Based Camp - March 18, 2026


The Trap of the Beautiful Ones： The ＂Mouse Utopia＂ Hits Gen Z

Topics
status obesity looks maxing
Hosted by
Malcolm Collins Simone Collins
Mentioned
Malcolm John C. Calhoun Scott Alexander Bruno Wolf
Why Did Culture Stop Evolving？ (2025=2015 But 1995≠1985) The Genetic Reason Europe Keeps Failing

Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 5 minutes

Words per minute

178.8

Word count

11,659

Sentence count

227

Harmful content

Misogyny

31

sentences flagged

Toxicity

28

sentences flagged

Hate speech

23

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we talk about the new gender affirming care, looks maxing, and how people fall into these traps, and why they are so common. We also talk about a case study from the 1950s of John B. Calhoun and the "Mice Utopia" experiment.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hello, Malcolm. I'm excited to be with you today because we are going to be talking about
00:00:05.940 looks maxing as the new gender affirming care. We've joked about how women are getting 1.00
00:00:12.340 basically gender affirming care when they get cosmetic procedures, you know, to look like young
00:00:16.740 women. And that, you know, in the end, it's all just the same as being trans. It's pointless, 1.00
00:00:22.380 feckless, chasing after a certain identity. You're going to tie it to the concept of the
00:00:27.980 beautiful ones are the mice from the the mice utopia experiment it's been all their time grooming
00:00:32.940 and we're we're doing this because i think it's important when people can learn that society
00:00:38.220 doesn't work and the type of autistic people who watch our show i think communities like 1.00
00:00:43.660 looks maxing or any sort of a maxing can feel like solutions but they are not well yeah it's
00:00:51.260 like gender affirming care be it looks maxing or becoming trans or getting a ton of cosmetic
00:00:55.980 procedures as a woman is just one of many traps that people are falling into. But I think as bad 1.00
00:01:01.740 as looks maxing, and I want to be clear that we're including this in the looks maxing category,
00:01:05.760 is performative masculinity maxing, which some people also do. 100%. And other things. More
00:01:11.860 good. Yeah. And I'm going to give other examples too. But I also more importantly want to point
00:01:16.440 that these are all traps that map, to your earlier point, to a particular behavioral pattern that
00:01:23.120 appears to be consistent across any abundant mammal society, which is even observed in rodents
00:01:30.880 per Calhoun's rat and mouse experiments that Malcolm just alluded to. And we're going to
00:01:35.840 talk about them in greater detail. And the reason why it's super important to talk about these traps
00:01:40.700 and falling into this particular type of trap is that this folly doesn't yield any lasting impact
00:01:49.000 And it doesn't yield happiness and contentment.
00:01:51.960 Like even if you're nihilistic, even if all you want is just a little bit of pleasure
00:01:55.740 in this short, pointless existence you think you have, it's not even the best approach.
00:02:01.300 And so really there's just no reason why anyone should be falling for these things.
00:02:05.360 And yet they are massively popular outcomes.
00:02:09.480 They're extremely common.
00:02:11.300 So let's talk about this.
00:02:12.840 And we're going to use Luxmaxing as a case study for how people unknowingly fall into
00:02:18.120 these traps so that all of us can be more adept at evading them personally or getting out of them
00:02:23.740 if we're in them and i think it's pretty easy even like even if your life isn't about these
00:02:28.000 things i think even you and i may sometimes find ourselves unknowingly get pulled into these it's
00:02:33.460 like a magnet that happens in times of abundance but let's start with the rodents the beautiful
00:02:37.940 ones just like you were saying so for those who are out of the loop on this between 1958 and 1962
00:02:44.880 a man named John B. Calhoun conducted overcrowding experiments. He used rats and mice. And he did
00:02:51.980 this in an effort to study how very high population density in an otherwise ideal environment affects
00:02:58.080 social behavior, mental health, and population stability, in this case in rodents. But his hope
00:03:04.180 was to better understand the implications of overcrowding and abundance for human society.
00:03:09.100 So he gave rats and mice endless food, like they were never hungry, endless water,
00:03:13.900 nesting material, and protection from predators and disease, so that a lack of resources was not
00:03:19.460 the cause of their problems. And then he observed how increasing population density changed aggression,
00:03:25.880 mating, parenting, social hierarchies, and overall physiological functioning over time.
00:03:31.820 Now, we've talked about these rat experiments in the past. Commenters are always like,
00:03:35.620 oh, these aren't scientifically rigorously conducted. And yeah, obviously, yeah,
00:03:39.740 the experiments were far from scientifically precise.
00:03:41.880 important thing about the rat experiments they may have been p-hacked they may not have been
00:03:46.480 scientifically rigorous but they were predictive and yeah no they yielded super super interesting
00:03:51.680 patterns that you could also argue we're seeing in modern abundant societies i think the reason
00:03:56.180 why people like talking about them is a lot of the stuff that he observed qualitatively
00:04:01.380 are like super major things for example let me give you some examples of of behavioral groupings
00:04:08.000 that he saw that like we talk about all the time in humans on our podcast to refresh your memory
00:04:14.340 so there were the there were the dominant so and then keep in mind again these these are of these
00:04:18.580 abundant rat or mouse because he did both just like cities that he created essentially and then
00:04:25.020 he just watched what they did so you know these are these are mice after after they've reached
00:04:29.380 this point where they just reproduced a ton you get the dominant aggressive males these are highly
00:04:34.380 territorial alpha males that monopolize prime nesting areas and mates. They frequently fight
00:04:40.160 and wound other males, and sometimes they attack pups. Then there are the dropouts or socially
00:04:45.760 defeated males. You could call them the incels. They're males driven out of territories by 0.56
00:04:50.880 dominant males. They congregate in central areas, often scarred, hyper-submissive, and involved in
00:04:57.060 seemingly purposeless mass brawls. In earlier rat experiments, some turned to cannibalism in the end.
00:05:02.800 so dark then there are the hyperactive or indiscriminately sexual males males that 0.81
00:05:09.080 mounted other males and juveniles showed disorganized mating attempts and sometimes
00:05:13.740 coupled asexual behavior with aggression instead of normal courtship patterns again there's a reason
00:05:20.220 why these resonate and then let's get to the female rodents there are the neglectful or 1.00
00:05:25.980 failed mothers females that abandoned litters moved pups repeatedly stopped defending nests
00:05:31.580 or became unusually aggressive toward their own young and toward other adults approaching the
00:05:37.160 nest. So again, wow. And then there's the hermit or withdrawn females who were adult females that 0.89
00:05:44.200 were treated to empty compartments, largely avoiding social contact, mating, or pup care,
00:05:50.000 effectively dropping out of normal communal female roles in mouse societies. This is what
00:05:54.000 I wanted to be. That was my role in our rat society until I met you. So go ahead. What were 0.98
00:06:02.020 you going to say? The way that you fix this, right? First, the core thing that he noted that I think
00:06:08.340 was the most important predictive element that to me just means he was getting some form of useful
00:06:13.540 data was that as you put mammals in a utopian-like environment, urbanization increases. They began
00:06:23.360 to congregate in denser and denser spaces even when they had more spaces accessible to them
00:06:28.580 and that is not a behavior that anyone would have predicted for humanity at the time that he was
00:06:34.760 doing these experiments and yet it is something that we've seen play out but you also see these
00:06:38.700 more fun things like what you're talking about yeah and so obviously we spent a lot of time
00:06:43.140 talking about the human societal analogs of the rodent groups i just mentioned but yeah let's go
00:06:48.900 back to the beautiful ones, because we're specifically talking not about the trap of
00:06:53.000 incels in modern society, or the women who choose to not have children, or the hyperaggressive males,
00:06:59.940 we're going to talk about, or the hypersexual males who start mounting other males, we're going
00:07:04.980 to talk about the beautiful ones, and the trap of the beautiful ones, and transmaxing, and other 0.98
00:07:10.240 forms of this, and so what were the beautiful ones in the rat experiments? They were a subgroup of 0.95
00:07:15.640 male rodents first observe in rats and then later in his mouse universe 25 study that withdrew from
00:07:21.720 normal social life they spent their time almost exclusively eating and obsessively grooming
00:07:26.920 avoiding fighting mating and parenting so that they they remained physically unscarred and well
00:07:33.080 kept but were socially inert and they did not reproduce and you're going to find this is uncanny
00:07:38.200 when we get into looks maxing so he described the animals as healthy in body but socially sterile
00:07:44.780 seeing them as a large stage symptom of social breakdown in an overpopulated yet materially
00:07:50.780 abundant environment. And before we go into looks maxers, I want to point out that this is a trap
00:07:55.940 that is not just about looks. I'm using looks maxers as like our way of sort of exploring how
00:08:00.160 people fall into these traps. But I'll just give you three examples of this form of societal trap
00:08:06.800 that have just been brought to my attention in like the last 24 hours, just to like, because
00:08:11.040 it's all over. It's all over the place. And a lot of people are falling into this trap.
00:08:14.700 So from one of our friends, she texted me the other morning and just was, I guess this occurred
00:08:19.940 to her. She's just like something for pernatal is to shame status, obesity, the idea that the drive 0.96
00:08:25.880 to eat is good. It helps us survive and pass on our genes, but the drive to eat can be hijacked
00:08:30.160 and made unhealthy and make it less likely for us or our children to survive. If we eat too much,
00:08:35.040 become obese. Status is similar, where the drive in general is good, and it evolved to be a strong
00:08:41.200 drive because it is so good at helping us and our children survive. But there are people, especially
00:08:45.720 at the top, who are status obese. Their drive for status, rather than contributing to their survival
00:08:51.500 and their children's survival, is actually hurting them. Super wealthy people who spend their money
00:08:55.900 on plastic surgery instead of more kids, for example. They are status obese, hurting their
00:09:00.040 genetic line by investing in status peacock feathers instead of their young. And this reminds 0.99
00:09:04.900 me of something that I heard among a very elite group that we, we used to mix in. There was this
00:09:11.820 one guy who at this point was a billionaire. And in this, this off the record, Chatham House Rules
00:09:17.440 conversation, he was sort of talking about his objective function in life. And like, for him,
00:09:21.800 it was always just like, well, and it just become a, you know, get, make six figures. And then it
00:09:27.060 you know become a millionaire and then become a multi-millionaire and then like okay we'll have
00:09:30.500 a net worth of over 10 million have a net worth of over 50 million 100 million a billion 2 billion
00:09:35.940 like it just is he he he i think he was going on 2 billion at that point or something like that and
00:09:41.460 then he was asked like what after that and he's like well then i guess it's gonna be 3 billion
00:09:45.780 it's just like like at what point you know like to what end when you do something with that that's
00:09:52.820 fun yeah they're like it just like and he he was talking in this conversation about how it was
00:09:59.160 sort of he was aware of the fact that it was hollow i think he was aware of the fact that
00:10:05.620 he'd become one of the beautiful ones essentially like that this is kind of this pointless
00:10:09.260 nihilistic exercise but he also wasn't trying to get out of it and and i really do i love this idea
00:10:18.280 of framing to our kids something like status obesity of like just because we're not above
00:10:25.040 shaming people for being fat i was i was growing up in a very fat shaming family right but your
00:10:30.500 family did not did not shame status obesity and to shame someone for being status obese the same
00:10:37.800 way you'd shame someone for like wearing tacky clothing i mean we do that early all the time so
00:10:43.980 we do we do yeah i i find it to be really disgusting behavior and i think that it is
00:10:50.380 it ruins people's lives it just ruins your life yes yeah people who have seen who strive for it
00:10:55.180 they're never really happy it causes genuinely i feel like there's more correlation with failure
00:11:00.200 to thrive and status obesity than actual obesity such a great way to put it and you and you do see
00:11:07.220 this in upper class circles all the time oh my god yeah and if you're like or or if you're stuck
00:11:13.720 in sort of a look max and you're like yeah but i don't have anything that matters to me right so
00:11:18.880 i'm trying to construct something and i'm like if you want a good check out the book the pragmatist
00:11:23.200 guide to life we will give it to you for free it's got an audiobook it's on amazon for like 99
00:11:28.340 cents if you want it it is the book for in an unbiased way having somebody walk you through
00:11:34.240 building something that you can philosophically rigorously believe has purpose when we try
00:11:39.900 unlike who we are today as influencers which is heavily biased heavily we have an ideological side
00:11:47.020 and we did not back then we were very very very ideologically unbiased back then or at least
00:11:52.860 attempted to be as hard as we could and that book can be it's a short book it's a short read it is
00:11:59.280 very useful in terms of getting around that basically what we do in it is we go over
00:12:03.980 everything you could think has value like literally we go through every philosophically
00:12:11.360 rigorous even potentially thing that could have value and we go through the arguments for it and
00:12:16.460 we go through the arguments against it um and so that makes it easy for you because you can be like
00:12:21.240 okay i can bite those bullets it's basically like can you bite these bullets against it and if you
00:12:25.880 can then it's probably a good solution in terms of structuring your life around it and now you
00:12:31.000 have a purpose something that you can structure your life around but anyway continue sorry it
00:12:36.180 actually is kind of blowing my mind so the difference between a like physical food-based
00:12:41.180 obesity and status obesity is food-based obesity is just like a it's it's a low-grade addiction
00:12:47.580 you know something that you can treat with naltrexone or avutine whereas status obesity
00:12:53.860 is a beautiful ones problem and i think what makes the the the disease of the beautiful ones 0.98
00:12:59.400 so uniquely insidious is that it is a very cerebral high performance vice in that it
00:13:09.580 eats the potential of people who would otherwise be very impactful in the world. Does that make
00:13:14.700 sense? Like these are, these are not people who are like following to like, they're not falling
00:13:19.260 to low grade, like sex addiction, gambling addiction, food addiction, right? They, they
00:13:24.340 are, they're rising above that. In fact, in many cases, they're extremely disciplined. You know,
00:13:28.580 these these like looks maxers are going and we're going to get into that like they're going through 0.96
00:13:32.140 incredible pain and deprivation to to to achieve your time being anorexic i mean i think you could
00:13:39.620 have you know if you had vanity which i think you hate the way you look so much you'd never
00:13:43.980 become a look maxer but you know i can see the appeal of something like that even to you
00:13:48.500 totally no but the feeling of control that it that it could bring because for me it was always
00:13:53.880 about control and that's what it is for most people who have anorexia um but yeah so i think
00:13:58.840 what's what's so crazy about that is yeah i was just thinking about like the obese people i know
00:14:02.880 many of them have kids above replacement rate they're working their butts off to give those
00:14:08.120 kids successful lives and if anything they're obese because they're eating their feelings and
00:14:11.460 they're very stressed as they really fight for something they believe in right like they're
00:14:16.380 suffering from a vice they have severe problems and they're they're not in control of their impulses
00:14:21.260 but like they're still doing more than the billionaire status maxer the beautiful one
00:14:28.420 so i think that just to highlight how insidious and sinful like per my view this particular trap
00:14:35.440 is there's also and i think this is really interesting i just saw a headline of this
00:14:39.080 well another version of this trap not beyond just status maximizing is virtue signaling or aimless
00:14:45.840 altruism i don't know if you saw this headline but the telegraph had this article that it ran
00:14:52.320 it was on the front page of drudge this morning okay titled the extreme world of the 20 something
00:14:57.280 men giving their organs to strangers forget giving blood these young people are offering
00:15:02.080 strangers their body parts such generosity could revolutionize a transplant system
00:15:06.480 and yeah so you you've actually seen that there's you see the occasional post about this
00:15:14.320 in the effective altruist slash like altruistic rationalist space where like, oh, so-and-so
00:15:22.060 gave a kidney.
00:15:22.940 Like, it's so great that they gave a kidney.
00:15:24.540 And these are people who already like are trying to be effective altruists, except they
00:15:29.500 lose the plot and they just want to like do all the good things.
00:15:32.120 So they like donate blood and they donate plasma and they start running out of things
00:15:35.340 to do.
00:15:35.980 And then they just start giving away their, like their kidney.
00:15:39.340 And then they just keep going to complete strangers.
00:15:41.300 And in this article, they talk about this trend, particularly in the UK. Most of these non-direct
00:15:49.240 altruistic donors are male, kind of like the beautiful ones. A good portion are in their 20s.
00:15:54.740 Then there's another large cohort in their 50s, weirdly. It also notes the donors are predominantly
00:15:59.860 white, highly educated, and less likely to be married or have children. These are, in other 0.89
00:16:05.600 words, I think beautiful ones. These are people who are stuck in an altruism trap. They're
00:16:11.660 optimizing to do good without really understanding what it is. And there are people who don't have
00:16:17.020 children, who don't have partners, who are not really making any lasting impact. Because what
00:16:22.900 do you do when you give someone a kidney? Maybe you're extending that person's life a little bit.
00:16:27.240 You're saving them from dialysis for a little bit. But like, what is that person going to do?
00:16:31.600 And this is also a stranger. Like you have no control over who you're giving your kidney to
00:16:34.960 in these cases so like i don't know you could be giving your kidney to like like a retired person
00:16:41.140 who's not gonna have any impact anyway aside from maybe maybe babysitting a grandkid a little bit
00:16:45.620 and helping that yeah like i really don't like it the the myop the myopy of this like you could
00:16:51.820 instead go work for a startup that will build synthetic kidneys like we're at that point
00:16:58.640 in human history i love the way you see things the way i do why don't you just make synthetic
00:17:04.220 kidneys we're so freaking close that so that and then that's why i'm like this is a sign of
00:17:11.820 really like you've gone off the rails like this is performative altruism it has no point it has
00:17:18.980 no reason it's crazy and then there's also dating and we we haven't run the episode yet but we
00:17:24.620 did an episode on new trends in gen z dating and one of the big trends that was emerging
00:17:29.880 among gen z pickup artists specifically is that there's this subset of gen z pickup artists that
00:17:37.200 are really just trying to like they're using their ray-bans are recording like sessions of
00:17:42.000 like cold approaches and they're just trying to get views like the point isn't to get women to 0.98
00:17:49.560 sleep with them per se it's to get attention to get reactions of we'd recorded one of our weekend
00:17:58.360 episodes on this which are for paid subscribers if you guys want to help us out on patreon or
00:18:03.140 sub stack they are if you're listening to this oh sorry no no sorry yeah this isn't this is for
00:18:09.240 the main channel oh awesome yeah by the way yeah we have we run two weekend episodes every single
00:18:15.760 week we now have this big backlog i think we have over 50 additional episodes that you have not seen
00:18:20.380 if you want to get your fix if you've already gone through all the backlog there's more friend
00:18:24.620 if you've already gone through all the backlog you have a problem okay you have like an emotional
00:18:29.040 problem i'm trying to put this show has been on forever okay simone at this point but if you if
00:18:36.300 if you have i appreciate it i appreciate yeah but also like if you want to support us and help us
00:18:40.740 out like we really would appreciate it it means a lot to us and it does make a difference for us
00:18:45.040 and i'm trying to i've been trying to create playlists so it's easier to do like the backlog
00:18:50.740 if you ever want to do it of like the stuff that's going to be evergreen right for a particular topic
00:18:55.380 of interest like psychology and anthropology science government and governance theory stuff
00:19:02.340 like that so anyway yeah but anyway so there's also now just like trends in dating in which
00:19:08.280 people are not even trying to get a partner they're just you know they're just cold approaching for
00:19:13.080 like to prove to themselves something or to to you know build a career as a higher status like dude
00:19:21.940 slash dating coach that's another example of this trap but let's go to looks maxing and go into it
00:19:27.640 in greater detail then what we're going to do is is we're going to look at clavicular and sort of
00:19:33.640 what he does to give you a picture of what looks maxing entails because it's just very entertaining
00:19:36.960 and then we're going to look at the various factors that are driving people into this particular
00:19:42.600 beautiful ones trap because i think that they're very they can give you an idea of how someone can
00:19:47.420 very subtly fall into a beautiful ones trap like status or like dating or like altruism without
00:19:54.160 knowing it because it can be a confluence of subtle things and i'm going to go through
00:19:58.340 the confluence of subtle gateway drugs essentially that bruno daniel friend of the podcast and of
00:20:05.320 reality reality fabricator sent to us as he looked into what was driving people into looks maxing or
00:20:11.540 might be driving people until we have one of our our big fans or was into look mac thing it's funny
00:20:18.380 like when we're like okay when do we give our kids like human gross hormones and stuff like that we
00:20:22.020 like reach out to this fan i'm like i'm sure he's done the research right he's so cool no he's like
00:20:26.460 one of my favorite people in the entire world i'm like a fan of him i'm a fan of so many of our fans
00:20:30.880 like i'm just like weirdly obsessive about them and i don't think they realize well because you
00:20:35.740 don't bother with real friends because real friends are a scam well they're but they're also
00:20:39.860 like not as well selected people who are your irl friends are people who you just happen to run into
00:20:46.260 the people that we come across content wise and who come across us content wise we're like we're
00:20:50.740 all really well matched for each other because we share interests and like very obscure interests
00:20:55.520 so anyway looks maxing is definitely on the rise it if you look at google trends and this is all
00:21:02.040 linked in the show notes, which you can find on Substack or Patreon, it shows how it came out of
00:21:06.340 nowhere in 2023, which is probably just when they started putting a name to this. Because for
00:21:13.360 example, the person we know who first clued us into a looks like maxing that Malcolm just referred
00:21:17.180 to, he's been doing this since he was a teen, you know, like using different hormones and injections
00:21:22.840 and interventions, et cetera, like going above and beyond to make sure that, you know, he grows
00:21:27.860 enough and like looks better than he otherwise could. So like this is, it's not like it only
00:21:33.240 just emerged in 2023, but that's when people really started talking about it online. Then
00:21:38.120 it interestingly came to a lull in 2024 and then swung back up in 2025, but also in a much more
00:21:46.260 extreme way, because that is when you start to see in Google trends, a spike of things like,
00:21:52.160 what is the word where you hammer your face face yeah whatever it's it's somewhere deeper in my
00:22:00.900 notes i'll i'll mention it in a little bit and also people like clavicular with clavicular being
00:22:05.480 now the new 2026 face of looks maxing who also is just like extremely extremely out there
00:22:15.720 i think that clavicular is i haven't seen that much of his content but he seems like so much
00:22:20.180 more emotionally healthy than like andrew tate as like a a young male influencer
00:22:24.600 i guess i know let's talk about what he does okay okay
00:22:29.340 i mean he i mean yeah i don't know okay there's a lot there's a lot with him so he he started
00:22:40.320 testosterone injections at like age 14 or 15 which i don't like blame him for doing his parents were
00:22:46.920 against this by the way his parents were not supportive of this he also engages and has
00:22:51.680 engaged in very long-term steroid use he this is where things start to go off the rails malcolm
00:22:57.600 he uses meth to suppress appetite and stay extremely lean and maintain hollow cheeks and
00:23:02.840 that's based it's it is very based i think like there's this one clip of him on social media where
00:23:08.680 he's like chatting with a girl at a club and she's like like i don't know like do you do any drugs or
00:23:12.300 something and he's like or like alcohol like do you drink out he's like well i don't really drink
00:23:16.680 alcohol i'd like mostly just do meth and she's just kind of like oh okay i mostly just do meth
00:23:23.640 yeah he's you know and also like people have come to question you know his his political
00:23:30.860 philosophy because he's like well obviously i would vote for who's the california gavin newsom
00:23:36.160 over jd vance because he totally mogs vance and i think like at one point like he said this to 0.94
00:23:40.740 like andrew tate at some stupid male influencer gathering in miami and tate was like child that 0.84
00:23:47.840 is not the way that you vote um i love i love that this guy is just like living on an aesthetic 0.94
00:23:55.780 like i get it and i like the commitment to the bit but also he's one of the beautiful ones like
00:24:02.900 to what end is this commitment so yes to our earlier point because i was i was this alluded
00:24:08.060 But yeah, he practices bone, bone smashing, which is when you use a hammer or fist to
00:24:14.380 hit your face, to induce micro fractures, to produce a sharper jawline.
00:24:19.340 Now, just to double click on this, because enough people have been talking about bone
00:24:22.540 smashing, where I was like, this can't, this can't work, right?
00:24:26.980 But also like, I was like, well, hold on a second, because this is how nose jobs work.
00:24:31.860 And by the way, there are some YouTubers who've done really great histories of nose jobs.
00:24:37.040 people have been doing of course you've watched this i love it but on our channel wherever you
00:24:41.840 find simona's like a really deep knowledge it's whenever we're talking about fashion history yeah
00:24:46.640 yeah but like people have been have been doing those jobs for a long time and nose jobs have
00:24:55.480 always involved breaking the bones in the nose and and strategically reforming them so i'm also
00:25:00.760 like well but i know that facial cosmetic procedures have for a long time involved
00:25:07.000 breaking bones in the face so maybe there's something to this but just in case you're
00:25:12.500 picking up a hammer right now and getting ready to go most looks maxers i know are super like
00:25:17.580 educated on this stuff i don't think they do something that didn't work no because no this
00:25:22.800 it doesn't work okay just let's get cut to the chase it doesn't i don't believe you okay now
00:25:28.160 No, it doesn't. And I'll explain why. And you're going to understand really quickly why. Okay. So
00:25:33.020 bone smashing is based on a misreading of Wolf's law, which says bone adapts to controlled
00:25:40.240 repetitive mechanical loading, like normal weight bearing exercise, not to random blunt trauma or
00:25:47.460 deliberate fractures. So surgeons point out that striking your face with fists or hammers
00:25:52.740 creates uncontrolled injury. So any microfractures or healing are unpredictable. They can't reliably
00:25:59.720 make the jaw sharper or more symmetrical. And reviews by doctors and oral maxillofacial
00:26:06.740 surgeons state that there's no clinical evidence that bone smashing produces cosmetic improvements
00:26:11.940 in facial structure. So like going down to the logistics of what's happening here, blunt force
00:26:16.840 to the face primarily damages soft tissue like skin and fat and muscle and blood vessels and
00:26:22.780 nerves. This causes swelling. It causes bruising, scar formation. It doesn't cause the clean,
00:26:28.860 controlled bone remodeling that they think they're doing. So even when small fractures occur,
00:26:34.120 they tend to heal along the original anatomy or in a misaligned way, which can worsen asymmetry
00:26:40.020 or create deformity instead of a sharper jawline. Experts emphasize that when bones truly need to
00:26:46.240 be repositioned or reshaped for cosmetic or functional reasons.
00:26:49.600 And this is comes to my, my nose job awareness.
00:26:52.760 Surgeons use very precise planned osteo osteotomies, osteo osteotomies and fixation.
00:27:03.040 Meaning that they're like really going in there and very strategically breaking
00:27:06.520 the bone and repositioning it.
00:27:08.080 They're not just like hitting it with a hammer.
00:27:10.540 So not repeated low level trauma to get predictable results.
00:27:14.680 So the problem is fake news, give me the hammer, give me the hammer.
00:27:19.900 I think that even clavicular has stopped bone smashing.
00:27:24.160 He just, like it got him a lot of attention, but he doesn't do it anymore.
00:27:27.640 I think because it doesn't work.
00:27:30.020 So I don't know.
00:27:30.960 He looked pretty dumpy in his before photos.
00:27:34.980 Yeah, but I think a lot of that had to do more.
00:27:38.360 So keep it on.
00:27:38.960 He engages in extreme calorie restriction.
00:27:42.040 a lot of that was just weight loss allowing his bone structure to come through the the primary
00:27:47.780 difference that i saw in his before and after had to do with weight loss it wasn't it was the meth
00:27:54.560 malcolm it's not the hammer okay i'm not condemning all of it i mean he could have just
00:28:01.580 used semaglutide but he had to be more metal so i don't know maybe he doesn't have insurance
00:28:07.680 coverage and the meth is less expensive, who knows. But keep in mind, going back to the
00:28:13.720 beautiful things, the beautiful, the beautiful ones theme of this all is that he also is well
00:28:20.100 aware, again, being quite based, and he really owns everything that he does. He's aware of the
00:28:25.640 fact that he's probably infertile due to the chronic steroid use, you know, if not all the
00:28:31.100 other things. He also told the New York Times, and I'm linking to the article in the show notes,
00:28:36.900 that he's not particularly interested in having sex with women, just knowing that he can is enough 0.98
00:28:43.340 validation for him. So like, this is, this is a person who at least as of now is not looking very
00:28:49.020 likely to successfully reproduce. This is a very, very good example of how looks maxing is the
00:28:56.360 beautiful ones, the ones who just excessively groom and look untouched and good, but are, are 0.90
00:29:00.760 not they're not they're they're an end to their genetic line to to all of mouse and rat history
00:29:07.080 they are genetic ends and he is a genetic end to every you know the millions of years of evolution
00:29:12.600 and i basically did what he did but was a different outcome at that age no you you did not obtain
00:29:20.460 hormones and no no what i mean is pointlessly optimized my goal at his age because he's young 0.60
00:29:29.400 right he's like 20 he's very young just have sex with as many attractive women as possible but he's 0.98
00:29:36.300 not having sex oh but you meant like pointless non-procreative sex yeah i understand but the 0.97
00:29:41.860 point i'm making is non-procreative sex is the same as is yeah it's all self-validation it was 0.97
00:29:48.600 all and if if i actually want to clarify that having sex is not the same as masturbation
00:29:57.480 non-propriative sex because honestly masturbation is way more effective if all you want is the
00:30:03.340 pleasure sex itself like if you're doing like a right sex is more relation there's no but also 0.58
00:30:09.760 there's way more like the the the the pain coins that i get from like like i'm thinking just like
00:30:18.380 as a male that i have to spend to get like the pleasure coin of like ejaculation or sorry like
00:30:26.740 a climax i have to get that's like 28 pain coins for one pleasure coin i understand but it's it's
00:30:34.600 about knowing that you can it's yeah and that's what i'm saying it's about the self-validation
00:30:38.420 it's not about physical pleasure and and i think that young people especially if you're born with
00:30:42.940 an enormous like goal drive like i was right um you can you can very easily if you're smart get
00:30:49.200 caught in one of these loops especially if you're doing really well at it you're like oh i'm good
00:30:53.540 at this okay i'm gonna lean in i'm gonna do more i'm gonna do more i'm gonna do more make the next
00:30:57.320 million make the next billion yeah and you just get obsessed with it there's a there's a role that
00:31:02.780 path dependency i think plays in this too of like after a while you're not good at anything else you
00:31:07.340 only know one thing in this world it's actually kind of scary just second guess i actually would
00:31:12.560 push back hard here i think that some of these youth obsessions like mine can be incredibly
00:31:19.020 useful when you get older oh i mean it certainly taught you a lot about sales yeah yeah they
00:31:23.480 taught me about sales it taught me about sales and how to talk to people and how to sell myself
00:31:27.200 to people and how to approach strangers and how to confidence how to own a room how to build
00:31:32.980 presence how to like i got more out of that than i did out of college i'll tell you that right like
00:31:39.560 true so i i don't i i just saying everyone should just go on a sexual rum springer and
00:31:44.540 well i mean you couldn't have done the sexual rum springer to its full completion without
00:31:50.240 going to college so i guess no no no i actually by like my second year of college i had basically
00:31:56.660 gotten over it oh yeah yeah i mean i still you know from from that point on you know i i still
00:32:05.600 slept with a number of people but it wasn't my core goal anymore yeah once you hit college it
00:32:10.780 was finding a wife yeah well no first year of college it wasn't finding a wife i was still
00:32:14.400 sleeping around a lot oh really yeah it was second year of college where i was like okay i got to
00:32:19.320 take this seriously now okay that's when you got matchmaking obsessed yeah or maybe maybe like
00:32:28.580 halfway through the first year okay oh fair enough then well also at that point i had slept with
00:32:34.960 everyone that you know that i saw that i thought was attractive in in my social circle so i i didn't
00:32:40.440 have a reason to keep trying i was like whatever where where when i was younger i wasn't limited
00:32:46.880 by that because i would hook up with people i met through online dating back when and keep in mind
00:32:54.220 this was a very different era of online dating you could actually very easily online date in that
00:32:59.100 era which is sad that like today you can't do that for real times have changed sad but yeah so
00:33:09.860 the cliffhanger is he's obviously a very extreme example but i think there are lots of men who are
00:33:15.920 falling into this trap and also you know women who are falling into the gender affirming trap 0.99
00:33:20.100 and just people in general who are becoming obsessed with their looks online or other things
00:33:24.780 so let's go through bruno daniel's theories on what drives people to looks maxing which i think
00:33:30.720 also explain what drive women to obsession with their appearance to sort of explain the subtle 0.99
00:33:36.040 ways in which i think also people fall into like algorithm maxing or status maxing and this is what
00:33:41.280 brunel daniel sent to us and thanks bruna you are awesome and yeah the best so one he pointed out
00:33:48.980 that camera tech sorry camera technology distorts how people perceive their own faces he cited a
00:33:55.880 2018 research letter in jama facial plastic surgery by boris pascover and colleagues who
00:34:03.160 modeled how perspective distortion affects facial proportions in close range photography
00:34:08.200 so selfies taken at typical phone distance like 12 inches can make the nose appear roughly 30
00:34:15.080 larger than it does in photos taken from like a five foot portrait difference so when people are
00:34:20.740 taking selfies they actually think that their nose is bigger and then they start getting obsessed
00:34:25.320 over it so there's this like subtle subconscious thing that makes you start feeling a little bit
00:34:30.820 like less comfortable about it i'm going to include additional studies that bruno sources
00:34:35.280 on these fronts in the show notes just so people know and then there's also number two snapchat
00:34:40.660 dysphoria comparing oneself to filtered faces he wrote around the late 2010 surgeons began
00:34:46.500 describing a phenomenon sometimes called snapchat dysphoria patients increasingly request procedures
00:34:51.780 designed to replicate filtered versions of their own faces produced by apps like snapchat or
00:34:57.220 instagram at least you know you're gonna like what you're going for that i know i know it's great
00:35:01.300 yeah plastic surgeons used to use special proprietary software this is what gets me
00:35:06.220 about like a nose job when somebody's like what would you want a nose job and i'm like what
00:35:09.320 i don't know what a pretty nose looks like like i don't know like how would i look corrected and
00:35:13.960 yeah plastic surgeons used to like make versions that would show you but now people are literally
00:35:19.240 seeing the after version of them in plastic surgery every time they turn on a filter every
00:35:25.060 time which is i just don't get it i don't understand why you want a different nose like
00:35:30.860 there's got to be something seriously wrong with your nose I don't know I have you ever turned on
00:35:35.320 like an attractive filter I turned one on by mistake and was like oh god this is what I could
00:35:41.960 this is what I could look like if I was pretty like it's it's actually quite I found it quite
00:35:47.320 disturbing because I I feel really uncomfortable about the idea of altering the way I look like I
00:35:53.720 even like dyeing my hair ever since I was a kid I felt it was some version of stolen valor
00:35:59.100 to like i i i don't i cannot pretend to be a blonde that would be criminal like i have this 1.00
00:36:06.720 feeling of like some inherited feeling of sumptuary laws you know like well you're not
00:36:12.060 allowed to look beautiful you're not like that's deeply wrong in some way well i mean that makes
00:36:19.620 sense if you're not beautiful don't lie but genuinely because then people will try to
00:36:25.140 reproduce with you thinking that you're something that you're not. Anyway, someone actually suggested
00:36:29.200 that as an episode to us at some point, like the ethics of cosmetic procedures and whether people
00:36:33.140 should have to disclose that, et cetera, or like having people do background checks on partners
00:36:37.700 to see if they ever did, that kind of thing. I think they also suggested- I am very against
00:36:43.080 cosmetic procedures, by the way. I see them as largely pointless unless- No, we've talked about
00:36:48.980 ones that you feel like you'd want to get someday if a certain issue arises that you think is
00:36:53.240 uniquely and both of us i had braces you've had you know dental stuff done we both had you know
00:37:00.020 as kids stuff okay okay i take that back yeah i'm okay with this so like yeah for sure if our kids
00:37:05.720 have their teeth growing crooked we're gonna help them get yeah you know i think your mom told you
00:37:13.280 as a kid like oh if you see a kid with crooked teeth their parents don't love them that means
00:37:19.040 she did she didn't tell me that she goes that's the easiest way to tell if a parent's love their
00:37:22.620 children. It's so mean because that's not true. It's kind of true though. No, because the thing
00:37:28.300 is in the United States for the like half of our audience, it doesn't live there.
00:37:33.840 Tooth care, dental coverage is entirely independent in the United States from health
00:37:39.000 insurance coverage. So you can have a parent who has health insurance through their employer
00:37:43.780 and they don't have dental coverage. And also most dental coverage is really, really bad.
00:37:50.000 at best it will cover two cleanings a year for example all the intense gum surgery i had to do
00:37:56.600 it covered like a couple hundred dollars of that and like the rest i'm paying for out of my
00:38:02.420 like personal fund savings for like buying myself treats it was like two thousand eight hundred
00:38:08.300 dollars and i'd saved up years for that to like go on and you know like do something nice for
00:38:12.720 myself and like that's gone to keep my teeth from falling out because that's dental coverage here
00:38:17.600 so no things like orthodonture for kids and stuff that is paid for out of pocket like it was a big
00:38:22.880 deal for my parents to get braces from me as a kid so then no that's not true it's not a sign
00:38:26.720 of being loved it's a sign of having money defending people from my mom's horrible classism 0.99
00:38:33.400 listen I love her classism but also I'm going to point it out as as a classism anyway yes so
00:38:39.900 basically you should at some point look I just think filters are really funny like there's some
00:38:47.320 filters that don't make you look more attractive they just like change your gender so you can see 0.99
00:38:50.860 what you look like if you're old or obese or male and there's this one amazing clip of like a mom
00:38:57.880 and a daughter and it begins with them as males like with the gender clip on and it's like no
00:39:04.080 sorry it begins with both of them no sorry it begins with the daughter just having it on her
00:39:09.340 face she's just holding the phone mostly aimed at her so his mom's her mom's on the side but her
00:39:13.240 mom hasn't been subject to the filter because it's only half her face the ai doesn't recognize her as
00:39:16.960 a human and like the daughter is just like hot dude and then she like scrolls the phone over a 1.00
00:39:24.120 little bit so like her mom's full face is in it and her mom is like all excited to be turned into 0.97
00:39:28.560 a hot dude like it turns her into this dumpy ugly man because she was already ugly to start 1.00
00:39:33.900 it's just so metal i love it so much and she judged the daughter is being the daughter was 0.97
00:39:41.140 hot the daughter was hot to start because at the end i think the daughter turns off the filter and 1.00
00:39:44.960 just see that like she was attractive as a woman so it turned her into an attractive man 1.00
00:39:48.800 and it just like it kept the the attractiveness equivalent like the ai is really good
00:39:53.800 oh my god christina you are one hot looking man oh my god are you freaking kidding me right now 0.92
00:40:01.620 that's awesome what get that are you freaking kidding me right now get that off that's disgusting 0.94
00:40:09.460 so anyway you might want to play with filters someday but filters really mess with people
00:40:13.020 and they can really hurt you like that that older woman the mother in that particular scenario was 0.80
00:40:18.800 probably very used to the way she looked as a woman and she'd like built some kind of reality 1.00
00:40:24.140 bending field about oh I'm really pretty anyway and then she saw herself as a man in a whole new
00:40:30.980 light and realized just how ugly she was all over again like filters really do affect negatively the 1.00
00:40:38.040 way you look at yourself. So it should come as no surprise that people who are subjecting
00:40:43.460 themselves to Snapchat filters are getting this dysphoria. And it looks maxers and probably trans 1.00
00:40:49.020 people and women alike are looking at these filters and feeling bad about themselves and
00:40:53.560 feeling like they need to do something. Here's the thing though. And here's how it gets to the
00:40:56.380 beautiful ones. This is a trap. Like you're getting obsessive about it, but to your point,
00:41:02.160 Malcolm, it doesn't matter. If you're ugly, you're ugly. Like that's how you look. It's the world. 1.00
00:41:06.520 i'm sorry like it sucks but like that's not what matters in the larger scheme of things
00:41:10.700 find your objective function and figure out what you actually care about if you don't know the
00:41:15.320 other the only other fun fact i will give you about filters and this might have changed but i
00:41:20.780 don't think it has changed that much is there is one person in the world who can turn on like a
00:41:27.100 snapchat or instagram filter and their face doesn't change do you know who that is i'm gonna say
00:41:32.460 no who kim kardashian really she's basically like the the touchstone of the filters has she 0.99
00:41:42.820 actually done this to to show people because i don't think she's a very attractive person
00:41:46.320 i think it's no yeah but that the filters make you look more like in that direction she she is 0.83
00:41:51.800 the filter which is just fascinating so yeah anyway interesting i i find her very unattractive 1.00
00:41:56.980 so i guess yeah maybe i don't know i would now i now i really want to see what you look like
00:42:01.360 i have to figure out i have instagram on my phone i have to figure out i'm so excited for this okay
00:42:07.940 anyway so then let's go to number three the the way that people fall into this trap without
00:42:12.640 realizing it the pandemic introducing zoom dysmorphia according to to bruto covid produced
00:42:19.500 another technological feedback loop dermatologists and plastic surgeons began describing zoom
00:42:25.060 dysphoria or sorry dysmorphia where constant exposure to one's own face on video calls
00:42:30.880 increased dissatisfaction with appearance and led to more cosmetic consultations.
00:42:35.220 Millions of people suddenly spend hours each day looking at their own faces
00:42:38.740 through front-facing cameras under unflattering lighting conditions.
00:42:42.960 Then he has two more academic sources on this.
00:42:45.980 Like it's, you know, it has been measured and attested by academics.
00:42:49.960 Number four, cosmetic modification among men is rising.
00:42:53.600 At the same time, male participation in cosmetic procedures has been rising steadily.
00:42:57.920 data from plastic surgery associations show growth in procedures such as hair restoration
00:43:02.420 botox style injections skin resurfacing treatments and body contouring among men
00:43:06.760 what is notable is not just the increase itself but the shift in framing instead of being
00:43:11.800 stigmatized as vanity these interventions are framed as optimization and self-improvement
00:43:16.680 what he didn't mention here and we talked about this in another episode and we even looked at
00:43:20.500 the google trends of it is like lengthening surgery which can cost upwards of two hundred
00:43:24.800 thousand dollars and be incredibly his profile says he's 6'1 so i can wear lifts
00:43:35.700 even with lifts you're not that tall
00:43:39.560 jerome never questioned my commitment again that's basically what you're doing though like
00:43:47.220 it's it's it is it is incredibly punishing and more men than ever are doing it which is
00:43:53.680 it goes to show, again, beautiful ones. This is not going to make you have a lasting impact on
00:43:59.760 the unbroken chain of human existence, but whatever. Number five, muscle dysmorphia and
00:44:05.500 the pursuit of extreme physiques. On the body side of the phenomenon, there is the related
00:44:09.920 condition known as muscle dysmorphia, sometimes called bigorexia. Researchers have found that
00:44:15.860 exposure to idealized muscular bodies and media correlates with body dissatisfaction
00:44:20.480 among men and increased risk of muscle dysmorphia symptoms. This dynamic is often
00:44:25.360 associated with anabolic steroid use and extreme training regimes or regimens. What Bruno didn't
00:44:31.020 point out is that in some areas, in fact, I think this is actually happening a lot in Brazil.
00:44:37.340 Men are injecting, in some cases, saline, in some cases, other materials.
00:44:42.320 Oh God, I find this so gross. Fake muscles. No, it's disgusting. Don't even, the pictures are so
00:44:48.940 horrifying don't look it up nightmare fuel nightmare fuel like worse than trans people 1.00
00:44:55.580 in fact though actually this is something i left out about stuff that clavicular does 0.64
00:44:59.860 but he is very interested in having the right like sort of shoulder proportions kind of like
00:45:05.860 you know i'm using this gambeson to look a little tougher with my little i think it looks good no
00:45:11.140 you look like what i like about these these sort of medieval outfits is they look so spacey like
00:45:16.980 you genuinely look like you could be no but strong prominent shoulders are masculine and
00:45:21.780 are attractive you know what clavicularis has done with his shoulders to make them look more
00:45:26.640 pad them with oh breast stuff cutlets yeah cutlets yeah well interesting yeah should i do that put
00:45:37.320 chicken cutlets on your on your shoulders i don't have falsies because we where do you buy them cbs
00:45:42.960 i've never owned any you never owned any i guess yeah i guess you didn't want to portray yourself
00:45:48.120 stolen valor malcolm i'm like very morally against this i've never even like i i didn't even
00:45:53.820 i i remember my my cousin got a training bra a training bra like you don't need a when you need
00:46:01.220 when you put it on a training bra is like a fake bra right it's like it's just like a little you
00:46:07.120 know it's like a little bra for girls who have absolutely nothing in there but you know she got 1.00
00:46:12.600 it anyway because i don't know maybe it made her feel girly or her parents are trying to prepare
00:46:17.020 her for the horror that is female puberty but i was like well i would never get a bra i mean even 0.72
00:46:24.020 even when you met me you had to convince me to actually get measured for my bra because i was
00:46:29.440 like well i can only possibly be an a cup because for sure i don't have anything and you were wrong
00:46:38.320 yeah but like yeah i'm for most of my life actually i only wore sports bras i basically
00:46:44.140 bound my chest but yeah so i i definitely couldn't have cutlets but yeah so like he
00:46:48.780 even clavicular is aware of like this but instead of thank god instead of injecting silicone into
00:46:55.380 his shoulders he or saline has just just put cutlets there but i actually think that's a
00:47:01.580 somewhat ingenious solution again i have a lot of respect for him but i don't respect the end
00:47:07.400 game of it all yeah no no meth no steroids that are going to sterilize you you know you got to
00:47:11.940 get out there you got to make maybe that's the point of it all right yeah but the point that
00:47:15.420 bruno was making was that like men are falling into this trap without knowing it because of this
00:47:20.460 this confluence of camera technology the way it's distorting distorting our self-perception the way
00:47:26.240 that filters are normalizing altered faces the way that that algorithmic feeds are amplifying
00:47:31.800 extreme physiques and sort of normalizing stuff that really isn't normal and really isn't healthy
00:47:37.060 And then this decline in even stigma against male cosmetic procedures that are really insane.
00:47:44.820 And what I want to point out is that exactly the same things are happening with things like status, with things like altruism, like in the rationalist communities.
00:47:54.100 like you know scott alexander it will offhandedly for example in a post about this or that thing
00:48:00.260 talk about so and so who very valiantly donated the kidney in a way like makes it clear that that
00:48:06.960 made that person good you know and like if scott alexander thinks someone's good then they are
00:48:11.220 good because he is like the smartest of all you know like god said so the smartest of all the
00:48:17.760 nerds no he's like he's nerd he's the ea rationalist nerd god you know like did this happen 0.79
00:48:23.520 as these people donated their organs because they read scott alexander
00:48:26.740 i wouldn't be surprised malcolm i genuinely wouldn't be surprised the article i would be
00:48:31.700 surprised it interestingly this actually surprised me that the telegraph article didn't talk about
00:48:38.120 effective altruism or rationalism because it's very obvious to me that that's what this is going
00:48:43.320 out of yeah like obviously i mean like ea came out of oxford this is a uk of origin
00:48:49.800 meme but the telegraph i mean what can you expect like they're not plugged in
00:48:54.600 they really don't know they can't find their feet but i i i want to stress that that like you'll get
00:49:02.620 into the algorithm and you'll start seeing these things and then you'll just tacitly if you don't
00:49:06.420 have a strong objective function you will just assume that well okay then that's what we're
00:49:12.600 optimizing for i guess just like i grew up my my thing was well like environment like save the
00:49:18.640 planet environmentalism i had no idea what that meant but my entire you're so right so much of
00:49:24.980 this is just you get stuck in an optimization loop yeah like well of course that's what the
00:49:29.380 right people do a good person is a good person right without any sort of philosophical or moral
00:49:35.620 framework behind it and people just spin out on that right but you're spoony and you're spinning 0.97
00:49:42.160 out it's not me a good person it's like have sex with as many people as possible or you know 0.98
00:49:47.400 masculine or be super masculine or for us right now have as many kids as possible right you know
00:49:52.300 like yeah but hey i i i'm pretty confident in that one i've seen our kids they're pretty neat
00:49:57.880 we have a very clear objective function and having kids is a very clear part of that and also we
00:50:02.480 really really love them i think this yeah the difference i love a couple you don't love them
00:50:08.960 here's the difference between the the beautiful ones trap and a genuine objective function because
00:50:17.540 they can look very similar right like both are very goal oriented achievement oriented things
00:50:22.320 and i think it's very easy to assume that one is the other right like these people donating their
00:50:27.780 kidneys you just like well of course they must really know what they're doing you know be very
00:50:33.780 mission driven if they're donating their kidneys right these are people who live their values
00:50:38.440 I think that the key difference is you're never going to get enough to feel satisfied or content in one bucket, whereas in the other you are.
00:50:51.040 Like, I think you and I, as much as we're often stressed and really worried about being able to do right by our objective functions, are heartbreakingly content.
00:51:01.000 to the extent that like our greatest fear is that like we're just gonna like suddenly drop down and 0.81
00:51:06.700 die because this is just so too wonderful or that it's not oh yeah no our our lives are stupidly
00:51:12.960 good i am i am shocked by the i mean i was just thinking today but but i always just reflect on 0.88
00:51:19.340 it's the life that you built for me right like you've given me this amazing existence right
00:51:23.600 you've given me this amazing i didn't know this was even an option this this wasn't one of my
00:51:28.160 multiple choice options on my on my board again i was going to be the beautiful one they were
00:51:33.820 treated and and chose to not to not have offspring i was that mouse so that wasn't you know i was the
00:51:40.540 what did he call the hermit mice that was me so i didn't know this was an option in the mouse utopia
00:51:45.600 this is really cool well no but we're creating a new option right like that's what the peronadal
00:51:49.740 they're like a community coming out there with like we're getting out come you want you want to
00:51:55.300 be part of the like high-tech sciency like agentic faction that thinks for themselves come join us
00:52:01.920 and we'll help defend each other right yeah we're the mice that calhoun notices in a corner building
00:52:06.760 some kind of structure to get out of the cage we're getting off planet guys
00:52:11.760 wait why are these mice building a rocket like something is going terribly wrong yes so that
00:52:21.500 that's us. But yeah, I think the problem, the problem with the beautiful ones trap is you,
00:52:26.740 it will never be enough. You will never have enough status. You will never be beautiful
00:52:30.940 enough. You will never be masculine enough. You will never be altruistic enough. You will never
00:52:34.980 have, have, have done anything. Whereas the weird thing is objective functions.
00:52:41.140 We don't call them life goals. We call them objective functions because they are things
00:52:45.480 that you are only able to try to maximize. There is no, in the end, achieving a goal.
00:52:51.260 There is no point at which you're like, check, I'm done.
00:52:54.160 I can die now.
00:52:55.160 You know, like, it's just like up until, you know, you realize that you can no longer really
00:52:59.940 pursue your objective function, you're going to push forever.
00:53:02.700 You're just trying to maximize whatever it is.
00:53:05.880 And so you'd think, well, oh, then you're also never going to be satisfied.
00:53:09.200 But weirdly, the emergent property of knowing that your life is now productively dedicated
00:53:17.200 to the pursuit of this objective function, you get this deep sense of contentment and
00:53:26.240 no more FOMO, no more cognitive dissonance. Like I, I remember the way I used to feel in moments
00:53:35.260 you, when I was pursuing a beautiful one's life, where I would just feel this empty existential
00:53:45.200 dread like this mixture of cold depression and of cognitive dissonance like not not being sure
00:53:55.580 if I was missing out on things they're like oh I should probably be doing this I'm not I'm just
00:54:00.560 not sure what if I'm doing this wrong what if I and and I don't ever feel that now like sometimes
00:54:06.300 I'm wondering tactically like well would it be better for me to spend my time on this or that
00:54:10.620 to like maximize our desired results but i'm never questioning i'm never like feeling this
00:54:17.020 deep unsettled worry of like am i missing out on this and i instead feel incredibly happy
00:54:23.520 incredibly tired but in that like i just spent the day at disneyland kind of way except that
00:54:28.380 that doesn't work anymore that doesn't really make me happy from disneyland happy anymore
00:54:32.600 quite stressful these days i guess as if i were a child who spent the day playing at a creek
00:54:37.980 okay that kind of feeling which our kids do every day that deep innocent contentment octavian's very
00:54:44.320 unhappy they got into the 20s again and that there's no creek play anymore right now he's
00:54:48.580 really devastated yeah i feel really bad because i get it i get it we'll get them out there soon
00:54:55.080 enough the spring is coming not yet though gotta plant more trees the daffodils are coming up
00:55:01.640 So anyway, if you want a free copy of the Pragmentist Guide to Life, DM us, we'll give
00:55:09.820 one to you.
00:55:10.520 Typically we only give free copies away readily to our paid subscribers on Patreon and Substack.
00:55:15.160 They get it for free.
00:55:16.400 But you know, if you really care about this and you really want to not be a beautiful
00:55:20.180 one and actually have meaning in life.
00:55:21.660 And I care enough about people to offer this.
00:55:26.000 If you want it, audiobook or ebook, we can send it to you.
00:55:28.080 And I think the key thing is that you should know deeply what you want to maximize in this world and not just be maximizing a thing because it's the algorithmic loop into which you've fallen. Be that the environmentalism or, you know, proselytizing your religion. I don't know. But just be really careful because it's a fine line, but it's a very deep and dangerous trap. Anything you want to add as a finishing point?
00:55:55.780 nope i love you check out the book it like genuinely especially if you're a young person
00:56:01.200 i think it i would have helped me a lot had i realized earlier that i should not be optimizing
00:56:06.920 my life around something as silly as how many people i was sleeping with but you know when
00:56:11.340 you're when you're young you don't have often a lot of things that can like give you the a broader
00:56:15.380 perspective yeah you're just working off societal defaults and both of our things that we were
00:56:19.660 optimizing for in our beautiful ones stage before we woke up essentially was like very classic like
00:56:26.180 you get a lot of sex me environmentalism save the planet we're gone yeah anyway love you the
00:56:37.300 yeah we are the male and female we are not like advanced or something right no no we 100% like
00:56:43.680 we we were not above this and I think there are still moments where I can feel the pull of that
00:56:48.700 magnet where i like if if again and i and in other members like paid paid subscribers only
00:56:55.380 podcast we were recently talking about this like i really hate feeds i tend to fall more into this
00:57:01.140 the i feel the the quicksand when i am scrolling on feeds of like oh like i'm not pretty enough i'm
00:57:09.700 not altruistic enough i'm not a good parent enough like you know i'm not performatively
00:57:14.400 good parent enough etc like why do i not have this like elaborate toothbrush set up for the children
00:57:21.620 you are a spectacular mother by the way for people who do not know this
00:57:26.440 it's like every morning i go downstairs she's cooking individualized meals for all of the kids
00:57:32.920 and she says i offered to handle all this for her in the morning because i used to handle the
00:57:37.600 mornings but no she insists because she's like it's when i'm doing laundry or cleaning up after
00:57:41.440 dinner or something and so she does like individualized all the kids are running around
00:57:46.100 playing with their own thing attacking each other and she'll have on like classic music or like like 0.94
00:57:51.180 really fun old movie music and stuff and it's just like scene okay it's a scene it's a scene
00:57:58.040 versus like a rager scene after we go to bed at night
00:58:03.120 it's like they have a rager downstairs genuinely like stuff's breaking people are like
00:58:10.900 vomiting in corners jumping off
00:58:13.200 oh my god
00:58:14.960 oh dinner tonight
00:58:16.820 tie with extra red curry paste and then a
00:58:19.200 grilled cheese sandwich no not
00:58:21.100 both i'm either having one or the other
00:58:22.700 if you think i need to have the chicken
00:58:25.060 curry tonight then
00:58:26.140 tomorrow night i think okay
00:58:28.660 tomorrow
00:58:29.940 girl cheese you make
00:58:33.160 great girl cheeses
00:58:34.600 so cheese
00:58:35.960 white bread
00:58:38.900 don't you try to get something healthy on me okay i'm gonna be i know just for for reference everyone
00:58:45.680 like this morning our kids had you know peanut butter and honey sandwiches with homemade sourdough
00:58:51.480 like sliced bread whatever what is the word loaf bread anyway sandwich bread and but malcolm god
00:59:02.080 forbid that he have homemade fresh because literally there's a loaf that just finished
00:59:07.640 downstairs no no no no for him we're getting out the wonder bread equivalent highly processed full
00:59:15.520 of all the but cheaper than wonder bread yeah cheaper than wonder blood yeah well yeah i always
00:59:22.340 get the store version come on again you know if the if the riboflavin isn't in it why are you
00:59:27.780 gonna eat it and of course you chose not just american cheese which is a substance inspired
00:59:36.600 by the concept of cheese but the craft brand individually wrapped in plastic american cheese
00:59:44.560 slices because you know the ones that i get the land of lakes one that we get at bj's are just
00:59:49.120 stacked and you just pull off the slices no but you got them individually wrapped in plastic
00:59:53.940 just to maximize those microplastics you really want to shove them in
00:59:58.800 get that microplastic i'll just i'll just keep the plastic on and melt it between the breads
01:00:05.600 macro plastic yeah but i don't think you can have american cheese without it being individually
01:00:12.180 wrapped right because you can you can if you get the land of lakes ones that we can buy at bj's
01:00:20.260 they are just stacked sometimes they're a little hard to pull off but no you chose the
01:00:25.620 craft individually wrapped in plastic ones I mean when I when I deign to buy what you ask
01:00:35.880 and get that cheese I always buy at least the minimally microplastic one but no
01:00:40.840 god forbid you're like why would I buy that one when I could buy craft craft is how you know it's
01:00:48.260 good it's it's the one brand okay you're such a 90s kid you're like i want a capri sun in a
01:00:57.180 metallic pouch i want the gogurt plastic sleeve i want the american cheese with i mean i really
01:01:07.860 you would prefer to have i can't believe it's not butter spread instead of you know real butter
01:01:14.560 right did you did you did your family do margarine back when that was the thing i believe i remember
01:01:21.020 yeah i can't believe it's not butter or something because when we were kids it was believed that
01:01:25.620 butter would kill you you've got to remember my family was a little different because my mom
01:01:30.080 didn't cook so i usually ate like pop tarts and stuff like that i i very rarely ate cooked
01:01:36.520 pop tarts yeah right this is what happens if you build an entire body off of like
01:01:41.720 pop tarts and like honey nut cheerios and other oh dude same no man i i did not touch
01:01:48.760 fruits or vegetables until i was like 16 15 or 16 years old yeah our kids are getting a a much
01:01:56.400 better nutritional environment than we know i sneak them bad food because simone gets mad at 1.00
01:02:01.720 me over that she got she doesn't like to have fruit roll-ups and stuff and i'm like no no no
01:02:06.780 know that's childhood yeah you're always slipping them like highly processed dross it's horrible 0.98
01:02:13.220 i saw you bought more gummies you monster you eat most of them though so shut up i don't eat most of 0.98
01:02:21.980 them gummies are delicious adults need an excuse to have gummies in the house let me tell you what 0.99
01:02:27.560 you guys if you haven't had gummies since you were a kid gummies are great i'm not talking about gummy
01:02:34.340 bears i'm talking about like mott gummies yeah like the the kind that parents are sold because
01:02:44.020 it contains real fruit juice but guess what one of the the smartest and coolest listeners to this
01:02:49.380 podcast who i shall not name for her privacy she makes gummies for her kids at home using fruit
01:02:56.340 juice i'm being shamed by other moms for not being for not being tried enough yes i will never he
01:03:02.820 She has more kids, but she, she has, she, I think she mills her own grain now. 1.00
01:03:09.700 Not only does she make better cakes than I do, but although it broke recently,
01:03:13.660 she has the airbrush.
01:03:14.920 She had an airbrush for her cakes.
01:03:16.760 She's well, I'm glad that you have aspirational women to, you know, try to. 1.00
01:03:21.760 I will never be enough.
01:03:22.540 Do more stuff for the family.
01:03:24.040 No, she, she inspires me.
01:03:27.080 There are a couple of moms who I'm just like, I will never, I, like, I told you
01:03:31.220 about one mom who sent their holidays that they celebrate we we have to all have a whole conversation
01:03:36.300 offline about these i'm just like yeah the people who listen to this podcast are next level this is
01:03:41.220 not one of those this podcast has cool listeners i'll tell you that yeah um well i oh we we we
01:03:48.460 definitely need to as an addition for like one of the weekend episodes love you simone i love you
01:03:54.640 too malcolm thank you for being gorgeous so i heard banging why did i hear banging
01:03:59.980 Stop! This is Indy's bed. Indy is supposed to sleep here. Why are you jumping? 0.98
01:04:17.660 Why?
01:04:24.220 You're running to attack me. Do not attack you.
01:04:29.980 I'm supposed to be a wanky nanny. 1.00
01:04:33.980 No! 0.68
01:04:35.980 Do not attack me.
01:04:37.980 Blind the viewers.
01:04:39.980 Why do you want to blind the viewers?
01:04:41.980 Blind the viewers. 0.91
01:04:43.980 I'm just blind the wanky nanny. 1.00
01:04:49.980 You won't get out of bed. 0.96
01:04:51.980 Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! I'll escape! 0.90