Ask A Genius 1444: Nonmonotonic Logic and Cosmic Thought
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/07/11
Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner discuss nonmonotonic logic—where adding new premises retracts previous conclusions—and its role in AI and cosmology. Rosner connects it to quantum physics and Information Cosmology, proposing the universe as a massive thinking machine, with thoughts unfolding across billions of years like cognitive associations.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So—nonmonotonic logic. Great rhythm when you say it: nonmonotonic logic. It’s the idea of adding premises that can retract previous conclusions. It’s used in AI. Thoughts on it?
Rick Rosner: For me, my stock answer is: everything goes back to quantum physics. If not just quantum physics, then quantum physics plus IC—Information Cosmology. Using quantum physics over an extended cosmological timescale, where the fundamental premises of the universe shift.
If the universe is a kind of informational map, then—this is something we haven’t talked about in a long time—a thought takes time. Thoughts aren’t instantaneous. Thoughts in your brain have to be built. Right? They have to be assembled. It happens fast enough that we mostly don’t notice the assembly process—our moment-to-moment mental landscape.
We think stuff, then we think more stuff, and we move through the day. We don’t generally notice the formation or replacement of thoughts as we move along. But it all takes time.
I find a convenient unit for building a thought is about a third of a second—to fully flesh something out. So imagine that if the universe is a thinking machine, maybe what takes a third of a second in our minds takes 10 billion or 20 billion years in the universe.
What we’re seeing—the moment-to-moment physics of the universe—might be a thought being formed, via the exchange of long-distance particles across spacetime. The universe, like our brains, is an associative engine. You light up parts of it based on its internal wiring—designed to pull up relevant, massive fields of information to help form a giant thought.
This process might take 10 billion years per thought. You can extend quantum physics as a mathematical framework for this. So nonmonotonic logic comes in—where you change premises mid-thought and retract earlier conclusions.
Also, you’ve got four syllables in a row there: non-mo-no-tonic. That’s where it gets nice.
Jacobsen: It’s a pleasing phrase. Like banana—you’ve got that same vowel repeating. Ba-na-na. That’s why Bananarama gives you five A’s in a row. But yes, saying nonmonotonic logic is like saying filler lyrics in a ’90s or early 2000s pop song—but with a bouncy cadence. So yes. Whatever song. But nonmonotonic—yes, there you go. It’s skippy repetition. It’s not flat like banana.
Rosner: Can we jump to the next one?
Jacobsen: Yes.
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