The Middle-Aged Genius’s Guide to Almost Everything 55 – Gauging Your Smartness Properly
June 30, 2020
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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Do you think you’re smarter than Newton? Do you think the waste is that level of waste?
Rick Rosner: Ballpark, yeah. Let’s assume for the sake of this discussion, IC is true. To reiterate what IC is, any sufficiently powerful, multi-nodal, broadband, information-sharing, self-consistent system is conscious.
And that our mind being a product of information being manipulated in our brain is similar to, if not identical to, the material world we live in, which is also a world generated from the information contained in a vast information processing system.
If that’s true, that’s a deep equivalence that’s at the heart of some of the best and most famous theories ever. Newton’s Universal Gravitation is about the equivalence between an apple falling on Earth and the Moon constantly falling around the Earth. Darwin’s equivalence between the vast array of life on Earth and the vast age of the Earth as demonstrated by slow geological processes.
Darwin was this huge objector to Catastrophism. Catastrophism tries to reconcile the biblical 5,000/6,000 years that the Bible says we are with the dramatic geological structures of the Earth. Darwin was like, “No, the mountains didn’t suddenly spring up like in some cataclysm. They’re the products of processes that take millions of years.”
River gorges take millions of years. He’s the one who saw the equivalence that if the Earth is millions of years old, then, maybe, that gives animal life enough time to differentiate. Not just plant life, all life, that’s a deep equivalence. Einstein had his two big equivalences that everybody sees the speed of light as the same.
The speed of light is always equal for everybody no matter how fast they are moving relative to each other. His general relativistic equivalence that you can’t tell the difference from inside a closed space.
There’s nothing that will tell you the difference between being in a gravitational field and being a uniformly accelerating frame of reference. The great theories were built from these big equivalences. There’s probably a zillion more of those.
If the equivalence of IC is right, then that’s a big deal. I’ve wasted a fuckload of time in not further developing it. Although, you’ve helped me, because you’ve held me somewhat to the fire. We’ve done all this thinking and talking about it over the last 6 years or so.
So, you’ve been a semi-saviour there. You asked if I am as smart as Newton. That’s not the right question because, once you have the insight or the initial insight, that can be smartness, can be luckiness. Like Darwin, he was smart, but lucky enough to go on a 5-year voyage around the world and see parts of the world.
He didn’t go on a grand tour of Europe. He went to the Galapagos and worked his way down the coast of South America. He saw the natural world geologically and biologically. That helped him developed his differing background few had, which helped him develop his theories.
So, that’s smartness plus luck. A lesser equivalence is continental drift, who is that Wegener?
Jacobsen: Alfred Wegener.
Rosner: Yes, he looked at coastlines. Him and others looked at coastlines and thought, “Gosh, these look like jigsaw pieces to a larger puzzle.” He looked closer, “There’s too much equivalence. Not if you look at the sea coastlines, but if you look deeper at where the coastlines drop off into the deep ocean. Those borders really match.”
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Authors[1]
American Television Writer
(Updated July 25, 2019)
*High range testing (HRT) should be taken with honest skepticism grounded in the limited empirical development of the field at present, even in spite of honest and sincere efforts. If a higher general intelligence score, then the greater the variability in, and margin of error in, the general intelligence scores because of the greater rarity in the population.*
According to some semi-reputable sources gathered in a listing here, Rick G. Rosner may have among America’s, North America’s, and the world’s highest measured IQs at or above 190 (S.D. 15)/196 (S.D. 16) based on several high range test performances created by Christopher Harding, Jason Betts, Paul Cooijmans, and Ronald Hoeflin. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writers Guild Awards and Emmy nominations, and was titled 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Directory with the main “Genius” listing here.
He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmys, The Grammys, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He worked as a bouncer, a nude art model, a roller-skating waiter, and a stripper. In a television commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the “World’s Smartest Man.” The commercial was taken off the air after Subway sandwiches issued a cease-and-desist. He was named “Best Bouncer” in the Denver Area, Colorado, by Westwood Magazine.
Rosner spent much of the late Disco Era as an undercover high school student. In addition, he spent 25 years as a bar bouncer and American fake ID-catcher, and 25+ years as a stripper, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. Errol Morris featured Rosner in the interview series entitled First Person, where some of this history was covered by Morris. He came in second, or lost, on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? over a flawed question and lost the lawsuit. He won one game and lost one game on Are You Smarter Than a Drunk Person? (He was drunk). Finally, he spent 37+ years working on a time-invariant variation of the Big Bang Theory.
Currently, Rosner sits tweeting in a bathrobe (winter) or a towel (summer). He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, dog, and goldfish. He and his wife have a daughter. You can send him money or questions at LanceVersusRick@Gmail.Com, or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn, or see him on YouTube.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Founder, In-Sight Publishing
Footnotes
[1] Four format points for the session article:
- Bold text following “Scott Douglas Jacobsen:” or “Jacobsen:” is Scott Douglas Jacobsen & non-bold text following “Rick Rosner:” or “Rosner:” is Rick Rosner.
- Session article conducted, transcribed, edited, formatted, and published by Scott.
- Footnotes & in-text citations in the interview & references after the interview.
- This session article has been edited for clarity and readability.
For further information on the formatting guidelines incorporated into this document, please see the following documents:
- American Psychological Association. (2010). Citation Guide: APA. Retrieved from http://www.lib.sfu.ca/system/files/28281/APA6CitationGuideSFUv3.pdf.
- Humble, A. (n.d.). Guide to Transcribing. Retrieved from http://www.msvu.ca/site/media/msvu/Transcription%20Guide.pdf.
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Rick Rosner 