Based Camp - February 06, 2024


Alpha Beta is a Bad Dichotomy: Kings vs Knights


Episode Stats

Length

32 minutes

Words per Minute

182.07085

Word Count

5,896

Sentence Count

331

Misogynist Sentences

7

Hate Speech Sentences

12


Summary

In this episode, we discuss the difference between alpha and beta knights and how to balance the two. We also talk about the joys of being a parent and how important it is to be a good provider for your kids.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Like in the world of like alpha, beta, sigma and everything like that, they, they act like
00:00:05.180 not being able to follow someone is a sign of superiority or superiority.
00:00:10.280 No, it's being a bad knight.
00:00:12.240 It's being unable to swallow my pride and just do what needs to be done for the good
00:00:17.060 of my community because I'm not the one making the orders.
00:00:20.300 That is not a sign of being extra manly or anything like that.
00:00:25.120 Knights are not less masculine than Kings.
00:00:27.640 Let's be clear about that.
00:00:28.560 Actually, Kings are generally like a good King is generally more effeminate than a good
00:00:33.720 knight.
00:00:33.980 So you can see that both groups are submitting in some ways.
00:00:37.440 Kings need to submit in so far as they need to efface their pride for the good of their
00:00:43.780 community.
00:00:44.840 Would you like to know more?
00:00:46.140 Now, I know we are here to discuss alpha, beta knights.
00:00:49.060 However, I want to first give a shout out to you, perfect husband, and show people that
00:00:55.100 husbands are not always the stereotypes of people.
00:00:57.340 Be the mess.
00:00:58.720 So you know the stereotype and the meme of like the boyfriend walking hand in hand with
00:01:03.140 a girlfriend down the street.
00:01:04.320 And then he's like looking back at some other really hot girl and the girlfriend, it is
00:01:08.320 like a stock photo is looking horrified at him.
00:01:10.380 You know that meme, right?
00:01:11.540 Yeah.
00:01:12.060 So you and I are like that, except what are you craning your neck at when we're on our
00:01:16.940 morning walks?
00:01:17.540 Oh, toys.
00:01:19.920 You know me.
00:01:20.560 Toys for the kids.
00:01:21.420 Yes.
00:01:21.840 You're always like, oh, can I like, and like, you know, even if we're like in a grocery
00:01:25.340 store and there's like a tiny little like just hanging somewhere from like the middle
00:01:30.260 of a shelf, like one of those little like, you know, little matchbox, matchbox, matchbox
00:01:35.600 cars or bouncy balls or anything that's like remotely kid like you're like, you're like,
00:01:40.680 you have to take a close look at it.
00:01:42.040 Like, will the kids like it?
00:01:43.360 Would this make them happy?
00:01:44.540 Would this make their eyes light up?
00:01:46.080 And you were just so constantly looking for ways to make your lives better and to bring
00:01:52.080 just more joy into this household.
00:01:53.940 And I, I mean, one, you are singular and amazing and I don't think you're actually human because
00:01:59.300 you can't possibly be because only like not even characters are like you because it's
00:02:04.380 not believable.
00:02:05.200 You know, you're just too perfect.
00:02:06.460 However, I do want people to know that I think there are probably more marriages like this
00:02:11.180 where, you know, there, there aren't like these constant feelings of like jealousy and
00:02:15.600 resentment and what about me and what, you know, but, but, but delight in things that
00:02:20.060 couples care about jointly, although you're better at carrying about everything and you're
00:02:24.320 way better at showing your love for everyone in this household.
00:02:28.040 So I just want to, I want to point that out.
00:02:29.740 I want people to know marriage and kids.
00:02:31.220 I have to, I have to add a caveat to this because it actually reminds me of something
00:02:34.480 that happened to me.
00:02:35.220 So this is the result.
00:02:36.940 I don't know if it's a result of me carrying my kids, but one of my optimization functions
00:02:40.160 right now, like background optimization, because it gives me a lot of happiness, right?
00:02:45.880 Something that gives me happiness is giving my kids something that makes them happy.
00:02:48.940 When I see them happy, that's like one of my core sources of happiness in life today.
00:02:54.080 And as a result, I am constantly on the lookout for things that I can use to vampire this happiness
00:03:02.260 for my kids, right?
00:03:03.380 You know, I'm, I'm just completely selfish action.
00:03:06.060 And it reminds me of how you have these different optimization functions at different ages.
00:03:10.720 I remember for a while after I left the age where like I was having sex all the time was
00:03:15.220 like everyone I wanted to have sex with that.
00:03:18.220 I would sometimes just be driving and be like randomly, like a part of my brain that had
00:03:22.280 learned to be passively looking for these things.
00:03:24.520 Like that's a good parking lot to have sex in.
00:03:26.740 If I needed to have sex with somebody, that's a good back area there where I don't think
00:03:30.920 people would find me.
00:03:31.880 Cause you know, when you're in like late high school, college, you know, you need to be
00:03:35.160 able to sneak around.
00:03:35.900 You need to find private areas.
00:03:37.180 Um, and, and then for a long time after that, I had so trained this like set of like, these
00:03:44.000 are things, which is actually kind of sad.
00:03:46.080 Like if my kids ever died, I still think the thing would be running in my head of this is
00:03:51.780 an optimization function around the type of toys that would make this kid happy or would
00:03:55.760 make that kid happy.
00:03:56.800 And I imagine it must be devastating to people who lose a kid.
00:03:59.220 They walk through a store or older me.
00:04:02.060 I reach an older age and I see things that trigger the, you know, the kids are out of
00:04:07.000 the house now.
00:04:07.700 Oh, the Octavian would have loved this when he was younger.
00:04:10.240 No, this is why hopefully we're having our last kid right around the time Octavian's about
00:04:15.680 to have his first kids.
00:04:17.540 Oh God, I hope so.
00:04:19.020 But I, the topic today is one that I actually find really interesting because it came, you
00:04:23.380 know, one of our listeners was asking about the concept of alpha and beta men and like
00:04:28.040 more of our thoughts on this subject and it's like, you know, I really don't know if that's
00:04:34.620 the right way to categorize men.
00:04:37.420 It's not that there are not subordinate and dominant men in the world because there are,
00:04:43.460 there are men who are, and we talk about this in other episodes, the alpha beta dichotomy
00:04:48.660 is a bit of a misunderstanding when you're talking about primates.
00:04:51.920 What you have with the true alpha was in primate tribes is what we call the astronaut Mike Dexter
00:04:57.300 stereotype, which is a smart, competent individual who everyone admires and wants to follow and
00:05:04.120 is like your captain of the football team, but who's also nice to the nerds because this
00:05:08.000 is what chimpanzees often do.
00:05:09.960 You need to recruit the support of those around you and that is how you maintain your brutal
00:05:14.940 oppression of those who would oppose you.
00:05:17.180 It is not the group of dickish guys who are slightly antisocial.
00:05:22.740 Well, that's actually much closer to in the great apes, what you would call a roaming
00:05:27.900 bachelor group common was in some eight groups, the unsuccessful, I think even like adolescent
00:05:33.260 lions, this is not just an ape thing, right?
00:05:36.360 Yeah.
00:05:36.680 But I mean, I try to look at apes for models of human behavior.
00:05:39.500 Sure.
00:05:39.740 Sure.
00:05:39.980 Sure.
00:05:40.600 Yeah.
00:05:40.760 So with adolescent lions, you'll get this phenomenon or lions, apes, whatever you see this in different
00:05:45.840 mammal species where unsuccessful males get kicked out of a group.
00:05:49.960 Like these are males who think that they're more dominant than they really are within their
00:05:54.200 social circle.
00:05:55.320 And so the dominant males kick them out and the women don't want anything to do with them.
00:06:00.000 And so they go around and basically in a group of all men act extra macho all the time.
00:06:05.620 And their goal is to try to take over another healthy group so that they can become the new
00:06:12.540 dominant males of that group.
00:06:13.980 Now it doesn't often happen.
00:06:15.560 It's sort of a sign of genetic failure.
00:06:17.360 So if you are going around with a group of unmatched men acting extra macho, I would look
00:06:24.480 at and try to understand the phenomenon of roaming bachelors because that's a better explanation
00:06:29.420 and it is definitely nothing to be proud of.
00:06:31.840 It is a sign of genetic failure.
00:06:33.720 And it's something that has been common throughout our ape ancestors.
00:06:36.640 Now these roaming bachelors, like if you were going to have a group of males attack you and
00:06:40.120 take over your tribe, it was the most common way that would happen.
00:06:42.340 It's not that that never happened.
00:06:43.180 But usually the fate of roaming bachelors is dying alone in the woods without ever finding
00:06:49.980 anyone who wants to be with them because that's not the actual status game that's played was
00:06:53.940 in the tribe.
00:06:54.720 These are people who couldn't understand their actual position was in the tribe.
00:06:58.360 But I started to think of how do men actually differentiate in our society in a meaningful
00:07:02.440 way, right?
00:07:03.120 Because I think that these alpha beta dichotomies are not as useful to me because they don't
00:07:09.460 describe ideological aspiration as it differentiates between communities and is predictive of meaningful
00:07:16.640 behavior and world perspectives.
00:07:19.080 So my dichotomy will make more sense to people.
00:07:21.920 So I do think that this exists, but it's a background thing, this alpha beta, sigma, whatever
00:07:25.180 thing, right?
00:07:26.740 I think the core way that I would differentiate men, and this is an evolving theory, so I might
00:07:30.820 do another video that expands on this theory in the future, is knights, kings, philosophers,
00:07:40.480 and mystics.
00:07:42.280 Hmm.
00:07:43.400 Interesting.
00:07:44.640 Knights are men who follow a leader.
00:07:49.080 They are men who are followers to, like, followers, but not in a subordinate way.
00:07:56.640 What I mean by that is when people hear, like, beta men, right, they think submissive men.
00:08:03.280 Yeah, they don't think people who are, like, fanboys of Jordan Peterson or Elon Musk, right?
00:08:10.120 Yeah, knights are not submissive in a cucky way.
00:08:15.720 They're not submissive in a, I will subordinate myself to anything that comes along that proves
00:08:22.260 it's more powerful to me.
00:08:23.940 They are submissive to a tribal identity and often a tribal leader that has proven an amount
00:08:31.220 of natural superiority to them in some way.
00:08:34.060 These individuals are defined by their integrity.
00:08:38.720 And something that's really interesting about knights, I think they're the most common group
00:08:44.580 of successful males.
00:08:45.860 You know, a lot of women want to date a knight.
00:08:47.440 They want this big, strong being of honor that stands for the tribe and the community and
00:08:54.840 that is fighting for justice and honor and everything like that, right?
00:08:58.880 Well, and if they've chosen a tribe and or leader, it's probably because that person has pretty
00:09:04.660 decent ideas.
00:09:05.540 So they've also chosen to fight for probably fairly good and well-vetted ideas that are
00:09:12.260 respectable and that a woman can get excited about, right?
00:09:15.460 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:09:16.460 The woman likes them because of their honor and integrity, which is what defines a knight,
00:09:20.660 but also their steadfastness, bravery in the face of their tradition.
00:09:25.680 And what judges the quality of one group of knights off of another group of knights is
00:09:29.160 who they've chosen as their leader.
00:09:30.980 Who are they following?
00:09:32.060 Is this an individual that deserves following or not?
00:09:36.280 And this now comes to a problem with knights.
00:09:39.700 Knights make terrible leaders of other knights.
00:09:45.000 And it has to do with the fact that their world framings are very different.
00:09:49.300 So for a knight to be a good knight, they must be a dentologist.
00:09:57.820 Whereas-
00:09:58.320 Deontologist?
00:09:58.860 Like D-E-R-N-T-O?
00:10:00.800 They must be a deontologist.
00:10:03.300 I mean, I'm going to not be pronouncing it right, but-
00:10:06.000 But for a leader to be a good leader, they must be a consequentialist.
00:10:11.300 So now we're going to talk about why knights need to-
00:10:14.140 Well, first let's talk about deontology versus consequentialism.
00:10:17.260 Consequentialism means that you judge-
00:10:20.420 No, no, we'll talk about the leader.
00:10:21.600 Leaders are leaders because they are individuals who often-
00:10:25.420 And sometimes this is genetic.
00:10:26.480 Sometimes they have some level of ability to choose this.
00:10:31.180 But they will not accept any role within a group other than a leadership role.
00:10:36.020 Okay.
00:10:36.280 If they lack the natural ability to draw knights to them, i.e. they are able to prove themselves as good leaders, then they become what in the alpha beta system is called a sigma male.
00:10:49.640 These are not mysterious lone wolves.
00:10:52.180 These are natural born leaders who unfortunately didn't have the gifts needed to draw a following.
00:10:59.000 Or weren't in the right place at the right time, etc.
00:11:01.040 Well, I won't say always the right place at the right time.
00:11:04.340 It might just be that they lack the qualities.
00:11:06.480 They weren't smart enough.
00:11:07.560 They weren't ambitious enough.
00:11:08.680 They weren't hardworking enough.
00:11:09.940 They weren't fit enough.
00:11:11.160 Whatever the case may be, they didn't draw the knights to them.
00:11:14.500 Because knights, typically, you know, you're going to have 80 knights for every one king, right?
00:11:19.740 Like, they do not – so when a person has the personality profile of a king but is not deserving of following, they become what is called a stigma male, which is a king that just refuses to submit to anyone else.
00:11:34.000 And we can talk about the negative consequences of that in a second.
00:11:36.580 So the two philosophies here are consequentialism believes that the consequences of your decisions or actions judge the morality of those actions.
00:11:48.320 So if I order troops to war and all those troops die, it doesn't matter how just it was that I decided to send them to war.
00:11:58.120 It doesn't matter how much I was following the rules of my position when I sent them to war, what I did with evil and feckless and pointless.
00:12:05.220 Because as a leader, I was expected to win that war.
00:12:09.960 And I don't get to make excuses as to say, but I followed the rules or I did what was honorable.
00:12:17.040 As a leader, if I antagonize another tribe because I decide to follow the rules of honor and that leads to a war between our two tribes, I am responsible for all of those deaths.
00:12:30.060 It does not matter that I acted according to the rules of honor or the rules of my culture or the rules of society.
00:12:37.340 And this is also true with logic.
00:12:39.200 I can think logically this was the best outcome.
00:12:41.860 If I fail in my logical interpretation, I must take responsibility for that failure.
00:12:48.940 I can't say what I was doing was, after all, I was trying to do what was right.
00:12:55.080 I didn't know it would end up terribly, right?
00:12:59.200 Knights must have the exact opposite perspective.
00:13:02.620 If a knight is a consequentialist, then they ignore their leader flippantly based on untotal information.
00:13:10.280 They don't have a total view of the picture of the world.
00:13:12.900 They don't have all of the information that their leader has.
00:13:15.520 And so they may act in a way that is unpredictable that makes them a very ineffective knight because when the leader is making a decision, when the king is making a decision, and he aligns the knights on the battlefield in a certain way, and a few knights decide, I know better, they can end up dooming all of their brothers in arms for thinking that they know better.
00:13:37.240 And this is a really, really big problem.
00:13:39.880 And so knights must be deontologists.
00:13:43.900 They must say, look, I follow the rules because following the rules is in itself a just thing to do.
00:13:50.580 But these are two completely different personality optimization profiles.
00:13:56.180 And they cluster within different communities, and they can cause different problems.
00:14:02.500 So one of the problems you get was knight communities.
00:14:04.920 So one of the most common knight communities, a cultural group that I think over, I won't say over-cultivate knights, but it has a lot of knights, like it really does a good job of producing good knights, is the Catholic cultural group.
00:14:17.820 And this is part of why, one of the things we constantly mention is Catholic immigrant groups to the U.S. are the most likely immigrant groups to form large organized crime organizations.
00:14:27.720 You know, whether it's the Irish mob or the Italian mafia or the Hispanic groups you have right now, and then other groups that use similar knight-like structures, like the Orthodox, where they have this deferral to authority strategy for determining what's true.
00:14:41.660 They also form large organized crime syndicates like the Russian mob and stuff like that.
00:14:45.900 So the question is, is why do you see this?
00:14:47.920 It's because you have this one deferral to authority mindset within the masculine population of the community, but then the leaders are also born knights, which means that they have sort of an honor code in terms of how they interact with the world.
00:15:05.700 But they also believe that they're in the position of a king, which causes them to, one, ignore the rules of the land much more readily, and two, get into conflict with anyone else who's in this localized king or leadership position, but is really a knight.
00:15:20.080 Whereas real kings don't do that.
00:15:21.900 Like, people who are born kings don't get into flippant fights over their honor and stuff like that.
00:15:27.100 That is, they understand that the well-being of their subjects is more important than their own honor or pride or anything like that.
00:15:36.640 What matters is the ultimate outcome.
00:15:39.880 So what do you think, first of all, of this framework that I'm laying out?
00:15:44.360 This makes sense so far.
00:15:45.660 Let's go to philosophers.
00:15:46.920 Hold on.
00:15:47.320 I want to talk about what happens when you get an overabundance of kings within a population.
00:15:50.920 The overabundance of kings within a population means that you have a bunch of people who can't find followers,
00:15:56.160 but also can't submit to others.
00:15:59.400 And these individuals then often go to the outskirts of society.
00:16:04.300 So it was in our modern day world that might be something like working in a fire watch or going and living in the woods and, you know, securing a little bunker in hopes that you get an apocalypse.
00:16:15.180 And then you could exercise your kingly abilities.
00:16:17.440 So it's very Aragorn-y, right?
00:16:19.520 Yeah, but historically what it means is population clusters that overproduce kings have usually been most disproportionately represented on the frontiers of society.
00:16:33.280 These were the individuals who, if they were in New York or Boston during the frontier period and they couldn't acquire a group of followers and stuff like that,
00:16:41.240 they'd just say, screw it, I'm going to go live on my own.
00:16:43.020 And then they'd go get in a wagon and they'd go to the edge of society.
00:16:46.700 And within America, there's some population clusters in America that you can find that just kept moving and kept moving and kept moving.
00:16:53.460 Like it's not like one immigration wave.
00:16:55.320 It's like they had to keep finding some reason to move over and over and over again.
00:16:59.520 What's causing this is because this is like an ultra king population.
00:17:03.000 But it also means that they're going to be much more individualist, much less likely to unite under a single leader or do anything truly meaningful in a social structure.
00:17:11.580 So it's kind of like your family and my family, if I'm thinking about like past behaviors.
00:17:16.260 Yeah, our family would be heavy producers of the king archetype.
00:17:19.280 Yeah.
00:17:19.720 People who led groups, led rebellions, stuff like that.
00:17:23.260 Or just disappeared into the wilderness to become like local sheriffs or circus performers.
00:17:28.820 Exactly.
00:17:29.440 In my family.
00:17:30.160 Yeah, they're like, I can't take over this group.
00:17:33.680 I'm leaving.
00:17:34.380 Bye.
00:17:35.140 But that's the way I was when I was a kid.
00:17:36.480 When I would hang out with social cliques, if I wasn't in charge of a clique, I'd say, screw it.
00:17:40.500 I'm going to go do my own thing.
00:17:42.060 And so often for like my freshman and sophomore year, I was often kind of seen as a loner.
00:17:46.340 And then I would seen as like the head of a social clique, generally my junior or senior year of things.
00:17:51.560 Because people would accumulate around me and we'd have our own community and stuff like that.
00:17:55.200 Anyway.
00:17:56.620 So, and this is not like a holistically good thing.
00:17:59.600 This is a personality flaw, not being able to follow people.
00:18:02.440 I need to be clear about that.
00:18:04.120 Like in the world of like alpha, beta, sigma and everything like that, they act like not being able to follow someone is a sign of superiority.
00:18:14.340 No, it's being a bad knight.
00:18:16.280 It's being unable to swallow my pride and just do what needs to be done for the good of my community.
00:18:21.740 Because I'm not the one making the orders.
00:18:24.260 That is not a sign of being extra manly or anything like that.
00:18:28.920 It is being a failure at being one type of man and being successful at being another type of man.
00:18:34.000 But that is not like knight.
00:18:36.080 Knights are not less masculine than kings.
00:18:38.680 Let's be clear about that.
00:18:39.600 Actually, kings are generally, like a good king is generally more effeminate than a good knight.
00:18:45.160 They are generally more open to compromise.
00:18:48.980 They are generally more open to like effeminate ways of acting.
00:18:53.640 They are likely more, like there's many things about a good king that involves self-effacement for the good of their community, but not for the good of an individual leader.
00:19:03.260 So you can see that both groups are submitting in some ways.
00:19:06.900 Kings need to submit insofar as they need to efface their pride for the good of their community and they need to efface their value system for the good of their community.
00:19:17.940 Well, and they are nothing without the loyalty of their community.
00:19:21.780 And as soon as they lose that, they have nothing.
00:19:24.160 Whereas a knight at least has a certain amount of like choice in his vote and personal agency in a way that a king kind of doesn't.
00:19:34.900 Exactly.
00:19:36.220 And now philosophers and mystics are interesting as well.
00:19:39.420 Philosophers and mystics typically only appear within male varieties when they get large urban clusters within cities.
00:19:47.800 These are the two groups that is most overly produced within the Jewish population.
00:19:51.620 Or really any urban, Muslim groups have urban specialization to an effect as well, which we've talked about.
00:19:58.300 Not all Muslim groups, but some Muslim groups.
00:20:00.120 And the Muslim groups that do also overproduce philosophers and mystics.
00:20:03.640 Now, when you're in a multicultural ecosystem, philosophers and mystics are of very high utility.
00:20:10.440 Philosophers aren't just philosophers.
00:20:12.060 They're people who learn and produce knowledge for the sake of learning and producing knowledge.
00:20:17.400 And these individuals are extremely high utility to any large community, right?
00:20:25.240 Because they just like learning and talking and debating and coming up with the best ideas.
00:20:30.760 This is not like a beta sigma or anything like that.
00:20:33.240 These are just people whose lives are dedicated to the pursuit of self-betterment through education and through educational pursuits.
00:20:40.680 The problem is that when you get an overabundance of the philosopher type male, you get sophists and you get bureaucrats.
00:20:47.960 And that is very, very bad.
00:20:50.080 These are individuals who are learned for the sake of being learned.
00:20:53.080 They basically create pyramid schemes of learnedness.
00:20:55.880 Or like vortexes of intellectualism that can ultimately draw a culture down and prevent it from advancing and focusing on worldly things that the culture kind of needs to stay alive, right?
00:21:13.580 Well, yeah.
00:21:13.860 And this is what sophists are.
00:21:15.040 These are people who debate for the sake of debate, and they have forgotten that learning and education has an end purpose, which is real world industry and utility.
00:21:26.640 When philosophers follow kings, they do very well because kings understand consequentialism and they live by consequentialism and they understand how their philosophers should be deployed.
00:21:36.440 Yeah, kings are like, well, okay, what are we going to do about this?
00:21:38.520 Okay, I'm going to take this thing that you've learned and I'm going to do this with it or we're going to change our policy as a result.
00:21:43.280 Whereas in isolation, all of that high caliber thinking is just high caliber thinking.
00:21:48.500 The philosophers generate the knowledge that informs the king, which guides the knights.
00:21:53.120 That is a healthy cultural ecosystem, which is why multiple cultural groups can work really well together and outcompete solo cultural groups.
00:22:01.220 And one of the really interesting things you have about Israel now, which we talk about in our book, is a group, the modern Jewish population, this isn't true of the ancestral Jewish population, we talk about this in the group.
00:22:09.700 It was really an urban specialist group, you know, outside of Israel, something like 98% of Jews live in urban centers.
00:22:15.560 And before the Holocaust, that was true as well, now need to take on urban roles, which is why you get really interesting looking Jewish urban settlements.
00:22:25.500 Like the, I need to look up the names of them, but I'll put some pictures on the screen, but they look like little micro, if you've explored the settlements in Israel, they look like little micro cities and not like regular suburbs.
00:22:36.360 They're incredibly dense and weird, like there'll be like little circles of community.
00:22:41.840 And there's other reasons for this, like the way you choose to pray, but it's a long story here.
00:22:44.780 But then the other group, and this is a producer cross community.
00:22:48.120 So the mystic, mystics are generally dangerous overall.
00:22:52.400 If you've seen our video on what we think of witchcraft, you can see why, but it is one of the male specializations.
00:22:58.380 This is why I believe you have rates of, or one of the evolutionary factor factor, one of the evolutionary factors that has led for a selection cross culturally for schizophrenia in populations.
00:23:13.040 It's that your classic mystic, the best mystic is your tribal shaman, who, whether you are, you know, a British people in the far North or in Africa, you know, all of these groups had tribal shamans.
00:23:26.540 These were individuals who heard voices that communicated with the land of spirits, and then they shared this information with their community.
00:23:35.360 And I'm sure they played some historic role of utilization for communities, but today I think they serve more a role of just errant information, because the information that they are gathering, while it used to, so the true role of the shaman in a community historically was to assure the loyalty of the stupidest individuals within the community,
00:23:59.720 or the most susceptible to mystical hoodoo and mystical manipulation to the king, which is, they did what today, like, cults do and stuff like that, which is to say some individuals just cannot be motivated by higher order ideas,
00:24:15.500 like honor and integrity, or a love of knowledge, or the love of, like, a desire to follow a just ruler.
00:24:23.080 They can only be motivated by threats in the world of the supernatural, and the mystics kept these individuals in line in following the king.
00:24:32.420 And the problem is, is that now we live in a society, like, especially as we enter a space-faring age, where these individuals that cannot be motivated by honor and integrity and stuff like that are just not particularly a useful use of food and life support systems.
00:24:46.660 So, that makes the shamans less useful than they would have been in a history context, unless we find some different way of utilizing them, which is going to be hard, given our views around things like witchcraft.
00:25:02.180 Yeah, so you're just like, drop them. Drop them.
00:25:05.160 I don't see a high utility for them. I think individuals, so I mean, there's two types of shamans, right?
00:25:10.520 One type of shaman is genuinely, like, thinks they're hearing voices and everything like that, and they are the schizophrenic type shaman.
00:25:18.060 These individuals are not going to act, they are not the type of person you want on a spaceship where a single mistake can kill everyone.
00:25:26.100 The other type of shaman is the type of shaman that is actually more like a philosopher type,
00:25:33.580 but they have slotted themselves into a shamanistic role, because they saw some level of arbitrage within that role.
00:25:41.080 And these individuals can, if they can close themselves off to the realms of the unprovable, as we talk about in our witchcraft video,
00:25:50.000 which I would suggest you watch to understand our full views on this,
00:25:53.760 can become of utilization and can move into a philosopher group,
00:25:58.480 but a philosopher group that's specialized on human manipulation and understanding how humans think and act,
00:26:05.640 so long as they do not promote chaos cults on the spaceship or the colony or anything like that,
00:26:13.080 you know, when I'm thinking distant human future.
00:26:15.020 When I say chaos cults, what I mean is, you know, genuine mysticism and the belief of alternate systems
00:26:21.680 that govern the physical reality within which we live, because that is what mysticism fundamentally is.
00:26:26.540 It's a hypothesis that there is an alternate explanation for how physics and reality works,
00:26:32.480 but a hypothesis that you are unwilling to have tested and disprove it.
00:26:38.020 So what do you think of this framework? Any other groups you would add to it?
00:26:45.040 I mean, in modern society, we also have to consider, and this is not a gendered thing, so maybe it doesn't count,
00:26:52.840 but the people who are just completely, like the hikikomori in Japan,
00:26:58.020 the people who've become shut-ins and completely...
00:27:00.460 I guess I'd call them blanks. These are the people who the shamans are meant to control.
00:27:05.860 Hmm.
00:27:06.220 I mean, they could be NPCs, they could be whatever you want to call them.
00:27:08.860 Yeah, I guess, yeah, maybe NPCs is the right word for them,
00:27:12.120 but yeah, that is like sort of one segment that I feel like is growing
00:27:14.640 and is increasingly a risk to society that is not addressed by this model.
00:27:22.860 Well, yeah, because this model is looking at the people who we want to take with us
00:27:26.860 and judging, you know, who is the best people to take with us.
00:27:29.680 Oh.
00:27:30.720 So it sounds like you want to bring, like, two kings, a ton of knights,
00:27:37.640 three philosophers and no mystics.
00:27:39.260 The stable-breeding population of kings.
00:27:41.960 We would talk about how this works and...
00:27:45.060 But yeah, the vast majority you need are knights and philosophers as well.
00:27:49.980 I mean, if you're in space, you need people who are dedicated to learning
00:27:52.920 and knowledge and truth, but are guarded against chaos and the mystical arts.
00:28:00.260 So you need these individuals who are not going to be susceptible
00:28:02.700 to external and alternate frameworks for physical reality,
00:28:06.440 but that can push science forwards and that can study populations
00:28:10.360 and provide useful information to those who is in ruling positions.
00:28:14.780 But the problem is that these groups all seem to hate each other
00:28:17.560 when they're just acting randomly.
00:28:18.900 Like, they all think that every other one of the groups is an enemy
00:28:21.640 because they see that they're different and they have different values.
00:28:24.580 Like, the individuals who are like,
00:28:25.600 you guys are such consequentialists, like, that's so evil.
00:28:28.140 And it's like, well, you don't want somebody
00:28:30.520 who's not a consequentialist running your society or your group.
00:28:33.820 Right. I mean, because, I mean, well, some, I think,
00:28:36.700 view consequentialism as very evil because they view it as
00:28:39.400 the mindset of the ends justify the means,
00:28:42.140 meaning that they focus on atrocities that could take place.
00:28:46.040 We focus on the, is this evidence-based?
00:28:49.700 Will there be an ROI?
00:28:51.020 Is this effective element of consequentialism?
00:28:54.400 Well, sometimes atrocities are necessary.
00:28:56.440 The consequentialist is the person who, as a leader,
00:28:59.700 you are trusting, you know,
00:29:01.640 I was playing Rogue Trader recently, right?
00:29:03.840 Which is a game that takes place in the 40k universe.
00:29:06.200 And there's a planet that's being overcome by a chaos cult, right?
00:29:09.960 And you have a few options.
00:29:11.440 You can try to save as many people as you can from the planet.
00:29:14.960 But, you know, a cult spreading there
00:29:16.220 and it will become a demon world
00:29:17.360 where people will end up being tortured.
00:29:19.120 And for eternity, the hundreds of years, thousands of years, right?
00:29:24.120 Everyone on the planet will live in a state of constant pain and fear.
00:29:26.620 Or you can basically set a detonation that destroys all life on the planet.
00:29:31.360 But you're not going to have time to do that
00:29:33.140 if you try to save a bunch of people.
00:29:35.080 The obvious right decision is to detonate all life on the planet.
00:29:38.640 Yeah.
00:29:40.160 If you are optimizing for anything like good in the world
00:29:43.740 or anything like that.
00:29:44.680 But it is also a horrifically individually evil decision
00:29:48.640 that a denatologist would never take.
00:29:50.320 And so that is part of the pain of being a consequentialist.
00:29:57.320 You just need like the logic
00:29:58.680 and people need to understand that you are logically aligned
00:30:01.160 with what their goals are as well.
00:30:02.580 Because some consequentialists,
00:30:04.160 if they're fighting for something like human purity
00:30:06.660 or something like that,
00:30:07.820 then they're going to come up with genuinely evil things.
00:30:10.200 Like trying to prevent people like us from breeding
00:30:12.260 because they see our use of genetics
00:30:15.460 in terms of our breeding patterns
00:30:17.400 as perverting human purity.
00:30:20.840 And so they are angry about that
00:30:22.720 and they want to sterilize us.
00:30:24.700 And they want to sterilize disabled people
00:30:26.300 who are the other people
00:30:26.960 who need this technology to have kids.
00:30:28.760 And that leads to genuine evil.
00:30:31.000 So it's important that the people
00:30:33.060 who are in a consequentialist group within society
00:30:35.360 have some level of higher order thinking capacity.
00:30:39.220 And that's also why it's important
00:30:40.080 that you have smart knights in a society
00:30:41.560 because dumb knights follow dumb consequentialists.
00:30:45.660 Yeah, dumb knights just go ahead
00:30:47.160 and execute on atrocities.
00:30:49.100 And there's plenty of historical precedent for this.
00:30:54.660 Don't take out.
00:30:55.400 But I'm sure there's some other groups
00:30:56.880 that I can add to or expand this system with eventually.
00:30:59.680 But I love you to just about it.
00:31:01.200 And I'd love to, you know,
00:31:02.280 in the future to hear your thoughts
00:31:03.560 on how women break out.
00:31:05.080 Yeah, that would be interesting.
00:31:06.620 Yeah.
00:31:06.920 Like if this is what men are,
00:31:08.500 then what are women?
00:31:09.320 That'll be a fun conversation.
00:31:10.440 I'm sure some women fall into this category as well
00:31:14.600 or this framework.
00:31:16.820 But the question is,
00:31:17.720 is what role are they taking within society?
00:31:20.560 Which may be different.
00:31:21.880 And I also love that you point out about the blanks.
00:31:23.900 Most people are blanks.
00:31:25.320 But blanks aren't alphas or betas or sigmas
00:31:27.640 or anything like that.
00:31:28.840 They're just people who are-
00:31:30.320 They're not doing anything.
00:31:31.160 They're just consuming.
00:31:31.900 Almost sort of automatically reacting to their reality.
00:31:34.200 They almost behave like particles
00:31:35.780 just reacting on the forces around them.
00:31:38.160 Yeah, kind of like just consuming air,
00:31:41.860 wasting space.
00:31:42.900 That's very sad.
00:31:43.420 Well, and a lot of them are,
00:31:44.360 well, I mean, they're vectors for infection.
00:31:46.040 They're vectors for memetic infection
00:31:47.480 because they can spread memetic infection
00:31:49.420 to otherwise non-blank individuals.
00:31:52.860 But memetic infections spread very,
00:31:54.760 very fast among blanks.
00:31:56.500 Like wokeism,
00:31:57.660 but also other forms of memetic infection.
00:31:59.560 Like the perversion of stoicism and Calvinism
00:32:03.480 that I think is represented
00:32:05.520 within some aspects of the red pill community
00:32:07.540 that we talk about
00:32:08.200 in The Pragmatist's Guide to Crafting Religion.
00:32:10.000 Right.
00:32:10.640 Yeah, absolutely.
00:32:12.400 Love you.
00:32:14.000 I love you too.
00:32:15.580 You're amazing.
00:32:16.440 I'm looking forward to time with our kids tonight
00:32:18.060 because it's going to be a special night.
00:32:19.780 Mm-hmm.
00:32:21.040 Right.
00:32:21.480 See you downstairs.
00:32:22.600 See ya.
00:32:22.940 See ya.