Ask A Genius 965: Ask Scott Anything, Session 4

Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/06/22

Rick Rosner: Round four. All right, you sent a list of some other topics to discuss. Let’s start with diet. You eat pretty healthfully.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Yes, for the most part, I fast for at least 16 hours a day. The eating window varies, ranging from a maximum of eight hours to sometimes as little as three hours, depending on the day. Some meta-analyses support this dietary pattern. My diet primarily consists of greens and fruits, including frozen fruits, dark chocolate, berries, and salads. I don’t consume much meat; if it’s given meat, I’ll eat it, to be polite. Otherwise, I’ll opt for alternatives like cottage cheese.

Rosner: Exercise. I don’t think you belong to a gym.

Jacobsen: No, I do yard work, bike, and do pushups. I rely on bodyweight exercises for standardized exercise.

Rosner: Okay. Sit-ups?

Jacobsen: Yes.

Rosner: How many pushups can you do at once?

Jacobsen: Fifty.

Rosner: How many sets of 50 pushups do you do per day?

Jacobsen: I usually do two or three sets.

Rosner: All right. Gardening.

Jacobsen: I love gardening. It’s a lot of fun. I learned a lot while working at the forest farm. An elderly lady taught me about edging, mulching, and weeding. You create a circular route around the gardens, drive the Gator, do quick weeding, throw it in the back of the Gator, and move to the next area. It becomes a routine. I love mulch and used to go through truckloads of it because the property was huge. The mulch should be deep and thick if you want to do it properly.

Rosner: OK. Luck in life and capitalizing on luck.

Jacobsen: I’ve had much luck interacting and coordinating with you on various projects, recognizing opportunities, and working to maintain them. I’ve been fortunate in many areas of life and am grateful for those opportunities.

Rosner: That’s good. Honesty and authenticity.

Jacobsen: Honesty and authenticity are crucial. I consider them straightforward concepts because, as Mark Twain said, you don’t have to remember anything if you’re honest. Being concise and honest means people engage with you for who you are without an explicit policy.

Rosner: OK. Awesome. Now, about hats.

Jacobsen: I love hats. I have a wide range of them. At my old place, a farm, I used to have a whole ledge along the stairs where I displayed my collection. There were nails all over the walls, and I had hats of all types.

Rosner: So you’re blonde. Do you sunburn easily?

Jacobsen: Yes, I burn easily. As a teenager, I had sunstroke a couple of times when I worked in construction, so I tried to wear sunscreen. I use SPF 60 when I’m exposed to heavy sun.

Rosner: So, what’s your genetic background? Ethnicity and nationality-wise.

Jacobsen: I’m 100% Northwestern European, so I should be in Northern climates. So, if taking the America frame, I’m 100% ethnicity-wise, heritage-wise, racially, and otherwise, ‘White.’

Rosner: OK, so like what? Are we looking at the Nordic states or the Baltic states?

Jacobsen: Nordic state, no Baltic. Nordic, Scandinavian, Iceland, United Kingdom, France, Holland, Finland, Sweden.

Rosner: How many of those places have you visited?

Jacobsen: Iceland. If I get the funding for Ukraine again, I’ll travel through those places, starting in England or Scotland, so I’ll be able to see some of them.

Rosner: OK. Animals and pets.

Jacobsen: I’ve had two cats. I got two cats when I was in construction: one named Pan and one named Anna. Anna was named after Anna Livia Plurabelle from Finnegans Wake, and Pan was named after the Greco-Roman god. Together, you can call them Pan-Anna because it sounds like a banana, and it’s my only real Joyceanism ever.

Rosner: So, what do you like? I like pets, including dogs, cats, and fish, but their repertoire and understanding could be improved. Do you look forward to a future where we’ve messed with pets to make them smarter?

Jacobsen: I mean, that’d be cool. It’s easier to surround yourself with more intelligent people than you. And you’ve already got that benefit.

Rosner: You have a slightly more exciting life. You don’t go to the trouble of getting intelligent pets, but get intelligent people around you?

Jacobsen: Yeah, that seems more straightforward. Whether you’re interacting with them digitally or in person, the dog and cat are friendly because they’re concise.

Rosner: OK. You’ve been on many boards and were in leadership positions when you were younger.

Jacobsen: Yeah.

Rosner: So hold on, there’s a question before you get to that stuff. So, in high school, you said you were pretty checked out. You weren’t very interested in life at school. This is partly the checked high school era, and there’s so much other stuff to do. But I tried to engage in the life of the school because I hoped it would make some girl notice me and like me, which is a perverse incentive. But did you ever have a teacher say you’re pretty smart and seem very checked out? Did you ever have a teacher try to get you, look at you and say you’re underperforming or under-involved, given your intelligence and conscientiousness?

Jacobsen: I had more than a few people, yeah.

Rosner: And?

Jacobsen: Including in college, but only a few people.

Rosner: And what would you tell them? Were they ever effective in trying to get you involved with stuff?

Jacobsen: It’s hard to make people do things against established patterns once after a certain point when things are ingrained. It’s getting them to go ten fingers and ten toes into any engagement, which is problematic.

Rosner: So it never happened that what a teacher thought you should be doing coincided with what you thought you should be doing?

Jacobsen: Unfortunately, I found I distrusted them and even checked out of them at some point.

Rosner: Did you have any inspiring teachers?

Jacobsen: No.

Rosner: That’s too bad because I’ve had quite a few, which is probably luck of the draw. But what about your boards and such?

Jacobsen: Well, being on the boards of the Athabasca University Students Union when I was a counsellor and vice president of finance and administration, I was on the board of…

Rosner: So, let’s go to Athabasca for a second. So, that’s your university. And it was distance learning for you.

Jacobsen: Distance learning is convenient online. I could do other things while I’m there.

Rosner: And did you ever show up? Where is it located?

Jacobsen: There’s a place called Athabasca where it’s located.

Rosner: But I mean, where is Athabasca?

Jacobsen: Alberta.

Rosner: OK, that’s like one province from British Columbia. Did you occasionally go there in person?

Jacobsen: For a couple of things to do with the student union, otherwise, no.

Rosner: So, how close is it to Edmonton? Edmonton’s in Alberta, too, and they’re one victory away. They came back from down 3–0. They have a game 7 to win the Stanley Cup. So, if you are an Athabasca student, does that mean you cheer for the Oilers?

Jacobsen: I don’t care much about sports, but I do care about Athabasca.

Rosner: Like if you were a sporty Athabasca, is that…

Jacobsen: Oh, I suspect so. They must be. But to an earlier point, Athabasca is 150 kilometres from Edmonton.

Rosner: That’s nothing. That’s less than 100 miles.

Jacobsen: Yeah.

Rosner: So, will they eventually have to change their name from the Oilers since oil is increasingly looked at with suspicion?

Jacobsen: Essentially, it’s a better name, though, than the Gassers.

Rosner: All right, what else here? You founded In-Sight Publishing in what year?

Jacobsen: 2012 for the journal, 2014 for the publishing house.

Rosner: And so you’ve done how many volumes of the journal?

Jacobsen: I’m behind a few years because I don’t have time. I am making a substantial investment per issue, which is a considerable investment.

Rosner: Is it supposed to be monthly?

Jacobsen: It’s supposed to be three times per year. And we have 24 issues so far.

Rosner: OK.

Jacobsen: Theoretically, if I get everything together, we’d have approximately somewhere in the 30s.

Rosner: OK. Then, I saw the Canadian Quantum Research Center.

Jacobsen: Right, so that’s an independent research center that Nature has listed based on its citations in the top 100 for Canadian research centers, founded by Professor Mir Faizal and me. I’m the Administrator, a Director, and he’s the Scientific Director.

Rosner: So, what kind of quantum research do you do?

Jacobsen: I administrate.

Rosner: OK, so you coordinate, and I assume you talk about research into quantum stuff with people who are trained and work in quantum things.

Jacobsen: A wide range of research that is part of the team. This is it. ‘CQRC, research on all aspects of quantum physics is performed. This involves research into quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, its application in high energy and condensed matter physics, quantum optics, quantum gravity, and string theory. As quantum mechanics is a fundamentally probabilistic theory, the mathematical structures used in quantum mechanics can have one application: CQRC. These structures will be used in novel ways to report scientific and technological relevance.’

Rosner: Let’s talk about that briefly because I like quantum mechanics, and it perfectly comports with what we know about the universe. It’s got a ton of experimental confirmation, more than any other theory. And while it deals in probabilities, it is mathematically exact. It’s a precise theory of uncertainty that applies to informational uncertainty. It’s how systems work that have incomplete information. Self-consistent systems, that is, like the world, that for the world to exist, it has to be self-consistent, that an apple has to stay an apple, even if you cross the room, you walk away from the apple, the apple doesn’t transform, the world remains consistent, but the world has a finite amount of information, so when you start picking at it in enough detail or at a small enough scale things get fuzzy and undefined, right?

Jacobsen: Yes.

Rosner: OK, and so a theory of how all that will play out is super helpful because everything that exists is characterized by finite information, which means quantum fuzziness. However, people like to jam quantum in wherever things are conceptually fuzzy to make things sound fancy or as an explanation for things that we don’t understand. For instance, some big-time physics guys say that consciousness must reside in quantum entanglement within organelles within neurons. And to me, saying that is just like saying, well, we’ve got this thing we don’t understand, which is consciousness. And I’m going to say, well, because it’s quantum. And that strikes me as inaccurate. I’m a little bit lazy.

Rosner: What do you think?

Jacobsen: There’s a haziness aspect, but they must be engaged empirically and make a claim. It’s not the most vital theoretical framework if they must be involved. Yet, they have to be engaged on empirical grounds for people to make a claim, but consciousness is quantum based on your microtubules in the brain or something like that. They’re claiming to provide evidence. You have to give a counter to that evidence or wait for them to provide more or better evidence.

Rosner: OK, which isn’t to say you can’t use quantum reasoning in non-quantum situations. I want to think of other drivers as quantum entities in the… I have incomplete information about them. Any time you have Bayesian probability, the probability is based on acquired information plus initial. Bayesian logic is. It’s a fancy term for the kind of probabilistic thinking we do. When we do that thinking, we have our initial assumptions about what we think a situation might be, and then we revise those assumptions based on the information we get. Initially, when Teslas came out, I had an estimate of how rude Tesla drivers might be based on that in LA and probably most places, drivers of fancier cars tend to be more disrespectful than average. And then that turned out to be accurate, plus more added rudeness. So, you can use those assumptions to model the probability of someone abruptly switching lanes in front of you to get an advantage in the number of cars in each lane at a stoplight. And that turned out not to be the way Tesla drivers are rude. Tesla drivers are primarily inattentive. But anyway, you can use probabilistic reasoning there. And there are significant parallels between quantum reasoning and probabilistic reasoning. Is there anything else about the quantum research center?

Jacobsen: I appreciate Mir Faizal and the team, and I look forward to seeing how things develop over time.

Rosner: OK. How many people are associated with it?

Jacobsen: The team is approximately ten people plus two administrative staff, if not more like collaborators.

Rosner: All right, so if somebody who works in quantum physics has an idea they want to discuss with you, as opposed to if they submit a paper to Nature or a ‘Journal of Quantum Physics,’ which is peer-reviewed and takes a long time. A, you have to write a very formal paper. B, it has to be peer-reviewed. It must go through that process several times before it can be peer-reviewed. You submit it once, and they take about six months and kick it back to you and say, well, accept this, but you have to fix this, this, and this, right?

Jacobsen: Yeah.

Rosner: And then you do that, then you resubmit it, it takes another three months, and they say, all right, we’re cool. And then they publish it after a year. So, I assume that some of the people you’re working with want to discuss some ideas and get them out there without the full-year turnaround it might take for a fully peer-reviewed journal. Is that something that goes on with you?

Jacobsen: I don’t know in science. I do the administrative stuff, and others do the scientific and academic work. However, they have been publishing peer-reviewed work for the Centre and through the Centre’s name. That’s the main focus.

Rosner: So people can throw around ideas.

Jacobsen: People can throw around ideas.

Rosner: So you do peer-reviewed stuff, too?

Jacobsen: Yeah, the Centre does.

Rosner: OK. And if somebody wants to do thoughts and, like, I don’t know enough about academia, but I feel like if somebody has an idea that is short of being a full-on paper, they can maybe write a letter to Nature or the Journal of Quantum Physics or whatever. Are there various publication levels with this center where, you know, full-on peer-reviewed and then less formal, just speculation?

Jacobsen: It’s exciting. Better channels are needed. Some journals are speculative and more rigorous than established. And those are the ones that they’re going to be going through. But again, that’s for the actual researchers themselves.

Rosner: So you don’t run this. What’s your title or job with them?

Jacobsen: My role is entirely administrative, which needs to be more scientific.

Rosner: So what does that mean? Correspondence?

Jacobsen: Correspondence, signing off on things.

Rosner: Proofreading? When an article comes in, do you review it to ensure there aren’t any typos or other errors?

Jacobsen: I haven’t had any requests like that sent to me. My role is minor compared to the scientists and researchers doing the more significant stuff.

Rosner: How long have you been working with them?

Jacobsen: A couple of years. A couple to a few years.

Rosner: OK, it sounds interesting. Is that the way everything is these days: almost entirely electronic, very little face-to-face?

Jacobsen: For most of my experience, I gave two opening talks for two conferences, which were recorded.

Rosner: Nice. What were your talks?

Jacobsen: They were opening remarks saying, “Welcome, this is the conference, this is what it’s about, etc.” They were a couple of minutes apiece.

Rosner: Where were they held?

Jacobsen: That’s a good question. Some of them were online for the most part. We had some reasonably big researcher names. I’m not trying to remember them off the top, but they were present, and they were presenting.

Rosner: That’s an achievement. So, all right, one last question on this. I am curious to know how much contact you have in your role or if you also interviewed many scientists. So, I don’t know how many quantum physicists you interact with, but just out of curiosity, do you know whether it’s common among quantum physicists to think of quantum mechanics as a theory of information?

Jacobsen: There is speculation around that. It’s relatively common as something interpreted as a theoretical framework for a theory of information. But they don’t believe they are taking the digital physics route. They’re taking a different path. I need to find out the precise details.

Rosner: Yeah, I don’t love digital physics either. But everybody’s aware of quantum mechanics. Everybody in quantum mechanics knows how it’s tied to information, but it doesn’t necessarily impinge on their day-to-day work. Is that a fair way of putting it?

Jacobsen: More or less. They don’t necessarily think in quantum mechanical ways, but I’ll use the theories. To think spatially and statistically is to think quantum mechanically because you’re thinking about probabilities where the probabilities can be relatively precise, but the actual considerations themselves are fuzzy. It’s precise fuzziness. Well,

Rosner: Most of the time, like when people work in quantum mechanics, they think quantum mechanically, but they’re not thinking of the more enormous metaphysical implications.

Jacobsen: No, that’s rare. However, many metaphysical reasoning and arguments in some physics circles seem more like supernaturalism, which sounds like physicists without a philosophy class. They sound like theologians.

Rosner: Yeah, which is a way to end up with physics being a thin coating of physics pasted over a bunch of loose metaphysical reasoning, which is not necessarily something you’d want either. Right?

Jacobsen: Yes. In a sense, I don’t think metaphysics is a field because anything that is metaphysical reasoning becomes subject to a law, as you can characterize it mathematically, itself becomes an aspect of physical law, but that’s an expanded framework of describing physical law within mathematical principles and something more akin to a unifying term or phrase: the principle of existence. Metaphysics is not a legitimate field, and theology is not a legitimate field. Fundamentally, you can get some insights from things in theology, like hermeneutics, where you do textual analysis, or it is an analysis of text to get some truth about how people think about things or think about things.

Rosner: OK. Based on your work with these guys, do you know where quantum physics is going?

Jacobsen: I’d have to ask Mir. He’d know.

Rosner: OK. And I will, eventually. See, we only have one more thing to hit, which is not quantum physics: Advocacy for Alleged Witches.

Jacobsen: Dr. Leo Igwe, an expert in this area, founded this organization. He’s Nigerian and on the board of Humanists International. I’ve known him for a long time. He is generally a significant figure in humanism, mainly because of his leadership in Nigeria as a humanist. He’s been very active and is an imposing figure. I just published the second website draft for that particular organization and handled some administrative tasks. He deals with issues manageable in Western Europe, North America, and the West. When you have pagans and neo-Wiccans, it’s a fun thing they do, or it’s something they sincerely believe, but it doesn’t come with a lot of medieval Europe baggage. So Africa…

Rosner: He’s from Nigeria.

Jacobsen: Correct. So I’m making the connection. In Africa, it’s a significant problem because, unlike in the United States, where evangelicals are viewed as religious crazies. In Africa, when you make a witchcraft allegation, in many cases, if it’s an older woman, they’ll kill her, injure her, ostracize her, or excommunicate her. We have cases of mothers who had their two sons accused of possession, resulting in battery acid being poured on them, causing severe injuries. There are many cases like that, including murders. So Nigeria is a big, in many ways, modern country. It has the most significant African population of any state. But at the same time…

Rosner: There’s a demographic similar to the US’s evangelicals who believe in mystical stuff.

Jacobsen: Yes.

Rosner: You could almost call them the rednecks of Nigeria.

Jacobsen: It’s probably more fundamentalism in Nigeria than in the States, but the humanist movement exists there, and the atheist movement exists there. I’ve written for the Atheist Society of Nigeria. I’ve helped out the Humanist Association of Nigeria. I’m aware of Mubarak Bala being in jail in Nigeria. I’ve written about that and worked with him. He’s the former president of the Humanist Association of Nigeria. The problem of witchcraft or witch allegations is continent-wide in Africa. There are many human rights abuses based on those allegations. The whole organization is dedicated to protecting those people. There’s a campaign to eliminate these accusations between 2020 and 2030. It’s a noble initiative. I’m working with Leo, and he goes to these villages in rural areas across various African countries to address these cases. It’s courageous and vital work.

Rosner: What is the religious framework for this? In medieval Europe, accusations of witchcraft were within a Christian framework, with Christians accusing people of working with Satan. Do these accusations in Africa occur within a Christian theological framework, or is it some other framework?

Jacobsen: People will find excuses, but it depends on the context, historically and geographically. In Nigeria and much of Africa, the basic premise is threefold: most people acknowledge Christian European colonialism in Africa, but they seldom acknowledge Islamic Arab colonialism in Africa for centuries and seldom acknowledge pre-colonial superstitions. Witchcraft is this weird thing that has emerged from pre-colonial superstitions, Arab Islamic colonialism, and European Christian colonialism.

Rosner: So it needs to be a well-formed theological framework?

Jacobsen: It’s just that people think these alleged witches are up to no good. Just because they believe something suspicious, not because they are breaking any religion’s rules, they are supposed to be in league with evil forces but not within a specific metaphysical framework. It shouldn’t be a framework. It’s a superstition. You see these mega-church pastors or online personalities in the United States preaching about fearing demons in the White House, demons during Pride Month, etc. It’s the same mentality but applied to rural, less developed contexts. In the United States, people get scared, but in some of these African contexts, people get killed over this. It’s just inspiring work.

Rosner: And has he saved people? How do you go about saving people? Do you get them out of the place where they are under threat?

Jacobsen: That’s one way to do it. Another way is to re-educate the public about what’s going on. Education campaigns are enormous.

Rosner: And do these people get spontaneously attacked? It’s not like they’re imprisoned and then lynched, necessarily. Generally, they are just members of the community. If they’re an older woman accused of witchcraft, that’s probably a death sentence for her. So, it’s traumatic. And what do you do with this organization or with Leo?

Jacobsen: I organize the administrative side of it, the same as the CQRC. So, the website, articles, photography, organization.

Rosner: So he does use his funding to spread information and travel to places where people are at risk for this kind of stuff?

Jacobsen: That’s correct. And I would recommend it; he has a TED talk. That is his journey from something to humanism or generally into humanism.

Rosner: It’s perfect. That is why he chose humanism over faith. Can you give his name one more time?

Jacobsen: Leo Igwe, L-E-O I-G-W-E. It’ll be spelled out when we get this online. I’ll be putting it online today.

Rosner: You and Carole probably get an email, so you’ll see it. OK, and then, as we close, just some help. If people want to see more of your stuff, list some places where they can look.

Jacobsen: Anywhere. Google my name, and you’ll find it.

Rosner: S-E-N. Jacobsen.

Jacobsen: Yes, unlike Israel Jacobson.

Rosner: OK. All right. Let’s wrap up. I’m going to take a nap. Thank you for your time. And if you think of anything else, we can keep going. Not if, when you think of other stuff.

Rosner: I will. Let’s do it tonight.

Jacobsen: OK. Quarter to 10?

Rosner: Yeah. All right. Talk to you then.

Jacobsen: Thank you.

Rosner: Talk to you then.

Jacobsen: Thank you.

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