[Beginning of recorded material] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We have a Delta variant wave in the United States; what is the Delta variant of COVID? Why is it dangerous? And what's your prognostication prognosis? Rick Rosner: All right, so the world has been watching India and particularly England. I think the Delta variant really took hold first. …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 611: Delta Variant, Yo, not Quadrant
[Beginning of recorded material] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: A quick addendum to the session on bad ideas. Rick Rosner: Ok, so the deal is we've talked about this before, but the analogy or the principle the people like to apply to like Republican diehards believing stupider and stupider shit and the Republican elected officials getting shittier and shittier …
[Beginning of recorded material] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: My general question is around transforms or transformation in two circumstances regarding a definition. One is the idea of a transformation in time. What is that? Two, a transformation in a context in which, as you referenced in an earlier session, something outside of time. What is transformation …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 609: Transforms in Time, and Not
[Beginning of recorded material] Rick Rosner: So I've been collecting on behalf of my wife and, a little bit on behalf of myself, like stuff from the past two hundred years; I bought my kid a sampler from 1812. A girl named Philadelphia Henderson, I believe—South Eastern England, which came with a genealogy. So we …
[Beginning of recorded material] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We are recording go ahead. Rick Rosner: Yes, right before we started recording in the previous session, you asked if I'm relieved now that things are better. And I said I'm not relieved because things are not better. And so, let me expand on that. Things are better …
[Beginning of recorded material] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: All right, the proliferation of good and bad ideas. What are your further thoughts on it? Rick Rosner: Well, beyond what I said last time, the deal is in America right now, probably other parts of the world, but certainly in America, people who fall for bad ideas, at …
[Beginning of recorded material] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Does Google Translate understand love?Rick Rosner: Or, to put it more succinctly, does Google Translate know what love means? I guess that was more succinct. We know that lexicographically, Google Translate has a very good idea of how love and its foreign equivalence fit into various languages. So, …
July 11, 2021 [Beginning of recorded material] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Go ahead. Rick Rosner: Yeah, so there are numerous problems, even if achieving technological immortality were feasible. There are metaphysical issues that arise with living indefinitely. One of them is the need to continually acquire more memory to give meaning to your endless existence. Without …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 604: Odds, Ends, Odd Ends, and End Odds
July 11, 2021 [Beginning of recorded material] Rosner: Yeah, uh, just before we started recording in the previous session, you asked if I feel relieved now that things are better. I responded by saying that I'm not relieved because the situation is not clearly better. Allow me to elaborate on that. It's true that we …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 603: An Ominous Situation in a Spectacle of a “What Next?”
July 11, 2021 [Beginning of recorded material] Rick Rosner: So, I've been collecting items from the past two hundred years, mainly for my wife but also for myself. I recently purchased a sampler from 1812, made by a girl named Philadelphia Henderson from South Eastern England. It came with a detailed genealogy, allowing us to …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 602: Definitely Infinitely Finite
Rick Rosner 