The Unavoidability of Faith With Rick Rosner

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/01/21

According to some semi-reputable sources gathered in a listing here, Rick G. Rosner may have among America’s, North America’s, and the world’s highest measured IQs at or above 190 (S.D. 15)/196 (S.D. 16) based on several high range test performances created by Christopher Harding, Jason Betts, Paul Cooijmans, and Ronald Hoeflin. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writers Guild Awards and Emmy nominations, and was titled 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Directory with the main “Genius” listing here.

He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmys, The Grammys, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He worked as a bouncer, a nude art model, a roller-skating waiter, and a stripper. In a television commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the “World’s Smartest Man.” The commercial was taken off the air after Subway sandwiches issued a cease-and-desist. He was named “Best Bouncer” in the Denver Area, Colorado, by Westwood Magazine.

Rosner spent much of the late Disco Era as an undercover high school student. In addition, he spent 25 years as a bar bouncer and American fake ID-catcher, and 25+ years as a stripper, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. Errol Morris featured Rosner in the interview series entitled First Person, where some of this history was covered by Morris. He came in second, or lost, on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? over a flawed question and lost the lawsuit. He won one game and lost one game on Are You Smarter Than a Drunk Person? (He was drunk). Finally, he spent 37+ years working on a time-invariant variation of the Big Bang Theory.

Currently, Rosner sits tweeting in a bathrobe (winter) or a towel (summer). He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, dog, and goldfish. He and his wife have a daughter. You can send him money or questions at LanceVersusRick@Gmail.Com, or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn, or see him on YouTube. Here we – two long-time buddies, guy friends – talk about the unavoidability of IQ.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, I was having this discussion about the concept of proof and evidence, and what constitutes a meaningless statement. I categorize proofs as confined to pure mathematics for mathematical proofs or logic for logical proofs. Everything else is statistical and varies depending on the study’s domain. Then there are meaningless statements, like “ideas sleep furiously,” which don’t fit into any of these categories.

Rick Rosner: Okay, we’re recording this, right?

Jacobsen: Yes. This relates to what you were saying about faith. How do you define faith, and how does it fit into this discussion?

Rosner: Before diving into faith, I want to talk about proof. I have these weekly debates with Lance, my conservative counterpart. When I assert something about Trump, such as his connections with the Russians, Lance demands proof. I cite deals with Russian oligarchs, but Lance dismisses them as insufficient proof. In our debates, nothing ever reaches the level of proof. Recently, I’ve begun to counter him by demanding he prove his claims. This leads to the broader question of what constitutes proof in daily life. We operate on many assumptions without having things conclusively proven to us.

Many things in our lives are known to the level of proof through experience. We understand everyday physics, like gravity and inertia, and Newton’s laws, through direct experience. For example, we instinctively avoid jumping off balconies because we know the consequences. This is experiential proof. Then there’s a less certain level of knowledge, like my belief that President Trump is a huge asshole. This would be hard to unprove unless, for instance, it was revealed he has frontotemporal dementia, which affects behavior. Even then, I’d still view him critically.

And then there are things I feel I know but aren’t as certain. Whether I actually know them doesn’t impact my daily life much. Take climate change, for example. I know it’s real, but if Lance asked me to prove it, my evidence wouldn’t be concrete. I could cite statistics, like the belief of 97 percent of scientists in climate change, but that’s not solid proof since I haven’t studied the detailed mechanisms. Nevertheless, it affects some of my behaviors, like feeling guilty about unnecessary car trips or trying to recycle, even though my understanding of climate change isn’t as direct as my understanding of gravity.

California now faces increasingly severe fires each year, far worse than before. We endure more extremely hot days. While climate change’s direct impact on my life may not be life or death, I am highly certain of its reality. Then there are lesser issues, like certain politicians. Tom Cotton and Ted Cruz, for example, seem like huge assholes, but my knowledge about them is limited compared to my 30-year awareness of Trump. I’ve only known about these other guys for around five to eight years and don’t read about them daily.

Regarding my understanding of how to pick up women, much of what I learned is theoretical, as I studied it after I was already with Carole and no longer in the dating scene. I believe in the socio-biological framework that suggests women seek stability and are more selective due to the greater commitment involved in pregnancy and child-rearing. Men, on the other hand, are perceived as more interested in spreading their genes. This knowledge, however, is somewhat speculative.

We live our lives without concrete proof for many things. We have experiential certainty about some aspects, like gravity, even though most haven’t studied advanced Newtonian dynamics or general relativity. For less critical matters, our understanding often rests on faith, based on common knowledge or sparse information. For instance, I’ve heard numerous anecdotes and tabloid stories suggesting John Travolta is bisexual, along with rumors from the entertainment industry. Do I know this for certain? No. Does it matter? Not really. It’s more of a faith-based acceptance.

A lot of what I think I know is vague and unsubstantiated, but it doesn’t impact my daily life significantly. If I were to evaluate the total information I possess, there’s a chance that much of it might be considered unreliable or ‘shit information,’ though it’s hard to measure. In contrast, my understanding of gravity is deeply ingrained and certain, far more so than my knowledge about Travolta’s sexuality.

Jacobsen: May I interject?

Rosner: Yeah, go ahead.

Jacobsen: From what you’ve said, I see at least three different thought paths. First, there’s the experience of gravity, which is a raw, physical observation of the world, repeated over time. Gravity, for you, is statistically real, an empirical form of knowledge, not faith-based. Second, I gather your approach to news consumption involves discerning more reliable sources from the unreliable ones. This seems to blend faith and trust or confidence. For instance, you may have trust or confidence in reputable journalism rather than blindly accepting claims, like those about John Travolta’s sexuality, from less credible sources.

Rosner: That example isn’t great journalism. There were occasional reports, like lawsuits against Travolta or pictures that suggested something, but they weren’t concrete.

Jacobsen: Fair point.

Rosner: I’ve lost track of the original point, but that’s not real journalism.

Jacobsen: Right. But with real journalism from trusted sources like Reuters or The Associated Press, you can have confidence in the information provided, like the connections between Trump and Russian oligarchs.

Rosner: Exactly. In that category, it’s more about trust or confidence in reliable information, as opposed to empirical observation.

Jacobsen: The third category seems to be straight-up faith, where beliefs aren’t necessarily based on gathered information or trust in a source but are simply held. These could be unjustified beliefs that many people have.

Rosner: That leads to a fourth category: superstitions and suspicions. These are things we might wonder about or semi-believe in, even if they’re not entirely true.

Jacobsen: Like angels and ghosts?

Rosner: I’m sure they don’t exist. However, I’m open to them in fiction for entertainment, and I acknowledge there might be gaps in scientific knowledge that could allow for mystical phenomena, though I find these gaps quite narrow. My own superstitions are more like compulsions.

Jacobsen: Those are my thoughts. Perhaps there’s a fifth category, which offers the closest levels of truth: logical and mathematical proofs.

Rosner: Most people aren’t dealing with that level of proof.

Jacobsen: True, and that’s why pure mathematics, for example, is such a specialized field.

Rosner: In coding, there’s a similar need for precision, akin to mathematical proofs. When building a program, you’re accountable for every process. I don’t think there’s a programming language yet that intuitively corrects your mistakes. It might be on the horizon, but I haven’t come across it.

Jacobsen: Like a mathematician for coding.

Rosner: Exactly. Imagine if it could understand that you’re trying to add a skin to a wireframe soldier in Call of Duty 8, but you’ve made an error and the skin is floating slightly above the frame. The software would automatically correct that. I’ve always found coding challenging because, like mathematical proofs, it demands such precision and has no tolerance for errors.

Jacobsen: So, coding, mathematics, and logic could be one category. Natural sciences, social sciences, personal beliefs based on experience, beliefs in general, and superstitions are other distinct categories. I think these encapsulate the ways we understand our world.

Rosner: Stepping back, it’s important to consider how knowledge actually functions in our lives. As evolved, conscious beings, we like to think we understand and control our actions. However, we live in a world tailored to our convenience, which allows us to navigate life with less understanding than we assume. We move from one familiar experience to another, some decisions being conscious and well-thought-out, while others are just automatic responses suited to beings of our nature in a world designed for us.

Our understanding, however, is often superficial. It’s like Plato’s Cave; our grasp of the world is somewhat vague. I’ve seen two science fiction shows recently, though I can only recall one, where characters are confronted with the underlying forces shaping their lives through big data analytics. In Westworld, for instance, people receive messages on their phones revealing truths about themselves, predicted by a big data analytics engine. It exposes the deeper structures of their lives, beyond their understanding, but clear to the analytic engine.

It’s often bad news for most people when they confront the stark realities about themselves, such as tendencies towards suicide, alcoholism, or various failures. This kind of revelation can lead to world chaos. Some people endeavor to discover their true selves. I’ve visited at least six therapists because my behavior was bothersome to others and I was encouraged to seek help. Although I never really wanted to go, thinking I was fine, my experiences with these therapists, combined with my efforts to write my autobiography over many years, have made me quite transparent to myself, which I value.

Within reason, when self-awareness becomes too painful, I retreat, just like anyone else. The world offers mechanisms to better understand ourselves, but comprehensive self-understanding or understanding of the world isn’t necessary to function well in it, as we live in a world designed for humans.

I watched “The Vow,” about NXIVM and Keith Ranieri, the leader of what was essentially a sex cult. He is now serving a 120-year prison sentence. His true motives are unclear. Early on, he may have been a manipulative grifter, but it’s possible that at some point he believed he was developing a beneficial system akin to Scientology, to help people understand themselves and improve.

“The Vow” tells the stories of people who joined NXIVM with the goal of self-improvement and professional success. While they were drawn into the cult-like aspects of NXIVM, they may have also experienced some positive changes due to the self-help content of the organization. Despite its sinister aspects, NXIVM did offer some degree of self-improvement techniques, much like Scientology, which was created by a con artist but still managed to compile various self-help methods from the 1950s.

Jacobsen: For the final question, would you say faith is good or bad?

Rosner: I’d argue that faith is, first and foremost, unavoidable. Considering our earlier discussion, we recognize that there’s a lot we don’t and can’t know. We’re certain about things like gravity, but when it comes to understanding what’s in someone’s heart or mind, that’s more ambiguous. For instance, I’ve watched Biden enough in the past six months to feel reasonably confident that he’s mentally sharp. He appears to be in command of the facts. But I can’t be entirely sure. Similarly, with Trump, despite claims on Twitter that he’s showing signs of dementia, he still communicates fluidly. His cautiousness walking down a ramp, attributed to wearing slick leather-soled shoes, seems logical. He wouldn’t want to risk a fall that would be widely broadcast. So, while I entertain the possibility of Trump having early dementia, I’m not fully convinced. It hasn’t been proven to me. Therefore, I accept on faith that Biden is mentally sound and that Trump isn’t significantly impaired. But, I can’t say I know for sure.

Most of what I believe has a substantial component of faith, which can be shattered by facts if probed deeply enough. We live in a world where our brains naturally engage in Bayesian analysis. We assess the reliability of our knowledge and weigh it against the risks of it being false. If something has significant implications for us, we strive to reinforce our knowledge, attempting to decrease faith-based beliefs and replace them with factual information.

Jacobsen: Is that the conclusion?

Rosner: Yes, that’s the end.

Jacobsen: Alright.

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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-sightpublishing.com.

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