Rick Rosner: To go back—how bad do you think things are in the U.S. right now? And, consequently, how does that affect Canada? Scott Douglas Jacobsen: It depends partly on how far the damage spreads. You mentioned the near term—but even near-term effects can be long-lasting. For instance, tariffs are almost never short-term measures. I …
Rick Rosner: One more topic. Our brown dog—she's 14 years old—has geriatric vestibular disorder. One or more of her Eustachian tubes gets blocked, which causes dizziness, head tilt, and circular walking. It is concerning and inconvenient to manage. She gets nauseated from the vertigo and has difficulty eating because she cannot properly position her head …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1334: Pet Ethics, Abstract Universes, and the Golden Rule
Rick Rosner: I sent you an article on the idea of “smart stupids” or “stupid smarts”—basically people, like tech billionaires, who are highly intelligent or skilled in one domain, like engineering, but display ignorance in areas outside their expertise without realizing it. For example, on X (formerly Twitter), you will often see users with verified …
Rick Rosner: You had ChatGPT summarize my life using publicly available sources, which it processed into a coherent narrative. There were several minor errors—for example, it claimed I spent ten years in high school. That is inaccurate. I returned to high school a few times over the course of a decade, but I did not …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1332: ChatGPT, AGI, and the Future of Multimodal AI
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, there is an actor who was known for film and theatre, born in Los Angeles. Rick Rosner: Val Kilmer? Are you saying Val Kilmer? Rosner: He was the youngest student ever accepted to Juilliard's drama program. He was known for Top Secret, Top Gun, The Doors, and Batman Forever. Real Genius. …
Rick Rosner: All right, you sent me a paper on quantum information—precisely, the number of computations performed by life on Earth over its history, right? These people—maybe women too, I do not know—ran some calculations. The trouble I have with it is that I have not thought about it much or for very long, and …
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Here's the question: Can the decline of Hooters be correlated with the rise of OnlyFans? Rick Rosner: Yes, to some extent. It's increasingly challenging, awkward, and less emotionally stimulating for many people to seek sexual or romantic attention from others in person, compared to the instant gratification of consuming digital content—particularly pornography. …
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Hey there, Rick. What's your topic? Rick Rosner: All right, so different eras in life and politics have different vibes, right? Jacobsen: We're currently in a period of older leadership. By historical standards, many global leaders today are well into their seventies or older. Rosner: Yes, and they're leading some of the …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1328: Aging Leaders, Declining Democracies, and AI’s Rise
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Dogs, go. Rick Rosner: We have two dogs. One just turned 12, the other 14 and a half. Dogs are mortal, and they decline quickly. The 12-year-old has some hearing and vision loss. You can't ask how she feels, but she seems crankier. The 14-and-a-half-year-old is sprightly, skinny, and peppy. She's happy …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1327: Strangling a Moment for a Moment of Coherence
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Any preliminary steps before I give the quote? Rick Rosner: No. It's just that we have a bad guy in charge of the country. So, Prime Minister Carney is the interim Canadian Prime Minister after Justin Trudeau. How does that work? He's not the permanent Prime Minister? Do you guys have to …
Rick Rosner 