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J Kusin
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Boltzmann brains are still talked about by prestigious physicists and philosophers so I don’t know why people are dismissing you. Leonard Susskind, Sean Carroll, and David Albert and many others continue to discuss them at very deep levels.

The main reason they discuss them is not philosophy of mind (or only barely). I’m following their lead and focusing on their cosmological power.

The two above physicists and philosopher discount any cosmology which posits more BB’s than “natural observers”, i.e. ones which were not formed via fluctuation.

Many current cosmological models predict infinitely more BB’s than any other type of observer. Those models must be wrong according to the above scientists and philosophers.

The models’ failures are because if there are infinitely more observers of this type why aren’t we one? The odds of being a natural observer are 0 in any a typical heat death single universe model.

That lead Susskind, Carroll, and Albert to say those models must be wrong. I am not aware of what exact changes Carroll and Albert favor, but Susskind’s I am aware of.

He says a special case of the multiverse of eternal inflation offers a model which avoids this problem. Regular eternal inflationary models fail. Susskind has in mind an eternal inflationary multiverse where the probability of spawning a new universe overwhelms the number of bubble universes in heat death. Each non-degenerate bubble universe has a chance at fluctuation a daughter universe, an idea from Sydney Coleman and Delucca. If the probabilities are played with, you still get infinite BB’s, but infinite natural observers as well. Perhaps infinitely more with the right probability measure.

This is where I think the solution to you worry is to be found. There are potentially many bubble universes dominated by BB’s or your digital version. But there are so many more observers like us.

How do we know we are “observers like us” or naturally evolved? Say BB’s don’t just fluctuate into existence knowing they are BB’s. Maybe the fluctuation is so great they fluctuate with memories like ours. They think they are natural but aren’t. How can anyone know they didn’t just pop into existence a second ago with all their memories? Can we solve that epistemic problem and how does it connect with Susskind’s model.

I don’t know that Susskind discusses it but I think he may implicitly believes what Carroll and Albert state. That if we begin to worry about that kind of BB, we can’t make the usual scientific progress. There really is no way to absolutely prove we aren’t such beings. Science is not interested in radical doubt at every level. Something has to hook into reality. And we carefully follow those leads and assumptions scientifically to better and better theories.

Boltzmann brains are still talked about by prestigious physicists and philosophers so I don’t know why people are dismissing you. Leonard Susskind, Sean Carroll, and David Albert and many others continue to discuss them at very deep levels.

The main reason they discuss them is not philosophy of mind (or only barely). I’m following their lead and focusing on their cosmological power.

The two above physicists and philosopher discount any cosmology which posits more BB’s than “natural observers”, i.e. ones which were not formed via fluctuation.

Many current cosmological models predict infinitely more BB’s than any other type of observer. Those models must be wrong according to the above scientists and philosophers.

The models’ failures are because if there are infinitely more observers of this type why aren’t we one? The odds of being a natural observer are 0 in any a typical heat death single universe model.

That lead Susskind, Carroll, and Albert to say those models must be wrong. I am not aware of what exact changes Carroll and Albert favor, but Susskind’s I am aware of.

He says a special case of the multiverse of eternal inflation offers a model which avoids this problem. Regular eternal inflationary models fail. Susskind has in mind an eternal inflationary multiverse where the probability of spawning a new universe overwhelms the number of bubble universes in heat death. Each bubble universe has a chance at fluctuation a daughter universe, an idea from Sydney Coleman and Delucca. If the probabilities are played with, you still get infinite BB’s, but infinite natural observers as well. Perhaps infinitely more with the right probability measure.

This is where I think the solution to you worry is to be found. There are potentially many bubble universes dominated by BB’s or your digital version. But there are so many more observers like us.

How do we know we are “observers like us” or naturally evolved? Say BB’s don’t just fluctuate into existence knowing they are BB’s. Maybe the fluctuation is so great they fluctuate with memories like ours. They think they are natural but aren’t. How can anyone know they didn’t just pop into existence a second ago with all their memories? Can we solve that epistemic problem and how does it connect with Susskind’s model.

I don’t know that Susskind discusses it but I think he may implicitly believes what Carroll and Albert state. That if we begin to worry about that kind of BB, we can’t make the usual scientific progress. There really is no way to absolutely prove we aren’t such beings. Science is not interested in radical doubt at every level. Something has to hook into reality. And we carefully follow those leads and assumptions scientifically to better and better theories.

Boltzmann brains are still talked about by prestigious physicists and philosophers so I don’t know why people are dismissing you. Leonard Susskind, Sean Carroll, and David Albert and many others continue to discuss them at very deep levels.

The main reason they discuss them is not philosophy of mind (or only barely). I’m following their lead and focusing on their cosmological power.

The two above physicists and philosopher discount any cosmology which posits more BB’s than “natural observers”, i.e. ones which were not formed via fluctuation.

Many current cosmological models predict infinitely more BB’s than any other type of observer. Those models must be wrong according to the above scientists and philosophers.

The models’ failures are because if there are infinitely more observers of this type why aren’t we one? The odds of being a natural observer are 0 in any a typical heat death single universe model.

That lead Susskind, Carroll, and Albert to say those models must be wrong. I am not aware of what exact changes Carroll and Albert favor, but Susskind’s I am aware of.

He says a special case of the multiverse of eternal inflation offers a model which avoids this problem. Regular eternal inflationary models fail. Susskind has in mind an eternal inflationary multiverse where the probability of spawning a new universe overwhelms the number of bubble universes in heat death. Each non-degenerate bubble universe has a chance at fluctuation a daughter universe, an idea from Sydney Coleman and Delucca. If the probabilities are played with, you still get infinite BB’s, but infinite natural observers as well. Perhaps infinitely more with the right probability measure.

This is where I think the solution to you worry is to be found. There are potentially many bubble universes dominated by BB’s or your digital version. But there are so many more observers like us.

How do we know we are “observers like us” or naturally evolved? Say BB’s don’t just fluctuate into existence knowing they are BB’s. Maybe the fluctuation is so great they fluctuate with memories like ours. They think they are natural but aren’t. How can anyone know they didn’t just pop into existence a second ago with all their memories? Can we solve that epistemic problem and how does it connect with Susskind’s model.

I don’t know that Susskind discusses it but I think he may implicitly believes what Carroll and Albert state. That if we begin to worry about that kind of BB, we can’t make the usual scientific progress. There really is no way to absolutely prove we aren’t such beings. Science is not interested in radical doubt at every level. Something has to hook into reality. And we carefully follow those leads and assumptions scientifically to better and better theories.

Source Link
J Kusin
  • 3.5k
  • 1
  • 9
  • 18

Boltzmann brains are still talked about by prestigious physicists and philosophers so I don’t know why people are dismissing you. Leonard Susskind, Sean Carroll, and David Albert and many others continue to discuss them at very deep levels.

The main reason they discuss them is not philosophy of mind (or only barely). I’m following their lead and focusing on their cosmological power.

The two above physicists and philosopher discount any cosmology which posits more BB’s than “natural observers”, i.e. ones which were not formed via fluctuation.

Many current cosmological models predict infinitely more BB’s than any other type of observer. Those models must be wrong according to the above scientists and philosophers.

The models’ failures are because if there are infinitely more observers of this type why aren’t we one? The odds of being a natural observer are 0 in any a typical heat death single universe model.

That lead Susskind, Carroll, and Albert to say those models must be wrong. I am not aware of what exact changes Carroll and Albert favor, but Susskind’s I am aware of.

He says a special case of the multiverse of eternal inflation offers a model which avoids this problem. Regular eternal inflationary models fail. Susskind has in mind an eternal inflationary multiverse where the probability of spawning a new universe overwhelms the number of bubble universes in heat death. Each bubble universe has a chance at fluctuation a daughter universe, an idea from Sydney Coleman and Delucca. If the probabilities are played with, you still get infinite BB’s, but infinite natural observers as well. Perhaps infinitely more with the right probability measure.

This is where I think the solution to you worry is to be found. There are potentially many bubble universes dominated by BB’s or your digital version. But there are so many more observers like us.

How do we know we are “observers like us” or naturally evolved? Say BB’s don’t just fluctuate into existence knowing they are BB’s. Maybe the fluctuation is so great they fluctuate with memories like ours. They think they are natural but aren’t. How can anyone know they didn’t just pop into existence a second ago with all their memories? Can we solve that epistemic problem and how does it connect with Susskind’s model.

I don’t know that Susskind discusses it but I think he may implicitly believes what Carroll and Albert state. That if we begin to worry about that kind of BB, we can’t make the usual scientific progress. There really is no way to absolutely prove we aren’t such beings. Science is not interested in radical doubt at every level. Something has to hook into reality. And we carefully follow those leads and assumptions scientifically to better and better theories.