Ask A Genius 1569: Aging Brains and Universes

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner

Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/11/21

How does Rick Rosner link Trump’s aging brain, collapsing “information universes,” climate-driven migration, AI overreach, and underreported wars such as Sudan in this wide-ranging interview?

The interview between Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner weaves together aging, politics, media bias, climate risk, AI, and longevity science. Rosner rejects simplistic claims that Donald Trump shows obvious dementia, instead using cosmology metaphors to describe how real Alzheimer’s compresses a person’s “information universe.” They discuss the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear Kim Davis’s challenge to marriage equality, underreported mass death and displacement in Sudan, and the racialized lens of Western news. Rosner warns that climate-driven migration and unregulated AI could destabilize democracies even as Western per-capita emissions fall, and he outlines his favoured supplements: fisetin, curcumin, and metformin.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Let’s make this an IC and political commentary mix. Trump is aging severely. He is overweight. His cognition is sometimes clear, at other times not. In an IC universe, you have consistent informational exchanges over very long periods of time.

Should the informational space of an aging brain outpace Trump’s luck over time in terms of its ability to hold itself together? 

Rick Rosner: Saying that Trump’s brain is turning to shit is optimistic. I do not watch that much of him, but he is constantly bullshitting and pulling things out of his butt.

I have never seen him fumbling in the way that somebody suffering from early dementia might. Instead of talking specifically about Trump, it is hard to tell because he has always been such a lying, blustery bullshitter that, as we have mentioned many times, it is hard to know whether he is losing his grip or simply doing the same bullshitting he has always done.

I saw my mother-in-law decline into dementia. That looked like a shrinking information space.

That translated into a universe that looks like a universe where everything is collapsing in on itself, which, in the metaphor, increases the apparent “recession velocity” among the mental “galaxies,” so that they become more redshifted, more informationally remote, until everything goes down into its own blackish hole. It resembles the Big Bang in reverse.

In standard cosmology, a “flat” universe is one with zero spatial curvature. Our best current model is a flat universe whose expansion is today dominated by dark energy, so it is actually accelerating and will continue indefinitely. Once we understand physics more fully, we will probably find a deeper informational reason for why the large-scale universe looks flat.

In older textbook models without dark energy, a universe with density below a critical value would expand forever. One with density above that critical value could eventually stop expanding and recollapse into a singularity where everything comes back together. That recollapsing case is the cleaner physical analogue of the shrinking information space: everything that was once far-flung ends up crunched back together, structure lost.

An Alzheimer’s brain that is losing information looks, in this analogy, like a universe being run toward a collapse phase. It is not literally blueshifted or redshifted in the astrophysical sense, but the accessible information space shrinks: fewer “galaxies” of memory remain in causal contact; more and more of the mind’s former content might as well have fallen beyond an event horizon.

In a standard expanding Big Bang universe, as time passes, the observable universe grows because light from more distant galaxies has had time to reach us, even while the overall expansion continues. Early on, the expansion was decelerating due to gravity; today, because of dark energy, it is accelerating. So over cosmic time, some galaxies newly enter our observable horizon, while others become effectively unreachable in the far future as they recede faster than light due to the accelerating expansion.

By contrast, the Alzheimer ‘s-style reverse-universe metaphor is one where the personal observable universe is shrinking: fewer memories and fewer stable connections, less structure, more effective redshifting of meaning, until the internal cosmos is mainly gone, replaced by a kind of private singularity.

More slowly, but it never hits zero expansion. That means that edge material from closer to t₀ sneaks into our view.

A universe that is losing information—a Big Bang universe that is decelerating—has less effective gravitational influence shaping its expansion history.

As more long-distance photons enter the observable universe, they increase the shared history of everything, slowing things down. But as you lose that history and mutuality, things start to recede from view again until, as you get overall collapse—overall loss of information—nothing can see anything else, and every galaxy is receding from every other galaxy at close to the speed of light. That is how your universe goes out as it approaches zero information.

Jacobsen: What do you think about the United States not pursuing the Kim Davis Supreme Court case to attempt to challenge same-sex marriage equality?

Rosner: For one thing, Kim Davis is an asshole. I am sure she has sincerely held religious beliefs. She was the county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, saying it went against her religious beliefs, and she kept filing lawsuits. Eventually, the question became whether her case could undermine Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court ruling that established same-sex marriage as a constitutional right nationwide.

She was pursuing a case that, had the Supreme Court agreed to review it, could have left marriage equality up to the states. That would have meant half the states in the country—the deeply conservative states—would not honour same-sex marriages. So it is good news that the Court declined to take it up.

The Supreme Court is weighted to the conservative side with a 6–3 majority, and we have talked about this a million times: Alito and Thomas are almost MAGA-aligned to the point of unreasonableness. They will side with Trump-friendly positions nearly every time. But even those two, if you give them a case that does not hinge on Trump-related nonsense, can still be legally consistent.

Even more so for the other four conservative justices and for the three liberal justices. I looked up the number of Americans who support same-sex marriage, and it is in the mid-70 percent range. It seems settled. Most MAGA voters are not interested in rolling it back. They have nothing at stake in it. That does not mean they will not get into other people’s business, but this is an easier situation for the Supreme Court to be reasonable on than questions about presidential power.

Advertisement

Amy Coney Barrett was put on the Court to vote to end abortion as a national right.

Now it is up to the states, and some are terrible about it, while others are not. But you ask her opinion on a ton of other issues. In that case, she comes from a deeply religious—some would say cult-ish—background where women are essentially handmaids. There is much Bible-heavy ideology. But she tries to do her job. If you ask her to rule on something that does not hinge on her religious beliefs, she will often be reasonable. And the same goes for everybody except the two truly unhinged justices—the two dickhead justices—who, as long as you do not hit them in their pet issues, will still try to do their job: being relatively neutral, trying to come to the best decision based on precedent, the Constitution, and basic reasonableness.

Their rulings on presidential power have given Trump way too much power. But not everything is about that.

Jacobsen: In American media—you watch a lot of it—do you notice any reportage on the war in Sudan?

Rosner: Not much. That is an important point. Where I see it is in the yelling shows I do every morning. I am not watching the media; I am yelling nonsense with other people yelling nonsense. It is like CNN, except more amateur hour. You have been part of it. If I am going to hear about that stuff, I will listen to it there. But on CNN or MSNBC? No.

Jacobsen: Over 150,000 people have died.

Rosner: I did read a long article about it in The New Yorker, but that is a niche publication. The number of internally displaced people is over 14 million. That is a massive humanitarian catastrophe that is not being reported.

Jacobsen: I have noticed the same in the commentary I have done with international law and humanitarian law experts. My reading of the situation is that in North America—less so in Europe—the coverage defaults to Israel–Palestine and then Russia–Ukraine. There are probably ten or so other major wars, with Sudan being one of the more significant, and there is almost no commentary. 

Rosner: A handy guide is: if it involves white people, or people seen as white-adjacent, you will hear about it. If it is Sub-Saharan Africa, not so much. 

Jacobsen: About the 14 million internally displaced people. 

Rosner: The UN has warned that because of climate change, that number could increase dramatically. By mid-century, climate-driven displacement could rise into the hundreds of millions. Some projections even push the upper bound toward a billion in extreme scenarios. That is about right. That is a looming problem.

Jacobsen: In that migration, authoritarian states—Putin and the Kremlin especially—will weaponize immigration. It is hard to watch. Climate change will be what it will be: a neutral force pushing people to move for survival, then dying on rafts trying to reach European shores. 

Rosner: Can I bring up an issue related to this? Per capita carbon footprint among Americans declines by about 1% a year because we work and shop more from home and because our tech gets more efficient. Also, the number of Westerners will decrease starting in the 2050s because Gen Z is having fewer children. So the world could be saved by consuming less energy.

However, it is a Marie Antoinette situation where AI could take up the slack and keep the consumption curve pointed upward, which is some absolute bullshit. We are using AI for much trivial nonsense—writing term papers, making porn, generating memes. Yes, maybe it helps medicine, but the most visible use is frivolous.

Trump said he wants the Senate to prohibit states from regulating AI. The Senate effectively said “no” with overwhelming bipartisan opposition. So Trump now says he will issue an executive order saying the U.S. government will sue any state that attempts to regulate AI. That is dangerous, because Trump, America’s least-informed modern president, has no understanding of the risks posed by unregulated AI.

AI might turn out to be an incredibly wasteful, resource-hungry “jerk-off technology” in many ways—especially if we leave it in the hands of greedy, arrogant tech billionaires.

Jacobsen: Have you taken any newer supplements?

Rosner: The one that is relatively new for me—though I have been taking it for six and a half years—is fisetin. It is one of those supplements that emerged from high-throughput screening. Before automation, testing a compound was slow. It relied primarily on accidents—penicillin being the classic “oops, mould in a dish” discovery—or on theoretical guesses. Recently, labs have used automated systems to test thousands of chemicals for specific effects.

Fisetin appears to have been discovered that way. Out of all the stuff you can test, fisetin is one of the most effective at inducing apoptosis in senescent cells—old, malfunctioning cells that should have already died. In a younger body, when a cell becomes damaged, it typically self-destructs. As you get older, your body clears those bad cells less efficiently. They hang around, consume resources, and increase inflammation.

Fisetin helps clear a lot of that stuff out. So I have been taking huge doses for years. I also have our dogs on it. And I have Carol on it a little bit; I have to persuade her to take more.

That is my favourite supplement right now, along with curcumin—turmeric, two words for the same thing, which reduces inflammation. And metformin, which helps your body use insulin more efficiently, reduces inflammation and, if you get COVID, may reduce viral load by around 40% in some studies.

Only one of those requires a prescription: metformin. It is one of the most widely prescribed drugs in the United States.

It helps your body use insulin more efficiently and reduces inflammation. And if you get COVID, it may reduce your viral load by roughly 40%. So there you go—three supplements. Only one requires a prescription: metformin. It is one of the most widely prescribed drugs in the United States. Around 50-60 million prescriptions are written for it each year.

Last updated May 3, 2025. These terms govern all In-Sight Publishing content—past, present, and future—and supersede any prior notices.  In-Sight Publishing by Scott  Douglas  Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons BY‑NC‑ND 4.0; © In-Sight Publishing by Scott  Douglas  Jacobsen 2012–Present. All trademarks, performances, databases & branding are owned by their rights holders; no use without permission. Unauthorized copying, modification, framing or public communication is prohibited. External links are not endorsed. Cookies & tracking require consent, and data processing complies with PIPEDA & GDPR; no data from children < 13 (COPPA). Content meets WCAG 2.1 AA under the Accessible Canada Act & is preserved in open archival formats with backups. Excerpts & links require full credit & hyperlink; limited quoting under fair-dealing & fair-use. All content is informational; no liability for errors or omissions: Feedback welcome, and verified errors corrected promptly. For permissions or DMCA notices, email: scott.jacobsen2025@gmail.com. Site use is governed by BC laws; content is “as‑is,” liability limited, users indemnify us; moral, performers’ & database sui generis rights reserved.