Rick Rosner: Okay, so it’s a common sentiment, shared by many, that there appears to be a higher percentage of individuals in the United States who embrace irrational beliefs than ever before. This isn’t about beliefs that later lack evidence, such as historical medical theories like humour or certain aspects of religion. Rather, it’s about …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 954: Global Aging Brains and Poor Literacy Skills
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I want to distinguish between four points of contact: one, symbol systems; two, representation; three, mathematical principles; and four, principles of existence. When you hear those four concepts, what do they trigger for you? Rick Rosner: They trigger thoughts of more efficient ways of representing certain aspects of the world because the brain takes …
Rosner: Part two of the discussion on Trump versus Biden focuses solely on Trump. I argued this morning on Pod TV that Trump aims to replace taxes with tariffs, which is a disastrous idea. It’s highly inflationary as most costs get passed on to consumers. For example, if a $10,000 tariff is imposed on cars …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 952: Round Two! President Biden and Former President Trump
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: President Biden and former President Trump are the oldest candidates in American history. Before them, they set the record. So, it’s very unusual to observe American politics from a distance. What are some of your thoughts on the context? Rick Rosner: They have the first presidential debate of this cycle in 10 days. Each …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 951: President Biden Versus Former President Trump
[Recording Start] Rick Rosner: So, I'm going through my book and talking, which is set like ten years in the future, about what life might be like then. You said to plug Carole's book, too. I've been working on this thing for years and years; you could argue for decades because I'm taking much stuff from …
[Recording Start] Rick Rosner: I was talking about the square root law of mesh networks, which states that the efficiency of people whose brains are linked is proportional to the square root of the number of people in the network. Black box-ness. So, we see this with AI and Google Translate, where AI can be effective, …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 911: The Square Root Law of Mesh Networks
[Recording Start] Rick Rosner: So, you should know that the main character is a celebrity and, to some extent, an industrialist who has used his celebrity to be the figurehead of a sizeable semi-insidious tech corporation, mainly in the 2030s; that is the period I am writing about. One of the things that he has access to …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 910: Rick’s Book is About a Celebrity
[Recording Start] Rick Rosner: So, we're still talking about notes from my novel in progress. The entertainment industry facilitates sociopaths; I think that's long been apparent, especially sociopaths who either are talented or claim to be gifted. There's the saying nobody knows anything in the entertainment industry, which refers to nobody knows what's going to be …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 909: The Forever-Book In-Progress
[Recording Start] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: American morale; that'd be good. Rick Rosner: Two of me yammering ago, I talked about how Trump's rhetoric has gotten uglier and Republican party rhetoric, generally, has just gotten more divorced from reality and aggressive. We're talking about American morale, and I told my wife that the people interested in non-normal government …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 908: American Morale and “Trump is a fucking idiot”
[Recording Start] Rick Rosner: Some people say, or at least one person I read, that AI is a misnomer; it's just high technology. Calling it intelligence, artificial, or whatever you want to call it, it's just increasingly powerful technology. We have the same genetics as humans did 100,000 years ago. We're not getting any smarter biologically, …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 907: Simulations of Consciousness Before Consciousness
Rick Rosner 