Based Camp - July 22, 2025


Newly Discovered Narcissism Type Explains the Left


Episode Stats

Length

52 minutes

Words per Minute

172.09909

Word Count

9,020

Sentence Count

611

Misogynist Sentences

16

Hate Speech Sentences

32


Summary

In this episode, Simone and I discuss a new phenomenon that scientists are discovering: Communal Narcissism. This is a new form of narcissism that is emerging in the leftist community, and it is making waves in the social media world.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hello, Simone! I'm excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be going over an
00:00:06.480 article called Communal Narcissism, which dives into a new phenomenon that scientists are
00:00:12.180 discovering, where it turned out that the way that the scientists change their methodology a bit and
00:00:19.560 go, oh my god, I found something shocking. It turns out that there is narcissism within leftist
00:00:26.560 communities. How did all of our old studies not pick this up? But it is a new phenomenon. So we're
00:00:32.880 going to be going over an article that was written by Brett Parley and Keith Thompson that explores
00:00:37.800 this phenomenon and how it is being sort of tracked and elucidated by scientists. And obviously, I'm
00:00:43.600 going to do what I normally do, which is not read the entire article, just read the parts that I think
00:00:46.960 are interesting to learn about. Because obviously, it starts just talking about what we all know,
00:00:52.760 with the leftist shockingly narcissistic in many ways. And going into when they all put up black
00:00:57.400 squares or pride flags over their pictures. Do you remember when that used to be a thing?
00:01:03.180 And in college, I remember when it would happen, I'd be afraid not to do it. I'd be like, oh my god,
00:01:07.600 I have to do it. Or everyone's going to say, because if all your friends have it up, everyone's going to
00:01:11.720 be like, ah, this is proof that you're homophobic. I already had suspicions that you might be a
00:01:17.360 conservative or have conservative sympathies. And so, you know, trying to start my career,
00:01:23.060 I had to go with the flow. I love some people who are like, I would never do that. And it's like,
00:01:28.640 well, you know, I do support like general gay rights, right? So I should, I guess, change my
00:01:35.440 profile. But let's continue here. Examining the literature on clinical narcissism in the time of
00:01:42.860 we discovered something surprising. Researchers had been certain that they would be able to
00:01:48.040 distinguish healthy individuals from those suffering from the new condition. What gradually
00:01:52.340 dawned on them was that many of the individuals they had been scoring as normal were in fact
00:01:57.540 exhibiting vanity, grandiosity, and entitlement. The hallmark traits of self-centered narcissistic
00:02:03.400 displays vary overtly and actually even more overtly than the ones who they were categorizing as
00:02:09.420 narcissists. Of course, the pathological aspects of the new condition announced themselves in
00:02:15.600 markedly different words and gestures. It had previously been assumed that these characteristics
00:02:20.220 were healthy, unlike the well-known characteristics of overt narcissism so readily apparent in people
00:02:25.940 like Trump. Remarkably, and I would say that people are like, oh my gosh, how dare you call Trump a
00:02:30.380 nurse? I mean, come on, like we can be conservatives and still be like, the guy's a little narcissistic.
00:02:35.380 But anyway, to continue here. Remarkably, the experts nearly missed telltale signs of what they would go
00:02:42.720 on to characterize as communal narcissism. Communal indicating that individuals seek validation and
00:02:48.100 admiration through their perceived contributions to social groups or communities rather than through
00:02:53.060 personal achievements. So what this new form of narcissism is, is narcissism about like,
00:03:01.340 I'm always a good person. I always do good things. I always contribute to my community in the night in
00:03:07.520 the correct way. And it is through constant signaling of sort of in-group when you are convinced that
00:03:17.920 that in-group is the only group that really matters, which you see among, you know, progressives was like
00:03:24.260 Hillary Clinton calling the others the deplorables. You really, as somebody who used to be a progressive,
00:03:30.020 I remember the way that they think. And it is really that the other, anyone who isn't within
00:03:35.700 their social alignment, this urban monocultural alignment is really sort of not human exactly.
00:03:42.400 Absolutely.
00:03:42.760 And not really worth considering or thinking about.
00:03:45.040 Yeah. Subhuman, like too ignorant to be really considered a peer. Yeah.
00:03:50.460 Yeah. But is that not like classical narcissism to consider only this one group as mattering and
00:03:57.740 dedicate your life to this one group and everything that they do is axiomatically good because they
00:04:01.400 are the ones doing it. To our surprise and that of the researchers themselves, communal narcissism
00:04:07.280 turns out to be the equal and opposite variant of the self-centered overt type in which individuals
00:04:13.380 boast about being quote unquote the best. Joshin Gerber's 2012 paper in the Journal of Personality and
00:04:19.680 Social Psychiatry introduced the agency communal model, distinguishing agentic narcissists who boast of their
00:04:26.840 intelligence and achievements from communal narcissists who claim to be the most helpful
00:04:30.980 or virtuous. Isn't that a fascinating way to delineate the two groups? Basically, if you have
00:04:38.200 this narcissistic trait and you are agentic, you become this sort of overt narcissist. I'm the best,
00:04:45.180 I'm the greatest, because you both think that you are the greatest and you think for yourself,
00:04:51.480 which is in a way morally superior to the communal narcissist who is non-agentic, but thinks that
00:04:57.320 they are great and everything they do is good. So they just align themselves with a pre-existing,
00:05:03.020 often what they see as the dominant cultural group.
00:05:06.120 Well, it seems to me like this is a new iteration of the Karen, what you're describing, because the
00:05:12.260 Karen is also that, like, I'm the HOA president. Like, I represent our community. You are ruining this.
00:05:19.520 You can't park here. You can't do this. And the classic Karen archetype is someone who believes that
00:05:25.300 they are in the right and speaking on behalf of their community, and not based on some individual
00:05:31.320 evaluation, but based on what they believe to be normatively correct.
00:05:35.520 I really found the way she put this interesting. This is a form of narcissism, where instead of thinking
00:05:40.480 you are the main character and the most important person and nobody else's thoughts, feelings,
00:05:47.320 perspectives really matters, you think that your community is the only one that really matters,
00:05:53.420 and no other community, thoughts, perspectives, etc. matters, and that you are an avatar of that
00:05:58.880 community.
00:05:59.840 Well, yeah.
00:06:01.200 I think that the Karen is a version of this, but I think that the higher version is the Twitter
00:06:07.620 person or something like that, because the Karen had to go out and run for office and everything
00:06:11.020 like that. She wasn't just reflexively reacting to whatever group she thought was the biggest in her
00:06:16.700 environment. I think that the better proto-iteration of this was like the satanic panic mom, the
00:06:24.460 Christian pearl-clutching mom when Christians were the dominant social group in America,
00:06:30.320 and instead of the urban monoculture, and this individual would just, and these likely exist within
00:06:35.920 some communities where Christianity or Mormonism is still the dominant group, where they just
00:06:40.760 reflexively pearl-clutch and pull themselves back to, well, my community is the morally righteous
00:06:48.120 community. My community is the correct community because they are the dominant community. They align
00:06:55.700 themselves with this community because it's dominant. And I think many people with their personality
00:07:00.020 structure switched which community they were supporting as the urban monoculture became dominant.
00:07:05.920 Right, so like, yeah, okay, I see what you're saying about agentic versus not agentic. In a sense,
00:07:10.920 they flock to whatever the dominant community is because they need something to stand behind as
00:07:17.940 authority since they aren't incapable of or not confident enough to develop their own authority.
00:07:22.880 Yeah, these are the people who make fascism work. You know, like, the moment the Nazi party seems to be
00:07:28.640 gaining power, they all flock to it because it is now creating the new moral standards, and they act as
00:07:34.560 moral police for the community to prevent people from deviating or defecting from the community,
00:07:40.540 which is actually sort of really good for the human gene pool right now because these individuals are
00:07:45.940 being completely weeded out of humanity in a big way when this behavior used to actually be quite,
00:07:52.900 because the urban monoculture has so low fertility rates, used to be quite successful as a fertility
00:07:57.660 strategy. Just align yourself with whoever looks powerful. Yeah, actually. And then be narcissistic.
00:08:04.640 Yeah. Yet both groups share the same essential needs for affirmation and validation.
00:08:09.940 Ekans' okay work enhance... Oh, sorry. No, sorry. I need to be clear here. His last name is okay.
00:08:17.400 They're not putting shade on his work. They're not saying Ekans' okay work. I was wondering why they wrote like that.
00:08:24.760 I was like, what? It enhanced our understanding further. The communal narcissist's warm glow conceals
00:08:31.640 a sense of entitlement and special status. For such individuals, feedback or criticism is commonly
00:08:37.320 experienced as an attack. Yes, I have noticed this. This is true of narcissists. Feedback or criticism
00:08:43.280 is an attack. And it's true for many progressives when you're like, hey, do you not see how imperialistic
00:08:49.240 your community is acting towards external groups? And they're like, how dare you? I can't. You can't.
00:08:55.720 Like when I pointed out that when they said it was monstrous and that the groups that use corporal
00:09:01.180 punishment are monstrous, like when we were skewered for this, I'm like, well, you know, depending on the
00:09:05.200 study you're looking at, it's like 85 to like 90% of like black Americans spank their kids, right? Like
00:09:09.420 this is way more dominant in African-American communities. Are you saying they're monstrous?
00:09:12.900 And they're like, oh, but how could you, the conservative say that we are racist? And I'm
00:09:17.540 like, well, because you're doing something racist right now, right? Like you're assigning a true
00:09:24.000 value to something that is just like a choice around parenting practices and not even a choice,
00:09:30.660 but a culturally bound choice around parenting practices. And so, but like you see their brains
00:09:36.500 break down in some of the pieces where we said that, you know, it was like, they don't even
00:09:40.100 counter-argument. They were just confused and enraged that us, the conservatives could point
00:09:45.660 out something that they, the progressives were doing was racist. While communal narcissism can
00:09:50.540 be detected in many social movements, both today and in the past, it most closely mirrors the ethos
00:09:58.520 of the progressive left. In fact, it plays a key role in the psychosocial dynamics driving that
00:10:04.460 ideology. Although I note that I think it used to be a driving force on the right. I used to
00:10:10.080 think that your, your standard communal narcissist in the, in the 1950s or 1960s in the United States
00:10:16.560 would have been a rightist and the right displayed these tactics when they held the dominant culture.
00:10:23.560 I don't think that this is intrinsically a leftist thing to do. I just think that this is a strategy
00:10:28.600 that is sometimes employed by some cultural groups to maintain power.
00:10:33.640 Yeah. And probably for the past 2000 years, it was more common to see people doing this through
00:10:38.240 church, which I guess exactly argue is more conservative leaning. So this is not exactly
00:10:42.960 a partisan thing. It's just that right now it happens to be a progressive thing, right?
00:10:48.240 Yeah. Communal narcissism exists on a spectrum at its mild end. Individuals earnestly advocate for
00:10:54.160 social justice, finding quiet satisfaction and camaraderie in their omni cause of supporting
00:10:59.820 the intersecting grievances of marginalized groups. When it less, but no, they put marginalized in
00:11:06.920 scare quotes. When less benign individuals become dogmatic and antagonistic as when the view hosts
00:11:13.920 engage in their anti-Trump vitriol, prioritizing moral posturing over dialogue at its most severe
00:11:20.640 individuals try to justify violence, such as BLM riots, assaults on Trump supporters, and the firebombing of
00:11:26.880 Tesla vehicles, perhaps most chilling is selective compassion. As seen in the silence of many
00:11:33.660 progressives after the recent murders of Yeren Levinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgram, despite the
00:11:40.820 victim's dedication to peace, many self-stylized champions of universal values withheld outrage,
00:11:47.460 revealing- Were these people who were killed?
00:11:49.400 This was the two Israeli diplomats who were killed, I'm guessing.
00:11:52.480 Oh, oh, oh, okay, okay. Yes. Thank you.
00:11:54.720 Someone who's about to go home to propose. Really sad that this happened.
00:11:58.000 I know, yes. Devastating.
00:11:59.140 Revealing a disconnect between their benevolent self-image and their deeper ideological purity.
00:12:04.680 And I did note this, you did not have much progressive hand-wringing after those murders,
00:12:09.500 after the Holocaust survivor was burnt alive in another American attack with a Molotov cocktail.
00:12:14.240 Oh, gosh, right. Then that was more recent.
00:12:16.500 That was more recent. And the left and the mainstream media just has not been covering this stuff much,
00:12:21.400 which I think shows their, you know, true ideological bent, which is quite chilling to me.
00:12:28.440 Yeah.
00:12:28.940 But, you know, I guess I'm glad I'm not Jewish. Like, it's a scary time to be Jewish in America
00:12:34.740 right now. I can see why they feel they need their own country to stay safe. But anyway,
00:12:39.680 the progressive left's pivot away from violent revolution in the 60s and its subsequent long-term
00:12:46.580 march through institutions echoes this pattern. From campus protest to corporate boardroom,
00:12:53.080 activists demand systemic change, but their need for validation often overshadow the very goals they
00:12:59.220 want to achieve. Thomas Salwell's The Vision of the Anointed unpacks this delusion where,
00:13:05.160 quote unquote, good intentions habitually resist disconfirming facts, leading to blind spots,
00:13:10.900 unintended consequences, and lack of course corrections, which I think we saw probably
00:13:14.920 most blindingly when Greta Thornburg, when she was, you know, taken in by Israeli troops,
00:13:22.040 they tried to show her the videos that Hamas had filmed of themselves, of what they did on October 7th.
00:13:28.780 Yeah.
00:13:29.140 And she refused to encounter this information.
00:13:31.900 And when asked to justify this, she was just like, well, you know, I didn't want to be,
00:13:37.020 she said like, brainwashed by their propaganda or something.
00:13:40.440 Yeah, I think it was just a choice not to engage at all.
00:13:42.220 It's like, this is Hamas's propaganda.
00:13:43.500 Yeah.
00:13:44.240 They want you to know what they're about.
00:13:46.720 Like, that's the thing.
00:13:47.860 That's a point so many Israelis keep trying to make of like,
00:13:50.740 they're really clear about what they want.
00:13:55.220 I, I, honestly, the level of cognitive disconnect,
00:13:58.560 I was looking at pictures from a pride parade recently.
00:14:00.500 Like, I wasn't even just looking at this, I was looking at the pictures.
00:14:02.920 And they had a whole section of the parade that was like pro-Palestine.
00:14:07.280 And, and, and it like dotted amongst all of the other pride stuff was pro-Palestine stuff.
00:14:12.120 And like Hamas flags and, you know, stuff like that.
00:14:15.780 And I was like, what the, what?
00:14:17.700 Like that you, Hamas is like, but we have said, we plan to kill you.
00:14:23.120 Right?
00:14:23.380 Like you understand this as you're, as you're protesting for us.
00:14:27.280 Like we're not shy about what we do to gay people.
00:14:30.960 We're not shy that we want this to be illegal, you know?
00:14:34.280 And I, I find this very like weird, the level of like cognitive disconnect and inability to see through the wider cultural milieu, I guess.
00:14:46.080 Totalitarian movements thrive by manufacturing consent.
00:14:50.400 Ordinary people are forced to cooperate with permission structures designed by elites with power and authority.
00:14:57.000 As consequence, they come to believe things that they would not otherwise have entertained.
00:15:01.440 Allowing men to compete against women in women's sports, approving sex changes for minors, opening borders to unvetted illegal immigrants, defunding the police, and decriminalizing crime.
00:15:11.840 Radicalized, radical changes in policy are facilitated by media and institutional narratives that provide scaffolding for fast shifting beliefs.
00:15:21.120 That is also interesting how quickly the progressive beliefs have shifted.
00:15:24.600 Like the ban on police thing, like came out of nowhere.
00:15:28.120 Like that would have been considered some weirdo fantasy, I think like five years ago.
00:15:32.740 And then it just became normal.
00:15:34.880 Like it wasn't like it became normal slowly.
00:15:37.280 It became normal like one month.
00:15:38.940 It was like, okay, now we're for banning.
00:15:40.960 But I'm still so not clear on like who, who actually wants this.
00:15:44.120 Because it, it seems like this wasn't exactly a black community thing because so many black communities know what they're less than whites do.
00:15:52.840 Like black voters work with less than white voters.
00:15:55.480 So it's not, it's, it's the Karenopoly.
00:15:59.440 It's the Karenopoly.
00:16:00.460 No, it is.
00:16:01.260 I think the communal narcissistic patterns are more prevalent in women than men, potentially because women are less agentic.
00:16:07.260 I don't know.
00:16:07.620 Well, women are more, they're more sensitive to social cues and they're more conformist, which makes sense from an evolutionary perspective because women are more dependent on their community support networks to survive because they spend, assuming they're reproducing a non-trivial portion of their lives.
00:16:25.100 And women get way more genetic benefit from striving to be average than men.
00:16:32.060 In that if women strive for the safe average option, so long as a woman survives broadly, she's likely going to do genetically okay because she's likely going to be able to find a partner if she wants one and have kids.
00:16:45.800 Whereas for men, I mean, this is because historically a lot of women, what were like multiple women to a partner or something.
00:16:51.100 Whereas for men, it was often harder.
00:16:52.840 Like you, you had to sort of go for broke, which would have pushed, you know, less conforming actions.
00:16:57.960 So as a woman, it was usually genetically safer to conform with group norms.
00:17:01.980 Whereas a man, it was usually genetically safer to try to look for what is objectively true.
00:17:07.360 Totally.
00:17:08.160 Yeah.
00:17:08.480 Men are go big or go home.
00:17:09.900 Women are.
00:17:10.840 Let's stick to the center of the bell curve.
00:17:14.780 In Private Truths, Public Lies, Tamar Koran introduces the concept of preference falsification,
00:17:22.740 where individuals publicly affirm politically correct, quote-unquote, truths while privately remaining skeptical.
00:17:29.180 Unlike overt narcissists who shrug off social norms, communal narcissists require moral approval from the anointed,
00:17:35.860 rendering them more susceptible to social pressures and more likely to falsify their preferences.
00:17:40.780 They readily adopt questionable ideas that the narrative insists are fair-minded and true.
00:17:46.300 In 1957, Carl Jung warned of, quote-unquote, collective possession, driven by a, quote-unquote,
00:17:54.820 overwrought emotionality that is immune to reason.
00:17:58.960 He spoke of psychic epidemic fueled by utopian delusions.
00:18:03.580 Today, psychic epidemic fueled by utopian delusions and collective possession or overwrought emotionality.
00:18:12.200 God, that actually is really, you know, I usually don't think much of Carl Jung, but that is very predictive.
00:18:18.860 Today's progressive left was chants like, no human is illegal, risks falling into this trap.
00:18:25.200 Arguably, it already has.
00:18:27.700 Yet, a pass forward exists.
00:18:29.540 And I, illuminated by two men who were both assassinated at the age of 39,
00:18:36.480 Malcolm X experienced a crisis of faith after discovering abuses within the nation of Islam,
00:18:42.020 but found clarity in his pilgrimage to Mecca, where he prayed alongside blue-eyed blondes and black-skinned Africans.
00:18:49.420 Upon his return, he offered the following statement,
00:18:52.480 I'm for the truth, no matter who tells it.
00:18:55.120 I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against.
00:18:58.940 I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such, I stand for what benefits humanity as a whole.
00:19:05.000 Martin Luther King, likewise, sought to combine the disparate values compromising his big-tent love for the Southern Baptist congregants
00:19:14.320 and the Nietzschean will to power from secular allies in his most famous sermon, 1967.
00:19:22.340 He forged a synthesis,
00:19:24.360 Power without love is reckless and abusive.
00:19:27.160 Love without power is sentimental and anemic.
00:19:30.220 Power at its best is love.
00:19:32.580 God, I find that to be incredibly stupid.
00:19:42.660 Sorry, I know that some people have been going,
00:19:44.480 oh, this is this great Baptist sermon or whatever,
00:19:47.640 and I'm like,
00:19:48.280 I think that Nietzschean philosophy is actually probably closer to right than this philosophy.
00:19:53.520 You can look at our video on Nietzschean.
00:19:54.640 Nietzschean philosophy is actually just broadly correct
00:19:58.760 in many areas, and I think that there is this drive whenever someone is popular
00:20:02.960 to be like, well, you know, not like them, you know, because that makes you look cool, right,
00:20:08.180 to be sort of edgy and have alternate perspectives.
00:20:11.600 But Nietzsche is mostly right.
00:20:13.980 This person, no, I think equating love as a guide to goodness leads to incredible immorality.
00:20:20.680 Because first, you know, progressives just define all their actions as driven by love.
00:20:25.480 That's how they justify them.
00:20:26.980 They say, well, I protect this community because, you know, don't you love your fellow human?
00:20:32.020 I, you know, distribute money to everyone because don't you love your fellow man?
00:20:36.140 I, you know, obviously I don't personally.
00:20:38.280 I take other people's money and distribute it, but you know what I mean.
00:20:41.120 I, you know, it's this, this, it allows you to justify anything
00:20:45.760 because you can just say, I'm doing it for love.
00:20:48.260 Well, it's just similar to the toxicity of contextualizing yourself as a good person.
00:20:53.640 Because therefore, you know, if you're a good person, then nothing you're doing is bad.
00:20:58.020 Because a good person wouldn't do a bad thing.
00:21:00.500 And I think that's a really common problem with narcissists.
00:21:03.220 Of course, this is the right thing to do because I'm doing it and I'm right and good.
00:21:10.100 Yeah, I do good things because, of course.
00:21:13.120 Because I'm a good person and good people do good things.
00:21:15.400 Therefore, it's ironclad logic, Malcolm.
00:21:20.060 But I also think that even if you do this correctly,
00:21:23.100 like you actually just do whatever creates this love emotion in you,
00:21:27.280 you didn't evolve the emotion of love to define like moral truth.
00:21:32.000 The oldest or one of the oldest stories that humanity has,
00:21:36.300 there's older stories in the Bible and Gilgamesh,
00:21:37.880 one of the oldest that we have is the story of Troy.
00:21:40.620 And the point of the story of Troy is that love can lead a man to do truly evil things.
00:21:48.980 Oh, I don't know.
00:21:49.900 Or the pursuit of hot women.
00:21:52.660 Well, I mean, I don't think that in the story it's framed as he's only doing it because she's hot.
00:21:57.900 And I don't think that they really differentiated hotness and love back then.
00:22:01.540 But I think that somebody can be like, no, that was just because he found her hot.
00:22:07.660 And I'm like, well, could he have done it for love?
00:22:09.840 And they're like, well, yeah, he could have done it for love.
00:22:11.440 And then it's like, okay, well, then it still stands.
00:22:13.080 The lesson still stands.
00:22:14.780 Love can cause people to do evil things.
00:22:16.880 It's one of the earliest stories that mankind needed to write down and teach other people.
00:22:21.280 And yet people have just forgotten this because it makes them sound like they're the good guy.
00:22:26.580 Yeah, it is really annoying.
00:22:31.600 Even people like Lex Friedman do this where they're like, well, what about love?
00:22:35.100 They just seem to think that bringing up love or acting like we have to talk about love or that love justifies things makes them look morally good or sophisticated.
00:22:46.200 Yeah.
00:22:46.600 And unfortunately now I need to bring this up whenever Lex Friedman comes up because I do feel that he is intentionally misleading about this.
00:22:53.480 Lex Friedman is not a professor at MIT.
00:22:55.440 He has taught classes, night classes, off-season at MIT, which I have done at Stanford and Harvard.
00:23:05.900 Well, I really only did it fully at Stanford and Harvard.
00:23:09.160 Simone did it at Harvard, actually.
00:23:11.240 You did it at Carnegie Mellon.
00:23:12.640 Carnegie Mellon.
00:23:13.320 We only did like a guest lecture thing.
00:23:16.340 But I could claim by Lex Friedman standards that I am a professor at Stanford or Harvard.
00:23:22.440 And so you're like, oh, well, if he hasn't actually done anything with Stanford, where was he educated?
00:23:26.960 And the answer is all of his degrees are from Drexel.
00:23:29.700 So I got to call him Drexel Freeman going forward.
00:23:33.520 But no, it gets me.
00:23:34.540 If you're going to brand yourself as this like big intellectual, I don't mind.
00:23:39.180 Because like there's other intellectuals.
00:23:40.560 I don't effing know where they went to college, but I still find their work interesting.
00:23:44.760 Like, for example, I've never thought about where Short Fat Otaku went to college or his affiliations was any sort of intellectual institution.
00:23:53.640 And yet for a long time, I really liked his work.
00:23:56.460 Recently, you know, you can watch our video on why it matters to take a side, like why fence sitting isn't good.
00:24:05.100 We think he's gone too far into the fence sitting place that it has corrupted some of his logic on issues in an effort to be a fence sitter.
00:24:14.780 Because some people define fence sitting as like morally good.
00:24:18.000 What makes a man turn neutral?
00:24:20.800 Lust for gold?
00:24:22.160 Power?
00:24:23.120 Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?
00:24:26.440 Right, you know.
00:24:27.320 But the point I'm making is like, I don't care where a person, a lot of people, like Catgirl Kulag, I love.
00:24:32.600 But yeah, Catgirl Kulag does really good intellectual stuff.
00:24:36.680 And I've never thought to ask, you know, what is this person's affiliation?
00:24:39.800 But Lex Friedman leads with this MIT connection.
00:24:42.460 Well, and also like there are people out there, major, typically conservative intellectuals, who actually have really impressive credentials, but don't share their real name or their face or their credentials.
00:24:55.900 And actually go out of their way.
00:24:57.580 Like Bronte H. Pervert went to Yale.
00:24:59.100 Yeah, but he would never say that.
00:25:01.820 And he intentionally, grammatically screws up his writing.
00:25:06.680 So yeah, I see.
00:25:08.800 I mean, I think that you see this repeatedly is that gets me, right?
00:25:15.080 Like, and I am willing to say this because, you know, we've met Lex Friedman and he never responded to my text about doing his show sometime.
00:25:25.040 And I've been, I've been on Piers Morgan, okay?
00:25:27.540 You can have me on, Lex.
00:25:28.940 I'm not, you're not too good for me.
00:25:30.620 Sorry, I have a lot of pride about influencers who I hang out with and then don't work with me.
00:25:38.180 I'm like, come on, man.
00:25:39.480 But hey, we weren't, well, I know we were already pretty famous back then.
00:25:42.680 So that was.
00:25:43.340 Back to the concept of love, though.
00:25:47.160 It is dangerous.
00:25:48.880 It is dangerous.
00:25:49.800 But I think hiding behind anything, be it love or be it I'm on the winning side, I'm on the good side, I'm with the church, I'm with this political party, I'm with this university.
00:26:00.420 Like, falling back on any of those, and this is one reason why we also don't really like referencing philosophers, and that's maybe the thing I like least about this Aporia article.
00:26:10.880 And I know you're saying, like, oh, this Nietzschean philosophy is solid.
00:26:13.860 Maybe it is, but leaning back on these people instead of articulating concepts using plain English is another way of hiding behind something without making your point and owning it personally.
00:26:26.840 Yeah, well, I mean, even the writer of this article, I'm struggling to tell from the context if they support this love sentiment, because the next thing they say is, such wisdom offers an antidote to the communal narcissism of today's left.
00:26:39.560 Authentic compassion rooted in universal truth.
00:26:42.700 Western civilization must return to these values.
00:26:45.540 Duty, honor, rationality, and openness to debate.
00:26:48.400 Now, those are some values I can get behind.
00:26:50.460 I need to do the Starship Troopers thing.
00:26:52.520 Courage, duty, honor.
00:26:53.820 Honor.
00:26:55.060 What is it?
00:26:56.840 It's a good day to die when you know the reason why.
00:26:59.500 Mm-hmm.
00:27:00.420 It's a good day to die when you know the reasons why.
00:27:05.980 Citizens, we fight for what is right.
00:27:10.240 A noble sacrifice.
00:27:13.020 When duty calls, you pay the price.
00:27:15.460 For the Federation, I will give my life.
00:27:18.820 Courage, duty, honor.
00:27:20.280 This is the world that we want to build.
00:27:22.760 Yeah.
00:27:23.700 But I actually like this alternate one.
00:27:26.300 Duty, honor, rationality, and openness to debate.
00:27:31.360 Sounds good.
00:27:32.600 Yeah, absolutely.
00:27:33.540 It was S. Scott Fitzgerald who noted that the mark of first-rate intelligence is the ability
00:27:40.040 to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time without losing the ability to function.
00:27:45.600 For instance, accepting that there are differences between individuals and groups.
00:27:49.700 A wise culture resists what Cilician called the persistent utopia lie, distinguishing authentic from performative compassion.
00:28:00.880 We must teach our children that genuine goodwill comes from personal decency, not external validation.
00:28:07.020 Only then will we be able to reconstitute the principles that have guided humanity for centuries.
00:28:14.100 And that's the article.
00:28:15.920 I thought it was interesting.
00:28:17.240 I thought it was interesting to go into this new concept.
00:28:21.040 I do think that the way that you fight this is by having kids who are proud to be other and different and do their own thing.
00:28:31.000 Which in part means that if you are, and I think that this is one of the big traps that many of the traditional Christians do,
00:28:37.480 is they teach their kids to obey because they were taught to obey.
00:28:41.540 And being taught to obey does a great job when your cultural group is the dominant cultural group.
00:28:46.660 Because when the kid is no longer with the parent, who do they obey?
00:28:50.220 They obey the person with the most power, which is the culture with the most power.
00:28:53.600 Yeah.
00:28:53.820 Well, that's a big problem with especially American parenting,
00:28:57.040 is that rather than let kids suss out problems on their own and resolve their own conflicts
00:29:02.380 and really just fight it out, you encourage them to appeal to authority.
00:29:07.400 And that produces this kind of culture.
00:29:10.660 Exactly.
00:29:11.500 And as I was saying, I see this so much in conservative circles where they're like,
00:29:16.900 oh, my kid is so obedient to look at them.
00:29:18.980 And I'm like, you should be maximally disobedient.
00:29:21.740 Yeah, you should not.
00:29:23.880 That's a bad sign.
00:29:26.640 It's obedient is what you should, or it's at least what we optimize for.
00:29:30.880 And again, culturally, this may change if you're from a different cultural tradition,
00:29:34.460 because cultures, I believe, sort of co-evolve with us.
00:29:38.380 And so you may find that-
00:29:39.360 No, I just, I really don't think obedience is a good thing at all.
00:29:44.300 What we encourage is teaching our kids that certain actions have consequences
00:29:48.960 and so that they can make rational decisions.
00:29:51.080 Obedience means following a rule, regardless of whether the rule is logical or beneficial or good.
00:30:00.280 And that's not-
00:30:01.960 Well, some cultures have operated off of that sentiment for a long time.
00:30:06.820 Yes.
00:30:06.940 I think, for example, many Catholic cultural groups have operated for a long time on a,
00:30:12.280 as you're talking about-
00:30:13.400 An obedience model.
00:30:14.900 Obedience model, right?
00:30:16.560 And I think that it's uniquely challenging within a modern context,
00:30:19.540 but I think that they're likely going to be better off of finding a way to just make sure that their kids know who they need to be obedient to,
00:30:25.880 which is God and the church, rather than trying to build something.
00:30:30.920 Because, like, you look at our kids, right?
00:30:32.840 They're not, like, their disobedience and intentional sort of trolly predilection is very obviously in a large part genetic.
00:30:42.160 We're just providing framing for it.
00:30:44.360 If you don't have that fire already lit, you're going to be easier trying to protect what you do have in your kids.
00:30:51.400 Which is, you know, when you talk about the video, if you parent like Jordan Peterson, your kids are going to be sims.
00:30:56.500 But I admit that, like, his parenting model may work for people who have co-evolved with obedient, optimized cultural frameworks.
00:31:06.920 You know, sitting the kid down and attempting to break their will may work for kids who, like, biologically have very weak wills and just really want something to follow.
00:31:15.800 Whereas our kids, oh my God, they, even, even, like, the youngest ones, they will look at us and, and be like, I'll be like, hey, Titan, you might knock that bowl off the table right now.
00:31:31.980 And then she'll, like, start pushing the bowl.
00:31:34.560 And I'm like, Titan, if you do that, I'm going to come over there and bop you.
00:31:39.340 And then she'll, like, get a big smile and knock the bowl off the table.
00:31:42.820 And then I have to go over and bop her.
00:31:45.400 And then she'll, she'll, like, whine for, like, 30 seconds and then go back to whatever she was doing.
00:31:50.740 But I think a lot of people, maybe this is why people don't understand why we have to do bops with our family structure.
00:31:55.620 Is it just, the kids don't care, you know, otherwise.
00:31:59.260 Usually, usually if there's a threat of bops, the kids won't do it.
00:32:01.880 But very frequently there's this with the kids and you know it, it's just like the cat.
00:32:06.040 That's like, even my little infant, I can be like, hey, don't do this.
00:32:10.680 And it's clear that she understands no now.
00:32:12.840 Because when I say no.
00:32:14.260 She gets so excited.
00:32:15.620 She'll immediately try to do it and start laughing.
00:32:18.380 And I'm like, oh my god, you're an infant.
00:32:20.240 So obviously I'm not going to punish you.
00:32:21.680 But I didn't, I didn't teach you to think it was funny.
00:32:24.800 To immediately try to do the thing that you were told not to do.
00:32:27.940 And I fear that that is just the genetic destiny of my family.
00:32:31.740 To want to break the rules.
00:32:36.540 My favorite incident of this was my little girl.
00:32:39.320 We were eating outside and I had a bowl of macaroni in front of me on the sort of patio where there's an overhang.
00:32:47.420 And so she comes over and knocks it off the overhang and it falls over.
00:32:52.180 And I'm like, that's a bummer, you know, but we've got more macaroni.
00:32:55.400 But then she runs down to where the macaroni fell in the bowl and she starts putting the macaroni back in the bowl.
00:33:03.360 And I'm like, well, obviously I'm not going to eat it now.
00:33:05.340 But that's so sweet and cute that she's going to come and bring it back to me.
00:33:09.740 And then she gets the macaroni back in the bowl and she walks it back to me.
00:33:14.140 And then she holds it up like she's going to give it to me.
00:33:17.140 And she was three at the time.
00:33:19.400 No, she was younger.
00:33:20.280 Probably two and a half at the time that she did this.
00:33:22.580 Like she's going to give it to me.
00:33:23.880 And then slow motion moves the bowl so it's over the edge and slowly spills it out exactly where it had fallen before, before giving it to me and just starts laughing.
00:33:38.580 And obviously at that age, there's no way we could have taught her this behavior at that young of an age.
00:33:44.860 But and this is why people can be like, well, why do you even punish them if you like, you know, this is genetic or whatever.
00:33:49.400 And it's like, look, breaking the rules isn't any fun if the rules aren't even enforced.
00:33:52.820 Exactly.
00:33:54.860 People with these inclinations like frameworks to break because what they're trying to do is figure out where the boundaries of the rule system are.
00:34:03.680 That's what this behavior is.
00:34:05.460 It's saying, OK, I can't get away with this, but can I get away with this?
00:34:10.200 OK, maybe if I try it and I look cuter while I do it.
00:34:13.260 You know, they are trying to find the boundaries of what they can get away with.
00:34:17.920 And you need to like a Roomba operating in a room with no walls.
00:34:21.520 It just won't learn anything if it doesn't hit the wall occasionally.
00:34:24.180 Yeah, exactly.
00:34:24.920 And I wonder, I mean, yeah, there must be some people.
00:34:28.900 I mean, I could have played with other kids where I didn't see this behavior.
00:34:33.440 Yeah.
00:34:34.020 At all.
00:34:36.240 No, our kids are the first kids I've ever met who can't meet a rule that isn't meant for them to break.
00:34:43.040 That isn't like an opportunity for fun through breaking.
00:34:46.080 Yeah, rules are just an opportunity for fun.
00:34:50.000 Come on.
00:34:51.020 Yeah, it's just an invitation for a fun tussle.
00:34:55.440 So, yeah, that's interesting.
00:34:57.280 I mean, how would you counter this?
00:34:58.640 Because this kind of communal narcissism, as it's described, hurts communities, doesn't it?
00:35:05.240 Or do you think there's some kind of technical benefit to this?
00:35:08.780 I mean, you were saying it's what makes.
00:35:11.520 I think you're thinking about it wrong.
00:35:13.260 I think that it's probably mostly genetic who is susceptible to this.
00:35:20.120 And I think that these individuals should just be thought of as like, because it's created specifically by being both narcissistic and non-agentic.
00:35:29.340 And being non-agentic basically, in my mind, makes you an NPC.
00:35:33.680 And so you should think of these people as like random NPCs that are spammed into the environment and are just always going to follow whatever the dominant cultural group is in this really predictable way.
00:35:43.260 And you just need to think about them as people to navigate around, not like actual players in society.
00:35:50.060 I know, but in terms of like, okay, if we were, there are all these conversations about how do we get the left to win back young men?
00:35:59.420 How do we get the left to win elections again?
00:36:02.000 How do we root out the gerontocracy running it?
00:36:06.300 Should there also be a conversation if the left wants to win more about rooting this out?
00:36:12.120 Or does this army of Karens help the left in some way?
00:36:18.640 They do help the left, I think.
00:36:20.760 They've caused a lot of their problems, but they also help them maintain sort of their internal, not cohesion, but conformity.
00:36:29.900 Now, this internal conformity is what has turned a lot of people away from them.
00:36:33.000 But it's also what turned people away from the right as well.
00:36:35.600 Any group that ends up courting these individuals, this is actually a good point, ultimately ends up failing because these individuals make the agentic people in society angry.
00:36:46.700 Like if nothing is more agentic than just shut up and follow the rules, stop trying to think for yourself.
00:36:52.060 And that's what the Christian Karens used to do in the 80s and the 70s, right?
00:36:56.420 And I think that that drove a lot of the agentic people.
00:36:59.500 That's why the tech bros of that time period were all progressives.
00:37:03.480 And today, you know, the competent tech bros are moving more and more to the right because they're being pushed out by this group.
00:37:09.880 And so the question is maybe just if you're a culture, build that culture in a way where it never accepts this level of sycophancy.
00:37:17.020 And this is why we internally build things like Lemon Week, which we do for our kids, where every year is a holiday.
00:37:23.900 You have to find something that offends you and spend a week learning to steel man it because we see offense as a sign that something threatens your wider ideology by being potentially credibly true.
00:37:36.400 Yeah.
00:37:39.380 Does this exist on – I think it does still exist on the right.
00:37:43.400 I think it exists in more isolated –
00:37:46.220 It always will exist in isolated church groups, religious groups.
00:37:49.620 What?
00:37:50.660 In isolated church and religious groups.
00:37:52.680 But I think it also exists in some isolated, especially old guard Republican groups.
00:37:57.140 Oh, absolutely.
00:37:58.060 Absolutely it does.
00:37:59.300 I mean when an individual on the right goes out and thinks they're going to look good by signaling something that shows, you know, very little actual thought has been put into it, which we often see like, you know,
00:38:14.140 Oh, I'm the most right wing because I say we should ban gay people.
00:38:18.000 And I'm like, well, how does this help anyone, right?
00:38:22.080 Like, if you're – if you think that being gay is okay enough that you're going to get married to another guy, you obviously don't hold the beliefs that you hold.
00:38:35.460 So you're not like helping them get into heaven or something.
00:38:38.640 You know, so – and you can watch our video.
00:38:41.600 You can say like, well, maybe it leads to like broader societal degradation.
00:38:45.140 Our video, Do Gays Destroy Civilization, where we went over this in detail looking at historic examples and it doesn't seem to.
00:38:51.160 Yeah.
00:38:51.200 It appears that in many cases it was actually the leading into societal collapse that you had stricter sexual norms.
00:38:59.180 A good example of this is the Romans, where they were looser before their golden age than at the height of their golden age or during their decline.
00:39:09.800 So, you know, I think a lot of people just have this like vague memory of like, well, the Greeks and the Romans at some point in their history allowed for gay people.
00:39:17.480 Therefore, before the decline, it's like, well, no, you should look at – because they also had an assent, right?
00:39:22.780 And so I think that there's just like no logical reason to really be going out and pushing for this.
00:39:27.500 Yeah.
00:39:28.020 And yet people push for it and it wouldn't even win.
00:39:31.260 It wouldn't even win if only conservatives were voting, if you look at like modern conservative beliefs in the United States.
00:39:35.980 It's just like an aesthetic belief that people, I think, push as part of dominance hierarchy fights or to affirm – because they think that like being conservative is like tough and cool in some way.
00:39:47.600 To affirm that about themselves.
00:39:49.900 Yeah.
00:39:51.920 Okay.
00:39:52.520 And then –
00:39:53.480 And I think calling these people out – we should have like a word for this.
00:39:57.760 Like calling these people out as like lame, like what is this?
00:40:03.860 I think it's sort of like stop masturbating in public is what you should say.
00:40:09.040 Like because that's what they're doing.
00:40:10.080 They're just trying to masturbate sort of this position in a pecking order instead of creating a real argument that would do anything to help the whiter party.
00:40:22.200 Can people recognize this in themselves?
00:40:24.620 Like how would someone even realize it?
00:40:26.680 Or is this – I mean I guess do narcissists even know they're narcissists?
00:40:30.160 I mean I think – can you see it in yourself?
00:40:35.040 That's a good question.
00:40:36.200 I mean I think the question is do you – like if somebody said, hey, spend a week seriously engaging with every idea that you find offensive as if it was serious and probably true, this is the best way to find this out about yourself.
00:40:51.480 And I think the number of things that you find too offensive to engage with is a sign of whether or not you are a person like this.
00:41:00.060 If the term – like that is too offensive to seriously engage with, it probably applies to –
00:41:05.380 If this ever is uttered by you.
00:41:07.960 What?
00:41:08.700 If you ever feel that way, you know you're in trouble.
00:41:11.140 Yeah, because offense means that you should engage with it more intellectually, not less.
00:41:15.780 It means it's threatening to you.
00:41:16.940 So I think that this world belief is defined by too much fear of engaging with things that are offensive to you.
00:41:28.780 That would be the easiest way.
00:41:29.540 But I don't think that these people can be broken out of this or anything.
00:41:31.800 I think even on the left, the people know the people who have this and they find them tiresome.
00:41:36.440 But they're like, but they're part of the alliance.
00:41:38.580 So let's try to make this wider thing work.
00:41:41.760 Yeah.
00:41:43.680 Oh, boy.
00:41:45.560 It's dark.
00:41:46.080 I love you, Simone.
00:41:47.260 What are we doing for dinner tonight?
00:41:49.300 You know what I would like for dinner tonight?
00:41:50.940 What would you like?
00:41:51.560 It's just some pizza.
00:41:53.560 Not potstickers.
00:41:55.700 Oh, you've got potstickers?
00:41:57.140 Yeah, I've got potstickers.
00:41:58.200 I haven't done potstickers in a while, actually.
00:41:59.940 It's been ages.
00:42:00.540 And I'll do that thing where I do a mix of them.
00:42:03.560 I'll make fresh kiosk dipping sauce.
00:42:06.440 Seems like something you'd enjoy.
00:42:07.680 And we can also do a little bit of kimchi because I'm done with the –
00:42:11.600 Yes!
00:42:12.540 Let's do kimchi.
00:42:13.900 Good gut bacteria for you.
00:42:16.080 Yes.
00:42:16.700 Good.
00:42:17.100 Okay.
00:42:17.680 I'm excited for that.
00:42:19.020 It'll be fun.
00:42:19.760 And we're about to have our first ever monthly hangout for Patreon paid subscribers at our $10 level.
00:42:26.800 I'm super excited.
00:42:28.260 We might do them on weekends.
00:42:29.400 We might keep doing them on weekdays.
00:42:31.260 We're going to find out from the people who show up and blast people over the weekend.
00:42:35.040 But huge thanks to those who support us on Patreon.
00:42:37.980 And if you're interested in supporting the podcast and hanging out with us occasionally, and soon we're going to start releasing exclusive episodes on the platform, check it out.
00:42:46.560 Yeah, I'm very excited for this.
00:42:49.180 You know, get to know what people think we should be doing more of, especially the people who like this the best.
00:42:53.220 Yeah.
00:42:53.860 Because we don't want to get stuck in like a vortex of the episodes that perform the best on our channel.
00:43:01.120 Seem to be, oh my God, women are the worst.
00:43:04.560 Oh my God, progressives are the worst.
00:43:06.580 Oh my God, Jews are the – something.
00:43:09.960 Just anything that draws out –
00:43:11.820 Anything that looks like we might be saying something anti-Semitic or racist, immediate pop-off.
00:43:16.940 Immediate, yeah.
00:43:17.540 Or anti-woman or anti-gay.
00:43:19.640 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:43:21.140 And then, you know, the rest, like we try to throw in some, you know, oh, like history, oh, prenatalism, and it just doesn't perform really as well.
00:43:27.920 But we don't want to end up in just a silo like that because then that's going to be boring, even if you do like that stuff.
00:43:35.080 Yeah, and people can be like, oh, well, this is a sign of your audience.
00:43:38.260 I'm sorry, I actually – I'm friends with some progressive influencers, and they're like, yeah, it's the exact same for me.
00:43:44.120 Really?
00:43:45.040 Yeah.
00:43:45.320 Oh, that's dark.
00:43:48.240 I don't know if I can tell you who it is who said this, but yeah, it's an influencer who our audience almost certainly knows, and they've said, yeah.
00:43:57.720 Classic.
00:43:59.340 Love you to death, Sloan.
00:44:00.580 You are the most perfect wife any man could ever have.
00:44:05.580 No, really just you because there's a lot of things that other guys can put up with.
00:44:10.320 Sorry, just me.
00:44:11.500 For me, you're a better match than anyone, right?
00:44:13.840 Yeah.
00:44:14.520 Yeah, I'd be a nightmare to a lot of people, but thank God you love me.
00:44:18.220 God, I love you.
00:44:19.740 All right.
00:44:20.620 Love you.
00:44:21.500 Bye.
00:44:22.400 Bye.
00:44:22.620 And I'll join the thing.
00:44:25.880 Where do I go for it?
00:44:27.220 I need to adjust it a little.
00:44:28.780 I don't know.
00:44:30.640 Well, the audience can see my two Father's Day gifts now.
00:44:34.080 I got the one helmet over there, and then I've got my Roman helmet, too, right over there.
00:44:38.300 I need to get a stand for that, don't I?
00:44:40.000 I do.
00:44:41.880 I think so.
00:44:42.900 Note to self.
00:44:43.760 All of my amazing exploits of the One Civilization video obviously inspired this.
00:44:54.820 It was Only Ever Rome.
00:44:56.060 If you haven't seen that video and you like our videos, that is probably one of my most
00:44:59.920 controversial takes and one of the most long research takes to do.
00:45:04.000 That required a month of research to put together and is incredibly offensive.
00:45:10.020 Anything new today that you learned, Simone?
00:45:13.760 Gosh, I did learn.
00:45:18.540 I guess, okay, I was watching.
00:45:20.060 I was trying to understand the reasoning behind Zorhan Mamdani's interest in providing government-run
00:45:29.740 grocery stores in New York City, and it's bizarre to me that he hasn't really addressed
00:45:36.440 the shortcomings of all the past experiments of government-run grocery stores, because you
00:45:41.840 need to keep in mind this is like a 1% margin kind of industry, meaning that this is one
00:45:46.800 of those industries where the corporate players in the space are deeply incentivized to be efficient
00:45:53.960 and to provide the best possible product and efficiency that there is, and government bureaucrats
00:46:01.320 are not incentivized to do that.
00:46:03.760 Is that what, he just hasn't thought about it?
00:46:06.020 I guess he hasn't, yeah.
00:46:07.180 I was trying to find, like, maybe there was something he thought of or would contribute
00:46:12.060 to this idea that had not been tried before.
00:46:14.360 Okay, so you don't know this part of the story.
00:46:16.540 He said that what they would use to pay for the government's grocery stores was $31 million
00:46:22.880 that he thought was going to corporate grocery stores as government subsidies, but he misread
00:46:29.300 where he got that information from, and they're not actually getting government subsidies.
00:46:35.000 So he doesn't actually have the money that he needs to do his little project, but, you know,
00:46:40.100 whatever.
00:46:40.200 Even if you provided government-run grocery stores, though, which would maybe artificially
00:46:44.260 depress the prices, that would just put normal grocery stores at greater risk, like eat at their
00:46:49.780 margins, and then cause grocery stores to shut down at a higher rate, and then create more
00:46:53.420 food deserts, it just, it's a terrible idea.
00:46:56.980 Oh, well.
00:46:57.540 No, it is hilarious, but I'm, I mean, I'm for him.
00:47:00.200 I want to speedrun New York, you know?
00:47:01.980 I think when people understand that metropolitan areas can actually economically collapse, because
00:47:08.160 I think right now there's this perception that no matter what they do, things are going
00:47:12.660 to be fine, and the new will always come back, and I don't think that that, like, that's
00:47:17.780 been one of my most persistent, and I think controversial projections, is that Manhattan
00:47:23.680 is going to economically collapse.
00:47:25.480 Well, it was.
00:47:26.040 I mean, it used to be, I don't know, as a teen somehow, because I watched mostly movies that
00:47:32.100 were made around the height of crime in New York.
00:47:36.300 Like, I can't remember the name of it, but there was this amazing, like, punk gang subway
00:47:42.120 New York movie.
00:47:43.740 Oh, yeah, but you're talking about, like, when New York was in the slummy state of, like,
00:47:49.040 the 1980s.
00:47:50.180 When I say that New York is going to collapse, I mean something far more drastic.
00:47:54.520 Warriors, 1979.
00:47:56.100 It was good.
00:47:57.420 This style was great.
00:47:58.580 Far more drastic than that, which I could totally see happening.
00:48:02.680 I was working on, for rfab.ai, which is now live on the website, if you want to play
00:48:07.260 it there.
00:48:07.980 It's still at a very alpha stage right now, so I don't know, maybe wait another week or something,
00:48:12.480 but putting together a giant list of all the competitors.
00:48:15.560 So I've tried every single paid chat app, and I'm putting together a review of all of
00:48:20.360 them for the site, because, you know, good for SEO, but also it's something I want to
00:48:24.360 exist, and I don't think that the audience of this show wants to hear me go through and
00:48:28.580 rank every single paid AI chat app, because I think they're so fun, that I'm trying to
00:48:34.180 build a better one now, because I'm like, well, all the existing ones kind of suck, and
00:48:37.120 in various ways where they could be improved.
00:48:39.520 So that's really exciting.
00:48:40.320 One really confusing thing about this, and it almost feels like a conspiracy to me, is
00:48:44.920 that the most popular ones, like, you know, Replica, Character AI, are by far the worst.
00:48:52.980 Even when you're talking about the ones that are for, like, narrative building, like AI
00:48:57.380 Dungeon, which seems to get a lot of attention and has an active community, it's just not
00:49:02.500 very good when contrasted with other ones, like Try Spellbound.
00:49:06.600 Yeah, I tried Character AI at your behest and was shocked.
00:49:10.680 She didn't believe me.
00:49:11.540 She said, you're using it wrong or something.
00:49:13.100 It can't actually be that stupid.
00:49:14.820 I'm like, no, it is, it is like actually confusingly bad.
00:49:18.680 Worse than that, yeah.
00:49:20.240 Worse.
00:49:20.920 And then you try it and you're like, oh my God, this is confusingly bad.
00:49:25.560 By the way, if you're wondering what I think are the best ones right now, and I still think
00:49:28.640 that both of these are better than what we're putting together, but we'll hopefully be beating
00:49:31.700 them soon, it would be GPT Flow, the paid model, the highest tier paid model, or Try Spellbound,
00:49:38.760 which Try Spellbound is interesting because it doesn't appear to have like a giant community
00:49:41.820 or anything like that.
00:49:42.940 And it looks like it's made by one person and yet it's incredibly good.
00:49:47.100 So I'm a bit confused by that.
00:49:49.620 Although their really good model broke and now they're on like an average model.
00:49:53.240 So we'll see.
00:49:53.700 It's still better than the other ones.
00:49:54.860 But anyway, I'll get started.
00:49:58.600 Dr. Torsten, Dr. Octavian, how are you curing Titan?
00:50:03.220 Oh, we're just putting it in a big napkin.
00:50:07.260 In a big napkin?
00:50:08.380 You made a big bandage?
00:50:09.240 No, no, no.
00:50:10.000 Let's buckle this up.
00:50:12.580 Yeah.
00:50:13.440 Just keep it.
00:50:14.240 And then hook it up to the medical can I say.
00:50:18.120 And then I hook it up to the medical can I say.
00:50:22.360 Now we can see his heart.
00:50:26.800 And if it's beating or not, then we gotta...
00:50:30.120 Wait, wait.
00:50:30.880 Let's jump down his brain too.
00:50:31.920 Right now.
00:50:32.760 Right now.
00:50:33.660 Let's do his brain.
00:50:35.440 No, keep your foot down.
00:50:37.740 Keep your foot down.
00:50:39.340 Let's check if his brain is working, okay?
00:50:43.360 Yeah.
00:50:44.560 You should sleep by now, okay?
00:50:47.220 In the hospital.
00:50:48.000 And I'll just go on you because
00:50:51.900 I want to check if all of the body's clear
00:50:55.320 and put the one on here too
00:50:59.900 because we want to take out his brain, okay?
00:51:03.980 Are you going to give her a brain scan?
00:51:06.220 Yeah.
00:51:07.520 I'll look for other persons that need help.
00:51:11.440 Oh, okay.
00:51:11.860 You're the ambulance driver now?
00:51:13.540 Yeah, I'm the ambulance driver.
00:51:14.860 And Torsten, are you the doctor?
00:51:18.040 Yes.
00:51:18.580 Torsten, are you the doctor like Andre?
00:51:21.560 Yeah.
00:51:23.000 His brain is okay, it looks like.
00:51:26.820 Well, thank goodness.
00:51:28.080 Yeah.
00:51:28.720 Let me see his heart.
00:51:30.100 And don't bring his heart.
00:51:30.700 Heart increase now.
00:51:32.820 No.
00:51:33.920 No.
00:51:34.580 His heart is not beating.
00:51:37.380 Well, what are you going to do?
00:51:38.920 We gotta retreat.
00:51:39.840 Oh, yeah, you're going to...
00:51:52.840 We need to take out his heart
00:51:55.820 and then put in this new heart.
00:51:58.220 Oh, you're going to do a heart transplant?
00:52:00.300 Yeah.
00:52:01.460 I know.
00:52:02.020 I just brought a heart transplant.
00:52:05.620 Hey, I'll take out the heart.
00:52:07.920 Oh, she's cured.
00:52:09.780 Is she better?
00:52:10.840 What?
00:52:11.440 You forgot something.
00:52:12.860 I need to take out your heart.
00:52:16.480 And I'll put in a new heart.
00:52:19.920 Oh, Titan, do you feel better?
00:52:21.640 Yeah.
00:52:22.380 Oh, that's so good.
00:52:23.920 Yeah.
00:52:24.480 Yeah.
00:52:24.540 Yeah.