*Interview conducted October/November, 2024.* Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Who is your favorite philosopher? Rick Rosner: That I have one? What Wittgenstein’s or Kierkegaard’s or most people’s most famous philosophers’ philosophy was, I don’t know. I can say one sentence about existentialism. I started taking a grad-level course in phenomenology when I was at CU, but I …
*Interview conducted October/November, 2024.* Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Do you think Walz is doing a good job and a bad job at as the running mate? Rick Rosner: Yes. He’s behind. He had little glitches that the Republicans tried to make hay off of, but they don’t seem persuasive. Walz claimed to have been in Hong …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1151: Walz to the Wall at the Time
*Interview conducted October/November, 2024.* Rick Rosner: So Project 2025 has been around longer than a year or two, but it had different names in the past. I'm not sure how old the Heritage Foundation is, but it’s probably 40 or 50 years old. It's their agenda, but it’s not necessarily Trump’s agenda. Even if Trump …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1150: Pre-Election Project 2025
*Interview conducted October/November, 2024.* Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What’s up, buddy boy?! Rick Rosner: So, it looks... Iran looks like they tested a nuke a day or two ago. It’s not confirmed, but they had what reads on the Richter scale as an earthquake, except it’s not in a place that has earthquakes, and the timing …
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about the year 2045? Rick Rosner: So, I thought we would talk, maybe in chunks, about the future moving forward. This is the same scheme as Charles Stross’s novel Accelerando, which is a novel about AI fucking transforming everything. He probably wrote it 20 years ago now. But with 2045, your …
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Dark chocolate or vanilla chocolate? Rick Rosner: Dark. Vanilla chocolate isn't even fucking chocolate. Jacobsen: Yes. Yes. Try telling that to a horse girl. Sweet stuff. Rosner: The darker, the better, up to some ridiculous point, like 85%. Jacobsen: Yes. I'm good to comfortably, regularly, 70%. Rosner: Yes. 70 is there. 70 …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1147: Vanilla or Dark Chocolate?
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, I am house-sitting. I'm taking care of two dogs. I should specify—I love animals after taking care of these dogs, but I think I prefer being without them, except maybe a cat or two. So, my thought about this is that I like animals. I enjoy living with dogs, but their …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1146: House-Sitting for a Neighbourino
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: If earthly civilization survives, is there a principle that the longer a civilization endures, the more it contributes to the universe? Rick Rosner: If you look at the set of all possible moments in a universe that follows the principles of existence, and there's no upper limit to the size of a …
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, let’s get into some other issues. What’s going to happen in the U.S. with all the guns? Rick Rosner: Right now, there are about 400 million guns in the U.S., around 250 million adult Americans, and roughly 16 million guns sold every year—more under Democratic administrations because the NRA often warns …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1143: What will happen with all of the guns?
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, I do have a topic. Rick Rosner: What is it? Jacobsen: What have we missed about the future? We’ve missed the ways in which technology will change social interactions. Rosner: So people are trending toward more isolation? Jacobsen: Yes. And there’s a long-term rise in narcissistic tendencies. So if you have …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1142: Enamored With Our Own Awesomeness
Rick Rosner 