WIRED Provably Lied About Us & Pronatalism's Triumph Over Effective Altruism

Join us as we discuss the recent coverage of Natal Con, focusing on a controversial Wired article that stirred the community. We dive into the misrepresentations and factual errors in the article, the financial realities of hosting such events, and how the prenatal list movement is rapidly growing compared to established movements like effective altruism and AI safety. With insights into the organizational efforts behind Natal Con and a comparison of different ideological movements, this video provides an in-depth look at the current landscape of natalism. We also touch on the motivations and commitments driving both the prenatal list and AI safety communities. Don't miss this engaging and eye-opening discussion!

[00:00:00]

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be with you here. Coming back from Nacon. We've had pieces on us in the past few days in the BBC in the New York Times there's gonna be a CNN one. We know there's gonna be an NPR one, we know that haven't come out yet. One on an Italian station, one of the two major stations in the country.

But Wired did the most unhinged piece. And I am, which is weird. I grew up loving, wired. This is so strange. I did you. I thought of them as like a semi-professional, not a semi-professional. I actually thought of them as like a premium.

Simone Collins: Absolutely beautiful print magazine. Loved their pieces. This is weird.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But their piece was completely boast. Unhinged and, and non-factual, like they got almost every fact wrong in ways that even your average base camp watcher would know. Yeah.

Simone Collins: I don't know. Even your understanding of basic linguistics would know.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And we're gonna read a bit of the piece and then go over statistics on what's been happening with the prenatal list movement when [00:01:00] contrasted with other movements recently, because we've now significantly passed in terms of like search traffic, effective altruism, AI safety, other stuff like that, which is really cool., so the,

Simone Collins: the title of the Wired article is Far right. Influencers are hosting a 10 K per Person Matchmaking Weekend to Repopulate the Earth. Yeah, so they, they're claiming that it, it costs $10,000 to attend Natal Con, which is.

Isn't that true?

Malcolm Collins: Well, okay, so if you're a watcher of the show, you know, we've been promoting the conference constantly for a long time. We've been promoting it with, with small discounts, but it also means, you know, the conference cost at nothing near $10,000 to go to, I know it was expensive. I think it was around a thousand dollars.

It was

Simone Collins: a thousand dollars. So then 900 with our 10% discount.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Which is a lot I know, but they also did a really good job of making it good and fun, like Yeah. My perspective.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: And I do think that that amount of money is needed to screen out crazy people. Oh, plus

Simone Collins: also, like, have you seen how much [00:02:00] any event space charges for food, like one cookie, $10 and they served breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

On Saturday plus snacks, plus open bar at dinner, and then there was dinner and open bar on Friday. I just. You can't use professional venue spaces and basically do anything less than that

Malcolm Collins: these days. I think that what people are thinking when they think of like costs or they're comparing it to something, is they're not comparing, they're comparing it to a con, like a furry con or something like that.

Yeah.

Simone Collins: Where there's an artist alley, there's absolutely zero food. And then there's just some speakers and it's at a bigger event space. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. They're, they're not thinking like, okay, they've gotta pay for the speakers, they've gotta pay for the, hotels for the speakers, I don't think any of the speakers are paid, but they gotta pay for the hotels, for the speakers.

They sometimes need to pay for flights. They need to pay for all of the venue space. They need to pay for security, they need to pay for insurance, and then they need to pay for all the meals. And the open bar too,

Simone Collins: because there were protesters out the first night. There were [00:03:00] lots of people trying to get in who didn't have registration.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And it wasn't just like a normal venue, like it was like a really nice venue. Mm-hmm. And then they had the second one where they rented out a museum. So like, it, like, I, I'd say for what it was, it seemed reasonably priced to me. I agree. Just so people know, we donated to this to make it happen because I knew that like last year they were in the red in running it and I wanted to help them.

Not, not risk that again, you know, Kevin Dolan took a personal hit on that. And. So, but we, we weren't organizing it, you know, we weren't personally going to suffer if this didn't end up working out. But the $15,000 thing, 10,000 is insane. Sorry. Yeah. The, the $10,000 in the title of the Wired article being that factually inaccurate Yeah.

To, to literally

Simone Collins: have a title with that egregious of a factual error is wild. This, I just, I don't know. I, I, I knew journalism was largely. Bankrupt in terms of quality, but I guess I, having [00:04:00] loved wired so much, I'm so, I'm still so stunned.

Malcolm Collins: Here's the thing I know, and somebody could be like, well do, how can you be sure that nobody made a $10,000 ticket purchase, like maybe at the last minute or something like that?

And the, the answer is, because we donated $10,000 to the conference that that's what we donated. Yeah. I think someone else

Simone Collins: probably in the media knew that. I think we'd mentioned that to someone or it was somewhere.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, but the point being is if that was the second biggest donation to the conference, so I know they didn't get money from anyone else.

Here's what I assume probably happened because Kevin loves effing with journalists. He probably, and I think he even mentioned he did this at one point when he knew a journalist was hostile, gave them a comically high cost figure. Oh, that's amazing. To to be like, Hey, I'm okay with having you come here and write a hit piece if you pay me $10,000.

F**k no. That's fair. That's fair. Okay. But it, but it would mean that they didn't do any research on like the conference or anything around it. [00:05:00] But anyway go into the piece. Let's, let's read a bit 'cause it gets really unhinged.

Simone Collins: Should I just go straight to the unhinged part or should I Yes, read it.

Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: go to the unhinged part. So

Simone Collins: this is what really gets me. . Natal conference organizer Kevin Dolan, a father of at least sex, according to Politico, has previously stated that eugenics, the belief that white people are genetically superior and the prenatal movement are very much aligned, which is.

The most unhinged definition of eugenics I have ever heard one, I, in case you are one of these unhinged people, eugenics as defined. Look at Wikipedia. And Wikipedia is not a conservative dominated space. There's, this is well documented too. People have actually looked at the backgrounds of all, you know, active profile or, or page editors.

So Wikipedia. Defines