Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about chemtrails? Rosner: Bullshit. Fucking bullshit. More lunatic bullshit. We should explain what it is. People say that commercial jets have stuff loaded into the fuel or something, so those white vapour trails you see across the sky are spreading chemicals to do sinister shit to people. bRetarded. Bullshit. None of …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1070: Chemtrails and Homeopathy
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How did the phenomenon of pseudoscience evolve in your lifetime, in the United States in particular? Rick Rosner: All right, there's a lot of money in being a right-wing pundit. Which includes a lot ofbullshit. All the prime-time talent on Fox makes $25 to $35 million a year. Hannity owns close to …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1069: Pseudoscience in Rick’s Lifetime
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Climate change denial, I should specify anthropogenic climate change denial. Rick Rosner: Right. Since we've been talking for ten years, the evidence for climate change has grown a lot. What you used to see was straight-out people saying, "Nah, it's bullshit. It's not happening. The Earth's cooling," or whatever. As evidence for …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1068: Anthropogenic Climate Change
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 