Inside The First Natalism Conference： Gossip & Impressions With Diana Fleischman
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Summary
In this episode, we re-unite with Diana Fleischmann to talk about the first major non-national pro-natalist conference out there, the Natalism Conference in Austin, TX. We discuss the conference, all the gossip, and all the fun.
Transcript
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Hello, everyone. You may see a familiar face with us today because we are rejoined by the
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one and only Diana Fleischmann, who we saw in Dallas recently. Austin! Who we saw in Austin
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recently for the Natalism Conference, the first really major non-national-based pro-natalist
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conference out there, which we did not organize but thoroughly enjoyed. Now, if you can't remember,
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Diana Fleischmann can be found on Twitter as a sentientist. She posts a lot and really
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interesting, thoughtful stuff, a good mix. So definitely check her out on Twitter. Also,
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you can go to dianafleishmann.com or check out the podcast interviews that she does with Aporia.
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But we are here to talk about the Natalism Conference, all the gossip, all the fun,
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because it was interesting. We didn't know what to expect, right?
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I can say I went to it with a lot of apprehension because I know the brand of pro-natalism that we
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push on our show. But, you know, when I look at the articles that are attacking us, they're always
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saying, oh, you know, the pro-natalist movement's just like a bunch of like crazy racists and like
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great replacement theorists and stuff like that. And I assumed going to the conference, like there
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was a part of me that was like, oh, it's just going to be like a bunch of like crazy people who
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are primarily motivated by race politics, who, you know, are just extremely, extremely,
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extremely off the reservation or like classic. So sometimes when you go to a conservative event,
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they'll just be like a bunch of hucksters, like trying to sell you on stupid, whatever scams or
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whatever. I saw neither of that at this conference at any sort of large level. It was predominantly like
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if people were like, what's the category of people? It felt very much like the early effective
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altruist movement, but much more religious. And I literally couldn't have asked for a better thing
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in terms of what I saw there, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. I was also a little apprehensive
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when I joined because, well, I think it's fine to say this. It was not beautifully and competently
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organized from the beginning. Like they originally reached out to me and Jeffrey, and then Jeffrey and
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I were not thrilled with the lineup at that point. The lineup got totally shuffled around. There's a lot
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of people that changed at that point. And unsurprisingly, they invited many women who
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ended up not being able to come because they had all children that they had to take care of.
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So I also asked them if they would be able to provide childcare. And they said,
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you know, we have no plans to provide childcare. As a side note, they did end up providing childcare.
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And I can understand their apprehension, given that the conference is running at a pretty big loss
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for the first year. I thought that that was kind of short-sighted. Although Kevin Dolan
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later said that he didn't see a lot of interest from other people and he left his six kids with
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a flex at home. I also was a little apprehensive from going because I'm kind of a poser in this
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space. I only have two kids. I may only ever have two kids. I donated eggs a lot, which is kind of
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like being a cuckoo more than anything else. But I mean, doesn't that technically mean you've had
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more than two kids? Yes, it does technically mean that, but it also means that I have refused to care
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for them in the way that trads would appreciate me doing. I still, it's very prenatalist, very
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prenatalist. It is prenatalist. It's also narcissistic. So that's another reason. And then
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when I saw the hit pieces that came out about it, I was thinking, you know, are we going to have
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Antifa show up? And there was a little bit of information security. They didn't tell anybody,
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even us until the very final minute, what floor things were going to be on. There was a lot of
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security. But, you know, what I found out going to tons of conferences over 20 years is that if
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you invite smart people, it doesn't actually matter that much what else you do. If smart people come,
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it doesn't matter. I mean, the amenities were really good and the scheduling, just because the
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schedule didn't really finalize until the very last minute. And I met a lot of cool people. Again,
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you know, when we were there, you guys are more tech focused. You guys are more kind of effective
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altruist and tech focused. And I was also thinking, you know, like, for example, our mutual friend,
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Ayala was saying, well, I would come to a party there, but I wouldn't be welcome. And it's true
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that she probably wouldn't have been welcome. There were people there who disliked her.
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Yeah. Well, I mean, it was interesting. There were some, one of the really interesting things was
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seeing how unwelcome. So there were some people who went there that were like old school style racist.
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Like there was a, this white nationalist, famous, whatever guy. But they seem to be pretty,
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what's the word I'm looking for? Like sad guy in the corner that no one's really interacting with.
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They had some people like, I know that they, they, they just were not, I think they went,
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and it was a really interesting thing. I noticed where if I looked at people who were there by age,
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the, the old people were typically operating on older ideologies that they thought would get them
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a lot of followership among the young people, but the young people were much more interested
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in messages, like the messages that you had. Yeah. So like, let's, let's try and divide it up.
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Let's think about, so, so Brit, Brit Benjamin, who was there with her four-year-old, by the way,
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there were only a handful of kids there. There was my daughter. There were surprisingly few,
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right? Yeah. There was an, there was a one-year-old who was getting into everything.
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It was very cute. There was a four-year-old and then Emma Waters brought her eight-month-old,
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which made me really grateful that my daughter is not yet that age. Cause it's very hard to keep
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them entertained. She had her hair small. Yeah. As far as the divide, you know, you guys were saying
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you thought it was going to be more 70% trad, 30% techie, and it ended up being more like 70% techie,
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30% trad, right? Yeah. And like deep techie too. Like I, you know, I have a tech BC background
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and the companies that they were working on were actually like really impressive often.
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Yeah. There were a lot of Mormons and a lot of Jews there. What other, I mean, I didn't know.
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Like a decent number of like Baptists, but not, not, I expected to see a bunch of tradcasts and there
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weren't really that many. There were some tradcasts. I was surprised that I didn't see any ultra
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Orthodox Jews. But see, the thing is, I don't think, so my definition of pronatalism is that like
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it exists independent of like a religious background. Like if your religious imperative
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is to like have a lot of kids and you're just doing it because it's part of your religion and
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part of that culture, like sort of by default, then you don't get credit for that. But if you're
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doing it because you have also thoughtfully thought through it and you may be really religious and you
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may have a religious imperative, but like, for example, we know some Orthodox Jews who I consider
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to be very pronatalist because they talk about like, well, there's, you know, the most impactful
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thing we could ever do with our lives is have kids. We really care about our kids. They're not just
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like, oh yeah, you know, like, you know, God decided we should have kids and you know, God has given us
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this many kids. So I think that we didn't see that many ultra Orthodox Jews there because
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many of them are only pronatalist by chance, like, or they have a lot of kids because they're also
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very religious, but they're first and foremost religious. Does that make sense? Yeah. I disagree.
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That's definitely not what I've seen. I mean, I've noticed a lot of ultra Orthodox Jews really
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get the pronatalist message. They get what we're aiming for. And I would have like, like when I go
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to other pronatalist events, like if we're putting together and this may be biasing me because most
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of the events we've done in the past have been in New York, it's very common to have ultra Orthodox
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Jews be at least 30% of the people coming. And yet I didn't meet a single one at the entire event.
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I met lots of Jews, but not ultra Orthodox Jews. Yeah. What's your take on this, Diana?
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I mean, there's a, there's an Israeli and Jewish saying that says children are joy and you know,
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they are really into children. And if you go to Israel, Israel is really pronatalist. There's
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playgrounds everywhere. Even when I went to a conference and went to a sex differences concert
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with my baby. And there was a, there was quite a few Jews there because the organizers were part of
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the community here in New Mexico, the Jewish community here in New Mexico. They were making
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such a fuss over my baby, which is not, not even that Jewish a baby. So yeah, I, I don't know,
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but I did meet, you know, like there's the guy I was giving a talk and a very sweet moment happened
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where I couldn't get my baby to settle down. So they moved my talk back a little bit. And my baby
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was sick. She's generally pretty chill. And this father of six, who was also somewhat Jewish came,
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swooped in and got my baby to sleep, not only just during my whole talk, but she slept for like an
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hour after that on my shoulder. He had some magical, you know, effect on her. And so I did,
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I did meet a lot of fathers of a lot of kids. I do think also, I wrote about this on, on Twitter
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that I was really struck at the warmth between men and women at, in this conference,
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cause I've never been to a traditional, I mean, I've been to church and I've been to synagogue,
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but this actually seemed like people were really paying attention to women in a way more than I'd
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heard about before. Maybe it was because women are underrepresented and they recognize that women
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there were taking time away, valuable time from their children. You know, Peachy Keenan was a huge hit.
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So I do, I'm curious what you guys think about, about this dynamic between men and women,
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as opposed to at academic conferences. Well, I think part of the stuff at academic conferences
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is there's so many rules against having sex. And there are a lot of people there who want to have
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sex. And I don't get the feeling that this conference was at all people who were in any
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way interested in hooking up. Yeah, that's interesting. A lot of people went there explicitly
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and they told me this and we're looking at seeing how we can handle this in a follow-up,
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looking to find a partner or someone to marry. And this was true of both men and women. I want to be
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clear about this. Fewer women went, but I noticed among the women who went, more of them were single.
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And if you want to get an idea of how many of the people at the conference were single,
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I think like our initial read is around 50% of the people at the conference had zero kids.
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And this is something we often see with reporters where they'll be talking about the
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pronatalist movement. And they're like, I want to talk to young people in the pronatalist movement.
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We have a ton of kids. Like, that's what I want for our article. And I'm like, the movement
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started like a year and a half ago. Where do you think we're going to, these people
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don't have fricking time machines? You know, this takes time, especially in today's environment.
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Yeah. There's just that one couple that has 22 kids and like what, 10 of them were in one
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Yeah. So I do think you're right. I think that there, it was unusual when I contrasted it with
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other events that had a similar feel. Like it really felt similar to manifest. Did you go to
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manifest this year? So this was like the best EA party I've been to recently.
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Just for context, manifest was, this was the inaugural conference essentially of the manifold
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prediction market. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Like Yad was there. Scott Alexander was there. Robin Hanson
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was there. You know, typical A-Lev was there. And it manifest they had on day one, like a betting
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market for when the orgy would happen or if an orgy would happen. And it ended up happening like the
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first night. Yeah. I think it was when it was not even it because why? It was so odd. Like I think
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when people are like, Oh yeah, I mean, academics go to conferences, one idiot laid, but is that really
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like top of mind? Yes. It's really top of mind at a lot of academic conferences, even back when I was
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an academic and I was single, like these are people who are culturally similar to me, everything like
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that. There do happen to be within the traditional EA community, lots of orgies and stuff happening.
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This is not rare. And it was notable. And I think it made it easier for men and women to interact,
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as you said, that this was not on anyone's mind. It was too wholesome for that. But here's the other
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thing is, is I feel even differently from that. I think at many different types of conferences,
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including conservative conferences. And I would also put this on like the ARC conference,
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like ARC conference in London, which is like a conservative Davos. That's what they're trying
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to do. Can you spell out the acronym there? The Alliance of Responsible Citizens. Jordan
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Peterson, Louise Perry thing. I often feel like when there are women speakers, it is because they're
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the token female speakers. They're not like, you're kind of like listening to them and you're
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like, Oh yes, the female has spoken now. That's good. Let's get that out of the way. Cause I want
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to listen to the guys speak. Cause those are the ones we all came for. Like there's not really this
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much like respect for them. And they also don't really have them that much. That's interesting
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to say. So like, in other words, I feel like in many of these cases, the women who are selected
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to speak at many conferences are selected as a diversity checkbox and not as actually good
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speakers. And what was really interesting is that some of my favorite speakers, including you,
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Diana, including P.G. Keenan were totally my favorite people, like hands down, you know,
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they had really, really interesting. Yes. No. Oh God. Yeah. But Benjamin's talk was amazing.
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Yeah. So like this, I was like, wait, Whoa. And like, so this was, and I did not expect this
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because one, it was a trad conference. And two, like, I'm so used to like any female speaker being
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a diversity checkbox and pretty boring and not that substantive and not that unique. And this was
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totally not the case. And then there was also just this like very big level of respect.
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I think part of this was just that the arc speeches weren't as good in general. And the reason why they
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weren't as good as general is because they were broadcasting them and there was a fairly large
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audience and it was more speaking to the audience. So it was a chance for people to pick up more
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followers. It was a general audience. So they defaulted to their stump speeches. Whereas with
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this one, because nobody knew, I mean, this was a oversight and planning. Nobody knew what speeches
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everyone else was giving. So it meant that everyone had to veer as far away from their default
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pronatalist stump speech as possible. If that's what they usually gave or move towards a pronatalist stump
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speech if they weren't used to giving pronatalist stump speeches. So like Razeeb gave a very,
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like, not generic at all. It was weird and interesting and I liked it, but it was like
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a pronatalist stump speech, but that's because he typically doesn't give one of those. Whereas
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like Britt Benjamin, you know, at Hereticon, she gave the pronatalist stump speech. So she ended up
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giving a speech on no-fault divorce and how it makes it harder to form good relationships.
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And I didn't know this about her. So Britt Benjamin is Patry's ex-wife. We've had
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Patry on the show before. He's the guy who does charter city stuff. And she is, has been a long
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time sort of pronatalist advocate. And she did a speech. We should have her on the program.
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And she is, is a divorce lawyer. That's what she does for a living. So she was able to talk about
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that in sort of like really interesting details. So I think that that was another reason why the
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speeches were uniquely good. But then I also reflect on the women's speeches at events like ARC,
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right? And they were speeches on like why we should ban pornography or like, you know,
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still sort of almost a form of female mate guarding behavior. Like they were like,
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if I'm going to be honest, like a lot of veiled female mate guarding in the guise of conservative
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value systems. Whereas here it was more like functionally, how do we solve this?
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Yeah. I think it's a big tent in the natalism movement. So there's people who are advocating for
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things like artificial wombs. There's somebody like Emma Waters, who has been beefing online with
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Richard Hanania about things like surrogacy. There's you guys who are very tech focused and
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interested in embryo selection. There was Pat Fagan, who's a very well-known sort of evangelist
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there who was back to back with me, which I never thought I'd be sharing a stage so closely
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with an evangelist. And what I was reading about is this guy called Charles Haywood, who was there as
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well. He came up with the slogan, no enemies to the right. And so I do think that conservatism has
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become less prone to criticizing other conservatives or other people who are value aligned. So in my
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tweet, I said, you know, maybe people were being nice to me because I'm value aligned. And
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Dolan, Kevin Dolan said, well, you know, people are not that value aligned with you. You are
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definitely less trad than everyone else. But in some sense, I was value aligned because I showed up with
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the baby, which, you know, is more value aligned than, than many people who were there.
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So I think that's the idea that like, if somebody's value aligned with you,
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with the message that you're espousing at that moment, that, you know, you shouldn't be critical
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of them. And, you know, given, you know, my, my interaction with Emma, for example, who's at the
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Heritage Foundation, I would have never expected that she and I would differ so much actually on what we
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think are some, some good ways to go forward. This is kind of at the, putting the beginning at the end,
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but let's talk about where this conference was and what it was like. So the whole first day was
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back-to-back speakers. And unfortunately, maybe for you, Malcolm, the best rundown of this is
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actually at American Renaissance, which is a white nationalist website. Yeah. So the best rundown of
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the whole conference, maybe somebody will post something else that's more comprehensive, but that
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was a summary of each of the talks. And, you know, to our credits and the natalism conferences credit,
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the American Renaissance writer said, well, natalism doesn't want to be associated with
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white nationalism. Yeah, that's right. We don't really want to be associated with natalism. Thank
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you. Yeah, please and thank you. And then the second day. I did, my, my experience with him at
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the conference, the guy who was affiliated with him was interesting because I did feel kind of bad for
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him because I felt like a lot of people didn't want to talk to him or engage with him. And so it's
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always sad to see somebody being ignored at a conference like this, but it was really exciting to see
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that they genuinely, you had some leaders of that movement show up thinking that their fanboys would
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be there or that this would be a way to recruit more people. And it didn't serve as that for them.
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And that was very heartening to me. Yeah. The second day was an unconference essentially. And like
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they, they had on, on the founding team for the natalism conference, someone who was really familiar
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with Stanford D school sessions with working sessions. So it was broken into this sort of like
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people propose working sessions or people go into all day thematic sessions. They were all suggested
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by participants and then just dig deep on ideas. The three of us floated around short, like 30 minute
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rapid fire unconference sessions. The subjects ranged from like, how do you create a renegade group of
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people to help solve academic problems to how do you keep your family and your religion? How do you
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innovate in education? How do you arrange marriages, summer camps? Yeah. Yeah. There was a guy who
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wanted to make a, a pro natalist romance novel. Yeah. This lovely woman there who was watching the
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children who got a free ticket to watch children. She told me that she has actually read pro natalist
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romance novels. I think there's Amish romance novels. Oh, there are a lot of Amish romance novels.
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She told me about one that she'd read recently where this woman falls in love, she gets married
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and then she has a child with Down syndrome and she runs away from her maternal responsibilities
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because she's so overwhelmed by having this child with Down syndrome. And then when she goes out into
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the real, you know, on non Amish world and everybody tells her, why didn't you kill your baby? She
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realizes how far the outside world has fallen. And so she goes back to her home and her husband
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to take care of her baby. And that's the romantic. I think that sounds fascinating.
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That's a fascinating story. Yeah. So, so it was pretty well run, but one of the things,
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one of the reasons I think it was like, this second part was well, like it actually was fun
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the second day, like engaging. One of the guys who was organizing the conference was one of the
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people who used to run the Singularity Institute. So people who don't know the Singularity Institute,
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and I keep mentioning, it felt very much like the effect of altruist movement from like 2010.
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And I'm, and I keep asking myself like, why? Like we were talking at one event, like, like,
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and this is really promising because the EA movement went on to be a very powerful movement in terms of our,
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our society. And somebody was like, well, I think the way the EA movement did so well is they
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disproportionately attracted, uh, autists. And then like five people, when somebody said that was
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like, raise their hands and somebody peeped in the room perfectly at that moment being like,
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did somebody say autists? And, and that's when I realized that, oh yeah, this movement is really
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disproportionately autistic. And I think the way it's attracting a very similar audience,
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it is a movement tied to an obvious truth or problem in society that is for whatever reason,
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socially, you're not allowed to talk about it. So it's the type of thing that's going to draw the
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iconoclast and the autist disproportionately, you know, with the EA movement, it was most charity is
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actually pretty ineffective and meant for self vanity. And that was just an obvious thing. Now everyone
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says that, but back then that was a controversial thing to say. And now it's population rates are falling
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really fast and this is actually a problem. And we probably should find a, like steer society in a
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direction where it can handle this. And so it's acting as sort of both me and the early EA movement
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without all the orgies. Without all the orgies. Only with pro-natalism is starting to sort of dip its
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toe into not pro-natalism at all, but I know many effective altruists who I thought would never have
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children who've decided to have children. And as much as effective altruists talk about, you know,
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facts and evidence, it actually is because of peer pressure and because effective altruists are
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getting to know other people who have children that they've decided. So Toby Ord, who wrote The
00:20:50.600
Precipice, wrote a essay with, with his wife, I think, her name's Bernadette about, you know, how they
00:20:57.240
decided to have a child and how it was going to reduce their effectiveness somewhat, but that it was, it was
00:21:03.200
worth doing. And that was a long time ago. That was like, I don't know, 10 years ago or something
00:21:07.880
like that. And so now I know a few other effective altruists who are now either having children. So
00:21:13.460
what I'm saying is that people are not immune to peer pressure. Even the most rationalist people
00:21:17.560
are not immune to peer pressure. It's so interesting though, that even doing it, they thought that it
00:21:21.920
would reduce their effectiveness when like, I honestly, it like from a hiring standpoint, when we
00:21:28.440
look at like potential employees, a combination of, of at least some proven competence and then being a
00:21:34.280
parent is such a good combination because they, they're less flighty, they're less flaky, they're
00:21:38.760
more consistent and you know, they're motivated, you know, and there's a lot of people who in EA I
00:21:43.100
would never hire, even if they're really intelligent because they're incredibly flaky people, like
00:21:47.860
profoundly flaky and in parenting really creates more reliability in people. So they're probably more
00:21:54.740
effective in odd, odd ways. But yeah, I, what, another thing in terms of like autistic, weird
00:21:59.260
populations that were discussed is at one point in one of the unconference sessions and there was a
00:22:04.160
discussion of like, well, but like what segments of society should we target with these messages who
00:22:09.400
are not already part of this movement and who are not like, you know, obviously like conservative
00:22:13.640
religious and someone, I'm not going to name them, but they're like pretty well known was like, well,
00:22:18.760
I mean, you know, furries are like a great example of a population that could, you know, that is
00:22:25.340
untapped and overlooked. And I, it like, it kind of blew my mind at first to think about it, but he's
00:22:30.280
like, no, listen, like he, he had recently gone to some like really conservative, more like higher
00:22:35.860
profile conference, but right before it was a fur con in the same like venue. And so he met and spoke
00:22:40.640
with some furries and asked them like, for example, about their, their costumes and what they did for
00:22:45.020
work. And the costumes are, you know, like 15 to $20,000. Like you can't, to be a real good furry,
00:22:50.280
like you gotta, you gotta have money. You have to have some level of competence and you have to be,
00:22:54.480
I guess, heterodox and clever enough to be like, I don't care what society thinks.
00:22:59.460
So you're saying being a furry is like being a parent?
00:23:03.960
Simone, I really do not think genuinely, they're not a good community to target because
00:23:07.680
honey and furriedom is hedonism. And so yes, it has a similar filter in that it's frowned upon by
00:23:15.680
society to talk about, but the honey is different. And so even if you're drawing competent people,
00:23:20.540
you're going to draw the people who are not, as you say, are flightier or less effective.
00:23:25.520
And furriedom I think is infantilizing. I think that parenthood is, is, is just a super grownup.
00:23:32.120
I think before you become a parent, you don't know if spending time with your kids is going to cut
00:23:36.240
into your, you know, video game playing movie watching time, or if it's going to cut into your
00:23:40.240
work time. And for some people it does cut into their work time and they never, you know,
00:23:43.880
regain their, their effectiveness again. I certainly am not as productive as I was
00:23:47.820
with two kids now than I, you know, as with, with one. And I'm, I'm, I've been listening to you guys
00:23:52.960
talk about how you manage your lives as a way of trying to figure that out. So yeah, the, the
00:23:57.380
natalism conference, yeah, it was, it was really, it was better, much better than I expected.
00:24:02.300
People were extremely warm and, and generous with their time. I don't think it was just because I
00:24:07.880
was carrying a baby, although I think that helped a lot. And I don't know.
00:24:11.900
So cute. She's adorable. I can cameo with her in a minute if you want.
00:24:17.120
Well, and it was really easy to talk to new people there. I was also surprised by that.
00:24:21.580
Sometimes at conferences, there's these conferences where people are like, why are you talking to me?
00:24:25.140
We don't know each other yet. Or you feel some apprehension about approaching groups.
00:24:29.580
And I noticed none of that was in this conference.
00:24:31.860
There were no cliques. I couldn't, I didn't see people who were just hanging out together
00:24:36.380
in a way that was glommed together the whole time. I didn't notice that at all. Even,
00:24:40.400
you know, the, the group of extremely tall men in conservative politics were, were, you know,
00:24:45.620
sometimes I feel like, if we're sitting down, it's fine, but I can't, you know, but they were
00:24:50.020
very, very, they got, they got down to my level. Hold on. I'll bring the baby out for a minute.
00:24:54.440
I want to see Stella. I want to see Stella. I want to see Stella.
00:25:00.000
So we're going to wrap up this one to start on the next one.
00:25:07.200
Oh, hello. You were so awake. Oh, did we just get a little wink? We kind of got a little wink.
00:25:15.580
Oh my gosh. Hello. Oh, she kills me. She kills me. She definitely like charmed everyone at the
00:25:24.060
Oh, let's see if we get a little smile from you.
00:25:31.980
Anyway, the conference was fantastic. We'd love to see people in future years. And I really do hope
00:25:36.960
that it can grow in the way the EA movement did historically grow and people were like, but then
00:25:41.580
it's going to burn out and sell out. I'm like, yes, that's what happens when something's successful.
00:25:44.800
And then we'll start something else new, but I'm really excited. And thanks for coming.
00:25:49.800
So yeah, it was a wonderful time and it was wonderful to spend some time with you guys as
00:25:54.200
well. Yeah. Yeah. That was one of my favorite parts. Not going to lie, but I think that's a lot
00:25:58.240
of what like these conferences need to be. And I think that's the one last point that I will end
00:26:02.180
with is that, you know, when, when you're building a movement, yeah, it's about sharing the ideas and
00:26:07.060
the unconference sessions and the brainstorming and stuff, but it's also just about showing people
00:26:11.100
that they're not alone and showing them other facets of the community and hanging out. And it was
00:26:14.780
great for that too. So I'm glad we got to see you.