Ask A Genius 763: Raymond Chandler Quotes

[Recording Start] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: “I do a great deal of research, especially in the apartments of tall blondes.” - Raymond Chandler. Rick Rosner: I believe Raymond Chandler worked for insurance, he was an insurance executive. I think he was married to a wife who was older than him and who was indisposed or a …

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Ask A Genius 762: Giga Society

[Recording Start] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Is the Giga Society label legitimate? Or is it more aspirational? Rick Rosner: Not legitimate but is it a meaningful distinction which is a less loaded way of asking it.  Jacobsen: I mean to me it sounds more aspirational but a serious effort. Rosner: So anyway what else can you …

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Ask A Genius 760: Examples From History

[Recording Start] Rick Rosner: We don't know but we can look at other examples from history. A brutally pessimistic and also optimistic example is Nazi Germany. Germany broke irretrievably under Hitler. All social and moral norms were violated and a dictatorial criminal government took over and devastated the country. And there was no recourse to …

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Ask A Genius 758: Evolution and the End of Human Dominance

[Recording Start] Rick Rosner: I've been thinking about evolution a lot lately and every solution under evolution is kind of necessarily half-assed. We're the product of four billion years of evolution roughly and that has led to a lot of deep efficiencies and elegant design, well not design because design implies intention, but elegant forms …

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Ask A Genius 757: “Evolution does not give a fuck.”

[Recording Start] Rick Rosner: Heading: ‘evolution does not give a fuck’. One of the hardest things, I think for people to avoid doing when thinking about evolution is thinking that evolution has any kind of morality or purpose or anything because evolution is just that the species that are successful at reproducing or the variations …

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Ask A Genius 755: Why this last one percent of human history?

[Recording Start] Rick Rosner: There’s a theme that some people like to emphasize that some great scientists including Einstein and Feynman said I'm just an everyday person who just thinks really hard, Crick or Watson also does that; brags about having a low IQ and stuff. That's fine up to a point but you got …

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Ask A Genius 754: Richard May Credit for John Brennan

[Recording Start] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: “I think some of the phenomenon we're going to be seeing and continues to be unexplained, and might in fact be some type of phenomenon that is the result of something we don’t yet understand” that's ex-CIA director, John Brennan. That was sent to me by Richard May, who's the …

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