Ask A Genius 963: Ask Scott Anything, Session 3

Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/21

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: This is session three of “Ask Scott Anything.”

Rick Rosner: You listed eight topics that we could discuss, including the various jobs you’ve had. I think both of us have had a diverse range of jobs. We know you’ve worked with horses, done extensive writing for different sites and publishers, and worked in the service industry. So, I want to talk about some of those experiences.

Jacobsen: Sure.

Rosner: Which job stands out to you that you’d like to talk about? What lessons did you learn from working in bars and restaurants?

Jacobsen: Bars, definitely. Bars have a rough crowd. Coffee shops, on the other hand, have people who like to take their time, which is quite surprising. Working at a burrito place was interesting because the tips were excellent. Without servers, the cashiers, burrito makers, and prep staff all shared tips, making them quite substantial. The best place to work at is probably bistros—middle to upper range, calm environment, good tips, and a nice variety of tasks.

Rosner: When I was working in bars, before I met Carole, I was often on the lookout for opportunities to hook up. Some of my colleagues might have felt the same way, but probably not as much as I did. In Boulder during the 80s, some people worked in bars to deal drugs. One guy I knew was dealing coke. I had several encounters with dealers. Did you ever use your job to meet people and hook up?

Jacobsen: No, I didn’t use my job for that purpose. I had crushes, but I didn’t act on them at work. Work was work.I didn’t mix personal intentions with it.

Rosner: I can relate. I didn’t know how to be a pickup artist until I was done trying. A rule of pickup artistry is that you don’t go out alone. If you’re alone in a bar, you’re seen as a creep, and your intentions are obvious. But working in a bar or restaurant removes that perception since you’re there to work. Although that wasn’t your intent, it aligns with the idea. Let’s move on to discussing Model United Nations. You’ve been involved in it quite a bit.

Jacobsen: Yes, I’ve participated in sixteen Model United Nations conferences.

Rosner: And that’s where people from all over Canada or even the world come together to engage in mock diplomacy. Is that correct?

Jacobsen: Yes. It becomes a simulated event of the United Nations, lasting from one to five days, depending on the event. For example, the Harvard World Model UN, which I participated in, lasts five days. The National Model United Nations (NMUN) conferences in New York and DC also run for something like five days. These three—NMUN DC, NMUN New York, and WorldMUN—are the biggest ones worldwide. I’ve done Harvard WorldMUN twice and NMUN-DC once.

Rosner: Do you have any desire to go into diplomacy?

Jacobsen: Yes.

Rosner: Do you need advanced degrees in something to become a diplomat? Does it help?

Jacobsen: It can help, but you can also be skilled at what you do. I was fortunate to be in good graces for three years and served on the board of United Nations Women Canada for three years, or what was United Nations Women Canada, the Almas Jiwani Foundation.

Rosner: Do you speak other languages?

Jacobsen: I do not speak other languages fluently.

Rosner: Does that limit the diplomacy you can do? Or with modern technology and fast translators, is that not a barrier?

Jacobsen: It can be limiting, but the ability to translate with online technology helps break down that barrier. The key is to speak your original language well so that the translation is accurate. I was involved in interfaith work, so diplomacy could be helpful there. I have been a member or somehow doing work around, on, or with, various organizations like the American Ethical Union, Center for Inquiry Canada, Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations, Young Humanists International, Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Discordian Society, The Church of Latter-Day Dude, Atheist Alliance International, Rationalist International, Freedom From Religion, The Skeptics Society, Sentientism,  the Unitarian Universalist Association, Humanist Canada, Discordianism, the Church of the SubGenius, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the New Enlightenment Project, The Satanic Temple, The Brights, the Skeptic Society, the Secular Student Alliance, various humanist organizations and parody religion groups, etc.

Rosner: Your notes indicate you’re interested in building bridges among various religions and philosophies?

Jacobsen: That’s correct. There’s a significant diversity among secular groups, which many people aren’t aware of. Although they disagree on some issues, they generally agree on many others.

Rosner: Do you think through dialogue, the world’s various peoples can reach accords and get along better?

Jacobsen: It helps. Conversation is better than war. Having boundaries to guide the dialogue is important, but discourse is necessary to build bridges. Our diplomacy work and interfaith efforts are essential. My friend, Professor Mir Faizal, and I co-founded the Canadian Quantum Research Centre. We hope to create an audiovisual series of discussions, with Mir as a Muslim and me as a humanist. We’d like you to join us at some point if it becomes a reality.

Rosner: Thank you. Do you want to potentially be a cyber diplomat and work on relations between humans and beings with artificial consciousness or hybrids? Do you think that will be a thing in the future—setting up dialogues and ethical discussions to ensure that neither humans nor artificial beings harm each other too badly?

Jacobsen: It sounds like an intriguing and important area for future diplomacy. Establishing ethical guidelines and fostering dialogue between humans and artificial beings will be crucial to prevent conflicts and misunderstandings. This will be inevitable, I think.

Rosner: The messing over or the dialogue, or both?

Jacobsen: There’ll be some messing over, but dialogue will be the main focus.

Rosner: I’m walking into the other room to get my glasses so I can read my notes. Now I’m walking back. 

Jacobsen: It won’t be like the Cylons and the Humans, or like the Terminator. Humans will be a sort of blurred middle group among all types, including hybrids. There’ll be biological people and synthetic beings, with the main boundary being the degree of sentience. Digital consciousnesses, though, in many ways will have to significantly dumb themselves down to interact with us best.

Rosner: We haven’t talked about this to any great extent, but I feel that AIs will talk as if they’re conscious long before they actually are conscious because training sets are the products of conscious people. Right now, if you talk to an AI, it gives you disclaimers like, “I can’t really think; I’m just a Bayesian probability model.” But at some point, some AIs will start insisting on their consciousness long before they’re actually conscious. Do you agree?

Jacobsen: That’s probably true. Experts will be able to make that distinction at some point. They’ll start developing standardized metrics for sentience. As they see how these entities act more and examine them closely, they’ll never have complete understanding because things will be too intricate. However, they’ll have specialized systems to help them identify these traits.

Rosner: And the experts won’t be just humans. We’ll have to work with AIs to understand what they’re up to. You have dialogues with people of various religious beliefs, but what are your own beliefs?

Jacobsen: I’ve approached this as a matrix of propositions. There is a vast range of propositions I haven’t considered due to the limitations of one lifespan and the sheer number of possible propositions. Throughout my life, I won’t even know a significant portion of the functionally infinite propositions that can be philosophically or theologically relevant and considered as religious beliefs.

Rosner: Are you okay with starting with the Golden Rule, like knowing how you would wish to be treated and then extending that, at least provisionally, to other beings? The Golden Rule seems foundational to many belief systems.

Jacobsen: The Golden Rule is very functional and helpful. However, it has the subjectivity that can lead to bias because what I would want may not necessarily be what you would want. This becomes particularly tricky when applying the Golden Rule across species.

Rosner: You can combine our evolutionary history with the Golden Rule to extend or reinforce it. Since all conscious creatures are products of evolution, and evolution makes us want to live for the most part, it aligns with the Golden Rule. I don’t know what happens in the mind of a salmon once they’ve completed their reproductive cycle, but I assume they still want to live. Evolution is fairly poor at letting creatures give up on life even after fulfilling their reproductive purpose. There is an advantage to being comfortable with dying at any point. So, given that, can we generalize that creatures want to stay alive? Is that a reasonable conclusion?

Jacobsen: We generally want to be alive. However, survival mode can look very different. It varies from whether an octopus wants to punch a fish that’s in its space to deciding between dark chocolate or milk chocolate. These choices might apply to me, but not necessarily to our dog, who can’t have chocolate as it could kill them. That’s not sensitive to a lot of contexts. In terms of morals, that’s one path we can go down. But in terms of rules of thumb, non-theist philosophies have some good principles. Humanists of various types have good principles. The World Pantheist Movement seems to have principles where you can interpret pantheism as seeing the laws of nature as God. That seems like a tautological way to approach the question of whether or not God exists.

Rosner: So, is humanism pretty much utilitarianism, aiming for the greatest good for the greatest number and trying to do the best you can?

Jacobsen: We’ll take that into account. It’s not the overarching principle. Humanism focuses on the welfare of the human species as a whole, without consideration of supernatural beings. Utilitarianism in Christianity might consider the wellbeing of souls, incorporating supernaturalism. Humanists are generally atheists or agnostics, not believing in supernatural powers. Some believe in God as the laws of nature, like Einstein’s perspective. They emphasize evidence, reason, free inquiry, and compassion, aiming for individuals to maximize their potential. They look at human nature from an evolutionary basis and adopt epistemological naturalism, rejecting parochialism while considering universal ethics.

Rosner: I can imagine two strains of humanism. One aims to provide fulfilling lives until the natural end of life, and another, technological humanism, sees death as a personal tragedy and a loss of information. Do you acknowledge these different strains of humanism?

Jacobsen: Yes, the latter is often termed transhumanism, which seeks technological means to surpass human limitations. Traditional humanists might be sympathetic but consider it more science fiction than science-backed.

Rosner: Let’s see what else. You’ve worked with, I have a note here that says UN plus the symbol for women.

Jacobsen: Oh, that must be an emoji. 

Rosner: I didn’t bring my computer down, so I took your email and wrote out the topics in shorthand.

Jacobsen: Yes. I was on the board of United Nations Women Canada for three years, or what was it. It was an interesting transition to being termed the Almas Jiwani Foundation. I resigned after my three-year term, and I don’t know why it’s still being called United Nations Women Canada or United Nations Women Canada National Committee. The thing is, UN Women does not list any such organization in its national committee listing anymore, for Canada. It’s dubious, seems untrue now. They list Australia, Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, United Kingdom, and United States. It might be politically and professionally expedient for her. It helps her get ahead. But it was clearly transitioned to a foundation, and she was very clear that she viewed United Nations Women as being in shambles. That’s what she told me. I did a lot of writing and volunteering for it, but I don’t know the specifics. She was also transitioning it into a foundation at that time and probably still, which is a long time, so there might have been an interpersonal feud. My efforts for gender equality are best done in other channels.

Rosner:  You might have more to say about marriage and kids.

Jacobsen: Yes. I think I mentioned that I’m not actively or super actively pursuing relationships on Tinder or something like that, so I’m not obsessive about it. 

Rosner: When you’re on Tinder, you often just end up talking to people a lot. It seems like people are there for the love of using Tinder. 

Jacobsen: It’s a bit of an indication. I’m turning 35 this year. I’m okay with the fact that it might be a little late.

Rosner: But given the potential for longer lifespans due to advances in technology, it’s not too concerning. Do you feel any pressure to start a diplomatic career, or is that something that can be started later in life?

Jacobsen: A lot of things can be started later in life. They can also be pursued simultaneously. When I was working at restaurants, I was also working on journalism. When I was at the horse ranch, I was involved in journalism too. Even during my military basic training, I was writing. These aspects of my life aren’t distinct. I was on various boards, doing activist work, and finding ways to generate income. It’s not as disparate for me as it might be for others.

Rosner: Let’s go back to Tinder. It seems to me that social media has made people more selfish on average. It’s not necessarily a bad thing; it’s just the way people are now. It’s a bad thing if you have to make sacrifices like in World War II, but we might not face that again. On Tinder, do you find people you can deal with who aren’t nightmares and are amenable to relationships? There’s less patience for coupling up these days. What do you think?

Jacobsen: My approach is that I’m not here to waste anyone’s time, and I hope they’re not here to waste mine. It’s nice just to have conversations with people. It’s not a significant loss. The online world tends to be a bit more superficial.

Rosner: In an earlier session, you mentioned that you take people at face value—that when people say they are a certain way in terms of their morals and ethics, they generally are, even if they sometimes fail to live up to their own standards. Do you find that on Tinder, you can take people at face value? As the conversation goes on, do you feel like a mask falls off and you find out they’re not as they seem, or what do you think?

Jacobsen: For the most part, people tell the truth. If they lie, it’s usually about small things. For men, it might be their height or income; for women, it might be their age or weight. I think that’s backed by evidence too. But taking people at face value in terms of believing what they say they believe tends to be accurate.

Rosner: Let’s see, what else? One of the notes mentions psychotherapy. I guess you’ve had some.

Jacobsen: Yes, I had some psychotherapy. I sat down with a therapist and told him I wanted to sort out my narrative, including dealing with an alcoholic and abusive background. I paid out of pocket by the hour, hoping to straighten out the chaotic parts of my upbringing to form a consistent narrative.

Rosner: And did you reach a point where there was nothing left to discuss?

Jacobsen: Yes, the therapist, who was an Evangelical Christian, told me nine months in that there was nothing major left to talk about and considered terminating the relationship. It was a formal way of saying I had a clean bill of mental health and had worked through what I needed to.

Rosner: Given that you have an alcoholic father, does that mean you have to guard yourself around substances?

Jacobsen: No, I never partook. I’m almost a teetotaler and don’t drink at all. I don’t really do any drugs either.

Rosner: That’s good. I’m the same way—I mostly don’t like alcohol. Let’s see, a lot of veggies and fruit in your diet?

Jacobsen: Yes, and chocolate. But I do a minimum of 16 hours of fasting every day. If I finish eating at 6 pm, I won’t eat until about 10 am the next day. It’s like a mini-fast daily, and I start eating around 10, 12, 1, or 2, depending on my hunger.

Rosner: And you’ve read that this has health benefits?

Jacobsen: Yes, it’s a mild way of getting the benefits of fasting.

Rosner: Any other topics you want to hit? We’ve covered most of them now.

Jacobsen: No, I think we’ve hit most of the important points. Any final questions?

Rosner: No, I think we’re good. Thanks for the conversation. The path you’re taking seems adventurous and intellectually rugged, kind of like a Teddy Roosevelt type, minus the safaris. Who are your heroes and role models?

Jacobsen: I admire the resilience and exploratory nature of Robert Anton Wilson, the longevity of Paul Krassner, and the humble activism of someone not widely known—Nsajigwa Nsasam, a humanist from Tanzania. I also appreciate the zest for life of Leo Igwe and the depth of knowledge and breadth of production of a musician like Jordi Savall. Additionally, I value the precision and word use of Glenn Gould and the honesty of Richard Pryor.

Jacobsen: Are there any books or other works that have inspired you and that you would recommend to others?

Rosner: As a teenager, I read “Siddhartha” by Hermann Hesse and “My Way of Truth” by Gandhi, which were influential.

Jacobsen: I read “Finnegans Wake” by James Joyce while camping, which is a challenging but rewarding read. I recommend it for anyone willing to delve into its complexity. The preface of one edition humorously states, ‘The first thing you understand about Finnegans Wake is that it’s unreadable.’

Rosner: I found it unreadable myself. I like to read fast and sloppy, but you can’t do that with “Finnegans Wake.”

Jacobsen: No, you have to read it in layers, and not everything will come to you at once. It’s a unique experience.

Rosner: We can do a fourth session tomorrow if you think of more topics. We could switch over to discussing the birth crisis in South Korea.

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