[HN Gopher] Boltzmann Brain
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Boltzmann Brain
Author : 6581
Score : 54 points
Date : 2020-01-17 21:00 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| empath75 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| kelnos wrote:
| PBS Spacetime did a fun video on this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhy4Z_32kQo
| AgentME wrote:
| I find this question really fun: "Am I a Boltzmann brain, or a
| real human?". If there exists both a human and a Boltzmann brain
| with your current mental state, then it doesn't make sense to try
| to answer this question with a single answer. Your line of
| reasoning will be identically executed in both, so your line of
| reasoning can't result in a single answer and be correct.
|
| Instead, one way to address the confusion about whether you're a
| Boltzmann brain or not, is to realize that in the case you're a
| Boltzmann brain, none of your thoughts or decisions matter at
| all. Even if you admit there's some probability that you're a
| Boltzmann brain, there's no use factoring it into your decision
| processes besides as a curiosity. Your decisions only matter in
| the case that you're an actual human, so that's the only
| possibility worth considering while coming up with decisions.
| (Similarly, if a coin was going to be flipped in a moment, and a
| bunch of things depended on which way the coin landed, including
| that you were going to be immediately executed with no
| possibility of escape if the coin landed on heads, then all your
| plans for the future should be exactly the same as if you
| expected the coin to land on tails with 100% certainty. It's the
| only path that any of your decisions matter.)
| cma wrote:
| A Boltzman half-brain with random fluctuations filling in the
| missing hemisphere's activations is much more thermodynamically
| likely than a full Boltzman brain. And a quarter of one even
| more so, etc.
| jdkee wrote:
| What if you are a recurring sequence of Boltzmann brains
| pooping into existence, lasting mere seconds but correctly
| temporally sequenced as to form a continuous consciousness?
| klodolph wrote:
| If you like these thought experiments, consider that I'm not
| actually responding to your comment, but I am actually
| mashing the keys randomly and it only appears to form a
| response by coincidence. We are not actually communicating
| with each other.
| kelnos wrote:
| That's not necessary (and is even less likely): the "you" at
| any given instant would be a Boltzmann brain with the memory
| of existing at previous instants.
| fredsanford wrote:
| >> recurring sequence of Boltzmann brains pooping into
| existence
|
| I think this finally explains current pop music to me.
|
| Justin Beibers pooping into existence...
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| This is one of my absolute favorite ideas/theories.
| state_less wrote:
| If a Boltzmann Brain that begets more Boltzmann Brains is
| possible, it would be more likely, since as soon as you had one,
| you'd have a whole lot more.
|
| Similar for other forms with this property. A form that when it
| does appear is then more likely to return again.
| brundolf wrote:
| It's always seemed dubious to me that people try to make
| probabilistic statements about an event that we only have one
| sample of, and whose causes we can only speculate about
| dang wrote:
| A thread from 2016: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12152658
|
| 2014: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6999074
| jv22222 wrote:
| Someone should make a "List of repeating ideas that come up on
| Hacker News with every new HN Generation" post.
|
| It would also be interesting to know how often a "New HN
| Generation" came in to being.
| nategri wrote:
| Would posit that HN is well into its "endless september" at
| this point.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| IMO, there's not a lot of repetition. It's just that certain
| individual posts get repeated over and over.
| irjustin wrote:
| I've always enjoyed this thought experiment and the loosely
| related one - Last Thursdayism[0].
|
| [0] https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Last_Thursdayism
| trhway wrote:
| > is the idea that the universe was created last Thursday, but
| with the physical appearance of being billions of years old.
|
| or it may have been just restored from a backup (with some bit
| rotting and missing pieces as evidenced by dark matter/energy
| and other inconsistencies)
| 725686 wrote:
| Ha, ha, "whether Last Thursdayism is true has raged on ever
| since its inception last Thursday"
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