Based Camp - How The World Stopped Caring About The Environment

00:00:00.000 Hello, Malcolm. I'm excited to be speaking with you today because 2025 was the year that

00:00:05.340 climate activism died. And I don't think enough people are talking about it, but major activists

00:00:11.220 and donors and even states are dropping climate change. Like it's hot. So we're talking about

00:00:16.980 Matthew Glacius, Greta Thunberg, Bill Gates, and even the state of New York, which is insane.

00:00:22.420 I'll go into it. I'm like, okay. I mean, it's clear. It's over. It's over. We're not trying

00:00:32.480 to make Fetch happen anymore. You only fight these causes because caring cells. All you activists can

00:00:39.360 go for yourselves. That was so inspiring. What a wonderful message. And in general, the sentiment

00:00:45.020 has shifted from saving animals and the earth to class conflict and human dignity. And this is

00:00:51.320 exemplified by folks like Kylie Jenner being criticized for swatching her animal cruelty

00:00:56.900 free makeup on her housekeepers. No one cares that it's animal cruelty free. They're like, 0.98

00:01:00.920 how dare you? She wants to become a housekeeper. She got it all cheap or whatever. This office that 1.00

00:01:08.400 was able to do animal testing really cheap. And then they found out it was just because they were

00:01:11.140 doing it on interns. I think there's that too. I heard about that separately, but this was,

00:01:15.300 I think a more prominent kerfuffle, but I just think it's really funny because she pays her

00:01:19.640 housekeeper. The housekeeper obviously consented to it. But I think just near, I think it's

00:01:24.560 exemplified because what really people are freaking out about is basically in any way using a paid

00:01:31.120 employee, I guess, you know, for anything and to not do it yourself. It's a fascinating phenomenon.

00:01:39.220 How hard, how fast, and how completely the climate movement was abandoned. 0.99

00:01:45.440 All right, that doesn't stupid ass rainforest. This place sucks. I was wrong, the rainforest. 1.00

00:01:52.840 We will be teaching our children about the climate movement as a historic movement.

00:01:58.980 Yeah. And speaking of historical movement, I think this, this is a, there's a wider question that this

00:02:04.620 development, the 2025 crash of climate activism brings to light, which is, this is of course not

00:02:11.200 the first panic we've had. And I think it's really important to ask ourselves in light of current

00:02:17.700 panics that are actively going on current things. People are like, we have to spend money on this. 1.00

00:02:21.940 We have to change our lives around this. We have to learn how to better divine what is worth our time

00:02:28.300 because I spent a huge portion of my youth dedicated to climate activism.

00:02:33.100 That's what her degree is in. Save the sea turtles. I like spent a summer volunteering to

00:02:37.380 help the baby sea turtles, make it to the ocean and measure the giant sea turtles. And by the way,

00:02:42.240 do you know the secret to stopping a giant sea turtle as they're making their way back to the ocean

00:02:45.920 so you can measure her? You stick your knee, you need two people, but you stick your knee behind her 1.00

00:02:52.320 front fin and then she can't move forward. And then that, that frees you up. Yeah. But it doesn't

00:02:58.520 always work when you get a big enough turtle, you just can't stop them. And at one point I just

00:03:02.840 watched that one of the Italian volunteers just ride her straight into the ocean. He just like gave 0.81

00:03:07.420 up and got on top of her and was like, I mean, like, you're not supposed to do that, but he's 0.64

00:03:10.380 just like, screw it. Like I'm going for it. And it was a beautiful thing to watch because there was

00:03:14.620 bioluminescence in the ocean at the time. And we're doing all this overnight. So it's like dark and

00:03:18.300 just watching an Italian ride into a glowing ocean on a turtle is one of those things you'll never forget.

00:03:23.640 But the point being is, is you dedicating is that we need to, we need to learn. We need to learn.

00:03:29.060 Yeah. I, yeah. And then I studied environmental business. I tried to build an entire custom

00:03:33.100 college major around this. I worked for earth day network. This is the group of people who created

00:03:37.080 earth day. I worked for the American council on renewable energy. I was extremely dedicated to this.

00:03:43.100 And there are a lot of people now that are extremely dedicated to working on, on AI related

00:03:49.920 apocalyptic organizations and, and working on all sorts of other panics. And so what I want to do

00:03:55.740 is also go through some historical panics and we'll also discuss climate change more. And we'll

00:03:59.300 also discuss the current crash. Cause I just think it's amusing.

00:04:01.640 Well, it's also interesting to talk about from the perspective of you and myself and the

00:04:07.620 figureheads of the prenatalist movement. Like yeah. Demographic collapse is another one of those.

00:04:11.340 We've got to freak out about this. And you know, we should, the point being is just because

00:04:15.540 something is like a big problem for civilization or something that's going to affect everyone.

00:04:20.640 It does not mean that you can turn it into a movement or that it will stay a movement in any

00:04:27.180 point of time. Like right now that climate chain has crashed out. It doesn't mean that anything

00:04:32.080 existential has changed about, I mean, depending on like deforestation, for example, is like

00:04:37.580 happening. It's still happening, right?

00:04:40.200 Oh, and I'm going to get into it too, but also like a lot of major cities, Mexico city,

00:04:45.720 I think it's Sao Paulo, South Africa, for sure. They're just running out of water. They're just

00:04:49.900 drawing down their water tables. I mean, he talked about Iran too. There is going to get a point

00:04:53.980 where they do not have groundwater to pull from. There's going to be nothing left.

00:04:58.100 So some of these are like existential questions for civilization.

00:05:03.000 Well, and so I, I think we, we, yeah, the, the, the larger discussion of this podcast is

00:05:07.480 when is it a justified panic when you need intervention? And I think a justified panic

00:05:12.180 is one where the issue is actually real and imminent. And one of the big problems with

00:05:16.880 climate change is that, yeah, climate change is real. It's just not as imminent as people

00:05:20.520 have repeatedly claimed. And that two will not resolve via normal environmental or market forces.

00:05:27.600 And I think a big common factor, and we'll, we'll discuss this more too, is if something is,

00:05:31.580 is priced into the market, for example, with peak oil, this wasn't the big,

00:05:37.480 panic that people thought it was because there are economic incentives for companies to build

00:05:42.160 innovations, to address diminishing oil supplies and to be better at extracting oil because people

00:05:47.460 are willing to pay for it. And as prices go up and people pay more for oil, people who are

00:05:51.660 entrepreneurial are willing to invest in technologies that allow them to extract oil

00:05:55.400 more efficiently. And so the problem essentially gets resolved.

00:05:58.820 But I want to, I want to take a second to just explain peak oil because some more fans are young

00:06:03.480 and may not know about this panic. Peak oil was a panic that was had in the 80s that human

00:06:08.380 civilization would run out of easy sources of oil to tap.

00:06:12.580 Yeah, like 10 years ago.

00:06:13.980 And, and, and because we built a civilization on oil, which we have, that human civilization

00:06:20.900 would collapse at the point that we ran out of oil.

00:06:23.460 Now, what is, what is interesting about this? And the reason I think is, it's a good thing

00:06:27.700 to sort of meditate on as a crisis is peak oil, you know, within the time period must

00:06:33.660 have seemed like the most obvious problem. There could ever be a problem. Is our civilization

00:06:38.320 based on oil? Yes. Is the oil supply finite?

00:06:43.500 Yeah.

00:06:43.820 100%.

00:06:44.220 It runs on magic or something, right? Like obviously it's finite, right?

00:06:47.720 Yeah. And what happens when we no longer have oil, if civilization runs on oil, civilization

00:06:53.880 stops, right? Like this is easy. If, then, then this isn't even like climate change or

00:07:00.960 something like that. Right. You know, or like people could debate the science of it or something.

00:07:04.420 This is just like, if, then, and it went in as a panic and it went out as a panic. And I, I think

00:07:13.980 that something that you did not get to is, I don't just want to look at this from the perspective

00:07:18.180 of what are the panics worth having? I want to look at this from the perspective of how do you

00:07:25.440 create a panic? Like, why were people ever so panicked about the environment?

00:07:31.620 Yeah. Well, we can also, I'm going to, I'm going to walk through some of the historical and recent,

00:07:35.920 well, relatively recent moral and social panics, because I think that there are some major moral

00:07:41.400 panics that we really should have had that we never had. And pretty much every actual moral 1.00

00:07:46.840 panic that has taken place over the last hundred plus years, totally stupid and unjustified wasn't 0.98

00:07:52.100 ever a problem. Like, why were you wasting your time on this? Well, like in the meantime, your lunch 0.99

00:07:57.160 is being eaten by Satan essentially. So we'll, we'll get into that too. But first, because I really

00:08:03.020 think people, a lot of people haven't realized that climate change is over as a cause now that it's,

00:08:07.900 it's over. No one cares about it anymore. I want to make sure people get the memo and I want to go

00:08:12.360 through the prominent detractors and, and, and major former activists who have now moved on

00:08:17.740 because I really want to hammer this home just to make it clear. Just, there are so many people who

00:08:22.860 haven't, they're, they're essentially like that person who's still living in the bunker, who assumes

00:08:27.180 that the nuclear apocalypse has taken place. They didn't realize that the world just kept going on and

00:08:31.020 no bomb actually hit. We've received letters from people written on like recycled paper using old

00:08:38.960 like billing envelopes that they didn't use for payment. So they're, everything's recycled and

00:08:42.960 they're writing to us being like, how dare you be in support of prenatalism when there are too many

00:08:47.920 people in the environment is in crisis and they just didn't get the memo. So let's, let's just be

00:08:53.080 super clear about what, what has happened. So let's start with Matthew Iglesias. Though he later took the

00:08:59.840 post down on December 28th. So just, just a little bit ago, he posted 10 years ago. I believe that

00:09:07.100 catering to the views of youth climate activists was important, but because I was not paid by the

00:09:13.260 same people who are astroturfing these groups, I was allowed to learn that I was wrong and change my

00:09:18.900 mind in response to information. And then in, in relation to this, and this is all an accident,

00:09:23.860 by the way, you get a, you know, context. He's like a major, I think, leftist thought,

00:09:30.560 like he co-founded Vox. He's that guy. Great. He's the founder of Vox. That's what we need to

00:09:36.300 know. Okay. Sure. Great. So in relation to this coddled affluent professional, that's the X username

00:09:43.080 posted a few years ago, a full professor of physics offhandedly assured me that climate research was a

00:09:50.180 scam and almost entirely a product of bad incentives in the grant industrial process.

00:09:55.540 He knew of people doing perfectly reasonable modeling. They were forced out of, out for lack

00:10:00.600 of funding because they didn't come to the correct conclusions. If you look at academic knowledge

00:10:06.260 production, it's actually a lot easier to engineer unanimity and consensus than you'd imagine.

00:10:12.160 And then on the subject of youth, not actively caring about climate change, we have Greta Zundberg,

00:10:17.320 the mascot of climate change. She began vocally supporting Palestinians and criticizing Israel's

00:10:24.500 actions in Gaza shortly after the escalation of the Israel. That was a bad investment, huh?

00:10:28.880 In October, 2023 though. So like this isn't only 2025 when the shift started. When she first made this

00:10:37.480 pivot, she tried to shoehorn it into environmental justice, but I'm not so convinced, but specifically

00:10:44.320 in a December, 2023 Guardian op-ed, she explained that solidarity with Palestinians aligns with the

00:10:51.880 movement's longstanding support for marginalized groups facing oppression, and then argued that

00:10:57.420 there can be no climate justice without human rights.

00:11:01.380 How can there be no climate justice?

00:11:04.220 Yeah, she's trying to be like, but well, but environmentalism is the same as imperialism, 0.99

00:11:09.060 occupation and humanitarian crises, which it is not, Ms. Thundberg. But she was trying to shoehorn it.

00:11:16.060 She was basically pivoting to those issues and trying to be like, no, they're all the same, but

00:11:19.900 they're not. Greta, they're not. But technically, she's still active in environmental causes today. 0.98

00:11:25.620 Her activism has broadened over time to encompass climate justice. But I think climate justice is just

00:11:31.000 your way of saying, I pivoted away from environmentalism, and I don't want to admit it.

00:11:35.280 And she did participate in an Extinction Rebellion protest in Venice in November of last year,

00:11:42.260 which they dyed the Grand Canal green. And I looked at pictures of it, and I'm like, I can't tell

00:11:47.080 what was done. And yes, it was non-toxic dyes, don't worry. Extinction Rebellion, which also goes as XR,

00:11:53.920 they operate as a grassroots non-hierarchical network. So basically, anyone can organize actions in its name,

00:11:59.860 and they follow these principles of non-violence, non-blaming individuals, etc. But they try to do

00:12:07.700 creative high visibility protests. They've done road and bridge blockades and occupations of public

00:12:13.420 spaces and sit-ins and glue-ins and lock-ins and symbolic stunts like fake funerals and dramatic

00:12:19.620 performances and targeted campaigns. But she's really not focused on environmentalism anymore.

00:12:26.300 Now, by the way, I was trying to figure out what she's doing post the flotilla, because that's 0.68

00:12:30.740 where she was living. That was her main gig. She's now living at an activist house in London.

00:12:35.220 This is what happens. You just sort of chill out. No, but I don't even know how she can come back

00:12:40.060 from this at this point. We have another episode of what's next for the left, because-

00:12:43.300 I know.

00:12:43.960 And it was made so much worse by the situation in Iran right now, because the fact that she has done 0.95

00:12:52.920 nothing about what the Iranian government is doing, which is exponentially worse than what Israel did,

00:12:59.660 it really goes to show, for her, the problem was the Jews.

00:13:03.240 When I say she's done nothing about the situation in Iran, I mean, she has not even made a single

00:13:09.380 tweet about it. She's able to motivate an entire flotillic instruction when it comes to Gaza. 0.87

00:13:15.200 But when it comes to the Iranians, she can't even lift an actual finger. 0.99

00:13:20.040 Great name recognition. She can bounce back as soon as she wants to. 1.00

00:13:23.520 But how? 1.00

00:13:25.180 Oh, reality TV show, some kind of pay the media piece, writing stupid fluff for that leftists 1.00

00:13:32.500 eat right up. Like, I just, I think she'll be fine. I just, it's clear that she dropped in. 1.00

00:13:38.520 And I think also Greta, she comes from a very media savvy family. She, she rode the wave of

00:13:46.140 climate activism and left it because she realized that the attention wasn't there anymore. And it's

00:13:50.100 just not, but you know, while she only really was in a mouthpiece that didn't actively cater to real

00:13:56.020 environmental outcomes, someone who actually really did seem to seriously care about climate change

00:14:01.980 and trying to do concrete, meaningful things to address it was Bill Gates. But similarly to Greta

00:14:08.980 Thunberg, Bill Gates is slowly backing away from climate change work and shifting his attention to

00:14:13.860 human rights. And he still says climate change is a serious problem. But now, and it is, I mean, but,

00:14:19.200 but just not what people said it was. He's recently shifted from a climate disaster framing toward a

00:14:24.740 focus on human welfare and adaptation and realistic expectations about emissions cuts, which is

00:14:29.480 perfectly logical. But for contrast in his 2021 book, how to avoid a climate disaster,

00:14:35.600 because he wrote a fricking book about it. This is how focused he was. Gates framed climate change as

00:14:40.700 one of humanity's biggest challenges and focused heavily on reaching net zero emissions through

00:14:46.260 innovation and policy. He emphasized that avoiding more than 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius of warming required

00:14:52.280 aggressive emissions cuts across electricity and manufacturing and transport and agriculture

00:14:57.680 and buildings. Now this is in 2021. This is after in 2020, we realized just how little a cut in

00:15:04.700 emissions you get from literally shutting down the entire world because of COVID-19. So I think,

00:15:10.160 you know, it's, it, he really held to this for a long time, but then came the pivot in October,

00:15:15.020 2025. He published this memo and this blog post and you can look it up. It's titled three tough truths

00:15:20.940 about climate. He argues that climate strategy should quote, focus on human welfare, even more than

00:15:26.880 temperatures, the greenhouse gas emissions. And he said that too much attention has gone to near term

00:15:33.200 emissions, emissions goals and doomsday rhetoric, and not enough toward improving the lives in a

00:15:39.380 warming world. In his, his ventures that were primarily based around climate change are now kind of

00:15:46.700 like their funding and staffing is being shifted around. So his venture initiative breakthrough energy

00:15:52.360 and related clean tech is, is getting some scaling back while he's putting more emphasis in technologies

00:15:59.120 that cut emissions, but more focus on improving livelihoods. And he's also increased overall spending

00:16:06.980 on global health and anti-poverty work through his foundation. And he's positioning climate more as just

00:16:12.560 one major issue among several drivers of human suffering with the focus really being on, on human rights.

00:16:19.000 Now let's look at States. Let's look at New York, right? Cause New York is, is it extremely, for those who live 0.99

00:16:23.760 outside the United States, it's, it's, it's a very progressive leftist environmentally focused state. And well,

00:16:31.080 they, they used to be extremely, extremely committed to climate change. Another, they're not exactly meeting

00:16:36.320 their commitments. So they once aimed to nearly eliminate greenhouse gas emissions. Their goal

00:16:41.940 was to do so by 2050 and get 70% of their electricity from renewables by 2030. That's four years from now,

00:16:48.760 but they are years behind on this. And their, their government heart, Hochul, I don't know how to

00:16:55.400 pronounce her name now argues that reliability and cost need to be prioritized because obviously they do

00:17:02.100 that she does blame surging energy demand, high utility bills and a hostile federal administration

00:17:07.860 on this. She, she doesn't admit that just, it's not practical, but beyond that, several marquee

00:17:13.740 policies have been delayed or softened, including regulations to implement the 2019 climate laws cap and

00:17:19.560 invest program that would change major emitters and they would charge major emitters and fund clean

00:17:25.340 energy and efficiency investments. So her administration also postponed all anti-electric new buildings

00:17:31.720 law backed an offshore gas pipeline previously rejected on environmental grounds and approved an

00:17:42.820 extension for a gas plant powering a Bitcoin mine. I think you'll remember like the New York was famous

00:17:49.220 for, Oh, they're going to take away your gas stoves back on all of this. And then even in the exact

00:17:55.640 opposite direction, the administration is courting energy intensive tech and industrial investment,

00:18:01.360 including a proposed 100 billion micron memory chip complex expected to consume as much electricity

00:18:07.680 as about 1.5 million homes, even as the state projects electricity demand could rise up to 24%

00:18:14.640 by 2040. So they're just kind of dropping it. It's just like, I think it'd be really fun. And I could

00:18:19.940 see things moving in this direction is if the right decides to try to take this issue from the left,

00:18:25.060 like they did with Maha. I mean, the two movements are really tight.

00:18:28.000 Well, one of our friends who runs a nonprofit that has always worked with state-level

00:18:32.580 Republican policymakers, like state legislators on climate tech, not because it's a progressive

00:18:41.140 cause, but because there are a lot of practical economic and logistical reasons to invest in clean

00:18:48.180 tech. It's not just that. It's that as the Republican party has undergone its reconstructure

00:18:54.180 and association, you've got major figures like Elon, at least he says he wants to be a centrist or

00:18:59.280 whatever now, but everyone knows he's a right leading individual, right? I mean, he's, he cares a lot

00:19:03.440 about the climate. Like you care a lot about like environmentalism. And I think a lot of, if you just

00:19:08.800 reframe it to protecting our hunting and fishing grounds, if you. Oh yeah. Like the old Teddy

00:19:14.760 Roosevelt conservation of like, I love nature. It's awesome. I want to go shoot some animals in

00:19:20.640 it and camp and have fun. And it's cool. If you, if you come out as, you know, with the campaign of

00:19:26.160 we need to, you know, do, do protection of wildlife and protection of wildlife from contamination,

00:19:33.740 I think move away from all the global warming stuff, right? Like that, that doesn't play to our

00:19:37.800 Republican base. So let me hunt and stop turning the frogs gay. Yeah. And I think that would appeal to, 1.00

00:19:44.120 of the, the Maha base. Yeah, totally. Yeah. That would appeal to most mainstream Republicans.

00:19:50.140 Yeah. And it would completely destabilize the Democrats. If the Republicans were coming at it.

00:19:55.320 To appropriate climate activism. That would be.

00:19:57.580 To appropriate climate activism. Well, that's, that's actually a thing because now climate change

00:20:01.880 has been made so uncool. There's this woman, actually a woman named Clara Chang, Changshin-Fang,

00:20:09.720 or Fang surveyed 1,003 self-identified climate activists and found that they're mostly female, 0.71

00:20:16.160 non-Hispanic, white, progressive, middle-class, over 50, and highly educated. So what does that

00:20:20.860 mean? They're Karens. So like now climate change has really become like the only people who now still 0.98

00:20:26.880 care about it are progressive old Karens. And, and Colin Wright on X wrote, it is increasingly

00:20:35.360 difficult to avoid the conclusion that such women are, are channeling the energy and protectiveness 1.00

00:20:40.120 that would ordinarily be directed toward child rearing into climate activism, treating earth

00:20:46.040 itself as their vulnerable child. And Joe Lonsdale, like the, the Joe Lonsdale wrote, climate activism

00:20:52.780 is a religion for midwits who want to feel intellectually superior, but are not. Women tend to be more 1.00

00:20:58.640 religious than men and will often seek it out in their lives, proceed accordingly. And then in response 0.86

00:21:04.520 to that, sentimental robotics, another user on X pointed out, just did some napkin math, not

00:21:10.140 according to, not, not accounting for lost productivity. We could be looking at 12 to 15

00:21:15.780 trillion in capital expenditure for climate efforts since 2000. Imagine how much we could have done

00:21:20.860 with those funds, not saying environmentalism is important, but obviously improving air quality,

00:21:25.580 et cetera, is good. But for 15 trillion, I feel seriously ripped off. So Simone, who is Joe

00:21:30.560 long? You said the Joe, who, who is this? Joe, of, of like the Trump administration,

00:21:36.520 the famous investor, the, the, I mean, like, okay. Somebody tied to the Trump administration.

00:21:41.140 Yeah. He's, he's, he's a, he's a very famous philanthropist and entrepreneur and investor.

00:21:45.260 He founded Palantir. He's with UT Austin. That's easy. That's easy. Okay. So the, the few

00:21:52.300 points I want to make here before you go further. One is, is that I think a big reason climate change

00:21:57.220 has dropped off. As you say, it's a bunch of old women now is a lot of young men pretended to care 1.00

00:22:03.200 about the climate because hot young women cared about the climate. Yeah. Not anymore. They're 1.00

00:22:07.120 old now. You were one of them back in, back in the day. I'm old now. I'm a hag. You're hag maxing 0.97

00:22:13.760 now. I'm a hag maxer. Absolutely. Yeah. Nobody, but I'm caring for a child now, not the climate you 0.98

00:22:20.420 see. Actually, I even asked online just because, you know, we've got a high enough profile now. I was

00:22:24.760 like, is there any like quotes or tweets of like people thirsting after Simone? Couldn't

00:22:28.920 find any, right? I'm a hag, but I couldn't let it, let it be. I'm wearing my hag scarf. It's 0.89

00:22:34.520 perfect. My little hag gloves. Look at this look. Look at this look. What am I? I'm Whistler's

00:22:39.780 mother. Exactly. Exactly. With glasses, with glasses. By the way, people are so stupid. And 0.99

00:22:47.820 I cannot tell you how many times I've seen this. People appear to believe that rim width

00:22:53.440 is an indication of prescription strength. I know this as well. I've seen this as well.

00:22:59.420 They're very dumb, but they think I don't, I don't even need glasses. I don't, I wear them 0.99

00:23:06.100 because it makes people think you're smarter.

00:23:08.580 Anyway, Simone, I think that this is hugely, like as these women get older and more undesirable, 1.00

00:23:17.540 their screeching at society is going to become increasingly more disgusted by the general

00:23:23.840 public. I think there was a great. I mean, well, I think they're, they're, they may be

00:23:28.000 playing a non-trivial role in the, the 25, 2025 dropping climate change, like it's hot thing.

00:23:34.140 Right. Well, and I, well, the degree to which they do not control the narrative anymore is

00:23:38.540 really strong. The one thing that got me recently is if you look at the last I was looking at

00:23:43.480 it, it had been published for like four days and it was the Paramount Plus on YouTube for

00:23:47.620 free, the new Star Trek thing. And after four days of being live for free on YouTube, it was

00:23:54.380 like at 130,000 views, which is less views than we get in a normal.

00:23:59.200 Well, they even advertised it. Didn't you see that there was even a, a, an advertisement

00:24:03.900 for it? It's not like it was just put on. Cause I thought, well, okay, well, they must've

00:24:07.780 just published it. No one knew to even look for it. And the algo is really weird now.

00:24:11.780 So give them credit, but no, they paid it for a million dollar production was major stars

00:24:17.300 in it, right? Like just nobody cares about what the mainstream media is zombified. They're

00:24:24.500 working like it's 1990 and they don't realize that the, the fundamental economics have completely

00:24:30.080 changed. The media landscape has completely evolved. They, they're just going to run out of

00:24:33.880 money and die, but they are, they are dead men walking. That is it. 0.97

00:24:37.820 Yeah. Yeah. It is completely, whenever we deal with them, I'm always just like, this is

00:24:42.020 extremely frustrated. 1.00

00:24:43.240 This is so stupid. And we do more work with the mainstream media that we cannot talk about 1.00

00:24:46.900 because of NDAs and stuff like that. Another thing about mainstream media talk about running

00:24:50.360 a movement is there was the recent thing where Nick, the guy who exposed the Somalian fraud 1.00

00:24:54.560 did an interview as a YouTuber. And then the YouTuber tried to cut him. It's so that it made

00:24:59.300 him look like he said a bunch of stuff he didn't say. And Nick had filmed it all with his phone.

00:25:04.420 I don't know if he had done that secretly or whatever. And so it came out that the YouTuber

00:25:07.080 was fraudulently manipulating the tapes and it made him look really bad. But what, what

00:25:12.140 Nick Shirley is who you're talking about.

00:25:13.980 Nick Shirley. Yeah. Is that we've had to do that while, without being able to film our own

00:25:18.720 stuff without like legally, I couldn't even, if I had filmed what happened during that viral

00:25:25.160 interview, I couldn't even share that with you. And what's even crazier about the viral

00:25:28.980 interview, the piece that that was attached to was supposed to go live in December and

00:25:33.120 it has not gone live yet. And we haven't heard anything from the team yet. So we think they

00:25:37.980 may have just dropped it rather than put in a disclaimer that their own person was wrong.

00:25:42.140 Like, I don't know like what they were going to do. They seem to not be aware that like we

00:25:47.280 might do a longer episode trying to dive into what, what happened with that, but just to cancel

00:25:52.180 an entire filmed project out of embarrassment is.

00:25:56.640 Yeah. It surprised me because from what we can tell when journalists have run pieces on

00:26:04.260 us, they tend to do really, really well.

00:26:06.840 Yeah. We just had a piece go viral in Germany.

00:26:08.680 Yeah. They, they, they perform quite well. And that makes us happy because we don't want

00:26:12.500 people to travel all the way from Germany or France or wherever, even if it's just New

00:26:17.880 York or DC to spend a day or two at our place and get a hotel and everything and have

00:26:22.340 it not yield an ROI. So we, we are sensitive to that. It is. Yeah. So it, it, it surprises

00:26:27.920 me that they invested in sending people out and then ultimately didn't run anything, but.

00:26:33.400 But I mean, even, even if they just make it a fully, you know, fair and non sensationalized

00:26:38.680 non hit piece coverage of demographic labs, cause they have plenty of footage of us just

00:26:43.260 talking about the issue in a didactic manner, which was our point in the first place. If

00:26:49.860 we don't ask people to do hit pieces on us and we encourage them to make them interesting,

00:26:53.700 but we, we, you can just use us for responsible news coverage. And many people do anyway, let's,

00:27:01.040 let's move forward though, because I think that the bigger, the bigger question that we need

00:27:04.800 to be asking ourselves moving forward about panics is, you know, what, when should I actually

00:27:10.280 be changing my life and behavior? When should I be donating to a nonprofit about this? When should

00:27:14.240 I be caring? And when can I reliably understand that one, this may not actually be a real problem

00:27:21.260 or as urgent as it is, or two, this will probably self-correct or our market market factors will

00:27:27.680 self-correct this. It will be priced in and people will come in and innovate a solution in time.

00:27:33.200 So I want to, I want to share some unjustified panics. And there are really two types of unjustified

00:27:37.920 panics, which is either the problem is not real or not as imminently urgent as it is, or the problem

00:27:44.400 is a self-correcting one through market dynamics or just through like natural self-correction. So

00:27:50.020 obviously, as we've just been talking about environmental doomsdays are just one of those,

00:27:55.240 the problem is just not as urgent as people say it is. What I didn't realize, cause I feel like we've

00:28:00.020 kind of been gaslit about this repeatedly is how many times people have said, oh, you have like five

00:28:08.960 years left. It's all about to end. And then nothing happens. So this even goes back to, and I'm sure it

00:28:14.260 goes back earlier, but there was this Earth Day end of civilization prediction series in the 1970s,

00:28:20.060 where around the first Earth Day, public figures and some scientists warned of looming environmental

00:28:25.660 collapse within a few decades, including claims that cities like New York would literally be

00:28:29.980 underwater. Yes, we've had like hurricanes where there's been flooding, but they meant actually

00:28:34.180 permanently, durably underwater and, and that the world would face unavoidable global famine and

00:28:40.200 resource exhaustion by the end of the century. And then also media reports in the seventies,

00:28:44.760 based on some scientific papers, warned of an impending ice age, ice age. And this was right before

00:28:50.260 this like series in the nineties where everyone was talking about global warming instead. But they said

00:28:54.700 that aerosol pollution and natural cycles would cause an ice age. And they predicted, of course,

00:28:59.540 again, famines and societal collapse, like literally time magazine, which used to be big for those who

00:29:05.700 are babies and newsweek, which was another really big publication amplified this as this consensus

00:29:11.420 view, like, oh, everyone knows the world's going to end. And it never did. And even, even though the

00:29:16.860 scientific community was divided on this and then the trends shifted toward, oh, it's global warming

00:29:22.660 instead. Nevermind. But every time this happens, they kind of just bury the, well, we were wrong part of

00:29:29.640 this and just switch to a new form of apocalypticism. And, and while it's absolutely true that environmental

00:29:36.140 problems like pollution and biodiversity are serious, loss of biodiversity, the actual imminent collapse

00:29:43.240 scenarios just haven't played out. Even in the, the eighties and two thousands. So after the seventies, there were all

00:29:49.020 these short-term climate apocalypses. Some high profile statements forecast that entire nations

00:29:54.520 would be wiped out by sea level rise around the year 2000, or that the Arctic would be ice-free

00:30:01.360 by the summer of, or the early 2010s. That just didn't happen. But I totally remember, don't you?

00:30:07.000 Oh, the polar ice caps are melting. Well, there's a famous one where Greta Thornburg predicted,

00:30:10.760 and this was like 15 years ago, that in five years, the world was going to be flooded.

00:30:14.200 No, just like the number of times that they've done this. And then it's just all like, well,

00:30:19.000 like they just keep going after. But this makes sense to me when I think, you know, in the context

00:30:23.760 of, I, you know, I worked for Earth Day Network, the people who started Earth Day and started one of

00:30:29.120 the earlier panics, you know, that there is a, because a lot of these organizations raised a lot of money

00:30:37.780 in the world of academia, as, as was alluded to in those earlier tweets I read off. And, and as, as,

00:30:43.380 you know, the Earth Day Network raised a lot of money, then you have these sprawling nonprofit

00:30:48.080 and economic organizations who have a lot of money and have a very vested interest

00:30:52.400 in not being shut down when it turns out the world actually isn't ending. So they have to build a new

00:30:57.760 panic. They have to, they would either have to find a new cause, or they would have to find some new 1.00

00:31:03.220 way to justify fundraising so that they don't lose their jobs. And so I think part of why climate change

00:31:09.020 just kept sticking around was for a very long time, people were able to just kind of keep the

00:31:15.600 delusion going. But let's move on from climate change, because we've talked about, I want to

00:31:20.160 talk a little bit. So I think that what we're seeing, and it is very interesting, is climate

00:31:24.860 change as a movement, if you contrast it with Greta Thunberg's current movements, for example,

00:31:29.480 right, and where the left seems to be going more, is structured quite differently. Climate change is an

00:31:34.720 apocalypticist movement, right? Like it is. Yes. Fix this or else civilization falls apart, right?

00:31:41.360 To draw up an apocalypticist movement is, from a historic perspective, pretty rare. Even when

00:31:48.320 religions that are apocalypticists, the predictions don't come true, people involved in them, they often

00:31:54.880 end up just doubling down, right? Like it's a sort of hope springs eternal thing, but just

00:31:59.800 apocalypticism springs eternal. Yeah. Right. And it's so interesting, because I think right now,

00:32:07.560 the movement that's growing that is structurally closest to the old climate change movement is the

00:32:11.480 pro-natalist movement, right? Like in the same way that a climate change advocate might get excited

00:32:16.040 when they see the numbers being down again, I get excited. I'm like, ah, I made a good bet. My

00:32:20.400 predictions are right. The numbers are down yet again. But the point here being is that they've moved

00:32:27.220 from an apocalypticist movement to a movement that is much more... It's fundamentally revolutionary.

00:32:33.660 It's about upending the social order. Yeah. It's about, yes, upending the social order. 0.94

00:32:37.980 So revolutionary and religious. It is a structure of basically metaphysical beliefs around how the

00:32:44.640 world works. We go a lot more in detail in our video on Zorhan Mandami, because I think he's a very

00:32:49.200 good explanation of this. Well, yeah, it's when we first became aware of anti-colonialism as a concept,

00:32:55.140 because we just hadn't really recognized that it was an organized philosophy.

00:32:59.460 Well, I couldn't conceive of how the philosophy of anti-colonialism could view the Jews, the native

00:33:06.040 population of Israel, as the colonizers. And if people are like, well, they came there from Moses' 0.95

00:33:11.760 time, we know that the population was 50%, at least the original population. So the native population,

00:33:17.320 after being removed by an empire, could be seen as colonizers by coming back to their original land,

00:33:23.320 right? They would post something like a meme of like Mount Rushmore.

00:33:29.000 This is a sacred monument. And you could post something like the Temple of the Rock on top of

00:33:36.440 the Jewish Temple, and it's exactly the same defacing. And yet they would offer no. And so I

00:33:42.900 didn't understand that until I took time to understand colonialist theory and how the groups

00:33:49.800 are divided within colonialist theory. And colonialist theory does not really bear much concern for

00:33:57.820 historic realities. It is a religious framework. And I think that part of the community that

00:34:04.020 previously within this apocalypticist's movement has gone down this new religious pathway. And then

00:34:09.940 the other part of the movement, the Bill Gates of the movement, right? They've moved in the pathway

00:34:15.860 that a lot of the traditionalist EAs started to move. You know, even they used to care about the

00:34:19.920 climate, but they don't know much anymore. And they've gone down the pathway of, well, I want to

00:34:26.580 like reduce the most in the moment suffering. I mean, if you point out that this is going to lead

00:34:30.980 to, and I think that this is where hard EA slash the sort of pronatalist ideological agenda really

00:34:37.240 contrasts with the agenda that these people have, right? Yeah. I think it's been laid very bare,

00:34:43.220 which is our plan is to attempt to use our resources, voices, power, lives, to build the

00:34:53.180 structure that future human civilization will be able to launch from. Like everything that I do,

00:35:00.420 I'm generally unconcerned with the life or suffering of any living human today, because there's going to

00:35:06.140 be so many humans in the future if we do things right, that I have a duty to plan long-term for

00:35:12.080 human civilization. And you see this with actors like Elon, like that's clearly Elon's goal as well,

00:35:16.780 right? Like his actions are not meant to leave in the moment suffering, you know, after he left.

00:35:20.900 Yeah. It's, it's a focus on long-term human flourishing. If you look at Bill Gates's actions,

00:35:27.480 it is immediate negative utilitarianism. And I, and I'd say selfishly even about reducing in the

00:35:34.540 moment suffering. And I think that's one of the core thing that divides the intellectual left and

00:35:40.160 right right now. I think that that's the core question that divides which side you are on as an

00:35:46.460 intellectual. Is your core goal long-term human flourishing or is it suffering reduction?

00:35:52.820 If it's long-term human flourishing, you're a rightist. If it's suffering reduction, you're a

00:35:56.920 leftist. Yeah. I mean, especially when you combine that with how you define self, like is your point of

00:36:03.620 identification of, or, or optimization around those furthest from you culturally and familiarly,

00:36:10.680 or is it focused more inwardly in the circle? Well, no, no, no, no. The point I was making,

00:36:15.300 it was sort of an inversion of that point. I, it just wasn't connected, not inversion. That's

00:36:19.440 not exactly what I mean. The point I'm trying to make here is that the left right now has an

00:36:26.180 intellectual caste, Bill Gates, the soft effective altruists, those, those communities, as opposed to

00:36:31.840 hard EA.org, which we have. So the soft effective altruists in the bill, in the Bill Gates cause,

00:36:36.040 they are not bought into the religion that the, the masses and the influencer class believes.

00:36:43.720 The, the Hassans and the Greta Thornburgs and many of the foot soldiers of the left, the ones who 0.80

00:36:49.160 are at these protests and everything like that, what they believe is more like a very poorly thought

00:36:54.660 through religious framework, but it is one that they believe without logic and uncritically.

00:36:59.540 A lot of it's just based on avoided behavior and avoiding discomfort and focusing on

00:37:04.580 immediate optics that, that make you look good and win you popularity points, I think.

00:37:11.000 Right. But, but this, but in the right, we have a, a mirroring structure, right? You have the

00:37:16.480 intellectual caste who will intellectually engage with cross-cultural religious anthropology and

00:37:22.080 topics and stuff like that. But you also have the religious foot soldiers who are just foot soldiers. 0.70

00:37:28.000 They're just operating off of a metaphysical framework that they have not deeply engaged with.

00:37:33.000 And I think it's important to recognize that and see how these two factions are changing in both the

00:37:39.220 left and the right.

00:37:39.920 Sure. But let's move on. Other, other forms of panic that I think very, and I mentioned this already,

00:37:44.760 consistently don't bear out, ironically, are social panics. Just to give you a couple that have taken place in

00:37:51.460 America in the last 20 years, there have been several musical panics. Like throughout the last hundred or so years,

00:37:58.760 people have freaked out collectively around jazz and then rock and roll and then rap and hip hop. Like this is the end.

00:38:07.560 It's going to, it's going to cause everyone to go crazy and become evil.

00:38:11.440 I think it maybe did. I genuinely did.

00:38:12.780 I think, I think it's a, I think it's a symptom, not a cause.

00:38:15.980 And then there was a 1950s comic panic. Did you know about this? I didn't know about this.

00:38:20.540 I've heard of it vaguely, but tell me more.

00:38:22.980 Comic books were accused of causing juvenile delinquency and moral decay.

00:38:26.020 And it literally led to Senate hearings and the comics code authority. Like there was actual

00:38:32.840 like legislation and major action to control the feminist frequency of that generation. 1.00

00:38:40.220 I think I kind of think so. And then there's the famous satanic panic where, you know, just people

00:38:45.620 thought that there were all these, these groups sacrificing children and stuff. I feel like it was

00:38:49.980 kind of an early QAnon kind of thing. There's a really great podcast called American Hysteria that

00:38:56.140 I think maybe earlier she did, the host of that did a podcast on the satanic panic. But if you want

00:39:01.860 to just hear about various things that people had moral panics about, definitely check out the

00:39:06.520 podcast, American Hysteria. I love it. She is delightful. Very, very leftist, but most of the

00:39:12.720 podcasts I listen to are super leftist.

00:39:14.280 You just listen to far leftists.

00:39:15.760 I love listening to far leftists. Yes. Then there was the, yes, as you alluded to the panic

00:39:20.480 around violence in video games, which totally like a lot of researchers looked into this,

00:39:24.820 tried to see a correlation between playing violent video games and expressing violent behavior.

00:39:29.360 And there just wasn't one that wasn't borne out at all. And then there were two red scares.

00:39:33.680 There was one from 1919 to 1920.

00:39:36.260 We need another red scare, by the way.

00:39:38.140 And then I, well, that's the thing. It's so funny. And then the forties and fifties and what

00:39:42.160 people believed at these times, at these times, and this is when it actually wasn't

00:39:46.400 borne out. Was it communists had infiltrated every, nearly every organization and they

00:39:52.880 hadn't at that time. And now it's just so ironic. And like, no one bats an eye, you know, where,

00:40:00.480 where's a red scare when you need one. And what I think is so funny is there were all these moral

00:40:04.900 panics and throughout the 20th century, as these moral panics played out, people were increasingly

00:40:10.400 losing their religion, only sort of going through the motions of their religious affiliation and

00:40:16.160 cascading into soft and then super soft religion, as you define it in the Pragmatist Guide to Crafting

00:40:21.760 Religion, which is basically just not really following the rules anymore, not really making 0.99

00:40:26.500 any hard sacrifices in favor of your religion. And this led to genuine moral decay. This led to 0.58

00:40:32.440 genuinely people becoming less disciplined, having less inhibitory control, having more mental health

00:40:37.440 problems, not, not getting married, not, not successfully building careers and lives and

00:40:42.340 savings. And now we've ended up where we are and it's not good. And there, but yet there's been no

00:40:46.880 moral panic about that, which I think is very interesting. But then let's talk about, let's talk

00:40:50.720 about examples of problems that have been resolved by market forces. And I already talked about peak oil,

00:40:55.740 but you had the, the multiple sort of either population or, or famine based predictions. So

00:41:02.680 in the 19th and 20th century, you have this, this Malthusian, both like the Thomas Malthus driven and

00:41:08.940 then the Neil Malthusian predictions that population growth would cause huge famines and mass starvation,

00:41:15.740 but instead, yeah, it was, it was, yeah, because in the past it absolutely happened that when populations

00:41:21.600 grew too much, then there would be some kind of massive famine. But in this case, because a lot

00:41:26.380 of this happened right around the industrial revolution and huge technological breakthroughs,

00:41:30.160 you had agricultural productivity just expand dramatically. I think they call it the green

00:41:35.720 revolution, right? And basically everyone was okay. And then you still though, again, in the 1970s had

00:41:43.860 Paul Ehrlich published the population bomb. And he predicted that literally hundreds of millions of

00:41:49.960 people would starve in the seventies, regardless of policy and that global death rates would climb sharply.

00:41:56.840 And the countries like India were essentially beyond hope. Like it's too late. It's all over now. And yet 1.00

00:42:01.940 instead, basically everything was fine. And just there, there was, there was no like desperate

00:42:08.800 rationing and huge death. And when there were famines, they were mostly driven by war and policy, not by

00:42:15.400 planetary carrying capacity, which was the argument that he made. I think also arguably COVID-19 was one of those

00:42:23.020 sort of would have resolved on its own kind of panic, panics. They, when you look at excess mortality in

00:42:30.520 various countries.

00:42:32.080 The countries that implemented, we've done another episode on this, implemented more restrictions had,

00:42:37.640 generally speaking, and this is also true of states, the more restrictions an American state implemented, the

00:42:42.300 higher its death rate was. The states that implemented the least number of restrictions had the lowest death

00:42:45.820 rates.

00:42:46.520 Yeah. So I think it, you know, that's, it's a really great example of a really serious panic that like

00:42:50.560 probably did more damage than good. But I also want to point out that there are absolutely justified,

00:42:56.280 justified panics. Oh yeah. Also, we have to also think about the fact that the COVID-19 moral panic

00:43:03.740 and in general panic caused people to completely, so many people lose complete faith in the media,

00:43:13.020 in their governments. Like you, you have so many knock-on problems from what happened,

00:43:18.500 but there were absolutely even environmental panics that were totally justified and caused people to

00:43:24.060 freak out and then solve the problem. Can you think of one that's environmental?

00:43:28.480 Yeah. The other layer.

00:43:29.620 Yeah, exactly. In the 1980s.

00:43:31.440 Yeah, you do. But yeah. So in the 80s, scientists realized, oh my gosh, there's massive seasonal thinning

00:43:40.160 in, in the atmospheric ozone layer over Antarctica, and that it was linked to chlorofluorocarbons,

00:43:47.980 because no one can pronounce that.

00:43:49.800 I'm pretty sure they made that word up. That's not real.

00:43:51.920 Yeah.

00:43:52.480 I don't think the ozone layer is real. I'm a doctor.

00:43:55.720 But basically it, they realized it was a big problem. Oh my God, we're all going to get skin cancer.

00:44:00.560 And then they, they, they, they created the 1987 Montreal Protocol, and it had various amendments

00:44:07.400 that required a phase down and then near elimination of almost 100 ozone depleting substances,

00:44:14.100 including most CFCs and halons. When they achieved basically almost total, I mean, 98 point to 99% 1.00

00:44:21.500 reduction in their production and consumption within, compared to their peak levels.

00:44:27.040 And now the ozone layer is on track to recover to pre-1980 levels by the end of the century,

00:44:33.860 which is really cool. Like we, we solved that problem. I think arguably also lead and gasoline,

00:44:39.260 it was like, oh my gosh, like this is causing people to go dumb. And then we're like, well, 0.94

00:44:43.880 let's take out the lead. And so we did. And that's great. I think the fears of nuclear war,

00:44:49.920 though elements of it were overblown. For example, a lot of people are like, well,

00:44:53.680 if there's some kind of nuclear attack, it's going to cause a nuclear winter and we're all going to

00:44:57.420 die. When like, then later, when you look more closely and you model a little bit better,

00:45:01.760 it would cause more localized issues, but not like a total worldwide nuclear winter in most cases.

00:45:07.220 But still, I think it was justified panic when people realized that countries were kind of,

00:45:13.320 they had their fingers over the nuclear buttons and like, hey, maybe we shouldn't just,

00:45:18.000 maybe this shouldn't be the way we communicate. And that, that caused a lot of, I think,

00:45:22.500 international social norms that turned countries against nuclear as the go-to war thing of choice.

00:45:30.920 Another one that was actually pretty justified, even though to most people who even lived through

00:45:35.700 it, including you and me, because we're olds, is Y2K. For those who are not aware, in the year 2000,

00:45:44.640 people predicted that computers would fail at midnight on January 1st, 2000, due to this date

00:45:50.420 programming issue with, with how computers were originally designed. They just didn't put it in

00:45:54.480 enough numbers. Why did they felt so big when it was happening? It felt like COVID.

00:45:58.640 Well, yeah, no, people were like, they were, they were creating bunkers full of food and they thought

00:46:04.060 planes were going to fall out of the sky. And, and this was because legacy systems stored years at two

00:46:09.140 digits, meaning that the, the mini computer systems would misinterpret 2000 as 1900. And that would break

00:46:16.340 functions involving a lot of comparisons and interest calculations and expirations and scheduling

00:46:21.400 and literally billions of dollars were spent on fixes. And some people like built bunkers and

00:46:27.360 stockpiled supplies. So people thought that 300 to $600 billion were spent on, on basically,

00:46:34.500 I guess, weatherizing us for, for the, the, the Y2K. Uh-huh. Which is a lot, but however,

00:46:41.040 however, in for comparison, a major synthesis by the climate policy initiative estimates that

00:46:46.280 a cumulative global climate, climate finance of about 4.8 trillion U S dollars between 2011 and

00:46:53.940 2020. So, you know, that's the, you know, Y2K was nothing in comparison and even updated data

00:47:00.440 shows that about 850 to 900, 140 trillion, sorry, billion USD in 2021, which was, that was about like

00:47:09.660 1.3 trillion per year. So anyway, like it was peanuts compared to what we spent on the environment,

00:47:15.000 but it was actually a real risk. And it wasn't something that was going to cause planes to fall

00:47:21.760 out of the sky. It wouldn't have caused people to not be able to get food, but basically banking

00:47:27.940 and power and telecom and air traffic and, and many key government systems like social security payments

00:47:33.260 would have actually not worked. So it would have caused real disruption. And we did actually need to

00:47:39.340 like, Oh, this is a problem we need to fix. Like it was justified. I'm saying it was justified.

00:47:44.340 It was money well spent. I'm glad that we did it. Um, because inconvenience. Yeah. I mean,

00:47:50.220 cause it would have sucked. Okay. A lot of people would have gone without their social security 0.50

00:47:54.700 payments and then had trouble getting food. And I mean, a lot of people's, I mean, people,

00:47:59.760 maybe their entire savings could have been wiped out by, by market crashes related to the stock market,

00:48:04.640 just total, totally going out of control. Like a lot of really bad things could have happened.

00:48:08.360 So it is very, very good that we panicked about that and took action. So you're a Y2Ker. You were 1.00

00:48:15.620 pro Y2K. You are pro Y2K. That is right. Saying the Y2K panic was justified or at least more so than 0.99

00:48:22.600 environmental damage, right? Yeah. And so I think these, these are the common characteristics of

00:48:27.860 justified panics, which is, I think the biggest thing is they're not priced in. I think when something's

00:48:34.120 priced in, like, Oh, we're going to run out of oil, oil gets more expensive. Okay. Well then

00:48:38.240 the market responds by finding more efficient ways of producing oil.

00:48:41.300 Like eventually, you know, like how it is like, Oh, we can't live in this place anymore. So we move

00:48:48.160 away. And then like, you know, we have to figure this out or like, you know, peak oil or like, Oh,

00:48:52.480 like we, you know, humanity eventually just finds a new way of, I mean, I, I, I, listen, I mean,

00:48:59.760 like when, when people settled, like when, when English colonists settled in New England,

00:49:04.960 there was like a mini ice age going on. It was super cold here that we've dealt with climate

00:49:10.180 change throughout human history. We, we adapt. I think it's one of those things that you slowly

00:49:14.860 adapt to and climate change was overwrought because they, they said it was a lot more urgent

00:49:20.140 essentially than it was. We basically have more time to adapt to that. So yeah, I think when you,

00:49:25.700 when you make it apocalyptic, it is unfounded when you're like, Oh, there's this urgent thing we need

00:49:31.860 to handle right now. And there's a very clear reason why at this point it's going to happen.

00:49:35.460 Like Y2K was clear. We knew we had a clear deadline. We knew exactly why it was clear like that. But

00:49:41.320 when it's more like, Oh my thingy, my, my equation says like that, that, that typically correlates with

00:49:48.820 is not playing out to you. Like, how do you, what's your takeaway with how we should be signaling

00:49:54.180 per natalism? It's per natalism going to become the next big movement. Like, how do we,

00:49:58.340 how do we handle that? I think that it's, it's not, we shouldn't be framing it as this, like

00:50:05.520 this year, it's all going to fall apart. I think very similarly to it's, it's kind of like this

00:50:11.680 combination of, of climate change and Y2K of like, well, the writing's on the wall. Like

00:50:18.200 the way many countries, social services are set up requires this thing that is going to not

00:50:26.120 be the case anymore. And so we have to change it. Like the, the numbers will change and the

00:50:31.900 equation will break. It is very simple logic. There's nothing that's going to change the fact

00:50:36.540 that that's going to happen, but we, we do have time to adapt. And I think that's why it's important

00:50:42.400 for us to talk about this, but we shouldn't make it this immediate panic because it's not,

00:50:46.860 it's something we can plan for. And as you point out many, many times, like endlessly,

00:50:52.100 it's not going to change. We're not going to start increasing our, our output of humans. Like

00:50:58.380 the, the birth rate's not going to go up suddenly. We more have to just adapt the systems. We have to,

00:51:03.340 we have to analogously build the computer systems that can deal with the year 2000.

00:51:09.220 Well, this is why my framing of, of pronatalism is our job is to replace the existing population, 0.99

00:51:15.920 right? Like when you change it to, from the, from the framing of like, this is cataclysmic,

00:51:19.920 think about society. I do point that out. I'm like, why don't you care given how cataclysmic

00:51:24.940 this is when I'm talking to reporters, but like the goal of the movement is not to prevent the

00:51:28.500 cataclysm. It's to replace the population today, which is kind of priced in. I mean,

00:51:33.060 one of the things I was talking to Simone about is, you know, how easy our kids are going to have

00:51:38.400 it dominating the future of human society. If you look at like 40% of kids in fourth grade can't

00:51:43.080 read now, right? Like one, the education system is failing because people are being idiots and 1.00

00:51:47.140 still sending their kids to school. And then like the, the upper middle class parents of students 1.00

00:51:51.260 who are still giving their kids a decent education are still, their kids, what was the word? Like

00:51:57.500 cutting their knees, something like that. What is that? No, they're not letting their kids play

00:52:01.420 rough and tough. Well, they're not letting their kids. No, well, more importantly, they're not

00:52:04.300 allowing their kids to learn how to use AI or be on the internet or be really good with tech. So like

00:52:09.000 that's, you also don't want to undercut your kids by, by disempowering them in a tech enabled age.

00:52:15.840 Like you have to find a middle ground. So yeah, I feel like we have a major strategic advantage.

00:52:20.820 Then on top of all of that, even genetically speaking, smart people are just not having

00:52:25.600 kids much anymore. And in terms of getting into positions, there's going to be so few young

00:52:30.720 people as our kids are growing up. I mean, consider like getting into Harvard, right? Like

00:52:34.700 that was as hard as it could have ever been. Like when I got into Stanford or she got into Cambridge,

00:52:39.620 the years that we got into our generation, because that was that giant generation when not only was

00:52:44.120 a generation larger than any generation before it, but it was a generation that was also more

00:52:49.520 focused on getting into college than any generation before it. Now, like people don't want to go to

00:52:53.880 college at high rates anymore. And the, the number of, of people who even could apply a smaller.

00:53:00.060 So for them getting into these top schools, getting into top positions is just going to be

00:53:05.160 dramatically easier unless AI changes everything. And like, no human has a job.

00:53:09.260 Yeah. And so speaking about AI, actually, I just in like, okay, like last five minutes,

00:53:13.920 cause I have to go get the kids. There are current panics. I think some are justified. Like I alluded

00:53:18.660 to earlier water shortages, that, that is an actual thing that like people kind of need to figure out

00:53:23.300 sooner rather than later, because Mexico city is about to run out of water. Johannesburg is about

00:53:27.380 to run out of water. Cape town is about to run out of water. Major Indian mega cities like Delhi and

00:53:32.980 Bangalore and Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata are all about to run out of water as are a bunch of other

00:53:40.000 places, including Sao Paulo and Beijing and Cairo and Jakarta and Istanbul and Mexico city and London

00:53:44.840 and Tokyo and Miami. They're all in, and not a very good position. So I think that's one

00:53:48.940 demographic collapse. We talked about what about, where do you stand with anti-apocalyptic system?

00:53:53.460 Because it's not, it doesn't really fit neatly into any of my criteria. Like it's not necessarily a

00:53:59.940 social panic, but it is kind of a social panic. It should, it should be treated as more of a social

00:54:04.700 panic. The Ellie Isaac Bukowski, the murder bots are going to kill us all is unfounded, stupid. You 1.00

00:54:10.780 can watch our videos on why we think it's stupid, but the, the AI will completely disrupt the way 0.99

00:54:15.140 society and the economy work. It's something we need to be paying attention to that a lot of people 0.78

00:54:21.080 will be out of the job in the short term is something we need to pay attention to and how we

00:54:25.100 work with AI instead of making ourselves a threat to AI by these jihadists. You know, we need to,

00:54:31.220 to find a way you can look at our Sons of Man series on this, where we talk about how you can

00:54:37.460 build this durable alliance. We'll do a track on it eventually where I go deeper into it. But

00:54:41.600 the wider thing I want to talk to you about AI here is I think it's something that people get

00:54:45.700 wrong. And it's one of those really like dumb takes you here all the time on the internet.

00:54:48.860 The reason why the billionaire class stopped caring about climate change is because now 0.94

00:54:54.480 they're all invested in AI and AI runs counter to climate change. A lot of people like Elon,

00:55:00.680 for example, he was pro climate and pro crypto at the same time, right? Like a Bitcoin crypto

00:55:05.400 explicitly, right? Like they don't care that their causes conflict with each other. That's not why

00:55:11.400 they left climate change. I don't even think it's tangentially related to why they stopped caring

00:55:16.500 about climate change. I just think that the climate movement lost its steam, mostly through

00:55:26.060 hyperbolic freakouts, where I think with the pronatalist movement, we've done a very good job

00:55:32.460 of localizing our hyperbolic freakouts so that we will see these collapses in places like Korea and be 0.89

00:55:38.960 able to point and say, look, I told you so in a way that is going to be hard for other people to miss.

00:55:43.600 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yeah. I think people need to look at, at the way, how I've moderated my

00:55:56.440 views is I need not complex modeling, but just very clear brass tacks. Like this system requires X to

00:56:07.460 work. X is, is not going to be a constant anymore. We cannot expect X to continue. And therefore,

00:56:13.200 we cannot rely on the system anymore. Like that, that is a very clear thing with demographical apps

00:56:19.060 that I know we just haven't addressed and that, that we can't address. And therefore we have to

00:56:24.780 prepare accordingly with AI. I really, I just don't, I don't, it's, I think it's hard to prepare

00:56:33.320 because it's such an unknown unknown. Well, I mean, when I am developing for AI, I literally just

00:56:41.260 will ask AI, Hey, what capability can I give you that would scare AI safety experts most?

00:56:47.920 That's been my design philosophy was the autonomous agents, which are mostly working now. We'll get

00:56:52.440 them to our, the reason why we haven't released them yet to like the VIP fans, which is what we're

00:56:56.160 going to do is because the RFAB main site was so buggy when I first thought it was safe to release

00:57:01.740 that I was just really embarrassed about that. And I never want to make that mistake again.

00:57:04.600 I want to do extensive testing so that even when we're doing our initial rollout, it's fairly bug

00:57:10.260 free, but I'm excited to be moving forward. Decided to have our fab stable. I mean,

00:57:16.560 Oh, wait in the comments, if you've made it this far, cause I actually do want to, I want to know

00:57:22.180 more about people's thoughts on what we should actually be panicking about now. Like what,

00:57:26.960 what panic is justified now? Yeah. Climate change is over.

00:57:30.140 I'll tell you a panic we haven't seen yet, but I expect we will see is more a panic around young

00:57:36.780 people dating AIs. It's a thing that's happening. It lends itself very well to like a debauchery 0.99

00:57:42.760 panic, robo sexuality ads being out there. I can see it. I can too. I mean, I'm basically married 0.62

00:57:51.600 to an AI. Like you're not. I also just feel like people kind of don't care anymore. Like there's

00:57:56.000 this really interesting moral malaise. I don't know. I, I, I just, things have gotten so absurd

00:58:02.600 now that I, I have difficulty. Do you know how absurd the world is? You and I are famous in this

00:58:10.440 crazy timeline. Well, you got, you got Octavian telling you, mom, get the kids. Yeah. They might be

00:58:20.700 outside now. So I got to run. I love you very much. And I will make your mango curry for dinner.

00:58:26.000 Good night, Malcolm. Oh, what episode do you want to run tomorrow?

00:58:29.320 I don't know. Your call. Um, it can be either of yesterday's episodes or either of today's

00:58:33.920 episodes. Like this one, this one's good. We'll run this one. Yeah, it's timely. I mean,

00:58:38.800 cause you know, 2025 is, is now quickly disappearing in the rear of a mirror. We got to do this while

00:58:44.780 it's fresh. People are forgetting about it already. Oh my God. All right. Ciao. Ciao.

00:58:51.020 And see if you can find anything wrong with the website because we are at a stage where I think

00:58:55.060 we can start advertising like tomorrow, if you can. Well, have you put in the Google ads yet?

00:59:01.960 You just said you did. I can't remember. Yeah. Oh yeah. Google and Reddit ads are now working.

00:59:06.080 Wonderful. Oh, oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah. But I love you to death. And I'm making you the mango curry

00:59:12.500 tonight, right? Yeah, that would be great. Yeah. So if you're doing the mango curry. Peppers and green

00:59:17.820 onions, but cut in those slightly larger chunks, not in little circles, right? Yes. And I would add

00:59:23.200 some garlic and sambolic, but not the hoisin. Yeah. Not hoisin. Yeah. Okay. Sambolic. Oh,

00:59:28.620 sambolic. Yeah. I could see that. I could see that. I think mangoes are so disgusting.

00:59:34.080 Oh, well, I appreciate you cooking with them for my benefit. As long as I don't have to cut it. I'm,

00:59:39.180 I'm okay. Because they're slimy. Yeah. They're the vaginas of fruit. There's a lot of fruits I don't like.

00:59:47.920 Come on. It's just gross. Anyway, actually, probably what's that really disgusting smelling

00:59:53.720 one? Durian. Durian's probably. Do the people think that they're like cool for liking? And I'm 0.81

00:59:58.900 like. Don't, don't even. No. Yeah. I'm sorry. No, that's not. It's not cool. For some reason,

01:00:05.080 lots of people acted like liking durian. Did you have to deal with that too? It was a thing. Yeah. I didn't

01:00:10.540 have to deal with it in any office. Thank goodness. But I am aware of it as a problem.

01:00:17.000 It was cringe. It was very, it was very cringe. It was the, it was a Silicon Valley startup version

01:00:23.580 of the person who microwaved fish in the lunchroom. You know, don't do it. It's not cool. Just don't.

01:00:30.920 Okay. Here we go.

01:00:33.420 Hey. Yeah. Hey, who wants to set up the trains?

01:00:38.020 You guys are too busy fishing? Yeah. Yeah. Looks like Octavian's going to have to get things

01:00:44.480 started. Huh, buddy? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm getting, I'm getting the pieces. Okay. Wow.

01:00:51.800 I'm getting the rubber bags off of the tracks if he would want me. Yes, please. Thank you

01:00:56.600 very much. Absolutely. Thank you, Octavian. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. It's okay, buddy. You're

01:01:12.420 going to build something. Yeah. Yeah. So how, so how these fish go on with the magnet is this,

01:01:21.420 it's just a teeny tiny magnet on this part of it. Very nice design, isn't it? Yeah. I love it.

01:01:28.380 My pleasure.

01:01:29.300 I love it.

01:01:30.160 Bye.

01:01:31.180 Bye.

01:01:31.720 Bye.

01:01:32.180 Bye.

01:01:35.400 Bye.

01:01:36.300 Bye.

01:01:36.620 Bye.

01:01:38.140 Bye.

01:01:41.020 Bye.

01:01:41.320 Bye.

01:01:46.520 Bye.

01:01:47.240 Bye.

01:01:47.300 Bye.

01:01:47.820 Bye.

01:01:49.200 Bye.

01:01:50.020 Bye.

01:01:51.620 Bye.

01:01:54.120 Bye.

01:01:55.580 Bye.

01:01:56.160 Bye.

01:01:57.020 Bye.

01:01:57.280 Bye.

Based Camp - January 22, 2026

How The World Stopped Caring About The Environment

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