Born to do Math 134 – A Tattoo to the Universe
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Born To Do Math
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/09/01
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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Why “Born to do Math,” though?
Rick Rosner: I like thinking about the universe, but not as much as I like thinking about the universe. I just don’t do it enough. And I do a lot of non-sense. The tattoo is trying to shame me into doing what I should be doing.
Jacobsen: You were eating jello in high school.
Rosner: Not high school, I was aged 20 years and 11 months. I had an insight into the nature of the universe. Yes.
Jacobsen: What was the feeling?
Rosner: This makes so much sense. This has to be right.
Jacobsen: What sense?
Rosner: That the universe is made out of information. And that if you drew a map of the information in an individual consciousness, it would probably look like and behave like the universe. That information exists within an information space.
That space has rules that are probably the rules of the universe. It clumps up via gravitation. It is shared via long-distance particles, like photons and neutrinos. The more information that you have, then the more precisely defined the information is within its information space.
Just all that.
Jacobsen: Why pursue obsessive IQ testing and memorization of the World Almanac in place of doing the math?
Rosner: Because I am a lazy fucker and made choices that kept me from becoming an academic in the areas of physics, which I probably should have done. The prospect of that just bummed me out. The work that it would take.
The laid that I would not be getting. I looked at the grad. students. All grad. students in physics at my university had their pictures up in a display case. None of those fuckers had hair. I thought, “Do I just want to think so hard that I could the hair off my head?” I was worried.
I probably shouldn’t have been so worried about getting a partner, a girlfriend, or a wife. I was very concerned about that. I couldn’t see how to do that while doing physics, except not in a way that I would get laid a lot.
Which I didn’t, except in modern terms, I had sex with 16 or 17 women. If I were in my 20s now, that wouldn’t be a horrible number because people are having less sex and are less concerned about racking up numbers.
It was a mediocre number for the 80s. I don’t know.
I like my wife. I like my marriage I have with her. Would I have been able to find somebody else who I would be able to be with? It is a crap shoot. My wife and I have been in couple’s counselling for more than a quarter century, not every week, just once a month.
It is not a yelling match every time. There is mostly no yelling. It is a way to do a little bit of work. It is to show that you’re committed to the relationship. I could’ve ended up with somebody else who was just as lovely as my wife.
But maybe, we couldn’t have stayed married. I think half of all marriages end in divorce.
Jacobsen: What are the benefits of marriage over singlehood to you?
Rosner: Having a friend around all the time, having somebody to keep things on track, somebody who allows me to be distracted and who takes care of a lot of stuff. I can take care of some of the stuff, having someone who does nice shit for me and who I can do nice shit for.
Having somebody with whom I have a long shared history, so, we’re not always explaining ourselves to the other person. I have been with Carole since April 5th, 1986. That is more than 33 years. It is nice not to start over.
It is nice economically, as we have talked about before. Society is set up to help couples get ahead more than singles and non-traditionals. When my wife and I got married, we had zero assets. Then we started accumulating fucking assets in the course of things.
It is built into society. We are lucky that my wife at first had decent jobs. Then later, I got good jobs. It is one of the preferred modes of existence in society. So, being in that mode, it lubricates life.
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