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I found the argument that this was self-refuting fairly convincing. If you're a boltzmann brain, then anything you think you know about anything is illusory an

I found the argument that this was self-refuting fairly convincing. If you're a boltzmann brain, then anything you think you know about anything is illusory and based on nothing at all, including the idea that you could be a bolzmann brain. I think this also applies, although less convincingly, to most theories that the world is illusory or a simulation. In any case, it doesn't matter because you'll stop existing momentarily.

icandoit 7y ago
I'd be careful assigning meaning depending on a relative time frame. After all the Sun will swallow the earth in about 7 billion years. I like to think the things we do matter independent of that fact.
- roywiggins 7y ago
  Sure, but you have causal effects in your general vicinity that will persist a little while, not least effects that come back to change the originating brain. Boltzmann brains have no past and approximately no future at all.
  - icandoit 7y ago
    Yes, but I experience meaning independently of those effects. I think that most people think those effects are what create the experience of meaning. Boltzmann brains experience meaning too. Not that is does them any good in the way that it does for biological system. It's not like we have a planet rich in meaning and then the sun swallows the earth and all that meaning retroactively disappears. It just exists in the past, not the future, and I think that is sufficient. I always thought it was funny when people thought that the heat-death of the universe had moral implications. Like that killing someone means they never existed, or something.
    - glenstein 7y ago
      I have maddeningly had this exact conversation with a friend, and I can't help but think there's something they're just not understanding about meaning. I don't think this view is uncommon, and I think people get there because they're just not thinking straight, but I don't know what they feel is at stake that they have to hold onto, that gets 'lost' if you accept that meaning doesn't persist through time forever.
mannykannot 7y ago
Yes, there are echoes of solipsism here, although the phrase 'quantum solipsism' has already been applied to something rather different.
laszlokorte 7y ago
Exactly the reasoning suggesting I might be a Boltzman brain are based on physical laws I know of but if I am only such a brain all theses physics, logic, math and statistics are just part of my imagination and could be totally invalid. How can I reason about probabilities of a brain existing in a universe I know nothing about? Even the concept of a brain itself would be just a mad idea.

icandoit 7y ago

I'd be careful assigning meaning depending on a relative time frame. After all the Sun will swallow the earth in about 7 billion years. I like to think the things we do matter independent of that fact.

roywiggins 7y ago
Sure, but you have causal effects in your general vicinity that will persist a little while, not least effects that come back to change the originating brain. Boltzmann brains have no past and approximately no future at all.
- icandoit 7y ago
  Yes, but I experience meaning independently of those effects. I think that most people think those effects are what create the experience of meaning. Boltzmann brains experience meaning too. Not that is does them any good in the way that it does for biological system. It's not like we have a planet rich in meaning and then the sun swallows the earth and all that meaning retroactively disappears. It just exists in the past, not the future, and I think that is sufficient. I always thought it was funny when people thought that the heat-death of the universe had moral implications. Like that killing someone means they never existed, or something.
  - glenstein 7y ago
    I have maddeningly had this exact conversation with a friend, and I can't help but think there's something they're just not understanding about meaning. I don't think this view is uncommon, and I think people get there because they're just not thinking straight, but I don't know what they feel is at stake that they have to hold onto, that gets 'lost' if you accept that meaning doesn't persist through time forever.

mannykannot 7y ago

Yes, there are echoes of solipsism here, although the phrase 'quantum solipsism' has already been applied to something rather different.

laszlokorte 7y ago

Exactly the reasoning suggesting I might be a Boltzman brain are based on physical laws I know of but if I am only such a brain all theses physics, logic, math and statistics are just part of my imagination and could be totally invalid. How can I reason about probabilities of a brain existing in a universe I know nothing about? Even the concept of a brain itself would be just a mad idea.