Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Let's start another rapid-fire session. Intelligent design, go. Rick Rosner: It's bullshit. It's creationists trying to make creationism sound scientific. Maybe some of them believe it themselves, or maybe they're just bullshitters trying to fool people they think are more naive than they are. But it's bullshit. They argue that you look …
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Some people, I do these sessions. I let them know about Ask A Genius. Obviously, it's named after you. I tell them. Would you have any questions for him? And then that's where this comes in because they're members of those communities, so they'd be the ones that I thought would be …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1066: The Chris Cole Session 4, “Pinky and the Brain”
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What's the fringiest thought you have ever had? Like the idea of being you. Everyone has a crazy thought at some point or another for a reasonable period. You thought there was a plausibility to something that, in hindsight, is not insane but not necessarily grounded in anything. Rick Rosner: Nothing comes …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1065: Delusions can be relative, and not
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What are your thoughts on religious experiences? Have you had any? Rick Rosner: Yes, but I haven't believed in them for long. Jacobsen: Was it drug-induced or naturally induced or what? Rosner: I thought that maybe my train of logic could point in the direction of some truth, to some form of …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1064: Seeing God, or the Sky Parting Trip and the Janitor
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I remember when I used to work at the pub in my old hometown. They were considering me for a potential managerial position at the Bistro side of the building. They owned the property. A manager there had some issues and eventually left because she got frustrated with management. I was in charge …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1063: The Hard Times for White Blue-Collar Americans
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, this comes from Thor Fabian Pettersen. He says, “The Nature of Timelessness, Entropy, and Matter Recycling: At the core of a black hole, the singularity is a point where spacetime curvature becomes infinite, and our current laws of physics break down. This suggests that our mathematical descriptions, which rely on relative …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1062: The Thor Fabian Pettersen Session
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Hindemburg Melão Jr. further asks, “Regarding the answer about dark matter, the evidence suggests different properties than what would result from the collapse of baryonic or leptonic matter objects. For example: gravitational effects (produced by dark matter) are very spread out, rather than concentrated, as would be natural if it was generated …
Rick Rosner, American Comedy Writer, http://www.rickrosner.org Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Independent Journalist, http://www.in-sightpublishing.com Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Chris Cole asks or says, "Follow-up question for Rick: What is the difference between an AI and a bulldozer?" I asked, "Is this Chomsky's referencing Turing's critique of the generic question 'Can machines think?'? Like the question: 'Can submarines swim?' If …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1060: The Chris Cole Session 3, AIs and Bulldozers
Rick Rosner, American Comedy Writer, http://www.rickrosner.org Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Independent Journalist, http://www.in-sightpublishing.com Scott Douglas Jacobsen: This would be a good one. This might be the last one. 9/11 conspiracy theories. The idea that, as long as terrified patient Al Qaeda that by someone, Laden did not execute a point with 19 men in Saudi Arabia, …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1059: The 911 Truths about 9/11 Truth
Rick Rosner, American Comedy Writer, http://www.rickrosner.org Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Independent Journalist, http://www.in-sightpublishing.com Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about the field of cryonics and the practical reason you couldn't be dead in liquid nitrogen? Rick Rosner: Well, I got part of me frozen in liquid nitrogen. I hope it saves me from worse shit. But reading about …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1058: Cryonics, or cry-me-on-phonics
Rick Rosner 