Based Camp - 70% of Gen Z Incorporates a Mental Illness Into Their Identity

00:00:00.000 73% of boomer males. No matter what psychological challenges I face, I will not let them define me.

00:00:06.380 72% of Gen Z females. Mental illness is an important part of my identity. 1.00

00:00:12.020 This chart right here that we're looking at is absolutely shocking to me. What it's looking at

00:00:17.780 is, quote, mental health challenges are an important part of my identity, end quote.

00:00:22.260 And then it's looking at how this has changed over time, where if you look at males who are boomers,

00:00:30.640 only 27% would say that mental health challenges are an important part of their identity.

00:00:36.420 Whereas if you look at Gen Z females, a full 72% say mental illness is an important part of my identity.

00:00:46.120 Now, I want to point out here, not even 72% of the population has a mental illness or a real mental

00:00:53.600 illness, I guess I should say. And yet, 72% of young women are identifying with a mental illness as an

00:01:02.280 important aspect of who they are. And I really wanted to dive deep on the negative psychological

00:01:09.720 effects of this to an individual, why this is a really dangerous thing that this is happening,

00:01:15.240 how this comes downstream from the destruction of our religious systems and understanding.

00:01:20.880 Because I think for a lot of people, as they destroyed and eroded the concept of a soul,

00:01:26.640 they needed something to replace it. Something that described who they were and that they could

00:01:34.040 identify with in sort of a deeper sense. And I think for many people that became either gender

00:01:38.160 or a mental illness, or gender and a mental illness.

00:01:41.200 Well, or you could say intersectional identity and victimhood as well.

00:01:48.820 Yes. And for people who are like, well, how bad is it for males? 67% of males in Gen Z identify

00:01:55.900 with a mental illness as a major part of their personality. If you were looking at millennials, 0.80

00:01:59.760 it's 67% of women. So the same as Gen Z males. And for males, 56%. 0.66

00:02:06.340 Now, this is interesting to me. Even if you're talking about millennial males,

00:02:10.720 over half of them identify with a mental illness as being a primary part of their identity.

00:02:15.960 That checks out given the younger people that we've spoken with and people in our own generation.

00:02:22.560 Yeah. And where was the big jump here? Well, the big jump started with Gen X. So our generation.

00:02:28.120 No, no, no. Just above our generation is Gen X. We're millennials. And then below us is...

00:02:31.920 Oh, Gen X is above us.

00:02:34.480 Yeah. Gen X is... So we have the greatest generation. These are the people who fought

00:02:40.260 in World War II. The lost generation. This is the generation that was too young to fight in World 1.00

00:02:45.360 War II in the United States. Then we have the boomers, who were the children of the World War II

00:02:51.160 war heroes. Then we have Gen X, which came after the boomers. Then we have millennials. Then we have...

00:02:58.260 Okay. Well, then in our older generation, there was a big jump from boomers to Gen X, where it went from

00:03:06.480 in boomers, 27% of males to 47% of male Gen X. And then for boomer females, it was 34% to 53% of

00:03:17.460 female Gen X. So already within women of our generation, you're seeing this set. And I would put

00:03:24.520 all of this was in the caveat of, Simone, you are autistic. You've been diagnosed with autism

00:03:30.820 much, much later in life, not as a young person. But what basically happened is we took one of our

00:03:35.400 sons in to get diagnosed. They were like, oh, here is why he's autistic. And then Simone was like,

00:03:41.460 those aren't autism symptoms. Those are all normal things. And then they're like, have you ever been

00:03:45.820 tested for autism? And then they tested you and you were like, oh, I guess I am. And before

00:03:51.300 autism, you thought you had OCD. I have been clinically diagnosed with OCD.

00:03:58.420 But did you ever make the OCD or autism diagnoses a major part of your identity?

00:04:05.620 Like would you have answered mental illness is an important part of my identity?

00:04:08.640 No. And I tried to hide it, as you know.

00:04:11.440 Mm-hmm. Okay. So first I want to talk about, I think, partially why this is happening. And this

00:04:20.980 comes from something that I noticed. We have another episode where we go over this, like the

00:04:24.620 turning of gender into a concept of a soul, where especially when you have these huge ranges of

00:04:30.500 genders that you can identify with. And when you talk to somebody about this, you're like, well, what

00:04:35.320 is this thing that you're calling gender? Because clearly it's not like what I mean when I think

00:04:40.220 gender. I'm like, do they have a penis? Like, that's what I'm asking when I say gender, right? 1.00

00:04:44.300 They mean something else when they say gender. And they're like, well, it's like the way you 0.98

00:04:48.880 relate to reality. It's the way you see yourself. And I'm like, oh, so it's like your genetic,

00:04:54.300 like sociological profile, right? Like you mean, and they're like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no,

00:04:58.740 it's not genetic.

00:04:59.720 I'm not that.

00:05:00.920 You can't be, yeah, because then the people who, you know, then you become what they call a 0.98

00:05:06.800 true scum is the term. This means that you can only consider yourself trans, i.e. choose your 0.98

00:05:12.900 gender if you have a form of dysphoria. And if you don't have a form of dysphoria, you, you,

00:05:20.520 they basically see it as like a form of gatekeeping. And the anti-true scum movement has largely won, 0.96

00:05:25.360 which means anyone can identify whatever you want. So they're like, oh, it's not genetic. And then I'm

00:05:28.740 like, oh, so it's like your personal preference. And they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. It's not a

00:05:32.580 preference either. Okay. That's a very offensive thing to say. And I go, okay, so it's not a

00:05:36.960 preference, but it's not like genetic. And it's not something that I can like put my finger on.

00:05:44.440 And it's like core to how you self-identify you've like reinvented the soul, but like gendered it.

00:05:51.420 Exactly.

00:05:52.460 And I think that mental health issues for people who aren't fortunate enough to be able to decide.

00:06:00.260 And when I say fortunate enough, I mean, this was, you know, within this generational context where

00:06:03.560 this is like sort of an elite class that gets access to special privileges.

00:06:07.340 And I would say that having a formal mental health diagnosis is a product of privilege because the

00:06:13.800 amount of money you have to pay to get one is, is quite high. We spent a lot of money just to get an

00:06:19.600 autism diagnosis for our sons. And yeah, but I'm sure you could do it through state services.

00:06:25.080 No, because we tried to do that.

00:06:28.640 I would, I would actually go so far as to say that the mental health diagnoses these days are a form of

00:06:34.280 a separate type of privilege, which is, yes, it might be a monetary privilege, but I think that the

00:06:39.240 bigger privilege is having a mental illness at all within this new cultural context equates you as

00:06:47.440 higher status than people who don't have mental illnesses. And I think that that is partially why 0.54

00:06:53.060 individuals have chosen to identify with them. And if you say, well, what do you mean by higher

00:06:57.860 status? You know, I, I would say that you have the ability to shut down other people's one

00:07:03.820 criticism of you within certain areas. You can say, well, I'm autistic. You know, you don't get to say

00:07:08.620 I'm not allowed to act this way. So basically if you look historically, like if I go to like court

00:07:13.360 culture or something like that, status was largely like, what are the things that I'm allowed to do that

00:07:18.540 other people aren't allowed to do? You know? Yeah, no, very true. Yeah. Pulling rank. Pulling

00:07:23.500 rank. Yes. And it gives you the ability to pull rank. It gives you the ability to do things that

00:07:29.160 are like socially shunned by other people. Right. It gives you the ability to pressure other people

00:07:37.000 into things they're not comfortable with. This is very much where you see the, you know, oh, you're not

00:07:42.420 sleeping with me. Are you ex phobic? Yes. You often see, you know, the trans community pulling, 1.00

00:07:47.880 for example, and that's a form of privilege. You're basically saying, well, my class outranks your

00:07:53.200 class and to deny me what I am asking you to is a offense to someone within my class. Like, like you

00:08:00.840 saying no to me is not something that's allowed. Yeah. And, and so I think that having a mental illness

00:08:06.700 in an ironic way within our current context is a privilege. Fortunately, we seem to only create

00:08:11.660 autistic children. So far, all of them that have been old enough to be diagnosed have been

00:08:15.620 diagnosed with autism. So that, that maybe, maybe we're breeding true. The people who don't know 0.96

00:08:20.960 what breeding true means is when two dogs of the same breed are having children, but I've never

00:08:25.380 been diagnosed with autism. And I don't, I don't think I have many autism symptoms or. No. Yeah. No.

00:08:32.280 So, and I, by the way, have reached out to the people who did this. If anyone here knows anyone

00:08:36.240 in this group, they're called the skeptic.com and they ran a 2024 presidential election study,

00:08:42.880 which is where this data came from. And I really want to split this data further. I want to split

00:08:46.980 it along political lines. I want to split it along religious affiliation. I want to split it along 0.95

00:08:52.200 whether someone's a parent, because I'd be very interested to see, you know, where this, this is,

00:08:57.540 is, is coming from. But I also want to point out that there also has been a huge explosion in

00:09:02.620 mental health diagnoses recently. So from 2012 to 2018, there was a 34.6% increase in the prevalence

00:09:08.300 of mental illness diagnosis in the United States. In 2021, 22.8% of U.S. adults experienced a mental

00:09:15.520 illness. Now this is where this gets really interesting. In 2021, 22.8% of adults are listed

00:09:21.360 as having a mental illness. Yet, even in these lower demographics, 47, so this is in Gen X, 47% of men

00:09:28.820 are identifying with a mental illness strongly. And 53% of women are. Or in millennial, 56% of males

00:09:34.800 are. And 67% of females are. So much more basically discussed online. Most of the people who are talking

00:09:40.620 about having a mental condition of some sort or special mental status are self-diagnosed.

00:09:48.140 Even people who really heavily talk about it. I remember at one point on Red Scare, Ana and Dasha

00:09:56.420 had a guy, there was an entire episode on autism. And it turns out this guy is completely self-diagnosed.

00:10:05.620 Autism LARPing. Autism is a class.

00:10:07.640 I mean, maybe he was really autistic. Who knows, right? But it's one of those things where 0.98

00:10:12.940 a lot of people who are extra vociferous about it also seem to be self-diagnosed. I don't,

00:10:20.220 it's a double-edged sword because on, on one hand, it's incredibly expensive to be diagnosed

00:10:26.040 for things. How expensive does the state not cover this? Like how much cover this? It doesn't

00:10:31.720 cover this for our children. So unless we were on completely state supported health insurance or

00:10:35.800 healthcare, how, how, how much per kid you're just giving around $500 per kid. That is, that is not a lot

00:10:42.740 of money these days. $500 per child. Who is $500? Simone, for a class status, $500, even for somebody 0.92

00:10:54.960 without a ton of money is not this big, keep in mind, you're not talking about like, this is

00:11:01.860 something you need to have done every year or every month. This is something you need to have done once

00:11:06.680 in your life. $500. I'm sorry. I don't buy that. That is not that's expensive. I think it's

00:11:13.000 expensive. That is not getting people out of this for economic. There are also in some cases up to

00:11:18.440 six month waits. Now I think after the pandemic ceased, this has become a lot easy. It's for

00:11:24.340 example, it was easier for us to book an appointment for our second son to be evaluated than for our first

00:11:29.780 son. So I do think that it is easier to get a diagnosis now than it was before, but most people are

00:11:34.040 still just not bothering and they're choosing perhaps because they're worried that they wouldn't

00:11:38.460 receive a professional diagnosis. I'm going to push back. I don't think these numbers are real.

00:11:43.560 These numbers just aren't real. It's not that these are people who are going undiagnosed because they

00:11:47.800 don't have the money. There is no way 72% of women in Gen Z have a mental health condition. 0.99

00:11:54.500 Well, but again, I guess I could push back and say the DSM really isn't about like, oh, do you have

00:12:00.660 something that's broken? It's more about behaviors that deviate from societal norms. And maybe we are

00:12:06.460 receiving a surge of behaviors that deviate from societal norms.

00:12:09.380 This is interesting. And I actually think that this is part of what's going on here

00:12:13.940 is that people are saying, in what ways am I different from what I think society expects of me?

00:12:22.760 Hmm. And then they're defining that the things about them that are different from societal

00:12:28.220 expectations. Oh, as being the thing that makes them them as a mental illness. But it's also just 0.97

00:12:34.220 to, you know, previous generations, it's just, this is how I'm unique. Right. But to them,

00:12:39.780 how they're unique needs to be medicalized because through medicalizing it, it is given tangibility.

00:12:49.220 Yeah. So clinically depressed is the new emo. You used to just be goth and now you're just

00:12:55.740 depressed. It's I'm depressed, but I'm depressed like as an aesthetic, because I think they mean

00:13:01.680 something more than what it meant historically. Historically, it would be like, okay, this might

00:13:06.700 color like some of your choices. I think now a lot of these mental illnesses are associated with

00:13:12.820 fashion, with music choices, with, it is a subculture. And let's talk about why this is

00:13:19.220 desperately unhealthy. First of all, you, when you medicalize the ways that you are different from

00:13:25.600 mainstream society, you remove personal responsibility from them and you remove your

00:13:31.900 ability to modulate them or choose among them. And I think that this is actually really critical

00:13:38.520 because, you know, I can, for example, be like, Hey, I am an incredibly confident person,

00:13:45.340 for example, but being an incredibly confident person can lead me to sometimes doing things which

00:13:53.100 inconvenience other people or cause damage in social situations. Now, if I've medicalized my

00:13:59.240 confidence, I get to now say, well, I don't need to address the negative externalities of this

00:14:05.580 personality feature because it's a medical condition and therefore no one can say, don't do it.

00:14:12.340 Yeah. If anything, you should accommodate it. You as the average person around you.

00:14:17.800 But also in the way that we relate to our own challenges in life. So you look at something

00:14:23.640 like anxiety and let's see 43% of adults say they feel more anxious than the previous year in 2024.

00:14:30.280 This is up from 37% in 2023 and 32% in 2022. So like, look at something like anxiety, right?

00:14:37.260 If I say that I, as a personality have anxiety sometimes, and I categorize anxiety as something

00:14:46.920 that I don't want and that isn't effective in my daily life, I would just work on ways to be less

00:14:53.480 anxious. If I have an anxiety disorder, now the anxiety is, and as I said, an important part of

00:15:01.940 who they are to remove the anxiety is to genocide this community in their minds, to genocide the

00:15:09.100 community of the anxious, of the medically anxious. Yeah. Well, actually this is something

00:15:14.680 that I felt when I was first diagnosed with OCD and then told that I could medicate it.

00:15:20.260 I was really against the idea because I didn't want to remove what I considered to be part of myself.

00:15:25.500 Like if I didn't have the things I did that were categorized as OCD by clinicians,

00:15:32.340 I felt like it wouldn't be me. And I mean, I think, you know, you could probably actually agree

00:15:38.260 with the fact that if I suddenly stopped doing all the things that we now know are associated with

00:15:42.840 my autism, I would be a very different person. Would you? Yeah. I mean, I guess I would say that I

00:15:54.260 would be dramatically more worried about you as a wife. I mean, one of the good things about your 0.96

00:15:59.420 situation is that there really is no risk of you ever cheating on me or even having a desire to

00:16:05.520 cheat on me because she doesn't like when people touch her other than me. Or ever getting fat. 0.60

00:16:10.740 Or ever getting fat. Well, that's a big one. Yeah. I have a, and I've mentioned this on other

00:16:15.260 podcasts, but it is, I think one of my greatest personality flaws, which is an instinctual,

00:16:20.400 really high level of disgust towards fat people. Well, I'm also unlikely to ever get unfit because

00:16:25.240 my, my manifestation, my autistic manifest manifestation of stimming has apparently always

00:16:30.980 been some form of exercise. And when I was a teen, it was just constantly swimming and not stopping.

00:16:35.180 And now it's just constantly walking and not stopping, which is why I have my treadmill desk.

00:16:39.660 So again, like this is, if suddenly all of these things disappeared, I would become a very

00:16:46.100 different person. So I don't know if you're, if these people are wrong in equating elements of,

00:16:52.160 but I mean, I also see the other side. So let's say that you choose to identify with your anxiety.

00:16:55.880 I mean, the problem is the, the, it seems practically speaking, the best way to deal with

00:17:00.720 your anxiety is you just learn to care about something else a little bit more and face the

00:17:06.360 thing that makes you anxious. And as you get used to it, you'll discover it's not so bad. And if you

00:17:10.780 instead act as though your anxiety is something that just like is a signal that has to be listened

00:17:16.440 to in, in the form of, Oh, don't do this. Therefore, then the anxiety will only get worse

00:17:22.100 and you will, will your circle of life will become smaller and smaller until literally you're choked

00:17:26.320 out of existence. And I know this because I have dealt with anxiety in both ways. And right now we're

00:17:32.060 in the, Oh, you're anxious about this thing. Let's do way more of it. Turn the volume up to 11.

00:17:37.060 Whereas before it used to be, Oh, I just won't do this thing.

00:17:39.400 Well, and I've noticed with your own, you know, mental proclivities that they have

00:17:44.340 significantly decreased as your responsibilities have increased. Yeah.

00:17:48.860 We pull this stuff has on you is intrinsically higher when you are in environments that are

00:17:55.840 more privileged, which is, I think, and a lot of these people don't realize how privileged their

00:18:00.760 environments are because they don't realize how little real work they do. Because I just don't

00:18:05.740 think that they know how much people who work hard actually work. I think that's one of the big

00:18:10.940 things in society these days is, you know, we, for example, like you and I, I was thinking how

00:18:17.440 blessed I was earlier today that we get to eat a meal every day and other people would be like a meal

00:18:22.680 every day. Surely you have more than one meal a day. And it's like, not even from a diet perspective,

00:18:28.060 like who has the time to have two meals in a day, let alone three, you know, or, you know,

00:18:35.860 when I wake up, I wake up at 2am to 1am every morning and people are like, Oh, well, you must

00:18:42.000 take long. I take like 30 minute naps. So to an hour nap sometimes during the day, but you know,

00:18:46.800 not even every day. And I feel like I have to do all this. And I'm also really strict with Simone

00:18:53.680 about any sort of indulgent activity, whether that is cleaning and people are like, wait,

00:18:59.200 cleaning you see as an indulgent activity. I'm like, yes, cleaning is an indulgent activity.

00:19:03.180 It can always be done faster. It can be batched and it's not necessary all the time. And I think

00:19:07.840 that a lot of these people who are dealing with these issues just have so much genuine, when I say

00:19:14.440 free time, I don't mean totally free time, but like your brain finds ways to occupy the tasks that are

00:19:19.680 allotted to you. And as you take on more tasks, your schedule, I think naturally finds a way to

00:19:27.340 accommodate them. And the thing that is most pushed out is the mental discomfort and second guessing and

00:19:34.060 anxiety and stuff like that. Yeah. You could think of your life as a vase and the anxiety that you have

00:19:44.160 are all of your, your worry as sand. And if you just fill your vase with really large rocks first,

00:19:50.420 like much bigger things and more important things to care about, there's less room to put sand in.

00:19:55.300 And if you just like throw in one or two rocks, your vase is full of sand. Like I just, if you just

00:20:00.160 crowd it out, it seems to make a big difference. Well, and I think that, I mean, so for people also

00:20:05.700 keep in mind, you know, we have four kids right now, you know, so we're at this stage where kids just

00:20:10.800 don't give you a lot of time to indulge in these emotional states. And I think also as a parent,

00:20:15.740 you're likely undergo some biological changes, which lower things like anxiety and stuff like

00:20:20.580 that. I don't know. I've seen some parents who are really anxious, but they usually have like one or

00:20:23.780 two kids. I don't know if I've ever seen a parent with a ton of kids be super anxious or like

00:20:28.700 helicopter. Yeah. Most of the parents that I know who have a lot of kids seem relaxed. If anything

00:20:35.740 negative, it's just exhausted, but not even, not even mad because they're just too tired to be

00:20:43.160 mad. Yeah. They're also less judgy as people. This is another thing I've noticed. They're very much

00:20:47.580 less judgy of other people. The ones I know, like other people that I, it might be because they're

00:20:53.840 like intrinsically, they understand like the high school social game just doesn't matter to them

00:20:58.080 anymore. Like once you get to like five kids or whatever, four kids. Yeah. Yeah. I mean,

00:21:05.060 I think a lot of it's because also you have this huge social network within your own house and

00:21:08.800 there's enough politics to kind of keep you occupied there, but yeah. But okay. So, so,

00:21:13.900 so going back to identifying with your mental illness, I do agree that, that when you choose

00:21:20.200 to identify with it rather than see it as just, ah, here's this thing that maybe I have to deal with.

00:21:27.420 It can cause you to not attempt to overcome it with the rigor you otherwise would, right? That's the

00:21:35.980 issue. Well, yeah. And I think that we choose what our primary identity is. And I think that anything

00:21:42.740 that you are born with, choosing that as your primary identity, identifying with something that

00:21:48.300 you didn't choose, I think is always intrinsically toxic. So whether it is an identity that you have

00:21:55.300 gotten because you think, oh, I have these personality characteristics, which are associated

00:21:59.060 with this mental illness in my mind, or I am white and therefore being white is a core part of my

00:22:04.760 identity, I think is really not because these things fundamentally aren't really who you are,

00:22:12.940 who you are, are the things you chose to believe. And for that reason, I think that the core identity

00:22:19.100 that people should be choosing in terms of like who they are is threefold. I would say one is what

00:22:26.960 you believe about the world. I think that's a really important category of identity. This can be

00:22:33.400 religion, or it can be a set of philosophical beliefs, or it can be a way of ordering your thoughts.

00:22:38.480 I think having that as a core mechanism of identity is meaningful because it's what you chose,

00:22:44.880 right? So it is really you, unless you didn't choose it. And some people are just sort of born

00:22:52.180 into a tradition and don't really take any ownership of it. And in that case, maybe I think it makes

00:22:57.360 sense to make it. The other thing I'd say is your cultural ancestry or a chosen cultural ancestry

00:23:05.480 being part of your identity. I've seen people who choose some degree of cultural ancestry. And no,

00:23:12.920 this isn't necessarily an ethnic ancestry. So for example, when people look at my cultural

00:23:18.640 ancestry and I am choosing a cultural identity, they will note in terms of the naming of my kids

00:23:23.880 or myself, I do a lot of Roman stuff, Roman and Greek, classical Greek and Rome. And this is not

00:23:30.760 who I am. I am not Greek or Roman, but I identify with those cultures because I want to continue to

00:23:42.740 build on the greatness that they achieved. And so it's sort of like, what Lego set am I playing

00:23:48.940 with? Am I continuing to build upon? I'm choosing that as an aspect of the way I see myself. And the,

00:23:57.100 the final one I would say is with your family and people can be like, well, why is that so important?

00:24:02.380 I think that, and this is my, my core core identity is as a member of like, I don't really see myself as

00:24:14.180 a different independent entity than you anymore or the kids. I am sort of like one part of a pie chart,

00:24:21.840 I guess you'd say in terms of my identity. And I think that kids really struggle with this when

00:24:29.920 they're younger because they have this instinct to rebel and create their own new pie chart. And it

00:24:36.780 can cause them to undervalue what they can draw from their parents and grandparents and great

00:24:46.620 grandparents, what they went through. Yet I think as a young person, seeing yourself as an

00:24:51.560 intergenerational entity is also very mentally healthy. And a lot of people are like, oh no,

00:24:55.300 how could you say that? You know, putting so much. And I'm like, not really. I mean,

00:25:00.560 it's just true one. And then two, it explained things about yourself. I think one of the most

00:25:07.440 important things that I learned from seeing myself as an intergenerational entity is it makes it easier

00:25:12.580 to look at things that your parents do that through different eyes, you don't want to repeat.

00:25:17.180 And you're like, ah, I must have that tendency in me as well. How do I circumvent it?

00:25:24.880 What are your thoughts on this?

00:25:29.060 I still defer to the form of self-identity creation that we outline in the Pragmatist Guide to Life,

00:25:37.440 where we basically say, choose your objective function. That is to say, choose that thing or

00:25:43.100 that collection of things that you wish to maximize with your existence. Then set out your

00:25:48.760 ideology, which is a series of hypotheses on how you think you can maximize that thing or those things.

00:25:54.400 And then three, based on what you've been dealt, that is to say, your body, your circumstances,

00:26:01.140 your appearance, your intelligence, your connections, whatever it may be, using those tools and those

00:26:06.320 materials, craft an identity that will maximize your objective function per your ideology.

00:26:14.800 And that seems to me the most practical thing to do.

00:26:20.260 I think you're right. I'll hold to that. I'll hold to that.

00:26:21.840 It doesn't have to do with, and of course, for us, seeing ourselves as part of an unbroken

00:26:28.000 family chain certainly plays into that objective function and also the way we see the world,

00:26:32.700 because our ideology is one of technopuritanism, of future worship, of long-termism and pronatalism.

00:26:42.460 So yeah, it makes sense for you to do that, but I don't know if it makes sense for everyone to do

00:26:46.700 that. It depends on everyone's unique set of objective functions and ideology.

00:26:49.000 I guess this is where I've changed since writing the Pragmatist Guide to Life,

00:26:53.340 is that I think that having more structure that somebody else just gives you is important for a

00:26:58.840 large part of the population. People like you and me, we are capable of,

00:27:02.700 rethinking everything from scratch with every possible challenge that we come across.

00:27:07.480 I don't think that the average human has the capacity to do this effectively.

00:27:12.420 And I think that if you, it reminds me of the Pragmatist Guide to Life, where people go through

00:27:16.240 it and they come to like the dumbest objective function, which is generally utilitarianism.

00:27:19.900 And I'm like, oh, that's the obviously wrong choice. But they're like, this is what the book is

00:27:24.820 arguing for, right? And it's like, if you give somebody too many choices, if you force them to think

00:27:29.400 through too many things, they default to the societal norm. And for that reason, I think it

00:27:34.660 is useful to lay out, yeah, but at the end of the day, these identities are probably going to be best

00:27:41.600 for achieving what you want to achieve.

00:27:42.900 Yeah. I somewhat agree. I mean, I do think some, well, I mean, so I would say if you're part of a

00:27:54.460 culture or religion that gives you preset templates that are already aligned with your objective

00:28:00.540 function and that already match with what you've been dealt. For example, if you were a Mormon,

00:28:07.120 you're given an objective function or a series of objective functions, you're given ideologies

00:28:12.680 and based on who you are, for example, a man or a woman, you're given a clear identity to which you

00:28:19.000 are kind of expected to conform. So you know who to be and you know what to identify with. And none of

00:28:24.320 those things as it happens.

00:28:25.320 Well, that's why I'm saying like, as we build a system for our kids, I don't think the right thing

00:28:31.880 is to tell our kids, you need to figure all this out on your own, your identity, everything like that

00:28:36.380 to maximize your objective function. I think giving them frameworks before that is going to be more

00:28:42.780 effective and then allowing them to modify those frameworks to create the optimal one for their

00:28:48.760 objective function. It depends for those kids of ours who really opt in to and really like our family

00:28:57.700 culture. Absolutely. We'll be like, well, you know, this is the way you can go with our family culture.

00:29:02.820 But for those who want to explore their own thing, I think we should give them the tool set to do that

00:29:07.300 adequately, instead of just encouraging them to randomly go on to other toxic things.

00:29:14.340 No, I think that makes sense. You know, and I think having a great deal of family shame for

00:29:18.420 capitulating to the urban monoculture value set in these forms of identity is really important to

00:29:25.140 protecting and warding them and warding our children against them being, being placed on them.

00:29:32.020 What I wanted to get to here was something that I think humans have an addictive tendency towards

00:29:39.420 doing this, or like a really strong mental tendency towards doing this. And we write about it in some of

00:29:44.280 our books and we mentioned on some of our podcasts, but I can't, I cannot help but restate it is that

00:29:49.080 people want to be told who they are. This is just something you see over and over and over again.

00:29:54.680 Yeah. Horoscopes, blood types, blood types by the way. Sorry, you were saying what was the next one?

00:30:03.080 Myers-Briggs profiles. Oh yeah. Myers-Briggs profiles. So zodiac signs. And these are always more common

00:30:09.880 women among women. Women seem to have an intrinsic desire to be told what their identity is.

00:30:19.480 And some men do as well, but it's just obviously stronger in the data we presented here. And in,

00:30:24.440 in, in, you know, if you know, zodiac sign people, they're usually women. If you know, 1.00

00:30:27.480 blood type people, they're usually women. If you know Myers-Briggs profile people, maybe a few more

00:30:32.840 autistic men, but with women in the EA community seem to care a lot more about it than men do.

00:30:37.720 Men mostly use it for dating purposes, but why is this the case? I don't know. I suspected something

00:30:46.440 that sort of wrong was maybe our mental coding is a, we expect society to tell us who we are

00:30:54.360 and what our roles are. And when society doesn't, when society says, choose anything, you know,

00:30:59.320 you do a sex in the city quiz and you're a Samantha and that's who you are for the rest of your life. 0.64

00:31:04.040 You know, you, you choose to, and I think that this is actually, when you look at books that do

00:31:08.840 well, like the Harry Potter books, I think they explicitly do well because they presented a

00:31:12.120 framework like this, like the house selection process and everything like that. There is an

00:31:15.960 escapist fantasy to be told and categorized by who you are. I mean, this is something you keep

00:31:22.120 seeing in girl teen dystopias that are targeted at women primarily. Are you a X or are you a Y? And

00:31:28.360 that's how we know. When you were a kid, Simone, did you ever fantasize about like being told who

00:31:34.280 you were or any of these worlds where they, they give you an identity?

00:31:41.080 Probably, but I don't have any distinct memories of it. And I imagine you never did because you're

00:31:46.280 just so strong about who you want.

00:31:49.160 No, even I find these concepts alluring.

00:31:52.040 Really?

00:31:52.840 I would kind of, especially as a teen, if I could be told you're an X house, like you're a Slytherin, 1.00

00:32:00.440 now have pride in being a Slytherin. I would love that. And I think that, okay,

00:32:05.960 new hypothesis forming here.

00:32:07.880 Okay.

00:32:08.280 I think what we're seeing here is because we have erased people's pride in their family

00:32:15.720 and in their own cultural history, people can't say, I'm a Scotch-Irish, you know,

00:32:22.200 greater Appalachian cultural group. I'm a-

00:32:24.440 Scotch-Irish. 0.94

00:32:25.800 What?

00:32:26.040 Scotts, not Scotch.

00:32:27.880 I said, oh, whatever. You know, they, they, they, they don't have anything to have pride in

00:32:35.160 or any cultural group to identify in with when historically you would have, you know,

00:32:39.560 if you were growing up in Manhattan, you would have been like, oh, they're the X group and

00:32:42.360 they're the Y group and they're the Z group. Or if you were growing up in, in, you know, 0.98

00:32:45.880 rural Scotland, it would have been like, well, that's X clan and that's Y clan and that's Z clan.

00:32:50.040 And they're like this and they're like this and they're like this. And I think that when we took

00:32:54.920 that away from people, they needed to create new clan identities. And this is, is part of what

00:33:01.080 we're seeing here because at the end of the day, while there are some cultures that are

00:33:06.200 truly individualist, I think the clan cultures have always been sort of a bit more common.

00:33:10.920 And when you take away the right to identify with your family and cultural group, you sort of force

00:33:17.240 the need to identify with something new and have pride in it and have immediate kinship with people

00:33:27.320 within it. And you've made this argument, for example, about Q groups as well, that it's like

00:33:32.040 the last group of, if you want to have some form of white pride, you just choose to identify.

00:33:37.400 Yeah. We've watched our video laundering of white pride, but I'm like, they, they, 0.98

00:33:41.400 they took the white pride parades and they dropped the word white, but they, they have changed nothing 0.81

00:33:46.200 else. This is not as much as they will pretend like this culture is downstream of like native

00:33:51.720 culture or something. It is not, it is a purely derivative of European cultural groups and they are

00:33:56.600 celebrating European cultural conquest of native individuals or recent immigrants when they, they 0.58

00:34:03.560 make these celebrations. Any final thoughts, Simone? People really love it when you say things,

00:34:07.480 because you're the smart one. How are you going to keep our kids from identifying as autistic?

00:34:11.480 I, I am not against the idea of identifying with a mental illness. When you identify with that mental 0.93

00:34:21.320 illness in a way where you like lean into it, into a strength. So I think that mental illness

00:34:26.760 identification is a double edged sword and I am all for unholstering your autism. As long as you use it 1.00

00:34:33.080 as a deadly weapon for good. I think most people unholster their autism or whatever, and they shoot 0.82

00:34:37.960 themselves in the head. If you just instead do something meaningful with it, that's amazing. And I think

00:34:44.840 that there are plenty of fictional characters even that show autistic people using their autism in a

00:34:53.400 way that, that bestows them with superpowers. Like Monk? Monk's a great example of this actually.

00:34:59.400 Monk, like Lisbeth Salander from the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. She's highly autistic and 0.95

00:35:06.920 definitely like a superpowered female. So I, yeah, I don't, I don't think that these things have to

00:35:18.360 be toxic. And that's why I feel very conflicted about this. I think, I think that they are. If

00:35:23.960 it's not something you chose, don't identify with it. Identify was maybe an iteration of it,

00:35:28.520 but always keep it positive. When you identify with something that's a cage, you are building a cage

00:35:33.960 around yourself. Well, sure. And I, I, it's hard for me to think of scenarios, for example,

00:35:41.880 in which people identified with their anxiety and it went well for them, for example.

00:35:46.600 So I understand that, but I think you have to think about these things tactically and

00:35:54.360 go back to our whole argument about constructing a strong identity. It has to have

00:35:59.480 very good virtues and very good vices. And you cannot have a complete public identity without

00:36:06.680 very clear vices. And sometimes a vice is a mental illness and I, you know, that's okay. You know,

00:36:16.200 I think it's okay to have, and you need to have vices or you're not believable. You're not seen as

00:36:20.120 consistent. You're not seen as trustworthy. If people don't know immediately and clearly what is wrong with

00:36:25.720 you. So I don't agree with that. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I'll agree with that.

00:36:35.160 What was the Churchill line? He has all of the virtues I detest and none of the vices. I love

00:36:40.120 something like that. I'm a big vice person. I love a good vice on someone, a potty mouth, a weird,

00:36:46.920 a weird disorder, a tick, you know, weird overjudgmental behavior, over the top behavior.

00:36:57.400 Vices are the new virtue, but only if they're managed in a way that is not genuinely disruptive

00:37:07.240 or annoying. So it's, it's, this is a dangerous road to travel.

00:37:12.760 Well, I love you to death, Simone. You are a very special woman.

00:37:19.400 Yeah. I love you. Thanks.

00:37:21.400 I love you too. No. So stable diffusion is one of these models where I'm actually running it locally

00:37:27.480 on my computer. Oh, wow. Okay. I didn't know it did that. And I can use lots of different like sub

00:37:34.280 models that I can put on top of it. So I can use it to create much less filtered images, i.e. like,

00:37:41.880 because, you know, that's a huge problem whenever we're creating title cards because we do spicy

00:37:45.320 topics and they're always like, oh, Microsoft, oh, you're disparaging someone or this looks naughty

00:37:51.480 or violent. And that gets me into trouble. But with stable diffusion, because a lot of people use it

00:37:56.600 for not safe for work content. Oh, they do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's done locally on my GPU.

00:38:01.960 Yeah. Oh, I see. So they're not afraid of being sued or something because of their...

00:38:08.280 Yeah. Yeah. So you can get looser models and then models that are trained on different things.

00:38:11.800 Anyway, so it gives me a good opportunity to expand the types of title cards that we're putting

00:38:18.680 together. By the way, for anyone who wonders what I use for title cards, typically if it's a cartoony

00:38:23.720 one, I'm using Microsoft Studio, which is one of the best for that.

00:38:26.680 Oh, not the DeviantArt one?

00:38:28.360 The DeviantArt one does the more artsy styles or more stylized things. It actually turns out that,

00:38:35.560 however, for the 1950s atomic style, you know, with like the housewives and stuff,

00:38:39.800 Microsoft Studio is best for that. Oh, I bet. Yeah. DeviantArt can't really do it.

00:38:43.320 Black Forest can't really do it. Black Forest I use for a lot of stuff whenever I'm doing something

00:38:47.640 realistic, but it's not really good at anything non-realistic. Like it can't take a concept and

00:38:52.760 make something, you know, but Microsoft is very good at that. But we'll see if I can bring stable

00:38:58.280 diffusion into my repertoire because it should also because I can load different models that sort of

00:39:03.560 change its presumptive training structure. It's going to give me more precision in terms of the

00:39:11.000 types of images I'm creating. And I eventually want to get to a point where I can even do training

00:39:15.880 myself because I would really like to train a model. And if any of our fans know how to do this

00:39:21.400 and can do it for me on 1950s atomic style images. Yes.

00:39:25.560 You know, like advertisers in 1950s, like housewives and stuff like that. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

00:39:30.200 I think that I could create a really interesting one. And I'd prefer to just go with that style for

00:39:34.840 all our images if I could. Just always, always. I don't know.

00:39:39.320 Just always housewives. Yes. Always, no, always 1950s atomic optimism.

00:39:47.000 Well, I, yeah, I like their, their future optimism in that time period.

00:39:52.120 Yeah. Technofuturism or no, what it was a retrofuturism. That's the term. Do you remember

00:39:56.680 the old blog retrofuturism? Did you ever follow it? It was a great, well, like from we'll say

00:40:06.840 2009, 2008. Oh, yes. I liked that. Yeah. Okay.

00:40:13.240 That was a nice old blog. I remember the age of blogs, by the way, Simone, where you had,

00:40:19.160 God, what was the one that I loved so much? And it's so woke now. I can't even remember. I used to

00:40:24.840 remember when I can has cheeseburger worth was a thing. The guy who founded I can't has cheeseburger,

00:40:30.520 by the way, deep. Eric Nakagawa. Yeah. And Simone was an advisor in our first startup,

00:40:36.520 Art Corgi. And we met with him a lot and he's a really cool guy. Oh yeah. We've since,

00:40:41.320 at least I saw him at ETH Denver because now he works in, or at least when I saw him at ETH Denver,

00:40:47.240 like two years ago, he works in crypto, worked in crypto. I think he still does. Yeah.

00:40:53.160 That's what? From memes to meme coins, I guess. Makes sense.

00:40:58.840 And by the way, I decided to look up to see if they had 1950s style creators and they do.

00:41:04.920 So I might be able to see if I can get one of these to work. Well, that would be really exciting.

00:41:11.320 Start your engines, Malcolm. Well, if I can make, if I can make better title cards,

00:41:17.400 more thematic title cards, more iconic title cards, I am going to be very, very excited.

Based Camp - October 22, 2024

70% of Gen Z Incorporates a Mental Illness Into Their Identity

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript