Ask A Genius 1503: Entropy, Texas Gerrymandering, and a Potential Show Hiatus
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/08/31
Rick Rosner reacts to Jacobsen’s prompt on entropy, admitting limited study and framing entropy as dwindling exploitable differences and mixed information, with quantum nonlocality complicating “information for whom.” He doubts universal entropy trends beyond local systems. The pair pivot to U.S. politics: a Texas redistricting push favoring Republicans; alleged intelligence-community purges under Trump allies; and the FBI’s search of John Bolton’s papers. Rosner decries misinformation dynamics on his show, says JD and Lance tag-teamed him, and contemplates ending or rebooting with far less politics. He closes with concern about eroding accountability, citing ignored court orders and what he sees as autocracy.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We can distinguish three types of entropy: mechanical, informational, and statistical/thermal, or some combination of those.
Rick Rosner: I have not really looked into the different entropies. I know that, in general, entropy refers to a system with little exploitable information or energy differences—it is all relatively uniform. You cannot get any work done by having something flow from hot to cold, because everything is the same temperature.
And there is little information in that system. If you have the green marbles on one side and the blue marbles on the other, that has information: green on the left, red on the right. But if they are all mixed together, there is less exploitable information. If you are sorting marbles into bins, there is one way to ensure that all the green marbles are on the left and all the blue marbles are on the right. However, there are numerous ways to achieve roughly the same 49% green on one side, and so on. Entropy is related to information, and information itself is not yet fully understood.
All right, take quantum mechanics. A particle in quantum mechanics—and I cannot tell you exactly how, because of the matrix operations—but a particle is not perfectly localized. In practical terms, yes, but in principle, there is a non-zero probability of finding that particle anywhere in the universe. So the particle is incompletely localized.
If you want to talk about information, you need to ask: information for whom? What is your framework? By specifying a framework, you are acknowledging that information is not localized. From that, I reason that we probably do not know shit about entropy within the context of the entire universe. We reason from local conditions that entropy increases unless energy is added or sorting occurs.
Any system that is not receiving external input will increase in entropy. But the entire universe—I do not believe that necessarily entropy increases. Though in a Big Bang universe, entropy rises until you get what they call a “lukewarm universe,” in which, a trillion years from now, if the universe keeps expanding, everything will be the same temperature. At that point, there will be no usable energy anywhere.
That is what I know about entropy: that it is probably not completely understood. Comments?
Jacobsen: No. We should do the news. The Texas Senate has approved a redistricting bill, which will now be sent to the governor for signature. What are your thoughts on that?
Jacobsen: It has been coming. We have already talked about it. It has been coming for weeks, maybe a couple of months.
Trump asked Texas to redistrict their congressional maps. Texas sends 38 representatives to the House of Representatives, and somebody told Trump you could gerrymander the state—concentrate Democrats into a few districts. Texas is currently running about 43% Democratic, 50-some percent Republican.
But if you draw your maps craftily, you can give Republicans narrow majorities in 30 of the 38 districts by concentrating Democrats. So Republicans win 52–47 in dozens of districts, while Democrats win 80–17 in a handful of concentrated districts. Currently, there are 12 Democratic members of Congress from Texas—that is only about 32% of the delegation, when it should be closer to 16 or 17 Democrats, if it matched the voter share.
They are going to draw a map that, if it works as intended, will give them 30 Republican Congresspeople and only 8 Democrats. That is important because the House usually flips under an unpopular president, and Trump is trying to rig it so Republicans do not lose control after the 2026 election. If they retain power, it would be terrible for the country, because Trump is doing more bad shit than any president since the Civil War—maybe ever.
He is not constrained. And the Supreme Court has given him wide latitude. So one of the only ways to stop him from doing more bad shit for the next three years is for Democrats to win the House in 2026.
Beyond that, I do not have any special insight except to point out some of the crazy shit being done. Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, is firing half of the Department of National Intelligence and eliminating the entire Russia desk. So we will not know what Russia is up to. Gabbard has been accused of being a Russian asset for more than a decade, and we are powerless to stop this hollowing out of the government.
And people who should be concerned are just playing along. Republicans used to be anti-Soviet and anti-Russian meddling in American politics for a century. But now they are rolling over. They are not the Republicans of previous decades. They are pieces of shit giving control of the country to people who are Russian dupes.
Do you know what a Russian dupe is?
Jacobsen: Which is a useful idiom.
Rosner: Yeah, it is the same thing—somebody whom Russia unduly influences. Now, when I call Trump a Russian dupe, Lance likes to say that I am calling Trump a Russian spy and then argues that it is stupid and has been debunked.
Of course, I have never said that Trump is a Russian spy. Lance characterizes what I say that way because he can debunk it. That is one more reason why I am shutting down the show tomorrow—after tomorrow. I cannot win.
We may come back in a few months with a different format. Whatever form it comes back in, it is going to be much less politics. Because I cannot win with people who will not be truthful about things or acknowledge well-established facts, and if JD is going to make it “more exciting” by double-teaming me with Lance, then I cannot do it. It is not suitable for me.
It is not suitable for a show that aims to make a point or help people. It is just bullshit. I am done with it.
Jacobsen: Big news in the States. The FBI raided John Bolton’s house looking for classified documents he was not supposed to have. Was there a justification given for it?
Rosner: He was National Security Advisor under Trump, and he has been deeply involved in Republican foreign policy for decades. But he has been talking forthrightly about how terrible Trump is. So this is seen as Trump’s revenge.
The FBI has not announced what they found in the way of classified documents, but I am sure he has a ton of papers. They may decide that some of those papers are classified. Probably nothing of enormous import—his time as National Security Advisor ended about six years ago. And he is probably not dumb enough to keep super-important papers he should not have.
But any of his notes on situations with classified aspects could be ruled classified. If the FBI finds them, they can submit those notes to the person in charge of classification. They can look at handwritten notes he took in meetings and say, “This information should be classified.” So I assume they will find a few dozen documents considered classified. Maybe more, maybe fewer. Probably in the same neighbourhood as Biden, because Biden had a bunch of boxes of old material.
Everybody has boxes of old material from previous jobs. I have big stacks of scripts and notes—probably four or five cubic feet of them. If I had worked for the government, I might have had a couple of cubic feet of notes. And if I had worked in a sensitive agency like the State Department, those could easily include classified information.
Biden had maybe a dozen, twenty or thirty boxes of old documents. They went through them and found a couple of dozen classified documents, dating back to before he was president.
Trump, meanwhile, had more than 100 boxes of documents that the National Archives had been requesting for almost a year. He kept putting them off, saying he had returned them all or would soon do so. After ten months, they finally sent the FBI in to get them. Trump had approximately ten times as many classified or top-secret documents as Biden.
However, Fox News attempted to spin it as an equivalent situation. And they will do the same with whatever Bolton has.
Jacobsen: Pete Hegseth has fired the Defence Intelligence Agency chief and other officials, including the head of the Pentagon’s intelligence agency and two other senior military commanders. Lieutenant General Jeffrey Cruz was fired.
Rosner: All the departments are eliminating people who disagree with them. Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, fired her ethics advisor.
You are supposed to have an ethics expert to help you navigate thorny issues that come up. And now the departments are basically saying “fuck accountability.” They are going to do whatever they want.
People are calling this an autocracy at the least. Entire swaths of government are now run by people who do whatever the fuck they want without regard for legality.
A judge ruled that Alligator Alcatraz has to be shut down within 60 days, as it is an environmental hazard on Native American land. And DeSantis refuses to shut it down. What is going to stop him? Who is going to stop him? Trump will not. The federal government probably will not.
So he is just going to contravene a legal order. Things are fucked here.
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.
In-Sight Publishing 