Born to do Math: 2018

Saturday, 22 December 2018

Born to do Math 101 - Separate-ish

Born to do Math 101 - Separate-ish

Scott Douglas Jacobsen & Rick Rosner

December 22, 2018

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We are not separate from the universe in the sense of the cat in the experiment of Schrodinger.

Rick Rosner: Let's assume the universe is a huge informationation processing entity, which may imply consciousness, it might not be. But there are things the universe knows and doesn't know. The micro-structure of what the universe knows and doesn't know is in its quantum mechanics.

It is in its physics of incomplete information, where particles exist incompletely. They have imprecisely defined energies and momentums. They are only defined as much as the universe can interact with them to define each aspect of the universe.

The universe has a vast but finite amount of information. That information is and the lack of complete information is expressed in quantum mechanical physics. Things that exist as complicated information processors.

If we can mathematically represent the information processing in consciousness in us - that is, we have information spaces reflecting the state of our information from moment to moment, then that information space would also be governed by quantum mechanical physics.

It would reflect the state of our knowledge from moment to moment. There would be quantum mechanical entities within this information space. But from the point of view of the universe, the quantum mechanical entities that would comprise our information spaces aren't made of the quantum mechanical particles that comprise the universe.

It is a separate space with separate entities. These entities reflect a different separate of information that we have knowledge and lack of knowledge about, which is reflective of the universe or indicative what we have learned about the universe.

But it is a physical space or information space. That the larger universe would not even be aware of. It is a quantum mechanical universe. It exists in a different space and is on a smaller scale. It has the same basic principles of the larger universe.

It is another level of superimposed order on the physical processes of the universe. But that relationship isn't clear, yet.

[End of recorded material]

Authors [1]

Rick Rosner
American Television Writer
RickRosner@Hotmail.Com
Rick Rosner

According to semi-reputable sources, Rick Rosner has the world’s second-highest IQ. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writer’s Guild Award and Emmy nominations, and was named 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Registry.

He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmy Awards, The Grammy Awards, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He has also worked as a stripper, a bouncer, a roller-skating waiter, and a nude model. In a TV commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the World’s Smartest Man. He was also named Best Bouncer in the Denver Area by Westwood Magazine.

He spent the disco era as an undercover high school student. 25 years as a bar bouncer, American fake ID-catcher, 25+ years as a stripper, and nude art model, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. He lost on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire over a bad question, and lost the lawsuit. He spent 35+ years on a modified version of Big Bang Theory. Now, he mostly sits around tweeting in a towel. He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife and daughter.

You can send an email or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn, or see him on YouTube.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Editor-in-Chief, In-Sight Publishing
Scott.D.Jacobsen@Gmail.Com
In-Sight Publishing

(Updated September 28, 2016)

Scott Douglas Jacobsen founded In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal and In-Sight Publishing. He authored/co-authored some e-books, free or low-cost. If you want to contact Scott: Scott.D.Jacobsen@Gmail.com, Scott.Jacobsen@TrustedClothes.Com, Scott@ConatusNews.Com, scott.jacobsen@probc.ca, Scott@Karmik.Ca, or SJacobsen@AlmasJiwaniFoundation.Org.

He is a Moral Courage Webmaster and Outreach Specialist (Fall, 2016) at the UCI Interdisciplinary Center for the Scientific Study of Ethics and Morality (Ethics Center), Interview Columnist for Conatus News, Writer and Executive Administrator for Trusted Clothes, Interview Columnist for Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), Chair of Social Media for the Almas Jiwani Foundation, Councillor for the Athabasca University Student Union, Member of the Learning Analytics Research Group, writer for The Voice Magazine, Your Political Party of BC, ProBC, Marijuana Party of Canada, Fresh Start Recovery Centre, Harvest House Ministries, and Little Footprints Big Steps International Development Organization, Editor and Proofreader for Alfred Yi Zhang Photography, Community Journalist/Blogger for Gordon Neighbourhood House, Member-at-Large, Member of the Outreach Committee, the Finance & Fundraising Committee, and the Special Projects & Political Advocacy Committee, and Writer for Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Member of the Lifespan Cognition Psychology Lab and IMAGe Psychology Lab, Collaborator with Dr. Farhad Dastur in creation of the CriticalThinkingWiki, Board Member, and Foundation Volunteer Committee Member for the Fraser Valley Health Care Foundation, and Independent Landscaper.

He was a Francisco Ayala Scholar at the UCI Ethics Center, Member of the Psychometric Society Graduate Student Committee, Special Advisor and Writer for ECOSOC at NWMUN, Writer for TransplantFirstAcademy and ProActive Path, Member of AT-CURA Psychology Lab, Contributor for a student policy review, Vice President of Outreach for the Almas Jiwani Foundation, worked with Manahel Thabet on numerous initiatives, Student Member of the Ad–Hoc Executive Compensation Review Committee for the Athabasca University Student Union, Volunteer and Writer for British Columbia Psychological Association, Community Member of the KPU Choir (even performed with them alongside the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra), Delegate at Harvard World MUN, NWMUN, UBC MUN, and Long Beach Intercollegiate MUN, and Writer and Member of the Communications Committee for The PIPE UP Network.

He published in American Enterprise Institute, Annaborgia, Conatus News, Earth Skin & Eden, Fresh Start Recovery Centre, Gordon Neighbourhood House, Huffington Post, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, Jolly Dragons, Kwantlen Polytechnic University Psychology Department, La Petite Mort, Learning Analytics Research Group, Lifespan Cognition Psychology Lab, Lost in Samara, Marijuana Party of Canada, MomMandy, Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society, Piece of Mind, Production Mode, Synapse, TeenFinancial, The Peak, The Ubyssey, The Voice Magazine, Transformative Dialogues, Treasure Box Kids, Trusted Clothes.

Endnotes

[1] Four format points for the session article:

Bold text following “Scott Douglas Jacobsen:” or “Jacobsen:” is Scott Douglas Jacobsen & non-bold text following “Rick Rosner:” or “Rosner:” is Rick Rosner.
Session article conducted, transcribed, edited, formatted, and published by Scott.
Footnotes & in-text citations in the interview & references after the interview.
This session article has been edited for clarity and readability.

For further information on the formatting guidelines incorporated into this document, please see the following documents:

American Psychological Association. (2010). Citation Guide: APA. Retrieved from http://www.lib.sfu.ca/system/files/28281/APA6CitationGuideSFUv3.pdf.
Humble, A. (n.d.). Guide to Transcribing. Retrieved from http://www.msvu.ca/site/media/msvu/Transcription%20Guide.pdf.

License and Copyright

License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com and www.rickrosner.org.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing 2012-2019. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Saturday, 15 December 2018

Born to do Math 100 - Tendencies in Order

In-Sight Publishing

Born to do Math 100 - Tendencies in Order

Scott Douglas Jacobsen & Rick Rosner

December 15, 2018

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In a universe bound to a digital physics, to a perspective of the universe as constructed via information, what will the net information of the universe tend towards as the arrow of time progresses in its apparent forward direction?

Rick Rosner: Under IC, the tendency of a universe is to increase in order, given the right conditions. The conditions being that there's an armature or a support structure in place that facilitates the increase of information within a universe.

With this increase in information, it is reflected in an increase in ease in order of the universe. Although, we still don't know how to measure that, and we know that the increase in order is embodied in the macro. The large-scale distribution of matter, the clumping of matter, into stars, galaxies, superclusters, and massive filaments that traverse much of the universe.

We know even less about how micro order, localized order, like on a planet that has evolved life and the life that it has evolved. That local increase in order, its effects on the overall order in the universe. There are two extremes as to what the effects could be.

One could be that micro order as close to zero effect on the large-scale order or information content of the universe. That all these evolved beings or the things that they at a certain point, say with technology, they order into something.

They are confined to their planets or little areas of their galaxies. They really have no practical effect on the ordering or the overall ordering of the universe. That is at one extreme. The other extreme is that those evolved beings and those things that they create, given enough time, end up having a significant effect on the ordering of the universe.

That you give a civilization enough time; it will go out and traverse its galaxy perhaps heading to the center, where there is a lot more manipulatable matter. The matter that is down a blackish hole with a million, ten million, or fifty million year civilization, with sufficient technology, would have time to get to a center of a galaxy even with the speed of light being an absolute speed limit.

Because galaxies are on the scales of hundreds of thousands of lightyears across. So, a sufficiently old civilization would have the time, perhaps patience and impetus, to interfere with a galaxy. By getting to the center - I haven't thought about this stuff in a long time, if galaxies go through periods of dormancy or collapse, of being turned back on, this process would tend to obliterate planet-based civilization that didn't take measures to protect itself.

So, a persistent civilization that persists across millions of years might travel to the center of a galaxy and might find sanctuary in or around the central blackish hole. There is actually some science fiction in the 70s.

It could be more than one science fiction author has suggested that civilizations can hide out in stasis fields that, basically, have some of the principles that might be associated with blackish holes. If you have an ancient civilization that has the power to traverse its own galaxy, and, perhaps, mess with some of the processes, it could be that highly ordered and local entities might have a lot to do with the overall ordering of the universe.

They might be able to manipulate how large-scale structures behave. They might be able to mess with the business of a galaxy. That is a bigger deal than colonizing a solar system. You were pointing to the quantum mathematicization of individual entities versus the overall quantum mechanical structure of the universe.

[End of recorded material]

Authors [1]

Endnotes

[1] Four format points for the session article:

Bold text following “Scott Douglas Jacobsen:” or “Jacobsen:” is Scott Douglas Jacobsen & non-bold text following “Rick Rosner:” or “Rosner:” is Rick Rosner.
Session article conducted, transcribed, edited, formatted, and published by Scott.
Footnotes & in-text citations in the interview & references after the interview.
This session article has been edited for clarity and readability.

For further information on the formatting guidelines incorporated into this document, please see the following documents:

American Psychological Association. (2010). Citation Guide: APA. Retrieved from http://www.lib.sfu.ca/system/files/28281/APA6CitationGuideSFUv3.pdf.
Humble, A. (n.d.). Guide to Transcribing. Retrieved from http://www.msvu.ca/site/media/msvu/Transcription%20Guide.pdf.

License and Copyright

Saturday, 8 December 2018

Born to do Math 99 - Jive Metaphysicians (2)

In-Sight Publishing

Born to do Math 99 - Jive Metaphysicians (2)

Scott Douglas Jacobsen & Rick Rosner

December 8, 2018

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, from a long time ago, you used a phrase. You said, "Agents of the universe." In the first example of Schrodinger's Cat, you spoke to a human being as an observer and a cat in a box as an observer.

What does "an observer" mean in an IC context? How does this work with "agents of the universe"?

Rick Rosner: It is easy to get confused because the universe observes itself. You can use "agents of observation" to apply to observing apparatuses within the universe, observing-and-information-transmitting apparatuses.

Those apparatuses can be something as simple as photons that record the state of something as they are emitted and then spread that information out. An agent of observation can be something as complicated as a conscious being plus some technology that transmits information.

Human beings that build broadcast apparatuses. All those are part of the universe and all of those can be part of how the universe observes itself or fails to observe itself. The universe transmits information about local conditions across time and space.

The sum of all these transmissions defines the universe. There is so much information that a finite universe can transmit about itself. So, the universe is only finitely defined. Things are blurry at the quantum level.

All information transmitting interaction is part of how the universe defines itself. Yes, we, humans, with our information-transmitting activities are part of the way the universe transmits information. But our significance is very local.

Although, we can imagine more advanced civilizations have more information transmitting significance across greater distances. You can imagine a Star Wars galaxy where that civilization transmits information across what we could consider vast distances.

They set up a network that transmits information across a big chunk of their galaxy, which kind of requires breaking the laws of physics in the Star Wars model; in that, you can't break the speed of light. It is possible that there is a civilization that has figured out how to conduct business across the distances between stars.

That would be part of the informational business of the universe. But it is still pretty limited, especially if some civilization learned how to live long enough and to do business across an entire galaxy. That is still only one out of a hundred billion galaxies of the universe.

So, the significance of even a galaxy-wide civilization in terms of the overall information business of the universe may still be trivial. But the issues of how trivial this stuff needs to wait on an overall model of an information-based universe.

Where the macro affairs of evolved civilizations of the universe may have almost nothing to do with how information is perceived and processed within the consciousness of the universe itself, which may be more based on the overall or macro distribution and dynamics of matter in the universe if the universe is itself a conscious information processor or even if it is an unconscious information processor.

Jacobsen: If the universe is a conscious information processor rather than an unconscious information processor, how does this change the Schrodinger's Cat experiment, as this adds a global third observer?

Rosner: It doesn't. It doesn't. The nature of the business of the universe isn't changed, which is the sharing of information.

Jacobsen: How can this be misinterpreted in an IC context?

Rosner: We don't have a good model yet. Nobody has a good model of the universe as an information processor. That means that you're subject to nothing but a misunderstanding. But one thing is clear, according to the laws of quantum mechanics, the situation doesn't change, regardless of the overall nature of the universe with regard to the information that is confined in the box with the cat.

It doesn't matter if the universe is conscious or not. It can't get to the information inside of the box because the universe, including us, set it up that way. You can't get the information in the box regardless of the overall state of the universe.

Jacobsen: Why doesn't box count as an observer?

Rosner: Because the box is the wall. When I say the universe is transactional, I mean things that happen in the universe don't matter, as if they didn't happen at all, if they are not communicated to the wider universe; it is an "as if" universe.

If information about what happened someplace is not recorded in the wider universe, it is as if that did not happen. There are subtleties to that, where it matters to us locally. You can build a whole planet inside of a Schrodinger Box. You could build a whole Schrodinger Box over the whole Earth with the entire probability of everyone on Earth dying or not being 50/50.

It is the analogy between the fate of humanity and the fate of the cat. But if you set up a shield between the Earth and the rest of the universe, it is as if the events happening in the rest of the shield never happened, because they never got information out.

Things signify locally if the information is conveyed or signaled locally. They only are signified wider if their information is signified to the wider universe. It is similar to consciousness. Some of your consciousness can be aware of some events that other parts of your consciousness are not aware of.

In the most brutally mechanistic way, there are people who have been subject to split-brain surgery. Some people with epilepsy have their corpus callosum severed where there is no direct way for each side of the brain to share information with the other side.

These people still have a complete consciousness. In that, they still find a way for the brain to be exposed to roughly the same information. You have two eyes feeding each half of the brain and so on. Those people function relatively normally, even though they have split-brain.

But you can sow with specialized experiments that they have two consciousnesses in that brain, where each awareness has a slightly different experience base and analysis base than the other. It is perfectly possible for parts of consciousness to aware of things that other parts of that same overall consciousness is not aware of.

It is all part of the transactional deal. Things only signify to the extent that they can share information with other parts of the universe. Then you can get into the wider argument that there is no permanent existence.

In that, if you wipe out the information in the universe, so there is no absolute existence of anything Because information can be obliterated.

[End of recorded material]

Authors [1]

Endnotes

[1] Four format points for the session article:

Bold text following “Scott Douglas Jacobsen:” or “Jacobsen:” is Scott Douglas Jacobsen & non-bold text following “Rick Rosner:” or “Rosner:” is Rick Rosner.
Session article conducted, transcribed, edited, formatted, and published by Scott.
Footnotes & in-text citations in the interview & references after the interview.
This session article has been edited for clarity and readability.

For further information on the formatting guidelines incorporated into this document, please see the following documents:

American Psychological Association. (2010). Citation Guide: APA. Retrieved from http://www.lib.sfu.ca/system/files/28281/APA6CitationGuideSFUv3.pdf.
Humble, A. (n.d.). Guide to Transcribing. Retrieved from http://www.msvu.ca/site/media/msvu/Transcription%20Guide.pdf.

License and Copyright

License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com and www.rickrosner.org.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing 2012-2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Saturday, 1 December 2018

Born to do Math 98 - Jive Metaphysicians (1)

In-Sight Publishing

Born to do Math 98 - Jive Metaphysicians (1)

Scott Douglas Jacobsen & Rick Rosner

December 1, 2018

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How does metaphysics jive with naturalism in some fundamental way, e.g. Laws of Logic and such?

Rick Rosner: If you want metaphysics to be a useful term: we were talking off-tape that if metaphysics is something applying to principles beyond the natural world, and if everything you discover about the principles of existence can be part of the natural world, then there is nothing for metaphysics.

It becomes a useless term. The way to make metaphysics a useful term is to say that metaphysics applies to the principles of existence that are reflected in the laws of the natural world. You have to divide someplace between physics and metaphysics.

Depending on how each is defined, you can have the set of things confined within metaphysics as zero things. Or you can say metaphysics applies to general principles that help determine the laws of physics. The natural principles like the principles of non-contradiction and self-consistency.

Except when you look at quantum stuff, for macro stuff to exist such as an apple, that apple has to have a non-contradictory set of attributes. It has to exist at a certain place, a certain time. It has to exist in a certain number. A non-contradictory apple can’t be both one apple and two apples at the same time.

Unless you set up some kind of experimental apparatus that really makes the indeterminacy explicit. When you’re talking about that, you might as well talk about Schrodinger’s Cat, which is the canonical indeterminate, macro experimental setup.

Jacobsen: Does this change with one observer outside or several billion observers outside in terms of the level of indeterminacy of the cat as dead or alive?

Rosner: The Schrodinger cat is set up to make the indeterminate state as explicit and macro as possible. To explain for people who may not be familiar, Schrodinger’s Cat is a cat in a box with a vial of poison that is attached to a detector of a radioactive particle; that has a 50% chance of decaying within a given time period, triggering the poison.

In the experiment, you run it for a half-life of this radioactive particle. You turn off the apparatus. After five minutes, there is a 50% chance that the cat is alive in the box and a 50% chance that the cat has been poisoned and is dead.

You cannot see into the box. The only way to check the status of the cat is to open the box. For right now, the box is yet to be opened. So, the cat exists as either alive with 50% probability or dead with 50% probability. That state can be characterized by a quantum mechanical waveform.

You can apply all the math of quantum physics that deals with indeterminate states to the state of the cat, which is unusual because the math of indeterminacy is typically applied to micro phenomenon like a radioactive particle or to the position of an electron or something small. This has been set up explicitly to be large.

Whether one or a billion observers through the internet of a live feed of the box, it does not change what is inside of the box; so, it has been set up that way. The box is closed off informationally from the rest of the world in order to preserve the indeterminate state of the cat.

Of course, PETA would hate this experiment. Over the last couple of days, they have argued if a responsible person then you will use certain terms, or if you are a good person then you will stop using stop terms: “Kill two birds with one stone” to “feed two birds with one scone.”

There are a lot of idiots in PETA. But, maybe, they aren’t that dumb with the good publicity for the idiocy of their stance here.

Jacobsen: Let's take two examples, I will start with the first one. One, does the probability change if the cat has some level of self-awareness and all the internal walls of the box are mirrors?

Rosner: Nope, nope, it doesn't change it. Everything is set up so that everything inside the box is different than what is outside of the box. The deal is, you set a part of the universe closed from the rest of the universe.

Things only have significance in the universe if that information can be communicated and you've set a special apparatus to keep the contents of the box closed off. Just because the box is a part of the universe does not mean the rest of the universe knows what's going on inside of the box.

The universe defines itself via its interactions that include us setting up experiments. We, as part of the universe, have set up an experiment where part of the universe, in the box, has been shielded informationally from the rest of the universe.

So, in practical terms, if that box is never opened, if you take the box and throw it into a crematorium without checking the status of the cat, you can make a situation in which the universe and the people in it never know what the state of the cat was before you threw the box containing the cat into the crematorium.

If you obliterate the information before it has the chance to escape via observation, that will remain forever indeterminate.

Jacobsen: What does this mean for black-ish holes?

Rosner: People have been debating the information state of black holes since they have been a thing. The principle is the same. If the information does not get out, and if the information is shielded from the rest of the universe, the effect it has on the rest of the universe is nil.

A black-ish hole is a hole that is more favorable for the transmission of information than a purely black hole. A black-ish hole can transfer information.

Jacobsen: Can you measure this rate of information exchange from a cat in the box to the black-ish holes?

Rosner: In theory, it would be part of an overall framework or some theory of black-ish holes.

Jacobsen: What would this imply? For example, the black-ish hole would presumably, be very close to the shape of a sphere.

Rosner: You would use some measure like bits per second or bits per square centimeter of event horizon per second. You would have the overall information transmission rate. You would have a transmission rate per unit area of the surface of either the black-ish hole itself or of space around the black-ish hole.

You can talk about stuff like black-ish holes but with event horizons; these come with black holes. Unless, I am confusing myself, and that is likely. That the math of the event horizon is such that nothing gets out. Although, that is not entirely true because event horizons radiate via the production of particles outside of the event horizon and the strain on space.

The strain on space is so charged with gravitational potential around the event horizon that there is enough strain there that the particles can be spontaneously created. Particles can always be spontaneously created via the rules of quantum mechanics.

Even more so in space that is under such tension from gravitation, that you're going to see more matter pop into existence around an event horizon than you would see in less stressed space. In that case, you have particle creation; two oppositely created particles to serve everything that is created.

In an event horizon, one particle goes into the black hole and one escapes. You have one particle escape the black hole in this scenario. Where, before, it is just the black hole. Now, it is the black hole plus the particle escaping the black hole.

Even a black hole with an event horizon, it emits information. A black-ish hole that is more permissive of the flow of particles and radiation in and out of it; it is going to have a higher rate of information exchange with the rest of the universe.

We have talked about the universe being an as-if thing. Everything is transactional in the universe. Things didn't happen if the wider universe does not have a way of knowing about it. Or if the part of the universe that you're concerned with - because the rest of the universe does not care if you have an alive or a dead cat in a box, it is only the people on Earth who care about a dead cat in the box.

There is a rate of information exchange with the cat in the box and the universe beyond our solar system. Even if you open the box, the odds that the state of the cat is going to have a significant impact on the universe beyond our local solar system - the odds are pretty low.

Because people like to say that other civilizations on other planets might be monitoring the transmissions of our TV broadcasts and radio broadcasts. They might come and see us because they intercepted signals from radio and TV, which might pique their interest.

But the odds are certainly larger than if you did an experiment with the cat; that that information would be intercepted. Is it really likely that other civilizations have been able to capture our broadcasts? Because they would be super attenuated and noisy. You would have to decode them to make them understandable.

Even that is a fairly unlikely thing, the odds that if you actually did the Schrodinger's Cat thing. That some alien civilization would be surveilling Earth to see the state of the cat. That is even more minuscule.

At some point, we get into larger issues of an information-based universe. Do the micro events in each corner of the universe do anything or pertain at all to the larger business of the universe? The answer is mostly, "No"; unless, the events in the corner of the universe lead to a civilization that explicitly spreads itself across greater and greater distances.

That is just a wild guess. The events on Earth do not have much to do with the overall story of the universe and the overall information transactions of the universe unless we become the civilization that develops a network that shares our trivia explicitly with the rest of the galaxy.

But, at this point, I have pretty much confused myself.

[End of recorded material]

Authors [1]

Endnotes

[1] Four format points for the session article:

Bold text following “Scott Douglas Jacobsen:” or “Jacobsen:” is Scott Douglas Jacobsen & non-bold text following “Rick Rosner:” or “Rosner:” is Rick Rosner.
Session article conducted, transcribed, edited, formatted, and published by Scott.
Footnotes & in-text citations in the interview & references after the interview.
This session article has been edited for clarity and readability.

For further information on the formatting guidelines incorporated into this document, please see the following documents:

American Psychological Association. (2010). Citation Guide: APA. Retrieved from http://www.lib.sfu.ca/system/files/28281/APA6CitationGuideSFUv3.pdf.
Humble, A. (n.d.). Guide to Transcribing. Retrieved from http://www.msvu.ca/site/media/msvu/Transcription%20Guide.pdf.

License and Copyright

License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com and www.rickrosner.org.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing 2012-2018. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Thursday, 22 November 2018

Born to do Math 97 - Cognitive Hierarchies and Cable Television

In-Sight Publishing

Born to do Math 97 - Cognitive Hierarchies and Cable Television
Scott Douglas Jacobsen & Rick Rosner

November 22, 2018

[Beginning of recorded material]

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is the idea of cognitive hierarchies as applied to ideas like television?

Rick Rosner: The new season for broadcast TV is on. It has blurred out with the new channels now since there are a gazillion channels. For ABC, NBC, CBS, they roll out some new shows in September. Carole and I have been checking out a couple of shows.

One of them is called Manifest. It is the list of passengers on a passenger jet. The concept of the show is a plane takes off and then lands 5.5 years later Now, all these mysteries unfold: why did this happen? Some people appear to have destinies and abilities.

It follows a dozen characters or so. What's interesting and also annoying is that since it is broadcast as opposed to cable, the characters are all pretty straightforward, they are all really easy to read. Any quirks that they might have may mean that it will likely be pertinent to plot twists at some point.

There is a certain lack of complicatedness and sophistication. It is an NBC show, I think. This calculation has been done by CBS for a long time, as it has the oldest demographics. Old people watch CBS.

They have a bunch of murder shows, genius shows, and so on. Every show is forensic detectives solving a murder. All the CSIs and NSIS, and Scorpion and half of a dozen others. What these shows have in common is clarity of execution for old people and people who do not want to think too hard, and also a little bit of flattery: "We will show you a show about geniuses. You will understand it. You will feel a little bit like a genius. Same with the mystery shows."

It seems similar to some of these other cables shows. They are making shows for people who are comfortable not thinking too hard. It seems like an overall cultural phenomenon in America. Fox News is predicated on enjoying it without thinking too hard.

The majority of their programming is bright and simple. It is based on the idea of making a shit ton of money by catering to people who don't want smart information or entertainment. So, you could argue that in America; there is a formation. Maybe, it has always been there.

But it is becoming more explicit: a stratification in thought styles. You could call this a cognitive hierarchy or cognitive layering, where there are plenty of resources for entertainment, for lifestyle, for people who are not comfortable being cognitively challenged.

There is clear and straightforward non-intellectually demanding information and entertainment. Not being challenged mentally. Those people who are at home with unsophisticated stuff, with a lack of ambiguity.

With straightforward and clear plotting and no grey areas, and this works for people who are older in their 60s and beyond and may not have the mental flexibility, there is a hint of mentally challenged for some of that demographic, e.g., a chunk of old people - not everyone but it is a part of the experience of growing old for a lot of people.

I assume that you could set up a ladder of how demanding various forms of news and entertainment are, and then separate out three or four different layers of complexity. If you like stuff that is tricky and springs surprises on you and takes a long time to play out, it is different.

Better Call Saul gets a lot of prestige and rave reviews from high falutin' quarters, so does the show Black Mirror. These are shows that have a lot of ambiguity. Some stuff that takes many episodes to resolve if ever. The greatest unresolved show in history is The Sopranos and went to black.

Several years later, people are arguing about what it means when it cut to black. Does it mean Tony Soprano was assassinated or simply that it went to black to end the series? People have loved to argue about it for many years now.

Jacobsen: We talked before about the functionally illiterate population in America. There are 32 million American adults who are illiterate. 14% of the entire adult population cannot read.

Rosner: Functionally illiterate means, I assume, that you can get along in life. 1/3rd of the population just doesn't really read or may have difficulties with more than casual reading. I assume that's what you mean. That reading is not a large part.

These people can read labels, traffic signs, and the headline on a news channel. They don't read books, newspapers, or magazines. Reading is simply not a big part of their life if at all.

Jacobsen: It is the impact of modern media on people's ability to consume information.

Rosner: Another 40% of that 1/3rd absolutely cannot read. They know enough words to go to the grocery store and can get what they need. They know what traffic signs mean. If given a slug of copy, they could not read it. If presented with a newspaper article and asked to read aloud, they would fail to read it.

Jacobsen: Given developmental psychology, you would find more boys and men in those categories. Girls and women speak and read earlier and maintain that advantage throughout life.

Carole Rosner: That's true. A study just came out about that...

Jacobsen: Go ahead, Carole.

Rick Rosner: Go ahead, Carole!

Carole Rosner: I just heard on standardized tests that girls perform so much higher in all those categories.

Jacobsen: That's right. It was about equal some time ago. But since that time, we have been seeing more disparities. It is not that the disparity is girls doing that much better. They are doing better. But the boys are doing much worse. They are declining.

Rosner: It used to be that girls underperformed because they got the messages. There was a Barbie saying, "Math is hard." Maybe, now, girls are getting messages or are messaging themselves to work hard while guys are bros now who are working harder at the gym than anywhere else - or at the gym.

Jacobsen: Even there, they don't. If a draft, the majority of men would not meet the minimal standards.

Rosner: Men are lazy and undisciplined now. To bring this back to cognitive layering, there has probably been a population that has been functionally illiterate or comfortably dumb. But it is only in the last 40 years that dumb or the lazy have been mobilized and catered to.

Fox News, "We are going to go after the dumbs and we are going t make them our own. We are going to lead them around and turn them into a force, a political force." We are dealing with the consequences of that now.

It is the day before the Kavanaugh vote. If you follow the news, there is so much stuff about how Kavanaugh is the least popular nominee in history, how the National Council of Churches (covers 100,000 churches with 45,000,000 members) has come out against Kavanaugh, how John Paul Stevens - a retired Supreme Court Justice - has come out against him, how there is a list of 1,800 law professors who have come out against him, how there are 100 civil rights organizations. Nobody wants him demographically.

No one with this level of disapproval has ever gone through, but he will probably go through because has a strong Republican base who can live their lives without seeing this information; it will be about how Kavanaugh is this put upon and a wrongly accused guy; it is a brutalization against America, against liberty.

They will be able to confirm him, the Republicans, because their base doesn't adequately consume news.

Jacobsen: What about the conservative women in disagreement with him?

Rosner: I think there are enough of them still in play and sticking with the Republican side. Here is the deal: Kavanaugh is a terrible deal for the country because he is 53 and could easily be on the court for another 30 years. He is obviously biased.

He is being put on the court to do the dirty work for conservatives. The damage of Kavanaugh on the court will be decades. Him not getting on the court will lead to Democrats not winning the House, which would be its own disaster. It would be another 2 years of unbridled Trump and entirely Republican domination: Republican House, Republican Senate, Republican Supreme Court, and Republican President.

It is a toss-up of Kavanaugh being confirmed and doing 30 years of damage versus Kavanaugh getting confirmed - and the thinking being born out via polls - and the Republicans going from moderately apathetic to being more active and then becoming more active.

The thinking is that if Kavanaugh is elected then Republicans will be calming down. It is bad if Kavanaugh gets confirmed but it also might be bad if he doesn't get confirmed. At this point, I almost undecided at the outcome.

I want him to not be confirmed and the Democrats to take the House. If either, I am undecided. But I am a guy. The harm to me with Kavanaugh would be less than for women.

Jacobsen: There are one risk and two follow-ups or silver linings with that particular line of reasoning. If he gets in, Roe v Wade will be part of the scrap heap of history, especially with the endorsement of people like Pence and all the people and organizations that are the undergirding of them.

Two other things come to mind. One is that more women are politically active now than at any other time in history. That's silver lining one. Two is that Trump or Republicans are at the lowest approval rating of women probably ever at 27% or lower.

So, it is a very tight cadre of women who would need to be very, very highly active, where we're talking 3-to-1 in terms of pushing weight to truly combat the centrist or even far-left-leaning sides.

Rosner: Except if the Democrats don't take back the House, then the Republicans have another two years of owning the government, which, every day, is a fresh outrage. The EPA deals that have been going on that most people do not even realize had been going on, such as repealing safety ratings of radiation and environmental toxins. There is so much going on; that the Republicans are accomplishing not only all these objectives.

[End of recorded material]

Authors [1]

Rick Rosner

American Television Writer

RickRosner@Hotmail.Com

Rick Rosner

According to semi-reputable sources, Rick Rosner has the world’s second-highest IQ. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writer’s Guild Award and Emmy nominations, and was named 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Registry.

He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmy Awards, The Grammy Awards, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He has also worked as a stripper, a bouncer, a roller-skating waiter, and a nude model. In a TV commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the World’s Smartest Man. He was also named Best Bouncer in the Denver Area by Westwood Magazine.

He spent the disco era as an undercover high school student. 25 years as a bar bouncer, American fake ID-catcher, 25+ years as a stripper, and nude art model, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. He lost on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire over a bad question, and lost the lawsuit. He spent 35+ years on a modified version of Big Bang Theory. Now, he mostly sits around tweeting in a towel. He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife and daughter.

You can send an email or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn, or see him on YouTube.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Editor-in-Chief, In-Sight Publishing

Scott.D.Jacobsen@Gmail.Com

In-Sight Publishing

(Updated September 28, 2016)

Scott Douglas Jacobsen founded In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal and In-Sight Publishing. He authored/co-authored some e-books, free or low-cost. If you want to contact Scott: Scott.D.Jacobsen@Gmail.com, Scott.Jacobsen@TrustedClothes.Com, Scott@ConatusNews.Com, scott.jacobsen@probc.ca, Scott@Karmik.Ca, or SJacobsen@AlmasJiwaniFoundation.Org.

He is a Moral Courage Webmaster and Outreach Specialist (Fall, 2016) at the UCI Interdisciplinary Center for the Scientific Study of Ethics and Morality (Ethics Center), Interview Columnist for Conatus News, Writer and Executive Administrator for Trusted Clothes, Interview Columnist for Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), Chair of Social Media for the Almas Jiwani Foundation, Councillor for the Athabasca University Student Union, Member of the Learning Analytics Research Group, writer for The Voice Magazine, Your Political Party of BC, ProBC, Marijuana Party of Canada, Fresh Start Recovery Centre, Harvest House Ministries, and Little Footprints Big Steps International Development Organization, Editor and Proofreader for Alfred Yi Zhang Photography, Community Journalist/Blogger for Gordon Neighbourhood House, Member-at-Large, Member of the Outreach Committee, the Finance & Fundraising Committee, and the Special Projects & Political Advocacy Committee, and Writer for Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Member of the Lifespan Cognition Psychology Lab and IMAGe Psychology Lab, Collaborator with Dr. Farhad Dastur in creation of the CriticalThinkingWiki, Board Member, and Foundation Volunteer Committee Member for the Fraser Valley Health Care Foundation, and Independent Landscaper.

He was a Francisco Ayala Scholar at the UCI Ethics Center, Member of the Psychometric Society Graduate Student Committee, Special Advisor and Writer for ECOSOC at NWMUN, Writer for TransplantFirstAcademy and ProActive Path, Member of AT-CURA Psychology Lab, Contributor for a student policy review, Vice President of Outreach for the Almas Jiwani Foundation, worked with Manahel Thabet on numerous initiatives, Student Member of the Ad–Hoc Executive Compensation Review Committee for the Athabasca University Student Union, Volunteer and Writer for British Columbia Psychological Association, Community Member of the KPU Choir (even performed with them alongside the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra), Delegate at Harvard World MUN, NWMUN, UBC MUN, and Long Beach Intercollegiate MUN, and Writer and Member of the Communications Committee for The PIPE UP Network.

Endnotes

[1] Four format points for the session article:

Bold text following “Scott Douglas Jacobsen:” or “Jacobsen:” is Scott Douglas Jacobsen & non-bold text following “Rick Rosner:” or “Rosner:” is Rick Rosner.
Session article conducted, transcribed, edited, formatted, and published by Scott.
Footnotes & in-text citations in the interview & references after the interview.
This session article has been edited for clarity and readability.

For further information on the formatting guidelines incorporated into this document, please see the following documents:

American Psychological Association. (2010). Citation Guide: APA. Retrieved from http://www.lib.sfu.ca/system/files/28281/APA6CitationGuideSFUv3.pdf.
Humble, A. (n.d.). Guide to Transcribing. Retrieved from http://www.msvu.ca/site/media/msvu/Transcription%20Guide.pdf.

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