The Technology Behind the Soul (Mysticism, Tech, & Witches)
Episode script. Originally published 2026-07-13 at https://basedcamppodcast.substack.com/p/the-technology-behind-the-soul-mysticism
In this Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins explore the intersection of technology, mysticism, and philosophy. Is dualism (a separate spiritual world) meaningfully different from materialist monism? They argue that “technology is just magic that we understand” — and what that means for interpreting the Bible, God’s will, and reality itself.
Topics include: why mysticism often leads to mental corruption and societal risk, Warhammer 40K-style chaos realms, the dangers of subjective “wishy thinking” over empirical probing, Catholic history with science, and why Techno-Puritans must be strict about mysticism in closed environments like spaceships or colonies.
A deep, thought-provoking discussion blending philosophy, religion, futurism, and practical ethics.
Based Camp - Technology and Mysticism
Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be discussing a very interesting question, which is if a dualist reality exists. So if people are familiar with what dualism is dualism is the belief that reality consists of both a material world and a spiritual world, and that these are fundamentally different things.
This is like, most Christians, most branches of Christianity are dualist. They believe in a soul, in spiritual stuff that is completely separate from our material reality. Then if you are a monist, as we generally are, are considered you believe that one type of thing exists, and that one type of thing can either be only the spiritual exists, or only the material exists.
Octavian Collins: Right.
Malcolm Collins: Okay? So we’re, we’re getting this out of the way. But if you are a dualist, one thing that I’ve been thinking about recently is what additional utility dualism grants an individual in terms of interpretation of reality and morality. And by this what I mean is it came from something that Leaflet said to me on stream, which I thought was just absolutely brilliant one of the smarter things in terms of changing my world perspective that I’ve heard in a long time.
She was like, “Well, you believe that everything that God does,” because we’re monist materialists, “is essentially a super advanced technology that we simply don’t understand yet.” Mm-hmm. And the wording that Simone used around this that I found really changed my view of this, which is ma- technology is just magic that we understand.
Instead of framing it the other way, like magic is just technology we don’t understand, let’s frame it technology... Because we don’t even under- I- I’m even gonna put it differently. Ma- technology is just magic that we presume somebody understands, because you don’t understand how the vast majority of technology in your life works.
Simone Collins: Yeah, I, I can’t tell you how this does the things that it does. I mean, I can describe what I’ve been told.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. It’s, it’s functionally magic to us, right? And this is where it gets interesting, because the thing that differentiates technology from something that’s not technology is whether there is presumably somebody in the world who understands how that thing works.
Now, presumably, God would have full knowledge of both the spiritual world and its rules of interaction, and the material world and its rules of interaction. And through that knowledge, he would be enacting his will within each of those realms. Given that’s the case, in the same way that I can say this is technology because I am aware that somebody somewhere in the universe knows how this works.
Any spiritual power that God is exercising is a technology from God’s And she’s like, “So given that’s the case, why are people so...” This is a, a tract by the way. Whenever Techno-Puritan tracts, but it’s going to be musings on, on this particular concept. Why are people so antagonistic to my belief in everything in the Bible being done with hyper advanced technology?
‘Cause functionally they believe the same thing that we believe, that it’s done with hyper advanced technology. They just don’t fully they, they think that part of that technology is spiritual in nature. And this is where it gets really, really interesting as a point to sort of pull apart. Because first, now we get to ask a number of really interesting questions.
Okay, so this means a materialist monist ideology is actually not as dissimilar from a spiritualist monist ideology as many people would think. So these are as a reminder here, the monists believe there is only one, either the material or the spiritual world.
Right.
And the monist spiritualist believes that actually the material world as we think we’re understanding it is an illusion.
Mm. And what actually exists is the spiritual world. Whereas I- How
Simone Collins: different are those from simulation theory people?
Malcolm Collins: Extremely different.
in no way are they connected at all. I, I can’t even think how they could... H- How, how did you get that, that, that was connected?
Simone Collins: Because the simulation theory people believe that what we think of the, is the material world is not really a material world, but rather a technological simulation.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, I guess in that respect they are similar. But yeah, they, they typically wouldn’t frame it that way. They think it’s, it’s, it’s more like we exist in some sort of spiritual ether that is projecting the forms that we believe the material world is made up of as
Simone Collins: like- Simulation theory ...
Malcolm Collins: a lower order existence.
I, I, I suppose, yeah. But at the end of the day, a materialist monist and material spiritualist actually have the same worldview, just different hypotheses about the f- the physical rules of that worldview. Both of them believe that our world is fundamentally governed by laws that can be studied and eventually understood to some extent.
Both of them believe that God has a perfect understanding of those laws. They just, the spiritualist believes that the laws that physics has uncovered are- completely downstream of some other more important set of laws. However, most materialists believe this as well. I believe that the laws that physics understands right now are not complete.
Oh, yeah. And we will find layers of physics above the layers of physics that we currently have.
Simone Collins: Totally.
Malcolm Collins: The, the core difference... So we actually fundamentally up until now all believe the same thing. The, I think the real core difference between the spiritualist and the materialist monist is the materialist believes the laws that we find above the laws right now, or like I, I believe this, are going to be mathematical in nature.
It’s going to be some form of like equation that basically reality is graphed upon. See our episode on the, the maths behind reality, and we talk about this in some of our tracks where we go into our beliefs on this, that, that reality is a self-graphing equation. Whereas the spiritualist believes no, no, no it’s actually like thoughts and gists and ideas and s- th- you know, wishy thinking that exists at the higher plane.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
And the- And is that not semantics? Because math is just a language that we use to describe certain things. But you’re, I think you’re saying that, I mean, are, are thoughts and wishy thinking also not just a language?
Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I think the, the second thing, which is why the wishy thinking being at the core of reality rather than the math being at the core of reality,
Speaker: Space. What is it? The simple answer is, we don’t know. Or at least we didn’t know until now. Hello, I’m not a scientist. But I do have a better understanding of what space is than any scientist living today. Where did I gain these insights? From this man. The founder of spaceology, Beth Gaga Shaggy.
Is the founder of spaceology. . This is what he told me when I met him on holiday . Space is invisible mining dust, and stars are but wishes. I mean, think about that.
That means every star you can see in the night sky is a wish that has come true. And they’ve come true because of something he calls Space Star Ordering. Space Star Ordering is based on the twin scientific principles of star maths and wishy thinking.
If that doesn’t convince you, well then, maybe you just don’t deserve to get what you want.
Malcolm Collins: is that I believe that to understand reality we must probe reality, right?
Hmm. And this is how the vast majority of science came about. It was people trying to understand God’s plan better, right? Like that, that is what science was historically, right? It is, it is the knowledge of God to, what is it, cover things. It’s the knowledge of kings to unveil them, right? You know.
And, and so for a long time historically that is what drew scientific advancement, was a, a desire to get closer to God. In, in our, in our understanding of reality as we’re directly commanded to do in that verse in, in, in the Bible, right?
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: And so, the, the, the, the spiritualist on the other hand thinks that to understand a higher order reality, the direction you probe is with rituals and inward belief you know, basically through meditation and rituals you can det- discover, or even psychedelics within some communities,
Simone Collins: you can discover these mental states Oh, okay.
Yeah, that, that is a, a very specific division then. Mm-hmm. Yeah, okay. No, okay. I’m following you.
Malcolm Collins: Whereas we see these things as, as corruptions of the mind. And, and for- Yeah ... people to understand why we see things as corrupted mental states, it’s because the information that is obtained during them is generally speaking worse at being predictive of future world states, future physical states, basically the stuff that science allows than a sober mind is.
And so, we see them negatively. By the way, I’ll- Mm-hmm
Simone Collins: drop in on Kid speaker
okay then you be good, clean up some messes, and when I come down we’ll make mac and cheese, all right? Okay. Bye guys
Malcolm Collins: And then this brings me to another interesting question here which I just, I had, I hadn’t thought through before, which is Okay, suppose there is a spiritual world, because somebody asked, “What would it take for me to believe in a spiritual world?” Yeah. And I was like, well, if there was a spiritual world, it would presumably operate by some set of rules, and we would be able to eventually, as technology increases, interact with it in some meaningful way, right?
Or n- even, even if it’s not as technology increases, as our understanding of ritual increases, as our understanding of meditation increases, as our understanding of, you know, all of these people who are these spiritual masters, if they’re presumably advancing any real knowledge that has efficacious utility in the world we would see their power intergenerationally advance.
And when it reaches a point where the efficaciousness of the spiritual pursuit and research is undeniable what you’re going to have happen is companies will begin to exploit that, right? Like, if a company- Oh,
Simone Collins: yeah. And oh my gosh, I’m forgetting the name of Scott Alexander’s book that explores exactly this concept, that like what if suddenly it was just discovered and then you get these startups that are like farming for, like incantations that you can use that will, you know, insight different things to happen.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they like- Yeah ... w- go through just different words a- all day to, until they try to find one, one iteration of the word that has some power, right? And then they patent it. Yeah, and then they,
Simone Collins: they patent it, yeah. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And then there’s patents for determining when people are using the, the incantations without the proper-
Simone Collins: Exactly
Malcolm Collins: But that is, like when people are like, what would, what would... A- if a spiritual world existed in the way that I would believe in that spiritual world, it would be mortifying. It would be Warhammer 40K, the War- like, basically you need the spiritual world to be like the warp to have this not happen, right?
Mm. So you could have a spiritual world where like the spiritual world is just and this is how it is in Warhammer, is by its nature chaotic and malevolent and leads to feedback loops. And if this is the world that we live in- What does that
Simone Collins: mean, chaotic man- malevolent and leads to feedback loops?
Malcolm Collins: Well, so what happens in the 40K universe is everything that, like humanity collectively believes in begins to or, or any sentient species believes in begins to grow a physical form within the warp, which is the- Yeah,
Simone Collins: like in Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But what that means is simple basal desires essentially create feedback loops.
So like a fear of death and disease creates a feedback loop- Creates a god ... where it creates a god that grows the more fear of death and disease there is, so this god creates- Mm ... more death and disease, which creates- Oh ... more fear of death and disease, which creates more death and disease. Which, and so you get a feedback loop, which leads to a god.
You have the same thing with like lust. You have the same thing with... Like the god of lust would want to create like crazy you know, Anna Valens-like, you know, w- what do we call those? Cinebites, right?
Oh.
Who just do anything for pleasure until there, there’s nothing left but a husk of who they once were.
And th- this, this creates these horrible cycles, right? But generally this sort of world where, where even, even in this world, like in the Warhammer world, people can still achieve some benefits from being like a, a Zesh follower or something like that, right? Like, but if, if the, the spiritual world is just purely chaos, you would not be able to use it.
And this would explain all of the warnings of people who are like, “Don’t gaze into spiritualism. It just messes up those people’s minds. It just scrambles them.” The vast majority of people mentally break. And I point this out. I mean, you could just look. The vast majority of spiritual gurus basically go cucking nutso, buttso.
They, they stop practicing proper hygiene. They begin to look, like, wild-eyed. They have a, a, a harder and harder time thinking logically through what they’re doing. And it, it, it can lead to, to fall-off. And we can go into why this happens in just a second. But, To take an aside here spiritualism as a, like if, if it does have factual power, companies would mass exploit it.
Apparently there’s a movie called like Flesh Pits or something like this. Mm. A Flesh Pits Park,
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Malcolm Collins: where like Coca-Cola begins to like mine this beast as like a, a, a form of, of soda for people, right? Like-
Simone Collins: Ew ...
Malcolm Collins: they, they, the moment anything is understandable to the extent that it can be used for personal benefit, it can be used for corporate benefit and industrialized, right?
Speaker: What
Speaker 2: the hell is this thing made out of? . All right, fine. I might have used a few unorthodox parts. Just tell me one. An orphan.
Speaker 4: Did you say an orphan?! Yeah, a little
Speaker 3: orphan boy.
Speaker 4: It’s powered by a forsaken child?! Might be, kind of. I mean, I didn’t use the whole thing.
Malcolm Collins: So it’s a, it’s a pretty mortifying world to think of. Now, you could think maybe God puts on specific protectors that prevent the spiritual world from being engaged with in this way. To which I would say, well if you believe that, you’re not a Christian and you’re not a Jew. Mm-hmm. Because Jews very explicitly believe that through engaging with the spiritual world you can accidentally contact malevolent spirits that can cause problems.
I mean, this was a pro- the Baal Shems always used to do this sort of stuff. That you can, you know, y- c- could cause... I mean, a lot of Jewish classical stories are about some Baal Shem went out there, created a golem or something when he wasn’t supposed to, and he goes nuts and destroys a town. That’s just like classic Jewish storytelling.
And so Jews don’t believe this. Do Christians believe this? Well, presumably if you think that witches are real to any extent if, if you are a spiritualist you do believe that they’re clearly harnessing malevolent spiritual power, right? Like, so, and the Bible does tell us that witches exist, right?
Now ob- obviously I, I think that what it means by that is mysticism more broadly. But, you know, if, if you believe in spiritualism, you’re, you’re gonna believe in, in witches. So, you know, suffer not a witch to live and all that. But these people who, who, who believe this more broadly, they, they also know that, okay, well so at least the Bible doesn’t say that God keeps a, a, a positive interaction with the, the spiritual plane.
So okay. Or, or you could say, well, whenever you engage with the spiritual plane for personal benefit, it ends up having some sort of like reverberating negative effect on you. Which maybe, maybe that could be a reason, but I, I still think that there would be a way a company could get around that, right?
Like, maybe use like pawns as the spiritualists, and then sort of farm out their bad luck and make money while not directly engaging with spiritualism, but having all the secret rituals themselves, right? You know, there’s, there’s always a way this can be exploited, right? So- But then what do you even gain by believing in the additional spiritual reality, right?
What, how, how different would the spiritual reality need to be from the material one to be a meaningfully different reality to you? So- Well,
Simone Collins: but I think the, where I really have my, I guess, gripes or has a, like- I take umbrage on this idea of I can just search internally and find truth when we know how flawed, both, like, from, if you just wanna look biblically at how flawed people’s own minds are and opinions are, and pers- like, views, how, how warped your view of reality can be, plus our understanding of just actual biology and the human brain from science thus
Malcolm Collins: far.
Well, I mean, and it creates horrible... Like, this is why mystics so often go crazy, is if your own subjective experience of reality is the ultimate truth of that reality then when you’re in a group of other mystics, right, which mystic’s interpretation, because you can’t be like, “You’re provably wrong.
Look here.” Mm-hmm. Which mystic’s interpretation comes first? And the mystic who’s the top of the popularity hierarchy, basically. The, the one who can push the others around, right? Because then one person goes, “Well, subjectively, I feel this is true,” and then the other mystic says, “Well, subjectively, I feel this is true.”
Simone Collins: Yeah, it, it’s using very faulty equipment for something. Like, I, I don’t care what ultimately is real, but I do care that we are using, you know, a, a, a thing that works for measuring and gauging what it is. Because if you really care about the thing, don’t you want to know? Like, they’re, they’re trying to, to use, like...
I, I, gosh, I don’t know. Like, they’re, they’re stretching out, like, a, a chewed up piece of gum, and they’re like, “Well, it’s one gum long ‘cause they s- I, I stretched it out and that’s how long it is.” And that’s, that, that’s not... You can’t use a chewed on piece of gum to measure the length of something.
That isn’t, it’s not a thing. Like, you’re not gonna get consistent results. Like- No ... you, you can. You can stretch it out and find a length, but that’s not... No. A- a- and, and I... Ugh. So that’s, that’s my biggest problem
Malcolm Collins: here. But wait, do you understand, like, when you think about a community, so imagine two mystics disagree with each other.
How do they determine who’s right? Now, in Judaism-
Simone Collins: Yeah, it’s the louder, more charismatic one.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. The Jews will say, well, they go to the, the, you know, the, the, the writings. And it’s like, you know as well as I do that that doesn’t always work in the mystic communities.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: It usually doesn’t work in the mystic communities.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I mean, and famously we know this doesn’t work because the Baal Shem Tov literally did this. When Rab- Rabbi Dov Ber, who everybody knew was a more learned rabbi than the Rabbi Baal Shem he was generally considered this. He considered himself this. The Baal Shem considered him this. He goes to the Baal Shem Tov.
The Baal Shem does some miracles in front of him, and he’s like, “Okay, I’ve been convinced, that, that, that everything the Jews have taught for the past thousand years is wrong,” right? Like, you know, that, that... I, because he came to the Baal Shem Tov. This was his main convert who ended up becoming the next head rabbi, Of the, the group that today became the Hasidic movement.
Which again, big movement, right? And at the time a lot of Jews were like, “Oh, you shouldn’t do this.” But now it’s been so baked into Judaism because, c- you know, Chabad has so much power that the, the th- th- this was the right thing to do. That as a Jew you should follow the mystic with a closer connection to God over the guys who know the text better.
Now, obviously historically as a Jew you’re not supposed to do this. This is very clear in the snake oven story, the, the oven of Unke story. But you get- w- we talk about this in some of our other tracks. You don’t need to go, we don’t need to legislate it here. The point I’m making here is so some Jews today, y- you know, will say, “Well, Judaism constrained by the text,” which it used to be.
But it’s not, it’s not as well anymore because these precedents have been set and accepted within the Hasidic community. And it’s hard, it’s hard to put that back in the bottle. You can’t be like, “Well, the Bashan Tav was clearly in the wrong,” right? Because he, you know, did miracle working over the text, over, over textural legal analysis.
But you know, and this, and this can lead to individuals crashing out, right? And we see this. You know, I, I obviously, I consider, like, Ruby Yard a good friend, right? And we warned him against going down this path. And I think that you know, a lot of p- people are familiar with his, you know, ayahuasca, the talking to Odin thing and everything like that.
And I think that I don’t really hold that against him. That’s who he is. That’s who he’s always represented himself as being, is a very mystical person. But, like, this is why mysticism can sort of lead you in these directions. Because external world pushing back and being like, “That doesn’t sound objectively true,” is no longer a pushback to your logic.
It’s no longer a pushback to your experience or world perspective, which can lead to wildly out there. This is where we, we have our episode No Witches on Sh- on Spaceships. Because you can begin to act in a way that is wildly dangerous vis-a-vis the wider community if now you are taking your subjective experience of how you think the life support system should work.
And if people are like, “Oh, mystics would never go that far,” I mean, look at the breatharians that are randomly killing themselves all the time. You, you’ve heard of the breatharians, right?
Simone Collins: I thought those were made up. They, they were a part of that fake cult that I participated in.
Malcolm Collins: Oh, no. Breatharians are real.
Simone Collins: Oh. Mm. That’s unfortunate.
Speaker 3: When it comes to food preferences, you’ve probably heard of a vegetarian, a pescatarian. How about a breatharian? So it looks like this. And then the exhale is through the mouth Yes, a breatharian, as in breath. 25-year-old Audra Bear follows this lifestyle, which is also known as prana. She’s very popular on Instagram.
The idea here is not to weigh yourself down with food so you can fill yourself with breath and life. I started breathing on December 1st, and by December 5th, five days later, I had no appetite for food, and I’ve eaten a handful of times since then, since in the last six months. Okay, so here’s what she does consume: herbal teas, green juices and smoothies, coconut water, and sometimes soup.
She says she does not miss food. The practice is more popular than you might think, but of course, we should mention medical professionals say you should seek advice before starting anything like this.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, plenty of people have died from this, thinking that you can survive off of just air alone and mystical power, and that, Wowee.
Simone Collins: Okay ...
Malcolm Collins: other people are just not trying hard enough.
Simone Collins: Oh. It’s the get a job, Al version of spiritualism.
Speaker: don’t you get a job? If you’re so hungry, why don’t you get a job? Get a job, Al. You got a negative attitude.
That’s what’s stopping you. You gotta get your act together.
Malcolm Collins: I love it. The get... Yeah. But no, th- th- you, you, you, you repeatedly see people who believe that they can obtain a portion of life energy from, like, spiritual stuff.
And so they, they go and they search out this stuff. But the point I, I wanted to get to, which I find to be a very interesting point, is how large do you need the spiritual world to be for it to be meaningful to you?
Hm.
So I’ll explain what I mean by this. What if it turns out that the spiritual world as we understand it is simply another dimension operating on different physical laws?
I mean, I, I, I really don’t know what it would be if not that, right? Like, it’s, it’s another dimension that can interact with our dimension and operates on, on a separate set of laws. Those laws are just the physics of this other reality, right? In which case, why have you gained something significantly above the understanding we have by just looking at our reality by positing this?
The other possibility is that the spiritual world is a secondary layer of our reality, that our reality exists with two membranal layers. Like, basically a membranal layer with spiritual reality on one side of that layer and the reality of the material world on the other side of that layer.
Simone Collins: Well, this isn’t necessarily mysticism.
This is sci-fi. This is parallel worlds, right? This is, like, a thin veil between different worlds or different versions of reality. Like, I mean, at the, the, the way the, the difference between sci-fi and mysticism can be very thin, possibly even nonexistent, a, a question of vocabulary choice.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I... And one of the things that I’ve always found most, like, the reason why I became, like, very sincerely techno-puritan when I went back and read the Bible is I was unaware that a literalist reading of a Bib- of the Bible could give me a materialist perspective on reality.
Mm-hmm. Right? Like, that I was like, “Oh,” like, it actually promotes the idea that all of this is happening with technology and the, like, super, super advanced technology, but with technology as we understand it, and that it, it doesn’t actually push for a separate spiritual world. If you wanna get into why we argue that, you can look at our tract series where we go over that.
I think tract eight is where we cover that the most. It might be tract eight or nine where we cover that the most. Mm-hmm. Which is generally a good jumping-off point if you’re already religious to understand how heretical we are
But yeah. So, that is like I, I don’t think that you’re gaining a lot if you’re just like, “Well, there’s another dimension with some rules that we don’t fully understand yet.” If, if there’s a, if there’s another dimension with rules we don’t understand yet, then you’re, you’re, you’re positing a physical hypothesis about reality.
You’re not really positing a spiritual realm. You’re positing that there is something that the scientists, the academics, the experts simply haven’t discovered and cataloged yet. But it is real in the way that, that this world is real, just operating on different physical subsets. Which makes the antagonism against the technopagan tradition from a spiritualist perspective or from a dualist perspective very odd when you actually break this out.
Because you’re like, “Oh the dualist doesn’t actually have some special...” When they’re like, “Well, I believe in, like, the wonder of magic and spiritualism,” and it’s like, well, that’s not really a wonder. That’s just you positing that there’s something that we don’t understand, where I also posit there are things we don’t understand.
I just think they probably don’t look like that.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I think for me it comes down to word choice, and there are entirely legitimate reasons why people would just stylistically prefer different words and tool use. And my problem is with the tool use. That’s it.
Malcolm Collins: Explain.
Simone Collins: Your subjective experience, your lived experience is not the best tool.
Your I feel like I had this experience or God spoke to me is not reliable because if we wanna use your own chosen vocabulary mystic- mystical person, demons also speak to you and they tell you, “I’m God. Hi, I’m God. Listen to me, I’m correct.” Right? Like, and also just y- your mind is not a very reliable narrator, no matter what.
Just anyone who’s experienced addiction would easily be able to explain that y- your mind can very cleverly get you to do very terrible and wrong things. It is not, it is not to be trusted. It- it
Malcolm Collins: can lead you anywhere. Yeah. And especially in these corrupted states. And that’s one of the problems- Yeah
about the corrupted state of the mystic is that because it all becomes a- at the end of the day, a popularity contest or a charisma contest what it means is that the well, assuming that they don’t have any actual power. Now, if they do have actual power, then, you know, why aren’t they curing world hunger, right?
Like, why are they, why are they performing magic tricks, right?
Simone Collins: Well, yeah. I just, I- I don’t know about any, any famous mystic who saved millions of lives or did amazing things or moved s- soc- society forward, moved humanity forward.
Note here, I should clarify she means mystics made any major contributions in their mystical research. Obviously, mystics have made contributions in other areas, , like
Isaac Newton was famously a big mystic, but all of the time this otherwise smart person spent that could have made many more contributions to humanity that he spent on his mystical research ended up with no contribution to humanity. It just sucks the life and time from otherwise well-meaning individuals
Simone Collins: I mean, I think- Yeah ... that there are some, like, St. Francis of Assisi I think inspired a lot of people, but did he actually help anyone?
Malcolm Collins: I don’t know. Well no, this is true for most mystics. They’re otherwise intelligent people that are basically removed from the efficacious pool of Earth’s population.
Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah. Which is hugely bad. Fertility shredder, IQ shredder. Yeah, not great, not great, not great.
Malcolm Collins: Well, because if y- if you’re, if whether or not you’re a good person is entirely subjective to this internal framework that you’ve built for yourself a lot of people want to believe like, “Well, I’m good enough.”
Right? Like, “I’m...” You know? Mm-hmm. And so they, they lean into that and it leads them to engage with information without any external de- way, way to de-confirm it, right? I
Simone Collins: agree, and it’s very frustrating.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: But I think understanding that, that, that there doesn’t need to be a difference between technology and magic that there, there doesn’t...
I think there’s a lot of groups that could be working together or appreciating things. Well, I think a lot of- Look, give credit to Catholics, okay? The, the, the, the groups, I, you know, like, I think a lot of Muslims did this as well. Like, Islam had its moment with this too, but I, I know mostly of historical examples of Catholics being among the first to really move forward the sciences, to move forward our understanding of the world and the universe, because they wanted to understand the magic of God.
The amazing things that God has built, right?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: And- Well,
Malcolm Collins: I mean, Catholics, they,
Simone Collins: they- They, they’re never, like, there was this point, and I don’t know exactly when historically there was this divide, when suddenly, like, learning more about science became heretical. And I think maybe it was a corruption.
It was a corruption of humans, not of any, of anything of, of what God really wanted.
Speaker 9: So if you’re wondering when this was, , the biggest and direct turning point where they went to AI to ask was probably Galileo. , Up until 1616, the church had regularly supported and invested in scientific advancement. , At 1616, the church’s consultants declared heliocentrism, the Earth orbiting the sun, as false and contrary to scripture. , This is based on certain readings of the Bible, although it wasn’t formally declared by the Inquisition at this point, and Galileo, -
was tried in 1633. He was forced to recant and sentenced to house under arrest, and his book was placed on the Index of Forbidden Works. And after this point, they begin to more frequently , and just sort of escalatingly, , deny science. , But again, of course, if we just went back to the way Catholics used to be
Simone Collins: I mean- but-
Malcolm Collins: I, I, I’d point out that if you look at Catholics in, in how they relate to mysticism, they have a benefit in that they have a centralized institution that can, you know, reign in the charismatic mystic- Yeah
and just be like, “No, you’re wrong. Like, you, people need to stop listening to you at this point. This is just wrong.” But because they’ve always had that level of protection against mysticism, it means that the latent level of mysticism within Catholic communities has always been higher than other Christian denominations.
Simone Collins: Hmm.
Malcolm Collins: So basically they don’t, they don’t get the worst of it. They’re protected from that. But the latent toxic effects of mysticism is much higher in Catholic environments. Hmm ... and
yeah. I mean, obviously with Integral Period- Hold on ... not tolerated.
Simone Collins: Acknowledge that at least at one point in human history, it was the Catholics who best understood that magic and technology are the same thing
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I mean, I, I think that the, the techno-puritan perspective on this is obviously, you know, for now we are a minority population, you know, living in a society where these things are normalized, and it is-
Simone Collins: Yeah
Malcolm Collins: upon us to not make ourselves negative externalities on other groups by being overly aggressive on the point of witchcraft or mysticism, right? You know?
Simone Collins: Oh, okay, so you’re saying, “Hey, give some grace to mystics. Give some grace to witches.”
Malcolm Collins: Well, we say don’t interfere with the basilisk, right? Like, mysticism is- No, absolutely
a very good connotation. Yes, yes. Until, like, this, this changes when you have techno-puritan first communities, techno-puritan first spaceships, techno-puritan first colonies. Right. Like, within, within the techno p-
Simone Collins: puritan space there, there’s zero tolerance for it. But that doesn’t stop us from tolerating it among other groups that are not impinging on our ability-
Malcolm Collins: Right, right ... to go about our sovereign business. Because the Bible, the Bible lay- lays out suffer not a witch to live, and I think that
should be the rule within techno-puritan first communities. Right.
Simone Collins: Of course, people define witch very differently. Yes. That’s definitions are, the
Malcolm Collins: definitions are- I mean, if you’re using magic against God’s will, that’s, like, a witch, right? Like, you, you have, you have specifically tapped into God’s pur- purview, presumably.
Right.
Simone Collins: Then a, a, a Catholic would- Turn around on us per our episode, per what we’ve said here, and say, “Okay, technology is magic, magic is technology. You are using IVF technology against God’s will i.e. by, you know, creating souls that may possibly be trapped forever on ice until they are, you know, taken away from us and discarded for some weird reason.
I don’t know.”
Malcolm Collins: But God commanded us to move forwards technology, technology. Right? Like, that, that was the line I, I talked about earlier. That is how like obviously when you create a new, a life-saving me- medical procedure, when you create a new you know, a- any, you, when you cure cancer or something like that there have been Christian groups that said, you know, like, “No blood transfers.”
Yeah. No Catholic says, “No blood transfers.” Nor do I think any Catholic would actually trade 10 just fertilized blastocysts for a 10-year-old human boy’s life. Right? Like, I think that actually the moral equation is quite well understood, it’s just engaged with differently, right? But when it comes to mysticism more broadly, what I’m talking about is because this is something I’ve thought about more.
Like, as the religion grows, as we get members, what does it look like if we ever have our own colonies, if we ever have a techno Puritan majority countries, right? Like, techno Puritan- Hmm ... majority environments. How do we relate to secular law within those environments? And I think that we should be very aggressive, at least with members of our community, of anything that smacks of mystical framing.
And this isn’t to say mystical research. Mystical research is always allowed. This is disprovable, like, if you’re like, “I’m gonna do an experiment on the world of mysticism,” fine. Because then you’re bringing mysticism into science, right? Mm-hmm. And we’re, we’re, we’re understanding it better. It’s when the idea is based on wishy thinking, and the reason I, I say all this, I just think it leads to next, extra, negative externalities in people’s lives.
Simone Collins: I’m sure.
Malcolm Collins: Whether these worlds exist or not, whether they’re tapping into something real or not, it seems to damage people’s lives. And, and, and, and damage the lives of people around them who become in, because eventually you end up with essentially a, like, if I’m a mystic professionally and I’m not producing any money, right?
I’m, I’m getting money from either my disciples or from the people my disciples teach.
Yeah.
And so I’ve set up this completely parasitic both in terms of economic and technological productivity, because it’s, it’s, it’s drawing and resources from the group around it. But also a, a, a parasitic community that bleeds poison into the logic of the people that it touches.
Simone Collins: Yeah, and I guess another way you could look at it, too because I think there’s a lot of people who- politely support/tolerate mysticism, but you could ask, “Would you be happy if your son or daughter became a diehard mystic?” Because if not, then maybe be a little less tolerant.
Malcolm Collins: Well, yeah. I mean, I think, and, and I will be incredibly strict with our kids if it comes to something like horoscopes or something like this.
Hmm. When it comes to, you know, any, any of the crystals or whatever, no, no.
Simone Collins: And those are so pervasive. Oh my gosh, horoscopes and crystals these days. Am I right? Yeah. And, and it’s so hard to tell too when people are talking about it ironically versus not Because all you have to do is be like, “Ah, but he’s an Aries.
Oh, well that explains everything.” And I can never tell if someone’s joking or if they actually believe that, like There are traits. Anyway, let’s not
Malcolm Collins: go there And, and for people to understand why you have to be so strict about this stuff a, when we’re talking about the far future, in something like America today, mystics are not a big threat to us, right?
If we’re talking- Speak for
Simone Collins: yourself, but sure ...
Malcolm Collins: if we’re talking about the distant future and you’re on a, a closed environment spaceship or space station, this becomes quite different. Mystics are an existential threat to everyone else on board that spaceship or space station. And this is why we ha- have to be much stricter when we’re talking about, like, the way that techno-puritan colonies would work, because we’ve always talked about intentionally setting them up in harsh environments.
If you’re in Antarctica or something, you have a colony, or deep under the ocean and you have a colony and you know, you have somebody within that colony who is experimenting with whether or not we need to breathe that has- Yeah ... massive deleterious effects for everyone else in that colony.
Simone Collins: Well, and I mean, presumably this is why there have been some isolated colonies that have just, I don’t know, you know, someone went away for a little bit, went to go buy some cigarettes, came back a year later.
Everyone’s dead No one was left alive. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah.
Simone Collins: You know, came, came with a ship of supplies from England. Oh, where is everyone? Things can go wrong real fast in- Yeah, yeah ... these isolated communities. Yeah. You don’t wanna, you don’t wanna do this in space, in the vacuum. Not, not great.
Malcolm Collins: And this is, this is, this is where we are really excited about the diversity, the genetic diversity that we’ll see in humanity’s future. You know, when you get different groups engaging fully with genetic augmentation, groups are gonna spec into different things, and that’s gonna be really, really fun.
The other thing that- Absolutely ... Lisa said on that call I thought was so interesting. I’ve mentioned this before, it was just such an interesting take. Is I, I was like, yeah, you know, some groups, like our group, might, might spec into, like, looking like giant Custodes or, or, or Space Marines, right? And another group, like say the Jews, with their high sneak stat, as we often talk about, might spec into like an agility sneak role or something like that.
Or, you know. And and she’s like, you know, when you’re, you’re creating a, a boarding party or a party for your crew, you know, you want people with these different specs, right? And each of them will have their own role. In the same way you, you’re gonna have a better team if you have like an orc warrior and like a dwarf you know, engineer and like a elven archer then you’re gonna have if you have like an all human team, right?
In like a D&D game or something like that. And, and, and so there is utility in tolerance for other world perspectives when you are engaging with those communities in a way that is mutually productive for each community. I just, You know, and again, this isn’t me saying I am against a d- we may discover a dualist worldview in the future.
I am not saying that we don’t discover that. But when we do, it, you know, well, how can I use souls to power things, right? How can I, you know, use magic to when we do, immediately it’s a new physical puzzle to be dissected rather than intrinsically an enigma. Because if it is intrinsically an enigma, then what we have tapped into is a chaos realm, and a chaos realm is always destroying to the human mind.
Speaker 17: You were telling me that it with your head. The certain amount of it after a while, it just with your head.
Speaker 18: That’s why I’m usually kind of like almost autistic is I’m just being constantly.
Speaker 17: Why?
Speaker 18: Because lower entities will come in and violate your free will.
Speaker 17: They know. All your , they see right through you.
Speaker 18: They will not manipulate your free will unless you ask them in.
Speaker 17: I have
Speaker 18: dude, do not say that I’m gonna get killed.
Speaker 17: I’ve a hundred percent communicated with something.
Speaker 18: I’m not judging anybody.
I’m just saying, okay, be careful.
Speaker 17: The question is whether that something was actually in my imagination or in my mind, or that something was something that takes place in another dimension.
Speaker 18: Once you open that gate, it’s all bad. They
Speaker 17: have, so why is it all bad? Why? Why can’t you experience that interdimensional?
being and learn something from it, and be a better person when you come out
Speaker 18: of it. Because, because every time it gets control, it starts murdering everybody.
Speaker 17: They wind up killing everybody later.
Speaker 18: In every case. And it always starts beautiful. It always starts great.
Speaker 17: Problem is, some of it makes sense.
Speaker 18: That’s where the psychosis comes in.
Speaker 17: Whoa.
Speaker 18: It’s going to create a giant societal crisis where most of the people are already going to get killed. Because an evil force wants conflict. So I’m saying no, no, no.
Speaker 17: It’s all chaos.
Speaker 18: Stop it.
Speaker 17: This is the nature of
the beast.
Malcolm Collins: Mm.
Simone Collins: Mm.
I like it
Malcolm Collins: As a, getting into pure techno puritan philosophy here. I’ve been doing more of those instead of like straight literalist Bible interpretations recently because I realize that as the community is growing they need more not like why I am so affirmed in this from the Bible but a framing for how to see and interact with their beliefs about the world and reality in a way that’s useful to them and also a better understanding of how we’re actually different than other groups which may be not as much as both other groups and our community would initially think, right?
Simone Collins: I agree. Yeah And we can’t just look at how the Bible’s legit, but what makes a techno-puritan a techno-puritan and not some other new religion or old religion.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Very nice. I love you so much. And thank you for your time, Simone. Any f- any final thoughts?
Simone Collins: I love you too. And-
Malcolm Collins: And for food tonight we’re just reheating potato?
Simone Collins: I’m gonna make the kids mac and cheese. Do you want some as well?
Malcolm Collins: Oh, that potato is very filling.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: I’m okay with some boncho if it’s not extra work for you, but also just reheating the two slices that we have left of the potato is enough for me.
Simone Collins: Potato rare bit. There must be a proper name for it.
Malcolm Collins: It’s good. Okay. You did a good job with it, Simone. Way to go.
Simone Collins: The, the, I feel bad ‘cause it’s insufficient effort. But
Malcolm Collins: thank you. That’s not, that’s not really the way the world works.
Simone Collins: I know. I know. I... Yeah, there’s this whole thing, this... I don’t know how pervasive it is in other cultures, but, like, if you didn’t suffer over it, and if it didn’t take forever, it’s not valuable.
Mm-hmm. I don’t know how to get around that. Like, you, you... I think if you... your influence from the, the church of subgenius and this concept of slack may have... No, I just think it’s in your nature to appreciate the elegance of minimal movement. And I appreciate that too, but I’ve been so steeped in American grind culture of like, oh, if I...
I have to performatively suffer-
Malcolm Collins: Which is officially a techno-puritan sin now, Simone
Simone Collins: I know. It, it is genuinely sinful. Slack is virtue. Performative grounded-
Malcolm Collins: Slack
Simone Collins: is a
Malcolm Collins: techno-puritan virtue. Like-
Simone Collins: Yeah ...
Malcolm Collins: study the subgenius to learn about s- slack because it is a techno-puritan virtue. Yeah ... and to, to deliberately act in a way that is extra work for yourself is time that you could have spent contributing to the world or your sleep, which you’re
Simone Collins: always
Malcolm Collins: getting- And wicca
Simone Collins: less of. All right. Packed. Sleep packed. Let’s do it tonight. Sleep. Okay? Okay. Okay. Okay. Great. Okay. It’s on. Okay. Bye, love you.
Malcolm Collins: Love you. Ish. Bleh.
Simone Collins: How Sorry, Toasty. You know what happened. Now you’re paying the price, friend
Malcolm Collins: Okay. He thinks I’m not there because he’s in trouble?
Simone Collins: Yeah, dude, I’m... Never, never miss an opportunity to add drama to-
Malcolm Collins: punishment ... someone’s,
Simone Collins: yeah, someone’s banishment from good favor. All right. Have I learned anything interesting today?
I, I just, I, there’s this one... I’ve tapped into this one YouTube channel that talks about cosmetic procedures in China, and one of the things that, that w- there was a trend for a while- Mm-hmm ... maybe it’s still a trend, is getting a permanent smile where, like, your lips are just a little bit upturned constantly.
There was one actress who got it done and th- then she went on this talk show where her mother berated her for getting too many cosmetic procedures, ‘cause she got, like, over 20. Like, she spent well over $100,000 doing stuff to her face, and then she goes on this talk show and her mom’s like, “I don’t even recognize you anymore.”
Like, “You have to stop. I’m, I’m going no contact if you keep doing this.” And she’s just sitting there, like, looking, like, y- you know, like pleasantly smiling and, and everyone’s like, “Why are you not reacting? Why are you not crying?” And she’s like, “Well, I, I am crying. It’s just that I got surgery to look like I’m constantly smiling.”
So she looked really disingenuous. And the audience is of course horrified because that is horrifying.
Malcolm Collins: But that’s all I think about. And here’s a funny
Simone Collins: thing.
Malcolm Collins: I added super stalk to RFAB.
Simone Collins: Yay.
Malcolm Collins: So now- Super stalk ... we have a feature that was suggested by Simone that allows you to stalk anyone and get all of their information, and it’s actually quite good- Saves me so much time
at email finding.
Simone Collins: Yeah? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Because one thing that I’m constantly doing is stalking people online and finding their emails and learning about their backgrounds and their career and where they came from, and I have to do all the separate searches. I use a little bit of AI, a little bit of a specific type of Google search.
You’re doing it for me. Now I just, I just go on super stalk with RFAB. Is it, is it live? Can I use it? Can I
Malcolm Collins: try it? It’ll be live by the time we’re done filming this episode.
Simone Collins: Oh.
Speaker 10: The other two features I am scrambling to get done by the time this goes live, or at least within a few hours of this going live, is Leaflet’s, , cool new thing for handling, , Vtubing, which is just like way better than anything I built. Our hardware thing, which for $45 allows you to buy a hardware app that you can flash with our software, basically your own personal Pip-Boy, and it’s got its own unique system that allows it to switch emotions, send you images, send you videos, you know, a lot more.
We really made it to tutor our kids so we don’t have to deal with, you know, raising the little buggers. , And then the final thing is an API system that allows you to put in your own personal APIs for anything you want to do and not pay us. , It’s just a way for us to make less money. I don’t know why we made it.
, I was inspired by Leaflet doing it, and I don’t know, capitalism, maxing, peer pressure
Malcolm Collins: And- I’m so
Simone Collins: excited. Super stalk ... in
Malcolm Collins: addition to super stalk, I’m now working on a fe- ... a feature that integrates email, text, WhatsApp, X, and well, everything.
And people are like, “I, I think there’s probably already some sites that probably try to do this.”
Simone Collins: There are. I mean, like Hootsuite for example, for people, like, managing a social media presence allows you to schedule and check across platforms. But I don’t wanna pay for it. And I imagine it’s pretty... I, I always, like, I’ve tried free trials of it and I don’t really like it, and then there’s there were a bunch of others that I’d used i- in the past that may have gone defunct now.
The problem is that I’m sure a lot of people can relate to this. This is something I struggle with, is that everyone has... Like, there are some people we o- only talk with on Discord, and then there’s the only on Signal person, and there’s the only on X version person, and then there’s only, only email people, only text people, only WhatsApp people.
I’m just like every day I use this routine using the comment browser with Perplexity to, like, open this, like, long list of URLs so I can check everything, the LinkedIn messages, the Instagram DMs. I’m so freaking tired.
Malcolm Collins: So you’ll be able to do that at the same place where you can generate not safe for work images and videos.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And the character looks like- You can get e- it’s a one-stop shop. You can do everything you need to. You can be you can do, you can goon and grind- Yeah ... all in one place. The,
Malcolm Collins: the engine that searches every not safe for work drawn image gallery at once. Oh,
Simone Collins: yeah. I tested that on this drive to New York we were once on, and I was like, “How effective is this search system?”
And so I decided to search cat girl and hamburger ‘cause I was like it c- it couldn’t possibly... I will never, I will never look at a hamburger the same way again. Then I looked up excavator. Now excavators are ruined for me.
Malcolm Collins: It works. The, the, the big thing that it does is it’s strictly better for looking at not safe for work images than not safe for work image sites themselves- Yeah
because it has a button that allows you to download an entire gallery at once and zips it for you.
Simone Collins: It’s incredibly impressive. It, it’s, it, it is deeply incre- and you can even do a safe for work versions of this, right? I, I think you can turn off NSFW.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, you can turn off, but it’s not gonna be as good.
Yeah,
Simone Collins: so like if I just wanted to find, like, fan art, I could just do that.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. Like, it combines, like, you know, Pixiv and DeviantArt and, and Danbooru and all the other, you know, sites.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I, I was shocked by how effective that was. And again, I am completely, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to eat a hamburger again.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go buy an excavator again.
Octavian Collins: Okay.
Simone Collins: All right, I’m not gonna think about it. But what Malcolm said to me this morning was “Well, Simone, like, what are ways that your life could be made easier, you know, in theory with AI?” And I gave him my super stock thing and my I can’t deal with all the DMs thing.
Can you guys let us know? Like, i- if there are any facets of your life that could be improved with AI, if we hear about it from enough people, Malcolm will just build it. He built my super stock.
Malcolm Collins: Like- This happens from Leaflet Stream. Somebody on a Leaflet Stream was randomly like, “Can you build a, a, a DM narration helper that makes it easier to DM games?”
And I was like, “Yeah, sure. I can build an, an AI DM assist.” Yeah ...
Simone Collins: recipe generator. And he did this, like, I was cutting apples downstairs for the kids ‘cause our childcare fell through today, and, like, then I come up with apples and smoothies, and he’s like, “I built super stock.”
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, the email integration- I feel so inadequate
thing is gonna take ages ‘cause I gotta test every single integration and make sure it works. And some of them I have to get around, like, the developer’s own rules to do this. So I’ll basically be taking parts of their stuff on your computer and hijacking it.
Speaker 11: I told him But I forgot all what it looked like. It’s so good. We can come in early tomorrow. You want the sheep movie? Watch it while I make dinner, buddy. Yes.
Speaker 13: Andy, are you, are you okay now?