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WIRED Provably Lied About Us & Pronatalism's Triumph Over Effective Altruism
Join us as we discuss the recent coverage of Natal Con, focusing on a controversial Wired article that stirred the community. We dive into the misrepresentations and factual errors in the article, the financial realities of hosting such events, and how the prenatal list movement is rapidly growing compared to established movements like effective altruism and AI safety. With insights into the organizational efforts behind Natal Con and a comparison of different ideological movements, this video provides an in-depth look at the current landscape of natalism. We also touch on the motivations and commitments driving both the prenatal list and AI safety communities. Don't miss this engaging and eye-opening discussion!
[00:00:00]
Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be with you here. Coming back from Nacon. We've had pieces on us in the past few days in the BBC in the New York Times there's gonna be a CNN one. We know there's gonna be an NPR one, we know that haven't come out yet. One on an Italian station, one of the two major stations in the country.
But Wired did the most unhinged piece. And I am, which is weird. I grew up loving, wired. This is so strange. I did you. I thought of them as like a semi-professional, not a semi-professional. I actually thought of them as like a premium.
Simone Collins: Absolutely beautiful print magazine. Loved their pieces. This is weird.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But their piece was completely boast. Unhinged and, and non-factual, like they got almost every fact wrong in ways that even your average base camp watcher would know. Yeah.
Simone Collins: I don't know. Even your understanding of basic linguistics would know.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And we're gonna read a bit of the piece and then go over statistics on what's been happening with the prenatal list movement when [00:01:00] contrasted with other movements recently, because we've now significantly passed in terms of like search traffic, effective altruism, AI safety, other stuff like that, which is really cool., so the,
Simone Collins: the title of the Wired article is Far right. Influencers are hosting a 10 K per Person Matchmaking Weekend to Repopulate the Earth. Yeah, so they, they're claiming that it, it costs $10,000 to attend Natal Con, which is.
Isn't that true?
Malcolm Collins: Well, okay, so if you're a watcher of the show, you know, we've been promoting the conference constantly for a long time. We've been promoting it with, with small discounts, but it also means, you know, the conference cost at nothing near $10,000 to go to, I know it was expensive. I think it was around a thousand dollars.
It was
Simone Collins: a thousand dollars. So then 900 with our 10% discount.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Which is a lot I know, but they also did a really good job of making it good and fun, like Yeah. My perspective.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And I do think that that amount of money is needed to screen out crazy people. Oh, plus
Simone Collins: also, like, have you seen how much [00:02:00] any event space charges for food, like one cookie, $10 and they served breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
On Saturday plus snacks, plus open bar at dinner, and then there was dinner and open bar on Friday. I just. You can't use professional venue spaces and basically do anything less than that
Malcolm Collins: these days. I think that what people are thinking when they think of like costs or they're comparing it to something, is they're not comparing, they're comparing it to a con, like a furry con or something like that.
Yeah.
Simone Collins: Where there's an artist alley, there's absolutely
Published on 8 months, 3 weeks ago