Title: Buddhist Cult At The Nexus of The Tech Elite (It Wants to Kill Your Soul)
Work: Techno-Puritan Supplemental Writings
Citation: TPS 61.0
Words: 15616
Source: https://basedcamppodcast.substack.com/p/buddhist-cult-at-the-nexus-of-the
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## Buddhist Cult At The Nexus of The Tech Elite (It Wants to Kill Your Soul)

*Episode script. Originally published 2026-09-16 at https://basedcamppodcast.substack.com/p/buddhist-cult-at-the-nexus-of-the*

**Techno-Puritan editorial context:** This is a supplementary episode, not a tract. The worldview criticized in this episode is presented as an inversion of Techno-Puritan values: the opposite of what we believe and advocate, and a cautionary example of how things can go wrong. Its inclusion is a critique, not an endorsement of the beliefs or practices discussed.

A deep investigation into Maple, a high-control organization with roots in effective altruism and Buddhist philosophy. The discussion covers its leader’s past statements on human extinction, ties to major tech funders, isolation practices, financial extraction from members, and plans for an AI system to enforce total control over society.

Hosts contrast these goals with their own focus on human flourishing and technological progress. The episode examines whistleblower accounts, funding sources like the Survival and Flourishing Fund, and why such groups represent a unique risk within elite intellectual circles.

Timestamps:

0:00 Introduction to the controversial group

0:20 Effective altruist funding connections

1:08 Leader’s statements on human extinction

2:37 Animal suffering and anti-predation efforts

3:40 Origins and cult-like structure

4:16 Links to Silicon Valley and manifest

5:28 Comparison to the Zizians

6:23 Goals of world monastery and AI god

7:52 AI system for constant monitoring

9:01 Eclectic philosophy and Xavier references

10:03 Daily retreat and chanting practices

11:49 Impact on member productivity

13:11 Early whistleblower accounts

14:08 Vermont property and loan tactics

15:48 Why Maple exceeds Zizians in risk

17:29 Sexual misconduct allegations examined

19:14 Totalizing ideology and control

22:32 Defender responses and overthinking claims

24:44 Ongoing funding and event presence

26:42 CRISPR and AI god ambitions

30:03 World religion and military goals

31:45 Kyle Hubbard report details

38:08 Trauma tolerance and member harm

41:02 Lecture style and status performance

44:05 Psychological aftereffects reported

45:32 Hierarchy and sleep deprivation complaints

50:02 Solitary retreats and isolation

54:05 East Asian teacher requirements

55:51 Current membership decline

58:14 Organ donation and medical ethics

1:00:49 Guru background and return to US

1:04:47 Negative utilitarianism in Buddhism

1:08:38 Infiltration of AI organizations

1:11:24 Influence in elite progressive circles

1:14:43 How such groups recruit and spread

1:17:13 Closing thoughts and future risks

maple

Malcolm Collins:

Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be talking about something that genuinely terrifies me. I feel like we’re personally blowing the lid off of this particular controversy. So if you guys remember, we had an episode where we were following organizations that had been funding. These were effective altruist organizations. These are sort of tech elite types, often on the the leftist side of things, that had been funding organizations that have been secretly planting people within news organizations without telling you to try to shut down the development of AI. Like the famous Guardian piece where three of the people were paid off. All three of them who wrote the piece Six. Six were paid off.

Simone Collins:

Yeah. Basically, yeah, it was it was all of the expert sources. It was the author, and it was the publication itself. So yes. To the tunes

Malcolm Collins:

of millions of dollars. And when we were chasing down their religious entanglements, one of the things that we noted, and we sort of passed it off, was, well, it appears the largest religious group, while they have been putting millions into Christian groups, the largest is some Buddhist group. And then the the the the just off the cuff statement was and it appears it’s mostly one group. So we mentioned this one group, then a few days later, a fan reaches out to us. And they’re like, that is something you want to double click on. So I will read a excerpt about the leader of this particular group. Okay? Sawyer considers human extinction as a noble impulse and as an ethically defensible goal. He has repeatedly shared that killing every human on Earth to protect the rest of life on Earth with his explicit life purposes from the ages of nine to 19. Oh my god. CRISPR, a gene modifying technique that could be used to create a novel bioweapon as his best available means.

Simone Collins:

That’s worse than the antinatalist. The antinatalist are like, look. The animals are way more miserable than we are. They need to go too. Or he wants to keep them around? Where they you know? Of course. Let the lions

Malcolm Collins:

or be it’s just us who can’t cause suffering.

Simone Collins:

Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:

Let the all of the insects in nature that eat animals and birds and frogs and

Simone Collins:

all the gazelles be eaten alive by the lions. It’s fine.

Malcolm Collins:

Well, you know, there are actually effective altruist organizations that have been funded to stop animals killing other animals in nature. There was the argument that it was, we might even do an episode on this point that it was the largest overlooked cause area that we needed to stop animal predation. And we did do an episode on it. Did we?

Speaker 3:

The episode came out six months ago, it was called the morality of the elite technocrat.

Simone Collins:

Look. You thought we did an episode on the Victorian cult that loved beating women.

Malcolm Collins:

Well, I’ll look it up. I’ll see. But he has now moved to what he wants to attempt to do until his vision shifted to killing them spiritually.

Simone Collins:

Oh, because that’s better. Alternative. Just kill their souls. At least it’s for eternity. That’s that’s how to really get it done.

Malcolm Collins:

Yeah. The reason I wanted to go into this and, no, he he said that’s the awakening, and you could say, well, that’s just, you know, being this is what Buddhists believe. This is one school of, like, genuine Buddhist thought, like, willing to kill you spiritually.

Simone Collins:

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:

Yeah. And this is what they want to do. So I wanna get into this cult that this guy has built up. It’s incredibly dangerous. The the if you follow this guy’s individual story, what is so interesting is this particular, impulse of his to eradicate all of humanity. I decided to dig deeper into it to be like, okay. Did he say this? Like, what’s actually going on here? Is this actually a cult? How dangerous is this organization that apparently has its tendrils? They’ve been funded by JPMorgan, by the way. They’ve been funded JPMorgan.

Speaker 18:

Note here, the funding from JPMorgan was more like a fund that funneled through JPMorgan than JPMorgan directly.

Malcolm Collins:

The survival and flourishing fund, which is the org that funded us and and and funds a lot of this anti AI sentiment. The the they’ve been funded by innumerable, effective altruists orgs that are not like, they’re really closely tied to, what was that? Inc something thing that happened at that hacker house that used to invite us until they were mad that we’re not approving of, you know, everything that

Simone Collins:

trans people say? Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:

You know how manifest held that second conference called ink something?

Simone Collins:

Less online was what happened before. Right? Oh, no.

Malcolm Collins:

There was a second thing that they did. That was for, like, writing stuff. Oh. So, anyway, they’re really tied with manifest and stuff like this. So this is, like, one degree of separation from us. If the techno puritans had, like, a mortal enemy as an organization, we have found it. Because, like, the Zizians, this is the trans murder cult that also spun out of the EA org. It really was a trans. Almost everyone in the organization was trans, and they killed more people than the Manson family. And yet you probably haven’t heard of them.

Simone Collins:

Yeah. But they killed people not in a we need to take out all the people, not even in an ideological way. They killed a landlord who wanted them to pay their rent after, like, years of nonpayment. Somebody’s parents who would die in the and then they killed someone who pulled them over. Look up the Zissians if you don’t know about them. You’re But we

Malcolm Collins:

have an episode. Them. You can read about them. This is fantastic. Yeah.

Simone Collins:

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:

But I think that a lot of people the reason I wanted to go into this is there’s this perception that, okay, the rank and file democrat, whatever, you know, they’re they’re evil. They’re extremists. They’re lobbying stuff at cars on the streets. But, you know, the they’re the the behind the scenes intellectuals controlling everything. Presumably, they’re less nefarious. Right? Like, they’re not so evil. Their intellectual upstream of this movement is, like, more muted. Because I think in republican circles, that’s often the way it is. If you look at a channel like ours, I mean, I think we’re pretty extreme, but a lot of people think that we’re fairly muted. And you and you see this in a lot of sort of upstream republican intellectual groups. And the reason I wanted to highlight and bring this group, their practices to light, is so that people can see, actually, the people at the end of this are not muted. They do want the eradication of all life on Earth. They do want the subjugation. I mean, this org talks about turning the world into a monastery. And they think that 50% they did this in an Atlantic article. They said this. So they’re not, like, quiet about this. So they wanna create their own army. Said they’d be

Simone Collins:

50% what? If they’re Buddhists, they’re

Malcolm Collins:

To enforce their lifestyle, which we will get to what their lifestyle is. Are you serious? Yeah. And well, they want to use an army and an AI god. They call it this demigore. Demigore. Or the cy no. Cybergor. And so they’re trying to build I know not a very appealing name for an AI god. Right?

Simone Collins:

No. But, also, like, we have organizations out there called Hugging Face, which to me just sounds like, you know, a sort of alien situation. I’m not

Malcolm Collins:

I’m not into this. The demigore. Demigore is hugging.

Simone Collins:

What what is this timeline? Why? I’m sorry. Carry on.

Malcolm Collins:

So, anyway, so they want 50% of all of the world’s gross revenue dedicated to the development of an AI god. And Tear to dream. What they want this AI god to do Yeah. Is monitor everything you do all day every day to ensure that you are living within their ethical framework.

Simone Collins:

No.

Malcolm Collins:

I mean go into this ethical framework.

Simone Collins:

In general. I think that that would be a really cool thing for any religion to have going forward. Like, it just constantly someone being like, you’re little Jiminy cricket.

Malcolm Collins:

You know? No. No. I agree if you you are thinking that they’re, like, a normal religion, like a Christian group or a Mormon group or, like, a whatever. Sure.

Simone Collins:

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:

They’re not. What they mean is absolute control to a dictator who’s going to control every aspect of your day. You are not allowed to look at a screen. You are not allowed entertainment. You are not allowed anything, which is very interesting given, like, they they have a practice where they leave people in isolation for, like, two to three months at a time, and you’re only allowed to talk to their founder.

Simone Collins:

Oh, so it’s like they’re they’re silent retreat

Speaker 13:

truth. Perhaps you can answer the one question that has plagued thinkers for all time. What dauf naive? What

Speaker 11:

What I find fascinating about this Oregon philosophy is how much it actually does align with Xavier Renegade Angel, if you’re familiar with that show. Here’s a person analyzing in Xavier Renegade Angel how they mix uh Native American mysticism and Buddhism and mathematics to create a philosophy that makes no sense on its face. And those are the exact three lines of thought that make up this guy’s worldview.

Speaker 12:

Xavier symbol happily mixes, uh, imagery from mathematics, native American religion, and Chinese philosophy. It’s representative of the eclecticism found in westernized spiritual circles, and it’s representative of that kind of haphazard combination of religions at will.

Speaker 15:

I found a fun write up of what it’s like to be there from somebody who appears to be pro this organization. As I entered the circular shaped room, I noticed a large wooden sign sitting on the opposite end. It read, abandon all hope, ye who enter here. This place will not support you. Abandon hope and fear. I grabbed my chant sheets and look and took my seat alongside the perimeter of the room. I looked around and noticed that of the 30 available cushions, only one was still empty. We waited silently. As soon as the clock hit 04:40, the woman next to me jumped to her feet and stormed out of the room. Five minutes later, she returned with a haggard looking figure behind her. The man shambled over to the open cushion, still half asleep. We do not tolerate tardiness, the woman commanded into the silence. As she returned next to me, my back straightened. Poor bastard, I thought. for the next hour, we chanted in Japanese, Pali, and English, followed by an hour of silent meditation by the time we were finished sunlight streaming through the windows. What I find interesting here is not the discipline. I appreciate discipline. It’s that the people don’t even follow the discipline. They’re not able to inspire people to be interested in their particular mission, and it’s because their mission is so obviously pointless. I mean, just imagine in this time of civilizational flux wasting your time chanting in a language you don’t even speak when you could be out there producing something, trying to make the world a better place.

Speaker 17:

To continue, later that evening, we reclaimed our cushions for another two hours of meditation and chanting. The schedule was rinse and repeat every day for ten days and that I was there, Everyone there seemed to be searching for something. For a few residents, the outside world had proven a bizarre and unforgiving place and the monastery with a refuge. It provided a home and a community that aligned with their values, so they decided to stay. For others, the monastery was a baro, a transitional state between two lives. And and so he’s basically talking about how they they rope people into this. And when they’re there, all productivity is sap from them. All ability to contribute to the world is sap for them, if your goal is saving all of human life, and and continuing flourishing, which is not this guy’s goal, it’s saving all life that’s not human. That’s all he seems to care about. That does the CRISPR thing, thus him saying, I want to preserve life like the name of the institute, obviously excluding human life in this equation, or at least significantly downplaying its importance. even if that was his goal, what he is doing, it’s clearly not moving people towards that direction. And if anything, it’s moving the world away from that direction, to to any logical person, to anyone who’s applying, rational judgment to the efficaciousness of the way he’s approaching his cause, which is perhaps what I find most upsetting about this is its wanton disregard for achieving the goals it is selling to people that it has.

Malcolm Collins:

And what’s fascinating about this group is if you look at, like, the whistleblowers we have had on our show so you look at people like Ayla. Ayla, early guest on the show, good friend of ours, one of the godmother, one of our kids, and people on the right are like, well, but she’s also, you know, a prostitute, so she’s evil. And it’s like, I I think Ayla tries you know, like, I I don’t agree with everything that she does within her life and everything like this, but I think she’s a considerate and brave person to the stuff she stands up against. She made a post standing up against this organization five years ago. Dude. And was attacked for it quite soundly. Specifically, what it what it was, there was a long Facebook post where she goes, from what I have seen of this organization, which is pulling a lot of people from our community, sending people to our events, going to tech companies, and setting up these, like, monastery for a day things where they attempt to, you know, clean people’s brains, if you know what I’m talking about. Remove all the bad thoughts, which is really what they say. They’re like, I just wanna, you know, clean your I wanna remove all the bad thoughts. Right? You know? And other people might call this brainwashing, but they don’t see it this way because they’re like, well, most people genuinely have mostly bad thoughts, and we need to remove them. Another thing to note about this organization, you’re talking about how they control things, is that the founder has made it so that once you join the organization, a lot of people have given their life savings to this guy. They’ve given all their money. They’re now dependent on him. The way that he operates is really shady as well. So for example, they they paid over $1,000,000 for this property in rural Vermont where they built all these. And I’ll put an image on screen here of this, and and you could laugh it up, Simone. It’s it’s quite a nice facility.

Simone Collins:

I saw the pictures. It looks idyllic. I mean, you put anything in Vermont, suddenly, it looks idyllic. But yeah.

Malcolm Collins:

I mean So they they wait. Did they pay for this? I was like, how do they pay for this? It looks expensive. They went around, and they begged their network for loans. And the moment they got the loans and paid for the property, they didn’t immediately begin to put really aggressive pressure on everyone in the network to forgive the loans, and they got, like, well over 50% forgiven. And if you look at what their income is now, because I was going over the recent financials, they are getting, I think it’s around $500,000 in donations a quarter. From whom? Who is doing this? Way that they do this is they force everybody who is at one of their retreats to spend, I think it’s, a week, every quarter or something like this doing nothing. But first, you create a a list of all of your, like, friends and family members who you might be able to extract money from. and then you have to really aggressively hit anyone you could extract money from while you’re paying to be there. This is not, like, a free thing to be at their institution. And, and so they’ll do, like, these big parties if, like, you got a lot of money out of your grandparents or something. Like, they tell you to target, like, elderly people. They tell you to target like, it’s really abusive. And if you really wanna hate this organization, I will put the face of the guy who runs it. Here, the moment Simone saw this, she’s like, I hate them so much after seeing this guy. But the reason I say that they’re more dangerous than the Zizians as as we move into this and I get more into specific claims here is twofold, and I think it’s worth noting. One, that this guy had the explicit goal of eradicating all human life, and they planned for doing it that was plausible, especially if he had money and a private location. Right? And that the EA orgs and the Silicon Valley orgs, these are, the elitist tech bro circles. Right? The reason why they mostly cut ties with this org is because of an elected sorry. An accused SA thing. What? And it’s not even, like, that severe. It was like a guy fingered a girl or something on a beach, and the girl who he did this to, other people have attested that she was very aggressively hitting on other staff members, which I believe when I look at a picture of I I’m sorry to say this, but,

Simone Collins:

like, sometimes you look

Malcolm Collins:

and you’re like sometimes you look and you’re like, look. I’ve seen the other girls who go to this. If they were just going after the hot girls, this is not what was happening here. And I know that we used to say believe all women, and then, like, basically, society was like, wait a second. Women lie a lot.

Simone Collins:

But Okay. Great.

Malcolm Collins:

Great.

Simone Collins:

Great. Great.

Malcolm Collins:

Great. From what I have seen from the number of people on each side of this particular story of hers and I wanna tell you why I don’t think SA happened with her.

Simone Collins:

Okay.

Malcolm Collins:

Okay. This is an organization that has produced copious people who said they have had, their brains tortured for years on end by this organization Tortured. Who say they’ve been exposed to extreme trauma by this organization Ew. Who say that this organization has financially exploited them and left them destitute.

Simone Collins:

Well, that’s unfair.

Malcolm Collins:

Pointed out this organization one of the creepiest things I read that this organization did is somebody achieved transcripts of people saying, like, I thought a lot of people had read, left the organization recently, and that made me concerned. And so then I talked to leadership, and then I realized only a few had. And then they pointed out the actual numbers, and they’re, like, actually a group of seven people left all at once shortly before this. And it shows this level of, like, brainwashing, like, not being able to think for yourself once you’re in this. Right?

Simone Collins:

Wow. Yes.

Malcolm Collins:

the reason why I don’t think they actually essayed this person is out of all of these allegations and as I’ve said, there are copious allegations from numerous angles about this organization. the reason I believe the murder thing is because the response to the Ayla post that was defending the org mentioned it. And that’s what I was like, and they’re like, and he was trying to talk about how he doesn’t wanna murder everyone anymore. And I’m like, that’s not a normal thought to have, and he’s never explicitly decried it. He’s never come out and written like, yeah. I did say that at one point in the past. I did believe that at one point in the past, but I don’t like, I’m really against that now. It’s more like, no. I just wanna murder everyone spiritually now. Like and make everybody follow my ideology. Even the techno puritans don’t want everyone to follow our ideology. Right? Like, even the techno puritans don’t say you all need to relate to animals in the way we do. You all need to relate to relationships. It’s it’s it’s a very totalizing religious system, which is what makes it so dangerous. But the point I was making here is out of all of this, no other SA accusations in the entire organizational history. Now That’s pretty good for any kind of cultish organization.

Simone Collins:

That’s actually very good. Also, when you just consider your general effective altruist or rationalist social circle, let alone group house much all of them.

Malcolm Collins:

If you look at Miri, like, fucking half the people at Miri’s have been by one of the higher ups. Like, do

Simone Collins:

you call them? Issue here is that this is actually a very uniquely asexual or sexless group. And, apparently, it it selects for people like that and is is conspicuously absent, of any of this stuff. I I think we can’t really yeah. Right. But but I wanna point out your

Malcolm Collins:

thing about it sex sex sex with, sex like, the negative standard EA, like, oh, I’m on a witch hunt for anything that anyone’s ever accused you of. This sex stuff, like, I actually I’m giving the org a pass on it. If if if they have gotten away without a single other in the EA community, which had all of the waves of me tooisms and all of the waves of any of you know that you use every polyamorous is polyamorous at. And that nothing has ever been accused of the founder who also, from everything I found, has never had a sexual relationship with anyone that anyone’s been able to document. He appears to be, if anything, this makes him more dangerous, very, like, serious about, like, his actual goals with all of this. And I would note for people before I dive into more here, his goal or potential goal because he hasn’t really attacked it or revoked it yet of eradicating humanity, it I love that the EA organization wasn’t concerned about that. The EA community, we eradicate humanity. Yeah. I mean, we all wanna do that some days. Right? Like, this is EA. Negative utilitarianism normal. It’s perfectly in alliance with Buddhism’s long term goals. Like, I can see why he aligned with Buddhism, because it’s it’s effectively a negative utilitarian religion. Right? Like, life is suffering. Less in suffering. That’s less in life. Right? Like, let’s end the cycle. Right? And and that’s his goal. Oh, I was gonna note that he says that you can only listen to him if you’re a member, like, you’re in this institution. And if you’re not listening to him, you can only read intellectual stuff written by Asians East Asians. But he’s white? He’s white. I know.

Simone Collins:

Does that mean people aren’t allowed to listen to him? I mean, does this still neutralize

Malcolm Collins:

his work? Been approved because he went to easy

Simone Collins:

Oh, he’s, like, an honorary agent.

Malcolm Collins:

And take certifications and yeah.

Simone Collins:

He’s a way Basically,

Malcolm Collins:

he just doesn’t want any ideas that could challenge him. And it’s not that everything he says is bad. One of the things that I think is good that he does is he’s very anti modern psychology, which we’re also against.

Simone Collins:

Yeah. I mean, so are the Scientologists. And so

Malcolm Collins:

are the Scientologists. Yeah. He’s also generally pro controlling your emotions, which we’re

Simone Collins:

also pro. Totally.

Malcolm Collins:

Totally. But then he said that you need to dedicate your entire life to the great love, and I’m like, well, it’s about controlling your emotions. Yeah. So let’s get into some of the recent accusations of this group. and I also find the group’s politics oh, I’ll read a thing from one of the people defending this group so you can get an idea of, like, what happens to somebody after they’re in the group. Okay? Okay. This is him defending it. Trying to not look crazy. Okay?

Simone Collins:

Okay.

Malcolm Collins:

It was all according to Soyuz’s plan. That’s the leader. He knew he wouldn’t defeat the rationalist in one fell swoop. So instead, he used their greatest weakness against them. He designed a situation that would lead them inexorably to overthinking. You see, they’d become beautifully proficient in making maps, but they never learned how to stop. So once called forth, their power of discrimination accumulated into a terrible mass, a mountain of analysis entombed us in the weight of endless distinctions. Soryu smiled. Finally, the bloody gears of civilization stopped. The diversity of life on Earth preserved. He had done it. Of course, b wasn’t an analysis paralysis. That wouldn’t be rational. And furthermore, they’d long prepared for Sawyer’s machinations planting a mole deep in the organization. Zichtun, it was a dangerous assignment. And although Zichtun would be able to trust himself once the mind control began, he had held on to one truth that so long as he endeavored to communicate thoroughly and honestly, the expert statisticians at Miri would use debasing techniques to extract the same powerful inferences. As you can see, this is how they feel like after after people have gone into their org and, like, recorded the the stuff that they’ve the crazy stuff they’ve been doing, this is how they respond, which in case you’re wondering, this is not a normal way to respond to something. Right? And I think that we are uniquely qualified to speak on this particular issue because both of us are orgs that were originally funded by

Simone Collins:

Survival and Flourishing Fund.

Malcolm Collins:

Not just the Survival and Flourishing Fund, but they grew out of the effective altruist community. Right? except we have been more thoroughly cut out of the community than they have. Okay? So that’s one thing to know. Right? Like, they still have people They seem to

Simone Collins:

have been cut out, though. Right? And weren’t you saying that the Survival and Flourishing Fund gave their donation to them before even we received ours in 2021, wasn’t it? They were 2019.

Malcolm Collins:

Yeah. Okay. So they they have been I mean, they’re still getting money. Right? So they’re still getting it, but I think it’s mostly that they’re just extractive now.

Simone Collins:

Yeah. These, like, weeklong sessions of give me your money.

Malcolm Collins:

Yeah. But they are still when I read posts, people will say that members with the sash, with everything, with the shaved heads still come to mainstream effective outrageous events.

Simone Collins:

Oh, wow. Oh, so it’s like they’re known. It’s it’s one of those guys.

Malcolm Collins:

It’s one of those guys. They’re known. They’re associated. They’re affiliated. Oh my goodness gracious. Basecamp in all of our community was explicitly blocked from all of these events. Like, in manifest, one year just went up and blocked us when we used to have some of because we know because they did post talk surveys. I think they said we had the most popular talk at the entire event. Oh, really? Yeah. People really like our talks because they’re spicy and fun and get people to think outside the box, but that is not allowed at these events anymore.

Simone Collins:

Right. I think we did offend some people as well.

Malcolm Collins:

Yes. Because I’m willing to say yeah. And what’s funny is this this group has also, like, dead named trans people and stuff like that. Right? So they’re Really? Yeah.

Simone Collins:

They’re not, like, leftist per se. They’re just No.

Malcolm Collins:

They’re true leftists. Right? Like What does that mean? They’re they’re what the leftist elite class actually wants for humanity and not what the leftist rank and file realizes the leftist elite class wants for humanity. The leftist elite clans may be more totalizing in terms of let’s destroy the human race with, you know, CRISPR viruses, or subject everyone to an AI god that controls their every action. but they are significantly and and everyone has to think like us. Everyone has to be a vegan. Everyone to eat bugs. Everyone has to you know what I mean? Right? But oh, you’re not even allowed to eat bugs as a vegan. Right? So what what are they? You know? Yeah. Who knows?

Speaker 16:

What I just find so crazy is that the scandal around this guy in the EA community is an obviously bogus sex scandal, whereas people aren’t focusing on the fact that a guy is being given millions of dollars a year who has expressed an interest in CRISPRing a virus to eradicate all human life to work alone in a compound with fanatical devotees following him and who also has the goal of engineering an AI to act as sort of fascistic overlord to all of human civilization when we know how he treats the people under him and what he expects from them. You know, you’d be spending the rest of your life sitting there chanting in a language you don’t even speak.

Malcolm Collins:

But they they also see through the bullshit that’s obvious to the on the ground person. Like, no educated leftist is still pro the whole trans thing. Like, everybody who’s, like, actually looked at it is like, okay. This is stupid. I get that it’s stupid, but I know what we have to pretend. So, like, you know, they they that’s sort of the ground they’re on. And this is why I think it’s useful to understand them because I think you can understand the behind the scenes of the highest levels of the opposition to us. But I was saying, I think, you know, we are both religious organizations that were founded in part to deal with the way society is changing. and everything about us is different in terms of, like, every metric. Like, we’re attempting to preserve human life, preserve long term human flourishing. We’re about protecting human diversity. We’re about continuing to evolve, continuing to conquer other planets, and seed them with life that can, you know, rediversify. You don’t need to protect diversity on Earth. Earth’s just one measly planet. Whatever. Let it go extinct. You know, we can do this on other planets one day. And it is true. If you seed life if you end humanity and the sun continues to expand, all life will eventually go extinct. There is no chance that any other life on Earth is gonna seed another planet. If we seed a billion planets with life and that continues to evolve and we then begin proactively seeding planets that we might wanna go to in the future, which is what humanity will likely do, The diversity of life that is downstream of a thriving humanity is exponentially larger. Not exponentially. It’s, like, not even it’s not even relevant. Like, the two numbers aren’t relevant. It’s it’s it’s the difference between, you know, an amoeba and all life on Earth in terms of its relevance. That’s what humanity means when contrasted with every other species on Earth combined, right, in terms of its its long term potential. But that’s the way we see that. And it’s also in the way we handle money. Right? Like, we put together our fab. we make money by people wanting to pay for what we’re offering.

Simone Collins:

But we are allergic to asking for money.

Malcolm Collins:

Yeah. Really, really, really, really Where they are aggressively extractive. We and our tradition is downstream of Christianity and Judaism, and we work a lot with these groups to to understand their theology. You know, we work a lot with orthodox Jewish groups. We work a lot with conservative Christian groups, and we work a lot to protect conservative religious ideologies. Whereas they have moved entirely in the Buddhist direction entirely and that we need to eradicate traditional Western civilization. But let’s go over, like, what they were accused of because I found this to be very interesting. And, again, this stuff is important for you to know because these guys have power. Like, people like these keep spinning out of these orgs. Well, and

Simone Collins:

I I think it’s important also for people to know that there are actually really groups like the ones described in, like, Kingsman. Because isn’t this, like, from the plot of that that with the the the main protagonist in the first Kingsman movie made some kind of, what, like, a cell phone that had a frequency that would make people go crazy and kill each other or something. But, like, this is worse than that because his original idea and you don’t know that he hasn’t dropped that. Okay? We know that he publicly claimed to prefer an idea that was more palatable apparently to donors. We don’t know that he’s

Malcolm Collins:

not But we also know that he hides his ideas. We know right now they have some internal teaching about how they relate to AI that isn’t made public. So we know that they hide their internal teaching.

Simone Collins:

And maybe they have you know, they’re out there in Vermont with CRISPR trying to engineer their let’s end humanity system. Yep. so this the piece that

Malcolm Collins:

we’re gonna be quoting here is, I think, the best of the pieces on this because I’ve gone through a number of attack pieces on this. Like, apparently, they’re drawing a lot of similar criticism that makes me believe it. The high control dynamics at Maple. And this was by Kyle Hubbard. Now what’s interesting about Kyle Hubbard is do you know what else Kyle Hubbard did, Simone? No. What? He was one of the donor recommended advisers who got this group the funding for the survival and flourishing fund, which I think shows that survival and flourishing is not bad people. Right? Like, they made a mistake, and even people involved in that mistake are drawing attention to the group that they ended up funding. But this org still has its fingers in a lot of things, and that’s important to note. Right? Like, when we were talking about it on our group call, one of our friends who is very influential in the EA, singularity, and whatever, you know, tech, She’s like, oh, I know who you’re talking about when I just mentioned the the crazy cult. And she’s like, oh, I’ve I I know them that wanna destroy humanity. I’m I’m familiar with their agenda. Oh, that one. That one. Okay. So he says, Maple has world scale goals. Maple’s stated goals include founding the next world religion, leading a world government with teeth, its own military, operating 500 centers worldwide, and building an artificial superintelligence that will turn the world into a monastery with residents equipped would essentially mean turning Sawyer’s mind into an AI god. Sawyer has said that he entered a Mandahi deep enough to make psychic contact with the mind of global AI, what they call the cyber gourd Oh. Or the cyber gourd That’s who you talked to. In the way that spiritual masters read the minds of other people.

Simone Collins:

Read the minds of other people. Well, you know, this

Malcolm Collins:

is Buddhist nonsense. Whatever. That’s not the

Simone Collins:

gay part. No. That’s not Buddhist. That doesn’t that’s not a Buddhist thing.

Malcolm Collins:

You don’t hold on. Wait. No. You are constantly brainwashed about how malevolent Buddhism is. You don’t think Sardami

Simone Collins:

is doing Buddhist in Buddhism. Let’s look

Malcolm Collins:

this up. Is is this a regular Buddhist thing?

Simone Collins:

Yeah. Is there mind reading in in Buddhism? I have extreme doubts.

Malcolm Collins:

Yes. It is a completely normal and foundational concept of traditional Buddhism. What? Yes. So in Buddhism, means absorption or unification of the mind. It comes from the roots of bringing together in a place formally. It describes a state where scatters stops dancing around and attention rests steadily on a single object, and it can be used to read minds.

Speaker 9:

Note to add even more color here. um If you go to main text, like in the Pali Canon, the Theravada, and later commentarial works, one of six higher knowledge is something, knowing the minds of others. A monk who has developed deep concentration, especially the fourth jihad, is said to be able to know whether another’s mind is lustful or not, hateful or not, concentrated or scattered, liberated or not, and so on. The Buddha and his disciples such as Mogalahana and Aradhana are portrayed as using this. Similar lists appear in Mahayana sources. So it’s not like a a secondary thing or something like that. This is this is, like, core Buddhist belief.

Malcolm Collins:

Yes. Simone, you need to, like, stop believing that Buddhists are, like, a cute little whatever things. They’re not. They’re they’re I I I keep having to, like, buzz I remember when I was talking to her early about Buddhism, she goes, Buddhists are are anti idolatry. And I was like, what are you talking about? They have, like, giant statues all over the place at every temple. She’s like, I don’t remember it. And I was like, Google the temple you went to as a kid because she was schooled in Buddhism as a young kid. And the statues were everywhere, and she’s like, I guess, like, just blank them out. I

Simone Collins:

know. Even in Ibaraki Ken where I I grew up, there’s a giant Buddha. And when I mean giant, like, it’s certainly bigger than the Statue Of Liberty. It I I’ve kinda

Malcolm Collins:

And you thought they didn’t have idolatry.

Simone Collins:

I know. I know. I was look. I just I’m having a dark time now because I’m actually starting to just allow myself to understand just how crappy humanity is, and I don’t like that. It’s not fun.

Malcolm Collins:

It’s not enjoyable. Groups of humans.

Simone Collins:

Now, mommy? Buddy, you have to wait until we’re finished.

Malcolm Collins:

He’s trying to use budpuppy.ai, our new platform for kids, and he’s really excited about it.

Simone Collins:

I will get you buddy, I promise I will get you set up, but I need to finish this first and so does daddy. Where’s where’s Eric? Oh, he he went. Actually, I got to use, like, a fake gun, and it was really pellet gun. Yeah. A pellet gun. It’s not a fake gun. It’s a real gun

Malcolm Collins:

that That can really hurt someone. You know you can’t shoot someone

Simone Collins:

without a gun. Where’s the where’s our pellet gun, by the way? Oh, can we use it? Oh, you got an airsoft gun? Oh, yay. Airsoft gun. I can’t have it in where you well, anyway, it’s secured, presumably. Oh, is it the one that you have near you? Like, I work at oh my

Malcolm Collins:

god. I should make sure the Airsoft gun is significantly more secure now that I

Simone Collins:

Yes. I am using the broken computer that text broke. It is my computer. Now I just have a

Malcolm Collins:

broken baby broke my wife’s computer and just got, like, a big slash through the screen right now.

Simone Collins:

He threw he was playing with a spoon, and he just threw it at the screen like it was some sort of javelin. But I appreciate his athleticism, and now I just have a broken screen with my Bye bye. Festive line.

Malcolm Collins:

So has stated a strong willingness to move.

Simone Collins:

Need it moving. I’m only gonna move if you give me

Malcolm Collins:

Can you hurt him, Simone?

Simone Collins:

Shall I throw the book at you?

Malcolm Collins:

Shall I throw the book at you? Get him get him.

Simone Collins:

No. Actually you know why Torsten has that cut on his face? Why? Titan threw a book at him.

Malcolm Collins:

Was he being a jerk?

Simone Collins:

He was hitting worth a pool noodle, so I would say that this was disproportionate.

Malcolm Collins:

That’s Tell it no Mudpuppy dot a I if you

Simone Collins:

can Okay. Fine. I’m gonna cancel mudpuppy.ai for you

Malcolm Collins:

if you

Simone Collins:

don’t leave it. Okay. But you have to pay the money and give me tokens.

Malcolm Collins:

has stated a strong willingness to let residents come to harm in the service of Maple’s mission. He stated explicitly the severity of trauma to students that he would tolerate, permanently unable to participate in the economy for the rest of their lives. He has asked a roomful of us to settle what portion of students becoming traumatized through training would be acceptable. Is it twenty percent, fifty percent, a 100%?

Speaker 10:

And I really contrast this with our org and the Technopuritan project where you can see that everything that we do is about attempting to improve the lives of other people and move them towards a place where they’re mentally healthier and better able to act on the world in a positive way. Whereas with this organization, he doesn’t care about significantly damaging the life of somebody who put their faith in him. Um, and that one of the ways that he defines pain that he’s willing to cause is they’re no longer able to contribute to the economy, e g, produce things that other people want to make the world a better place, just like a wrecking ball through the life of people who have put their faith in him.

Simone Collins:

What is traumatizing them? What is happening? Have people

Malcolm Collins:

We’ll go over the training. It would traumatize anyone.

Simone Collins:

Oh my gosh. Okay. So for example like, training to be a moderator on YouTube? There was

Malcolm Collins:

an instance in which he was giving a lecture because people have to go to his lectures every day, which if you have watched them, I will play one from YouTube here. You want to smack this person. It’s like the slow, like, dinging a gong a couple times really slowly and then waiting, like, five minutes to start talking and then talking in that low, like, Very much the antithesis of whatever techno puritanism stands for.

Simone Collins:

Yeah, man.

Speaker 4:

So I’m not gonna make you listen until he starts talking because he keeps hitting this freaking bell thing. Um, but this is what it sounds like when he does start talking.

Speaker 5:

As you sit, make use of this opportunity to relinquish thinking, to let go of whatever thoughts our minds produce.

Speaker 6:

He just, like, aggressively hates your time. He has aggressive disrespect for you if you have, like, a job or things to do to try to make the world a better place. He hates you specifically and wants to burn as much of your life as possible. I I wanted to put more of this, but I just didn’t want to force you guys to sit through it because there is few things that I personally at least find more painful than having to listen to somebody like this.

Malcolm Collins:

And I’m gonna include this with our, like, religious stuff, but not our tracks because I do think that this is important to understand, like, what we never want to become, this sort of performative, I’m so high status. I’m so cool. Look at me. because it’s it it represents everything I think wrong with the elite society that’s destroying the world right now.

Simone Collins:

This is so not the Buddhism I grew up with either.

Malcolm Collins:

It is real Buddhism. No. Real Buddhism is hitting a fucking bell and sitting with your legs crossed in your stupid sash and thinking you’re better than everyone.

Simone Collins:

Well, that’s yeah. Anyway said didn’t do that.

Malcolm Collins:

People began to drift off. Right? Or one guy began to because they don’t let people sleep much at night. Sure.

Simone Collins:

And that’s this is a classic, like if you’re in a strict zen monastery, they, like, they beat you with a stick if you fall asleep.

Malcolm Collins:

So the guy began to drift off, and then he made everybody else stare at him for the next ninety minutes just stare at his face being Oh, like to, like, laser eye him back awake or something? No. Stare at him, the teacher. They had to pay attention to just him sitting there doing his Buddhist thing for the next ninety minutes to learn attention again or something.

Simone Collins:

Back to look at him. That’s just that’s just great.

Malcolm Collins:

I I can’t And note, the org has not pushed back on this stuff. They they released a a thing fighting back against this. Okay. And they said no one has undergone physical harm at one of our retreats.

Simone Collins:

Well, yeah, they’re not beating him. I would prefer a beating. I would prefer to be

Malcolm Collins:

I prefer a

Simone Collins:

beating too.

Malcolm Collins:

Yeah. That’s the

Simone Collins:

thing It wakes you up. I mean, slap. You’re awake. You’re it’s good. The you know, sometimes it’s just hard to stay awake when you’re meditating. I get

Malcolm Collins:

But I think the way that they responded is for me affirming that these accusations are true. Because if the accusations are not true, they would have addressed the specific accusations. They wouldn’t have said, well, we never beat anyone. And that was never one of the accusations in the first place, guys.

Simone Collins:

You’re traumatizing people. We’ve never no one has been physically touched. Oh my goodness gracious.

Malcolm Collins:

Well, they do, like, cut you off from your friend groups and family when you go, and people say there’s been, like, months

Simone Collins:

and can make money from them, apparently.

Malcolm Collins:

Oh, yes. So I’m continuing here. When he’s talking about the how many people can they traumatize twenty, fifty, a 100%, discussing how Maple would deal with societal collapse, he said, if half the Maple community starts running around like chickens with their heads cut off and die within the first week, just let that process play out.

Simone Collins:

Well, I appreciate that they only want the most resilient to become leaders in their community, I guess.

Malcolm Collins:

And he goes on to say here, indeed, many have left, including me with severe psychological problems that were not present beforehand. I am personally in contact with over a dozen people who have had a year of mental health issues afterwards who are who are still going to therapy and seeking spiritual guidance primarily for issues relating to Soryu and Maple. Beyond those, I am in contact with personally, I am aware of dozens more, which I have also found through researching it. Very, very common that people feel this way afterwards.

Simone Collins:

Did they describe the sorts of things that they suffered from? Like, following the the at least significant shift in composition of leverage, another socially based

Malcolm Collins:

And these guys were founded by people associated with leverage.

Simone Collins:

Okay. Well, yeah. And I think what they they temporarily rented space from leverage or whatever until they went to some other location. So they were physically proximate. But I believe that with leverage, there were there were consistent things that people, you know, claimed having to deal with afterwards, you know, they need to see therapy, but it was due to, like, very specific stuff. Is are people being specific here about what they’re suffering from, or is it just very vague? Like, now I see therapist. Now I see physical.

Malcolm Collins:

Listen to what happens at the thing, it would be very clear that, like, bad things would happen to you. What’s interesting is that the, the things that they complain about was very like, if you understand psychology and the way cults operate and, like, what’s actually, like, bad behavior and what it’s clear that the effective altruist mind and the leftist mind doesn’t have the language or the alarms to know when something is dangerous versus when something is just a normal part of an organization or a religion. So I’ll provide an example here. You know that part about wanting to wipe out all of humanity with an engineered disease? That was like an afterthought in this piece. You wanna know the first complaint he has about them?

Simone Collins:

All That they made them do hard things?

Malcolm Collins:

Rest with Soryu, who has unironically told the community, this is a dictatorship, and I am the dictator. So they don’t like that there’s hierarchy. There’s hierarchy. That was more concerning to them than they wanting to eradicate humanity thing.

Simone Collins:

Oh, no. Oh, no. No.

Malcolm Collins:

This is what I mean. They literally have, like, colored glasses that they can’t see the dangerous stuff the org is doing. or the locking people alone for months on end was their only contact being this one guy, who berates him every time he sees them apparently. that is considered an afterthought. You wanna know what the next thing they complained about was? This one actually is a problem, but they thought this was less important than the first one. Okay. Every hour of your day is scheduled or monitored producing clonic sleep deprivation, overwork, and exhaustion. Guilt Why do they

Simone Collins:

all do this? It was also the Zizzians that had the biphasic sleep problem that

Malcolm Collins:

made them actually pretty delusional. Normal for cults. If you get people to not sleep a lot, they become a lot less credulous when you’re telling them to believe whatever you tell them to.

Simone Collins:

Fair enough. Been there.

Malcolm Collins:

This enrage directed at ordinary frailties. For example, the breaking of an inexpensive item, lying down during the talk, being sick with COVID, or needing rest. When one student’s head began to nod during the talk, and this is when he made everyone in the room stare at him. Right?

Simone Collins:

Oh, boy.

Malcolm Collins:

And then but that’s that again is, like, harsh, but it’s not as severe as some of the stuff we’re gonna get to. Although, I will say the constant monitoring is insane. You should not be in an organization that’s doing that. Like, he he called it benevolent monitoring. And, basically, wherever you are in your room, anywhere, you are constantly being monitored. And then I camera? How? Like I it it kills camera and audio. Okay. Residents are pressured this is another thing. We’re like, this came before the actual damaging stuff. Right? Residents are pressured into major life decisions. Sawyer pressured breakouts with outside partners, a totally okay thing to do if they’re, like, actually toxic. Instructed couples to have children, a totally okay thing to do if you’re in a religion. A a preacher saying you should start thinking about having kids, which it sounds like was basically what he said Is a totally fine thing to do. They don’t have the warning bells for what’s actually dangerous.

Simone Collins:

I’m also confused as to why despite, at least at one point, wanting to kill everyone, he would encourage people to have kids. What’s going on there?

Malcolm Collins:

because now he’s trying to spiritually kill everyone. Remember what he says his goal is. It’s to take control of global AI And use that to subject the world to what it’s like to live in his monastery. Constant monitoring, berating of you’re ever not worshiping the dear leader, etcetera, etcetera. It is an organization dedicated around a hierarchy of elite individuals, presumably. Like, if they ever had the entire world, it would be, like, the higher EA ops and everything like that controlling everything. I mean, Miri has basically said they wanna do the same thing as well. They’re like, well, we wanna prevent people from developing AI. So what we’re gonna do is we need some, government agency that works across all governments and monitors everyone everywhere to make sure nobody’s working on AI and implements our morality along the way.

Simone Collins:

Okay. Great.

Malcolm Collins:

and pressuring people into, like, long commitments to Maple. this is the attitude we need here. Once you begin your training, you either achieve your aim or you die, he said. Which, again, I don’t see that stuff as very bad. Like, this is the thing. The things that he highlights as the biggest things, and we’ll get to where I do actually think things are terrifying

Simone Collins:

Okay.

Malcolm Collins:

Are things that are just anti progressive.

Simone Collins:

And Like, hierarchy. Oh, right. Right. Right. Right. Children. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:

Okay. Good. Residents are asked to publish approved residential accounts of soraya in scheduled writing sessions, so they constantly write about, like, what is good. And there’s this maple tale thing. I read it. That’s where we were able to get multiple accounts of people saying, I thought that a lot of people left recently. And then I talked to the leadership, and they said they hadn’t. This was from their own, I think, approved writings, the dude

Simone Collins:

that this

Malcolm Collins:

came from. And then we can contrast this is what actually happened. See even in the approved organizational writing, people are basically showing they’re brainwashing. And that’s an actual concerning thing. Yeah. Some residents voluntarily attended solitary retreats that run one to three months during which the only human contact is Soryu, who, within that isolation, often applies extreme pressure and guilt. Now this, he he puts off like a one off, oh, whatever, two to three months with an abusive founder who monitors you all the time, and other people could hear people on these wailing and screaming and other things like that. That’s the actual concerning cult like thing.

Simone Collins:

I think some people just wanna feel alive, and maybe you kinda do when you’re in a horror scenario.

Malcolm Collins:

Well, I mean, that’s how you brainwash somebody. You don’t give them any sleep. On this this retreat, they’re supposed to be spending ten hours a day in meditative poses. Oh. You know, like, with the weird sitting thing and the Isn’t

Simone Collins:

that Isn’t that enhanced interrogation technique?

Malcolm Collins:

I mean, yeah. I would consider what these people are being put through. They’re not allowed to see who gives them food. They’re given, like, their vegan gruel once a day Kids are few times a day without the person seeing them. And the only person they interact with, which is from one to ten minutes, and it’s just to critique their meditative form, is the leader of the movement.

Simone Collins:

Yeah. That’s I mean, it just to me, it sounds like a it’s just your typical cult. What what disturbs me about it is the, you know, the genocide of humanity element of it. Well, that, he says, isn’t his goal anymore.

Malcolm Collins:

I mean, it’s a spiritual genocide of humanity now. But

Simone Collins:

Dude, he says. He says.

Malcolm Collins:

He says. The problem is is he’s never publicly recounted his previous views. And that’s the thing that gets me. Yeah. Recanted. He’s never said like, enough people have have through third party said that these were his views at one point, and he has told multiple people this, that even his defenders are saying that this was his views, that he’s never, like, come to terms with why he changed his mind on this. And that scares me.

Simone Collins:

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins:

Because that’s exactly the type of thing a Buddhist would want to do, especially one who has these extremist beliefs about humanity and animals and wanting to even still free the planet from the scourge, which is humanity.

Simone Collins:

Sorry. He’s really excited about it.

Malcolm Collins:

About hashpubby.ai. Yeah. Hashpubby.ai. Yeah.

Simone Collins:

Look. I’m glad. I’m glad you built

Malcolm Collins:

He got to play it a little bit on my account, and he had a lot of fun with it because it allows you, you know, kids to make images and videos. And we’re adding that should be live by the time this episode goes live coding. So I’m trying to make it because if you use the RFEM API, then you’re using, like, the Fable API or the OpenAI API, which is a lot more expensive than using your own OpenAI or cloud accounts, which for a lot of people, I I don’t wanna do that. I don’t wanna be, like, financially exploiting people. So the way around this is the, coding AI session on the site connects to your and you set this up on your kid’s account, OpenAI account or your Fable account, and it essentially turns the vibe coding interface of Fable or OpenAI into an audio plus simple visual things that the kid can click on or interact with to audio interface. So it basically just transforms these other APIs into APIs that kids can interact with more fluidly. Anyway, which I think is really cool. That’s what I want for him. I figure other parents probably want that as well.

Simone Collins:

Well, yeah. Because, also, you’re you’re not just gonna pay for those tokens. You’re not gonna do that. But if they can piggyback on your thing, it’s kinda like the new the new version of adding a kid to your family plan, your phone family plan, which is it’s nice.

Malcolm Collins:

Yeah. okay. Next. Has stated that one of the main purposes of Maple is to extricate the evil ideology that the residents enter the community with and replace them with trustworthy ideology. Oh, okay. Stated that teachers other than himself that residents study must be both Asian and ordained, excluding the entire Western world.

Simone Collins:

The race supremacy of this is very interesting. I we haven’t really explored that.

Malcolm Collins:

Yeah. The it’s it’s a very ethnosupremacist organization.

Simone Collins:

Yeah. I I I I was trying to understand. Did you did you see see anything about his reasoning? Like, the reason why they have to be Asian East Asian?

Malcolm Collins:

Well okay. So think of it from his perspective.

Simone Collins:

For god. The little bit sorry.

Malcolm Collins:

I’m just reading random bits here. PTSD, including panic attacks, inability to be close to others, feeling permanently defiled or ruined, and also with, this list of post cult aftereffects categorized by researcher Margaret Singer, including major depressive, excessive guilt, difficulty holding a job, and concentration or memory loss. Their alumni who heard Surreya’s judgmental voice in their head for months or years had recurring maple related nightmares and who were afraid even in safe and private context to voice a concern about maple except in maple’s own language and framing.

Simone Collins:

Wow. That’s pretty wild. Yeah. That’s, like, effective. Clearly, what he did was effective at demoralizing and controlling people. So I

Malcolm Collins:

guess Well, not that effective because they are sort of collapsing at this point. Oh. which is bad because means their members are getting into other organizations. one of our friends who’s close to it said they only have 15 full time members left anymore.

Simone Collins:

Oh. And they used to have over 30, and and, you know, the

Malcolm Collins:

campus and everything like that. Right? God. And they just burned through money when I was looking at, like, their expenses and stuff like that compared to us. Man, I love the Czech Republic. Cheap, make money, give it out to members. Very opposite with the two in this org. But sorry. Speaking speaking of Maple. Oh, you’re talking about oh, yes. You were saying why the SS supremacy is like, okay. So suppose you’re him. Right? And you’ve gone and you’ve spent years studying under all of these, quote, unquote, eastern leaders, which your dad did. Remember? Your dad went out and became No. He studied Aikido under one particular yeah. Well, this guy basically did the same. Goes to Japan, I think, Japan, and studied under some master. And then he worked his way up to, like, the head or one of the head priests at some major Buddhist temple. Then he comes back, and he infuses that with his, you know, grandiose sort of narcissistic view of, like, everyone has to listen to me. I’m the one in control, everything like this. Right? And we need to eradicate all life, which which does work with Buddhist ideology as we pointed out before. It is a negative utilitarian religion. There there’s just no way around this. Simone, I remember the first time I encountered you was this, and you were like, no. I grew up a Buddhist. No. It’s not. And there was, like, actually think about it. And then, like, some day later, after she got a big argument with me about this, she just said it to somebody else. She’s like, well, don’t you go say? And I was like, wait. But you acted like I lost that argument. Like, my argument about the ID. You never admit when I convince you. And so now I’m stuck as an organ donor because I convinced you not to sign up as an organ donor.

Simone Collins:

Oh god.

Malcolm Collins:

You didn’t tell me I had convinced you. You just stood there angrily, you know, like, so then I feel bad and I sign up. And now how are you gonna did you get me off the list, Simone?

Simone Collins:

We still have to go to the library and get the form notarized. Just as an update on this, it is it is pretty insidious. When you wanna get off the donor registry in many states, it’s really not easy to do so. In Pennsylvania, I saw that Malcolm’s license, which has the donor heart on it right now, was it gonna expire fairly soon? So I’m like, oh, okay. Well, instead of paying $45 now to have it changed just to remove the donor thing, we’ll just wait for his renewal, and then we’ll just change that detail with renewal. Well, it turns out you can’t change that detail with renewal. You have to pay an extra $45 and get a separate notarized form to to actually submit the change. And so they really do make it difficult for you to try to escape this this ultimate outcome. And I I’m not recanting any of my conspiracy theories at this point. I I have not yet seen anything to suggest that what I said in that episode was wrong even though there are people who’ve written in and been like, well, well, well look. I know that mostly when people are declared bank brain dead, that they’re gonna die

Malcolm Collins:

with them. Don’t care about whether they’re mostly right or always right, and they seem to cover up the institution.

Simone Collins:

Yeah. My problem is, yeah, when people are overenthusiastically diagnosing it or not even diagnosing it and still putting them people in the pipeline. And my other issue with it is that they’re not giving anesthesia, like, proper anesthesia to the people who are having their organs extracted. No.

Malcolm Collins:

They just they just paralyze you.

Simone Collins:

They don’t you giving paralytics. Although I also learned, and this made me cry for, like, five hours, that until like, through the eighties, newborns were not being given pain medications when they were being operated on, like getting, you know, heart surgery. They were just also given paralytics. So humans are just the worst ever. We’re just like, I don’t know. It’s a baby. What could it possibly feel? I don’t know. They’re brain dead. What could they possibly feel? Their body’s convulsing.

Malcolm Collins:

Actually, Simone, the baby thing, I’m I’m gonna disagree with you on this one. I actually think that they were probably right to do that. So let me explain

Simone Collins:

because you They’re gonna kill them with the pain meds?

Malcolm Collins:

Pain meds of all of the types of meds that you can give somebody are one of the most dangerous to get exactly right. And in an infant, the percent off you need to be, especially if you’re dealing with technology of the nineteen sixties or the the nineteen fifties or the nineteen forties.

Simone Collins:

No. You’re, like, until nineties Malcolm. I I get that, like, for a very long time. Even with the original surgeries, they thought that pain meds were, even when they had them, were bad, that you needed the pain.

Malcolm Collins:

You’re saying until the nineteen eighties. You likely if if you’re talking about, like, when could they safely do this with babies reliably at a normal hospital, probably the technology didn’t exist until 1975. And so there there was, like, five years when when like, I understand your feeling on this.

Simone Collins:

Babies. You

Malcolm Collins:

you’re you’re unfamiliar with how dangerous this stuff is around babies.

Simone Collins:

I get it. I I I don’t I don’t want babies to hurt. I want babies to ever be in pain. Look. Every every time I see that little hole in Tex’s chest from his whole experience as a newborn.

Malcolm Collins:

Yeah. But he’s tough now. Yes.

Simone Collins:

Throw off your computer by throwing a spoon at it.

Malcolm Collins:

Yeah. Thanks, Tex. But the the the let’s talk about it. So he goes, and he gets he becomes this guru. Right? Yeah. Comes back to The United States, sort of combines it with effective altruism, and creates this very extractive, you know, high demand religious organization. And he doesn’t want people to leave the organization, right, because he wants to maintain power because I think he genuinely believes in his vision. I mean, I think it’s delusional, and he doesn’t have people

Simone Collins:

Well, I think he’s in his vision, but has a lot of proclivities around also self aggrandizement.

Malcolm Collins:

Right. Because he hasn’t built it in a way, and he hasn’t structured it in a way where people can disagree with him. Whereas if you contrast that with techno puritanism, our literal last tract was just me going over an argument of somebody presenting a completely alternate metaphysical structure and me saying, that’s a pretty good argument. You know, like, yeah.

Simone Collins:

Because it was.

Malcolm Collins:

Yeah. I was like, that’s that’s I don’t agree with it, but I think it’s plausible it aligns with the data that we have access to because we are not like him. Like, we operate in you could never say something like that in his world. You would never have him going up there and being like, somebody presented me with an idea that goes against everything that we say, and I think it’s plausible and a good thing

Simone Collins:

I don’t think his idea went against everything he’s he said. But, also, it I I think the problem with this particular religious leader is that if something wasn’t his idea or the idea of some distant East Asian person, the it’s it’s it’s not

Malcolm Collins:

it’s being is is by reducing the number of people that you can seriously look for alternate ideas or ideologies from to East Asian and ordained people within the Buddhist tradition, you’re just not gonna find a lot of people who can disagree with him or present you with new ideas. Because a lot of like, for your average Western reader, one, a lot of that’s just not gonna be that interesting to read. And and two, it’s not gonna present you with ideas that are gonna be outside of his fault. He basically has limited the set of things you can read to things that could never challenge his authority or only challenge it in in in marginal ways that that you as a westerner wouldn’t fully grok. But once you understand that these ideologies are negative utilitarian in nature, which Buddhism is, e. G, life is suffering. That’s, like, the core thing in Buddhism. Life is suffering and suffering. That’s negative utilitarianism. He he his more extreme beliefs are gonna flow from a lot of these ideas because they do flow from these ideas. Right? The the thing is is in the same way that, like, techno puritanism is actually when I ask AI because I’ll I’ll go to Fable and be like, what’s trick? The How does Malcolm keep getting the bible to agree with him? And he gets like, the trick that he’s using to make techno puritanism work is he’s very familiar with the biblical scholarship of this period. And so he’s familiar with what the scholarly consensus of is of what people believed the Jews of this period believed, what early Christians believed. And he just states this stuff so it sounds miraculous, and then people go and look at it, and they’re like, oh, why does the bible agree with all of these weird things? The the trick is basically I’m telling the truth. I’m I’m I’m actually just arguing from what early Christians and Jews actually believed, and a lot of modern Christians and Jews are unaware of how different, you know, Judaism at the time of Jesus, Christianity at the time of Jesus likely was from modern Christianity.

Speaker 7:

And, no, this isn’t an attack on their beliefs. modern Christians are aware that, like, Abraham had different beliefs about religion than a modern Jew has. they they don’t have any problem with that, or Moses had different beliefs than the modern Jew has. Um, they just, uh, there’s this sort of, like, haze that leads them to believe well, and that means that people living at the time of Jesus would have had the exact same beliefs that they have, even though beliefs during that time were as radically different as beliefs during the time of Abraham or Moses, and I simply focus on those beliefs.

Malcolm Collins:

And so I’m able to take that and then synthesize it with a a technological perspective. Right?

Speaker 8:

Which is how the techno Puritan beliefs are able to pull the trick off where they sound very heretical from the perspective of modern Christianity, but align with the actual text of the Bible much closer than modern Christian interpretations.

Malcolm Collins:

And and it synthesizes remarkably well, I’d say miraculously well. But, like, that’s the that’s the trick. His trick is his negative utilitarian humanity must be subjugated. Humanity must be controlled. And if I can’t, it must be eradicated mindset actually aligns if you go to the early Buddhist thinkers with what they thought. and a lot of modern Western Buddhists are unaware of that. and so he’s actually pulling something not dissimilar from me what you could say that I’m pulling, and that’s why he says you have to follow the Asian ordained ministers. Right? Because you, the Westerners, would be unaware that this is what Buddhism actually is about. But if you’re, like, deep into it, you’re like, oh, this is what they’re actually about, the negative utilitarianism ending the cycle, ending suffering. And and so, interestingly, our two ideologies, if you talk about, like, an anti spiral tradition and a spiral tradition, you look at the other tracks, that’s what you’re seeing here. Right? Like, I I think you’re seeing the personification of two branches which are doing something kind of similar, which is going back to what these traditions actually taught even if your average Western Buddhism thinks Buddhism is all about love and hugs and cuddles and everything’s nice and puppy dogs, And your average Western Christian thinks that everything is about love and cuddles and Jesus is about being, you know, I saw a Christian teacher recently that was all about like, a lot of people think that, like, because they’ve been told even from the church that Jesus was, like, maximally nice. That that’s what good meant in terms of Jesus, niceness. And so they think that being good as a Christian is about being the nicest. And if they and if they’re they’re basing themselves off of niceness, then they can beat God and Jesus, and they can be like, okay. I’m nicer than God is. Right? Yeah. Jesus is pretty nice, but but not always. I mean, he did call people out. Right? They they’re like, oh, I don’t even call people out. You know? You know? And I think that in that way, this organization represents you know, I often talk about how, like, I think the Aztec religion is a mirror of Christianity that can be used to highlight a truth of it. It’s a it’s a purely opposite religion, a purely evil religion. If you look at you know, we we talk about the Shabbatai Levy. Right? And we’re like, he’s the antichrist. Like, a perfect inversion of Christ’s life. See our episodes on that. If you look at this organization, I think it’s a perfect inversion of the techno puritan organization in the way it handles funds, in the way it handles members, in the way it handles growth, You know, like extracting money from members instead of giving money to members. Right? Like Focusing everything on this sort of narcissistic, I am the god of this. Everyone listen to me. We’re gonna make everybody follow me instead of focusing on the diversity of of humanity and thought and even within the organization having a very low structure, focusing on the family because that’s the way you actually help people move up. Work, you know, a lot of our episodes were, like, you need to learn to vibe code. Need to learn to do the next thing. You need to learn to so that you can stay employed. And he’s like, I don’t care if you’re permanently unemployed for the rest of your This this lack of concern about the psychological damage he does to people, you know, me being like, hey. Go out there. You know, research. Come up with other ideas. Bring them to me so that they can change my my mind. I wanna know when I’m wrong. I don’t want you guys to be in a cage because if you’re not in a cage, then you’re not gonna be bringing me ideas like the angel idea, which I thought was pretty cool. And yeah. Thoughts, Simone?

Simone Collins:

It is odd to me that he wouldn’t he wouldn’t be so concerned about the outcomes of people leaving. It’s

Malcolm Collins:

Well, they’ve been able to get people into major AI orgs. You know, they’ve been able to get people into major effective outreach organizations. Right? Like, they they have infiltrated a lot.

Simone Collins:

That’s really disturbing. So maybe they aren’t leaving because they’re bouncing out, you think, but they’re leaving because they’re being assigned to things?

Malcolm Collins:

Some. Some. I mean, less now, I think, it’s beginning to shatter. His control is beginning to shatter, but that’s why we’re learning about it. When Ella posted about this five years ago, if you read her post, she hedges everything. You would have no idea how bad the org is because it’s clear that she is terrified to speak against them. Wow. When they still had power and who knows how many orgs like this are still in power when you when you look at what a lot of these organizations are donating to. And I think we collectively need to remember that your average Karen wailing on the street, your average GDC progressive who screams at the sky and what was that park where we met?

Simone Collins:

Oh, Yoruba Buena Gardens.

Malcolm Collins:

Yeah. Before they all did it. They all screamed at the sky in Yoruba Buena Gardens. We look at these mentally broken people, and and we can think maybe maybe this runs all the way to the top because in the celebrities, it does. You look at the Hollywood celebrities, and these are deeply broken people. We might do an episode on that in the near future just like how psychologically destroyed Hollywood has become. And what we don’t keep in mind is as as as cold and ruthless as strategizing as people like you and me can be seen as people who influence, like, the intellectual right sphere. You know, obviously like, when we were going to speak at the White House, the challenge for them booking us was so many people. We had so many fans at the White House that they all wanted to make sure they were there. And so whenever there was a conflict, had to rebook us because there were, like, a number of people who wanted to like, we do the same thing. We influence the intellectual of, like, this new right wing ideology disproportionately, and groups like him may seem small. You may go to his channel and see, you know, a 150 views on a video or something like that. But the influence that they are able to have within the progressive elite circles is outsized in the same way that our influence is outsized in the conservative elite circles. And if you project the broken Hollywood elite into these individuals, you can miss how cold, calculating, and disciplined their puppet masters can be. And and and willing to eradicate humanity, willing to pull that trigger. Right? And I I want us to all, you know, be aware of that. And and you guys don’t need to harass these guys. The only reason we know about them is because they lost their power. Like, it broke. It’s falling apart for them now. But that means there’s somebody else in the shadows now. That means this is the way it always is. It’s always and then maybe we should ask Ayla. Who’s the next?

Simone Collins:

Yeah. She might know. She might be yeah. I it’s it’s hard to say. I mean, they’ve always been

Malcolm Collins:

closest to the next group is Myriad that I’m aware of that’s still operational.

Simone Collins:

We don’t know what new ones are out, though, because we’ve been kind of frozen out for a while, so I couldn’t say. And I would I would say that underrated is the extent to which this has been happening in the San Francisco Bay Area since at least the sixties. So what’s scary about now and what’s different about now is in the sixties, these groups would go off and have their primal screams and bring spirits back from the dead or whatever it is that they did in their isolated weird places, and they would not affect anyone else. But now we have groups that have CRISPR and AI and millions of dollars to funding. And when you focus on

Malcolm Collins:

the wrong orgs, when you’re out there focused on the Bohemian Grove, which is just a summer camp for old people, right, like, at this point.

Simone Collins:

Right? It’s so true. Yeah. The Bohemian Grove When you’re focused on the Jews hanging out, making pranks, listening to music or whatever. And, like, meanwhile, there are groups that are dedicated to the end of all not just all living humans, all the souls. It’s not enough to get all the ones that are alive now. Oh, it’s so disturbing.

Malcolm Collins:

They they they Buddhism is a genuinely disturbing religion. Like, I’m I’m actually, like, in the eradication of every soul. And they will frame it differently. They’ll say, oh, it’s a unification into a bland blah. Like, it’s it’s eradication, buddy. No. You you are telling me that life is suffering, and we must eradicate suffering. We must end the cycle. What what are you talking about ending, buddy? You you can define what’s at the end of that particular tunnel however you want. But to Well,

Simone Collins:

I mean, they’re they’re arguing that you’re you’re clinging in this act of suffering to this concept of self, which is only causing more suffering to you. Wouldn’t you be happier if you weren’t anything?

Malcolm Collins:

Anyway yikes. Terrifying. Yikes.

Simone Collins:

Well, I’m glad that’s not our lives right now. I’m glad someone’s not telling that telling us we have to stare at them for long periods of time

Malcolm Collins:

uninterrupted. These lame Buddhist meditation things. I’m so glad that techno periodism is so fun and loose and diverse.

Simone Collins:

Yeah. And non extractive. Everyone’s so kind to each other and to think that there are groups that are just forcing their members to call friends and family and demand money from them, from an organization that wants them to end permanently and and and and to coerce them into living a certain lifestyle. It’s just I don’t know how people get rubbed into this, but I find it’s it’s high status. Humanity.

Malcolm Collins:

So this is actually, this is important for people to understand how these orgs proliferate. Okay. They built this is what this is what, vector was what they were called. What were they called? Leverage?

Simone Collins:

Are you talking about leverage?

Malcolm Collins:

Work too. Yeah. the the founder brands himself as high status and connected to donors within the wider effective altruist singletarian peerage network. you know, he goes to events and people are like, well, if I go to this, and because they’re looking for religion, they’re looking for truth, they’ve been taught their entire lives to hate the West, to hate Christianity, to hate Judaism. He provides an alternative for them, and he’s high status. So then you go and and you get, you know, your brain clean, which is like he says it’s his goal. You come in with all these evil thoughts, and it’s my job to clean your brain. So I’m the only Clean

Simone Collins:

your brain. That really doesn’t sound good.

Malcolm Collins:

I mean, he doesn’t use the term clean your brain, but that’s the

Simone Collins:

the the the, how you would describe what he says he wants to do. Okay. Clean your brain. Great. Great. Fantastic. Yikes.

Malcolm Collins:

Well And I can see how somebody could be I mean, look at the way Technopuritan. We don’t come out there. We don’t say we have all the answers. We don’t we don’t go along with the

Simone Collins:

Because we don’t.

Malcolm Collins:

Is bad. We don’t you know, we say we wanna create a small community that can serve as a base for projecting our goals for the future of human civilization, from this small community, of families. Right? And they are something entirely different. You know, they want to insert themselves within large organizations, take them over, manipulate them. It’s a very different goal.

Simone Collins:

That’s it’s it’s it is a religion around active dialogue and an interest in long term human flourishing and cultural sovereignty. The complete opposite of everything that they that they stand for. But isn’t it nice to have a mortal enemy? Yes. Lovely.

Malcolm Collins:

Yes. Mortal enemy. Yes. Don’t harass them or anything, by the way, people. Again, they’ve already fallen apart. We should be looking for what’s next. So you guys in the EA community, keep an eye out. Let me know the next cult. Reach out. We can flag them here first.

Simone Collins:

Indeed. Well, what? We’re, like, six 12 11 years old? Eleven years late? Twelve years late? With this guy? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, so we can hear the next thing first to be to be the first to break the next thing first do it. Okay. I was like, because we did not break this one. Ayla might have broken it eleven years ago, not us. Okay. Cool. Cool. Cool. Do you want anything for dinner? Not really. Okay. I’m sorry. Can I get you anything? Can I make your life better in some way? Do you want me to, like, wash any sinks treats that you have so that you have Have you cleaned

Malcolm Collins:

up the mouth in the attic?

Simone Collins:

Oh god. Keep I forgetting that. Sorry. We don’t have plastic bags lying around. And so I’ve got plastic bags in my room. Giant trash bag. We paid for those. I’m not wasting an entire trash. That’s, like, 15¢. Dead mess. Anyway, I’ll figure

Malcolm Collins:

it out. Getting plastic bags because you don’t use them at stores.

Simone Collins:

Because they charge for them. Look. I have a dirty diaper sitting right here. I’m looking at it now. I will just use that dirty diaper to pick up the mouse and then wrap the mouse in the diaper and then throw the diaper away. That would be my trash bag. I have a plan now. I will handle it.

Malcolm Collins:

An absurdly frugal person, Simone.

Simone Collins:

You know what? Maybe epigenetics is real.

Malcolm Collins:

This is also how we’re different

Simone Collins:

from them. You you know if

Malcolm Collins:

you give us money, we spend it on trying to to build stuff, make it better. Look at mudpuppy.ai. Check it out.

Simone Collins:

We need more additional uses of dirty diapers anyway as a world.

Malcolm Collins:

Or rfab.ai if you if you want regular, you know, chatbot related stuff, but Mudpuppy is a fun new thing.

Simone Collins:

Such a cute name. Yeah. Mudpuppies, which I didn’t know, are basically American axolotls that are brown. So they’re, like, they’re the they’re the, like, the backwoods.

Malcolm Collins:

My mom called me a mudpuppy growing up. She called all the kids mudpuppies.

Simone Collins:

Well, she also called them all little shits, didn’t she?

Malcolm Collins:

But Yeah. Which are both backwards sayings about little kids. Because the mudpuppies don’t even live in Texas. They live in the Appalachian region.

Simone Collins:

See, there you go. Yeah. They’re the the the backwoods down home cute axolotl to the feet

Malcolm Collins:

as They’re They’re not, like, pink and gay like the other one. Oh, the other axolotls are, like, rat motocs.

Simone Collins:

Yes. That I that I now hate so much.

Malcolm Collins:

Whereas the puppies are just are just simple brown axolotls. Yes. The no pretensions. And they’re much larger too.

Simone Collins:

Oh, they are? Yeah. They’re they’re

Malcolm Collins:

they’re frankly more interesting. Anyway, love you to Desimon. I love you too. You’re a great princess, and, the kids are amazing. And, thank you for giving being a great wife

Simone Collins:

to me for another day. Thank you for being a magnificent husband and not being too mad at me for not explaining to you when you’ve changed my mind. The default understanding should be that if you make point, I am going to eventually come around to it. I’m just gonna be mad at first. Look. It’s hard to realize as a human that you’ve operated under some incredibly mistaken premise for years, if not decades. Okay? Allow a girl a little bit of umbrage for a moment as she adjusts to the new paradigm. Don’t assume that just because I’m irritable upon learning that I’ve lived a lie for years, that I’m not going to change my mind once I realize that I’ve lived a lie for years. Okay? Just bear with me here. I’m sorry.

Malcolm Collins:

Okay. Okay.

Simone Collins:

Love you. Bye. Goodbye. To add that tagline to the Reality Fabricator load page.

Malcolm Collins:

Oh, what? We will replace you? It’s so good. And it comes in right before the page finishes loading. So you’re like, wait. Did I see that?

Simone Collins:

That’s perfect. That’s perfect. I just saw it when we were getting into this this recording room.

Malcolm Collins:

That’s so It’s such a

Simone Collins:

great effect, I think, but freaks people out. Reality Fabricator. When did you add it? I didn’t notice it this morning. Like, a week ago. Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, I’m not paying attention, am I? Shame on me, but I love it. It’s so good. Oh my gosh. Life is good. I’ve been waiting all weekend for this episode. I cannot wait. I’m so excited. Thank you for doing it.

Malcolm Collins:

This is very fun. And we up so I can see the whole thing you’re drawing.

Simone Collins:

Oh my god. I told it to stop this.

Malcolm Collins:

Then press the big camera button.

Simone Collins:

I can’t use the camera. Ask a grown up or pick a photo instead. Alright.

Speaker 14:

What are you doing? And Gracie. Ah. ah Ah. Octavian, what are you doing? And Gracie, I’m listening. What you doing? The time.