by josephwegner on 12/10/24, 5:22 AM with 150 comments
by throwup238 on 12/10/24, 11:57 PM
Can anyone explain this bit to me? The formation of biological brains was a multi-billion year climb against entropy. How would a brain form spontaneously without those random fluctuations tearing the constituent components apart?
I’m having trouble understanding the logic here. Random fluctuations don’t imply that any order from those fluctuations can be preserved. The higher order features like brains are path dependent on something resisting those random fluctuations to allow something stable to form, whether that’s an atomic particle, cell, organ, or organism.
IANAP and I don’t know what I’m talking about
by joegibbs on 12/10/24, 6:17 AM
This is the same with all solipsistic arguments, like simulation hypothesis. If the universe is, in fact, an illusion, then how do you truly know anything about the real world? Sure it could be a computer simulation, but there’s no way to know for sure. The parent universe could actually follow different laws entirely. It could be creating a ”simulation” through entirely different methods. Hell, for all you know it could be an evil demon using magic to trick us, because magic could be real in the parent universe. It’s all unfalsifiable.
by kempje on 12/10/24, 10:50 PM
by dang on 12/10/24, 8:09 PM
You do not need to worry about the argument that you are a Boltzmann brain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41031300 - July 2024 (1 comment)
Boltzmann Brain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22079253 - Jan 2020 (149 comments)
Boltzmann Brain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12152658 - July 2016 (17 comments)
Boltzmann brain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6999074 - Jan 2014 (18 comments)
by unholiness on 12/10/24, 10:22 PM
The reasonable things that continue happening each day in our universe would be extremely unlikely if we are just Boltzman brains. Every bit of sensible reality would be coincidental. The very continuance of that reality is an experiment constant proving the falsehood of Boltzman brains, at a rate of oh maybe millions of sigmas of confidence per second.
Now, if you believe the universe came to an initial state due to pure thermodynamic coincidence, millions of sigmas per second is laughably small compared to the chance that a whole universe outside your brain popped into existence, so Boltzman brains are the most believable thing and you should believe in them.
This completes a pretty direct argument: Believing the initial state of the universe was a thermodynamic coincidence forces you to believe in Boltzman brains, Boltzman brains force you to believe reality should collapse immediately, and reality does not collapse immediately. Therefore you simply can't believe the first assumption, that initial state of the universe was a thermodynamic coincidence.
Accepting this is often called the "Past Hypothesis". It's spoken of in deferential terms and said that it can't ever be proven... But to me this is rock-solid proof, with more sigmas of evidence than any other scientific discovery and increasing by the second! Can't we just call it the Past Theorem already?
by simonh on 12/11/24, 11:17 AM
So if the argument is we're most likely to be such brains, then we are most likely to exist in a haze of incoherence. We don't. Right now I have an experience of a coherent historic memory, intentionality, sensory experiences, all of which make sense in the instant. If I am a random Bolzmann brain none of that should be true.
So we'd have to have a reason to suppose that the minuscule fraction of coherent, consistent random Bolzmann brains are more likely than the occurrence of environments that generate 'actual' brains, each of which may generate many, many such brains.
by Pigalowda on 12/11/24, 2:24 AM
The runners up are brains in jars and simulation theory.
I feel like a Boltzmann brain knowing that it’s a Boltzmann brain is too good to be true. Might as well make the god of Abraham out of entropy - if you can get a regular Boltzmann brain, why not get the most powerful Boltzmann? Maybe it will take trillions of attempts over trillions of universe births and deaths. But you only need it to work the once.
by 725686 on 12/11/24, 2:38 PM
by shagie on 12/10/24, 10:11 PM
by Geee on 12/11/24, 7:36 AM
However, if something fluctuates somewhere eternally, then I'd say that it's possible that this random fluctuation causes a very simple computer to form which is able to update it's state based on some simple rules, which results in complexity, i.e. our universe. This way you wouldn't need complexity to pop up spontaneously, but just a simple thing which is able to simulate a complex thing.
by cakealert on 12/11/24, 3:52 AM
All these numbers are somewhere on the number line. In fact, the slideshow of every creature is on the number line.
Is anything real? Because being instantiated in matter is just another way of animating the slideshow where physics takes care of the transition function.
There are unfortunately no insights to be had in this endeavor.
by fourthark on 12/11/24, 9:35 AM
by Balgair on 12/11/24, 5:39 AM
The article does not go over here the time that such a brain could last for, but given that it's quantum mumbo jumbo, we can again assume something in the times of 10^-43s to 10^109 yr. Which, again, means that such a brain can hardly be said to have ever have existed in the first place compared to the time of it's formation probability. And yes, that means our current universe is in the same 'meh, just round it off' bucket.
Like, we get caught up in the minutiae of this thing's mind, it's perceptions, it's sanity, it's soul (?). But if anything the absurdist thought experiment ends as just a mirror aimed at ourselves, with the void now creeping in behind our hats. What am I? What is perception? What is time? Can any of this ever possibly matter compared to these might-as-well-be infinities? Oh God!
I've put numbers up here, they are very poor estimates mostly. And then I tell you that these numbers are so huge that, very literally, nothing that will ever exist in our universe can be made to understand that far future in which this absurd quantum brain comes out of. That time ceases to have any meaning at all in this not quite so empty quantum vacuum.
So, having looked into this mirror, I don't know what tell you. I'm going for a walk, enjoy the season here, hug the fam, have a coffee, laugh, run, play. The universe has spared us this moment.
by bee_rider on 12/11/24, 7:31 AM
by NoZZz on 12/12/24, 9:44 PM
by rzzzwilson on 12/10/24, 5:38 AM
by stevebmark on 12/10/24, 11:43 PM
The misunderstanding comes from the common, but fundamentally wrong belief, that an infinite universe means infinite possibilities.
by smokedetector1 on 12/10/24, 10:34 PM
by quantadev on 12/10/24, 11:59 PM
I think there's more and more evidence that we're instead in a 3D reality that's the manifold (surface) of an Event Horizon. We're neither inside nor outside a black hole, but on the boundary of one.
All Black Holes form from matter "falling in" rather than stuff "exploding out", and that's how our universe formed (as a Black Hole, one dimension higher up than normal 2D black holes we see). The general rule is that any N-dimensional reality is on an Event Horizon and will have contained/embedded within it (N-1)-dimensional other black holes (it's a hierarchy).
The JWT also just showed our universe is expanding at a rate that's also inconsistent with our current Big Bang theory, and is off by a whopping 8%. I think the reason we see the expansion is not because of Dark Energy (which likely doesn't even exist), but is because the surface of all Event Horizons only expands over time, or in the case of a 3D (excluding time dimension) Universe we see more and more of volumetric space forming, because it's a volumetric expansion for us, rather than the "area" (2d) expansion on conventional 2D Black Holes.
I also think the surface normal vector (perpendicular) vector, at any point on such a manifold (Event Horizon) will be experienced as a "time" dimension. That's why time is a "special" variable. Thus time only moves forward whenever the event horizon "grows" (due to matter falling in from outside it)