Rick Rosner: You had ChatGPT summarize my life using publicly available sources, which it processed into a coherent narrative. There were several minor errors—for example, it claimed I spent ten years in high school. That is inaccurate. I returned to high school a few times over the course of a decade, but I did not …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1332: ChatGPT, AGI, and the Future of Multimodal AI
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, there is an actor who was known for film and theatre, born in Los Angeles. Rick Rosner: Val Kilmer? Are you saying Val Kilmer? Rosner: He was the youngest student ever accepted to Juilliard's drama program. He was known for Top Secret, Top Gun, The Doors, and Batman Forever. Real Genius. …
Rick Rosner: All right, you sent me a paper on quantum information—precisely, the number of computations performed by life on Earth over its history, right? These people—maybe women too, I do not know—ran some calculations. The trouble I have with it is that I have not thought about it much or for very long, and …
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Here's the question: Can the decline of Hooters be correlated with the rise of OnlyFans? Rick Rosner: Yes, to some extent. It's increasingly challenging, awkward, and less emotionally stimulating for many people to seek sexual or romantic attention from others in person, compared to the instant gratification of consuming digital content—particularly pornography. …
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Hey there, Rick. What's your topic? Rick Rosner: All right, so different eras in life and politics have different vibes, right? Jacobsen: We're currently in a period of older leadership. By historical standards, many global leaders today are well into their seventies or older. Rosner: Yes, and they're leading some of the …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1328: Aging Leaders, Declining Democracies, and AI’s Rise
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Dogs, go. Rick Rosner: We have two dogs. One just turned 12, the other 14 and a half. Dogs are mortal, and they decline quickly. The 12-year-old has some hearing and vision loss. You can't ask how she feels, but she seems crankier. The 14-and-a-half-year-old is sprightly, skinny, and peppy. She's happy …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1327: Strangling a Moment for a Moment of Coherence
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Could you use entropy in informational cosmology as something akin to a universal clock? Rick Rosner: You can. In Big Bang cosmology, entropy can be interpreted as a clock. However, both Big Bang cosmology and the laws of thermodynamics may fundamentally misunderstand how entropy and thermodynamics behave on tiny scales and over …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1326: Informational Cosmology, Entropy, and the Future of the Universe
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Any preliminary steps before I give the quote? Rick Rosner: No. It's just that we have a bad guy in charge of the country. So, Prime Minister Carney is the interim Canadian Prime Minister after Justin Trudeau. How does that work? He's not the permanent Prime Minister? Do you guys have to …
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Why do you think the universe might last for trillions of years? And if it does last that long, what would that imply for the net informational history of the universe? Rick Rosner: It's likely far beyond just trillions of years. Depending on what we mean—whether it's heat death, proton decay, black …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1324: Entropy, Information, and Cosmological Models
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What are the fundamental implications of quantum computing and information in informational cosmology? Rick Rosner: I do not know much about the mathematics of entangled computation. It involves working with highly entangled quantum states, which allow certain classes of problems to be solved more efficiently than with classical computers when used in quantum computers. …
Rick Rosner 