Based Camp - December 08, 2023


How is Man Better Than Beast？ IQ or I Will


Episode Stats

Length

32 minutes

Words per Minute

181.24736

Word Count

5,850

Sentence Count

392

Misogynist Sentences

21

Hate Speech Sentences

20


Summary

In this episode, we talk about persistence, and how it's one of the most important qualities of a human being, and why it's better than cleverness. We also talk about the most ancient hunting technique, the "Persistence Hunt."


Transcript

00:00:00.000 The thing that helps persistence and endurance beat out cleverness is that you have, you know, a billion rolls of the dice.
00:00:08.620 So even if the dice is loaded against you, eventually you're going to roll something great.
00:00:12.660 People who are persistent get many dice rolls.
00:00:15.820 In D&D terms or Baldur's Gate terms, it's the difference between having high stats and rolling with advantage.
00:00:22.900 Rolling with advantage means you roll twice and then you take the highest roll.
00:00:26.940 Whereas high stats just add a number to your roll after the roll.
00:00:30.940 And you would always rather roll with advantage than have high stats.
00:00:35.960 This is just true for life, right?
00:00:37.880 Like you can actually just have advantage on everything.
00:00:41.420 So long as you are willing to accept failure and try again and again, be rejected again and again.
00:00:47.680 Would you like to know more?
00:00:49.880 Malcolm, one thing I really appreciate about you is that you loved that my motto when we first met was repeated.
00:00:56.200 Blunt Force.
00:00:57.380 Like you got it instantly and no one else did it.
00:00:59.420 Yes.
00:00:59.760 I was like, oh, this is someone I want to marry.
00:01:01.640 But I want to ask you a question.
00:01:04.240 Because I want to know if you actually know this.
00:01:06.060 Other than our intelligence as a species, which is just off the charts, do you know what other thing is almost holistically unique in humans?
00:01:17.380 Endurance, right?
00:01:18.120 Like long, long endurance hunting and whatnot that we haven't even really early humans did, which is why so many megafauna have gone extinct.
00:01:25.800 Yes.
00:01:26.200 So there are some African tribes that still do this.
00:01:29.640 And I'll see if I can find a video of it or something because it's insane to watch.
00:01:32.700 So what they will do to hunt a deer or gazelle like in Africa, right, is they'll just chase them.
00:01:39.460 And they just keep chasing them.
00:01:42.180 They can run faster than people.
00:01:44.320 Yes.
00:01:45.080 To start.
00:01:45.740 But they just keep chasing them until the deer just falls over exhausted.
00:01:52.720 They walk up to it and they break its neck.
00:01:55.020 These are the sand people of the Kalahari Desert.
00:01:57.900 The last tribe on earth to use what some believe is the most ancient hunting technique of all.
00:02:04.440 The persistence hunt.
00:02:06.900 They run down their prey.
00:02:09.600 The animals have taken fright.
00:02:11.300 They will concentrate on the bull.
00:02:13.600 He will be carrying a heavy set of horns.
00:02:15.740 And therefore will tire more quickly.
00:02:17.960 After hours of tracking, they've entered an almost trance-like state of concentration.
00:02:23.460 At times it's impossible to see any sign of the kudu's tracks.
00:02:26.660 And the hunters must imagine the path it will have taken.
00:02:30.380 They're now close enough for the next stage in the hunt.
00:02:34.600 The chase.
00:02:35.840 Only one man will undertake it.
00:02:38.280 Kuroe, the runner.
00:02:39.760 It's now a test of endurance.
00:02:42.060 Who will collapse first?
00:02:43.820 The man or the animal?
00:02:45.180 This was how men hunted before they had weapons.
00:02:48.480 When a hunter had nothing more than his own physical endurance with which to gain his prize.
00:02:53.840 Running on two feet is more efficient over long distances than running on four.
00:03:01.400 A man sweats from glands all over his body and so cools himself.
00:03:09.500 A kudu sweats much less and has to find shade if it's to cool down.
00:03:14.500 And a man has hands with which to carry water.
00:03:17.380 So during the chase, he can replenish the liquid he loses as sweat.
00:03:21.500 Then the kudu collapses from sheer exhaustion.
00:03:26.500 It's like those horror films where the person who's being chased is just screaming and running and acting all manic.
00:03:34.560 And then the killer is just slowly walking behind them, like fairy, just methodically.
00:03:39.900 Well, I mean, it's interesting.
00:03:42.380 I sometimes imagine when humans go into space, because all space-faring entities will be marked for their intelligence, right?
00:03:50.940 They'll all have been the most intelligent species on their planet.
00:03:53.560 So what makes humans unique?
00:03:55.300 What's the other really weird thing about humans?
00:03:57.820 Because all species will likely have something that's like...
00:04:00.100 I can almost guarantee that interstellarly, if there are multiple intelligent species, one of the things that humans would be known for is stupid amounts of persistence.
00:04:12.300 Like, other species will be like, oh yeah, they'll just keep chasing you.
00:04:15.040 Like, you piss them off, and they'll just follow you forever until they have killed you and everyone you know.
00:04:23.480 But no, I mean, I don't think that that's a bad thing to have as a species.
00:04:28.360 But I also think it's a very interesting thing to have that marks what makes us different.
00:04:35.460 Because I think so many people, when they define what makes them human and what they're proud of for being human, they talk about the intelligence and the wit and the cunning of our species.
00:04:47.540 Yeah, that's what people celebrate.
00:04:49.960 Like, you know, James Bond isn't necessarily...
00:04:53.280 I mean, he does show some signs of persistence, but that's not what's emphasized.
00:04:56.440 What's emphasized is his cleverness and his fighting and his suaveness and blah, blah, blah.
00:05:01.180 But that's, yeah.
00:05:02.620 But the other thing that makes us human is our persistence.
00:05:08.280 And I actually think within our own family culture, when I think about the values that I want to elevate for my kids,
00:05:14.760 when I think about why I married a woman who, on her dating profile, her quote was,
00:05:19.620 repeated blunt force, it was because I think venerating persistence is more important than venerating intelligence.
00:05:34.300 Yeah, if there were apologetic risk score for persistence and we had access to it,
00:05:39.920 we would probably weight it in our calculations above intelligence.
00:05:43.300 Don't you agree?
00:05:44.360 Oh, absolutely.
00:05:45.080 Yeah.
00:05:45.360 I mean, so there is a apologetic risk score for an internal locus of control.
00:05:48.940 And I view that as highly correlated with persistence.
00:05:51.980 Believing that you...
00:05:53.420 So internal versus external locus of control, for people who aren't familiar,
00:05:56.960 a person with an external locus of control, if they're trying to explain the events in their life,
00:06:00.660 they will explain it through external means.
00:06:02.780 Or if the person with internal locus of control will try to explain the events of their life through internal means.
00:06:07.400 So, for example, if a person with an external locus of control gets fired,
00:06:09.900 it's because X had it out for me, because the company was racist, because, you know, whatever.
00:06:15.740 A person with an internal locus of control will say, I didn't do this right.
00:06:18.980 I didn't do this right.
00:06:20.320 Right?
00:06:21.160 And every outcome always has an internal and external locus of control explanation.
00:06:25.580 There's always answers from both perspectives.
00:06:28.880 And that is...
00:06:31.060 And sometimes one is truer than the other.
00:06:32.780 But what's interesting is that people who persistently have an internal locus of control will come up with internal locus of control answers.
00:06:38.280 And this helps psychological health, having an internal locus of control.
00:06:41.840 Whereas having an external locus of control hurts psychological health.
00:06:45.200 And it's something that the urban monoculture in any soft cultural tradition will always elevate,
00:06:50.760 is external locus of control, because they're easier in the moment.
00:06:53.780 They just cause more pain in the long run.
00:06:56.940 So it is something you can select for.
00:06:58.780 It is something you can culturally train.
00:07:00.920 And I remember growing up, my mom always told me.
00:07:04.140 She goes, and this is why our school, the Collins Institute, we are four gifted kids.
00:07:08.040 But we say, we are looking for giftedness in terms of I will, not IQ.
00:07:13.540 And this is something my mom always told me.
00:07:15.840 She'd actually shame me whenever I tried to elevate myself through IQ.
00:07:21.540 Because I did well on IQ tests.
00:07:23.160 You know, I was in the gifted classes and everything like that.
00:07:25.960 And she was like, do you know how many pathetic losers there are in PhD programs?
00:07:32.040 And like, she really looked down on doctors and lawyers and people of those, which she would call lower middling professions.
00:07:39.600 Because she said there was a cap on how much you could really earn or how much of a difference you could really make in a world in those professions.
00:07:44.900 But more than that, you know, the number of people who go to Harvard who end up being total losers, the number of people who go to Stanford who end up being total losers.
00:07:52.300 And she always taught me that that was expected of me.
00:07:55.040 I mean, I remember she said, yeah, of course, you're going to go to, you know, an elite institution.
00:07:59.880 But you shouldn't be proud of it.
00:08:02.700 That's the minimum that's expected of you.
00:08:05.300 You should be proud of what you achieve in life.
00:08:08.960 And there is nothing more denigratable, nothing that you can smear more or look down on more than a person who was blessed with a high IQ.
00:08:18.740 Because this is largely something you don't choose.
00:08:20.740 And who went to one of these institutions, so they had advantages in life, and they didn't end up making a positive impact on the world.
00:08:28.800 Or they didn't end up making much of a positive impact on the world.
00:08:31.700 I mean, what a sign of a lack of a moral core, right?
00:08:37.100 Or persistence, I guess, is in my family.
00:08:39.680 When I saw Simone, it was like her saying, I am moral in the truest possible sense.
00:08:44.980 Repeated blunt force.
00:08:45.960 Because I guess I, in my family and with my kids, I was taught to associate persistence, especially persistence in a way that denigrated or dismissed intelligence as a sign of moral fortitude.
00:09:05.800 Well, I mean, the thing is, too, when you look at, and I'm not saying that high performance and traditional schooling is at all a sign of intelligence because it isn't necessarily at all.
00:09:14.520 But when you look at the outcomes of kids who do the best in school, they often do not necessarily show the best outcomes in life.
00:09:23.300 Plus, you know, when you look at the outcomes of those who have the highest IQ, you also don't see, you know, these necessarily being the people who are going to send us to Mars, who are going to, you know, build amazing, crazy, cool things.
00:09:36.020 I mean, there is a certain minimum amount of intelligence that you're going to need to do stuff.
00:09:41.720 I mean, I think one reason why maybe Forrest Gump is such a beloved movie is because it kind of is a story about persistence winning out with very, very, very little intelligence.
00:09:53.780 But I do think that that's a little bit of a false god.
00:09:56.380 Like, you do need, realistically, a certain amount.
00:10:00.620 I mean, I think even with me, my strengths, and I've always seen it as my strengths.
00:10:04.700 He does this as a great perhaps song that I like that talks about this recently.
00:10:07.880 I should put a little clip here of it because I like it.
00:10:32.660 But yeah, my strengths, intellectually, was never intelligence.
00:10:38.600 I have always really struggled.
00:10:40.620 So when I went to Stanford Business School, for example, in my first year at the school, and Simone remembers this, I came inches from being expelled due to low grades.
00:10:49.440 When I graduated in the second year, in my final half of that year, I was easily in the top 5% of my class.
00:10:56.840 And this is something that has persistently happened in high school.
00:11:01.860 Like, high school.
00:11:02.340 This is like a generic high school.
00:11:04.320 I was around the half mark in terms of grades for the first couple years.
00:11:09.280 Now, I graduated near the top of my class.
00:11:11.300 But I always start really low in anything I do.
00:11:15.580 And I suspect that this is similar for podcasting or, like, trying to make a name of myself, like the public sphere, right?
00:11:21.260 Like, I am going to start incompetent for a much longer period than most people are incompetent.
00:11:27.560 But I will outwork the other people.
00:11:30.420 And that is my gift, right?
00:11:32.300 And through outworking them, I will ultimately win.
00:11:37.680 And I think some people, they may look at our podcast and they'll be like, I'm a little afraid.
00:11:41.060 Like, I like this, but I see that they're not getting the views I would expect.
00:11:43.960 So they're probably going to give up.
00:11:46.560 Don't worry.
00:11:48.080 Yeah.
00:11:48.320 I mean, unless you, you know, find stuff to find another avenue that's more useful for my time.
00:11:53.780 You're right.
00:11:54.060 But I think the important thing, too, is that there is an instrumental reason why this matters.
00:11:57.720 So if you're really, really clever, you also have to be lucky.
00:12:01.740 You know, you can't just be purely clever.
00:12:04.880 You have to be clever at the right time, at the right place, with the right people and the right resources.
00:12:09.160 And the thing that helps persistence and endurance beat out cleverness is that you have, you know, a billion rolls of the dice.
00:12:18.660 So even if the dice is loaded against you, eventually you're going to roll something great.
00:12:22.640 Whereas if you are just very clever, you may have a load of dice, but you're only rolling a couple of times, you know, without persistence.
00:12:29.140 You may not actually get the kind of winnings that you want.
00:12:31.440 I actually really like that framing.
00:12:34.140 People who are intelligent have loaded dice.
00:12:36.680 People who are persistent get many dice rolls.
00:12:40.180 In D&D terms or Baldur's Gate terms, it's the difference between having high stats and rolling with advantage.
00:12:46.740 Rolling with advantage means you roll twice and then you take the highest roll.
00:12:50.780 Whereas high stats just add a number to your roll after the roll.
00:12:54.740 And you would always rather roll with advantage than have high stats.
00:12:59.380 This is just true for life, right?
00:13:01.880 Like you can actually just have advantage on everything so long as you are willing to accept failure and try again and again, be rejected again and again.
00:13:11.440 This is a cool thing about our society now, right?
00:13:15.040 We used to live in a world where I think for most humans today, one of the biggest punishments they'll face is social rejection, right?
00:13:22.360 Now, hold on.
00:13:23.560 When I am saying try again and again, I do not mean bet everything financially again and again, right?
00:13:29.540 Financially, I actually have always been and I believe in being quite conservative.
00:13:33.440 I mean, my brother doesn't.
00:13:35.540 He, he's been more successful than us.
00:13:37.420 He actually at one point was going to get a burning ships as a tattoo that he always talked about for his sort of motto.
00:13:43.020 That would have been awesome.
00:13:44.620 What?
00:13:45.580 That would have been awesome.
00:13:46.880 I know, right?
00:13:47.880 That's a cool tattoo.
00:13:49.040 But when it comes to the primary area that people are punished in our society today, the primary place that we're punished is social, right?
00:13:58.280 And social punishment feels incredibly painful, right?
00:14:01.380 When people criticize me online or something like that, right?
00:14:03.700 Like we have this instinctual fear because of evolution that if we are not accepted, that we are going to be expelled from our community.
00:14:12.560 And historically, if you couldn't find a way to make the people around you, the people who could signal to you their displeasure happy, you would fucking die.
00:14:20.180 Like the evolutionary pressure to be accepted by your community is incredibly high.
00:14:24.660 And this is how the urban monoculture is able to, through peer pressure, use it to manipulate people so successfully.
00:14:30.800 But it doesn't matter anymore.
00:14:34.940 In a world of network states, my people are defined not by the people who are around me, but the people who accept me for who I am, for what I'm trying to do.
00:14:47.680 So long as I act with integrity and I always fight for what I logically have deduced to be true and who continue to accept me when I realize that logical deductions I've made in the past are wrong or incorrect and I update my beliefs, my actual people, like the people who have a value set similar to me, they will appreciate that I have been able to update my beliefs based on new information.
00:15:11.620 The people who, on one side of the spectrum or the other, have always really been my enemies, will hate me.
00:15:20.940 So when somebody says something mean to me within an online environment, it doesn't challenge something that I value about myself.
00:15:29.060 As I'll say, when people are like, Malcolm, you're talking over Simone, you're not respecting her enough, I genuinely get offended by that.
00:15:35.520 And I genuinely get ashamed by that because that's not who I want to be.
00:15:37.800 But when people are like, oh, you're an idiot, I'm like, fucking no, I'm not an idiot.
00:15:41.940 Like, I almost certainly am financially better than you and live a happier life than you, so I'm pretty fucking sure I'm not an idiot.
00:15:48.960 By most metrics of success, I have done pretty well.
00:15:53.220 Or they'll say, Malcolm, you're a, I don't know, whatever, like you're a exophobe.
00:15:57.620 And I'm like, I know I'm not an exophobe.
00:16:00.280 Like, what are you talking about?
00:16:02.180 Like, this is not an exophobe.
00:16:04.940 Exophobe means you're a phobe of whatever.
00:16:07.400 So they'll say, you hate X group to try to get you to change your behavior.
00:16:11.440 Oh, okay, okay, okay.
00:16:12.280 They're saying you're phobic.
00:16:13.100 Okay, sorry.
00:16:13.980 Don't personally identify as hating X group.
00:16:15.380 But if somebody's like, for example, you're homophobic, right?
00:16:19.240 I'm like, I fucking know I'm not homophobic.
00:16:21.240 I lived a vast majority of my life fighting for gay rights, fighting for gay people when no one else would.
00:16:27.440 Getting into fights in my school when I was the only person who would stand up for the gay kids in my school.
00:16:32.940 Getting the shit kicked out of me instead of the shit getting kicked out of them because I was standing up for what I knew was right.
00:16:40.080 I know who I am.
00:16:42.500 I know I'm not homophobic.
00:16:44.080 But I am also not willing to say just fucking whatever the LGBT movement says is the right thing to say these days.
00:16:51.580 Because, you know, I am not going to be the strong woman trapped on the stage during that moment where she's like.
00:16:57.480 Now, this is the first year that a trans woman is in the competition.
00:17:00.960 How do you feel about that?
00:17:02.260 Amazing.
00:17:02.960 I feel honored to be a part of history.
00:17:05.080 I have a lot of incredible trans friends who are athletes.
00:17:07.700 And so we're all inspired this woman's competing.
00:17:10.640 Uh-huh.
00:17:11.120 And have you actually ever met Heather Swanson?
00:17:14.260 No, I've never competed against her before.
00:17:16.360 No.
00:17:16.820 She's not exactly your average trans athlete.
00:17:19.300 Well, what is an average trans athlete?
00:17:22.500 Honestly, I find that kind of bigoted, David.
00:17:24.820 Okay.
00:17:25.580 Heather Swanson is actually joining us now.
00:17:27.960 Ms. Swanson, how does it feel to be competing today?
00:17:31.780 I can't tell you how free I feel now that I've started identifying as a woman.
00:17:37.820 Now that I can compete as female, I'm ready to smash the other girls.
00:17:42.500 Well, with that, let's get right to the action.
00:17:44.640 I try to look into the future of how things are going to play out.
00:17:48.580 Like the trans people in sports thing, the LGBT community should have fucking known how
00:17:54.800 much that would backfire.
00:17:56.340 And that it's not a position they can continue to hold.
00:17:59.000 And mostly they've backed down from it now, but it's not a position I ever stand because
00:18:02.920 it was fucking obviously stupid.
00:18:04.580 And it was fucking obviously not what, when I was fighting for gay people to not be oppressed
00:18:10.340 in high school, I was ever fighting for.
00:18:11.980 I was never fighting for somebody with the body of a man to be able to compete against
00:18:16.940 people with the body of a woman.
00:18:18.700 That was obviously not.
00:18:21.140 That is what, when conservatives of the time, you know, which a different generation of conservatives
00:18:25.580 would say, they'll eventually try this.
00:18:27.360 I would say, I don't think they will, because only an idiot would do that.
00:18:31.400 Sometimes we do things we're not so proud of.
00:18:34.400 Some for money.
00:18:36.880 Others to gain the athletic edge on the competition.
00:18:40.300 Sometimes those secrets come back to haunt us.
00:18:42.740 Ah!
00:18:43.760 You know what I mean?
00:18:44.600 People who were not around during that period of LGBT rights may not remember or, or really
00:18:53.660 realize just how common this argument was, where people would be like, what, you're fighting
00:18:59.220 for trans people?
00:19:00.600 You think that they should be allowed to compete in women's sports?
00:19:03.680 And we'd be like, no, of course not.
00:19:05.320 That's a transphobic thing to even suggest that somebody would try that.
00:19:10.160 Because it is just so comical and insane.
00:19:14.240 And it was the common argument used against the trans movement in the early days, and
00:19:20.260 the approved older response was, it was transphobic to even suggest that trans people may one
00:19:29.420 day try to gain access to that.
00:19:31.940 We've said, no, they just want to live their lives, they just don't want to be oppressed.
00:19:35.020 The insane bottom of the slippery slope argument back then was that eventually trans people
00:19:41.280 would demand to compete in women's sports, and demand to, untransitioned, be allowed to
00:19:46.640 change in front of other women, and that was an offensive thing to even suggest back then.
00:19:54.480 It would be like if, with no other context, you saw somebody tweet, furries should be allowed
00:20:00.360 to live in zoos.
00:20:01.380 Because people would say that that person hated furries, because they'd say, that's
00:20:05.360 a ridiculous thing, no furry is actually going to ask for that.
00:20:10.040 And even as a person who supports the furry community, and is like, yes, I think if people
00:20:15.720 want to identify as animals, they should be allowed to identify as animals.
00:20:18.880 I think they should be validated for that, just as much as when I talk to, you know, a Catholic
00:20:24.520 priest, I will call him father, even though I'm not part of his cultural group, and I don't
00:20:28.440 believe that.
00:20:29.440 I think that he has gone through a lot to get there, and he deserves that validation.
00:20:33.900 But when they are asking to live in zoos, there are just logistical issues that make it unrealistic,
00:20:41.940 regardless of how I affirm their identity, or what they think about their identity.
00:20:46.920 It's the same thing with trans people in sports.
00:20:50.040 Me saying a furry living in a zoo is a bad idea, and has logistical issues associated with
00:20:58.440 it, is not me hating on the furry community, or me being anti-furry.
00:21:04.160 Anyway, back to persistence.
00:21:06.360 How do you think we're going to instill this, the importance of persistence, in our children?
00:21:11.360 Oh, beat them.
00:21:14.960 I'm sorry, I'm joking.
00:21:16.820 I'm joking, I'm joking.
00:21:19.100 No, I think that my parents actually did this perfectly.
00:21:22.600 Okay, how did they do it?
00:21:24.400 Well, they shamed me for taking pride in IQ over persistence.
00:21:29.760 But they also, did they reward persistence?
00:21:32.980 Yeah.
00:21:33.880 If I did well on a test that I hadn't studied for, that was the same as failing a test.
00:21:39.060 Okay.
00:21:40.260 Achieving something because of natural ability was always seen as a really negative and pathetic
00:21:46.900 thing.
00:21:47.440 But what's an example of them rewarding something?
00:21:51.980 Well, they rewarded it with praise.
00:21:53.940 They rewarded it with, like, I don't know.
00:21:55.760 It was just like, this is the only thing.
00:21:56.480 So basically, when they saw you tried really hard at something, then they would praise you?
00:22:00.380 Well, not if I tried hard and failed.
00:22:01.900 They were never that kind of family.
00:22:04.060 I should be clear.
00:22:05.340 They weren't a, all that matters is that you tried family.
00:22:08.040 They were like, all that matters is that you tried and you crushed your opponents to dust.
00:22:14.440 No, I mean, it's a, it's a, I think the core thing about persistence in a world where the core
00:22:20.260 reason people fail persistence is because they are, you know, shamed or something like that in their
00:22:27.600 environment is to teach people to ignore the value judgments of those around them.
00:22:32.880 That's the core thing.
00:22:36.320 So when people around you, you know, I think like, for example, a core persistent message
00:22:40.920 for me that I have relayed on the show before in our books, as I was younger, there was one
00:22:45.720 time when a teacher was like mad at me and I got punished and my mom was like, well, do
00:22:51.560 you think you did the wrong thing?
00:22:53.200 And I was like, no, I don't think I did the wrong thing.
00:22:55.880 And she goes, well, I'm gonna let you in on a little secret.
00:22:57.960 You know, elementary school teachers, society thinks they're losers.
00:23:03.040 They're basically minimum wage employees who nobody respects.
00:23:06.380 You could ignore everything she says.
00:23:08.960 In adult world, she's pathetic.
00:23:11.100 And I took that to heart and I got in trouble a lot as a kid because I always did what I
00:23:14.780 thought was right.
00:23:15.680 And I suppose that's still what I'm doing today in society.
00:23:18.540 And I think that goes hand in hand with persistence.
00:23:21.140 These are identical value sets.
00:23:23.500 The ability to ignore other people when they are telling you that what you are doing is
00:23:30.400 immoral.
00:23:30.940 And I think this is one of these things where, and we've talked about this in our like Jordan
00:23:35.000 Peterson parenting video and stuff like that, where he saw his goal as a parent to break
00:23:38.800 the will of his child or the children who he was in charge of observing, right?
00:23:44.400 And the children would do something and he was just, he needed to outweigh them or he needed
00:23:49.380 to force them to do what he wanted them to do without, you know, significant explanation
00:23:54.680 as to why he wanted them to do this without having to logically convince them.
00:23:58.580 And that's telling them to arbitrarily obey authority.
00:24:01.040 And I actually like a lot of what he says.
00:24:02.680 I just really disagree with this aspect of what he says.
00:24:05.900 Because I think when you grow up, and I think a lot of people today are grown up, taught
00:24:10.320 arbitrary obedience to authority is morally valuable, right?
00:24:16.080 And so they then look, what does the norm of our society think?
00:24:20.280 What does the, we were recently at Thanksgiving with our family.
00:24:23.000 And I remember at one point I mentioned something along the lines of, well, I mean, women are
00:24:27.760 naturally submissive on average, right?
00:24:30.140 This is in reference to our Dears video, the Dears anime video that we did.
00:24:35.060 And she gave me this death stare.
00:24:38.880 Like, what are you talking about?
00:24:40.720 This was my stepmother.
00:24:41.800 Because, you know, she knew that society would back her for that position.
00:24:47.780 And this was a mainstream societal position.
00:24:50.700 So she, I don't think, could ever thought through, just like logically, everyone who is
00:24:56.580 being honest knows that on average, women prefer to be submissive in their relationships
00:25:02.300 more than men do.
00:25:03.500 And being able to admit this when you know you'll be punished for it is the same value
00:25:12.580 set that allows you to keep trying at something when everybody's laughing at you for failing.
00:25:17.580 One of the biggest moments I had about this in my life was I was taking this GRE and GMAT
00:25:22.340 prep, right?
00:25:22.960 So for people who don't know, GREs and GMATs are the tests you have to take to get into graduate
00:25:27.160 schools, specifically business schools.
00:25:29.320 And I was going to a random Kaplan class.
00:25:32.980 So you got to understand, this is just like the normal, the people in this class were the
00:25:36.500 normal people who are taking GMATs and GREs.
00:25:39.220 The normal people looking to go to business school.
00:25:41.140 Not the best of the best or anything like that, just the people who are out there trying
00:25:44.320 hard.
00:25:44.840 And this isn't like, you know, SAT prep in high school or something like that, where
00:25:49.040 only rich kids are doing it.
00:25:50.140 Because when you're going to a business school, you're usually two years out of school.
00:25:53.740 You know, these are people who can pay for this themselves.
00:25:55.420 Within my class, I remember I came to the class and I was consistently, because it was
00:26:01.320 like a four day or something like that class, consistently within the first day, the worst
00:26:07.380 performer in the class.
00:26:09.040 And I told everyone in the class, I go, oh, well, I'm going to Stanford or Harvard.
00:26:14.160 And they just laughed.
00:26:15.740 Like the class actually started laughing.
00:26:18.040 Now, for people who don't know, I did end up going to Stanford, but I ended up working
00:26:21.820 really, really hard.
00:26:23.620 And it got to the point where some of the people who had associated me, like there was
00:26:27.920 this one guy in the class who had associated me at this low status because everyone in
00:26:31.700 the class had laughed at me, you know, the first day when I said I was doing that and
00:26:35.220 I was consistently doing poorly.
00:26:36.980 And I even remember the instructor turned to a guy who was like making fun of me for saying
00:26:42.840 something the last day.
00:26:43.620 And you go, you know that he is consistently by a large margin, the best performer in this
00:26:49.580 class today, like you should not still be making fun of him.
00:26:54.660 But like, and it was, it was a moment.
00:26:56.580 Well, actually the bigger moment for me was when I slept with a few women in the class.
00:27:00.020 Oh God, of course.
00:27:01.220 Hey, hey, I always, that's, that's what I remember about.
00:27:04.500 Well, here's one thing that I'm realizing my parents did for me that I would actually
00:27:08.520 love to do with our kids, which is specifically incentivize action that requires persistence to
00:27:14.900 get what you want, not intelligence.
00:27:16.640 So for example, one thing that my parents always did, which I thought was really cool
00:27:21.160 was if I wanted something, they'd never pay for it outright.
00:27:24.660 They would say, we will match what you can make for this.
00:27:28.600 So like, I wanted to have a loft bed at one point and it cost like $500 to buy the kind
00:27:33.780 I wanted.
00:27:34.280 And they're like, okay, if you save $250, I will match that.
00:27:39.600 And so then that required like just working and churning and like making the money to get
00:27:43.720 there.
00:27:44.120 And I think that those kinds of lessons and incentives are even better than praise or
00:27:50.760 shaming because you have to, you have to actually like discover the value of persistence
00:28:01.040 and then you win through persistence.
00:28:03.140 So I'd like to do a lot of that with our kids.
00:28:05.860 So like, you know, keep trying and then you'll get it.
00:28:08.560 Or in order to get it, you're going to need to keep trying and not just be super, super
00:28:12.600 clever.
00:28:14.020 Well, as people who don't know this about my wife, she is a golem of persistence.
00:28:18.880 She is a, you are the human.
00:28:20.960 I guess golem is really persistent.
00:28:23.100 No, I'm not talking about golem from Lord of the Rings.
00:28:25.380 I'm talking about the Jewish golem.
00:28:28.100 The look, it doesn't matter.
00:28:30.400 She's an avatar of persistence.
00:28:32.100 I'm talking about a clay monster brought to life by magic that is consistently just dedicated
00:28:39.000 to a specific goal.
00:28:40.040 That's what I meant by golem.
00:28:41.520 Anyway.
00:28:42.680 Oh, the clay thing that comes to life.
00:28:45.740 Okay.
00:28:47.100 Okay.
00:28:47.880 Yeah.
00:28:48.200 That's the right word, right?
00:28:49.900 Yeah.
00:28:51.440 Sorry.
00:28:51.780 I just need to look this up.
00:28:53.160 I just think, I think Smeagol, for example, is more persistent than just a dumb clay thing
00:28:59.300 that has been brought to life.
00:29:00.260 But anyway, he is persistent, but you are the human avatar of persistence.
00:29:07.100 So when she was young, she participated in running and you ran so much.
00:29:13.680 They were like, you are destroying your joints.
00:29:15.740 You need to do something that's not going to be hard on your joints.
00:29:20.000 And so then she's like, oh, fuck it.
00:29:21.380 Okay.
00:29:21.580 I guess I'll swim.
00:29:23.140 Right.
00:29:23.900 And then you swam so much.
00:29:25.420 She spent so much time in the water.
00:29:27.260 She developed early stage osteoporosis because she was weightless for so much of the time.
00:29:33.480 And that is why even today she has osteoporosis.
00:29:35.780 Today, she exercises, as we established in a previous video, five hours of physical exercise
00:29:40.320 every day you do while you're working.
00:29:42.540 Her superpower, like on the scheduling video, we talk about this.
00:29:45.460 I don't know if it will have gone live by the time this video goes live or not, but
00:29:48.640 she is able to just work.
00:29:50.960 Like if she is working from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. in a day, just work without breaks except
00:29:56.280 for lunch throughout the entire day.
00:29:58.940 And people can be like, well, what do you mean by that?
00:30:00.940 Like me, normal humans, like we need to like, I don't know, we'll like get online.
00:30:05.180 We'll search something.
00:30:05.940 We'll give ourselves little rewards throughout the day.
00:30:08.240 She does not do that.
00:30:09.700 She is just able to persistently work.
00:30:11.520 I don't, I mean, is that persistence or is that autism?
00:30:14.920 Like let's be practical.
00:30:16.420 There's lots of autistic people who use autism as their shield to get around hard work.
00:30:22.780 You have used it to fortify and fuel you into a killdozer.
00:30:29.180 People who don't know about the killdozer, that is my, if I was to create a party, right?
00:30:34.640 You've got the Democratic Party, which is the, you've got the Republican Party, which is
00:30:38.260 the elephant.
00:30:39.280 Elephant.
00:30:40.060 I want the killdozer party.
00:30:41.520 The story of the killdozer.
00:30:43.340 If you don't know the story of the killdozer, you need to look up the story of the killdozer
00:30:47.420 because it is the most quintessential American story in like American history.
00:30:54.160 Basically guy who kept by bureaucracy.
00:30:57.480 Sorry, sorry, sorry.
00:30:58.200 Malcolm, you're frozen right now.
00:30:59.900 I'm just waiting for you to come back, but then we need to go get the kids.
00:31:03.740 So tell your story.
00:31:05.140 Yeah, great.
00:31:07.000 Basically, there was this guy who kept getting screwed by bureaucracy and by bureaucracy and
00:31:10.580 by bureaucracy and he ended up getting screwed so many times and so unjustly that he's just
00:31:16.680 like, fuck it.
00:31:17.600 I'm going to build an armored tractor, which he built secretly in his business that had
00:31:23.220 been destroyed by like, for example, one of the things is they had blocked all of the
00:31:26.800 roads going to his store or something like that.
00:31:28.900 So no one could even get there anymore because the person who was on the council, like owned
00:31:34.660 one of the properties that decided to take the road leading to his thing.
00:31:37.660 I don't remember the whole thing.
00:31:38.720 It was just completely insane.
00:31:40.080 He was truly wronged.
00:31:41.260 Yeah.
00:31:41.660 Yeah.
00:31:42.000 And he just built this armored tractor that he used to go around.
00:31:45.400 Didn't kill anyone during this rampage.
00:31:48.200 Just destroyed the property of everyone who wronged him.
00:31:51.480 And it is the spirit of justice for me.
00:31:55.040 And I want him to live forever in American folklore alongside, you know, Paul Bunyan and
00:32:02.400 Johnny Appleseed, because I think he is a true American hero.
00:32:08.060 Yeah.
00:32:08.800 I love you, Simone.
00:32:09.700 We'll go pick up the kids now.
00:32:10.800 They're across the street.
00:32:12.360 I love you too, Malcolm.
00:32:15.840 All right.
00:32:16.540 All right.