Born to Do Math 186 – Spirituality, “Thoughts and Prayers,” and Prayer
September 22, 2020
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, we talked a little bit about spirituality. We talked bluntly, in the not too distant past, about traditional religions. What about these practices? Is there any efficacy of prayer?
Rick Rosner: In the current American landscape, everything has been turned to crap because every time a bunch of people get shot up. The only thing they can say, especially politicians who want to say they are for gun control, is that they offer thoughts and prayers. If you live on Twitter, as I do, somebody is like, “Fuck you! Do something concrete because thoughts and prayers don’t do anything.” So, the efficacy of thoughts and prayers in the current American landscape is zero. They don’t do anything. They don’t even get people to do anything concrete in terms of action, except getting pissed off about the “thoughts and prayers” people.
Jacobsen: In this IC model, does prayer work?
Rosner: …No. Although, there is the Oprah model, The Secret, that what you actively wish for will come to you, which is mostly bullshit except if, by actively wishing for something, it causes you to either take action – to get ready to go after this thing – or makes you more able to perceive opportunities to find this thing in the world. So, wishing for things doesn’t make them happen, except that it prepares you to notice and go after these things, there’s the saying, “Chance favours the prepared mind,” or, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
If you work at something, and if wishing helps you change perceptual settings, then, “Yes,” but wishing all by itself doesn’t send a signal out into the world for it to send things to you shit; that it otherwise wouldn’t send you.
Jacobsen: So, there is nothing there to which you are praying. Therefore, there is nothing to help you, outside of changing your own perceptual system.
Rosner: Right. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pray. It doesn’t mean you should expect things to happen if you do pray. You could cynically use it. Republican politicians are corrupt and not willing to do anything, and cowardly. People who have been selected via the recent trends in politics have been shitheels.
The deal is, I could imagine heroically cynical politician, of which there aren’t any on the Republican side, going ahead and saying, “Thoughts and prayers,” all the time. This generates tremendous outrage, then something is done, but no one is doing that.
[End of recorded material]
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 