Based Camp - Do Smartphones Brainwash Women into Hating Babies？

00:00:00.000 hello simone i am excited to be here with you today today we are going to be going over a lot

00:00:03.660 of fertility statistics a lot of graphs and we are going to be asking a question that has been

00:00:08.680 posed in a few different ways we're going to be looking at a number of different articles and

00:00:11.840 research pieces today one is the question of is fertility collapse primarily due to a breakup in

00:00:19.460 marriage rates downstream of cell phone use or is and then a second argument i heard actually

00:00:26.060 very interesting for me what is it adam ruins everything that got adam conover he has like a

00:00:31.040 podcast now and he had a competent like progressive pronatalist on who is arguing that it was cell

00:00:36.880 phones that were leading to all of this this is not something i've heard before i mean certainly

00:00:42.140 cell phones have been blamed for the lack of children's literacy the mental health crisis but

00:00:47.240 marriage rates well no she argued it was making kids that wasn't happening to the phone so we're

00:00:53.700 going to go over these two related arguments okay okay sure and i'm going to start by reading a

00:00:59.180 piece from the financial times and then going occasionally into other pieces that it's citing

00:01:03.240 but from a marked fall in the number of couples had u.s rates of marriage and cohabitation remain

00:01:09.340 constant over the past decade america's total fertility rate would be higher today than it was

00:01:14.360 then and here i am putting a graph on screen that is total fertility rate varied widely by marital

00:01:21.420 status and what it looks at is what your total fertility rate would be if you had been having 0.86

00:01:27.600 kids this whole time so some numbers look really high like the married and spouse present looks like

00:01:33.480 it's been hovering around 4.5 for the the past decade right and so the question is okay why does that look

00:01:40.740 like it's hovering around 4.5 why does separated look like it's hovering around 2.5 why does married

00:01:46.160 spouse absent look like it's hovering around three like these seem weirdly high right okay

00:01:50.960 so here's why while women are married they tend to have very high birth rates note the chart above 0.97

00:01:58.400 does not show that married women will have four or five kids it means that the average birth rate

00:02:03.700 for married women ages 15 to 50 sums up to four or five kids you started at 15 there that seems a

00:02:11.820 little like you're massaging the data okay i don't think many women are getting married at 15 0.96

00:02:16.420 a sweetheart tiny tiny tiny um but that's a 35 year span when the average woman will actually only 1.00

00:02:23.360 spend 12 and 20 of those years married yeah so okay what is shown here which i find compelling

00:02:32.140 is that for period married the number of kids people are having is not declining over time

00:02:39.640 so if you can get people married earlier you are going to have more kids yet we've said that before

00:02:46.040 i do not think that that is the core of the problem but we'll talk about that in just a second

00:02:51.060 as you can see above there's been a decline in married fertility since the peak in 2009 but married

00:03:00.020 fertility rates today aren't actually much lower than married fertility rates in the mid-2000s

00:03:06.080 for diversees and widowers age-adjusted birth rates are actually higher now than they were before

00:03:11.920 the recession never married women again have about pre-recession levels of fertility too

00:03:17.140 by fixing age-specific marital status 2001 to 2008 levels we can model a counterfactual scenario

00:03:24.800 of what fertility might have been had people gotten married and formed families at the same rate as 0.53

00:03:32.240 formerly and what you see here is that yes the fertility rate would have fallen net negative

00:03:38.980 uh but not by a ton you're looking at like by a negative like 0.2 here or something like that

00:03:46.420 okay but we'll get to why i'm not super compelled by this essentially all of the decline in fertility

00:03:52.400 since 2001 can be explained by changes in the marital composition of the population married to single

00:03:58.040 and divorced women are all about as likely controlling for the age and marital status to 1.00

00:04:03.300 have kids as they were in 2001 but today a smaller portion of women are married during those peak 0.98

00:04:08.800 fertility years relationships are not just becoming less common but increasingly fragile in egalitarian

00:04:14.260 finland it is now more common for couples who move in together to split up than to have a child

00:04:19.400 a sharp reversal in the historic trend and this is from a paper here partnership dynamics

00:04:25.040 an entry into parenthood comparison of finished birth cohorts 1969 to 2000 any thoughts before i go

00:04:31.420 further i'll keep going i want to hear more when pictured as a rise in happily childless dinks dual

00:04:38.600 income no kid couples with plenty of disposable income the social trends accompanying falling birth

00:04:43.140 rates seem benign but the rise of singledom and relationship dissolution is a less rosy story

00:04:48.140 especially considering the drop in relationship formation is steepest among the poorest of course

00:04:54.280 many people are happily single the freedom to choose how to spend one's life and with who or

00:04:59.460 without is to be celebrated i don't believe that by the way people aren't happily single everyone hates

00:05:03.240 their life when they're single i don't know i loved being single but i didn't know you existed so

00:05:09.180 there's that okay okay quality of your life when you were single versus quality today

00:05:13.100 much better now more stressful though yeah but the point being is is you would hate your life when

00:05:19.880 contrasted with today if you knew this was a possibility yeah totally but the wider data on

00:05:25.640 loneliness and dating frustration suggests not as all as well so we're going to put some graphs on

00:05:30.240 screen here here you can see the share of children born outside of wedlock by mother's class and this is

00:05:35.180 in the united states 64 of your poor 36 of your working class 13 of your middle or upper class

00:05:42.520 um millennial family pass by class do you have a kid before marriage or do you have marriage before

00:05:49.220 a kid if you're poor 61 chance you have a kid before marriage only 16 chance you have a marriage before

00:05:56.000 a kid wow okay if you're working class it's 44 chance you have a kid before marriage 34 chance you

00:06:03.360 have a marriage before a kid kids are forcing marriages in our society if your middle or upper class is 1.00

00:06:08.960 actually only a 19% chance you have a kid before marriage and a 51% chance you have a marriage

00:06:13.080 before a kid. Wild, right? And when you look at these disparities. Why an almost worldwide decline

00:06:22.080 and why now? The fact is that this is happening almost everywhere all at once. Points to more

00:06:29.660 broad changes acting across borders than country-specific factors. The proliferation of

00:06:34.700 smartphones and social media has been one such exogenous shock. True. Geographic differences

00:06:41.640 in the rise of singledom broadly track mobile internet usage particularly among women whose

00:06:47.480 calculus in weighing up potential partners is changing. Both of those things are true but maybe

00:06:52.900 not as strong as you think. Surveys of childless women tell us that the top reason is not career 0.96

00:06:57.380 lifestyle or financially related. It is that they just haven't found the right partner. This was the

00:07:03.660 second most common reason given in a representative UK study of 42-year-old childless women right behind

00:07:10.120 not wanting children. Focus on career was way down the list. US studies echo this. Fertility rates

00:07:15.820 within marriages have stayed fairly steady since 1990. And I'll put a graph on screen here or a chart

00:07:21.600 on screen here. The most important reason for remaining childless. This was a 1970 British cohort

00:07:26.800 study. So a very old cohort study first of all. Yeah. And if you look at men versus women actually for

00:07:32.800 men trying to find a good partner it was the harder problem than it was for women. This was 28% of men 0.99

00:07:39.620 not wanting children. 23% of men not finding the right person. For women it was 31% not wanting

00:07:44.860 children. 19% not finding the right person. So women are the bottleneck in not wanting children. Not 1.00

00:07:49.380 not finding the right person. This is a little bit of pocket sand here. Okay. Mobile phones and

00:07:54.340 attitudes towards women's participation in politics. Evidence from Africa. So in this study they are

00:08:00.220 showing that women adopt more liberal views of a woman's role in a relationship and with kids

00:08:07.360 when they get access to mobile phones. And this is where I will bring up the secondary argument I

00:08:14.340 heard that I found pretty compelling from that Adam Conover show. Which is to say okay well so

00:08:19.660 and I actually think this argument is way stronger than this argument in the financial times. Because

00:08:24.960 the financial times is like well it's women becoming more liberal and not getting married. But the 0.87

00:08:28.880 problem is is that we know in societies where women are still getting married which we'll get to in a 0.98

00:08:32.340 bit you know whether it's Iran or India or anything like that we're still seeing precipitously dropping

00:08:36.440 fertility rates. Right. So it's not marriage. It's just not. It's just not. We don't. We should see a 0.98

00:08:43.840 huge difference in the societies where marriage is still happening and where it's not still happening

00:08:47.860 and we don't see that huge difference. So whatever it is is everywhere. It's in rural Guatemala. It's in

00:08:53.960 Iran. It's in India. It's in China. It's in the U.S. What is everywhere? Mobile phones. So what this

00:09:01.260 other person argued she goes well what you don't understand is how much boredom people used to have.

00:09:07.520 She's like you know when I was growing up yeah we had phones and I had like snake on that phone. I had

00:09:12.600 snake on my phone. I'm very good. I remember fondly. Yes. Yes. And when you're deciding do I want to go

00:09:18.800 over to a friend's house or play snake you usually want to go over to a friend's house even if they

00:09:23.780 don't have like something specific plan you're like almost anything is better than snake snake is only

00:09:29.160 better than like sitting alone in a car or something like that right now you're dealing with a completely

00:09:35.420 different phenomenon. Do I want to go to a friend's house or enter like a fully immersive 3d world right

00:09:40.820 or do I want to chat with an AI or do I want to like that's lot lot harder especially and and within

00:09:48.440 cell phones you've got these whole you know keep in mind you didn't have things like reddit back then

00:09:52.400 you didn't have things like social media as we understand it today where there is constant feedback

00:09:56.980 constant dopamine loops and the idea being that the main reason people had kids historically was just

00:10:04.300 that they were born. That's the main reason they dated. That's the main reason they hung out with

00:10:08.700 friends. That's the main reason they did all of the things that made society work. Yeah because what

00:10:12.920 we're also seeing is rates of like the number of friends that people have are much lower now than

00:10:18.220 they were before as well and that does correlate with smartphone adoption. So there's there's ancillary

00:10:23.860 evidence that suggests this is true. People are just not they don't need other humans to amuse them 0.56

00:10:30.820 anymore. And in some countries they're like banning cell phones in schools and stuff like that which

00:10:36.660 was a lot of this it's like I'm sorry that's not gonna work because then they're gonna have access

00:10:40.780 to cell phones outside of school. Do you plan on them finding their partner in high school like you

00:10:44.600 don't seem to so why are you acting like that's the solution right? Yeah. So one even if this is a

00:10:51.740 problem I'm not particularly compelled by it and then two this doesn't explain the secondary issue

00:10:56.760 which for me is much bigger which is that fertility rates are going up for every single age cohort except

00:11:02.560 for under 24. Yeah. Or going up or staying around steady. It's under 24 that is that is dropped and

00:11:10.380 then under you know 20 where you've had the precipitous drop. And so what we need to find is

00:11:15.820 ways to motivate fertility at these these higher ages more than you had historically dramatically more

00:11:21.740 than you had historically. And so you can't explain new technology which you might say is actually the

00:11:26.760 drop in fertility rates is a good thing and we need to increase fertility rates in older 0.56

00:11:32.420 generations through increasing the desire like you need to have a more a desire to have lots of kids

00:11:39.260 than even your ancestors did. And also none of this really to me like the boredom thing that doesn't

00:11:44.100 explain 50 percent of people saying they don't want kids if you're talking about like Gen Z you know

00:11:48.520 like that doesn't explain that when historically as we went over in a recent episode only five percent of

00:11:53.660 people said that. So and and 20 percent had no kids historically by the way that was what we learned in

00:12:00.440 that episode. I don't know if it's necessarily boredom or if it's also that we've lost an ability

00:12:06.500 to be comfortable dealing with humans at all because of phones. People are far less comfortable now

00:12:13.180 interacting in person let alone picking up a phone to make a call you know that that's like seen as kind

00:12:19.520 of like a palsy move you know. I think it's palsy. Who dares to give me a call and that I think adds the

00:12:28.500 friction significantly to bringing another human into the world and being aware of the fact.

00:12:33.960 Well I agree. I think what we need is new exogenous ideological motivators for child for having kids.

00:12:40.660 Absolutely yeah. And not modifying or banning technology that we cannot control in terms of

00:12:47.440 how our kids are interacting with it. Absolutely yeah. And when I say they're like well I can control

00:12:53.140 when they're young yeah but then you can't control when they're not young and now you've you've given

00:12:56.460 them this horrible thing they have no immunity to. Yeah that that's a really important thing is this idea

00:13:03.340 of raising kids screen free. I get the so an argument I hear a lot of people make is well at least I can

00:13:10.360 give my kid inhibitory control and the ability to live without screens as long as they're in my

00:13:17.740 household. And I do see benefits in that absolutely it's great. We're not giving them inhibitory control

00:13:23.840 if you are removing the screens. You have done the exact opposite. Yeah I mean the thing is you have to

00:13:28.260 learn how to have that control despite the presence of the screens unless you plan on isolating your kid

00:13:33.580 for life because otherwise they will get access. Which the Amish do and some Hariti communities do 1.00

00:13:39.420 functionally speaking but yeah it's not in one of those groups you know uh I guess convert

00:13:46.500 if that's the way you want to play the game. I think it's a it's it's I want kids who can engage

00:13:52.740 with technology uh because I think that technology is going to be key to them crushing their enemies

00:13:57.600 and so I'm not I'm not keeping them away from this stuff you know. But to continue the fallen coupling

00:14:04.840 is the deepest in extremely online Europe, East Asia, and Latin America followed by the Middle East

00:14:10.520 and then Africa. Singledom remains rare in South Asia where women's web access is more limited. 1.00

00:14:17.160 This is really interesting to me because I didn't know that web access for women was so limited in

00:14:20.900 South Asia. And it is true that the places where you've seen the biggest fertility crashes have been

00:14:25.600 like East Asia where phone use is so much more common than it is in Europe or the United States.

00:14:31.200 And then in Latin America phone use is also super super common in terms of like recreation and stuff

00:14:37.080 like that. And it's less common in Africa from what I've heard. So six in ten women internet users 1.00

00:14:41.960 who took part in a study face some kind of restriction from their families when using the

00:14:46.180 internet. This is in Pakistan. Women disconnected feminist case studies on gender digital divide 0.80

00:14:52.800 amidst COVID-19. This is a paper. The majority of respondents of the survey said that they are only

00:14:59.180 allowed to use the internet for attending online classes or talking to family via WhatsApp.

00:15:04.860 More than a third of those surveys acknowledged higher restrictions on the use of internet for

00:15:09.440 girls than boys, with 16% saying girls are not allowed to use it at all. 16% said girls are not allowed

00:15:16.980 to use it at all. Gosh. But boys are fine. Yeah. Why the difference? Well, because they're not

00:15:23.400 incepted with the feminist mind virus, which is the key thing that's causing a lot of the changes in the 1.00

00:15:29.760 way women view one, the right to not have kids, I think. Yeah. But I mean, having phones is damaging for 1.00

00:15:35.560 everyone. You know, the effects are universal. No, it's not. Not in the same way. The ideological

00:15:41.900 spread to a guy, like you're not going to F up a guy's image of his attractiveness with a phone.

00:15:47.460 You're not going to F up a guy's image of his market value in dating markets with a phone.

00:15:51.320 I don't know. I mean, the existence of looks maxing implies to me that that's not true.

00:15:55.680 Looks maxing is a minute community. When you contrast it with the women who think that their 0.99

00:16:01.440 value on the marriage marketplace is their value on the sexual marketplace. It's like not even,

00:16:06.340 this is the majority of women versus 0.01% of guys. I don't know. No, no, no, no, no, no. What do you

00:16:14.660 mean you don't know? Do you argue that the number of looks maxers is higher than 0.01% of the US 0.99

00:16:20.760 women though are far more likely to end up obsessing about their appearance because that 1.00

00:16:25.820 tends to be a major factor influencing their desire. Okay. So you're saying that it is way

00:16:30.840 more damaging to women than men. Well, yeah, but I'm also not so sure that

00:16:34.700 we're moving. No, no, no, no, no. You back up your, your position here. What, but also,

00:16:41.640 I mean, what you still, I'm not just talking about the development of body dysmorphia. I mean,

00:16:45.660 you're also screwing up inhibitory control. You're also distracting people. Like why that

00:16:49.660 doesn't matter. I don't think that matters at all to having kids. So are you saying it's a cult? I

00:16:55.140 mean, I mean, but also look at the cultural ideals that are presented to young men online. They're

00:17:01.500 basically, you know, forced infantilization for most of their lives. Men are encouraged to live

00:17:06.440 like teenagers for as long as they possibly can. There's very little celebration of parenthood and

00:17:11.260 early marriage. That's true. I think that there are some online communities for men that do push

00:17:16.980 that, but the number of men that gravitate towards them is the vast minority. I think that this is

00:17:22.780 the difference here. You were talking about the vast majority of women versus the vast minority of 1.00

00:17:27.780 men. If you look at the women who end up making inaccurate judgments about their value on marriage

00:17:34.960 markets due to interacting with online dating pools, I would say the number is probably 95%

00:17:41.100 to 80% of women. If you look at the number of men who develop an obsession with their looks versus

00:17:47.040 the number of women who develop an obsession with their looks based on online. Online women,

00:17:50.500 I'd say over 50% of women. Men, I'd say less than 3% of men. You're just not talking about the same

00:17:56.360 numbers. So you're just trying to blame body dysmorphia on why women aren't having kids? 0.96

00:18:01.420 It's one of the things I'm saying, for example, red pillism, for example, is much less damaging to

00:18:07.380 having lots of kids than feminism is. A guy who enters a, even an inaccurate representation 0.88

00:18:16.380 of a historic male-female relationship as depicted by the red pill community is likely to have kids.

00:18:23.680 It's my intuition that the bigger problem is the normalization of a culture that puts hedonism over

00:18:31.600 all else and doesn't reward having families or living in alignment with values that aren't just

00:18:37.800 hedonistic or highly progressive values. And I think that that affects men just as much as women.

00:18:43.480 I disagree really strongly here. It doesn't, I mean, like it obviously does. I'm trying to walk you

00:18:47.840 through this. So I'm trying to get you to like, think of numbers in your head. Okay. What percent of

00:18:52.620 men who engage with the internet do you think are engaged with like toxic, like red pill communities? 1.00

00:18:57.780 Probably not that many, but I'm not sure. Like I have no, I have no research on this.

00:19:07.540 The number is, is, is maybe between five to 25% low. Okay. However, you also know how many women 1.00

00:19:17.300 who engage with the internet engage with toxic progressive communities. You can just look at the

00:19:23.100 data. It's 70, 60%. It's, it's not even close.

00:19:32.480 Yeah, I think, well, and it's not, not to run counter to my own argument, but the fact that

00:19:38.700 spoonies are almost entirely comprised of young women, this is to say people who believe that they

00:19:44.140 have chronic illnesses and sometimes really do, but often don't. And that can be really damaging to

00:19:49.260 their lives. And what about Stoics, right? How many female Stoics have you heard of on in online 1.00

00:19:54.140 communities? Yeah. Yeah. Fair. I mean, that, that is true. So the internet is more damaging

00:20:00.100 to women than it is to men. I've not heard this thesis before, but I'm going to have to think

00:20:07.680 about it, Malcolm. I'm going to have to think about it. All right. So key findings from the research

00:20:12.920 indicate that around 40% of the women surveys use the internet every day. So a lot of them are still 0.55

00:20:17.220 using it every day. And even in these countries with usage becoming higher as family income rises.

00:20:22.440 So again, family income, this probably shows why you have the negative correlation here,

00:20:27.060 a whopping 80% of the respondents who are unable to use the internet are from South Rizikistan,

00:20:32.880 one of the newly merged districts of the Khyber-Pakitakoa something province. Anyway, you may,

00:20:40.640 what, what sort of birth rate does this lead to? Well, Pakistan's birth rate is falling,

00:20:44.620 you know, as recently as the 1990s, it was over six per woman and now it's 3.41, but it's still

00:20:50.820 quite high when compared to something like India, which is below replacement rate now, or Bangladesh,

00:20:55.560 which is below replacement rate. This is not to overstate the role of social media,

00:21:00.960 other cultural differences between countries and regions mediate both the spread of liberal ideas

00:21:06.120 and people's ability to act on them. Cast and honor systems encourage high rates of marriage,

00:21:10.780 irrespective of media access and female education, income and employment differ markedly between 0.80

00:21:15.640 regions. So remember, we're talking about India has a unusually low fertility rate for its income level.

00:21:20.500 So let's look at India in marriage rates. Okay. In a 2018 survey of more than 160,000 households,

00:21:29.300 93% of married Indians said that they came from an arranged marriage. Just 3% had a love marriage and

00:21:35.980 another 2% described theirs as a love come arranged marriage, which usually indicates that the

00:21:42.180 relationship was set up by the families and then the couple agreed to get married. There has been

00:21:47.800 only a slight change over time. 94% of octogenarians had an arranged marriage and the figure remains at

00:21:54.680 over 90% for young couples in their twenties. Did you know that? That's really interesting to me.

00:21:59.360 That is really interesting. Manisha Mondal always thought that she would have a love marriage.

00:22:05.460 I was used to fighting with my parents. I fought to attend college. That was a little far away from

00:22:10.220 home. I thought, okay, love marriage will be the next thing to fight about. Manisha, an office assistant 1.00

00:22:16.000 in Bahali, a small town in Eastern India told me, but in the first few days of college, a few boys

00:22:22.420 approached her to talk and older female students took her to the bathroom for a talking to. If she spoke to 0.99

00:22:28.220 the boys, they warned her reputation would be ruined to keep an eye out for her. Her older brother

00:22:33.580 would drive past college a few times a day to make sure she was not talking to boys. College was

00:22:38.860 important to Manisha and she'd rather incredibly oppressive and then work, then take a chance on

00:22:45.400 love. So she cared more about work than she cared about marrying who she wanted to, which I thought was 1.00

00:22:52.200 really interesting. Yeah. It does sound oppressive, but it appears to be working by her last year in

00:22:57.380 college. Her wedding had been fixed with the son of her father's friend from the same community.

00:23:02.020 I see my parents. They have never had a fight, so I think it will work for me too, the 24-year-old

00:23:07.940 said, showing her crossed fingers over the WhatsApp call. Marrying within your caste remains an essential 1.00

00:23:14.140 feature of marriage in India. In 2014, a survey of more than 70,000 people, fewer than 10% of urban

00:23:21.020 Indians said anyone in their family, anyone in their family had married outside their caste and not many

00:23:26.240 more outside their jahiti or subcast. Interfaith marriages were even rarer. Just 5% of urban

00:23:33.040 respondents said that anyone in their family had married outside their religion. Oh, wow.

00:23:38.200 Did you know about that in India? I didn't. But India and Pakistan aren't famous for great quality of

00:23:47.500 life for women. So I just don't know how I feel about this. The solution to me is not, let's just roll

00:23:56.440 back human rights. Let's just roll back education. Let's just roll back human rights a smidge.

00:24:03.960 I don't accept it. I don't. And I think that carrots are more motivating in the end than sticks.

00:24:11.480 I think that empowerment is better than disempowerment. And I think that there's plenty

00:24:16.480 of history in the world in which women have had a lot of freedom, but have used it well because they

00:24:23.220 weren't exposed to a terrible culture. And I agree that smartphones are a vector for very unsustainable

00:24:30.560 and dangerous cultures. And I agree that those cultures have also hurt me, but they also hurt me 1.00

00:24:36.780 as a teen well before smartphones existed. I don't think just taking them away.

00:24:43.020 You look at what motivates fertility in our family. Conviction, ideology, religion,

00:24:50.720 none of it would be at all mitigated by cell phone or internet exposure.

00:24:58.060 Yeah. Also, you would not have gotten kids out of me if you were like, well, I only want to marry

00:25:04.480 a stay-at-home wife who doesn't go on the internet. 0.97

00:25:08.120 I would not have gotten kids out of you. Squeezing you for all the kids.

00:25:11.220 Well, like your whole, your, your selling point to me was, you don't have to give anything up if

00:25:17.620 you don't want to. You can keep your career.

00:25:20.460 Do you see that as an unrealistic selling point for most people?

00:25:23.000 I do see that that's an unrealistic selling point for most people, but.

00:25:27.620 Also, I'd point out here that, that you make it sound like totally magnanimous towards me,

00:25:32.980 but the actual term of the contract we came up with is not as unfair as it may sound. The rule

00:25:39.840 was, is that you would always be allowed to pursue your career. And if it came to it,

00:25:44.500 I would become a stay-at-home dad. Not that I would always support you no matter what. The rule was,

00:25:50.820 you were going to support us no matter what. Yeah.

00:25:52.920 I just gave you the privilege of supporting the family.

00:25:55.740 The option, optionality, giving women optionality, I think gives them empowerment. And I think most

00:26:04.600 of the choices among women to, so optionality plays a role in choosing to not have kids because 0.96

00:26:12.880 one of the biggest things we're seeing is just fewer unplanned teen births. Like that's what we're

00:26:16.920 seeing in South America. It's not that people's intentions have changed. It's just that there are

00:26:21.320 fewer mistake pregnancies and people are delaying fertility. But I think that the core answer to

00:26:26.360 all of this is mistake babies is where the kids have disappeared. Yeah. Like largely that is what

00:26:32.780 has happened. And what you're talking about here is not mistake babies, but you're talking about

00:26:37.740 basically forced babies by disempowering women and, and, and, and creating unwanted babies, which

00:26:43.060 again, like, I don't think that forcing people into anything is the solution and I'm vehemently

00:26:50.860 against it. Well, it doesn't seem, but I think there are countries that do this. Like Iran does 1.00

00:26:55.380 this and it doesn't lead to an increase in fertility rate. How does Iran force people to 0.94

00:27:00.160 have kids? Women in Iran do not have a lot of rights and the marriage rate is really high and 1.00

00:27:05.600 it doesn't lead to a high fertility rate. So the question is why, why? And the answer is because

00:27:10.240 you can't, it doesn't work like this. You, you, you can't just do that, especially if they have

00:27:13.720 access to the internet and stuff like that. And so I, I think that it is a, you might be able to

00:27:18.840 get around it if you're in a culture where widespread access to the internet isn't as

00:27:22.260 common, but I don't think that those cultures will end up being the cultures that end up

00:27:26.340 dominating the human species going forwards. So I'm not particularly concerned about them

00:27:30.740 or interested in emulating them myself. So the question is this, can you build up the

00:27:35.840 spiritual fortitude to interact with these types of technology? And I think that's doable

00:27:40.220 while still motivating like way higher kid rates than people had historically. And I think

00:27:44.220 that that needs new cultural systems, new way of relating to what kids mean to your culture.

00:27:50.520 There's a lot of the reasons why people don't have kids are based on false premises. You know,

00:27:55.900 the idea that you should have your career and everything 100% in place before you have kids,

00:28:02.020 which now is increasingly impossible. Who's ever going to be financially or career stable

00:28:07.020 going forward in an age of age.

00:28:08.800 You can't wait to have kids until you're, you're stable.

00:28:11.440 Yeah. There's a bunch of false and, you know, also this false perception that it's not a good

00:28:15.520 idea to have a kid while you're going through college or graduate school. That's one of the

00:28:18.380 best times to have kids.

00:28:20.300 Yeah. I was, I was talking to one of our followers about this and they were like, well, you know,

00:28:24.100 my partner's autistic. And so we need like a full-time nanny to have kids and start having 0.98

00:28:28.700 kids. I'm like, no, you don't. It doesn't, my partner's autistic. Okay. Like you'll figure it out. 1.00

00:28:33.740 It's more, it is more stressful to have a full-time nanny if you're autistic, because guess what? Now

00:28:40.400 your life is entirely about managing this party. Yes. Which by the way, is incentivized to exploit

00:28:46.400 you, to disappoint you, to only think about themselves and not about you or the baby. So

00:28:50.800 good luck with that. Being an autistic parent, I think is a lot easier if you're good at masking, 0.93

00:28:55.640 because you will do what doesn't feel natural, but is best for your baby. When a neurotypical

00:29:03.080 parent would not, I act cheerful and playful around our kids as much as I can. And certainly

00:29:10.740 I don't feel it a lot of the time, but I do. I go downstairs and just, you understand it. She,

00:29:15.580 she creates the perfect environment for my kids. She, she goes, I go downstairs and she is making a

00:29:21.380 homemade pizza and playing Italian music, like, like fun, like whatever music. The kids are all

00:29:26.880 helping. It is this perfect scenic family movement moment. And I'm like, Simone, like, how are you this

00:29:31.800 perfect? And she goes, well, I thought this is what like a perfect family moment would look like.

00:29:35.140 So I decided to do this. Cause like, I don't know, like I'm autistic. Right. So I was, I figured this

00:29:39.340 is what you need to do. Right. Yeah. So normal neurotypical parents do what they feel like doing and react

00:29:43.700 to their children the way that they feel. And a good masking autistic parent reacts the way a perfect, 0.77

00:29:49.820 loving, playful, yes. And parent will. And so I would argue that. And, and I would say also many,

00:29:57.820 many, many, when who are autistic are also really, really good at masking. So they're among the very 0.77

00:30:02.260 best parents you could possibly have. No, you don't need a nanny. Cause like, that is the one thing

00:30:06.040 that autistic people really aren't that great at even being able to deal with, with training, 1.00

00:30:10.220 which is just other people being assholes and taking advantage of them, which is a constant thing, 0.98

00:30:15.000 right? Like with all of our old, like childcare options before we found our amazing solution we have 0.97

00:30:19.580 now. You were basically like, Simone, you can't talk to them because I would talk to them and

00:30:24.160 suddenly like all of the terms would be subverted. Suddenly they would drop out on us. Suddenly

00:30:28.380 like their rates would triple. And they sense weakness whenever they talk to Simone. Simone is

00:30:34.220 not dealing with contractors. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not good. Because she's like, I don't want to be

00:30:39.500 mean. And I'm like, you need to be mean. Like you need to show that you have boundaries.

00:30:44.760 Yeah. Yeah. And you don't, you, you enter like. Yeah. Like they'll call me trying to work. And

00:30:50.840 this, this, again, this isn't with our current childcare arrangement, which is amazing. But

00:30:54.140 like babysitters would call me and be like, Oh, so-and-so has a dirty diaper. And I'd be like, 1.00

00:30:58.260 Oh, well, of course I'll come down and change it. And then, you know, of course I'm like super

00:31:00.920 interrupted. It's a, if you give a mouse cookie situation where like, then I'm down for an hour

00:31:04.660 and here I am paying this person an hour. And they demand that you talk to them and they,

00:31:09.320 you know, and you're like, Oh, I'm talking to them because it makes them like us more. And I'm like,

00:31:12.900 no, they think that by talking to you, they are getting you to like them more so they can get

00:31:18.940 more out of you. It's not the other way around you. Yeah. Anyway. But yeah, that among other

00:31:25.860 things likes it in this like list of things that people misunderstand about parenthood and just

00:31:33.100 changing the culture around it can make a huge, huge, huge difference. And it's going to have to

00:31:38.700 happen on a community by community basis. But in the end, it's those high fertility communities 0.93

00:31:42.880 that are going to inherit the earth. So it doesn't matter that only a small number of cultures are

00:31:47.740 going to pass through all this. The ones that figure it out will. And I just don't think the

00:31:52.440 ones that systematically disempower women are, are, are going to make it. These women 1.00

00:31:58.400 there'll be like a permanent dysgenic spiral. Yeah. It's, it's not, it's not good. It's not good.

00:32:05.680 Also they're, they're not having that many kids anymore.

00:32:07.840 Yeah. It's not even that effective a strategy anymore. So it's like, well, why, why take all

00:32:12.540 the costs? Yeah. The, like going forward one, I mean, because child mortality is way down,

00:32:17.580 women don't ultimately have to have that many kids to really grow the population because we're not 1.00

00:32:24.000 losing half of them to tragic ends prematurely. However, sacrifices between fertility issues and 0.90

00:32:33.160 delayed childbearing people are going to have to be highly motivated. If they want to have kids,

00:32:39.320 they are going to have to really, really, really, really try and either invest in a ton of like just

00:32:45.460 holistic health solutions and live healthy lives, which is hard to do these days or undergo fertility

00:32:52.140 treatment and IVF to have the number of kids they want to have. And that's a culture thing. 0.88

00:32:57.900 That's not a female disempowerment thing, but I do agree. And we're going to have to talk about this

00:33:02.680 with our own family that, yeah, maybe you're right that phones are hurting women, young women, 0.95

00:33:10.680 especially more than they hurt men, which is. Well, I think that you protect them not by not

00:33:16.380 having them access phones, but by having a strong memetic structures that can protect them from the

00:33:22.500 types of memes. It's the memes on the phones that are hurting them. Yeah. It's not the phones.

00:33:26.560 Yeah. The phones are amazing technology. The phones are amazing. The way that we use our phones with

00:33:34.140 kids. I would never not want our kids to be around phones because our kids know. I'm not that worried

00:33:37.800 about our daughters. Last night Octavian was like, oh, how do you make a paper boat? And I'm like,

00:33:42.180 I don't know. Let's look it up. And then you can learn. That's so cool. I mean, my mom used to look

00:33:47.040 things up in dictionaries with me and I love that she did that, but now we can do that with literally

00:33:50.560 learning how to do almost anything. You know, how, how to deliver a baby calf, how to assemble

00:33:55.960 all sorts of things. This is so cool. Well, I love you to death, Simone. Any final thoughts? I guess

00:34:00.520 not. Sorry. So it's the accident babies. That's the problem. We need not more accident babies,

00:34:08.020 but we need to find a way to offset the accident babies that don't exist anymore. And the cultures

00:34:12.320 that relied on accident babies to replace themselves like Catholics. I'm going to say like, but it's, 0.99

00:34:16.920 we need to make, we need to make childbearing an aesthetic desirable thing. We need to make

00:34:25.060 childbearing aspirational. We need to make it people's special interests. This has to be how

00:34:29.980 people are competing, what people aspire to, what people enjoy, what their hobbies are.

00:34:34.320 And when I speak at conventions and people come to me and like at the Pernadals convention last year,

00:34:37.740 somebody was like, well, I mean, surely you want to ban condoms. Surely you want to ban porn.

00:34:42.140 And I'm like, no, those are the babies we're glad don't exist. The babies that somebody had

00:34:47.660 because they couldn't figure out how to use a condom or they couldn't get access to a condom 0.86

00:34:51.120 or the babies who exist because a guy didn't have access to porn. And so it was like, well,

00:34:56.040 I want to get off today. So I got someone to use my girlfriend. Those are the babies that, 1.00

00:35:02.180 that are, that are the accident babies. Yeah. How can you be pronatalist? And even if it's just

00:35:07.060 pronatalist in terms of like, Oh, I love kids. How can you love kids and want people who resent kids

00:35:15.080 to be raising them? Now we need to change our culture and show people that actually they are

00:35:19.660 ready to have kids. Yeah. But that is a very different thing than literally forcing it upon

00:35:26.120 people because face it, many people just never do get ready.

00:35:30.120 It is interesting to me that so many religions rely on our basic, most perverted, most animalistic 0.98

00:35:37.940 biology to motivate reproduction. And that those, those groups are the ones that are dealing with

00:35:44.280 fertility collapse the most because it turns out that this system just doesn't work in the modern

00:35:48.080 era and that you need to find ways to get people to value kids for the sake of the kids, which,

00:35:53.340 which does work. You know, for example, if you look at the Catholic communities, for example,

00:35:56.540 they're doing really well in terms of the fertility is because they want to have kids. It's not because

00:36:00.640 they accidentally got pregnant or didn't understand contraception or they, you know,

00:36:05.120 it's because they're like, I am all about having like as many kids as possible.

00:36:08.420 Yeah. And I think, well, the thing is, and what I think Catherine Poceluk has it right, that

00:36:12.160 high fertility couples start out wanting a lot of kids for a setting and ideological reasons. 0.90

00:36:16.860 And that gets them through the first three. It's like loosening the jar because it is really hard

00:36:21.740 to push through your first kids. It is difficult when you're doing everything for the first time and

00:36:25.780 they're not there to entertain each other. And you haven't yet shifted to commercial operations

00:36:29.840 of everything. So nothing's really sustainable. That's the hardest part. So you need that exogenous

00:36:34.280 motivator. And then beyond that, the kids sell themselves. Like it's, it just, it's hard. It's

00:36:39.340 hard to quit after that point, as long as you have the physical, are you addicted to pregnancy?

00:36:43.840 I'm not addicted to pregnancy, but I am definitely addicted to having more kids and wanting more kids

00:36:50.180 in this world. They're just such amazing people and they love each other.

00:36:53.500 Purpleing child addiction. I know. I actually find it very interesting that progressives,

00:36:58.380 they always frame what we're doing. It's like a breeding fetish. They're like,

00:37:02.280 Yeah. Well, which one is ironic because none of our children have been produced via sex.

00:37:07.060 Right. But the idea of like, oh, they're trying to force their breeding fetish on society.

00:37:10.940 And it's like, what a perverse understanding of why people do things. Right.

00:37:15.020 Yeah. Like literally the only version of sex that is not an exercise of some kind of kink is 0.50

00:37:23.360 procreative sex. Yeah. Everything else is some kind of kink or like hedonic thing. The only version 0.99

00:37:30.600 of sex that is like actually. Well, that's what it evolves for, right? Like that's, that's why you

00:37:33.840 feel these things. Yeah. Duh. But you know. Anyway, love you to Esteban. Have a good day.

00:37:39.460 I love you too. What are we doing for dinner?

00:37:41.640 Gochujang chicken. I was actually wondering if you could do fiery chicken with gochujang,

00:37:46.740 but not the sweet sauce.

00:37:48.300 I don't know what you're talking about. Like the same chicken you had last night. That kind of

00:37:54.980 chicken. The chicken I had last night used gochujang and a sweet sauce. It didn't. No.

00:38:01.120 It was just gochujang and what? No, there was no gochujang sauce in that chicken at all. That was

00:38:05.740 not gochujang chicken. What was that? That was Szechuan chicken. Really? It was very sweet for what I

00:38:14.180 thought. When I gave you gochujang chicken, I was like, wow, like, don't you think it's too 0.99

00:38:19.040 sweet? And you're like, it's not sweet at all. I'd be lighter. It's just right now. I'm not

00:38:23.800 really in the mood for sweet food. I'm more. Would you just like mapu dofu instead? I just,

00:38:27.540 I need to use that chicken. Yes. Let's do mapu dofu. Off I go then. I love you. You're amazing. 0.58

00:38:35.800 Everybody has been dunking on phones again. Like we're back to it. I thought that with the

00:38:40.740 threat to TikTok ban, that people would start defending phone use. And now

00:38:44.940 no, suddenly phones are still bad. I haven't noticed this. I have noticed it offline. Not,

00:38:54.380 not necessarily online. Let me do the reminders. Hey, guess what? We are going to be in Austin at

00:39:00.000 the natal conference this March. We would love to see you there. So whether or not you live in Austin,

00:39:04.740 this might be a great excuse to take a little trip. You can get 10% off your registration for natal

00:39:10.720 con. The, this is the second inaugural pro natalist conference, uh, by entering the code Collins at

00:39:16.780 checkout. So if you are going, we're really excited to see you there. And if you're not, sorry.

00:39:25.160 What does it look like when you eat, Toasty?

00:39:49.900 Does it look crazy when you eat, Toasty?

00:40:07.180 Oh.

00:40:09.720 Oh,

00:40:10.480 Oh.

00:40:10.660 Oh,

00:40:10.960 Oh,

00:40:11.220 Oh.

00:40:12.060 Oh,

00:40:12.200 Oh,

00:40:13.120 Oh,

00:40:13.460 Oh,

Based Camp - February 04, 2025

Do Smartphones Brainwash Women into Hating Babies？

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