasio-Cortez 2024.”

[00:26:53] Speaker: I need one of you to go to Rome and brainwash the Pope into a hardcore religious conservative overnight.

[00:26:59] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, having beliefs that will make other people feel uncomfortable, right? Like- Yes

[00:27:02] I mean, genuinely we support these organizations ‘cause I want an iteration of them to survive, but that also requires some, like, like, truth of them. So I think the, the point that you make is really, really good. It’s are you the type of person ... I mean, think about it with a musical t- trend or something like this.

[00:27:18] You see other musicians and this is actually interesting when it comes to status seeking, right? If a musical tradition or if a stylistic tradition is already established and you see it and you are a fundamentally status-seeking individual, it makes little sense to attempt to try something entirely new because that doesn’t gain you status.

[00:27:40] In- Well, it, it does in one way, okay? It’s do you want to be perceived as high status by the majority or do you want to be the highest status person within your small community? If you are the second, right, like if I [00:28:00] can’t be the top jock then I’ll just become a goth, right? Or invent something new.

[00:28:04] I think that might be like a, a psychological difference in these communities that may lead to the creation of more things. But the question is, is... By the way, I decided to look up because the one sport that it gave to Catholics was cycling and I was like, “I didn’t know the bicycle was invented in a Catholic majority country,” and it wasn’t.

[00:28:21] Oh. It was invented in Germany. So-

[00:28:24] Simone Collins: That’s, it- bicycles are so freaking German. That’s amazing. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Which is, which is a

[00:28:28] Malcolm Collins: 50/50 country or historically-

[00:28:31] Simone Collins: It’s a very Catholic- ... I mean slightly more Protestant ... and it’s, as we’ve discussed in other episodes, a place where the Catholic Church has disproportionate levels of power because tax revenue goes directly...

[00:28:39] Like, if you identify as a Catholic, your tax revenue goes partially to the Catholic Church and the only way you can get out of it is like- Well, yeah, they tried to take

[00:28:46] Malcolm Collins: over and like split from the Catholic Church and like almost all of their clergy is like 90% plus Well, no, they, they tried to have,

[00:28:50] Simone Collins: They had, they tried to have control of their finances, like their own finances, probably because they’re like, “Look, we’re actually getting a lot of essentially guaranteed revenue.

[00:28:58] We would rather manage it ourselves.” Yeah ‘Cause I mean, what?

[00:29:03] Malcolm Collins: Well, I mean, and they, they won these votes. It was like 90% votes Yeah. Like, you can see our video on that, that time that like a, a portion of the Catholic Church tried to split. You know, that was, that was a wild thing to learn about having happened recently.

[00:29:15] So that’s one thing. I, I, I, yeah, I do think that there is something like deeply psychologically harmful about the idea that it’s always better to improve what you already have and to try to make something that’s entirely new, because that’s where you get big technological breakthroughs, right?

[00:29:31] That’s where you get like the next big thing. That’s how we get to the stars, right? But what’s also interesting is other cultures that believe in iterative improvement, like I would say Japan and Korea are cultures that believe in iterative improvement. But both of those cultures have created styles.

[00:29:49] In fact, Japan is like a style factory

[00:29:52] Simone Collins: that are- Yeah, no, except that Japan’s styles are extremely iterative based on other cultures.

[00:29:57] Malcolm Collins: Derivative, yeah.

[00:29:58] Simone Collins: The, sorry, yeah, der- derivative. So that’s not even... I, I, I don’t think that holds.

[00:30:03] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess you would say you probably want a culture with some people from each group, right?

[00:30:08] Like a, a world with, with some people from

[00:30:10] Simone Collins: each group. Obviously. That’s one of the reasons why we got into perdidals in the first place, is we were really concerned that only certain viewpoints would be represented in the future when really we get maximum value when a bunch of different cultural subsets and approaches interact.

[00:30:25] Malcolm Collins: Ugh. Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think intuitionally this is a very interesting thing because it’s one of these things where like when I’m talking to Catholics they’re like, “Well, don’t you want to be part of this like tradition that determines what’s true and is the sole tr- source of what’s...” And I’m like, “Like literally, there is nothing that would counter sell me against joining a movement than what you just said.”

[00:30:48] Like, of course I don’t want somebody else determining what is existentially true about reality. Like that, that would have a hugely negative effects on my ability to determine what’s true about reality, which I would see as a very negative thing.

[00:31:00] Speaker 14: Figuring things out for yourself is the only freedom anyone really has. Use that freedom. Make up your own mind.

[00:31:06] Malcolm Collins: And of course, I don’t want somebody else out there telling me how to style myself, how to live myself.

[00:31:12] But what’s interesting is I think even the Catholic tradition has the tools to build this potentially in a way that’s even superior to Protestantism if they do it right where, you know, with religious orders and stuff like that. They have historically done this a lot. I mean, religious orders are if nothing else, I mean, the Opus Dei- The way that they live their life could be thought of as differentiated as, well, not as differentiated as Gauss, but like maybe like 10% as differentiated as Gauss.

[00:31:43] I mean, hey, Gauss don’t do like mortification and stuff like that, right? You know. Or the regular daily rituals. So yeah, I, I say it’s differentiated. But they just have a formalized system for doing it. But here’s the thing I don’t understand. And, and again, I think some of the changes where like groups are different for a [00:32:00] very long period of time can become biological, ‘cause like when I have Catholic friends who, you know, we talk about problems in the Vatican, we talk about ways that it could be done better, and I’m always like, because this is my intuition as someone from a Protestant intellectual background, I’m always like why don’t you just start your own order?”

[00:32:18] Like, you could email the Vatican and be like, “Hey, like, let’s start an order where like the Opus Dei treats, you know, daily work as if it’s a religious duty, like raising and having the next generation, caring for the next generation, caring for...” Like all of this would fit very well within things the Vatican would presumably want, unless they’ve just gone like fully evil at this point, right?

[00:32:38] Like, if they’re just like, “No, we hate babies now too.” Why not just like go and, and start, at least pitch that, right? And, and there’s been multiple like devote people I’ve known, so devote that they seriously thought about joining the priesthood or, you know, they have or they’re, you know, interested in.

[00:32:54] Like really, and, and it never gets to step two with them. They never draft anything. They never put anything together. They never email anyone. They never like, “Okay, like let’s, let’s do the next thing.” Which is interesting, because I’ve gone to Mormons with similar pitches and, and, and they have followed suit.

[00:33:10] They’re like, “Oh yeah, like I should, I should email the central, you know, temple about this. This is a good idea. Like, let’s push this up to the local bishop. Let’s, you know, see,” but why? Why do they not try to make things better? I could, I have two theories about this. It could be that they just don’t believe that the, like, they don’t actually have faith that the central institution can fix itself even if they put their energy into it, and so they’re

[00:33:33] Or they expect it to, like, push back on them and be like, “No,” or they’re punished in some way for doing this. I don’t know. Or it could be th- they don’t actually see fixing the central institution as core to fixing the the wider system because the central institution they’ve already written off is so divorced from their daily experience as a Catholic.

[00:33:54] Simone Collins: Hmm. It’s ... I, I have extreme difficulty engaging with that particular mindset. My goal is, or default assumption is it is always better to just throw out the thing and try again. Which I guess-

[00:34:12] Malcolm Collins: Yeah ... could

[00:34:12] Simone Collins: be seen as excessively wasteful That’s always my default as

[00:34:14] Malcolm Collins: well.

[00:34:14] Simone Collins: Yeah. Wasteful, stupid, not likely to lead to long-term- Well, the, the, the

[00:34:19] Malcolm Collins: downside-

[00:34:20] the same progress ... of this way of thinking, and it does have a big downside- Mm-hmm ... is the one that Redeem Zoomer fights against. Oh. So what he points out is if you’re always just like, “Well, it’s been captured, it’s not good anymore, we’re gonna do it new and we’re gonna do it better, we’re gonna do it awesome,” you lose all of the wealth that accumulated within the old thing.

[00:34:40] Mm-hmm. So you lose all of the beautiful old churches you lose all of the money that people had donated to the religious institution and then that gets captured by the infiltrators, the woke infiltrators or whatever infiltrating group. And he even points out you don’t even need that many people because they’re looking for young leadership.

[00:34:57] You know, if you can get in- Yeah ... yeah, I mean, I, even, I go even so far as once techno-puritism becomes larger I think it may even make sense to intentionally structure young families in regions with sort of dying institutions like this to capture their leadership boards covertly take them over, and then repurpose them for our stuff.

[00:35:18] I, like, I think that that is, is very doable when you only need, like, five or six people to control voting and they just don’t have a lot of young people and so all you need to do is wait them out, right? Hmm. And then you can recapture old religious institutions quite easily from the, from the wokies.

[00:35:31] But-

[00:35:35] God, I’m, I’m, sorry, I’m, I’m, I’m trying to think through. Is that... That’s... It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that you lose all the wealth, because losing all the wealth, if you think it like w- why a lot of America was founded, like the early groups in America- Yeah ... a lot of it was like, “Get,” like, “Let’s go somewhere new.

[00:35:51] Let’s create

[00:35:52] Simone Collins: something.” Yeah. We, we don’t care about wealth, we care about earning potential. And there’s- Yeah ... earning potential in violent innovation. [00:36:00]

[00:36:00] Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. Well-

[00:36:01] Simone Collins: It’s high risk, high reward, but when, when you have a diversified portfolio, you’re gonna see Well, I

[00:36:08] Malcolm Collins: mean, Jews get the best of both worlds, right?

[00:36:10] Which- Hmm ... is one of the th- they, but they deal with a huge negative externality because of it, which I don’t think is worth it. So let’s talk about how Jews avoid this.

[00:36:19] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:36:19] Malcolm Collins: What Jews do is they’re constantly splitting off from each other with like, “Oh, I have a new idea about how to do Judaism,” or there’s some new hot rabbi or whatever who’s like the new coolest guy in town.

[00:36:29] And y- we even talked about how within Judaism you can like go and be like, “That rabbi is wrong,” like in the middle of like a thing, right? And you get some-

[00:36:37] Simone Collins: Yeah, there, there’s a more live but overly, we would say, charisma-heavy meritocracy.

[00:36:44] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Mer- m- well, it, it’s charisma-heavy and rote memorization heavy and- Yeah

[00:36:48] Scholarship heavy. Which isn’t always a bad thing. And, and then also the groups that have more children out-compete the other groups, right? You know. Like in the early ... If, if you look at the early Hasidic movement it’s, it’s very clear that like the Baal Shem Tov and his group was not able to win the intellectual game.

[00:37:05] All of the elites were mis- mis- misnom- they, they all thought he was a, a crazy nut job mystic and you shouldn’t follow him and don’t do that. And he ended up winning because his groups had higher fertility rates. And, and th- through persistence and high fertility rates was really ... He’s a great example of this.

[00:37:25] His community, now the Hasidic community, is able to reintegrate with the rest of the Jewish community and capture their old institutions. And that’s the thing that allows it, is because it’s the idea of all Jews are fundamentally Jews. Like you, secular Jew, who says that they hate everything about my tradition and everything like that and is working to destroy, you know, Israel, is working to

[00:37:48] Or the, the, the ... ‘Cause you know, there are Hasidic groups that are also anti-Zionist, right? Like, oh, well it doesn’t matter. Even if you work against Jewish interests if you are matrilineally Jewish, then you are really Jewish, and you can always come back and be fully Jewish. And because of this, you never can get a full split within the Jewish community.

[00:38:09] And if we talk about how diverse Judaism ... Th- this is not a modern thing within Judaism. This, this goes back to the very earliest days of Judaism. If you go back to the differences in beliefs between the Sadducees and the Pharisees the Sadducees, the, the ones who actually ran the temple that like the Jews wail outside of and everything like that these days there was one period where like one Pharisee queen had like- A l- c- could be said to be running it, but for almost all of Jewish history it’s run by the Sadducees.

[00:38:35] They didn’t believe in an afterlife, they didn’t believe in angels, they didn’t believe in demons, they didn’t believe in the vast majority of what we call the Old Testament. They only believed, I think it was up until the, the, the part about Moses this, this is the difference between what they call the, the oral and the written Torah during that period.

[00:38:52] Now of course it’s all written today. But i- ironically, the Pharisees, in terms of like all of the things they believe about reality, you know, An afterlife, demons, angels, a messianic period that was coming in the near future. We’re, we’re dramatically closer on like a scale of closeness to Christians than they were to the Sadducees, this group that ruled over them institutionally, which is one of the things I’ve always found really weird about Judaism, this pining after this symbol like the temple.

[00:39:25] Which to me would’ve been a, a symbol of oppression by an outside group that had very little theologically or metaphysically in common with me. And saw me as an... A, a- what, what’s funny is techno-puritanism, like if you’re, if you’re laying all the religions out there is actually probably like theologically and metaphysically way, way, way, way, way closer to what the Sadducees believed than modern Judaism is.

[00:39:51] If you go through all our tracts and everything like that. But again, none of this matters to Jews because for Jews it’s like what you call yourself. So why, what is the negative externality of this? This never split mentality, right? [00:40:00] Like split as much as you want, but it’s never a true split as long as you have the matrilineal line.

[00:40:04] What we’ve talked about it before. It’s that now all of a sudden you become responsible or your group becomes branded by all of the bad actors who have a shared identity. So now you get hit with the negativity with the Orthodox Jews who are you know, overly draining from, you know, in, in, in sort of scammy, if technically legal ways you know, what, what, what are these systems? Social systems, right? Which o- obviously there’s been a number of scandals about that right now. Or who are protecting you know, Jewish scammers, like the hospital guy we talked about in the episode, that the, the ADL when... No, that, that was Chabad who went out of their way to protect him.

[00:40:47] Or when like the ADL, you know, goes after the YouTuber for, for bringing up this community that’s like, you know, actively like a really big negative externality on the people around them, and like everybody knows some Orthodox communities do this. You end up inheriting the sins of groups as diverse as like, for example, when, when, when people talk about like Jewish conspiracies, like controlling everything they’re often...

[00:41:11] And then they point to like, “Look at the guy who’s running X. Look at the guy who’s running Y.” These guys are often Reform Jews, right? Like there is no reason for Orthodox Jews to be eating the sins of Reform Jews like this, and yet the Jewish community just tanks it. Like, they’re just like, “Oh yeah, like, he’s still technically a Jew,” instead of saying what, you know, any Christian would say is, “That guy is not in any meaningfully w- way what I am.

[00:41:39] Like even if he calls himself a Christian, he’s not the same sort of thing that I am.” And that I think is, is actually one of the leading causes of antisemitism is, is having to tank bad actors without any ability to culturally police those bad actors because they actually have culturally no shared systems with you at that particular moment.

[00:42:04] I think it’s e- it, it, it’s better to lose accumulated wealth than it is to... but I mean, I gotta look at outcomes for the Jews, and they’re doing quite well. So is it? That’s, that’s... I mean, I tried to take inspiration from that when I built the way the index could work so that you didn’t have that.

[00:42:18] Like, people could actually be excommunicated or, you know, forced out. But yeah. What, what are your thoughts, Simone, on this, this particular... And I, I, I really want to emphasize for people, this is not a... When we’re looking at something that is so holistic, like all of the sports types, all of the stylistic types, so holistic a- a- and, and, and for such a long period, like 100 years like it, it’s worth noting.

[00:42:44] It’s worth picking up on. It’s w- it’s worth saying to yourself, “There’s something here. What is it?” What are your thoughts, Simone?

[00:42:53] Simone Collins: I think people intuitively have biases in favor of hiring people with certain religious backgrounds. Like, there are reasons why there seem to be disproportionate numbers of Mormons working for government organizations like the CIA, why there’s a disproportionate number of Jews and Catholics on the Supreme Court.

[00:43:13] It, it, it’s not just, I think, selection from candidates. I think also non-members of those cultures see Certain specialties being useful and that, that can play into it. And I, I do think that people may not consciously realize it, but they might look at someone and be like, “Oh, it’s a Jew. They, like, fit into this slot in my mind.

[00:43:42] Like, they’re, they’re gonna be good for this,” or, “Oh, they’re a Protestant.” Like, this is the kind of... When people talk about culture fit when they’re deciding whether to invest in someone or hire someone, sometimes I wonder if this is what they’re thinking about. Like, culture fit isn’t necessarily you will work well in [00:44:00] this company because you believe in this, like, these artificially created tenets that are in our HR guide, but rather, oh, like, you’re a Protestant, you get it, you’re gonna invent everything anew, you’re gonna be really comfortable with that, or, oh, you’re a Catholic, you’re more likely to be comfortable fixing an existing system, m- navigating within it.

[00:44:20] Oh, you’re a Mormon, you’re gonna be really good with sales with belligerent outsiders and g- making them comfortable and at ease and being really polite but also showing loyalty and consistency with an organization that takes good care of you. Like, whatever, right? But I, I do think that that feeds into-

[00:44:36] Malcolm Collins: Yeah

[00:44:36] these biases. I’m, I’m going into AI to see if this, this trend also holds with inventions. Mm. Like, like major inventions. Oh,

[00:44:41] Simone Collins: I would be shocked if it didn’t. Come on. I mean, yes, it’s worth I guess it’s worth checking, but I w- I did not

[00:44:47] Malcolm Collins: even think to check that. Well, I mean, I wanna, I wanna, I don’t wanna, like, just come out with this and be like, Okay

[00:44:50] I mean, I’m gonna, I’m gonna think inventions are gonna have a, an unusually high number of Jews in them, right? Like-

[00:44:56] Simone Collins: Mm-mm. I don’t think so What proportion of Silicon Valley unicorn startups were founded by people with Protestant backgrounds or heritage?

[00:45:05] Malcolm Collins: Okay, so let’s, let’s have a look at this. It did, it did inventions, major inventions of the last 100 years.

[00:45:11] The train, the steam locomotive, railway, Protestant. The plane powered controlled flight, Protestant. Refrigeration, Protestant. Engines, Protestant. Th- this was eng- steam engines. Th- so that was Protestant. Engines, internal combustion. This was mixed but strong Protestant areas like Prussia.

[00:45:31] It says German contribution heavily from Protestant area. It, it doesn’t seem... Okay penicillin, Protestant. Jets, Protestant. Nukes, Protestant. Although I, I would imagine nukes are you could also say Jews. Yeah, that’s, that’s absolutely wild,

[00:45:48] Simone Collins: that trend. I, like, I just can’t believe they don’t...

[00:45:51] They, in school, they don’t tell you

[00:45:52] Malcolm Collins: about how these things are d- like, because we’re supposed to believe everyone’s the same, nobody tells you like, “Oh, the, these, these things are actually different. These groups are actually different in, in outcomes.”

[00:46:03] Speaker 7: And what’s funny is throughout this entire piece, I’ve never really looked at other countries. I haven’t been talking about Africa or the Middle East, , or, , you know, the Eastern Orthodox traditions, because we all know, like, come on, we know when we’re looking at like major cultural innovations and everything like that, , , the people who are like edgy and accept that people are different.

[00:46:23] I just think that’s what’s often not accepted is culturally, at least the Catholic majority areas are, , closer to, you know, , these other regions than they are to the Protestant areas. But we often lump them in because we have become so blinded by, I guess, , just realizing that racial groups are different, that we basically see all white cultural groups as being broadly the same.

[00:46:48] And one of, the wider points that I think our fans should internalize , is this is not true. And we have a lot of fans from like different cultural backgrounds and everything like that, different ethnic backgrounds. , And I think , that doesn’t exclude you from being like other groups may be better for me and I can learn from them.

[00:47:03] In the same way that like me saying I think the Jews have outcompeted Protestants at pretty much every turn in the past 50 years at least. , So what can we learn to do better than them? , When we’re approaching all of these things, honestly, you only benefit from seeing the flaws within your own system and from somebody like giving you the, the truth bomb of like, “Okay, this isn’t working, this isn’t working.

[00:47:26] How do we make this work?” If somebody does that to you and your response is, “I don’t wanna think about that, I don’t wanna look at that, or that’s not true,” when it’s demonstrably true in everything we’re looking at, at the evidence here, then you will never improve. Your people will never come out on top.

[00:47:40] You will never be among the alliance of the people who come out on top because you’re just not useful. You will always stagnate in your inadequacies. ,

[00:47:49] Speaker 19: One of our fans from Latin America was like, “Well, you know, if you appealed more to Catholics, if you didn’t mention the negatives about Catholic history, , think about all the people you could get on team from like Latin American countries [00:48:00] which are joining the right increasingly.” And it’s like, I’m not in this about numbers.

[00:48:06] What I care about is people plus technological capacity or innovative capacity. If a group isn’t creating technology, then they’re not really relevant in terms of societal power. You know, I could get a thousand Somalians on team in Somalia , and the reality is that they’re not really that relevant.

[00:48:25] So my goal is to improve people because I think every group can be improved, but you can only improve a group from that group internalizing and coming up with solutions to the areas that they are falling behind other groups

[00:48:39] like clearly there are lots of individual Catholics who I really like and who I think are really good people, and even the majority of individual Catholics I’ve met in my life, , almost every individual Catholic I’ve met in my life. But I also can’t ignore the difference in grave statistics. I can’t ignore the difference in terrorism statistics.

[00:48:57] I can’t ignore the difference in,

[00:48:59] Military coup

[00:49:00] Speaker 12: statistics. I can’t ignore the difference in innovation statistics or cultural creation statistics.

[00:49:06] Speaker 20: If I want Catholics to join us among the stars, then they’re going to need to find a way to, like what’s causing these issues and how to address these issues, and that can only be done by talking about them and accepting that they are real

[00:49:19] Malcolm Collins: Well, a- also you have to have, like, a degree of being willing to tear down to build something new.

[00:49:27] Like, one of the, the startling things that I was thinking about, because a lot of people are like, “Oh, well, like...” That feeling you get when you go for, like, a Latin mass and I’ve gone for a Latin mass, and it feels super uncomfortable and creepy to me. I- ... I- have you gone to a Latin mass?

[00:49:42] Simone Collins: Yeah, I like a Latin mass.

[00:49:44] Malcolm Collins: Oh, I do not. What I find really nice, because I used to live, you know, in Scotland and I’d go all the time, is the, you know, the, the torn down cathedrals. That created a good- The, all, seeing all of the i- idols, like, ripped out of their sockets and everything like that- Oh my goodness ... I was like, that looks so much better.

[00:50:01] You know, it’s a utilitarian building, right? It’s, it’s, it’s a sign of, like- Mm-hmm ... the destruction of the cons- like, like,

[00:50:08] Simone Collins: Good heavens ...

[00:50:09] Malcolm Collins: hedonism. Like, to me, it just feels like hedonism, right? Like, it’s like, like way too much on a dish, right?

[00:50:15] Speaker 8: The buildings to me, if you have trouble, , understanding what I mean by this, they feel like worshiping at an aesthetic orgy, i-i-in terms of their a-aesthetics. , It feels to me honestly more hedonistic and more indulgent in, like, the amount of gold and music and, , whatever you wanna call this stuff than, like, if I saw , a satanic temple where they were, like, worshiping on naked bodies, right?

[00:50:41] But I’m not saying that this is an objectively true reality or at a satanic temple where, like, they had an orgy in the room. Like, it’s literally more indu-- in terms of the gold, in terms of what you could have helped other people with instead of spending this money and time and effort on, , engaging in some sort of feeling, inducing some feeling in yourself, , that feels good,, a-- which is hedonism.

[00:51:04] I mean, that’s just hedonism. , And I’m not saying that my reaction to this is an objectively true one. I actually think it, it’s probably a biological one, , that it comes from my ancestors choosing different things from their ancestors, ‘cause never at any point in my life did I just decide I’m going to, , feel this way.

[00:51:20] I’m going to react this way to this sort of an institution. , And so I don’t think that they can help the way that they biologically feel. , I think that this is genuinely affirming for them, but it’s useful to also understand in terms of if you’re attempting to convert somebody that some people will genuinely...

[00:51:37] Like, you bring them into this environment, and they’re like, “Why is everyone here having an orgy? Why did somebody think that was religiously appropriate?” , Whereas to , you don’t see it that way. You’re just like, “Oh, the m-the majesty of all of the gold and jewels and the window panes that put the different colors on the floor and the s-the smells of the thousands of stinky candles, , that are meant to, [00:52:00] like, overwhelm you with the, the biggest, like, punch in your gut of, , feel-goods, , that you could have,” that some people are just gonna viscerally react differently than you react to that.

[00:52:12] , And in the same way that I can’t-- Because if I say this to someone, they’re like, “No, no, no, no, this gets me closer to this thing. This brings me...” And I think it really does. I think that we’re probably have some degree of biological difference

[00:52:24] Malcolm Collins: Like, ev- everything at once. In fact, we walk by here, and we often comment.

[00:52:28] I mean, I know the, the church that you like most in our area, and like, describe it. It’s like a little It’s a, it’s a square building with four windows.

[00:52:36] Simone Collins: Yeah. It’s, it’s a, it’s a very old, mm, early 1800s, late 1700s building that’s extremely austere but beyond charming in our, by our estimation.

[00:52:48] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So, this, this was really fascinating to me.

[00:52:52] And again, I’m not like advocating... I, I, I, I mean, what I would like to see from Catholics is create a new order, create a new way of doing things that, that captures the good values that you have and that you know, potentially even with goals of reforming central institutions, right? Like- Hmm

[00:53:09] historically Catholics always had secret societies. Like you get, get your secret society on, man. Like, create a secret society that’s, that’s gonna try to take back Rome, right? Like, it, the, it, it, it’s, it’s very interesting to me because, like, I know so many good Catholics, right, who are, like, really good Christians, really good people really good values, very intellectually curious.

[00:53:30] And among... And they all say, “Well, we’re gonna take back the Vatican.” But they’re, like, not doing anything about it themselves. And that’s such an interesting psychological thing for me to see ‘cause it would never occur to me to, like, be part of, like, a religion that was, like, I thought was, like, existentially true about reality and have no a, a, a goal of, like, fixing the central organization other than just, like, “Well, we’ll, we’ll wait it out,” right?

[00:53:55] Like, “It’ll be better eventually.” And one of the things that one of the Catholic listeners said to us recently, which I, I understand why this makes sense if you’re a Catholic, is he’s like, “Well, look at all the young priests that are being ordained.” Like, they are overwhelmingly conservative compared to what they were however many years ago.

[00:54:12] Yeah. And it’s like it’s irrelevant if the pope chooses the cardinals and the cardinals choose the pope. You only need 50 in the world super progressive priests out there for them to ordain, right? Like, you, you don’t need to capture the majority in the way that the voting system works. You need to capture everyone.

[00:54:32] And it’s... that’s, that’s incredibly d- it... to, to the point where they have no young priests to choose from who aren’t within their tradition. Now okay, if I was a young Catholic today and I wanted to, to fix things, how could you do it using this existing system? Create a secret society of priests who are actually super based but pretend to be woke and totally with the system as it is now.

[00:54:56] Get them into positions where they have voting rights through nepotism and everything like that, then recapture the institutions.

[00:55:04] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:55:06] Malcolm Collins: I also want more thoughts on the Poland ex- exception, because a lot of the negative traits that I sort of see coming out of the Catholic tradition more broadly don’t seem to have affected Poles as strongly as other Catholic groups, and I don’t know why.

[00:55:24] That is, that is something. They also don’t seem to affect American Catholics as strongly as other Catholic groups.

[00:55:33] Simone Collins: Yes, though how devout are most American Catholics? You know, I, I, I somewhat question the degree of someone’s Catholicism unless they actively live and f- have a full Catholic lifestyle.

[00:55:50] By that I mean-

[00:55:51] Malcolm Collins: Well,

[00:55:52] Simone Collins: America- ... they live in a Catholic community, their kids go to Catholic school, all, like their entire social network is Catholic

[00:55:59] Malcolm Collins: [00:56:00] America has of all of the, the, the Western countries, all the technologically advanced countries, my understanding, the most conservative branch of the Catholic Church.

[00:56:09] Like, in terms of- Well, and

[00:56:09] Simone Collins: we have a lot of really vibrant conservative Catholic communities. But of course, the, the people I knew who were Catholic were not really Catholic by my estimation because they weren’t in those communities. They were mixing with people like me. And if you’re a kid and you’re Catholic and you’re mixing with people like me, you’re probably not gonna stay Catholic

[00:56:29] Malcolm Collins: Well yeah, that, that makes...

[00:56:30] Well yeah, not creating as much of a community separation, like we are different-

[00:56:35] Simone Collins: Mm-hmm ...

[00:56:35] Malcolm Collins: is also really important.

[00:56:37] Simone Collins: Extremely, yes.

[00:56:39] Malcolm Collins: And it’s something we work really hard to do with our kids. But yeah th- this was really fascinating to me. I really value the creation of entirely new ideas, entirely new things that, that...

[00:56:49] I mean, that is the very reason why I want to save Catholicism- Well, and I would say- ... because it’s different from my tradition.

[00:56:54] Simone Collins: It is. Yeah, well, well, yeah, that ironically the, the one thing we like about it is that it’s different and in- interesting to us in its novelty, though it is not in its own right novel.

[00:57:06] But we also know that we have an extreme bias against, like, Chesterton’s fence. We’re like, “Why is that there? Burn it down. We’ll build a new one. It’s fine.” Like, there will, there will be problems, but we’re only gonna know what the problems are if we burn it down, so let’s do it.

[00:57:22] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, we- we’re not like, “Oh, you don’t understand why that fence is there.

[00:57:25] Like, burn it down.” Yeah. Oh, allow this stuff. Like,

[00:57:27] Simone Collins: clearly there’s a problem. Okay, now we’re seeing that There’s only one way we can test this.

[00:57:31] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, build it back and build it better, right? Like- Yeah ... oh, I don’t understand why this prohibition’s here. Mm-hmm. I’m okay with at the beginning when they removed that prohibition.

[00:57:39] Yeah, let’s drop it. And now I’m like, oh, well we should have had that prohibition. Let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s build it back in a way that works within a modern context maximally.

[00:57:46] Simone Collins: Exactly, yep.

[00:57:47] Malcolm Collins: But this to me, you know, in terms of how I build my tradition and for my kids, for the very reason that I want to save Catholicism, which is they are different is I want to it, it...

[00:58:00] Again, as people have said, “Malcolm, stop saying diversity,” what you mean is variety. Mm-hmm. If one cultural group is outputting more differentiated ideas that are productive I am going to want my descendants and my culture to have more in common with that group. Which is why we lean really deeply into the, the, s- the ways that Protestantism and Catholicism are different from each other, because I really admire all of this innovation that a Catholic may think it’s pointless.

[00:58:28] Like, it’s irrelevant who invente- Oh, you guys invented soccer? Well, we have it now. Whatever, right? Like, are you making money off of it? Like, what, what’s the, oh, you invented goth? Oh, you invented punk? Oh, you invented rock? Oh, you invented blues? Oh, you invented... You can invent everything but eventually everyone else gets to use it as well, right?

[00:58:46] So like, oh, you invented the plane? Whatever, right? Oh, you invented the, the steam engine? Oh, you invented... You know, whatever, right? Like, we all get that now. That is y- and, and that’s not necessarily as Simone said. Like, if you get to space, and I think that Leaflet had a really good point on this, and you know, people begin genetically augmenting themselves as we become more and more different, it is at that point why you can understand why variety has value.

[00:59:08] Whereas Leaflet said, which I thought was really intelligent, she’s like, “Think about it from the perspective of, like, a D&D campaign.” Like, you don’t want all human m- mages or whatever, right? Like, you want different types with different specialties. I will say that I don’t think after we begin to get more cybernetic technology and genetic augmentation technology the people who ch- choose to stand fully vanilla are just gonna be a massively under-specced class.

[00:59:36] In the, in the same way that, like, Amish could be in, in any sort of, like, battle since today. Like, Amish can live perfectly happy, healthy lives, which they do. However you know, you’re going into war y- with all of the different groups. You’re not gonna choose an Amish on your team, right? You know?

[00:59:52] You’re, you’re going into, ... I, I mean, there’s some specific pathways where you would, but for most you’re not going to. And I think that 200, [01:00:00] 300 years from now the people who today who don’t engage with cybernetics and AI and genetic augmentation are going to fall in a role that is undifferentiated from the way we see the Amish today, e.g.

[01:00:14] in 300 years the people who don’t adopt technology will be seen as not a dissimilar thing from the Amish, like the same kind of a thing. They, they may even not be able to tell how you’re different. You’re like, “Well, I only wear 21st century clothes before the you know, the, the everybody just started hanging out in virtual space.”

[01:00:33] And they’ll be like, “That’s a, that’s a weird...” It’s like some weird sex thing in their mind. They’re like, “I don- I don’t know why you’re doing- this is weird. You wanna, you wanna talk to people in person like, like an animal?” And I think, or, I mean, in terms of social changes we’re already seeing this with, like, our leaflet streams and stuff like that, yeah?

[01:00:51] Where it’s a new form of socialization that is likely going to become more and more dominant in the self-identity and cultural identity of the next generation. And, and people get from that. You know, you go ... What I, what I mean by this is however often your kids go to church in a lot of instances they might be watching streamers more.

[01:01:16] So they’re adapting more of their cultural identity from those streamers, and the streamers with religious identities are affecting them in terms of either keeping them in those communities or pushing them out of those communities. And, and we’ve seen a rise in these sorts of streamers unfortunately which has just been fascinating.

[01:01:36] Any, any final thoughts, Simone?

[01:01:39] Simone Collins: No. Interesting stuff.

[01:01:42] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, interes- interesting thread. And people are like, “Stop pulling threads that make X group look bad.” We, we attack lots of groups on this show, and we get a lot of hate for it, but I think that when I say attack, what I mean is we’ve gotta look at the historical data, we’ve gotta look at how groups are different, and we have to learn from that.

[01:01:58] I mean, I just got served our stop it Jews, you’re speed running a progrom episode, right? Like, you think a Jew is happy to see that? Like, no, not at all, right? But it’s important to call this stuff out as we see it. A- a- at that episode, I mean, who is that episode for? It’s for helping Jews, right? Like, who is this episode for?

[01:02:18] It’s for helping people with Catholic identities, but also showing why we aren’t remotely tempted by that particular identity. I, I mean, maybe Simone more than me. But yeah

[01:02:33] I also think something that, that Catholics can take away the most from this, that I would if I was a Catholic-

[01:02:38] Simone Collins: Okay ...

[01:02:39] Malcolm Collins: is to try to understand better how Protestants think so that you can emulate them better, so that you can convert them better if- Hmm ... if that’s the goal. Because if you understand a group would always rather be purer and new than have, you know, a degree of historicity but be more corrupted when you make the arguments around historicity they’re just not going to get to them.

[01:03:09] Like n- not even in the, in the li- like they don’t, they don’t pass the beginning of the wall unless you first explain the utility of historicity in a way that they would find compelling.

[01:03:21] Simone Collins: Perhaps, yeah.

[01:03:23] Malcolm Collins: Which is a much harder... I mean, I can’t even think of what argument around do it because it’s the way.

[01:03:27] The, I mean, the basic- biggest argument for that is Chesterton fence. Like, well, these rules were put here for a reason so they’ll lead to better outcomes long-term, to which the other person’s just gonna be like, “But they haven’t for the past 100 years, so why would they for the next 100 years,” right? Like, if you could show in the past 100 years they’re relating to much better results, then I’d be like, “Okay, great, yeah, you’ve created a compelling argument.”

[01:03:47] But, like, what we’re in fact seeing is much worse outcomes in terms of fertility, in terms of productivity, in terms of innovation. So then I find that less, less compelling. Anyway, love you to death, [01:04:00] Simone. Yeah, no, I’m, I’m not, I’m not gonna, like, censor myself around a topic just ‘cause it’s gonna piss off a portion of the fan base.

[01:04:05] Like, it, it, these are things that need to be talked about if we’re gonna figure out how to save human civilization.

[01:04:10] Simone Collins: Malcolm, you’re just repeating yourself. You, we, it’s okay. It’s okay.

[01:04:13] Malcolm Collins: Okay,

[01:04:14] Simone Collins: well I feel bad. You

[01:04:14] Malcolm Collins: can handle them. It’s, it’s like, how dare you say I have cancer? It’s like, well, if we don’t address the cancer, right, you know, like-

[01:04:20] Simone Collins: They know, they know.

[01:04:22] Look, and if they can’t figure that out, then they’re never going to, okay? All right.

[01:04:26] Malcolm Collins: I love you, Simone.

[01:04:27] Simone Collins: I love you, too. Aw, don’t stress about it. So you know how Octavian self-soothes by tagging, as he calls it, which is moving toys tags between his index and middle finger?

[01:04:42] Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm.

[01:04:43] Simone Collins: Like a

[01:04:44] Malcolm Collins: An autistic thing he taught his siblings how to do

[01:04:46] Simone Collins: Yeah, he’s like, “You, you need to learn how to tag.” So Tex flosses. I’m not even kidding you. He has pulled the threads out of an old towel, and he likes to floss his teeth. He’ll, like, run a thread between his teeth, and it, it comforts him so much. And I don’t get it.

[01:05:06] Who flosses? I mean, I guess, if flossing is actually quite comforting. Never mind. Never mind. Anything new on your end?

[01:05:12] Malcolm Collins: All right. I mean, we’ve got a bunch of new features out. We’ve got the feature that fully animates what you have on YouTube. S- not YouTube. So if you create with Leaflet’s system- Yeah

[01:05:23] something, you know, she just gives me the code for that. I dump it into our site, and now I built a secondary thing which allows an AI to puppet one of those and talk through them. I’m still improving it a bit. But if you put in the effort to make one of those, it should work in the near future entirely.

[01:05:38] And I’m gonna try to get it working to create entirely automated VTubers. You know, just, like, really wanna terrify the industry.

[01:05:45] Speaker 15: , We’ve also released some new features like a, video recording feature that’s way cheaper than any of the existing sites, a video editing feature that’s like Descript, but actually has more features and is way cheaper. , These are improve-- They’ve just launched, so whenever something’s just launched, it’s gonna get a lot of improvements in the near future.

[01:06:01] I think we launched our email aggregator site, , that allows you to use AI to better manage your email, text, WhatsApp, all that. , So, , I’ll, I’ll be working on all of this, , as well as all of the stuff that we’ve already released. , And, , always feel free to join us on Substack, , as a subscriber or on Patreon as a subscriber, where we release weekend episodes.

[01:06:19] Malcolm Collins: I’ve also worked to fix up a few features, make the Leaflet system even better, more, more options. And hopefully soon I’ll be releasing my video software stuff because that’s, that’s sort of the next thing I’m working on for the site.

[01:06:31] Simone Collins: Oh, like the podcast recording or editing?

[01:06:33] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, podcast recording and editing.

[01:06:35] Simone Collins: Both. That’s so cool. Yeah.

[01:06:37] Malcolm Collins: Oh, for dinner tonight, I would love it if, oh, here, I can show you what it looks like. ‘Cause you’re like, “What thickness do you want the beef for a,

[01:06:45] maybe twice the size of one of these

[01:06:47] Simone Collins: I’m like, you want julienned carrots sized... Okay, you, yeah, you want-

[01:06:53] Malcolm Collins: Carrot strips ...

[01:06:55] Simone Collins: you want yarn. You want yarn sized-

[01:06:58] Malcolm Collins: Yes ...

[01:07:00] Simone Collins: beef strips.

[01:07:01] Malcolm Collins: And to cook it up with the bok and the onions and the... And you can just cook that all together. Like, that’ll cook at the same rate.

[01:07:09] And then with fried rice, I really love it. If possible. You’re on. Best of all worlds, you amazing woman.

[01:07:15] Simone Collins: Hopefully it turns out well.

[01:07:16] Speaker 16: It’s raining? Is it a thunderstorm?

[01:07:25] Speaker 17: Do you think we’ll see any more flashes of lightning?

[01:07:33] Speaker 16: You saw one?

[01:07:48] I didn’t see the flash. Maybe there wasn’t one

[01:07:56] Well, we can randomly count, but we were counting after [01:08:00] flashes of lightning

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