Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
EXIT Podcast Episode 20: The Ivy League (feat. Max Powers)
421 Plays3 years ago
Max is an EXIT member and a dabbler in crypto, real estate, and entrepreneurship - but on this episode, I was particularly interested in his experience at an Ivy League school, and his take on the children of our decadent globalist elite. We discuss:
- Actual communists versus corporate diversity neoliberals
- The exodus of competence from elite institutions
- Interdimensional psychic pedophile vampires
- The possibility of a rightward preference cascade
Recommended
Transcript
Max Powers: A Journey in Hiding Among Elites
00:00:17
Speaker
Hey everybody, welcome to the Exit Podcast, joined here by Max Powers.
00:00:21
Speaker
Max is a bit of a jack of all trades.
00:00:22
Speaker
He spent some time in the corporate world.
00:00:24
Speaker
He's dabbled in entrepreneurship.
00:00:26
Speaker
He does some crypto mining.
00:00:27
Speaker
He owns a little rental property.
00:00:29
Speaker
But the main thing I want to talk about tonight is his experiences hiding his power level among our decadent globalist aristocracy.
00:00:38
Speaker
Welcome to the show, Max Powers.
00:00:40
Speaker
Oh man, great to be here.
00:00:41
Speaker
What an intro.
00:00:42
Speaker
I just hope that I can live up to that hype.
Dreams of Balkan Freedom
00:00:46
Speaker
So, uh, Max did some time in the Ivies and, um, had a pretty interesting experience there, but for starters, I want to talk about your dream, your vision of the future, where you want to be.
00:01:01
Speaker
Um, because you have a dream that's pretty interesting.
00:01:03
Speaker
Tell us a little bit about where you'd like to end up and why you think that's necessary.
00:01:09
Speaker
Well, really, really good question.
Citizenship and Family Plans in a New Land
00:01:11
Speaker
So, um,
00:01:12
Speaker
You know, before I even found the exit group or anything, I, through some friends, kind of just, you know, I'll say started to realize where things were going, but started to realize the opportunities because of where things were going.
00:01:25
Speaker
And I basically had a dream to either be able to live
00:01:28
Speaker
they're exclusively part-time full-time whatever i want to do to be honest with you uh kind of in i guess one of the one of the bulking countries i have a like heritage claim which will give me kind of like full citizenship so that's pretty cool and obviously uh you know as a u.s citizen already you can you can have whatever dual citizenship you want which doesn't matter but uh just to be able to kind of come and go and also the country is obviously a little more i'll say
00:01:53
Speaker
based, I guess to use a way super simple term than kind of we're dealing with now.
00:01:57
Speaker
So just have the option to go to a place that's not going to like, I don't want to say kick me out of a job, but yeah, kick me out of a job or force a shot in my arm or try to make my kids cut off their genitals or things like that.
00:02:08
Speaker
All those types of things.
00:02:10
Speaker
You know, that's something that really excites me.
00:02:12
Speaker
So to be able to have a
00:02:14
Speaker
place in the mountains kind of over there.
00:02:16
Speaker
Just, I mean, who knows, maybe a place in the city too.
00:02:18
Speaker
I don't know.
00:02:18
Speaker
That'd be awesome.
00:02:19
Speaker
But to just have options to be able to move myself and, you know, any family that I have, especially a family that I'm starting,
00:02:26
Speaker
to be able to do that and to kind of move freely.
00:02:28
Speaker
That's definitely the dream.
00:02:29
Speaker
Part of that is because, you know, I see where things are going and I certainly don't think things are getting better in the U S I think, Oh man, I mean, we get, this could be an entire podcast about how things are getting worse, but pick
Freedoms: U.S. vs. China
00:02:41
Speaker
an aspect.
00:02:41
Speaker
You can pick any single aspect you want and things aren't getting better.
00:02:44
Speaker
And so that's,
00:02:45
Speaker
That's kind of my dream for that.
00:02:47
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, and it's definitely true that as I think other societies are slowly opening up, you can definitely say things, for example, in China that you couldn't 20 years ago.
00:02:57
Speaker
And here you can say less and less.
00:03:00
Speaker
And we're sort of meeting in the middle.
00:03:02
Speaker
We have exit members that are in China.
00:03:05
Speaker
Oh, really?
00:03:06
Speaker
Because of the things that they want to say.
00:03:10
Speaker
those things are safer to say in China versus here.
00:03:13
Speaker
Interesting.
00:03:14
Speaker
Because as long as you're not, you know, criticizing the party over there, like they don't really care what your opinions are on most things.
00:03:21
Speaker
I want to say even when, when I was studying in school too, that I had a class on, on government, I think they touched on like the Chinese government.
00:03:29
Speaker
And I think it was, it was a study at Twitter, whatever it was.
00:03:31
Speaker
It was something about
00:03:32
Speaker
to where they even went so far as that you were more at risk of not even if you criticize the regime that was allowed to a certain level.
00:03:40
Speaker
It was that if you did it in a capacity that also then suggested or called for like collective action, basically like if you were just an atomized voice that was screaming in the void, they didn't really care because they understand that poses no threat.
00:03:51
Speaker
But the moment you want to try to collectivize or do something bigger, that's when they shut it down.
00:03:56
Speaker
And like, that's, it's always kind of stuck with me to be honest with you.
00:03:58
Speaker
And again, in some academic studies, how, you know,
00:04:00
Speaker
I don't know how valid it is, but at the same time, like it's, it's passing the smell test initially.
00:04:06
Speaker
That also seems like it's true.
00:04:07
Speaker
You know, like it makes sense.
00:04:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:09
Speaker
I mean, there's a billion of them.
00:04:11
Speaker
It's, it's hard for them to police all kinds of wrong thing, you know, except when they were in the throes of like violent sort of mob action to repress
Twitter's Leadership Change: First Amendment Concerns
00:04:23
Speaker
those things.
00:04:23
Speaker
But on like a, on like an ongoing, like,
00:04:27
Speaker
a bureaucracy to maintain ideological control.
00:04:30
Speaker
They really can't afford to be that picky.
00:04:36
Speaker
So speaking of ideological and institutional control, we just saw that Jack Dorsey stepped down in favor of Parag Agrawal, who says his role is not to be bound by the First Amendment.
00:04:51
Speaker
Yeah, I saw that.
00:04:52
Speaker
He's joining the Indian tech CEO mafia now.
00:04:57
Speaker
All the other ones, they're just ganging up together.
00:04:59
Speaker
Yeah, so suffice to say, he's a Stanford guy, so
Elite Education's Influence on Society
00:05:05
Speaker
to speak.
00:05:05
Speaker
And you and I have talked about how elite education drives cultural change.
00:05:10
Speaker
So can you tell me a bit about the things that you saw among your graduating class and where they landed and the impact that that made?
00:05:17
Speaker
Well, the way that I always think about it, and I guess the way that's best for me to tell the story is that it wasn't really until I went through school, got out of school.
00:05:27
Speaker
Because while you're there, I mean, you're up and elbows with some of the high, like, you know, it was, yeah, very, very famous people.
00:05:34
Speaker
Sons of senators, like literally one's like a son of like a senator.
00:05:37
Speaker
And this grandpa's like the governor of a state.
00:05:39
Speaker
It was just like, it was pretty crazy.
00:05:41
Speaker
I saw him writing his name on...
00:05:43
Speaker
like on the attendance sheet and literally in a class earlier that day we learned about something like his grandpa as a senator passed and then I was like wait is that your dad he's like no that's my grandpa my dad's the governor I was like oh sick cool but so like you got some you got some interesting people but uh so like you kind of knew while you're there and you just get the air of like who you're around and it's uh you know a lot of people get high and it makes you feel pretty cool you're like oh you have to you know
00:06:08
Speaker
Being around those people, you feel special and you get out and you realize you're not really special.
00:06:13
Speaker
But I mean, some of those people stay special though because they do that.
00:06:16
Speaker
But the thing that struck me the most was that as, oh man, as I got further on and I got further from being in school, kind of further removed, I started to see two things.
00:06:27
Speaker
Both initially where these people filtered out from and even...
00:06:30
Speaker
And I just went to undergrad.
00:06:32
Speaker
So like I just saw from the undergrad level, the real power centers come from like the graduate level.
00:06:36
Speaker
But to be honest with you, at least half, if not three quarters of those people go to some sort of either IV or like very high tier kind of graduate school.
00:06:44
Speaker
And so I saw initially where they filtered out to and where they're continuing to filter out to.
00:06:49
Speaker
And it kind of blows my mind because people don't understand, nor do they understand,
00:06:55
Speaker
And it's not like it's like a, how do I put this without sounding like arrogant?
00:06:58
Speaker
It's not like in a way of like, oh, we're so cool.
00:07:00
Speaker
We control everything.
00:07:01
Speaker
But like people don't understand nor appreciate how much these people filter out into the highest echelons, almost immediately in the highest echelons of every single area of our society.
00:07:12
Speaker
It's legal.
00:07:13
Speaker
It's legislative.
00:07:14
Speaker
It's executive.
00:07:15
Speaker
It's entertainment.
00:07:16
Speaker
It's banking.
00:07:17
Speaker
It's obviously banking.
00:07:18
Speaker
It's banking.
00:07:19
Speaker
It's everything you can possibly.
00:07:22
Speaker
It's even startups, like even startups that are, it's,
00:07:25
Speaker
Man, it still blows my mind the very nature where you got some people.
00:07:29
Speaker
I remember just looking at people that are in, like I said, Mitch McConnell's office.
00:07:33
Speaker
Or they're clerking for the Supreme Court.
00:07:35
Speaker
You do that over and over.
00:07:37
Speaker
Or it's like late night TV show talk hosts.
00:07:41
Speaker
You just go over and over.
00:07:42
Speaker
I could go on like this forever.
00:07:44
Speaker
But you get the point as far as that goes.
00:07:46
Speaker
But anyways, how that ties on what we're talking about is that
00:07:50
Speaker
at least 25% of these people are like really like true believers.
00:07:53
Speaker
And those are the people that usually filter into like the NGOs or like the legislative or kind of like the legal system, the parts where you can really pull those like ideological levers of power.
00:08:04
Speaker
I would say there's probably another 25 that they go along with it, but like it's, I've dug into this a lot and it's only partly because for the, if these people are ready to wake up, they would have to like reinvent their entire life.
00:08:16
Speaker
And like, they're not,
00:08:17
Speaker
These people are like racehorses.
00:08:21
Speaker
They're very good at the purpose that they do, and they're very intellectually gifted, but you don't ever feel like there's a lot of authenticity.
00:08:31
Speaker
And so these people, those are the, those, that's a huge chunk of them.
00:08:34
Speaker
So those people go on to get along.
00:08:35
Speaker
But anyways, these people filter out into all of these things and they set the
Elites Shaping Culture and Policy
00:08:40
Speaker
policy.
00:08:40
Speaker
I know like a lot of people like that it's America, it's bottom up.
00:08:43
Speaker
Like it's not though.
00:08:44
Speaker
It's not, I promise.
00:08:45
Speaker
Like it's not, it's not that way.
00:08:47
Speaker
And these people set it from the top down, whether it's like we said, the entertainment,
00:08:52
Speaker
or the legislative or the, especially financially, you know, I think talk about debanking people, you know, I know people at like black rock and blackstone, like all the, all JP Morgan, uh, Goldman Sachs.
00:09:02
Speaker
Like you just go on and on down the line.
00:09:03
Speaker
And it's, um,
00:09:05
Speaker
Yeah, it's pretty crazy.
00:09:06
Speaker
Well, especially the big ones are when they get into the Harvard Law.
00:09:09
Speaker
Those are all the people that become the governors or the senators.
00:09:12
Speaker
And they start smaller, so there's not too many that are there yet.
00:09:15
Speaker
But man, you give it like 10 years, you see how many of them there.
00:09:18
Speaker
And so it's pretty crazy.
00:09:20
Speaker
So they're clerking for the judges and essentially feeding them their rulings.
00:09:26
Speaker
They are working for the lobbying firms that write the laws that are then fed to the...
00:09:32
Speaker
legislators, you know, if they're involved in entertainment, they're making decisions about sort of what ideas are
Twitter: Humor and Critique Amidst Media Sidelining
00:09:40
Speaker
disseminated.
00:09:40
Speaker
There's
00:09:43
Speaker
there's almost no dimension of sort of mass media or institutional control that's not touched by these people.
00:09:51
Speaker
And that's why I wanted to talk to you because I'm interested in like what these people are like and who they really are.
00:09:57
Speaker
Because, you know, on Twitter, we have our view of what's like going on behind the scenes.
00:10:04
Speaker
And it's, you know, partly that's entertainment.
00:10:08
Speaker
We're just sort of schizo posting to pass the time and to make each other laugh.
Navigating Elite Culture and Conformity
00:10:13
Speaker
And partly it's sort of we are expressing what we really believe to be true, but we're expressing it in a way that's sort of daring people to take us seriously so we can call them a fag and tell them to go off.
00:10:28
Speaker
And there's definitely a cloak of irony on all this.
00:10:34
Speaker
But I got to imagine that being...
00:10:38
Speaker
so embedded in that culture and surrounded by those people, you had to have moments where you were like, surely they know, surely they can sense that I'm not one of them.
00:10:49
Speaker
And like, Oh man.
00:10:50
Speaker
Well, so yes and no.
00:10:52
Speaker
So when I got in there, I was still like, I don't know.
00:10:54
Speaker
I've always been like, kind of like more right wing on some things, like always growing up.
00:10:59
Speaker
I like, I don't know.
00:11:00
Speaker
I don't say like it's not big brain centrist, but like growing up, I've never in my entire life conceded on like like guns.
00:11:07
Speaker
I've always been comfortable with guns.
00:11:08
Speaker
Like it was never an issue.
00:11:10
Speaker
So I've never that was always kind of like a conservative foothold in my mind.
00:11:14
Speaker
But like I I grew up kind of liberal.
00:11:17
Speaker
And like so it wasn't until probably whenever the Republican primary was.
00:11:24
Speaker
I was not to put too much of a time on it here, but I was in school and this was when Donald Trump was going there.
Questioning Mainstream Narratives
00:11:31
Speaker
And I think it was down to like him and Ted Cruz.
00:11:35
Speaker
And I was sitting there and like, I didn't really know which way I was going to go.
00:11:37
Speaker
Because like I said, I was still kind of liberal, but I was like kind of like waking in the process of waking up.
00:11:41
Speaker
I'm sitting there and I'm like, well, I'm sure shit not going to vote for like Hillary Clinton.
00:11:44
Speaker
And so like I had been wearing a like a tank top that said like Donald pump, right?
00:11:50
Speaker
It was all those like stupid ones around campus.
00:11:52
Speaker
And I was getting these like these like stairs, dude, like death stairs, just stairs and cheers.
00:11:56
Speaker
And like, like, so I'm sitting there and like, I've always been a little bit of a troll at heart.
00:12:01
Speaker
And so like, dude, if I can get this from like a shirt, I wonder what would happen.
00:12:04
Speaker
I get like an actual like mega hat.
00:12:06
Speaker
So of course I got a mega hat.
00:12:08
Speaker
And, uh,
00:12:10
Speaker
So I go long story short, a couple of things.
00:12:14
Speaker
I was in this one, like one of those, like, it's kind of like pretty close at school there.
00:12:22
Speaker
And I was talking to a girl.
00:12:25
Speaker
And I had the hat on and I think she's in like Columbia or something like that.
00:12:29
Speaker
And we went to talk and they were talking about the hat.
00:12:31
Speaker
This poor thing's got like a little too contentious.
00:12:33
Speaker
And at one point I just stopped and I was like, this is when I was a little more like Sid Natty.
00:12:37
Speaker
And I was like, okay, if you're here, do you consider yourself like an American?
00:12:43
Speaker
She was like, no.
00:12:45
Speaker
I consider myself a Colombian.
00:12:46
Speaker
And like, like I didn't, I didn't mean this to come off like a dick.
00:12:48
Speaker
I was literally just like, well, then why don't you go back to Columbia?
00:12:52
Speaker
They didn't, they didn't like that very much, but it's an honest question.
00:12:56
Speaker
It's like, you don't want to be like, why, why are you here?
00:12:58
Speaker
Get out of here.
00:12:59
Speaker
But, uh, so that was one.
00:13:01
Speaker
And then there was another one where, uh, I literally, I didn't even say anything.
00:13:05
Speaker
I literally just made a girl cry by wearing that hat.
00:13:07
Speaker
Like, it was just, yeah, like, just literally, I mean, there's a bit more of a story, too, but I don't want to get too, too, you know, doxy there.
00:13:14
Speaker
But yeah, I made her go cry.
00:13:15
Speaker
Just didn't even say no words, just like wore the hat, looked away.
00:13:19
Speaker
All of a sudden, she's crying.
00:13:20
Speaker
And someone told me that's why she was crying.
00:13:22
Speaker
And I was like, that's, yeah.
00:13:24
Speaker
So I mean, I got to think that I got to think that in 2019 or 2020, you probably would have made the news.
00:13:30
Speaker
Like just just walking around Harvard with a Donald pump and a MAGA hat on like that.
00:13:37
Speaker
Um, that, that just speaks to how, how, how radically things have changed even over there.
00:13:44
Speaker
Um, so, so, I mean, suffice to say then, I mean, this was 2016 was a different time, but suffice to say, like you weren't, you weren't really hiding your power level over there.
00:13:54
Speaker
You were just sort of, you know, I mean, I was more like a, I was like a Steven Crowder, like kind of like that, that no, seriously, I was, I was on my way, but I like, I wasn't there yet.
00:14:03
Speaker
And I was like, ah, like, okay.
00:14:05
Speaker
and i'll tell you what really did it for me man was like uh there was it was it was honestly a lot of like the the fake nature of the the sexual assault stuff that they do and that like when they talk about how it's like one in five or one in four one in five girls and i always thought that weird because i'm sitting there and like hey when i found out that it was like wait the real rape rate of like when you have actual rapes of the countries and like the congo that it's the equivalent of like the war-torn congo and i'm like
00:14:31
Speaker
something doesn't seem right here.
00:14:32
Speaker
Like there's no way this college campus girls are getting away at the same rate as like a civil war torn country.
00:14:36
Speaker
Like it doesn't, it just didn't make sense.
00:14:38
Speaker
So that's kind of the first string that unraveled literally everything.
00:14:40
Speaker
That is the pinpoint starting point.
00:14:43
Speaker
And I mean, there's obviously some stories behind that too, but just like, that was definitely the starting point where I was like, Oh, okay.
00:14:49
Speaker
Like if this is fake, what else is fake?
00:14:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:14:51
Speaker
I spoke to a guy and this, this speaks to kind of what you were addressing earlier.
00:14:56
Speaker
I talked to a guy recently who's pretty well connected in the Bay Area, and he told me this story about how someone he knew who was in a management position had a lesbian employee that they needed to fire for performance reasons.
00:15:10
Speaker
And so they decided to like buy a booth at some LGBT women in tech conference and like make this big donation and this big show of support for LGBT issues explicitly so that they would have the top cover to fire this lady when it was time to make their move.
00:15:31
Speaker
So when you say the people, you know, it seemed like they were true believers
Activist Movements as Industries
00:15:36
Speaker
or just paying their dues.
00:15:38
Speaker
Was that like,
00:15:42
Speaker
do you think that they are still in that mode in the world of work?
00:15:47
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:15:49
Speaker
100%.
00:15:51
Speaker
So there is one of the biggest things that struck me towards the end was that the amount of, and this is something that doesn't get talked about that much, is that like, because it's not, I would say like officially like sanctioned or mandated, is that the amount of like opportunities for kids that are like mediocre, but you got a lot of kids that
00:16:08
Speaker
they feel entitled to like they're gay, they're gay and whatever.
00:16:10
Speaker
And they, they just get positions at like McKinsey and company or Bain or like all the top, the top firms that's just like reserved for like gay kids.
00:16:17
Speaker
So, um, are they true believers?
00:16:19
Speaker
So let me, let me tell you a quick story.
00:16:20
Speaker
That's, that's very good.
00:16:21
Speaker
As I sat, sat down one time, I was talking to this girl,
00:16:24
Speaker
about she was involved with whatever like there was like four like anti we'll call like anti-rape things right and like not to focus on this but this is just one thing that like this is again this is where the whole thing started so i was like oh cool well i mean just like just real quick i mean that's another sense in which the in which uh 2016 2017 was kind of a foreign country because now it's 100 percent race
00:16:48
Speaker
Like, Me Too is just totally off the radar now.
00:16:53
Speaker
And back then, that was the big thing.
00:16:55
Speaker
It was all about gender.
00:16:56
Speaker
Gender relations, yep.
00:16:58
Speaker
Continue.
00:16:58
Speaker
Yeah, so we were, there was like four of these organizations.
00:17:03
Speaker
They all had different stupid little names and all of the acronym, whatever, you know, the bullshit.
00:17:08
Speaker
And anyway, so I was sitting down to the one girl that was involved, either directly or just tangentially involved with them.
00:17:15
Speaker
and i remember asking her because like at some point i was like this is weird i asked her i was like is there any evidence to like to support that any of these groups have like curved any of like the the sexual assault campus and then she like and then the girl and this is where you talk about the true believers that like i came at her from every which way and just like just went through it like well if one worked do we need more and if more aren't working what are they doing wrong is more gonna like
00:17:40
Speaker
Just pretty simple stuff.
00:17:42
Speaker
They'd be like, all right, this should... And she basically just short-circuited and it goes into NPC mode where it's just like, well, I'd be happy to just go in at whatever.
00:17:50
Speaker
And it's like, okay, you're obviously not being honest about any of this.
00:17:54
Speaker
And so... Well, it's an industry.
00:17:57
Speaker
I mean... No, exactly.
00:17:59
Speaker
Exactly.
00:17:59
Speaker
It's
Sustaining Institutions Through Funding
00:18:00
Speaker
an industry.
00:18:00
Speaker
And these activist orgs, when they accomplish some objective, like, you know, there were...
00:18:10
Speaker
probably thousands of Ivy League types, lawyers and activists and academics whose full-time job was gay marriage for like 10 years, maybe longer.
00:18:25
Speaker
And when Obergefell happened and gay marriage was legalized across the country,
00:18:32
Speaker
those people aren't going to go learn to code.
00:18:34
Speaker
Like they're going to just find the next thing.
00:18:38
Speaker
And, and so like there, there's a, there's a momentum to this that is self-sustaining.
00:18:44
Speaker
It's not going to go away.
00:18:46
Speaker
Like, I mean, honestly, it reminds me a lot of like the, uh, what's happening with like the, I hate to use this term, but like,
00:18:52
Speaker
deep state as far as like what was like the global war on terror is now just getting the internal war on fake terror.
00:18:57
Speaker
Oh, sure.
00:18:57
Speaker
Those guys have budgets to spend.
00:18:59
Speaker
What are they going to do?
00:19:00
Speaker
Well, it's the same thing.
00:19:01
Speaker
Like they, I mean, I would, I, you know, I would say they're more honorable in some ways, but like, at least they had like, I would say real skills rather than just making noise to make stuff that happened.
00:19:11
Speaker
But, right?
00:19:12
Speaker
Like, what they do actually, like, could have a useful purpose rather than just, like, pounding the table
Impact of Diversity Quotas in Elite Spaces
00:19:19
Speaker
until you get what you want.
00:19:20
Speaker
Right.
00:19:20
Speaker
But, so anyways, there's, and again, it's hard to quantify, but I would say probably...
00:19:25
Speaker
at least 10 are like true diehard NPC.
00:19:29
Speaker
And to be honest, I think back of it, I think there's definitely like a huge correlation between the people that are the smartest and most successful and the people that supported this type of stuff.
00:19:39
Speaker
And it wasn't, it wasn't a positive correlation.
00:19:41
Speaker
I promise.
00:19:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:19:42
Speaker
But it was, it was usually the people that were in there on diversity quotas of some sort, whether it was like gay, lesbian, trans, whatever.
00:19:50
Speaker
Those are usually people.
00:19:51
Speaker
And this is,
00:19:51
Speaker
I can't remember who I remember reading about that.
00:19:53
Speaker
They said basically this would happen.
00:19:54
Speaker
If you let people in like that, they're going to notice they're not doing as good as the other people and they're going to question why.
00:20:00
Speaker
And when they don't want to acknowledge that just because they're not as smart or not as good, they're going to say, oh, it's racist.
00:20:05
Speaker
It's sexist.
00:20:05
Speaker
It's, I don't know, homophobic.
00:20:08
Speaker
What insert X, right?
00:20:10
Speaker
And yeah, so that's kind of right.
00:20:12
Speaker
So you've got probably 25 that's that.
00:20:14
Speaker
25 that's like on their side, but like...
00:20:18
Speaker
they're not, they're not driving it.
00:20:19
Speaker
Right.
00:20:19
Speaker
They're long for the ride, but they're not driving.
00:20:21
Speaker
They're not driving.
00:20:22
Speaker
And then you have, I don't know if it's 25.
00:20:24
Speaker
Cause I honestly, to be straight with you, I don't think it was that big, but maybe like another, let's say 10 to 20% is like, just doesn't care.
00:20:32
Speaker
They don't give a shit.
00:20:33
Speaker
Like they don't, they don't care what they just wanted.
00:20:35
Speaker
Fucking snort Coke and make money and do whatever.
00:20:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:38
Speaker
Which like nothing wrong with that, man.
00:20:40
Speaker
Go do you.
00:20:40
Speaker
But like,
00:20:42
Speaker
they're just in that spot.
00:20:44
Speaker
And then there's probably another 20 to 25.
00:20:46
Speaker
I don't know if it's 25.
00:20:48
Speaker
I would say at max probably 20 that's either leaning towards our side, on our side, or just at least friendly to our side.
00:20:54
Speaker
Oh, that's surprising.
00:20:55
Speaker
And that's like...
00:20:57
Speaker
it's bigger than you think because like I, I had a moment where I was at school and like, I felt very like alone basically.
00:21:03
Speaker
Right.
00:21:04
Speaker
And I try to figure out why, and I was trying to think back to like my friends and like why I like my friends.
00:21:09
Speaker
And I realized that was cause like, I liked them because they said things, they said what they thought and it was real and authentic and genuine.
00:21:16
Speaker
One of the things that, that bothered me and felt empty was that every conversation felt like this, just like bland, not
Challenging Ideological Stances in Academia
00:21:22
Speaker
like repeat.
00:21:22
Speaker
Cause they were all different.
00:21:23
Speaker
They're all smart conversations, but there just didn't,
00:21:26
Speaker
there didn't feel like there was anything else to it is the best way I can put it.
00:21:28
Speaker
It was just like these hollow conversations.
00:21:31
Speaker
And so I started to kind of like speaking out, not like, I don't know, how do I put this?
00:21:36
Speaker
I like directly, but I know the one that I was fighting back at the time that I would just like unironically just be like, okay, was when they started bringing up the trans thing.
00:21:44
Speaker
And I was just like, no, they're mentally ill people.
00:21:47
Speaker
I will not, I will not budge on this.
00:21:49
Speaker
And I was at the time I had taken some, some psych classes and this is, um,
00:21:54
Speaker
I remember looking into the definition of like what they, whatever they read, configure the definition of like, uh, what's the, what's the official word now for when you're like, oh, gender dysphoria or whatever.
00:22:04
Speaker
When they reconfigure the definition to like, not be as bad as it was, it still is a mental illness.
00:22:09
Speaker
You by definition cannot be trans without being mentally ill.
00:22:13
Speaker
And like, if you just drive home that point, they were at least honest enough where they wouldn't like it and they still wouldn't like you, but they would still just be like, well, yeah, but,
00:22:22
Speaker
insert everything that would follow, but they still couldn't run away from that point.
00:22:26
Speaker
And at that point, people just kind of stopped talking to you.
00:22:28
Speaker
So it was just like, whatever.
00:22:29
Speaker
But, uh, you know, you put your MAGA hat on or your down pump thing and just walk away.
00:22:32
Speaker
But, uh, like, yeah, I mean, so I, I went to a, I went to a relatively woke, uh, master's degree program and I never, I never felt any inclination to like pick fights.
Women's Career Paths vs. Personal Fulfillment
00:22:45
Speaker
Um,
00:22:46
Speaker
Um, you know, when people would say things, I just, I just didn't feel like engaging.
00:22:50
Speaker
And I, I, I sort of, I was already getting enough of that on Twitter that I, you know, it was like, I'm good.
00:22:56
Speaker
I'm topped off.
00:22:57
Speaker
Um, but the one thing that I would do is, is some of my classmates who were female, um, who would express if they expressed any, any like dissatisfaction with, um,
00:23:12
Speaker
the career trajectory that they were on or like aimlessness, which a ton of them had, they were like, you know, this is just sort of the next thing to do.
00:23:20
Speaker
And, you know, I'm not sure, like, you know, what really the point of all this is.
00:23:26
Speaker
I would be pretty direct with them.
00:23:28
Speaker
Like, I don't think that you should, like, I think that you should have a family.
00:23:33
Speaker
I think that would be more meaningful to you.
00:23:35
Speaker
I think that would be better for you and better for the world.
00:23:36
Speaker
Oh, bro, you are a misogynistic gig, bro.
00:23:39
Speaker
What are you doing?
00:23:41
Speaker
Now, here's why I did it.
00:23:42
Speaker
Here's why I did it.
00:23:43
Speaker
Because, like, if you're talking about gender orientation or race or sex or whatever it is, you know,
00:23:54
Speaker
the odds that that conversation is going to make anybody's life better is like zero.
00:23:59
Speaker
There's no, there's no, there's no version of the world.
00:24:02
Speaker
It's honestly, man, it's, it's negative because most of the time people hate you more than they would have hated you before.
00:24:09
Speaker
And like, I would argue you're worse off than they're worse off for that.
00:24:12
Speaker
Cause it's not, not one of those people like, Oh, hate hurts you.
00:24:14
Speaker
But just like everyone is more agitated after that.
00:24:17
Speaker
No one, no one feels better.
00:24:18
Speaker
Like in the big picture, those conversations need to happen.
00:24:21
Speaker
And that's why I do it on Twitter.
00:24:23
Speaker
But like interpersonally, my personal relationships, the gain from having that conversation versus the chaos that it unleashes doesn't make any sense.
00:24:34
Speaker
But on this one issue, it's like there's a non-zero chance.
00:24:42
Speaker
that somebody remembers that conversation, they make a different decision and it makes their life way better.
00:24:46
Speaker
And like, I, you know, these are, these are my friends.
00:24:49
Speaker
These are people that, and they're smart women and capable and they could totally do the job.
00:24:55
Speaker
It's just spreadsheets.
00:24:56
Speaker
I mean, these are like, you know, even these like quote unquote elite, you know, MBA jobs that they're supposed to be having are mostly a joke.
00:25:03
Speaker
And, and, and, you know, so it's not like, you know, you're not good enough.
00:25:08
Speaker
You can't do it.
00:25:09
Speaker
It's like,
00:25:11
Speaker
my attitude is always like, I, I need to do this for the family.
00:25:17
Speaker
Like that's my only goal here.
00:25:20
Speaker
And like, if your goal is like,
00:25:23
Speaker
I want to be able to vacation in the South of France and I want to live, laugh, live, laugh, love and do that.
00:25:29
Speaker
See, this is, this is what I was talking about, dude, is that when people for them to break out of this, they have to reimagine their entire
Socioeconomic Navigation in Elite Institutions
00:25:36
Speaker
lives.
00:25:36
Speaker
And none of them are comfortable doing that because the moment they've been brought up their parents and their parents' parents.
00:25:41
Speaker
And I mean, obviously it was different how many generations ago, but the milieu that they're in with their parents, their family, they all go to the same vacation spot.
00:25:47
Speaker
Expectations.
00:25:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:25:49
Speaker
It's the expectations and everything that goes along with it.
00:25:52
Speaker
These people would have to get new friends, probably new family to be honest with you.
00:25:56
Speaker
Like every, every, they would have to entirely destroy their life to build it back up again.
00:26:01
Speaker
And none of them want to do that because something I've always, something I have always maintained is that the kids are,
00:26:07
Speaker
it's always the kids that are like smart that come from like middle to like maybe upper middle class.
00:26:11
Speaker
So sometimes even like the lower of the upper class, like they're wealthy, but they're not like, they're not, you know, private jet wealthy.
00:26:16
Speaker
They're like drive a, you know, drive a Mercedes, maybe wealthy, right.
00:26:19
Speaker
Something like that.
00:26:20
Speaker
Or even less than that.
00:26:21
Speaker
Maybe just drive a, like a, you know, a nice suburban, whatever.
00:26:23
Speaker
Anyways, I've always maintained that what I saw was the kids that came from those types of backgrounds, sometimes even the lower two, but there just wasn't enough of them that mattered.
00:26:34
Speaker
Like they were the, they were the best off because they knew how to deal with like, ah,
00:26:37
Speaker
It sounds so gay, but adversity and all that bullshit.
00:26:40
Speaker
But seriously, no.
00:26:41
Speaker
Those Squisbee Mercedes kids.
00:26:43
Speaker
Yeah, no, not quite like that.
00:26:44
Speaker
But you know what?
00:26:47
Speaker
It's the kids that can't just call up their parents that can call up the, oh, dude, you know, there was, where we were at, if you wore, like, a tie from a certain, like, organization on campus, and you got in trouble in the county, like, I can't remember if it was the DA or the judge, like, if you wore that, he was also a member of that.
00:27:05
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:27:06
Speaker
They would, like, basically go lighter, easy, like, as easy as possible and get you out of pretty much anything you wanted.
00:27:11
Speaker
not like full on get you out, but everything they could do, it was known that like you're part of the same thing.
00:27:16
Speaker
So like, that's what I mean.
00:27:17
Speaker
It's like, you're not, you're not going to be part of that milieu.
00:27:19
Speaker
But anyways, the kids are like a little scrap.
00:27:21
Speaker
Well, cause you also have to keep in perspective the kids that maybe their parents drive a suburban Mercedes are not the kids that their parents are literal billionaires or a hundred millionaires.
00:27:30
Speaker
It's all a matter.
00:27:32
Speaker
That's what I mean.
00:27:33
Speaker
Anyway.
00:27:33
Speaker
So the kids that come from that,
00:27:35
Speaker
they've at least dealt with a thing or two not going right.
00:27:37
Speaker
They haven't got what they want job wise, et cetera, et cetera.
00:27:40
Speaker
They seem to deal the best.
00:27:41
Speaker
And I would, they don't want to go the highest because they're the connections, but those are the ones that I enjoyed the most because they crossed like the skills with the, the ability to overcome.
00:27:50
Speaker
And they were, they were mostly the genuine people because I don't know why, to be honest with you, but those were the, those are the awesome ones.
00:27:56
Speaker
Then you see some of the other ones though, that, oh man, kid was like,
00:28:01
Speaker
Let me say this.
00:28:01
Speaker
I saw one that was a, like a ninth generation Ivy league kid to like the same school and yeah, nine generations.
00:28:07
Speaker
I don't, I don't even know how many families are like that, but anyways,
00:28:11
Speaker
A lot of them will struggle because they never really had much real adversity.
00:28:15
Speaker
They struggle because there's nothing... How do you go higher than where they're at?
00:28:20
Speaker
Their parents are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, whatever it is.
00:28:23
Speaker
Where is there to go?
00:28:24
Speaker
What do you do?
00:28:26
Speaker
Professionally, anyway.
00:28:28
Speaker
If they had some imagination, they could probably...
00:28:32
Speaker
go to a whole different, climb a different ladder, but that's not really on the radar.
00:28:37
Speaker
So a lot of people, and this feeds the next one, a lot of people have been prophesying the death of the universities as an elite filter.
Universities as Filters for Elite Positions
00:28:45
Speaker
um and i mean well right like i i agree with you that that's that that's not going anywhere um but did you get the sense that most of the people there were legitimately smart enough and competent enough to do the work that they were going to end up doing or are they going to make a hash of these institutions good good question okay i can give you i'm saying i've been out enough that i've
00:29:13
Speaker
The only way I can answer that confidently, I feel like is if I were to fast forward 30 years of my life and see what has happened to the people who have gone, what has happened to the institutions they've filtered into, right?
00:29:24
Speaker
But as a proxy, let me say this.
00:29:27
Speaker
I knew of a girl who was trying to apply to, I'd say Harvard Law, and she had like a 3.9 GPA or something, and she had like
00:29:39
Speaker
like a one 68 or 69 on like the LSAT.
00:29:42
Speaker
So like real like top tier shit.
00:29:44
Speaker
Right.
00:29:45
Speaker
And, but she was a white girl and she like, as my understanding, either got like waitlisted or she like, Oh, she like, I think she got like waitlisted, but then she got accepted to some special program.
00:29:57
Speaker
And then she like got into Harvard law.
00:29:59
Speaker
And so like, it wasn't even like an immediate thing.
00:30:01
Speaker
Like we're talking like this top, just top, top, top tier.
00:30:04
Speaker
And like still could barely get in now.
00:30:08
Speaker
Contrast this.
00:30:09
Speaker
Before I say this, and not to be all, not to cuck on it, but the next guy I'm going to talk about, really nice guy.
00:30:14
Speaker
I really like him.
00:30:15
Speaker
He's from Africa, African.
00:30:18
Speaker
And now that he's graduated, he's gone back and he's doing really cool stuff, great stuff over there.
00:30:24
Speaker
I love that.
00:30:24
Speaker
He's going back, trying to help Africa.
00:30:26
Speaker
Fantastic.
00:30:26
Speaker
Not even in a crappy gay NGO way, in a literal, he's doing real stuff to help them.
00:30:31
Speaker
Cool.
00:30:32
Speaker
Anyways, yeah, so it's cool.
00:30:33
Speaker
But anyways, this guy had like a 3.6 GPA and like just mediocre like LSAT scores.
00:30:39
Speaker
Redacted.
00:30:41
Speaker
did a dual degree like at the, at the same time.
00:30:42
Speaker
And so it's just like, they're smart.
00:30:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:45
Speaker
But like, this is the way I've had this theory for a long time is that what you're going to see is that like, as more and more of these upper institutions, whether it's the graduate schools or Goldman Sachs or whatever, take, take any institution as they chop the
Redistribution of Talent and Power Structures
00:30:59
Speaker
talent down.
00:30:59
Speaker
Cause it's not, what's the best way to put this?
00:31:02
Speaker
It's not like they're trading a plus for like,
00:31:05
Speaker
an F. It's not that dramatic.
00:31:07
Speaker
They're trading A plus for like a B or a B plus or even just a B minus sometimes.
00:31:14
Speaker
And that's not the worst, but as that goes on, you're going to get the whole institute because right now it's just spattered with it.
00:31:21
Speaker
So it doesn't really bring down the whole, like the, let me say the whole quality of it.
00:31:26
Speaker
But as it goes on, yeah, you're going to bring down the whole quality of it.
00:31:30
Speaker
And so I would say that I think eventually, yeah, the bell will toll, but I don't think we're there yet.
00:31:36
Speaker
But on that same thing, what I was saying is that I think this is the reason, and it kind of goes with like the whole milieu of how things are going with everything, moving towards decentralization.
00:31:45
Speaker
is that as the top talent gets kicked out or kicked down from these things, you're basically taking a certain amount of talent that always used to go towards the top and it's going towards more like startup isn't the right word, but like upstart institutions, whether it's like an investment bank or it's like a, I don't know, a music company or it's engineering or,
00:32:03
Speaker
And you're seeing a lot of this.
00:32:05
Speaker
And I don't think this is entirely invalid in so many things.
00:32:07
Speaker
And that because they're not going there, they don't get that opportunity.
00:32:10
Speaker
They go elsewhere.
00:32:10
Speaker
They kind of find more unorthodox ways to do this.
00:32:13
Speaker
So I think it's kind of shaking things up because you're getting ways.
00:32:16
Speaker
Or this was like another one, man.
00:32:17
Speaker
It was a girl that I knew that was like, she was like Hispanic, but she was white passing Hispanic.
00:32:21
Speaker
So it's just like, that's, by the way, I know it's not like a, like a really a closed secret, but most of the people that benefit from those diversity, like one girl I knew was like, you could throw her in any Midwest, any like,
00:32:32
Speaker
Any red state in the whitest area, no one bad not.
00:32:34
Speaker
No one be like, oh, this is a person of color or whatever.
00:32:37
Speaker
But because she, her grandma is Iranian, which is also...
00:32:42
Speaker
I think one part I would say is white.
00:32:45
Speaker
Because of that, she gets to claim Middle Eastern, and her parents are worth $100 million.
00:32:49
Speaker
She's struggling.
00:32:50
Speaker
She's underprivileged.
00:32:52
Speaker
Oh, dude.
00:32:54
Speaker
Yes, seriously.
00:32:55
Speaker
Or there was another one where, again, a white-looking dude, gone to school, super Middle Eastern.
00:33:00
Speaker
You see him, you're like, this is this guy?
00:33:03
Speaker
And now he's Muslim.
00:33:04
Speaker
They're just regular white.
00:33:06
Speaker
I'm a Christian dude.
00:33:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:08
Speaker
So those are the kids that benefit from that.
00:33:09
Speaker
But no, so I think long, short, like eventually you're going to get there.
00:33:13
Speaker
But also, like I said, that's creating other dynamics.
00:33:15
Speaker
Yeah, it's the edge cases.
00:33:17
Speaker
It's the ones that tick the boxes on a technicality that are reaping the most of those benefits.
00:33:24
Speaker
So is, is the mood over there from what you saw, and maybe this has changed since then, but like, is it more like I'm with her neoliberal, like corporate diversity training type ideology, or is it like actual, like pink hair commies?
00:33:41
Speaker
So I think we touched on this a little before and that depends what you talk about or who you're talking to.
00:33:46
Speaker
I would say the broad majority of the true believers that are real hard left, mostly diversity.
Wealth, Ideology, and Self-Interest
00:33:51
Speaker
It's mostly – and insert diversity in how you want, but whether it's people of color, whatever.
00:33:56
Speaker
I hate that term, but just the Hispanic, whatever it is.
00:33:59
Speaker
Those are the ones that go the hardest on it.
00:34:02
Speaker
Most of these people are just self-interested and it just so happens that a lot of these things just help their self-interest.
00:34:08
Speaker
There is the true believers, but I don't think –
00:34:11
Speaker
Maybe like 1% of all the people were people that like, like I remember one straight white dude that was like super into the hard left stuff.
00:34:19
Speaker
But like, other than that, that was it.
00:34:21
Speaker
He's kind of a little bit of white knight type stuff.
00:34:22
Speaker
But like, other than that, man, it's like the more people that are, if they're kind of like semi incompetent or middle of the road or lower middle of the road, they're going to be like true believers, hard, whatever.
00:34:31
Speaker
And then if they're like, if they're kind of that, but they get the opportunities, they're going to be more neoliberal.
00:34:35
Speaker
But then if you get the competent ones that are also white, those are mostly going to be neoliberal.
00:34:38
Speaker
So I would say broad swath is like, I'm with her neoliberal.
00:34:42
Speaker
And then the rest of it, like the small, small cutout of that is like the real shrew.
00:34:46
Speaker
I don't know if you've heard of the term bio Leninism, but there's a, there's a theory basically that, that if you are a mediocrity,
00:34:55
Speaker
one of the ways that you can distinguish yourself to the system is through loyalty and obedience and root and
Grooming Elite Success from Early Age
00:35:02
Speaker
ruthlessness.
00:35:02
Speaker
Like I'll do whatever the system demands.
00:35:06
Speaker
Like you want me to kick a baby?
00:35:07
Speaker
I'll kick a baby.
00:35:08
Speaker
I don't care.
00:35:09
Speaker
And, and I think that you definitely see that at the upper echelons.
00:35:13
Speaker
And I, I want to talk about this too, because like, these are people who, you know, barring, barring some like real sort of effortless genius,
00:35:22
Speaker
that you do find occasionally.
Shift in Elite Narrative Acceptance
00:35:25
Speaker
A lot of these people have sort of been groomed for this from very early on.
00:35:30
Speaker
They had their extracurriculars dialed in, you know, they were doing all the right things.
00:35:34
Speaker
I'll see it's, it's, it goes, dude, it goes deeper.
00:35:37
Speaker
It goes deeper than that.
00:35:38
Speaker
They go, they go to, I show you not,
00:35:42
Speaker
they have like feeder middle schools and elementary schools that then feed into, no, I'm not even joking.
00:35:49
Speaker
Which means that they've only ever been around that type of kid too.
00:35:54
Speaker
Like it's not just that they're weird.
00:35:56
Speaker
And this is what I'm talking about is that they can't change, they can't change their thoughts because they'd have to change their entire life.
00:36:04
Speaker
Like, this is what I mean is that like, it's, it's so I guess it's a white pill and a black pill and that there are, yeah, the entire system has taken over, but at the same time, like,
00:36:13
Speaker
if things were to go a different way, I think a lot of people would just throw down their arms.
00:36:16
Speaker
Like, they wouldn't... I don't see a huge spot of these people that would die to, like, defend these types of ideas.
00:36:24
Speaker
God, no.
00:36:25
Speaker
I don't think they'd die to defend anything.
00:36:27
Speaker
Yeah, there's a very clear opportunity for a preference cascade where everybody... And, you know, honestly, I think to some extent you're already seeing, like, cracks in the dams
00:36:40
Speaker
where people are starting to look around at each other and be like, you know, how, how hard are we willing to go on this?
00:36:47
Speaker
How, like, how far are we really willing to take this?
00:36:50
Speaker
You know, because there are some elements of, well, like, like you said, how it's, how it's sort of, they're losing a lot of really great talent because of,
Impact of Ideological Adherence on Talent
00:37:00
Speaker
for ideological reasons and the best writing, the best thinking, the best comedy, the funniest people, the people who should be, you know,
00:37:11
Speaker
on TV and famous for being funny, they are on Twitter.
00:37:19
Speaker
I mean, that's who's making people laugh and everybody knows it.
00:37:23
Speaker
And like that system cannot expel all of its talent indefinitely.
00:37:31
Speaker
Or else it'll just be the mediocrities and they won't be able to keep the machines running.
00:37:36
Speaker
And I don't just mean from a, like, engineers blowing up planes or anything.
00:37:42
Speaker
I mean the social machinery.
00:37:45
Speaker
They won't be able to hang on to their narrative because they will be literally too stupid to defend it.
00:37:51
Speaker
I mean, if you want to get a little morbid with it, I think one of the things I think about a lot is I used to be a lot more into graphs and all the data in years past than I am now.
00:38:00
Speaker
But there's a lot of things that's stuck.
Mental Health and Ideological Extremes
00:38:02
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
00:38:03
Speaker
I am the science.
00:38:04
Speaker
I don't know if you saw that today with Fauci.
00:38:08
Speaker
Like, I am the science or whatever.
00:38:10
Speaker
His word is law.
00:38:12
Speaker
Anyways, oh, yeah, he's what I call a medical drug dread or something like that.
00:38:17
Speaker
But vaccine judge dread.
00:38:22
Speaker
I remember looking back and like if you look at across the political spectrum, like it like rates of mental illness, I think about the one and it's like hard left women is just like off the fucking charts.
00:38:31
Speaker
And then you have like, hard left men is like way up there.
00:38:34
Speaker
And then it kind of, as it goes, it gets lower and lower.
00:38:36
Speaker
And so like, if you want to be a little morbid, I think at some level, whether it's suicide or drug abuse or whatever, they're weeding themselves out.
00:38:42
Speaker
I mean, that's always been happening, but I think there is a certain, and some people go so far to say demonic.
00:38:47
Speaker
And I don't think that's entirely like out of the question, but I don't, I don't ever like to go that like everything is demonic.
00:38:52
Speaker
I don't like going down that route.
00:38:53
Speaker
Cause that just gets a little weird to me, but that's definitely there.
00:38:56
Speaker
And then I also think that you have just like, people can be bad all on their own.
00:39:00
Speaker
And that is, yeah, that's the tactic I like to take.
00:39:03
Speaker
There's like people can be evil, you know, maybe with a little help, but they can do it all on their own.
00:39:08
Speaker
And so you kind of get that and people and institutions, they poison themselves.
00:39:12
Speaker
They just poison themselves.
00:39:14
Speaker
And like you said, it kills the people, kills the institutions, kills the social circles.
00:39:18
Speaker
And I...
00:39:19
Speaker
They're not getting better and they're not sending the rest.
00:39:22
Speaker
Right.
00:39:23
Speaker
Well, and it's, it's, you know, people, people act as if that can continue indefinitely and it just can't.
00:39:31
Speaker
And I've, I've always been kind of an optimist
Legacy Admissions and Meritocracy
00:39:34
Speaker
about that.
00:39:34
Speaker
Like, like it's good that redacted is no longer.
00:39:42
Speaker
the arbiter of like who's capable and who's elite quality.
00:39:46
Speaker
Like it's good that a lot of those people are morons and a lot of the people outside are geniuses.
00:39:53
Speaker
Like, cause that requires us to think more carefully.
00:39:55
Speaker
Do you know what the legacy acceptance rate, do you know what the legacy acceptance rate for Harvard is?
00:39:59
Speaker
No, what is it?
00:40:01
Speaker
It's like 30%.
00:40:01
Speaker
Really?
00:40:02
Speaker
So if you, if you have a parent who went there, you have a 30% chance of getting in.
00:40:05
Speaker
Wow.
00:40:05
Speaker
Versus if you were just regular population, it's like three.
00:40:08
Speaker
Right, right.
00:40:09
Speaker
Yeah, so I would disagree a little in that while they're not still the arbiter, you and I both know that if you're going to harbor it doesn't mean you're smart, but they're still, and to her credit, the one girl I was referencing previously, even though she was the beneficiary of this, she knew that this was not...
00:40:29
Speaker
Like you said, it's not an arbiter, but what they were was a power broker and they still are.
Elite Education as Power Brokers
00:40:33
Speaker
They're a hedge fund power broker and they give you the rubber stamp of like, yes, the regime approves of you.
00:40:39
Speaker
It's like essentially, I mean, like it's not quite like that, but like more or less it is like, okay, you are –
00:40:46
Speaker
and we talked about this a little, like when you have a background from one of those fancy schools, people automatically assume you're smart.
00:40:52
Speaker
They do.
00:40:53
Speaker
Like even, even today they're just like, Oh, this guy's smart.
00:40:56
Speaker
And then you would just have to focus on kind of impressing people.
00:40:58
Speaker
Yeah.
00:40:59
Speaker
Like not even impressing people and like that you're smart, but like making them like you, it takes, it takes,
00:41:04
Speaker
It's like most people are fighting with one hand tied and with this you get to use both hands.
00:41:09
Speaker
It's way lower escape velocity to make something happen.
00:41:13
Speaker
Exactly.
00:41:14
Speaker
You can get your foot in almost any door, but the secret that no one tells you is that that alone will not keep it there.
00:41:21
Speaker
You have to be competent to stay in competent places.
00:41:24
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:26
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:26
Speaker
Which sounds self-evident when I say it out loud.
00:41:28
Speaker
Well, I mean, it's not necessarily self-evident because it just depends on how much incompetence you believe these institutions will tolerate for ideological reasons.
00:41:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:41:40
Speaker
Because clearly the answer is not zero.
00:41:42
Speaker
Like, there clearly is a significant amount of incompetence and absurdity that they will tolerate in the interest of...
00:41:53
Speaker
not looking bad or even not seeming to sort of question the orthodoxy.
00:42:00
Speaker
So you mentioned something that I think is a good question.
00:42:04
Speaker
We have our memes about spirit cooking and blood drinking and interdimensional psychic pedophile vampires.
00:42:14
Speaker
And you went to school with some of these people's kids.
00:42:19
Speaker
And maybe you spent some time in their houses.
Secretive Behaviors in Elite Circles
00:42:22
Speaker
Did you see anything that struck you as like actually dark and creepy or are they just rich like goofs?
00:42:32
Speaker
I hate, I hate to like to burst the bubble on this one, but like, no, I didn't, I didn't see, I didn't see any, like, it's not, you know, I like, so here's what I'm going to say.
00:42:40
Speaker
Is that stuff probably there?
00:42:43
Speaker
Like, yeah.
00:42:44
Speaker
But like, is it there in a capacity that even though I was like,
00:42:49
Speaker
even though I was in, let me put it this way.
00:42:52
Speaker
If it's there, there is kind of a hierarchy within the school where like, there's mostly like the general, I'd say the lower half, like socially.
00:43:00
Speaker
And then there's kind of like the next 25% that kind of like gets to hang out with the upper 25%.
00:43:04
Speaker
And I was at least in that, like the people get to hang out with those people.
00:43:07
Speaker
Like I wasn't one of the cool, cool kids, you know, I don't, I don't vacation in the Hamptons or whatever, stuff like that.
00:43:13
Speaker
But I at least got to hang out at their parties and do whatever.
00:43:16
Speaker
And if it's there, it's within the small rung of the upper rung.
00:43:21
Speaker
And I didn't know.
00:43:22
Speaker
So if it's there, I didn't know about it.
00:43:24
Speaker
But, you know, I'll tell you this.
00:43:27
Speaker
These people, and they don't even have to be the rich ones, I think they get very callous and, like, things get very...
00:43:35
Speaker
I don't know if numb is the right way, but because of the way they've been brought up and lived their lives, like shit, man, you're a kid going to an Ivy league school and you got these crazy career prospects lined up and you're kind of on top of the world.
00:43:45
Speaker
And like, I, there was a few moments of just callousness towards like people's, like literally towards people's lives that like, I wasn't prepared for, but like, yeah, a little bit where you're just like, Holy fuck, man, what the hell?
00:43:58
Speaker
What do you mean?
00:43:59
Speaker
What is this?
Callousness Among Elites: A Concern
00:44:00
Speaker
Like just some, some party stuff where like, ah,
00:44:04
Speaker
Like a kid, I remember one time without getting too into details here, let's just say people got a kid like way too drunk, like had to go to the hospital drunk.
00:44:17
Speaker
And like after discussing it later and discussing steps to make sure that no one else would get in this way.
00:44:23
Speaker
again at a certain place.
00:44:25
Speaker
Nobody wanted to do anything about it.
00:44:27
Speaker
And not even like, oh, they don't want to be a part of it.
00:44:29
Speaker
Literally just like, doesn't matter.
00:44:30
Speaker
Not my responsibility.
00:44:31
Speaker
Don't care.
00:44:32
Speaker
I'm just like, are you fucking kidding me?
00:44:34
Speaker
You almost fucking killed a kid.
00:44:35
Speaker
And people are just like, oh, whatever.
00:44:37
Speaker
I'm like, no, I'm not...
00:44:39
Speaker
not, not cool with this.
00:44:40
Speaker
So it was, uh, yeah.
00:44:42
Speaker
So, I mean, there's that and it goes on a lot of the plate, like a lot of those other places there too.
00:44:46
Speaker
So that's, I don't know.
00:44:47
Speaker
It's a little vague.
00:44:48
Speaker
I can't get too into details with it, but like, let's just say it was, yeah, it was not, not the best.
00:44:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:44:53
Speaker
And, uh,
00:44:54
Speaker
I think that there is, you almost have to become acculturated to the idea that your decisions are going to impact people negatively.
Decisions and Accountability Among the Elite
00:45:05
Speaker
So if you're planning to be one of the lords of the universe and govern millions of people or write laws that affect millions of people, part of that deal is like,
00:45:21
Speaker
what are the odds that this regulation gets somebody killed?
00:45:25
Speaker
Or, you know what I mean?
00:45:26
Speaker
Like you're just thinking at this huge scale that like the human brain is not really built to function at.
00:45:35
Speaker
And so, go ahead.
00:45:37
Speaker
I think it goes back to something a little simpler, to be honest with you, is that like, it's not, it's not even anything as far as I remember so grandiose as that, is that these people have, because I get to go back to like these people being brought up in the feeder elementaries and then the feeder middle schools and the feeder high schools, like,
00:45:55
Speaker
it's not even anything so complicated as like that it's training like that it's more so that these people have such a disconnected idea of what like middle america is like you know the shrinking the shrink both both literal in the socioeconomic context and literal in the literal context of like what's between the coastlines um that they they just have no idea and they had this like crazy almost caricature of like really what it is yeah and um
00:46:21
Speaker
I think that is what more stems from it because they think they're better than you and they think they know more than you and they're smarter
Intellectual vs. Moral Superiority
00:46:27
Speaker
than you.
00:46:27
Speaker
And that like, look, man, to a degree, you take the average IQ of like kids at Harvard, like, yeah, it's going to be two, three standard deviations higher than the average, like the nation.
00:46:34
Speaker
Like that's, that doesn't mean they're better than you.
00:46:37
Speaker
Like that's, that is, that's just a fact on that.
00:46:40
Speaker
But at the same time, like I, well, that's ultimately, that's ultimately why we can't have honest conversations about IQ.
00:46:47
Speaker
It's because the,
00:46:51
Speaker
the mainstream understanding of that is that being smarter makes you better.
00:46:57
Speaker
Like, because it does, it does make you better able to delay gratification, better able to control your impulses, you know, and, and those things,
00:47:08
Speaker
There's no divinity to confer sacredness on human life per se.
00:47:15
Speaker
It's like, you know, the difference between a 140 IQ person and an 80 IQ person is
00:47:25
Speaker
and a chimpanzee is just a matter of degrees.
00:47:29
Speaker
It's just a spectrum.
00:47:31
Speaker
And so like, are you more important?
00:47:33
Speaker
I mean, you get a smart chimpanzee.
00:47:35
Speaker
It might be smarter than the AD IQ group.
00:47:36
Speaker
I'm not sure.
00:47:37
Speaker
Well, so what I'm saying is like, there's nothing, there's no way of saying like, we all share a common dignity.
00:47:45
Speaker
And so they just, because their worldview has no vocabulary for that kind of conversation, they just have to run from the whole question.
Hypocrisy in Elite Circles
00:47:56
Speaker
But they don't in terms of their personal life.
00:47:59
Speaker
In terms of their personal life, they know that they want to be hanging around the high elves, the super smart elites who'd make all the culture and do all the beautiful things and build all the beautiful things, or at least have the capacity to.
00:48:14
Speaker
And so...
00:48:15
Speaker
yeah, it's, there's, there's a, there's a massive amount of hypocrisy around that.
00:48:18
Speaker
That's, that's almost, you would need like, kind of like you're saying, you would need a different worldview to break that hypocrisy.
00:48:25
Speaker
There's no resolving it internally.
00:48:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:28
Speaker
What's they, they just literally have no, they have no concept of like any idea what it's like.
00:48:33
Speaker
They, they think they still think that it's, well, this is kind of where some of the narratives like clash is that a lot of them think that all of the people that aren't doing well, still because of, and like,
00:48:43
Speaker
here's where I'll add a little addendum to this is that like, they still will say, and they will confess that it's all socioeconomic
Equal Opportunities and Elite Beliefs
00:48:52
Speaker
faster still.
00:48:52
Speaker
And that whether this is, whether it's white or black or Asian or whatever, they like, it doesn't, it doesn't matter.
00:48:57
Speaker
They still think that's,
00:48:59
Speaker
part of the thing.
00:49:00
Speaker
And so that goes to their things that they, oh, well, if we could just give these people a life like I had, they'd be the same as me.
00:49:07
Speaker
And like, that is kind of the other part that they haven't come to grips with where it's like, no, they wouldn't.
00:49:11
Speaker
And that's also okay.
00:49:12
Speaker
It's like, not everyone has to be like that.
00:49:14
Speaker
Like you need farmers, you need
00:49:16
Speaker
line work is the factory.
00:49:16
Speaker
You need people slinging a shovel, man.
00:49:18
Speaker
I've sling a shovel before.
00:49:19
Speaker
There's times where I'm doing my nerd shit all day and I miss doing that.
00:49:23
Speaker
I just like to give me a big pile of gravel and I just want to move it from one another.
00:49:26
Speaker
Not even gravel.
00:49:27
Speaker
Fuck that.
00:49:27
Speaker
Give me sand.
00:49:28
Speaker
Move one spot to the other.
00:49:29
Speaker
It's way harder when that's all you can do.
00:49:33
Speaker
Oh yeah, that sucks, dude.
00:49:34
Speaker
That's the worst.
00:49:35
Speaker
Right.
00:49:36
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:49:36
Speaker
So like, yeah, it's, it's, uh, to, to, to do it recreationally is very different from like, this is how I have to eat.
00:49:42
Speaker
It's true.
00:49:43
Speaker
I have to, I have to shovel sand or I don't eat.
00:49:46
Speaker
But so I found, you know, when I was in school and I was in a world that was somewhat similar to this, it helped a lot to have like a buddy around for when they got
Genuine Connections with Non-Elite Workers
00:49:57
Speaker
into the woke stuff.
00:49:57
Speaker
So I could just kind of give them a look and we could suffer together a little bit.
00:50:01
Speaker
So did you have people like with you on the inside or were you basically like all by your lonesome?
00:50:07
Speaker
A little towards the end.
00:50:09
Speaker
A little towards the end.
00:50:10
Speaker
I had like, like I had one girl that I knew that was kind of like a normie
00:50:15
Speaker
Also a fellow like normie tier conservative that works like, oh, this is brutal.
00:50:19
Speaker
But other than that, honestly, man, not really like you.
00:50:22
Speaker
I was it was alone for like a long time.
00:50:24
Speaker
And like mainly what I do is I would just hide those to like either people I would talk to back home or like even just like my girlfriend at the time or stuff like that.
00:50:31
Speaker
And yeah, so no, I didn't did not have much support, which did not.
00:50:35
Speaker
But at the same time, like I was still able to like.
00:50:38
Speaker
I don't know.
00:50:39
Speaker
I feel like there's ways, I don't say ways you can catch your language, but like there's still ways you can talk freely without like always having to like tip your hand.
00:50:45
Speaker
Sure.
00:50:46
Speaker
And so I got real, I got real good at that as far as like being able to talk as much as you can without being like, Oh, hello.
00:50:51
Speaker
I am entirely different from you.
00:50:53
Speaker
But so you get to do a little bit of that, but to, Oh, let me say that's the point I remember before was that the one thing I've thought about this a lot since I've left that, that I always want to hopefully,
00:51:02
Speaker
someday could emulate is that like there is definitely no more fucking noblesse oblige of like uh to like no seriously that's like that's no it's it's now it's plunder and pillage stage man even even all those people know that too where it's just like get as rich as you can well you can yeah and uh i don't think there's any illusions about that all the people something like 10 of every class of the school anyone goes into consulting at the big three
00:51:26
Speaker
And then, or just like similar management consulting types.
00:51:29
Speaker
And then the other 10% went into like, like investment banking.
00:51:32
Speaker
So like a bulge bracket or like, you know, some little market shop.
00:51:35
Speaker
So like you got a fifth of the class right away.
00:51:37
Speaker
That's just going like, yeah, give me the money.
00:51:39
Speaker
Give me the money right away.
Meritocracy vs. Inherited Power
00:51:41
Speaker
When you can have an honest conversation about hierarchy, then you can, you can conceive of yourself as an aristocracy that owes something to the whole that you are in this together.
00:51:54
Speaker
And we just totally aren't.
00:51:56
Speaker
Because it's a quote-unquote meritocracy, we're supposed to believe that at least the white people, like the poor white people, are there because they're stupid and make bad decisions.
00:52:12
Speaker
Lazy.
00:52:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:13
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:14
Speaker
And, and so like, how can you like, how can you owe anything to them?
00:52:19
Speaker
How can you have a responsibility toward them?
00:52:22
Speaker
How can you even be like countrymen?
00:52:25
Speaker
Like the same people?
00:52:27
Speaker
You can't.
00:52:28
Speaker
Funny, funny you say that about like that.
00:52:31
Speaker
And not even all of them were white, but like I found myself being more friends with the people that were like workers at the like at the school.
00:52:39
Speaker
And I like not they were like my friends, but like I was I would bullshit more with them.
00:52:43
Speaker
Yeah.
00:52:43
Speaker
I knew most of them like in where I was at, like first day basis than I did with like I would say with I would say I bullshitted a lot with them, had some of the most honest conversations with them.
00:52:53
Speaker
And so that was like where I worked at the time was the guy that was like, I think it's like, I never pinned this down, but like, because I feel like he told me he spoke like a bunch of languages, but he was either like black from like South America, black, like that northern corner or like from...
00:53:07
Speaker
like Western part of Africa.
00:53:08
Speaker
I can't remember to be honest with you.
00:53:10
Speaker
Cause he had like Spanish name too.
00:53:11
Speaker
So like, don't figure.
00:53:13
Speaker
But like, anyways, me and him would bullshit like a lot of just like all the insanity that was going on at the time.
00:53:20
Speaker
So definitely had some of that, but nah, man, like that, that was something that always struck me was that being able to talk to those people.
00:53:27
Speaker
And it was like you, it was almost like you were teleporting and that I would,
00:53:31
Speaker
like teleport back to the real world, like have a talk with these people.
00:53:33
Speaker
And then I'm back in like highfalutin intellectual world with like sitting down talking about whatever.
00:53:38
Speaker
And like to their credit, everyone there is super smart.
00:53:41
Speaker
The way that I always put it is that like every one of these schools is a normal person with something extraordinary about them.
Competence in Elite Environments
00:53:47
Speaker
Like you talk to one kid that like I'm smashing beers with and we're shotgun.
00:53:51
Speaker
And then, you know, the next day I find out he's like top 10 in the world for like his age group for mathematics or something like that.
00:53:57
Speaker
And so it's just like everyone is normal to a degree, believe it or not.
00:54:01
Speaker
But like, and this kind of goes back to, to like when we were talking about like, you know, thinking that everyone above you in these positions is always has to be competent.
00:54:09
Speaker
I think the way that I put it is that,
00:54:11
Speaker
And why most people think that they deserve these things that they do to a degree or that like people that, you know, aren't always from these strata, whatever, all that bullshit.
00:54:20
Speaker
What I'm saying is that like, it's probably a small portion of the time that you actually have to be that smart to stay in that job.
00:54:26
Speaker
But when those times come, you fucking need to be that smart to stay in that job.
00:54:29
Speaker
But most of the time it's shit that like an average person could do.
00:54:32
Speaker
Like, like you said, you're doing, you're doing spreadsheets that like you get the columns and you check them and they check themselves.
00:54:37
Speaker
Right.
00:54:38
Speaker
And like, so it's not a huge deal, but then there's those few moments where the model has to be right, or this has to be right, or you really have to like use your fucking brain.
00:54:44
Speaker
And like, not everybody can do that.
00:54:45
Speaker
And like, I don't know.
00:54:47
Speaker
I don't know where I'm going with this, but that's... It's so critical to the functioning of the system because our ability... Basically, the way that we produce things is we produce them with machines and with data and with...
Intellectual vs. Physical Prowess
00:55:02
Speaker
There's a massive cognitive load on all the ways that are the most productive in this society.
00:55:06
Speaker
And so, and so IQ, so Moldbug had a really interesting point that really cracked things open for me.
00:55:15
Speaker
He was talking about ancient Greece and how in ancient Greece, they essentially viewed physical strength and prowess the way that we currently view intellect.
00:55:30
Speaker
Like, that was what made you like, like the, for us, the idea of like connecting muscles and height with like being a good person doesn't make any sense.
00:55:41
Speaker
It's like, what's the correlation there?
00:55:44
Speaker
But for them, like that was the guy who accomplished the most, who could, who could save you in a battle, who could carry you off on his shield, who could be the hero.
00:55:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:57
Speaker
And, you know, he would, if your ox got lost, he could bring your ox home when nobody else could.
00:56:04
Speaker
And so it's that sense of like, these are the people that the society can't function without.
Moral Significance of Intellectual Prowess
00:56:11
Speaker
And we impart moral significance to that.
00:56:14
Speaker
So I think there's a couple of ways to look at that, that actually this makes me think of, is that like,
00:56:18
Speaker
two ways and the first one that came to mind was that like and i don't know who said this is definitely not my original thoughts but like we've definitely moved on from like the warrior archetype being the ideal to like more of the the magician or the shaman to where like now it's that you think about like this the witness hit me was like i it was i was watching rick and morty and it was like in a weird window see i mean it's i i i hate it and i love it it's you know it's entertaining you're in a safe place it's all right
00:56:45
Speaker
There's still things I hate about it because it's still paused, but it's also still kind of cool.
00:56:49
Speaker
I will say, at least the first three seasons, I gave up after the first three seasons, but they were legitimately really funny.
00:56:56
Speaker
Funny.
00:56:57
Speaker
Yeah.
00:56:57
Speaker
Like really
Media Portrayal of Intellect
00:56:58
Speaker
funny.
00:56:58
Speaker
But if you look at Rick, Rick is the quintessential like shaman magician type where like he solves, he's, he's stick thin.
00:57:04
Speaker
He's not strong, but he solves every problem with intellect.
00:57:08
Speaker
Like even the most dire situation is because of his intellect.
00:57:11
Speaker
And that is the ultimate thing.
00:57:12
Speaker
And this has been going on for a while.
00:57:13
Speaker
I mean, like you can almost see the transition where like, look at back to the future where like, you still had a bit of that, like good looking and like Marty McFly, but then doc again, this is basically like, it's basically like Rick.
00:57:24
Speaker
It's basically Rick.
00:57:24
Speaker
But, like, Doc is, again, the magician who solves every problem, like, with his intellect.
00:57:30
Speaker
And so I think that's number one, but number two, I think it also could be connected to the fact that like back in Greek times, they were most dependent on the people that were the strongest.
00:57:39
Speaker
And nowadays we're most dependent, well, I guess you can make arguments, but like the upper echelon and the wheels of the system are most dependent on like the brain people.
00:57:47
Speaker
And so because of that, that is what is most venerated.
00:57:50
Speaker
Now, whether that was done intentionally or that happened naturally, I don't know, haven't really thought about it that much, but that's definitely where we're at in that like the magician shaman,
00:57:58
Speaker
how smart are you is the ideal
Crypto Success: Luck or Intelligence?
00:58:00
Speaker
now.
00:58:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:00
Speaker
And I mean, there's, there's, it's, it's really hard to argue with results and that can even become absurd.
00:58:06
Speaker
Like I was thinking about crypto and NFTs and I have encountered guys who are bazillionaires because of crypto, who frankly, you talk to them a little while and you realize, you know, he probably just got, probably just got lucky.
00:58:23
Speaker
Like maybe not dumb, but like,
00:58:27
Speaker
super weird or like probably just, you know, you just made the right call one time and it worked out for him and that's good.
00:58:33
Speaker
But at the same time, like I would find myself like soliciting advice from those people just because there's something magical about the fact that he had, he's a bazillionaire.
00:58:45
Speaker
So he must have something figured out.
00:58:46
Speaker
Like it's hard for me to, it's hard for me to consciously reject this intuition that like, ah, he knows something.
00:58:54
Speaker
I need to be around this guy.
00:58:56
Speaker
No, see, I can speak, I'm not, not that I'm a gazillionaire, even I really, I need substantial wealth, but I, I think the majority of the time that I mined Ethereum and when I was like buying it personally, it was probably between the prices of like 80, 80 and $300, right?
00:59:10
Speaker
So like very early, like very early.
00:59:15
Speaker
And I mean, obviously not like $3 early, but like early,
Initial Skepticism in Crypto Turned Advice Seeking
00:59:19
Speaker
relatively now.
00:59:19
Speaker
We're sitting at, what, 4,500 a day?
00:59:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:22
Speaker
Like, same thing.
00:59:23
Speaker
I'm no different.
00:59:24
Speaker
And people used to give me shit about like, hey, how's your internet money doing?
00:59:27
Speaker
Like, you know, three years ago.
00:59:29
Speaker
And like now they're like, oh, what crypto do you think?
00:59:32
Speaker
I'm just like, dude, of course, no.
00:59:33
Speaker
There's not really like a good answer.
00:59:35
Speaker
Just wait until the next cycle.
00:59:36
Speaker
Like it's going to top.
00:59:37
Speaker
Like I don't, just cause most people like you, you know, I can't, you can't give someone a one-off like quick answer of anything that's, that's worth giving them.
00:59:45
Speaker
You can't just be like, all right, like you, you'd have to sit down and be like, all right, here's what you buy.
00:59:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:51
Speaker
Well, cause you don't realize you sit there doing research for like fucking three years, probably spent hundreds or thousands of hours looking at this.
00:59:57
Speaker
You don't realize how much you've like taken in and you start getting into where like, I know you've had this phenomenon.
01:00:01
Speaker
Maybe you try to show family or friends like a
01:00:04
Speaker
And then you realize that it's like a seventh level meme.
01:00:06
Speaker
You have to explain like four more memes into it.
01:00:08
Speaker
And like, so it's, it's the same thing with crypto where you're like, something small happens or something.
01:00:13
Speaker
You're like, oh dude, this is, this is game changing.
01:00:15
Speaker
And then you're like, wait a second.
01:00:16
Speaker
I can't explain this to anyone without explaining like six other things.
01:00:20
Speaker
And so it's really difficult.
01:00:21
Speaker
Cause like, yeah, I'm no different.
01:00:23
Speaker
I'm the same person, but now people look to me and they're like, oh, do you, I do that?
01:00:26
Speaker
I'm like, dude, I don't know.
01:00:27
Speaker
Do what you want to do.
01:00:29
Speaker
I can help you if you want to do it, but I'm not going to make that decision for you.
01:00:33
Speaker
Cause that's mostly what people are usually just looking for is like, they want you to just make the call for them and be like, Hey, yeah.
01:00:38
Speaker
Right.
01:00:39
Speaker
Touch, touch my, uh, touch my project and turn it to gold.
01:00:43
Speaker
Like, you know, yeah, yeah.
01:00:44
Speaker
Yeah.
01:00:44
Speaker
Basically.
01:00:46
Speaker
Uh, so, so to get back to this sort of social situation that you were in,
01:00:52
Speaker
Tell me a little bit about like dating in that
Dating Scene in Elite Circles
01:00:55
Speaker
world.
01:00:55
Speaker
Could you have a conversation with these women?
01:00:57
Speaker
Like, it seems like some of them had to have been interesting, at least outside of the ideology part where, where there areas where you could connect.
01:01:05
Speaker
Oh dude, absolutely.
01:01:06
Speaker
A hundred percent.
01:01:07
Speaker
Um, I would say that like in the same way that we talked about the confidence correlation, competence correlation with like the ideological competition, uh, correlation, um, definitely same thing here with like attractiveness to where like the ones that, I mean, it's pretty common.
Perceptions of Attractiveness in Elite Settings
01:01:21
Speaker
Like at what, at what,
01:01:22
Speaker
What do you want me to say?
01:01:23
Speaker
At this point, it's just how it is.
01:01:24
Speaker
The ones that were more attractive.
01:01:26
Speaker
However, there was something, though, and without getting too doxy, there was something, though, that we talked about of the girls at school, if they were a six or a seven, they thought they were an eight or nine.
01:01:40
Speaker
And the few handful of actual eights or nines
01:01:43
Speaker
I don't know if there's any true like tens there, but like the handful that there are, are already taken by like Chad, Chad, Uber, Chad, uh, who, you know, has, whose parents are with whatever.
01:01:53
Speaker
And he's going to come, like, he's already got his associate's job at Goldman or whatever it is.
01:01:57
Speaker
Right.
01:01:58
Speaker
Like there are, are you gonna, how are you gonna, because she, she needs you to be higher status than her.
Dating Challenges for High-Status Men
01:02:04
Speaker
Exactly.
01:02:04
Speaker
How are you going to be higher status than her?
01:02:05
Speaker
That's a tough sell.
01:02:06
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:07
Speaker
If she comes in already at the Mercedes level and she used to be the Rolls Royce of the Aston Martin, like,
01:02:12
Speaker
you're tough shit, man.
01:02:13
Speaker
But, uh, so like, so no, so that's definitely a thing.
01:02:17
Speaker
But what we did was, um, like there was, there was a good amount of schools nearby.
01:02:22
Speaker
And so we would just kind of farm out.
01:02:23
Speaker
Like that was, that was the most common practice.
01:02:25
Speaker
And that wasn't, no, I mean, like you laugh, like it's, you just call whatever school, like, Oh, Hey,
Expanding Dating Pools in Elite Schools
01:02:30
Speaker
like that.
01:02:30
Speaker
Now you just need to farm out.
01:02:32
Speaker
Yeah.
01:02:33
Speaker
Okay.
01:02:33
Speaker
So that was, but like I said, could you talk with them?
01:02:35
Speaker
Yes.
01:02:36
Speaker
I would even go so far as to say is that like, I met, ah, let me see it.
01:02:41
Speaker
Again, it depends.
01:02:42
Speaker
I met more average looking normal girls there than I did like average normal dudes there.
01:02:48
Speaker
Let's say that much.
01:02:49
Speaker
Like there's, it was like, you kind of get the thing where like a lot of the dudes are like,
01:02:54
Speaker
I don't know.
01:02:55
Speaker
I don't say a little weird, but like, yeah, they're really like an athlete or like, well, not like, not in like the negative, like, oh, they're all weirdos.
01:03:00
Speaker
That was a cool guy.
01:03:01
Speaker
Like, no, like they're all just weirdos that when you guys, guys get smart and they get obsessive, you get a little autistic and you get a little weird.
01:03:06
Speaker
Like that's, that's just what happens, dude.
01:03:08
Speaker
Like, so, so you have to imagine there's like a huge swath of guys like that.
01:03:12
Speaker
And they're like the world's foremost knowledge on this tiny little like subject or whatever.
01:03:17
Speaker
And we get a little fucking weird.
01:03:21
Speaker
Charles Murray actually has a hypothesis about that, which is... So if you read the book Human Diversity, it's a really interesting read.
01:03:28
Speaker
But one of the things that he talks about is...
Diversity in Competence Among Genders
01:03:31
Speaker
that men tend to have a wider distribution of outcomes.
01:03:35
Speaker
Two men tend to be more different from each other cognitively and behaviorally and everything else.
01:03:41
Speaker
I've always heard it put as that, like, you're going to get more genius men and more like retard men than you are like either of women at all.
01:03:47
Speaker
Like that's, so yes.
01:03:48
Speaker
So yes, but that's true across the board for like behavioral, like it's, it's not just cognitive, it's everything.
01:03:54
Speaker
And, um,
01:03:56
Speaker
not only that, but internal to an individual man, he will have greater diversity of competence than women.
01:04:04
Speaker
So like a woman who is super smart will tend to also be just competent at everything and attractive and thin and, you know, across the board.
01:04:16
Speaker
And a man who is super competent,
01:04:19
Speaker
can be like a total mess in every other aspect of his life, which I think that's intuitively something that we all kind of.
01:04:26
Speaker
It's the mad genius.
01:04:27
Speaker
Like you think about the scientists in his lab and the papers and everything everywhere.
01:04:31
Speaker
And he's got that board scribble all over, but he's like super fucking smart, but his life is also a mess.
01:04:36
Speaker
Like, yeah.
01:04:37
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:38
Speaker
Well, and, and, and Murray's thesis is that it's because women have the two X's.
Genetic Makeup and Competence Variance
01:04:44
Speaker
And so like that washes out some variance, but it also covers some redundancies.
01:04:49
Speaker
Yeah.
01:04:50
Speaker
And then because you've got the X and the Y, it's like, well, if you didn't get the gene for like knowing how to tie your shoes,
01:04:57
Speaker
Like, sorry, dude.
01:04:58
Speaker
Like that's, you just don't get one.
01:05:04
Speaker
Anyway.
01:05:05
Speaker
So, but that's neither here nor there.
01:05:06
Speaker
Like, but that totally makes sense that you would, that you would see that particularly in the extremes with the smartest people.
Potential for Ideological Reconciliation
01:05:14
Speaker
Yeah.
01:05:15
Speaker
So, and my, my, my last question that I wanted to ask is given the,
01:05:21
Speaker
You know, everything that we've talked about, given how this ideology is baked into their social circles and the way that they're raised and almost everything else about them, and given how sort of hostile that ideology is to upwards of half of the population of the country, do you think that there's any hope of like reconciling as a country or people just pretty much ready to go to war?
01:05:47
Speaker
Like, do you think they'd come around if the political winds blew a different way?
01:05:50
Speaker
I mean, to be honest with you, I think it depends on how that happens because like if it's something where, whether it's swift or gradual,
01:05:57
Speaker
that all of a sudden CNN is like, hey, like, let's not have immigrants.
01:06:03
Speaker
Like something like that.
01:06:04
Speaker
Like, you know what I'm saying?
01:06:05
Speaker
I mean, like, that's a very small, that's a very small example, but just project that onto every, every other single issue.
01:06:12
Speaker
If that started happening, it happened like a gradual measure.
01:06:14
Speaker
Do I think these people would come along?
01:06:16
Speaker
Absolutely.
01:06:17
Speaker
Because these people, like I said, the racehorse metaphor, that's a really good one because racehorses will, I mean, I don't know that much about horses, but
01:06:24
Speaker
pretty sure racehorses will like go where you have them go for the most part.
Adherence to Narratives Without Consideration
01:06:28
Speaker
They're just the best at getting there in like, in that fashion.
01:06:30
Speaker
I think that's the same with this and that you mentioned that a lot of these people is just what they do, right?
01:06:35
Speaker
Especially the women.
01:06:36
Speaker
Like they don't, they don't really think about why they're doing it.
01:06:38
Speaker
They're just doing it.
01:06:39
Speaker
But believe it or not, I think that's a big portion of these people.
01:06:42
Speaker
They're the people that are actually like,
01:06:44
Speaker
and say non-NPCs because these people are very smart, but they're still NPCs to a degree.
01:06:48
Speaker
But the amount of people that stop to think of, I'm doing this because X, because Y, and they all have a story.
01:06:53
Speaker
Don't get me wrong.
01:06:53
Speaker
Oh, I'm doing it.
01:06:56
Speaker
Right.
01:06:57
Speaker
Do you feel like there was any real like decision behind that?
01:07:00
Speaker
Like, no, for a lot of them, you don't.
01:07:02
Speaker
You're just like, oh, cool.
01:07:02
Speaker
Like it makes sense.
01:07:03
Speaker
And it's great.
01:07:04
Speaker
It's the same way when you're a kid, you say, I want to be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever the hell.
01:07:07
Speaker
It's a socially acceptable thing to say.
01:07:10
Speaker
So same thing with these people.
01:07:11
Speaker
If this happened gradually, do I think a lot of people would come along?
01:07:14
Speaker
Absolutely do.
01:07:14
Speaker
I think a huge spot of them.
01:07:16
Speaker
I think, oh, I think you're seeing, I hate to, I hate to put it as well.
01:07:22
Speaker
Yes and no.
01:07:23
Speaker
I think a lot of it would also depend on racial lines.
01:07:25
Speaker
I think whether, even though a lot of the nation is going this way, I think a lot of the upper echelon is still incredibly white.
01:07:31
Speaker
And so like, I think in the same way that Wisconsin or Iowa or, you know, Michigan can vote red one year and blue the other year, I think those people, because they're predominantly white, they think more of the issues.
01:07:43
Speaker
I think they would come along strictly because as soon as it's acceptable for them to say,
01:07:49
Speaker
I'm like, oh, yeah, I don't really appreciate that, like, the neighborhood that I grew, well, I guess it wouldn't happen to these people because their neighborhoods are, like, 98% white anyways.
01:07:56
Speaker
But, like, as soon as they're like, yeah, I can't take the subway at night back from Goldman to my neighborhood.
01:08:02
Speaker
my $4,000 a month, like one bedroom apartment in Manhattan or whatever.
01:08:07
Speaker
Like as soon as they're allowed to talk about that and why they can't do that, I think things would get really different because you'll still have to remember that, especially the men, I still believe that's the men that are driving a lot of this is that like, they're still kind of autistic and like dudes, you can't, this is something that's always blown my mind.
01:08:23
Speaker
And then is that,
01:08:25
Speaker
It's so frustrating to me that you get these people that are so incredibly competent.
01:08:30
Speaker
They have to notice sharp changes and sharp contrasts and such little details in such large systems.
01:08:38
Speaker
They have to be brutally honest about it.
01:08:40
Speaker
They have to be like, oh, this isn't because X, Y, Z. And then they can switch over to FBI crime statistics and be like, oh, no, it's socioeconomic factors.
01:08:48
Speaker
And I'm like, dude, no, no.
01:08:49
Speaker
God.
01:08:52
Speaker
So that's, so like, and someday I think there's going to come a point where they're going to be like, Oh wait, maybe that's not, maybe that's not what's going on.
01:08:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:59
Speaker
Like that.
01:08:59
Speaker
I mean, they're clearly, they're clearly, it's a question that I think, like you're saying with the racehorse metaphor, I think it's a question of where they're shining their incredibly bright spotlight.
Incentives to Maintain Status Quo
01:09:11
Speaker
And they have very, very strong personal and social and financial incentives to keep that spotlight as far away from those things as possible.
01:09:21
Speaker
And like, you know, I mean, I voted for Evan McMullen in 2016.
01:09:26
Speaker
Like, you know.
01:09:27
Speaker
Oh, you got psyoped?
Evolution of Beliefs Through Critical Reevaluation
01:09:28
Speaker
You got psyoped in the CIA guys?
01:09:29
Speaker
Psyoped real hard.
01:09:32
Speaker
Oh, bro.
01:09:33
Speaker
But yeah, yeah, it was rough.
01:09:36
Speaker
And so, and when I describe...
01:09:41
Speaker
how that happened and how I came around, so to speak, on some things.
01:09:48
Speaker
It wasn't like I changed my mind about anything that I had really thought deeply about.
01:09:55
Speaker
It was more like I heard a particular story in school and it seemed right enough and it didn't sound off any alarm bells.
01:10:08
Speaker
But then when someone said, okay, but have you really
Race Conversations: Benefit vs. Harm
01:10:10
Speaker
thought about that?
01:10:10
Speaker
Like, how do you know that?
01:10:13
Speaker
And then, and then I started to look into it and then I was like, oh, well, okay, maybe, yeah, maybe that's not the case.
01:10:18
Speaker
I mean, so like, you know, wait, what do you mean?
01:10:21
Speaker
Well, I had a conversation, I had a conversation with my stepdad once about, well, the subject of race.
01:10:30
Speaker
And, and it was like, you know, why, why is it always like this everywhere in the world?
01:10:38
Speaker
And his answer to me was, what good can possibly come from having the answer to this question?
01:10:49
Speaker
Like, why would you want to raise this conversation?
01:10:56
Speaker
Because it would just sort of, like, if you're right,
01:11:00
Speaker
And if this is just the way people are, then it would just sort of hurt them and you wouldn't be able to fix anything.
01:11:08
Speaker
So what's the point?
01:11:10
Speaker
And that actually, when I was 15 or 16, I was like, OK, fair enough.
01:11:16
Speaker
And when things would happen that would sort of
01:11:19
Speaker
ping those alarm bells again, I would just say, well, that's the way it is.
01:11:24
Speaker
I don't have any opinions about this.
Societal Narratives and Conformity Challenges
01:11:26
Speaker
And, you know, and essentially what changed for me was
01:11:34
Speaker
this really strong counter narrative came into power, which was like the only explanation for all of these things is, is that you and your daddy and your granddaddy are monster racist.
01:11:49
Speaker
Yeah.
01:11:50
Speaker
You have to be destroyed.
01:11:52
Speaker
And like, yeah, that's the other one, man.
01:11:54
Speaker
And like, there's no, there's no, there's nothing you can say to that.
01:11:59
Speaker
There's no, there's no, there's no way to, for you to integrate into that worldview.
01:12:04
Speaker
That's a conversation stopper.
01:12:05
Speaker
Like you, you literally say, and like, I literally have tried to get this out of motor cabbie there.
01:12:11
Speaker
Cause I hate it when I see it, but that is like, what if it was switched around?
01:12:15
Speaker
Like, oh, oh, kill me, kill me with that.
01:12:18
Speaker
When I hear that, but like, but no, seriously, this is a time where this is appropriate or it's like, okay, you switch that around.
01:12:24
Speaker
Like that is a conversation stopper and you're probably going to jail for a hate crime.
01:12:27
Speaker
Like it's, it is, it's so dramatic, but then it's so accepted today where it's like, yeah, you need to be killed off.
01:12:36
Speaker
And all you can do in the face of that, the only way that you can challenge that narrative is to say...
01:12:46
Speaker
all right, let's look at the facts and let's talk about why that narrative doesn't make a ton of sense, which means you got to bring up all kinds of uncomfortable conversations.
01:12:53
Speaker
And that sucks.
01:12:54
Speaker
Like I still, I still think my stepdad was basically right.
Historical Perspectives on Race Discussions
01:12:59
Speaker
That like these conversations are going to hurt a lot of people and that sucks.
01:13:05
Speaker
I don't want to hurt anybody, but like, what's the alternative?
01:13:08
Speaker
Like we have to be honest.
01:13:09
Speaker
So here's, I got two things on this one.
01:13:14
Speaker
from 1965 until probably 10, maybe 15 years ago, you didn't have to answer that question.
01:13:21
Speaker
Your stepdad was right in that they had the luxury of not having to worry about that because we could absorb that.
01:13:27
Speaker
You could absorb 500,000 Africans and 500,000 people from South America.
01:13:29
Speaker
It didn't matter.
01:13:30
Speaker
And now that we're getting to the point where like,
01:13:37
Speaker
in order for people to maintain their lives in a way that they wanted.
01:13:40
Speaker
And this is what I've said for a long time, that nothing's really going to change socially, politically, whatever, until people get uncomfortable enough that the cost of, I don't know, speaking out against this is lower, or at least the same as it is to just burying it in their daily life.
01:13:58
Speaker
And so I think that's one thing that's going on.
01:14:00
Speaker
And then the other one that I was literally just talking with a buddy, and this is the way to sum up what, like, what, because you, you forget sometimes when we talk about things like this, that you, because of the way you were brought up, it's still, the program is still in there, in that, like, you still feel kind of bad sometimes.
Paternalism: Freedom vs. Protection
01:14:14
Speaker
You feel like, like, it's, like, bad things, but at the end of the day, it's just truth.
01:14:17
Speaker
It's just the truth.
01:14:18
Speaker
And, like, you,
01:14:19
Speaker
How can you feel that bad about like the truth?
01:14:21
Speaker
The things we talk about are unpleasant, but not untrue.
01:14:25
Speaker
And that is the best way of putting it because it's tough to hear, especially if you've never heard it before, but you're a lawyer, like at least you kind of get it.
01:14:32
Speaker
It's very difficult to hear because you go, wow, like that means everything I've learned growing up and also the fate of like,
01:14:38
Speaker
a whole bunch of people, millions of people is basically set in, not set in stone, but it's pretty well set for at least now.
01:14:46
Speaker
Well, this is the one.
01:14:47
Speaker
Yeah.
01:14:48
Speaker
I mean, I think, I think part of the solution to that, like I, I have, I have interacted with people who are always going to struggle to understand like their retirement plan elections and choosing a healthcare plan.
01:15:05
Speaker
And, uh,
01:15:08
Speaker
Examining a loan document, examining a mortgage, talking to a realtor, taking out a credit card, all of these sort of high cognitive load tasks that they will always struggle to execute.
01:15:22
Speaker
And my attitude toward those people is not like, well, you're just too stupid to function and so you're just going to be unhappy and you're just going to get took for a ride for the rest of your life.
01:15:36
Speaker
My mentality toward those people is like,
01:15:39
Speaker
we have to bring back some paternalism.
01:15:41
Speaker
We have to bring back this notion because unless, unless the alternative is we can either build a system of laws that accommodates the, the low IQ and, and just is a straight jacket for everybody else.
01:15:58
Speaker
Or we can build- It's Harrison Bergeron.
01:16:01
Speaker
I've never read that one.
01:16:04
Speaker
It's the dude that was smarter, stronger, faster than everybody.
01:16:07
Speaker
And they made him wear, I thought it was headphones that were just screeching noise all the time.
Balancing Intelligence and Freedom
01:16:13
Speaker
Yeah, to bring the top down.
01:16:16
Speaker
I can't remember what philosopher, some newer political philosopher, but he was like,
01:16:19
Speaker
The only system you should have that adjusts who is where as far as in the class system, the only thing that is right on any sense of the way is that if you're bringing the lowest up, not bringing the top down.
01:16:31
Speaker
Well, but I mean, I'm not even talking about making smart people stupid.
01:16:35
Speaker
I'm talking about banning financial instruments that smart people could understand.
01:16:42
Speaker
that low IQ people are not going to ever be able to understand for their own protection.
01:16:45
Speaker
Oh, dude, absolutely.
01:16:47
Speaker
Which the other alternative is you can build, which is kind of what we have today, you can build a legal system that's built around the smartest people so that they can have maximum freedom to wheel and deal and the low IQ people just get worked, just worked all the time, constantly.
01:17:05
Speaker
And the only alternative to those two
01:17:10
Speaker
is to say people are different and they need different rules and they need, and like, and, and, and I don't know how you do that.
01:17:18
Speaker
Like that's a really challenging, um, this shit makes me laugh.
01:17:22
Speaker
Cause sometimes I, something I, something I think about sometimes to make me like, like I said, we kind of feel kind of bad about like what we talk about is that I think back to like my grandfather's grandfather would have thought basically no different, probably like more hardcore than like what we think today.
Conservatism and Societal Change
01:17:36
Speaker
And like the conversation you and I are having, our grandparents, our great grandparents, they would be like, yeah, no shit, bro.
01:17:42
Speaker
Like no shit.
01:17:43
Speaker
This is obvious.
01:17:44
Speaker
Like, and that's, that's what keeps me going sometimes is that the amount of time that things have been this way and so fucked up is so new.
01:17:51
Speaker
And it's so short in the grand scheme of things that like, this is definitely an aberration.
01:17:56
Speaker
And one thing that, that also keeps me going is that like,
01:17:59
Speaker
those, I hate to use this word because it got so fucked up that these days, but conservative beliefs, right?
01:18:04
Speaker
Those will always be there when you meet them.
01:18:06
Speaker
Like when things, when times get tough and you like, I'm not, not that I think it is, it's going to happen like immediately, but the power goes down and you have to send the man out to hunt or to chop wood or whatever.
01:18:16
Speaker
Like you're going to go back to like gender rules pretty fucking quick.
01:18:18
Speaker
But, um,
01:18:20
Speaker
Right.
01:18:20
Speaker
Beyond that, like it's, you know, the stuff is all, what's the word for this?
01:18:26
Speaker
It's all a luxury right now to be able to like do all this nonsense.
01:18:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:18:31
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:31
Speaker
But no, I think that the big thing on what you were talking about is like the hierarchy.
Merit-Based System: Return to Comfort
01:18:35
Speaker
No one's comfortable with hierarchy anymore because I think part of it, to be honest with you, is that the hierarchy we've experienced now is so tainted and is not a meritocracy because back in the day, like if I know someone who's more competent than me, they're smarter than me, they're more experienced than me, they're more successful than me.
01:18:50
Speaker
I have no problem.
01:18:52
Speaker
Like they can be like, all right, I need you to like go outside, stand on one foot.
01:18:56
Speaker
And then like, you know, flap your arms like a bird.
01:18:58
Speaker
And I'll be like, I don't know what you're doing, but I trust you.
01:19:00
Speaker
And like, it was, I would, I would go do that.
01:19:03
Speaker
But if there's someone above me, who's like, they're just there arbitrarily, or I can like, you know,
01:19:07
Speaker
You kind of have that sense that they're not more competent than you.
01:19:09
Speaker
Like they can tell me to do something.
01:19:11
Speaker
I probably know myself that I need to do.
01:19:13
Speaker
But even then that I'm going to be hesitant to do it because I'm like, I don't trust that you're more competent than me or should be doing this.
01:19:19
Speaker
So I think that's you.
01:19:20
Speaker
We kind of have to like, I don't know.
01:19:22
Speaker
I don't know how you saw that because what comes first?
01:19:23
Speaker
Do you like try to make your own hierarchy system that go within that?
01:19:27
Speaker
Or do you try to like get back to what that should be within this?
01:19:29
Speaker
Like basically like reform or like reconstruct.
01:19:33
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, on the basis of what I'm doing here, I think I lean more toward exit and getting out and, you know,
01:19:43
Speaker
abandoning ship.
01:19:46
Speaker
But I think you have to get back to a hierarchy of genuine competence that people respect and recognize.
01:19:54
Speaker
And a lot of that, I think you're right, has to do with something has to go seriously wrong in a way that can't be papered over, in a way that can't be ignored.
01:20:08
Speaker
And the people who competently handle that will become legitimate authorities.
01:20:14
Speaker
And, and everyone will recognize that and there won't be any doubt.
01:20:17
Speaker
And there won't, it's not going to be this, like, you know, you're just there because your daddy, you know what I mean?
01:20:23
Speaker
Like,
01:20:24
Speaker
That won't have anything to do with it.
01:20:26
Speaker
Well, this has been a great conversation, Max.
01:20:28
Speaker
Thanks for coming along to share your thoughts.
Conclusion and Gratitude
01:20:31
Speaker
Anyone who's interested in learning more about what we do here at Exit, you can check us out at exitgroup.us.
01:20:36
Speaker
You can also check out the podcast at exitgroup.podbean.com.
01:20:40
Speaker
Follow us on Twitter, exit underscore org.
01:20:43
Speaker
Thanks a lot, Max.
01:20:44
Speaker
Great talking to you.
01:20:45
Speaker
Take care.