[Recording Start]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We embarked on a project where you reviewed most of the material we’ve produced over the last eight years since your time on Jimmy Kimmel and the start of our collaboration. What recurring themes have you noticed?
Rick Rosner: One prominent theme is the presence of numerous typos, which is inevitable given the volume of our conversations over eight years. Roughly estimating, we’ve probably spent at least a thousand hours talking, resulting in millions of words once transcribed. To thoroughly edit and correct all these texts would require a significant amount of time and resources, which we don’t currently have. While the typos may require readers to infer some meanings, the general essence of our discussions remains accessible.
Jacobsen: What’s another key theme you’ve observed?
Rosner: The other notable theme is how our discussions have often been ahead of the zeitgeist, especially regarding the impending AI revolution. When we started talking about this eight years ago, it wasn’t a widely acknowledged topic. Visionaries like Ray Kurzweil were speaking about transformative changes, and later figures like Elon Musk and Bill Gates began discussing the disruptive potential of technology. However, their focus might not be as comprehensive as ours, where we consider the impact of AI on virtually every aspect of life. The concerns they express often revolve around more conventional fears, like robots taking over, which I find to be a rather simplistic view of the future challenges and changes AI will bring.
In reviewing our discussions, I’ve noticed that our topics tend to fall into certain categories, which I like to think of as ‘buckets’. The idea of buckets, probably less common since the 1960s when everyday use of physical buckets decreased, resurfaced with the concept of a ‘bucket list’. In our case, we have several thematic buckets. One is technology and the future, which covers many of our conversations. Another is physics and philosophy, followed by cultural topics like TV shows and joke writing. Then there’s the bucket for IC (Informational Cosmology), a recurring theme throughout our talks.
Regarding IC, it’s true that it can be challenged. Critics might argue that none of its premises necessarily have to be true, which is valid. However, if we consider a universe that accumulates information both internally and possibly from external sources, the nature of this information influences the universe’s development. A universe consistently expanding in a big bang manner, as it acquires more information at a steady rate, differs from one where incoming information is random or appears random. In the latter scenario, not all new information aligns with the existing data, leading to temporary consistencies. These are reconciled with current information, often at the expense of historical consistency. This concept suggests a universe where collapsed matter isolates older, inconsistent information from the active, consistent center.
In this model, the universe continually seeks consistency within randomly generated information. As new data arises, older information is pushed to the periphery, safeguarded from potential destructive inconsistencies. This process necessitates shielding parts of the universe from each other to maintain overall existence. When reintegrating older information, it’s done over billions of years, creating a shared history and thus consistency. This, I believe, supports the IC perspective that the universe is about more than just defining itself, indicating a deeper, more complex process at work. This may seem a bit off from our original discussion about thematic ‘buckets’, but it connects back to the essence of many topics we’ve covered.
[Recording End]
Authors
Rick Rosner
American Television Writer
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Founder, In-Sight Publishing
In-Sight Publishing
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://www.rickrosner.org.
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Rick Rosner 