cognitive generalists, Erik Haereid, Rick Rosner, Science, Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Ask A Genius (or Two): Conversation with Erik Haereid and Rick Rosner on Cognitive Generalists (Part Ten)
Individual Publication Date: April 22, 2020
Rick Rosner and I conduct a conversational series entitled Ask A Genius on a variety of subjects through In-Sight Publishing on the personal and professional website for Rick. 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. Erik Haereid earned a score at 185, on the N-VRA80. He is an expert in Actuarial Sciences. Both scores on a standard deviation of 15. A sigma of 6.00+ (or ~6.13 or 6.20) for Rick – a general intelligence rarity of 1 in 1,009,976,678+ (with some at rarities of 1 in 2,314,980,850 or 1 in 3,527,693,270) – and ~5.67 for Erik – a general intelligence rarity of 1 in 136,975,305. If a higher general intelligence score, then the greater the variability in, and margin of error in, the general intelligence scores because of the greater rarity in the population. This amounts to a joint interview or conversation with Erik Haereid, Rick Rosner, and myself.
Keywords: cognitive generalists, Erik Haereid, Rick Rosner, Science, Scott Douglas Jacobsen.
Ask A Genius (or Two): Conversation with Erik Haereid and Rick Rosner on Cognitive Generalists (Part Ten)[1],[2]*
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Something that I want to dive into more. The idea of something discussed by Rick and me for a long time. We've talked about something dealing with an assumption coming from digital physics with the universe as an information system. Digital physics deals, probably, with the general idea of a computational universe. I do not want to lay an undeserved claim or stake in something developed for 35 or more years by you. However, I made contributions in the efforts in some developments in this area with you, how ever loose and recent. You have respected this or noted this in statements of "we" and "our," and so on. Nonetheless, Informational Cosmology deals with large-scale dynamic implications of this computational view on things, more as a philosophy of physics than a formal physics with the minimal mathematics infused at present. One school of thought in psychology comes from computation, as in the nervous system as an integrated computer-like system. The same general ideas seem to permeate different fields. The human nervous system, as a material and organic object, processes data, in a broad sense of "data."
Now, when we look at the ways in which human beings process information – both in a general capacity and in faulty/crummy ways too, this comes to another idea reflected in some of the thoughts expressed by Rick and me over time. In that, we have the general capacity of human beings as computational entities. We think about stuff. We crunch information produced internally and derived from sensory input from the outside world. We're naturally empiricists with sensory information and rationalists with the ability to think; an endowment from evolution to the human species barring catastrophic cognitive deficits or injuries. The human organism is a naturalistic, integrated system of sensory input and thinking. We're evolved, though. (I like the phrase, "There is no governor anywhere.") We're embodied. We poop. We pee. We drink and eat. We dance, maybe, and love, for most. We have sex. We follow the passions of life, of the moment, and of whimsical thoughts or emotions. I like the example of one of the longest-running iPhone developments ever over 3,500,000,000 years, or more.
Rick, you've been developing these ideas and working on them far longer than me. However, half of a decade or more, we have been working together, writing together, talking, and so on, in the development of a variety of projects. One of those comes in the form of Cognitive Thrift or a loose series of premises about the economy of thought, i.e., the economics of thought in an embodied, evolved computational system while living in an active and dynamic world in which choices, actionable computations, need implementation. Mental resources are finite, non-infinite. You made the argument, earlier, about geniuses, potentially, having more cognitive resources. This seems to build on the notion of Cognitive Thrift. If one has a still-finite while larger-than-others set of mental resources, then an individual can change their internal and external environments more than others and probably with a wider range of possibilities and, thus, more idiosyncrasies as well. Intelligence seems as if another consideration for Cognitive Thrift.
In that, an individual can develop the requisite mental resources for the instantiation of a better survivable environment, a cozy place – mentally (cognitive and emotional) and physically, then the selection quality comes into play too. One's resources within a Cognitive Thrift framework implies, in some ways, a better ability to select, make intelligent decisions based on the quality of thought. Some scattered research indicates more intelligent people process information more rapidly, more efficiently in terms of energy use. A Cognitive Thrift perspective on this would imply intelligence as a factor here on two levels. One, the better choices made, by definition the more intelligent choices made, on average, compared to some norm or range with permission for failings or bad choices at times or in particular individuals. Two, the efficient processing of information in choices. Cognitive Thrift becomes two-part, on this particular consider though wider in application, with better choices and efficient processing. Both reflected or correlated with intelligence. In the efficiency of energy consumption, I mean physiologically, neurologically in terms of the energy consumed by the brain.
Rick, you've used, I think, some of these considerations for the view of human beings as generalists. Somehow, we are cognitive generalists and then this becomes reflected in the dominance of physical space on the surface of the Earth. What is a generalist in an ecosystem, in an evolved environment and organism?
Rick Rosner: A generalist is an organism that can exploit a variety of conditions and has the ability to exploit new conditions, which involves the ability to analyze situations using some kind of set of tools that are generally applicable. It is circular. But you can imagine a very niche-adapted lobster who has this one technique for cracking open mussel shells. But put that lobster in any other set of conditions and then the lobster is frickin' lost. You can imagine a more generally adapted lobster who understands the mechanism of shells. So, if presented with a variety of different shells, the lobster can vary its shell-cracking technique because it understands the shell is made of two parts and that it needs to get in between them to parse them, or smash them into something. To take this farther, think about octopuses who have a very good mental toolset, it allows them to understand jars. There are octopuses. If you put them in a jar, and if they figure out how to get their suckers up against the lid of the jar, and then rotate the lid, then they get out of the jar.
There was a story of an octopus annoyed by a light on all night. It was able to project a shot of water at the light to bust the lightbulb. It was a lucky strategy. But the octopus had no idea of how the light worked. It was just trying to do whatever it could. I don't know Octopuses have general toolsets. Some octopuses are good at assuming the general shape and colouring of a bunch of different marine animals for camouflage. All this implies many animals have a mental picture of what they're doing. Along with the mental picture are a set of tools, of concepts, that they can mix and match to go after or address new stuff in their environments. Paul Cooijmans talks about one of the dimensions as the width of the associative horizon or associative width. It is how many different analogies that you can apply to a situation. So, the octopus sees the annoying lightbulb and, at the very least, assigns the light bulb to the category of things that might possibly be addressed with a jet of water. Certainly, the octopus doesn't understand thermal expansion.
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Rosner: Differential thermal expansion in which part of the lightbulb is hot and hit with cold water, and will contract, cracking the lightbulb, wrecking the vacuum, allowing air in, and oxidize the filament and burn the lightbulb out. The octopus only knew a little bit of that. That's being a generalist. One more thing, jokes are, often, applications of generalist-type reasoning. When you come up with a new thing that Donald Trump is like, which is tough, because we've been coming up with jokes, he's been the thing to joke about for almost 4 years now. If you can come up with a new analogy about Trump, then you are halfway to a decent joke.
Erik Haereid: It's about abilities to draw maps and use it to get what you need and want. You could say that consciousness is a result from evolution and expansion, and entities with a certain degree of evolved consciousness are generalists whether we talk about humans, organisms in general, AI or the Universe itself.
This is a perspective: Consciousness is something someone, an entity, owns. Through that it has some kind of value; to someone. Value has to do with motivation and preservation; it's a reason to exist. With no intrinsic meaning, it's the end as a conscious entity. So, every entity that owns a consciousness has a reason to live, organisms or not. If something doesn't have a consciousness and still exist, like a stone, it is a part of a consciousness, e.g., the Universe or human. The stone has no motivation to survive other than as a part of, an information in, a consciousness. Humans could be entities that in addition to be conscious are within a bigger consciousness (e.g. the Universe).
If you exist as unconscious, nothing has meaning to you; then you mean something to others or not. If this is true, then every organism has some kind of consciousness, since organisms seem to have a drive and motivation for life. Conscious entities have a kind of motor or energy that make them act (drive, motivation), and unconscious entities move or change because of forces outside them. Then consciousness becomes an engine with a goal that motivates it, e.g., bacteria then have a small amount of consciousness, and are specialized, driven towards some simple but clear goals.
If you look at consciousness as an information processor, where one goal is constantly to improve and getting closer to some other goals, using new and old information and innate, internal methods (like human logic) to steer the right way, then bacteria have some simple kind of senses (ability to get information), storing-mechanisms and processors. Ants are obviously more complex, dogs quite complex and humans most complex among organisms. You could say that the degree of "generalism" an entity has is proportional with its amount of consciousness. So, humans are quite good generalists. Ants are more like experts or specialists.
Generalists, as I interpret the word, have more opportunities to achieve the best solution, and through that control the environment. Simpler organisms are "specialists", experts; they are extremely good at some few inborn and learned patterns. But when their habitat is threatened, they don't have many choices; they are less adaptable to novel situations than generalists are. They have fewer opportunities changing the environment into what they want than humans have (humans have a larger degree of free will or ability to make things and create situations that fits us).
It's about understanding causes and effects, and about conceptualization. A generalist can draw conclusions from abstractions and transform it into the physical world. One can make logical thoughts about how things could and probably would work, and try it out; make mental images of possible situations and outcomes. This kind of mental abilities increases the probability for success; achieving what you need and want. If you just practice trial and error arbitrarily, until you hit the target, you'll need more trials, energy and time to succeed. The degree of "generalism" is a function of how much and effective one can use that continuously unreliable environment to gain success; getting food, procreation or rest or whatever one's aim is.
Humans are adaptable but not very fast when some "specialists" threaten us, like a dangerous virus. Our brain is a quite slow tool, after all, and our intuition is not that helpful in some critical situations. When we have to react fast, we often use simpler methods to achieve what we want, e.g. escaping. We need time to adapt, and when we get that time it seems that we are the most adaptable species. We have used our brain to develop methods to postpone whatever we need more time to solve; we are good at making temporary solutions.
Simpler organisms have more specialized features, like changing skin-/fur colour after the colour of nature, like white in winter and green in summer to avoid being seen. They can have quite complex strategies for catching their victims, like the spider and the net. But these methods are basically inherited. You can't say that viruses are stupid when they manage to control humanity within days. They are simple but effective. Even though they don't manage to procreate without another organism as helper, they are sort of smart since they overwhelm that organism. Our immune system is not very fast and adaptable, after all. We are big creatures, complex organisms and therefore vulnerable compared to smaller ones.
Humans are kind of not wiser than nature itself. But we seem to be a species that is born to go for that. In many ways, we try to overcome nature, understand it to control it, but maybe that's where we become dummies because we, into some degree, don't respect ourselves as part of that nature. I rather think that our aggression, hunger and drive towards the impossible is our way of gaining the generalist label; increasing our ability to survive.
All organisms have a need for safety; avoid getting damaged, ill or eaten; to establish a fundament to live from. Humans make this more complicated than "specialists". We have bigger demands to stay healthy, safe and motivated. Primary needs like food, shelter and physical protection against enemies are just a few things. You have this Maslow's hierarchy of needs, that suggests which needs we have and how we prioritize them. It's a whole package, and a part of it is to achieve and preserve a feeling of being home. It's like when you see a painting or a movie that makes you feel "right", or when you travel and find a single spot somewhere and get that inner unexplainable peace of being in the right place at the right time. To live optimal lives we need an inner feeling of being at home when we explore.
Jacobsen: What might relate the ideas of intelligence described before for the notion of human beings as generalists, i.e., as cognitive generalists more than physical generalists?
Rosner: I don't even know what a physical generalist would be. You cannot be a physical generalist without being a cognitive generalist. You could argue that we have the bodies of generalists because we're wimpy. We lack a lot of the protections that organisms that couldn't make their own stuff would have. We have very little fur. So, we need clothing. We can't go or run as fast as a cheetah. We stand on two legs. We have our arms free to fiddle around with shit. We have the bodies of organisms who are able to make stuff at the expense of physical prowess. We've traded expensive means of moving and protecting our bodies for an expensive brain, which lets us make protection. Because we can make body armour more effective than any animals' body armour. We can make vehicles that can move faster than any animal. So, the wimpy body plus the overdeveloped brain is a generalist body structure. I think that answers the question.
Haereid: Humans become superior in a lot of ways, not because of our physical body but what the physics in our brains can create of mental images and solutions. We are good at transforming these images into the physical world.
It's obvious that we are vulnerable concerning our physics. We are complex, and are victims of attacks from other organisms and threats, and vulnerable concerning damage. We can't fall from more than a few meters before we die. Cats and bacteria can. We have after all a quite vulnerable immune system. We have some nice traits like grip abilities with our fingers, and we can walk and run quite well compared to many organisms (that's maybe an exaggeration). Our senses are quite bad compared to many animals. With a minor brain, we would be extinct or just another species with our local habitat. One of our strengths is our ability to make things that amplify ourselves in sensibility and strength; this makes us better physical than we are. Like with the gun and the combine harvester. So, the combination of body and mind is a natural compromise, and maybe this is one of the natures best solutions. Maybe there are some better natural solutions, theoretically; a more generalized body and brain. I don't know. But it seems like a good compromise and combination; amplifying our physics using our mental abilities. If you control the physical world you could use it to your own benefit.
Jacobsen: Is "generalist" the right term?
Rosner: I think it is a decent term because it prompts a lot of questions about what it means. You have to think about what is required to have an ability to address the world or anything that can happen to you, as opposed to a grasshopper. I don't see grasshoppers as being great generalists. They're good at hopping or flying through the air, landing on plants, and eating the plants. They might have a small mental library about what plants are good to eat and what isn't, and how to react to threats. I think a lot of bugs just have this tool kit that says, "All of sudden, if you are not in shadow and you were, fucking move!" They don't understand motion. If they see moving, then they just move. It is not general. It is a specific tactic: if A, then B. You see bugs in the house, flies and spiders. You feel sorry for them. Because there is nothing in the house for them. If you move them in a cup and trap them outside, then you're screwed. They have no idea what a house is and that they have to get out of the house because there are, likely, no good food sources for them in the house. Maybe, that is not true for the spiders. There may be enough food sources in the houses for spiders. But yes, I think generalist implies a mental model of the world and a toolkit of angles on the world. An integrated toolkit as opposed to a bug toolkit, which involves. Degrees of understanding.
There might be an alternate term for a generalist like world modeller, or something that encompasses the multiple nodes model of consciousness, where you've got a chorus of specialists. All working together to model the world. You could call it choral consciousness, which sounds good but probably doesn't add any clarity.
Haereid: I guess so. It's about understanding the conceptual umbrella and its associated concrete phenomena. Generalizing is about evolving general categories that logically and with meaning make us navigate mentally and physically. It's like the (phylogenetic) tree, with the trunk, branches and leaves, that always expands with a larger trunk and more branches and leaves, and categorized into something that we understand and can benefit from.
Simpler organisms can't see the tree because they, let's say lives on the leaves or inside the trunk. They don't understand what a tree is even though they live on and in it. So, talking about something, in general, is putting something in perspective, as much as possible or thinkable, into different views, and settle that map as a navigating tool, always improving it with more information, more experiences, better rules and conclusions.
Jacobsen: Are "generalists," as claimed about humans, truly generalists or merely dominant cognitive pluralists, which may be reflected in lists of cognitive biases and various irrationalities empirically found in the psychological sciences even uniquely found disproportionately among the highly intelligent?
Rosner: Who is in charge, I think it is a better framework than free will. Free will, I think, is a logical fallacy. In that, free will fans want the ability to make decisions free from constraints. But the constraints are often consisting of the information that you need to make decisions. So, a better framing of free will is what you're talking about, "Are we true generalists making the best possible decisions after collecting as much applicable information as we can to the best of our cognitive and perceptual abilities as opposed to beings who think that we are making informed decisions but really the game is rigged and biology-and-evolution are making the decisions? We think we're making the decisions, but our decisions are hardwired and predetermined by our evolutionary nature, our evolved nature. You see this most with regard to sex. We make a lot of dumb decisions. We make decisions that are destructive to other aspects of or lives for sexual gratification, e.g., Anthony Weiner scuttles his life, his party's chances. He fucks up America because he needs to jack off to talking to young girls on the internet. He scuttles his marriage, his career, his reputation, and pretty sure that he fucks his financial situation, goes to prison, only so he can jizz.
That is not an, obviously, very informed decision, not a free decision. It is something about his biology hat got in the way of any kind of other reasoning. The answer to your question is, "In some ways, we are pretty good generalists. In other ways, we are determinists. We are the victims of fairly strongly wired biases in our reasoning and motivations."
Jacobsen: I would call this form of cognitive evolution "rounding the circle." The idea of the more generally applicable cognitive apparatuses or architectures an organism or entity has, then the more closely this organism comes to approximating a perfect circle in terms of approximating perfect or complete generalism.
Rosner: There is an implied question with what you're talking about. It is, "Are we missing a whole lot of tools?" Because we are still in the early days of generalism on our planet. We are the king shit generalists, but we haven't been around that long compared to everything. We are not that great compared to what is to come. What you're asking if there are generalist tools, ideas about the world, that would allow us to address and dominate the world, which we're missing. That is a question that has to be asked on various levels. Certainly, our philosophical understanding of what the universe is about is super-duper incomplete. Beings of the future will have more tools for cosmological philosophy. But does our incomplete deep philosophical understanding of the mean that we don't know what to do with two sticks? There's a sarcastic Twitter term called "Galaxy Brain."
Rosner: Would a true galaxy brain be more able to come up with more uses for two sticks than we would? Or are two sticks just materially limited in what you can do with them, conceptually? I would say that there are a lot of things that have limitations because of the basic materialness. The things as things: a rock, an apple. Some advanced creatures may be able to come up with advanced tools for manipulating matter and be able to turn the apple into something else. But in terms of the rock as rock or apple as apple, I am not sure if there is more to be gained than basic feeling situations by having the equivalent of an 800,000 IQ. Could be wrong, though, there's plenty of science of fiction. I watched the last half-hour of a movie called Midnight Special. It is a kid who has these abilities to decipher and manipulate the world. This has been a staple of science fiction for – I don't know – 80 years or more, where some being is so smart that they can manipulate stuff with their mind. They can make stuff rise off the ground; they can make heads explode. They can start fires. I am not sure that that's really a thing. The deeper conceptual understanding means that you can do superhero shit with matter. But I don't know.
Haereid: Constraints are expandable. I like to see us as organisms with a free will restricted to our current constraints. And that we, with increased consciousness, will expand our constraints. Then the free will is a part of the evolution as our limitations are, but in ongoing development. You could argue against this by our obvious restrictions, like our physical limited brain and body, our libido and other apparently dominating and determined drives. But this is who we are now. What or who were we some millions of years ago? Then we had other constraints. Maybe our destiny is predefined. Maybe evolution is wired. It's impossible to tell. What gives meaning to me, as one who doesn't know this is the experience of having a free will inside some constraints. I do a lot all the time that feels like it's not predetermined. You can argue logically that it has to be, but also the other way around.
I think one of our predetermined constraints that is independent of time is that we have drives; that we as organisms are motivated for some goals and for being active alive. The particular goals change over time, but not the concept. An idea is that humans as generalists and conscious entities will evolve beyond what we today can imagine. This implies more general tools, more power, more control, more consciousness, fewer constraints, more free will, converging towards higher consciousness. But I think it's crucial to respect who we are currently; you can't move towards a goal if you don't know where you are. It's one of the constraints of the map.
Control is an appropriate word, yes. We will not manage to see the world as messy even if it is, because that will not suit us. Then we will always find connections, even new ones, that fit into our system of survival. We reject or transform the information that doesn't fit. Our perception of reality tends to become what fits us, what gives meaning to us. This is also a constraint that we operate within, and that is a foundation of how we evolve and what we become in the future.
We have some internal structures that we can't negotiate with, that defines us. One of those is the ability to make a variety of new creations in more complex ways than simpler organisms. But we live in a framework, even though the framework as we see it today could and probably will change in the future, for instance our bodies with technological help and AI.
Are we at some point getting total control, total wisdom? It seems that knowing everything is meaningless to us, and in that view we will always have more information to reveal and inventions to make. The idea that there is always something that we don't know is part of our drive and survival.
[1] Erik Haereid has been a member of Mensa since 2013, and is among the top scorers on several of the most credible IQ-tests in the unstandardized HRT-environment. He is listed in the World Genius Directory. He is also a member of several other high IQ Societies.
Erik, born in 1963, grew up in Oslo, Norway, in a middle class home at Grefsen nearby the forest, and started early running and cross country skiing. After finishing schools he studied mathematics, statistics and actuarial science at the University of Oslo. One of his first glimpses of math-skills appeared after he got a perfect score as the only student on a five hour math exam in high school.
He did his military duty in His Majesty The King's Guard (Drilltroppen)).
Impatient as he is, he couldn't sit still and only studying, so among many things he worked as a freelance journalist in a small news agency. In that period, he did some environmental volunteerism with Norges Naturvernforbund (Norwegian Society for the Conservation of Nature), where he was an activist, freelance journalist and arranged 'Sykkeldagen i Oslo' twice (1989 and 1990) as well as environmental issues lectures. He also wrote some crime short stories in A-Magasinet (Aftenposten (one of the main newspapers in Norway), the same paper where he earned his runner up (second place) in a nationwide writing contest in 1985. He also wrote several articles in different newspapers, magazines and so on in the 1980s and early 1990s.
He earned an M.Sc. degree in Statistics and Actuarial Sciences in 1991, and worked as an actuary novice/actuary from 1987 to 1995 in several Norwegian Insurance companies. He was the Academic Director (1998-2000) of insurance at the BI Norwegian Business School (1998-2000), Manager (1997-1998) of business insurance, life insurance, and pensions and formerly Actuary (1996-1997) at Nordea in Oslo Area, Norway, a self-employed Actuary Consultant (1996-1997), an Insurance Broker (1995-1996) at Assurance Centeret, Actuary (1991-1995) at Alfa Livsforsikring, novice Actuary (1987-1990) at UNI Forsikring.
In 1989 he worked in a project in Dallas with a Texas computer company for a month incorporating a Norwegian pension product into a data system. Erik is specialized in life insurance and pensions, both private and business insurances. From 1991 to 1995 he was a main part of developing new life insurance saving products adapted to bank business (Sparebanken NOR), and he developed the mathematics behind the premiums and premium reserves.
He has industry experience in accounting, insurance, and insurance as a broker. He writes in his IQ-blog the online newspaper Nettavisen. He has personal interests among other things in history, philosophy and social psychology.
In 1995, he moved to Aalborg in Denmark because of a Danish girl he met. He worked as an insurance broker for one year, and took advantage of this experience later when he developed his own consultant company.
In Aalborg, he taught himself some programming (Visual Basic), and developed an insurance calculation software program which he sold to a Norwegian Insurance Company. After moving to Oslo with his girlfriend, he was hired as consultant by the same company to a project that lasted one year.
After this, he became the Manager of business insurance in the insurance company Norske Liv. At that time he had developed and nurtured his idea of establishing an actuarial consulting company, and he did this after some years on a full-time basis with his actuarial colleague. In the beginning, the company was small. He had to gain money, and worked for almost two years as an Academic Director of insurance at the BI Norwegian Business School.
Then the consultant company started to grow, and he quitted BI and used his full time in NIA (Nordic Insurance Administration). This was in 1998/99, and he has been there since.
NIA provides actuarial consulting services within the pension and life insurance area, especially towards the business market. They was one of the leading actuarial consulting companies in Norway through many years when Defined Benefit Pension Plans were on its peak and companies needed evaluations and calculations concerning their pension schemes and accountings. With the less complex, and cheaper, Defined Contribution Pension Plans entering Norway the last 10-15 years, the need of actuaries is less concerning business pension schemes.
Erik's book from 2011, Benektelse og Verdighet, contains some thoughts about our superficial, often discriminating societies, where the virtue seems to be egocentrism without thoughts about the whole. Empathy is lacking, and existential division into "us" and "them" is a mental challenge with major consequences. One of the obstacles is when people with power – mind, scientific, money, political, popularity – defend this kind of mind as "necessary" and "survival of the fittest" without understanding that such thoughts make the democracies much more volatile and threatened. When people do not understand the genesis of extreme violence like school killings, suicide or sociopathy, asking "how can this happen?" repeatedly, one can wonder how smart man really is. The responsibility is not limited to let's say the parents. The responsibility is everyone's. The day we can survive, mentally, being honest about our lives and existence, we will take huge leaps into the future of mankind.
Rick G. Rosner, according to some semi-reputable sources gathered in a listing here, 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] Individual Publication Date: April 15, 2020: http://www.in-sightjournal.com/haereid-rosner-nine; Full Issue Publication Date: May 1, 2020: https://in-sightjournal.com/insight-issues/.
American Medical Association (AMA): Jacobsen S. Ask A Genius (or Two): Conversation with Erik Haereid and Rick Rosner on Cognitive Generalists (Part Ten) [Online].April 2020; 22(A). Available from: http://www.in-sightjournal.com/haereid-rosner-ten.
American Psychological Association (APA, 6th Edition, 2010): Jacobsen, S.D. (2020, April 22). Ask A Genius (or Two): Conversation with Erik Haereid and Rick Rosner on Cognitive Generalists (Part Ten). Retrieved from http://www.in-sightjournal.com/haereid-rosner-ten.
Brazilian National Standards (ABNT): JACOBSEN, S. Ask A Genius (or Two): Conversation with Erik Haereid and Rick Rosner on Cognitive Generalists (Part Ten). In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 22.A, April. 2020. <http://www.in-sightjournal.com/haereid-rosner-ten>.
Chicago/Turabian, Author-Date (16th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott. 2020. "Ask A Genius (or Two): Conversation with Erik Haereid and Rick Rosner on Cognitive Generalists (Part Ten)." In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 22.A. http://www.in-sightjournal.com/haereid-rosner-ten.
Chicago/Turabian, Humanities (16th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott "Ask A Genius (or Two): Conversation with Erik Haereid and Rick Rosner on Cognitive Generalists (Part Ten)." In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal. 22.A (April 2020). http://www.in-sightjournal.com/haereid-rosner-ten.
Harvard: Jacobsen, S. 2020, 'Ask A Genius (or Two): Conversation with Erik Haereid and Rick Rosner on Cognitive Generalists (Part Ten)', In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 22.A. Available from: <http://www.in-sightjournal.com/haereid-rosner-ten>.
Harvard, Australian: Jacobsen, S. 2020, 'Ask A Genius (or Two): Conversation with Erik Haereid and Rick Rosner on Cognitive Generalists (Part Ten)', In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 22.A., http://www.in-sightjournal.com/haereid-rosner-ten.
Modern Language Association (MLA, 7th Edition, 2009): Scott D. Jacobsen. "Ask A Genius (or Two): Conversation with Erik Haereid and Rick Rosner on Cognitive Generalists (Part Ten)." In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 22.A (2020):April. 2020. Web. <http://www.in-sightjournal.com/haereid-rosner-ten>.
Vancouver/ICMJE: Jacobsen S. Ask A Genius (or Two): Conversation with Erik Haereid and Rick Rosner on Cognitive Generalists (Part Ten) [Internet]. (2020, April 22(A). Available from: http://www.in-sightjournal.com/haereid-rosner-ten.
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