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Intuitively, I feel that it is extremely more probable for a Big Bang, giving rise to life that knows science, to randomly occur than for a Boltzmann Brain, sel
by bmh100 10y ago
Intuitively, I feel that it is extremely more probable for a Big Bang, giving rise to life that knows science, to randomly occur than for a Boltzmann Brain, self-consistently simulating the evolution of such a universe for billions of years, to randomly occur. However, it is hard for me to explain that feeling more precisely.
Maybe it's like this: it is much more likely to randomly simulate a game of chess where a pawn gets promoted to a queen than it is to randomly generate a move history from random characters, which resulted in a valid chess game of a pawn getting promoted to a queen.
- stavrianos 10y agoWe don't need it to simulate the universe for a billions of years. We just need it to simulate your belief that it happened for a couple of seconds.
- bmh100 10y agoYes, a belief which relies on logical validity and self-consistency of memory and thought, which would in turn need to be the result of a "simulation". And by "need", I really mean "much more likely than the alternative" of producing such a state otherwise.
- dri_ft 10y agoBut are you really scanning all of your beliefs for consistency at every moment? Couldn't you just be presented with a simulated feeling that your beliefs are consistent? Wouldn't that be enough? It's certainly plausible that a Boltzmann brain could have that.
- contravariant 10y agoAnd in the end, does it really matter? The person I recognise as myself isn't the Boltzmann brain, but rather the person the Boltzmann brain thinks it is. Even if the Boltzmann brain swiftly disintegrates I will still live.