“When bad actors face no practical constraints, that is always dangerous. Language let us compress reality into symbols, freeing our minds to roam more widely. That same generalist power makes us adaptable—but it also means our systems can fragment when pressure rises. The slope does not always look slippery, until it does.”
“I would choose cryonic preservation. Your blood and water are replaced with cryoprotective solutions, then your body is cooled to liquid-nitrogen temperatures to avoid ice crystals that destroy tissue. Revival remains speculative—no one has ever been brought back—but if identity can be preserved, I believe it is worth attempting.”
AI replaces good work with bad work, yet people expect limitless growth. Rosner argues the real mistake is assuming human cognition is excellent. If consciousness is evolutionary rather than sacred, artificial systems could eventually reach our clumsy level. The question is not whether AI becomes conscious — but how competently.
In this conversation, Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen examine whether humans can maintain meaningful understanding in an AI-driven world. Rosner argues that advanced intelligence will force people either to merge with AI or accept a diminished grasp of reality, comparing non-integrated humans to household dogs navigating a world they cannot interpret. Jacobsen responds that many communities—such as the Amish—function pragmatically within limited worldviews, even when those frameworks are false. Together, they discuss religion, pseudoscience, and functional ignorance, concluding that long-standing human tendencies toward siloed understanding will likely intensify as AI accelerates the pace of complexity.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner discuss Gen Z’s deep reliance on digital devices, reduced face-to-face interaction, and declining sexual activity. Using the “hermit crab” analogy, Rosner suggests Gen Z feels vulnerable without phones but functions well in a tech-supported world. Data shows historic lows in partnered sex, masturbation, and romantic relationships among young people, driven by over-entertainment, anxiety, and social challenges. While this trend could lower birth rates and ease environmental pressures, it also raises economic concerns for consumer-driven capitalism. The conversation explores potential societal shifts, AI integration, and acceptance of future human modifications as adaptation strategies.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner outline potential compute futures: dystopian “cruel” systems, protective “conservative” networks, uncompromising optimization turning everything into infrastructure, leisure-driven “endless fun,” passive “idiocracy,” market-driven “capitalist,” adaptive “contextual” orchestration of CPUs, GPUs, QPUs, and speculative “Darwinistic” evolution where compute outlives humanity, cost, time, and energy efficiency optimization.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen interviews Rick Rosner in a wide-ranging conversation starting with swear words and diving into utilitarianism, longtermism, effective altruism, AI ethics, simulated consciousness, moral uncertainty, and capitalism. Rosner critiques modern frameworks, explores future consciousness, and calls for ethical clarity amid rapid technological change.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner discuss Berlin’s controversial AI-operated “cyberbrothel,” raising urgent ethical questions about consent, violence, and societal norms. They explore future scenarios involving conscious AI sex robots, examine agency and emergent personhood, and reflect on humanity’s diminishing ethical control as AI intelligence accelerates beyond human comprehension.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen interviews Rick Rosner about the nature of therapy, particularly couples counseling. Rosner shares his extensive experience in therapy, noting the importance of unbiased therapists. He reflects on the complexity of discussing current events, like the Israel-Palestine conflict, within therapeutic environments, recognizing the emotional weight it carries for many, including American Jews. Rosner expresses frustration over politicization in counseling and stresses the need for impartiality. He relates this dynamic to personal communication challenges with his wife, emphasizing the role of therapy in fostering constructive dialogue about personal and external issues, including political tensions, without ideological bias.
*Interview conducted in November, 2024.* Rick Rosner: So, naturally, I think that Big Bang physics is a theory that has not entirely caught up with observation. Everything is relatively new. Essentially, everything we know about the universe has been learned in the last 100 to 120 years. The farther away a galaxy is, the more …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1190: Is there more to it, or no?
Rick Rosner 