Pragmaxxing

Malcolm and Simone discuss the concept of "pragmaxing" - dedicating your life to maximizing a purpose bigger than yourself. They talk about why trying to improve the world, even if you won't experience the results, is worthwhile. They cover martyrdom mindsets, generational progress as a relay race, and leaving the campsite better than you found it. Malcolm argues this drive is innate to humans and that competent people uniting can create positive change. He emphasizes realizing you are flawed but still striving for a future "radiant beings" deserve.

Malcolm: [00:00:00] one person in a comment, he goes, why are you trying to make the future a better place if you won't experience that future? And it's bro, you are so missing the plot. So what Simone said, we have a different iteration of how we see ourselves. And that's cute.

If I lived for, let's say, a hundred thousand years, right? I would be such a radically different person at the end of that period, that there is no way I would have any meaningful connection to who I am today.

Yeah, it's

Simone: pointless. It's pointless. The person you're going to be in even ten years is not going to be you. So why are you trying to preserve

Malcolm: it? Yeah, and if I did try to preserve it, if I did successfully preserve it, if in a hundred thousand years I was meaningfully the same person I am today, well then I didn't improve.

I didn't better myself, and I shouldn't still be around. I am a pointless, wretched thing if I improved so little over a hundred thousand years that I am still recognizable as a Malcolm. That is sad and sickening. And so why do I care that I can't see the better world that I'm trying to create?

It is a world not meant for me. It [00:01:00] is a world that I would sully with my very presence. Moses on the mountain, you are not meant to live in the promised land. Because you are wretched, you are trying to lead the way for the people who will get to experience the Promised Land because they deserve it in a way that not a single person alive today does.

Would you like to know more?

Simone: Welcome to Base Camp where one person has a conversation with themselves two times over. One says themselves and one's in drag. I'm Malcolm Collins dressed as a woman. And this with me here today is

Malcolm: also Malcolm Collins, but this time dressed as a man. I would love it if we pretended that's what our show was.

Like we convince people that it really is just one person with a synthesizer talking to themselves. Yeah. So we wanted to talk about Maxis. Because this has really become a thing recently, you know, whether it's looks maxing or trans maxing or we see it across society and when I want to talk about [00:02:00] the allure of it, and if we could create an iteration of it, that is healthy because a lot of it is just almost intrinsically unhealthy whenever you are, so I understand why it's emotionally appealing.

Right? This idea of, I'm just going to go 100 percent whole hog into whatever thing it is I'm doing. I'm just going to say, okay, at every level, how do I optimize the outcome, right? That I'm trying to achieve. And that can create this sort of Zen state. Yeah. It's a sort of forced hedonistic stoicism where it's hedonistic in that you're maxing a thing, but it's stoic in that you are As intelligently as possible trying to think through how do I actually maximize this thing?

And as disinterestedly and soberly as possible, and that [00:03:00] can create you to view things in a very different way. And it's much easier to apply that to a specific modality than it is to say, well, what if I took this maxing mindset and applied it to my entire life? So that's one thing that we wanted to talk about with this, but then we wanted to say.

All of this within the context of if we're creating healthy maxing, well then we need to think about maxing as a cultural group, like how do you max our cultural group and this comes to defining our cultural outside of just our religion or whatever, right? I mean, like the wider group, the type of people who watch our videos, the type of people who are part of this sort of new conservative movement in America.

And I think a really good acronym for engaging with this group is not one that applies to it, but one that applies to another group, which is Tessacralism. Have you heard of

Simone: this? What? No. I'm picturing weird hats. Is this okay?

Malcolm: , it's used to explain like the [00:04:00] cluster of things that EAs are into.

. Transhumanism, Singulitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Affective Altruism, and Long Termism. I mean, you definitely see some of these. Transhumanism, Singulitarianism, Rationalism, Affective Altruism, and Long Termism definitely like cluster together within this community.

And one of the things that I've noted is that within... Our community, you get a separate area of clustered interests which are education reform or working on alternate education systems space travel, like interested in making us an inter Planetary species bio accelerationism you know, so sort of like trying to do like our use of genetic technology with our kids or artificial limbs or stuff like that.

AI accelerationism I'd actually argue with the other community, anti AI ism or AI panic is a [00:05:00] core aspect of their philosophy. Yeah. Anti censorship economic liberalism, so... Basically economic side of libertarianism like looser government controls and stuff like that. Often this is seen in like city state interests, like being interested in like creating outside city states.

Poverty. Yeah. Yeah. Pro sexuality but not engaged in sexuality hedonistically, but just yeah, interesting from like a study perspective. Like they're not afraid to engage with it, but they don't engage with it to hedonistically please themselves and nerd culture. And maybe somebody can come up with some sort of acronym.

For this group. But I was like what could you create through combining these different philosophies and why this group has these different philosophies? So what's actually like driving this group to have all these different philosophies that differentiate so much from the EA community? I think the EA community, above all things, is driven by [00:06:00] a terrified fear of death and not existing anymore.

They're so afraid of AIs killing them all. They're so afraid of progress. They're so afraid of... Dying, you know, life extensionism is critical for them. Like digitizing the human mind is critical for them.

This focus on both maintaining stasis and then within that stasis, making it as pleasant as possible. Whereas this other group. They are much more interested in moving forwards as quickly as possible and in intergenerationally improving as much as possible while seeing themselves as disposable.

One of the, you know, obviously I'd say one of

Simone: the avatars. No, I would, so I would word that a little bit differently. I would say, you know, by having a very different definition of what self is. That is more expansive than the individual biological being or some kind of continuous consciousness.

Malcolm: The point being is that, all of these ideologies are [00:07:00] based on one specific outcome which is building a Sort of a pluralistic, intergenerationally improving and robust humanity.

So robust means multi planetary almost intrinsically and expanding, right? Creating the seeds of what becomes the human empire. The great interplanetary human empire. And that, This is something that can be maxed. Dedicating your life to this philosophy is something that can be maxed. And, I guess I'll call it pragmaxing.

And I'll