There seems to be a lot of chit chat on the web at the moment about Boltzmann Brains. And I was wondering (as you do, on a quiet September day in France) if I might actually be one? The thought came to me after I read Mr Occasional Stirrings' post, a while back, in which he talks about these brain thingys.
So what is a Boltzmann Brain? Well, you need to think universe, then imagine an entity (kind of cosmic) which is supposedly self aware (so it sort of lives) suddenly creating itself (just like that) in a hypothetical future. This happens entirely by chance, (that's very important) as a result of fluctuations that occur randomly; which themselves arise out of some sort of future cosmic, chaotic state. (Phew!)
Now then, if we suppose that what I've described above was hypothesized many light years ago, then I, being self aware, could be a Boltzmann Brain believing itself to be a sheep sculpture. I could be here, now, because of some past prediction of a future random chaotic fluctuation that has already occurred in the universe and, quite by chance, up I popped in France! Well, it's a thought!
And why not! Another Boltzmann Brain is blogging under his BB name!
So what is a Boltzmann Brain? Well, you need to think universe, then imagine an entity (kind of cosmic) which is supposedly self aware (so it sort of lives) suddenly creating itself (just like that) in a hypothetical future. This happens entirely by chance, (that's very important) as a result of fluctuations that occur randomly; which themselves arise out of some sort of future cosmic, chaotic state. (Phew!)
Now then, if we suppose that what I've described above was hypothesized many light years ago, then I, being self aware, could be a Boltzmann Brain believing itself to be a sheep sculpture. I could be here, now, because of some past prediction of a future random chaotic fluctuation that has already occurred in the universe and, quite by chance, up I popped in France! Well, it's a thought!
And why not! Another Boltzmann Brain is blogging under his BB name!
1 comment:
Well... maybe so. I think this Boltzmann Brain concept could be usefully extended into the concept of a Boltzmann Universe. Let's say that a Boltzmann Universe is an infinite universe, or one that is expanding at an increasing rate, in which the true laws of physics apply everywhere. (Of course, we don't yet know the true laws of physics, but that doesn't matter here). In such a universe, anything which does not violate these laws may (and, eventually, will) happen. So we can say that:
1) In such a universe, you could search far and wide but you wouldn't stumble across a perpetual motion machine (because it would break the 1st and/or 2nd law of thermodynamics). Neither would you find a place where homeopathy 'worked' by anything other than the placebo effect.
2) Anything else that could happen, within those laws, may happen, and we are free to speculate. There may be intelligent, self-aware entities, either - like people and sheep - as a result of evolutionary pressure on biological material, or - like a Boltzmann Brain - as a chance arrangement of materials which just happens to have such properties. There may, somewhere, be a monkey bashing away on a typewriter that just happens to produce a play about a Scottish king called Muckbath.
However, this is not an excuse for solipsism. We may not live in such a universe (ie our universe may be finite, in which case all this Boltzmann stuff doesn't apply). If we do live in a Boltzmann Universe, we cannot test the theory that we are figments of a Boltzmann Brain's imagination (because, to be convincing, such an imagination would need to incorporate all the laws of physics in its imaginings, and therefore the figment would be indistinguishable from reality). An untestable theory is not a scientific theory.
Therefore I think we can rest easy with the assumption that you really are a real sheep sculpture that really does blog.
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