Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/02/02

Link to eBook availability:

This will be the final set of volumes in the Trusted Clothes collection, as I found more extant materials. I missed a bunch. So, several years later, I did what I could to recover the lost interviews or articles and compiled them into the hilariously and overly self-involved archival work of the “Jacobsen Bank” — so-called. The word “bank” instead of “archive” is simply because “bank” is three letters shorter and does much the same job.

This amounts to the final articles of Trusted Clothes by me, which began as a side project in the ethical and sustainable fashion industry. My foci are varied, as with the recent addition to the horse industry. An interesting project focused on gaining some basic and intermediate skills in the rapidly shrinking equine industry in British Columbia while using the connections made with people, some basic knowledge, and work experience on a horse farm to bolster some of the claims and questions asked in the interviews.

Trusted Clothes was a remote job on the Western side of Canada for a family on the East side of Canada with running a website and business to bring exposure to small and medium business fashion people involved in ethical and sustainable fashion. Insofar as I know, the business no longer functions as one; it is defunct. By the looks of it, the business has not been running for several years. I came at the right time. I enjoyed the job interview with Shannon. I remember the question, “Where are you from?” I was asked with a peculiar curiosity.

I appreciated the opportunity to grow in a completely disparate journalistic, editorial, and writing area. It was interesting to have a steep learning curve in this field and then to convey this in the interviews with ethical and sustainable fashionistas and some fashionistas. As with most of these businesses, or most of these types of business enterprises, the majority of the people involved in them are women and somewhere between young adult to early middle-aged for the most part.

Highly involved work, difficult to achieve any success. However, they worked their butts off to come out with a product earning the title of ethical and sustainable. This could be the fashion industry’s future in terms of design, harvesting, production, sales, use, and discard: a cycle into an environmentally sustainable product with minimal harm produced — something like an ethical and sustainable assembly and recycling chain.

At some point, the consumption patterns and the recycling processes will need to adapt to several billion people on the planet and the desires of everyone to attain — what is called — a Western standard of living. If those dreams of a Western standard of living sustain themselves, then things like ethical and sustainable fashion — simple as the clothes we wear — will need to be taken seriously. The only problem is scaling up.

Even though the global population growth has slowed tremendously and continues to do so, the consumption rate continues to climb in gross terms. The best part of a fashion-based change in consumption is more fun than transitioning to more powerful energy forms, e.g., nuclear or geothermal. It can be done with aesthetics, which, to me, is fabulous — much more fun. Indeed, more energy consumption isn’t inherently bad, but efficiency and harm reduction are better.

January 21, 2024

Scott Douglas Jacobsen

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/02/01

Link to eBook availability:

Human beings invented human rights as human beings invented the gods. To quote Ezra Pound:

The long flank, the firm breast

and to know beauty and death and despair

and to think that what has been shall be,

flowing, ever unstill,

Then a partridge-shaped cloud over dust storm.

The hells move in cycles,

No man can see his own end.

The Gods have not returned. “They have never left us.”

They have not returned.

Nevertheless, as we all know, the concept of a god, not simply the Abrahamic Yahweh — G-d, comes with blessings and cursings, fortunes and failings, and some claims about Him, not all of which may be true — maybe none. The god concept contains premises knit together into a weave — a weave laced as a drape, even a curtain, gently over the mindscape of believers. Believers believe. Believers act. Believers converse. Believers convert. Believers coalesce. Believers change and alter societies. In this way, the god concept transmutes the abstract, the in-mind, into the concrete, the in-reality. No matter the god in mind, that process affects most rising and falling societies in history. Thus, maybe, we can all agree: the god concept, ignoring veracity, impacts the world in history and to the present, massively.

That which amounts to the in-mind, the invented, the imaginary, the unreal, can affect the in-reality, in that sense. The god concept tends to come with a few universalist ethical principles, for example, the Golden Rule, loving one’s neighbour as oneself, compassion and justice, non-harm and welfare, the one family world, brotherhood, world reparation, justice and dignity, service to humanity, living in harmony with The Way, benevolence and reciprocity, and equality. Let us call these traditionalist transcendental religious ethics in the universalist canon; the rest sit in the particularist camp. Parochialism is a specific set of guidelines, rules, and laws for a particular set of believers.

Even if taking the god concept, whether true or not, a mind becomes necessary to make god exist and for the concept to actualize in the world through said beings’ minds and lives. Similarly, with the universalist and particularist camps of transcendentalist religious ethics, those need minds to act within them as social codes. In that sense, they become intersubjective agreements in sociality more than objective moralities — let alone transcendental realities. In this manner, traditionalist transcendental religious ethics become universalist, at times, and parochial, in others. While in truth, that is to say, they become intersubjective agreements bound to specific geographic locales and historical periods, they get perceived as transcendental and objective, mistakenly.

Human rights come forth similarly, in-mind. In the mind, these formulate the codes of conduct and ethics in most of the substantive ethical institutions in the world today. They exist around the globe. They created the framework for establishing an international system of laws, obligations, and rules. These become, not only human rights but, international human rights. These institutions become stronger with each passing year, for the most part, with some, minor setbacks. These international human rights come with massive intersubjective agreements despite consistent violations since the inception of their invention. The striving for international human rights converges with the work of universalism.

The universalism inherent in international human rights represents a convergence of the universalism from religious ethics towards a common core of moral truths bound to a principle of simplicity in foundations for an optimization of ethical considerations with equal application for all in theory with the extinguishment of religion in them while an allowance for belief in them, through them. In a manner similar to the god concept, minds become necessary for actualization in beings’ minds and lives. No minds, no rights, so minds make rights. An intersubjective agreement abstracted for approximated objective observation of formalized processes, human actions, international institutions, and rights documents. The difference: god concepts get blind acceptance, illegitimate authority, and dogmatic worship; rights get conscious deliberation, open debate, and democratic enactment. The former as absolute and simplistic. The latter as statistical and complex.

Traditional religious transcendental ethics seen in the religious ethics come with narrow application. International human rights come with broad applicability. Do not simply believe me; we merely need to count the truism: Even amongst the religious in societies, most adhere to human rights arguments when making cases for fairness, justice, and truth. In addition, few play by religious rules in an international sense. Most play by international human rights through global institutions, for example, the United Nations. Every Member State participates there, whether the General Assembly, Security Council, Economic and Social Council, or the International Court of Justice. Not many take part in the religious ethics in theocracies or the dogmatic secular moralities of Maoism, Communism, and the like. International human rights become secular in this decoupling process. These become international secular human rights, whether spiritual religions or political religions: Both insist on and generate dogma.

Hence, the reason for the stipulations in prior writings of traditional religious transcendental ethics and international secular human rights as a distinction for Canadians and others, one, to make, and two, to decide upon as a path forward for their societies and regions. Even though, these exist, gods and rights, in mind. Their impacts on individual lives and systems of governance remain inevitable while not immutable. Any move towards universalism in ethics will necessitate a move to international secular human rights due to the decoupling from the parochial nature of spiritual and political dogmas. In this way, abstracted ethical principles garner reality through these intersubjective agreement abstractions of international secular human rights enacted through minds into lives with an arc towards universalism as a prism for fractionation to pervasive values and decoupled from spiritual and political religions: benevolence, compassion, dignity, equality, harmony, justice, non-harm, one family world, reciprocity, service, welfare, and world reparation. Which is to say, we never “left” ourselves.

January 19, 2024

Scott Douglas Jacobsen

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/01/31

According to some semi-reputable sources gathered in a listing here, Rick G. Rosner may have among America’s, North America’s, and the world’s highest measured IQs at or above 190 (S.D. 15)/196 (S.D. 16) based on several high range test performances created by Christopher Harding, Jason Betts, Paul Cooijmans, and Ronald Hoeflin. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writers Guild Awards and Emmy nominations, and was titled 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Directory with the main “Genius” listing here.

He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmys, The Grammys, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He worked as a bouncer, a nude art model, a roller-skating waiter, and a stripper. In a television commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the “World’s Smartest Man.” The commercial was taken off the air after Subway sandwiches issued a cease-and-desist. He was named “Best Bouncer” in the Denver Area, Colorado, by Westwood Magazine.

Rosner spent much of the late Disco Era as an undercover high school student. In addition, he spent 25 years as a bar bouncer and American fake ID-catcher, and 25+ years as a stripper, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. Errol Morris featured Rosner in the interview series entitled First Person, where some of this history was covered by Morris. He came in second, or lost, on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? over a flawed question and lost the lawsuit. He won one game and lost one game on Are You Smarter Than a Drunk Person? (He was drunk). Finally, he spent 37+ years working on a time-invariant variation of the Big Bang Theory.

Currently, Rosner sits tweeting in a bathrobe (winter) or a towel (summer). He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, dog, and goldfish. He and his wife have a daughter. You can send him money or questions at LanceVersusRick@Gmail.Com, or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn, or see him on YouTube. Here we – two long-time buddies, guy friends – talk about Gaza and Ukraine, a tiny bit.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You have a lot of thoughts on the current actions of the state of Israel, the Israeli Defense Forces in the Gaza Strip and associated areas. What is it?

Rick Rosner: Right before we started taping, you mentioned that we should touch on anti-Zionism isn’t necessarily anti-Semitism because you can be pro-Jewish and not pro- Israeli government though if you’re on Twitter or now called X, maybe it’s changed over the past few weeks when as the war has gone on, but the people who are quickest to be anti-Zionist, if you went to the rest of their feed there were mostly anti-Semitic too; a bunch of fucking assholes.  Now we’re more than two months into the war. Israel has killed about 1% of the population of Gaza; about 20,000 people but maybe only about five or six thousand are Hamas and pushing 8,000 of them are kids and the ratio of 8,000 kids killed versus 110-120 Israeli soldiers killed; that’s a terrible ratio. There’s such a thing as softening up the enemy with aerial bombardment before going in with ground forces but this seems punitive, some of the ratios coming out of Gaza. It’s not like Gaza is very big; it’s only 150 square miles. Two thirds of the buildings in Northern Gaza have been obliterated or damaged, more than 90% of the people of Gaza have been displaced, 64% have had a relative injured or killed. There are 300,000 Israeli troops versus maybe 30,000 Hamas.

Jacobsen: Also, does any military presence from Palestine have a command in control an air force, a seafaring Army, a ground force of any substance in any real sense of a traditional military? It seems they don’t and that’s the reason for the resort to Guerilla tactics.

Rosner: Yeah, but I mean it also works to their advantage because they can pull the bullshit where they hide. Every place they are is full of civilians. So, you do have to work around or blast through the civilians to get Hamas. Meanwhile, I’ve been told that the leaders aren’t even in the area; they’re in Qatar where they’re billionaires and I don’t know how true that is but I’m sure it’s not entirely untrue. All American Jews and I think the vast majority of Americans are pulling for Israel. Remember that meme, honey badger don’t give a fuck?

Jacobsen: No.

Rosner: Honey badger is apparently this savage little wolverine like creature that’ll just chew your face off. So, there was a meme from a few that it’s savage and Israel don’t give a fuck about international opinion. They’re going to go in there, they’re going to finish doing what they’re doing and it’ll only take about another month because there’s only so much that you can blow up. Then well, Gaza is going to have to rebuild. And as we talked about before we were taping, since 1948 since Israel became a nation, Gaza hasn’t had competent non-corrupt leadership. They’ve always had a shitty agenda and they’ve always stolen billions of bucks from the people they’re supposed to be governing and there’s never been an effective occupation. The last time Israel occupied Gaza; they used 9,000 Israelis which is nowhere near enough to do a proper occupation. To have a chance of Gaza working as a country or a territory or whatever, they’re going to need competent some kind of neutral leadership.

After World War II, 1.6 million Allied troops occupied Germany for four years. I’m sure they drew down the troops over time but they were there doing denazification and it wasn’t that you got the old Nazis to decide not being a Nazi, I’m sure a lot of them still believed in Hitler but they learned to shut the fuck up. There were laws against swastikas and Nazi stuff and the younger generation came in and you’re going to need something like that if you want Gaza to work. After the war which is all stick, you’re going to need a ton of carrot. You’re going to need to dump billions in for rebuilding. When one person says we got to bring Hamas back; they killed my sister, my mom is missing a leg now, we got to fuck up Israel, then you want everybody around him to say “Shut up. That was then, this is a new time and we’ve all got jobs and the money is pouring in. We’re going to live in fancy places, so just shut the fuck up with that.” I don’t know if that can work at all but I mean it worked in Germany, Germany is our friend now. You could argue that Germany works better now than the US does. Japan’s our friend; Japan got occupied by a million Americans after the war for years.

So, Israel being assholes now; any chance of a solution that doesn’t lead to more waves of this requires some kind of neutral, non-corrupt occupation with tens of billions of dollars being thrown at Gaza to rebuild. The money is available. Nobody wants the Gazans but there are a lot of countries that are pretty rich and willing to kick in quite a bit of money to rebuild the country and because it’s so small with only two million people. It takes fewer billions than it does to help Ukraine fight the Russians. The end.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/01/31

I was sitting writing this evening, formatting some interviews for publication when I was listening to Ablaye Cissoko and had to pause for a moment to reflect on a feeling washing over me.

There is an intimate linkage between death and love. Not its manifestations of dramatization in movies or romance novels. Not in the moment of death and crying, wailing, mourning, and grief when a loved one dies.

Indeed, I watched my only grandfather who I knew, Pete Jacobsen, die in front of me, in the faces of the whole family of his side, a family he built for us. A family he never knew and had to rebuild on his own.

It’s not those moments of death and love that I am feeling. It’s the resolution moments. It’s the idea of a lost love, brief and long, in times prior, as I’ve had six relationships.

The idea of putting those to rest, those feelings, though still flammable(!), is, in a manner of passing-meaning, to put to death a part of oneself for new seeds to plant, to grow, to blossom.

Love requires a continual death of the self, of memories or warped images of personal history. That fragmentary sensation lived as a self in a worldline in the world.

I do not know necessarily the meaning of love in a life, but I know the meaning of life in a love. It becomes empty without it. We all know this, except for the living-dead who know not only not-love but a not-self. The mentally ill who are the selves no longer with us.

The frozen landscapes of a broken self. To love is to know a unified self and to unite this self with another and others, to move on, these must be disintegrated and reunited in the flow of this process called life.

The attachment and detachment from others does, in some sense, mean a flow from one love to another. Those loves, those put-to-rests are the engine of life renewed.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/01/30

According to some semi-reputable sources gathered in a listing here, Rick G. Rosner may have among America’s, North America’s, and the world’s highest measured IQs at or above 190 (S.D. 15)/196 (S.D. 16) based on several high range test performances created by Christopher Harding, Jason Betts, Paul Cooijmans, and Ronald Hoeflin. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writers Guild Awards and Emmy nominations, and was titled 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Directory with the main “Genius” listing here.

He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmys, The Grammys, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He worked as a bouncer, a nude art model, a roller-skating waiter, and a stripper. In a television commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the “World’s Smartest Man.” The commercial was taken off the air after Subway sandwiches issued a cease-and-desist. He was named “Best Bouncer” in the Denver Area, Colorado, by Westwood Magazine.

Rosner spent much of the late Disco Era as an undercover high school student. In addition, he spent 25 years as a bar bouncer and American fake ID-catcher, and 25+ years as a stripper, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. Errol Morris featured Rosner in the interview series entitled First Person, where some of this history was covered by Morris. He came in second, or lost, on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? over a flawed question and lost the lawsuit. He won one game and lost one game on Are You Smarter Than a Drunk Person? (He was drunk). Finally, he spent 37+ years working on a time-invariant variation of the Big Bang Theory.

Currently, Rosner sits tweeting in a bathrobe (winter) or a towel (summer). He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, dog, and goldfish. He and his wife have a daughter. You can send him money or questions at LanceVersusRick@Gmail.Com, or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn, or see him on YouTube. Here we – two long-time buddies, guy friends – talk about Cory Doctorow, meeting him. (I didn’t, but I did interview him a while ago.)

Rick Rosner: There was a dot com bubble around the year 2000 when a lot of people including my writing partner and myself were doing the man show.comWe were doing the content for that and everybody thought that web portals have the potential to make you a millionaire if you got enough traffic and if people made your page the page that they started their cruising the internet from. That turned out to be a bubble and just not true though people do have portals but it’s usually a search engine. People usually start with Google unless you buy a certain brand of computer that has Bing as the default and you’re too lazy to change it over to Google. The portal thing came true for a very limited number of portals namely Google but that was half a decade or more after the dot com crashed.

There was everything dot com. I think pets.com wiped out a lot of people’s money and there was probably toys.com. There wasn’t enough of something to go around, I’m sure money to make everybody a millionaire from having a web page. I just read an article by Cory Doctorow, I mean you could say there was a mortgage bubble that broke at the end of ’07 and into ’08 which is anybody could get a loan to buy a house because lenders came up with a scam to make loans and then package them and offload the risk; to step away from these hand grenades before they went off. The idea was if you made a bunch of home loans, you bundled them into sets of a hundred… home loans have been very reliable sources of lending income that they don’t usually go bad. I don’t know what the percentage was. So, these people could package sets of 100 loans and maybe more to other financial institutions and they sold very well because people thought of them as a very reliable investment.

Two, three, or four percent of homeowners will default and even if they do, then you can foreclose on their homes, so you haven’t lost that much money. So, there was a wild scramble to just give everybody a home loan. This was during the period when credit was so easy that I borrowed $262,000 on 17 credit cards because people were offering you zero interest balance transfers but essentially loans for six months and nine months and a year for signing up for a credit card. I saw this and I paid off our mortgage using credit cards and then still had a bunch of money left over to just stick in the bank and just kept rolling over this debt by getting more and more credit cards just rolling it and nobody gave a shit. I refinanced our house at one point. I’m like “Do you want any documents about what kind of job I have?” They’re like, “Nah” and it was a crazy time because scammers were just putting anybody into a home and then it all came apart and millions of Americans, I think lost their homes. So, that was the home loan bubble.

Now, it’s 15 years later and according to Cory Doctorow, AI may be a bubble because to make truly powerful AI you need to spend a ton of money stuffing that AI with data. Some of these ChatGPT is called an LLM, large language model. Well, the large part of the language model is tens of thousands of people in countries with low wages coding stuff into the Ais. The article I read on this, not Cory’s but a different one, talks about people in Africa just plowing through thousands of pictures of people wearing shirts and then circling the shirt and then adding keywords that describe the particular aspects of each shirt. So, the big databased AI, when it gradually understands what a shirt is, is basing that on a million pictures of shirts and generating that cost tens of billions of dollars and Doctorow talks about how the AI stuff that we use in an everyday fashion is often like a small model and abridged model of the large models that are fun to use and often deliver disturbingly sophisticated looking results but they have no true insight because they’re abridged.

I don’t understand the whole landscape well enough to say exactly what abridged means but I understand that there may not be a business model that makes AI profitable considering how expensive it is. Since the dot com era, there’s been an investment model that early versions of stuff can operate at huge losses and Doctorow calls the companies that exploit this model bezzles, which is his term for an embezzlement that hasn’t been discovered yet. He says companies like Uber are bezzles because they’ve been operating at huge losses for their entire lifespans and he doesn’t believe that there’s ever a way for them to be consistently profitable. Uber came in and disrupted taxi cabs into oblivion but because early on companies and venture capitalists expect these companies to operate at huge losses and then to build a moat; Uber has probably a pretty big moat for Cars on Demand and you spend maybe $80 billion to get the moat and then supposedly when everybody’s locked into using mostly just Uber, then that’s when you can screw them in terms of price and start making money consistently, once people are used to using your product after getting bargain rides for a few years.

Doctorow says that the prices you need to pay to use Uber and to make it profitable for the individual drivers would be so high that Uber will never really be profitable and he suggests that there’s going to be a similar reckoning with AI which I don’t know what are my thoughts on that other than to report to you what I just read. One is that there was the dot com crash but after the crash, beginning with Google, we now live in a freaking dot com world. The internet flowered 10 years after the crash of all these internet-based companies and now we live our lives on the internet. So, I could imagine a similar bubble and crash and a resurfacing of AI a few years later. AI seems inevitable but maybe not according to the curve that we think is happening now. Any comments?

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: None.

Rosner: Okay. He had one more term. I met Doctorow by the way.

Jacobsen: What? Where? When? How?

Rosner: He was speaking at our local library, at the Studio City Library. My wife says he’s talking tonight and so I went there and I heard him talk and I bought a copy of his latest novel and he signed it. He brought with him the mayor of the socialist; Mayor of Burbank.

Jacobsen: California?

Rosner: Yeah, the next town over is Burbank and they have a socialist mayor who’s running for like State assemblyman and he’s one of the only autistic elected politicians in America. So, after the meeting I go, “What’s it like? Is it tough being autistic?” He’s very personable and apparently extroverted and I’m like “What’s the deal? Is it hard to do politics and be autistic?” and he goes “Yes! This is all performative. I learned how to appear to be this way and I go home and I’m very quiet.” I can relate to that.

Jacobsen: You were a fanboy.

Rosner: Yeah, I feel like I followed a similar process like meeting people in bars. So, anyway it was an interesting night and I love Doctorow. He came up with this new other term which is reverse centaur.

Jacobsen: What is a reverse centaur?

Rosner: It’s a human who’s being written by AI. He says that in the future there’s going to be a big risk. I’d call it more than a risk, I’d call it a fairly probable thing that’ll happen which is the people who are in charge, who will rise to the top of various institutions and companies are people who are, I guess being written, who are most willing to let powerful AIs tell them what to do. We’ve talked about this and we didn’t have a term for it but the people who are most skilled and the most intimate with powerful AI are going to be… it’s not going to be Skynet necessarily, at least at first, it’s going to be people in close tandem with, not necessarily the current dumb AI but the future smart AI. We’ve talked about how even if you’re not one of the kings of the future and queens of the future that even regular people will have to become intimate with AI just to negotiate the world; to help them not be constantly victimized by information systems that are beyond their Ken or Barbie. Any comments?

Jacobsen: No.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/01/30

Link to eBook availability:

Let me start with this: I did not expect this collaboration or the project. Even though, they’re my fault. I tend to fart around a lot with a wide smattering of projects, topics, themes, personas. I find them fun. I remain a playful and experimental person, even as I get older. Maybe, especially as I get older, it seems like deep temperament. Something to plumb. I enjoy reading authors who exist as kin to Kurt Vonnegut. A survivor of war: so trauma survivor — a funny writer. A physical sensation of pleasure to read the architecture of the written word by authors like him. Perhaps, that roots the element of play with me. As the late and prominent American humanist Isaac Asimov purportedly said, “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny…’”

Atheists, agnostics, brights, freethinkers, humanists, satanists, und so weiter, I, often, get a sense of whimsy about a life so short in community with them, because the so short life must take a whimsy sense given its brevity. My matrix or meta-premises of orientations about the world, my self, and the relation between the two, sits somewhere between the superset of these. A common thread with the superset comes from the presence of humour and use of empirical means to grasp elements of the world. The religious discourse, on the other hand, tends towards the asinine, the boring, the cruel, the dogmatic, the dreary, the dull, the dumb, the erred, and — no doubt — the faithful. Words in some sense seem ineffective in the display of overwhelming wonder present to generations of humanity with nothing but religious iconography, tales, and text to guide them. A sincere and naive wonder bound by ignorance without a method to know deeper functional and pragmatic truths about the universe. A “Eureka” followed by silence. Science gave the “that’s funny” response to the “Eureka” reverberating through the human animal in response to Nature.

Psychology as a purported claimant to scientific status appears late in the empirical game in the 1870s with Wilhelm Wundt. An empiricism beginning in the contemporary centuries, maybe, in the 1500s. Modern science garners respect for functional truths about the world, pragmatic truths about the world. These functional truths represent operationalism. These pragmatic truths represent practical application. The latter following from the former. To represent operations of Nature means the possibility for practical application on Nature, thus, we come to the basic sciences: biology, chemistry, physics, and mathematics, with the development of technologies following from these fields of inquiry. The greater the magnitude of complex systems, then the more difficult the discovery of deeper truths about those systems. Human information processing remains a great problem to solve, potentially a mystery. Regardless, as an evolved production of Nature and the unitary nature of Nature, the functional truths about Nature apply to us. In theory, psychology can act as a scientific conduit to learn deeper truths about human information processing with the possibility for technological developments to modify it. Is that true, funny, or both?

Counselling psychology comes from psychology. Ideally, psychological investigation remains empirical: the “that’s funny.” Counselling psychology, naturally, follows this vein. The counselling psychology interviews with Dr. Robertson represent an educational series devoted to casual discussion of complex counselling psychology ideas and topics in relation to counselling psychology. As both humanists, the bias sits on this fulcrum: the “und so weiter” — my people. As a trauma survivor who did his work, life can be trauma. Counselling psychology becomes a necessity there. In the aforementioned sense, a technology, a tool, to modify human information processing for healthier living. The articles come as bonus materials to interested readers.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen

December 28, 2023

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/01/29

According to some semi-reputable sources gathered in a listing here, Rick G. Rosner may have among America’s, North America’s, and the world’s highest measured IQs at or above 190 (S.D. 15)/196 (S.D. 16) based on several high range test performances created by Christopher Harding, Jason Betts, Paul Cooijmans, and Ronald Hoeflin. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writers Guild Awards and Emmy nominations, and was titled 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Directory with the main “Genius” listing here.

He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmys, The Grammys, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He worked as a bouncer, a nude art model, a roller-skating waiter, and a stripper. In a television commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the “World’s Smartest Man.” The commercial was taken off the air after Subway sandwiches issued a cease-and-desist. He was named “Best Bouncer” in the Denver Area, Colorado, by Westwood Magazine.

Rosner spent much of the late Disco Era as an undercover high school student. In addition, he spent 25 years as a bar bouncer and American fake ID-catcher, and 25+ years as a stripper, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. Errol Morris featured Rosner in the interview series entitled First Person, where some of this history was covered by Morris. He came in second, or lost, on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? over a flawed question and lost the lawsuit. He won one game and lost one game on Are You Smarter Than a Drunk Person? (He was drunk). Finally, he spent 37+ years working on a time-invariant variation of the Big Bang Theory.

Currently, Rosner sits tweeting in a bathrobe (winter) or a towel (summer). He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, dog, and goldfish. He and his wife have a daughter. You can send him money or questions at LanceVersusRick@Gmail.Com, or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn, or see him on YouTube. Here we – two long-time buddies, guy friends – talk about Workspace Theory.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, there’s an idea called workspace theory with regards to the operations of the mind and cognition. I sent the article or the link to you in a reference to it. What are some of your preliminary thoughts on it? Does it have any relevance to informational cosmology?

Rick Rosner: Yeah, I did my usual cursory examination of it and it seems to be dead on, I mean pretty exactly corresponding to that part of IC; that sensory information that makes it to conscious attention probably because it’s urgent or novel and then all the associations, all the things, and that everything worthy of consideration during a given moment plus all the associations pulled up by those things in your mind is the conscious workspace. I think the theory says consistent with what we believe that is so advantageous in terms of doing what the brain does which is helping you survive by modeling and predicting reality that that is a thing that arises. It’s circular reasoning to say that it’s the predominant mode of thought. It’s the thought that we’re aware of because it’s consciousness and we’re freaking conscious but it’s a big deal and for several reasons it seems to be like the best way to use your brain.

You think about things that seem to require thinking and by thinking you mean pulling up anything that your brain thinks might help you think about the things that need thinking about. It can be more than one thing at a time and all that stuff, all the things worth thinking about in a given moment according to your brain’s learned prioritization is the conscious workspace. For instance, it’s a terrible thing to get a BJ while driving. It’s very unsafe and in fact it was the precipitating… I almost got run over on Easter Sunday. I mean not run over; run off the road by a couple; a guy getting a BJ on the way to church. He was in his Easter finery and he was driving erratically and we could kind of tell there was somebody down in his lap and it’s also the precipitating incident in the Stephen King novel ‘Thinner’; somebody getting a BJ runs over an old gypsy woman and gets cursed.

So, if you’re getting a BJ while driving, there are several things demanding your attention. So, that’s an example of the conscious workspace. On the one hand the BJ and on the other hand driving and really that’s more than enough but there are other situations. I mean especially since everybody is often frozen in place like a zombie by what’s coming in over their phone, you’ve got the world that’s on your phone then you got the world that’s around. So, anyway I mean that’s the deal, that’s your workspace and we know it’s a good way of addressing reality because that’s what everybody has and uses whenever they’re awake. That’s all I got.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/01/29

Tianxi Yu（余天曦）is a man who’s interested in IQ tests. Here we talk about the Mahir Wu, China, training, education, Henan Province, and more.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Is the decline in the interest in IQ in China similar to the decline in North America and Europe? Were the main Covid-19 years a factor in this?

Tianxi Yu: I don’t know much about Northern Europe, but as far as I can observe, interest in IQ is all the way down. China’s interest in IQ is not low, it’s just from a different perspective than the High IQ Society. For example, we often express IQ through intellectual activities like memory, chess, Rubik’s Cube, etc., rather than IQ tests, which of course is a nice gimmick. the advent of Covid-19 was unfortunate for humanity, and demotivated most of the industry, not just IQ.

Jacobsen: What makes the CAT2 of Mahir Wu so difficult?

Yu: It wasn’t as hard as I thought, it’s just that I haven’t done the test in a long time, as well as spending less time on CAT2, so I didn’t get as high a score as I would think. But compared to CAT1, CAT2 is much more rigorous, and it’s hard to achieve that level of rigor for spatial tests, and it’s by far the set of spatial tests that I recognize the most. I’ve always maintained an appreciation for high-range IQ tests; while it’s not a good measure of everyone’s overall IQ, it’s a good test of imagination and logic, and good tests tend to excel in imagination, which is why I’ve always respected Mahir.

Jacobsen: Bead counting can get very difficult and sophisticated. Can you explain this cultural artifact of math to readers?

Yu: In common parlance, bead counting is to make a planner in the head. Bead counting is based on the intention of the abacus so that the operation process of the abacus is fully “internalized” so that it is completely free from the actual external action of the abacus, under which the internalized mental abacus used to perform calculations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division in the mind. The speed of the calculation is much faster than electronic calculator, and the speed of the calculator is very impressive. Often, as long as you hear the title of the report, or see the type of formula, the calculator will be able to answer immediately. Therefore, the bead calculator is one of the best calculation techniques in the world.

Jacobsen: What is OU training?

Yu: Mathematical Olympiad. In an area with a large population or a well-developed education, it is normal to participate in competitions from an early age, and everyone is likely to participate in competitions in several subjects during elementary school, the most popular of which are math competitions. These competitions can be used as a means of meritocracy when advancing to higher education

Jacobsen: One Chinese equestrian friend of mine at the ranch here knows of the Chinese equestrian Olympic team members. That friend went to the University of British Columbia. She said, “The schooling system ruined my childhood.” She laughed. But it had a serious note to it. Is that the kind of curriculum and drilling in Hubei province?

Yu: I used to suffer similarly, and my distaste for teaching to the test probably runs deeper than any of you. For those of you who don’t know, the Hubei paper is one of the toughest in all of China, and the acceptance rate is in the bottom three in China. Since I was a child, I had to participate in various competitions, and by the time I was in high school, I had a deep aversion to studying, and I spent my college years flunking out. But now with the end of my study career, I feel that some things exist with a certain rationality, different countries go through different ways to screen the talents needed, and the talents needed by each country are different. Then my realm has been elevated and I have also started to come out of the shadow of failure and have also started to accept the pain that I have experienced. There is no point in pursuing suffering, but transforming it into manna for growth is what we can do. I would not like to go through what I once went through again, but I am thankful that these experiences I once had have replenished my character.

Jacobsen: Are ordinary people economically stuck in a class in manner similar to the United Kingdom where class is real or in India where caste becomes the determinant of one’s life outcomes?

Yu: Classes must exist, and breaking out of them can be very difficult. The essence of class is still social mobility. If the society is a positive and thriving quality society, then the mobility of class must be strong, and only when the society is in a downturn, the mobility will be weakened or even die. Economic level trapped in a class is a probable thing, but if you can seize the opportunity of the times, there is still a chance to stage a comeback. For example, China’s reform and opening up to the sea entrepreneurship, and later real estate opportunities, and 20 years ago the wave of the Internet. To this day, cryptocurrencies also still have a lot of opportunities, I also in my spare time related to investment, at the beginning of the investment, I lost a lot of money, but now not only come back but also made a lot. But despite all this, I think that reaching the class leap that the world thinks of is still unlikely. I am not encouraging people to enter this market, in my opinion, the vast majority of people cannot make a profit, making money is an ability, not a behavior.

Jacobsen: How do Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and other places compare to China in their style of education?

Yu: Competition exists to varying degrees in mainstream East Asian countries and regions, and the intensity of this competition far exceeds that in Europe and the United States. But statistically speaking, mainland China has the highest level of competition. I didn’t behave well in my college entrance exam year (2018), ranking in the top 5% in Hubei province, and could only go to an average university; if you want to go to a good university（985）, you need to be in the top 2% of the provincial rankings at a minimum, and for Tsinghua and Peking University, two of China’s best universities, you need to be in the top 0.08% of the provincial rankings. This should be a rare situation in the world.

Jacobsen: What is the hardest province on the exams and schooling in China? Why that particular province?

Yu: Different standards of “difficulty” lead to different conclusions. Taking the 2023 college entrance exam data as an example, the most difficult region is probably Henan Province, where if you want to go to 985, you need to reach a provincial ranking of 1.14%, and the Tsinghua and Peking University rate is 0.046%,  a whopping 1.31 million people taking the exam. Large populations, underdeveloped local economies, lack of industrial diversity, underdeveloped secondary education, and lagging university development .etc are the main reasons for the difficulty in Henan.

Jacobsen: Do you think the medium term future of IQ societies is a decline rather than stability or growth?

Yu: This has to be analyzed from various aspects. In terms of the nature of society, there are two main directions in which the IQ Society has developed, one is entertainment and the other is functionality. Previously, the IQ Society was known mainly because of the proliferation of media and the broadcasting of related quiz programs, and to this day it is also widely circulated in social media. However, I think the next development should tend to implement rather than too much hype, hype can bring exposure, but it is also time-sensitive, such as the establishment of some talent platforms, to provide companies with high IQ members, so that people with high IQ can get good employment opportunities. Maybe you think my idea is rather low, but employment is a very serious problem, especially in China. At this stage, it is very difficult to get a job in China, and I mentioned the difficulty of competition for civil servants in the last interview, but think about it, if the competition within the government system is so difficult, won’t all private enterprises die? Many industries have withered away, more than 25%of the young people (aged 16-24) are not employable at this stage, and the salaries in most industries are dropping drastically, which makes me think of the scenes of the Great Depression in 1929. Of course, this difficult situation will continue for 20 years or more in my view, so it is important to increase company-employee mobility. In the long run, the world will always be guided by smart people, and as long as highly intelligent people can make a good living in the world as they see fit, I’ll be satisfied, not necessarily in the name of a “society”.

Jacobsen: What does the future of the economy of China look like for the 2020s? Obviously, it’s going to be an important global player. Elon Musk estimates the eventual economy of China to be 2 to 3 times the size of America. 

Yu: If you’re saying that China will be a major player in the world economy, then yes, if you’re referring to whether or not China’s economy will overtake the US, I don’t think it’s easy to tell. The US tends to express negativity about the US internally while touting other countries. This is a way of distracting attention from the fact that other countries have inflated confidence and underestimate the US, Japan in the last century being the best example. I don’t think the Chinese government will follow Japan’s previous example, but the populist sentiments of the public are high at the moment, which may affect the government’s behavior. I will not make an accurate prediction of the future development of the economy. For the time being, I think the most likely scenario is that the world will fall into a financial crisis around 2027, which will be a major sign of the recessionary period in this Kondratieff Wave, and the world will fall into a new depression. As for who will become the new economic hegemon, it depends on who will perform the best in this recession, resisting the recessionary potential and at the same time saving up for the new recovery.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/01/28

According to some semi-reputable sources gathered in a listing here, Rick G. Rosner may have among America’s, North America’s, and the world’s highest measured IQs at or above 190 (S.D. 15)/196 (S.D. 16) based on several high range test performances created by Christopher Harding, Jason Betts, Paul Cooijmans, and Ronald Hoeflin. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writers Guild Awards and Emmy nominations, and was titled 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Directory with the main “Genius” listing here.

He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmys, The Grammys, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He worked as a bouncer, a nude art model, a roller-skating waiter, and a stripper. In a television commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the “World’s Smartest Man.” The commercial was taken off the air after Subway sandwiches issued a cease-and-desist. He was named “Best Bouncer” in the Denver Area, Colorado, by Westwood Magazine.

Rosner spent much of the late Disco Era as an undercover high school student. In addition, he spent 25 years as a bar bouncer and American fake ID-catcher, and 25+ years as a stripper, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. Errol Morris featured Rosner in the interview series entitled First Person, where some of this history was covered by Morris. He came in second, or lost, on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? over a flawed question and lost the lawsuit. He won one game and lost one game on Are You Smarter Than a Drunk Person? (He was drunk). Finally, he spent 37+ years working on a time-invariant variation of the Big Bang Theory.

Currently, Rosner sits tweeting in a bathrobe (winter) or a towel (summer). He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, dog, and goldfish. He and his wife have a daughter. You can send him money or questions at LanceVersusRick@Gmail.Com, or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn, or see him on YouTube. Here we – two long-time buddies, guy friends – talk about some physics-y, metaphysics-ish stuff.

Rick Rosner: So, a principle of IC is that consciousness fairly easily and reasonably and frequently arises because it’s an efficient way and an achievable way for systems to model the world to increase their chances for survival, right?

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Yes.

Rosner: Okay. So, evolution evolves; it arises and then that leads to questions about how shitty consciousness is as a thing for beings to have. For a lot of animals, for instance, I’m sure they appreciate being alive while alive and once they’re dead, everything’s erased. So, there’s like no eternal suffering. But the system does seem to have some drawbacks which leads to questions. We don’t know any better ways of existing consciously than the consciousness we’re used to with its drawbacks but it does prompt questions about whether there are better systems. Like, one better system might be or one less drawback might be indefinite existence or at least being able to merge your consciousness into persistent conscious systems. So, you never really go away.

That leads to the question of is that even possible. I mean it’s a whole other question as to whether indefinite existence is even a thing that should be aspired to but we can argue, “Yeah, given the structure of consciousness, we’ve evolved. We want to keep living.”  So, for creatures like us at least, the answer is “Yeah, it would be good to have limitless existence with the possibility of never passing out of existence” That leads to the question of is that even possible.  Philosophically, it doesn’t even sound possible because it involves an infinity and you can’t have an infinity. Living forever equals infinity. Living indefinitely dances around the infinity because the infinity never happens. You never reach infinite time; you just keep existing with a nonzero chance of being able to continue living indefinitely. So, you just keep living.

So, that’s probably philosophically and metaphysically possible because no matter how long you live, you never reach infinite time; you just keep going which is probably allowed but then you get to our model of IC which says there has to be an armature a framework that contains the information from which our universe is built. And were something to happen to that framework, as something happens to the framework for our consciousness, our brains; brains die all the time. So, you can imagine the death of an armature which would wipe out the universe it supports but there’s an argument against that which is, given the age and complexity of the universe, the odds that the universe quits existing and even the very long lifespans of the conscious beings that have evolved within it are really low, maybe vanishingly low, maybe that’s wishful thinking but maybe it doesn’t matter what the outside armature is because that armature is subject to probabilistic calculations about its continuing existence which give a near zero value for it winking out of existence. Do you have any questions or comments?

Jacobsen: There is a physics of annihilation and creation I think, that kind of physics really plays well into a theory of information applied to cosmology.

Rosner: Okay, when you say there’s a physics of how do you mean exactly?

Jacobsen: Annihilation and creation?

Rosner: Yeah,

Jacobsen: A physics of existence and non-existence in a way.  That kind of physics would be more grounded, it wouldn’t be that theoretical.

Rosner: You can mathematize that stuff is what you’re saying.

Jacobsen: Yes, you can provide a mathematical framework for creation of particles of universes of multi- universes and for the annihilation of them but basically a winking out when the universe has its little snapshot moments. At some micro point it could snapshot just out of existence.

Rosner: For instance, you could do the quantum mechanical calculation of what would be, take the visible universe; 10 to the 85^th particles. What would be the quantum probability that that whole thing would just wink out of existence?

Jacobsen: Yes, and I think we could use a statistical argument that the bigger and older the universe, the less likely it is to just wink out because there’s a long history of probability bent towards existence for that particular structure in terms of stability.

Rosner: I’d agree with you and I would guess that the quantum mechanical calculation for the probability is either encompasses the history of the universe or just ends up being kind of mathematically more or less equivalent to that. Basically, I don’t know that you’re calculating with the universe runs into its anti-self over its entire breadth; probably not. But anyway, there’s some way to calculate it and the numbers are really low and then there’s an analogous type of principle which is if you’re trying to determine whether the universe is natural and actually existent or is some kind of simulation. Even if it’s a simulation the odds that the universe will do something that will betray that it’s a simulation at any given moment in any given neighborhood is also probably vanishingly small.

If the universe is simulated and was just created like a second ago or the calculations for it were just implemented and what we think is the 14 billion year or much longer than that, history of the universe is bullshit and the universe was just created as a simulation pretty much now, the odds that will know that are vanishingly low because the universe acting like a natural universe as part of a really good simulation is baked into the calculation. Is that reasonable?

Jacobsen: I’m going to say yes. I’m going to simply go back to the idea that anything informational can then be characterized as computable. So, it wouldn’t be a normal computation because it would incorporate all the different kinds of computation that go on anyway because it happened in the universe anyway. What I’m getting more at is that you can do certain transforms not in the material sense but in the idea of how we think about it, how we conceptualize these processes. So, you can sort of do a transform of basic kinds of information defined as state change; State A to State B and the difference between those, the information change between those two states and then a sort of set theoretic approach to that by just including the element defined difference between those two states where each state is a superset. So, you’d say set C is the difference between set A and set B where set A and set B are state A and state B. So, you can make an informational equivalence with the set theoretic approach and there’s a bunch of things you can do like that.

Rosner: So, what you’re arguing is that each moment of the universe implies a big old set of highly probable next moments.

Jacobsen: Yes, and there are a set number of operators in the universe, for instance, a different types of set particles. So, let’s say, take the standard model of particle physics which as far as I know is complete now with the Higgs boson. Let’s say, you assign all of those individual subatomic particles that are part of the standard model particle physics as a letter or a symbol as an element and you can make a set out of that. So, you could define this mathematically, you could define this set theoretically…

Rosner: What you’re saying is every open quantum situation in the universe is a member of the set and you can determine from that set, a set of next possible moments that conform to that set and the vast majority of those moments depict or embody a universe that looks a lot like the universe we’re in at any given moment just a fraction of a second later and the number of those possible universes far dwarfs the more singular next moments that contain zero information; the universe just goes to nothing.

Jacobsen: Yes, and I think as you’ve explained before and as I agree with, there’s three things; there’s an infinite possible number of something things, arrangements of things or arrangements of elements whatever you want to call them, there are flavors of nothing like zero and 0.0 and 0.00 in terms of the definition of that but then there’s just an absolute actual empty set.

Rosner:  But the universe is the next moments that contain very little information because the universe has been obliterated. The number of those possible universes is just vastly smaller than the number of existent universes.

Jacobsen: Yes. I mean a universe that doesn’t even have a time to exist isn’t even is. Something like that is an empty set and that kind of empty set is really the absolute nothing that we’re… that versus everything else.

Rosner:  With quantum stuff you can probably characterize like a null universe with just like a few quantum numbers which may allow slightly different flavors of nothing but they all still can be characterized by just a few numbers as opposed to an existent moment in the universe that requires well more than 10 to the 80^th numbers all of which can vary in a multiplicity of ways just so that you’ve got some inconceivably large number of next possible moments.

Jacobsen: Yeah. I would even simplify the argument to this. You have more arrangements of something with an implied past and a possible future than with something by which I mean nothing; it doesn’t even have a have a past to exist or an implied future, it just isn’t.

Rosner: Yeah, and as we’ve mentioned before, you can take this back to Descartes, “I think, therefore I am” I don’t know what he meant but the evidence of existence of self-consistency as experienced by a thinking being implies a level of self-complexity, self-consistency, and self-consistency that argues probabilistically for existence in the same way that we’ve just been arguing probabilistically for the existence of the universe. It’s less probable that a human consciousness exists because the number of elements in a human consciousness is way smaller than the number of elements in the universe but it’s still big enough to argue for its existence probabilistically. And then you can get into arguments if you want and somebody would at some point; is if all we can really be conscious of is our consciousness, then arguments for the existence of the universe are not that much stronger because we can’t really know the universe. We can only know our consciousness but at this point we’re just okay to say our existence and the universe’s existence are both highly probable which is all I’ve got.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/01/28

Ian Bushfield’s website biography states: “…[He] is an advocate for Humanism, science and social justice living in Metro Vancouver. He is the current and was the first Executive Director of the BC Humanist Association. He co hosts the PolitiCoast and Cambie Report podcasts covering BC and Vancouver politics, respectively. He earned a BSc in Engineering Physics from the University of Alberta and a MSc in Physics from Simon Fraser University, and has completed a BCIT certificate in non profit management. He helped found the UofA Atheists and Agnostics in 2007 and led the group until graduating in 2009. In 2008 the group successfully challenged the University’s 100 year old convocation charge as it asked students to use their degrees “for the glory of God”. From 2013 to 2015 he lived in the UK, first in Leeds then London where he worked on science advocacy and transparency campaigns at Sense About Science. Today, he lives in Coquitlam with his partner and two kids.”

Here, we talk about everything about the British Columbia Humanist Association.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: It’s been a bit since the last updates, for me, in connecting with the British Columbia Humanist Association (BCHA). I get pre-occupied, sorry. What is the newest in humanist ceremonies through the British Columbia Humanist Association?

Ian Bushfield: Humanist ceremonies are like a breath of fresh air for folks who lean towards reason and compassion without the whole supernatural vibe. These ceremonies cover things like weddings, funerals, and life celebrations but without the religious twist.

Here in BC, one of our biggest challenges has been the government’s steadfast refusal to recognize our ability to solemnize marriages. This means that you can’t legally have a humanist officiant perform your wedding in the province (only Ontario actually permits this) unless there’s a certified religious official there, or a civil marriage commissioner. We’ll have more on this later this year as we’re going to update some of our previous research on the issue and launch a renewed push for the government to update its archaic and discriminatory marriage act.

And in the meantime, we’re also going to be working to develop an expanded resource section of our website to provide links to the growing number of secular celebrants who are able to provide people with humanist ceremonies at other major milestones, such as the birth of a child, death, graduation and anything else. The great thing about humanism being non-dogmatic is there’s no official way to do any of these ceremonies but rather it’s about creating something meaningful and personal to those involved.

Jacobsen: How is British Columbia of the comprehensive sex education front?

Bushfield: Comprehensive sexual health education is about giving young minds the roadmap to navigate these critical aspects of life. It’s not just about the birds and the bees; it’s about empowering kids with the knowledge and tools to make informed decisions about their bodies and to cultivate healthy relationships.

At the BCHA, we’re all about reason and science. Comprehensive sex ed aligns perfectly with that. It’s based on evidence, promotes consent, and tackles issues like gender equality and 2SLGBTQ+ inclusivity. We believe in fostering a community that values open dialogue and respects diverse perspectives.

Why are we campaigning on this? Simple – we want to ensure that every student gets access to comprehensive sexual health education. It’s not just about what happens in the classroom; it’s about shaping a society where individuals are equipped with the understanding and respect for each other’s autonomy and choices.

It’s also critical that we pushback against the reactionary forces that we’re seeing in society right now. On the one hand, the traditional anti-choice religious right continues to push failed abstinence-only policies, including through sex ed programs delivered in some schools by so-called ‘crisis pregnancy centres.’ And if that’s not alarming enough, we’re also seeing the growth of a renewed effort to ban books and topics that address sexual and gender diversity. These groups are targeting school boards and inclusive policies like SOGI123.

So our campaign is a call to action for schools and policymakers to prioritize comprehensive sexual health education. It’s time to break down the stigma, embrace inclusivity, and empower our youth to make decisions that align with their values and well-being. Because, let’s face it, informed choices make for a healthier, happier society.

Jacobsen: What is Bill C-367?

Bushfield: Most people are probably aware that hate speech is a crime in Canada. It’s also a crime to condone, deny or downplay the Holocaust. I know there is some controversy among freethinkers about whether these are justifiable infringements on our freedom of expression, but what I think might surprise some readers is that one of the defences that you can use if you’re facing these charges is that your expression is based in good faith on “an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text.” In other words, if you take your hate speech from a holy book, or say that it’s your religious belief, then you can continue to attack gay and trans people, deny the Holocaust or otherwise promote your vile bigotry. 

It’s important to note as well that the “religious text” part of the defence was only added in 2004 as a compromise to homophobic religious groups that opposed same-sex marriage.

So Bill C-367 is a simple bill that removes those religious defences. It was introduced by Bloc Quebecois leader Yves-François Blanchet in late November of last year.

Jacobsen: How does this provide special privileges for the religious not afforded to the non-religious in British Columbia?

Bushfield: There are three secular defences to a hate speech charge: The statement could be true, it could be for the public interest or if it’s in the service of countering hate speech. An example of those latter two might be an academic consideration of hate materials to try to debunk them or otherwise undermine their effectiveness.

The critical difference with the religious exemption is it allows bigotry to persist if it meets the “sincerely held beliefs” test, which is how our courts have generally defined religion in law. So someone perpetuating extreme homophobia has to meet a much lower bar if they claim their religion made them do it than a non-religious person who would need to establish the truth or public interest of the claim.

Because of this double standard, we’re supporting Bill C-367 to close the loophole that could be exploited to promote harmful ideologies under the guise of religious expression.

For us, fostering a society that is inclusive, respectful, and free from discrimination is paramount. Removing this defence aligns with our commitment to promoting understanding among diverse communities. We believe in the power of open dialogue and constructive conversations that contribute positively to the public discourse.

We’re inviting everyone who shares that belief to join us in supporting this bill. Your voice matters, and you can make a difference. Take a moment to write to your Member of Parliament, expressing your support for the passage of Bill C-367. Encourage them to contribute to the creation of a safer and more tolerant society by backing this crucial amendment to the Criminal Code.

Let your MP know that you believe in a Canada that upholds values of equality, respect, and understanding for all its citizens. Together, we can build a more compassionate and inclusive future.

Jacobsen: What is the major issue facing medical care in preventatives to a truly secular healthcare system?

Bushfield: The intersection of religion and healthcare in British Columbia is a multifaceted issue, notably underscored by the government’s master agreement with denominational health associations. This agreement facilitates the allocation of approximately $1 billion in public funding annually to faith-based healthcare organizations. However, it also allows these institutions the latitude to abstain from providing certain medical services that run contrary to their religious tenets.

It’s very important to understand that those decisions about what care to provide, or not, are made at the highest level of these organizations – at the board of directors, which is often appointed by religious orders. Individual doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals working in these facilities often do not share these restrictive beliefs and patients – particularly those in emergency situations – don’t have a choice about which facility they will end up in. This effectively means that some Bishops and senior priests are intervening between the medical decisions being made between a patient and their doctor.

Let’s get more specific.

Reproductive health services – abortion and contraception – is the first major area of contention, and actually why these agreements were penned in the early 1990s. Faith-based healthcare organizations, operating within the parameters of their religious doctrines, may impose restrictions on services such as contraception, abortion, and assisted reproductive technologies. This dynamic raises questions about equitable access to reproductive healthcare for individuals whose beliefs diverge from those of the affiliated institutions. Simply put, you can’t get an abortion – or possibly even a birth control prescription – at St Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver’s West End.

End-of-life care, specifically medical assistance in dying, is another dimension where religious perspectives can significantly impact healthcare choices. Publicly funded religious hospitals and hospices can simply refuse to provide MAID on their premises. They are required to provide an “effective referral” for those seeking to exercise their right to die with dignity but in practice this has meant excruciating transfers to secular facilities.

The government committed to rectifying this injustice last year but their resultant compromise, announced last fall, was to construct (at the taxpayer’s expense) a small clinic attached to St Paul’s Hospital that would be run by the secular health region. Patients could then be transferred from their rooms, through a hallway, to this new clinic to receive MAID.

It’s frankly still dehumanizing and utterly disrespectful. This compromise required nothing of the Catholic hospital and still treats patients and secondary to the ideology of the hospital’s board of directors. It also does nothing for the patients at the many religious long-term care facilities who are similarly still denied equal access to MAID.

This is why we’re continuing to call on the province to tear up the master agreement. A secular country should not be funding religious hospitals, especially when they’re denying patients their constitutional rights. Write your MLA if you agree.

Jacobsen: What is the latest in municipal prayer and legislative prayer?

Bushfield: In far too many cities and provinces, sadly, it’s still happening.

We actually have a couple of new entries in a European academic publication called eurel that I encourage everyone to check out. They offer quick summaries of the current state and include references to much of our recent work on the topic.

Beyond that though, we’ve been campaigning hard since the fall when we released our latest report on prayers in BC municipal council meetings. Our previous report was a few years ago and found a number of communities included unconstitutional prayers in their 2018 inaugural council meetings and none included them in their regular meetings. Our new report found seven municipalities (down from 26) had prayers in their 2022 inaugural meetings, notably including the City of Vancouver who hadn’t had prayers in almost 20 years.

We showed in the report that our lobbying after the release of our first report resulted in a number of communities abandoning the practice. And building on that success, we’ve been pushing those remaining seven to commit to end prayers before the next inaugural meetings in 2026. And I’m very pleased to say that we already have commitments from five of those cities – only Vancouver and Parksville haven’t formally promised to review their practices.

We’re going to keep up the pressure on those remaining two, so stay tuned to our website and newsletter and support our work so we can continue to work toward ending prayers in local governments.

In the meantime, we’re also finalizing our reports on prayers in municipal governments in the other provinces. We’re going to have an updated report on Ontario soon, as well as publishing data on the Atlantic provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan. We’re always looking for volunteers to help with that work, so people should get in touch.

We also updated our Legislative Prayer Across Canada infographic in December, as Manitoba’s legislature has slightly amended its practices. Right now Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland and Labrador are the only legislatures (including Parliament) that don’t include some kind of prayer at the start of each day’s sitting.

Jacobsen: What is crucial to understand in public discourse about the provisions of end of life care for the non-religiousin British Columbia with respect to individualized considerations at these sensitive moments in life?

Bushfield: Honestly, people just need to read our new End of Life eBook to learn more about this. Sophie Burk and I wrote this as an expanded update to an earlier pamphlet we’d produced and it covers most things that humanists and the non-religious in BC will want to know about. It’s short, informative and has a very helpful list of resources at the back.

In brief, we cover Humanist perspectives on death, mental wellbeing and emotional support including pastoral support and end-of-life doulas, planning for death, advance care planning, healthcare issues including MAID and health inequity and death during crises.

I found the last section particularly interesting to think and write about as we discussed the overlapping COVID-19, toxic drug and climate crises that are each forcing us to think more frequently about death. I also like to think that in turn also forces us to value life even more.

Anyway, I encourage everyone to check out the book, it’s free and very readable.

Jacobsen: How are religious addictions programs influencing even the secular subpopulations in British Columbia, where there is a coerced attendance at religious recovery programs, for example?

Bushfield: First off, we need to understand the scale of the crisis we’re facing in British Columbia. Every day seven people are dying needlessly from the toxic drug supply. We have the tools available to stop these deaths but bigoted ideology is impeding us.

What we need to do is abandon the failed drug war approach and adopt an evidence and human rights-based approach to issues arising from drug use. Historically, prohibitionist regimes, often rooted in European Christian morality, have influenced drug policy. In BC in particular, that morality was often also fueled by reactionary anti-Asian racism. The BC Humanist Association, as secularists, firmly rejects a moralizing approach to drug-related challenges.

Today’s public health crisis related to drug use is primarily driven by an escalation in drug toxicity rather than fundamental changes in individual behavior. We recognize that drug use has been a constant throughout history and will be a constant in the future. The issue is one of regulation, not prohibition. We allow the safe consumption of caffeine, alcohol, tobacco and cannabis but force other drug users into unsafe conditions using products that are likely laced with dangerous levels of fentanyl and other chemicals. Drug users and experts are united in this diagnosis and have been clear about it for years.

To address this crisis effectively, we support the decriminalization of drugs and the implementation of a safe alternative supply, as outlined in “Decriminalization Done Right: A Rights-Based Path for Drug Policy.”

Continued criminalization perpetuates the marginalization and stigmatization of people who use drugs. Moreover, it hinders scientific progress by maintaining a legally enforced taboo against exploring the potential beneficial medical uses of certain substances, impeding evidence-based research.

For those grappling with substance use issues, we advocate for a health-focused approach that prioritizes evidence-based treatments. These treatments should be accessible to all individuals in need, free from judgment or stigma. Proper regulation of facilities is deemed essential to protect the rights of patients, and public funding is seen as crucial to eliminate financial barriers to accessing necessary care.

Again, the science backs this up. A recent study found that religious-based abstinence treatment programs do not reduce drug poisoning risks and are possibly riskier than no treatment, while another found that safe supply programs drastically reduce overdose deaths.

In summary, we need to shift away from moralizing approaches influenced by religious perspectives, and instead move towards evidence-based, compassionate, and inclusive strategies to address the toxic drug crisis in British Columbia.

Jacobsen: What do British Columbia Humanist Association members consider some of the more important social activist items now?

Bushfield: Because Humanism is deeply concerned with this one life we have, I tend to think humanists care deeply about all aspects of our lives and society. We’ve spoken a lot already about several of our current campaigns and your readers can look at our Issues Summary for a sense of where the BCHA stands on many contemporary issues. That said, we’re not dogmatic gatekeepers and I like to think that for any position we take, there’s bound to be a few members who disagree. But we’re a democratic organization, so people can always join and express their opinion through our Board of Directors.

The one thing I do want to flag though is our legal advocacy. In the past few years, we’ve intervened at every level of court from the BC Human Rights Tribunal to the Supreme Court of Canada. Our excellent pro-bono counsel has helped us advance the important duty of neutrality through each of these cases.

Most recently, we were at the Supreme Court of British Columbia presenting arguments in a case that pitted the province’s Privacy Commissioner and two ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses against their former congregations. The apostates had requested their personal records and the congregations were claiming a religious privilege to exempt themselves from the province’s privacy laws. We were pleased to see the Court agree with us and the Privacy Commissioner in its recent ruling that those religious rights are not absolute and had to be balanced against the privacy concerns of the former members.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses are likely to appeal or continue the fight at a later stage, and we’re going to be there arguing for the importance of secularism and the rights of the ex-religious in these disputes.

Jacobsen: What services do humanist chaplains provide? I find this a much lesser known aspect of humanist work. 

Bushfield: This is a smaller but growing aspect of our work, but one I’m really proud of and see a significant future for.

Humanist chaplains play a unique and important role in providing support and guidance to non-religious individuals in various contexts. Unlike traditional chaplains associated with religious institutions, humanist chaplains focus on secular and humanistic values.

1. Counseling and Emotional Support: Humanist chaplains offer counseling and emotional support to individuals facing various challenges in life. This can include issues related to personal relationships, grief, existential questions, and ethical dilemmas, all within a secular framework.
2. Community Building: Humanist chaplains work to foster a sense of community and belonging for non-religious individuals. They organize gatherings, events, and support networks that provide a supportive environment for those who may not have a religious community to turn to.
3. Life-Cycle Celebrations: Just like traditional chaplains officiate religious ceremonies, humanist chaplains lead and officiate at life-cycle celebrations. This includes weddings, naming ceremonies, and memorials, creating meaningful and personalized ceremonies that align with humanist values.
4. Ethical Guidance: Humanist chaplains engage in discussions around ethical and moral questions, helping individuals navigate complex ethical dilemmas without relying on religious doctrines. They provide a secular perspective on moral decision-making and personal values.
5. Hospital and Institutional Visits: In settings like hospitals, prisons, or universities, humanist chaplains offer support to individuals regardless of their religious affiliation. This could involve providing comfort, companionship, or facilitating discussions about meaning and purpose.
6. Secular Rituals and Ceremonies: Humanist chaplains develop and lead secular rituals and ceremonies that mark significant life events. These events are designed to be meaningful and reflective without relying on religious symbols or beliefs.
7. Interfaith Dialogue: Humanist chaplains often engage in interfaith dialogue, promoting understanding and collaboration between individuals with different belief systems. This contributes to a more inclusive and diverse community.
8. Educational Programs: Humanist chaplains may organize and participate in educational programs that explore humanist philosophy, secular ethics, and critical thinking. These programs aim to promote a rational and evidence-based approach to life’s challenges.

Each individual chaplain will have their own particular focus depending on the needs of the community they serve. Overall, their role is to offer a supportive and inclusive space for individuals who identify with humanist, atheist, agnostic, or non-religious worldviews.

For the BCHA, our primary Chaplain is Dr Marty Shoemaker at Kwantlen University Polytechnic. He’s fantastic and you really should speak to him directly.

Jacobsen: What are the strangest forms of hate mail and misunderstandings of humanism known to you? I get like declarations of atheists and agnostics as automatically worshipers of Satan in some countries from respondents. I’m curious about the latest in our little bubble of secularism and humanism. 

Bushfield: This is something we’re having a lot of fun with on our TikTok channel. In the past year, and especially as Twitter has become completely inconsistent with our values, we’ve started posting more there. In particular, I’ve done a couple of videos where I open “fan mail” or read and respond to comments under newspaper articles that we’re heavily featured in.

One recent letter simply told us that “atheism is sin” and quoted the Bible at us. Other comments assume that Canada is “a Christian country,” which they may actually have a historical argument about but completely misunderstands the impact of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

What’s been really great to see on TikTok though is that our following has grown from a few hundred to over 2500 in just the past few months. Some of our videos have reached tens of thousands of people and we’re able to engage in a more direct and personal way than on many other platforms.

It’s probably ephemeral as each of these platforms seems to become unusable after a while but for now, that’s probably the best place to follow us beyond our website and email newsletter.

Jacobsen: People can donate here. They can join here. They can volunteer here. Any final thoughts or updates for today?

Bushfield: I wrote a couple blogs for the end of 2023 about our many successes in 2023 and our big goals for 2024. I won’t rehash that entirely here but I am very excited for the work we have coming to promote secularism in local government and school boards, to start building new humanist communities and to tell humanist stories across our platforms.

On top of all of that, we set a new fundraising record to end the year. I know people were probably starting to get tired of my fundraising emails but the secular movement in this country operates on such a shoestring budget, especially compared to the well-funded religious right. We’re on the path to sustainability but we still need to kick it up a notch or two more. So if anything we’ve talked about resonates with you, please sign up for even just $10 a year and help become part of this movement.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the chance and your time, again, Ian. [Ed. And ChatGPT.]

Bushfield: Any time. Thank you.

And please note that some of my responses were written with the help of ChatGPT.

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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

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© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/01/27

*This interview was originally published through In-Sight Publishing as a 3-part series (one, two, three). It was republished in issue 209 and issue 210 in Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society.*

Chris Cole is a longstanding member of the Mega Society. Richard May is a longstanding member of the Mega Society and Co-Editor of Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society. Rick Rosner is a longstanding member of the Mega Society and a former editor of Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society. Here they talk about IQ claims.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, as this is a group discussion with three longstanding members of the Mega Society, the focus is Intelligence Quotient or I.Q., particularly debunking claims. What is I.Q. truly a measure of, at this point?

Chris Cole[1]*: I.Q. is an attempt to measure general intelligence, which is analogous to the power of a computer. There is an enormous literature on this subject. I’m going to take it as a given. It will be embarrassing if when we understand more about how the mind works it turns out to be a chimera.

Richard May[2]*:‘g’, the general factor of intelligence, i.e., cognitive ability.

Rick Rosner[3]*: IQ as measured by a high-end test is somewhat different from IQ as measured by a regular range usually group-administered test. Regular range tests measure intelligence, the ability to focus for 45 minutes, and cultural literacy.

High-end tests can measure obsessiveness and attention to detail, a love of puzzle-solving, and in some cases desperation for validation.

Intelligence has changed over the past 20 years to include skill at using tech to get answers.

Jacobsen: What differentiates a fake I.Q. score claim from a real one, e.g., signals of a fraud or claims far above the norms of a test, etc.?

Cole: Since it is difficult to define, it is difficult to measure. There is a desire to claim intelligence which creates a motivation for “vanity” tests. In science we try to overcome such tendencies using experiments to disprove theories. It is a sign of trouble if a test is not carefully normed.

May: You can perhaps find examples on Facebook and the social media generally.

Rosner: Concerted efforts to lie are fairly rare – claiming a high IQ is not very helpful in life and may even hurt – there’s Stephen Hawking’s quote that “People who brag about their IQ are losers.” There are casual claims – BSers at parties, movie stars trying to seem smart. Geena Davis’s PR team used to mention that she’s Mensa. Sharon Stone is said to have a 150 IQ. James Woods 180. And these might be legit. But that’s to address a specific issue of not being considered a bimbo.

One big tell for IQ fraud is people claiming to have completed and gotten a high score on the Mega or Titan in 10 or 12 hours. Back in 1985, I spent more than 100 hours on the Mega. Now with the internet (and coding skills which I don’t have), I could’ve cut that time by 80%. But the internet has also invalidated the Mega – not only with all of the answers floating around out there but also with instantly solving the verbal analogies just by plugging them into Google.

Jacobsen: What ranges for I.Q. scores have the highest reliability and validity, typically?

Cole: The Langdon and Hoeflin tests are on the cutting edge of reliability and validity. The Mega Test, for example, has been normed several different ways. A group of us are working on a new test that is cheat resistant.

May: Scores with the highest reliability and validity are those closest to the mean on standard IQ tests. Hoeflin and Langdon’s tests are untimed power tests more suitable for measuring above average intelligence.

Jacobsen: What tests are considered the most robust, legitimate?

Cole: We have a problem now that several of the most carefully normed, such as the Langdon Adult Intelligence Test, the Mega Test, the Titan Test, the Ultra Test, and the Power Test have been spoiled.

May: Those of Hoeflin, Langdon and Wechsler.

Rosner: Hoeflin’s tests have been the most thoroughly revised and normed. His Mega Test was normed on more than 4,000 test takers. His test items are excellent. But his tests have been voided by the internet – too many easily found answers. The Mega was published in Omni magazine in 1985, I think, a decade before most people had the internet. You had to use actual physical dictionaries.

Today, I think Paul Cooijmans’ tests are the most legit high-end tests. Paul takes pleasure in bursting the bubbles of people who claim high IQs by offering stringent scoring and norming. Doing well on his tests takes much time and what he calls “associative horizon” – being able to come up with dozens of ideas to crack a tough item.

Jacobsen: What is the status of measuring I.Q. scores above 4-sigma – experimental high-range testing, in other words?

Cole: The Adaptive Test, which is a work in progress, is the cutting edge. Contact me if you want to work on it. [Ed. chris@questrel.com.]

May: Apparently measurement at the far-right tail of intelligence has improved astronomically. I mistakenly thought that determining and measuring IQ was quite difficult even at the 4 sigma level. The Mega Society used to have a statement either at the beginning of Noesis or on our website or both, I think, indicating that we attempted to select members at the 4.75 sigma level, but selecting this rarity was experimental and quite difficult for many reasons. (Not exact wording.) 

Today there is an IQ group which has apparently identified the 3 most intelligent individuals on planet Earth! This is quite an achievement in my view.

Since it is well known that the actual distribution of IQ-scores at the far-right tail does not conform to a Gaussian distribution, one has to assume that even if the ceiling of the IQ tests employed was sufficient (not exceeding that intended by the test developers) and the intercorrelation of the various tests at the highest levels was known and that the correct Kuder-Richardson (?) formulas were applied to concatenate the valid IQ scores, that the entire population of planet Earth was actually tested by or on behalf of this group. Since various planetary subgroups of different sizes could have differing means, standard deviations and distribution shapes, a weighted average would need to be taken in order to determine the statistical properties of the global IQ distribution for planet Earth.

This is an unparalleled achievement in psychometric history. I personally don’t know anyone tested for this project in order to determine the actual shape of the global distribution of IQ-scores at the far-right tail, but I assume this is just a minor sampling error. Presumably you and your friends and neighbors have all been tested. Since the three most intelligent individuals on planet Earth have now been identified in fact, the correct protocols were undoubtedly used. If only Lewis Terman were alive now! — LINK here.

Jacobsen: You have all been around the block. Your membership in the Mega Society has spanned decades. So, you’ve seen controversies, failed high-I.Q. societies, and proclamations to this-or-that I.Q., even individuals who spun off into fraudulent activities, messianic posing, and criminal behaviour. As a note on collectives of high-I.Q. people, when it comes to claimed high-I.Q. societies, what are the major warning signs of something awry, not quite right, with it.

May: The major warning signs of statistical and psychometric incompetence, fraud, or madness are usually quite subtle. Please see below.

Rosner: You got to start with the disclaimer that most people in high-IQ societies are well-behaved relatively normal people who like taking tests and solving puzzles, and there are only a few lunatics. And because the ones I belong to don’t get together very often, you don’t have a chance to see any warning signs developing.

Although, in the case of one guy from many years ago, you could see a guy who was kind of being physically dominant and, I guess, mentally dominant getting increasingly frustrated that people didn’t understand him or believe his theories. So, it was just an increasing belligerence or pre-belligerence.

I guess, a skosh of megalomania.

Cole: The major warning signs are the ones you list: fraudulent activity, messianic posing, and criminal behavior.

Jacobsen: Following from the previous question, what are the minor, or subtle, warning signs?

May: I get slightly suspicious if someone comes up with the most brilliant Theory of Everything ever, explained in a newly invented language of neologisms, which only the inventor of the theory himself can understand, especially if the theory makes no falsifiable predictions and none of those few who claim to understand the theory can explain it in their own words. I’m also slightly suspicious of, e.g., taxi cab drivers or barbers, who have conclusively proved Einstein’s theory of special and general relativity wrong.

If someone claims to be the most intelligent person in the history our solar system or to be the actual God of the Bible, then this level of measured intelligence may be beyond the current development of psychometric science, even with the Flynn effect. I’m probably too skeptical sometimes.

Also, branding of one’s associates by high-IQ types is often unnecessary in my view.

Rosner: Again, I don’t hang. I have no basis or nothing to talk about regarding this. It is not like I was living with a high-IQ person who slowly went crazy, besides myself. Really, in the last few years, I’ve gotten less crazy, more lazy. Lazy has replaced crazy.

Cole: The minor warning signs are incredible IQ claims.  As a rule of thumb anything above five sigma is not credible as is anything that has not been normed using regular statistical methods.

Jacobsen: Why is 4 standard deviations above the norm (e.g., mean 100, S.D. 15, I.Q. 160) such a difficult barrier to break in finding highly intelligent individuals?

May: Almost no one in the alleged “real world” is interested in measuring intelligence beyond the 4 sigma level. Where would you find a large sample of individuals beyond the top 1-per-30,000 level of intelligence to study? This level of intelligence is not a target level for standard IQ tests developed by psychologists. Why should it be? Which professions require IQs beyond the 4 sigma level? Even Nobels in physics probably depend more upon a mathematical ability sub-factor of general intelligence than upon super-high IQ per se. Two physics Nobel laureates didn’t qualify for inclusion in Lewis Terman’s study of the intellectually gifted, because their IQs were not sufficiently high! In addition Nature may sometimes not be ‘politically correct’. What if cognitive differences were discovered among various human sub-groups? For example, what if a growing number of trans-species individuals, who identify as advanced AI units, were found to be better at arithmetic addition?

Rosner: Several reasons, one, there aren’t that many people. 4-sigma level is one person in 30,000. Although, in real terms, it’s less rare than that because the average IQ of people on the street is like 105 or 110. The people with IQs of 35 are institutionalized. You don’t see them around. It’s rare. That’s one problem.

Problem two, it is hard to test. All the good high-end tests take dozens of hours to do well on. Thing two-and-a-half, many people who might score well on them might be successful and may not want to waste their time putting in 40 or 50 hours in something that doesn’t compensate them.

They could be trading stocks or coding or doing business deals or getting laid. None of which taking an IQ test helps.

Cole: High range tests require high range questions which are hard to create. Plus there is not much of a market.

Jacobsen: What have been the successes and failures of the Mega Test, the Ultra Test, the Power Test, and the Titan Test in identifying highly intelligent persons – despite being compromised?

May: There is evidence that uncompromised tests work better.

Rosner: Maybe, some smart people still trickle in. The Mega Test has been compromised since, probably, the late ‘90s or the internet made it possible to contaminate the questions by throwing around answers in chat rooms.

The Mega Test was the most successful in finding high-IQ people because the most people took it when it was published in Omni magazine. 4,000 people took it. It’s more than any other test ever.

Which means, though, more people have taken the Hoeflin tests than tests by any other author, though probably a strong second and possibly somebody who has overtaken Hoeflin because he has written dozens of tests is Paul Cooijmans, who has been writing tests for decades and has cranked out quite a few.

Some of his tests have certainly been taken by more than 100 people. In the aggregate, thousands of people must have taken Cooijmans tests. With the success of the Hoeflin tests, they have found, depending on the cutoff, hundreds of high-IQ people.

Some of those people got together and some people were mentored by other high-IQ people, and had their lives improved, including myself. So, the success of the Hoeflin tests is the large numbers of people who have taken them.

For years, I, and sometimes with partners or being asked to consult, pitched TV involving high-IQ-type competitions. The same kind of shit as Project Runway or American Idol. A talent search, but instead of for fashion designing or culinary skill or singing skill, it was for raw intelligence.

This is an idea that comes to people not infrequently, but just has never been turned into a show. But if you had a show that did that, that would be the most successful project ever to find high-IQ people because millions of people would see the show and tens of thousands of people, if there were high-IQ tests associated with the show, would try those tests.

But that project has never happened, which I think is stupid because reality shows are about following assholes around with cameras and there are plenty of high-IQ assholes. Not as a percentage of high-IQ people who are, as I said, mostly decent, normal-ish people.

But if out of 100 people who have managed to score 160 on an IQ test, there are probably a half-dozen who you could productively, entertainingly follow around with cameras.  

Cole: First of all Ron Hoeflin is a talented question framer.  Next he spent a lot of effort validating his questions.  Finally he normed them several different ways.

Jacobsen: In principle, what is realistically needed to test between – let’s say – 4 and 5 sigma above the norm, reliably and validly?

May: Perhaps advanced AI can be used to develop significantly improved high-range intelligence tests. Other neurobiological methods of assessment of the general factor of intelligence, ‘g’, may eventually make IQ tests obsolete. For example, measures of biological traits such as pitch discrimination ability (of sound frequencies), among other such physical measures, have been found to have surprisingly high correlations with general intelligence. This may be the way of cognitive ability assessment in the future.

Rosner: You need experienced test-builders. You need a decent amount of people to norm the problems on, to make sure the problems can actually measure high-IQs. You need their other scores to see what scores getting those problems right correspond to.

As I said, you need some kind of widespread exposure. You have to let hundreds of thousands of people know that the test exists. Ideally, that it’s something fun and/or cool to do.

Another condition is that it would be really, really helpful if the test took less than 20 hours to take. It would be helpful if someonecould spend 20 hours or 10 hours on the test and score near the ceiling, which is not a common thing among these tests.

Cole: To avoid spoilage you need question schemas, not single questions.  Then you need a way to automatically collect many samples.  Presumably this would be on the Internet.  A group of Mega members is working on this.  Contact me if you’d like to help [Ed. chris@questrel.com.].

Jacobsen: What is the principal design of the Adaptive Test, inasmuch can be stated at this time? (Is this series the first announcement of the test, by the way?)

Cole: Cf www.mental-testing.com.  There are some articles in Noesis.  Let me check with the team.

Jacobsen: What other extraordinary high-I.Q. societies have been observed by you – the highest, most inclusive, most exclusive, the most multi-planetary, least reliant on D.N.A. prejudice, most non-carbon-based, und so weiter?

May: The Plurality IQ Society

Top 0.0000000000000000000000000 … % of Multiverse

Previously the highest-IQ group founded was the Aleph Society, which sought to have at most fewer than one member per Multiverse potentially qualifiable. However, the Aleph is found to be insufficiently selective in its admissions criteria for several reasons. First, it only considered 3 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time per universe. We feel that it is necessary to include all theoretically possible multiple dimensions of spaces and of times per universe of the Multiverse. (For multiple-time dimensions see, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_time_dimensions , https://arxiv.org/abs/0812.389 ,
https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/there-are-in-fact-2-dimensions-of-time-one-theoretical-ph ysicist-states/ )

Secondly, the Aleph only sought the highest IQ ‘individual’, including AIs, in the Multiverse ‘now’, i.e., at only one point in ‘time’ relative to one (1) observer, the Wormhole Officer (formerly called the Membership Officer). To remedy this we ‘now’ recognize that to whatever extent possible technologically, the Wormhole Officer must be a time traveler.

Thirdly, it is not sufficient that our psychometric instruments selecting at the Aleph level be culture free. Our IQ tests must also be genome free, i.e., free of any genetic influences upon performance. Speciesism is even more common than racism and gender-bias. We seek genetic justice in our member selection testing criteria. For example, in the past and even today, species with brains are unfairly advantaged over species without brains, including, of course, AIs. Why should an Isaac Newton have an IQ advantage over a slug, simply because a Newton has a brain? This obvious bias must be eliminated.

NB: All of the non-members of the Plurality IQ Society are Full Non-members and Official Non-members.

Jacobsen: What is the system of thought or the psychometric philosophy behind associative horizon?

Rosner: In my mind, when you get hit with a hard problem, one that might take more than ten hours to figure out. Part of it is how many different angles can you come up with on the problem. How many parts of life can you apply? How many possible analogies can you apply? How many keys are on your key ring to approach the problem?

When he talks about associative horizon, it is how many associations can you possibly come up with, with the symbols or whatever, that constitute the problem. To some extent, taking one of these high-range tests is profiling the author, trying to figure out, maybe, them, Hoeflin problems have a Hoeflin flavour to them, let you know if you are on the right track. Other test makers have flavours similar to them too.

It may be similar to their culture, say. The person building the problem found something in their world and boiled it down to an analogy. There is a popularish puzzle that is 7 d in a w.” You have to figure out what the “d” and the “w” are. It’s ‘days in a week.’ The problems can get tough. Another easy one. “5,280 f in an m,” ‘feet in a mile.’

So, “106 billion p who e l.” The “e” “l” is tough. You have to figure out. It is ‘people who ever lived.’ So, for a lot of IQ problems, they have at least some aspect of that. Decoding, figuring out what the symbols represent. Then it is an exercise in figuring out what could the “p” and the ‘p in e l’ stand for.

“6*10^23 As in an M.” My numbers might not be right. But ‘atoms in a mole,’ it is a test of cultural literacy. Often, there is further manipulation done to the symbols, so you have to work through two or three transformation or link two or three transformations to figure out the problem. It is how much cultural literacy do you have or do you give yourself, and then the flexibility for combining these things.

It is how much different stuff can you bring to bear on a fairly obscure or convoluted problem.

Jacobsen: How did you first come to find the Mega Test?

May: Actually I don’t remember. It was about 40 years ago. I probably met Ron Hoeflin through my membership in the Triple Nine Society. This was probably my initial connection to the Mega Test.

Rosner: Some guys in my dorm told me about the Mega. I must’ve already been IQ braggy. Yuck.

Cole: Saw it in Omni Magazine.

Jacobsen: What were the claims about the Mega Test – and your score(s) in each section on it – by Ronald Hoeflin, the media, and others?

May: Ron Hoeflin told me that I was the 2nd person to obtain a perfect score on the 24 verbal analogies, I believe. I think Marilyn Vos Savant was the first. I certainly didn’t tell many people, beyond my girl friend. I remember showing a copy of the Mega Test to one young woman, thinking she might be interested. She just laughed and laughed. Neil Blincom of Mr. Pecker’s original, illustrious National Enquirer tried to interview me once when I was Membership Officer of the Triple Nine Society. I pondered this offer deeply for a fraction of a second. I remembered Chris. (never forget the decimal point) Harding’s interview, “World’s Highest IQ Genius is an Unemployed Janitor” and decided not to be interviewed. I avoided the media.

Rosner: So, the claims were the Mega was the world’s hardest IQ test. By hardest, having the highest ceiling, the score a perfect score would get you, for instance. I think after the sixth norming, after Ron looked at 4,000 test submissions that came through Omni. I think the ceiling became 190 S.D. 16 or a little over 5.6 sigma. The first time I took it, I got a 44, which was 23 verbal problems right and 1 wrong and 21 math right and 3 wrong. I took it a second time and got a 47, which was 1 math wrong, I think. It doesn’t matter whether math or verbal; I got 1 wrong the second time.

What does that translate into for me, after the fourth or fifth norming, my 44 wasn’t high enough to get me into Mega. Marilyn herself turned me down for admission. My score might have corresponded to 172. Then after the sixth norming, after all these scores came in, I think a 44 got you a 180. I think the Mega cutoff is a 176. There you go. The 1-in-a-million level. Next question.

Cole: Omni called it the “world’s hardest IQ test.”   Interpretation of scores can be found in Hoeflin’s normings.

Jacobsen: How does the internet complicate legitimate testing in the high-range?

May: The internet facilitates cheating on tests and meeting other cheaters to work with.

Rosner: The Mega came out in ’85. The Titan, the sequel to the Mega, came out in ’90. Most people got on the internet in the mid-to-late-‘90s. For those tests, it complicated and contaminated them because people went on message boards and threw answers around. Some of which were correct. That was problem one. Problem two was once Google came along; you could put in the words to the analogy and the fourth word would pop up. The analogies were half of the Titan and the Mega.

The 24 verbal problems were all analogies of the type “find the fourth word.” Most of those could be instantly solved using a decent search engine. Tests are different. The Cooijmans tests, which I consider the most challenging of the internet era tests can’t simply be solved by plugging things into a search engine. You still have to figure a lot of shit out. The most general issue with these tests and the internet is just sharing answers. Beyond that, it is a pain in the ass to make sure that the problems on the test can’t be solved through easy searches.

Chris (Cole) and his group of people, who are working on this test that are resistant to having answers shared, are working on tests that give each test-taker the same general problem, but the specifics of the problem are fresh. So, somebody else’s answer on this problem is not going to help you because, even though the problem should score the same – getting it right should reflect the same IQ level, you can’t just post what you got on answer 12. They’ve been working on that for well over a decade.

It’s coming along. Anyway, next question.

Cole: The Mega and Titan tests have been spoiled on the Web.  The Power and Ultra tests are at risk.

Jacobsen: Some, in fact more than a few, claim extrapolations well beyond the norms of the mainstream tests, e.g., the WAIS and the SB, which cap out at or around 4-sigma. Assuming legitimacy of the claims, then, the individuals would be highly intelligent, but the claims can range between a little over 4-sigma to 6-sigma. How is this extrapolation generally seen within the high-I.Q. communities at the higher ranges?

May: I don’t know how other others generally perceive unsound or bogus extrapolations of IQ scores.

Rosner: I think the skepticism of super-high scores is generally more for specific claims than for the entire idea of being able to have an IQ that high. I think most people in the high-IQ community believe it is possible to have an IQ close to 200. But I think most people also have a reasonable idea of the rarity of scores like that. Adult IQs, the deviation scores, are based on a bell curve, where between 0 and 1 standard deviation, you have 34% of the population in a bell-shaped distribution for something like height. Between 1 and 2 SDs, you’ve got 14% of the population. Between 2 and 3, you’ve got about 1.5% of the population. Between 3 and 4, you’ve got roughly one-half percent of the population.

Let’s see, about 4 SDs, that’s only one person in 30,000 should score above 4 SDs. One person in 3,000,000 above 5 SDs. What is it? 1 person in 750,000,000 above 6 SD or so; somewhere, I’ve fucked it up, according to the standard bell curve. People also like to say that at the very far ends; there are more outliers than on the normal bell curve. That there are more high-IQs than would be given if it were a perfectly bell-shaped distribution.

But even so, you shouldn’t see more than a half-dozen or ten or twelve or whatever, people, with scores above 6 SDs. So, Paul Cooijmans has the Giga Society, which has 7 or 8 members. It is for people with IQs that are supposed to be one in a billion. So, there are 8 billion people on Earth, 8 members of the Giga Society, so that makes a certain sense, but not really. That’s as if everybody who could score at that level has taken one of his tests. That’s just obviously not true. So, way too many people scoring at the one in a billion level. It’s not like the Giga Society has 300 members.

Cooijmans is pretty rigorous in his norming and testing. So, if you have taken a Cooijmans test and scored at or close to the Giga Society, legitimately, Cooijmans has written in the past about people’s attempts to cheat on his tests, but I don’t think there has been a successful attempt in decades. So, people are pretty accepting that if you get a Giga level score on his tests; that you’re legitimately pretty smart. The claims of super high-IQs, there are legit claims based on performing well on ultra-high IQ tests or kicking ass as a kid on a test like the Stanford-Binet or the Wechsler. Someone can say, “As a kid, I scored a 200,” or something.

That’s another thing I won’t go into. People who claim high-IQ scores and are lying are generally not sophisticatedly lying. They’re saying something that cannot hold up at all. I don’t know if there are many or any sophisticated lies about having a super-high-IQ. So, then there are people outside the high-IQ community who are skeptical about the whole thing, but no one is really worried a lot about it, because: who gives a shit?

Also, if you want to say something, or know something that I’m not aware of, that contradicts what I’m saying, go ahead.

Cole: Hoeflin’s norms all involve some extrapolation.  I find it reasonable up to the mega level (about 4.75 standard deviations).

Jacobsen: Following from the previous question, what seems like the motivation behind making claims well beyond the norms of the most used mainstream I.Q. tests?

May: It’s a shame Einstein did physics. He could have been on Facebook (now called Meta, I guess).

Rosner: Going off my own experience, I kind of felt like a loser based on when I was about 20. I’d fucked up a lot of opportunities for myself. Then somebody told me about the previous world’s hardest IQ test, which was a Kevin Langdon test. It ran in Omni or Games Magazine. I took it and scored 170. I went, ‘Wow, that’s a good score.’ When Mega came along, I took that. I liked that validation that it gave me. Even though, it is a ridiculous thing. I kind of feel like it might be analogous to a guy who can bench press 500 lbs.

It’s kind of a goofy thing. You wouldn’t tell that guy it is goofy to his face, but the Sven Magnason. He is 6’4” and weighs 310 lbs. and eats 200 grams of protein a day to get that or support that huge bench press and has hypertension and his joints will be fucked in 10 years. It’s a kind of a goofy thing. It is amazing the guy can bench 500 lbs. It is this ridiculous thing. It is a very obscure sport. Sven Magnason is not playing in the NFL for 1.8 million USD a year. He probably works in a warehouse and does strength training on the side.

It doesn’t translate into the kind of fame or success that you might want. So, it is a niche kind of sport.

Cole: Vanity is one motivation.

Jacobsen: What are some of the more egregious I.Q. claims in 20^th century by groups and by individuals? This is a free forum.

May: In the 20th century — maybe being the smartest man in America was a fairly egregious claim. Top 1 per billion high-IQ societies may qualify if such came into existence in the 20th century.

Rosner: I don’t know. Anybody can go on the internet and type whatever they want. One of the craziest claims I saw I mentioned before. Somebody had a site or has a site claiming Jesus had an IQ of 300. The idea that somebody with the deep wisdom of Jesus meant Jesus had a huge IQ. His estimate based on nothing: If smartest people have an IQ of 200, then Jesus must have an IQ of 300. William Sidis, people claim 259 based on extreme achievements as a young person, at least it is based on his history and is a fairly earnest attempt to estimate a very smart young man’s IQ.

It is kind of egregious and not based on him being tested. Oh! Some of the most egregious are in the last 15 years; some insane moms, one mom out of Colorado, maybe 18 years ago, got a hold of the answer key to an earlier edition of the Stanford-Binet. Stanford-Binet gets revised every 15 or 20 years. I don’t know. You can still find psychologists who will give an earlier version. In the stacks of libraries. Probably, the Norlin Library at the University of Colorado, she found an earlier editions, found an answer key. Then taught her kid all the answers, so, that kid scored, at age 3 or 4, like a 10-year-old, which, the way they calculate childhood IQs, gave him an IQ well over 300. She tried to get herself and her kid famous off this.

It, eventually, fell apart because the kid did not have a 300 IQ. So, that is pretty egregious. But! Doable if you’re not an idiot about it, I believe. But anybody who would do it would be a kind of idiot. First of all, I don’t know. How much would a 4-year-old be into it? But if you took a 6-year-old and got a 6-year-old into it, “We’re going to ride this pony into a T.V. show, your acting career.” It has never happened, but it is not impossible. Because Alicia Witt was a child actor, an actor now. Great actor and great kid actor, one of the things that makes for a great kid actor is a 4-year-old who can read.

Because if you can give a 4-year-old – Alicia Witt could read at 3 – a script and the kid can read the script and memorize the script rather than having to be told shit line by line, and if the kid is smart enough to do that, then the kid is smart enough to take direction. Alicia Witt was at least a kid actor because she was super fucking smart. So, I’m thinking if you had a motivated 6-year-old and a creepy parent. I even started working on a screenplay on this or thought about it 30 years ago as a good plot. Like a lot of shit I do, I didn’t do anything with it, except the mom did it and a shitty job in real life.

The right combination of psychopathic parent and bright, motivated kid. That team could believably sustain the bullshit that that kid has an IQ of 300+ for quite a while. Although, nobody has done that. Yes, that would be egregious.

Cole: Before they were banned by Wikipedia, there were many articles by groups making incredible IQ claims.

Jacobsen: What seem like the big lessons in debunking phony I.Q. claims from the 20^th century?

May: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” — Richard P. Feynman

Rosner: [Laughing] A lot of stuff underlying a lot about high-IQ is “Why?” Why claim to have a high-IQ? Why work your ass off to get a super high score on these tests? Why sweat debunking it? In retrospect, you can see why you might want to hold people who might claim super-high-IQs up to scrutiny, at least given Raniere. The NXVIM sex cult, swindler of the Bronfman’s who is in prison for life now. One of the pillars of his duping people was using a high score on the Mega Test to claim to be one of the smartest people on Earth, though he didn’t really push it.

Because once he gathered enough acolytes, I don’t know enough about him to know how often he dragged out his IQ. But it seems that once he was surrounded by dozens of followers; that he didn’t need to do that. He could rely on his charisma and manipulation skills, and also being at the top of a pyramid of people with good manipulation skills. He was smart enough to recruit charismatic actors, TV stars. A couple actors from Smallville. People with actual show biz careers. One of his selling points and one of the selling points of Scientology can help you succeed professionally in shit where what it takes to succeed, like acting, can seem nebulous.

So, he didn’t need to haul out his IQ a lot because he was surrounded by TV stars who were helping him recruit other people into his cult. He, certainly, deserved a lot of scrutiny, perhaps a lot sooner than he got the scrutiny. There’s another guy who is pretty culty who has a bunch of acolytes who espoused a bunch of scary shit. So, that’s one reason to scrutinize claims of super-high-IQ because people can be up to no good, but those people are fairly rare. Of the 60, 80, 100, people who have qualified for the Mega Society over the past 40 years, 95 or more percent of them are completely normal, undangerous people.

The biggest danger might be that they might be really funny, like Richard May, is a completely decent guy who happens to be extra smart and extra funny. Super-high-IQ people mostly aren’t to be feared. What were we talking about? I always talk myself way away from the question. [Ed. Question repeated.] That, I guess, let the babies have their bottles for the most part, let high-IQ people be high-IQ people, it doesn’t hurt anyone, except for a few cases. Those involved in IQ fraud, the fraud is pretty transparent.

Most of the high-IQ lying is some desperate asshole who is 25 and going to undergraduate parties at his school. That guy finds a freshman girl and says, “Oh, people don’t understand me. I have a 205 IQ. I graduated high school at age 5.” It’s that abject bullshit. There are more sophisticated attempts, but not that much more. Because the payoffs are pretty low. Even lower than getting a hand job from a freshman girl, the end.

Cole: “It’s hard to be right.” — Richard Feynman

Jacobsen: What would you define as fraudulent activity in a high-IQ community or an individual?

Rosner: Making claims that you know aren’t supported by your performance on tests.

Cole: Fraud takes many forms just as it does in common law. Because of the Internet, tests with fixed questions are particularly vulnerable to cheating.

May: I have nothing to add.

Jacobsen: What would you define as messianic posing in a similar regard?

Rosner: If you end up with a cult, that’s messianic posing.

Cole: The common language definition of messianic behavior will serve. 

May: I have nothing to add.

Jacobsen: Similarly, what about criminal behaviour?

Rosner: If you end up in jail for the rest of your life, if the FBI has a thick dossier on you because you are considered a potential threat in certain ways, that’s criminal behaviour. The FBI has dossiers on lots of people because, historically, the FBI has done good things and asshole things.

So, if they have a dossier on you, because you’re a legitimate psycho who has the potential to do bodily harm to people for some weird political reason, then there you go.

Cole: Again I have nothing to add here to the common language definition of criminal behavior. 

May: I have nothing to add.

Jacobsen: On the Mega Test, why was the three interpenetrating cubes problem seen as the most difficult?

Rosner: It is widely agreed that the three interpenetrating cubes problem was the hardest problem on the test. So, the problem that is agreed upon as likely being the correct answer has not, as far as I know, been proven to be the correct answer.

Interestingly, you can look it up. It depends on what shit is online. But at various times since the ‘90s, it has been agreed upon that the correct answer is floating out there. But you can’t be sure that you’ve found the consensus correct answer.

But the figure, the geometric figure, that corresponds to the consensus correct answer can be found in popular culture, but I won’t tell you where.

Cole: It’s the only problem on the test where the answer that Ron accepts has not been proven. There are a few of these on the Titan.

May: It was the certainly most difficult, but my spatial ability is not sufficiently high to understand why this is so.

Jacobsen: Above 4 standard deviations above the norm, why should there be more scrutiny more than any other cutoff?

Rosner: Isn’t there some claim that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”? You could argue that because claiming to have one of the world’s highest IQs gets you more than claiming to have a 120 IQ.

In practical terms, not so often, it can get you on a quiz show. It can get you on the cover of Esquire magazine. It can get you interviewed. It can get you on TV. It kind of got me laid once. I was going to get laid anyway. But it was part of that package that got me laid, I guess.

Cole: A credible high range score requires credible high range test questions, which are hard to formulate and norm.

May: I have nothing to add.

Jacobsen: What was the hardest IQ test you’ve ever taken in the high-range? What lesson can be learned for test-makers from this?

Rosner: I say that I’ve had a lot of success, but I’d say that I’ve had the most difficulty with Cooijmans’ tests. Because he brings in stuff from a lot of areas. I don’t want to say too much about his tests because he doesn’t want people talking about his tests and helping other people.

But by the time the Mega Test had been published in Omni, it had been through a number of revisions with hinky problems getting knocked out or revised until they were clear and bullet-proof. The answers were tight. I think Cooijmans talks about the pleasure of when an answer clicks into place. That click of satisfaction of when you know you found the answer.

I would say that on some of Cooijmans’ problems. The click is, maybe, not as loud as on some Hoeflin problems. On Cooijmans’ problems, you can find some really good answers that aren’t as good as the intended answer. That’s, maybe, the mark of one type of really good ultra-high-IQ test.

That there are stopping points. On multiple choice tests, those are called distractors. There are answers among the choices that seem right for various reasons if you’re taking desperate stabs at an answer.

On high-IQ tests, you can come up with answers that make a lot of sense. But do they make as much sense as the intended answer? No. But you’ve fallen for an inferior answer. On tough tests, a lot of problems on hard tests are finding the signal among the noise.

I’m writing a book in which somebody or the recipient of what he thinks is a coded message, thinks that it is a true message because it is based on the first letters of four consecutive sentences. That spell out a word.

The odds that this would happen by chance are 26 to the 6^th power, which is 676 squared, which is 400,000 to 1. Then you have to knock that down because there are a zillion four-letter words. So, anyway, the odds are tens of thousands to one that it’s not a coded message, especially since it is specific to the character situation.

So, the character reasons that it is likely a true signal. And on a tough IQ problem, you’d like the numerical coincidences to have an unlikelihood of, at least, 1 in a 1,000. When you look at a number sequence, you see a pattern. Then you say, “What are the odds that this pattern would arise by chance?”

On some super-hard IQ problems, there are more than one pattern to be found. Again, you have to ask yourself, “Was this intentional or accidental?” A tough-ass IQ problem really pushes the limit in finding the signal among the noise.

Cole: The only high range test I took was the Mega. 

May: The Mega Test and the L.A.I.T. are the only high range tests I’ve ever taken.
I did not distinguish myself on the latter.

Jacobsen: Is IQ declining in importance now?

Rosner: IQ as IQ is declining in importance because it is a product of the middle of the 20^th century when people really believed in it and used it to skip kids a grade, or not, to put them in gifted classes, get admission to magnet schools.

At some point, probably in the ‘50s, you might be able to get laid by your IQ. Since debunked, it has a greasy feeling about it, weirdo, creepazoid. The Cal. State schools, today, decided to get rid of the ACT and SAT altogether and the SAT is an IQ surrogate.

They decided it is not helpful, not worth the shit people go through to prepare for the tests. We can see enough about a student without some IQ surrogate in their admission packet. I’d say intelligence is increasing in importance because we are tiptoeing up to artificial intelligence.

That when we talk about AI – and AI is a misnomer right now; AI means “machine learning.” Eventually, AI will mean “Artificial Intelligence.” We will need ways to mathematicize and to come up with metrics of the power of thought in brains and in other stuff.

So, old school IQ declining; new school AI shit increasing.

Cole: IQ seems to be about as important now as it was when I was young. The SAT has some problems because it has become easy to improve a score via tutoring, but that is being addressed.

May: There is a theoretical possibility that Nature, specifically natural selection might not be entirely “politically correct.” Theoretically there could be differences among human groups that evolved under different conditions. E.g., If only females could bear children, then males would be the expendable ‘gender’. A small number of healthy males could impregnate a large number of females and the group would survive. A large number of males, if males did not bear children, and a small number of females would not allow the group to survive. Hence, there could be more variability among males, including cognitive variability, because males would be more expendable, than among females, i.e., there would be more male ‘geniuses’ and more male idiots.
Fortunately we now realize that there are no biological differences between males and females. Gender is a purely social construct. We now realize that men can menstruate and have babies too, if given a chance. The only important differences are among large numbers of pronouns, all referring to identical nouns.

Footnotes

[1] According to some semi-reputable sources gathered in a listing here, Rick G. Rosner may have among America’s, North America’s, and the world’s highest measured IQs at or above 190 (S.D. 15)/196 (S.D. 16) based on several high range test performances created by Christopher Harding, Jason Betts, Paul Cooijmans, and Ronald Hoeflin. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writers Guild Awards and Emmy nominations, and was titled 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Directory with the main “Genius” listing here.

He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmys, The Grammys, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He worked as a bouncer, a nude art model, a roller-skating waiter, and a stripper. In a television commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the “World’s Smartest Man.” The commercial was taken off the air after Subway sandwiches issued a cease-and-desist. He was named “Best Bouncer” in the Denver Area, Colorado, by Westwood Magazine.

Rosner spent much of the late Disco Era as an undercover high school student. In addition, he spent 25 years as a bar bouncer and American fake ID-catcher, and 25+ years as a stripper, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. Errol Morris featured Rosner in the interview series entitled First Person, where some of this history was covered by Morris. He came in second, or lost, on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? over a flawed question and lost the lawsuit. He won one game and lost one game on Are You Smarter Than a Drunk Person? (He was drunk). Finally, he spent 37+ years working on a time-invariant variation of the Big Bang Theory.

Currently, Rosner sits tweeting in a bathrobe (winter) or a towel (summer). He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, dog, and goldfish. He and his wife have a daughter. You can send him money or questions at LanceVersusRick@Gmail.Com, or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn, or see him on YouTube.

[2] Chris Cole is a longstanding member of the Mega Society.

[3] Richard May (“May-Tzu”/“MayTzu”/“Mayzi”) is a Member of the Mega Society based on a qualifying score on the Mega Test (before 1995) prior to the compromise of the Mega Test and Co-Editor of Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society. In self-description, May states: “Not even forgotten in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), I’m an Amish yuppie, born near the rarified regions of Laputa, then and often, above suburban Boston. I’ve done occasional consulting and frequent Sisyphean shlepping. Kafka and Munch have been my therapists and allies. Occasionally I’ve strived to descend from the mists to attain the mythic orientation known as having one’s feet upon the Earth. An ailurophile and a cerebrotonic ectomorph, I write for beings which do not, and never will, exist — writings for no one. I’ve been awarded an M.A. degree, mirabile dictu, in the humanities/philosophy, and U.S. patent for a board game of possible interest to extraterrestrials. I’m a member of the Mega Society, the Omega Society and formerly of Mensa. I’m the founder of the Exa Society, the transfinite Aleph-3 Society and of the renowned Laputans Manqué. I’m a biographee in Who’s Who in the Brane World. My interests include the realization of the idea of humans as incomplete beings with the capacity to complete their own evolution by effecting a change in their being and consciousness. In a moment of presence to myself in inner silence, when I see Richard May’s non-being, ‘I’ am. You can meet me if you go to an empty room.” Some other resources include Stains Upon the Silence: something for no one, McGinnis Genealogy of Crown Point, New York: Hiram Porter McGinnis, Swines List, Solipsist Soliloquies, Board Game, Lulu blog, Memoir of a Non-Irish Non-Jew, and May-Tzu’s posterous.

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/01/27

*Further resource hyperlinks at the end of the interview.*

Sorina Kiev is a restauranteur in Kyiv, Ukraine. We met after a meal at one of Kiev’s restaurants, which Remus Cernea and I had during the final city visit in a multi-city ‘tourism of war’ trip through Ukraine from November 22 to December 5 in 2023. Our travels started from Chisinau airport in Moldova, then on to Odesa, Mykolaiv, almost to Kherson, back to Mykolaiv, to Dnipro, to Kharkiv, to Kyiv, and back to Chisinau before parting ways. Kiev and Cernea are friends. Remus is a prominent humanist activist and independent war correspondent with Newsweek Romania. This is a continuation of a comprehensive series on a war following in the footsteps of a similar educational series on Israel-Palestine a couple years ago through Canadian Atheist.

Here Sorina and I talk about the business side of civilian life during war. 

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are here with Sorina Kiev. So, you and your husband are restauranteurs in Kyiv, Ukraine. We met in early December when I was visiting several cities for some independent journalism throughout Ukraine. So, if that’s okay, I wanted to touch on the pre-war context, the early war context, and the current context concerning living in a city and running businesses.

Sorina Kiev: Yes, we are the co-managers/co-owners, and I, together with Emine, am a co-managing partner. So, the two families are the owners, and we, with Mika and also Kemal and Rustam, are involved in managing. We are two families managing it.

Jacobsen: You have three restaurants, correct?

Kiev: Yes.

Jacobsen: Before the full invasion on February 24th, 2022, what was the context in Kyiv for basically regular civilians and business owners such as yourself?

Kiev: Overall, there was much less discussion in the media and the public about the imminent invasion. I usually follow international media and Romanian. I have a couple of online sources that I constantly check, and if in CNN or other international sources. In Romania, the discussion started around October. I think that there are lots of troops and so on. The Ukrainian media was barely reporting it. I mean, early on, there was almost nothing. Then, some vague reports came slowly, and even in January, there needed to be more reporting about that. I remember because one week before the invasion, I called a meeting with our managers to discuss our reaction, what we could do, and how we organize it so it is manageable. Everybody was sort of looking at me a bit, wondering what the point of such a meeting was.

We said, “You go in the basement,” “You take some reserves quickly…” etc. So, we made a scenario of extreme cases which afterwards occurred. Also, I took a photo on my phone because PrivatBank appeared to have some sort of a ‘what to do in emergencies,’ I thought it was pretty cool, and I thought we would also work with it. So, there was some sort of preparation, but it was minimal.

Jacobsen: And from that first day of the invasion on February 24th to when the Russian front line, as you told me over the lovely restaurant dinner with remus, which was 5 km from Kyiv, which is within artillery fire. What was the context there for mobilizing as a civilian to just provide food and a sort of safe house in some ways for other civilians?

Kiev: A small correction, 5 kilometres is from where we left, which is at the outskirts of the town. To the restaurant, it’s more like 20 up to 23 kilometres. So, not that it’s a big difference, but it’s slightly further. The question again, please?

Jacobsen: Sure. As you told me, basically, everything in terms of food production, going down into the basement, keeping some staff, some accidentally having to stay and being very helpful, and then I believe people are staying and sleeping in the restaurant. So, this is sort of providing temporary housing as well as food; I don’t know if it was 24/7, but food and beds for free for civilians, these sort of humanitarian efforts on the part of just a regular co-owner of restaurants.

Kiev: Well, indeed. At the time, a minimum of 10 workers lived in our restaurant. So, we organized the sleep in the basement. We have a hall and part of our kitchen in the basement. So, they were using these parts, which are their basement. Initially, some people were trapped because they couldn’t get out of Kyiv and were living in all three restaurants. There were two restaurants in this location where we met, so we closed the other two, and we were just periodically replenishing whatever was finishing at the one where they were staying. There were constantly around ten people who were working to provide food for voluntaries, for the army, for the police, for Teroborona, for people in the Metro because there is a Metro exit right next to the restaurant. Some 100 metres away and staying with them since the first day. People simply stayed there because everything was so scary and closed. So, there was no possibility of buying anything. They started taking sandwiches to people. I mean, everybody was doing that; it’s not like we were the only ones.

One of our sous chefs was there, and then he started organizing and producing food for volunteers; they were the main carriers.

Jacobsen: And personally, for yourself, how did you feel during that period?

Kiev: So, we escaped with Emine. Kemal and Rustem, they came back. So, the four of us travelled westwards towards Czernowitz. Then, after we arrived at Czernowitz, we stayed the night, and then Rustem and Kemal returned to Kyiv by train. So, basically, on the 26th, they were back. They spent one night at the house, then the next night, they took their things and moved into the restaurant.

Jacobsen: As this period developed, when the Russians were 23 km from the restaurant and 5 km from your home, how long did this period last before the Russians, the front lines, started to get pushed back sufficiently where people started to feel at least marginally safer?

Kiev: We can check the exact dates, but it’s the end of March. It was for one month. We opened very early when it was more or less safe because many people were coming and asking; mostly, they were the soldiers and the Tero. I mean, everything was improvised, so they didn’t have proper kitchens, and they didn’t have proper places to stay. So, everybody was living in some sort of temporary whatever, so it was very difficult. I remember Kemal trying hard to open up so that people could feel that everything was okay. I can search and see; I will send you some photos because they sent us the photos, we were full from the first day. Maybe another one or two places were also open, but nothing. So, everything was closed. So, it got full quickly because everybody was in touch with everybody, and it was very quick for the news to spread that there was something open, and then many people came. The only time when we cooked Ukrainian borshch [Laughs].

Jacobsen: [Laughs] For those, this is a parenthetical statement for everyone. My lovely colleague, Remus Cernia from Romania, planned a trip for me as a Canadian and a much younger journalist, going through all these cities in Ukraine together. This was his idea and pitch, and I had the gumption to go through this plan of his, which was a fabulous one, and I’m eternally grateful to him for it. He was constantly pumping up this borscht at Sorina’s restaurant, so he kept asking the poor waitress about borscht when he got there. And it must have been a slight misunderstanding, and she said, “Oh yeah, I know him,” And then he’s like, “So, what kind of borscht do you have? She’s like, “We don’t have borscht,” so she gave some close substitutes. So, this is the whole thing and, thus, the humorous commentary from Sorina.

When you’re sort of managing staff in that war context, not just the sort of the feeling for yourself, sort of younger people that are working for you; how do you keep the morale together when they’re working around the clock, they’re living in temporary housing and they don’t know what the outcome early stage of the war is going to be at that point, whether the Russians going to be pushing further into the city or if they’re going to be capture/ killed or if the Russians are going to be pushed back so they can have a sense of more safety?

Kiev: There are lots of things to talk about here. Our major contact hub was one of our managers. Usually, he’s on the spot with everybody, with the audience, with the guests, with some of the institutions. He even organized the evacuation of some families from Irpin, which was really like on the verge of being under occupation, because they waited and waited. At some point, some bomb fell in front of the block, and they decided to eventually leave, but already no car was driving in Irpin. There, he is talked to somebody from Teroborona, with whom they were working. I mean, Teroborona was doing a lot of stuff, so they were also helping volunteers to move from here to there and to deliver, and so he got to Teroborona, and then they went with two cars because it was a big family. Then they evacuated them literally under fire.

So, many stories of people getting trapped here and there and staying with the family wanting to come. That’s why they needed to keep working: we could reorganize the team faster than elsewhere. Even now, it was really like the coagulating event because we have three places where people work. Before, there were people who wouldn’t know other people from other restaurants, right? But like this, they worked together and got into this extreme solidarity in Kyiv. We were trying to help everybody. Many people got trapped here and there were these evacuation lines, and people who work in the restaurant put them in contact. I mean, there is still a big group of people in Germany who are working together. There were two weddings in Germany. Now, soon, there will be a baptism. So, it’s a lot of stories and a lot of not-so-happy stories.

The fact that people were able to communicate and have these private channels, it’s like when certain people spread out everybody went home to relatives, to friends, and to wherever they thought it’s safer and then via communicating you sort of figure out what is going on there, what is going on here and at this time it’s easier to believe what your friends are telling you than what it’s written in the media or other public reports because that is already tricky.

Jacobsen: Did you happen to lose anyone who worked for you to the war?

Kiev: Yeah, unfortunately, we did. We have one who passed away during a car crash. So, there was a horrible car crash with a bus which was hit by a car and then hit a gas benzene system like a transporter, and then it caught fire, and there were lots of people. She was trying to go to Poland. That was sort of, I think, in April or May.

Jacobsen: And then was out of 2022 or 2023?

Kiev: 2022, and then we have another former hostess who got killed in the bombing in Kramatorsk. She was working there, and they bombed the pizza place, and she was walking there.

Jacobsen: And how did the other staff and yourself, the other owners, react to hearing that news, if they heard it? I assume they did.

Kiev: We heard it because it’s basically via social media. The first waiter died in the car crash; it was really painful because her mother was also working with us, and she was working for a long time with us, and she was like 22.

Jacobsen: Oh! I mean, her life just started.

Kiev: Her boyfriend was also working with us. It’s completely devastating. It’s the sort of life now for Ukraine. Everybody has somebody on the front.

Jacobsen: When I arrived in Chisinau, Remus and I went from Chisinau airport to Odesa and Mykolaiv. We got very close to Kherson, but at one of the last checkpoints of the last checkpoints, we were turned around and went back to Mykolaiv. Then we went to Dnipro, Kharkiv, and then to Kyiv and then back to Chisinau, and in each city, anyone I talked to, as you noted, either had lost someone or had someone actively in the front. It is such a common story, and people don’t know the context of what Ukrainians live under right now. Unless, they go there because there are subtle aspects of curfews: 12:00 p.m. till 5:00 a.m. in many cities. There are air raid alarms pretty much every day in every city we went to, a lot of the time in the early morning. So, the idea of just a regular schedule, let alone regular sleep, are ways the public is, and I do mean the civilians, being terrorized by this war whether missile attacks or drone attacks constantly. When we were there, I believe the largest drone attack was struck on Ukraine with 75 drones or something to that point in the war; this was between November 22nd and December 5th.

So, what are some common themes or aspects of life for people living under war even when the front line is not necessarily close anymore? I don’t think people realize the pressure is just for regular civilians.

Kiev: So, it’s human nature that you try to cope and move on; it’s common sense. Step by step, you go on. It takes quite an effort for everything to work because it’s not easy. Initially, there were problems with the gas and supply and incoming whatever products were needed for living. Now, everything is settled. All economic, political, and social life cycles are insured with everything they need to work, but all these interruptions are extremely disturbing. I remember the worst was May 2023, when every night of that month we had from 1, 2, and 3 a.m. until early morning, 6-7 a.m., the air raid alarms. It was horrible. I mean, hearing bombings and anti-air artillery, it was tough, and you could see everybody that it’s very tiring and it’s very difficult to go on like this. On the other hand, it was morally supporting people, the fact that especially in Kyiv, there was a very high rate of air defence success that was preventing the bombs from reaching their targets, which was very good. But overall, I think people’s health is taking the whole weight of the trouble. Now, we have one of our colleagues with a heart attack. Even though, she had a very difficult operation, they are putting her out of the hospital because there is no place.

So, they are so overloaded that even in pretty difficult cases, they have to send people home because they don’t have enough places, and it’s not epidemic. It’s simply heart disease. So, this is all basically based on stress. You won’t see it because everybody’s trying to keep up a happy and smiley face, but I think the people take the toll in really weird ways with heart problems and other insults. They are very common now. Also, the incidence of cancer is very high here. Overall, the stress is putting everybody in the most extreme conditions.

Jacobsen: When I was travelling to each of these cities with Remus, I am not a clinical psychologist or a psychiatrist; however, as far as I could tell, several people had clear signs of PTSD, to your point. And I think sleep deprivation as well is also a factor in heart disease, cancer risk, and so on. And with these air raid alarms, I don’t think people understand. Every night, from 2 a.m. to 3:00 a.m., we walk to our next bus to go to the next city with the trip at 9:50 a.m. in one city and at 9:30 a.m. we hear the air raid alarm and then maybe only a couple kilometres away, all we hear is Boom Boom, and people were like, “Oh, okay” and then just started continuing to walk nonchalantly, casually. We went “Okay,” we walked to the next bus, waited for the bus, took the bus, went on our way to the next city and then started that routine again.

You would be more intimately aware of this. The Russians are targeting civilian infrastructure, fine art museums, cathedrals, UNESCO sites, residential buildings, administrative buildings, schools, and so on, without any military targets around at all. So, I would assume as civilians, this is even more impactful in terms of hearing those air raid alarms in the sense of constant lack of safety is a feeling.

Kiev: Yeah, I think you just adapt. For instance, there are nights when you stop hearing the air raid alarm, continue sleeping, and stop reacting so strongly, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect you. Kids are also quite funny; I remember in the middle of the year, the main teacher of my youngest son, who is in the sixth grade, was writing a really angry letter to a group of parents. She wrote there, “I can’t believe these kids. When there is an air raid alarm, they start applauding!” Of course, I mean, kids are kids. They will always be happy because they don’t have class. It’s kids; what do you expect? As always, people have some sort of mechanism that protects them, and they adapt, and that’s what we try to do.

I think a major thing is Zelensky’s role; he took very seriously mobilizing, supporting, and showing the right way. So, all this democratic speech and caring about everybody, about each and everyone, about men, women, and kids, I wouldn’t have expected, and it was one thing that made the difference. Even now, he keeps giving a speech every evening. I don’t think it’s easy, I think it’s very difficult, but it is important because it addresses today’s problems, and making it every day keeps you going. It was at the beginning, and it’s even now. I think there are lots of people who are still following his speeches.

Jacobsen: What are the typical contents of those daily speeches?

Kiev: He speaks about what happened today: I did this, I did that, we need to do this, we need to do that, etc. It’s very down to earth and communicates the main points you must discuss. There are a lot of people saying a lot of stuff, but I think without that, Ukraine and Ukrainians wouldn’t have managed the way they did. Now, I think there is a really strong attack on all the public features in Ukraine, and I think this is also some sort of Russian attempt to break up the morale and the support of the leaders in Ukraine. I mean, it feels like it starts a really difficult time. Hopefully, it will not be that difficult.

Jacobsen: You mentioned paying attention to the international media, including CNN. Is that common among many Ukrainians, or is it more uncommon? Are people too focused on survival at the moment?

Kiev: No, I don’t know. At least 10% of your available time is spent on searching the news, that’s for sure. Everybody learned that the more varied your sources, the more chances you have of getting the right information or the closest to reality, truth. There are lots of people who are checking Ukrainian and some other sources. Some groups are like local or more interest-oriented groups that provide information. Many people, for instance, check the city hall groups, Telegram, or Instagram. I think people pay much more attention to institutions because now they’re the only credible sources of information available.

Jacobsen: What do the international media, on a theme base, tend to get wrong and tend to get right about the facts of the war?

Kiev: Oh, I think certain interpretations are not in place. I mean, there is a way of showing news in Ukraine and telling it, like on the one hand is Ukrainians who say this, and on the other hand is the Russians who say this, but you can’t make it as if it’s equally true or equally guilty parts. There is no equality there. There is one party that attacks and another party that defends. I mean, there cannot be equality in any way.

Jacobsen: I agree with you. I’ve gone over the central documents of the United Nations around the time of the full-scale invasion, including one of the first letters written by the Ambassador from the United Nations, the permanent Ambassador to Ukraine. There were votes on these resolutions condemning the war. They are specifying a condemnation of Russian aggression against Ukraine, demanding the withdrawal of the troops, etc. The vote was overwhelmingly against the Russian aggression against Ukraine. So, it’s framed as Russian aggression against Ukraine, not the reverse, and the overwhelming majority of the member states of the United Nations, in my review of the documents, are against that aggression and so voted for resolutions condemning the actions of the Russian Federation under President Vladimir Putin. So, certainly, I agree.

So, any framing against that would not be in proportion to the evidence of that voting record at the United Nations. So, the majority of the world agrees with the Ukrainian perspective of Russian aggression because it fits the facts.

Kiev: Yes, but all the time you have the news that Russians attacked and bombed, blah blah blah and then it comes, “Yes, but the Ukrainians also did this.” The underlying message that the news gives is that they are not saying that Ukrainians are guilty or anything, but the way the news is generally presented shows that there will be equal participation in the conflict or something like that. For instance, there was a very cool response to the question, “Let’s negotiate the peace.” It’s like, “What negotiations? Just leave, and there will be no war.” I mean, what to negotiate?

Jacobsen: So, you’re pointing to a problem in media generally of not necessarily a false equivalency but a sense of trying to provide balance in contexts where the style of balance is disproportionate to the evidence where you need to present more than one side; however you don’t need to provide a 50/50 balancing of that equation. You have to make it proportional to the evidence where there might be a couple of crimes and human rights abuses. However, the vast majority are on one side versus the other, especially when in a defensive position rather than an aggressor position.

Kiev: Yeah.

Jacobsen: I just want to be mindful of your time because you did say 1 hour, and it’s past 1:00 now, your time.

Kiev: Yeah, I’m leaving for my house for the winter holidays, and somehow everything is gathered, and it’s really difficult now to organize everything. If you have more questions, I could also answer them in writing, which will be less constraining regarding meeting and being online. Maybe afterwards we can talk.

Jacobsen: Certainly. So, let me say thank you very much for your time today. I know you’re busy, in the middle of a war and the middle of a holiday season coming up. So, I appreciate you taking the time for this interview today.

Kiev: At night, they threw maybe ten drones again, and I couldn’t fall asleep until almost 2:00 a.m. when the air raid alarm was over.

Jacobsen: I believe you; I mean, the entire time Remus and I were travelling, I was constantly sleep deprived, not simply because we travelled every day and a half to two days to new cities but also because of the air raid alarms. I wasn’t used to that. Even when returning to Canada, a safe country, when I hear certain things at the horse farm where I work, I recall the air raid alarms, or I might miss seeing something, and I think it’s a Ukrainian soldier because those memories stick. I’m glad I went, but I sympathize and agree after experiencing that firsthand because you don’t know. You don’t know unless you’ve experienced it, and that’s life for you right now, too; that’s the other thing.

Kiev: Yeah, hopefully, it will be over sooner than later.

Jacobsen: I agree.

Kiev: Okay, let’s stay in touch. I hope I was at least a little bit helpful.

Jacobsen: You were very helpful. Civilian perspective is very important in this. Thank you very much, Sorina.

—

Further Internal Resources (Chronological, yyyy/mm/dd):

Humanist

Humanists International, Russian Federation, Ukraine, and the United Nations (2024/01/08)

Personal

The Long Happenstance of Iceland and Copenhagen (2023/12/09)

Romanian

Remus Cernea on Independent War Correspondence in Ukraine (2023/08/25)

Ukrainian

Ms. Oleksandra Romantsova on Ukraine and Putin (2023/09/01)

Oleksandra Romantsova on Prigozhin and Amnesty International (2023/12/03)

Dr. Roman Nekoliak on International Human Rights and Ukraine (2023/12/23)

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/01/26

It’s the rolling tumbleweed wisdom of long-time Canadians lucky enough to see their 70s and beyond.

It’s the wisdom of every old woman who I grew up with; it’s the woman who would be quoted as saying, “A man is just a woman’s strategy for making other women.”

It’s the genius of the woman when asked, obtusely, if men like her, replies, which men and to ask them.

Life is harder for women, particularly for women who bear children. As the bearing is not only gestation and birth, but bearing the weight of childcare, every human being, now at least, came to the world through a woman.

Most human beings came to the world on a paved road of care built by a woman with much of the road construction materials provided by men and women. Generally, though, the architecture of early care is made a woman’s responsibility. It’s 24/7 — conservative and liberal commentators agree on this.

Given this experiential burden, wisdom emerges. This is the woman’s wisdom H.L. Mencken defended, in spite of his sexist attitudes at times. He defended the truth of the superiority of women won in experience. A wisdom few men can match throughout life and to the end, if the man lives as long as the woman at all.

Margaret Atwood’s genius lies in this wisdom born by experience and the transference of experience in the honest perusal of the historical record. Atwood understands. She sees patterns and integrates them for larger patterns. Let’s call this patternizing.

The degree of this is apparent in the resonance with so many women worldwide aware of this Canadian’s works. Atwood, certainly, is in her final chapter of her life barring some medical miracle for humanity in life extension.

Atwood’s genius is perspective, or rather perspectives. Writers know this sense of patternizing of the minds of others. The ‘bad feminist’ is not, and not in the for or against categories.

She is in the humanist category of understanding the world around her, projecting this in learned fantasy to readers, and letting them decide on the world wanted by them.

Just words, her words after words after words are her power. The choice is ours and she is a historical conduit: the “Antiquated Scribbler.”

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/01/26

Takudzwa Mazwienduna is a member of Young Humanists Zimbabwe. Here he talks about Young Humanists Zimbabwe.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: How is the remote work and travelling schedule working for you, now?

Takudzwa Mazwienduna: It is very flexible, and there is a good work/ life balance. I love that I can manage to travel and experience different adventures, go to new places, meet new people and learn about new cultures, all while I work on my own time. 

Jacobsen: What is the basis of the fictional book based on the exploration of the moral decay of religion in Africa today? I will add. It’s not simply Arab-Muslim colonial history and European-Christian colonial history. Even the earliest emancipated countries, like Ghana, are being attacked in a form of neo-colonial Christian evangelism, they’re targeting the legal system to enforce homophobic agendas, e.g., the Ugandan and Ghanaian anti-LGBTI+ bills.

Mazwienduna: The book looks into how authoritarianism is a feature of post colonial African culture, and explores how monotheistic, totalitarian religions like Christianity take advantage of this. The recent revelation of TB Joshua’s cult is very telling; a great example of how something like this plays out. 

Jacobsen: What was the startup out of the State of Florida from the new girlfriend and you?

Mazwienduna: We run a Virtual Assistant company in the real estate industry remotely. We have real estate companies as clients who outsource their property management to us. 

Jacobsen: How is Montenegro? I’ve never been there.

Mazwienduna: Montenegro is a very conservative country, but we like that it is very quiet. We haven’t stayed around much but we have set it as our primary base, buying property there has many benefits. On the 18th of this month we are flying to an island in the Philippines called Dumaguete. The last time we were there we were in Metropolitan Manila, an urban jungle. Now we want to explore island life, many digital nomads have recommended this for us.  

Jacobsen: How long has the podcast been around now? What are some of the topics and themes covered for the secular and humanist audience of Zimbabwe in those media?

Mazwienduna: The podcast has been around for 3 months and they have covered secularism and cultural dynamics in Zimbabwe. The insights on that podcast are groundbreaking, and the podcast has the potential to become mainstream in the country. Zimbabwe is at a point where the majority of the population is ready to have these kind of discussions. 

Jacobsen: Obviously, the biggest change is the development of Young Humanists Zimbabwe from the Humanist Society of Zimbabwe. What have been the main forms of collaboration and cooperation? Was the name change and incorporation to fit the name changes of IHEYO to Young Humanists International and IHEU to Humanists International? I noticed several organizations like this now. Ironically, Humanist Canada was already like this, or made its change before those others. 

Mazwienduna: The original name of the Alliance was PICH Zimbabwe, but the we changed the name to align more with Humanists International. 

Jacobsen: I like the idea of no particuclalry problematic issues for Zimbabwean secualrists other than cooperation as the mode now, especially as Uganda and Ghana have anti-LGBTI bills trying to be forced through their legislatures.

Mazwienduna: The Zimbabwean government is more concerned about the consolidation of power rather than persecuting minorities. The problems in Zimbabwe have more to do with politics and economics rather than secularism. The repressive laws that have been introduced in recent years like the Patriotic Act are mostly meant to discourage political opposition.  

Jacobsen: I suppose the development of Zimbabwe and other countries will reflect the rest of the world now. Everyone simply competing for global intellectual talent, which, increasingly, is comprised of young highly educated, well-qualified women more than the men if simply taking the last couple decades of postsecondary institution attendance. What are the areas Zimbabwe most needs to catch up with the rest of the world?

Mazwienduna: I think cyber technology infrastructure is where Zimbabwe needs to catch up. As a remote worker, I could have stayed in Zimbabwe with a much lower cost of living, but that would be career suicide because there are 18 hour long power cuts everyday and the fastest internet is around 2mb/s. Zimbabweans are missing out on opportunities because of it. 

Jacobsen: How is this flight of talent from Zimbabwe going to impact its economic and social development for the rest of the 2020s?

Mazwienduna: The flight of talent started in 2001 when our economy started going downhill after the famous land reform program. This accelerated the decline of the economy, and subsequently the standard of living. So it is not anything new to Zimbabwe, it has been going on for 22 years and the country has been rock bottom for a while because of it. Most Zimbabweans migrate to the UK, Australia and South Africa, and there have been huge Zimbabwean communities in these three countries since the early 2000s.  

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time, Takudzwa.

Mazwienduna: It’s always a pleasure Scott! 

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