[Recording Start] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I know Carole and Isabella put the brakes on for you a bit because you tend to go full throttle and things, at least earlier in your life you did. Rick Rosner: Yeah. Lazier, but yeah. Jacobsen: You've had that phrase, lazy has replaced crazy and by crazy I translate …
Ask A Genius 836: Evolving Jewish Views
[Recording Start] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Addendum. So you're reform Jewish. Rick Rosner: Yes. Jacobsen: You grew up reform Jewish? Rosner: Yes. Jacobsen: Mom and dad were reform Jewish? Rosner: Yes, further back there was Orthodox. My great-grandfather was a rabbi. My mom grew up in a more towards the conservative household. They kept kosher. I …
Ask A Genius 835: Plato and Socrates
[Recording Start] Rick Rosner: Alright, so you just asked me what I think Socrates or Voltaire would think if they suddenly found themselves in a very religious era, for example, in the year 800 AD in Europe, when the Catholic Church ran civilization to a certain extent. The cultural life, the passing on of non …
Ask A Genius 834: Long Covid
[Recording Start] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Is Covid over? Please tell me. Rick Rosner: No, people are thinking and pretending it's over because we are now three years and two or three months in. People are sick of it and nobody's reporting results anymore. Testing is way down. Carol, my wife, works at a school and …
Ask A Genius 833: Boiling Down AI Talk
[Recording Start] Rick Rosner: Last time we were talking about AI and I just wanted to boil what we were saying down to its essentials which is that AI seems to be able to do a rough approximation of in task information processing at a level that is either comparable to human or enough in …
Ask A Genius 832: ChatGPT and Substrate Independence
[Recording Start] Rick Rosner: Well, it started with me reading a tweet that said that cheap AIs can be almost as good as expensive AIs. Apparently for language model AIs you can spend millions of dollars pumping them full of information and get a chat bot who's pretty good at chatting but this tweet said …
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Ask A Genius 831: Did Rick Memorize the World Almanac?
[Recording Start] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You had, not only had, but have a very interesting life history. There's one thing in there that I had question marks about and I really don't know the answer to. Off tape I phrased it wrongly that I thought you had studied or memorized The World Almanac. Rick Rosner: …
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Ask A Genius 830: Addendum to 829
[Recording Start] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Addendum to last session. Go ahead. Rick Rosner: One last thing is how crazy that a fucking whole industry and everybody in the fucking country now and North America, the whole fucking world is now talking about the shit we've been talking about for fucking forever and how fast it …
Ask A Genius 829: Writer’s Strike and Boner Town
[Recording Start] Rick Rosner: Today's May 2nd 2023, the writers’ strike; the first one in 15 years. Started at midnight and the first big issue is streaming where 15 years ago, 2007-2008, streaming was just getting going and streaming was basically three minute little productions on YouTube or trailers for stuff running elsewhere on YouTube. …
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Ask A Genius 828: Alan Turing’s Extremism
[Recording Start] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I want to talk about Alan Turing’s extremism. I found one kind of extreme quote but I think it's more or less correct. I'm saying this extreme even compared to some of the most let's say zany or even “rational” extreme position of some futurists. So the quote is “This …
Rick Rosner 