A true Boltzmann brain may have an illusion of the order in completely random observations. So the fact that my observations look ordered is not evidence that they are really ordered for me as BB. In short, we should nor believe BB’s thoughts. And thus I can’t disprove that I am BB just looking on my observation.
But your argument may still be valid. This is because evolving fluctuations may be more probable than momentary fluctuations. For example, imagine infinite universe filled with low concentration of gas. This gas can form a brain directly for a second, it will be BB. But this gas can also form large but fuzzy blob, which will then gravitationally collapse into a group of stars, some of them will have planets with life and such planets will produce many brains.
While mass of initial gas fluctuation is many orders of magnitude larger than one of the brain, it is less ordered and thus more probable. Thus normal worlds are more probable than BBs.
A true Boltzmann brain may have an illusion of the order in completely random observations.
Sure, like a random screen may happen to look like a natural picture. It’s just exponentially unlikely with picture size, whereas the scenario you suggest is indeed generic in producing brains that look like they evolved from simpler brains.
I meant not that ’random screen may happen to look like a natural picture”, but that BB will perceive random screen as if it has order, because BBs are more likely to make logical mistakes.
Inability to distinguish noice and patters is true only for BBs. If we are real humans, we can percieve noice as noice with high probability. But we don’t know if we are BB or real humans, and can’t use our observations about the randomness to solve this.
Momentary BB (the ones which exist just one observer-moment) has random thought structure, so it has no causal connection between its observations and thoughts. So even if it percieve noice and think noice, it is just a random coincidence.
However, there is a dust theory. It claims that random BBs can form chains in logical space. In that case, what is noice for one BB, can be “explained” in the next observer moment—for example random perception can be explained as static on my home TV. There is an article about about it https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.01826.pdf
A true Boltzmann brain may have an illusion of the order in completely random observations. So the fact that my observations look ordered is not evidence that they are really ordered for me as BB. In short, we should nor believe BB’s thoughts. And thus I can’t disprove that I am BB just looking on my observation.
But your argument may still be valid. This is because evolving fluctuations may be more probable than momentary fluctuations. For example, imagine infinite universe filled with low concentration of gas. This gas can form a brain directly for a second, it will be BB. But this gas can also form large but fuzzy blob, which will then gravitationally collapse into a group of stars, some of them will have planets with life and such planets will produce many brains.
While mass of initial gas fluctuation is many orders of magnitude larger than one of the brain, it is less ordered and thus more probable. Thus normal worlds are more probable than BBs.
Sure, like a random screen may happen to look like a natural picture. It’s just exponentially unlikely with picture size, whereas the scenario you suggest is indeed generic in producing brains that look like they evolved from simpler brains.
I meant not that ’random screen may happen to look like a natural picture”, but that BB will perceive random screen as if it has order, because BBs are more likely to make logical mistakes.
That’s an interesting loophole in my reasoning, thanks! But isn’t that in tension with the observation that we can perceive noise as noise?
(yes humans can find spurious patterns in noise, but they never go as far as mistaking white noise for natural pictures)
Inability to distinguish noice and patters is true only for BBs. If we are real humans, we can percieve noice as noice with high probability. But we don’t know if we are BB or real humans, and can’t use our observations about the randomness to solve this.
Yes, that’s the crux. In my view, we can reverse…
… as « Ability to perceive noise means we’re not BB (high probability). »
Can you tell more about why we can’t use our observation to solve this?
Momentary BB (the ones which exist just one observer-moment) has random thought structure, so it has no causal connection between its observations and thoughts. So even if it percieve noice and think noice, it is just a random coincidence.
However, there is a dust theory. It claims that random BBs can form chains in logical space. In that case, what is noice for one BB, can be “explained” in the next observer moment—for example random perception can be explained as static on my home TV. There is an article about about it https://arxiv.org/pdf/1712.01826.pdf
Thanks 👍
(noice seems to mean « nice », I assume you meant « noise »)