Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner examine Information Cosmology (IC) as an alternative lens on gravity, time, and dimensionality. IC treats the universe as an information processor: no true event horizons, no infinite-density singularities—only quantum limits on compressibility and information flow. Time slows near collapsed matter yet remains dynamic at the center. Extra dimensions are informationally expensive, so reality stabilizes to three after early fuzzy epochs. Redshift reflects informational segregation; correlated histories cluster locally. Photons exemplify dimensionless behavior until interactions set geometry. A universal clock emerges from global information updates, roughly aligning subjective brain time with overall objective cosmic ticks.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We have not talked about this part of the series in a few years. Not black holes, but “blackish holes.” When matter collapses, time slows near the outskirts, not at the active center. The active center remains dynamic—there is still time there. Collapsed matter causes a slowing of time compared to the more active areas of the universe, where time flows more as we experience it. Under IC—Information Cosmology—does that model envision time differently than general or special relativity does, especially in the context of collapsed or inflated matter?
Rick Rosner: Yes. Under IC, which is all about the flow of information, maybe I am entirely wrong, but there can still be information moving in and out. There are no true event horizons in IC—or at least that is my understanding. However, I could be totally mistaken about that.
You get weird time effects around event horizons, but under IC—Information Cosmology—there are no true singularities. There is a limit to how much matter can be compressed within an intense gravitational field.
You can only squeeze material down until there is no information left to extract. That is still incredibly dense, but not infinitely so. In general relativity, a black hole’s density theoretically goes to infinity—a true singularity. In IC, there is a quantum limit. Quantum fuzziness around what would otherwise be a singularity prevents infinite compression. The gravitational field can still be enormously strong, but not limitless.
General relativity works beautifully in most situations, even most cosmological ones, just as Newtonian gravity works fine for everyday mechanics. However, IC suggests boundaries where general relativity starts to break down—specifically around extreme densities and information limits.
I suspect there might be efficiencies to exploit near the massive black hole at the center of galaxies. The scale of space and the rate of time there might make computation more efficient—perhaps faster or denser processing near that gravitational environment. However, that is speculative.
Jacobsen: Is the topology of IC substantially different from current models?
Rosner: Maybe. I have not studied it deeply, but I have been reading about high-dimensional data in fields like epigenetics. Sometimes, your dataset can occupy a space with twenty thousand dimensions—an information space so complex it is almost useless until you apply dimensionality reduction techniques.
IC, if it is good, should explain why we experience only three spatial dimensions. The short answer: extra dimensions are informationally expensive. It costs too much to sustain them. So, reality economizes on information, reducing everything to three spatial dimensions.
The additional dimensions—if they exist—could be encoded within the forces and interactions among particles, wrapped up in the tensions between gravitational, electromagnetic, and other quantum fields. By “particles,” I mean the basic systems of protons, electrons, and neutrons that make up our universe.
You boil everything down. Anything that does not reduce ideally to three dimensions shows up as stress—distortions in particles and in space itself.
Those stresses take the form of electromagnetism and gravitation.
Moreover, there is another thing. The universe is segregated based on the information variables it shares in common. In the standard Big Bang model, as confirmed by observation, the farther away a galaxy is, the more redshifted it appears—the faster it seems to be moving away from us.
That redshift is informational. You are living in a universe where systems that share your information—your history—are local to you. Systems less correlated with your information, with less shared history, appear redshifted and distant.
That is an efficient way to compress complexity and reduce dimensionality. The universe stays three-dimensional, but each part of that three-dimensional structure consists of local neighbourhoods—clusters of information that share history. It is how you can manage enormous informational density by partitioning it into correlated regions.
Not to say segregation is good when it comes to people, but when it comes to the structure of the universe, yeah.
Heaven forbid I use the word “segregation.”
Jacobsen: In an IC universe—since spacetime is emergent—there should be an early period when the dimensions have not fully stabilized. As the system evolves, it settles into a stable configuration through the dynamics of information. Within that, could there be fuzzy dimensions—regions where the geometry is not yet well-defined?
Rosner: Kind of, but it does not take much information, matter, or space for the system to settle into three dimensions. A universe with a single fuzzy particle has no defined dimensionality. However, if you have eight particles, that might be enough for it to act roughly three-dimensional most of the time. If you had 150 particles, that should be more than enough for a consistent three-dimensional structure.
Our universe has on the order of 10⁸⁵ particles, so its three-dimensionality is deeply established. It is only in a highly early or tiny universe that dimensionality might flicker—sometimes defined, sometimes not.
You could argue that individual particles—particularly photons—do not really have dimensions. Photons do not experience time because they travel at the speed of light, and they do not experience space because, at that speed, spatial dimensions contract to zero from their reference frame.
So, some particles do not have any fixed dimensionality. It is only through their interactions that dimensionality becomes established.
Jacobsen: How do you fit subjective senses of time within objective time? Informationally.
Rosner: We live in a world with its own clock, but that clock does not tick at the same rate everywhere. Under IC, there is still a kind of overall clock. If the universe is an information processor—a system modelling itself—then it must have a temporal framework governing those operations.
Our minds are subjective experiences of our brains, and our brains are physical systems modelling the world in real time. That means our brains have internal clocks synchronized, at least broadly, to the forward flow of time in the external world.
By analogy, the universe itself can be viewed as a vast processor where events—moments of information exchange or awareness—constitute its “ticks.” These universal events might span billions of years. So, local variations in time—slower here, faster there—do not necessarily affect the overall “clock speed” of what the universe is doing on its grand informational scale.
Rick Rosner is an accomplished television writer with credits on shows like Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Crank Yankers, and The Man Show. Over his career, he has earned multiple Writers Guild Award nominations—winning one—and an Emmy nomination. Rosner holds a broad academic background, graduating with the equivalent of eight majors. Based in Los Angeles, he continues to write and develop ideas while spending time with his wife, daughter, and two dogs.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the publisher of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and Editor-in-Chief of In-Sight: Interviews (ISSN: 2369-6885). He writes for The Good Men Project, International Policy Digest (ISSN: 2332–9416), The Humanist (Print: ISSN 0018-7399; Online: ISSN 2163-3576), Basic Income Earth Network (UK Registered Charity 1177066), A Further Inquiry, and other media. He is a member in good standing of numerous media organizations.