There are four ifs there, so, giving equal likelihood to each, we end up with a 6,25% chance of being in an infinite multiverse in which every possibility is realized. — Lionino
We are likely not in one, but if we are, then the same thing that applies to Boltzmann brains applies here: we have no reason to believe in any reasoning we do — which bears no weight on whether it is true or not, but still. — Lionino
Sorry Michael, I cannot follow you. You've strayed from mathematics, just like Tones did with the example of Twain=Clemens. Your example, like Tones' appears to be completely irrelevant. To me, you've changed the subject and I cannot follow the terms of the change. If you want to continue this course, please demonstrate how it is relevant to mathematics. However, in the meantime I ask that you consider the following — Metaphysician Undercover
When we recognize that the value produced by carrying out the procedure on the right side is "equal" to the value produced by carrying out the procedure on the left side, we implicitly acknowledge with the use of "value", that this is something within the mind, dependent on that mental activity of carrying out the procedure. If we use use "identical", instead of "equal" it is implied that what is really a value (something mind dependent) is an object with an identity. This is why Platonism is implied when we replace "equal value" with "identical value". It is implied that the value is an object with an identity. — Metaphysician Undercover
The values returned are the same. What is represent by the right and left sides is not the value itself, but the operation. Therefore the "=" signifies an equality between two operations, it does not signify "the same". — Metaphysician Undercover
It is irrelevant to the rest of the post, which demonstrates that "the value" of the right side, and of the left side is only produced by carrying out the procedure to its correct conclusion. — Metaphysician Undercover
No that is clearly not the case, because these two procedures are completely different. They are said to result in the same value, 2, but the operations represented do not have the same value, nor are they identical. — Metaphysician Undercover
But before that singularity there was no time axis on which a previous event caused the big bang event, was it? — Quk
You think there was spacetime before the Big Bang? — Quk
Right, A=B means that the value of A is equal to the value of B. This does not mean that A is identical to B, so the "=" signifies a relationship of equality, it does not signify a relationship of identity. — Metaphysician Undercover
Two dollar bills are non-identical, but equal value. — Metaphysician Undercover
But this creates a procedural problem in practice. Let's take the example "1+1=2". The value represented by "1+1" would be exactly the same, identical, to the value represented by "2". The problem is that "1+1"contains the representation of an operation, and "2" does not. And in order that an operation can fulfill what is intended by the operator, the operation must have a very special type of value. Because it is necessary to recognize this special type of value, that signified by the operator, it is impossible that "1+1" signifies the exact same value as "2", because there is no operation represented by "2". In other words the value represented by "1+1" consists of an operation, and the value represented by "2" does not, therefore they are not representations of the exact same value. — Metaphysician Undercover
Is there something that you disagree with in Carroll's conclusion? — wonderer1
The probability of our being a normal observer is 100%. Here we are.
... The Big Freeze has not happened. — creativesoul
Science seems to be self-defeating re: Boltzmann Brains: our best theories imply we're probably BB's, but that's "cognitively unstable" (aka "I really don't want to believe that"), so we're probably not BB's and we can't trust our best theories.
Just ditch this idea that minds can come from mindless stuff. It just creates problems. You're not a Boltzmann Brain — RogueAI
I get that, but if we are BBs then our scientific theories are incorrect; this is straightforward paradox, it has something in common with the "Liar' sentence.
If our scientific theories are correct, we are most likely to be Boltzmann brains.
If we are Boltzmann brains our scientific theories are incorrect.
Do you not see the problem? — Janus
How is it in conflict? — Luke
B-theorists typically emphasize how special relativity eliminates the past/present/future distinction from physical models of space and time. Thus what seems like an awkward way to express facts about time in ordinary English is actually much closer to the way we express facts about time in physics.
it presupposes the experience of time that we have. — Luke
There is no similar study we can do to see how damage/changes to “unmoving space(time)” affects physical objects. — Luke
That’s not something I believe, and I doubt it takes into account the facts as we best understand them. — Luke
But I am arguing against your view. — Luke
You're just doubling down and are still ignoring the fact that if we are BBs our scientific models are incorrect. — Janus
No, you have it backwards, if we are BBs our scientific models are necessarily incorrect (assuming that it would even be possible for BBs to have scientific models, which is extremely questionable), as I already explained. — Janus
But since it is our science that (purportedly) tells us that we are Boltzman brains and that hence all our science is wrong, why would it be rational to believe such a self-eliminating conclusion? It is precisely this problem that you have so far completely failed to address. — Janus
You are simply ignoring my argument. — Luke
The traditional view is a presentist one, where 3D objects move over time. — Luke
If consciousness is underpinned by physical stuff, then how can it move when none of the physical stuff does? — Luke
Why should you be able to treat consciousness as a presentist object in an otherwise universe? — Luke
The consciousness of what? If you mean the consciousness of the 4D host, then that is extended across time and doesn’t move. If you mean the consciousness of a 3D part of that 4D host, then all the 3D parts are different and none of them moves. — Luke
In brief, the BB problem arises if our universe (1) lasts forever (or at least an extraordinarily long time, much longer than 101066 years), and (2) undergoes random fluctuations that could potentially create conscious observers. If the rate of fluctuations times the lifetime of the universe is sufficiently large, we would expect a “typical” observer to be such a fluctuation, rather than one of the ordinary observers (OOs) that arise through traditional thermodynamic evolution in the wake of a low-entropy Big Bang. We humans here on Earth have a strong belief that we are OOs, not BBs, so there is apparently something fishy about a cosmological model that predicts that almost all observers are BBs.
This mildly diverting observation becomes more pressing if we notice that the current best-fit model for cosmology – denoted ΛCDM, where Λ stands for the cosmological constant (vacuum energy) and CDM for “cold dark matter” – is arguably a theory that satisfies both conditions (1) and (2).
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It is therefore reasonable to worry that BBs will be produced in the eventual future, and dominate the number of intelligent observers in the universe. Note that this conclusion doesn’t involve speculative ideas such as eternal inflation, the cosmological multiverse, or the string theory landscape – it refers to ordinary ΛCDM, the best-fit model constructed by cosmologists to describe the universe we live in today.
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I will argue that cosmologies dominated by BBs should be rejected, not because I have empirical evidence that I am not one and I should be, but because such models are cognitively unstable.
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The best we can do is to decline to entertain the possibility that the universe is described by a cognitively unstable theory, by setting our prior for such a possibility to zero (or at least very close to it). That is what priors are all about: setting credences for models on the basis of how simple and reasonable they seem to be before we have collected any relevant data. It seems unreasonable to grant substantial credence to the prospect that we have no right to be granting substantial credence to anything. If we discover that a certain otherwise innocuous cosmological model doesn’t allow us to have a reasonable degree of confidence in science and the empirical method, it makes sense to reject that model, if only on pragmatic grounds. This includes theories in which the universe is dominated by Boltzmann Brains and other random fluctuations. It’s not that we’ve gathered evidence against such theories by noticing that we are not BBs; it’s that we should discard such theories from consideration even before we’ve looked.
Notice "two things". Equality deals with two things, identity only involves one thing. — Metaphysician Undercover
I think that is what bothered Wittgenstein about mathematics — Metaphysician Undercover
And to avoid the tedious repetition of these words: "is equal to" I will set as I do often in work use, a pair of parallels, or duplicate lines of one [the same] length, thus: =, because no 2 things can be more equal.
People can produce whatever axioms they like, but if they are not useful they will not be used, nor become conventional. — Metaphysician Undercover
Nah, it's a matter of my understanding of the strength of the evidence. — wonderer1
No. I am claiming 1-4 are insufficiently justified given the present state of scientific knowledge and my ability to distinguish well evidenced science from highly speculative science. — wonderer1
Yes, and as I've shown over and over again, that definition of "=" is not representative of how "=" is actually used in mathematics. Therefore it is a false definition, designed for some other purpose, foreign to mathematics. — Metaphysician Undercover
Those are the people who say "=" signifies identity in mathematics. They claim to be doing mathematics when they say that "1=1" means that what left 1 signifies is the same as what the right 1 signifies. But that's obviously not mathematics. In mathematics, the left side of the equation always signifies something different from the right side, or else the equation would be useless.
It's one thing for non-mathematicians, who don't know any better, to think that what they are doing is mathematics, when it's not. But it's truly shameful when mathematicians claim to be doing mathematics when what they are doing is not mathematical. As I explained already, that's how they come up with false axioms. — Metaphysician Undercover
Whether (1) is true is unknown. As far as I know, the universe as we know it might end with a false vacuum decay tomorrow. — wonderer1
It's hasn't been clear to me that when you say, "or our science is incorrect", that you recognize the relativity of incorrectness. — wonderer1
So, an argument from authority then? — Janus
Even worse, it seems that they are not really saying what you seem to want them to be saying. — Janus
It could be the weirdest and most embarrassing prediction in the history of cosmology, if not science.
If true, it would mean that you yourself reading this article are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than a person with a real past born through billions of years of evolution in an orderly star-spangled cosmos. Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions.
This bizarre picture is the outcome of a recent series of calculations that take some of the bedrock theories and discoveries of modern cosmology to the limit. Nobody in the field believes that this is the way things really work, however. And so in the last couple of years there has been a growing stream of debate and dueling papers, replete with references to such esoteric subjects as reincarnation, multiple universes and even the death of spacetime, as cosmologists try to square the predictions of their cherished theories with their convictions that we and the universe are real.
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Alan Guth, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who agrees this overabundance is absurd, pointed out that some calculations result in an infinite number of free-floating brains for every normal brain, making it “infinitely unlikely for us to be normal brains.” Welcome to what physicists call the Boltzmann brain problem, named after the 19th-century Austrian physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, who suggested the mechanism by which such fluctuations could happen in a gas or in the universe. Cosmologists also refer to them as “freaky observers,” in contrast to regular or “ordered” observers of the cosmos like ourselves. Cosmologists are desperate to eliminate these freaks from their theories, but so far they can’t even agree on how or even on whether they are making any progress.
In a single de Sitter universe with a cosmological constant, and starting from any finite spatial slice, the number of "normal" observers is finite and bounded by the heat death of the universe. If the universe lasts forever, the number of nucleated Boltzmann brains is, in most models, infinite; cosmologists such as Alan Guth worry that this would make it seem "infinitely unlikely for us to be normal brains". — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain#In_single-universe_scenarios
...and the longer you spend on this topic, the less likely it is that you are one of them. — Banno
