kali_fornicationbig facts
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Graili don’t believe in wifi, just like i don’t believe in trees. i know they’re there. that requires no belief.
The belief would be that your senses aren’t being actively deceived. Also, that you’re not a Boltzmann brain hallucinating in the void.
I personally believe all the axioms of science apply. It’s still fun to poke at them.
the atheist says “i will not believe”. the agnostic says “i can not believe”. one is as dogmatic as the beliefs they purport to refute, the other lacks the capacity for dogma, as belief for them is simply not possible.
Belief in a null is a lot more reasonable than belief in something so powerful it can pretend to be a null.
Belief that I am not in a Truman show like environment is a lot more reasonable (without evidence) than belief that I am in a Truman show, and they are doing a perfect job.
That doesn’t mean I don’t try disproving the null hypothesis.
It’s an assumption, not an extrapolation. Assumptions, without evidence are beliefs.
We assume several unprovable axioms to allow science to function. A lot of work has also been done to collapse them down to the core minimum. What is left is still built on belief.
The fact that the results are useful back validates those beliefs. It doesn’t prove them however.
we’re comparing it to a system where none of that has been done. it’s sort of a “god of the gaps” situation but the gaps are shaped exactly like pieces in a puzzle. we can extrapolate the form of the proof even if we can’t show it. the same is not true of the other camp.
You say that, but, if the universe has an infinite lifespan (as current models suggest) then we would almost certainly be Boltzmann brains. (There would be an infinite amount of Boltzmann brains, but only a finite number of humans)
I personally believe I am not, and the universe actually exists, rather than a sensory/memory ghost.
surely if the universe has an infinite lifespan there could be an infinite number of humans? for whatever passes as a huban at any given time. the two concepts may even overlap.
not that it matters for the day-to-day, anyway.
The logic is that the universe of big bang matter has a limited lifespan. This sets a hard limit on the number of humans via “normal” means.
Boltzmann brains are due to a quirk of quantum mechanics. Matter can come into existence spontaneously. The rate is proportional to the amount (technically the energy content). Given enough time and space, something that would fit the definition of human could spontaneously appear. The odds of this are unbelievably long, but, so long as it’s finitely large, in a true infinite universe it will happen an infinite number of times. It’s a bit of infinity Vs very large number weirdness.
End result is that there will be a large but finite number of “normal” humans, but an infinite number of Boltzmann brain humans. Therefore, the chances of being an actual “normal” human is effectively infinitesimal.
Agreed about it not mattering, day to day. It’s one of those things that is of interest to theoretical physicists, since it might tell us something interesting about the nature of our universe.
It seems more likely in a universe that is infinitely large that brains would come into existence through simpler deterministic processes like they did on earth than random fluctuations no?
Our best ideas on the big bang put the universe as huge, but finite in space. (Way bigger than the observable universe) The question is time. If time is infinite then Boltzmann brains win.
Matter has a finite life, energy differentials run out. Stars run out of fuel. Black holes evaporate. Even protons eventually fall apart to energy. Then there is endless emptiness.
That emptiness would be finite in space, but infinite in time. Without that last boundary, weird things happen to maths.
If you appeal to heat death then you cannot say brains pop back into existence either because “matter has a finite life,” and so it is self-defeating. If brains can pop back into existence due to random fluctuations then surely planets and stars could as well given enough time.
The energy to spontaneously create a planet is vastly more than a brain. Then again, with the weird maths of infinities, it might play out.
Though to recreate the full illusion would require something closer to the big bang itself.
It’s well into the “here he dragons” realms of science however. Speculating well beyond reliable evidence.