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Pragmaxxing
Malcolm and Simone discuss the concept of "pragmaxing" - dedicating your life to maximizing a purpose bigger than yourself. They talk about why trying to improve the world, even if you won't experience the results, is worthwhile. They cover martyrdom mindsets, generational progress as a relay race, and leaving the campsite better than you found it. Malcolm argues this drive is innate to humans and that competent people uniting can create positive change. He emphasizes realizing you are flawed but still striving for a future "radiant beings" deserve.
Malcolm: [00:00:00] one person in a comment, he goes, why are you trying to make the future a better place if you won't experience that future? And it's bro, you are so missing the plot. So what Simone said, we have a different iteration of how we see ourselves. And that's cute.
If I lived for, let's say, a hundred thousand years, right? I would be such a radically different person at the end of that period, that there is no way I would have any meaningful connection to who I am today.
Yeah, it's
Simone: pointless. It's pointless. The person you're going to be in even ten years is not going to be you. So why are you trying to preserve
Malcolm: it? Yeah, and if I did try to preserve it, if I did successfully preserve it, if in a hundred thousand years I was meaningfully the same person I am today, well then I didn't improve.
I didn't better myself, and I shouldn't still be around. I am a pointless, wretched thing if I improved so little over a hundred thousand years that I am still recognizable as a Malcolm. That is sad and sickening. And so why do I care that I can't see the better world that I'm trying to create?
It is a world not meant for me. It [00:01:00] is a world that I would sully with my very presence. Moses on the mountain, you are not meant to live in the promised land. Because you are wretched, you are trying to lead the way for the people who will get to experience the Promised Land because they deserve it in a way that not a single person alive today does.
Would you like to know more?
Simone: Welcome to Base Camp where one person has a conversation with themselves two times over. One says themselves and one's in drag. I'm Malcolm Collins dressed as a woman. And this with me here today is
Malcolm: also Malcolm Collins, but this time dressed as a man. I would love it if we pretended that's what our show was.
Like we convince people that it really is just one person with a synthesizer talking to themselves. Yeah. So we wanted to talk about Maxis. Because this has really become a thing recently, you know, whether it's looks maxing or trans maxing or we see it across society and when I want to talk about [00:02:00] the allure of it, and if we could create an iteration of it, that is healthy because a lot of it is just almost intrinsically unhealthy whenever you are, so I understand why it's emotionally appealing.
Right? This idea of, I'm just going to go 100 percent whole hog into whatever thing it is I'm doing. I'm just going to say, okay, at every level, how do I optimize the outcome, right? That I'm trying to achieve. And that can create this sort of Zen state. Yeah. It's a sort of forced hedonistic stoicism where it's hedonistic in that you're maxing a thing, but it's stoic in that you are As intelligently as possible trying to think through how do I actually maximize this thing?
And as disinterestedly and soberly as possible, and that [00:03:00] can create you to view things in a very different way. And it's much easier to apply that to a specific modality than it is to say, well, what if I took this maxing mindset and applied it to my entire life? So that's one thing that we wanted to talk about with this, but then we wanted to say.
All of this within the context of if we'r
Published on 2 years, 2 months ago