Malcolm and Simone discuss how AI and robots will transform childcare and parenting in the coming decades. They talk about existing kid-focused AIs like the doll that talks to children. They also cover how future home assistant AIs could help watch kids, allowing for more low-effort parenting styles.
Other topics include:
Dollar store gifts & low-cost approaches to birthdays and holidays
The dangers of helicopter parenting and benefits of giving kids independence
Financial and lifestyle changes needed to have more kids
Grimes' social media promoting AI for kids
Funny stories of reckless college escapades at St Andrews
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] but I'm thinking, you know, in 20 years, I imagine we will have AI avatars, i. e. robots that are in your basically AI slaves that live in your house. That help with like parenting and stuff like that. Well,
Simone Collins: there's already one for kids.
There's like the, this, it's, it looks kind of like a doll and it's an AI that talks to your kid.
Would you like to know more?
Malcolm Collins: By the way, we're at 1 0 5 now 1 0 5. What? Oh followers. 9,000 1 0 5.
Getting close to that 10 K number.
Simone Collins: Oh, gosh. Yeah. I'm excited about that. Well, okay. As, as a, when you were younger or even like when we first met. Did you think you were going to be a high effort or a low effort parent?
Malcolm Collins: Interesting. It never occurred to me. You
Simone Collins: didn't think about how you were going to approach things.
You just knew you were going to have a lot of kids.
Malcolm Collins: I kind of always thought I'd be super rich and super successful in like a major world figure. [00:01:00] So it never occurred to me.
Simone Collins: Because what, you would just have somebody else raise your kids?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. If I needed to. Yeah. It never occurred to me growing up that I would be in any way constrained in anything I did as an adult.
Simone Collins: That's actually, that's actually really interesting. Because I think that you. And I I think you more by temperament are a low effort parent. Like you just, you outsource as a sort of natural part of your management of any project. You know, you're not about putting in maximum effort, performative, or otherwise you try to do things elegantly and efficiently.
And I admire that deeply. And so you never would naturally be a high effort parent, but I think that if you were really wealthy and you did have nothing but like nannies, like one nanny for each kid and like a lot of people on them, those kids would experience a high effort parenting. growing up, meaning that there would be someone [00:02:00] micromanaging and helicopter parenting them all the time.
Why? Even if you tell a nanny or a babysitter or whatever to like, Hey, be hands off, you know, let them make their own mistakes. It's okay. If they fall down, like, you know, don't make a big deal out of everything. They know that they will be fired or they will be. Well, and this
Malcolm Collins: is something that we've seen was a lot of the wealthy parents that we know, and it's a big problem that they have with child rearing is when they create environments where they have somebody else like living in their house and helping raise their kids, especially if they have multiple people who can sort of watch each other to an extent.
These people are almost sort of forced to overindulge the child. Because it, you know, it's quite one thing to say, Oh, I won't give into a child's tantrum, but when you know, the mom is looking at you and seeing this child just like absolutely destroyed, it can be really hard to not do anything about it.
Or the
Simone Collins: kid makes a mess and you're like, Hey, you know, Jimmy clean up the mess. And Jimmy doesn't clean up [00:03:00] the mess. And then, you know, you, you try to make a big thing about it. And then, you know, the parents come in and the house is a complete wreck. And. The kids are having a tantrum. You're going to look really bad as the nanny, you know?
And so we've seen this happen. We're like, okay, they're just now they're cleaning everything up for the kids. Now the kids are getting super spoiled and entitled. And they're also being watched at every second. Again, I also like, we say this to babysitters all the time. Like, you know, our kids get bumps and bruises.
Like they fall down, they rough house, like this happens. But they do not want to be the kind of babysitter or nanny that returns. That it sees the parents return and like the kid is a black guy, you know, like you're not going to get hired again. And, and even we would probably be like, Oh, what happened here?
You know, like, this is not great. Actually we're pretty chill about that. We understand because we know how rambunctious our kids are. But yeah, no, so, so I think that's really, that's an interesting observation here just specifically that. Even low effort style parents who like know better or parents who understand that a helicopter parenting or coddling a child is really [00:04:00] damaging if they choose to pay other people to raise their kids, or they send their kids to a public school, a private school, daycare, et cetera.
I think
Malcolm Collins: daycare and public and private school are quite different. So, one study that people may not be familiar with is typically the kids who get sent to like, kindergarten earlier. They did a great, like, controlled study on this recently because they couldn't take all the kids into this like state paid kindergarten program.
The kids who got in actually did much worse in terms of their academics, long term, their emotional development long term. And even though the stereotype is homeschooled kids do worse socially than non homeschooled kids. The reality is that if you look at the meta studies on this, while you'll get things on both sides of the line, the majority seem to trend towards homeschool kids, have better social skills than non homeschooled kids and better leadership skills and better emotional control.
And this is because they learn their social, socialization from watching adults, whereas the rest of the kids learn their social abilities from like this weird [00:05:00] Lord of the Flies situation in this evil bureaucracy you've thrown them into. I mean, our school system in most of the world is this weird Totalitarian bureaucracy.
You have to like live a portion of your life under like, almost like living in a prison system. It is absolutely bizarre that we think that this would have positive social emotional outcomes.
Simone Collins: Well, and, and the kids are also in a highly regimented environment because they have to be to like make everything work and they are being micromanaged a lot more.
And there are a lot more like sort of strict rules and like, here's how it's going to go. And I'm going to watch you and I'm going to tell you what to do
Malcolm Collins: again. Yeah. I mean, in public school these days, you have very low student to teacher ratios. I think
Simone Collins: that most Yeah, but there's still I'm sorry, you never went to public school.
Your classes were like I did go to public
Malcolm Collins: school. 15 kids. And most of the pressure on kids to behave in certain ways within public school comes from their peer group, not from adults.
Simone Collins: No, I totally disagree. In a classroom environment, you've got, you know, 31 kids [00:06:00] at
Malcolm Collins: their desks. Seth, this is Valdivictorian.
You of course had extra attention from the teachers because you were No.
Simone Collins: What I'm saying is, like, no one is allowed to get up. There have to be rules to go to the bathroom. There have to be rules for everything because without that structured regimented environment, That's
Malcolm Collins: not what messes kids up.
Whether or not you can get up in a room. What are you talking about? It's about the way you relate to them emotionally. And that is primarily done from their peer group, not from the authorities. If you're in a class of like 500 kids to one teacher, the teacher is basically irrelevant in terms of the social and emotional lessons.
They're teaching the kids. Yeah, but the
Simone Collins: student, Subject to a system, which is like a big brother, and that's why you have all these kids who are constantly appealing to authority instead of actually like, so, for example, we have this issue of a lot of kids now who don't know their own limitations and boundaries and don't know others limitations and boundaries.
Why is that? Because when they get. Hurt by someone or wronged by someone, they get to appeal to this bureaucratic system of rules. And that person gets a timeout. And every time something goes wrong, they don't have to figure out how to navigate that [00:07:00] interpersonally as kids. They get to figure out how to navigate that bureaucratically as parts of the system.
And that's what I would
Malcolm Collins: really agree with this. And I would say that this is a huge problem right now in society as far as you're talking about appealing to bureaucracies because the bureaucracy teaches them, you know, how do you get the teachers involved? How do you call somebody over? If somebody has hurt your feelings in any way then, then, then they get punished.
And so kids learn to utilize this as a tool at a very young age. If I can convincingly argue to a person in a position of authority that somebody hurt my feelings, then I get to use the violence of the state, basically the violence of the authority, the IE, the power of the authority on whoever I can convince hurt my feelings.
And so it creates this, this mindset where it also keep in mind, like what, what do kids get punished for? They get punished for quote unquote, hurting other kids, whether that's their feelings or their, their bodies, which. for kids makes them believe that in a [00:08:00] society, the number one thing of value is not being hurt.
This is where you get was in this left community, like ultra lefty community minded individual, this belief in negative utilitarianism, because that's the belief that's implicitly taught through the power structures of our school systems. The way that you call down upon the ultimate authority, like Power on someone, you know, like, like your God in this system, like I'm going to call down lightning on somebody else is by claiming to have been hurt physically or emotionally, which then to an individual makes them think like I deserve as a right in society to never be emotionally or physically hurt.
Like even after they leave the school system, that's when you get this you know, mindset we see right now in our society. So
Simone Collins: I agree. It's worse than that. Because they don't understand how to deal with being hurt themselves. They literally don't have the tools for it. So, when you look at animals like mammals, especially when they're young, they play, they nip at each other.
They bite, they jump, they, they push boundaries and they push each [00:09:00] other's boundaries and they often hurt each other and get hurt. What is the point of that? They are learning internal resilience and they're learning where other people's boundaries are. At least like other, not species, but like other people or other.
Similar kinds boundaries are. And when you don't learn that, like if for example, you don't get a chance, like a homeschool kid might to like, you know, get punched by a brother and the mom's too busy to like realize it and have to deal with justice on your own. You aren't going to learn how to deal with that.
You're only going to learn how to appeal to authority. So that's the other important thing is I think that there is some level of emotional regulation that also comes out of this is just learning that like, hey, sometimes life isn't fair. I don't always get to file a complaint and have justice take place when I'm wronged.
Sometimes I just have to figure out how to deal with the fact that people can be dicks to me and I'm going to over time. You know, learn from that and avoid people who are going to punch me when mom isn't looking. So I, I think that's another really big problem of that, but [00:10:00] I do think this is an interesting thing and that we, what we came into this conversation planning to talk about was that low effort parenting is inherently pronatalist.
Actually it's can, it can be difficult to actually gift your child with low effort parenting in modern society, even if you yourself are a low effort parent. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: like with our kids, right? Like, we let them do basically what they want to do as much as we can but, you know, we've had CPS called on us that we've done a video about, right?
Like, by letting our kids play outside alone with us watching them from inside, that was considered a CPS callable event.
Simone Collins: Inside a locked yard, by
Malcolm Collins: the way. Yeah, in a locked yard. But this is also a problem for us. I mean, we live on a farm, right? Like, if you leave our house, and you walk from our house, you can walk into the woods, and you can walk into like a national park, right?
Like, it streams, everything like that. It's a fun place to play. But we can't let our kids play there. Like, it was a generation ago, kids our age by now would be running into the [00:11:00] woods all
Simone Collins: the time. Like, yeah, I mean, I grew up reading Calvin and Hobbes. I know you hate Calvin and Hobbes, but like, This vision of this boy going out into the woods with his wagon and his toy tiger.
Also, by himself, mind you, not even without, like, siblings to kind of, you know, keep him honest. Can you imagine? You know, like,
Malcolm Collins: No, it's wild, yeah. And I'm hoping that in a few years, you know, our oldest will have to bite the bullet, but then once they're old enough to watch their siblings, we can send them out.
I mean, I do, we do need to be wary. There are, I mean, I have seen large coyotes in the woods here that could easily kill a kid. So we do need to be aware of that, and, and keep them In safe areas but I mean, and I watch enough Lost 401 stories for people who don't know the Lost 401 phenomenon.
People know I really like my like, occult, like, mysteries and stuff like that. I, I just love listening to them. And so I'm terrified. Mr. Ballin, we love, like Lore Lodge, we love, like I could go Mr. Grimley, like anyone who does. [00:12:00] like anything tied to cryptids or missing 401s or other types of mysteries.
I absolutely love listening to, but it also terrifies me of like letting my kids go play in the woods because so many it's like, well, I was watching them and I turned away for a few seconds. And the next time I looked at the toddlers were all gone.
Simone Collins: No, that, that happens a lot. Like the many stories began with.
I don't know if my toddler was playing in the backyard while I watched from inside, or we were hiking and the toddler ran ahead a little bit and then that's the last time they were ever seen. Not good. Yikes. That's why we lock the gate and they stay in there for now.
Malcolm Collins: But it also requires a level of like, I don't know, I think part of this might even just be genetic that you are even able to be a low effort parent.
Cause I remember, you know, we had some friends over at our house once and all our kids were playing together. And they were, they had a lot of kids they were high fertility family, what, four or five kids? Anyway and their kids and our kids were playing in the local creek, because we have a creek by our [00:13:00] house with a, an area where it pools, so you get like a natural pool where the kids can swim and you know, one of our kids fell in, and they just started sinking, and they were freaking out, like, I was like, I,
Simone Collins: I, I like casual.
Even when Malcolm is standing like two feet from this kid. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I, I did not act with any sort of a panic or, or worry. I was pretty relaxed in going, pulling the kid out of water and then, you know, putting them on the shore. And like, I mean the kid, you know, sinking in a, in a, in a pond, like, you know, they, they're terrified.
Right. And, the kid was fine, you know, he got up, and then he kicked at the, the water, and he was angry at the pond for annoying him. But and, and with me, people are like, oh, you're such a horrible parent. It takes a kid a while to drown. Like, I saw him from the moment he fell in. I had plenty of time to walk over, and, and not get wet, and He wasn't going to drown in that period of time and he was learning a valuable lesson about falling into ponds.
[00:14:00] But you know, I think a lot of people are just like anything that threatens, you know, you must immediately go out and run and panic and have a huge emotional situation over. And I don't think that would have served his benefit at all. But I think that that's, you know, probably not a conscious decision I made.
It was just like the way I'm genetically coded to like, look at the situation and be like, is this going to kill him? Yeah,
Simone Collins: no, we both have this sort of reaction where your reaction is just sort of practically. Pick them up and take care of them and like dust them off, but like not freak out. And my natural reaction is to do the same thing, but then laugh hysterically at like, one of our sons last night thought he would be absolutely hilarious when he was taking a bath like taking a little cup of water and then like, Drinking it in a really weird and annoying way.
But then immediately this backfired cause he inhaled a ton of water and he just starts like coughing, like he's an old man, like, and I just like dying of [00:15:00] laughter and, you know, I think a lot of other parents might be like, Oh no, my son is, is, is he swallowed water to the wrong way? Like he's choking on it.
And I'm just sitting here like. I
Malcolm Collins: mean, historically, lots of families have like 15 kids, if
Simone Collins: you're not okay with any of our kids ever getting hurt or dying, I'm, I mean, I am, I am very safety conscious as are you, which is why you're so paranoid. I mean, what's all this like for a, for a one, like
Malcolm Collins: missing person.
Yeah. But I mean. I think that, you know, if you're not raising your kid in a way and you're not, not treating them with the level of care that they would receive in a family of 15, then you're, you're not treating them in a sustainable way or in a way that is aligned with our evolutionary
Simone Collins: history. Well, yeah, no.
So let's, let's go into it. Like why is low effort parenting pernagelous and important? I think the big one is we've already talked about this here and we've already alluded to this a lot. When you have low effort parenting, you are giving children an opportunity to develop their own sense of internal regulation, socialization, and independence.
And if you don't do that, you're not going to have independent [00:16:00] kids. Second, it is the only way to make parenting sustainable for parents. And we say to our friends all the time, there is nothing harder than having just one kid because with one kid, everything's a big deal. You also kind of feel obligated to make everything a
Malcolm Collins: big deal.
I think two is slightly harder than one. I think where it really starts getting easier, three, four,
Simone Collins: et cetera. Well, but with one, it's like You're really freaking out about it about everything. You know, Oh, the tiniest rash. Whereas like with two, you're like, I don't know. I've seen this before. You know, this is fine.
Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And now that you're at two kids, because you know, you grew up an only child. I think a lot of people you know, before they have a couple of kids, they don't realize how I would see it as abusive. It is to only have one child. Yeah. Because
Simone Collins: they also start entertaining each other. Even if they look like they're fighting, they're entertaining each other and they're not clinging to you.
Momentary needs of entertainment, which is really important. But yeah, I also get the mindset of just knowing that you're going to have a lot of kids, which causes more low effort parenting is incredibly valuable because you [00:17:00] start asking yourself, even if you've only at that point had two or three or four kids, is this something that I'm going to be able to handle?
When I have five, six or seven kids. And if the answer is no, well then we're just not going to make a really big deal out of this. You know, we're just going to have to, you know, be chill and it, it makes you much calmer as a parent. And then of course we've always argued again and again, that the amount of money that parents spend on kids is absolutely insane.
Between the camps, they send them to the schools. They send them to the products they get for them, the brand new clothes. And this happens at every level of income I've noticed. This is not just something that like wealthier middle class families do. Like everyone spends unreasonable amounts of money on kids, especially on like special kid foods.
And I think when you are a low effort parent, you're instead thinking about like crock pot meals. And you're thinking about buying in bulk and you're thinking about like. Cooking the same way I learned how to cook is like a river guide when I was a kid where you're like cooking these [00:18:00] bulk meals and they're actually very healthy and they're very affordable and they're probably healthier than like the hyper processed baby food that you used to buy when you had only one child,
Malcolm Collins: right?
And our kids love going to the toy store, except they don't know that the toy store that we take them to is just the local dollar store. So we know that they can't accidentally get attached to anything that's too expensive. And I mean, this is, this is just
Simone Collins: like, Which is actually, hold on, I just want to point out, this is an extremely traditional thing, and the concept of getting kids expensive toys for the holidays is completely bonkers.
This song, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. There's this line where they say, take a look at the five and ten, glistening once again with candy canes and sugar. lanes of glow. Now that the five and 10 that's the dollar store. That's a five and 10 cent store. People were not shopping at high end stores for gifts for their kids and they were still having a very magical Christmas enough to be memorialized by like 1950s Christmas songs.
So
Malcolm Collins: you [00:19:00] can easily get all your kids stuff from a dollar store for Christmas and still give them a pretty magical Christmas. Which is you know, and we've so moved away from that. We have these expensive, insane toys I see people giving now. And it's like,
Simone Collins: why? Oh, and it's not just that. I mean, also like birthdays, have you seen birthday cakes that even like our peers, I'm referring to our peers.
I'm not just referring to like Instagram influencers are getting for their kids. They are fancier than our wedding cake. I kid you not.
Malcolm Collins: I know traditional Calvinist families, birthdays are a sin to, to, to have a holiday themed around an individual. And I mean, we've talked about maybe not doing birthdays for all our kids once we have a lot of them.
We have
Simone Collins: extremely chill birthdays to start. We've yet to have a birthday party for any one of our children. You know that, right?
Malcolm Collins: Well, we kind of have, we've had a few birthday cakes. We
Simone Collins: make birthday cakes cause that's fun.
Malcolm Collins: We haven't did a birthday party. Oh yeah. We've certainly never invited anyone over.
What up? What a chore that
Simone Collins: would be. Some parents also seem to do birthday parties, but like, [00:20:00] just parents come. And they, they buy like a bunch of decorations and a really expensive cake. And then they post a photo of it to Facebook or Instagram or whatever. So I'd have to
Malcolm Collins: do that, Simone. I don't want to friends.
Do you have any idea what a burden that would be?
Simone Collins: Oh, terrifying, genuinely. But yeah, I mean, it's so that's, that's the other element is the financial element. A lot of people do not have more kids now or do not think they can have kids or wait too long to have kids because they expect to spend insane amounts on their children.
When in reality, children really don't cost that much. I, number one, our biggest expense for kids is what do you think? Diapers, no medical stuff. My God, medical stuff. Yeah. Medical stuff. And then probably after that, probably whole milk because they, I mean,
Malcolm Collins: formula is so expensive now. It's like 6.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
And they, they chug it. So that is our. Like, but yeah, I mean, aside from that, and if you have good [00:21:00] insurance through an employer and we have kind of shitty insurance, so it's super, super high deductible or they're like, Oh yeah, spend 10, 000. And then maybe we'll talk about covering expenses. Yeah,
Malcolm Collins: but we don't even like do anything for our kids.
Like regular stuff, but we don't have kids with like medical issues.
Simone Collins: I know we take them to checkups. They get vaccines. Well, if they have like a rash or they're sick, we take them in. And that adds up. Plus he got those ear thingies a
Malcolm Collins: while ago. We should probably get better at home medical
Simone Collins: care. Well, yeah, but, and that's one of our plans for this year.
Also for ourselves. It's just like switch to Chad GPT, plus like those really detailed blood panel lists, like where we get like a very detailed blood panel from ourselves for ourselves, at least to start, we're going to experiment on ourselves for first, before we do this with our kids. But then use that as like a marker plus like really detailed analysis.
Plus, you know, things like Ezra scans where we're getting right.
Malcolm Collins: And to point out here, anyone who thinks you're being irresponsible. I have a degree of medical training because [00:22:00] of my academic background. And doctors are profoundly less educated than you imagine them to be. They are not that smart.
If you, it's one of those things where when you know about a profession and then you see people on air and you can immediately tell like how much they don't know about the profession. And you're like, Oh, wow. The moment I learned about this profession at like any sort of like academic level, then I see people in mass media or like a famous person on like a show talking about it.
And you're like, Ooh, he's pronouncing all the words wrong. And he's, you know, you know, it's the same as doctors. If you have all that. I
Simone Collins: think many of the medical professionals, people come into contact with have extremely specific and narrow. Ranges of focus where they are incredibly good and they have amazing pattern recognition, but only in one specific area, like a nurse that was helping to take care of me after I delivered one of our kids, like started just veering the tiniest bit [00:23:00] outside of like labor delivery and like very, very newborns.
And abysmal advice. And I'm like, wait, like, is, where are the studies about this? And she's like, oh, no, no, I heard this in like a parenting book, or a parenting Facebook group, for moms. And I'm like, oh, of medical professionals? She's like, no, no, no, of moms. And I'm like, oh! No!
Malcolm Collins: I'm a mom, so I know.
Simone Collins: As a mom on Facebook, I think.
So, yeah, I mean, I think there's, there's just also that, that like, it is, there's, there's so much to know in the medical profession and then you kind of get into your niche and you really, really know it, but that doesn't mean that you know everything about the human body. But AI is actually really good at answering questions like that, but yeah, no, so, so kids don't have to be that expensive and a major, major, major pronatalist issue.
Has to pivot around this concept of shifting the way that people parent from expecting to be a helicopter parent who spends insane amounts of money on their kid to being a parent who trusts their kid to [00:24:00] learn really important lessons while still providing guide rails. So they don't tie or get really hurt.
And who, you know, doesn't spend a ton of money on them because frankly, you know, when we give our kids presents half the time, they prefer the box. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I, I mean, I'm just thinking about where parenting is going to be in like 20 years, because I was thinking about, you know, you're mentioning AI.
In terms of you know, helping with this advice on parenting, but I'm thinking, you know, in 20 years, I imagine we will have AI avatars, i. e. robots that are in your basically AI slaves that live in your house. That help with like parenting and stuff like that. Well,
Simone Collins: there's already one for kids.
There's like the, this, it's, it looks kind of like a doll and it's an AI that talks to your kid. And like, as a parent, you can tell the AI to like. Get your kid excited about brushing teeth. Wait, what? Are you serious? Show this to me. Oh, shit. Okay, yeah, I will. Why don't
Malcolm Collins: we have one of these? Are they
Simone Collins: expensive?
I saw, like, Grimes on her Instagram, like, [00:25:00] promoting this a while ago. I'll dig through it and find the company that she was in partnership with. I mean, of course, like, Grimes is both, like, a parent of children and, like, a super futurist. It's gonna be someone promoting something like this.
Malcolm Collins: We have immense respect for Grimes.
Anyone who thinks that she is not an absolute genius is They're just believing public sentiment in the same way that like the press likes to, you know, smear people.
Simone Collins: Yeah. But anyway, there's that. And then I saw an ad for another one too. I, I will send you the ads so that you can splice them into this.
Hey Grok, um, can you tell me about how they make rocket ships? Absolutely! Rockets are made with strong materials like titanium and designed by highly trained rocket scientists.
I'm so excited for you to tell me about the dentist. I've never been to one. You don't have teeth. But I can still smile. And then what happened? He said he didn't want to play with me anymore. Thank you for telling me about your day. Sometimes, holding a friend's hand makes me feel better. [00:26:00] Do you want to try squeezing my hand?
Simone Collins: Because no, we're already there. So like, if we're already there, we're also going to get. And of course you and I have talked about creating AI friends for our children. No, but I think
Malcolm Collins: it would be better for kids because the core reason, like with a lot of our kids, I can just leave them to do nothing and they're mostly going to be fine.
But the younger ones, I have to worry about them like choking on a rock or something, right? Like I have to, we're sticking it out, their hands in an outlet. So I have to keep a level of watchful eye over them. But as soon as I get an AI that can identify these behaviors and prevent them then I can leave the younger children.
They're in their own. No, even like going into the woods, the core reason I'm afraid of them going into the woods would be, we should just look like an AI, like monster truck thing that follows them around. And maybe even, I mean, I know that the commercial ones won't come armed for, you know, animals that could attack the kids.
But you know, we have, we know some people who could modify them to follow the kids into the woods and keep them safe. I think it's
Simone Collins: a sci fi that I read once with like teens that were highly [00:27:00] irresponsible in it. They, they were belts that would kind of inflate into giant bouncy things. They were ever like fell off a building or something, which they, you know, I mean, when you were at St.
Andrews, like a certain number of students would die each year falling off the cliffs when they got drunk. Right. So, which
Malcolm Collins: is, you know. Really useful. To remove them from the gene pool. I, I know. So this was a seven and eight was the, the line that everyone wants here. It's a in the last eight years at the school, when I was there, seven kids had fallen off the cliff and before that, even more had fallen off.
And I remember at my orientation, they were like, okay, like parents have called me to be like, do you understand below the cliff is.
Simone Collins: The ocean. Craggy rocks. Well, no. Craggy rocks in the
Malcolm Collins: ocean. Craggy rocks in the ocean. Right. But I'm just giving this context. And he's like, and I get calls from parents. The, the, the guy who's running the school all the time.
And he's like, and I am like, what, what am I supposed to do? Fill it in. Like there's nothing you can [00:28:00] do. You could build a giant wall around all of the cliffs
Simone Collins: around the university. I think what they expect is those Golden Gate Bridge style suicide barrier gates. The kinds that like, you know, go over, they like, bend over.
So just to, you know, completely ruin the landscape. If a kid is going to get
Malcolm Collins: drunk and jump off a cliff then I'm sorry. I just don't have that much sympathy. And people are like, did you get, yeah, I got drunk and I never jumped off a cliff. I never came close to jumping off a
Simone Collins: cliff. Well, and it's actually really impressive when you think about it.
How few people in St. Andrews are dying because there's traditions like the May dip where you stay up all night, you get crazy drunk, and then you run into the ocean with a giant crowd of people. And okay. When we, when we
Malcolm Collins: saw it, you happened to see the May
Simone Collins: dip. So you, I saw it. Yeah. Although we did not see any pyramid.
Oh, actually, no, sorry. What I meant to say is we did see a ton of paramedics just standing around. Yeah, that
Malcolm Collins: wasn't a thing when I did it. Come on, Simone. We were pussies back then, you know, we, we froze our butts off. It was with the, [00:29:00] with you know, with the clubs. So the local university clubs would, this is actually an interesting change.
If you talk about like the degradation of our society where we understood it was the job of the prestigious clubs on campus and they could earn additional social status. by setting up protective and comforting things around may dip. So they do things like hand out toasties, which are like little
Simone Collins: grilled sandwiches, grilled cheese sandwiches.
Yeah. Grilled
Malcolm Collins: cheese sandwiches with ham. Yeah. And they would hand out you know, they'd hand out a warm towels. They'd have, they'd have little paramedic things set up, but these were the, the high prestige, basically it was insane. I guess you could say frats and stuff
Simone Collins: that would do this. Well, this is what happens when you allow young people to develop a sense of independence and responsibility.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But now you go and it's all like the university funded adult paramedic booths all over the beaches, you know, and everyone's
Simone Collins: fat. Well, okay. Sorry. All the women are fat.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, this was shocking when I went to see Maydip again, for anyone who's from St. Andrews. If you haven't seen it, like, [00:30:00] recently, there was not a girl at that school I would snog.
And this is me, like, as a 30 year old man looking at, like, younger college women where you'd think I'd be interested. Like, I was looking, and I'd be honest, my genitals were afraid of what I would
Simone Collins: see. My assumption, too, by the way, was that you just weren't drunk enough. And like back in the day, no, we checked with your brother and sister and they were like, no, no, no.
Like, yeah, everyone was super hot when we were there. Cause you were there at the same time as, as your
Malcolm Collins: brother. Well, I mean, we were there right after Will and Kate were there. So within like a couple of years. So, you know, we were people who don't know that the Prince and the yeah. Anyway
Simone Collins: No, no, no.
There is an episode on the crown about just that, that I'm watching right now with great enjoyment because I get to see St. Andrews. I think they're even, they, there's even a shot of the Sainsbury's. Yeah. And fun aside. So on this night of May dip, everyone, of course goes to the local grocery store, a Sainsbury's and [00:31:00] completely clears out all the alcohol, obviously.
Cause you have to get immensely drunk to be able to stay up all night and then get into the ocean. So, Oh, Tesco. That's right. It wasn't a Sainsbury's. It didn't. And we're walking down the aisle and we didn't realize it was made up night until we walked past the alcohol shelves and it was only like 5 PM and they were all empty.
And then there were these two St. Andrews guys who in the most posh English accent you can imagine one turns to the other and says, this is Daya. And he's
Malcolm Collins: like, this is Daya. And we're like,
Simone Collins: oh, this is alcohol. I love it. Yeah. Only like the, the chintziest, like
Malcolm Collins: low class. But the other teenager story we should probably tell is the one about me in the window.
Yes, yes, please. So I had this you know, St. Andrews is like a tourist town, right? And I was in one of the old historic buildings that, that I had rented a room in, right? But it was right on the road right on one of the main roads that everyone would walk by and it had a big, like plain [00:32:00] glass window to, to the road.
So they could see in pretty easily. And I had recently bought repl like a sword. Like, you know, Andrew Tate sword, right? Except this is, I would never get one. He has like an officer sword, like some sort of tool. Sorry. We have a great sword at this house. But back then I had a Gladius, which is a classic Roman sword.
That's like a single handed, but it was a good replica actually. Anyway so I, of course, do what you do when you are a man and are playing with your the high quality replica swords. Which is, you know, swing them around. And you, you put on music. And me being me, you know something you know about me, Simone, is I don't always put on my clothes.
But you know. Simone Not always. Henry Too much effort, right? You know, uh and, and so. I was I think like Footloose was on or something, dancing around with my sword in, in
Simone Collins: And what he forgot was that St. Andrews is actually an incredibly popular tourist destination and also [00:33:00] constantly being toured by prospective students.
Malcolm Collins: Yes. And so I had been doing this for God knows how long, like people were like, Malcolm, are you this carefree and energetic all the time? You always were. Yes. Yes. I've been doing that for a long time. And so I was in the middle of my partially new, like, boxers only sword dance routine and I turned around and I noticed that there is a giant crowd that has been building on the street, watching me,
I at the moment I saw it, I immediately dove under the couch, which I can only imagine was funnier than all of them.
Simone Collins: Oh God I, I imagine that someday somebody watching this video is going to be like, Oh my God, he's that
Malcolm Collins: guy, that
Simone Collins: guy, I remember that. But yeah. Okay. So like, [00:34:00] just to recap here, like you cannot have pronatalism and helicopter parenting.
And I think there are some people out there who believe themselves to be pronatalist who are also helicopter parents. And if you do not come to terms with the fact that you're going to have to get a way more chill. In order to be not only a pronatalist parent, but also a good parent that, that does not raise emotionally stunted infantilized children.
You're gonna have to learn low effort and I will say I have tendencies toward this and Malcolm sometimes you have been, not sometimes, sorry, frequently, you have been the one to encourage me to not be such a tight ass about things.
Malcolm Collins: I'm sorry if I ever press you too hard.
Simone Collins: No, you don't, you, it's, it's very necessary.
And quite frankly, the reason why I personally did helicopter parenting stuff was not because I genuinely believed it would create better outcomes. I did it because I was [00:35:00] neurotic. And parents should not be imposing their neuroticism on their own children. That is.
Malcolm Collins: I know it's true. You definitely are.
I don't mean to say this.
Simone Collins: I am neurotic and evil. I'm glad you finally admitted it. I love you too. I think you're an amazing father. And I would love for people in the comments to share their favorite low effort parenting tip. So that we can learn from them. Except that there's some low effort parents out there.
I'll also go on. Okay, I hate doing this. But if anyone has access to some kind of Apple device and can leave a five star review for our podcast on Apple, it would probably make a big difference for us and or like this video. And or subscribe because
Malcolm Collins: we never ask for this on YouTube. We're doing okay.
But on a lot of the podcasting sites, it's a lot harder to get reviews. So one review on one of the podcasting sites matters. Like 30 or 40 subscriptions on YouTube. Yeah,
Simone Collins: I'll tell you what, I go to Apple Podcasts now, and I have to say, [00:36:00] this is dire. So Dire.
Malcolm Collins: Anyway, I love you to death Simone, you are a sweetheart, and I every Wait, it's not just Apple, any of the podcasting services that you can leave reviews on, those are really helpful to us and I appreciate it, because, you know, we don't want to look like an obscure nobody, I mean, we are obscure, but I don't want to look as obscure.
But not really. Actually, if you look at our view numbers, we were probably up to about between the various platforms around 1000 hours a day now. In terms of watch time, which I know people, you know, they see these small channel numbers in the context of a social media age. But this is this is a lot.
This is like a lot of people's time. We were looking at something like consecutive watchers and we're at like something like 40 consecutive watchers at any point in time between the various platforms, you know? It's, it's pretty wild. So, you know, helping us On the podcasting platforms helps a lot in terms of what it takes for us to grow the channel and us growing the channel makes sure that you keep seeing episodes because at a certain [00:37:00] point, you know, we need to be realistic about this, you know, given our careers, we could probably do something else.
And if we're not growing. Fast enough. Probably doesn't make sense for us anymore, but I don't think we're anything close to that right now. Right now we're growing at the clip that we would like. But anyone who is, is willing to help with that, it
Simone Collins: means a lot. Yeah. Thanks everyone.
Low Effort Parenting is Pronatalist (& Random Chat)