Fumfer Physics 53: Science, Theology, Infinity, the Mega Society, and Ukraine’s Drone Revolution

Scott Douglas Jacobsen interviews Rick Rosner on science’s challenge to theology, skepticism among Mega Society members, the philosophical status of infinities in physics, and Ukraine’s rapidly evolving drone warfare. Rosner argues scientific progress has undermined literal religious mechanisms, while physics treats infinities as mathematical tools rather than physical realities through renormalization. He likens mass-produced drones to possums and octopuses: inexpensive, expendable systems whose overwhelming numbers can reshape modern asymmetric warfare. Ukraine’s planned production targets underscore that transformation.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Anything in math you want to talk about? We actually do periodically, every once in a while, check in on this. Where do you think theology sits now? Any further reflections on that?

Rick Rosner: No, my position on that is the same as it has been: theology has been hollowed out by the success of science. You can continue to be religious, but belief in a lot of holy mechanisms has been pretty thoroughly challenged. Science has explained a lot and disproved a lot of religious claims.

The religious people I know—well, you have Colbert and Kimmel, two famous people raised Catholic, with Colbert especially being a serious Catholic. They may follow the moral doctrine, but I doubt they follow all of the theology literally.

Maybe there is some base faith in God, maybe in the afterlife. But in terms of the hand of God actively working in the world to make things happen, I do not think most smart people believe that.

Jacobsen: Where do Mega Society members typically sit on that? In your experience, where do they typically stand on belief in all this stuff?

Rosner: Pretty much where I stand. There are some Mega Society people who might be struggling with mental issues, and in those cases, their opinions should probably be looked at skeptically.

Jacobsen: There is a tendency toward non-belief in these ideas.

Rosner: Yeah. Just imagine the people you know in the Mega Society. You would probably agree with me: it is hard to imagine most of those people being complete believers in a standard religion. 

Jacobsen: Complete believers? No. Partial? Maybe. I just do not see, typically, faith as the refuge of a serious person. 

Rosner: I do not know what else I have.

Jacobsen: Can you elaborate on the philosophy of the physics behind the idea that you need infinite information to have an infinite series of zeros to define something?

Rosner: I feel like Feynman was one of the guys associated with the idea that infinities in physics are often signs that something has gone wrong in the calculation, or at least that the theory needs careful handling. Let’s ask AI. Here is what AI says.

It says David Hilbert, the legendary mathematician, famously argued that the infinite is nowhere to be found in physical reality. Max Planck is mentioned. Carlo Rovelli, one of the founders of loop quantum gravity. Max Tegmark, who we know from his theories about mathematical structures and consciousness. Sabine Hossenfelder. And Roger Penrose.

So this “no actual infinities in physics” view has a long history, and I feel like Feynman was broadly on the side of being suspicious of infinities. But the deal is that if the universe is emergent, and if the universe has to have existence at all sizes, then you can imagine a non-contradictory universe of roughly any finite size. The universe needs to work with a finite number of parts and a finite amount of information—which is a dumb phrase, because anything finite is short of infinite.

But anyway, if it is an emergent universe, it probably does not work with actual infinities. The infinities in math are often conveniences. They make math portable. They make math usable.

Here we go: how physics deals with infinities. Because equations can sometimes predict nonsensical infinities, physicists developed techniques such as regularization and renormalization to control or absorb those infinities into measurable quantities. This work was associated with people like Feynman, Julian Schwinger, and Shin’ichiro Tomonaga, among others.

So if your equation has infinities, you find ways to handle them. You do not just let them sit there and say, “Well, reality is infinite, so who cares?” You push them to the side, or you reformulate the theory so the observable predictions stay finite.

Jacobsen: Who is the most educated member?

Rosner: I do not know. Chris Cole has a graduate degree, I think. Harvard undergrad, maybe Caltech for graduate school. I am not sure. I assume there are a few people with graduate degrees.

Jacobsen: Who would you mark as the smartest one among them?

Rosner: That is hard. In the Mega Society, smartness comes in different flavors. Chris Cole has immense intelligence and also immense entrepreneurial acumen. Dean Inada has immense mathematical and visual genius. Other people I do not know very well. I have not been deeply involved in Mega for a long time.

Jacobsen: What else can we talk about? Anything new on the internet?

Rosner: Well, internationally, how are you? How is it where you are?

Jacobsen: It is pretty good.

Rosner: Okay. You have not had any massive bombing. It seems like Ukraine is now launching more drones and strikes at Russia than Russia is launching at Ukraine, at least in some categories.

Jacobsen: That is generally the case. I would say so.

Rosner: And the number is insane. The number we hear is that Ukraine aims to produce around seven million drones in 2026, which would average about 19,000 a day. That is a lot of stuff to send at an enemy, even with a high failure rate.

Drones are the possums of modern warfare.

Jacobsen: Absolutely true. Yes.

Rosner: For people who are not familiar with how possums work, octopuses work somewhat similarly. Tragically, some animals are highly subject to predators, and these animals are not built for long lifespans. You capture a possum and raise it in captivity, and you would be lucky to get a few years out of it.

Many octopuses have very short lifespans. They live for a year or two, grow, get big enough, reproduce, and die. But they make a shit ton of offspring.

Possums also produce a lot of young. That is different from humans, where it takes 15 or 18 years to raise a person. Humans do not have that many babies, and in modern societies, the babies do not die at a huge rate.

There are population patterns that change once a society reduces infant mortality. In less secure societies, women may have five, eight, or ten kids, partly because not all of them are expected to survive to adulthood. Then medicine, sanitation, and economic development come in, and population patterns shift.

Right now, much of the world is in a post-shift environment, with fertility falling below replacement in many countries. The global population is still projected to keep growing for decades, but the latest United Nations projections put the likely peak around the mid-2080s, not 2050.

But anyway: possums, octopuses, drones. You make a shitload of them. They have a high failure rate. They get preyed upon. Most do not complete the mission, or, in the animal case, most do not live to reproduce.

That is the drone model. Make thousands and thousands of them, send them at the Russians, and if 10 or 15 percent do their jobs, that is still devastating. And they do not cost much compared with the systems they can destroy.

Jacobsen: Thank you very much for the opportunity and your time, Rick.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen is a blogger on Vocal with more than 200 publications on the platform. He is the Founder and Publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978–1–0692343; 978–1–0673505) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369–6885). He writes for International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN, 0018–7399; Online: ISSN, 2163–3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), Humanist Perspectives (ISSN: 1719–6337), A Further Inquiry (SubStack), Vocal, Medium, The Good Men Project, The New Enlightenment Project, The Washington Outsider, rabble.ca, and other media. His bibliography index can be found via the Jacobsen Bank at In-Sight Publishing, comprising more than 10,000 articles, interviews, and republications across more than 200 outlets. He has served in national and international leadership roles within humanist and media organizations, held several academic fellowships, and currently serves on several boards. He is a member in good standing in numerous media organizations, including the Canadian Association of Journalists, PEN Canada (CRA: 88916 2541 RR0001), Reporters Without Borders (SIREN: 343 684 221/SIRET: 343 684 221 00041/EIN: 20–0708028), and others.