How Did the Gender Wars Get This Bad？ With Alex Kaschuta
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Summary
Alex Kishuda is one of the most influential thinkers in the idea space right now, and one of my favorite people in the entire world. In this episode, we talk about gender wars, and why we need to talk about them.
Transcript
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Hello, everyone. Today, we are joined by one of my favorite people in the entire world, Alex
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Kishuda. She is probably someone you've heard of through her podcast, Subversive, which is how I
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learned about her. She also has a sub stack at alexkishuda.substack.com. It's called The Garden
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of Earthly Delights. She has excellent content there as well. So do check her out. Today,
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we're going to talk about Gender Wars, which is really exciting because everyone loves talking
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about it. Come on. It's fun. Would you like to know more? I'd love to hear how you got on this
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topic, Alex. Oh, and I should also note, if you don't know who Alex is, Alex is probably one of
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the most famous dissident intellectuals in sort of the idea space right now in terms of and interviews
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a lot of other dissident intellectuals. Thank you. That's very, yeah, I feel flattered by that
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introduction. Sweet. Yes, I mean, this is a this is I feel like it's a topic that maybe this is my
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algorithm because I'm just like so morbidly curious about what's going on. So obviously,
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now I have a small child, I am breastfeeding all the time. So I'm also staring at my phone all the
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time lurking, you know, reading stuff online more than usual. And it seems to me like things are kind
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of bubbling up in a almost like violent way. Like the discourse has, you know, I keep saying this,
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but it's like, you know, Rwandan radio levels of hatred between the sexes have been brewing now.
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It's, it's, you know, I'm someone who made quite a lot of my following on Twitter by, you know,
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being honest about sex differences. And, you know, essentially, kind of like, you know, human
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biodiversity, but with with a sex lens, because that was, you know, that was interesting to me at
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that point. And these things are quite kind of uncontroversial in some ways, like sex differences
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do exist, you know, they're interesting, people like talking about them. But I feel like, you
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know, there was a certain dynamic and certain incentives on these platforms that take things
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like that, assert a level of discourse that is based on, you know, I don't know, what's that called
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the evolutionary psychology and all these things that that are they're interesting to people in the
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space. And then, yeah, reduce them to the lowest common denominator and create kind of like many,
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you know, sub cults around personalities that it's quite interesting. I mean, even even kind
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of from a cold perspective, just looking at, at how the space has morphed from when I, you know,
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started posting about it to to what's going on now. It's, it makes me think that, you know,
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maybe there's a certain even to two truths that are quite basic, like this is quite, you know,
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mundane stuff, we kind of forgot about it for a while. But you know, the fact that there are certain
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average differences between the sexes. Yeah, I mean, that's something that was kind of instinctively
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known for a while, you know, present in many stereotypes, for sure. But now that it's kind
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of out there, and and it's almost kind of like codified in the internet, it's turned into an
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info hazard in a way, like, and it's, it's gotten kind of monstrous in a way. So I feel like maybe
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we should be a bit more blue pilled about these things. I don't know. It's just I recoil at what's
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going on right now. And I'm so I'm afraid for our future. A thesis on what's going on right now.
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Historically speaking, the humans, at least the humans that survived, were always in opposite
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gender pairs. And so they always had a level of interest in the other gender, even though they
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were different. And when they had kids, 50% of those kids would be the other gender. So they would
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have interest in the other gender as we move to like, as marriage rates fall dramatically across the
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world. And as fertility rates are falling dramatically across the world. There's a large
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group of individuals that really only has the best interest of one gender in terms of any of their
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the ways that they're trying to influence the public. On top of that, we live in a society where
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I say sometimes I'm like, wouldn't it be cool of like Neanderthals were still around, like you could
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interact with something that was almost like a human, but like had pretty vastly different
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mental proficiencies and perspectives. And I'm like, but we kind of live like that already.
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Like, men and women can almost be thought of as two different sort of hominid species that live
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alongside each other. And historically, promote this in the dissident, right?
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Be careful. Yeah, historically, these two groups, they always had to work together. But now because
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they don't as much anymore, as soon as women got the right to vote, we were sort of on a crash course
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to a society in which one party represented the needs and wants of one of the two groups. And then
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the other party represented the needs and wants of the other of the two groups. And I do think that in
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a way, that's where sort of politics is drifting throughout the world is a feminine mindset and a
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masculine mindset in terms of policy positions. But yeah, open to hear your thoughts on this theory.
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No, I think I think that's fair. I think that's, you know, as someone who's a little bit skeptical
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about democracy in general, I don't necessarily know if it's that tied to the vote. I think it's
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more tied to the fact that materially, women have kind of unlinked from the protection, like physical
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protection in terms of, okay, I'm fighting off invading predators, be those in the forms of men,
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or I don't know, big cats and stuff like that, that was really necessary back in the day.
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And the fact that a lot of women really don't need provision from men. And I think there's a quite a
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big class of men who kind of expected to have that to bring that to the table, okay, I'm going to provide
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for my family or, you know, whatever parameters society around them gave them, like, for example,
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now, you have the phenomena of the of the two income household, it's pretty tough to maintain a
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middle class standard of living without making, you know, big sacrifices, if you want to have a
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family or, you know, children, multiple, many, many children in the style of the Collinses,
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without making some sacrifices in your social status, in, you know, kind of going down the
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rung of where you find yourself as, you know, in your relative status, in the groups that you're in.
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So I think that's, that's been a bit complicated, because essentially, you know, I also draw from what I
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see around me. And I'm looking at, you know, I have a lot of friends who would like to get married.
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And at one point, I was really critical. I was like, Okay, come on, you know, you're 30 years
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old women, come on, it's time to get married, you know, be serious, you know, you know, it's,
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it's, it's a moment, but looking around, it is really tricky. You know, I don't necessarily know
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who exactly these women are going to marry, because I have, you know, men from my generation as well.
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They're not necessarily marriage minded. I know they're online, there's kind of this idea that,
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you know, the men are just waiting, you know, the women are kind of the bottleneck in the marriage
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market, you know, they're sowing their wild oats, they're girl bossing, they don't want to get
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married. In reality, I think things are a bit more matching the old, old stereotypes where women
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were a bit more marriage minded. You know, things have changed, obviously, but I think the old
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stereotypes still hold like, you know, men in base reality, outside of, you know, online spaces where
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everyone, every man's a future dad and super trad and can't wait to, you know, have pop out 10
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children and provide for them. They're a little bit more reluctant to, you know, tie the knot for
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classical reasons. You know, I think you're absolutely right. And I want to unpack this a
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little bit. So I think what we're seeing in society, because I think guys like when I tell a guy,
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you're not actually marriage minded, they don't perceive it that way. And they perceive it as a
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woman's fault. And I think the reason is, is because they are being unrealistic. So this is the plan
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that these guys all have, because I've talked to them about it. They're like, oh, I'll reach like
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30 or 40. And then I'll marry a girl who's like 25 or 22. These women are not going to marry you.
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The women who want to marry when they're 22 want to marry 23 year old guys. Yeah. Like Simone and I
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did when we got married. This is, this is who those women are marrying. There are women out there who will
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marry you, but they are your age or around your age. And it is those women who are desperately out
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there looking for someone to marry. And then the guys are like, oh, nobody wants to marry me because
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they're trying to lock down a girl who's much younger than them. And I've just consistently seen
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this phenomenon because I don't know some fantasy that's baked into guys when they're young, which
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is like, well, I have an infinite fertility window or because they're over focused on fertility windows.
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And it's like, if you care about fertility windows and you're a man, you need to marry young there.
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This isn't like an infinite thing where, yeah. And so I think that that's, what's creating this
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misinterpretation is that the women who want to get married, you know, when they can get married,
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like in their thirties, the guys are like, who wants to marry them? They've been passed around.
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And it's like, well, say the same for you. Why are you 30 and not married? Right. You know,
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I think it's also, you know, there's a growing popularity of content like this, you know,
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10 years ago, you had kind of Red Bull forums and pickup artistry and things like that.
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It's quite relatively niche. I think, you know, maybe one in, you know, eight men knew about it
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and, you know, knew about game, had read the game or something like that, like kind of the more,
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the more analog version of this whole thing. Nowadays, I mean, you know, I don't necessarily
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think there are many men in the Western world who at least haven't tangentially heard of Andrew Tate
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and kind of the whole sphere around him. I mean, he's kind of like, you know, the spiritual godfather
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of the last man, you know, people, you know, he's kind of a focus point, but there are kind of
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concentric circles of this knowledge of, you know, female nature, all of this stuff, you know,
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empty egg cartons. And this is partially derived from evolutionary psychology. Like there are actual
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insights in it. And it is interesting. I mean, I've, you know, I've been kind of in these spaces for
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for a long time and it overlaps like the Venn diagrams between evolutionary psychology, actual
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scholars of evolutionary psychology and, you know, what, what the red pill says or what some of the
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red pill people say, there's overlap. These are not completely overlapping because there's also a
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lot of kind of lore that's very specific to the red pill. It's very selective as well. You know,
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this is about female nature, not necessarily the interplay of male nature or female nature,
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because if you try to be too forthright about male nature, then no one's going to buy your ebook
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because this just has a very specific target market. So to sell the ebooks that one wants to
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sell, it's all about, you know, how to, you know, female nature is duplicitous, you know,
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the dual mating strategies, all this type of stuff that comes out of evolutionary psychology,
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hypergamy, you hear all this, you know, scholarly lingo being, you know, presented, but not
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necessarily used in a certain way. For example, the red pill sees hypergamy as essentially,
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if you drill down into it is, is women dating anyone other than me. If that's, you know,
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it's like anyone who has any sort of redeeming quality, be it looks or money or social status
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or being funny or tall or short, or, you know, whatever, whatever thing that is attractive to
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the woman is hypergamy because, you know, this guy has it and I don't. So it's, you know,
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it's such a silly concept. It's like women want to date up. Everybody wants to date up.
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Men want to date up. What you want to date down? Like who wants to date down? Like why,
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why is this? They're like, I'm going to tell you this horrible secret about women.
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They like having, they like trying to date people who they think are higher status than them. And
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it's like, yes, you know, I do too. You know, another thing about Andrew Tate that I want to
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get on here is I don't, have you ever seen our Andrew Tate is Blippi takes like on the,
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I think you mentioned that on, on my podcast as well.
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On the commodification of the male identity, which is to say, you know,
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if our listeners don't know who Blippi is, he's this guy who a lot of kids watch these days and
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he like dances around fire trucks. Whoa, look this right here. Yeah. This
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is a hydrant wrench. You use this to open up the fire hydrant.
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And like, it goes on and gets in like garbage trucks and like all of the things that kids
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would like, but like, obviously no adult actually wants to do these things. And we argue that Andrew
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Tate's online identity is optimized around what like a teenage boy would think that an adult man
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wants to do with his life, but that like very few adult men actually want to do.
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But he's really gotten good at, at, at packaging this sort of instinctual masculinity that young
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boys feel and then selling to them a pathway to achieve this thing that no one should want
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to achieve anyway. And I think in creating these sorts of aspirational pathways, because
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on the right, we have as much of a problem with this on the left, you know, on the left
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where we, we, we, we may, you know, condemn individuals who go out there and create this
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illusion of like a lifestyle where they're just sleeping around a lot and they are, you
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know, all polygynous and all, you know, whatever. Right. And we're like, oh, how horrible that
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you have created this aspirational lifestyle that doesn't correspond with kids or like actual
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happiness. Or we keep recently, we've been playing a lot of the end scene from the gladiator
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where we're like, you know, this is what heaven is. Right. You know, it's the farm with the
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wife and the kids. And, but on the right, we have the same thing. I mean, how is Andrew
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Tate any different in sort of the aspirational life that he's showing people? Because it's
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not a life that leads to productive, stable relationships.
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I have a question for both of you though. And cause I'm not really sure this is something
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I wonder about, but I don't know if it's maybe really what's playing out. I feel like
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to a certain extent, globalization, the internet, et cetera, has allowed us to sort of culturally
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homogenize. Like there's, there's less differentiation between us, between men and women, between
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different cultures, between different nations. And people are in these various tribes online,
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but there's a lot more similarity. And perhaps a lot of the polarization that is emerging between
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men and women has more to do with homogenization and less to do with there being like serious
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differences. What makes me think this is because when you look at a very, very homogenous nation,
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South Korea, you're seeing some of the most antagonism between genders, essentially because
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there are no super different racial and ethnic and religious groups really in South Korea. Instead,
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the way that people are choosing to galvanize is based on gender. And so you have the four
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nose movement among women, you have men who are extremely resentful. And of course, then you have
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this major prenatalism problem. Could it be that part of what's going on with gender wars online is
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we're also seeing a little bit less balkanization of other groups. People don't necessarily feel like they
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belong to some specific group aside from their gender. Like it's the easiest thing to identify
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with. And then that's what might be causing this to become more pronounced. I don't know. It's just
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something I'm wondering about. And I'd love your thoughts.
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Yeah. I think, you know, if you look at how politics works online, you know, there's there's
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polarization and on every dimension. And like you said, this is kind of the most the most close to
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home thing where you almost inevitably have frictions. You already have frictions within the family.
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So you either have mommy issues or daddy issues, if you're online, probably one of them, at least.
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And, you know, that's already kind of a gendered strife that you bring to the table. And then
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obviously, as a red blooded individual, you probably will pursue romantic relationships,
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you're going to have rejection. I know, I'm remember, you know, being in middle school and
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not very attractive and, you know, getting rejected by boys. And if I had, whatever the the fem cell
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manifesto to that point, I would probably gone down some sort of rabbit hole, you know, condemning
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my life and not realizing that, you know, by the time I turned 16, and I know my cup size would go
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up, you know, all my problems would be solved from that perspective. But this is the type of thing that
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just wasn't available at that point. So I kind of muddle through and just kind of, you know, take it on
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the chin and, you know, wait for things to get better and keep trying and, you know, smile at the
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cute guy. And then hopefully something will work out. And it did, I guess, for some people,
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maybe it takes longer, some people never happens. And for those people, there's more and more of
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this kind of palliative care for your ego online. And there's nothing more kind of
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injurious to your to your person than being sexually rejected. And I think especially for young men,
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it's very scary and damaging. And if you have all these kind of meta narratives of why this is
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happening, and why, you know, women are demons. And on the other end, you know, you have, you know,
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a lot of kind of porn culture. And, you know, even if you're a young woman, you're like, okay,
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you hit puberty, and then you, you open up the internet. And it's just, you know, it's just boobs
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and ass. And, you know, obviously, this is kind of what the younger men also relate to. Okay, this is
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kind of what femininity should be. This kind of trickles into your first relationships, if you have
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them, it's, it's a scary environment. It's like you go from zero to 100 in, you know, very scary
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waters. And I remember that was the case, even when I was in high school. You know, I hadn't heard
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about porn. But you know, my first boyfriend clued me in on everything that I needed and didn't need
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to know. And it was a very, you know, frightening time, actually. And I can't even imagine how much this
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whole thing is ratcheted up. And it doesn't surprise me that, you know, younger women have, you know,
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all sorts of, you know, desires to transition and, you know, extreme forms of feminism are taking
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root in in the zoomer mind. And yeah, I mean, things are polarizing, because the enormity of
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the opposite sex online, and it's, you know, detailed, you know, darkness is presented and
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reflected at you every day. And it's extremely frightening. I mean, I wouldn't, I'm not surprised
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that men, you know, are incels. Actually, I went into a rabbit hole a few days ago, I didn't know about
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this, you know, there's a whole subculture, obviously, incels have their own lore, their
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old thing. But for some reason, on, you know, this kind of tick tocky videos on YouTube, they showed
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me some incel videos where there's kind of this whole group of male models that they all idolize
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male models that I've never heard of as a woman who apparently, you know, loves these guys, these
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chats. And they're, they've kind of picked out for the portions of their faces and things like
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that. And okay, all these guys saying, you'll never be Chico. Apparently, Chico is a guy who
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they all love. And it's just such a deep rabbit hole of, you know, this perfectly proportioned
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twink looking gentleman. Yeah, I don't know, it's it was kind of, sometimes when you when
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you stumble onto something that's not yours, and it's so exotic, and has so many layers of
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lore and, and things that people have been thinking about is kind of was very startling to
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me, especially because this is apparently, they're kind of codifying what it is to be
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attractive to women. And it's such a such a failure of cross sex mind reading, like a
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lot of this, this incel stuff is, oh, it's wild. I cannot elevate men. Yeah. Yeah. One
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of the things that I often mention in the book is, is that I am what most women consider to
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be a very attractive man. And men like in the comments will be like, that can't possibly
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be true. No, I'm not what men consider to be an attractive man. But in the and then
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they're there, they have these aspirations of body types and attitudes that don't correlate
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with what the other gender actually wants. Instead, it is an idealized version of what
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their gender wants. And we're seeing the same with women. I think we're seeing the same with
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women. What women want? Like, I'm just look like I'm just telling you, like, guys, look
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at the guys who young girls are drawing. These are elf men. All the young girls are into like
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this twink elf man look, or they're like depressed dads. The meme I was trying to remember about
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this was young girls are into guys who look like line cooks, elf princes, or depressed
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fathers, or some combination of them. And then they have various people in this Venn diagram
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here. Yeah, I don't know about that one. There's a there's a great like chart on this of the elf
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men versus depressed dad. And then there's like another mark on there. I can't remember what it
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is. But anyway, but it's not the ideal of you know, the the Andrew Tate like character. But I also
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think there's something that you said at the beginning. So both of you said something that I
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really want to elevate as ideas, because I think that both of them have an element of truth to them.
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Simone's point about homogenization, the more homogenized the culture tends to be these days,
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the more like is severe the gender war is. And for people who want to learn about the gender wars
00:21:01.480
in South Korea, I'd suggest a YouTube video called the gotcha gang wars part one and two. It's a
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fantastic breakdown of this. And we'll probably do an episode on Korean culture eventually. The second
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one that I think is really true is you talking about forbidden information. I think as the the sort of
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dominant culture in our society, this urban monoculture begin to ban certain types of
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information tied to human biodiversity, with a subclass of that information being gender differences
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in perspectives and proficiencies, they made this information more powerful and very useful for
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individuals who want to use it towards malevolent ends, even if those ends are not like they don't
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intend them to be malevolent, it can just sort of like organically evolve in a malevolent direction,
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because now this information, you know, it can be delivered in a did you know x and y and like x and
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y are things that are obviously true, but are banned truths within our society. And then you know, b and z,
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b and z are things that a person wants to believe are true, but are now being tied to this obviously
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true information. So like, did you know that women want to date men who are better than them,
00:22:10.080
you know, and therefore, all women cheat and lie. And and the the you can package these in the same
00:22:17.240
thing is done with men, you know, that they did to young girls, like, did you know, that men get
00:22:22.460
turned on by violence, and therefore, all men want to beat you. The other thing that Alex pointed out
00:22:27.820
that that's really sticking with me is before, if you felt something if you felt uncomfortable through
00:22:33.820
puberty, or if you were rejected by men or women, okay, it sucked. And maybe you would, you know,
00:22:39.120
complain to your friends about it. And you would listen to some sad songs. But that was kind of
00:22:43.460
the extent of it. Whereas now, there are so many resources, like you say, to go online, and there
00:22:48.800
are communities that will say, well, of course, and that's because men slash women are evil. And
00:22:53.640
therefore, you can become this and you're going to identify as this. And now you're going to dress
00:22:57.100
like this and talk like this and believe these things. And it's going to change your entire life
00:23:01.580
trajectory. When as whereas before, it was just a mood, it passed. And you see the same,
00:23:07.740
it may be magnified more with transitioning, right? You're uncomfortable with your body going
00:23:12.480
into gender. And then a lot of people who aren't actually trans end up starting to transition or
00:23:17.360
using hormone blockers, because there's a community out there that's like, oh, you feel this way,
00:23:23.080
therefore, you're this. So I think that's a really good point that there are all these resources now
00:23:27.500
for various feelings, I think associated with a broad external locus of control, as in it's not your
00:23:34.520
fault. This is happening. It's society's fault. And therefore, you should join our group that you
00:23:40.300
now have me thinking about it very differently, which is fun.
00:23:43.960
Yeah, I also wanted to elevate a final thing that I think is a big problem here that I didn't realize.
00:23:49.760
So our fans set up like a discord server for our community, and it's ended up doing really well.
00:23:54.600
And after I've been interacting with the discord server, I realized how harmful these types of places
00:24:00.620
are, in terms of like, psychologically speaking, they're sort of like, no, no, I mean, I think
00:24:07.080
ours is fine. But I think generally, the rules, because it creates these insular online communities
00:24:14.040
that are typically focused around a single person, because a lot of the times they'll be created for
00:24:18.940
like a YouTuber or something like that, or a single online personality. So that person has elevated
00:24:23.500
status within the community, everyone, there's sort of a feedback loop of acceptance and praise for that
00:24:28.440
individual. And then whenever anyone says something positive about that individual,
00:24:31.300
and the moderators, whenever somebody disagrees with them, can, they don't do it in our community,
00:24:37.040
but they can within other communities, just ban the person or silence that particular, like wrong
00:24:41.940
think, which allows for real quick snowballs of ideas to sort of radicalize in a way that they
00:24:50.980
just couldn't historically, because someone historically, if a group was getting sort of crazy, could always
00:24:55.440
go, hey, let's take it back a few steps. But that's not really as easy within these environments where
00:25:01.040
some people have so much control about the information that's being communicated.
00:25:04.860
Okay, I have one final question for you on the subject, Alex. How are you going to be raising your
00:25:10.040
kids differently or intentionally in a way with the gender wars in mind? Because you don't, I mean,
00:25:16.780
obviously, on the extreme end of the very bad direction spectrum, you have extreme feminists,
00:25:21.480
for example, who are raising their boys to essentially hate being male, right, that you are
00:25:25.260
the evil thing. And you know, we have to make you feel guilty from age one. You know, how do we how
00:25:31.160
do we correctly raise kids of various genders? What's your plan? Yeah, I mean, this has become and to be
00:25:37.240
honest, at least in part, this is except except for my, you know, morbid fascination with it, because
00:25:41.120
it is really interesting to see all this kind of develop. But, you know, I wrote an essay a few years ago
00:25:46.080
about my worries about, you know, raising boys, and it was more about, you know, kind of the, you
00:25:50.480
know, DEI complex, and you know, the fact that, you know, as white boys are going to have, you know,
00:25:55.160
maybe issues. But to be honest, I think at this point in my life, I'm like, I'm more concerned that
00:25:59.640
they're going to be seeded with some sort of, you know, nihilistic bullshit for the internet. And,
00:26:04.640
you know, either that or completely rendered useless by, you know, extremely lifelike video games or
00:26:11.760
something like that. I mean, it is, it's, it's, it's, it's captivating. I see how much of a, you
00:26:18.660
know, slavery I have to the screens, I really try to be mindful of this to kind of distance myself to,
00:26:26.440
but it doesn't always work. I mean, it doesn't often work, actually. Also, because partially,
00:26:31.260
this is also what I do, you know, I kind of have to keep an eye on it to see what's going on. But I
00:26:36.240
think, you know, our plan is essentially in the longer term to move to New Zealand, to build a
00:26:41.380
compound, to have a much more nature focused life. And what we have there is a lot of Ben's
00:26:48.700
extended family, which is my, my husband. And yes, essentially, those kids are all, you know,
00:26:53.540
into surfing, into hiking, into, you know, we're really going to push the physical activity,
00:26:58.560
be outdoors, you know, things of an online nature need to be incidental rather than the main,
00:27:04.980
the main thing, which, you know, here where we live in Romania, it's, it's a bit of a kind of a small
00:27:09.440
city, big town, something type location. And it's just not the same caliber of outdoorsyness that
00:27:17.120
we that we want. So yeah, that's kind of the plan. And I think I know, just being very mindful of
00:27:22.900
limiting screen time controls, all this type of stuff, but also at the same time, you know,
00:27:28.580
being also mindful, but the fact that their social life is probably going to be plugged into this
00:27:32.980
stuff. So totally. And professional life too. Exactly. You don't want them to be, you know,
00:27:38.360
this is kind of the thought process here, especially in Romania, where, you know, people
00:27:41.460
are very conscious that everything is on the internet. If you want to have like a white collar
00:27:45.800
job and, you know, be a professional, you have to be really savvy with using these tools, which I can
00:27:51.260
understand, but, you know, scrolling on TikTok, it's not really using the internet. So, you know,
00:27:55.640
one has to be mindful of that as well. So yeah, I mean, that's kind of my take. I'm not,
00:28:01.500
it's not very, it's not a solution, but it's, you know, a mindset more than anything.
00:28:08.740
Yeah. I like that. That's a good approach. It sounds very healthy.
00:28:12.220
Yeah, it does. Hopefully. I don't know. They're still small, so I haven't messed them up yet.
00:28:16.180
Okay. I will ask one more final question here. How are you going to relate to, or have your kids
00:28:22.300
relate to AI in a social context? So I'll explain what I mean by this. One of the toys that I'm really
00:28:27.760
excited that'll be coming in a few weeks for our kids is this Grok toy, which is a AI that a kid
00:28:33.380
can talk to that by Grimes. And it looks really cool to have like a, you know, because I think
00:28:40.400
about my kids, like the caregivers who they're with are not the most educated people in the world.
00:28:44.740
And so this would allow them to verbally interact with something that is, you know,
00:28:49.480
the equivalent of like a Stanford PhD and its level of knowledge and in its grasp of the English
00:28:53.420
language whenever they feel like it, which could dramatically advance their intelligence and
00:28:59.200
communication capabilities. But it could also create really negative psychological effects,
00:29:04.560
like the rabbit too. We also have ordered and we'll be giving to our kids. I don't know if you've seen
00:29:08.760
this device. It's a little like a screen that you can talk to and interact with the internet through
00:29:15.120
just your voice. So they don't even need to learn to type to really have full access to the internet.
00:29:18.840
So how do you think about tools like this? Yeah. When you said Stanford PhD, I was just imagining,
00:29:24.580
you know, the voice of Andrew Huberman coming through the Grok toy and teaching your children
00:29:28.460
to do cold exposure. Grimes actually voiced them. So you'll hear her voice. Oh, okay. The voice of
00:29:35.400
Grimes telling your children to do cold exposure. Exactly. There you go. Yeah. I mean, I actually haven't,
00:29:42.840
I'm still in kind of the, the fearful peasant, you know, waving her hand at the sky stage of,
00:29:49.000
of interacting with AI in relation to my children. I'm just like, don't, don't slap the iPad out of
00:29:54.960
their hand. Don't do it. I'm still kind of developing a coherent approach to it. I'm not a, you know,
00:29:59.700
you guys are pretty much the, the internet's early adopters on many things. So I don't know if we're
00:30:04.340
all at that. It's admirable, but yeah, I mean, I'm actually going to look into this. It sounds pretty
00:30:08.700
cool. I might get it as well. They're only 99 bucks. Really? Oh yeah. And what we realized is
00:30:14.400
we think they're so cool. It's we, we actually, since our oldest son has autism, he's been going
00:30:22.500
through ABA therapy, which it's actually about to stop because he's improved so much, but during
00:30:27.060
every session that he had, both when he was in daycare and then after he left, they, they graft
00:30:31.440
all of his good and bad behaviors, very autistically actually, which is quite appropriate, I guess.
00:30:37.020
So we can actually see like spikes of bad behavior, spikes of good behavior. His behavior
00:30:42.280
was terrible in daycare. As soon as he leaves these graphs that are like all high and, you
00:30:46.920
know, going up and down, they just, they plummet. And suddenly his behavior is amazing. And we
00:30:50.500
realized, okay, it's important for kids to have peers. And we're kind of like, okay, well, we'll
00:30:55.000
just provide them with siblings, but child peers are not necessarily the best influence. Same
00:31:02.500
with child peers on the internet, but also completely random peers on the internet. So part
00:31:06.960
of our approach is, well, we can't trust humans anymore because everyone's going to be corrupted.
00:31:11.220
So maybe we can just choose the right AI for them, not the wrong one, the right one, and
00:31:17.240
then use that as their influence instead. But it is, it is one of many approaches and I
00:31:22.280
like yours, but it's been so great to have you on. And I just want to remind everyone
00:31:25.680
listening to definitely check out the subversive podcast, as well as go to alexksushita at
00:31:31.980
.substack.com. We'll include links in the description so you can get to these things
00:31:36.740
easily. But Alex, thank you so much for coming on and we hope you'll come back very soon.